Gee hesitated. Slowly he said, “We have a bargain, little goddess.”
Together, we went to the shelving that covered the weapons room and I tapped three times, waited, and tapped once. Tomorrow we’d have to change the knock code. Gee and I stood back as the shelves opened and Alex peeked out, his curls in high kink, his face ashen, a shotgun in a two-hand grip. His eyes swept the room, taking in the rev and its head. The head in my hand. He started laughing. It was mildly hysterical but at least it was laughter. “Kit,” Beast said, using my mouth.
Alex dropped the shotgun. Gee swiped it from the air before it hit the floor and discharged. Alex fell into my arms, pale and shaking, making the wreath clank against my weapons.
I said, “It’s okay. It’s okay.” I patted his shoulder awkwardly. “Gee is here to take care of you. He’ll see that the rev is taken away and Leo’s cleanup crew will take care of the rest. And I’ll get you some of Derek’s Tequila team.”
“Sure. Fine.” I heard him lick his lips, a dry, panicked sound. His heart was racing against my chest. “I gotta say. I may move into Ed’s room. It’s the safest place in the house.”
I grinned. “Take that up with Edmund.”
“Yeah. Right.” He stepped away. “Thanks for coming.”
I heard a vehicle door open as I touched his curls, stalked to the front door, and opened it. Nearly took a foot in my face where it was about to kick in the door. I caught the foot in midair—all those catlike reflexes—and held it high. Derek was balancing on his other foot, extended for the kick, able to stop momentum. It wasn’t something he’d been able to do back when he was just human. I wondered if he knew that. I grinned a feral cat-grin, all fangs, and said, “Awww. You were coming to save me.”
I dropped his boot and Derek shook his whole body. Battle energies flushed through his skin, unused and rancid to my expanded scent capabilities, his body full of vamp power and strength. His eyes rested on the head in my hands. “Alex?”
I let the snark flow out of me. “He’s okay. Thank you for coming.”
“Yeah. Well. I like the Kid.”
Meaning that if it had been me in trouble he wouldn’t have bothered. Check.
I shut the door in his face, went to the kitchen, and set the vamp head in the kitchen sink. Put the rev head beside it. Opened the fridge. Took out a Coke can and popped it with a single claw in the ring. I drained it, letting the sugar and the caffeine hit my system like a sweet, high-kicking brick. “Oh. Praise baby Jesus and dance on the head of a pin.” Before Alex could ask, I said, “One of my house mothers used to say that when she had her first sip of coffee in the mornings.” Alex had stopped laughing and now looked troubled. I lowered my head to him and asked, “What?”
“Am I gonna be in trouble with Leo?” He swept his arm to the blast damage on the wallboard, the blood splatter, the heads, and the bodies, one in my bedroom with a bloody mess and one in the living room with much less blood but a stink of decomp.
I chuckled and opened a Snickers bar. I tossed the entire bar in my oversized mouth and chewed, talking as I did. “Not a lick. You did good.”
“I may have nightmares. I may be having one now,” he confessed. “And Jane? You look really weird in that form. Especially with chocolate in your teeth.”
“Uh-huh.” I told him about the blood on the Son of Darkness and my theories about the attack on HQ and finished with, “What else you got on the Big Bad Uglies?”
I heard a ding and Alex pulled a small tablet from his pocket, scanning and swiping the screen. Excitement began to overwrite the stink of fear in his pores. “Oh yeah,” he mumbled. “That’s good intel. Especially with this.” He waggled the screen in front of my face. “The old vamps don’t seem to understand modern tech. It’s like following footprints in the snow.” He gestured me to his table-desk in the living room, which, semimiraculously, was still upright. He opened a laptop-tablet and transferred the info from his small tablet to the larger one. “I tracked the ones who took Grégoire on traffic cams and the private security cams I had already acquired.” Acquired. That was a hacker term for hacked. “I know where Grégoire is,” he finished.
My adrenaline pumped hard. “And?”
“You sound like a cat trying to talk.”
I grinned around my fangs and popped in another Snickers. He had a point.
“He’s currently in the Garden District. Specifically at Arceneau Clan Home. The security system just went down, which means that Grégoire gave up the codes. Better hurry. I already called Bruiser to pick you up.” Lights lit up outside, a car pulling into the slot next to the SUV I sorta stole. I pocketed the .380 and grabbed a heavy gobag with better gear and clothes and a nice fluffy towel. The bag was waterproof, thank God. I stomped into the blasting rain.
I opened the SUV door, threw my bag into the floor, and climbed in, wet leathers and leather seat meeting with a grinding squeak. “Hey, gorgeous,” Bruiser said. And though I looked like the love child of a wet cat and the creature from Swamp Thing, I knew he was serious. He thought I was pretty no matter what I looked like. That alone melted my heart. Bruiser pulled away from the curb and I stared out the window, not wanting him to see what his words did to me.
? ? ?
It was still an hour before dawn when we parked down from Arceneau Clan Home. The house was standing open, the door wide and the house seemingly dark inside. Bruiser and I both pulled weapons. I chose the Benelli M4 and silver fléchette ammo, which had been in the huge gear bag. The combat shotgun could fire seven three-inch shells before I had to reload. It also could also accommodate my bigger hands and knuckles. Bruiser chose two long swords and two .45s with silver-lead ammo. He was going with the big guns.
Silently, we moved through the rain and the dark up to the front door. I stopped him with a raised hand and stepped in first, sniffing for explosives. Instead I smelled Brandon and Brian and Grégoire, but their scents were fading. Grégoire’s captors had brought him here to get something, and it had to be something that would affect the EV’s takeover of New Orleans. But Grégoire was gone. The twins had arrived only moments too late, if my nose was telling me things as it should. Overriding all of them, I smelled unknown vamps. Strangers. Were the Deadly Duo here? Did we have them cornered?
I held up three fingers and mouthed to my honeybunch, Brandon, Brian, Grégoire, gone. I pointed out the door, then held up two fingers. Two unsub-vamps. Some humans. Maybe four. I pointed to the kitchen at the back of the house. Bruiser nodded. Started inside. Stopped when a door opened and closed, unseen, the sound hollow.