“Okay.” Eli opened the weapons room, studying his gear. The guys all followed him, the lure of toys too much to pass up. I stayed at my place, sipping tea, watching. Eli gave out communications gear consisting of earbuds and tiny mics, all attached to small boxes via curly wires that went down the back of the neck. The box went on a belt at the back. It wasn’t military or Secret Service quality, but it was okay. While they checked the devices, I took the new armor back to my room and gathered my weapons into a gear bag big enough to hold them and towels and a change of street clothes. I repacked my gobag and added three oversized plastic bags with zippered closures for wet gear.
I tried on the new armor. The two-piece armored uniform was unpleasant on my skin even with silk-knit long underwear. The magic was crackly-feeling, but it would breathe, it would shed water, it had built-in armor, it was spelled to resist attack spells, it was warm, and it was dry. Mostly that. I peeled it and the long underwear off, rolled them up together, and tossed them into the gobag. Once I stomped into the expandable boots made of similar water-wicking material, I reassessed my wardrobe looking for something eye-catching. I pulled on a dancing skirt and rolled the waistband down, making it into a short hoochie-coochie skirt; pulled on a thin top; then added a belt and a beat-up leather moto jacket. I looked at myself in a mirror. Only the boots were a practical fashion choice in the winter storm. The rest of me looked trashy, which was sorta the goal. Score! I smeared on scarlet lipstick, braided my hair, and went into the foyer, where I could hear the boys chatting about weapons and gear. No one gave a wolf whistle or made a comment about the outfit, though I had to admit their reticence might be due to the nine-mil I was carrying, and my glare.
The rain had eased and we headed out. I was almost in the SUV when I remembered one more important thing. I tossed the oversized gobag to Eli and raced back inside, where I grabbed the cooler from the laundry room. It was starting to stink, even with the excellent rubber seals. Two rotting vamp heads and a rotten rev head might come in handy. Who knew what the night would bring.
I stopped at the living room entrance, watching the Kid. “Your guards will be here in a bit. Keep the shotgun handy until they check in and prove to be ours.”
“Yes, Mooooom,” he said, without looking up. But there was a gun on the floor at his feet.
“While we’re gone see if you can find a link between Adrianna, Titus, Louis, Bethany, Katie, and Batard, or any combination of the above. Something that would tie them all together for hundreds of years.” I thought about the painting in Leo’s office. Yeah. There could be something in historical records.
Alex looked up at that one, his young face pulled tight in thought. “Adrianna is British. Maybe Celtic? The Romans conquered the British Isles before the first Mithran was created. If a Roman took servants and slaves back to Rome, Adrianna could have been one. Then when Titus came back from the holy lands a vamp, he might have bought her. Ended up with her somehow. Turned her himself?” He shrugged. “Too many variables.”
“She didn’t have Celtic or tribal tattoos that I noticed. But if you’re right, then that would make her as old as the priestesses. A first-or second-generation vamp.” I remembered the first time I saw her, as she attacked me at a party. Cold power had flowed from her like icy air from a glacier; her red hair, curly and wild, fanned out around her; and her blue eyes were not quite sane. Adrianna was powerful enough to be a master of a blood family, but in New Orleans she had only risen to the position of first scion of St. Martin. If she was a sleeper agent, planted in Clan Pellissier decades, even centuries before . . .
“And you killed her.” Alex’s eyes held mine. “And Immanuel.”
Both of us were thinking about how that might affect everything relating to all that was going on. None of it felt good. I’d been trying to kill Adrianna from the first moment I saw her. Now I had succeeded. And I had to wonder if I had messed up monumentally.
“I’ll see what I can find out,” he said into the silence. “You should take some of your magical stuff. Just in case. Lock it into the weapons cache in the back of the SUV.”
“Are you worried they’ll attack here and take it?”
“I’m worried that you need more weapons than we think. Take a few of them. Keep my brother alive.”
I stepped into my room and picked up le breloque. It vibrated against my fingertips as I slipped my arm through the circle to carry it. A shock of power rammed up my arm and I nearly dropped it. “Stop that!” I said to it.
Alex laughed in the other room. “You talking to inanimate objects?”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” I muttered, too low to hear. I left the small box of magical trinkets, except for the former blood diamond, now called the Glob, a weapon designed with my blood, body, lightning, and magic. A weapon I had no idea how to use. I wasn’t worried about it falling into the wrong hands. The only hands that could use it were mine. And I had a bad feeling that an angel had plans for it.
At the thought, my cell rang. Molly’s number. Molly, who should be at the bottom of a gorge with no cell reception, camping. I answered, knowing who it was, who it had to be. “Angie?”
“Aunt Jane. My angel is watching over you.”
My eyes teared up. I found it hard to speak for a moment. “Thank you, Angie Baby,” I managed. The call ended. I had a feeling that if I called back, the call wouldn’t go through, to the bottom of a gorge. I was pretty sure that Angie’s magic had made the call happen. I looked around the room for Hayyel, who wasn’t there. “Okay. I’ll take any help you might want to give.”
I carried out the cooler and the magical stuff. The former blood diamond I tucked into my gobag when I got to the SUV. The others went into the weapons cache as the Kid suggested. Ordered. Whatever. I did as I was told.
? ? ?
New Orleans was old. Like hundreds of years old, one of the first port cities, back when the land was colonial and run by the . . . European monarchs. Right. There were parts of New Orleans that had burned and not been restored, where buildings had been demolished or had fallen down and hadn’t been rebuilt. Other sections hadn’t been fully restored from Katrina. Still other areas had been upgraded and spiffed up to look pretty nifty. The Greenway fell into both categories. Currently, parts of it were muddy, weedy, eroded chunks of real estate, surrounded and segmented by walkways and ill-kept streets, sections of which hadn’t been paved since the days of the Kingfish, Huey Long, and his huge modernization and reform of Louisiana. Long had possibly been a demagogue, but he had built roads and bridges and infrastructure and he had believed in and worked for the people. Not much good had happened in the state since he was assassinated at age forty-two. The greenway upgrades were an attempt to correct that.