Needing to do something—anything—I left the house and headed to the garage and the prisoner caged there. The steel side door closed behind me, leaving me in the dim light that passed through the windows of the garage doors, windows that someone had covered with black paper secured with packing tape. I clomped across the concrete and flipped on the overhead fluorescents. The lights were blinding, and my well-aimed kick slammed into the silvered cage so hard, it scraped across the floor and bumped into the far wall. “Wake up, Francis!” I shouted. Adrundel rolled over and stared up at me, his eyes totally vamped and his fangs showing. He hissed. And lunged at me, talons reaching through the cage, the stink of burning rotten meat filling the garage.
“Sometimes when the poop hits the fan, we should block it and run,” I told him. “Sometimes we should haul off and knock it for a loop, back at the spinning blades. Wisdom is knowing two things. One is which time is which. The other is that no matter what you do, you’re gonna get crap on your hand.” I kicked the cage again, harder. The vamp inside lunged at me. And I laughed.
“Who is your blood-master? Is it Esther McTavish?” When Francis laughed at me, I kicked the cage again, and this time Adrundel was flung loose to bounce against the barbs of the cage. His blood stank of metal and rot and sickness, some of the scents almost buried beneath the stronger smell of fresh vamp blood. “Where does Esther lair? Give me a place, or you have no value to me alive.”
He growled at me and shivered, sticking his hands into the pockets of his ragged pants—the only article of clothing that was left to him. He looked cold and miserable in the unheated garage. His chest had healed, skin over concave ribcage, and I could see each breath he took and the irregular beating of a heart pulsing in the notch where the ribs came together. There was no carapace and no indication of new limbs. I’d have to remember to tell Soul when I got over my mad. I kicked the cage less violently, more to make my point. And I pulled a vamp-killer from a spine sheath. Francis Adrundel got a totally different look on his face.
“I wasn’t joking earlier about your head being worth forty K to me. Alive, you’re worthless.”
“Esther had a place she kept in town. One of those historical-society houses.”
Vivid joy shot through me, hot and vicious. I kicked the cage again and spun the knife so the reflective silver caught the light. “Healing from silver poisoning is a nifty talent, but it doesn’t help much when your head is disconnected from your body.”
“You are one crazy bitch.”
“I’ve been told that by better people than you,” I growled. “Address.”
“I don’t know. I didn’t care at the time.” I reared back and he quickly added, “But it was off of Orleans Street. I know that much. It had a tower on the front corner.”
I sheathed the knife and pivoted on my heel.
“I need blood. Human blood. I’m starving!”
I paused, thinking. “I’ll have more questions. When I ask them, if you answer sufficiently well, I’ll see about getting a blood-slave in here to feed you. Fame Vexatum.”
“I am a Naturaleza,” he said, nearly spitting the words.
“And that makes you a dead fanghead. Forty K, remember? Think about it.” I closed the door to the garage after me and went to Bitsa. Someone was sitting in a deck chair, positioned in front of my bike, holding a pocket knife, whittling. Whittling? I couldn’t remember seeing anyone whittle, not ever, except on TV reruns of Mayberry and in Western movies.
I cocked a hip. “Whadda you want?” I demanded.
Without looking up, Eli smiled, that tiny quirk of expression almost impossible to catch unless I was watching for it, and sliced a long, sharp sliver from the wood. It tumbled off his hands to the ground, joining dozens of others there. “I want you to chill, babe.”
“I am not your babe. And I’m plenty chilled.”
“You’re raging mad, worried about your old school friend, who you feel that you somehow failed way back when. You’re even more worried about the child upstairs, who may be dying of cancer. You’re upset because your boyfriend-who-isn’t is here and acting like an ass. You’re upset because a beautiful woman has a relationship with him when you don’t. And you haven’t been laid in ages.”
Laughter bubbled up in me at the final comment, and he glanced at me under lowered brows before returning to his work. Some of the tension eased out of me with my laughter, and when it had run its course, I said, “That is such a guy comment.”
“Yeah. It is. But it’s true. You’ve been depressed, impossible to live with for weeks. Now you’re here, finally doing something, and nothing is going right. And then Rick shows up. And his Soul. And you get punchy mad. By the way, is our prisoner still alive?” Another curl of wood hit the ground.
“Marginally. If undead is actually considered alive.”
He gave me that twitchy smile. “So. You need to hit someone? Spar a bit?”
I blew out the rest of my irritation. “Thanks. Yeah. Maybe later. Right now, I need to check out an address our prisoner gave me. “You want to ride shotgun?”
“Thought you’d never ask.” He closed the knife and rose to his feet in a single fluid motion and looked me over. “That all you’re wearing?”
I knew he was talking about my lack of firepower, and I grimaced. “No. Guess not.”
“Pissed off is not the same as well armed,” he agreed, leading the way into the house.
“I’ll remember that.”
• • •
Minutes later we were pulling into town in the SUV, and shortly after that we were on Orleans Street, looking down cross streets. It took a while, like, maybe half an hour, before we had narrowed the houses down to the most likely. Natchez had several houses with what might have been classed as towers on them. We parked on the street and made our way to the door.
I smelled vamp and blood and put a hand on Eli’s arm to stop him. I opened my mouth and drew in air over my tongue as Beast might have done, smelling, identifying, and classifying the various scents. Eli watched me and the street and the house all at once, a gun in each hand, but hidden out of sight behind his leg and behind my back. “Blood-servants, too many to count, have been in and out of this house. Vamps too. But mostly we have something dead inside. I think several somethings.”
“Recently dead? Human dead? How many?”
“Yeah. More than one. We need to call your girlfriend.”
I drew a weapon as Eli holstered one of his and hit a single number. He had Sylvia Turpin on speed dial. Wasn’t that sweet? I didn’t say it, but it must have showed on my face, because Eli said, “Shut up.”
I laughed softly as he said, “Syl. We have a house in town with multiple DBs in it. I’d rather not call it in to the city LEOs, but we need to see it. We also have PsyLED in town, and we have not notified them. How do you want to handle it?”
I heard her say over the phone, “It’s never too soon to start campaigning. I’ll meet you there and call it in myself, if you don’t mind. I’ll call your PsyLED pals too. Address?” He gave it to her, and the sheriff signed off with the words, “I’m close. I’ll be there in twenty. Meanwhile, stay out of my crime scene.”
We sat parked in front of the old house until the sheriff’s car pulled in to the drive. Sylvia got out of her unit, looking trim and fit and—if Eli’s scent signature was anything to go by—incredibly sexy.
I got out, and we three met at the steps to the front door. “Eli. Yellowrock,” she said. “So how do you know we have DBs inside?”
“I can smell them,” I said.
“Dead dog? Dead cat?”
“Nope.”
I could see her thinking about calling the city cops for backup, but she decided not to.