“I’ll take the front, through Katie’s and out to the street,” he said into my ears. He looked at Troll, taking in the broad shoulders and huge chest. “Think you can boost Janie up to the window when I give the word?”

“Piece of cake.” To me, Troll said, “You find who took my Katie and you put a hole in him for me.”

I nodded and sheathed my weapons. I’d need hands free to climb through a high window. I just hoped they weren’t still there waiting in ambush. At that thought, I said, “Eli, take Brute with you. See if he smells them leaving through another door.”

Brute woofed and raced to the house, Eli hot on his tail. Literally. Which made me smile as much as I could, knowing that the Master of the City and his heir had disappeared on my watch and under my nose.

Troll stood bent-kneed, about five feet away from the wall of the neighboring house, and linked his meaty fingers together to made a basket of his hands. I gauged the distance from his hands to the window and backed up fifteen feet. Drawing on Beast’s strength, I raced toward Troll and leaped, landing with my right foot in his hands. I pushed off and up as Troll straightened his knees and simultaneously raised his arms, pushing, shoving, lifting, throwing me high, like a gymnast. I shot up and over at the window, meeting the window sash at waist level, my hands thrusting down, using the momentum to lift my legs up. I caught my balance and paused on the sash, hands and feet all together, the way a cat might stand on a narrow ledge or tree limb.

“Janie,” I heard softly below me.

Before answering, I inspected the room inside, dark and shadowed. There was no one there, but the smell of fresh vamp and human blood hung thick on the air, mixing with the scents of glue, putty, wallboard, wood, and human sweat. If there was an intruder inside, one who had a better-than-human sense of smell, he or she would know I was coming.

“Janie,” Troll called again.

“What,” I hissed over a shoulder.

“Your feet are muddy. And bare. And the window’s broken.”

“I noticed,” I said dryly.

“Be careful,” he said. “And bring my Katie back.” Vamps and their humans were big on terms of possession, but there was something tender and yearning and frightened in his voice. I so totally did not want to know about his relationship with Katie, but there was no doubt that he loved her.

On a silent breath I said, softly, “Working on it, Troll. Working on it.” Then I let myself drop to the floor of the dark room, drawing my weapons, my feet on carpet and shards of glass. My weight drove the glass into my soles and I hissed at the pain of sliced flesh. I took a second step inside, trying to avoid the glass, but a needle of antique window pierced my instep. Beast, responding to the danger to my feet, dropped us into the gray place of the change and my legs morphed from the knees down. I held in a scream of pain as my bones cracked and shrank and then expanded into the half-human, half-puma, big-cat form of paw. When she was finished, I had bitten through my tongue, adding the smell of my blood to the stench of the house. I gasped when the bone pain eased and shook the glass off my hard paw pads.

The gasp drew air into my mouth, and the scent and stink of humans and freshly spilled blood filled my head. Blood-servants, several of them, had entered here earlier today. Peregrinus’ men and women. The construction guys had disturbed them in the attic and died for their trouble.

Silently, I crossed the room, into the dark.

CHAPTER 19

Someone Fired. They Fought Back.

The house beside Katie’s was empty except for two dead workers in the attic hallway and a dead contractor on the first floor. They had died fast and recently, their blood still liquid and running into the corners of the uneven floors, soaking into the plaster and through the cracks, pulled by gravity into the nether regions of the house. The construction van they had driven in was gone, a quick and easy way to move two injured vamps through New Orleans’ unique, aging, repair-requiring architecture. No one would notice a panel van sporting a construction company logo.

The only positive thing we found in the house next to Katie’s was Derek, bleeding and beaten, slumped under the eaves where he had hidden himself after getting away from Peregrinus. The marine groaned a bit and moved a lot more slowly, but he was with us mentally, once Soul rested her hands on his shoulders. I wasn’t sure what she did, but it looked a lot like healing. At the very least, she made him feel better.

The crime scene went to Soul. She would rather have been looking for the hatchling, but with the deaths, she had no choice. The special agent with PsyLED took the scene over with controlled and ruthless efficiency, calling her up-line boss, calling local contacts, starting with Jodi, and then working her way down the list to all the other agencies and people she needed to contact for a vamp-on-human murder investigation. She didn’t have to tell me this had FUBAR written all over it, and that I was the one who would get stuck in the middle of the mess if I was here.

I didn’t stick around to see who all showed up. Eli, Derek, Brute, and I left on foot, Brute in the lead, off leash, and we ran hard to keep up as he followed the scent of Katie and Leo, Peregrinus and the Devil, following the scents of danger, discord, and blood through the night. He kept his nose in the air, tracking the van’s trail through French Quarter streets. We ran across the Quarter and right back to vamp HQ. As we rounded the corner, the lights in that part of the Quarter went out, for at least four blocks, leaving a black hole in the night.

I dialed Bruiser as we ran, just in case he was conscious again, but the call went to voice mail. I left a message. “Up and at ’em, Onorio. HQ has been hit.”

•   •   •

The two-thousand-pound gate—the one that was designed to stop a dump truck filled with explosives—was bowed in and had bounced off its roller track, damaged beyond repair. We stood in front of it, huffing and panting, taking it all in. Eli swung a low-light ocular over one eye and scanned the grounds. “Nothing. No one. Up the front or split up and take the back too?”

“I’m heading to the side entrance,” Derek said, “to get my men organized.” The side entrance was hidden in the brick wall and opened into Leo’s office.

I nodded to him. “Be careful.” To Eli, I said, “We stick together.” We raced in a zigzag pattern across the unlit, unmanned, circular drive and headed for the stairs to the entrance. Three steps up, the night exploded in a blinding light. Several things happened all at once. Brute yelped. We ducked to either side of the stairs, arms up to guard our faces. Eli cursed and yanked the ocular from his eye, temporarily blinded. But there was no explosion, no shrapnel, nothing to explain the agonizing light, until it dimmed from excruciating, to merely painful, to a coruscating, scintillating brilliance. And then to darkness.