Outside a car flashed its lights. The limo, idling. A horn blew from down the street. Then two more. Then longer and more strident.

My door opened and Bruiser walked out, his boots silent on the wood flooring. He crossed the space to me, encircled my waist with one arm, and yanked me to him. He kissed me. Hard. Demanding. Plundering. He bent me back. A tango dance move that put all the important parts in very, very close proximity. Heat blossomed through me like bombs going off. And I had no doubt that if we didn’t have an emergency, we’d be in my bed right now.

I gripped his shoulders and kissed him back. And again my throat made that sound, that almost-moan that I couldn’t keep silent.

Bruiser broke away but held me bent over, all my weight on his one arm. “I know,” he said to the others, his eyes spearing me. “Get a room.” He whirled me upright and opened the door. Strode out into the dark and the rain. Eli cursed and followed.

I followed too, but quite happily. Now I knew what other women meant when they said a kiss left them floating. I was sure my boot soles were landing about six inches off the ground. I slid inside the limo, the door closed, and Shemmy sped off, me holding on to the emergency strap.

• • •

We reached St. Louis Cemetery Number One just as darkest night fell and the heavens opened up again. We got out at the corner of St. Louis and Basin Streets and raced to the nearest entrance. The deluge was stunning, the water beating down on us heavy and pounding. It already stood an inch on the sidewalks, falling too fast to run off.

Metal screeched and clanged—old iron being wrenched and torn. A gate flew at us and we all ducked. The revenant walked out of the entrance, holding something. A human leg, which he lifted and started eating. Lightning flashed and boomed, close by, thunder rolling. But my energies stayed put, stable. Beast shoved her way to the forefront of my brain, her vision turning the world silver and gray and sharp green.

Bruiser pulled his sword and took off the revenant’s head in one clean sweep. He was good. He had been Leo’s Enforcer once and he had over a hundred years to master La Destreza. The revenant fell and Bruiser kicked the parts in different directions, striding into the unlit cemetery. I didn’t know if it was always unlighted or if the storm had put the electricity out in a different part of the city. But watching him move through the rain in wet-streaked leathers was an erotic exercise all on its own. Holy crap.

St. Louis Cemetery was the oldest in New Orleans, containing the first bodies laid to rest in the 1700s, all aboveground. Statues adorned many of the mausoleums. Angels and crosses were everywhere. Stone children. The savior with arms outstretched, Jesus on the cross, the statue defaced, his legs broken off. Iron gates keeping back the riffraff from the tombs of the wealthy, vault doors bricked and cemented over. Carrara marble. Plaster. One tomb painted blue. Xs in red paint on others.

Red flowers spun into the air, lifted by a sudden wind, and then were knocked to the ground. It was gusting and frigid, forcing the rain beneath my collar to stream down my spine. Palm trees lashed the night, branches flying.

The voodoo priestess Marie Laveau was reputed to be buried in the cemetery, but really, who would know if she had even died. I had never asked if she had been turned, taken another name, and lived as a vamp today. It was possible.

Over the smell of the rain, I caught the scent of fresh human blood and bowels released. Vomit and urine. The sharp tang of fear and despair. And the older stink of revenant. I pulled my vamp-killers, turning my head at each small space between mausoleums, waiting for attack.

Bruiser turned down an . . . aisle? Walkway? Eli and I followed. And we found them. Beer bottles were everywhere. A lantern that could survive the deluge cast soft light. Illuminating three revenants, feasting on humans. At least two victims, by the number of heads, but there were five legs, so that was wasn’t anything to go on.

They looked up at our appearance, dropped dinner, and dove at us. These had feasted well and they were fast, nearly as fast as a normal fanghead. I whipped the vamp-killers in a scissors move and took out the one near me, cutting her in two. Bruiser took out the man with a clean beheading. The first two crumpled, dead again.

Eli hesitated as a child dove at him. Fangs flashing. Eyes empty and wild. A child vamp. She couldn’t have been more than twelve. He hesitated. Bruiser stepped in and took her head.

The act was necessary. Completely essential. Yet the ease with which Bruiser moved shocked me. There was no hesitation. Just a fluidity of motion that was like death on the wing.

Eli’s mouth opened as the child’s head flew and spun into a puddle. He got a strange look on his face, as if he’d seen a ghost. Or was reliving something from his past. Yes. That. He stood, there, frozen, weapons down. Vulnerable. I knew, through personal experience, that being taken to water this morning had brought him closer to his past, his memories, his own private hells, the ones he’d lived through courtesy of Uncle Sam. And they had risen up and attacked him all at once.

Bruiser gripped his own bloodied blades in one large fist and grabbed Eli’s jacket. Rain slicked his face as he shouted over the downpour, “Not a child. She looked like a child, but she wasn’t. Her name was Joan Bennett and she stood only four feet nine. She was staked and beheaded in nineteen forty-three for killing two humans.” He shook Eli. “Not. A. Child.”

Eli focused on Bruiser. Took Bruiser’s hand in his and pushed it away. But he wasn’t back yet. He was somewhere else, someone else. Emotions locked down. Feeling nothing. Remembering everything. It was the first time I’d seen evidence of the PTSD symptoms that probably helped end his career in the Rangers. I didn’t know what to do to help.

“She had her head back,” I said to Bruiser over the downpour.

“All of them do, and all were beheaded at their deaths,” Bruiser said, his tone grim. “We have to—”

A gust of icy wind blew the lantern over with a clatter. Battered us. Sudden dark enveloped us and I pulled hard on Beast’s night vision. Inside me she growled low. I stumbled against the wind, a howling banshee, and regained my footing. The rain, which had come in waves all day, again pounded down so hard it threw up a white mist as the droplets shattered on impact.

Over it were strange scraping sounds, like flesh against stone. Revenants poured out of the cracks and crannies and rushed down the walkways. Blind eyes zeroed in on us. Seven revs. Bruiser stepped close, placing Eli between us, his back to me. I turned and faced away too, my partner in a safe place until he got his head together. Revs weren’t built for wind. Three slipped and I dispatched two of them. Bruiser took a third one.

They were on us. I stabbed and cut, but they were too close. I tried to pull on the Gray Between, but I couldn’t find it, the place I reached for inside myself empty. And for the first time today, there was no lightning. No way to take them down from outside of time. I stabbed and cut, stabbed and cut. It wasn’t enough.

One latched on to my elbow, getting a mouthful of armor and silver. She wasn’t deterred. Her mouth smoked. The stink of burning vamp rose against the beating rain. I dropped my longer blades and drew the short ones. Stabbing, aiming at heads, cutting across eyes. The female on my elbow pulled me down. I landed on one knee, feeling something wrench. This was going to end badly unless Eli got himself together. Beast screamed in rage, the sound tearing my throat.

I smelled Edmund.

CHAPTER 10

Their Heads Should Loll Over and Bounce as They Walk

Long blades flashed. Edmund took down three vamps, moving so fast and lithe it was like watching water slide down a rock face. Bruiser matched his stance to Edmund’s and suddenly the revs were all down. We were standing in ankle-deep water and vamp entrails and remarkably little blood.

Edmund turned to me. “You will never leave me out of a fight, mistress. Do you understand?”

“You were hurt. You nearly died, you idiot.”

“I am well.”

“Yeah.” I raised my voice over an icy gust of wind that whistled through the mausoleums. “Who attacked you?”

Ed’s face twisted in something that might have been self-anger. Or indigestion. The words seemed to drag out of him when he said, “I do not know. I did not know the scent of their blood. I did not see their faces.”