Dawn was approaching when a minor vamp walked up to me and handed me a box. It was plain, white, no tape, no bow, so it wasn’t a present. “From your primo, Edmund Hartley. With his compliments. He said to tell you that disturbing the priestesses was not necessary. His exact words were, ‘Brawn and bullets beat magic.’”

I let a corner of my mouth curl up, wondering if he had shot Adrianna to get the bracelet off her. Not asking, but still curious. I opened the box and inside was a gold snake, the one from Adriana’s arm. And she had put up a fight getting it removed, if the blood on it was an indication. I sniffed the blood. The crazy woman’s, all right. I rubbed my fingers over the gold, which was slick and shiny and slightly warm to the touch.

“Legs?”

I looked up. “Oh. Hey, Wrassler. ’Sup.”

“I’ve been standing here for a good thirty seconds, talking to you.”

Eli was watching me with narrowed eyes. Not concerned, exactly, but piercingly interested.

I raised the snake to Wrassler and asked, “Does this feel wrong to you?”

Wrassler was a seriously big man, like World Wrestling Entertainment big, and though he’d lost a leg and full use of one arm, he still fit the size ratio. Even more since he muscled up after the injury. He was big and bald and my friend. He took the snake and handed it back, fast. “It’s spelled. Something dark.”

I held the snake, drawing on Beast vision. Something dark, like a fog of moisture, wrapped around my fingers. I hadn’t noticed that about the bracelet until now. The dark shadow was in the shape of a snake. The snake in the center of all things was what skinwalkers used to shape-shift. What if it was magic that worked contrary to my own? What if someone had given it to Adrianna knowing that I’d take it? I was full of conspiracy theories lately, but vamps lived for that stuff. I had no desire for anything dark magic in my life. I frowned at the snake. “You got a big hammer?”

“There’s a maul in the tool shed out back. You want me to beat it out of shape, Enforcer?” He used the last word to remind me that because I was one of Leo’s Enforcers, what I wanted had significance and weight, but I had to formulate a request into a specific order.

“Yes. Beat it out of shape. Then take it somewhere and have it melted down. Then give it to the witch coven and have them Break it. Charge the spell-cost to Leo.” Break was a magical working to stop and destroy another magical working. I put the snake back in the box and instantly felt better. The box, though plain, was an anti-magic box. Cool. And yeah. The magic in the snake was of an attack variety, going after my own, maybe striking anyone’s magic. “Once it’s broken, bring it back to me.”

“For the Enforcer.” It sounded formulaic.

I figured that was agreement, and I gave him the box. “Thanks, Wrassler. How’s the dating life?”

The big guy took the chair beside me. It creaked under his weight. “I never thanked you for setting me up with Jodi.”

“I didn’t set you up.”

Wrassler scuffed a palm and sausagelike fingers over his bald pate. “Potayto, potahto. I’m crazy about that girl.”

“I’m glad.” And I was. Jodi was a cop, a successful woman in a man’s world, but she had been lonely. So had Wrassler. They had thrown mournful, meaningful, lovesick glances at each other for months. They were perfect together.

“I’m gonna propose.”

My happy romance-is-everything thought pattern crashed and burned. Jodi would have a conflict of interest if she married a blood-servant of the Master of the City. She would not be allowed to maintain her command of the woo-woo department of NOPD. She would be demoted, pushed aside until she was totally ostracized and powerless. And she would never leave the force. And Wrassler would never leave Leo. Jodi was totally human. Wrassler was a blood-servant and would live for a couple hundred years. This looked like a disaster waiting to happen. I hadn’t thought this through. “Uhhh.”

“I got the ring.” Wrassler was holding out a small, black velvet jewelry box. He opened it with a thumb. Inside was a yellow gold ring with three diamonds the size of pencil erasers. I knew next to nothing about diamonds, and even I knew they were flawless. Nothing else flashed like that. Wrassler stood, pocketing the velvet box. “Just so you know.” He walked away, the snake box in his other hand.

Lightning struck down. The Gray Between opened around me. Time skidded, twisted, started, and stopped. In the nonmoments that took place, I caught a glimpse of the security system at my side. The lights, which should have been green or blinking green, all went red.

The lightning was shorting out the system. I turned in my chair and saw the snake box in Wrassler’s hand. It was shining red, a line of red light, rippling like lightning coming from the front doors, crackling, hitting the snake, and then shooting through the floor. And down.

Toward the Son of Darkness.

CHAPTER 13

Landing with a Thump on the Polar Bear Rug

I spun up and into a sprint. Almost reached the main elevator before I realized it would never open for me, not in no-time, even if the cops and crime scene techs hadn’t commandeered it. I whirled and raced for the stairs. Shoving the door open took effort and muscles strained to the limit. I dodged people on the stairs, more people than usual, thanks to the main elevator and half of HQ being off limits.

I took stairs, then hallways, then more stairs. It had taken weeks to map all the no-longer-secret passageways and stairways in the joint, and I was sure we had missed some. The architect had both a funny sense of humor and a good idea about hidey spots and ambush locations. I wound down and down. Past sub-four, where fanghead prisoners, like Adrianna, were kept, and into the lowest sub-basement, sub-five.

It was cold and dank and wet down here. The walls were spelled to keep out the water that would have otherwise dripped in and filled the place, thanks to the high water table in New Orleans. It was so wet right now that the whole place would be a swimming pool in minutes if the working failed. There was a faint hint of mold. A stronger tang of blood. And the reek of unwashed vamp. The Son of Darkness hung on the wall, still wearing the blood- and filth-encrusted clothing he’d worn when I had taken him down. The serial killer was still pulp and goo but was mostly human-shaped now, his long bones nearly back in place, his facial structure beginning to look normal. But his body was surrounded by a nimbus of red, a glow just like the one on the snake box. “Bingo,” I said.

Time spat and shook through me and returned to normal. I watched carefully and the magics vanished. If I hadn’t been using Beast-sight and my own skinwalker abilities, I’d never have seen it at all.

“Joses, son of Judas Iscariot,” I said, pronouncing it Yo-sace, son of Ioudas Issachar, as he had himself two thousand years ago, when he and his brother took the crosses of Golgotha and tried to bring their father, Judas, the betrayer, back to life. “Joseph Santana.”

He didn’t move. He didn’t breathe. His heart—not that he had one anymore, since I’d ripped it out of his chest—didn’t beat. I had no idea how he was healing except that his body might truly be immortal. Even without a heart, which I had given to the witches. I needed to call Jodi and see if the heart was still fresh and healthy. If the heart hadn’t begun decomp, that meant that I could take the SOD’s head and the pieces would still live. Which would be freaky.

I thought about the smell of the blood in the blood bottle. And the pink thread on the dog-fanged revenants. Someone had used immortal blood on the head and neck of the dead vamps when they were reassembled for funerals. And they healed. Sort of. Enough to come out of the graves when called. That was why so many were buried in human graveyards and not in the vamp cemetery on the far side of the Mississippi River with the other vamps.

If a sleeper agent had gotten some of that blood to the SOD at any point in the last months, that might be why the Son of Darkness was healing. Callan. Fernand. Amitee. Any of them might have gotten down here. I leaned and sniffed. Caught the stench of the mixed blood from the blood bottle. It still smelled fresh, which never happened with vamp blood until now. I traced the scent with my nose. It had been sprinkled all over the SOD.

This. This was why they had attacked HQ. To get down to sub-five and put blood on the heartless bag of bones.