I dropped his boot and Derek shook his whole body. Battle energies flushed through his skin, unused and rancid to my expanded scent capabilities, his body full of vamp power and strength. His eyes rested on the head in my hands. “Alex?”

I let the snark flow out of me. “He’s okay. Thank you for coming.”

“Yeah. Well. I like the Kid.”

Meaning that if it had been me in trouble he wouldn’t have bothered. Check.

I shut the door in his face, went to the kitchen, and set the vamp head in the kitchen sink. Put the rev head beside it. Opened the fridge. Took out a Coke can and popped it with a single claw in the ring. I drained it, letting the sugar and the caffeine hit my system like a sweet, high-kicking brick. “Oh. Praise baby Jesus and dance on the head of a pin.” Before Alex could ask, I said, “One of my house mothers used to say that when she had her first sip of coffee in the mornings.” Alex had stopped laughing and now looked troubled. I lowered my head to him and asked, “What?”

“Am I gonna be in trouble with Leo?” He swept his arm to the blast damage on the wallboard, the blood splatter, the heads, and the bodies, one in my bedroom with a bloody mess and one in the living room with much less blood but a stink of decomp.

I chuckled and opened a Snickers bar. I tossed the entire bar in my oversized mouth and chewed, talking as I did. “Not a lick. You did good.”

“I may have nightmares. I may be having one now,” he confessed. “And Jane? You look really weird in that form. Especially with chocolate in your teeth.”

“Uh-huh.” I told him about the blood on the Son of Darkness and my theories about the attack on HQ and finished with, “What else you got on the Big Bad Uglies?”

I heard a ding and Alex pulled a small tablet from his pocket, scanning and swiping the screen. Excitement began to overwrite the stink of fear in his pores. “Oh yeah,” he mumbled. “That’s good intel. Especially with this.” He waggled the screen in front of my face. “The old vamps don’t seem to understand modern tech. It’s like following footprints in the snow.” He gestured me to his table-desk in the living room, which, semimiraculously, was still upright. He opened a laptop-tablet and transferred the info from his small tablet to the larger one. “I tracked the ones who took Grégoire on traffic cams and the private security cams I had already acquired.” Acquired. That was a hacker term for hacked. “I know where Grégoire is,” he finished.

My adrenaline pumped hard. “And?”

“You sound like a cat trying to talk.”

I grinned around my fangs and popped in another Snickers. He had a point.

“He’s currently in the Garden District. Specifically at Arceneau Clan Home. The security system just went down, which means that Grégoire gave up the codes. Better hurry. I already called Bruiser to pick you up.” Lights lit up outside, a car pulling into the slot next to the SUV I sorta stole. I pocketed the .380 and grabbed a heavy gobag with better gear and clothes and a nice fluffy towel. The bag was waterproof, thank God. I stomped into the blasting rain.

I opened the SUV door, threw my bag into the floor, and climbed in, wet leathers and leather seat meeting with a grinding squeak. “Hey, gorgeous,” Bruiser said. And though I looked like the love child of a wet cat and the creature from Swamp Thing, I knew he was serious. He thought I was pretty no matter what I looked like. That alone melted my heart. Bruiser pulled away from the curb and I stared out the window, not wanting him to see what his words did to me.

• • •

It was still an hour before dawn when we parked down from Arceneau Clan Home. The house was standing open, the door wide and the house seemingly dark inside. Bruiser and I both pulled weapons. I chose the Benelli M4 and silver fléchette ammo, which had been in the huge gear bag. The combat shotgun could fire seven three-inch shells before I had to reload. It also could also accommodate my bigger hands and knuckles. Bruiser chose two long swords and two .45s with silver-lead ammo. He was going with the big guns.

Silently, we moved through the rain and the dark up to the front door. I stopped him with a raised hand and stepped in first, sniffing for explosives. Instead I smelled Brandon and Brian and Grégoire, but their scents were fading. Grégoire’s captors had brought him here to get something, and it had to be something that would affect the EV’s takeover of New Orleans. But Grégoire was gone. The twins had arrived only moments too late, if my nose was telling me things as it should. Overriding all of them, I smelled unknown vamps. Strangers. Were the Deadly Duo here? Did we have them cornered?

I held up three fingers and mouthed to my honeybunch, Brandon, Brian, Grégoire, gone. I pointed out the door, then held up two fingers. Two unsub-vamps. Some humans. Maybe four. I pointed to the kitchen at the back of the house. Bruiser nodded. Started inside. Stopped when a door opened and closed, unseen, the sound hollow.

A muffled scream sounded in the instant the door was open. A wind whooshed through. I caught a whiff of burning human flesh and terror and bowels and urine. Bruiser took an uneasy breath. Glanced at me in warning and question. I gave him a quick nod to show I smelled it too. But no one moved this way when the door closed. We slid into shadow.

Using standard paramilitary urban-operations, conceal-and-clear techniques, we slid from shadow to shadow and room to room, clearing each, moving faster than human, but still silent and far too slow. The sound of muffled screaming grew strong, but despite my instincts, I didn’t rush back, not until I knew we would be safe. No point in giving them more people to hurt, whoever they were.

The place was deserted. No people, no furniture. No furnishings at all. Walls were cut, broken, shot up. Blood was everywhere. I didn’t know whose.

Grégoire had gotten his people out. Grégoire’s primo, Dominique, and Shaun Mac Lochlainn, her anamchara, were in Atlanta, with Del, Leo’s primo and his lawyer, Del flying back and forth as needed to deal with Leo’s legal needs in New Orleans and cleaning up the legal and physical mess that existed in Atlanta since Leo had defeated the Blood Master of Georgia. Grégoire’s scions and blood-servants had been with him at HQ. He might have been a quivering ball of terror at the thought of Le Bâtard being in New Orleans, but he had still been thinking. Until he was taken.

We moved quickly to the back of the house and met at the kitchen door. A woman’s voice carried through the door, smooth, velvet tones, accented, perhaps Greek. But definitely European. “Where are the Onorios Brian and Brandon Robere?” she asked. A muffled scream followed. Grunting. Then again, soft and pleasant, the woman asked, “Where are the Onorios Brian and Brandon Robere?” There was no mention of Grégoire. They had him already. The victim, clearly being tortured, screamed again. Through the door we heard, “I shall remove the choke gag from you and you will answer me, every question, this time. And then I will kill you quickly. If I sense prevarication, I will replace the choke and proceed as I have until now. Nod if you understand. Good boy.”

Bruiser looked at me and his face was both intent and weirdly happy. He leaned in and whispered, “Six against two. No place I’d rather be. No one I’d rather be with. Not in all of my long years.”

My heart did a little somersault and pirouette. Bruiser kicked in the door.

CHAPTER 14

If It’s Ass You Want . . .

Time sped up with battlefield awareness. I took in the upscale kitchen in an instant. The kitchen stovetop burners were on, gas flames a bright, too-hot blue. Knives glowed red in the flames. Two foreign vamps and six unknown blood-servants. Another blood-servant was stretched out over the island, face up, arms and legs cinched back. Naked. Exposed. Torso and thighs burned where he’d been tortured.

Before I could blink, the vamps whirled and drew swords. Bruiser fired twice, fast, two-tapping the vamp closest to the tortured human. The other vamp popped toward Bruiser. The blood-servants swept toward me like a wave of death, blades in every hand. I braced the Benelli against my shoulder, aimed at the first human, midcenter, fired, the shot pattern tight and deadly. She fell. All sound blasted away by the shot. We had miscounted at four humans.

The others spread out, moving so fast I could barely follow, humans hyped up on vamp blood. I fired again, missing, wasting my expensive ammo on humans.