I laughed, but it sounded odd, too deep, my Beast close to the surface. From overhead, in the second-floor hallway, I heard a thump and crash. Eli’s gun followed the sound, held close beneath his arm. But nothing came through the floor.

Since the AC was still on, that meant that the power was on, and with one hand, I found a light-switch panel containing eight switches and one of those round dimmer switches. “Lights,” I said, warning him. He flicked his goggles out of the way. I flipped all the switches and stabbed the dimmer. Lights came on everywhere. My eyes watered. Outside, I heard a pop of vamp movement and whirled. A flash of something pale showed in the now-illuminated courtyard, and I smelled the receding stink of burning vamp. Santana was taking off. Over the fence at speed.

The cops were pulling up out front. I wasn’t gonna get a chance to chase Santana down. But I did mark the direction of his exit by the smell and by a glimmer of light in the night. He was still burning, like the way human flesh burned when pure potassium got embedded in it. I was guessing that when he tore the sliver of the Blood Cross out of his neck, he didn’t get all the fire and now was being consumed by the flames of the Blood Cross. I couldn’t think of a better way for him to go, even if it meant war with the EVs.

From the other end of the house, I heard something crash. “Window,” Eli said. Outside there was a muted thump. The other vamp getting away; Dominique making a hasty exit.

I holstered the weapons and dialed Alex. Succinctly, I said, “Call the cops and Leo. We’re at Rousseau Clan Home. Cops are here. Santana got away. Dead vamps and drained humans. We need to be able to track Santana. We need medic for drained humans and vamps to heal any that might survive.”

“Copy. Eli?”

“We’re both good.”

The connection ended and moments later, cops rammed the Rousseau front door and the first wave poured into the house. We were standing with our weapons on the floor and with our hands high when the cops raced through the front of the house and into the long hallway. They scooped the weapons into the corner, put us in handcuffs, and shoved us to the floor, where we stayed. I got a good look at the front half of the L-shaped house; the back entrance to the hallway opened into a huge yellow kitchen with modern, fancy cabinetry, yellow- and brown-veined granite cabinet tops with lots of quartz and mica flakes inside that made them gleam in the lights. Beyond, I caught a glimpse of a living area with brown leather furniture, a luscious leather that screamed expensive. I could see a yellow silk rug beneath the furniture that probably went for forty thou, and crystal chandeliers overhead that were probably worth even more. The window treatments were full of tassels and drapes and swags and looked tacky to me, but I probably wasn’t cultured enough to appreciate them. The kitchen was spotless and the smell of Clorox flooded out, suggesting that Leo had—literally—cleaned house to remove any signs of the vamp war. And then Santana had shown up.

With a frisson of worry, I had to wonder if the nearly dead humans had been his cleanup crew.

We sat on the floor, silent and still, not answering questions, until a familiar figure appeared, wearing a fancy suit with prison tats below his sleeves, an incongruous mixture among the uniforms. The detective walked up, stopped, and stared down at us, his face expressionless but still oozing menace. I figured that was a skill he’d learned undercover in prison among gangs. There was still a price on his head set by the gangs, and the powers that be at NOPD didn’t know what to do with the hero cop, so they had dropped him into the basement with Jodi Richoux. “Sloan Rosen, as I live and breathe,” I said. “You do that whole ‘badass in a suit’ look well.”

Eli slanted me a glance. He didn’t know Sloan well, because the detective worked opposite shifts with Jodi in the woo-woo department. Eli’s glance said he’d sit silent unless called upon for more. I inclined my head a fraction, saying I got the message.

“You the ones who called in the medic?” Sloan asked, watching the byplay, his dark skin gleaming under the too-bright lights.

“Yeah,” I said. “Vamps drained some humans. We got two of the fangheads. Two got away.”

Sloan stepped to the vamp who had been chewed in two by the barrage of bullets. Then he looked over at the façade of the back half of the house, which was peppered with a lot of bullet holes. He toed the vamp. “Bit of overkill, don’tcha think?” Out in the courtyard, medical personnel were attending to the humans, separating them from a limp pile into individuals.

“No. She had been drinking on”—there was a microhesitation before I finished—“Joseph Santana, the vamp who killed the fifty-two humans. He’s the most powerful vamp I’ve ever encountered, and his blood gave her extra healing abilities. She didn’t go down and stay down. My partner had to put her down.”

Sloan stared at me, his eyes narrow. My hesitation had not gone unnoticed. Nor had the unnecessary info I’d offered to cover it up. “He one of the two who got away?”

“Yeah.”

“And you didn’t chase them?”

“Coulda tried. But we kinda had cops heading our way, aiming guns at us,” I said. “I didn’t want my partner to get shot. Is it okay to take off the cuffs? My fingers are falling asleep.”

Sloan thought about that for a while, chewing a toothpick, which I thought was a totally noir finishing touch, what with the suit and the tats. After making us wait long enough to bother normal humans, Sloan gestured to one of the three cops standing guard. The cops uncuffed us and stepped back, weapons still at the ready. Sloan gave us a “get up” gesture and we stood, shaking out our muscles. I said, “I called Mr. Pellissier to send over a vamp to feed the humans. Maybe we can save them.”

“They better not turn ’em,” one of the cops said. “’Cause the only good suckhead is a staked suckhead.”

The other cop laughed. “Yeah. Like these two. Good shooting, man,” he said to Eli. “Too bad you can’t take ’em all out.”

Sloan frowned. Vamp racism was rampant in large parts of the city, but the cops were usually better at keeping it hidden. The death of fifty-two humans by one vamp had brought a lot of the latent hatred and fear out in the open. I decided not to respond to the comments, and Eli followed my lead. Sloan gestured to the two cops, stepping out into the courtyard. The last cop looked no less friendly about vamps, but he also looked like the angry, silent type, a guy who had a hard-on for anything and everything that wasn’t like him—white, middle-aged, out of shape, and unhappy.