“Wall off Leo and Katie from the rest of the room,” I said to the vamps, “and then give Leo what support you can. If Katie wins, this night will be a bloodbath.”

“I like bloodbaths,” Dominique said. I didn’t want to inspect that line too closely, especially as her eyes were alight and she looked so cheerful all of a sudden. They all did. The smell of blood and fighting was like drugs to vamps.

Mac Lochlainn and his pals moved in front of us and started clearing a path between the fighting vamps and humans, some by asking, others, those too belligerent or out cold, by simply tossing. We moved forward with an awful efficiency. I heard bones break as the vamp warriors cleared the way. A lot of people were gonna be sore tomorrow. If they lived through the night.

Kabisa and Karimu, Arceneau’s soldier twins, worked to the side, holding off four wolves, using blades with ruthless efficiency. Sending the wolves yelping, bleeding, limping away, where “my guys” tranked them. They fell so fast that they maintained wolf form. Ooh rah.

I spotted Leo and Katie in a corner of the room, bodies wrapped around each other seemingly melded together. Fangs and claws were embedded in flesh and they held each other still, like two wrestlers, evenly matched. But Katie had her fangs in Leo’s throat and Leo had his buried just below Katie’s right collarbone. Not a good site for draining a victim.

Katie lifted a hand and smoothed Leo’s hair, like she might soothe a pet, her hand steady and controlling. I didn’t like that one bit. Leo was splashed with blood, his clothes ripped and showing pale skin. Very pale skin. Katie was harder to judge under the garish blood-based body makeup, but I was thinking she had a well-fed, rosy hue.

“Dominique, how do we separate them when we get there?”

The blond woman turned to me, blood on her chin. Surprised, she said, “We feed him.”

“Ah. Right.”

Moments later, we reached Leo and Katie. Dominique held out her hand and Karimu, eyes fierce and intent, placed a clean blade in it. Dominique sliced her own wrist and held it near Leo’s face. He opened his eyes and slid his fangs from Katie’s chest. He sank them into Dominique and sucked hard. She hissed. Fell to her knees beside Leo. A moment later, Leo released her; Dominique fell over and was carried away by her blood-servants as Grégoire knelt in her place, rolling up his sleeve. The two men held glances a moment, Leo’s vamped-out, Grégoire’s calm and still.

Grégoire said, “My pledge to you. My pledge to Pellissier. My pledge to the Master of the City.”

“You will be rewarded and recompensed.”

Grégoire chuckled, the tone dismissive. “Drink, my friend. And win.” Leo sank his fangs into Grégoire’s arm at the elbow.

Over my earpiece I heard, “Sarge, cops are at the door. And ... I’m seeing blood in a hallway on one of my monitors. No one’s been fighting there.”

“Location?”

“Outside Leo Pellissier’s office.”

Ruse. Opportunity. Battle and mayhem in the vamp-camp would be a great opportunity to accomplish a goal if one were prepared and willing to take a chance. I saw an image of a big-cat lying on a tree limb over a path to a watering hole. Waiting for the opportunity to attack the unwary. Or a great place to take a nap.

Both, Beast assured me. There was something smug in her tone.

“Let’s see about the blood. Meet you at Leo’s office,” I said into the mike. I raced for the stairs and was third to arrive. The door was open, the stink of blood searing my nose, overwhelming my senses. A Vodka Boy was scanning the nooks and crannies, weapon ready for firing. Derek stood over the body. Lying on blood-soaked rugs was the petite, diplomatic assistant. Safia. What was left of her. Derek was cursing fluently and nonstop under his breath.

Beast shoved her way to the forepart of my brain and studied the scene. Not a human kill. Claws and killing-teeth brought her down. But not for meat. Wasted meat, wasted blood. Beast drew in a breath over my nose and tongue. Gun fired here.

I processed and shared her comments but with a few sophistications of language tossed in. “No vamp would have wasted her blood. No wolf would have wasted her meat. Katie was seen on a security camera in this hallway. She had fresh blood on her face when she appeared in the ballroom.”

“Katie killed her?” Derek asked. “Old rogue?”

“Don’t know. We’re gonna need the cops, who happen to be at our door—lucky us.” I looked from the body to Derek and added, “I don’t believe in coincidences. Make copies of all the camera and TV footage. We need one for us. If any of your guys are wanted by law enforcement, get them out of here.”

“We’re clean. You let the cops in. They’ve brought in a ram to take down the front door. A white chick in an evening gown will settle the cops faster than a brother with guns.”

I’d have laughed except for the body at my feet. Instead, I said, “You get to the ballroom and tell them the cops are here. See if Leo has Katie under control. If not, stake her.”

His eyebrows went to his hairline. “You sure about that?”

“No, but what choice do we have? Katie may have killed the were-cat. Whatever she may be tomorrow, right now, Katie’s rogue. I’m the Rogue Hunter. My order.”

“Yes, ma’am. You are that.”

I didn’t take the time to inspect his comment. I raced for the front entrance, set my visible weapons on the glass table near the air-lock door, and checked over the foyer of vamp HQ. Empty. Silent. I entered the air lock. Taking a deep breath, I opened the front door.

There were cops at the entrance, Jodi Richoux at their head. Jodi in tactical gear was something to behold. Pert, a lot shorter than I am, blond hair tucked under a helmet, cinched into body armor never intended to mold to the body of a curvy woman. Ugly but efficient attire. Someone needs to talk to armor designers about female body shapes and style.

Beside her was Sloan Rosen, her second in command. He looked like a fashion plate in his armor. Just wasn’t fair. Behind them were more cops, two holding a battering ram. Jodi recognized me and said something coarse and vulgar, which I ignored. “We need you,” I said. “We have a dead body.”

It took a while to assure Jodi that the violence was contained. Based on the two species’ proximity, she had been expecting ongoing hostile behavior and vamp aggression problems. She and her team had been primed and ready, watching the live media coverage from the unmarked van just in case, and had gone into action when the first bodies hit the floor.

The cops spread out in vamp HQ, a few to prowl the hallways, a few to the ballroom, a few joined Angel’s Tit to look over camera footage, and Jodi came with me back to the body. Oh joy. Because the status of vamps had yet to be decided in terms of U.S. citizenry, and because Leo had formally declared vamps to be a separate nation, all on TV, recorded for history, Jodi passed the legal hot potato up the chain of command. Her bosses agreed to send her a CSI unit to work up the crime scene, and ordered her to seal off the building. They were sending for the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. The bureau, also known as DS, was the law enforcement and security arm of the U.S. Department of State. It would take them hours to get from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans. Dawn. Maybe later.All I could do at the moment was play freaking-danghostess and hope Leo and Katie had been separated by the other vamps.

The mess was gonna get interesting—or harder, deeper, and stinkier—and fast.

CHAPTER 11

Don’t Beat Yourself up over It

While I was dealing with the cops, the press had regained consciousness en masse and discovered that cameras were still capable of filming. They caught footage of werewolves trotting away, or being carried out like dead dogs. Of wounded humans and well-fed vamps. They garnered half a dozen impromptu interviews, sending the feed out live again, before Leo—who had managed to subdue Katie—shut them down. The feed had been picked up by FOX and had gone out to the nation, but it was after two a.m. and the hullabaloo was less than it might have been. So far. After dawn things would change. After dawn, everything would change.

To keep fallout to a minimum, Bruiser ushered the press to the greenroom with promises of medical treatment for their bumps and cuts, with assurances of interviews with cops, vamps, any were-creature who was willing to chat, and blood-servants. He’d have promised them most anything to get them away from the ballroom and its blood splatters, blood pools, and evidence of chaos. Like sheep, they followed him and settled in the greenroom—not that it was green—paying no attention to the lock on the door that was designed to keep them safe. The fact that the lock was on the outside to keep them in wasn’t discussed or discovered until after it clicked shut.They made a ruckus and there would be hell to pay later, but the short-term benefits seemed worth it to Leo and Bruiser. I’d been confined in the greenroom before and it was comfortable, as much as a temporary lockup can be, with couches, a TV, and food humans can consume. They were also given a nurse, as promised, two vamps to chat with, Innara and Jena, and an armed guard for their own protection. Uh-huh, right. It wasn’t my decision, but it was easier to get things done without the constant interference.

I told Roul and his were-bitch—whose face was still covered—to gather their wolves, and picked out a room for them to wait in. I had a police videographer take digital footage of them as they entered for verification of cuts, injuries, and bloodied muzzles—which they all had. I told Roul to keep them all in wolf form until the cops got to them for collection of physical evidence, but watched them change back to their human forms almost as soon as the words were out of my mouth. I was glad I’d chosen a room with a security camera to document which wolf was whom. I found them some clothes, and made a call to the kitchen for a dozen meat trays. Much like me, weres needed calories to make the change and they were ravenously hungry. I left them when they started looking at me like I was dinner.

It was clear that there were things going on under the surface of the political tug-of-war, beneath the bloodletting and the personal combat, things that I had no clue about, things that would pose bigger problems later if I didn’t handle them properly now. And I was surely messing up from lack of knowledge, an unclear vision of vamp and were history, and my own shortcomings. But I kept at it. The job was my responsibility.