Bruiser said, “Don’t forget date night tomorrow night. You and me at the Rock N Bowl. And my place afterward to address the button problem.”

I closed the door and escaped.

CHAPTER 3

You Will Not Blow It Up

Outside, Eli wore an expression even more obscure that usual. I expected him to tease me or say something, but he simply looked me over and handed me a tissue. “Wipe your mouth and put on new lipstick. You’re smeared.”

“Spoilsport,” I accused. “You enjoyed that.”

He chuckled evilly. Leaving me behind, he climbed the steps with the measured tread of a man with things on his mind. I wiped my mouth and chin and applied lipstick, following my partner up to the entrance of vamp HQ. This was why Eli and I were such a perfect team, the ability to anticipate each other’s moves, needs, thoughts, plans. It was especially effective in battle, and against vamps, battle was always likely.

“Where do we stand on the ability to prevent a shooter across the street?” I asked, looking over my shoulder at the windows there and surreptitiously watching the limo pull out of the drive and down the street. All the upper windows in the two-story building were closed, thankfully. I had been shot at recently from that vantage point, and the local law hadn’t caught him. Or her.

Eli said, “Leo’s lawyers are still in negotiations with the owner and the property management company, but the offer Leo made was too good for them to pass up. They’ll take it. And if they don’t, we’ll manage something.”

“You will not blow it up.”

“Now who’s the spoilsport?” He flashed me a slice of a grin before we stepped into the glass cage at the front door.

The front entrance system of the Mithran Council chambers was simple on the surface. Visitors stepped through the first “glass” door, which wasn’t just glass. It was triple-paned polycarbonate bullet-resistant glass, strong enough to stop most ammunition up to a small rocket. The doors locked behind the visitors, securing them in the see-through cage, also composed of polycarbonate bullet-resistant glass and steel supports. Then, when the security person watching the entrance on camera was satisfied that the visitors were welcome, the inner doors, ditto on the polycarbonate, opened. If the person watching wasn’t satisfied, the visitor would be asked to remove all weapons, empty all pockets, lift shirts, and remove shoes. Airport security measures had been incorporated too, with metal detectors built into the outer walls. As we stood inside the cage, Eli and I had now been scanned and inside HQ a quiet alarm had gone off. We didn’t have to do the partial strip show, however, since we were part of the team.

Operation Cowbird was still in place, meaning that we were not just worried about attackers from outside, but were still apprehensive about bad guys already inside HQ, especially since two of the baddest of the bad were chained up in the basements, one troublemaker in sub-five and one a bit higher in a private scion lair. Neither vamp was physically capable of escaping. Neither was even coherent. Heck. Neither of them might have healed brains yet. But that hadn’t stopped vamps in the past and humans had paid with their lives. Unfortunately, unlike the rogue vampires I was famous for hunting, the vamps in the bowels of the building were important bargaining chips—or would be when they healed enough—saved for the European Vampires’ visit, and I couldn’t behead them, no matter how many humans they had killed.

HQ’s inner doors opened and the stink of vamp and blood and human rushed at us: the peculiar herbal scent of mixed vamps was peppery and astringent and reminiscent of a funeral home, with the assorted dying flowers. Humans and their blood were a permanent part of the circulating air system, always hanging in the air from feedings. And sex. Not to forget sex. Many humans, when fed upon, and when given small drops of vamp blood as payment, developed high sexual drives, while also being passive and nonresistant to advances. The perfect and willing blood-servant or blood-slave.

Something else I didn’t like.

Wrassler greeted us. “Evening, Legs, Eli.”

I nodded to the big guy and moved into position for the pat-down. Wrassler was seriously huge, nicknamed so because he was bigger than any World Wrestling Entertainment superstar. He motioned a woman to pat me down and took Eli himself, walking with a limp, on a prosthetic that had replaced a foot and lower leg lost in a battle here at HQ. I knew that his injury wasn’t my fault, but I still felt the responsibility to help him move forward and cope with his new life. Responsibility was a step up from guilt, so, for me, that was good. I was growing. I used to try to carry the weight of the world on my shoulders. Eli and Alex had been working on me, schooling me to be fair to myself. I was trying.

The woman’s pat-down was professional and non-handsy and I declared the vamp-killer strapped to my thigh. “And I have wood stakes in my hair,” I said.

“No silver?” she asked.

“Nope.”

She stepped back and away before I could look at her name tag. She was one of the new blood-servants from Atlanta. We were still integrating the blood-servants and blood-slaves of Atlanta’s former Master of the City.

“Leo’s in the gym with Gee,” Wrassler said. “He’s asked you to join him there.”

We signed in and walked away, Eli silent in his combat boots, my dancing shoes loud and somewhat clompy. Once behind the wall on the way to the elevator, I asked, “Well?”

“Did not detect a thing.”

We stopped and checked our pockets for the miniature tracking devices that were being tested in advance of the next big hootenanny in town, when the European Mithrans came to New Orleans to kill Leo and take over the U.S. That was their plan and saying no to the visit and attack wasn’t an option.