Mercy Blade

Leo had made use of the interior space of the hillock under his house; the center of the mound had been hollowed out and reinforced. I spotted three security cameras and laser motion detectors. Not that they had done him any good, but it was hard to design a security plan for any eventuality. And I figured werewolf attack hadn’t been high on the designers’ minds.



We started down, Bruiser’s and my boots clomping echoes off the bright walls. Blood, smelling of wolves and Leo, had dripped all over the stairs, smeared with paw and boot prints, all dry.



The door to Leo’s lair was at the bottom, where Bruiser entered more numbers on another keypad. The door opened with a gust of air, a rotten blood and wet dog scent whooshing out along with a dull red light, to reveal the room. Leo’s home-base lair was a small apartment consisting of a sitting area and a king-sized, four-poster, pewter bed with a headboard of curlicues and fleur-de-lis. And a lot of blood. The sheets and pillowcases were drenched in it. The rugs below were sloppy wet with it. And Leo was in the middle of it all, half lying on the mattress, his position changed from the first time I’d seen him. His bare right foot rested on a rug, his left on the mattress, and he was leaning back against a mound of bloody pillows wearing black pants and a once-white shirt. His face and body were slack, his skin so white he looked like a mannequin, waxy with death. His eyes were closed. And his chest was still, breathless, with that vamp undead-death thing.



My silver-tipped stake was at his feet, bloody and well-used.



Hedge of thorns encircled the bed, casting a reddish light over everything, giving Leo the only color he had, making the blood appear even more vibrant and deadly. But unlike the spell that protected my boulder garden, this one hadn’t burned the rugs or walls and stopped short of the ceiling. And it seemed to provide an additional purpose than simply a last-ditch bolt-hole activated by the primary’s blood. This one was a trap. Caught in the hedge, held a foot off the floor, was Girrard DiMercy.



CHAPTER 23



“Rock and Roll, Legs”



Gee was trapped in the spell like a moth in the strands of a spider’s web, his body suspended above the floor, caught in a fighting posture. When we entered, his eyes swiveled our way. That, and breathing, assuming a storm god had to, were the only movements he could make. His swords lay on the bloody rugs, the edges coated with dried gore. But the blades were pointing away from Leo, and Gee’s back was facing the bloody bed. Yet, the stake was on Leo’s side of the hedge. “He was either defending Leo from attack,” I said, “or running away when the hedge came up.” And only Leo could tell us which.



Sabina shook her head slowly, her mantle rustling. “Little Leo, what have you done? Is there enough blood in all the world to heal you now?” Which did not sound good. She looked at Bruiser and addressed her comment to him. “Your master is close to death. When the spell falls, I can give him my blood, but I cannot restore him. He will need much blood. Much.”I stepped around Gee, observing him from every angle I could, looking for additional weapons; there were none that I could see. But there was a nasty gash on one arm, old and half healed. I had a feeling I might have given him that one when he was sitting outside my house. Because my guns were loaded with silver shot, and silver wouldn’t kill an Anzu, I pulled two steel-edged vamp-killers and set my balance. Waiting.



Bruiser stepped to a wall phone, an old-fashioned one that had a dangly tangled cord. Our cells were useless underground. He dialed two digits, like on an intercom, and said, “Evie, we’re ready down here. Send down ten blood-servants as soon as they’re free of the spell and pronounced healthy. Leo’s badly wounded. Yes.” Phone to his ear, he nodded to Sabina and then looked at me. “Kill Gee if he resists.” Into the phone he said, “Go.” And hung up.



An instant later, everything fell. The hedge fell, the red light vanishing in a burst of white light. Sabina fell forward, toward the bed and Leo. And Gee fell to the floor.



He hit the bloody rugs like a broken marionette, air woofing out of him, ending in a grunt as I landed on him, one knee in his belly, a position I’d landed in a lot lately. He lay there, gasping, my knife at his throat, his eyes on mine. There was no evidence of fight in him. And no weapons that I could see.



“I did not wound my lord,” he gasped. “I tried to protect him from the wolves.” I sniffed carefully, parsing the disparate scents to their distinct origins. Under the reek of Leo’s blood, I smelled Roul, another werewolf, and the were-bitch. And faintly, I scented Rick. He had been here, or someone wearing a lot of his blood had been here.



I chanced a quick look at the bed. Sabina was sitting on the mattress, one hand gently at Leo’s lower back, one at his nape, holding him the way she might a small child. His lips were at her neck, sucking hard, his eyes closed and his face twisted as if with a great effort. It was bizarrely like watching a kid try to suck a thick milkshake through a straw, and I wanted to laugh, until I remembered who was handy to provide him a blood meal if he got well enough and violent enough to take one. My sense of humor was gonna be the death of me one day.



“Let me go to him,” Gee said. “I can heal him.”



“Not until Leo can tell us what happened here,” Bruiser said, his voice tight, his gaze glued to Leo and Sabina. I glanced at the bed, seeing Sabina’s skirts stained red, the white linen fabric wicking up the unclotted blood from the mattress.



Leo pulled from Sabina, his fangs still snapped down, his eyes vamped out. “Crap,” I murmured. Where was the blood-servant cavalry from upstairs?



But Leo said, “Girrard, mon ami,” and let loose a bunch of French I couldn’t begin to follow, not with only my high school Spanish. Too weak to get up, Leo held out his hand.



“Let Gee up,” Bruiser said. “Leo says Gee saved his life, and killed a werewolf to do it.”



I looked at the blood on the floor and bed. Now the quantity made sense. I stood slowly and backed away, but I didn’t put the blades up. Not yet.



Gee seemed to flow to his feet and across the room, to Leo. Sabina stepped back, the holes over her carotid artery closing as the vamp saliva constricted blood vessels and flesh. Though Leo had worked hard to suck her dry, she looked no worse for the wear. I had to wonder, as I always did, who she drank from. She had no scions and no blood-servants. None of the outclan did. But that was a mystery for another day.



Near midnight, all the blood upstairs had been cleaned up, and thanks to the healers and Gee, no one had died. Low level blood-servants and -slaves were hauling rugs and lugging the mattress up the switchback stairs from Leo’s lair, stuffing linens into plastic bags to be burned. Higher level blood-servants were heading down the stairs to return minutes later, wobbly-kneed and drained. And I was watching everyone and everything, Gee at my side. “And once again, you’re at the scene just in time to help avoid major problems,” I murmured to Gee. “Fill me in?”



The Mercy Blade shrugged, a Gaelic-Frenchy shrug, all grace and delicacy. “I was watching the clan home to keep it safe, when the wolves struck the Master of the City. It was just before dawn, and I”—he placed a hand on his chest—“disrupted their plans. My presence and my small magics, trapped in the witch’s hedge of thorns, kept my lord Leo alive until you came.”I nodded once, distracted, shunted to the sidelines. The sheriff and his were-deputy were sitting in Leo’s office with Jodi Richoux and a governor’s assistant. Yeah, I’d ratted out the deputy. He had known what his buddies had done and couldn’t stay away. He had also taken the call, sent in by Sloan Rosen, to drop by the clan home to check things out. The betting bunch had laid odds the deputy would be fired and arrested, unless he accepted a plea bargain and told us where the wolves were holing up. It didn’t look likely. The events of the night had now coincided with Jodi getting a judge to sign a warrant for Tyler Sullivan’s room at the clan home. Only his room, nothing else. Any Louisiana judge knew not to rile the Master of the City.



Jodi had found the shells and the gun where I’d told her they were and an arrest warrant had been issued for Tyler Sullivan. I didn’t envy whoever told Leo about the snake in his midst.



In the main room of the clan home, vamps loyal to Leo, and blood-servants loyal to their masters, had gathered. Katie was with Leo, giving him a feeding strong enough to finish his healing, and timely enough to guarantee she would be named his heir. The fangheads and walking blood-meals were all talking about it. And I guess it was exciting, if you lived and breathed fanghead politics—not that vamps lived or breathed.



For now, I’d had enough of vamps, weres, witches, ancient Sumerian gods, and even little green guys who liked to swim in fountains. I just wanted Rick, alive and well. I wanted to take him home, to my mountains, where we could be safe. Home to Beast’s hunting territory.



But wishes were a waste of time. I’d broken my lease and had nowhere to live except for New Orleans. For now, I had a cheating boyfriend to find and save. If it wasn’t already too late.



Unfortunately, I had no idea where to start.



Near two a.m., Bruiser found me sitting on the front steps in the shadows of the outside lights, feeding the last crumbs of burger to the barn cats. I was fighting sleep and depression in equal measure, and when he sat down next to me, I didn’t look his way. Silence stretched between us.



I sniffed shallowly, detecting the smell of his blood, fresh and thin, and the scent signature of Leo, the trace chemicals telling me the MOC was out of danger. Low levels of toxic stress compounds meant Leo was fine, and the fact that Bruiser was alive beside me proved that Leo hadn’t crashed and burned, which was a good thing. My job as Rogue Hunter would have meant that I’d have to stake Leo.“Are you the new primo?” I asked finally. “Or maybe the re-primo?”



Bruiser chuckled tonelessly. “I suppose I am.”



“Good. I need back into vamp HQ to look at the party tapes again. I need to go back to the beginning.”



“Why?”



“Rick is still miss—” I stopped, breathed past the tears that flooded my eyes and constricted my throat. “Everything started with the party. That’s as good a place as any to start looking.”