Death's Rival (9 page)

I paid for insurance and overnight shipping to New Orleans and though it was an exorbitant
price, I didn’t blink at the cost. Another way the vamps had ruined me. Money meant
a lot less now, was a lot less dear.
Blink. Bloody body. Open eyes
. I put the latest blood vials into a bubble-wrap envelope without telling the helpful
clerk about the blood, and then secured them into the shipping container so they wouldn’t
roll around and burst.

I saw my reflection in the windows against the night outside. I looked like I’d been
crying, my face strained and flushed. I took my receipts and left.

Inside the little town I also found a pay phone. I hadn’t seen one of those in forever.
I went back to the UPS store and held a twenty up to the locked door, mouthing, “Change?
Please?” Maybe it was the tear streaks on my face, but something worked because he
cleared all the change out of his cash register for me. I tipped him another five.
He was a happy camper. But he’d surely remember me.

Standing in the dark, I inserted coins and called Bruiser on the pay phone. He answered
with a simple hello. He sounded very British in that moment, though he hadn’t been
British since the early nineteen hundreds. He also sounded distant and unapproachable.
If Leo told him to kill me, would he do it? I honestly didn’t know, and it was dangerous
to be attracted to a man whose loyalties lay elsewhere. “Hello?” he repeated.
Blink. Bloody body. Open eyes.

“Your pilot is dead,” I said. “Stuck to the bulkhead wall by nails just like a bug
on display. His blood was sprayed all over the Lear.” My voice sounded hollow, empty,
and rough as broken stone. “Your new first mate was drained and left on the bunk I
slept on. The air traffic controller was injured. It was done by two blood-servants,
one vamp. They knew where I’d be.” I placed a hand over the envelope in my pocket,
the one I had taken from the drained body of the new first mate. It bent under the
pressure but didn’t crinkle, a heavy cotton fiber paper. Bruiser started to reply
but I interrupted with “You have a serious leak. I’ll get home on my own. We’ll talk
then.” I hung up, walked back to the bike, and lifted the helmet. The phone rang.
Dang caller ID. I walked over and picked up. “What?”

“You, little girl, are not human. And I have the security tape.”

I chuckled. “Reach. I
know
that was not a threat. Your clients would be horrified if they ever learned you could
be enticed to blackmail.”

“Not blackmail. Self-protection. I don’t know what you are, but if I feel threatened,
this will go viral so fast that cheap, pixeled-out video of you carrying a dead cop
out of a cave will look like child’s play.”

My past was always coming back to haunt me, ghosts of the dead. I had nearly died
killing off a whacked-out family of vamps in a closed gem mine in the Appalachian
Mountains. I had survived but hadn’t been able to save the cop. Another failure I
carried on my shoulders. A camper had caught the video on his camera as Molly and
I exited the cave, the dead cop over my shoulder. “I’m not your enemy, Reach. But
Leo would be, should I tell him you’re monitoring his incoming and outgoing calls.
For now, let’s just call it even. I’ll keep your secrets. You keep mine.” I hung up
again and got on the bike. The phone rang again as I rode away. I didn’t look back.

* * *

I rode back to Seattle, taking in the sights as the clouds grew more ominous overhead
and rain started to spit down in hard, widely spaced drops. The buildings were a charming
mixture of new and old, towering and modest-height, nestled into the terrain as if
they’d been tossed and landed where happenstance chose. The pace of life here, this
late at night, was leisurely, with only moderate traffic and no sense of urgency.

The Space Needle was amazing, and Beast peeked out to get a good look, snarling,
Too tall to use for watching prey. Stupid human buildings.
After that, she disappeared from the forefront of my brain again. In spite of her
disdain, part of me thought I’d like living here.

Underneath the usual white-man smells of modern life, Seattle smelled of fish, stone,
raw wood, and green earth. It smelled of rain—lots of rain—tropical-forest quantities
of rain—and freshwater lakes and the Pacific Ocean and a sense of freedom I hadn’t
expected. Though part of that might be from getting out from under Leo’s and Bruiser’s
and even Reach’s thumbs. Unless I gave them opportunity, like with the pay phone call,
they couldn’t find me tonight without a lot of work and a lot of luck. I stopped for
gas and washed more blood, now dry, off my boots. It ran in thin trails across the
pavement.

Near the Fisherman’s Terminal, at the wharf, I found a coffee shop still open and
wheeled the bike in. I got an extra-large chai latte and a big blueberry scone and
pulled out the laptop I’d stolen from the vamp house. I went online and did some research
into flights out of the city. There were plenty of commercial red-eyes leaving, heading
east, but nothing direct to New Orleans until morning. I’d be getting in near ten.
I needed to be there a lot sooner, but I had no choice. I booked a direct flight with
one stop, but no flight change, which cost me over five hundred dollars, but I didn’t
quibble, and—not able to use cash for a flight since 9/11—I used the one credit card
I was pretty sure no one knew about. I borrowed the coffee shop’s phone and left a
message at the shot-up airport where the borrowed bike would be, then rode the bike
to Sea-Tac, Seattle Tacoma International Airport, and left it in short-term parking
with a hundred-dollar bill in the saddlebag.

With two hours left until my six a.m. flight to New Orleans, I cleaned up in the ladies’
room and ate in a terminal restaurant that served overpriced, overcooked, undertasty
food. I settled in for a long night. Having brooded myself into a total funk, I pulled
out the fancy, heavy cotton envelope and turned it over. My name was on the front
in a flowery, curlicue, old-fashioned script that looked like calligraphy. Old vamps
had the best penmanship. They’d had centuries to perfect it. Whoever had written the
two words had managed to imbue my name with elegance and menace, or maybe that was
just me projecting. Or maybe it was the spot of bloodred wax sealed with the imprint
of a bird with a human head, maybe an Anzu.

Sniffing the envelope, I detected a faint blood-scent: peaty, spicy, and a little
beery—the now-familiar blood-scent of the vamp who drained the first mate. It was
an odd scent for a vamp. Even without being in Beast form, I knew it was the same
vamp who had sent my attacker in Asheville, and all the ones since.

Deflecting a spurt of apprehension, I slit open the envelope and pulled out the single
sheet, unfolded and scrutinized it. The words were oddly capitalized, like the way
old English words were capitalized in documents to indicate their importance. Again,
it was written in the calligraphy of someone who had written in script back when that
was a prized skill.

You killed my Enforcer, Ramondo Pitri.

You will Die with your Master,

in a massacre such as you have never seen.

This, at a time of my choosing.

Ramondo Pitri was the name of the blood-servant I’d killed in Asheville. He had come
into my hotel room, carrying a gun with a silencer, and smelling of unknown vamp.
I had shot him, killed him, before I ever knew that he was a made man out of New York,
not the usual vamp fodder. He hadn’t smelled like any vamp I knew, or been formally
attached to any of Leo’s clans. All that had caused us to assume he was a hired killer.
But as an Enforcer, Ramondo should have been known to the general vamp population
and should not have entered any other master’s territory without proper papers or
an invitation. And he should have stunk of his master’s blood and been deeply under
the blood-bond, rather than smelling of a distant and irregular feeding. Of course,
I was an Enforcer—sort of—and I had no blood-bond at all.

I turned the paper over as if looking for clues that simply were not there. I had
killed another master’s Enforcer and now I had to die? And Leo had to die? And the
blood-slave at the Sedona Airport had to die? And the pilot stuck to the wall of a
jet had to die, as did the drained corpse of the first mate? All because I . . . what?
Shot first and asked questions later?

The grief I had given into on the harrowing bike ride receded a pace, leaving a small
blank slate of uncertainty on my soul. Grief, like guilt, may not always be warranted.

I folded the letter back into the envelope. I needed a cup of strong tea, but there
was nothing in the airport except teabags, so I walked to a bar and ordered a pint
of Guinness Draught, not because I could get a rush out of the alcohol—skinwalker
metabolism is too fast for that—but because I wanted something in my hands to help
me think. Holding the big glass, I sipped.

The taste brought Beast to the forefront of my mind again.
Smells like vampire,
she thought, and she was right, which might, subconsciously, account for me ordering
the beer in the first place. Peaty and beery. Yeah. Like the vamp. I drank long, killing
half the beer, feeling tension begin to drain away. I was tired and sleepy, but I
pulled the letter from my pocket again and studied it. Midnight had come and gone.
This read like some kind of vamp-challenge, the fanged Hatfields meet the vamped-out
McCoys. If a challenge had been issued to Leo, I hadn’t been notified. I looked at
a clock and discovered it was now after five a.m., Pacific time. Maybe the letter
meant midnight tomorrow. Or next week. The new moon was days away.

Smells like vampire,
Beast thought again.
Is important
.

It was the first time she had taken such an interest in my life in weeks, and I couldn’t
help my internal smile.
Okay,
I thought back at her.
But why?
She didn’t answer.
Big help you are.

I debated calling Bruiser and asking, and I decided it could wait. This vamp threat
would be contained in the Vampira Carta or its codicils, which I had on file on my
own laptop back in New Orleans and could access soon enough.

Old vampires are patient hunters,
Beast thought
. Like snakes, lying on rocks all day in the sun
.
Not moving until a rabbit—or a puma—comes by. Then striking, fastfastfast with killing
teeth. Even if snake is too small to eat its prey.

Sooo. The vamp attacks me,
I thought back
, in the cities he’s conquered. Like a snake. Sneaky. That’s part of his war on Leo?

Again, Beast didn’t answer.
Dang cat.
I didn’t want to use Reach for this. Maybe it was nothing, but he’d known about each
of my stops on this little excursion. Maybe my best research help was also my new
worst enemy.

I pulled out a throwaway cell and considered calling Derek Lee. I thought about how
he had been Leo’s ally first, then mine through a process I wasn’t sure I understood,
except for the money. I had made sure he was paid for his kills of rogue-crazy-nutso-vamps,
and he had backed me up on several gigs. Money created either honorable bedfellows
or cheating partners, one or the other. And then there were his new guys—who might
be safer and more trustworthy than his older, dependable guys. Or not. There were
too many new faces to keep track of.

“Derek Lee,” he answered, succinct.

I smiled into my beer. Took a long slurp, so he could hear it, and said, “I need some
intel.”

“Legs,” he said, using the nickname he and his men had given me. “And I should help
you, why?”

“Because I keep life interesting,” I said. He snorted. “And because I have money and
something else you want, although you haven’t figured out what, yet. No questions
asked.” Derek Lee went quiet at that. I had just offered a future favor, whatever
he needed, whenever he needed it. “I need intel on Ramondo Pitri, a made man, of Corsican
descent, if I remember right, out of New York.”

“That’s the guy you shot in your hotel room,” he said, his interest sharpening.

“Yeah. Turns out he was the Enforcer of an unknown vamp, who intends to challenge
Leo soon. He thinks I need to die along with Leo.”

“Damn suckheads. Uh. Sorry.”

The men knew I didn’t curse and that often made them uncomfortable, as if they had
mistakenly said a bad word in front of their grandma, in church. I laughed, the sound
curt and bitter. “My sentiments exactly. One of your guys, Angel Tit, if I remember
right, is from New York. Maybe he has contacts there he can use to dig up some history
that isn’t on record.” Angel Tit was the nickname of Derek’s electronics guy, a hacker
as good as Reach. Well, nearly as good as Reach.

“What? A black guy from New York should know the mob?”

“He can ask his buddies and they can ask around. That’s all I’m asking.”

I heard Derek talking in the background, the sound muffled. “He says okay, but his
guys are scattered. He doesn’t know what he can find out. It’s gonna cost you, Legs.
Money to grease the way.”

“It always does, Derek. It always does. Before you hang up, I need some specialists.
I want an intel guy and a security guy on retainer, to meet me at dusk, at my house.
The security guy needs to be someone with Special Forces training, but doesn’t have
to be a marine or SEAL. Army’s fine.” He snorted his opinion of the army. “I’ll give
you a finder’s fee, but they’ll belong to
me.
” I put delicate emphasis on the word. “Not you.” A silence stretched out. I waited,
knowing that I had insulted him by saying the men I wanted had to belong to me and
not him, and knowing that most people would have said something—anything—to end the
silence. I didn’t.

“Money talks,” he said at last, the words almost spitting. “I’ll send you some guys.
I can’t vouch for them personally, but they have good records.”