Downbeat (Biting Love) (39 page)

When I’d taken my flute case from the backpack, I’d first had to remove a piece of junk.

My mother’s art was the most precious thing in the world right now.

Still wailing the C#, I took the little ceramic dwarf and threw it as hard as I could into the megavamp’s skull.

It hit between the monster’s eyes with a crack. Gravloth recoiled; the note had definitely weakened him.

But more, it delayed him the instant Julian and Miyagi needed.

Julian drove the stake with his whole body into the monster’s back. The point appeared in the megavamp’s chest, just as Miyagi spun a step-on-air tornado twist.

He blendered Rounin’s wickedly sharp blades through the monster’s neck.

The head sliced off. Surprise twisted its features. Blood fountained.

An instant before I was splashed with hot blood Dragan swept me out of the way.

We landed on the floor, Dragan on top. My flute fell from my hand to clatter onto the wood next to me, but I didn’t care.

Dragan was alive
.

Tears filled my eyes. I smiled through them at him. “We did it.”

“We have, indeed.” He smiled back. “We’ve won.”

“You haven’t won anything,” a new voice rasped. “The Soul Stealer will rise again!”

Chapter Twenty-Five

I raised my head to see Nosferatu step out onto the balcony. Camille and Giuseppe entered behind him, fanning out to flank him.

“Camille,” Nosferatu said. “Get the head. Giuseppe, retrieve the body.” While they moved, the master Coterie vampire
tsked
. “Too bad you staked him. I would have enjoyed drinking the life force of an ancient. But the blood is only useful when pumped by a living heart.”

Dragan leaped to his feet, shielding me as I rose. Julian palmed Mr. Miyagi behind him. Luke groaned from the wall. The only sign of Dru was the big hole in the window.

The head had tumbled toward the door. In two steps Camille scooped it up. Nobody could have stopped her.

But the body had dropped near us. That was another story.

As Giuseppe neared, Julian and Dragan shared a glance. In concert they slid forward, Julian pushing Giuseppe back while Dragan tugged the body one-handed behind the piano, then stood guard over it. His fingers were still gone but his chest and dislocated shoulder had healed.

Camille, near the balcony rail, waved the head. “You have that, but I have this.”

“Well done, Camille.” Nosferatu smiled. “Bring it here, and then both you and Giuseppe can wrest the Soul Stealer’s body from the Alliance vampires.”

She turned.

“Wait,” Dragan said. “After everything he’s done? The Alliance can make you a better deal.”

She turned back. “Why should I listen to you?”

“Why should you listen to him? You’ve seen what Nosferatu and Giuseppe think of you. They’ve been using you all these decades.”

“That’s not true,” Nosferatu said. “I love you, Camille.”

“He loves using you,” Dragan countered. “He’ll never make you first lieutenant.”

“Camille, my dear. We can discuss the position of first lieutenant—after you bring me the head.”

“Discuss.” She filled the word with the music of her contempt. “Meaning you’ll dangle the promotion in front of me, but once you’ve put this monster back together, you’ll give it to him? I don’t think so.”

“Give me the head!” Nosferatu’s voice rang with compulsion.

Grimacing, she took a step toward him.

“Don’t,” I called. “He’s lying to you, compelling you.”

“What?” She shook her head as if clearing it. Her expression hardened. “Nice try, boss.” She waved the head at Julian. “Does your side have a better offer?”

Nosferatu snarled. “Damn it, Camille—”

“We do.” Julian’s eyes glittered from bruised and puffy skin. “Join the Alliance and we’ll give you protection and access to the best training on the planet.”

“Not good enough. I want to be first lieutenant.” She paused. “But I don’t want to go to Iowa. I want to stay near Chicago.”

“Not happening,” Nosferatu said. “Your household and businesses here are forfeit.”

“We’ll give you a place of your own,” Julian said. “A household in Meiers Corners. You could be your own master. Bo and I would give you one lieutenant each.”

“I’d need a local household business,” she said.

“You’re not rebuilding Fangs to You. Black leather lederhosen is not an image we want.”

“I couldn’t make any money anyway, not since your professional marketing campaign has established Meiers Corners as disgustingly wholesome.” She snapped her fingers. “Give me that cute little Nieman’s Bar and I’ll drop all my lawsuits.”

Julian grimaced but he said, “Done.”

“Camille,” Nosferatu said. “You can’t possibly want to give up the power I bestow upon you.”

“What power?” She spoke without turning. “With you I get backstabbing and lies…and used. It’s getting old. Time to move on with my life.”

She turned to me. “You know, my mother was a serf. She worked her fingers to the bone just for the privilege of starving while rich men ate. I trained as a courtesan so that some day I could wield power through a man. But you said it, Rocky. Some people are worth it.” She sneered over her shoulder at Giuseppe. “And some aren’t.”

She sauntered to Julian and handed him the head.

“You’ll regret this, Camille!” Nosferatu spun and stalked out.

Giuseppe, with a thoughtful, narrowed glance at Camille, followed slowly.

Dragan said, “
Now
we’ve wo—”

“Don’t!” I put my fingers over his lips. “Haven’t you learned Murphy has a spy satellite?”

We gathered the Soul Stealer’s head and body to be destroyed. Mr. Miyagi searched the choir loft and found all Dragan’s fingers, which miraculously reattached, good as new. Dru staggered in, only a little the worse for wear, as he was flexing them. Apparently Mom had found her and taken care of her until she recovered.

A call to Elias was on Mom’s horizon.

As for Elias, he deactivated the Shield, the refugees returned from Iowa along with extra v-guy help to mind-wipe folk from the ball, and everybody, not just Camille, moved on with their lives.

A few weeks later we all sat in the living room of my mother’s new house, its down payment courtesy of an advance for my first world solo tour, with Dragan conducting. I admit I was scared at the idea, but knowing Dragan would be at my side, I was also excited.

Mom was in her element, pouring drinks and smiling up a storm. A dozen of her new line of upscale garden decorations watched us, gnomes and frogs and fiddle-playing crickets made out of a material so lifelike it felt as if they’d join the discussion at any moment.

Julian was grumbling. “Yes, all right. Only Zajicek could have changed the plan fast enough to get us past Nosferatu’s vamps. And he was instrumental in keeping the monster from Rocky long enough for her to put her flute together and play the C#. That took courage, I guess.”

“I can’t believe it worked,” Bo said. “I thought for sure when the plan FUBARed, that was it.”

“Luck,” Luke said.

“It’s unfair to be that damned lucky,” Julian complained. “Anybody else as black-hearted would end up in the shitter.
He
ends up smelling like roses.”

The music in Julian’s voice told me here was the real reason he was so unrelentingly antagonistic with Dragan. I wondered what was in Julian’s past that caused it.

“Well I can’t believe you took down the megavamp without us.” Elena bounced baby Rorik in her lap. The boy laughed delightedly.

“You had more important work to do.” Bo smiled down at his son.

“I know it needed to be done,” Mr. Miyagi said in his deep, rough voice. “But I have never taken a life before. It weighs upon me.”

“I’m not sure that monster counted as a life,” Bo said.

“A sentient being.” Miyagi shook his head.

“It was war,” Julian said. “Him or us.”

“There’s a cost to killing,” Logan said suddenly. “A heavy one. There always is. I destroyed Nosferatu’s old lieutenant. I’ll never forget it.”

“He threatened children, Logan,” Liese said. “It had to be done.”

“Yes. But it will always be with me.”

“You did the right thing.” My mom refilled Mr. Miyagi’s drink. “You saved my little girl.” She beamed at me. “So she can have her debut solo tour and marry Lambo-man. And make lots of grandchildren for me.”

“Mother.” I blushed. But “Bolero” played in my head with its relentless, driving rhythm.

Dragan rubbed a gentle knuckle on my cheek. “I will never tire of that.”

“Her blushes?” Nixie said from where she walked with Jaxxie. “Or making grandbabies?”

My cheeks flamed. “Enough! Or you won’t be my matron of honor.”

“I’ll be good.” She smirked.

“One last thing.” Dragan pulled a pair of thick eyeglasses from a pocket inside his jacket. “Or rather, two.” He pulled a second pair from another pocket.

“My backup-backup glasses,” I said. “Where did you find them?”

“Where didn’t I find them?
Drahý
, when you need real glasses, I’ll get you the best money can buy myself. But these—” He crushed them to powder between his palms. “Are an abomination.”

“You’re right.” When everyone turned to me in surprise, I shrugged. “I’ve kind of gotten used to not having their weight on my face.”

“Effin’ finally,” Nixie said. “But jeez, all this good stuff going on scares me. It means Murphy’s gonna be joggling the handle of the commode, and sooner rather than later.”

“How about the blond with the man-shoulders and the braid I saw the night of Dr. Vilyn’s murder, heading for the sanctuary? We never did find out who he was.”

“That’s a start.”

“Maybe he wasn’t real,” Elena said to me. “Maybe you only thought you saw him. Elias did wipe you a couple times after that.”

I just glared at her.
 

Help came from an unexpected quarter. “I believe her,” Luke said. “It wasn’t me, but I’ll do everything I can to find out who it really was.”

Nixie groaned. “Don’t try to fix it. We need one bad thing, to fly us under Fate’s fuckup radar.”

“I can help with that,” Logan said. “Bo, remember last July when we found that phone video, revealing the healing properties of vampire blood? And we were worried a bad guy shared it?”

“Unfortunately.”

“I’ve been trying since then to trace where the video was sent. I finally made some headway recently.”

“More good news,” Nixie groaned. “We’re getting Murphyized for sure.”

“Hear me out. The video was indeed sent to another phone. A stolen burner. I’m good, but even I can’t trace that.”

Bo growled. “You have to keep trying.”

“Sure,” Logan said. “But it doesn’t look good.”

“That’s really crappy,” Nixie said. “Crappy enough that I feel better now.”

“Glad someone does.”

The vampire hung suspended from the steel cable in Paris, not by his claws, but sitting on a securely attached trapeze. He analyzed the crisscross of laser beams below him.

“Do you need any help?” The human’s whisper was neither harsh nor impatient.

Dragan Zajicek, orchestral conductor, part-time international courier and newly married man, smiled. This was certainly different from the last time, when he’d been beset by one fuckup after another.

Lust shuddered through him. Fuck. Up. It conjured very pleasant images. “I’m good,” he whispered back. “Although, this isn’t how most women would want to spend their honeymoon.”

Rocky snorted. “I’m not most women.”

She most certainly wasn’t. Once she’d learned to embrace risk, she’d shown herself to be his match in every way, including, surprisingly, this. He said, “Is the alarm signal jammed?”

“Yes. I did it while you were playing with your trapeze.”

“Playing?” He aimed a cutting laser at the glass case below him. “I’m an international conductor and professional courier. I don’t play.”

“You’re a boy. Everything you do is play.”

He smiled. He couldn’t help it. She put joy in his life. Bantering was only part of it. But since they hadn’t a bed—or backseat—right at the moment, banter would have to do.

There was plenty of time for it. The guards had been doubled since the last time he was here. Even so they had fifteen minutes because their entry was so smooth. Oh yes, with her, there was time for banter.

He tightened his abs, curled into a ball, slid his toes over the trapeze and reversed, hanging upside down. He uncurled until his head hung inches above the glass.

Snaking a mechanical claw through the crisscross of laser beams, he grabbed the uncut diamond, big as a child’s fist. It was the real thing tonight.

A flip sent the thing sailing through the air toward her. “Hey.” She snagged it, barely.