Green Flame Assassin (Demon Lord series, book 2) (18 page)

TWELVE

“Sure you can trust me.  Look at this face.

Hey, stop laughing before I kill you.”

                                   
            
—
Caine Deathwalker

“And what if we don’t want to bend knee to you?”  Josh’s eyes were a yellow haze of fire.  His hands formed claws.  The bones of his face coarsened, growing bestial. 

I stepped off the table, dropped, and landed lightly on my feet.  Brielle backed a step; half turned, saw Josh with the liger peering out of his eyes, and froze between us.   The rest of the dhampyr were on their feet, but didn’t intervene.  That would have weakened Brielle’s position, suggesting she couldn’t take care of herself. 

She ignored me, facing Josh.  “You haven’t earned anything in this city.  The instability was caused by your murder of an Alpha wolf.  Do you deny this?”

Josh’s voice roughened, as if words were no longer easy to form, “He needed killing.  Which of you wouldn’t defend a heart entrusted to you?”

Brielle’s tones softened, “It’s not that we don’t understand; we just can’t approve.  If you would be Master of the City, the needs of the city must come before your own.”

“I don’t want to be Master of the City.”  Josh sloughed off the beast, his face becoming human once more, his claws morphing back to hands.  “But I will protect my people.  We bow to no one, but if we’re left alone, all of you will be left alive.”  He shot me a glance.  “That’s all I came here to say.  I’ll wait for you outside.”  He turned his back on all of us and stalked out the door as if we were all beneath him.

I had to admire his style.

Vivian came up to me, keeping her eyes on Brielle.  Mason drifted over, making it a four-person knot with everyone else in the room pretty much discounted.

Vivian said, “Josh is ex PRT.  If he goes down, the feds will swarm in here like fleas on a wolf.  But if he really wanted to go to war with you, he’d win, or do so much damage to you, the fey and wolves would clean up easily.  You’d lose everything.  You’ll get more by befriending him than by trying to leash him.” 

“Cat’s don’t walk on leashes,” I added.

Mason smiled broadly, looming on my right.  “You might be right.  We will consider your words.”  He caught Brielle’s gaze.  “Right?”

She nodded.  “We will consider, but we make no promises.”

Vivian looked at me, waiting.

I nodded.  “I suppose that is the best I can hope for right now.”

Brielle stepped in close to me, her pale face inches away.  “Walk softly in our city.  We do not answer to the Courts of L.A., the vampire courts, or those of the fey.  We heard about the mess you made in your own city six months ago.  We don’t need a night of the red moon here.”

I gave her a stare with tingling eyes.  My eyes were reflected in hers.  One of my eyes had that weird slit pupil in it again.  She gasped softly and took a step back from me.

I said, “I’ll walk as softly as I can, but I will also kill whoever needs it.”

“Understood,” Mason said.  “I’ll walk you out,”

We retraced our steps and exited by the front door.  The sun was dropping lower, but we still had hours of daylight left.  Mason pulled out very dark sunglasses and slipped them on as we stepped off the porch.  Vivian put hers on as well.  They were day walkers, only half vampire, but the summer sun took its toll.  I was feeling a bit wilted myself, used to the milder summers in Malibu.

Josh was in the drive, in Kat’s VW.  He must have called her for a pickup.  He yelled at me, “You coming?”

“No, you go on.  We’ll follow you in one of these sedans.”

Mason canted his head, looking at me with veiled eyes.  “You will?”

I nodded.  “Sure.  You’re going to loan me a vehicle in the spirit of cooperation.”

He shrugged, displaying carelessness with his property that told me he was more than filthy rich.  He probably didn’t really expect to get the car back, and would write the bribe off as the cost of doing business. 

He said, “Fine.  You’ll find I can be a good friend.  Should other dhampyr prove too stubborn, and get themselves killed off, I think I can promise you a more sympathetic response under my leadership, especially if you’ve got some control over the liger.”

Vivian looked like she wanted to spit in Mason’s face.  I put a restraining hand on her arm, smiling at Mason.  “I am here to do business.  We should all try to get along.”

Vivian pulled violently away from me and marched over to the VW.  She climbed in, leaving me to ride alone as Mason handed me a set of keys, pointing to one of the Jags.  “That one,” he said.  “When you return it, make sure the tank is full.”

I smiled.  “Sure, I’ll try not to let it get blown up or anything.”

Mason lowered his voice, “Why are you really in Sacramento?”

I gave him my best look of baffled innocence.  “I’m an open book, Mason.”

“We’re all friends here,” he said.

“Sure, I’m into that.  The power of love and friendship can change the world.”  I managed to say that with a straight face, not that he bought it.  I left him there, strolling over to his car, keeping an eye out for the lady assassin who was on my trail.  With her around, I couldn’t afford to be predictable.  That’s why I was changing vehicles.  Every little bit helps.

I followed Kat’s VW down the drive, out the gate, and over to the corner.  She pulled in and parked.  Everyone bailed from the car, forming a lynch mob on the sidewalk.  I parked behind the VW and got out. 

Before I could speak, Vivian turned a hard face my way.  She burst out in indignation, “Were you actually kissing up to that sleaze back there?”

Josh added his own softly rumbled inquiry, “Planning on controlling me, are you?”

Kat glared.  “So my car isn’t good enough for you?”

I drew a PPK and shot her vehicle in the ass, punching out a taillight, drizzling red plastic splinters to the street.  “No,” I told her.  “It isn’t good enough for me.”  I swung my gun hand to my side, and slanted the liger a look that told him to stand down before other things got shot.  “And no, I’m not interested in controlling my allies, shooting them maybe, but not controlling.”  My glance swung to Vivian.  “And you are an idiot—a hot idiot—but still an idiot.  Of course I’m going to exploit an advance from one of the major players in this game.  What part of ‘keeping one’s enemies close’ don’t you understand?”

Kat blinked back tears.  “I can’t believe you shot my car.”

I grinned.  “That’s because you don’t know me very well.” 

Josh jerked a thumb at the bullet hole in the car.  “You are going to pay to fix that, right?”

“You’re damn right he will!” Kat yelled.

I looked at Kat and I offered her my weapon.  “How about if I let you shoot my ride instead?”

She snatched the gun from my hand, moved abreast of my borrowed car, and emptied the clip.  Intentional or not, she fired across the rear passenger seat, shattering windows on both sides of the car, doing little significant damage.  She finished with a big breath and returned the PPK with a smiled.  “Yeah, I do feel better.”

“And people say violence doesn’t solve anything.”  I holstered the weapon.  “Anything else?”  No one said anything, so I said, “Well, I got something.  There was a hidden source of mystic energy in that room back there.  I couldn’t pin it down, but I noticed something interesting when Mason showed us out.  The mystic web covering the place is his.  Its center moves when he does.  He’s a lot more powerful than the other dhampyr know.”

I started toward my Jag, but Vivian’s hand caught my arm.  “Do you think his power comes from the dream stone?”

“It’s possible, but there are a lot of mystic artifacts out there that could explain this.  Still, I want you to swallow your dislike of the man and try to get close to him.”

She let me go.  “I’m sorry, Caine.  I should have known you knew what you were doing.  I was … unprofessional.”

I loved her confidence in me.  Such a rare thing for me to find.

“Forget it.”  I walked away.  “Let’s go kick some wolves into shape.”

She called after me, “After we clean the broken glass out of your back seat.”

Oh, yeah
.

*    *    *

Leaving Sacramento, we found the wolf pack compound out near the Folsom Lake State Recreation Area.  We parked our vehicles at the edge of undeveloped hill property that was thick with granite outcroppings and oaks.  A dirt road serviced the site, winding past a couple of small cabins, built from boards, not logs.  A larger structure lay beyond, half-hidden by trees.

I left the Jag and joined the others outside their VW.  Kat had her arms crossed, plumping up her boobs.  “I’m not going in there.”

“Sensible.  They are wolves after all.”  Vivian checked over her guns.  Like mine, they were freshly loaded with clips of silver ammo.

Kat said, “It’s not that.  Bad memories.  Last time I was here, I almost died.”  Her glance swept Josh.  “I would have been
eaten
if not for—”

“It’s okay,” Josh said.  “Go home.  We’ll ride back with Caine.”

“You’re sure?”  Her voice sounded troubled as she hugged herself, needing to do something with her hands.

Josh smiled at her.  “Yeah, go on.  We have to take special care now to keep you safe.”

We do?  Am I missing something?

She returned to her VW, driving away.  We started up the road.  I didn’t see sentries, but knew they were around.  Wolves are as paranoid as they are arrogant.  Besides, they couldn’t be too secure without an Alpha around to tell them what to do.  You get used to things like that: pack mentality.  As we neared the two cabins, their doors opened.  A thin man with heavy stubble and bushy eyebrows moved to the edge of the porch on the right.  A woman with wide hips and small breasts came out of the cabin on the left.  They studied us all, but their eyes remained on Josh.  From the tension in their lean, starved-looking bodies, they might have been waiting for the end of the world.