Cold Reign

I turned and walked back up the stairways and walkways and tunnels and passageways and back to the front entrance. Time flipped back and forth between stopped and normal as I walked through it all until I found Wrassler and Derek in conversation and told them what I had discovered. “Get a hose and wash him off,” I said. “It’s probably too late but it’s marginally better than nothing. And find and secure Callan and the Marchands. They’re in this up to their fangs.” When neither moved, I said, “Orders of the Enforcer,” which let them off the hook if there were negative repercussions from my decisions.

“I’ll hose off Joseph Santana,” Wrassler said, speaking of the Son of Darkness. “You handle the detainees.” Derek nodded and turned on a heel without speaking. Wrassler raised his eyebrows and looked at me. “Why does he hate you?”

I shrugged. “My winning personality?”

Wrassler moved off, chuckling and muttering, “Winning personality. Yeah. Sure.”

In the foyer, the cops were still questioning vamps, trying to get in the last interviews before dawn hit and the younger vamps became comatose and the older ones simply walked away. It would be hours before they talked to me, and I was done waiting. NOPD knew where I lived. They could come visit me there. I waved to Eli and walked out the front door.

There was a vamp central SUV parked in the big parking area with the key fob under the mat. I started the vehicle, flipped on the wipers, and drove home. I let my mind rove and wander as I drove, not trying to think anything in particular, not trying to make connections or deduce anything at all. Just letting myself meander internally. I had a bad feeling about a lot of things I had seen tonight and they seemed to lead nowhere. Which meant that they had to have a connection.

I pulled in an empty spot in front of the house and stopped. The lightning hit again, far off this time, and I saw the green sparking glow in my bedroom. The initial traces of understanding washed through me as all the little pieces began to line up for inspection.

The first time I had seen the magical thing called le breloque had been in a storm. A magical storm. A storm god, an Anzu, wanted it. There were magical detonators on normal bombs. Red magics on the snake and on the SOD. Mixed blood on the VIP—very important prisoner. All the Europeans knew we had him, and maybe they didn’t know he was heartless. Heartless. Funny me. Except it wasn’t amusing at all. After seeing revenants rise, I had to concede that the blood might heal the bag of bones. Maybe totally.

Whatever was going on was tied to the SOD, le breloque, the magical storm, the arcenciels trapped in the magical storm, and the European vamps. Leo said he knew they hadn’t come ashore en masse. But they were tied in with everything that was going on, and Leo had to know that. Sooo. Leo knew what was going on and he was letting it happen. Or . . . He had thought he knew. And then Grégoire was taken. Yeah. That.

I turned off the vehicle, got out, and looked up, seeing only cloud-to-cloud lightning. I pulled on Beast’s night vision, however, and I saw a great deal more. Arcenciels dancing in the lightning, not dropping into no-time. Three of them. As if they were trapped in real time.

I walked inside. Wrung out and replaced the sponges by the door. And opened my bedroom door. On my small table was le breloque, glowing green, throwing green sparks. Red motes raced through the green. The top part of the corona was composed of laurel leaves. The bottom was a gold ring with the odd symbols on it. Tonight I had seen a similar gold circlet on the head of a king, his hands all over Katie Fonteneau, Leo’s heir.

Looking down, I saw the red motes and the silver-gray motes of my skinwalker energies inside me. Magic. Magic that had been waiting to find its proper shape and form. Waiting to awaken. The long game. I opened the small footstool and stood on the top rung so I could see the box of magical stuff. It was sparking too, the same colors as the corona that had once been a crown on a king’s head. Carefully, I took the box off the shelf and placed it on the foot of the bed. I opened the box. Inside were magical trinkets, including a particular gem. The Glob had been part of the blood-magic spell that I had interrupted the night the red motes had entered me. Now the device was attuned to me, somehow, something I had known since it had been transformed inside my own lightning-scorched flesh. Lightning had changed it. Changed me.

Right now, it was being charged by the magical storm outside. I didn’t touch it. Not this time.

Alex knocked softly on the door. I grunted and he stepped inside. “Two hours ago, two humans were allowed ashore from a cruise ship that may or may not have had vampires as other passengers. Their reason for being allowed on U.S. soil was stated as being ‘to deal with government and public officials and appropriate paperwork.’”

I closed the box and put it back on the shelf. Slid my hand away from the hedge of thorns that protected it. Alex said, “Brandon and Brian were at the dock as Leo’s lawyer and interpreters when they heard that Grégoire had been taken. They left the docks midnegotiation. An international incident seems to be brewing between what might have been European blood-servants, representatives of the Master of the City, and the U.S. government. The mayor’s spokesperson is making a political commotion and squawking to the media about the MOC walking out of negotiations.”

“Did Leo call the Roberes off?”

“No. That was unilateral.”

“So, not Leo’s decision.”

“True. It’s still a problem.”

“But not an Enforcer job at this point in time.”

“No. But Grégoire and Brian and Brandon all are missing.”

I remembered the painting in Leo’s office, Katie in bed with a man, a woman peering in through the window as the last piece fell into place. I knew who all three players from that painting were. “Katie was having sex with the king, the emperor Titus Flavius Vespasianus himself,” I muttered.

“What?”

I shook my head, as if to shake up the things rattling around inside it. “I’ll be right back.” I went through the side door, across the porch, and back into the rain as I dropped to the ground. By now I had been so wet for so long that I didn’t even notice it except for the cold. That was pretty miserable, and I shivered. I passed my boulders and stopped at the fountain. It was a huge marble tulip full of rainwater to the petaled rim, with a miniature naked woman sitting atop, the sculpture finely detailed. It no longer splashed, because I had turned off the water, but the statue was of Katie, naked, complete with fangs. She rose from the middle of the fountain bowl, a small, carved stone perfection, a masterwork.

This house had been Katie’s before she lent it to me and then gave it to me as payment for a service. I used her teapots to make tea. Sat on her furniture. I never liked her, but I had never worried that she was a threat. Bedbug crazy, yes. Dangerous, no. I turned from the fountain, raced up the shattered boulders in the former rock garden, and leaped for the brick fence, less than twelve feet from the top of the rock pile. I got a toehold on a small irregularity and shoved up. Now that I didn’t have to hide what I was, I vaulted over and landed on the far side, splashing down.

I trotted to Katie’s back door and banged.

Troll, Katie’s primo blood-servant, opened the door, almost as if he had been expecting me. He looked pale in the predawn light, as if he had been fed on too often and too deeply. He was wearing a T-shirt under a hoodie and thick jogging pants against the growing cold. He was huge, all muscle and toughness, and the winter clothes were tight on his torso, loose on his lower legs and arms, layered for the weather. “Little Janie,” he said.

“Troll. The Enforcer of the Master of the City of New Orleans and the greater Southeast USA needs to see the paintings of Katie.”

His face didn’t change but his scent did. A faint, barely-there alteration. It gained the taint of despair. I thought he might refuse me, but the title of Enforcer obligated him to back away. Only Katie herself could refuse me.

It was nearly dawn, in the middle of an unusual and epic storm. Katie’s Ladies was empty of clients, the girls in their rooms doing whatever working girls who catered to vamps did in their off hours. I walked through the house. Troll followed me, and together we stopped at each painting of Katie, studying them all, one by one.