Cold Reign

Bruiser’s cell chirped. He tapped the screen and said, “Alex?”

“I’m safe. Tell Jane her cell is off again.” His voice was manic, the way it sounded when he was overindulging on energy drinks. Eli and I had talked to him about the dangers of overdosing on them, but he was a geek teenager, ten feet tall and Kryptonite-proof.

I fished around and found my cell. It was in pieces; the only thing still intact was the Kevlar cover. I didn’t remember picking it up at the house. I didn’t remember breaking it, but it must have happened in the firefight inside Arceneau Clan Home.

“Did she bust another one?” Alex asked Bruiser.

I muttered something less than ladylike under my breath and tossed it to the SUV floor.

“Yes,” Bruiser said. “She did.”

“Ha! I owe myself five bucks.” He continued, “I got three things: Vamps coming ashore in a rubber dinghy while the attention was focused on shore during the original altercation with the Feds and ICE. Brandon’s and Brian’s current whereabouts. And Grégoire’s attackers/kidnappers on camera after they left HQ.”

I stood straight. “Yeah? Grégoire first.”

“Timeline: The EV vamps carried Grégoire out through the side entrance of HQ and gave him to two humans. He was bound and bleeding and unconscious. The humans carried him down the street and put him in a car. I got a partial plate. Found the car on the way to Clan Arceneau. Not long after, I got a visual on the Roberes at the dock and leaving at a dead run. They got in one of Leo’s SUVs, but they deactivated the GPS on it and I lost them on the traffic cams. I reacquired the humans and Grégoire. They ditched the car on the Lafitte Greenway Trail and left on foot, where I lost them on St. Louis Street. Best guess is they got into one of the cars going past, but not sure which one. I’m backtracking through the footage to see where the Roberes ended up, but it’s taking time to acquire the private surveillance footage.”

Which meant he was hacking right and left. I should tell him to stop, but lives depended on his illegal abilities. I kept my mouth shut.

The Kid continued, “Sending you coordinates of the abandoned car. I’ll call back when I have more.” The connection ended and Alex’s face disappeared from the screen.

I reloaded as Bruiser drove, glancing several times to check on the vamp in the backseat. She was vamp-sleeping, the breathless, dead look of the undead uncorpse. I said, “You drained her power, didn’t you?” He didn’t answer, just turned his wipers on higher as the rain became harder. “That’s the Onorio secret power, or one of them. To be able to steal the magic of the undead. And that’s why the vamps want Brandon and Brian. Because they’re Onorios. Now, because one of the humans got away, they know about you being Onorio.” Again he said nothing. “You’re glowing. Full of power, like a Naturaleza vamp looks, after it’s drained a human.”

He glanced at me quickly and away, saying, “Do I repulse you?”

I pointed at my fangs. “Do I repulse you? Did I repulse you when I killed five humans back there?”

Bruiser smiled, his lips quirking up, eyes crinkling. “There is nothing you can do and nothing you might look like that would repulse me, Jane Yellowrock.”

I snapped the nine-mil into its holster and looked at my hands. I wasn’t sure if I could blush in this form or if it would show if I did. “Ditto,” I said. “Not repulsed. Just glad you weren’t necking with the vamp back there while I saved your ass.”

“Not necking. And if it’s ass you want . . .”

I looked out the window, hiding my pleasure. An arch in my voice, I said, “I’m willing to accept thanks taken out in trade.”

Bruiser chuckled in the manly way they do when they’re thinking about sex. He drove with one hand and took mine with the other. We drove the rest of the way to the greenway holding hands, not looking at each other, me with a silly little smile on my fangy mouth.

The car Grégoire had been taken away in was a black, four-door Lincoln, and it had been pulled off St. Louis Street and onto the greenway grass before it was abandoned. Bruiser slammed the SUV into park and we rushed to the vehicle through the rain. I grabbed Bruiser’s arm as he reached to open the door. “Possible explosives,” I said. “The bomb squad is going to make overtime today.”

“I’ll call it in,” Bruiser said, and called NOPD. While he talked to dispatch and was put through to three other departments, telling the same tale each time, I walked around the Lincoln and sniffed things out. I caught the bloody spoor of Grégoire; he had been carried away. I started the muddy slog on the Lafitte Greenway, which wasn’t as pretty as that might have sounded, being a treeless stretch of grass and not much else. However, their trail ended at tire tracks in the mud. They had switched cars. My shoulders slumped, though I followed the tire tracks for a dozen blocks, the vehicle heading lakeside, until the mud no longer left a trail. I had lost Blondie.

Back at the SUV, the bomb squad hadn’t yet made an appearance, and the storm had gotten much worse, like an out-of-season hurricane, but with sleet and frozen rain. Even in half-Beast form I was shivering and miserable. Bruiser held my door for me, as if I were wearing a ballroom dress and not the soaked leathers. I was so getting some nonleather armor.

We had to find the witch who was bringing in the storm—hopefully Adan Bouvier. And locate Grégoire. And the vamps and humans who took him. And we had to stop all of them and then stop the boat offshore. At some point, I had read a text update from Alex that the Coast Guard was patrolling the waters watching for vamps and humans who might want to make it ashore, but in the rain and wind, humans would surely miss a lot. Clearly there were more than just two European vamps in town. Maybe the entire EuroVamp contingent was coming ashore in twos and threes, ready to do that whole preemptive strike on Leo. My heart rate increased as a spurt of adrenaline shot through my bloodstream. Alex had said something about vamps coming ashore in a rubber dinghy while the attention was focused on shore. Too much was going on and I was confused and hungry and tired.

Using the SUV’s onboard computer, I got Internet access, texted Alex, and got a fast answer. At the same time we were watching ICE and the feds and baiting Rick, a motorized dinghy carrying six passengers had come ashore, at least two of them vamps. Alex was working to identify them all now, and when he sent me some stills, I was able to assure him that two of the vamps were out of commission, one dead at the burned-out Arceneau Clan Home and one in the back of the SUV. The humans were DBs too. Considering the storm and the distance from their insertion point, I could likely account for all the hours between landfall and torture/arson.

Alex also sent me pics of the vamps and humans who had gone after Grégoire. My heart clenched and the blood froze in my veins, even though there was no surprise in his identity. One of the vamps was Le Bâtard. Grégoire’s sire.

Bruiser’s cell chirped again. He answered and listened. When he ended the call he said, “Let’s go. We’re needed at the Council Chambers, and the Mithran in the back will cook if left out in the sun too long.”

I looked up at the sky and said, “Sun?”

Bruiser didn’t even laugh. Seeing me shiver, he turned the heater to high and also ran the air-conditioner, trying to get some of the moisture out of the vehicle. In our short absence, it had grown colder and wetter and the windows were fogged. I hated New Orleans winters. And summers. The weather here nine or ten months out of the year. Hated it.

My honeybunch whipped the wheel and gunned the motor.

“You gonna tell me about the call?” I asked when Bruiser sped through a yellow light, turning over to red. Bruiser seldom ran lights, probably habits left over from the days when vamps and their servants ran under the radar and did everything possible to avoid the attention of law enforcement. Not today.

“You asked about the new cages in the scion prison. One was not coated in silver. Adrianna is missing.”

“You are freaking kidding me.” Though with my fangs it came out, U r fek’g kiddick ee.

“Sadly not. She was set free during the storm. There were security problems from two lightning strikes into the grounds themselves. It’s dawn now, so she’s gone to lair, but we need to—”