Dark Heir

“No. He didn’t.” Eli glanced from Derek to the bloodstained rooms around us and back. “Was Derek working for Leo during the vamp war?”

“Yeah.” The cold closed on me with icy claws, and I checked on Derek again. He was bent over, his head inside his SUV, his weapon down beside his leg. He had said guns were equalizers in a war with vamps. Why had he drawn his gun?

“Juwan,” Eli said.

I thought back to Juwan. What had someone learned when Juwan was interrogated? What if Juwan was acting under Derek’s orders when he had attacked? What if someone had called Derek and warned him that I was onto him? What if I was paranoid? What if I wasn’t paranoid enough?

Eli bladed his body so he could keep Derek in his peripheral vision and looked back into the house. “That one is head height. So is that one,” Eli pointed to blood spatters high on the wall beside the door. “Then below them, on the floor.”

I followed his finger, putting it all together. “They were shot, head shots, not staked. Not killed in sword fights or blood duels. Just shot and then beheaded,” I said. Execution-style.

“Human soldiers did this. Not vamps.” Eli and I both positioned Derek again—still at his vehicle, but I realized I hadn’t seen the driver and I couldn’t tell if he was there or not. We turned, quickly quartering the room, counting the wall spatters and the floor splatters. They matched. Eli said, his tone musing, “And Derek did say that guns were equalizers. Can you tell if he was here then?”

“Not unless he was injured. There’s too much vamp-blood smell. It’s been too long.”

“He’s coming back. He’s got something in his hand.”

“Not a gun. Paper.” The gun was missing. In his spine holster?

“Still.” Eli stepped into the living room, taking cover behind a small bureau, which allowed him to see the entire foyer and keep me out of the line of fire. He pulled his sidearm and readied it for shooting. “Just in case Derek just got orders from on high to take us out. Or he’s changed sides and is working for the European vamps. Or some other scenario we haven’t considered.”

“Crap,” I said. But I rolled my head on my shoulders and blew out my tension, pulling on Beast, who rose in me and sent tendrils of power through my bloodstream. “No shooting. I’m taking him down and asking questions later.”

“Good by me.”

I positioned myself so that I’d be behind the door when it opened. When Derek opened it, I stuck out my foot. He tripped. I rode him down and banged his head on the marble. He went still. Easiest takedown ever. I picked up the paper he had been holding, which turned out to be an envelope, one of the fancy kinds Leo used. I suddenly had a bad feeling about knocking Derek out. Concussions could be healed by a vamp, but insulting a vamp’s hospitality might result in waking up dead. I flipped the envelope over and saw the word Lachish written on the front, in Leo’s fancy penmanship. “Well, crap,” I said.

“Don’t move,” a soft voice said. I looked up to see a guy in jeans and T-shirt, with a weapon pointed at me. Juwan was holding the gun, and he looked way too pleased to see me in his sights at a time when his boss—Derek—was unable to do anything to help or protect me. Juwan had been the driver. Or had followed Derek. Someone had let Juwan out of his cage at vamp HQ, healed him, and sent him after me. His finger began to squeeze the trigger. Rather than reply, I dove to the side, dropping the letter and drawing two nine millimeters. Juwan’s weapon tracked me, and I heard the first shot.

CHAPTER 15

By the Fluids of His Undeath

The next shots were overlaid, concussing and echoing. Half-deaf, I heard a muffled shout as I hit the floor, sliding, swiveling all at once. Only to see Juwan fall. Blood on both thighs.

In a leaping crouch I crossed the floor and shoved the guns away from the fallen man, checking him for additional wounds. Except for pinpricks of closed fang wounds on the skin at his jugular, there were none, but Juwan’s left leg had sustained arterial damage, and blood was spurting into the room. Eli dropped to the floor beside me and went to work, medical supplies appearing from pockets and pouches. He sliced open Juwan’s pants with a small blade and tore open a sterile package—the latest medical wonder, developed for battlefield injuries, injectable, foam, pill-like blocks, contained in a modified syringe. Still deaf, I dialed for help on my cell and held the phone to Eli’s head for him to handle. Fortunately, his headset had protected his hearing in one ear. Then, while he worked to stabilize Juwan, I gathered up all the unfired weapons, my gobag, the envelope addressed to Lachish, and all Eli’s extra ammo, and carried everything to the back fence, dropping them over and beneath a shrub, where it would be hard to spot them from any direction. Just in case.

Minutes later an ambulance and police were out front, probably called by nervous neighbors, and the primo had called a lawyer from Leo’s high-priced firm. The attorney was on the way, my partner was in handcuffs, in the back of a cop car, along with Derek’s driver, and the cops would soon want me at cop central for questioning. Because, yeah, we had one unconscious guy and one shot guy lying on the foyer floor, with evidence of multiple shots fired. But, ummm, we also had a crime scene with multiple bloodstained sites, and no record of police being called to address a vamp problem. How did I explain that? I couldn’t. I had guesses, and all of them might be wrong. After all, it looked like I’d been wrong about Derek and his driver being out to get me.

I caught Eli’s eyes through the unit’s side window, and he gave a single quick nod, off to the side, away from the ruckus. It was a tacit order for me to make our next appointment without him. It also meant that he had likely overheard someone saying I should be arrested too.

I frowned but nodded. I had given a preliminary statement to the cops, little good that it did, and if I stuck around, I’d be in cop central for hours while Joses/Joseph was still on the loose, with backup from some traitorous vamp at HQ. Pulling on Beast’s stealth abilities, I slid into the early shadows and along the house to the back. I leaped the low fence and picked up all the gear.

Crossing yards, courtyards, and streets, jumping fences, and weaving through the falling dark, I hoofed it out of the district, calling for a cab on the way. I hadn’t contacted Rinaldo in ages, but he was working the dinner shift and said he’d pick me up in ten. I emerged on Jackson Avenue and spotted the cabbie in the rush-hour traffic. Which was even more heavy than usual. I was going to be very late to the appointment with Lachish, Molly, and Sabina. On the way, I texted Alex with the deets of the ambush and told him to start reviewing all video showing the entrance to the scion lair where we had trapped Juwan. Fat lotta good it did us.