Dark Heir

“Yeah. Well, if he dies, we’ll lose any and all info he gained from fighting the SoD. So give me vamp names in order of likelihood.”

Eli pulled a minipenlight and inspected the wolf, the light flashing over the bloody body so fast, I couldn’t tell what more I was seeing. “He’s barely breathing,” Eli said. “Blood loss, shock. Leo owes you a boon. The so-called big honking boon. You could call him.”

That was true. I hesitated, my fingers poised over my cell phone in my pocket. A boon that big was worth a lot more than a werewolf’s life. Which was a horrible, foul, selfish thought; my old pal guilt gripped me in her cruel hands and twisted. But that boon could save my own life someday. Or Molly’s. Or those of my godchildren. How much was Brute worth? I hadn’t realized I had pulled my cell until after I’d dialed Bruiser.

“Jane,” he answered, warmth in his voice. With just one word, I could tell he was tired, sleepless, like me. Pulling a second all-nighter, except for the short nap in my bed.

I blushed. I could feel it creeping up my neck. “Santana and Brute fought. Brute’s hurt. I need him alive to tell us what he knows about Santana. Joses. Whoever. And I have to call Jodi, to report the three women Santana killed, so I need Brute handled stat.”

Bruiser rephrased carefully, as if he wasn’t sure what I had said. “Santana fought Brute and the werewolf is still alive?”

I looked around the garden, only now seeing what my nose had told me. Blood was spattered everywhere. There were broken pots and overturned lawn chairs. “Yeah.” I bent low to hear the soft, wheezing escape of air from damaged lungs. “Barely.”

“I’ll be there in ten.” The call ended.

I stared at the cell. Bruiser hadn’t asked where I was. He didn’t have to. Bruiser knew where I was. All the time. I cocked my head, holding the cell that was a leash and a prison and a spy, thinking. Wondering if I had exhausted the ways that I could turn the cell to my advantage.

Beside me, Eli put away the penlight and turned on a larger flashlight, the beam so bright my eyes teared up. It was the brilliance, not the vision of the battered dog, that brought my tears. Wolf, I reminded myself. Werewolf. Not dog. It wasn’t a dog covered in blood, seeping from dozens of wounds. Not a dog with glazed eyes. A wolf. A werewolf.

One who was dying. One who had saved my life once upon a time. Who had gone into battle with me against common enemies.

“Well, crap,” I said, kneeling in the bloody grass. Getting anywhere near an injured werewolf who couldn’t shift to heal himself was stupid. Helping said werewolf was suicidal. “Medical pack.” I held back my hand and Eli placed the mesh bag into my palm as if he’d had it ready and waiting. “I am not predictable,” I said as I unsnapped the pack and pulled on nitrile gloves. They were Pepto pink. Cute.

“Sure you are, babe. I’d treat the throat wound first. And try to not get bit.”

“Thanks,” I said making sure the sarcasm was properly expressed.

I eased my hands under Brute’s jaw and applied pressure to the werewolf’s throat, to either side of his esophagus, so he could still breathe. He was unconscious or too close to death to snap at me. His breath rate was fast, his heartbeat was faster, stuttery, uncertain. His body smelled sour and sick, the smell of death clinging to him.

I felt something hard beneath my fingers, like bone or . . . metal. Holding pressure with the heels of my palms, I let my fingers follow the shape. It revealed itself to be a chain, like a dog collar, but it was too thin, too delicate. The heft and shape were more like a fashion necklace, and there were things hanging from loops on it. I slipped it from the folds of the wound and discovered that it was wrapped around Brute’s bloody jaw. Keeping my flesh away from the wickedly sharp teeth, I eased it free and handed it to Eli. “What is it?”

A long moment later Eli said, “If Alex can recover any data from a bunch of jump drives hanging on a gold chain and covered with were-blood, it might be something. If the blood can’t be cleaned away, then you’ll have a nice necklace.”

“Jump drives?” I asked. “Thumb drives, flash drives? Same thing?” Eli nodded and I said, “Reach said that Satan’s Three took his data. They could have used jump drives.”

“Or sent it to themselves. Or to the cloud. Or just copied the hard drives.”

“Adrianna had marks on her throat near where she was bitten by the Son of Darkness.” Marks that could have come from the gold chain I’d been holding as it was ripped off her. The gold chain that was dangling in Eli’s fingers, the links the same size as the marks on her neck. Reach’s data? One chance in a . . . couple hundred. Maybe.

Santana was a child of the Roman Empire and had been kept prisoner for the last hundred years. He’d had only a few days to learn about the modern world and would have concentrated on the things he needed to survive: food—human cattle—shelter from the sun, a safe place to lair up. Electronic hardware had to be way down on the survival list. If he took the necklace from Adrianna, it was because he thought it had significance, like magical powers. And for us, maybe it did.

“Get back to the house. Now. Before anyone gets here. Get the Kid working on it. Tell him I’ll buy him a whole computer store if he can save the data.”

Eli chuckled and disappeared into the night, taking his flashlight with him, leaving me in the dark with a dying werewolf, Brute’s blood on my hands. “Come on, boy,” I said gently. “If you die now, you’ll never have a chance to get revenge for my Beast slicing your nose open.” Brute didn’t react, but he didn’t stop breathing either, which was good enough for the moment.

In less time than he had promised, Bruiser walked into the walled garden, three shorter forms behind him. By their smell, I knew they were vamps. And by the smell alone, I could tell they were agitated, vamped-out. Such concentrated blood smell could make the young ones vamp-out and go on a feeding frenzy. “Bruiser? You sure about this?”

“Not in the least, but he assures me he can control them and that they need a challenge to remember that they are Mithrans, not simply meals to the more powerful among them.”

“He?”

Magic rose; icy prickles danced along my skin, sharp and burning cold. I knew that magical signature. A fourth form walked into the garden, a man of middle height, lithe, and so powerful it hurt where his magic touched me. Edmund Hartley’s power seemed to hurt the three young vamps as well, because the small group came to an abrupt stop. And danged if two of the three young vamps in the bloody garden weren’t vamps who had been drained by Joseph Santana the day he escaped. Vamps who had been prey to Santana.