Death's Rival (Jane Yellowrock #5)

Bitsa Alone Could Wake the Undead

Once again I was sitting in the sweathouse, feeding kindling to the fire. The coals had been smoldering beneath a heavy layer of ash when I entered, and I had uncovered them, fed them twigs, then larger pieces. The rocks were heated, and the smudge basket was full of smudge sticks. It was as if they had known I was coming. Considering the dream, they probably had. I had started to sweat long minutes past, and had a steady trickle going when Aggie entered and closed the door on the rest of the world. She sat beside me, and I could feel her eyes on me. I kept mine on the fire, letting the flames steal my vision in the dark hut. More minutes passed. I was sweating freely and stewing in my own irritation when Aggie finally spoke.

"We have spoken of your soul house, of the cavern that drips with moisture, lit by flickering firelight, the place of your earliest memories."

I nodded to show I knew what she was talking about. It was the cavern where I made my first shift into we sa, the bobcat, when I was a child of maybe five. When Aggie took me back into my own memories it was to this place I most often went.

"You carry anger around in your soul home like a trapped storm cloud full of thunder and lightning and heavy rain," she said, her voice a murmur. "Your spirit overflows with that anger. This anger is too large for you to contain, and it is compressed within you."

She fell silent while I envisioned the darkness within me, and the storm she could see there. She was right. It was a raging storm, bigger than Katrina, more destructive than Hurricane Andrew, trapped there, inside me.

In the sweathouse, the fire crackled and spat, stealing energy from the wood with a soft hiss. "Do you want to tell me about the anger?" she asked.

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Fed the fire. Aggie waited. I had the feeling that she would wait until nightfall and say nothing else. She had given me an opening and now it was my turn, to take or not. "I killed a man in my hotel room in Asheville. I didn't see a gun - it was down at his side - but I reacted to the threat I sensed, the fear I felt, and I shot him. He died. Only after he fell did I see that he was carrying a gun with a sound suppresser on it." Aggie's expression didn't change; even her scent stayed the same, calm and waiting. "I found out later that he was only there to look me over in preparation to challenging me to a fight of some sort. And now all the vamps and blood-servants in the Southeast are in danger. Because I killed a man."

After a long moment, during which Aggie added a log to the fire, she said, "He was only there to look at you? He could have done that in a restaurant. On the street. Anywhere. He came into your hotel room? With a gun in his hand?" I nodded. "Then perhaps he was going to kill you and slip away, so he didn't have to challenge you."

My head snapped up. I met Aggie's eyes and she laughed at whatever was on my face. She shrugged, as if to say, "It's just a thought," but she said nothing.

Some of the shadow I carried fell away from my shoulders. "Thank you," I said. Aggie shrugged again. "In your heart, you knew this. It is only part of your darkness."

"Last night, Leo Pellissier and his heir forced a feeding on me. To bind me to them."

Aggie didn't flinch, but I smelled her reaction: surprise, anger, and something deeper. She was protective of me. That lifted my hurt even more, and the darkness was no longer so heavy. I took a breath and it felt clean and fresh, like the way air felt coming out of a cavern. The breath of the earth. The breath of my soul house, my spirit place, moving again, no longer blocked.

"I had stupidly claimed to be Leo's Enforcer, a position that requires sharing of blood, and sometimes sex, in a binding ceremony. When I made the claim, it was to protect myself and others, and I had no idea it involved any kind of sharing. When it first happened, I wouldn't let him bind me, but now that he's facing a new threat, a bigger threat, he took what I'd verbally given him."

"And are you bound by this vampire?"

"Not so much. It isn't permanent." But it should be. I didn't say that part. "I'm angry. He had no right. It was an assault. And I have no legal recourse."

"Because under this Vampira Carta you have told me of, you gave him certain rights over you when you came into his employ." I nodded. "Rights you did not understand." I nodded again. "But once you knew of these rights, you still remained in his employ."

I didn't nod this time. Aggie had hit the nail on the head. I had known a forced feeding could happen. I stayed because the money was good. Because I was curious about vamps, and had allowed myself to get caught up in their lives and society. And maybe for other reasons I didn't yet understand, reasons that had to do with my own forgotten past. "I was stupid," I said, now hearing my bitterness.

Aggie cocked her head, letting me think it through. She shifted and resettled her legs. "And now you are conflicted, because you gave him the rights over your body and blood, but you never expected him to take them."

"Yeah. That about covers it. It proves I'm pretty stupid, doesn't it?"

"A scorpion's nature is to sting. A raptor's nature is to rend and tear flesh. Did he do that which was normal and right according to his nature?"

"Yes," I whispered.

"And your nature is to protect and to serve. Did you do that which was normal and right according to your nature?"

"Yes," I said again, my brows coming together. There was so much wrong with that line of thought. It's the nature of a serial killer to trap and torture humans. It's the nature of a pedophile to touch children. But nature doesn't make everything right. It's often just an excuse. Yet understanding one's own nature is often a first step to personal growth. All this psychological crap was making me irritable.

As if she sensed my irritation, Aggie changed course. "Will you leave his employ?"

I thought about Leo. And Bruiser. And the other humans I had met and liked. "I should. I don't know. I have to think about that."

"If you stay, it will be with eyes wide open now. Fully adult and fully informed."

"Yes. I understand." I shook my head and started to rise.

"There is still an angry darkness inside you." Aggie leaned back and relaxed, her eyes serene, like a nun's, like a woman who had made her choices and was okay with them. Not anything like me. "This anger is perhaps the core of who you are. It storms in the very center of your being, and it forms the basis of every decision you have ever made. We should look at this anger."

After a moment I said, "I made a vow when I was five years old." Aggie waited, implacable, resting in that enveloping sense of peace. "I made a vow to kill the men who murdered my father and raped my mother." To give her credit, Aggie didn't flinch at the bald statement. I eased back to the floor, my heels and butt on the cool clay. "I put my hands in my father's cooling blood." I put out my left hand as I had done as a child, to show her. "And I wiped it down my face." I lifted my hand, palm facing me, and dragged it down my face, slowly, feeling again my father's blood, sticky. The air cool as it hit the streaks of blood on my cheeks and forehead. "And I promised to kill them. I looked them in the face, silently, but promising that they would die. I was only five. I thought I hadn't succeeded. Until I remembered the bearded man hanging over a fire circle." This time, Aggie sat forward, her pupils wide in the firelight, her mouth opening slightly. "He was the yunega in my memory. There was an old woman, my grandmother. She poked him with a stick. I want to remember that. All of it. I think that is part of the dark, angry place inside."

"Anger, building and storming," Aggie said. I nodded. "Okay." She put on the music, a wood flute, playing a haunting melody. She lifted a heavy, earthen pitcher and dripped water over the hot rocks with a ladle. It hissed and spat. Steam rose, the air growing close and humid. My sweating increased instantly. Aggie passed me a bottle of water and I opened the top and drank. The water tasted bitter, and I stopped midswallow, watching her. "It's got a little something in it to help you remember," she said. I grunted and finished the bottle, draining it.

Aggie took the empty and chose a smudge stick from the basket. She lit the end. A bitter, acrid smell filled the steamy room. I breathed in. Closed my eyes. Time passed.

The room grew much lighter, as if the door was open. I turned to it, and saw an old woman enter. She was wearing a shift, coarsely woven cotton over her naked body, bony legs showing beneath, her feet bare. "The yunega is dead," she said. "Come."

I stood, the clay floor chilling the soles of my bare feet. I was wearing a blue dress, which I saw in glimpses as I walked out of the house, down the trail to the small clearing. I kept my eyes low as we entered the open space. In the center of it was a circle of white quartz stones, with gray rocks inside and the remains of a fire - ashes and one blackened log. Something black hung above the cold fire. It dripped once, a drop of reddish water trickling down and falling into the ashes. I let my eyes rise to the blackened stumps. They had once been feet. Now they were scorched meat, with blisters above in the scarlet flesh. The skin had split and wept. I let my eyes rise up the man's body.

His upper thighs were red and covered with dried blood. I smelled burned hair, and saw little blackened curls of hair on his skin. His manhood was gone, leaving only a patch of raw meat. I remembered his scream when it was removed - a long ululating wail. Above the wound was a white belly, hanging and slack, like a fish belly. His chest had brown nipples and hair, like the stomach of a dog. Men of Tsalagiyi did not have so much hair on their chests. Only the yunega had hair all over their bodies, like dogs or rats. My father's chest had been smooth when I dipped my hand into his blood.

The white man who raped my mother hung from sharpened deer antlers that had been shoved through his shoulders. His hands were tied behind his back with rope. Lank hair, the color of acorns, fell forward, half hiding his bearded face. He had had no beard, only the mustache when Uni Lisi captured him. Now his face was scruffy, like a bear, with hair. His blue eyes were open and dry, staring down at his body. His mouth was open in a silent scream. With my skinwalker nose, I could smell his blood and the stink of rot, but white men always smelled of rot and unwashed bodies. "Are you sure he is dead, Elisi?" I asked.

Elisi picked up a stick from the fire and stabbed him. "He no longer bleeds."

"Do we eat him?"

"No. Skinwalkers do not eat the bodies of our enemies. It is forbidden. It makes us sick."

I nodded and turned away. "Good," I said. I looked up at the leaves in the trees. They were golden and scarlet, with patches of blue sky showing through. "And the other one?" I asked.

"He is next."

I swam back up from the vision of fall leaves and blue sky. I was gasping and wet with sweat. The thin cloth tied above my breasts and hanging to my knees was soaked and limp as I shoved up with my elbows against the clay floor. "Elis - " I stopped, my throat so dry I couldn't speak. Aggie handed me another bottle of water. I opened it and drank it down, and nothing had ever tasked so good.

A demon had told me recently that I had never taken vengeance on my enemies. That he had killed my grandmother in the snow, as he had killed many of the Cherokee on the Trail of Tears. The demon had lied. A laugh escaped my mouth, half hysterical with shock. The demon had lied. Fierce joy threaded through me, weaving into my soul. "Elisi killed him. My grandmother killed him."

Aggie nodded slowly. "Your grandmother was a warrior woman, like those of old." There was no condemnation in the tones. "Did you see it? Did she make you watch his death?"

I started to shake my head and stopped. I had a quick image of leaves, dark and thick, over my face. Beyond them was fire, a man hanging over it, screaming. Three women worked over him, mostly naked, wearing only thin shifts, their clothes draped across nearby bushes. The women were Etsa, my mother, and her sister, and Elisi. "I wasn't supposed to see it," I whispered. "But I hid. I watched. Until he started screaming so bad. When they cut him."

I looked at Aggie. "I led my grandmother to him. To them. I caused their deaths."

"And is that part of the storm inside you, child?"

I shook my head, stopped, and nodded, uncertain. "I think that there's more. I need to remember the rest."

Aggie looked as if she would disagree, but after a long indecisive moment, she passed me another bottle of water. "One bottle should have kept you in the dream place for many hours. No one has ever needed two."

I stopped with the bottle halfway to my mouth, watching her.

"Did your grandmother have yellow eyes like you?" she asked

Holding her gaze, I drank the drugged water down. Recapped the bottle. Handed it back to her. "Yes. So did my father."

"I see." And I was afraid that she did indeed see. Before I could comment, the dreams took me again.

The yunega was in a cave up the hill beyond Elisi's house, bound and naked. I squatted before him, bare feet on the smooth clay floor, my hands clasped between my knees. "Did you see what they did to him, to your friend?" I asked. "They will do much worse to you." The man looked at me. He was yunega. He did not understand the speech of Tsalagiyi. He was staring at my face. It was still crusty with the traces of the blood of my father. I wouldn't wash it until my vengeance was done. I smiled. He shrank back against the cave wall.

The night was cold and wind blew through the trees, whispering and sighing, and golden leaves swirled on the night air. But I was warm in the coat that had once belonged to the killer of my father. It had been in the saddlebags of his horse, wrapped up in brown paper and twine. It was too big, but it was warm and red, the color of blood.

The last yunega had been brought to the clearing. He was gagged. Naked. Tied. He was lying on his stomach, screaming into the dirt as Elisi pounded deer antlers through his shoulders with a huge piece of white quartz the size of a human head. I was with the women this time, sitting on a log at the fire, not hiding. The wind skirled through the clearing, setting the leaves dancing. I pulled my new coat closer and the women hauled on ropes, lifting the man into the air and over the fire circle. There was no fire tonight. Tonight the women each held knives. I too had a knife, my first blade. It felt strange in my hand, cold as the winter wind, sharp as the pain in my heart at the death of my father. We gathered close. Etsa, my mother, made the first cut.

When I woke much later, it was night, and the sweathouse was cool and empty, the fire out, Aggie One Feather gone. I was alone. And I knew why Aggie One Feather thought me angry and full of storms. I knew. Slowly I stood and went outside into the night. Winter had come in the past hours. It was cool, with a north wind blowing. I removed my cloth covering and placed it in the basket for used sweat clothes. Turning the faucet on, I washed the smoke and sweat from me, the cool well water sluicing me clean - the washing part of the ritual - a cleansing after the pain of old memories. On the narrow shelf high above the faucet, there was a scrub brush, new, still in its plastic wrap, a new bar of soap, and shampoo in a small bottle like the kind hotels leave on the counters for the forgetful patron. They were gifts from Aggie. I opened them all and applied them to my body to remove the stink of fear-sweat and the stubborn reek of smoke. Afterward, I dried off, braided my hair, and dressed. The house was dark and silent as I walked to Bitsa. I helmeted up, kick-started her, and drove into the night.

The ride over the river and back into the French Quarter was fast, but less furious than the one this morning. My mind was quiet, my spirit was quiet, and even my emotions were quiet. I was quietness all inside me. I had found a part of me that I had lost. It wasn't a pretty part, but it tied the lost pieces together. I was born of a war clan. Of a skinwalker clan. We led our people into battle, tribe against tribe, tribe against the white man. When there was no war, we were the executioners.

I remembered the vision of one of the men who had raped my mother, hanging, bucking his body, fighting to get free as the women took their time with him. I blinked the image away, but it was burned into my mind, the memory, once found, now a part of me.

My grandmother had not let evil lie. She had searched the evil ones out, had hunted them down, and killed them in the worst way possible, which was the ancient, long-forgotten way of her skinwalker culture. She had brought justice to the people who depended on her. But there was a narrow, thin line between justice and sadism. Between justice and evil. My grandmother had surely crossed that line, had dumped gallons of blood onto it, obscuring it totally. I wasn't sure she was any better than the men who had killed my father.

No wonder skinwalkers went crazy when we got old, if we carried that kind of thing with us, inside us. Vengeance and justice were what we did. It was what I was. That spiritual constraint and demand for justice was why I had become a rogue-vamp hunter. Was why I was so good at killing. Living with it had never been easy, but at least I understood more of who I was now, more of why I made the choices I made. And more of the guilt that rested in my heart, a guilt that was trying to reconcile the duties of the skinwalker with the rules of the Christian God. Thou shalt not kill. Turn the other cheek. Pray for those that despitefully use you. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. The rules were supposed to uplift the human spirit and make us better people and help take us to a better place within our own hearts here on earth and after death. I had helped torture a man to death, and then buried the memory.

Now I remembered it. I remembered it all, every cut, every scream, and the joyful rage that rose in me when he died at my hand. I was five years old.

And now I could chose who I would be in the face of evil, in the face of life's problems, in the face of a vampire who had taken what I stupidly offered him. In the face of who I could become. If I lived long enough, I could decide - rationally and without emotion - how I would deal with Leo's blood theft. Leo, who was a scorpion with a stinger, and who acted only according to his nature, just as I had, when I was a five-year-old skinwalker, only recently awakened to my shape-changing gifts.

I pulled into the side yard of my freebie house and locked the gate behind me. I lifted Bitsa to the porch and leaned her against the house wall, leaving the helmet on Bitsa's seat. As I gathered my weapons, I smelled steaks on the grill in the backyard, and my stomach growled like a wild animal. I entered my house, smelling Kid - freshly showered - and Eli, and beer, and potatoes, and . . . Bruiser.

I stopped in the kitchen, placing my guests. They were sitting in the living room, a football game on the TV, and they were talking beer - brands, hops, distilleries. Guy talk. The kitchen table was set for four. I pushed a plate over and placed my weapons with a clatter in the cleared spot, knowing the men had to have heard me - Bitsa alone could wake the undead. I took a beer from the fridge and twisted off the top, drinking it down fast. The alcohol hit my system like a bomb, even with my skinwalker metabolism. I was dry as a bone and the sudden rush felt wonderful. I finished the beer and picked the weapons back up.

I walked silently through the house, avoiding the men, and into my room. I stopped, placed the weapons on the bed, and dropped my blood-stiff clothes to the floor. I dressed in black jeans and a yellow, long-sleeved T-shirt, smoothed and braided my hair, the long plait hanging down my back, still wet. I shoved stakes in, scraping them against my scalp. I strapped one blade to my thigh in plain sight. I didn't bother with shoes.

Back in the kitchen, the smell of cooking meat blowing in from outside made me salivate. The hunger that had been quiescent all day rose, clawing my stomach like a taloned hand. I hadn't eaten after the shift. I was starving. But there were things I needed to face before I ate. I opened another beer, the alcohol potent in my blood.

Sipping my beer, I walked into the living room and stood in the opening, my feet apart, one hand loose at my side near the knife. The swinging shelves were in place over the safe room, no hinges showing. If I hadn't seen the mess earlier, I'd never have known the hidden room was there. The living room looked as if nothing had been done to it; even the construction dust was cleaned up, the room spotless.

The men finally saw me, and the TV went mute, leaving the room in silence. I turned my gaze slowly to the men, the Kid first, then Eli, then Bruiser, and his gaze I held. The tension in the air rose, electric, as if Bruiser were sitting on a live wire. Eli and Alex were watching him, watching me, uncertain, knowing that something was up, but clearly not knowing what.

"Good evening, Jane," Bruiser said, after an eternity.

I didn't reply. Just took another sip, waiting.

He stood, and took two steps, as if he thought he might cross to me, and then stopped, a yard from his chair, in the middle of the room. "I'm sorry. I didn't . . ." He stopped and drew in a breath as if air-starved. "I couldn't stop them. When they forced you."

Eli came to his feet in a single rolling motion, as if he were all muscle, no bone. He stood between us, but back, so that we formed a tripod with me at the apex. His body was loose in that precombat tension of the best fighting men, and his eyes shifted back and forth between us. The Kid rolled the other way, all elbows and knobby knees, and stood behind the couch, out of the way. I let one side of my mouth rise, just slightly. Eli didn't know what had happened, but he was ready for anything.

"Jane?" Bruiser held out his hand. It was bruised, purpled, and swollen, as if it had been broken. So was the side of his face. Bruiser had been hit. Hard. It was difficult to injure a blood-servant. It took a vamp.

I indicated his hand with the beer bottle. "Leo do that?"

He looked down and turned his hand over and back, as if seeing the injury for the first time. "Yes. When I disagreed with his tactics." He looked back at me, his brown eyes catching the lamplight. He raised the hand and shoved it through his hair, sending the brown strands askew. "I thought it was simply a planning session. That was how Leo phrased it when he asked me to bring you. I didn't know they were planning to force a feeding and binding on you."

"And when they forced me? And you were holding me on the floor? What then?" As I said those words I could see Eli tense, shifting one pace in for better positioning. I lifted a finger from the beer, stopping him. I wanted to hear this.

Bruiser stood straight, dropping his hands to his sides. He blew out a breath, his face going from supplication to something colder, harder. I liked this Bruiser better. It was more honest. He was Leo's plaything and blood meal, Leo's right-hand man, and he always had been. It should have hurt, but the hunger growing inside me and the emptiness that Aggie had exposed when the trapped anger stormed away stopped my pain.

"I was blood-drunk, Jane. I wasn't able to move, wasn't able to fight, wasn't able to stop them. I held you down and they hurt you. They forced me. I want you to know that. It was against my will."

I didn't say anything and he added, "When you left, I attacked Leo. He stopped me." Bruiser held up the hand as explanation. "He backhanded me into a wall. Broke my hand and jaw. It was bad enough that I didn't heal instantly even with all the Mithran blood in me." Bruiser dropped the hand. "Leo needed your cooperation once he read your report and saw the name de Allyon. He remembered the problems his uncle Amaury had not so long ago, and he thought you wouldn't agree with his plans. So he used me to get you. I'm sorry, Jane."

Not so long ago. Only a man who had already lived more than a hundred years would think two centuries was not so long ago. I understood what had happened. I even understood my own stupidity in being part of it. But I was not ready to forgive. "And you defend him?"

"No. I explain him," he growled. "And I apologize for myself. It's what a primo does."

It's what a primo does. Yeah. Got that. "Get out, George. Now. Before I decide to let my Eli here hurt you."

He heard his given name and he put it together, understanding that my calling him George and not Bruiser was important on many levels. And he processed the "my Eli." George swiveled his head to the man standing one pace away. He considered Eli's positioning, the placement of his feet, the relaxed posture. The two men, who had just been talking beer and sports, studied each other now like potential combatants, one trained by Uncle Sam to kill, the other still so full of vamp blood he was nearly healed in one day from wounds that would have incapacitated a human for weeks.

George turned his head to me, dismissing the soldier as if he posed no challenge. From the corner of my eye, I saw Eli's mouth curl up in a smile. Without looking at him, I smiled too. It was one of those perfect agreement things that happens sometimes when two people understand each other on an instinctive level, on a snake-brain level. Eli and I had fought. We knew what moves we'd make and how fast. If it was needed. I saw his fingers curl in slightly.

I tucked the thumb of my free hand into my jeans at my waist, to indicate action wasn't necessary. Yet. "I'll do my job for Leo," I said to George, "but not because of his forced blood-bond. I'll do my job because I killed a man in Asheville. Because humans were killed there and here on my watch. You tell that blood-sucking fiend I said that.

"If there was a dinner invitation, it's rescinded. Get out of my house. You know where the door is." I stepped out of the way and gestured with the bottle at the door.

George's mouth firmed, an obstinate gesture that said he was going to disagree. But he didn't. He walked past me out the door and closed it behind him with a firm snap. That sound said something important, but I didn't want to deal with it, not now. I followed and keyed the dead bolt, then went back to the living room. Eli and Alex hadn't moved. I leaned against the wall and finished my beer, watching them.

"Are you okay?" Alex asked.

"Just ducky. But if your brother doesn't feed me I may eat him."

Eli laughed at the double entendre, but he went outside to the grill and came back in with four steaks. The Kid cleaned off a place and put away the unused dishes. We ate in silence at the kitchen table, companionable silence. I liked it. And I got the extra steak.

After dinner, while not-so-Stinky Alex cleaned up the dishes and griped about not having a dishwasher, Eli and I stayed at the table, going over the day's intel. "There might be a correlation we haven't considered, between the Blood-Call businesses and the cities where de Allyon has taken over," Eli said, passing a printout to me.

"I'm listening."

"De Allyon was making vamps sick. What better way than to have them drink from sick humans at Blood-Call?"

I remembered thinking at one time, in the last hectic days, that vamps were being made sick by drinking diseased blood, but that had seemed impossible unless a normal, natural plague had entered the human population. There had been no reports of horrific human illness in the media, and no way could that have been kept quiet.

There were also so many cities where Blood-Call was operating, cities that had no sign of sickness. The lack of plague and the specificity of attack had made me put the idea on the back burner. But then, there were the sick humans in Seattle who had claimed they were getting better. They weren't Blood-Call employees, they were blood-servants who lived and worked at the Seattle Clan Home. Without explaining, I pulled my cell and dialed the Seattle Clan Home. When a woman answered, I said, "This is Jane Yellowrock. I was there a few days ago, and took some blood from some blood-servants who were left on the premises after the revolt staged by the Mercy Blade failed. Are they still alive? Did they get well?"

The woman said stiffly, "Yes and yes. And then our new master removed them. Don't call again." There was a click and the call ended.

I stared at the cell and smiled. "Of course he did." I looked up at the brothers and said, "Alex, how certain are you about the money trail of the corporations that own Blood-Call?"

He was standing at the sink, drying his hands; he pushed a tiny laptop to the center of the table and opened it. It must have been sleeping because it opened to a company Web page instantly. Blood-Call's graphics were red and black with two beautiful, scantily clad couples on the front. One partner of each couple was a vamp, and the other was being a meal. It was clear that sex was on the menu as well as blood. Eli scooted his chair closer to me and we both leaned in, studying the screen, arms almost touching.

"I've traced it back through several shell corporations to an offshore account," Alex said. "The mailing address is a PO box on the main island. The shipping address is here." He pointed to the screen. "I have a World of Warcraft buddy on the island and he's doing some footwork to see what's at the address. I'm betting it's a cafe or an empty lot. The finances trace back through four shells to a numbered account. There's no way to find out anything further. No way to see if it ties to Lucas Vazquez de Allyon."

"Why not?" I asked. "Someone has to come in from time to time and deal with the accounts."

"Not offshore accounts. Not if they have the numbers and the passwords. Back in the day, someone had to show up in person and open an account. Now it can be done electronically and no one at the bank ever sees the client. I tried tracking the money back, but I couldn't get through."

He looked at his brother with a sly grin. "Offshore banks have better security than the Pentagon." Eli raised his eyes without lifting his head, and Alex laughed at whatever he saw on his brother's face. He looked back and forth between us, his expression changing to speculation. He grinned at his brother and went back to the dishes.

That speculative look suddenly made me aware that I was sitting close enough to feel Eli's body heat, close enough to feel the fine hairs on his arm graze mine when he moved. My limbs went heavy. A slow warmth settled deep inside me. I felt Beast start to purr.

I kept my eyes on the screen as Eli sat back. When I could trust myself to speak casually, I stood and said, "I'm beat. I'm heading for bed." Beast hacked deep inside and Alex looked over his shoulder again at his brother, then at me, and he grinned. Crap. I turned and went to my room without another word. And I slept in boy shorts and a tank instead of naked. Men.

The phone rang, waking me before dawn. I knew without looking that it was Leo - I could feel him pulling on the blood-bond. I wanted to ignore the cell's insistent ringing, but my hand went out all its own and I picked up the phone, hit the TALK button. "What?"

Bruiser said, "At sunset yesterday, Lucas Vazquez de Allyon, Blood Master of Atlanta, Sedona, Seattle, and Boston, claimed blood-feud with Leonard Eugene Zacharie Pellissier, Blood Master of the southeastern states, in direct contradiction of the Vampira Carta." His tone was stiff and formal, and I knew that Leo was right there, listening, exerting all sorts of emotional overtones to the conversation.

For a moment, I froze, that electric stillness of remembered fear and pain, Leo's fangs buried in my throat. Beast placed a paw on my mind, all claw and spiking demand. We are not prey.

I sucked in a breath that sounded of sorrow as much as remembered agony, and shoved down on my fear, letting Beast trap it beneath her claws as if it were her dinner. The memory of the feeding eased. Beast was right. We are not prey.

His voice even more unyielding, Bruiser said, "We believe that somehow he knows we discovered who he is, and this forced his hand."

Somehow. Yeah. Like the leak I warned you about that you can't find. All I had to do was send you a report on Blood-Call and Lucas, and everything changed. But I didn't say it. I didn't rub salt in the wound. Go, me. "Okay," I said to Bruiser and to Beast. "Why blood-feud and not a Blood Challenge? What's the difference between the two?" I asked, rolling up to my butt, sitting in the middle of the bed, the covers wrapped around me in the chill. I was facing the windows at the front and side of the house, seeing car lights move past one, seeing the bushes move with a slight wind in the other.

"A challenge follows the protocol of the Vampira Carta, all the rules and regulations set therein. A blood-feud is a much older contest, one from before the Carta was written, and it puts aside the Mithrans' most important legal document. According to historical precedent, there are no established protocols for the feud. Because you killed his Enforcer, Ramondo Pitri, unprovoked, de Allyon can declare blood-feud, according to the old ways."

It always came back to the man I had killed in Asheville. But I remembered what Aggie had said yesterday morning. "His Enforcer was in Asheville to check me out, to see why I had moved ahead of all of Leo's people into the rank of Enforcer, cutting you out of the position too. He could have looked me over on the street, in a restaurant, anywhere. Yet he was in my room, his gun drawn, with an illegal suppressor on it. Seems to me he was going off the reservation, hoping to take me out first. Seems to me that I'm lucky to be alive."

I heard background noises and then Leo said into the phone, "Unfortunately, my Enforcer, we have no evidence of that. When my George suggested that very scenario to de Allyon's messenger, he asked for proof. We had none to offer, except for the human police reports, which are not sufficient in a Mithran court. Only a Mithran eyewitness would be acceptable to others of my kind."

"Right," I said, and though I knew he could hear the sarcasm, he went on, unperturbed.

"Therefore, the demand for blood-feud remains. I have petitioned to the Outclan Council of Mithrans for a ruling on the matter, and they have put it on the agenda for when they meet again in the new year."

"Meantime we're all in the crosshairs," I said.

"Precisely. My George will send you the information we have on the methodologies of blood-feuds."

I heard background noises again, thinking over the "my Enforcer" and "my George" phrases as the cell was passed around. Leo was staking claims - pun intended - as I had done with my use of the words "my Eli" last night.

George said, "You need to know that de Allyon offered another way out of this. Leo could turn himself and you over and de Allyon would let all the others live. Leo turned him down."

Yeah. I bet he did. "Wait." The winter chill of the room made goose bumps rise on my arms. "Let all the others live? Does the blood-feud mean he can kill everyone?"

Bruiser made a sound, very British, all nose and curled lip. "Historically, all of one side or the other died in a blood-feud, all the Mithrans, all the servants, all the slaves. Everyone."

At last I understood, and lots of things fell into place, including Leo binding me - just after sunset, yesterday. "Well, crap."

"I'll send you all the information I have on the precedents and the histories. Most of it isn't electronic. Most is in the form of letters and reports, so it'll be photocopied and messengered over later today.

"My master will agree."

I hated that "my master" crap and wanted to hurt Leo for trying to bind me to him, and for tying Bruiser to him so tightly, even if it did save his life. I felt something pull again in my mind, a compulsion to help Leo, a need to help him, and my anger at Leo flamed out. Leo needed a huge takedown or maybe some sensitivity training, delivered with the pointy end of a stake. I smiled grimly at the thought. My grandmother had been very adept with sharp pointy things. "Later," I said, and ended the connection.

"What?"

I turned and found Eli in my bedroom, standing in the dark with his back to my wall, the door open beside him. I eyed the door. Then Eli. He was in boxers and a tee. His arms and legs were corded with muscle, his eyes dark in the shadows. He was holding a weapon in each hand, both semiautomatics. "When I lock my door, it's to stay locked," I said.

"Not when the house is under surveillance."

"You mean the guy who appears to be sleeping in the alcove across the street? Small guy, dressed like he has money, but no place to crash?" It was a guess, but Leo's Mercy Blade had used that doorway to watch my house before. So had Leo.

"You knew?"

"I'm not surprised. Next time, knock."

"Next time, tell me when we're being watched."

I lifted my hand to show that I was prepared. I was holding one of the twin Walthers, the grip bloodred. Eli gave me one of his lopsided smiles. "You look good curled up in that bed, wearing a thin tank and not much else but a gun." I didn't reply except for a faint flush he couldn't see in the dim room. He moved out of my room and pulled my door closed behind him. I flopped back on the bed. "Crap. Crap, crap, crap," I whispered to the ceiling.

Seconds later the cell rang again. "What do you want, Bruiser?"

I could have kicked myself when I realized what I'd said, and there was a smile in his voice when he said, "Callan was sick, and Sabina has healed him."

I ignored both my gaff and his tone. "Who is Callan?"

"One of the vampires in a cage at Katie's. He says he served de Allyon only because his master kept him alive. He has asked to join Leo's power base and it's being considered. Leo would like you to speak to him before dawn, find out, if you can, what de Allyon's plans are."

"Yeah. Fine. I don't need to sleep anyway," I said crossly. I threw the covers away and hung up on Bruiser.