Shadow Rites

“Four,” Derek said. “There are few things I appreciate more, as Leo’s other part-time Enforcer, than walking into the gym to see blood everywhere, suckheads down and out, and a Ranger walking away with a smoking gun.” Derek crossed the room and held out his hand to Eli. “That was fine shootin’, my brother.”

Eli stared at the proffered palm half a second too long before slapping his hand into it. “Booyah,” Eli said, Ranger-style.

“Hooyah,” Derek said back, Marine-style. Then they both turned to the screen and Derek said, “Play it forward.”

Over our heads the action resumed, and I watched as Leo dropped into place beside me, rolled me over, ripping my shirt. It was so fast it all looked like one move. Considering that Leo had been a warrior on battlefields where death was frequent, up close, and personal, for more years than his security team all combined, it likely was.

The wound up under my arm pumped blood into the air and Eli dropped to his knees next to Leo, medical supplies already in his hands. But Leo didn’t waste time applying pressure. He drew the little knife he had later used to free Gee and sliced the blade through the fingertips of his other hand. Vamp blood didn’t often pump like human blood, except from the stump of a neck or a wound to a major artery, but Leo had been under stress and his blood spurted three feet to land in a stream of droplets on the floor. It glowed crimson in the gym lights. Leo plunged his fingers into my wound. Eli froze for a moment before shoving the supplies back into his leathers.

Edmund ripped his wrist with his fangs and pressed it to my mouth. My lips didn’t close over it, and the blood of a master vamp filled my mouth and dribbled to the floor. Neither vamp seemed to notice the waste, but a young vamp on the sidelines did. She was vamped out, her eyes like black pits opening into a fiery hell, her talons an inch long and sharp as steel. She edged closer. Her mouth moved on words that I couldn’t make out. Derek quoted her, “I’m hungry.”

On-screen, Edmund snarled at her. Eli shot her. That must have been Pauline Easter, the new security scion. Frankly she had shown remarkable control not to fall and feast, with all the blood scents and pheromones that must have filled the air. Biologists had postulated that the scent and taste of blood released something like endorphins into a vamp’s bloodstream. Shot, Pauline fell and the remaining humans ducked, covered their ears, or raced from the room. Dying vamps are noisy. Vamps who might be dying or who think they might be dying are noisy too.

Vamps themselves began racing away. A woman from housekeeping was standing in back of the shot, her mouth open, frozen with fear. Her arms wrapped around her chest as if hugging herself.

On the floor was Gee, a small human-shaped body, a faint bluish haze covering him, unremarked by the others, who probably thought it was simply the video. Gee’s magic was bluish and his blood evaporated like alcohol, smelling like flowers in the sunlight. But in the gym, no one noted anything about Gee. All eyes were on me as, together, Leo and Edmund lifted my body.

Eli stood to the side, a nine-mil in each hand, watching the dwindling crowd, his eyes everywhere except on me. With his fighting leathers and stone-cold expression, he looked like death’s henchman. But I could see the screaming rage beneath the surface. The impotent fury. My partner had been pissed.

The two vamps carried me toward the camera, followed by my partner. Off-scene, something happened, and Eli lifted his right arm, his hand steady as he slowed and pulled off three shots. He was close to the camera now, this one with a mic in it, and I could hear the blasts as more than muffled cracks. The small group passed beneath the camera and out of sight. Eli had been armed with standard ammo. I knew because I saw the young vamp nearest twitch, even with three rounds in her.

The video began again from a different angle, from inside an elevator as they crowded in. No sound on this one. The elevator doors closed. The vamps laid my body on the floor and Edmund lifted my head and pinched my nose, his other wrist still at my mouth. I struggled weakly and swallowed. Again. A third time. At my side, Leo removed his hand from my side. The wounds on his fingertips were healed. Vamps heal fast. Leo resliced his fingers, deeper this time, and he sliced his palm as well before sticking all bleeding parts inside me. On the floor, I gagged and my body spasmed. My flesh was white, tinged with gray. It looked as if I was dying.

The elevator doors opened again to reveal two vamps, both young scions, who vamped out at the sight of me. Eli, without thinking, acting on instinct, raised his weapon and fired. When the mag was empty, he raised the other weapon and fired three more times. The air was filled with the smoke of gunfire, a gray haze. The elevator camera showed the two vamps dropping down into a small heap together. The master vamps lifted me up over the downed vampires and carried me out and down the hall. Eli followed, implacable, changing out the mags for fresh as he paced.

The three disappeared behind a door. Edmund’s door. There was a trail of blood and bloody footprints on the carpet.

The video stopped and the screen went blank except for a single camera, showing the empty gym, a single woman in it, wearing the gray of housekeeping, a bucket on rollers at her side and a mop in her hand as she scrubbed my blood off the wooden floor.

Then the largest screen lightened and a huge version of Bruiser’s face filled it. He was looking straight at me. I realized we were looking at real time now and that Bruiser had a combat face nearly as implacable as Eli’s. “Move closer to the camera,” he said tonelessly.

I stepped closer, knowing he was looking for wounds. I smiled brightly at him, and his expression went from worry to frank disbelief. “Big smile too much?” I asked.