“Amitee hated Leo. From the very first moment she met him,” I said. “And now we know why. She was part of layered plots by the Europeans, probably for decades.”
“Trained up by Immanuel to hate him?” Eli suggested, draining his espresso and placing the small cup in the light of one screen.
That made sense. Long before I killed him, Immanuel had been replaced, eaten, by an u’tlun’ta, a skinwalker, a creature like me but one who had done deliberate black magic and taken the place of a living, breathing, sentient being. I had done a lot of bad things, but not that. Never that.
Alex said, “I haven’t uncovered much in our own files, but your previous researcher had drawn some conclusions based on a series of parties thrown by the Rocheforts back in the 1960s. Parties attended by the elite of the world music scene and by the wealthy and the young royals of the time. Fernand was good friends with Lennon and Harrison before they died. Pete Townshend and Keith Moon. Keith Richards. Lotta rock-and-rollers.”
I nodded. I recognized some of the names.
“Leo’s son attended parties. He also socialized with the Damours when he came home to New Orleans,” Alex said.
“Everything in this entire city and the vamp world seems to come back to the Damours.” I muttered. But then, that was what the bloodsuckers’ long game meant—the single inciting event that tied all the hatreds and deaths together in the vamp world.
The original Damour sire had weak vamp bloodlines that left their scions in the devoveo for decades, even centuries, mad, raving creatures referred to as the long-chained. Creatures that were supposed to be put down by the misericords, the Mercy Blades, like Gee DiMercy. Instead, the Damour clan guarded theirs and hid them away, using their slaves on Saint Domingue—before it was liberated in a bloody slave revolt—in breeding experiments to create a bloodline that might help bring the long-chained around. They also performed unspeakable experiments with blood sacrifice and magic, even after they came to the shores of the States. And then Tristan and Renee, brother and sister, married and added their inbred children to the list of the long-chained. And tried to use my BFF’s children, my godchildren, in one such experiment to heal them. They, and their nameless sorcerer brother, were dead. I could almost hear Munchkins singing and celebrating even now.
“More than that,” Alex said, bringing me back to the here and now. “The parties they gave were often well attended by the paparazzi. Get a look at the dudes in the background.” He held out a tablet and widened a photo into a grainy close-up of a small group of people. “It’s really fuzzy thanks to vamps not photographing well until the digital age, but I’m pretty sure this is Louis Seventh. And these guys”—he pointed—“might be the vamp emperor Titus Flavius Vespasianus with Le Bâtard. The three stooges of vamp hierarchy, in the same vicinity as Macario and Gualterio Cardona.” He pointed at two humans in the photo. “You got thoughts about all this, bro?” Alex asked.
“Lots of thoughts,” Eli said. He stood and went to the espresso machine. I heard him making a double shot, all without turning on a light. Gotta love muscle memory. “The Marchands are the European vamps’ onshore liaisons.”
Alex said, “Sleeper spies. Foresworn to Leo and all that. Yeah. I had time to download the vid collected from Adrianna’s cage. The Marchands let Adrianna out of the crazy box. I have some security of them leading the way when HQ was attacked. They helped take Grégoire and the B and B twins.”
Eli sat down with his oversized cuppa. He pointed to the screen with the sat map of the area where the witches said the storm witch was working. And he tapped the building with the lightning rod. “Our people may be in there. We need good intel, absolute one-hundred-percent intel about layout. A reconnaissance mission. And we need better shooters. I don’t want dead local vamps or Onorios on our hands.”
“There’s more,” Alex said, sounding grim.
“That’s why you got cookies, isn’t it?” I said. “To butter us up?”
“Hadda learn something from the suckheads. Give a present when you bring bad news. The Damours were clearly trying to set up NOLA for European vamp takeover, as far back as your arrival.”
I scratched my fingers through my hair and pulled it over a shoulder, out of the way. “Agreed.”
“Why? Why did they choose the Damours and the Rochefort clan and Peregrinus and the devil? Why did they chose the Rousseau clan?”
Because Adrianna—she of head-in-a-cooler fame—was originally a Rousseau, I thought. The rest of it . . . “This is tying my brain in knots,” I said, thinking about Katie, on the inside, her sister a prisoner and a tool of Leo’s enemies.
“The long-chained,” Eli muttered.
“Amy Lynn Brown,” I said fast, speaking of the vamp scion whose blood brought scions down from the devoveo in record time. There had been murmurs about her for years before the Shaddock clan in Asheville revealed her. “The EVs planned all along to take over Leo’s territory, but when the news about Amy leaked, they moved up the timetable.” It all made sense. “We have to call—”
“Already called it in,” Alex said. “Dacy and Leo have Amy under their wings and in a safe room. One that no one knows about. No one.”
That meant us too. That meant our map of hidden passageways and staircases was still not complete. Dang vamps and their secrets. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s see the rest.” Because Alex never showed all his cards on the first pass.
In footage from another security camera, we watched as Le Bâtard, Fernand, and his sister walked beneath a light, from another car, this time covered in blood. The date and time stamp were from the night Edmund was attacked with silver and nearly died. I remembered the unfamiliar scents from the night Beast had tracked Ed. The Marchands had a way to mask scent. I remembered the blood bottle. If they drank from that vile mixture, it would likely change them in all sorts of ways. Crap. I hated blood magic.
“Those sniveling petits, mangeurs de morts.”
I whirled to see Edmund standing behind Alex, the bookcase door opened to the sleeping nook/weapons room under the stairs. Eli relaxed and removed the mag from a weapon. He had drawn and aimed faster than I’d turned.
“Silver?” Edmund asked, casual, eyebrows raised at the mag.
“No, but they would have hurt,” Eli said. Casually he added, “You were talking about sniveling eaters of the dead, I think? Cannibals? Which I understand is an insult of the worst sort for Mithrans.”
“They were the ones who attacked you, weren’t they?” I asked.
“I was never certain, but it now seems most likely. Their fighting forms were different from what I teach, and so I thought interlopers on these shores, not our own. But the Marchands came from France, so their styles would of necessity be different.” A strange expression crossed Edmund’s face, something cold and deadly, and was gone before I could place it. “My mistress, may I have permission to challenge the Marchands to Sangre Duello?” He meant blood duel, in the mishmash of languages the Mithrans used. It was a duel to the death.
“After we get our people back,” I said, “I don’t give a rat’s hairy behind what you do.”
“I’d take that as a yes,” Eli murmured. “Gear up?”
“One more,” Alex said, punching a tablet.
On-screen, we watched as Sabina was escorted inside a warehouse, her hands and arms bound by silver. A prisoner. “She let herself be taken,” I said. “Why would she do that?”
Edmund’s head swiveled on his neck in that eerie thing they do, that totally not-human, more bird or snakelike movement. “We are not alone.”
Eli slid from his seat, weapons in both hands. He had one nine-mil pointed at the side door and another pointed at the front door. I’d left all mine in my room. Again. Eli grunted and stuck out a hip to reveal the hilt of a blade. I gripped the weapon in one hand and slid it from the Kydex holster with the softest of snaps. The hilt was crosshatched and a little too large for my grip but good enough. Way better than nothing.
A soft knock sounded at the front door. Eli and I slid toward it through the shadows. The house was dark, no lights except the glow of screens. On the front porch was Derek. And Rick. Eli looked to me, his eyes appraising my reaction even in the dark. He racked both slides, one at a time, and removed the rounds he had chambered. Holstered his guns and went back to the table. “You called them?” he asked his little brother back in the kitchen.