“True. But are you more relaxed?” he asked.
“Yeah. Thanks. Now, about Juwan.”
“For a human, he is inordinately difficult to read.”
That stumped me, because Edmund, though technically a bond slave, was tremendously powerful, a master vamp under any other circumstances. “So you got nothing?”
“I saw Adrianna in a variety of lascivious positions, none of them likely to have been a result of reality, but he was definitely smitten. Other than our brain-dripping prisoner, I saw only one other Mithran, and it was a bare glimpse.”
“And,” I said, letting my impatience show.
“It may have been nothing. Or everything.”
“Okay. I got it. I can’t skewer her on sight.”
Slowly, he said, “Dominique.”
There were a lot of vamps. Hundreds in the New Orleans territory alone. But there was only one Dominique, and that was the heir to Clan Arceneau. Arceneau’s blood-master was Grégoire. Grégoire was Leo’s second-in-command. And Leo’s lover. I had been hoping I had been wrong about Adrianna’s partner in crime, but it seemed the scents in Adrianna’s bed were not misleading. “Well, crap,” I breathed.
“Yes. My sentiments exactly.”
“Edmund, when the prisoner in sub-five got away, he left a pile of nearly dead humans on the floor, humans who had to be fed and turned, and a bunch of you showed up just in time. Dominique was there. So were you.” Edmund didn’t respond, so I asked, “Who was there first? How did you all know to come down there?”
Cautiously, Edmund said, “Dominique was standing at the top of the stairway on sub-three. She called us down, to turn the humans.”
Just as carefully, I asked, “Why was Dominique at Council Chambers? Was she invited? A party? Something?”
“No. She is seldom here. I admit to surprise at seeing her, though at the time it didn’t register as odd.”
I remembered seeing Grégoire sniffing around sub-five after the Son of Darkness got away. Had he been smelling Dominique? I asked, “Was there any indication that she had, possibly, just maybe, been in sub-five?”
“There was blood on her dress. A fine mist of it up the front of the skirt in a slender V shape, as from an arterial spray. Human blood, fresh, by the smell. But that could have come from anywhere.”
“In a V shape,” I said. “As if she had been wearing a cloak and took it off after she had been sprayed with blood?”
Edmund said, “Anything is possible.”
“Thank you, Edmund. I’ll not divulge where I learned of this.” I ended the call. I had no idea how to handle this. None at all.
* * *
Eli and I talked for a bit as he drove, trying to think like an old vamp and trying to decide what to do about Dominique and checking out every site that might lead us to the Son of Darkness, without having to bring her or Grégoire into the picture. Because going after his heir based on only a glimpse from a traitor’s blood-drunk brain could get us both killed, fast.
I texted Alex to have security at HQ look for footage of Dominique before, during, and after Santana got away. I texted the security team at HQ to search for a scarlet cloak. Nifty electronics and digital toys could get us only so far; then the human eye had to take over and search. I got back a text telling me that Derek had shown up at the house, ticked off at being ambushed in the empty clan home. In the next second, I received one from Derek himself that said, You and me gotta have this out. No more bullshit.
I texted back, Watch your language. Thought you mighta switched teams, hanging out with Juwan.
No. I. Gave. My. Word.
“Ouch,” I said aloud. The punctuation suggested that Derek was severely ticked off. And yeah, with reason. I had a feeling I was gonna have to make nice-nice with Derek for a long time over this. I texted back.
I am sorry. When SoD is caught we’ll talk. Though I had a feeling it might be more fists and feet and less talking. I really needed to work on my social skills.
Eli and I stopped first at an alleyway near Louis Armstrong Park, not far from where Santana got pricked by the sliver of the Blood Cross. The homeless men had been living in cardboard boxes behind a Dumpster, and according to the scent on the dead men’s throats, they had been drained by a burned and bleeding Joseph Santana. After that, things were less certain. The total draining of three humans had been enough blood to get Santana away from the park, but not enough to heal him completely. Not enough to put out the fire burning him from the inside out. For that he needed vamp blood, priestess blood in particular. Fortunately for us, there wasn’t a priestess handy and unprotected.
Unfortunately, there were old vamps around and less protected than I would like. I remembered the consensus about the SoD being out of touch with modern times. There had been four clan homes in the Garden District, back then, when Santana came to New Orleans as visiting royalty. He had been feted and entertained and wined and dined—or wined and blooded—at all of them. Currently, three of the Garden District’s clan homes were vacant—Mearkanis, Rousseau, and Desmarais—empty of everything but ghosts, as the visit to the old Mearkanis home had demonstrated. But one was still inhabited. Arceneau Clan Home, Grégoire’s home, and Grégoire had been drinking from Santana. The Son of Darkness might want revenge. And a traitor had seen Dominique, the Arceneau heir, who was currently controlling the clan home in the Garden District while the clan blood-master waited on Leo. We went there first.
Brandon and Brian, Onorio twins and Grégoire’s primos and security specialists (despite the fact that Onorios can’t be bound to a vamp), met us at the front drive. The wrought-iron gate was locked, the house was dark, the shutters closed, and the twins were decked out in low-light and infrared headgear, top-of-the-line coms gear, a multitude of blades and arms, including shotguns in spine holsters, and full Enforcer regalia. I had never seen them wearing the leathers of Enforcers. And all I could think was Oh. My. Gosh. Holy. Crap. My reaction must have showed on my face when I exited the SUV.
“She likes the way we look,” Brandon said, identified by his scent, and sounding satisfied.
“Too little too late. She turned us down in favor of George,” Brian said, automatically repositioning so that his brother and he could both shoot and take us down with ease but not catch each other or the house in the cross fire.