thought about the vamp Leo had captured. I didn't want to be part of that, not again, with the silver and the questions and the stink of burning vamp-flesh, but I thought it was more likely he'd let her live if I was there to temper his mood. Assuming I didn't tick him off and make him kill her outright.
Deep in my mind, Beast huffed. We will see the vampire in his den. We will know much, just as when we saw his hidden place in his Clan Den. I had seen one of Leo's lairs, deep beneath the clan home, which was now burned to the ground and beneath it probably. And yes, I had learned a lot.
And hey, Leo paid the bills. I'd probably suffer vamp-consequences if I didn't go, once Leo was up to meting them out.
I checked the time and said, "Okay." And I wondered if I had just screwed up badly or made the smartest move a vamp-hunter could make.
"I have sent the location to your cell phone. Meet me in ninety minutes."
An hour later, after I had eaten a fabulous steak and a mediocre salad, I dressed in the kind of clothes I wore when I went to visit a vamp instead of to fight a vamp. No armored jacket, no Benelli strapped to my back, no guns except the one I tucked into a boot beside the hidden vamp-killer. Thick denim jeans like bikers wear instead of armored leather vamp-fighting pants. Only three vamp-killers. Hair braided tight. Stakes in the loops at my belt, ready to be tucked into my hair like ornaments when I unhelmeted. I put on the silver choker to protect my neck from fangs. Leo would have plenty of humans around to feed him, but that was no reason to be provocative, and a bare throat was a clear provocation to an injured vamp.
I pushed Bitsa into the street. I felt the eyes of the brothers on my back - and legs and other body parts - as I straddled the bike, rose, and kick-started my Harley. I could also feel their misgivings, which did nothing to quell my own. I checked the phone for the address and GPS directions Bruiser had sent to it, before heading into the Warehouse District of New Orleans.
The Warehouse District was just what it sounded like - the centuries-old storage facilities of the New Orleans docks, where indigo, rice, cotton, food crops, cloth, tobacco, and other items had been shipped downriver and to Europe, in return for silk, porcelain china, tea, and slaves. Later centuries had shipped cars, mechanical tools, raw and formed iron, steel, coal, technology, imported illegal drugs, and exported sexual slavery, cash, liquor, cigarettes. Everything, legal and illegal, moral and immoral, had been stored, for a time, in the warehouses. Now the old refurbished buildings housed artists' lofts, cafes, exclusive restaurants, galleries, apartments, spas, fitness centers, and all manner of upscale social businesses.
The address I turned in to was a recently rehabbed warehouse, updated and secluded. There were bars on the windows, the wrought-iron fleur-de-lis made so popular by French immigrants, pretty as well as effective at keeping out burglars. The building also had electronic security up the wazoo: dynamic cameras with low-light and infrared capability, keypunch locks; two armed guards with earpieces, bulges suggestive of guns, and the look of trained soldiers patrolled the place. It was all stuff I had recommended to Leo for the Mithran council's headquarters and his now-burned clan home. I'd have to remember to send him a bill, now that he'd finally followed my advice.
Blinding-bright security lights brought tears to my eyes and threw the place into sharp-angled shadows. I wheeled into the parking area and Bitsa's roar went silent. I pulled my riding gloves off. I didn't really need to, and didn't often ride with gloves, but the finger-by-finger let me scope out the place.
Sitting on the seat, I smelled seafood, hot grease, and coffee - natch - and wine and beer - also natch - and the scents of mold, hot tar, exhaust, stagnant and moving water, and flowers - jasmine, I thought - that marked the city. I saw the last traces of the sun on the horizon, bleeding reddish in the cerulean sky. I smelled humans I recognized. Two of Derek Lee's Vodka Boys were among the security I saw patrolling. I smelled Bruiser and Wrassler. I smelled Leo's Mercy Blade, Gee DiMercy somewhere close by, and I smelled several