The local vamps and their humans were in and out of the inn and the cottages. I spotted my victim, Klaus, cheerfully following Shaddock or one of the other vamps around like a puppy. He didn’t even need a leash to be compliant to his current minder. Which made me a little sick.
The other prisoners were out like lights, under a sleep working, well secured with steel and silver.
The kids were watching a Disney flick and eating popcorn. Cassy was napping. She seemed to sleep a lot.
Sabina, in New Orleans, had disappeared. She had been hurt, burned, in the attack on the fanghead cemetery. She hadn’t been seen since her cell phone call to Alex.
HQ in New Orleans were not answering the phone or text or e-mail or anything. Alex couldn’t raise them at all. Alex couldn’t access the cameras in the old building. Alex—and thus we—were blind, though Eli had called in a favor, and so we knew the building at least was still standing and seemed to be occupied.
Jodi’s cell phone went to voice mail. The WooWoo room rang without an auto response.
And Brute had shown up again. He had dragged his big mattress into the TV room and was snoring like a freight train, Pea lying on his shoulders, the stink of wet dog filling the room. EJ was curled up against Brute’s smelly, hairy side, sound asleep, a bowl of popcorn in the curve of his little knees, spilling over. The cute nearly melted my heart.
Except for the kiddos, the tension in the TV room could have been cut with the blade of a sword. I didn’t know where the invading fangheads were. Alex hadn’t found the Flayer. Eli was running out of weapons to prep. It was the vamping hour . . . Crap.
I went to my suite and pulled out all my fighting gear and lined it all up on the bed. There was a lot of stuff. Of the fighting leathers provided by Leo, none had survived the many duels and battles and . . . Dang. The holes in the white leathers and the black leathers were significant and bloody and they still stank, even after Eli had cleaned the leather.
I tossed the ruined, holey whites and blacks into the corner and pulled out the big box containing the armor Eli had ordered. The smell when I opened the box wasn’t leather; it was vaguely chemical, sharp and bitter. The set on top wasn’t the camo I expected, but was scarlet. Not as flamboyant as Leo’s but made with military armor, Kevlar, Dyneema, and a layer of anti-magic.
The scarlet armor could be adjusted to fit the broad shoulders and narrow hips of my half-form perfectly. My old boots were still perfect on my paw-feet—not because the cold bothered me, but because I was tired of digging ice balls out from under my claws.
To go with the scarlet armor, I laid out the two gorgets to protect my throat: one gorget made of titanium overlaid with silver, and the more decorative, repaired, gold gorget set with citrines. I laid out the gold arm cuffs shaped like snakes, which had once belonged to a redheaded vamp who just would not die. When she finally was beheaded, and stayed dead, and Bethany died, I had ended up with the bracelets. The cuffs would be loose on my wrists, having been made for a woman’s upper arms, and they no longer contained magic of any kind, but they looked magical. I had thirteen wood stakes, thirteen silver stakes, and three glass vials of expired holy water—not that any vamp would know it was old. I had a boot box full of magazines loaded with lead-silver rounds and regular rounds. I had the double shoulder holster, a hip rig with a nine-mil and sheaths for the stakes. I had a sword sheath with a double-bladed flat sword for blood duels. I laid out three throwing knives. There was the Mughal blade in its red velvet sheath, my sword of office, a blade that came with a long history and a prophecy that the wearer would not die in battle, or some such nonsense. The Mughal blade was a gift from Bruiser.
I had le breloque. It glimmered a soft gold against the gray coverlet.
The Glob, with the Blood Diamond and the sliver of the Blood Cross, the iron of spikes of Golgotha, witch magics, and my own flesh cooked into it by lightning. It was an ugly, fist-sized