flowed across the open area and stopped in the foyer, in front of Lincoln. I took them in as they moved, and tensed. “We do not bow to you,” the man said to Shaddock in liquid syllables.
Kojo’s accent was vaguely foreign: not Cajun, Spanish, Latin, or Leo’s old-fashioned French cadence, not the more modern version of the language. This was something flowing and ancient with swift and clear vowel sounds, curling like wavelets capping on a lake, brushed by an approaching summer storm. Maybe an African intonation. His tone slipped into something sarcastic and insulting as he looked me over. “Therefore, why should we bow to her?”
In an instant, Shaddock moved, a strange popping sound of speed and displaced air. Kojo was flat on the floor, a stake in his belly, paralyzing him.
Ooookay.
I didn’t react. Eli did. The sound of multiple weapons schnicking echoed in the space. The entire front area went dead silent. Eli was aiming two weapons, one at Kojo, one at Thema. Battle wariness.
Shaddock had taken Kojo down. Thema was still standing, but she slid slowly to the floor. Shaddock had thrown a stake and hit the female vamp in the belly at the same time he took down Kojo. He had been expecting trouble. And dang, the MOC was fast. Shaddock also had excellent control. His fangs were fully extended, yet his eyes weren’t vamped out.
“Kojo and Thema.” Shaddock’s fangs schnicked back into the roof of his mouth. He indicated the man and woman in turn. “They were ton-tigi in Mali. Lost their hunting grounds and their clan around 1350. They’ve been traveling for the last few centuries, seeing the world.”
With my half-formed ears, I heard keys clicking and knew Alex was searching for ton-tigi. “Mali?” I asked as my partner holstered one weapon, pulled the stake from Thema’s belly, and aimed the remaining semiautomatic weapon at her head. Her fingers formed a fist, but she lay still. To Shaddock I said, “If they’re working for you, they don’t seem very reliable.”
“We have sworn to kill the Makers,” Thema said. “Anyone who fights our enemy is our ally. But you are weak and the smell of sickness is on the air.”
“The Dark Queen,” Eli said quietly, “killed Joseph Santana, also known as Joses Bar-Judas and Yosace Bar-Ioudas, the elder of the Sons of Darkness, and fed his body to the white werewolf.”
The woman, splayed on the floor, braced her arms and sat up. She turned slowly to me, her eyes wide. “This is true? You killed one of the Makers?”
Makers. Probably an ancient name for the Sons of Darkness. Gotcha. Snow had melted on her from the warmth of the room, her hair wet and glistening, her clothes spotted and drenched with damp. “Pretty much.”
“He is dead? Forever? Never to rise?”
Except for that pesky heart. I really needed to deal with that last body part, which was in the hands of Jodi and the NOLA witches. Didn’t say any of that. I said, “Unless he can resurrect himself from Brute’s crap, no. He isn’t coming back.”
Thema reacted to that, a flash of some unnamable, almost-human emotion that seemed to be composed of humor and joy and grief all at once. She managed to get to her knees, one hand over her belly wound, the tang of unfamiliar vamp blood on the air. “And the young Son of Darkness is here? The Son of Shadows is here,” she emphasized, “in this place? This is true?”
The Son of Shadows. Yeah. That fit with the whole “shadow thing” in Edmund’s mind.
She drew a knife that gleamed wicked bright in the lights. Eli went all tense/still/dangerous, his weapon in a two-hand grip, aimed at her head.
“He’ll be in Asheville tomorrow,” I said, my eyes flashing between them, Shaddock’s security all scary vampy and Shaddock slouched against Kojo, watching the rest of us.
There was something new and powerful about Shaddock, a leashed, contained capacity for violence, the way a bomb looks before it devastates the landscape. Casually, the MOC removed the stake in Kojo’s abdomen. He licked the blood off the wood in a gesture that was nonchalant, oddly amused, and all vamp.
I finished, “The Flayer of Mithrans will not be progressing to the inn. He has a place in town.”
“There is no place at the inn,” Shaddock said, laughter in his tone, oddly quoting the Bible as he pulled away from Kojo.
“We will destroy the Flayer of Mithrans,” Kojo said. He sat up in measured movements, reaching for a matte