to the former MOC of New Orleans. And he was doing linen? Yeah. He needed a purpose. I had been spending the majority of my time as Beast, so I hadn’t noticed who had what jobs around the inn, but we hadn’t brought servants. So someone had to be taking care of laundry and dishes and household things. Usually that meant Eli, but he’d been upgrading security measures everywhere and making himself useful with a hammer and nails on the unfinished cottages. “Sounds good,” I said, pressing the elevator button. “Let’s see where we stand with Shimon and his merry band of blood drinkers. We may have to travel once we find him.”
“Love.”
I tilted my head back at him as the doors closed on us.
“We could call in some other monster hunters. Nomad and his cohorts.” Nomad was my first boyfriend and he taught me all about fighting vampires, then deserted me when I got in trouble. Nomad had also been bitten by werewolves, not that I’d told Bruiser that story. Maybe someday. My face must have shown my reaction to Nomad’s name.
“Rick LaFleur?” he suggested. Another former boyfriend, no less annoying, but not a bad guy. In fact, he had been pretty great during the recent unpleasantness. And I needed to have a talk with him, one-on-one, and clear the air, now that I had a better grip on what magic did to people’s will. But later. If I lived through this.
“Ayatas?” he proposed when I remained silent, pushing, making it clear that we needed backup. Ayatas FireWind was my brother, and though things were better between us, they weren’t so great that I wanted to call him for support. He worked for PsyLED, the senior Special Agent in Charge of the eastern U.S. In the past, he had put his job first, before family, or at least before me. I wasn’t at war with him, but I was a long way from trust.
Yeah, we’d need help of some sort, but I shrugged, noncommittal yet unimpressed with Bruiser’s recommendations. Ed was in trouble. The last remaining Son of Darkness was nearby, probably planning revenge on me for feeding his brother to the dogs, so to speak. We needed to warn all the law enforcement agencies, and we had to warn my people in New Orleans to be ready. That was my political home base. That was where the attack would come because almost no one knew we were no longer in NOLA.
“Your clan Mithrans and Shaddock’s Mithrans?” he suggested, pushing just enough that I knew he was worried.
Lincoln Shaddock was the newly promoted local Master of the City of Asheville, and the protector of the most valuable vampire in the world, Amy Lynn Brown—the only vampire whose blood could shorten the time a newly turned vamp spent in the devoveo—the ten years of nutso-crazies vamps went through before they “cured,” like bacon, and found reason again. If they found their sanity at all. Many did not, or had not before Amy Lynn had come along. Any attacker would want to obtain Amy Lynn pronto, meaning she was in danger. The MOC owed me favors and loyalty since I’d made him master of his own territories and hunting grounds.
“Sure,” I said. “We’re in Shaddock’s territory, and any invading vamps might look me up eventually, so we should notify Shaddock and get his advice, but only call in an army if we need to.”
Bruiser gently squeezed my hand. The doors opened. Shoulder to shoulder, we stepped from the elevator to the main level and the central living area.
* * *
* * *
The winery part of Yellowrock Clan Home in the mountains, what I called Yellowrock Appalachia, was a big building off to the side of the inn, with a grape press, colossal stainless steel wine tanks and fermenters, and a Borelli bottling line, whatever that was. It was all top-of-the-line stuff that had made Bruiser’s eyes go wide when he first saw it.
The inn was designed in a large, wide-mouthed, blunt-nosed V-shape, with the entrance and main public area in the blunted point of the V and the two V wings containing five suites each, on two stories. When he first saw the place, Alex had called it a “humongous, freaking big house.” He was right. With a stone façade and four massive, wood, unshaped timbers that rose from the entry-level floor to the top of the second-story domed ceiling, actual trunks all twisted and golden and gorgeous. The trunks were