Onscreen, the vamp lifted his head and sniffed the air. Snow pattered down onto his coat and hair, not melting. Cold-blooded for real. The other vehicle’s front window lowered and Lego spoke to the other one, whose face was hidden. I regretted not having audio on the cameras.
“Eli has the driveway mined in two places,” Alex said, “but farther up, not at the street.”
“We don’t know who is in the vehicles,” I said. “We couldn’t detonate anyway.”
I returned my attention to my cell. Speaking slow, with a care for the meaning of each word, I said, “Wrassler, two groups of vamps have moved out of Europe. One group may have been in New Orleans for a while—long enough to snatch our missing people. Withdraw all of Clan Yellowrock into HQ and invite the other clans. Go on lockdown. Send word to Koun requesting that he accept the position of Acting Enforcer to the Dark Queen, New Orleans District, in addition to his position as chief strategist of Clan Yellowrock, until such time as Derek is able to resume his duties. If he isn’t interested in the job, send me a list of candidates. Alex will send a letter instructing all blood clan masters to defer to Koun, Acting Enforcer to the Dark Queen. So speaks the Blood Master of Clan Yellowrock”—I took a breath, claiming my political power—“and the Dark Queen.”
“Yes, my mistress,” Wrassler said, with a breath of relief.
On the screen, the lone vamp standing in the snow turned toward the camera recording him, as if he knew it was there. Snow fell on his face. He was green-eyed and now I could see the nearly white platinum blond of his hair. He stretched out an arm and snapped his fingers. The back door to the second vehicle opened. A girl was shoved into the brightness of the headlights: she fell to her hip, skin white as the snow. Long, straight red hair slapped down. “No,” I whispered, placing a hand on the screen. Lego grabbed the girl’s arm and yanked her up, against his chest. Dark red smears were left in the white behind her. Blood. Her blouse had once been white. It was dull with brown stains.
She was still bleeding freely and there were vamp-bite marks in her throat.
He jerked her hair, pulling her face up, into the meager light. Snow fell on it, unmelting.
Shiloh Everhart Stone. Of course it was.
“He’s got Shiloh. She’s hurt bad,” Alex said softly to Eli.
Wrassler cursed, hearing the words over our connection.
Sooo . . . one group of vamps or two? I had told the Flayer where I was. If a second group was, or had been, in NOLA and bleeding and reading my people, then they may have figured out where I was too. Either way, this was bad.
Eli put on a burst of speed. But the drive was uneven and unpredictable and he couldn’t run flat out without risking a broken ankle. The snow suddenly fell harder as a sideways blast of wind shunted it horizontal. We weren’t supposed to have wind at all. Brute put on a burst of speed, bounding high through the drifts.
Through the blustering snow, I watched as the vamp raised his hand and ripped out Shiloh’s throat. Blood splatted and dribbled, bright in the whiteout. He didn’t drink. He held her up by the neck and wasted the blood, a vamp insult. Lego dropped her to the snow and got back into his Rover. Sedately, the two vehicles backed out of the drive and pulled into the night.
“You are dead,” I whispered to him.
Shiloh raised a hand. Gripped her throat. And squeezed. Shutting off the meager blood loss. Meager because she had already been drained so completely. Blood oozed through her fingers.
Brute dashed after the Rovers, a flash of white wolf on white snow, and out of camera range.
Eli fell to Shiloh’s side and pulled a small blade. Without the headlights it was hard to see, and the snow grew thicker. Heavier. The night darker. Eli placed his wrist at Shiloh’s mouth, but she pushed it away. She couldn’t drink. She didn’t have a throat. She needed vamp blood to heal. And we didn’t have any. Brute raced back to Eli’s side, panting, looking all wolf and furious, as if he would attack and destroy the world. He threw back his head and howled, the sound angry and demanding. Unanswered.
“Keep my people safe,” I said to Wrassler. “That includes Jodi and Sloan.” I ended the call. To Alex I said, “Call Big Evan. Tell him about the Range Rovers. Tell him to shield his vehicle.”
“Roger that.”
“Tell him that as soon as it’s safe, they’re to turn around and go back home. Nothing is safe here.”
He didn’t reply.
“You should have told me” I whispered to Bruiser.
“To what purpose,” he whispered back. “We have done what you wanted us to do.”
He was right. I had run away. And now, my world was falling apart, my friends were in danger, and I couldn’t do a single freaking thing about it. I had sworn to protect all my people. I had failed. I needed to heal. Fast. Now. I needed to be everything I had walked away from. And more. And I couldn’t.
Except . . .
“What?” Bruiser asked softly. I raised a hand to stop him, thoughts whirling through me, images, sensations, memories.
I had taken Leo’s blood at the creation of Clan Yellowrock.
I had taken Gee’s blood at the creation of Clan Yellowrock. I had taken Edmund’s blood. I wasn’t a vamp, and calling Ed hadn’t worked before, but . . .
But I wasn’t a vamp. Right. Not a vamp.
But I was the leader of Clan Yellowrock, through the blood of Leo. And I was the Dark Queen.
“I need the crown.” Without thinking about it, I pulled on Beast-speed and raced up the stairs toward the bedroom. Pain forgotten, lost in the wash of blood spilled from Shiloh’s throat.
I ripped open the closet door and dropped to my knees in front of the oversized plastic tub of magical trinkets and snapped the lid open. Everything I had brought from New Orleans and everything the Youngers had brought from NOLA when they joined us here was in the tub: charms Molly had made for me, the carved bone coyote that had appeared after a weird dream, the blue Anzu feather Beast had taken from a dead Anzu, lots of stuff in a jumbled mess. I grabbed up the Glob. The lightning-and-angel-created, multi-magical-item amulet was warm to my hand. The Glob absorbed magic. That was the Glob’s magical power, to drain out magic, especially aggressive magic being used against me. It had once drained le breloque when the crown tried to take me over against my will. But it hadn’t stopped the power merge when I had chosen to use the crown. Le breloque was somehow tied to the position and power of the Dark Queen, not that I knew how that worked. Yet. I stood and carried them both back down the stairs, feet tapping fast, passing Bruiser on the way up.
“Janie?” He whirled and followed me.
“I’m the Dark Queen. I’m the freaking Dark Queen,” I ground out. “Not crowned by Leo, but a power chosen for myself. I put the crown on my own head. The magic in it claimed me. It has to mean something. It has to come with power of some sort. I took Leo’s blood. I have this magical crap.” I held out the two icons. “I have star-shaped scarlet energies in my body that I don’t know how to use, and that are growing cancer, maybe because I can’t use the magic and it has to go somewhere and do something so it settled on disease. Maybe I have to be able to use the power and the magic, or let its pressure off, like a steam valve. I need to be able to access it. I just don’t freaking know how to do that!”