Faith Hunter: Mercy Blade

Bruiser gave me that half smile, but I could see his concern as he took in the amount of blood on my clothes. Patrick stuck out his chest and said, “My first responsibility is to Mr. Pellissier. If the girl is under the employ of—”

“It’s Miss Yellowrock to you, lawyer-boy. And the girl a heartbeat away from dying in there has a name. It’s Nettie. Now call for help. The only reason I didn’t call the cops and paramedics already is to make sure somebody was here to handle the fallout.”

Bruiser laughed as if he’d won a bet. “I shall call in some of Leo’s scions to heal the less severely wounded, and bring healers and Sabina in to heal Nettie and Leo. But unless someone dies, there’s no reason to contact law enforcement.”

The lawyer nodded, his eyes on Bruiser. “I concur. Who would you suggest we bring in?”

Bruiser turned to me. “Describe the lair.”

I understood what he was asking. Leo, as Master of the City, would have several lairs. “Pale gray walls, what looks like sterling silver or polished pewter poster bed, white sheets, except where his blood is, which is practically everywhere.”

“He’s here, then. That simplifies matters.” Bruiser named three vamps and said he would go himself to pick up Sabina. I knew the priestess would have to be the one to heal Leo. Only one of the very old ones could heal a vamp from silver-poisoned wounds. “Do you have their contact information?” Bruiser asked the lawyers.

“Yes.” The other lawyer, not worthy of introductions, perhaps, pulled out a cell phone and started punching numbers. I listened long enough to make sure he was calling vamps, and turned back to Bruiser. I didn’t say thanks. You don’t say thanks for doing the right thing. But I did give him a slight nod as I finished off my second hamburger and opened another. He eyed the fast food bag and shook his head. He and the witch sat on the top step side by side. The lawyers wandered back to their car, voices grumbling as they dialed vamps, grumbling about me, which made me smile.

Bruiser swiveled his head to me. “You do know how to make friends and influence people, Jane Yellowrock. I’ve said that to you before, but some sarcasm bears repeating.”

“Yeah? Then let me influence you one more time. Send some people who are loyal to you to find Tyler and bring him in. He’s in this up to his neck and sinking fast.”

“Can you prove it?”

“Think so, yeah. Well enough to convince Leo. And I already informed NOPD.”

Bruiser thought about that for a moment, maybe thinking that the hired help should have informed Leo and him before the cops. But he inclined his head in a brief bob, relief and thanks and something that looked like thwarted need on his face. “I’ll call on the way to get Sabina and send a team for him.”

“You can find him that fast?”

“If Tyler has his phone with him, yes,” he said standing and moving down the stairs for his car parked below.

I thought about my cell and the GPS tracking device in it. “One more thing,” I said. Bruiser paused. “The wolves who attacked Leo have Rick LaFleur and he’s been hurt. If I can—”

“I have no idea where the wolves are. But if I hear something, I’ll let you know. Before I call the police.”

Yep, the hired help had been put in her place, but it wasn’t like I could gripe about it when I was asking a favor. “Thanks.”

The cars all pulled away, leaving me alone in the shadows with burgers and a bag of clean clothes. I rolled the bag’s top closed and headed back to the barn to change. No need to advertise my bloody state if Leo’s fanged henchmen were arriving. Old blood never turned a sane vamp on, smelling like death, like leftovers spoiled in the fridge, but the predator in them might want to take a closer look at my wounds. No need to give them a reason to make me defend myself.

As I approached the barn, the wind carried the reek of old blood before me and the barn emptied in a stampede of squeals and thrashing hooves, while barn cats of every size and description gathered, some twining around my ankles and jumping up on stall doors to get a better view. I was under no illusions that it was me that attracted them. It was the blood and the burger bag.

Inside, I stripped and sniffed myself. Though all my blood and the chicken blood had been groomed off me by Beast or flaked away when I shifted, wearing the clothes had left me stinky. I found a hose and drain in a grooming area and washed, the chill water hitting me with a shock. It must be well water, because my shower water never got this cold. It was almost as cold as mountain water. While I rinsed, I drank from the hose, feeling my tissues swell like a sponge as I rehydrated.

When I was cleaner, I dried off using two towels I found folded in a stack. They were clean but rough, smelling of detergent and only slightly of horse, which was a nice scent after my own old blood smell. I dressed in clean clothes, jeans and a tee. “Mine,” I said to the cats, shoving them away from my food bag, and hearing an echo of Beast when she claimed things. Or people.

I shoved my feet into socks and the butt-stompers, and stuffed the stiff, bloody leathers into the small duffel. I wished for a brush, but made do with finger-combing the hip-length mass before braiding my hair and sticking stakes back into it. Dressed, I felt more secure, safer, though I knew better than most how little protection clothing really was. Last, I located the mangled silver collar that Beast had found at Leo’s and hidden. “Dang,” I murmured, turning it to the light as I made my way back to the house. It had defended me from multiple vamp-fang attacks and not been the worse for wear. Wolf fangs, backed up by powerful jaws, had ruined it. The pattern and some of the silver rings could be salvaged, but it wasn’t going to be cheap.

Back at Bitsa, I placed the clothes and most of the weapons into the saddlebags, and reloaded the shotgun. I strapped it to the bike, knowing that if the cops did get called, I’d have to hide them. The M4 smelled freshly fired, and there was no good reason to have a fired weapon and bloody clothing at the scene of a bloodbath. For now, I strapped vamp-killers on each thigh and hip, and the one holster that wasn’t bloody under my left arm. The strap rubbed uncomfortably on the tender skin of my recent wounds.

With as much accomplished as I could under the circumstances, I sat on the front steps of the house and nibbled the last burger, tossing bits of cheese and beef paddies to the cats that followed me from the barn. They were still milling around me when Bruiser and Evangelina, who seemed to be glued to his heels, got back, Sabina in the backseat. Three more cars pulled in within moments of one another, a human blood-servant/bodyguard/driver and a vamp in each. I recognized Innara, one of the coleaders of Clan Bouvier, and Koun and Hildebert, Leo’s warrior scions, and noted that none of the vamps had been part of the conspiracy-whispering taking place at the vamp/were sleepover that had started all this. Bruiser had chosen well.

As they left their cars, doors slamming, I got to see what vamps wore in the their free time, when they weren’t trying to kill me or attending a black-tie event. It was jeans for the guys and cotton pants and silk tank for Innara. Sabina was in her typical nunnish robes. She probably didn’t own anything else. The bodyguards were dressed in jeans and jackets to hide the array of weapons each carried. We looked one another over, assessing danger levels, and decided we didn’t have to react. I gave a little head bob to acknowledge them, and got one back from each, security personnel greetings, all business.

I gave a little head bow to Sabina, knowing that there was something more I should probably do to acknowledge her status, but I didn’t know what it might be. She wasn’t my priestess, after all. The vamps gathered around the open front door and breathed in, nostrils expanding and contracting as they scented, a weird, almost choreographed body movement, bizarre to observe on the non-breathers.