“Right. We’re honored to be the danitaga to War Woman, Jane Yellowrock. Dalonige‘i Digadoli.”

“You said my name right.”

“Yeah,” Eli said, his face serious and intent. “I’ve been practicing. Now let’s go solve the world’s problems.”

* * *

We walked into vamp central, keeping it light, keeping it relaxed, went through the pat-down and the listing of weapons. Eli and I put on headsets that allowed us to talk to the person manning the security console and walked to the elevator before turning the units off. On his cell, Eli asked his brother, “You have her location?”

“Yeah. I had to backtrack through hours of footage—thanks for all the time, by the way—but I located her on the security cameras. Go to the third floor and I’ll give you directions to her lair.”

“Which should be loads of fun,” Eli muttered.

Minutes later, I knocked on the inner door of the supposed lair of Bethany, outclan priestess of the Mithrans. A human opened the door and stared out at me. He was holding a cannon, pointed dead center at my chest.

CHAPTER 24

Doing the Big Nasty

“Janie?” he said, startled.

“Wrassler?” I said at the same instant, just as surprised.

“We weren’t expecting company.”

“Uhhh . . .” We as in we, a couple? Wrassler and Bethany? When I’d given his number to Jodi? Oh crap.

But before I could say something totally inappropriate, he said, “Some of Leo’s most experienced people keep watch on her when she sleeps at HQ. Do you want me? Or . . .” He looked back over his shoulder while holstering his Taurus Judge .45/.410, a gun easily mistaken for a cannon. I swallowed my heart back down into my chest cavity, where it danced a jig as it tried to settle to a normal rate and not the fight or flight of a gun in my face. “. . . or Bethany? She’s awake, but she’s feeding.”

Which sounded just icky. “Feeding while . . . ?” I made a circular motion with my hand, trying to find a socially appropriate term.

“Getting it on,” Eli supplied. “Doing the big nasty. Making the two-backed—”

“Stop.”

“Yes, ma’am.” But he didn’t sound the least remorseful.

Wrassler just gave us a small smile. “I wouldn’t have opened the door had that been an issue.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, of course you wouldn’t.” And he wouldn’t. Wrassler was big enough to be a member of WWE—World Wrestling Entertainment—but he had brains and sensitivity and long years with the NOLA Mithrans, which required a healthy awareness of all things vampy-protocol-ishy to survive and prosper. Which he’d done really well until I’d shown up, after which he’d lost a leg and use of an arm. Go, me. With an effort I kept my feelings off my face. Wrassler wouldn’t appreciate either guilt or sympathy. “May we speak to her?” I said instead.

Wrassler lifted a huge shoulder in a shrug that would have moved a mountain range. “She’s better after feeding. Come on in.” He stepped aside, limping as he put weight on his prosthetic leg. From the corner of my eye, I saw Eli with a weapon. He’d drawn down on Wrassler, not that it would have saved my life. If Wrassler had intended my hurt, his round would have passed clean through me, Eli, the wall behind us, the wall on the other side, and probably out into the French Quarter. Or, depending on what the versatile minicannon was loaded with, it might have just filled me with shotgun pellets, taken out every organ in my chest cavity, and killed me before I could shift, like the yunega did my father.

I had a sudden flash of ancient, faded memory. My father dead on the floor of our home, his hands in beast-claw form. Partially changed, as he tried to draw on a beast-form to save his life. The memory of my small hand in his cooling blood. Painting my face in promise, a promise to kill the white men who had been his murderers. Which I had done.

I shook myself free of old memories when Eli put his hand to the small of my back and gently pushed me into the room. I stopped just inside the entry and stared.

The apartment was small by modern standards, a tiny sitting room on the right, a bedroom directly ahead, a bath to one side, closet to the other. But it was far, far different from other vamp rooms I’d seen. It wasn’t gilded or inches deep in Middle Eastern rugs or full of paintings. The floor area was bare. Spartan. And lovely. The cypress floor was so smooth it felt like glass beneath my boots. In contrast to the empty floor space, there were shelves built around the walls, filled with orchids beneath grow lights, bleached bones, and African artifacts that should probably have been in museums. There were African tribal masks, animal skulls, tapestries, iron arrow points, twisted iron necklaces, rotting breechcloths, spears decorated with feathers, amazing carvings, bright pigments, and . . . blood. Yeah. Blood, old and grayed by time, used as coloration or to anoint some artifact in sacrifice, the ancient mixed with the smell of fresh blood on the air—sharp from the recent feedings.

The lighting was bizarre, landing on the artifacts from odd angles and unexpected positions, throwing shadows that held teeth and claws and movement as the air-conditioning came on and a false breeze stirred the feathers and cloth. Clothing and jewelry hung on pegs on the walls—wildly patterned skirts in silk and cotton, billowy blouses, ballerina shoes, silky underthings in reds and pinks and amazing blues that didn’t fit into any modern-day version of undies. There were necklaces made of horn, bone, blackstone, onyx, polished marble, pearls in fabulous colors, and dozens of shades of jasper and agate. Earrings and bracelets hummed with magic. Geodes lined the shelves, cut to reveal amethyst, some kind of pink stones, darker than quartz, and some kind of blue stones, the color of the sky at dusk.

Bethany’s room was pagan and harsh, uncivilized by European/American standards, tempestuous . . . and utterly magnificent. There were African phallic symbols, idols of the earth goddess, death masks like those at Madame Tussauds, all things I recognized because one of my housemothers had loved history.

Brenda. She had been the best. I’d learned how to be civilized because of her. Not civilized like the yunega, the white man, but civilized in the sense of humanity, long-lived and long-suffering. For some unclear reason, the suite reminded me of Brenda. Brenda who had been nothing like a suckhead.

Bethany, suckhead in question, was lying on a bed that might have come from fifteenth-century Europe, carved in Christian art of the time and magical symbols, though none with crosses. She wasn’t that nutso. The bed was strung with tight hemp ropes to keep the mattress resting flat. The bedclothes were white silk. And Bethany was dressed in . . . a sheet. Nothing else. Her blue-black skin was so oiled and rich looking it seemed to throw back the candlelight. Her hair—always long, braided, locked, and strung with beads—was up in a high wrap, like a turban made of her own hair. The beads in the locks gleamed in the lamplight, as did the myriad earrings hanging from her ears.