“No.” Her shoulders went back; her chin rose. “Never.” It occurred to me that she saw a lot worse than a mountain lion in the eyes of her bosses.

Before I could respond, I heard from the stairs, “Correen?” The voice was grating, sexless. Beast flared through me, into my limbs. I raced down the hall and up the stairs toward the sound, touching the charms to make sure they were still in place. I reached the second story.

“Correen?” The voice sounded weak. Scared. Dominique, the blonde who had commanded me to call on her, tottered from a bedroom, a white nightgown fluttering around her feet. Metal bracelets clinked as she moved. The cross in my hand flared with vicious light. Dominique cringed, hissed, her fangs falling forward. I ran toward her. She wrenched back, her feet landing wrong. Falling, she hit the floor, her wrist catching her weight with a loud snap. Her face twisted into a grimace and she turned her eyes from the cross, holding up a protective hand. “No,” she said. “Put it away. Please.”

“Not yet. Where is he? Where is the rogue?”

She cradled her broken wrist, the hand sticking out at an odd angle. “No. I can’t.”

“You don’t have much choice,” I said, breathing in. “I can smell him. He’s been here. The vamp council gave me authority to kill you without reprisal for harboring him.” Beast rose higher, snarling.

“Harboring him?” She laughed, a wretched gurgling sound, hysterical and despondent all at once. Full of . . . despair? Vamps can feel despair? Dominique turned her face up to me. She was crying bloody, watery tears, trailing down a face so pale that her skin looked transparent. “I haven’t been harboring him. None of us have. We’re his prisoners,” she spat. “You should have come when I asked.”

She held up a foot, displaying a shackle around her ankle. The flesh beneath it was red and swollen, blistered with pustules, torn skin seeping watery blood that made little ssssing sounds as it cauterized against the silver metal. The clinking I had thought was bracelets was a silver anklet, binding Dominique.

I knelt and examined her. She was pale and bloodless. Her skin was faintly yellow, like brittle parchment, and her eyes were hollowed with purple smudges. Her neck showed repeated vamp bites, the skin torn and ridged with scar tissue. She had been bled, often and without recourse to enough blood to restore her. Worse . . . I hadn’t known vamps could break bones. “The silver,” I guessed. “It’s poisoning you.”

“Yes. Me. Three others of my clan held prisoner here.”

I pivoted on one knee and looked back into the hallway. At each doorway stood a vamp wearing nightclothes, looking haggard. I inserted the silver cross inside my leather jacket. Dominique sighed with relief and dropped her head to the floral carpet. “Your human servants aren’t feeding you?” I asked. “Where are the twins? Why don’t they just let you go?”

“Our young blood-servants were bled and taken away. I don’t know if any survive. The ones remaining are old, their parents, or even great-grandparents, unable to fight, unable to help us for fear that their loved ones yet live and will be killed. And we cannot feed while exposed to silver. The poison taints the feeding.” She tilted her head to see the man across the hall from her. “He’s taking so much. There isn’t . . .” She turned back to me, her head moving slowly on the stalk of her neck. An emptiness spread across her features, and I recognized a despondency so heavy it looked like death. A deep, daunting desolation. “There isn’t enough blood in the world for him. Not even Mithran blood. And if he takes more from us, we fear we will rise rogue, that the old tales will be borne out in our flesh.” Her eyes closed and she whispered, “Already each of us takes far too long to find our own sanity at sunset.”

I reached for her shackle. “I can take care of—” Her eyes shot from my face to my neck; my skin went sweat slick. The magic charms instantly grew hot against my stomach, burning in the presence of the danger presented by a hungry vamp. I fought the urge to move away in fear. “If I free you, can you control yourself enough not to drain me dry?”

The man across the hall chuckled. “If you set her free, she will rip out your throat in joy. We all would.” He sniffed the air, raising his head, licking his lips. “I remember your scent from the Pellissier party. Not quite human. Tasty.”

“So much for being kind,” I said. I stood and stepped away from Dominique. “You’ll just have to wait until I kill your blood-master.”

“No!” Dominique said. “Why would you kill Grégoire?”

The vamp across the hall laughed, derision in the tone. “You are a fool, you little ‘not-quite-human.’ Grégoire is not rogue. No! He is prisoner, and has been for these two months and more. He is shackled, as we, with silver. He still lives, though he grows weak. I feel his heartbeat, slow and weak.”

“You should have come when I asked,” Dominique said. “You should have come.”

Understanding slid into place with an almost audible click. The rogue was bleeding Grégoire, which was why Dominique had commanded me to visit, back at Leo’s party. And if she hadn’t felt safe telling me at the party, then the rogue had been there, close by, listening. Could I be any more stupid? I pulled the cross from my shirt. “Where is the rogue keeping your blood-master? And why is he keeping you shackled—other than a blood meal? And most important, who is the rogue?”

The man across the hall laughed. Dominique wept. The vamps in the other two doorways rattled their chains. And Correen moved up the stairs, a butcher knife in her hand.

“Though it surely means the death of my human family, I called Clan Pellissier,” she said to Dominique, as tears rained down her wrinkled face. “The blood-servant of the blood-master of New Orleans is on the way.” Outside, lights drew up in front of the house. An engine died. Doors closed. They must have been close by. I saw my payment for bringing in the rogue’s head flitting away. Correen screamed and raced toward me.

I threw Dominique to the floor of her room, stepped in after her, and slammed the door. Out in the hall, Correen banged the blade into the door, screaming, “Dominique! Dominique!”

I dropped to one knee, so close I was bathed in the sick breath of the vamp. I shoved the cross at her face, blazing a cold, bright light. “Where is the rogue keeping your blood-master? Why is he keeping you shackled? And most important, who is the rogue?”

When she answered, all the breath went out of my body.

By the time the footsteps made the top of the stairs, I was standing in an open window overlooking the back garden. Gathering Beast to me like a cloak, I jumped, hit ground, rolled into a crouch, and took off across the lawn. In a single leap, I took the six-foot-tall back fence and raced to my bike, still hidden in the shadows, three blocks away.

CHAPTER 25

Witchy power

I gunned the engine, crouching over the handlebars. Beast crouched with me, face to the wind, my/our mouth open for scents. I was heading out of town, along the Mississippi River. And I was about to do great damage to the entire vamp council in general, and to Clan Pellissier in particular. When I was done, I figured someone would kill me.

Lightning cracked overhead, throwing the world into jagged edges of light. Rain sliced down, beating me as I rode through the storm. I was soaking wet by the time I found the old house and turned down the drive between the rows of oaks, in the wake of two cars, moving slowly through the rain. I passed both, the people inside obscured by the night. Security guards? Not like it mattered. They’d never have time to react.Lightning shattered overhead. I smelled the rogue’s human scent, fresh on the wind. I gunned the engine and bent over the bike. I took the stairs to the porch with a grinding of wheels on wood and hit the front door, still moving fast. The door wrenched open and kicked back against the wall, the impact slamming through my bones. I rode the bike into the foyer, spun out on the slick family crest, and killed the engine. Glass tinkled as something broke.

An alarm wound up, the single tone starting low and climbing, getting ready to wail. I was moving so fast that the engine was still whirring with power and the alarm was only a hope of urgency. I kicked the stand into place while tossing the helmet, checked the M4 for firing readiness. Pulled the strap over my head so I wouldn’t drop it. Rested the weapon on my chest. I wasn’t going to use the gun unless I had to. I could smell humans in the house. I saw one at the kitchen, her mouth wide.

With one hand, I reached under my jacket and pulled my T-shirt free of the jeans. One of Molly’s little charms landed in my damp glove, the tingling of its harnessed power hot even through the gloves. I had worn them close to my body, reactivating the protection portion of the spell they carried. Now, like the Benelli, they were locked and loaded. The bike fell silent. I retucked the shirt and rotated my head on my neck to loosen muscles tight from the ride.

I raced up the curving staircase on the right, my booted feet almost silent on the deep carpet, my motion throwing rainwater in spirals. The vamp scent of the rogue was strong. The alarm wailed.

Immanuel, Leo’s son, raced into a hallway at the top of the steps, swathed in silvery light, already shifting. I had a single instant to see dress pants, bare feet, shirt hanging open, revealing his bare chest. I reached the landing. Pulled a stake. The alarm reached its pinnacle, wailing.

A paw swiped out, claws raking the air—so fast. I dodged, ducked. Chose my spot on his chest. Slid up under his guard. Stabbed him with the stake. Hard, up under his ribs.

He staggered back. I pulled the cross and advanced. There was only a pale glow. Immanuel fell against a tall stand. A statue tottered, started to fall. A marble statue. On a stone stand. He roared. Stone cracked. The statue exploded before it hit the floor. Marble dust and rock shards shot over me, shrapnel, cutting deep. Immanuel was drawing mass. I’d hit his heart. He should be dead, if he was a skinwalker turned by a vampire. . . .

Not a vampire, Beast said. Skinwalker. Liver-eater. Took Immanuel’s place.