The caged vamps reacted to the sight of company in different ways. One attacked the bars of his cell, throwing himself against the iron, screaming incoherently. One laughed, a chilling, insane sound. One wept, curled on her mattress. Others, frenzied, reached toward the humans, eyes crazed, fangs deployed. Only one looked at me with reason in his eyes. He was wearing a shirt and pants. Shoes. His cell was larger than the others, containing a bed, desk, chair, table, and recliner. A flat screen TV was mounted across the bars and the desk was loaded down with books, a laptop, and various other electronic devices. I made a swift mental sketch: brown and brown, average height, slender, flat nose, as if broken, which was odd. I assumed he was a chained scion who had found himself and was ready to be released into the world. Until he met my eyes, held my gaze. And smiled. His small fangs flipped down and he ran his tongue over the sharp, inch-long tips, the gesture almost taunting. All righty then.

I could feel their hunger, ravenous, demented. It would have been kinder to just stake the pitiful things, but that wasn’t my job. The security arrangements were, which meant I needed to prepare a report on the safety measures of Shaddock’s Clan Home and his scion-lair. Crap. I hated reports. Not hiding my frown, not caring if I threw off anger pheromones, I took in the arrangement of the overhead lighting, each bulb protected by metal grates, the switch by the door, and moved through the room. Security cameras were in the four corners, the dynamic, mobile kind, operated by remote from a secure location. The bars were bolted into the rock floor, rock ceiling, and rock walls with no sign of rust or corrosion. I checked for adequate fire protection, drainage, and a safe manner to feed the caged. There was a large round drain in the sloping floor and sprinklers overhead. A hose to clean the vamps and their cages was curled on a hook. A stainless-steel sink big enough to swim in stood in one corner, and from it a stainless trough ran around the walls.

Shaddock said, “Blood-slaves—or the occasional pig if times get hard—can be bled at the sink, and the blood’ll drain around the room, feeding the vamps who slurp out of the trough.” He sounded proud and I smothered my anger. It was barbaric, not that the scions cared. They were too wacky to care. No one cared that they were kept like prisoners, either. They had signed all the legal documents giving the vamp master permission to control, keep, and care for them for as long as he chose, and then acceding permission to be put down like rabid dogs if they didn’t come out of the devoveo.

Actually, Shaddock had done a good job creating his lair. The Vampira Carta didn’t specify that rogue scions had to have mattresses or space. And all Leo cared was that they wouldn’t starve or get free. I had no choice but to be satisfied. I left the room, the two vamps still talking about the various nutritive techniques and systems of restraint for the chained ones. I was just angry. Deeply, silently angry. Chen watched me leave with flat, cold eyes.

CHAPTER SIX

Leo Pellissier’s Right-Hand Meal

By dawn, the envoy was protected and safe in his windowless suite in the four-star hotel, his blood-servants around to defend and serve him. And I was free to hunt. Almost as important, I was allowed time away from the vamps—who were all sicko killing fiends—and the blood-servants who allowed them to continue living like kings, despots, and feudal lords.

Though I hadn’t slept in nearly forty-eight hours, I was too ticked off to rest. Bruiser, Leo Pellissier’s right-hand meal, had left me a text during the night. “It is in Leo’s best interests for you to hunt down the weres and prove the Mithrans innocent.” Well duh. No kidding. What did it? The national news media filming the protestors out in front of the hotel? Or the report that more campers had been attacked during the night, by something fanged and clawed? A second text added, “Leo has cleared this hunt with the International Association of Weres, who have placed a bounty on their heads. Leo wonders why they were not dispatched when the rest of the pack was exterminated.”

I texted back. “Wolves were in New Orleans lockup. Not gonna shoot dogs with human witnesses.” Privately I added, “Idiot,” but I didn’t type that part.

I was free to chase the werewolves and the grindy and Leo and the IAW would pay me for it. My eyes on the news channels, watching while I changed, I flipped through from Asheville’s local channels to the national ones, learning that last night’s campers had been deep in a wilderness site near a small creek, over forty crow-flying miles from the previous attack site, and because it happened in the dark instead of by day, the media was again attributing it to vamps. Dressed in jeans, hiking boots, and layers of shirts, I filled a backpack with supplies I might need. I’d be hunting with the local sheriff and his deputies, guys I knew—cops who had questioned me extensively following another hunt—and so I was carrying only two handguns. No need to worry the local law enforcement by showing up armed like a mercenary.

Once dressed, I brought six knives and my backpack into the twins’ common room and finished weaponing up in front of their large, flat-screen TV. Brandon, his hair washed and combed back, was stretched out on the sofa, wearing a heavy white robe with the hotel’s logo on it. There was an open bottle of wine and an empty glass on the tea table beside him, and two dainty wounds in his neck. He looked satiated, and happy. Which ticked me off.

The local early morning TV personality was a cute, energetic blonde with a perky voice. When Brandon flipped back she was saying, “—pires kill like that, don’t they Mason? With fangs, and claws?” A grim smile on my face, I shoved my favorite vamp killer, eighteen inches of heavily silver-plated steel in a hand-carved elk-horn handle into its sheath.

Mason, on a split screen, was standing in front of trees, emergency vehicle lights blinking in the distance. “The older ones don’t usually kill their blood supply, Marcy, but the young rogues do often kill their victims. These attacks appear to the law enforcement and park rangers very similar to the wounds suffered by the people killed a year or so ago.”

“Those attacks were brought to an end by Jane Yellowrock, the local vampire hunter, and a coven of local witches, right?”

I felt myself flush and an electric shock shot through me. Oh . . . crap. Molly’s husband was gonna kill me.

“Janie is famous,” Brandon said, laughing.

“For our viewers, here’s some footage shot by an amateur videographer, the morning when a local sheriff detective, Paul Braxton, was killed trying to take down the vampires in the cave system of the old Partman Place.”

“I remember that, Marcy,” Mason said. “The Partman Place was a nineteenth-century homestead until gemstones were discovered and the land was sold to a mining company.”

Marcy said, “The mine closed down when the gems ran out. Last year, a blood-family of young rogue vampires took it over and local residents started to disappear.” A poor quality feed ran. “When a camper saw two blood-covered females walk out of the mine he took a short video.” On the television screen, his feed zoomed in on my face, my peculiar amber-colored eyes seeming to glow, an effect that had been blamed on the golden sunrise. What else could it be, right? But it was Beast. And people might not be so sanguine about Beast in my eyes now.

“According to some sources, Jane Yellowrock is back in the area. What does she say about these attacks?” Marcy asked.

“We have people tracking her down now. But in unconfirmed reports, she told one law enforcement officer that no vampire caused the wounds.” Mason’s voice sounded skeptical. “Of course, one source suggests that she went to New Orleans to work for the vampires. So that might have changed her perspective.”

“Weird, to go to work for your enemy. But I guess money talks,” Marcy said.

I frowned. On the screen, Molly and I were both covered in blood, the sunlight hitting us as we came out of the mine, into the dawn light, me carrying Brax, Detective Paul Braxton, over my shoulder. Or what was left of him. One of the young rogue-vamps had killed him. The scar on my throat was clear in the video, the angled sunlight of early dawn catching on the raised, ridged, raw, partially healed, red scar. Back then it was four inches wide, brand-new, left over from a near beheading by an enraged young rogue. I had survived by shifting into Beast. And Beast had saved us all by taking down the last rogue-vamp. Dang Internet.

Brandon looked at my neck, still scarred, if you looked closely. “You heal up good.”

I grunted. Swung the backpack over my shoulder, and left the room. On the other side of the hotel, I raised my hand to knock at a room door. Inside, I heard the same announcer, still talking about me, and the rumors surrounding me. She said, “Some sources think it’s possible that Jane Yellowrock may not even be strictly human herself.” That’s just hunky-dory. Derek already had questions about who and what I was.

I knocked and Derek opened the door. Fast. As if he had been expecting me. He was still wearing his suit from the night’s work and he held a handgun at his side. His gaze whipped over me and settled on my throat. In my peripheral vision, I saw him unlatch the safety, his finger moving smoothly. Not good. I tensed, knowing that even drawing on Beast-speed, I wasn’t faster than a bullet fired at point-blank range by a trained killer. “What happened to the scar?” His voice was low, emotionless, an interrogator, who intended to scare the crap out of his witness.

A knot rose in my throat, but my voice, when I spoke, was steady. “I took six months off after that kill. It took me that long to heal.” Which was the truth, as far as it went.

“Skin grafts?”

“Something like that.” Actually shifting two or three times a week, letting my body heal from the wound that had nearly decapitated me, but I wasn’t sharing that with him.

“And your eyes in the film? You got an explanation for that?”

“No.”

Suddenly Derek chuckled. “Injun Princess, did I ever tell you I was Creek Indian on my mama’s side?”

“No.” I wondered if Creeks had a skinwalker mythos. I wondered if he guessed about me.