 
Zombie's Bite

Karen Chance

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2015 Karen Chance

Prologue

It came in the middle of dinner. An impossibly long, impossibly hot, impossibly mosquito-filled dinner on a terrace overlooking what a tourist brochure would call a vista and Kit Marlowe called a swamp. The once starched collar on his dress shirt had gone limp and was sticking to his skin along with the curls at the back of his neck, and that was despite the fact that vampires don't sweat.

Or, rather, they usually didn't. But everything sweated here. Even the diaphanous curtains around the French doors were hanging sad and dispirited, and the quiet murmur of conversation was broken by forlorn little drips from the rapidly melting ice sculpture in the middle of the table. It was a cherub, which should have been ironic considering that he was in _hell_ , but was surprisingly apt since what looked like tears were streaming down its fat little cheeks to splash in the drip pan below.

Kit slapped another of the flying vermin and grimaced.

What genius had decided that al fresco dining made sense _here_? Under a sea of swaying lanterns, which might as well have been runway lights guiding the greedy bloodsuckers straight to their own dinner -- of his flesh. He hoped vampire blood gave them a sour stomach. He hoped it poisoned the lot of them. He hoped they'd rise after three days under his command, because he had a target in mind, oh yes, he did.

The target in question was visible through the sculpture, the dark eyes, perfect profile and wine reddened lips distorted by the ice into a ferocious scowl that, Kit reflected grimly, probably provided a truer glimpse of the creature than the usual flawless façade. Since his own were likely equally as distorted, Kit allowed himself the luxury of scowling back.

Mircea, the suave bastard, was having a good night. He had somehow managed to turn a disaster of a meeting between the mad-as-a-hatter Latin American consul, ostensible leader of all vampires south of the border, and their own had-it-up-to-here-and-then-some lady, into something almost . . . . Well, pleasant was hardly the word considering the venue, but at least nobody had died.

Again.

Yet.

But how long that would hold true was anyone's guess. Alejandro, the useless twit of a consul, was losing his grip on his senate, although he was too far gone to know it. That had suited Kit, since the last thing the North American Senate needed was an aggressive, expansionist neighbor. Alejandro was an idiot, but he was a predictable idiot, making him manageable.

Until recently, that is, when the master vampires who populated his court had started running amuck with what amounted to zero supervision. And soon thereafter had also run here, and not for the gumbo. Louisiana had become a hot bed of illegal paranormal activity, none of which followed the North American Senate's laws or even seemed to realize that they existed.

And the usual threats didn't work. Not when Alejandro's masters knew that their not-so-beloved consul was ultimately going to be held responsible for their actions, and didn't care if they lost him, would probably prefer it at this point, if half the things Kit had heard were true. And they were, he'd had his best people on this for over a year. No, Alejandro wasn't the problem; he was just the figurehead his court kept around to take the fall if anything went wrong. Someone else was the driving force behind this farce, this virtual _invasion_ , and God, the thought of those bastards trying their usual tactics in his territory just --

Damn it, he'd bent his fork.

He slowly put it down. He couldn't taste dinner anyway, not tonight, not without knowing _who_. Who he was after, who was the target he'd been chasing for so long, whose head they had to cut off before anything was going to change. But they couldn't decapitate a shadow, and Kit didn't have a name, after almost a year he still didn't, and it _galled_ him. Even more so with his lady's eyes on him, sloe dark and assessing, waiting for him to point out the culprit from the assembled villains when that was the problem -- they all bloody were!

His eyes swept the rogue's gallery around the table once again, only to be interrupted by a picture of his own scowling face that flashed before his vision.

_Thank you, Mircea_ , he thought viciously, but schooled his features into a slightly more benign expression. Or maybe not. Another image flashed, this time of him looking cross-eyed and constipated. He sent back an image of his extended middle finger, which stopped the flow of visual rebukes, but was exactly no help otherwise.

Bugger it all! The smooth son of a bitch was looking cool and calm and decidedly not bug-bit as he laughed convincingly at some comment by that idiot Alejandro, who thought he was a wit. And he was, if you put a "nit" in front of it, Kit thought, as the wine steward stopped by his elbow.

"Make it a double," he told the man, who hadn't been bringing him wine. Not that it had helped.

God, the things he had on that vampire. God, how it galled him to sit here, simpering and smiling -- or watching others do so -- and paying court to an addlepated blight providence should have removed from the earth centuries ago. God, the things he'd like to --

_Careful_ , Mircea's warning murmur was enough to let him know that he had started to project. Not that it mattered. Not with the level of incompetence in this --

He felt the scream rather than heard it, a soul-level reverberation that caused him to knock the glass the steward had just filled out of his hand. He saw it bounce on the table as if in slow motion, hitting the pristine white cloth and rolling off the side, crashing to the floor like a cymbal to underscore the voice in his head. The one crying out a single word: _"Master."_

Chapter One

"Is it always this hard to find a room in New Orleans?" Dory asked, as the owner of the crappy little motel fumbled with his keys.

"Nawlins," he told her, glancing over a beefy shoulder. And taking a moment to smile appreciatively at the tank top sweat had molded to her torso and the short cap of brown hair sticking to her skull.

Dory frowned. "What?"

"You're down south, little lady. Got to pronounce it right. Like the French with Paree, you know?"

"Okay, so is it always this hard to find a room in Nawlins?"

"Nah," he rattled the door, which appeared to be about as sturdy as the rest of this place, which meant that Dory was amazed it hadn't fallen in on its own. "It's Jazz Fest. Ain't as bad as Mardi Gras, but it's close. Used to be just a local thing, but they keep on advertisin', and every year it gets bigger. We were sold out the whole week 'till a guy did a no show. 'Course, he could still turn up later, but don't you worry, darlin'. I got your back."

Literally, Dory thought, as a meaty hand found the back of her jeans.

Dory indulged herself with a brief image of ripping it off and beating him with it. It had been that kind of day. But it would be a bitch finding another room.

"So, uh . . . so are you in town for the music?" the guy asked, looking vaguely concerned when his bicep was pinched, causing the hand to magically spring away from its resting place.

"No."

"Oh. Uh, okay then," he said, renewing his efforts to find the right key. A few fumbling moments later he managed it, causing the door to swing open with an audible groan. "Here, I'll just help you with --"

He stopped abruptly, having just discovered that the large duffle bag she'd sat down while he fiddled did not move when he pulled on it. Or when he yanked. Or when he put both hands on it and _heaved_.

"Good God, girl, what you got in there? A body?"

Dory swung the pack up onto her shoulder and slipped past him. "Not yet."

She kicked the door shut.

And scowled, because the action had stirred up the air. The room smelled like mildew, stale microwave popcorn, cigarettes and sex. She tossed her gear onto the bed, sending up evidence that the comforter hadn't been washed since possibly the 80's, and threw open a window. And just as quickly regretted it.

Bayou is not an attractive smell. Bayou smells like somebody's old socks wrapped around a dead skunk, at least this one did, and the wind was blowing this way. After a second, she decided on the popcorn and cigarettes, since the screen over the window was torn and the tiny winged vampires that abounded down here were being drawn in by the overhead light.

At least they were until it flickered and went out.

She sighed, closed the window, and fiddled with the air conditioner poking out of its bottom half by the dim light from the parking lot. The grumpy old item belched like a freight train for a couple seconds, sending a cloud of dust into the room that coated her sweaty skin and clumped on her eyelashes. And then sent forth a tepid stream of air only barely cooler than the sauna outside.

Damn, it was hot.

Louisiana in spring might not be hell on earth, but it was running a close second. Dory mentally added another grand to the tally sheet for this job as a heat tax. And then another for the mosquitoes. And what the hell, a third for the freaking _smell_ , because it didn't matter anyway since it was looking less and less like she was going to collect a damned thing.

She flopped onto the bed, having forgotten the state of the comforter, which was a hell of a name for something that reeked of sadness and bourbon. She tore it off, threw it into a corner, and then lay back down the sheets. Which might be cheap and paper thin, but at least had seen the inside of a washing machine recently. And, finally, finally, she breathed a small sigh of happiness, because the air conditioner's trickle of relief was pointed this way.

She toed off her shoes, and felt it tickle her soles.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, that was better.

Somebody knocked on the door.

"Compliments of the management," floated through the thin wood.

Dory narrowed her eyes, and pulled a couple items out of her bag, because this wasn't the sort of place that had management. And because it wouldn't be the first time the hunter had become the hunted. She took up a position to the side of the door, gun in one hand and stake in the other, wishing the crack around the facing was big enough to see through.

And then she didn't have to.

"Aw, come on, open up. I got the good stuff," a familiar voice said.

Dory sighed and opened up. And found the front desk guy, who also appeared to be the place's only employee, perusing the label on a large rum bottle. "Spicy," he told her, holding it out with a grin.

She shoved the Glock into the holster at the small of her back. "I brought my own."

"Yeah, but it's prob'ly warm. Everything's warm this week." The guy swatted a mosquito, which left a worryingly large smear on his neck. "You'd think it was the middle of summer already."

"I noticed."

"So let me in. I got ice," he said temptingly, and picked up a plastic bucket. He held it out in one hand; the other still proffered the rum. He waggled his eyebrows.

"Thanks," Dory told him, and took them both.

And shut the door.

"Hey!"

There was no mint, but the ice was fine and the rum, surprisingly, wasn't half bad.

After making herself a tall one, Dory pulled over her bag and liberated a packet. The latter was the case file she was currently running down, which as usual involved a vampire. Not as usual, this one was a master, and at third level, was powerful enough to pose a challenge.

That was okay; Dory liked challenges. She especially liked challenges that came with this kind of price tag. And the possibility of many, many more big payouts later on, the kind that could put her always shaky finances on solid ground for the first time in . . . well, ever . . . if she didn't screw it up.

She took a moment to admire the official bounty papers, which had the old timey scrolls and elaborate flourishes of the Latin American Senate. Who had missed their very bad boy repeatedly when he was in their territory, and had decided that their luck wasn't likely to improve when he fled to the States. So they'd hired her, because it seemed she was getting a reputation as someone who never missed. And they wanted this guy dead or alive, with a preference for dead-and-in-little-pieces.

That suited Dory; manhandling a body through customs was never fun.

She let her finger trace the seal, which was done in red wax like a prop out of an old movie. She'd never seen it before this mission. How could she have? She hunted vamps; she didn't work for them. Well, not officially, anyway.

There had occasionally been masters who ended up with revenants, the mad results of a Change gone wrong, and been glad to pay her to clean up their mess. Or a vamp who needed info on a rival that nobody else -- nobody vampire, anyway -- could get close enough to get. Or a master who'd been ordered to deal with a subordinate, only to find out that he was stronger than expected, and that he was in over his head . . . .

But a formal commission?

From a _senate_?

Yeah, she didn't get a lot of those. Or, you know, any, because senates could clean up their own messes. Senates were made up of the strongest of the strong, the beautiful, charming monsters who ran roughshod over everybody else in the vampire world. Senates didn't need to employ a dirty little dhampir.

Until, suddenly, they did. Or one did, and one was really all she needed, wasn't it? Dory folded the pretty paper, and dreamed of future commissions. Official ones, lucrative ones . . . .

Somebody knocked on the door.

She picked up her gun, and did a repeat of the side of the facing thing.

"I brought mint," a familiar voice said hopefully.

She eased open the door. And a bunch of the saddest, wiltiest mint leaves she'd ever seen were thrust in at her like a bouquet. She regarded them for a moment. Then she regarded the beefy face above them. "I thought we could make mojitos?" the front desk guy said hopefully.

"No."

"I brought sugar," he added, fumbling in his pocket as the door started to close. "I found some little packets in the coffee room that --"

"No."

"I get off in an hour," he said quickly, peering in the tiny slit that was left. "I could run to the store and get some better --"

"No."

The door shut.

Dory went back to the bed, and picked up the photo that went with the file.

Unlike most, her prey looked like a vamp -- the Hollywood version, anyway. Slicked back dark hair, too-pale face, menacing expression. Visible Adam's apple. No scars, of course. Vamps didn't have them unless they came pre-Change, and even then, they'd usually be covered by a glamourie. Not that it looked like tall, dark and creepy was worrying with one of those.

That was the only break she'd had so far. Because this was not the sort of guy you forgot. This was the sort of guy who gave grown men the willies in broad daylight, and would probably send sensitive types screaming after dark. This guy . . . was memorable.

At least, she really hoped so, because she was tired of eating his dust. Bastard was slick as the oil in his hair. Despite a rather broad experience to pull from, Dory had missed him not once, not twice, but _three freaking times_ already.

This did not happen.

This was not going to happen again.

She was only getting paid once for this job, no matter how many weeks it took her. Too many more and it was going to stop being a windfall and start edging into liability territory, even with the heat tax. It was also starting to be frankly embarrassing.

Son of a bitch was going down.

But not tonight. Dory liked challenges, but she wasn't stupid. Tomorrow, in daylight, when even third degree masters were sluggish and slow, would be quite good enough.

She rooted around in the bag and liberated a plastic-wrapped shrimp po'boy and a bottle of Louisiana hot sauce. There was no dessert, but the dime bag of weed in her jeans would do fine. She was going to eat, shower and take a little nap. And by morning everything would probably look a whole lot more --

There was a knock on the door.

"Oh, give it a rest!" Dory said, around a mouthful of shrimp.

Right before the door was kicked open, and her prey stood there, staring at her.

For a split second, Dory stared back, lettuce falling from her lips because there was a sandwich in her hand instead of a gun. And then shrimp were scattering everywhere, and she was hitting the floor behind the bed with her gun now where it was supposed to be. And preparing to do the patented shoot-his-ankles-and-wait-for-him-to-drop maneuver.

Only to discover that the bed was on a platform.

Shit!

Her duffle was on the far side, where she'd dropped it to remove the comforter. But it didn't matter because the motel furniture was old wood and splintered easily. The next second a chair was history, and a makeshift stake was in her hand, and she was leaping over the bed --

And stopping, but not because he'd used power on her, which usually didn't work anyway.

But because he hadn't.

He hadn't done anything.

Dory stood there, breathing hard, the jagged edge of the wood actually _denting his throat_ , and he still didn't. Her eyes locked with his, but there was none of the anger she'd expected, none of the vengeance of a vamp who has realized he's being tracked and has decided to turn the tables, no anything.

Except for pained pleading, which was so wildly out of place that it threw her.

"Is this some kind of trick?" she snarled, after a moment.

The vamp didn't say anything.

Dory's hand tightened on the stake, slipping on sweat and possibly blood, she was gripping it so hard. But she didn't move. Not even when he suddenly grabbed her arm, because it wasn't an attack. More of an entreaty, despite the strength that was enough to bruise the muscle.

"Kill . . . me . . . ." the pale lips whispered, right in her face.

"What?" She stared at him.

"Kill. Me." And then, before she could process that, he started yelling it -- "Kill me! Kill me! Kill me!" and pushing her into the room. And shrieking it in her face, and okay, if this was a freak-them-out tactic, it was a really damned good one, Dory thought, wondering why she didn't just do what the maniac wanted.

But she didn't get a chance.

Because a moment later, he had grabbed the stake, and was wrestling her for it. And when he couldn't separate it from her fingers, he stared around, spied the one she'd left on top of her bag, and dove. And turned to face her a moment later, blood coursing down his shirt from a slit in his throat, and a grin of pure relief spreading over his features --

Until he toppled over and hit the nasty floor, face first, and stayed there.

Courtesy of the stake he'd just plunged through his heart.

Well . . . shit.

Chapter Two

The body was lying in a disgusting room in a motel Marlowe could only assume was named Didn't Want to Sleep in My Car, although he couldn't be sure. He who usually noticed everything couldn't recall the name or what the outside had looked like or who had been behind the front desk or if there'd even been a front desk. He'd torn through the place too fast to notice anything, and now he was just kneeling there, on a dingy stretch of tile, wanting to rip someone's head off.

But there was no one there.

"Find him," he said hoarsely, his Child's blood seeping through his fingers.

"Sir --" someone said, before someone else wisely shut him up through a process Marlowe didn't see, because he couldn't see anything.

Except the slack features resting on the arm of his coat, and the slit in the throat deep enough to have drenched his trouser leg, because Allen had bled out before he got here.

He had thought he might be in time. It would have drained him badly to save one so close to death, but he could afford that now. And why could he afford it? Why could he leave himself vulnerable when he never did?

Because half the senate was here with him. And some of his best men. Yet Allen lay here, dead in his arms. The boy he'd found screaming over the smoking corpses of his parents in the Great Fire, the boy he'd raised as his own son, the boy who as a young man had chosen this life, willingly, happily, just wanting to serve. And he had, admirably, for the last four hundred years.

Until today.

Kit surveyed the room expressionless. For once, he didn't have to work at it. He could feel it, the gaping hole in his Child's chest where the stake had stolen him away. It felt like it had been thrust into his own: the pain, the loss, the endless, aching void --

Someone would bleed for this.

Someone would _die_ for this.

And said someone would scream a long time before the end.

"Master?" Kit turned to see Heinrich, the ragged cow boy he'd picked up in Germany long before there was a Germany, who was now a second level master with a nose a bloodhound would envy. He'd been – literally -- sniffing around for clues, and it looked like he'd just found one.

"Did you find him?" Kit rasped.

"Her, my lord. We're after a woman." Heinrich held up what appeared to be a single dark hair.

"You're sure?" Kit glanced around. "This place looks like it rents by the hour. There could have been dozens of people here in the last week --"

"No," Heinrich's eyes went dreamy, the way they did whenever his nose was in charge. It was as if it pulled brain power from all his other senses, and maybe it did. Kit didn't know how Hounds did their work, and right then, he didn't care. He just wanted the result.

"Well?" he prompted, after a minute. Because Heinrich could go on scent journeys that lasted hours as he traced the story of a room back days or even weeks. He could recreate whole scenes—who had been there, what they'd been doing, where they'd been before they came—a hazy movie playing in his mind formed from scent instead of sight, but almost as good.

Almost.

Because he had a worrying frown on his forehead that Kit didn't like.

"Young, yet old . . . human, yet not . . . adrenaline yet . . . no fear," Heinrich murmured. "She expected to take him, if it came to that . . . she expected to win . . . ."

"She _did_ win," Kit said harshly, keeping a lid clamped tight on his temper. He couldn't afford to lose it now. Not until he had her. "What do you mean, human but not?"

Heinrich moved his head slightly, a lock of blond hair falling into his eyes. Which he didn't bother to push aside, since he didn't need them, anyway. "Not sure. Sweat is human, but . . . ."

"No human did this."

"No. There's something else, so subtle, I can't get a read on it. Something dark . . . something shadowy . . . something . . . odd."

"Odd?"

"Oddly familiar . . . ." He scented the tiny remnant again, which was unprecedented. Heinrich never needed to do that twice. His forehead wrinkled some more, trapping blond strands in the creases. "I know this, I _know_ this, but I can't . . . quite . . . ."

"Familiar? Then you've scented her before?" Kit asked sharply. Because that would mean she was in their files, which would make this considerably more --

"No," Heinrich said, squashing the hope before Kit could finish the thought. "Not her. But someone . . . ."

"Someone with her? There were two?" That would make more sense. Allen had been one of his best men. He wouldn't have gone down easily.

"No. No others. Except for --"

"Sir?" A new voice from the doorway caused Kit to look up. It was Liam, his second, his afro impeccable in spite of the heat, his smartly fitted gray suit as dapper as if he hadn't just sprinted across a sweltering city in record time. Unlike the sweating bag of lard he had by the arm, in a stained wife beater and sagging jeans. "Front desk clerk," Liam said, as the man stared at the bloody mess on the floor. "We found him on his way back in."

"Back in from where?" Kit asked. "Where has he been?"

"L-l-liquor store," the man said, still staring. "I—I—I—"

"You—you—you _what_?" Kit jerked the man, who had been slowly sinking to his knees, the rest of the way down. "Where have you been?"

"I—I—I just went out for a minute. To get some better rum --"

His pudgy hand was wrapped around a paper bag covered bottle, which he was about to drop. Kit relieved him of it \-- rein it in, rein it in, rein it in and _get some answers_ \-- and the man just blinked at him. Kit would have thought he was under a suggestion, but he was too stupid to need one.

"He said he was trying to impress the girl he let in here earlier," Liam said. "Petite, young -- maybe early twenties -- unusually strong. Said she hefted a bag weighing almost as much as he does with no discernable difficulty."

"She was hot, though," the clerk said, tearing his eyes away from the body. And glancing around like he expected to still find her here, keeping company with a corpse. "And she liked rum . . . ." His eyes focused on Kit's. "Are you guys the cops? Is she in trouble?"

"More than you can possibly imagine," Kit breathed, as another report, this one a communication from his office in Las Vegas, came echoing through his mind.

" _My lord, we just found Allen's last report, filed last night."_

" _And?"_

" _He said he might have a line on that senator you had him checking out, something big."_

" _Did he say what?"_

" _No. But he did say he had picked up a complication. Someone was tailing him, someone good, and he had to waste time shaking her. He said he wouldn't have bothered to mention it, but the last time, he got a good look at her."_

" _And?"_

" _I'm sorry, sir, but he said she was . . . rather, that he thought she might be --"_

" _What, damn it! He thought she might be what?"_

" _Dhampir."_

Chapter Three

Being the hated cross between a vampire and a human had its downsides, Dory thought. Like all of them, all of the downsides of both species and then some. But it had its good points, too.

"I don't know!" The guy with the coffee colored skin and impressive dreads stared down at her wild-eyed. Maybe because he was currently dangling two feet off the floor. "I swear -- they don't tell me anything!"

"Who is they?" Dory asked, hiking him a little higher. And wishing, not for the first time, that she was a bit more statuesque. Five feet two was a hell of a thing when you were trying to be intimidating, although it appeared to be working at the moment.

"Th—the bokors. They run things. I just sell stuff," he gestured around at the voodoo paraphernalia that littered the tiny shop.

Nawlins was lousy with voodoo emporiums of one type or another. Mostly, they all looked the same: tribal masks nailed to the walls or hanging from the rafters, bins of straw dolls with beady little eyes that seemed to follow you around the shop, mojo bags filled with odorous clumps of who-knew-what, and candles of all kinds and descriptions. The usual stuff designed for tourists who wanted a slightly creepier than usual souvenir.

But this wasn't just any old shop. A subtle symbol near the front door proclaimed to those in the know that this was the real deal: a licensed, bonded member of the Guild of Necromancers worked here. One of the tolerated members of an otherwise hated breed, who served the undead part of the supernatural community like doctors did for the living.

Or, at least, that's what they were supposed to do.

But certain bokors had a little more on the menu. Like, for instance, adjusting the aura that vamps projected to others of their kind, the invisible-to-humans field that told every vamp they met what clan they belonged to, what family, what master. It was like wearing a descriptive sign around your neck, one that no glamourie could conceal.

And one that made it very difficult to hide from those chasing you.

Dory therefore hadn't been too surprised when she'd found this place's business card in the jacket of a certain crazy vamp. She'd been hot on his tail all week. He had every reason to want a new aura, along with a new face, and a bokor willing to bend the rules could give him both. It all made sense . . . .

Right up until he killed himself.

Why bother getting a new aura if you're just going to destroy it a few hours later? Why off yourself when you're doing a damned good job of evading your pursuit even _without_ a new identity? And why decide to die in front of _her_?

Dory didn't know, but the questions had made her curious. And then the cashier had come at her with a baseball bat, and curiosity morphed into suspicion. A simmering little knot of it deep in her gut about her part in this, and her sudden, too-good-to-be-true windfall.

She snarled, and Dreads got a slightly more panicked look on his face. "L-look, I told you. I don't know him from Adam --"

"You attacked me as soon as you saw his photo!"

He swallowed. Thinking on his feet -- or off them -- did not appear to be his strong suit. "I—we've had some robberies lately. I was nervous --"

"You should be," Dory said, baring tiny fangs. They were a damned sight smaller than her Sire's, but still more than enough to rip this guy's throat out. Which was sounding better all the damned time.

Something of her thoughts must have leaked onto her face, because Dreads suddenly turned café au lait. "He was in here this afternoon," he said in a rush.

"What did he want?"

"To talk to one of the bokors --"

"About?"

"I don't know. They went in back. And after he left, the boss said anybody asking about him ought to be considered dangerous --"

"But not him? Not the guy himself?"

"No. Boss said he wouldn't be back."

"And he knew this how?"

"I don't know. I _don't_!" he repeated, looking panicked when her grip tightened. "You'd have to ask \--"

"Okay," Dory said, and dragged him through a floral curtain.

The back of the shop was a lot less kitschy than the front, with plain wooden countertops, rows of standing shelves, and an exam table that didn't look like it was getting much use since there were half a dozen cardboard boxes sitting on top of it.

"You—you can't be back here," Dreads told her nervously.

"I'll keep it in mind. Where is he?"

"Who?"

"The bokor!"

"I—he left a couple hours ago. He said he'd be back—you can't look in there!" he added, when Dory's gaze slid over the boxes again.

"Thanks," she told him, and went over to check them out.

The one on top contained bottles of little white pills. The ones below held loose little white pills. They looked like coated aspirin, small and round and innocuous looking. Only they weren't, because nobody got that worried about aspirin.

But as clues went, they kind of sucked.

She didn't care if the bokors were running dope; dope didn't work on vampires. She was looking for . . . hell, she didn't even know. But a quick search didn't turn up anything else of interest.

Maybe, she finally admitted, because there was nothing else there.

The paperwork on dead guy had said he was unstable. That he'd gone crazy and taken out a couple villages, before hightailing it out of the country. Maybe that whole scene earlier had just been more of the crazy coming out. And maybe Dreads, who reeked of ganja and had a back room full of pills, had just been nervous about anybody asking questions. And maybe she should go score some etouffee and locate another bed for the night because she was wasting her time.

Because seriously, if anything was going on, would someone like Dreads have been left to hold down the fort?

And then the curtain was ripped aside, and a dozen guys started spilling into the room.

Dory blinked at them; that was helpful.

"Panic button?" she asked Dreads.

"Panic _button_ ," he said viciously, right before her fist plowed him in the face.

He dropped, she swiped an arm across the table, and a few thousand little white pills scattered everywhere, sending the guys in the lead slipping and sliding and crashing into the shelving. That would have been great, since the shelves did not appear to be properly attached, and went down like dominoes, trapping half a dozen guys underneath. But it quickly became a problem when the contents of all those shelves smashed against the floor, sending noxious clouds boiling throughout the room, toxic enough to make Dory's throat close up.

Great.

Even worse, the fumes did not appear to bother her opponents. Like they didn't seem to register the splashes of acidic goo they were stepping in, or the knife she sent into the nearest one's throat, or the bullets that shredded the head of the one behind him. Maybe because they were already dead.

"Son of a bitch!" Dory coughed, and grabbed her lighter.

But she still needed an incendiary, and she didn't think --

Oh, wait.

She slammed a foot down on the clerk, who was trying to crawl away, and grabbed her bag off her back. This, she reflected -- _stop to kick a zombie in the chest_ \-- would be easier -- _send it staggering back into several more_ \-- if she had put the damned thing -- _empty a clip into a guy trying to eat her thigh_ \-- in a pocket! Where the _hell_ \--

Oh, there.

Her hand closed on smooth glass, and the next second a nearly full bottle of rum wasn't anymore as she sprayed the contents all over the attacking throng, some of whom were still trying to crawl out from under the shelving.

They didn't make it. A second later, they were sizzling on the floor, and the rest were sizzling on their feet, and the closest few were going up like man shaped tiki torches. Dory smiled in relief.

Right up until the nearest one grabbed her.

The creature's hair was on fire, along with most of its torso, but it didn't seem to notice that, either. Because zombies don't feel pain, do they? And the human body -- even a dead one -- doesn't immediately incinerate.

Might have thought of that before, Dory told herself grimly. Because fighting a burning corpse wasn't any more fun than fighting a non-burning one. It might even be worse.

Make that definitely worse, she decided, as her jacket sleeve caught on fire when she punched a hole through its face. And as she was forced to duck under the table to get away from the rest of the bonfire brigade. And as Dreads hopped up from the floor and slammed her in the side of the head with something.

Something that left her less stunned than blinking in confusion.

"A _tray_?" she demanded, flipping the heavy metal table over onto the zombies.

He looked down at the flimsy aluminum object he was holding, and then back up at her.

"It's all I could reach."

"A tray?"

"Look, I'm not paid enough for this," he said, sounding annoyed. "I'm just supposed to man the register, you know? This isn't my -- augghhhh!" he screamed, as a fiery zombie grabbed him instead of Dory, maybe because the rum had landed in its face and it couldn't see past the flames.

"No, you idiot! You've got the wrong one!" he shrieked. "Her! You're supposed to attack—erk," he added, as the thing got him around the neck.

Dory slammed a new clip into place and shot it in the head. And grabbed Dreads when it staggered back with half its cranium gone. And dragged him behind the last remaining shelving unit still standing. Where they got some solidarity going and began lobbing bottle after bottle at the approaching horde. Some of which did nothing, and some of which actually helped the other side by drenching the flames, and some of which --

"Oh, that was a good one," Dreads said, as a guy trying to flank them from the left suddenly blazed up in brilliant blue flames that licked the ceiling before going out. And reduced him to a column of powder that filtered slowly down onto the floor.

And onto the smoking bodies of the other goons, who had finally taken enough damage to stop moving.

Mostly.

Dory shot a final holdout until it stopped twitching, grabbed Dreads and slammed him against the wall.

"Um," he said eloquently.

"Talk," she grated out.

"Okay," he said, taking a deep breath. And then: "I just got this job, all right? They said there'd been a string of break ins and they needed me to be vigilant -- that's the word they used _vigilant_ , I had to look it up -- but they meant be twitchy with the panic button if anything happened. So I was. And, okay, yeah, I knew some illegal stuff was going on, but you know how hard it is to get a job when you're an ex-con? The Circle's on my ass all the time and my parole officer is a _punk_ \-- he's maybe sixteen -- and he _hates_ me, and kept sending me to all these dead end jobs and -- well, a guy's gotta eat, right? But nobody cares. You make one little mistake and nobody --"

"Shut up!" Dory told him, and shoved a gun in his face.

He shut up.

She kicked the nearest bottle of pills with her foot.

"The bokors are running drugs?"

He nodded.

"What kind?"

He mouthed something. She let up on the collar she was throttling him with slightly and he dragged in a deep breath. And then breathed out an answer. "D-designer drugs. You know, for the mages?"

"What mages?"

"Any mages. Well, any with cash, anyway."

Dory frowned. "Why is a bokor selling drugs to mages? They deal with vamps." She glanced at the nearest sizzling pile. "And other dead things."

"But live ones have more money," he pointed out. "You got any idea how hard it is making a living off the vamp community? There's just not enough of 'em. One of the bokors told me he was barely scraping by, 'till he got an offer from someone down south --"

"To distribute illegal magical drugs?"

He nodded. "They sell like hotcakes. We put 'em in the poppets -- you know, those straw men they have outside? And people walk right out with 'em --"

"What do they do?"

The guy frowned. "The poppets?"

"The. Drugs."

"Oh." He blinked. "Depends on what you need. Like I said, they're designer."

"Which means what?"

"Well, like this guy that came in here this afternoon. Not your guy -- another guy. He wanted to become a wardsmith. Make fancy keep out spells for the well-heeled, you know? But he couldn't pass the test."

"The test?"

"To get his license. Nobody'll hire a wardsmith who ain't licensed. Don't you know anything?"

Dory jerked his head down. "I know I'm getting impatient."

The guy swallowed, possibly because the gun barrel was now denting his nose. "Well, anyway, he bought a bottle to help him pass the test."

"How would a pill do that? You either have the talent or you don't."

"No, you either have the _power_ or you don't," Dreads corrected. "You can be as skilled as you like, but skills ain't nothing without the juice. Or maybe you got it, but it's not in the right area. Maybe it's spread out all over, like with most mages. A little in this talent, and little in that—until you take the pill . . . ."

"And it concentrates your magic," Dory guessed.

He nodded. "Pop a pill, adjust the spell that comes in the bottle -- to tell it where your magic's 'sposed to go \-- and wait a couple hours. Then for the rest of the day, you're super mage. Good for impressing the ladies, passing tests, winning fights . . . it also gets you high as fuck, which is a nice bonus \--"

"And if a non-mage took it?"

He shrugged. "Humans don't have magic."

"But vamps do."

"What?"

Dory slammed him against the wall again, trying to ignore the building rage inside her. It wasn't easy. If there was one thing she hated, it was being played for a fool. "What would happen if a vampire took this?"

"What?" the guy said again, looking confused.

" _What would happen?"_

"I don't know! I don't know!" Dreads looked at her, wide eyed. "Only the bokors would know --"

"The ones in contact with 'someone down south?'"

He nodded.

Dory snarled.

"Please don't hurt me," he said, in a very small voice.

" _Then give me another target."_

Chapter Four

Bayou, Kit decided, smelled like ass. He glowered at the heavy, moss laden trees, the soupy, opaque water, the rotting vegetation. And what he was fairly certain was the corpse of some small animal floating in a patch of debris a dozen yards off shore.

But he wasn't sure.

He wasn't sure because he couldn't separate one scent from another in this fetid mess, which felt like it was actually assaulting him – physically -- on all sides. It was worse than the bogs in Scotland. It was worse than Sulphur Springs in Colorado, where one of his masters had inexplicably chosen to live. It was worse than anything he'd ever tried to scent through, because it wasn't just one smell, it was all of them!

And it was alive.

"That's . . . really quite . . . something, isn't it?" Heinrich said, with a faintly shell-shocked look on his face.

"Tell me you can scent through it," Kit rasped.

"I . . . think so?" He'd never heard that level of uncertainty in the usually confident voice before. Not about his nose.

"Then get on it," Kit said, and the blond moved off to join the others.

Heinrich had his entire team here, the Baskervilles, as they liked to call themselves, a group he'd recruited and trained for the hardest of assignments. He'd heard about the morass of scents the bayou provided to anyone with a nose, and had thought the trip offered a unique chance to set them a challenge.

Well, they had one now, Kit thought grimly, watching through narrowed eyes as they gyrated around, one even hanging off a nearby tree limb, trying to catch a whiff of the creature they'd tracked here. If they'd been a less able group, they'd have lost her already. First in the quagmire the Old Quarter had become, which thanks to this festival was completely packed with sweaty tourists, and then in that burnt out hulk of a building, the air saturated with charred wood and potions of all descriptions.

Why the dhampir had decided to follow up murder with a spot of arson Kit didn't know, but it hadn't made his job any easier. Not when she scented as a plain human in a sea of them! But track her they had, nonetheless, all the way here, to the edge of a particularly odorous stretch of bayou.

If she was trying to get lost, she'd picked a good place.

Kit's fist clenched at his side, nails biting into the soft tissue, little half-moons of blood blooming against his flesh. He ought to be thanking his men for their dedication to duty. He ought to be deciding on an excuse for deserting dinner so abruptly. He ought to be doing a lot of things.

But all he could seem to manage was to stand here, fighting a rising tide of anger.

He couldn't lose her. He owed a debt to one whose forgiveness he could never ask, because he hadn't been fast enough. He wouldn't fail him again. He wouldn't if he had to slop through every inch of this quagmire himself, on his hands and _knees_ \--

"Sir!"

Kit whirled, and barely refrained from jumping. He should have felt Heinrich come up behind him; should have heard him. The man had a nose, but he galloped around like a colt, banging into everything. Hell, he should have smelled him, even thought that had never been his talent, because he was sweating from effort, the shaggy mane limp and falling in his face . . .

A face that was currently beaming with pride.

"We have her."

"Good." Kit turned and strode over to the small knot of people who had gathered at the water's edge.

They were looking at a forest of moss laden trees that led off into a dark, watery jungle. Cypress knees broke the surface here and there, bleached ghostly pale by whatever sun had managed to find its way under the heavy canopy. Huge floating piles of algae and lily pads almost obscured the water. A stray moonbeam hit a pair of alien eyes, not hers, not human, but some gray backed leviathan of the deep, that flashed a maw of jagged teeth at them before turning with a flip of its tail and disappearing into the depths.

Kit heard one of the men swallow.

"It's an alligator," he snapped. "You could break it in half with one hand."

_If it left me a hand_ , floated through the man's mind, before he tamped the thought down hard.

Kit let it go.

There were boats drawn up on shore, ones they'd appropriated from a nearby tourist location that hadn't yet opened for the season. There were canoes, kayaks, and a small fishing vessel -- silent types except for the latter, so as not to alarm her unduly. Kit didn't know her strengths, didn't know what abilities the bogeyman -- or woman -- of his kind actually had, because all dhampirs were different. But some of the old stories said she might match them in sensory ability, and he wasn't going to risk it.

"I heard dhampirs are worse than gators," one of his southern boys said, throwing a shotgun over his back. "I heard they got claws and a tail like an animal. I heard they can see a man in pure darkness. I heard --"

"I don't care what you've heard!" Kit said, studying at the map of the waterways they'd found along with the boats. The place hadn't opened for the season yet because of an undue growth in vegetation, which had made many of the usual routes impassable.

Good; that should limit the playing field.

"We could split up; try to surround her," Liam offered, looking over his shoulder.

"That we could." Kit looked up. "Karl, Adelin, take a canoe and branch off to the right at the end of this leg," he traced a finger along one possible route. "Margo, Alex, take the kayaks and check out this shallower area to the left. Heinrich, David, take the other canoe straight down the main river, or whatever the hell they call this thing."

"And me, my lord?" Liam asked, dark eyes grave.

"You and I will stay here, to make sure she doesn't double back. And to be available to move whenever anyone spots her."

"Yes, sir," Heinrich said staunchly. "And don't worry, sir; we'll find her."

Kit grabbed his arm. "Just remember: no killing."

"Sir?"

"Your job is to locate her, not to take her down. You find her; you call in, understood?"

Heinrich nodded. "And . . . then what?"

Kit felt his eyes go red. "And then she's mine."

Chapter Five

"You have got to be kidding me," Dory whispered, watching from a tree as a vamp-filled canoe paddled through the liquid jungle below her.

" _Shi—"_ Dreads began, before Dory clapped a hand over his mouth.

She'd had to bring him along or risk him informing her prey that she was coming. He was also the only one who knew where their destination was. Some factory the bokors had set up in the swamp, because apparently they didn't have noses. Or maybe, after a while, you just didn't smell this place anymore.

She wished her nose would get on with that. Because between rotting fish, decomposing plants, more than a hint of sulphur, and the waves of ganja every time her companion moved, she was all but scent blind. Which is how the posse had almost managed to slip up on her.

And it was a posse. The one in front was in the classic pose of a Hound, face forward, eyes closed, navigating by nose rather than the eyes he probably thought of as secondary. The one in back was less into it, glancing around nervously, but with a sharp gaze that said this wasn't a pleasure trip.

Not that Dory had thought that, anyway. Master vamps -- dressed in suits, no less -- didn't often hang out in odorous bogs.

Unless they had a really good reason.

A really good reason like a dead family member.

In her hotel room.

Fuck.

She was going to rip some bokor's intestines out through his goddamned _throat_.

"Maybe they're just here for the . . . uh . . . ambiance?" Dreads whispered, when the vamps had passed by, and she'd released his motor mouth.

She turned to look at him. He had a small book in his hand. "What is that?"

"Thesaurus. I'm improving myself. Thinking about going back to school."

She looked at him some more.

He frowned.

"Ambiance," he said, checking the book. "The character and atmosphere of a --"

"I know what it is!"

"Well, excuse me. Some of us didn't have a chance at a fancy education."

"Neither did I!"

"Really?" He looked interested. "Then how come you talk like that? All educated and shit?"

"I've lived a long time," Dory said, looking through her bag.

"How long? Do dhampirs live as long as vamps? I mean, you're not . . . ninety or something . . . are you?" he looked slightly alarmed.

"Four hundred and ninety would be closer."

"Shit! No shit? Shit!" he said, staring at her, and looking fairly appalled. "And I was thinking you were kinda . . . cute."

"Shut. Up."

And he did, for about half a second. "What's that?" he asked, just as a shot rang out.

Dory felt it part her hair as she dove down the tree, jerking Dreads along with her. Before stuffing his lanky ass in a hollow between a bunch of cypress trunks. For once, he didn't have anything to say. He just looked at her, throat working, as she put a finger to her lips.

And then did it again, more forcefully, until he nodded, clutching his book.

After she was certain he'd done the math, she climbed back up the trunk, bag in hand.

And sure enough, the vamps were back.

"The _hell_?" The blond Hound was holding a gun, in the pose of a man who had just snatched it away from his companion, a redhead with a buzz cut.

"I told you," the smaller man said, glancing around. "I saw something."

"Of course you saw something! This whole place is moving! That's no reason to --"

"No, I _saw_ something. Something human \--"

"So you're planning to shoot every human you see? People live out here! And we were specifically told --"

"Yeah. Weird people. Scary people," the other guy muttered.

The blond looked disgusted. "You're afraid of humans now?"

"I'm not afraid of anything," his companion bristled. "Except . . . ."

"Except?"

The redhead glanced around again. "What the boss said . . . that can't be right, can it? It must have been something else --"

"Something else that took Allen without a fight?" the blond asked, shoving the other man's gun into his waistband. "You saw that room as well as I did. Lamps still on the tables, curtains still at the window, crappy T.V. still on its crappy stand --"

"That's what I'm saying. What could _do_ that?"

"You know what. We were told what. And you need to keep it together or --"

"I have it together! I just --"

"Just _what_?"

The redhead scowled. " _Dhampir_." He said it the same way everyone did, with a disgusted curl of his lip. "That can't be right."

"Well, probably not now," his companion said sourly. "That shot must have alerted half the swamp that we're \--"

He cut off as a speedboat raced up, sending water in a huge arc on one side, high enough to almost drench Dory's hiding place when it stopped on a dime.

"What the hell was that?" A vamp with a mop of dark, curly hair leaned over the side, addressing the blond.

Who glared at the redhead for a second before swallowing. And then looked up to answer his . . . head of house? It wasn't really a guess. Curly's power signature was like a miniature sun, utterly eclipsing that of the other two. And causing Dory to bite her lip.

First level master.

Had to be.

And _pissed_ , judging by the way said power fluctuated, giving away the anger his face and voice were keeping on a tight leash.

Wonderful, she thought, digging through her bag. Just wonderful. This job was getting better all the damned _time_.

"I'm sorry, sir. There was an accidental discharge --"

"It wasn't accidental," the redhead said, because apparently he was stupid.

"Not accidental?" Curly repeated quietly.

"No, sir. I saw something --"

"And discharged your weapon to _what_? Ensure that it saw you, too?"

The voice didn't change, but power flared, hot enough to cause the blond to flinch. He wisely stayed silent. The redhead on the other hand, apparently had a death wish.

"I'm sorry, sir. But I thought I had her \--"

"Your job is not to _think_. Your job is to follow orders. Which you seem incapable of doing --"

"Sir --"

"-- or of listening when I am talking to you!" Curly snatched the idiot out of the canoe with one hand. And left him dangling over the water for a long moment, with the expression of a man who would dearly like to throw him in.

Ultimately, he decided to throw him into the speedboat, instead. "Take him back to shore," he told someone curtly. "We can't afford any more mistakes."

"Yes, sir." An impressive 'fro poked up from the driver's seat, as the master started climbing over the side of the boat. "Sir? Where are you --"

"I'll deal with this myself. Take him back to shore and stay there until we have her."

"Yes, sir." The fro did not look happy. "But, perhaps . . . ."

"Perhaps _what_ , Liam?"

"Perhaps it would be better if I went in David's place?"

The master looked up from where he was seating himself in the swaying canoe, which the blond was helping to steady with an oar. "Why?"

Liam looked unhappy some more. But he didn't back down. "With my nose, I could possibly be of more use here, while it seems a waste to have someone with your expertise not directing --"

"Don't patronize me," the brunet said sourly. "And Heinrich's nose is quite adequate, wouldn't you say?"

"Yes, sir. But if you find her --"

"Not if."

"I meant to say, _when_ you find her . . . wouldn't it be better if someone else was at risk --"

"At risk?" The brunet's face flushed.

"Sir." The dark eyes were steady. "She _is_ dhampir --"

"And we are eight masters! Or am I counting wrong?"

"No, sir."

"She is _one woman_. One very foolish, very dead, woman. Nothing more!"

"Yes, sir." Liam's expression didn't change, but he didn't push it.

A moment later, the speedboat took off with its disgraced cargo, and Dory used the cover of the noise to climb back down to where her own pain-in-the-ass was waiting. For once, he didn't say anything. Just watched her as she took a small carrying case out of her bag, and started working a pod loose from its enveloping Styrofoam.

She did it quietly, because the two in the canoe hadn't moved on. They were just sitting there, discussing what the other guy had seen. They didn't necessarily believe him, but they were going to check it out anyway.

Because whoever these guys were, they weren't amateurs.

And they were out for blood. _Her_ blood. And why didn't she think they were going to wait around while she explained about fake bounties and living zombies and how none of this was really her fault?

Because vamps were so great at listening to dhampirs. She only knew one who might, and he wasn't here. Just a bunch who thought she'd killed their man, because they'd been _meant_ to think that, and if she didn't come up with evidence to the contrary pretty damned quick, her hide was going to end up tacked to Curly's wall.

_What are you doing?_ Dreads mouthed, because apparently he couldn't stop talking even now. Dory shot him her best glare, which seemed to work, because his mouth snapped shut. But his eyes followed her every move as she prepared to lose some more money on this deal.

And held out a little silver ball on the palm of her hand.

God, she hated this part.

After a second, the pod cracked open, sending out tiny tendrils that looked like slug slime and felt worse oozing over her flesh. Fortunately, it didn't take long. After a minute, the nasty tongue-like protrusions slipped back inside and the pod closed. And then abruptly took off in defiance of gravity, zooming off her palm and through the trees on a crazy, zig zag course that made no sense at all.

To the eyes.

"There!" One of the vamps cried, responding to the wide arc of her scent being left behind by the fleeing pod. And a second later the canoe was all but levitating itself, shooting like a bullet through the dark water.

Dory waited for a second, then two, then grabbed Dreads by the front of his t-shirt when she was sure they were out of range. "You've got to get out of here."

"No _shit_!" The words burst out after being repressed for so long. "I thought I was gonna have a heart attack! Nobody said anything about being shot at! Nobody said \--"

"Being shot at is the least of your problems."

"My problems? My problems? How is any of this _my_ \--"

"Because they didn't just follow my scent here, they followed yours," Dory said, keeping her grip on the tie dye when the guy tried to pull away. "You can try telling them I kidnapped you --"

"You _did_ kidnap me!"

"-- and forced you to come along, and maybe they'll listen. Or maybe they'll rip your throat out, because they're a man down, and you just spent the afternoon with the person they think killed him."

"Killed . . . they . . . what?" he stared at her. "Who's been killed? The only ones I saw were some zombies, and they were already --"

"The vamp -- the one that I showed you a picture of?"

He nodded.

"He was part of their clan. Probably sent to investigate the stuff your bosses have been selling. Only I didn't know that. Because your bosses' suppliers hired me to take him out for them, telling me some cock and bull story about him levelling a couple villages in Mexico --"

"What does that have to do with me?"

"-- and I followed him here. But before I could do anything, he showed up at my motel and offed himself."

" _What?"_

Dory nodded. "Slit his throat, then staked himself. Blood was everywhere. Too much to clean up, and anyway, it wouldn't have mattered --"

"He _offed_ himself? You mean . . . _why_?"

"At a guess? Because your bokors told him to," Dory said, pulling him down to their boat. It was a small one, but it had a motor. Dreads should be able to keep ahead of the vamps, assuming she could keep them busy. "Those pills you're selling?" she added, because he was still talking. "The ones that concentrate magic?"

"What about 'em?"

"Well, vamps have magic, too." She pushed him in. "But it's different from the human kind. It's life magic -- the kind they steal from bad little boys like you."

He blinked. "So?"

"So what happens to a body when all of its magic -- and therefore its _life_ \-- is suddenly quarantined? Locked up by being redirected to something stupid, like enhanced vision or whatever?"

He blinked some more. "I . . . don't know. I don't know much about vamps."

"Well, I do. And a dead body minus its animating life magic is pretty much just a dead body, isn't it? _Like the kind your bokors control?"_

He stared at her, open mouthed, because he wasn't stupid, after all. "You think -- you mean -- they're trying to --"

"Gain control of a master."

Dory couldn't blame him for looking at her like she was crazy. Because bokors didn't have that kind of power. They controlled dead bodies, true, but they controlled _empty ones_. A dead human was just a vessel to be filled with a necromancer's power, a puppet with no way to resist because nobody was home anymore. A vamp, on the other hand, while technically dead, was very much not empty.

And they tended to react – violently -- to anyone who forgot that.

True, there were stories about especially strong bokors briefly seizing control of baby vamps. Or of seeing through their eyes, to spy on a vamp family by using one of its own members. That sort of thing was why hunt-the-necromancer had once been a fashionable pastime. But controlling a third level badass?

No way in hell.

Yet she knew what she'd seen. And she'd been crazy vamp's very next stop, after talking to a bokor _who said he wouldn't be back_. And who sold dangerous, illegal pills that just might be able to give him control of a master, at least for a little while.

Like long enough for him to drive a stake through his own heart.

"But . . . but what _for_?" Dreads was asking. "Why would they --"

"I don't know. That's what you're going to find out for me."

He shook his head violently, sending the dreads flying. "No way. No _way_. I am _out_ of this. I thought . . . it was supposed to be harmless, all right? Like selling weed. Nobody said anything --"

"Maybe not, but you're in it now."

"Like hell I am! I told you --"

"And I'm telling you. You have two choices: do what I ask and get yourself out of this mess, and maybe even pick up some reward bucks. Or ignore me and run -- and see how far you get. If you're smart, and lucky, you might even last a couple days before they find you."

Dreads glared at her through the hanging locks of hair. "I hate you."

"Shouldn't that be despise?" Dory asked, raising a brow. "Loathe? Abominate --"

"Give me that!" He snatched the book he'd dropped on the way down the tree out of her hand. And then looked up, biting his lip. "All right. What do I have to do?"

Chapter Six

Kit crushed the small silver object in his hand like tinfoil. Heinrich stood by, shamefaced, because he'd just been beaten by one of his own training toys. One he'd developed himself.

"Where did she get it?" Kit rasped.

Heinrich licked his lips. "We've been using them for a few years now, to train the younger recruits' noses. And you know mages. They steal anything they think might give them an edge --"

"She's not a mage."

"No, sir. But anyone can buy magic, if they have the money. And we designed these to work off a charm that \--"

"How many does she have?"

"I -- there's no way to be sure. But that wasn't a copy. It must have been lifted from one of our own supply depots. And if so . . ."

"If so?"

"They come in cases of twenty-four," he admitted, looking miserable.

Kit didn't say anything.

_Sir._ That was Liam's voice, in his head. _I don't understand it, but we're suddenly getting multiple hits, from all areas. It's as if she's suddenly everywhere at once \--_

She isn't. Her toys are.

Sir?

"Explain it to him," he told Heinrich, while he stared at the gloomy, odorous morass in front of him.

She hadn't left. She knew they were on her tail, had probably seen him during that debacle with David, knew what he was. And that he had others with him: strong, vengeful, and closing in. Yet, instead of slipping away quietly, she chose to deploy a no doubt costly diversion and continue . . . doing what?

Kit's lips pursed.

_What about the man with her?_ Liam asked. _The mage?_

What about him?

We believe they've split up. He was just seen on a speedboat, tearing downriver, and he was alone. Should we pursue?

No. We have his scent; we'll deal with him later. Stay on the girl.

Yes, sir.

And inform our group of what's happening. I want them to run down every one of Heinrich's inventions and destroy them.

"Uh, sir?" Heinrich broke in. "It might be easier to find out which depot was raided if we have an example to, uh . . . to go by . . ." he trailed off as Kit handed him the destroyed remnants in his hand. "Yes, sir," he said, regarding them sadly.

_Understood,_ Liam replied.

Kit thought for another moment. _Do you still have that map of the waterways?_

Yes, right here.

Plot every point where the scent trails have been detected. Call me when you have it.

_Yes, sir._ Liam didn't ask why.

Heinrich looked like he was about to, but wisely changed his mind. They sat in silence for a few moments, or what passed for it here. Like with his people, the night seemed to bring the bayou alive. Sluggish and quiet in the daytime, it woke up after dark with almost as many sounds as scents. Kit counted no less than six different kinds of frogs, twelve birds, what might be a coyote, and the odd, grunting belch of the giant reptiles nature had forgotten to kill in the last great extinction event.

Alligators. What place did something like that have in the modern world, Kit wondered, watching one eye him from the shadows. Of course, he sometimes thought the same about himself.

He didn't know how to fight like this, chasing a bunch of toys in some ridiculous cat and mouse game. He didn't want to learn. He wanted what he did know: open combat, one on one, a fight to the death. He wanted to taste blood, wanted to hear bones crack and flesh tear, wanted --

To hurt.

And not just her.

He was finding his current mix of emotions to be . . . disturbing. Human anguish over the loss of a child, vampire rage at being challenged, the grief of his men for their brother seeping through the bond . . . . The whole of it was enough that he would welcome a distraction, even one that left him with a few less teeth. He might even let the creature get in a few blows before he took her out, might bleed a little while for the child who had bled for him . . . .

Assuming they ever found her, that is.

Damn it! Where --

My Lord.

Tell me.

Liam chose to show him, instead. The old laminated sign they'd ripped off the door of the rental shop flashed before his vision, as clear as if he was holding it himself. Color coded lines, green, blue and red, snaked out from the shore, showing the paths his men had taken, including his own. And all around them, in a profusion of squiggles, were the trails of Heinrich's annoying little devices.

Yes, she'd had a whole case. And she'd used them, covering a large swath of the swamp. Large, Kit thought, but not all.

"Take the boat," he told Heinrich. "Follow the two closest trails, see if they lead anywhere."

"Sir?" The Hound looked confused.

"If you locate her, let me know. Stay well away and hidden until I arrive."

"Yes, sir, but . . . what are you going to do?"

"Check this out," Kit said, pointing to an expanse of more or less solid ground up ahead.

"But sir . . . no scent trails have been reported there."

Kit looked up, and allowed himself a small, vicious smile. "I know."

Chapter Seven

God, she hated this thing, Dory thought, pulling on a section of clingy fabric. It was already a sauna out here, so what was she wearing? An all-enveloping, figure hugging, hot-as-the-gates-of-hell body suit that only worked once and cost the earth and she was so losing her shirt on this job!

But that wasn't the worst thing, she thought, ducking under a limb with a thick, coiled snake draped around it. The worst thing was that there wouldn't be a paycheck at the end of it. The best she could hope for was getting out from under with a whole skin -- and an empty bank account -- and no prospect for all those lucrative future jobs that she'd already begun to count on.

She should have known it was too good to be true. Should have suspected the two smiling reps who showed up in Brooklyn _in person_ because obtaining her help was so damned important. Should have done due diligence --

But that was just it. She _had_. She'd followed procedure, even after the extra-large retainer they'd left with her -- in check form, she recalled, wincing. Damned thing had probably bounced by now. But she hadn't let the amount scrawled across it stop her from calling the Latin American Senate itself to verify, that very afternoon. Which the bastards had no doubt expected, because she'd gotten all the right answers on the other end.

And it _had_ been the senate's number. She wasn't stupid enough to use the one off the check! So whoever these suppliers were, they had connections at court. Enough to get someone sympathetic to answer the phone, in any case, which should make them easier to track. And she was going to track them. Oh, yes. After this, she so very, very --

Dory's thoughts cut out when she heard something off to the left. Something that sounded like a person striding through the undergrowth, and not being particularly stealthy about it. She froze beside the trunk of a tree, the mesh on her suit immediately taking on the appearance of crusty bark and moss. A flick of her wrist, and the screen over her face adhered into place as well, obscuring the last part that was still visible.

Chameleon suits cost the earth, although this one was supposed to be on someone else's dime. But they were worth every penny, she thought, as a human form emerged from the undergrowth. Oh, yes, they were.

Because it was the master, his power a hot prickle across her skin even a dozen yards away, his sharp dark eyes taking in the whole of the glade --

And sliding right over her, without even pausing.

And it looked like his nose wasn't liking eau de swamp any better than hers. Because he had breathed in at the same time, an automatic habit for creatures accustomed to using scent as much as sight. And now he was choking and swearing and coughing and tearing up.

Tell me about it, buddy, Dory thought, and tried to tamp down her heartbeat.

It was the only tell that might still give her away. The suit muffled it somewhat --considering what she was after, she'd insisted on the upgrade -- but this was a master. This close, he'd hear it; there was no doubt of that. But would he be able to pick out the human among all the scurrying, flapping, and swimming things around her?

She kind of hoped so.

_Stop it_ , she told herself firmly. He isn't your prey. You're after the people who set you up. This one was played as much as you were, and lost a Child in the process. At least, that was the only reason Dory could think of for why a first level master in a designer tux would he tromping his way through a quagmire in the middle of the night.

Tall, dark and creepy hadn't been the Child of a Child, some distant hanger on of the clan several times removed, barely a spark in the darkness. No. He'd been made by the creature who had his head thrown back, his ears working as none of his other senses would do. Because that had been his Child who had died, his blood that had spilled on that motel floor, a burning sun in his firmament that had suddenly winked out.

Leaving everything darker behind it.

Dory scowled behind the mask. She hated shit like this. She liked a clean, open fight against an enemy who needed killing. Not some furtive chase through the dark, trying to avoid slaying someone who the human part of her felt slightly sorry for. And that the vamp part wanted to break, to kill, to feel the heady, sweet blood of a master welling up under her --

Stop it!

But it was too late. Her vampire nature hadn't caused her to move, or to utter a single sound -- she'd had too much practice for that. But it had caused her heartbeat to speed up. Not enough to alert most vamps, no, but a master? And one who had been looking for it?

_Shit,_ Dory thought fervently, as the man's eyes suddenly snapped open.

And looked straight at her.

* * *

It was standing by the tree. Kit could map it with his ears as easily as with sight, the hot thrum of its blood muffled in some way he didn't understand, but strong and steady and _there_ , nonetheless. It was _standing right by the tree_.

Yet he couldn't see it.

Until it moved, barely a ripple on the night, one his eyes wanted to slide off of even as he leapt --

And crashed to the ground, pinned in place like an animal by a sparkling net of pain, like a hundred Tasers hitting him all at once. He roared and ripped the thing in two, throwing it aside to finish sparking out against the wet earth. And looked up --

And didn't see her.

Son of a _bitch_.

Kit jumped back to his feet, staring around, his pulse hammering, his senses reaching out for a sound, a scent, a glimpse --

And found none of them.

But she _was_ here. He'd been right: the place to look wasn't one that was registering, all lit up temptingly, but the one that wasn't. The one conspicuous only by the absence of any activity at all until that tell-tale glimmer.

He didn't see it now, not anywhere. Didn't hear it, either, which probably meant she'd moved, and moved quickly, out of range. But he hadn't imagined it, or the numerous toys she seemed to have with her.

But people only used mage tricks if they thought their own strength inadequate. Otherwise, why not just attack him, kill him now? Before he could bring an army down on her head?

Because she couldn't.

And because that wasn't happening anyway. He hadn't brought his men along for that; he'd brought them to help him find her. Now that he had . . .

This was his fight.

And it was about to get dirty.

* * *

Going to demand a goddamned _refund_ , Dory thought, watching a very costly net spell last all of a couple seconds. Of course, those seconds bought her time to run like hell, to get out of hearing range, to blend in with the cacophony of night on the bayou. But it wasn't like he was going to take the hint and go away. Wasn't like he was going to think, hey, you know what? She could have thrown something a lot more lethal just now, maybe we should talk.

No.

Vamps didn't think like that. If he stopped to wonder about it at all, her actions would be taken for stupidity or weakness. And that would only make him more inclined to find her again, because every predator loves easy prey.

Her lip curled, baring fangs that there was no one there to see. Because she wasn't prey. In the vamp world, she was pretty much the apex predator, the mongoose to his snake. And she was about to Rikki Tikki Tavi his _ass_.

Dory hunkered down behind a tree, opened the maw on her great big bag, and considered. She wanted to neutralize him -- had to neutralize him if she was ever going to get anywhere \-- but didn't want to kill. Okay, she _wanted_ to kill, but killing first level masters with big families was a good way to be on the run for centuries. Vamps were like elephants; they never forgot a damned thing. Not when it came to revenge, anyway.

So no killing.

But damn if having to do non-lethal wasn't a royal pain in the --

Dory never even felt the blow land. One second, she was on the bank, pawing through her bag, and the next she was hitting down in a patch of mingled swamp and mud, face first.

And the next she was flipping and hurling the object in her hand at the blur coming at her like a freight train. A freight train that hit the muck where she'd just been lying and stayed there, thrashing about in the web spell she'd thrown, instead of ripping her throat out. But if he got out of this one as fast as the other --

And he did.

But Dory had expected that and already been moving, reaching into her bag and lining things up, and then rapid firing spells at him as he threw off the web and lunged for her again, muddy and wild-eyed and furious.

And even more so when her arsenal in turn stunned him, tripped him, stunned him, enmeshed him, stunned him, stunned him, freaking _stunned him_ \--

This wasn't working. He shrugged off everything she could throw at him, almost as fast as she could throw it, and before long she was going to be out of tricks. And then what?

Well, then she died, Dory thought, pragmatically.

But probably not quickly.

And _fuck_ that.

She bit the bullet – literally -- slipping a small silver capsule out of a side pocket and into her mouth. It wasn't cyanide, it wasn't defeat, because she wasn't dying here today, no matter what asshole thought. But, God, it suddenly felt that way!

But not because he'd grabbed her.

He was still thrashing around, throwing off her last supposedly escape proof net, when the disorientation of a $5,000 spell hit her like a baseball bat to the head. Or make that heads. Because Shards was a next level, coven crafted, how do you like them apples spell that left Dory feeling like she'd just been ripped into a thousand pieces.

Which was unfair, since it was only three.

Three copies jumped out of her skin, looking like identical triplets. Or like mirror images, only they weren't. Decent illusion spells went for $100 bucks a pop if you knew someone and twice that if you had to pay retail; when you were forking over the price of a decent used car, you got a little more.

Which was why the shards dove on command for the bag, grabbed fistfuls of pain, and unleashed them on the master vamp, who – predictably -- had just jumped back to his feet.

And Dory Prime grabbed the sadly depleted leftovers and ran.

She heard the fight escalate behind her, the Shards giving the vamp almost as much hell as she would have, and that was with weapons. Once they ran out, they'd attack him physically, for as long as the charm held, which given what she'd seen of him so far, wouldn't be long. But it ought to buy her a couple minutes, and she needed them.

She needed them badly, she realized, stopping by a cypress tree and panting heavily, but not because she'd planned to.

But because her head was still reeling from that initial savage blow. It had been stunning, easily enough to have killed a human and to make a vamp rethink his life goals. It felt like he'd cracked her freaking _skull_ , to the point that her vision was blurry and her usually excellent reflexes were shot.

Which probably explained why she staggered trying to grab the tree, tripped over a root and went tumbling down the short embankment into the water.

And into the nursery for every damned gator in the swamp.

Dory looked up, dripping mud and dizzy as hell, and froze.

A little moonlight filtered down through the heavy, mossy canopy, gleaming off the lily pads and dappling the algae . . . and the backs of more gators than she could count. They were everywhere. _Everywhere_. To the point that the "water" mostly wasn't, but was made up of moonlight hitting the ridges on their knobby hides.

And that wasn't right, was it? Gators didn't . . . flock . . . did they? Or whatever the term was, although she was pretty sure there wasn't one because they didn't do that! They were loners, or so she'd always heard . . . .

Only it appeared that she'd heard wrong.

She'd also been wrong about the nursery thing. Because while some of those hanging about on shore, grabbing a few moonbeams, were fairly small, maybe three or four feet tip to tail, others . . . were not. She spotted a bunch in the eleven to thirteen foot range, a few leviathans of maybe fifteen, and one that she was pretty sure was her addled brain playing tricks on her, because it had to be twenty freaking feet long.

Dory stared at it. Twenty feet of muscle. Twenty feet of terror. Twenty feet of prehistoric hate with a maw of what-the-fuck and claws they didn't make anymore because even nature had looked at those things and thought, you know what? That was a bad idea.

Like stopping to gawk at the wildlife with a master on your tail, she thought, when something flew out of the forest and grabbed her.

To any watching humans, what happened next would have probably looked like a blur, something so fast and fluid against the night that they could have been excused for missing it all together. But Dory wasn't human, and she'd danced this dance before. So many times that it was like an old tune on the radio, one you start humming with the first few notes, without thinking.

One second, the vamp version of the Incredible Hulk was grabbing her, and the next her feet were in his stomach and he was being flipped over her head and thrown half a dozen yards through the air.

Straight into the pit of hell.

Dory's arrival had led to a little snarling and snapping, mostly among the closest beasts. Which had sensed someone there who shouldn't be, even though they couldn't see her. But her utter stillness and the suit's muffling abilities had ensured that they'd mostly calmed back down.

Until a hundred and seventy pounds of enraged vampire splashed down, right in the middle of them.

And then froze, as all five of her remaining stun bombs hit him at once, right in the chest.

He disappeared under a few thousand tons of thrashing fury, and Dory stumbled up the bank, feet slipping, head reeling, and stomach churning because this wasn't the way she did things.

This wasn't the way she did things at all.

So much for non-lethal.

God _damn_.

Chapter Eight

Twenty minutes later, Dory was still shaken, although that could have had something to do with floundering through a mile or more of swamp. The "ground" around here was mostly moss and algae-covered water, with the rest ankle deep mud spiked with trippy little roots. None of which acted like roots should and stayed underground!

But she'd made it. She was currently looking at a little building exactly like the one Dreads had described: tin roof, wooden walls, stilts to keep it out of the muck, and quite possibly the most obnoxious odor she had ever smelled emanating from it. Seriously, there should have been blue clouds hovering over the top, only she didn't see any. Of course, she couldn't see much out of seriously watering eyes.

Well, at least she couldn't miss it, she thought, squatting in a tree and rolling a joint.

It wasn't likely to cover the smell, but that was okay since her nose had basically shut down in self-defense at this point. It wasn't likely to help anything else, either, which was more of a problem. A big problem, since her dhampir nature tended to rear its ugly -- and scary, and completely insane -- head, whenever she got a little too upset.

Like after feeding a guy to a bunch of modern dinosaurs, for instance.

Yeah, yeah, she hadn't had a choice. She knew that. There's a big difference between feeling sorry for someone and dying for him, and Dory wasn't a saint. She'd never pretended to be. If he'd taken half a second to talk to her . . . .

But they never talked to her. Vamps freaked out when the bogeyman showed up, and death was usually the only thing on their minds. Hers. And that was when they didn't blame her for killing one of their family. Conversation had definitely not been on the menu.

Of course, you didn't try, her conscience murmured.

Yeah, like she'd had a chance!

Sometimes she didn't know what was wrong with her. She was _dhampir_. She wasn't supposed to worry about things like this. She was supposed to kill everything in a room and walk away, unaffected. Her other half, the one that was squirming away under her skin right now, sure didn't have a problem with that. She'd woken up in too many rooms full of corpses, after it had decided to come out for a joy ride, to know.

And she'd worried over every one of them.

At least she had for a long time. These days she had a better grip on herself, and had developed tricks to keep the tiger in its cage. So when it did get out, it was usually in the middle of a knock down drag out when she was bleeding and in pain and not thinking clearly enough to tamp it down.

And in those cases, the people she found when she woke up weren't the kind you grieved over.

But it hadn't always been that way. There'd been a lot of years when she'd stared around in horror at piles of bloody, broken bodies, and wondered: did they all deserve it? Could they all have needed killing? Or did her other half not care? Did it just get caught up in the moment, like she'd seen some vamps do, laughing as they slaughtered dozens, laughing even as they were stabbed over and over and --

Stop it!

But she could still feel it, feel the tiger pacing, knew it wanted out. Despite the horror story of an evening, it was still hungry. Because it was always fucking hungry and \--

"Shut up!" she said, aloud, which was stupid this close to her prey. Not to mention crazy -- talking to herself in the middle of a swamp, all alone, because she'd just killed the only other --

Stop it!

And finally, she did.

Dory lit up, leaned back, and relaxed her body, letting a far more fragrant haze engulf her. She breathed in, feeling the weed's calming smoke hit the burning core of her rage, like a bucket on a bonfire. But it was better than nothing.

Calm, she told herself. Don't think. Just breathe.

It would have been easier if she wasn't injured. But her expensive suit had taken a tear in the hell pit, along with a good two inches of the calf below, courtesy of some literal stick in the mud. It wasn't a physical problem -- her battered skull was more of an issue -- but it was leaking and that tended to make her other half . . . antsy.

Like it needed the help.

But the weed was strong, the wound was already closing, and she wasn't in any immediate danger. The tiger finally went back to sleep. Alone at last, Dory gazed through hanging strands of moss at the little shack, hoping no one had noticed her earlier slip up.

But it didn't look like it. In fact, she didn't see any movement outside at all. Looked like the guys were cozied up in the little house, blissfully ignorant and busy cooking up their latest batch of --

Dory stopped, her eyes narrowing through a smoky exhale.

Because cooking up . . . what?

She'd been a little too busy to think about it before, but now she wondered. Their suppliers were down south. They sent the pills through the mail, like generic medicine. She didn't have to take Dreads' word for that; she'd seen the labels on the boxes. And then the pills went into the poppets.

So what, exactly, were they cooking?

She stubbed out her blunt and went to find out.

* * *

Ten minutes later, most of a vampire erupted from the water. He was still on slow-time, the sensory distorting trick his kind used when confronted with multiple enemies at once. And so, for a second, he saw everything: the droplets from his hair glittering like diamonds in a shaft of moonlight; the puddles of blood on the water, like spilled wine; the moss blowing in the wind, like sirens' hair . . .

And then time snapped back to normal, and with it came a roar of mingled pain and fury that shook the treetops.

And nothing else, because everything that could leave the area had already done so.

Which was just as well, considering that his practically shredded right leg gave way a moment later, sending him plunging back underneath on a wash of agony.

Motherfu—

_Sir!_ Liam's alarmed voice echoed in his head, yet another pain. _Are you --_

Be silent!

But, sir --

And don't contact me again until I damned well tell you!

Liam terminated the conversation, but a thread of disapproval, like a silent hmmph, reverberated through Kit's brain. He shut his eyes. Liam would make sure he paid for that later. That wasn't the way a proper master responded to his long-suffering chief of staff. Who was only trying to help his quest and preserve his life at the same time, which he was honor bound to do for both Kit's and the family's wellbeing . . . .

He'd heard it all before.

He was going to hear it again.

But not right now.

After a moment, he scraped himself off the bottom and slowly followed the bitch up the beach.

He collapsed onto a patch of odorous undergrowth, the skull of the last craggy bastard who'd decided he'd make an easy meal still in his hand. He tightened his grip slightly, hearing it pop under his palm with a satisfying crunch. The body was back in the bloody pool, along with thirty or more others and a good deal of his flesh.

A very good deal.

After a few moments, he rolled over, staring at the stars just visible through the moss laden trees, and swallowed.

Well, you wanted to bleed, he told himself.

He didn't look around at the empty patch of forest. He knew she wasn't there. He'd glimpsed her struggling up the bank, visible only when she moved, a liquid outline against a night dappled with shifting shadows.

And limping.

Looked like the poor thing had twisted her ankle, he thought, and for some reason, burst out laughing.

It felt good, despite everything, so he did it some more. He didn't know why. Probably something to do with his screwed up psyche, which had never processed emotion the same as everyone else.

Not even when human. _Especially_ not when human. Kit stared at the mossy canopy above -- a soggy, drippy canopy now, as it had started to rain -- and reminded himself that things could be worse.

He could be a child again, watching a succession of siblings die of one thing or another. From his sister Mary when he was four, to all his brothers, one after the other, to his baby sister Jane. Who his parents had seen fit to marry off when she was a slip of a girl of twelve, and who had predictably died in childbirth a year later.

He'd only found out about that after he was Changed. He'd returned from the rigors of his own untimely demise to discover that the Reaper had done his work on the sweet, cherubic faced child. The one who had dogged his steps as a toddler, clinging with a chubby hand to his one pair of good hose until he'd been forced to tell her to stop. And then crying because he was the only one who'd ever been kind to her, the only one who saw a daughter as having any value at all.

So he'd given her the hem of his coat to hold instead, and let her follow him around. And she had, right up until he went away to school to please his social climbing harridan of a mother. Then to London, and beyond . . . .

And by the time he returned, she was dead. He hadn't known how to grieve then, either. But he had known how to kill; oh yes, he had. Like her fat oaf of a husband, who had wanted her dowry but swore not to touch her until she was old enough, and had died for his lies.

No, Kit had never learned how to grieve the normal way.

But his would do just fine.

He felt the last great rent in his leg close up and tighten, the muscles finally getting their act together and reconnecting. He rolled to his knees – carefully -- and took stock. He was covered in gore, had lesser wounds all over his body, and had lost a good deal more blood than was recommended.

But then, so had someone else.

He was on his hands and knees, his head hanging down almost to the ground, which was the only reason he caught it. But swamp or not, scent blind or not, half dead or not, there was one thing a vampire didn't miss. And a closer inspection of the tangled weeds and mold and mud beneath him confirmed it.

Below the smell of his own blood, there was a trace . . .

Of someone else's.

And, once again, Heinrich had been right. It was odd. He smeared a bit on his finger and tasted, just to be sure, and yes. It was familiar in a way he didn't understand.

It was also old.

Very old.

He paused for a moment; he had not expected that.

The few misbegotten half breeds he'd come across had been young and barking mad. Probably accounted for why someone normally staked them, often before they reached double digits, the way you'd put down a rabid dog. For what else could you possibly do with it?

But that hadn't happened here. This dhampir had lived three, perhaps four hundred years, maybe even more; her blood was hard to read. It wasn't vampire, it wasn't human, and even if it had been, he'd never met any three hundred year old humans to compare. And yet she seemed functional, at least enough to buy a bag of cursed toys to plague him with.

He took a moment to absorb that.

And then he called Liam.

Dhampirs. Old ones. What do we know?

_Old ones?_ Liam's mental voice sounded puzzled. _I . . . thought there weren't any old ones._

_So did I,_ Kit said grimly. _Find out._

While Liam communicated with the office, Kit concentrated on that unusual scent. And discovered another hint further up the bank. It was barely a single drop of blood, too small even to see.

But then, he didn't need to see it, did he?

And it seemed she had more than a twisted ankle to worry about.

_We have no dhampirs on record older than sixty years,_ Liam informed him, a short while later, while Kit was nosing through the undergrowth. _Although, I'm sorry to say, our information is not complete. They disappear into the human population too easily, switching locations, identities, even appearance at the drop of a hat. And we don't have the same advantages when tracking them as we do for our people. We usually only hear about them when they cause trouble._

"Oh, this one is good at that," Kit murmured.

_This one? You mean you've found her?_ Liam's mental voice sharpened.

Let's say I plan to make her acquaintance shortly.

Yes, sir. I can have backup to your position in --

_No._ Kit got unsteadily to his feet, putting weight on the newly regrown muscle. It held. _I'll call if I need you._

Sir--

_That will be all,_ Kit said, and ended the communication. That wasn't going to help get him out of the dog house, but right then, he didn't care. He took another moment to check out the evening's souvenirs, but none were an issue. Except for the leg, which was still spongy, but would heal on the way.

He set off through the forest at a slow jog, dodging trees and ducking under vines, finding the more or less solid ground between patches of marsh. His speed picked up as he learned how to move here, as his strength started to return, as his nose woke up in a way it never had, attuned to the faint traces of blood that might as well have been a trail outlined in neon.

As he started closing in.

Chapter Nine

Dory gagged; it looked like her nose hadn't shut down, after all. Although she really wished it had. Oh, God.

She'd discovered the source of the stench: hundreds of dead fish washed up on the banks, and more in the water. It made the swim over just as much fun as the rest of this trip had been. But at least her other half was behaving.

It was probably off throwing up somewhere.

Dory could see the fish because the shack was brilliantly lit, with beams spearing out to illuminate the light rain that had started to fall, a small dock, and a speedboat. The boat was loaded down with familiar looking boxes. Dory climbed up a rusty ladder, and walked over to check one out.

It wasn't full of pills.

She pulled out a nice, thick glass bottle with a grinning death's head on the label. Or maybe not quite dead. Because the grin was a little too malevolent, and the eyes were a little too aware. And then a beam from inside the house lit up a name in brilliant acid green: Zombie's Bite.

Huh.

Dory opened it and took a sniff.

Rum.

She took a tiny taste.

Still rum.

She pulled open another box: twelve more bottles in between cardboard separations, so they didn't knock against each other. She assumed the rest of the boxes were the same, since they all bore identical labels. She sat on her haunches and thought for a minute.

Box after box of rum . . . in a swamp . . . full of dead fish and crazy gators.

Nope, she had nothing.

Better go ask somebody, then.

The shack turned out to be roomier than she'd thought, with an office type set up: desk, a few empty filing cabinets, boxes of empty glass bottles. And a label printing machine with a row of grinning death heads spilling out onto the floor. But no people.

There were none anywhere else, either, like in the two outbuildings she found on more solid ground behind the house. Just filthy wooden floors that would never have passed an inspection, rows of dusty barrels, a gas generator chugging noisily out back. And a big copper still, gleaming in the gloom, surrounded by a bunch of different sized tanks.

Looked like somebody was bootlegging.

Probably the guys who drove up in a large truck a moment later, rumbling down an old dirt road.

Dory quickly drew back into the shadows, because raindrops were visible on her suit. But it didn't matter. They were too busy arguing to pay any attention to her.

"-- the hell it have to be last night?" she heard someone say, before the truck even stopped rolling.

"Because we're done after tonight. And we still got a ton to do and I wanted to cross something off the list."

"So you flush all the wastewater?" a guy asked, getting out of the cab. "You couldn't have found anything else --"

"It needed to be done."

"Yeah, _tonight._ When we wouldn't have to smell all the fish it kills! God," the guy stared around. He was big, burly and wearing a sweaty Hawaiian shirt and an even sweatier baseball cap. He took off the cap and wiped his forehead, but it didn't seem to help. So he took it off again and smacked the other guy, who had just come around the truck, on the head.

"Cut it out!" the smaller man said, frowning. "Anyway, it turned out to be useful, didn't it?"

"Useful?"

"Yeah. The dead fish lured up a bunch of gators, so I used them to test the last batch."

"You gave rum to the _gators_?"

"Well, I had to make sure it wouldn't poison anyone, didn't I?" the little guy asked, working to get the chain off the warehouse door. "Too high of a concentration and you don't get zombified, you get dead."

"Bet the bokors'd like that," the third guy, tall and lanky and chewing tobacco, piped up.

Hawaiian shirt frowned. "Why would they like that?"

"Well, they like dead things, don't they?"

"So?"

"So then they'd be deader."

The big guy just looked at him for a moment.

And then the ball cap came into play again.

Dory stared at them. They looked like the three stooges, only not as bright. The bokors running this operation either hadn't arrived yet, or were long gone. But there was a better than average chance that these guys knew where they were.

She moved out into the opening between the house and the warehouses, which was maybe the size of a couple basketball courts. It was well lit, with the house lights spilling in from one side, and security lamps over the warehouse doors on the other, not that it mattered. They still weren't paying any attention to her.

But somebody else was. A prickle over her skin was the only warning she received before she was suddenly airborne. She went flying -- literally -- across the open space, landed hard, and rolled --

And was hit again before she could get back to her feet.

Only this time, the angle was different, the angle was down, and that left her prone and pummeled for a hellish few seconds -- which is a long damned time when something that feels like an industrial pile driver is smashing into you. But, like most dhampirs, Dory had her Sire's resiliency, along with a good deal of his strength. And five hundred years of dirty tricks to go along with them.

So she threw a handful of mud in her assailant's eyes, stabbed him in the neck when he reared back, and then kicked in the side of his head on the way back to her feet \--

And hesitated, because she finally caught a glimpse of his face.

The master.

Oh, holy _shit._

And then she was airborne again.

"Did you hear somethin'?" the short guy asked, right before Dory smashed down onto the barrel he'd been rolling. "Woah!" he sprang away. "Woah! What was _that?"_

The barrel rolling over me, Dory thought blearily, from under a couple hundred pounds of liquor.

"What's the matter? You hit something?" the big guy asked, from inside the cab of the truck, which he was trying to back up to the door.

"No, something hit _me_!"

"Ghosts," Lanky said, staring around, wide-eyed.

"Don't start," Hawaiian shirt warned him. "You know damned well --"

"If there's zombies, why can't there be ghosts?" Lanky demanded. "It's the same thing in'it?"

"It is not the same thing!"

"How you figure that?"

"Because necromancy is based on known magical principles. It's like science, right? Ghosts are just superstition. Stories for the weak minded."

"Well, I believe in 'em," Lanky said, as Dory pushed the barrel off her, causing it to roll back up the ramp.

"I rest my case."

"I . . . think I saw something too," Short Stuff whispered, his eyes on the gravity-defying barrel.

"What the hell did I do to get stuck with you two?" Hawaiian shirt demanded.

And then someone snatched Dory off the ground.

Wonder who, she thought blearily, and plowed a fist into his face.

She actually tried to plow it _through_ his face and out the back of his head. Which might have worked if he was human, considering the power she put behind it. But, of course, he wasn't, and it mostly just seemed to piss him off.

Because the next few second's beating was right up there with the worse she'd ever had. One shoulder went numb, her already rattled head was rattled some more, and she possibly broke a rib or three. Which was a good trick considering that hers had the tensile strength of tempered steel.

But then, so did the fist bashing into them.

At least it was until she grabbed the barrel the two guys were still staring at and smashed it over the madman's head, drenching him in 150 proof and sending him stumbling backwards into the clearing.

And then threw on her lighter.

"What the -- what's going on back there?" Hawaiian shirt demanded, leaning out of the cab, trying to see.

"Ghosts!" Lanky said again, staring at the flaming barrel.

The short guy didn't say anything; he just stood there with his mouth hanging open.

"Damn it!" Hawaiian shirt told them. "The boss'll be here any minute and you two are horsing --"

Dory stopped listening. Sorry buddy, she thought, bending over and clutching her stomach, while watching the vamp go up in flames. But if it's you or me, it's gonna be you.

Of course, she could be wrong, she thought, as the barrel suddenly exploded outward, sending pieces of burning wood flying in all directions. And leaving a vamp standing there in an incandescent mass of blue fire. And fury.

Okay, you don't see that every day, Dory thought, and _moved_.

Up the ramp, to where a bunch of barrels on a rack were waiting to be loaded. A shove sent it tumbling over, and they hit the dirt, some falling out and one of them busting open. And one is all it took.

The gushing alcohol hit the burning shards, and a moment later, the whole area went up with a whoosh. The men started screaming and running around, except for Hawaiian shirt, who gunned the truck, and only made things worse when he forgot it was in reverse. He plowed into the fire, panicked, and then shot back the other way. And smashed into a dark blue Mercedes that Dory hadn't noticed because it had arrived in the midst of the chaos.

_The bokors_ , she thought, and started for the car --

And the next thing she knew, she was in the water.

It happened exactly that fast, between one blink and the next, although the water wasn't exactly close. But a motivated master can cross a lot of ground in a hurry. Even while carrying a woman that he clearly intended to drown.

Or maybe the plan was to beat her to death; Dory couldn't really tell. Or maybe he just didn't care at this point. And ding, ding, ding, we have a winner, she thought, as her head and the bottom of the river came into brutal contact -- repeatedly.

But the river bottom, while muddy and horribly full of fish guts, was not actually lethal. Not even when the master found one of those damned roots to slam her head against instead, with the enthusiasm of someone trying to drive it right on through. But that didn't work either, which would have had Dory pretty smug except that he didn't have to kill her.

He just had to keep on trying until she ran out of air, because the fish soup they were swimming in appeared to have smothered the flames.

Like it _was_ about to do to her.

Dory thrashed and fought and kicked and tried to bite. She tried every damned trick she knew, and invented a few new ones on the spot. She got his testicles in a clench once, but he slipped out of it before she could rip them off. And he wasn't just fast; he was strong and determined, and didn't seem to care how much damage he took, since he'd heal in time. Time she wouldn't have, because her struggles were getting weaker and her vision was getting darker, to the point that all she could see above her were the silhouettes of floating fish, dancing flames, and an agitated surface she was never going to reach again because she couldn't break his hold.

She couldn't break it.

The realization sunk in like a stone in her gut. Along with the fact that her bag was back in the clearing where she'd dropped it, and didn't contain anything likely to work on this son of a bitch anyway. And she was getting tired, while he had a whole family to draw strength from and --

And it was going to be her, wasn't it?

And then he released her.

It took Dory, who was more than half drowned, a few seconds to realize what had happened. And then another few to orient herself, and thrash back to the surface. And some more to gasp air into oxygen-starved lungs, while they simultaneously tried to cough up mud and muck and freaking fish guts --

And what the _hell_?

She didn't know. She stared around, bleary eyed and disoriented, still gasping for air. But all she saw was a merrily burning warehouse, a bunch of dark figures running around backlit by the flames, and one lone man standing on the pier, his arms raised --

And a speedboat that almost took off what remained of her head.

Dory dove, feeling the rush of water as it sped by, missing her by inches. She swam back to the surface a moment later, in time to see the boat disappear around a bend in the river and be hidden by a clump of trees. But not before she'd glimpsed the crazed master at the wheel, blackened and bloody and almost bald --

And speeding away from her.

For a moment, she just stared after him blankly.

Had he thought she was dead? She'd still been fighting. How had he missed that? And where the heck was he _going_?

Dory decided she could figure it out later. Like after she dealt with this, whatever the hell this was. She swam and then waded back on shore, pausing only to take stock.

It wasn't encouraging. Unless you'd just come to terms with your own mortality, that is. In which case, every pain, every dislocation, every sharp, stabbing sensation -- hell, even the _smell_ \-- was suddenly okay. Was better than okay. Was pretty damned amazing, in fact, and where the _fuck_ was that bokor?

She rounded the house again, limping and still breathless, but didn't find him. The sleek Mercedes was gone, and the man she'd briefly seen on the pier must have gone with it. Because all she saw was his henchmen, still at work, now all but throwing whatever booze they could find into the back of the truck.

Dory jumped up onto the hood, the cab and then the back. Lanky was coming around the side at a jog, until Dory reached down and plucked him up by the ponytail. Leaving him dangling off the edge of the truck, three or more feet off the ground, and probably in considerable pain.

For some reason, she wasn't feeling too sympathetic.

"Oh, God," he whispered, pale blue eyes darting around, but utterly failing to see her.

"Not quite," Dory snarled, and jerked him up to her face.

"Oh God!" he repeated, looking seriously panicked.

"The bokor," she demanded. "Where did he go?"

"Wh-who are you?" he whispered. "Wh-what are you?" And then, before she could answer, one of his arms stopped flailing long enough to pull a little bag out of his shirt and thrust it at her.

Dory looked at it. "What's that?"

"G-goofer dust."

"What?"

"Graveyard dust!"

Dory looked at it some more. "What?"

"And . . . and angelica root! And Devil's Dung! And ginseng and bluestones and salt and whiskey!"

"Well, at least I can get behind that last one," Dory said dryly.

The man blinked, his eyes still searching fruitlessly for whatever held him. But he appeared to be farsighted, because even this close, he never focused. And then he scowled. "That damned Lulu! She charged me fifty bucks for that bag! Said all malicious spirits, plus the evil eye, plus --"

"Is Lulu one of the bokors?"

"What?" He frowned.

"The people running this operation. I only saw a guy --"

"No, that was the Reverend. But he doesn't have time to make gris-gris anymore. He's busy."

"I bet. So where'd he go?"

"B-back to Nawlins. They got a thing tonight \--" he frowned some more. "Hey, why do you care? You're a ghost."

Dory pulled him onto the roof of the truck, slammed him down and whipped her face screen off. Leaving him staring up in alarm at a disembodied face floating in the air above him, and glaring down malevolently. "Which is what you're going to be unless you start talking," she told him. "Fast."

Chapter Ten

Faint moonlight illuminated lily pads and dark water as Kit tore down the river, his movements as assured as if he'd done it a hundred times. Cypress roots stuck up here and there, crowding the boat where the stream was narrower; shallow sandbars lurked just under the surface, ready to beach him; and some branches hung heavy and too close. Yet he didn't hit a single one.

His actions were swift and sure; his hands on the wheel of the boat never so much as trembled. But that was the problem. They were bloody well supposed to!

Like he was supposed to be able to call on Liam, or Heinrich, or a dozen others to let them know that something had gone seriously wrong. Yet he couldn't. Even his brain didn't seem to be under his own command.

What had that dhampir done to him? What kind of magic could do this to anyone, much less a master? And, most importantly, _how did he break it?_

He roared internally, pouring everything he had into getting any kind of response from his suddenly alien body. And, finally, he did. It was a tiny thing, and nothing that would actually help. But it felt huge nonetheless, when he was able to lift his index finger a scant quarter inch off the steering wheel \--

And was promptly slapped down for it -- hard.

His whole body shook with the rebuke, which hurt more than anything the dhampir had managed to do to him. It was as if fire licked every cell, leaving him bent over and clinging to the wheel, to keep from passing out and falling from the boat. It was terrible.

And terribly useful.

For, in that moment of crystalline agony, he heard something -- no some _one_ \-- a male voice muttering commands at the back of his mind. Commands that somehow overrode his own, like someone was using his eyes to see by the faint moonlight, using his hands to steady out the small craft, using him . . .

Like a puppet.

_Necromancer_ , Kit thought, the snarl in his mind like bared fangs.

And immediately, the hold tightened, coiling throughout his body, like a fist around his throat.

Someone didn't like him knowing. Someone would have preferred him to continue blaming that little dhampir. But slick though she might be, she couldn't do something like this. He hadn't thought anyone in the world could, not even a group of necromancers working together. He was a first-level master, supposedly one of the most powerful creatures on earth. This wasn't _possible._

But it was happening, nonetheless.

And try though he might, he couldn't seem to make enough difference to so much as upset the little craft. And now they were slowing, coming up on a pier jutting out into the water. Where several men waited by a car.

Kit stopped the boat and leapt onto the pier, his voice greeting them by name, although he'd never met them. Never even seen them, although he would never forget them now. He memorized their faces, every crease, every line, and judging by how many of those there were, they weren't using glamouries. That did not bode well for him, but at the moment, he was less concerned with that that with what they were saying.

"Why did you choose _him_?" a tall man with a craggy face under an expensive haircut demanded. "Of all people --"

"He was the only one who drank the rum," Kit heard himself say. "Her servants all had wine --"

"Then put it in the wine!"

"We discussed this," the second man, a vampire, commented. Older, white haired, a definite Castilian lisp. Kit didn't know him, but he hadn't met everyone in Alejandro's entourage. "It's detectable in wine. Not to you, perhaps, but to us. It had to be spirits."

"Don't lose your nerve, Eric," Kit added. "This is almost over."

"Yes, if you can't hold him!"

"I can hold him. And it's better this way." Kit felt his hand come up, to stroke his own chin. "Marlowe's her chief of security. He can go anywhere, do anything, and no one will question it."

"Until they try to talk to him mentally, and it doesn't work! Until she does --"

"The concert will keep her attention. He'll come from behind. She'll never know what hit her."

"And Mircea?" the Spaniard demanded. "If your consul is removed, but he remains, this is all for nothing. My master is not willing to meet him in combat. He has already said, he will not attempt it."

"Then your master's a --" Craggy began, before Kit's hand clamped on his upper arm.

"He will not have to," he told the vampire easily, feeling his face stretch into a smile. "I'll turn on Basarab as soon as I've finished with her. If I manage to kill him, all is well. If I don't," he shrugged. "I'll keep him busy long enough for your lot to do it for me, while "rescuing" your poor consul from the chaos."

"And once she is dead? If they capture your avatar?"

"As soon as Senator Marlowe kills his consul in a dastardly bid for power, he is dead. His men may not act, but half the senate will be there, including the consul's own guards. He won't live to tell anyone anything."

"You had better be right. My master is risking a great deal --"

"And we're not?" the craggy man interrupted. "Do you know what the vampires will do to us if this blows up? Who they'll give us to?"

"Yes," the Spaniard smiled slightly. "I have made his acquaintance."

"They say he can keep a man alive for weeks before death."

Months, Kit thought viciously, and wished like hell that the senate's chief torturer was here right now.

"Come, gentlemen," he heard himself say. "We have gone on a long journey together. Let us not lose our nerve at the final hour."

"It is not nerves," the Spaniard said, bristling. "You said you had thought of everything, yet you lose track of your intended avatar for several hours. And when you finally return with him, he is burnt, beaten and bloody . . . and half bald!"

"Alliteration at its finest!"

"I am perfectly serious, 'Reverend'," the Spaniard snapped.

"As am I. But as you know, the potion does not take effect immediately, and I had no way of controlling him until it did so. I expected him to be at his Lady's side all evening, but circumstances . . . intervened."

"And if they 'intervene' tonight?"

"That is why Eric is here, as a backup should I falter. But I assure you, that will not be the case. By this time tomorrow, your master will be in position to challenge for leadership of the North American Senate, and we," he glanced at his accomplice, "will be as rich as Croesus."

The other two did not smile back, but they didn't argue anymore, either.

"Now, let us concentrate on finding me a new tuxedo," Kit said. "And perhaps," he added, looking ruefully up at his singed curls. "A hat."

Chapter Eleven

Apocalypse -- how appropriate, Dory thought \-- was the bar/hangout/hook up joint for the local sup community. At least, it usually was. But tonight it was all slickly dressed people, a special concert in honor of the consuls' visit, and invitation only.

Dory didn't have an invitation.

She didn't have any fucks left, either.

"I don't know how you're going to—urp," Dreads said, as Dory tossed him up to the balcony of a nearby building. She waited a moment while a group of partiers ran by, laughing and slipping on the watery street, while they all tried to fit under the same umbrella. And then she jumped up herself.

"Are you gonna do that again?" Dreads asked, clinging to the balcony as she looked upward.

"Why?"

"'Cause I want to know if I should throw up now or later!"

"Later," she told him, and repeated the process.

"Why are we _here_?" he demanded, as they clambered over the third floor railing. "I told you, I already made the call --"

"And got nowhere, because the senate isn't in Vegas right now, it's here."

"Yeah, but I left the warning, like you said \--"

"And I appreciate it," she said, pulling him to the end of the balcony. There was no railing there, and the club roof was just across a narrow alley. "Unfortunately, there's only one guy who might have believed you, and he's here."

"So you're gonna go warn him?"

"We are."

"Wait," he said, looking down three stories at the wet, hard cobblestones below. "I ain't Shaft, all right? I won't do you any good in there --"

"You won't have to fight."

"Then why I gotta go at all?"

"Because invisibility doesn't work on the nose, especially vampire ones. An invisible puddle of fish guts, rum and swamp gunk moving around is going to attract attention -- unless they have somebody to blame it on. Somebody visible."

He frowned at her. "So I'm what? A human air freshener?"

"Sort of the reverse," Dory said, and tossed him onto the roof of the club.

Predictably, he screamed the whole way. But that turned out to be a good thing. Because there were a couple guards, one on each side of the peak, who came over to see what the commotion was about. Giving her a perfect chance to --

Wait.

Dory paused, stake in hand, a frown crossing her features. Wait, she couldn't whack them, could she? They were technically the good guys, just a couple of the senate's vamps who had pissed somebody off enough to get stuck on a roof in the rain. They didn't deserve to die for that.

And, okay, that was . . . inconvenient.

She left Dreads to it, while she started searching through her bag for something less lethal.

Guns, ammo, plastic explosives . . . .

"Man, I just want to listen to some tunes, you know what I'm sayin'?" he was telling them. The redhead grabbed his arm. "Hey man, it's Jazz Fest, man. Don't be like that."

"What do you want to do with the Stoner?" The ginger asked his partner, whose expensive Jheri Curl was getting ruined by the rain.

"I have a couple ideas."

The ginger vamp grinned. "You'd get high."

"I'd like to get high. This thing was supposed to start an hour ago."

"When you're consul, the party starts when you get there," Ginger said dryly.

Bowie knife, tire iron, grappling hook, rope . . . .

Jheri looked over the side of the roof. "How about we drop him off, see how big of a spot he leaves?"

"Hey man," Dreads said, looking alarmed. "Naw man, I—I'll just be goin' --"

"Thought you wanted to hear some tunes."

"Well, not if you're gonna be like that about it."

Ginger sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "We're going get more of these as the night goes on, aren't we?"

His companion shrugged. "Probably."

"I need a drink."

"Won't help."

"Hey," Dreads said, looking back and forth between them. "Hey, but seriously man, you two wanna get high? 'Cause I can make that happen."

The vamps exchanged a look.

Shit, Dory thought, and started searching faster.

"What do you have?" Jheri asked.

"My man!" Dreads grinned at him, because he really didn't know much about vamps, did he? He threw open his jacket. "Ask and ye shall receive. I got your three b's: bud, beans and black beauties. I got cocoa puff, if you want something with a little more kick. I got 'shrooms that, whew, _will_ get the party started, if you know what I --"

"Take whatever you want," Jheri told him.

"Take? Naw, man, I'm sellin'. Gotta keep circulatin', you know? I'll drop a little something later --"

"You'll drop it now."

"What?"

"It's like the man said," Ginger told him, lips twitching. "We only get high if we get it in a form our systems can handle."

"W-what form?"

They grinned.

"Oh, shit!" Dreads said, and gave a panicked look in Dory's general direction. "Aren't you done _yet_?"

Guess so, she thought.

And staked them.

"The fuck?" Dreads said, stumbling back as twin bodies collapsed to their knees in front of him.

"It's okay," Dory said, leveraging them to the roof. "You have to take head _and_ heart to kill them, and I only took --"

"The _fuck_?"

"-- one, so they'll live. But they'll be immobilized until someone removes the stakes. They're not powerful enough to --"

" _The fuck?"_

"Are you going to keep saying that?"

"What the hell you expect? You _killed_ them!"

"They were dead anyway," she said, picking up her bag and putting a soothing arm around his shoulders. "Someone will find and unstake them sooner or later, and until then, they're really better off."

"Better?" He craned his neck back around, because Dory was walking him over to a dormer window.

"Well, it was either that or kill them for good. And they did say they were bored --"

"I need to puke," he told her, and really kind of looked it.

"All right." She waited.

"All right . . . what?"

"Puke. It's better out here than inside, with a bunch of super sensitive noses—"

"You . . . you're the most . . . you . . . damn it!"

Dory waited some more. He didn't puke. He just stood there, vibrating slightly. "You ready?" she finally asked.

"Hell no! But let's get this damned thing over with!"

"Good answer." She led the way through the dormer.

Inside was what looked like a breakroom for the staff: cot, arm chair, small T.V., overflowing ashtray. But no people. Although it was hard to tell, since the music was loud enough to shake the rafters, making the whole place seem to move with it. The concert might have waited, but the party obviously hadn't, a fact borne out when they slipped into the hall, which was splashed with blue, pulsing light from a stairwell.

"Okay, here's the deal," Dory said. "We're going downstairs and check it out. If the senator I know is there, we warn him and done. If he isn't, he's probably with the consul. So we keep watch for the vamp and hope she gets here before he does."

"And if she don't?"

"Let's . . . hope she does," Dory said, trying to sound upbeat.

Dreads looked like he was going to comment, then changed his mind. Just as well. She would have had a hard time explaining what she intended to do about Marlowe since she didn't know herself.

Among other things, the lanky bastard back in the swamp had informed her that she wasn't just dealing with a first-level master which – hello -- she'd already guessed, but with a senate member. And she couldn't take one of those on her best day. As she'd proved when he'd almost killed her while _on fire_.

So, yeah, if he showed up to assassinate the senate leaders -- or any damned body else -- he was probably going to succeed. Unless she warned them first. Or suddenly got about ten times stronger, which didn't seem likely.

"We . . . could just leave a note," Dreads said, looking at her. Like he knew what she was thinking even though he couldn't see her face.

And damn, that sounded really good. But while Dory might not like vamps, she liked even less the idea of the senate, the one group mostly keeping them in line, suddenly being in chaos. While a bunch of drug running assholes ran amuck, plundering at will.

Because that was the plan behind all this. Get their damned rum down the throat of a master -- any master -- and they could control him, and thereby his family. Could get them to sign over deeds, empty bank accounts, and then stake each other once it was over, hiding the evidence.

And meanwhile the senate, who was supposed to stop that sort of thing, would be in disarray, being challenged for control by Alejandro's masters. Who thought they were about to have it all: his senate, which they all but ran anyway, and the North American one. Which would be vulnerable after the death of its leader, and subject to an antiquated system of duels to decide on a replacement.

But in reality, they were being played, too, by bunch of necromancers with delusions of grandeur. But their delusions were much more likely to become reality. Because something like this wouldn't just eviscerate the senate. If they succeeded, it could alter the power structure of the entire supernatural community, weakening the vamps, giving the mages an unprecedented advantage, and throwing off the balance of power that had kept the peace for centuries.

Mages attacking vamps. Vamps attacking mages. And the necromancers cleaning up while everyone else fought for their lives.

So, no, as much as she'd like to leave a warning and get out of there, she couldn't. Because she couldn't know that it would go to the right guy, or that it would go anywhere at all. Or that it would be in time if it did.

Dory swallowed. "We're staying."

Dreads sighed. "Okay, but how am I supposed to mingle like this?" He looked down at his tie dye T-shirt and old jean jacket ensemble.

Dory took a moment to realize what he meant; fashion had never really been her thing. But he had a point. Everyone downstairs looked like they'd just walked out of the pages of a fashion magazine. Dreads was going to be thrown out on his ass in about ten seconds flat.

And they didn't exactly have time to go shopping.

"I don't need the whole suit," he told her. "You get me a tux jacket and a top hat, and I can make it work. Go as a local character, you know?"

"A local character?"

"Yeah, you know. Like Ruthie the Duck Girl."

"What?"

"Not what, who. Roller-skating in her wedding gown through the Vieux Carre, trailed by a bunch of ducks. Ain't you never seen her?"

"No." Dory thought she might remember that.

"Or Chicken Man. Claims to be a voodoo priest, but it's all show. He ain't even a mage. But he always draws a crowd anyway. Not every day you see somebody bite the head off a live chicken, and drink its blood right outta the neck."

"Okay --"

"Or the Lady with the Cross. She carries a big cross with her everywhere she goes, and crawls along the sidewalk. They say it's in penance for killing her sister --"

" _Okay."_ Dory stopped him before she got a whole history of the city. "A jacket and a top hat?"

"A jacket and a top hat. Then I can be . . . Professor Ganja, Vieux Carre fixture and Jazz enthusiast." He grinned. "Might even make a few sales."

Dory nodded. She didn't like to waste the time, but it would _be_ a waste if they got thrown out as soon as they showed up. "All right, check the break room; there was a closet in there. I'll take this one," she told him, and opened the door to a room across the hall.

And met Marlowe coming out of it.

Chapter Twelve

For a moment, Kit just stared. This close, the invisible creature in front of him wasn't, with a head and body that the shifting light was playing over, like a mannequin made out of glass. But it wasn't a mannequin; it was that damned dhampir.

_It was that damned dhampir_ , he thought again, hope dawning.

And then she belted him.

It was enough to send him staggering backwards, into the little room where he and his nemesis had been waiting out of sight, so that nothing would give them away. And where a massive battle had been waged internally for more than half an hour. Waged and lost, because try as he might, he couldn't wrest back control.

Until her fist hit his jaw, almost shattering it. She followed him to the floor, continuing the abuse because the necromancer obviously had less experience with combat than with black magic. And Kit wasn't helping him, wasn't even when the bitch broke his arm.

Because, suddenly, he could move.

_Him_ , not his nemesis. It only lasted for a few seconds, while the shock of her assault reverberated through him. But it was enough.

_Liam!_ He screamed mentally.

_Sir?_ Liam's always calm voice answered immediately. _How may I --_

The voice cut off mid-sentence, as a metaphysical fist tightened around Kit's neck. And as two physical ones latched onto his throat, trying to throttle him. Or maybe trying to pop his head off like a cork from a champagne bottle, because that's what it felt like.

And judging by the dhampir's enthusiasm, she just might have succeeded.

But the damned bokor had recovered. And while he didn't have Kit's knowledge, he did have his strength. Which he used to throw the woman off, violently enough to send her stumbling back into the corridor. Where she grabbed the carpet runner and jerked, at the same moment that his body tried to follow up on the advantage, sending him sprawling.

And then rolling down the hallway, wrapped up like a sausage in a bun -- or a vamp in a carpet -- faster than the time it took to think the words.

Ha, he thought vaguely.

Good one.

But not good enough. She came at him with a stake, lightning fast, the invisible suit making the damned thing look like it was levitating. And all right, he had a new nightmare now, Kit thought, right before his fist punched through layers of carpet and grabbed her.

The bokor had been aiming for her neck, but Kit managed to throw him slightly off, resulting in an Alien-like grab to the face. Predictably, she sank her fangs into his flesh, practically separating the ball of his thumb from everything else, and forced the release. But she couldn't capitalize on it before the bokor backhanded her with every ounce of force Kit had.

She landed over by the stairs, on top of some Rasta who hadn't gotten out of the way fast enough, and didn't immediately get back up again.

Come on, Kit thought urgently, as the bokor fought with the wooly embrace. You're better than that! Didn't you almost roast me alive? Didn't you break my arm, something no man has managed to do since my Change? Didn't you throw me _into a lake of giant reptiles_? Come on, get up!

And she was obviously trying. But she was also obviously hurt, and it must have been bad. Because she was floundering around like a drunk when she had to know he was coming for her, was coming for her _now_.

And he would have. But the moment he tore free of the confining carpet, the music from downstairs was drowned out by a flourish of trumpets, like something out of a medieval movie. But it wasn't. It was that theatrical bitch Alejandro, who insisted on acting like a king instead of a consul.

And who, right now, probably had a queen alongside him.

The bokor sent Kit careening through the nearest door, into a room with a view, to confirm it. And sure enough, a horse drawn carriage had just pulled up in front of the building, the neon glow from rows of club signs reflecting in its shiny black surface. And off of the top of the wet umbrella a footman was holding out, to keep the emerging consul dry.

Who then turned with exaggerated, old world courtesy, to help his lady descend.

No, not his lady, Kit seethed. My lady. And not just his consul, but his master, the one who had Changed him, the one who had elevated him far beyond his humble beginnings, the one it was his duty to defend above all others.

Like it had once been his duty to Jane.

The rage hit him suddenly, an all-consuming tide of white hot fury. It surprised the bokor, who apparently wasn't used to controlling through that kind of emotion. Or feeling it, judging by his mental yelp.

Welcome to my world, Kit thought viciously, and screamed a warning: _To the queen!_

And was heard.

Below him, the dark haired beauty in a crimson evening dress and rubies jerked her head up, looking straight at him. And two dozen lights in his mental landscape, every Child he had in the area, suddenly flared brilliantly, like novas in the night sky. Because they'd heard him, too.

Unfortunately, they also heard something else.

_There's a problem. Don't let anyone through but me_. The command flashed across his mind -- and outward to the family -- an instant before the connection shut down hard.

No, Kit thought, in disbelief. _No!_

_Yes,_ the bokor told him nastily, jerking him away from the window. _I can't make a connection for you, but I can damned well control one if you leave it open. Now, let's go see your lady, shall we? After all, she's expecting you._

Chapter Thirteen

"You don't look so good," Dreads said, helping Dory back to her feet.

At least, that's what she thought he said. It was a little hard to tell, since his voice sounded both near and far away at the same time. Like the corridor that was telescoping in and out and in and out and --

She was so screwed.

She grabbed the stair railing and hung on for dear life, while Dreads talked some more.

She wasn't really listening, finding it a little hard to concentrate with what felt like half her skull caved in, but she didn't need to. There was only one thing that a sane person would be telling her right now, only one thing she ought to be doing, because this wasn't a fight she could win.

And dying here wasn't going to help anybody.

But something else might, she thought, as Dreads bent over to pick up his stash, some of which had dropped from his coat when she crashed into him.

Including a familiar little bottle of small, white pills.

They were the ones she'd picked up in the bokor's shop, and given to Dreads when she sent him to warn the senate. She hadn't known the whole damned bunch was here, but they had a regional office in New Orleans, and he was supposed to go there with the evidence if the phone call didn't work. And he had, which is where she'd found him, kicking his heels and waiting for someone to talk to because everyone was here.

And now so were the pills.

She grabbed them with shaking hands, trying to get the cap off while watching the door that Marlowe had just disappeared through.

"You said these take a couple hours to work," she interrupted Dreads, who was still talking. "Is there any way to speed it up?"

"Speed it up?"

"Yes, speed it up!" Dory said, still fighting with the cap because her hands didn't seem to work right. "Is there any way to make it take effect faster?"

"Well, yeah. I mean, it's not recommended \--"

"How?"

"Okay, so there was this guy. He came into the shop one day --"

"The short version!" Dory said, finally managing to pop the cap off.

Dreads blinked. "You take more of them."

"How many?"

"Depends on how fast you want 'em to work. They're not like human drugs; they don't got to work their way through your system, you know? They're a key that opens up your magic so the spell can tell it where to go. But having most of your magic drain into one thing all at once is kind of . . . unfun . . . so the pills have time release bits in 'em to stretch it out. Some go to work as soon as you take 'em, but others --

"So if I take more pills, I'll get more of the bits that trigger immediately," Dory summed up.

"Yeah. But like I said, that's not rec -- what are you doing?" he demanded, when she poured the entire contents of the bottle into her palm.

"Taking all of them."

He grabbed her wrist. " _All_ of them? You got a death wish?"

"No. But I need a boost and I need it now \--"

"Well, get it some other way!"

"There is no other way!"

"Listen to me!" he said holding on for dear life. "Responsible drug use, okay? _A_ pill tells your magic to reroute to one place. But that's _most_ of your magic not _all_ of your magic, 'cause you're a magical creature and you need some of it to live. Too many pills and you reroute too much and nothing's gonna work right, _if at all."_

Dory paused. Man had a point. "How many can I safely take, than?"

He waved his free hand around. "How should I know? People don't do this!"

"Guess!"

"No more than five." He watched her pour most of the pills back in the bottle, and swallow his best guess dosage. But he didn't look happy. "I don't even know if they'll work right on you. We don't get dhampirs --"

"They won't work unless you say the incantation. So say it."

"I . . . what?"

"The spell! That activates the pills."

"You want _me_ to do it?"

"Who else?" Dory said, her voice a little shrill, because she was suddenly feeling . . . really weird. "I'm not a mage!"

"Well, neither am I. I'm mean I am, you know, technically, but --"

She grabbed him. "Say. The. Spell."

"And if I mess it up?" he stared at her, a little wall-eyed. "With that much stuff in you, who knows what might --"

"You're not going to mess it up. You fought zombies today. And a crazed dhampir. And eluded a crap ton of master vamps, some of them Hounds. You can _do_ this!"

He stared at her for what felt like a year, but was probably only a couple seconds. And then he wet his lips. "So what do you want? I mean, where you want your magic to—shit!"

That last was in response to Marlowe, who had just barreled out of the room, heading straight for the stairs.

"Strength!" Dory yelled, and crashed into him.

* * *

Kit could have kissed her. Filthy, misbegotten half breed she might be, but she was a _stubborn_ filthy, misbegotten half breed. As evidenced when she smashed into him, hard enough to knock him to the floor. And by the dozen strikes that hit down like machine gun fire all around his weaving and bobbing head. The last of which --

Punched through the floor.

"It's working!" the Rasta yelled, from by the stairs. "It's working!"

"That was me!" she snarled, ripped her bleeding hand back out of the hole. "You haven't said the damned incantation yet!"

"Oh, right." He looked around. "Hey, have you seen that paper?"

"You don't have it _memorized_?"

"I don't do magic, okay? I just sell the stuff --"

"Then find it! It was just here!"

"Shit," he said, and started looking around for something. But the bokor didn't seem to like that, and leapt for him, using Kit's agility to all but levitate off the floor. And to cross the small space between one heartbeat and the next and grab for the man using Kit's newly mended broken arm.

Which the dhampir promptly broke again.

"Son of a bitch!" he said, and wasn't sure if it was him or his nemesis.

"No, just a bitch," the girl growled, and threw him through a doorway.

Kit would have been back on his feet in a split second, but the bokor wasn't him. And while he might be controlling a vampire body, he was still thinking -- and reacting \-- more like a human. The dhampir wasn't.

Which was how Kit found himself sliding on his back across a slick wood floor before plowing his head into a wall. And then _through_ it, when she grabbed him before the bokor could react and started trying to force him through a nonexistent hole. Repeatedly.

There's a window right there, Kit thought blearily, right before his head and shoulders burst through the solid, old fashioned construction. And out into the open air, leaving him to get splashed in the face by the runoff from the roofline. He thought she might leave it there, using the wall to trap him as she had the rug --

But no.

Because the next moment, he was falling two stories onto a bunch of parked cars. Make that formerly parked, he revised, as the Lincoln whose trunk he'd just landed on gave a surprised lurch. And took off with a screech of the wheels, blasting away from the curb fast enough to almost throw him onto the ground.

Almost, but not quite.

Because the bokor's attention was on the dhampir, who had just jumped onto the roof of another car, taking a shrieking Rasta along with her. While Kit was on a car speeding away from his lady, and any harm he might do her. And he damned well intended to stay that way.

He'd landed butt down, half on the trunk and half on the back window, and there weren't a lot of hand holds. So he made some. He grasped hold of the window openings on both sides of the car, dug his fingers through the metal of the roof, and held on for dear life.

The bokor realized what he was doing about the time that a VW bug came screeching around a corner after them, nicking a lamppost in the process because it was driving on the sidewalk for some reason. And then veering off and skimming a brick wall on the other side. Kit could see the dhampir yelling at the Rasta, who was behind the wheel but clearly didn't know how to drive.

But he knew how to floor it, because they were gaining fast.

And still arguing.

"-- pockets?" Floated back to Kit over the sound of tire squeals.

"I can't . . . and drive!"

"You can't drive anyway!"

"Oh, great, that's what I get . . . helping."

"You haven't helped yet! Now turn out your pockets and find the --"

"You turn them out! I have to watch the \--"

They smashed into the back of Kit's car.

The dhampir, who'd started going through the man's jacket, looked up in surprise.

And the next second, she was on the hood of the car, a slender figure rippling with neon and spotted with rain, balancing for a second with vampire-like ease on the wildly swerving vehicle. Before leaping at Kit, stake in one hand and knife in the other, like someone who had done this before. And fast enough that, if he hadn't managed to get his legs up in time, the evening could have ended right there.

As it was, she went flying back into the Bug, hitting hard enough to shatter the front windshield. And to send it swerving even more wildly along the road than before. And then crashing into the Lincoln again, when the Rasta hit the gas instead of the brake.

Throwing her right back onto Kit.

They stared at each other for a second, almost nose to nose, something neither had expected. And then the bokor was throwing her off and trying to stamp her into the space between the cars, so that the Bug would run her over. But that required splitting his attention between Kit and the dhampir, and fighting two opponents at the same time didn't seem to be his forte. Because Kit's hands stayed where they were.

That left him fighting only with Kit's legs, which nonetheless caught the dhampir a savage blow, sending her flying onto the Bug's bumper and then jumping --

And missing, because the car they were in suddenly sped up.

It was raining harder now, which had mostly cleared the streets. That was lucky considering that they were all but flying through the narrow lanes of Old Town, screeching around corners and threatening to turn over. While Kit fought a terrible battle with the bokor for control of his own hands.

The creature finally managed to pry one up despite everything Kit could do to stop him. Only to have to let it go again when he realized what Kit already had: that the little dhampir hadn't missed, after all. She had caught onto their fender and was being dragged along behind the car.

Yes! Kit thought. Yes, you reckless bitch, come get me!

And she was. The next moment, she pushed off from the road and grabbed Kit's right foot. And then his left trouser leg, and then his still tender right thigh, causing him to gasp in pain as she used his body like a ladder to pull herself up. The bokor started flailing his legs around again, but she had a good grip now, and was riding them like a bucking bronco at the fair.

Until the bokor finally realized that he didn't have to figure out how to kill the dhampir; he could simply order his puppet to do it for him.

Kit felt himself automatically dropping into slow-mo, everything going calm and quiet. He could suddenly see individual rain drops sluicing down around him, see the panic in the Rasta's eyes as he stared at them, see the dhampir's stake headed for his chest. And her surprise when it hit metal, because Kit had just moved to the side, not hurrying, taking his time.

Unlike a moment later, when he turned the full force of his speed and fury on her.

* * *

Dory suddenly remembered why fighting this guy the normal way wasn't a great idea. He dodged a blow, jerked his tie off, and wrapped it around her neck in a single, almost impossible to see motion. And just that fast, she was choking to death.

It was like the river all over again, only this time, she was suffocating in open air. But none of it was getting down her throat, and try as she might, she couldn't shake him. This is why you fight the old ones with toys, she reminded herself, as stamping on his feet didn't work and stabbing his calf – repeatedly -- didn't work and then an arm went around hers, holding her in place, and she couldn't get loose and she couldn't _breathe_.

And then someone started blowing a horn.

Dreads, she realized, in the car behind her, and he was laying it on. Why, she didn't know, since the vampire wasn't likely to be spooked by a car horn. But someone else was.

Dory didn't know what the driver of the Lincoln had thought about all this, but each crash had caused him to speed up, maybe trying to outrun the crazy Bug on his tail. But that hadn't worked, which must have panicked him even more. And when Dreads started all the commotion, it was the last straw.

He floored it, despite the fact that they were coming up on a curve, the big car taking it on two wheels. The Bug, which was not as heavy or aerodynamic as the Lincoln, didn't handle it so well, flipping onto its side before skidding towards the nearest light post. Which fortunately caught it before it slammed into a shop.

The Lincoln's passengers weren't so lucky.

Dory was never entirely sure what happened next. She knew she was thrown free, knew she rolled into a very hard brick wall, knew she managed to rip the damned garrote off her neck before it finished killing her. But other things were a little sketchier.

Like how Dreads magically appeared at her side, or why the vamp hadn't come over to finish the job, or why she kept going back down every time she tried to stand up.

Black outs. She was having mini blackouts, she realized, probably due to lack of oxygen, and that wasn't good. Like the fact that her senses seemed to have cut out on her. Dreads was talking, as usual, she could see his mouth moving, but no sound was coming out.

And then the vamp was there, grabbing her up, and this was it, wasn't it?

This was how she went out.

Fuck it, Dory thought savagely.

Make him _feel_ it at least.

And she did. An upward swipe of her arms broke his hold, but instead of running she grabbed him back and flung him through a closed shop window. And then dove after him, picking him up again amid glass and wood and tourist tees, and slinging him with all her might at a very solid brick wall.

And right on through it.

She stared, not understanding, because that wasn't what usually happened when she threw a guy at a wall. But he was already coming at her again and there was no time to think. Just to growl and run to meet him, catching his fist in her hand, forming the proverbial immovable object and irresistible force. Because for a moment, they just stayed like that.

And then she forced it back.

The look on his face was almost comical, but Dory wasn't feeling very funny. She snarled and picked him up, body slammed him, and then threw him at the wall on the other side of the alley. This one didn't break.

It did, however, leave a vamp-shaped indentation in century's old brick, like the one she left when he came off the wall with a roar and returned the favor. They proceeded down the alley, trading off full body slams, and leaving a set of modern art sculptures behind them, madness worked into stone. And somewhere along the way, Dory figured out what Dreads must have been saying.

And then she spotted him at the end of the alley.

"The pills!" she yelled, having just buried the vamp in brick again.

"What?"

Marlowe tore free and came after her, and she slung him into a wrought iron fence, because she'd run out of wall. "Bring me the rest of the pills!"

"You don't need any more pills! You gonna die if I give you any more pills!"

"I'm gonna die if you don't!"

"Goddamnit!" he glared at her. But he came at a run, just as Marlowe grabbed her again.

"You missed your turn," he seethed.

"You know . . . I never did learn . . . proper manners," Dory panted, and shoved him back at the fence. And ripped a section of old ironwork out of the concrete, bolts and all, and started rolling him up in it. Like the carpet, she thought, giggling hysterically, because she was high as fuck. And because it was funny, a carpet full of pissed off vamp that was snarling and snapping and trying to bite. And ripping off solid iron pieces until she started hitting him in the head with one, repeatedly. And then Dreads was there.

"When you do . . . the incantation . . . this time," she told him, "send it all . . . to hearing."

He threw up his hands. "But I just told it to go to strength! And you can't split it like that! Least not right after you just --"

"It's not for me."

"What?"

"It's for him."

"Him?" Dreads regarded the captive, snarling vampire. "But he ain't taken any pills."

Dory smiled and grabbed Marlowe's remaining curls. "Give me a minute."

Conclusion

A baton hit the steel bars of the cell like a gunshot. Kit jumped off the filthy bench and gave a little scream. And looked around, wild-eyed.

"That was loud, wasn't it?" The dhampir asked, from the opposite bench. "But I guess everything's kind of loud to you right now, huh?"

"You _bitch_ ," he whispered.

She moved her bench slightly, and the ear piercing screech-scratch-squawk of the protesting metal made him shudder and sit back down. "Uh huh."

"You two done?" the guard demanded. "'Cause you got a visitor."

"About bloody time," Marlowe said shakily. He didn't understand what had taken his men this long. He hadn't been able to call them -- hadn't been able to do anything since that damned dhampir shoved half a bottle of pills down his throat. Except get his ass kicked most of the way across New Orleans.

Until the last of his strength drained away, leaving him sprawled in an alley, half dead and weak as a kitten. Too weak to hear the damned bokor anymore, but also too weak to defend himself. Including against the two overweight cops who found them, still feebly trying to gouge each other's eyes out, maybe an hour later.

They'd been in jail ever since, cozied up to drunks and prostitutes and a guy in a feather bra who kept singing Cole Porter songs.

But now his men were here.

Finally!

Only they weren't.

Kit looked up to see a handsome senator, the rich nap of his tuxedo fabric -- bespoke, of course -- and the gleam of gold from his cufflinks looking completely out of place amidst the grime. But his smile was as easy as always, like the subtle pass of a folded bill to the cop. Who pocketed it on his way out.

"Why is he leaving?" Marlowe asked, grabbing the bars. "Where are my men? Damn it, Mircea! Get me out of here!"

Mircea's dark eyes swept over him, and Kit could swear he saw amusement lurking in their depths. "You don't look as bad as I expected."

"Did you hear me? I said --"

"I heard you, although it was difficult." He pulled over a chair and sat down, crossing his legs and taking out a gold cigarette case. "Is there a reason we're whispering?"

"I can't talk louder than this without giving myself a migraine!" Marlowe hissed, hearing every syllable reverberate in his already bruised mind. He shot the dhampir a look. God, when he got out of here, when he got his power back, what he wasn't going to --

"Cigarette?"

"I don't want a damned cigarette! I want out!"

"Well, I'll take one, love," feather bra said, smiling charmingly as he leaned past Marlowe.

Mircea obliged, and even lit the damned thing for him. Why, Kit didn't know. He'd given up figuring the creature out centuries ago.

He was sitting back in his chair now, watching Kit through a haze of smoke, one of those annoying half smiles on his face. Mircea did love his little jokes. And Kit clearly wasn't getting out of here until this one had played out.

"Your men are well, as is your lady," Mircea said. "The former are rounding up the last of a group of nefarious types, while the latter . . . is having a talk with our friend Alejandro."

"He isn't our friend!"

"No? Perhaps not. But he seemed . . . unhappy . . . with some of the same people we are. Including some of his own court, one of whom appears to have been in this up to his formerly intact neck."

"If we discuss this elsewhere, you won't need euphemisms," Kit said, annoyed.

Mircea smiled brilliantly. "Oh, I don't mind. It's something of a game that way, isn't it?"

"Mircea --"

"Rather like the games certain men have been playing with us. It seems you were right: some of Alejandro's people were engaging in illicit activities, including running drugs into our territory. The drugs were mostly benign; they were merely trying to get a foothold in the market here. But one of the men they were using for distribution seems to have been cleverer than most, and started tweaking the formula. He eventually found a version that worked . . . on a more widespread clientele. But then, I don't have to tell you about that, do I?"

"Damn it, Mircea! Did you catch that son of a bitch?"

"Yes and no. There were two in this particular charade, one of whom is currently enjoying the tender embraces of our friend Jack."

Marlowe smiled.

"He was the most important, as it turns out, as the new formula was his creation. He intended to use it locally, on a few of our wealthier friends, in order to pay off some gambling debts. And to fund a rather expensive set of tastes \--"

"And the other?"

"In a moment. As I said, this man, Eric Montrose, is local, and small time. He stumbled across something, however, that wasn't, and was contacted some months ago about . . . expanding . . . his ambitions. He wisely did not give his new partners the formula, however, and his supply was burnt up in his shop this evening, all that didn't go into the rum."

"And what happened to the rum?"

"Some of it went up in flames, too. The rest is washing slowly out to sea. Along with the three men who worked for Montrose."

"And the other? The one who . . . inconvenienced . . . me?"

"The Reverend, as he was known, has suddenly vanished."

Marlowe snarled.

"Yes, I know. But it wasn't your Hounds who are to blame. We believe he may be . . . better connected . . . than his dupes. Quite a bit better connected."

The Black Circle, Marlowe thought. Yes, this reeked of them. As if regular mages weren't bad enough, his department also had to contend with the slimy, magic-addicted, completely unscrupulous bastards that populated the magical underworld.

"It doesn't matter," Kit said. "We'll find him. _I'll_ find him. He killed Allen."

"Yes." Mircea's expression turned grave. "I hoped you had reasoned that out by now."

"It wasn't too bloody hard! I had him checking out Montoya, our senatorial friend. I suspected he might be behind the recent upswing in . . . illicit activities . . . in the area, but needed proof. Allen must have come a little too close to getting it, so they hired a dhampir to take him out. And when she failed, they dosed him up and sent him to her doorstep, like a goddamned present, to make sure she succeeded!"

"I didn't succeed. He killed himself; I told you that," the creature said.

Kit ignored her. "What I can't understand is why they sent him to her after he came under their control. They could have had him kill himself anywhere, including hundreds of miles away. Why do it here? Unless they wanted me to spend hours on a wild goose chase, until their noxious brew took effect!"

"No, they dosed him in the afternoon, before you touched the rum," Mircea murmured.

"Then why? What was the point?"

Mircea stubbed out his cigarette, and fastidiously tossed it in the trash, despite the floor being a muddy mess. "To cause further dissention in our ranks, most likely."

"Dissention?" Kit frowned. "What dissention?"

Mircea had gotten up, to knock on the door, but at that he turned. And met Kit's eyes steadily. "Specifically, to ensure that you and I were at each other's throats."

"What?" Kit wondered if his head had been hit harder than he'd thought, because that made no damned sense at all. "Why would you care if I killed a filthy, misbegotten, sordid half \--"

He broke off, because the turnkey was back, and was finally opening the cell door.

But not for him.

Mircea -- elegant, dignified, polished Mircea \-- slipped into the dirty cell after the guard. _And picked up the damned dhampir_. And not to throw her over his shoulder, either.

But to cradle her in his arms.

Kit just stared.

And then he noticed something, noticed a number of somethings, some of which should have registered before. Like as soon as the fight shredded enough of her suit for him to get a good look at her. Liquid dark eyes, finely arched brows, a hint of amusement in the tilt of the lips, which were also full and shapely and so similar to --

"No!" Kit said, but there was no denying it. The scent -- the damned scent -- no wonder Heinrich had thought it familiar! He hadn't smelled it before, no.

But he had scented it's . . . her . . . _father_.

" _No!"_

"I came myself to make sure that you understood," Mircea told him. "There was no harm done to your family by my own. There will therefore be no retaliation."

Kit just stared at him.

"I can walk," the dhampir protested, as he carried her from the cell. "More or less."

"Perhaps this is my way of making sure I have you where I want you, for once," Mircea told her.

Kit thought he might throw up.

"At least tell this oaf to let me go," he said, because the damned cop was in his way.

"Oh, don't worry," Mircea said, glancing over his shoulder. "Your men should be by to fetch you in an hour . . . or five."

"Mircea!"

"You've had a hard day, in more ways than one, Kit."

"Mircea . . . ."

"And you have a temper, you know you do."

"Damn it, Mircea! Don't you dare --"

"Just to be on the safe side, I think a little head start might be a good idea, yes?"

"Mircea!" The door closed _. "Mircea!"_

Kit felt something pop.

And realized that he'd just ruptured his own eardrums.

Goddamnit!

" _MIRCEA!"_

The End

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