“He hired you in New Orleans for a job none of us could do. And you did that job, even when it meant killing his son. In his own way, he respects that. Before he sent me here, Leo said, ‘Jane Yellowrock has a propensity for luck.’” The words were stilted, a perfect mimic of Leo. He went on, imitating the MOC. “‘She looks for the truth, no matter how unappetizing, and uncovers it, much like a muckraker or a gravedigger, but one who carries a stake and knows how to use it.’” Bruiser chuckled, but there was no humor in the sound.
“When he heard that Mithrans were changing shape in Natchez, Leo arranged to get you involved. Some of his people told Hieronymus about you.”
Silently, everything began to click into place. Some of his people . . . Like Reach. Son of a gun. “He couldn’t just up and send me himself. That would imply that he forgave Hieronymus, which isn’t the fanghead way, not without a lot of bowing and scraping and pleading on Big H’s part, but he could make sure things were okay in his territory.”
Bruiser nodded. “Politics.”
“I hate politics. And vamp politics more than most.” I stared at the primo until his eyes lifted from the floor to me. “Can I ask questions?” I asked.
“I presume that you mean something more along the line of an interrogation.”
“Pretty much. But I need to get dressed.”
“I like you the way you are.”
The last of the pain seemed to ease away at his amused tone, and I said, “Tough. Give a girl some privacy. “
Bruiser shrugged and left the bathroom, letting in colder air before he shut the door. I shivered hard and clutched the damp towel. I went to my own room and was dressed in thirty seconds, my T-shirt sticking to my damp skin. I was braiding my hair when the primo entered my room from the bath. He was wearing a dress shirt with a subtle pattern in the weave and the dress pants, wrinkled from the steam. He stopped in the doorway and stood there, watching, as my fingers twisted and tugged my wet hair, saying nothing, his face as impassive as a vamp’s. For reasons I didn’t understand and didn’t want to explore, I didn’t ask what he was thinking.
“Twenty questions,” he reminded me.
“Tell me what you mean about having freedom.”
“What else do you want to know?” he murmured. He shoved the covers out of the way and sat on my bed. The action was odd, as if it was summertime and the comforter was hot.
“Months ago, we were fighting vamps here in Natchez. I finished off mine, and you finished off yours, and I said something. I don’t remember what. But you whirled on me, swords out. And you didn’t recognize me. At all.”
“What else?” he asked, his face taking on an intrigued attentiveness. “What else do you want to know?”
“Why has your scent changed?” I swallowed at the shift in his eyes as something feral stared back at me. “What are you?” I finished, whispering. Knowing that was the question he had been waiting for.
CHAPTER 15
You’re a Gun Whore
He did that brow-tilt thing, only one brow going up, quizzically. It was something I had tried in the mirror, but it seemed the ability to lift a single brow was innate, not learned. “All of your questions have a single answer. Have you heard the term Onorio?” he asked.
I shook my head and slid into the chair by the bed. We were close enough that our knees brushed before I drew my legs into the chair and pulled the discarded comforter over me. He said, “It means ‘honored one’ or ‘honored freeman.’” When I still said nothing, Bruiser said, “An Onorio is a revered and honored status among blood-servants, but few who attempt the position survive. Most end up dead or turned and chained. I was one of the lucky few, and only because I was mostly dead through it all.”
I remembered when he had died, his skin so pale and gray. And when the priestess lay across his body, naked and drinking. “The priestess drank. And then she fed you.”
“Yes. To keep me alive. That amount of ancient blood fed to a blood-servant begins a transformation, but doesn’t necessarily finish it. In my case, it stopped just before I was turned. Onorio status means I have many of the skills and gifts of the Mithran, but few of the drawbacks. I’ll be younger for much longer. I’ll be faster. I can see in the dark nearly as well as a vampire.”
Understanding beat its way into me. “Onorio. You mean like a Renfield?”
He laughed, the sound not particularly lighthearted. “Sometimes fiction writers get it right. Sometimes not. And sometimes only nearly so. Yes, we’ve been called Renfields, the special servants of the undead. And I will live a long, long time. Perhaps as much as three more centuries.”
“You’re hot, in an old, cold house. Even with my skinwalker metabolism, I’m chilled.” I knew two other blood-servants who had higher-than-human body temperatures. “Grégoire’s B twins, his primos, are they Renfields? Because they’re the longest-lived servants I know of.”
Bruiser tilted his head to me, the gesture oddly and uncomfortably like Leo’s. “Yes. Brandon and Brian went through the process over a hundred years ago and both survived. They are the only other Onorios whom I know. If I tell you that Renfield is a derogatory word, will that only make you use it more often?”
“Probably. Once, a long time ago, you said something about there being a way for you not to drink. For you not to be bound.” He had also said it was a way for us to be together, but I didn’t repeat that part. “Was it this Renfield thing?”
“Yes. I had thought many times about trying for Onorio status.” He shifted on the bed, leaning forward and taking my hand. His skin was feverishly hot. “I can share my thoughts and will and power with someone I bond with, much like a master vampire does with a primo blood-servant, but without the actual servitude. And, best, I have to drink only once or twice a year to maintain my status, and then from any Mithran. I am free of Leo. If I wish to be.”
“Sooo, why didn’t you do it sooner?”
“All blood-servants think about it at some time or another. It is a powerful position among the Mithrans. And we think about requesting that we be turned. But there is danger in either process.”
“Yeah. Ten years of insanity, chained in the basement,” I teased.
“The devoveo is a rite of passage,” he said, amused.
“The devoveo is a time when the vamp disease makes humans go insane, reworks a human’s body and brain into something new—” I stopped, remembering the insectoid movement of the Naturaleza that Eli and I had tried to kill.
“Son of a gun,” I said, thinking, trying to put it together. “The Naturaleza here have been twice transformed. They got turned the first time; then they started drinking their fill, which made them stronger and faster and harder to kill, better at healing. Then they got the vamp plague.” I narrowed my eyes, trying to bring it all into focus. It was here. The answer of what had happened to the supervamps was here. “And then someone started including magic powered by a full witch circle, and that did something more, probably something unexpected, and now they’re transforming into something else. It’s all connected somehow.” It felt right. But there were still puzzle pieces missing, important stuff I needed to know, stuff that might help me kill supervamps and find Misha. Flying by the seat of my pants usually endangered only me. This time other people were in danger and I didn’t like the feeling of responsibility.
A knock sounded at the door, two soft taps. “Up and at ’em, Legs,” Eli said. “We got vamps to behead.”
“I’m up,” I called out. “I’ll be ready shortly.”
“Yeah, well, don’t get all gussied up. It’ll be a bloody night.” He moved on down the hall.
“Jane?” Bruiser rolled off the mattress and to his feet, once again watching me with that intensity, unexpected and unnerving. “I can’t join you hunting.” He placed a chaste kiss on the back of my hand. “I have other duties. Be safe.”
With no other words, he disappeared back through the bath into his room. Leo-type duties, I assumed. He might not be bound to the MOC, but he was still employed by the chief fanghead.
Alone in my room, I pulled my braided hair into a fighting queue and dressed in vamp-fighting gear. I’ve worn lots of different things when fighting vamps, from nightclothes and flip-flops—total accident—to full-on, high-impact, plastic motorcycle armor secured into my leathers. With the new vamps, I’d need all the good stuff.
I started from the skin out with the silver-over-titanium chain-mail collar Leo Pellissier had given me to replace the one lost in his service. It clasped in place over the gold nugget and mountain lion tooth on the doubled gold chain. I’d bought the chain before the price of gold soared so high. I couldn’t have afforded it at today’s prices. I unrolled and donned the silk-knit long johns that were perfect for hot, sweat-generating sports in cold weather, and laid out the now-tight leathers.
I inserted the flexible plastic into the specially made slits at elbows, knees, and my own customized areas: inner elbow, back of knee, and groin—places vamps wanted to drink from. The plastic on the inside joints had to be very pliable, and so, while it wasn’t very thick, it was filled with silver foil set into the plastic when it was poured. I pulled on the skintight leather pants and a fleece top before lacing on my combat boots. I zipped up my pants and stomped the boots hard before starting the arduous procedure of weaponing up.
I carried thirteen crosses, all silver, all tucked away into pouches or under my jacket so the silver glow that alerted me that a vamp was near didn’t alert them that I was near. Crosses worked on vamps when other forms of religious icons didn’t, because vamps had been created with the wood of the three crosses of Calvary. It had been an act of black magic that went wrong. And didn’t it always?
Three throwing knives were in sheaths specially made into the jacket front. Thirteen ash stakes and thirteen silver ones, each about fourteen inches long went into various loops and sheathes, ready at hand no matter how my body might be positioned, the sharpened tips either pointing away from my body or into the plastic protection of the body armor. Five fighting blades came next: the newest vamp-killer I strapped to my left hip for a cross-draw that resembled a sword draw in many ways; a blade into each boot sheath, one into my holster harness, and one in a spine sheath in the back seam of my jacket—a last resort draw that meant I was in major trouble.