Blood in Her Veins (Nineteen Stories From the World of Jane Yellowrock) (70 page)

The first time I saw Margaud wearing the weird ghillie suit, I had wondered what she needed the suit for. At the time, I figured it was something she had made to celebrate her sharpshooter days, something she wore when hunting in the swamps and bayous, despite the occasional brightly colored bits of thread. Now I realized the uni was something more, something magical, a suit that she wore to protect herself and to . . . to call the thing in the bar? To
control
the
demon
?

Wondering if I could die from fire, from burning to death, I inhaled to shout, and started coughing. I hacked out the words, “Lucky, put out the fire.” And he must have understood.

The witch wrenched his attention from the swamp thing to me, then to the ceiling. His eyes widened in surprise. I don't think he had noticed the flames until that moment. He pulled something from a pocket and threw it with one fist, up into the ceiling. It stuck and the flames twirled around it, whirling back the way they had come, toward the metal star stuck in the ceiling and the slight hole it had made there. Cool, wet air rushed into the room from the busted door. The roar of the fire diminished and was gone in seconds. But so was the light, the electricity ripped away, along with the flames. I saw the room in overlays of green and silver, and hot spots that continued to smolder.

The creature unsheathed claws from its muddy body and swiped at Clermont.

The vamp sidestepped the claws, the motion beautiful and neat, no wasted movement, no wasted energy. He cut again. Sidestepped. Cut. Sidestepped. The creature roared each time, but its wounds clotted over.
Clermont stepped back and Edmund stepped in, cutting, cutting, cutting, lunging over and over. Just before each of the creature's motions, Margaud moved, its body following hers in a peculiar, macabre dance.

Lucky was watching her, as I was, and he reached again into his pocket and withdrew something that sparked when it hit the air. He threw it hard, a baseball pitcher's fastball. It smacked into the ghillie suit and stuck. Flames licked up, burning, even in the wet cloth.

The creature stepped forward and backhanded Lucky. The witch spun through the air and cracked into the pool table, bending in ways no human body was intended to. His ribs splintered with brittle
snap
s. The table was no longer on fire, and Lucky gripped the scorched felt, curling his fingers into it to stay upright. But I heard the bubbling wheeze when he tried to inhale. He had lung damage. He grunted and his face went white.

Margaud's ghillie suit roared up in flame, and she screamed. The swamp thing walked to her. It wrapped her in its arms and the flames sizzled out, smothered in mud and swamp water. I could hear Margaud gasping and the stink of her terror was clear and sharp, even over the reek of burning homemade ghillie suit.

The demon turned from her and it seemed to have found its way. It stepped forward and struck at Clermont, its claws gouging deep into the vamp's belly, sending him flying too. Edmund danced out of the way. The other vamp, the one who was down on the stage, groaned, catching the demon's attention. The creature fisted its hands and raised them high. I tried to fire the M4, but it clicked.
Empty
. The mud thing brought its fisted hands down on the unconscious form. Bones splintered and cracked.

I reloaded the M4 with regular shot, my movements efficient and spare, Beast fast, but still too slow. I raised the shotgun and aimed at the thing. Then shifted my aim for Margaud. I had never killed a human except in defense of my life or in defense of another. I hesitated, uncertainty filling me. What if Margaud wasn't actually directing the thing? What if I had it all wrong? I fired. The round hit the ghillie suit and spread. But nothing penetrated. The shot stopped, hot and smoking. And fell to the floor with
ping
s. Her ward, which had seemed so weak, was more than it had appeared. Much more.

From the doorway came a crash and a deep rumble. A blackened claw bigger than the opening busted through, burned wood snapping and
splintering. A yellow arm pushed the claw through. No. Not a claw. A shovel, with steel teeth along the bottom. What the drivers of heavy machinery called a bucket. It was the front-end loader that had been parked in the street. Jerking the bucket side to side, the loader ripped out the old entrance. The ceiling above shuddered, the weakened second floor trying to drop through. The creature and Margaud turned to the heavy vehicle. Edmund backed away from the mechanical claw, laughing with delight, his head thrown back with joy. Dang vamp. He was having fun.

For the first time in the fight, I could also see Margaud's face clearly. She was perhaps the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, even in the silver gray of Beast sight, even with her face twisted in hate. The ugly expression was darker than the hell the swamp demon had been called from, foul, dreadful, seeking only pain and death.

The huge bucket with its steel claws jerked and tore as it worked its way forward, the tractor tires gripping on the damaged wood floor. The yellow machine was forcing its way inside like in some child's film about sentient machines. The loader rolled inside, revealing Eli sitting in the glassed-in cage, his face like stone, his hands working the controls. The demon attacked the loader, throwing itself against the clawed bucket, Margaud's body a mirror image, fighting an invisible menace. The bucket jerked forward and up, picking up the demon, the steel claws catching it at its middle and tilting, lifting. The swamp demon roared, its voice matching the sound of the huge engine. Eli carried the demon, rushing to the wall beside the stage. He slammed the bucket into the wall, the claws ripping through the demon and cutting into the plaster on the far side. Black blood sprayed.

The demon shuddered and screamed. Lucky hit with one of his dissipate spells. And the demon melted into a puddle of mud. Clermont whirled to Margaud. But she was gone. He clutched his middle, which was bleeding, and caught himself on a chair, holding himself upright, amazingly still whole, in the middle of the ruined blood bar.

Clermont gripped his side and belly, holding in what passed for guts in vampires, and made his way across the wrecked floor to the vamp on the stage. He rolled the unconscious, broken vamp over and tilted back the bloodsucker's head, as if opening an airway. But . . . vamps don't need to breathe. I understood when Clermont's fangs snapped down and he bit his own wrist, holding it to the vamp's mouth. The blood flowed fast for
several seconds before the vamp's eyes snapped open and he swallowed. He gripped his master's arm and pulled it tight to his lips, sucking.

Lucky groaned and rolled over, clutching his side and ribs. He activated a healing spell, one I could see in the dark of the bar, which was probably red and orange, but in big-cat vision looked green and silver, shot with blue, in the weird colorblindness of the feline.

Edmund made a quick whip/slash motion and sheathed his swords. Elegant and beautiful. And if I was guessing right, he was a better swordsman than Leo Pellissier's Mercy Blade. Better than Leo. Maybe even better than Grégoire, who was known to be the best swordsman in the entire United States. Edmund had been hiding things from us all.

The clatter/roar of the front-end loader changed to a cough and went silent. The plasticized glass door opened, and Eli stepped out of the loader cage and dropped to the floor, where he caught his breath and held it for a space of heartbeats. He moved away from the machine, his body stiff and slow. He was badly wounded to be showing any sign of weakness.

“Honest to God,” he said as he stepped to the wall where the bucket was stuck. His voice was just a hint breathy as he went on, “I thought Vin Diesel as Riddick had it all wrong, but there
are
movie mud monsters. And worse. This one melted on a wood floor and disappeared.”

“It'll be back,” I said. “Its maker or controller, or both, didn't get what she wanted. And she got away.”

“Who?”

“The person in the homemade ghillie suit. Margaud.”

Eli frowned, pulling the name out of his memory, making associations with a demon and a bar fight. “The sister of the two Hulk wannabes with the Amazon this afternoon? The one that made all this small-town, love-triangle, witch-vamp shit happen?”

“Yeah.” I couldn't argue about the estimation or the language. Sometimes
shit
is the only word for a particular situation.

He looked around the burned blood bar. “Margaud. Makes sense.”

“Questions to ask Solene if we can break the circle. Or in the morning, if we live that long. You need vamp blood to heal. Edmund?” I called, looking around. He was gone.

“You need to shift back,” Eli said, as if we were debating. “And I don't know where the slimy little bloodsucker is. I never saw him in the battle.”

“He was there. We'll talk about him later. How long?”

Eli frowned, a downward quirk of his lips. “It lasted one-twenty-seven seconds.”

One hundred twenty-seven seconds. A little over two minutes. It seemed like an hour. But my partner was right. Where was my vamp helper? Why had he taken off after facing a mud demon and fighting our way out of a mess?

Clermont snapped his arm away from the healing vamp, licked his wound to constrict the fang holes, and stood. He walked over to Lucky, still lying half under the burned pool table. He knelt close to the witch and said, “We been played. Our children been played. Or entire peoples been played, by a human what can call her up a demon. We been enemies a long time. We been friends only since our families join. I say we stronger dat little time when we joined. I say I sorry I din' see what happening to my boy and to your girl. I say I sorry I such an ass, even if you don' take my sincere apologies.”

Lucky put his hand into Clermont's and let the vamp pull him to a sitting position, his legs stretched out and his back resting against a blackened pool table leg. “I accept. And I offer you my own, how you say, sincere apologies.”

“We not much leaders we not able to see a common enemy.”

“Divide and conquer work best on dem what blind to dangers,” Lucky agreed.

“We not some dumbass politicians. We leaders. And right now, we need our strength. I offer you, Lucky Landry, father of my daughter-in-law, gran'father of my—of
our
—gran'boy, Clerjer, blood of my veins, to make you strong to fight.”

“Long as I don' got to kiss you, I accept.”

“I'm told I kiss real good. Maybe I'm insulted, yeah?”

Lucky chuckled and his face wrenched in pain. “Okay. I kiss you. Hell, I kiss dat ugly frog demon if it fix my ribs. And I thinking I got lung problems.”

“Got you pneumothorax, you do,” Clermont said. “I hear air leaking and blood gurgling.”

I remembered the vamp leader was a surgeon, back in his human days.

“To fix you, I gone stick a needle like a tenpenny nail in you side right
here”—he touched the witch's side—“and den I'm gon' drain my blood inside. Heal you fast. Den you drink some my blood and be heal for real.”

“I not gon' wake up dead, am I?”

“No. You still be pain-in-de-ass coonass witch, what walk in de day.”

“Do it, den, wid my thanks.”

“Lucky? Clermont?” We all turned to the stage door where Bobbie stood, holding her grandson on her shoulder. “The vampire you sent to protect us says the fight's over.”

“Vampire?” Lucky asked.

Edmund eased Bobbie away from the door and stepped out. Behind him came Gabriel, looking pink-skinned and healthy, and behind him, a gentle hand on his shoulder, came Shauna. So that was where Edmund had gone. To check on the people downstairs.
Go, Ed.
I nodded at him, a slight inclination of my head. He nodded back, his gaze serious and intense. Weirdly, Edmund walked to me and knelt at my feet, his swords back and behind him like wings. I looked down at the top of his head in confusion. What was this? I looked around in growing panic.

“Ed?” He didn't answer. Just knelt there.

Whatever Ed was doing, no one else seemed to notice or care. The others—witches, humans, and vamps—ignored us and gathered at the pool table where they huddled together with their faction leaders in what was probably a group hug/blood-feeding/bloodletting. Eli, who was still moving stiffly and clearly needed to feed on a vamp sometime soon, looked over Edmund and me, chuckled softly, and turned his attention to the room, evaluating entrances and exits and possible close-quarters fighting. Not looking at the hugging. No longer looking at Ed.

From the doorway, Alex walked into the bar, saying, “Just gag me with a spoon and get it over with. All that huggy, kissy, mommy, daddy crap.” The brothers fist-bumped.
Idiots
. Every single one of them. And the worst was Edmund, still at my feet, his head bowed. I wasn't sure what gave me the impression, but I had a feeling Ed was laughing at me.

I considered my vamp helper in light of the battle, the problem with humans, witches, a starving vampire, and a baby locked together in an underground lair, all afraid and angry, and decided it had turned out much better than it might have. “Get up,” I said, hearing a long-suffering note in my two words. Edmund stood with a flair that might have come
from the Middle Ages or a Hollywood set. “Ed, I take it you taught the young vamp idiot how to feed without sex?” I said.

“Yes,
my master
,” he said, sounding quietly subservient and yet somehow managing to convey his hilarity.

“Having fun, are you?”

“More than you can possibly imagine,
my master
,” he said, with heavy emphasis on the last two words. He was determined to call me
master
. To get under my skin. Or to bind himself to me in some way I couldn't comprehend.

“Teaching proper feeding habits doesn't take long when one is experienced in such matters.” He added, “My master.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, thinking,
No freaking way.
I had enough responsibilities to deal with. “Once you get over the chuckles,” I said, “would you be so kind as to heal my partner? Eli's hurt from when that thing knocked him across the room.”