The gurgler just ahead started to moan, a rhythmic, pained sound, and the scent of human fear added to the stench riding over the perfumed air. My cell buzzed. I ignored it and sped ahead, into the last room. I took in the details fast.

It was lit with candles on every surface and was decorated in white and pink, with a Victorian four-poster in the middle of the floor space. The linens were thrown back and mussed, as if it had been used recently, but the bed was empty. There were silk and tasseled ottomans and dainty chairs and more dolls on shelves. The windows were covered with modern, sunlight-blocking shutters, but the back door was open, letting in the night and the sound of the Mississippi skirling past. Against the back wall of the feminine bedroom, beside the propped door, two humans stood, each with black bags over their heads, hands behind their backs, as if they were lined up for a firing squad. Judging by the clothes and stature, the one on the left was Esmee.

Four vamps stood at parade rest, two on either side of the humans, all male, wearing powdered wigs and those weird clothes they wore way back when, with stockings and big buckles on platform shoes, and padded shorts. Vamped out, with blacker-than-black eyes and fangs just a bit over an inch long, which identified them as young vamps, easy to kill.

The details merged into a deadly whole. I was already moving as I took in the final particulars and bloody minutiae.

On a chaise longue lay a female vamp wearing a scarlet dress the exact shade of her hair and of the blood that smeared her red lips. In her lap was a human, blood drunk, his head lolling, his camo fatigues open to the waist, exposing his hairy belly and unshaven neck and face. Blood poured in a steady stream from his neck, which had to be deliberate. Vamp saliva was both healing and a constrictor, causing blood vessels to close and skin to tighten, stopping bleeding almost as soon as a vamp withdrew her fangs. The human was breathing, but his pulse, visible from the way his head and neck were extended, was too rapid, and he was pale. She had taken too much, too fast. The vamp’s head snapped up and she met my gaze.

As my arm swung back, the blade catching the candlelight, I recognized Silandre from her photo, her hair the color of a sunset before a storm, eyes the blue of hyacinths. In her photograph, her skin had been the white of a corpse, blue veins visible beneath its pale surface, but was now pink and flushed. She had been drinking her fill. Whatever she had been before and whether she was on Hieronymus’ list or not, Silandre was now a Naturaleza. She hissed at me like a cat, and I realized she was also totally nutso. Crap. The crazy ones were always the worst.

I slashed forward.

In one of those faster-than-possible moves, Silandre tossed the body at me. Into the path of my blade. I spun, dodging the flying human. Silandre rose to her feet, eyes vamped out, her lips curling in a snarl, revealing bloody, two-inch fangs. Her bodyguards attacked. Knowing I would be too slow, I continued my spin, blades out to my sides. As we all moved, Eli shot, the clatter of his weapon ripping into the air. Time slowed and shifted, and I saw the bodies of the guards to my left fall. The ones on my right reached me, slipping past my knives. Instinct made me leap to the side and down, rolling, scissoring my legs. I cut behind the knees of both bodyguards and rolled again. The gun clattered. Herbal-scented blood splattered me. Both vamps fell. Heads mostly gone from the automatic fire, hamstrings severed. I pivoted to my feet.

A flash of scarlet caught my eye at the open door. Silandre fleeing. Eli followed her while I bent over the human on the floor. He was still breathing. I raced to the back wall, pulled the black bag off Esmee’s head, and ran a short blade through her bonds. Her arms fell limply to her sides and she dropped to her knees. Just as the vamps on the floor started to struggle.

“Stay put!” I shouted to Esmee, my own voice lost beneath the roar in my ears. I dropped my bloody knives on the bed and pulled an eighteen-inch blade, effectively a short sword. Picking the vamp who seemed the most lively, I shoved him flat on the floor with my booted foot. Raised the vamp-killer over my head and brought it down. Hard. It’s a lot more difficult to behead someone with a sword than most people think. Sometimes it’s more like chopping wood with a dull steak knife. It was a lucky strike, because his head rolled cleanly away, gallons of fresh blood gouting from the stump, a lot more than usual in vamp kills.

Rogue vamps, Naturaleza vamps, uncured vamps still in the devoveo, and crazy vamps murder humans. I get paid to kill them for it. So I’ve become somewhat of an expert at head lopping.

I stepped across his body to the next one, prepared to repeat the measure. The vamp struggled on the floor and got one arm beneath him, pushing to rise. On the vamp’s chest were a line of holes; the stink of silver and vamp blood reached me. Eli had used silver rounds and, just like the vamps in the woods earlier, the silver hadn’t stopped the vamps any better than lead.

My partner stepped back inside and shouted, “She’s gone. Down the scaffolding to the water.” Which was not what I wanted to hear.

I beheaded the second vamp and moved to the others as vamp blood gushed across the floor in spreading pools, staining the white rugs. The third vamp didn’t want to die, and despite the silver in his blood, he grabbed the handle of the sword as I brought it down. I didn’t have to be able to hear to know he was growling. His fangs slashed at my ankle, and I kicked forward, breaking a fang with a snap that reverberated up my leg, into my spine. Fangs were hard. When his head snapped back, I struck down and again. And again. Until he was in two parts. The fourth vamp was fully awake by then and I realized I had made a crucial mistake. He came at me.

CHAPTER 7

Sheet Creases on His Left Cheek

I raised the bloody, silvered vamp-killer. Before I could bring it down, Eli emptied his gun into the vamp’s chest. Which disintegrated like a watermelon at a shooting demonstration. It was easy work thereafter to pin him to the floor with my blade. I stood over the vamp corpse, breathing heavily. He wasn’t moving and he might even be true-dead, but I wasn’t betting on it.

Eli touched my shoulder to get my attention and motioned to the vamp, then tapped his own neck with the edge of his hand, asking me why I hadn’t beheaded him. We were still deaf from the weapon fire and I mouthed, Prisoner. To question. Eli frowned as if he didn’t think that was such a good idea and started checking over the injured humans, freeing the last one. Actually, I didn’t think it was a good idea either, but I needed info on the Naturaleza, and one of Silandre’s goons might give it to me.

While Eli made sure Esmee was okay and led her to the doorway of the room, I texted Big H’s primo for three things: a silver vamp cage, and to send a cleanup crew to the house and another one to the woods where we had left the other body. Vamps didn’t want medical professionals to have access to vamp bodies, blood, or genetic material. Until recently, even Homeland Security hadn’t gotten hold of a true-dead vamp corpse, but on my last visit to Natchez, we had left so many lying around that I figured at least one vamp had gone missing and into their clutches. Rick had been on scene so it stood to reason that some giddy government forensic anthropologists and pathologists had carved one up. Not that I had mentioned that to Leo yet. I was getting smarter. I also texted the Kid to tell him we had Esmee and that she was unhurt.

Esmee tapped my arm and I jumped. I had gotten so busy texting that I’d forgotten to keep aware of my surroundings. Not smart. I was getting too dependent on Eli for backup. I put my phone away and led the tiny older woman outside. It was testament to the political power of the vamps Under the Hill—or to Bruiser and Leo’s helpful interference—that no sirens had sounded despite the gunfire. I put her in the backseat of the SUV, where she sat, silent, staring down at her wrists. Though my ears were still ringing and hers had to be even worse, I tapped her wrist above where it had been abraded by the rope that had bound her.

Esmee shook her head and lifted it, meeting my eyes. I half read her lips when she said, “I nearly got those boys killed.”

I knew about guilt. I knew about guilt that was richly deserved and guilt that was misplaced, and this guilt fell into both categories. “Miss Esmee, what you three did was utterly crazy. You three, Eli, and I could have died tonight because of your ill-conceived and ill-thought-out vamp-hunting plan. But unless you held a gun to their heads and forced them to dress in camouflage, loaded their guns against their wills, and then drove them here under threat of death, you are not ultimately responsible for the actions or the current state of health of two grown men.”

“I should have known better.” She stroked her wrist and flinched at a tender place. “I never saw a vampire move so fast. I didn’t know they could do that. I thought we’d just bust in and shoot ’em and rescue some of the missing humans. Case closed. But there weren’t any humans there. The men vampires reached out and took our guns like we were babies. Just plucked them away.” She shook her head, her eyes swimming with tears. “We were tied up so fast. And we could hear Bubba crying.” She blotted her cheek. “Is he going to die?”

I looked at Eli coming through the door, Bubba’s arm around his shoulders, the anemic man being half carried. I got out and watched as Buddy and Eli helped the injured man into the backseat. “I think he’ll live,” I said, closing the door. “He probably needs a transfusion.”

“I ain’t gonna take no blood,” Bubba said, his lips blue and his head lolling. “I might get some gay man’s blood and turn into an abominable and go to hell.”

Eli’s brows went up and I turned so no one could see my grin. “I think he means an abomination, and I also think he thinks being gay is contagious.”

“Our preacher says it can be spread just like any other disease,” Buddy said.

“Your preacher a doctor?” Eli asked, and started the engine, leaving it running with the heater on full. “No. Your preacher’s an idiot.”

“No blood,” Bubba said.

“And you’re an idiot too. But have it your way.” Eli went around to the back of the SUV and tossed me a bag. I caught it, surprised at the weight. “Silver restraints for your captive.”