Cold Reign (Jane Yellowrock #11)(59)
Leo (pretty sure he was buck naked) lay closest to us, on his side, his bare feet dangling over the edge of the mattress, a thin, shiny sheet tossed over his hips, his head on his arm. Long black hair dangled over the side, curling on the ends. Katie was in the middle and definitely naked, the small fleur-de-lis brand on her upper arm darker than I remembered, the scar brown and uniform. She had been branded before she was turned, possibly as a crime of the French state of the time. Delicate and erotic, she was posed languidly on the mattress, facing Leo, the covers underneath her. Grégoire, farthest from the doorway, was at her back, one arm holding her close to him, spooning, his face buried in her nape, her ash-blond hair tangled in his lighter locks. At least he was under the covers. Mostly. The important bits.
“Boss,” I said calmly.
“Do you know why the revenants are rising?” he asked, opening his eyes, cutting to the chase.
“Yup.”
Leo brushed the hair out of this eyes and sat up. His hair was longer than I remembered, a good six inches longer. It lay on his shoulders and across his chest in a tousled disarray. Sex on a stick. “Proceed,” he said.
I filled him in on the discoveries of the day, including the pink silk line we found at the funeral parlor. “We also found a bottle of something that made Edmund freak out. It’s possible that it’s used in the embalming process. Maybe it—”
Leo thrust out his hand in a give it to me gesture, imperative.
I looked at Eli, who moved into the room where he could cover all the vamps. He centered one weapon on Leo, the other on Grégoire. “You get Katie,” he instructed Derek. Leo vamped out. So did Katie. Grégoire didn’t move except to twitch the arm that hung off the edge of the mattress.
“Blade,” I said to Eli, assuming that the boy wonder already had one in hand.
“Got it.”
“Explain yourselves,” Leo said around his fangs, in the soft velvety tones of the mesmerizing fanghead.
Derek sighed and drew a weapon. “Standard ammo, boss. You try to kill us, go into a feeding frenzy, we’ll shoot you, let you heal. Come back at a better time.”
“It’s what a good Enforcer does,” I said. Leo scowled at me, but I stepped close and extended the bottle to him. The Master of the City of New Orleans, way underdressed for a business meeting, wrapped his pale fingers around the neck of the bottle and pulled it from me. Without removing it, he sniffed the cork. Stopped, his eyes narrowing, his head tilting to the side as if to access an old memory. But he didn’t go nutso or try to eat me. Instead, his fangs retracted, his eyes bleeding back to human. He was beautiful and, for a moment, uncertain, perhaps even terrified, though he hid it instantly. He extended the bottle to me. I took it and stepped back.
Leo took a breath deeper than he needed for speaking, as if to settle himself, and said, “This contains the blood of Louis the Seventh. And Le Batard. And a dozen others I recall from long ago.” He lifted his brows. “And the blood of Titus Flavius Vespasianus.”
As Leo spoke, Grégoire peered out with one beautiful blue eye. The scent of fear pulsed into the room. “I told you that Le Batard is here.”
Leo said, “We have no eyewitness proof of his presence in the city. Be still, my love.” But things were moving in the back of Leo’s eyes, like pieces on a chessboard, rearranged and reorganized and reconsidered. Leo was still in the game. Musingly, he said, “If the age of the rising revenants and the scent of this blood are indicators, some plan of our enemies has seemingly been in place for two hundred years. The Caruso Family were originally Clan Bouvier, but if they have been the willing spies of the Europeans, they may have set a strategy in motion that we only see with the rising of the revenants.”
Grégoire’s face slowly eased away from Katie’s shoulder, his eyes bright with tears. “I told you. I am doomed.”
Leo leaned back, exposing waaaay too much of himself, and stroked Grégoire’s pale white shoulder. Katie pulled a golden comforter over Blondie. “You are safe, my darling,” she said. “Remember that you are safe here. We three are enough to defeat them all.”
“No one is doomed,” Leo said softly, a faint smile on his face, his eyes turning to me in speculation. “We are quite safe. All is according to plan.”
I frowned, not liking that I seemed to be part of his plan. “You know why the revenants are rising,” I guessed.
Leo rolled back to us, set his eyes on me, and readjusted his silk covering. Thank God. “Revenants rise from the second death when they are not put properly in the ground. There are myths that they might be raised by choice and the will of their masters, for use in battle, where there is a need for confusion, fear, and where large numbers of inconsequential bodies might be lost without harm to the plan of battle.” He stopped, watching us all.
He wasn’t going to tell us outright. Either he was playing with us the way a predator played with his dinner, or he wanted to see if we could figure it out on our own. I hated guessing games. “Okay. You brought your core people into HQ. You think Le Batard and Louis Seven are in town. You think the boat that tried to dock is tied into some arcane plan by the Europeans. You think it’s possible that the Europeans are . . .” I stopped, realization dawning. I met his eyes. “You think they’re sitting offshore, ready to come ashore the moment agreement is reached on the parley, not giving you time to get plans laid. You think they’re raising revenants to make it harder for you to keep order in your city, and to turn the local officials against you.”