Cold Reign (Jane Yellowrock #11)(6)

“Oh,” the deputy squeaked, backpedaling to the far side. He sounded surprised, but really, what else was gonna happen? That’s the advantage of lots of blade practice and really sharp blades—steel versus flesh wins every time.

The head rolled off. Bounced and landed on the tree. A broken branch speared into the neck and held the head in place like a warning on a castle wall, but low down. I wanted to laugh, but it probably wouldn’t be seemly in front of all the officers.

To Alex I said, “What do you know about this pair?”

“I’ve been cross-checking police reports. Apparently since the rising of Davide Berkins, keeping watch in graveyards is suddenly chic among the NOLA fraternities, and this rising was witnessed,” the Kid said into my earbud. “According to eyewitness reports of the risings, it looks like they crawled out of the coffin together. We now have names and prelim histories. Oliver Estridge is the human and the vamp is Mitchel Hopkins. Histories say the cause of death was a murder-suicide, a lovers’ tiff between vamp and human. They were buried together in 1909.”

“Who made the COD ruling?” I asked.

“Amaury Pellissier.”

“We wanted to question him,” a self-important voice said.

I looked over a shoulder and spotted the owner of the voice. She was the sheriff of Plaquemines Parish, and her photo had been plastered over half the parish for months, on billboards that promised to get supernats out of her parish. She had won reelection, but clearly not for brains.

I raised my eyebrows and wiped my blade on the soaked and stinking cloth of the vamp’s jacket. The blade wasn’t bloody, but it was gooey. I stood, focused on the politician. Keeping my voice toneless, I said, “You wanted to question a rogue vampire.” Sheriff Pansy Knight was a tall woman and clearly wasn’t accustomed to looking up at another woman, but in my combat boots, I was six foot two to three, a good four inches taller than her. I could play nice-nice or I could go for pain-in-the-butt. I was going for PITB but Eli intervened.

“Eli Younger, ma’am, of Yellowrock Securities.” He put out his hand. “Unless you prefer sir. Some sheriffs do. And we aim to be courteous.”

I slid my partner a look but he was focused on the sheriff. I had seen that look before, when he met Sylvia. Maybe things were worse than I thought. Maybe I should have tried to be a marriage counselor. Or romantic relationships counselor. Or cracked their heads together. Whatever.

Pansy narrowed her eyes but took Eli’s hand. “Ma’am is fine.”

To me she added, “We needed to question him.”

My partner might want to be nice. I didn’t, and I laughed. “He’d been dead for a hundred years, Pansy.” She had a girly name. No way was I not gonna use it. “He had nothing left to chat about, not without a master vamp to feed him and try to bring his brain back online. He was an old rogue killing machine.”

“You like killing rogues, don’t you? Makes you feel special?”

Eli dropped her hand fast and the interested look vanished. I just chuckled and sheathed my vamp-killer. “Don’t try to bait me, Pansy. I’m not that easy.”

“I don’t like your kind in my parish.”

My kind? Cherokee? More likely it was the fact that I was a supernat and had been outed slowly over the last few months. Or someone had told her personally. “Oh? So the next time someone tries to eat your high school basketball team, you want me to let the rogue kill kids? And announce to the world that it was your call?” I stepped to Eli, my back to her, an insult when delivered by skinwalkers, and finished over my shoulder with, “The Master of the City will be calling. Have a nice convo.”

“I won’t talk to his kind.”

I chuckled again. “Yeah? Kid,” I said to my other partner, “send this entire thing to the reporter from WGNO. That should make great late-night news, combined with us saving that kid from another rogue. An hour later, post it up on the website and anywhere else you want. When the sheriff apologizes, it can come down. Eli?”

“Got your six,” he muttered. And he sounded pissed. Good. We walked away.





CHAPTER 2


    That’s Pure Politics, Babe



The wind whipped in, bringing vamp scents, pepper and lily and papyrus, more acerbic scents like turmeric and sage. And human blood. And sex. Always that. Always together. I leaped over the railing—gunwale? side?—and came face-to-face with Leo Pellissier, the Master of the City of New Orleans, and the two minor-level vamps and three human-dinners-on-two-legs who were fanned out behind him. I glanced at each and drew in the air in little bursts of breath, taking in their faces and scents to remember and catalog later. Leo’s territory had grown and there were a lot of newbies I hadn’t gotten to know yet. Worse, we had fangheads visiting from distant U.S. cities who had sworn to Leo, back when an epidemic threatened the U.S. vamps. There were too many newbies to make anyone safe.

I opened my mouth to say hi to the chief suckhead but caught myself. “Pellissier,” I said, much more politely and only a beat too late.

“Enforcer,” Leo said.

“Sir,” Eli said to him. “You heard?”

“I did,” Leo said. “So did the lovely reporter. She has one of the new directional microphones developed by the military.”