Cold Reign (Jane Yellowrock #11)(74)

Wind whooshed through the house, wet and cold and miserable. I stood in my bedroom, holding a king’s magical crown and a vamp’s head. Her hair was tangled around my fingers like a twisted wet brown tail. A cell phone began to buzz, some reggae bell tone, probably Derek calling my partner. I’d moved fast.

“Jane?”

I turned to see Gee, standing in the doorway, two long swords out to his sides. “I haven’t cleared the house,” I said, my voice too low, too rough.

His eyes fell to the wreath on my arm but he didn’t speak of it, instead asking the question that warmed more than my body. “Where is Alex?”

I knew the answer by the scents in the house, scents I hadn’t parsed until now. “In the weapons room. He’ll be holding a shotgun. If you open the door, try not to let him kill you. It would hurt him a lot.”

“Your concern for my welfare is touching.” Gee stepped closer, his eyes taking in my face, with the huge upper and lower cat fangs and my oddly shaped body. “Brandon and Brian are missing,” he said, and I remembered the incident at the docks when the Robere twins had left the scene precipitously. The outcry from the mayor’s office.

“You think they found Grégoire’s attackers and are—” I almost said dead too. But none of them were dead. They couldn’t be. I changed it to, “in custody of Le Batard and Louis le Jeune?”

“I don’t know. Find them before it’s too late.” He held out a fist, closed around something rounded. I didn’t really trust the big bird, but I held out my huge, big-knuckled paw. In it he dropped a small black stone, one with white inclusions in it. “It’s called an Apache tear. If you need me, you can crush it. I will come.”

I tucked the stone in my jacket pocket, far away from the Glob. The pocket was full of water. I had to get some water-wicking fighting armor. “I’ll get some guards from HQ to watch my house, but will you keep an eye out too?” I looked outside and added, “Keep it and my partners safe?”

“If you will keep le breloque safe.”

“I’ll do my best. But people are more important than magical implements. I’ll use it to save lives if necessary.”

Gee hesitated. Slowly he said, “We have a bargain, little goddess.”

Together, we went to the shelving that covered the weapons room and I tapped three times, waited, and tapped once. Tomorrow we’d have to change the knock code. Gee and I stood back as the shelves opened and Alex peeked out, his curls in high kink, his face ashen, a shotgun in a two-hand grip. His eyes swept the room, taking in the rev and its head. The head in my hand. He started laughing. It was mildly hysterical but at least it was laughter. “Kit,” Beast said, using my mouth.

Alex dropped the shotgun. Gee swiped it from the air before it hit the floor and discharged. Alex fell into my arms, pale and shaking, making the wreath clank against my weapons.

I said, “It’s okay. It’s okay.” I patted his shoulder awkwardly. “Gee is here to take care of you. He’ll see that the rev is taken away and Leo’s cleanup crew will take care of the rest. And I’ll get you some of Derek’s Tequila team.”

“Sure. Fine.” I heard him lick his lips, a dry, panicked sound. His heart was racing against my chest. “I gotta say. I may move into Ed’s room. It’s the safest place in the house.”

I grinned. “Take that up with Edmund.”

“Yeah. Right.” He stepped away. “Thanks for coming.”

I heard a vehicle door open as I touched his curls, stalked to the front door, and opened it. Nearly took a foot in my face where it was about to kick in the door. I caught the foot in midair—all those catlike reflexes—and held it high. Derek was balancing on his other foot, extended for the kick, able to stop momentum. It wasn’t something he’d been able to do back when he was just human. I wondered if he knew that. I grinned a feral cat-grin, all fangs, and said, “Awww. You were coming to save me.”

I dropped his boot and Derek shook his whole body. Battle energies flushed through his skin, unused and rancid to my expanded scent capabilities, his body full of vamp power and strength. His eyes rested on the head in my hands. “Alex?”

I let the snark flow out of me. “He’s okay. Thank you for coming.”

“Yeah. Well. I like the Kid.”

Meaning that if it had been me in trouble he wouldn’t have bothered. Check.

I shut the door in his face, went to the kitchen, and set the vamp head in the kitchen sink. Put the rev head beside it. Opened the fridge. Took out a Coke can and popped it with a single claw in the ring. I drained it, letting the sugar and the caffeine hit my system like a sweet, high-kicking brick. “Oh. Praise baby Jesus and dance on the head of a pin.” Before Alex could ask, I said, “One of my house mothers used to say that when she had her first sip of coffee in the mornings.” Alex had stopped laughing and now looked troubled. I lowered my head to him and asked, “What?”

“Am I gonna be in trouble with Leo?” He swept his arm to the blast damage on the wallboard, the blood splatter, the heads, and the bodies, one in my bedroom with a bloody mess and one in the living room with much less blood but a stink of decomp.

I chuckled and opened a Snickers bar. I tossed the entire bar in my oversized mouth and chewed, talking as I did. “Not a lick. You did good.”