Cold Reign (Jane Yellowrock #11)(80)

Bruiser stood to the side and Edmund dropped to one knee. I cleaned the vamp-killers on my linens, sheathed them, and stumbled off the bed, the head still dangling. I’d caught her head. I went to work on the knob. Which was really stuck.

“The door!” Edmund roared.

I took a two-hand grip, Adrianna’s head banging on the painted wood, blood splattering, and heaved the knob free. Closed the door. Bruiser rushed outside and brought in the female vamp he had drained. She was smoking hot. Like, literally. Bruiser carried her to the kitchen and dumped her onto the table.

“Where were you?” I whispered to Ed.

“At the Mithran Council Chambers dealing with problems there.” Edmund sliced his wrist and the fingers of the other hand with a small steel blade. He placed the wrist at Alex’s mouth, dripping in enough that Alex coughed weakly before swallowing. At the same time he stuck his fingers into Alex’s neck. Deep into his neck. Where Adrianna had cut him. I looked back at her body. She was wearing a golden knife at her waist, the blade aged, made of many-times-folded steel. Damascene steel, they had once called it. I had such a blade of my own, though mine was curved and delicate, while hers was straight and covered with blood. Alex’s blood.

“You’re dripping,” Edmund said distinctly, “blood and rainwater. Go away. Put that head somewhere. Check the injured humans. Clean up the mess. Make yourself useful.” His tone was commanding, the cutting edge of a master vampire to his minion. In a more conciliatory tone, he added, “Mistress.”

“Uh-huh.” I didn’t need the kind of smarmy obsequiousness that many masters demanded. I didn’t even want it. But the tone reminded me that Edmund had lost his clan and his mastership over it to one less than deserving. He had given up power on purpose and I didn’t know why. And he had attached himself to me, sworn loyalty to me and to my friends when he could have avoided it. He still had secrets, and secrets could be dangerous to me and to mine. Perhaps he was mine under false pretenses. But he had run through the French Quarter at vamp speed after dawn to help Alex. The only other vamp I knew who was capable of that was Leo. I shook my head, my black hair pulling at my wet leathers. We’d have to have a little talk about all this. Alex groaned; his lips, which had looked slightly blue, were pinker.

I looked at the head. I’d caught this one. Laughter burbled up inside me, inappropriate and hysterical. I swallowed it down.

I walked to the side porch and opened the empty cooler, dropped Adrianna’s head into it. It landed in the corner, faceup, fangs down on their little hinges. From the kitchen I brought a five-pound bag of ice and banged it on the porch floor until the cubes were loose. I dumped the cubes over Adrianna’s head, watery blood gathering in the bottom. I latched the chest and dragged it inside and to the laundry room, where I could keep an eye on it. The house hadn’t been cleaned by Leo’s custodial team, which meant there was old blood on the floor and bodies and heads lying where they had landed. I should put the heads together, like a collection of bookends or salt and pepper shakers or something. Instead, I put them all in the cooler and checked the humans. They were all alive and mostly coming around. Group concussion. Adrianna had been an old, powerful, fast-as-blue-blazes vamp to knock them all out before even one could draw and fire.

Bruiser was still in the kitchen with the captured vamp. She was no longer smoking and I figured he had allowed her to drink from his wrist to heal her. For the moment, she was holding his wrist and hand, gazing adoringly into his eyes, speaking with a sweet, feminine voice. She was a knockout: big boobs, tiny waist. Blond. I ground my fangs. I hated her.

I stomped back to my room and dragged Adrianna’s body and the other vamp’s body into the shower so they could drain. Cleanup crew should have been by. It seemed the Enforcer wasn’t at the top of the night’s to-do list. Stepping across puddles of goopy blood, I toured my house. Clearly Adrianna had fed well and deeply in the short time since she had escaped HQ, because the fresher blood was everywhere, tracked all over the dried, tacky blood. I was so not mopping this all up. I located another unofficial cell and called Scrappy.

“Lee Williams Watts,” she answered. “Mr. Pellissier’s personal assistant. How may I help you?”

“Jane Yellowrock,” I identified myself. “Alex called for a cleanup crew ages ago. They. Are. Not. Here. Send a cleanup team and some bloodsucker healers to my home, now. I want them here in thirty minutes even if they have to fly. Got it? There’s blood everywhere, a wounded security team, a re-dead rev in the living room, and two dead vamp bodies in the downstairs bathroom.”

“Just the two?” she asked, sounding perky.

I looked at the cell. Considering my history, I guessed it was a legit question. I put the cell back to my ear. “Just the two. And the revenant. But there’s a lot of blood. And I need two sets of leathers cleaned. They’re soaked. And I need a new mattress. It’s bloody too.”

“I’ll check the files for the brand and model and have a new mattress delivered by nightfall.” I heard soft tapping as she worked. “A cleanup team with an armor expert has been dispatched with an ETA of forty minutes to an hour, due to the weather. I’ll enter this number in as your new official cell phone and upload it with all pertinent data.” She paused. “And I’ll order you several more. According to my inventory, you’ve gone through a lot of them lately.”