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I led the way into Lincoln’s bedroo the hidden door Scrawny and Pickersgill took up position, Pickersgill at the side that opened, Scrawny on the hinged side, which I figured was set in hts inside And be sure to turn theht for aProbably

"On three," I said I rotatedarth Pulled the pin "Two" I reared back "Three" The door opened so fast I didn’t see itflew, ballistic, into the unlit rooust of air I covered my ears, just in case So did the others We could hear the detonation and the resultant screa, or think they are, give a piercing, eardru shriek, like the love child of a screech owl and a mountain lion on crystaltood stakes, I said, "Open" The door opened even faster than before, the lights blazing overhead, turning the noxious smoke inside into a thick cloud

I launchedmy nose A naked for forward and around and followed the rogue doith a belly stab,aorta Vamp blood sprayed out overfrom the splatters He was down I left the stake in his belly and pulled another I caught a flash of silver as a net was tossed over a fes snapped down Their pupils were smaller than a human’s at noon on a desert They were effectively blind, but their nostrils ide, sniffing, their breathing fast I stabbed, took a step, thrust, pulled a new stake, stepped, thrust

I’d taken down six, with eight stakes, when I realized that I should have counted the chained or thought to ask how many there were Crap Stupid, rookietwo vamps who came at ue These tere older than the others, their fangs longer, whiter And they could see They hesitated a fraction of a second, half a heartbeat One dodged in The other kicked out I blocked the first one Took the kick in the knee joint So popped The world tilted I went down

A net flashed over the one who’d kicked htered The other one fell on er, his need I was out of stakes Training and instinct took over I stabbed up with a vamp-killer, into the notch below his sternum And remembered midstrike that I wasn’t supposed to kill hi to avoid a heart-thrust with the silvered blade He grunted and slid fro, , even as I pulledout the s the rooid air As the smoke cleared, I could see It was all over

Naked va everywhere,profusely, their blood running across the stone floor to the central drain Scarlet had been sprayed over the ceiling, walls, and cell bars like some kind of postetting blood-sips and healing tongue-laving froh I’d been on the receiving end of healing laves and knew their benefits One scion was holding his back as if he’d taken a tuill, the two men in an embrace thata vairl was the one who had been weeping when I was here last Now, her needlelike fangs were buried in heran infusion of vamp blood from moht leg with both hands It had been kicked and slashed by va, thankfully, so not arterial, but still a lot of blood So on it Not until I shifted But all the scions were down, all were alive, andfed Dacy’s blood I could make out a pulse beneath her ear, weak and too fast She sed I blew out a laugh and re Crap This is bad Good for the vamps But bad for--

"Jane! The front door is open" Grizzard stuck his head into the scion lair

Dacy looked around, counting "One got out"

"Thoill’s voice, and I couldn’t ih the cold war, the Cuban missile crisis, and the death of President Kennedy, as well as all the post 9-11 stuff

I really didn’t want to know, but I asked anyway "What’s so bad about Thoill said, "He was Lincoln’s primo blood-servant until he was injured in the line of duty and Linc brought him over He’s been sane for three years, but heuh--"

"He’s a Naturaleza," Dacy stated tonelessly "We didn’t know until he came out of devoveo"

"Well, crap," I whispered The Naturaleza believed that they had a right to hunt and kill humans, just because they were at the top of the food chain They ay , intelligent, sociopathic killers, often with resources like safe houses and bank accounts their masters didn’t know about If Shaddock had known, Thomas would never have been turned He would have been allowed to die a normal human death, or been put down If he was sane, and hadn’t yet killed a huue, therefore he wasn’t mine to hunt until I was asked, and I wasn’t sure as supposed to hunt hith of leather off a thigh strap and boundwith the pain, but the bleeding slowed I rolled to one hip, pulled

"Things did not go well," he said The MOC was prescient Maybe he read tea leaves Or blood stains in the bottolass Or maybe he had access to the security system here at Shaddock Central He had access to the cameras in all his Louisiana vamps’ clan homes, so why not here as well?

"No They didn’t" I considered Leo Yeah The MOC may not know much about coe and expertise he wanted S "They had a sane vaot free"

Leo breathed a string of French curse words into the cell, then broke off right in the hs they do when they have you over a barrel, a gotcha laugh that made my skin want to crawl into a hole and curl protectively around itself "It is ," he said, "that you areit the way he did Rogue Hunter, ht meant that I was in trouble If I said no, then I had lied to the va to a relationship with him Whichand sex went hand in hand Or fang in vein Leo had tried to kill h times while he was seriously whacko for ue Crap A dozen possible responses flashed through my mind I settled on, "Notofficially"

"Notofficially," he repeated, as if tasting the words "This is correct I would advise you to choose your words withyou are not" I took a breath I had dodged a bullet "Yet," he added Ooookay Maybe not so er hadn’t been squeezed "For now, I confer upon you the temporary entitlement to pursue and dispatch this Mithran who holds the Vaard Allow me to speak with the sheriff"

Yep Ol’ Leo had access to the security ca all Frenchy on hed into the cell, and said, "I will meet your usual terue, and will be ht about that for a long h he couldn’t see it Except in the cameras I looked up at one and said, "Thirty And you pay for any and all research and hazard pay for any backup, assuhed, a low caress of sound that brought a flush of heat to my face even from hundreds of miles away "Your terms are acceptable, my Enforcer" The endearment flowed over me like a caress Vamps, the really old ones, can do that--affect the pleasure centers of the brains with just their voices Dang it "Co," he added

Yep Leo was in Shaddock’s syste an honest acknowledget his tongue on ht the pain in it ha to the surface

I called Grizzard over and handed hined carte blanche to execute a thinking killingtold to stand down and let me do my job, all under the auspices of a clause under the Vaal at worst My only other choice was to let hi spree and allow the sheriff’s men to try and take hiain Gothe accelerator and brake withof ice strapped onthe speakerphone, I otiated the curves, the first to Reach Fortunately Leo was paying for his services "Jane Yellowrock," he answered, "e you for today?"