Chapter Eight #3
His face cold as stone, Uncle Rick went straight to Villetti, who stood when Rick entered.
They shook hands briefly, and Uncle Rick said, “Villetti. Good to see you. With your approval, I’ll provide the necessary paperwork to transfer the two vampires in the house and the beheaded one on the lawn, to PsyLED, and to the queen’s lockup.
Our people can share evidence. If we can prove they injured or killed a human, they’ll remain in prison. ”
“I’m amenable to that,” Villetti said. “Chattanooga has insufficient detention chambers for paranormals.”
“Understood,” Rick said. “I suggest we wait until daylight and transport them in dead-boxes. The paperwork should be here by then and we can transport them safely.”
Vampires who committed violent crimes against humans weren’t offered trial.
They were carried away in light-proof coffins, sometimes called dead boxes, transported to the queen’s residence, bled and read by the queen’s people and, if found guilty, were put away.
The queen had the only vamp-secure prison in the U.S.
The bad guys never saw the dark of night again.
Uncle Rick turned his eyes to them. “Everhart-Truebloods. No. Make that Walter. You’ll update me fully when I’m done here.” That was an order, and not a happy one. “For now, if Detective Villetti has no more questions, you may go home.” He put an odd emphasis on the last four words.
“Get out of here,” Villetti said, sounding tired.
“I’ll drive,” Walter said, making it an order.
So many orders.
Angie picked up her staff and her cloak. Her right hand looked nearly healed, and her left hand looked less dead, though EJ noticed she didn’t grip the staff or hold the cloak with it.
EJ reached for the castanets and headsets.
“What are you doing with those?” LaFleur demanded. It was the cop asking now, not their Uncle Rick.
“Palillos,” EJ said. “Battle castanets. Headsets. Mine.”
“I know what they are,” LaFleur said. “Why are they here?”
“They slow down a demon until the demon can be collected. Sir.”
Uncle Ricky-Bo looked peeved. “Yes. Collected. As in collected in a containment vessel. Where is the vessel?” His last words were clipped and annoyed.
“We don’t have one, sir.”
Villetti said, “Angie collected the demon into an interdimensional space in her staff.”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Uncle Rick said, shaking his head. “Y’all are going to be the death of me.”
For some reason, Villetti found that amusing. Maybe because that was the same phrase he used when he saw them too.
“Villetti, photograph and catalog all the items. When he’s done, take your toys and get outta here,” Rick said, “before I change my mind and haul you and your gear to PsyLED.”
Angie
I climbed into the car, turning my head to the lights across the street as EJ initiated a obfuscation working.
Hidden in magic, he took off his bloody clothes and redressed, standing in the freezing cold as if unbothered by the temperature.
He had extra clothing in a vacuum-packed baggie in the glove box.
Who kept vacuum-packed clothes in their car? Apparently, my baby brother.
Walter drove. The seats were heated. I debated saying what was on my mind, staring at the nighttime city, massaging my left hand.
Casually Walter asked, “Where am I driving?”
EJ moved uneasily in the passenger seat, as if he’d been caught doing something wrong. I smiled into Walter’s rearview mirror, totally unrepentant. “We’re that obvious?”
Walter said, “LaFleur knew it too, and must have approved. The wording he used was not a law enforcement command. He said, ‘You may go home.’ Not ‘You will go home and stay there.’ I assume he knew you had another stop to make, and I assumed you would take the opportunity to do ‘a little digging,’ as you often say. Since the queen has not called to order you home and back into Pecan Protocol, your bodyguard will be driving you, and keeping you out of trouble. Should that be possible.” His last words were acerbic.
EJ said. “Cennet A. Campbell-Baines, aka Chancy Bigelow, gave us a false name and involved us with internal vampire politics. We have a legal responsibility to seek her out.”
“Address,” Walter requested.
EJ touched the activation button on the system and spoke the address.
The route appeared on the screen, a home on Lookout Mountain, on West Watkins Street, in a high-priced neighborhood that was part of the city’s auto-grid.
Walter took a right, heading into the hills, and initiated auto-drive.
Chattanooga had varying elevations, from six hundred feet above sea level to around two thousand feet.
We would be climbing and, while Walter would never consider auto-drive during rush hour, it was fine in the middle of the night.
Settling deeper into the heated back seat, I asked, “What did you find at Londyn’s house? That thing you took when you got us Cokes.”
Walter swiveled his seat around, locked it in the new position, and held out his hand. On his palm was a small vial of glowing purple liquid. “It was in the refrigerator. An empty one was in the garbage can. I can see the magic in it, so it’s…a great deal of magic.”
EJ said softly, “Handle that very gingerly, Walter. I saw things like that in the war.” He tilted his head, listening to the liquid’s magic.
“If it’s what I think it is, it’s a potent working created by the Rus witches.
Intel said it allowed a drinker to be temporarily possessed by a demon and yet control it for a short period of time.
A very short period of time. Long enough to use the EEB’s power, if you’re willing to pay the price of possession.
In the war, the time limit was said to be about ten minutes before the demon took over and the possessed had to be shot so the demon could be re-collected.
Our side got the working. The testing was suspended. ”
“Interesting,” Walter said.
I had never heard of an elixir to control EEBs. Everharts didn’t make workings contained in fluids—elixirs. Not that we couldn’t. We just didn’t. The empty bottle in the garbage can suggested that someone had used the elixir, like the possessed muscle-bound guy in the hallway.
Moving gingerly, Walter wrapped the empty bottle and the full one in a padded cloth and tucked them into a pocket.
“Do you believe that Chancy/Cennet was involved with Londyn?” I asked.
“Unknown,” Walter said. “It’s best not to speculate, which is why the captive vampires will be sent to the queen’s people for a bleed and read.”
EJ rearranged his seat and stretched out his legs as far as he could. He paused in the motion. Softly he said to Walter, “Londyn tried to kill…one of us. We’ve assumed it was me. What if it was you?”
“With a demon bomb, something not seen since the war,” I said.
“Is she dead?” EJ asked.
“Londyn?” Walter asked, crossing his feet at the ankle.
“It grieves me to say, but your lady friend did not survive her encounter with her attackers. But the queen’s scions will read the vampire whose fingers you broke in the door.
Good move, by the way. We will know a great deal tomorrow.
Sooner, if the vampire is old enough to be awake in the day.
However.” He tilted his head back and forth, considering.
“We should have received more details from Ojos by now. Check your unicom and brief me on your lying client.”
EJ slapped open his unicom and the system began reading aloud.
It was the newest security update of the information collected and collated on Chancy/Cennet.
The trip into the hills lasted long enough to hear about schooling, marriage, children, divorce, and one new bit of information added two minutes ago by Alex Younger.
Chancy had an official political alliance with my ex-husband. Legal contract and all.
Walter touched his unicom system. Alex Younger answered.
In a voice as frozen as the weather outside the vehicle, Walter said, “Explain the reason why I was not immediately informed of the client’s contract with Angelina’s ex-husband.
I am the children’s bodyguard. I cannot protect them from unknowns. ”
“Keep your pants on, dude,” Alex said. “You had the info, like, ten seconds after I found it. I’m not a spring chicken anymore. All-nighters are hard on a guy my age.”
“You are scarcely forty,” Walter spat, his voice far less liquid Jamaican and more precise British, “and you dined on vampire blood often enough as a teenager to remain young and spry. You could stay awake for days with few ill effects.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Flatter me. I like it. The information was buried. The contract wasn’t signed in Chattanooga, but in New York, and the paperwork was filed there, under the auspices of the MOC of New York, Julietta Ravensport, a vampire who’s been problematic, politically speaking, and who also happens to be part of the contract.
I’m digging into why the contract was signed there and who all the signees are, and what tangled relationships they have with Karson Marrazzo. ”
I was buzzing all over, as my gift was trying to activate but couldn’t because of the headache. Which chose this moment to thud like a drum.
“I’m pulling dossiers,” Alex said, “but if New York is involved with this, you need to be careful.”
“Always,” EJ said, “but in this specific situation, why?”
Outside, sleet slashed across the car and faded just as fast.
“In the last year of the war, Julietta Ravensport challenged Jane Yellowrock, as head of Clan Yellowrock, to Sangre Duello,” Alex said.
“Yeah?” EJ said. “So?”
I drew the political and familial conclusions, but EJ wouldn’t.
He’d been a teenager when he volunteered for Section Seven service.
I explained, “If she had challenged the queen, Ravensport would have had to battle through the chain of command and defeat all the people in line before her. Instead she challenged the head of Clan Yellowrock.”