Chapter Twenty-Two
EJ
His wall screen flickered to life, and Ojos warned him he was about to be invaded. He quickly put his implements away and saved and closed his working file.
On the oversized screen, timestamped only minutes past, before sunset, at six twenty-two p.m., a vampire waggled her fingers at the camera from the top of the building next door. She leaped. Her body flew across the alley, dropping fast. One story. Two. She reached out.
Like someone from the Mithran Cirque de la Lune, she grabbed the railing around Walter’s balcony, swung up both legs, and perched on the railing, toes and hands in a perfect balance.
She made a kissy face at the nearest camera.
Dropped onto the snow-covered balcony and pulled an amulet.
With it, she unlocked Walter’s door from outside.
Moments later, she had opened the inside steel shutters and slipped within. The shutters closed.
He checked the time on the video. She had entered Walter’s apartment thirty minutes before sunset.
She had been wearing a full suit of armor with helmet and a blackened face shield, but there was no denying who she was.
She never wore the queen’s colors, always her own, her armor a psychedelic nightmare of purples, electric blues, vibrant pinks, and shocking scarlets in abstract geometric shapes that gave most vampires fierce headaches when any light hit it.
She used the garish design to great effect in battle.
The multicolored armor didn’t do much for a witch’s vision or brain either. He sat on the couch and replayed the vid.
His door pinged, and he clicked it open. Angie and Villetti entered and rushed to his side. Angie, her hands in gloves and singing with healing amulets, pounced on his couch and scrooched up to him. “Play.”
To Villetti, she said, “That’s Cousin Wacko. Walter will have a meltdown.”
Villetti said, “Wacko? That’s considered pejorative in America, yes?”
EJ smiled slightly. “She herself picked that nickname and similar others. She likes it. She likes everything that grates on the nerves, insults the senses, and affronts current social conventions.”
“I don’t remember meeting a vampire cousin,” Villetti said.
EJ said. “Shiloh Everhart Stone, our mother’s niece, our cousin, and witch with minor power, was turned against her will at age fifteen.
After she came through the devoveo, it took a few years for her to become accustomed to all her powers—both vamp and witch.
About the time she had it all under control, she was bitten by multiple insane werewolves. ”
Villetti sat beside Angie, saying, “Witch, vampire, and werewolf?”
“She doesn’t shape-shift,” EJ said. “But the prions that create were-traits made her…” He paused as Shiloh jumped from the top story of the building next door.
“Made her crazy. Wacko,” Angie said, finishing his sentence, both of them excited, talking over each other, as if they repeated gossip come to life. “She reveled in it. Hotheaded. Violent.”
“How was she bitten by insane werewolves?” Villetti asked. “They Changed the same night the vampires did.”
“Not all of them. Shiloh needed money. She requested the queen give her a bounty-hunting mission,” EJ said, “to track down and kill a werewolf that was still insane after the Change. Unfortunately, Shiloh and her boyfriend found an entire pack that had been turned by an insane wolf-bitch-queen before the Change. Werewolves killed the boyfriend, tore Shiloh into pieces, and nearly killed her. The queen’s people found her. ”
“And now she works for the queen,” Angie said.
“When EJ was twelve, I think, a blood clan member of one of the vamps she beheaded, took Rachel, her primo, human lover, and best friend, and tortured her, draining her slowly to death. To save her, Shiloh challenged the kidnapper’s Blood Master to Sangre Duello. Not the kidnapper. Her master.”
“Rash,” Villetti said.
EJ took up the narrative. “In her twelfth battle, she killed the Blood Master, and was well on the way to beheading her new blood family, one by one, until the kidnapper finally released Rachel. She drank her way through the rest of her new people, leaving them drained on their dueling floor. She posted the entire thing live on vamp social media, and when she was done, still covered in blood, she told the world that a clan of vampires was theirs for the taking. She renounced them. By morning, they were all under the fang of one new master or another. Or dead.”
“But the glut of blood, on top of the were-bite, did something even more to her,” Angie said. “She’s called Le Vampire Sauvage—the wild vampire. To us she was always just Cousin Wacko.” She poked EJ with an elbow. “Play it again.”
“Le Vampire Sauvage,” EJ said as the brutal, feral woman leaped from the building next door again. “And that title says everything. I adore her, but Aunt Jane once called her batshit crazy. And from the vids I’ve seen over the years, it fits.”
“Vids?” Villetti asked. “And what does she do for the queen?”
“She’s technically part of the Everhart coven,” Angie said, her eyes glued to the wall screen, “and part of Yellowrock Clan, but she’s not the queen’s godchild, and her mother and our mother had different fathers.
She does wet-work jobs for the queen, sometimes alone, sometimes with Quint, Aunt Jane’s lady-in-waiting and armorer.
Quint is a certified psycho too. Shiloh and Koun sometimes work together.
Shiloh’s still a vampire bounty hunter, like Aunt Jane used to be.
” Her voice was almost reverent as she watched the vid play over and over.
“Last I heard Cousin Wacko and Walter had a falling-out.”
“Which begs the question, why did the queen send her here?” EJ asked.
“The Dark Queen never does anything by accident,” Angie said.
Ojos said, “The personal protocols on Walter’s apartment have been overridden. See views three and four for camera videos.”
View three was Walter’s main room. View four was Walter’s bedroom.
In low light, the décor in both areas was rich, ornate, with antique Persian rugs, tablecloths, long tufted couches with pale-colored throws everywhere.
It all showed as greens on the screen, but EJ thought it might all be reds and oranges and intense blues.
He realized he had never been into Walter’s rooms. Another indication they had not allowed the vampire into their lives.
On the video, the steel shutters opened and Shiloh slipped in.
She pulled off her helmet and tossed her straight dark red hair, her eyes dark, skin pale.
She walked around Walter’s apartment, touching things here and there.
Sniffing. Placed her helmet on the dining table.
Studied the stacks of papers, riffling through them.
She laughed, the sound coming through the speakers, just a little off, faintly derisive.
On the screen, Walter’s eyes opened.
Faster than the video could pick up, Shiloh moved. Not vamp-fast. Faster. EJ had never seen anyone or anything move so fast.
“Hello, lover boy,” she said, her voice so throaty it sounded as if she had smoked a case of cigars and guzzled a case of whiskey. And knowing this vampire witch, she may have.
“Shiloh,” Walter said calmly. “We have never been lovers. It saddens me that the queen chose to send you to assist me.”
“Drag your head out of your ass. Not everything is about you. Aunt Queenie sent me to assist my cousins. Not you. You were just the whipped cream on the milkshake.”
She sliced her wrist and held it to his mouth. “Drink. We have bad fangheads to track down and behead.”
“So bloodthirsty,” he murmured. Instead of licking the proffered treat, his fangs clicked down without his jaw unhinging, which wasn’t always easy. He sank them into her wrist.
“Bastard,” she hissed, jolting at the sudden pain.
“Cousin Wacko,” Villetti repeated the title, his tone concerned.
As he should be, EJ thought. How had she moved that fast? There hadn’t even been a blur on the screen.
Walter chuckled, wrapped his hands around her arm, and sucked.
“Le Vampire Sauvage is at your door,” Villetti said. “Perhaps we can ask why she’s here.”
EJ had been so deeply into his thoughts he hadn’t realized it.
He palmed three amulets. From the corner of his eye, he saw Angie reaching for hers.
Taking his cue from them, Villetti scooted away from Angie and freed his service weapon, checked his magazine for vamp-killer rounds, and placed it on a cushion, safety off.
“Close your eyes,” EJ said. He buzzed the door open and closed his eyes, one arm over his face.
A blinding flash and massive sound wave hit the room.
He tossed his amulets. Rolled away from the couch. Hit the floor. His attack amulets sang disharmony, clashing, piercing noises. Disorienting.
Angie rolled the other way, her own amulets flying.
One anti-flash-bang amulet discharged, a dis-illumination working that muted the dazzling light.
Another amulet silenced the deafening explosion.
One of Angie’s imbalance workings pinged like ricochets off steel, created to affect the inner ears of vamps.
From somewhere a final amulet sang like trees falling in high winds. He recognized Shiloh’s signature notes of a smoke bomb working sometimes called black fog. EJ hated that one. It took forever to clear a room afterward.
Shiloh said, “Sgrios draoidheachd.”
Instantly, all her own workings and their countermeasures were gone.
Even black fog. When his vision cleared, Cousin Wacko was sitting on his kitchen table, her legs in a full lotus, an apple from his refrigerator in her left hand.
She bit in, munched, and swallowed. “Hey there, kiddos. You’ve grown.
That’s your boyfriend, Angelina? He’s hot. I guess you don’t want to share.”
“I didn’t think Rachel was into guys,” Angie said, her tone cold.
“I don’t share,” Villetti said at the same time.