Knickknacks met my eyes everywhere I looked, kitsch down the ages, salt and pepper shakers, boats in bottles, and hundreds of dolls, most of them the collector's porcelain type about eighteen inches tall, wearing hoop skirts or evening gowns, with real hair and perfect painted faces. And fangs. Collector's dolls with fangs. I just shook my head.

There were Tiffany lamps, ta.s.sels, rocking chairs, piles of silk pillows, fanged stuffed animals, and everything had price tags hanging on them. Silandre's Saloon had been converted into Silandre's Shoppe. The smells were nearly overwhelming: scented candles, dried herbs, potpourri, popcorn, vodka, and blood. The dried herbs were mixed vamp; the blood was human. I tensed, hearing a gurgle from ahead in the depths of the shop. No one was screaming, no one was fighting; whatever was happening was obscured and muted by all the stuff in the building.

The room was maybe eighteen feet wide-the width of the house-with narrow windows down each side in rows like in a church. From what I could see, which wasn't much, the building was at least sixty feet long. Shotgun style for real. From somewhere ahead, a phone rang with an old-fashioned, tinny sound. The gurgling got louder and took on a gasping rasp.

I pulled two ash stakes and moved down the aisles between all the stuff. I could immobilize with ash, keeping the vamp alive for questioning. Or whatever. Or I used to be able to do that, before vamps changed into the things we'd fought in the trees. And me holding only ash. Rethinking, I replaced the stakes with vamp-killers. With Eli covering my back, I stepped into the second room. This room was painted in the same garish pink as the trim on the house and it was full of handmade quilts hanging everywhere, in every kind of fabric: silks, satins, wools, even flannel, many in what were probably traditional patterns, others in modern scenic patterns-whales and dolphins cavorted next to angels and trees of life and pentagrams. This room was short, with an old-fashioned fridge and stove in one corner and a closed door in the other marked RESTROOM, in hot pink, of course.

The gurgler just ahead started to moan, a rhythmic, pained sound, and the scent of human fear added to the stench riding over the perfumed air. My cell buzzed. I ignored it and sped ahead, into the last room. I took in the details fast.

It was lit with candles on every surface and was decorated in white and pink, with a Victorian four-poster in the middle of the floor s.p.a.ce. The linens were thrown back and mussed, as if it had been used recently, but the bed was empty. There were silk and ta.s.seled ottomans and dainty chairs and more dolls on shelves. The windows were covered with modern, sunlight-blocking shutters, but the back door was open, letting in the night and the sound of the Mississippi skirling past. Against the back wall of the feminine bedroom, beside the propped door, two humans stood, each with black bags over their heads, hands behind their backs, as if they were lined up for a firing squad. Judging by the clothes and stature, the one on the left was Esmee.

Four vamps stood at parade rest, two on either side of the humans, all male, wearing powdered wigs and those weird clothes they wore way back when, with stockings and big buckles on platform shoes, and padded shorts. Vamped out, with blacker-than-black eyes and fangs just a bit over an inch long, which identified them as young vamps, easy to kill.

The details merged into a deadly whole. I was already moving as I took in the final particulars and b.l.o.o.d.y minutiae.

On a chaise longue lay a female vamp wearing a scarlet dress the exact shade of her hair and of the blood that smeared her red lips. In her lap was a human, blood drunk, his head lolling, his camo fatigues open to the waist, exposing his hairy belly and unshaven neck and face. Blood poured in a steady stream from his neck, which had to be deliberate. Vamp saliva was both healing and a constrictor, causing blood vessels to close and skin to tighten, stopping bleeding almost as soon as a vamp withdrew her fangs. The human was breathing, but his pulse, visible from the way his head and neck were extended, was too rapid, and he was pale. She had taken too much, too fast. The vamp's head snapped up and she met my gaze.

As my arm swung back, the blade catching the candlelight, I recognized Silandre from her photo, her hair the color of a sunset before a storm, eyes the blue of hyacinths. In her photograph, her skin had been the white of a corpse, blue veins visible beneath its pale surface, but was now pink and flushed. She had been drinking her fill. Whatever she had been before and whether she was on Hieronymus' list or not, Silandre was now a Naturaleza. She hissed at me like a cat, and I realized she was also totally nutso. c.r.a.p. The crazy ones were always the worst.

I slashed forward.

In one of those faster-than-possible moves, Silandre tossed the body at me. Into the path of my blade. I spun, dodging the flying human. Silandre rose to her feet, eyes vamped out, her lips curling in a snarl, revealing b.l.o.o.d.y, two-inch fangs. Her bodyguards attacked. Knowing I would be too slow, I continued my spin, blades out to my sides. As we all moved, Eli shot, the clatter of his weapon ripping into the air. Time slowed and shifted, and I saw the bodies of the guards to my left fall. The ones on my right reached me, slipping past my knives. Instinct made me leap to the side and down, rolling, scissoring my legs. I cut behind the knees of both bodyguards and rolled again. The gun clattered. Herbal-scented blood splattered me. Both vamps fell. Heads mostly gone from the automatic fire, hamstrings severed. I pivoted to my feet.

A flash of scarlet caught my eye at the open door. Silandre fleeing. Eli followed her while I bent over the human on the floor. He was still breathing. I raced to the back wall, pulled the black bag off Esmee's head, and ran a short blade through her bonds. Her arms fell limply to her sides and she dropped to her knees. Just as the vamps on the floor started to struggle.

"Stay put!" I shouted to Esmee, my own voice lost beneath the roar in my ears. I dropped my b.l.o.o.d.y knives on the bed and pulled an eighteen-inch blade, effectively a short sword. Picking the vamp who seemed the most lively, I shoved him flat on the floor with my booted foot. Raised the vamp-killer over my head and brought it down. Hard. It's a lot more difficult to behead someone with a sword than most people think. Sometimes it's more like chopping wood with a dull steak knife. It was a lucky strike, because his head rolled cleanly away, gallons of fresh blood gouting from the stump, a lot more than usual in vamp kills.

Rogue vamps, Naturaleza vamps, uncured vamps still in the devoveo, and crazy vamps murder humans. I get paid to kill them for it. So I've become somewhat of an expert at head lopping.

I stepped across his body to the next one, prepared to repeat the measure. The vamp struggled on the floor and got one arm beneath him, pushing to rise. On the vamp's chest were a line of holes; the stink of silver and vamp blood reached me. Eli had used silver rounds and, just like the vamps in the woods earlier, the silver hadn't stopped the vamps any better than lead.

My partner stepped back inside and shouted, "She's gone. Down the scaffolding to the water." Which was not what I wanted to hear.

I beheaded the second vamp and moved to the others as vamp blood gushed across the floor in spreading pools, staining the white rugs. The third vamp didn't want to die, and despite the silver in his blood, he grabbed the handle of the sword as I brought it down. I didn't have to be able to hear to know he was growling. His fangs slashed at my ankle, and I kicked forward, breaking a fang with a snap that reverberated up my leg, into my spine. Fangs were hard. When his head snapped back, I struck down and again. And again. Until he was in two parts. The fourth vamp was fully awake by then and I realized I had made a crucial mistake. He came at me.

CHAPTER 7.

Sheet Creases on His Left Cheek I raised the b.l.o.o.d.y, silvered vamp-killer. Before I could bring it down, Eli emptied his gun into the vamp's chest. Which disintegrated like a watermelon at a shooting demonstration. It was easy work thereafter to pin him to the floor with my blade. I stood over the vamp corpse, breathing heavily. He wasn't moving and he might even be true-dead, but I wasn't betting on it.

Eli touched my shoulder to get my attention and motioned to the vamp, then tapped his own neck with the edge of his hand, asking me why I hadn't beheaded him. We were still deaf from the weapon fire and I mouthed, Prisoner. To question. Eli frowned as if he didn't think that was such a good idea and started checking over the injured humans, freeing the last one. Actually, I didn't think it was a good idea either, but I needed info on the Naturaleza, and one of Silandre's goons might give it to me.

While Eli made sure Esmee was okay and led her to the doorway of the room, I texted Big H's primo for three things: a silver vamp cage, and to send a cleanup crew to the house and another one to the woods where we had left the other body. Vamps didn't want medical professionals to have access to vamp bodies, blood, or genetic material. Until recently, even Homeland Security hadn't gotten hold of a true-dead vamp corpse, but on my last visit to Natchez, we had left so many lying around that I figured at least one vamp had gone missing and into their clutches. Rick had been on scene so it stood to reason that some giddy government forensic anthropologists and pathologists had carved one up. Not that I had mentioned that to Leo yet. I was getting smarter. I also texted the Kid to tell him we had Esmee and that she was unhurt.

Esmee tapped my arm and I jumped. I had gotten so busy texting that I'd forgotten to keep aware of my surroundings. Not smart. I was getting too dependent on Eli for backup. I put my phone away and led the tiny older woman outside. It was testament to the political power of the vamps Under the Hill-or to Bruiser and Leo's helpful interference-that no sirens had sounded despite the gunfire. I put her in the backseat of the SUV, where she sat, silent, staring down at her wrists. Though my ears were still ringing and hers had to be even worse, I tapped her wrist above where it had been abraded by the rope that had bound her.

Esmee shook her head and lifted it, meeting my eyes. I half read her lips when she said, "I nearly got those boys killed."

I knew about guilt. I knew about guilt that was richly deserved and guilt that was misplaced, and this guilt fell into both categories. "Miss Esmee, what you three did was utterly crazy. You three, Eli, and I could have died tonight because of your ill-conceived and ill-thought-out vamp-hunting plan. But unless you held a gun to their heads and forced them to dress in camouflage, loaded their guns against their wills, and then drove them here under threat of death, you are not ultimately responsible for the actions or the current state of health of two grown men."

"I should have known better." She stroked her wrist and flinched at a tender place. "I never saw a vampire move so fast. I didn't know they could do that. I thought we'd just bust in and shoot 'em and rescue some of the missing humans. Case closed. But there weren't any humans there. The men vampires reached out and took our guns like we were babies. Just plucked them away." She shook her head, her eyes swimming with tears. "We were tied up so fast. And we could hear Bubba crying." She blotted her cheek. "Is he going to die?"

I looked at Eli coming through the door, Bubba's arm around his shoulders, the anemic man being half carried. I got out and watched as Buddy and Eli helped the injured man into the backseat. "I think he'll live," I said, closing the door. "He probably needs a transfusion."

"I ain't gonna take no blood," Bubba said, his lips blue and his head lolling. "I might get some gay man's blood and turn into an abominable and go to h.e.l.l."

Eli's brows went up and I turned so no one could see my grin. "I think he means an abomination, and I also think he thinks being gay is contagious."

"Our preacher says it can be spread just like any other disease," Buddy said.

"Your preacher a doctor?" Eli asked, and started the engine, leaving it running with the heater on full. "No. Your preacher's an idiot."

"No blood," Bubba said.

"And you're an idiot too. But have it your way." Eli went around to the back of the SUV and tossed me a bag. I caught it, surprised at the weight. "Silver restraints for your captive."

I grinned and went through the house to the b.l.o.o.d.y bedroom in back. I might be becoming too dependent on him, but it was great to have a partner who could read my mind. The room was splattered with vamp blood, the once-white carpet saturated, as were the walls, the bedspread, and the kitsch for sale.

My vamp captive was unmoving. He should be true-dead. He didn't have much left where his chest used to be, and silver to a vamp's heart should have killed him. Even if his maker had been a thousand-year-old master and poured his powerful blood into the vamp's mouth the instant he fell, the silver should have killed him. That much silver and that much blood and tissue loss should have killed any vamp of any age, and the only way he should have survived was if he was buried with the commingled blood of all the nearby clans. Or just buried, and maybe-not likely, but maybe-he might rise three days later as a revenant. I'd never had to kill a revenant, but it was reputed to be messy, b.l.o.o.d.y work. Revenants and young, uncured vamps were where the myth of zombies came from. I remembered the way the vamps had moved in the dark, under the trees. Though the vamp should be dead, as I stood over him I could actually see the tissue of his chest grow out, healing. Even revenants didn't heal like that. I was getting a bad feeling about all this.

I dumped Eli's bag of supplies onto the bed and discovered silver handcuffs with silver spikes on the inside and outside. Ankle cuffs made the same way. A neck cuff was included, and maybe it was being surrounded by the remembrances of slavery in this lovely little town, but the collar reminded me of the collars slaves used to wear. This one was silver and spiked, and a metal handle came out of the side to better control the captive.

Shoving away my disgust, I clapped the restraints on the vamp, wrapping Eli's silver chain through the ankles and wrists, and then pulled tight so the vamp was curled up and fastened in the fetal position. Last, in spite of my revulsion, I applied the handled neck collar, because if he came to on the ride home, that could be deadly. I removed my vamp-killer from his shoulder, cleaned all three blades on the bedspread, and sheathed them.

In the bathroom, I ripped down the shower curtain-pink, of course-and lay it in the doorway. Then I used the collar handle to roll the vamp in the plastic. With the mess and gore contained, I dragged him across the room, through the house and outside, where Eli and I manhandled him (vamp-handled him? I wondered grimly) into the back of the SUV, and got in the front seat. Eli swung the SUV into a five-point turn and gunned the vehicle back up the bluff as we started home.

"Hey. What about our ATV?" Buddy asked.

"I'll see you get home. You can get your ATV when you can both walk under your own power." Eli added, "Make sure your brother drinks a lot of fluids, and none of it beer or shine or wine or malt liquor or regular liquor. Get him some Gatorade. Feed him liver for the next three months or so."

One of the men gagged but no one replied, and the ride to the boys' single-wide trailer was made in silence except for monosyllabic directions. We were met by four pit bulls chained to trees in the bare-dirt front yard. A rusted red pickup truck was up on blocks near the front door, a disused chicken coop was to the left of the trailer, and a patch of what looked suspiciously like marijuana and turnip greens growing together was to the right. Everything was lit like the noonday sun by two security lights, bright enough to see that the front door was open and the trailer was missing several windows, the holes blocked by grocery bags and duct tape. Eli helped the men inside, and Esmee and I waited in the safety of the SUV.

When Eli got back in, he said, "Those two boys are one match away from a bonfire or an explosion. They're living on borrowed time."

"How so?" Esmee asked.

But Eli just shook his head and spun the wheel into the night. I caught a whiff of something like ether and I swiveled my head back to the trailer. Ether was often used to make methamphetamines. Great. Esmee was friends with idiots who aspired to be drug lords.

"Where do you want to keep our fanghead guest?" Eli asked.

"Big H should be sending a silver vamp cage to Esmee's." Even as I said the words, a car pulled up beside us and a vamp rolled down the pa.s.senger's window, flashing us some fang and waving before easing in behind us to follow us back to the B and B. Eli laughed, a breathy sound, part amazement, part disbelief, and shook his head.

We were met back at the house by a stranger standing on the front porch. "Oh, dear," Esmee breathed when she caught sight of him in the headlights.

"Your son?" I asked.

"Yes. That tattletale Jameson must have called him." Her tone didn't portend good things for the chef-c.u.m-bodyguard.

She opened the door and slid to the ground the instant the SUV rocked to a halt. I figured she would slink up to him and take a tongue lashing. Instead she squared her shoulders and stormed up to the man. "Gordon. You will mind your manners. If you open your mouth for so much as one word of condemnation or one of your legal-based tongue lashings, I will rewrite my will and leave everything to Jane Yellowrock." She stormed past him and inside, slamming the door.

"Oh, c.r.a.p," I said. Eli burst out laughing. I followed Esmee to the front door and the steely-eyed man there. Before he could open his mouth and take out his ire on me, I said, "I don't want her money. I don't want your money. I am not responsible for her chasing out after the vamps. She went with-"

"Her vulgar druggie friends."

"Yes. And they won't be taking her anywhere anytime soon."

Gordon, a fair-haired, blue-eyed man wearing a dress shirt and dress pants under a tailored wool jacket, lifted his chin. "And why might that be?"

"Because by his symptoms," Eli said, coming up behind me, "one lost about half his blood supply, and he won't feel up to hunting anytime soon. Their transportation is still parked Under the Hill. And we have the boys' weapons." Instead of going to the hatch, which would have exposed the b.l.o.o.d.y pink shower curtain to the world, he opened the back pa.s.senger's door and reached behind the seat to lift three shotguns, broken open so they wouldn't fire, and four handguns, all of their magazines missing. "From the quality, I a.s.sume that these are your mother's?" He handed over a shotgun, a rifle, and two handguns to Esmee's son.

"Good lord. She's gone bonkers."

"No," I said. "She's just bored. When's the last time you took her shooting or fishing or shopping?" I made it more of an accusation than a question, and followed it up with a left hook. "Big, fancy lawyer hands off his mother to the help and then wonders why she acts out? Spend some time with her other than holidays, and maybe she'll stop." I grabbed the vamp med kit that had somehow survived the h.e.l.lish night and set it inside the house door.

"I'm not a practicing lawyer," Gordon said. "I'm a judge."

"That's what you heard out of what I just said?"

Behind me, I could hear Eli's soft laughter. "Still," he said. "The lady has a point."

"Humph," I said, and thought, Lady? Me? I went back outside and met the vamps just getting out of the car that had followed us. I waved them back into their older-model Caddy, saying, "In back, in the garage. Eli, will you bring the car around?" Gordon stood on the front porch, looking nonplussed. I had the feeling he wasn't used to being ignored in his mother's home. I also had the feeling that he would have a lot to say about a vamp being kept caged in the garage, so I wasn't going to tell him.

In minutes we were in the garage, the delivery vamps standing back, watching, as we worked to a.s.semble the silver cage, which was bigger than the ones I'd seen in Leo's city, bigger and woven with silver-tipped barbed wire. Ingenious and horrific, and the pointy bits had traces of dried blood on them that I could smell. I removed the silver chains in which I'd bound the injured vamp, and Eli tossed him inside. I locked the cage shut.

"He true-dead, he is," one vamp said, sounding very Cajun. He was wearing a searing-bright lime green shirt, bright enough to reflect the moon. Big H's vamps were nothing like Leo's, style-wise. "Why you cage him?"

"No one wit'stand dat much silver," the other one said, tucking his long blond hair back behind both ears. "Him come back rev'nat, two, tree day from now, you don' take his head."

"That's the usual way," I agreed. "But this fanghe- vamp is coming back alive. Or undead. Whatever. He's healing." I pointed to the fresh flesh on his ribs. "Half an hour ago, he didn't have ribs. Now he has skin over a rib cage and organs inside it."

The vamps leaned in and studied the prisoner. "Him smell wrong, he do," Blondie said.

"Stink, he do," Limey said. "Like smell of poison and rot in ground and blood magic. Like dem new vamps brought by dat de Allyon, what come and try to take over Hieronymus' territory."

"Different kind vamps, dey was," Blondie said.

"Yeah," I said. "About those different kinds of vamp. Did de Allyon actually come to Natchez himself, or did he send an intermediary?"

"Hem come," Limey said, sounding disgusted.

Blondie snorted. "Hieronymus be sick wit dat vamp plague, or de Allyon not take over."

"Hem and he humans go first to Hieronymus, invade his sleeping lair, place what should be secret but he know it," Limey said, making sure I understood that it had been an inside job. "De Allyon come out in charge, big man, act like king wit he queens on he arms."

"Den dey tell us Fame Vexatum is ended and humans is prey again, to take and drain and kill. Our priest say no, and de Allyon kill him."

My ears perked up. Priest? But before I could ask, they went on, and because they were so chatty, I didn't want to derail them with my curiosity.

"We call Leo Pellissier in New Orleans for help, we did," Limey said. "And we wait."

I opened my mouth and closed it fast. More hinky. Either the disloyal vamps in Leo's camp hid the call for help or . . . or Leo refused it.

"De Allyon, hem bring twenty Naturaleza wit him," Blondie said. "Twenty is like forty of us. Maybe sixty. Dey kill . . . Dey kill seventeen of us dat first day, true-dead."

"And when Leo not answer, we go into hiding." Limey spat to the side to show his disgust. It landed on the garage floor with a soft splat of loathing. "Politics is what dat was. Hem put politics before us."

"How soon after de Allyon got here did you start noticing the difference in vamps?"

Blondie made a little chuffing sound, much like Beast might make, part laughter, part loathing. "Dem Naturaleza is faster, stronger than us. But they start to crawling like bugs, only later, after she join him."

"She?"

Limey elbowed him. "Enough. I hear when Hieronymus tell her to call Clark. He tell her what she need to know."

"Mmmm. You ask Clark," Blondie said to me, "about dese vamps what scuttle like bugs and stink of dead earth."

I had gotten a lot more from the vamps than I had expected, so I didn't protest. b.u.mping the silvered cage with a toe, I said, "Smell or not, I'm hoping he'll tell me what I need to know." I frowned grimly and gestured the vamps out of Esmee's garage. As they drove off, Eli and I headed to the kitchen, following the smell of steak. I wanted to sink my teeth into a thick juicy, b.l.o.o.d.y, rare one. I spotted Jameson in the back entry and heard him murmur as I pa.s.sed, "Thank you, Miss Jane, for bringing her back."

"Welcome, Jammie. Do I smell steak?"

"I have just now removed it from the grill, rare and cold in the center. And I promise not to spoil it with sauteed mushrooms or salad."

"You're a good man."

Jameson held out robes, one to Eli, one to me, thick white, soft ones. "If you'll give me your b.l.o.o.d.y leathers, I'll see to it that they are properly cleaned."

My brows went up. "Yeah? Cool." I could get used to this. "No chemicals," I warned, sliding out of the crusty jacket. "Not even mink oil. Vamps can smell it. I usually just rinse it off and wipe it down. The blood residue confuses future vamps and gives me an edge." Eli looked at me curiously. "What?" I said.

He shook his head, dropped his jacket, and pulled down his pants zipper. I quickly faced away and pulled the robe over my shoulders before dropping my own leather pants. "The things you say," Eli said, "and the things you think about. That's all."

I had no idea what he was talking about, but I didn't really care either. I smelled steak and my stomach rumbled. Beast purred. Food.

After I finished a hunk of beef worthy of a king, I showered off, pulled on warm clothes, and dialed Clark. He answered with a "Miss Yellowrock?"

"Got it in one. Is it true that you called Leo when de Allyon got here and he didn't come?" The silence was long and chilled, and I realized it must have sounded like a verbal ambush with a d.a.m.ned-if-you-do and d.a.m.ned-if-you-don't reply option, so I added, "Because if you called Leo, I'll be looking into that for you."

Clark expelled a breath. "Thank you. It would be-" He stopped and rephrased. "I would be happier if I knew that my master was safe and not still in great danger from politics." He said the last word as if it was something vile, and it wasn't like I could argue.

And then it hit me. "You're wondering if I'm here to help or to harm Big H. Aren't you?" His silence was my answer and was almost enough to make me cuss. I echoed his tone and said, "I hate politics. You understand, Clark? I'm here to fulfill my contract with your master. And keep him alive. And restore peace to this territory. That is all. On my honor."

He breathed out again and said, softly, "Thank you."

"You're welcome." We said polite good-byes and hung up, which left me staring at the walls. What the heck had I gotten myself into? And how long before the local cops paid me a nasty visit and threatened to lock me up? Knowing I needed to get a handle on this investigation, I took Big H's kill list to bed with me.