Shadow Rites: A Jane Yellowrock Novel by Faith Hunter Read Free Book Online Page A

troublemaker in sub-five and one a bit higher in a private scion lair. Neither vamp was physically capable of escaping. Neither was even coherent. Heck. Neither of them might have healed brains yet. But that hadn’t stopped vamps in the past and humans had paid with their lives. Unfortunately, unlike the rogue vampires I was famous for hunting, the vamps in the bowels of the building were important bargaining chips—or would be when they healed enough—saved for the European Vampires’ visit, and I couldn’t behead them, no matter how many humans they had killed.
    HQ’s inner doors opened and the stink of vamp and blood and human rushed at us: the peculiar herbal scent of mixed vamps was peppery and astringent and reminiscent of a funeral home, with the assorted dying flowers. Humans and their blood were a permanent part of the circulating air system, always hanging in the air from feedings. And sex. Not to forget sex. Many humans, when fed upon, and when given small drops of vamp blood as payment, developed high sexual drives, while also being passive and nonresistant to advances. The perfect and willing blood-servant or blood-slave.
    Something else I didn’t like.
    Wrassler greeted us. “Evening, Legs, Eli.”
    I nodded to the big guy and moved into position for the pat-down. Wrassler was seriously huge, nicknamed so because he was bigger than any World Wrestling Entertainment superstar. He motioned a woman to pat me down and took Eli himself, walking with a limp, on a prosthetic that had replaced a foot and lower leg lost in a battle here at HQ. I knew that his injury wasn’t my fault, but I still felt the responsibility to help him move forward and cope with his new life. Responsibility was a step up from guilt, so, for me, that was good. I was growing. I used to try to carry the weight of the world on my shoulders. Eli and Alex had been working on me, schooling me to be fair to myself. I was trying.
    The woman’s pat-down was professional and non-handsy and I declared the vamp-killer strapped to my thigh. “And I have wood stakes in my hair,” I said.
    “No silver?” she asked.
    “Nope.”
    She stepped back and away before I could look at her name tag. She was one of the new blood-servants from Atlanta. We were still integrating the blood-servants and blood-slaves of Atlanta’s former Master of the City.
    “Leo’s in the gym with Gee,” Wrassler said. “He’s asked you to join him there.”
    We signed in and walked away, Eli silent in his combat boots, my dancing shoes loud and somewhat clompy. Once behind the wall on the way to the elevator, I asked, “Well?”
    “Did not detect a thing.”
    We stopped and checked our pockets for the miniature tracking devices that were being tested in advance of the next big hootenanny in town, when the European Mithrans came to New Orleans to kill Leo and take over the U.S. That was their plan and saying no to the visit and attack wasn’t an option.
    It took a while, but Eli finally pulled a tiny device out of a stake sheath. He held it up to the light and it looked like part of child’s toy, a red and blue plasticized square. “That was a good plant,” he said. “A good location, and I didn’t even notice the insert.”
    I, however, couldn’t find one on me at all. We turned and retraced our steps to the front, and on the way, I stopped and picked it up. Eli frowned, a slight downward hitch of his lips, before his face relaxed. He said, “She slipped it into your knife retrieval pocket and it went straight through.”
    “Yep.” Back at the entrance, Wrassler stood to the side, his hands loose and ready, as if to draw a weapon. Losing a limb could make one hyperalert. “Wrassler’s insert was excellent,” I said. “I’m wearing slacks with false pockets and it went straight through.”
    The little blonde grimaced. Well, she wasn’t little. She stood five-seven, but that was several inches under my six feet, so she was little to me. Her name was