———– ——————
Three days later . . .
———– ——————
Shamira was beginning to wonder how undercover cops and agents dealt with the mind-numbing boredom of stakeouts. She’d thought that there would be cool gadgets, skulking, espionage . . . in fact, there was a lot of waiting in vehicles that slowly began to fill with junk food wrappers and Starbucks cups. The six of them had spent their first day in Savannah getting the lay of the land, and then had broken into teams to start investigating Lacroix’s haunts and patterns. For some unknown reason, Henry had decided to pair Shamira with Banshee, and the two women were not exactly bosom buddies. Shamira had not spoken to the assassin since she and Renata had thrown Shamira into a cell at Shane’s behest.
At the moment, they were parked near a warehouse owned by their adversary, waiting for the sun to fall so that they could make their way in. It was nearly impossible, they had discovered, to keep Shamira out of a place without serious spellwork. And if Shamira could not shadow jump past them, Banshee could use her Mind Fog to walk right past guards. It was a difficult one-two punch for Lacroix to defend against, particularly since he did not know it was going on.
Banshee was sipping at one of those frou-frou kinds of coffee that Shamira had no tolerance for. Coffee should have sugar in it or nothing at all in her opinion. The svelte Asian woman glanced through the binoculars at the lighted grounds, verifying how many people they were going to have to contend with. And the place was inundated with external security cameras and the like, which is why this particular place had drawn extra scrutiny in the first place.
“The thing about most vampires,” Banshee muttered, “is that they are too race-centric. Lacroix seems to employ humans, but he doesn’t utilize them. And the lack of weres or other major magical creatures is a weakness.”
“So you’ve mentioned,” Shamira replied flatly. “Doesn’t explain how we’re getting around these ones. These guys are all human, right? So we can’t hurt them?”
Banshee shook her head. “No, we can hurt them. We just can’t be noisy about this, and we should at least try and avoid casualties. Human guards are not great threats to Shane, but murder investigations could be.” She put the binoculars down. “So, you and Clara are getting serious, correct?”
Shamira smiled a little as she looked out of the car. “I guess. We haven’t really . . . Hey, since when did you care –”
“Clara has been a friend for a long time, and I would like for us to be. And I bring it up because it was pointed out that you are in a better mood when you think of her. I was hoping it might make you more receptive to talking with me.” Banshee’s mouth quirked. “Unfortunately, social subterfuge is not a specialty of mine.”
Shamira scrunched up her face. “Is this really the time to talk about this?”
“We have thirty minutes until sunset, and this time is as good as any. You have shown no interest in talking at any other time.”
“Listen, Shane’s the one I want the apology from –”
“That is good, because I have no intention of apologizing.”
Shamira was a little confused by this tact. “So then what did you want to talk to me about?”
“I just wanted to talk. Shamira, I did what my lord demanded and while I disagreed with the decision, it was not evil. I would not serve him if I felt him capable of asking for truly evil things. I owe Shane more than you can imagine, and it will take more than one bad call to make me defy him.”
“So when push comes to shove, you’ll back him? Even if he’s wrong?”
Banshee fixed those dark, knowing eyes on Shamira. “You speak of ‘wrong’ as if it were a black or white concept, and we both know that is not true. Cheating on your taxes or running a red light is on a completely different scale from draining the blood of vampires, undead, and faeries for profit. Punishing a child who did not truly deserve it by sending them to their room hardly constitutes a mutiny-worthy offense.” She looked away.
“I have served Shane for a hundred and sixty years. I served him unquestioningly because that was the only way I knew how to serve a lord. Those I served before would have seen me eventually drown in the blood of my victims, but it took a vampire to save what was left of my soul. Shane saw something in me worth saving, as he has with all his children.”
“Not all of them,” Shamira said. “I mean, it seems that everyone is sane enough.”
Banshee’s mouth quirked again, making Shamira wonder if she ever actually gave full-fledged smiles. “Henry was an alcoholic with a tendency for vigilantism, even when he was a sheriff. Bjorne suffered from serious depression and was suicidal when he was brought over.”
“Reaper was on the verge of becoming the worst sort of mercenary . . . the kind that had seen too much in a short life and was slowly ceasing to care. Bunny was headed towards the vapid debutante until her disease returned, and Pierre was falling into a paranoid world of shadows and mistrust before Shane first approached him.”
“What about Clara?”
“And we return to the object of your affections,” Banshee replied. “Suffice to say that Clara had . . . anger management issues. I will leave it to her to explain the details should you choose to ask. Her transformation over the last sixty-plus years has been quite remarkable, though she still has a temper.”
Shamira smiled, remembering when Clara told her about throwing a lamp at Shane’s head.
“I envy you, you know that?” Banshee continued. “For that look on your face when you think of her, or the look on her face when she thinks of you. I do not have a relationship like that. In fact, I never had. But I am content with my afterlife, and I am happy to have found the home Shane brought me into. Last but not least, I am happy to have met you. You are an insanely stubborn, incredibly appealing woman. You fear the smallest of creatures, yet you would charge head-on into battle with Dark Pools to protect people you barely know. You crave submission, yet you defy authority with almost reckless abandon. Quite frankly, you seem to have ‘stirred the pot’ as they say. I am glad you are here, and am still willing to put my friendship and existence in your hands. I simply want to know whether or not you value them.”
Shamira smiled wryly. “I don’t want to see you get hurt if that’s what you mean. Which is strange, because I also want to punch your lights out.”
“How typically American,” Banshee replied smugly.
“Says the former Yakuza bitch.”
“Touche.”
“Heads up,” Shamira said, cutting their heart-to-heart short. An armored truck was approaching the front gate. “What the hell is that doing here? Not your usual delivery vehicle is it?”
“I should think not. Can you see inside?”
Shamira looked. The warehouse grounds were warded so she could not use her Shadow Sight to look in, but the armored car wasn’t. Unfortunately, “No. There must be a light on inside the back. Damn it.”
“Remain calm,” Banshee said, as the driver of the vehicle spoke to a security guard, showing identification and so forth. Her binoculars drifted downward. “How about the shadows underneath the vehicle?”
Shamira looked again and sure enough, there was a dark patch under the car. “This may be our best opportunity to sneak in,” she agreed. They both got out and Banshee opened the trunk for her compatriot to climb inside.
“Once you are in, find a place to hide. I’ll keep watch from out here. Do not use the phone unless you have to, but do not be afraid to call for backup if necessary.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Shamira replied as the trunk closed. Instantly she homed in on the shadow cast by the heavy carrier and jumped into it. She quickly oriented herself, spotting the guard’s feet from her hiding place. She grabbed onto the frame of the vehicle from underneath, lifting herself up just as the vehicle began creeping forward again. Being a vampire had many advantages.
The car pulled into the warehouse, where there were plenty of shadows to jump to. Luckily the wards were all around the perimeter, separating the inside from the outside, but allowing Shamira to move freely within the confines. She popped over to behind a stack of crates and took a looked around. It was an odd warehouse, and by odd she meant freaky. There were crates and so forth to be sure, but they were all broken and empty and carelessly discarded.
In the center were dozens of large glass tubes hooked up with all sorts of random paraphernalia which Shamira couldn’t recognize. Science had never been her strong suit, but science fiction was a little more up her alley. They looked like weird stasis pods or something similarly cheesy. They contained murky bluish fluid that resisted both her normal and Shadow Sight, the latter of which made her nervous.
She watched as several warehouse workers moved to the back of the armored car and hauled another crate out of the back. Then two people who looked like they had slightly better breeding took over once it was loaded on a truck. These two looked more like scientists than grunt labor, and they took the crate apart with delicate precision to reveal a smaller container that was similar in sophistication to the tubes scattered around the room.