Deaths Excellent Vacation

vibe wafting off each of them. Twelve vampires, several of them Masters. Too many of them to be just about killing a human heiress. This wasn’t about Tammy.
    Bones knew it, too. He gave an almost languid look around, but I could feel his tenseness grating across my subconscious. “X, what an unpleasant surprise. This clearly isn’t coincidence, so tell me, who betrayed me?”
    The black-haired vampire addressed as X stepped forward. “A human hires a hit man to kill his cousin for money, boring. That same hit man botches the job twice, funny. Then the desperate hit man sends a ghoul after the girl to finish things up, my curiosity’s piqued. That same ghoul ends up with his head cut off by a mysterious redhead . . . ah. Now I’m interested.”
    “Who’s your friend, honey?” I asked Bones, not taking my eyes off X.
    “Former coworker, you could say. An overly competitive one who got brassed off when I killed several of his best clients.”
    Former coworker. X must not have been a small-time hit man for Bones to refer to him that way, which meant the vampires with him had to be badasses, too. Our chances just got downgraded from slim to screwed.
    “Could my old friend Bones be involved, I wondered?” X went on. “The young heiress has government connections, it turns out, and so does the Reaper. And the Reaper’s supposed to be such a bleeding heart when it comes to humans. When another rumor spread that the human heiress would be here tonight, I took precautions in case I was right about who was protecting her. And lucky me, I was.”
    Precautions? That was one way to describe the dozen vampires surrounding us, all of whom were armed to the teeth. I glanced back at the nightclub. Would anyone come to our aid? Or would they stick to the whole “no violence on the premises” thing and stay the hell away?
    “You’re here for me, leave her out of it,” Bones said, with a barely perceptible nod at Tammy. “Let her go back inside, and we’ll settle this ourselves.”
    “She may not be why I’m here, but I’ll be sure to kill her, too, so I don’t risk war.”
    Clever bastard . If X killed us while we were defending Tammy, he could call it business. Tammy had a contract out on her; otherwise, Bones’s people could consider it personal and retaliate for our slaughter. X was covering his bases well.
    Tammy began to whimper. X gave her a genial smile. “If it makes you feel better, your cousin’s dead. I killed him after I learned what I needed to know about you.”
    So that’s why Don couldn’t find Gables, not that it did us any good now.
    Bones glanced at me. “Kitten, are you getting angry yet?”
    I knew what he meant. Since I found out I’d absorbed fire-starting power from the pyrokinetic vampire I drank from, I’d fought to keep that borrowed ability under control. But now, I let all the repressed anger, determination, fear, and sadness from the past few months roar to the surface. My hands became engulfed in blue flames, sparks shooting onto the ground.
    “Kill her!” X shouted.
    Knives flew at me in a blur. I rolled to avoid them, concentrating on X. Two months ago, I’d burned an entire property and exploded a Master vampire’s head right off his shoulders. Burn, I thought, glaring at X. Burn.
    Except . . . he didn’t catch fire. Sparks still shot from my flame-covered hands, but nothing more lethal came out of them. I shook my hands in frustration. Work, damn you! Flame on, fingers!
    But the previous deadly streams of fire that had scared me with their ferocity seemed to have vanished. The most dangerous thing I could do with my hands now was light someone’s cigarette.
    “Oh, shit,” my mother whispered.
    I couldn’t agree more.
    “Protect Tammy,” I yelled, then grabbed for my knives, cursing as I tried to dodge another hail of blades aimed at me. Some of them found their mark, but none in my chest, thank God. Still, that silver burned where it landed, making me fight the urge to yank it out. I flung some of my weapons instead, adding more silver to the barrage Bones had just sent. Then I rolled behind one of the cars for cover, finally getting the chance to snatch out the silver embedded in my shoulders and legs.
    Tammy screamed as some of the vampires took to the air. I took two of the knives I’d pulled from my body and sent them winging at the vampire closest to where she was crouched. The blades found their mark, and he crashed into a car instead of Tammy and my