Raven Cursed: A Jane Yellowrock Novel by Faith Hunter Page A

Shaddock had built what looked from the driveway like a gnome’s house, tiny, old-fashioned, and impossible to secure. Instead it was a fortress. It took a little over thirty seconds for all the metal panels to close fully, and another fifteen for the automatic latches to seal. Over them, black insulated shades dropped—a final seal.
    Grégoire smiled slightly and waved limp fingers in a circle. “Air? Water? Fire?”
    “Got me an air duct cut into the rock. Fan works on solar batteries. A cistern with a thousand gallons of water,” Shaddock said. He pointed up. “Sprinkler system. Gotstores enough to last the blood-servants for a year.” Chen stood to the side, expressionless, but conveying irritation in his stance. His boss was giving away trade secrets.
    “Escape? Security system?” Grégoire asked.
    “Got them too.” Shaddock didn’t volunteer the location of other protective measures. I frankly was surprised we got to see all that we did. Vamps were private creatures, and the fact that he let us see all this only meant he had a lot more security stuff hidden. Stuff he wouldn’t tell us about, and certainly wouldn’t show us.
    “Your scions?” Grégoire asked.
    Shaddock led the vamps into his bedroom where he pressed some more buttons; a shelving unit hummed, sliding behind another, revealing a narrow door, steel, banded with more steel. One-handed, he turned four levers, unlatching four manual locks, and opened the door. The smell of stone, cool cave air, vamps, and old blood filled the room. He stepped through. Before I could stop him, before the twins checked the room, Grégoire followed. I flew through the doorway after them and was brought up short, standing with two weapons drawn, feeling stupid. Especially when Chen raced in after me, his own weapon aimed at my head. I gave him a weak smile and holstered the Walthers. He frowned and reluctantly holstered his own.
    The only scion-lair I had ever seen had been run by crazy psycho-vamps in New Orleans for their long-chained scions—uncured vamps who had never found sanity and who should have been destroyed centuries earlier. I had no preconceptions except modern fiction and scuttlebutt, which said that nutso young vamps were kept chained to the walls until they cured. Not so. These vamps were in steel-barred cells, maybe eight-by-eight feet. Bare mattresses on stone floors. The uncured-scions-to-be were naked. Vamped out.
Rogue
. My hackles rose.
Cages
. I fought down Beast’s growl. She hated cages, and rogues almost as much.
    The caged vamps reacted to the sight of company in different ways. One attacked the bars of his cell, throwing himself against the iron, screaming incoherently. One laughed, a chilling, insane sound. One wept, curled on her mattress. Others, frenzied, reached toward the humans,eyes crazed, fangs deployed. Only one looked at me with reason in his eyes. He was wearing a shirt and pants. Shoes. His cell was larger than the others, containing a bed, desk, chair, table, and recliner. A flat screen TV was mounted across the bars and the desk was loaded down with books, a laptop, and various other electronic devices. I made a swift mental sketch: brown and brown, average height, slender, flat nose, as if broken, which was odd. I assumed he was a chained scion who had found himself and was ready to be released into the world. Until he met my eyes, held my gaze. And smiled. His small fangs flipped down and he ran his tongue over the sharp, inch-long tips, the gesture almost taunting.
All righty then.
    I could
feel
their hunger, ravenous, demented. It would have been kinder to just stake the pitiful things, but that wasn’t my job. The security arrangements were, which meant I needed to prepare a report on the safety measures of Shaddock’s Clan Home and his scion-lair.
Crap
. I hated reports. Not hiding my frown, not caring if I threw off anger pheromones, I took in the arrangement of the overhead lighting, each bulb protected by