Free Blood Trade: A Jane Yellowrock Novel by Faith Hunter Page B

father, but not by much. I also looked over the profiles of the local clans’ blood-masters, primos, and secondos. There were photos of bars and warehouses and businesses in the file too, properties owned by vamps.
    “We’re in On Top of the Hill,” Eli said of the old historical district. “Destination?” I gave him the address, turned off the tablet, and set it in the side pocket of the SUV.
    Hieronymus didn’t ask us to meet at his Clan home, which was an antebellum plantation home outside of town, but rather in an old warehouse in Natchez Under the Hill. Under the Hill had been changed drastically by the earthquake of 1811, an earthquake so violent that it altered the course of the Mississippi River. The eddies, floodwaters, violent swells, floating debris—including trees and fully laden, crewless boats carrying whiskey, furs, flour, hardwood lumber, and other items from the North—landslides, and avalanches had taken off over a hundred acres of the old streets. And when they were rebuilt, and then rebuilt again under General Ulysses Grant, they were much different from the original.
    There were three Under the Hill streets, each over a half mile long, forming tiers or terraces, running parallel with the river. Each street cut into the slope, making sharp-angled hairpin loops on the ends that put Lombard Street in San Fran to shame, while innumerable little cross-street alleys zigzagged up and down the hill between houses and gardens and businesses. Earlier incarnations of Under the Hill had offered no attempt at beauty, but once vamps came out of the coffin, when Marilyn Monroe tried to turn the president in the Oval Office, it was discovered that vamps had made Under the Hill their home, digging into the earth of the hill, making dwellings and businesses in the half-cavern buildings. With Beast vision overlaying my own, like my version of 3-D glasses, I could see witch magic everywhere—reds, yellows, silvers, and greens all infused with black and silver and gold sparkles of power. It seemed concentrated in three places, one location on each street, the three forming the points of a triangle with the apex at the hilltop.
    We were meeting at a warehouse on the middle street, Tin Alley, near the old McHenry’s Gambling Establishment. The building was an old redbrick two-story and was situated on a corner, up against the sidewalk. The twelve-foot-tall wooden front doors were banded with rusted iron and open to the night air. Music, sounding like live stringed instruments, flooded through and into the street. The windows were narrow and covered with solid iron shutters, sealed tight. The place was a firetrap, with limited exits and gas lighting—I could smell it on the night air—and vamps were flammable. How stupid was all this? It had to be something to do with the history of the city and Big H’s clan, something ritualistic. Vamps were big on history and ritual, having lived through most of the former, and the latter allowing the predatory hunter clans to live in proximity to one another without all-out war.
    We drove around the block before parking, weaving between the fancy cars of the fanged and wealthy. Vehicles lined the streets, as there was no parking in front or at the side, only a tiny lot in the back that was packed with cars secured behind a twelve-foot-tall chain-link fence with razor wire on the top. Inside it were a dozen black Lexuses, three Caddys, and one old Bentley, its cream paint gleaming under the streetlight. At each car stood a human blood-servant—security types—armed and dangerous. Several smoked, and I lowered my window an inch to test the air. Floating over the herbal scent of vamp and the stink of gas lighting, I smelled cigars, cigarettes, chewing tobacco, and marijuana.
    “Sloppy.” Eli said.
    “Yeah. And no limos, no armored cars; just ordinary cars right off the car lot. That’s odd.”
    “Or you’ve been spoiled by Leo and his über-rich cronies.”
    Which wasn’t