Black Water

by Faith Hunter

Sirens sounded in the distance. We were out of time. Local law enforcement and the state cops had made the trek through the crevasse and were on the premises, somehow with a cop car. I tapped my mic on and whispered, “Time’s up. You got her?”

  “We have her,” Prince said. “We are taking her up the cliff now.”

  “Let’s go home, boys and girls,” I said into the mic. “See you back at the van.” As I left, I checked the Cohen house out, the one marked on Nell’s map. It looked secure. I smelled women and children. No blood. I hoped their safety was worth whatever Heyda had been through.

  ***

  The drive back was silent except for the sounds of Heyda feeding. She had been out of her mind with anguish and blood-loss when found, and it had been all the vamps could do to get her back to the van. Once off the mountain and heading home, all the humans from her clan fed her, followed by all the vamps. It took a lot of blood to feed a drained and tortured vampire back to sanity. I’d seen a vamp drained into madness before. It was pretty awful.

  Heyda’s skin was the blue-white of death, except where she was bruised from beatings. Her head had been shaved. There were dozens of half-healed cuts on her. Her wrists and ankles had been shackled with silver and were blistered, the skin torn and blackened in places. I didn’t know what Yummy had done with the colonel, but no matter what she had done, it wasn’t enough. It just wasn’t.

  When we got back to the clan home, Ming met us in the drive. Heyda fell out of the back of the van, into her maker’s arms. Instantly Ming pulled the injured vamp to her and leaned back her neck in one of those not-human movements. Heyda, already vamped out, bit down into Ming’s carotid and started drinking. The other vamps gathered around, the mixed power of vamps rising on the night air in a ceremony that I had seen once, but never completely understood. The prince was part of the mix, his arms around both vamps. I guessed the little challenge between him and Eli was off for the time being, which was fine by me.

  The driver closed the side doors and got back in the cab, gunning the motor of the old van and heading away from the clan home, back to our hotel. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the leather headrest.

  Yummy hadn’t been with us on the ride home. I figured that was a good thing. It might be good if I never saw the vamp again. But there’s something about the universe that forces us to face our fears and our pasts and our weaknesses. I had a feeling that Yummy and I would cross paths again someday.

  On the drive through Knoxville, Alex hacked in to the police coms and informed us that the local and state law enforcement officers were taking a number of children and women into protective custody and had arrested several men and women for various and sundry crimes, with more arrests and charges pending. It wasn’t enough, not with what I’d seen and smelled at the compound, but like a lot of things in my life, it would have to do.

  ***

  The next afternoon, I rode Fang up the hillside to see Nell, to thank her for the help and for the intel. To determine a few things about her. To suggest a few things to her about her security and, maybe, a few things about her future. This time when she met me on the front porch, she wasn’t carrying a gun. She was wearing a long skirt and flip-flops, her brown hair pulled back in a braid, much like the way I wore mine. She was sitting on the swing, whose chain supports had been replaced with new steel that creaked pleasantly when she pushed off with a toe. I hoped the money Alex had left on the front porch last night had gone toward the dress and the chains.

  I rode Fang all the way up to the end of the drive and left the bike in the sun, the metal pinging and ticking as it cooled. “Afternoon, Nell,” I said.

  “Jane Yellowrock. You’uns come set a spell,” she said in the local vernacular. “I got you some good strong iced tea with honey and ginger in it.”

  I never drank tea that way, but it seemed impolite to make a face. I climbed the steps and accepted a sweating tea glass. The green glass was old, bubbled with air like old, handblown glass. It probably was an antique; there were treasures in these hills. I sat, sipped, and was pleasantly surprised by the taste. After a comfortable moment, I said, “You act like you were expecting me.”

  “I was, sorta. Don’t know why.”

  “Is it because of the magic I feel every time I put a foot on the ground here?”

  Nell’s face paled to nearly vamp-white. She whispered, “I’m not a witch.”

  “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. Right? That’s the way you were taught.”

  Nell just stared and I felt the land around me rise, as if aware, as if to protect her, the current of intent passing through the foundation of the house, into the porch chair where I sat, and into me. And I caught again the scent of Nell Nicholson Ingram. “My people would have called you yi-ne-hi. Or maybe yv-wi tsv-di. Or even a-ma-yi-ne-hi. You would have been respected and maybe a little feared, but not burned or tortured or beaten.”

  Nell frowned, not knowing that her body language was telling me so much about her. About her life in another time, another place, but still so close. Just over the ridge.

  “I’m not a witch,” she whispered again, as if saying it so tonelessly, so repetitively over the years, had kept her safe.

  “No. Your gift isn’t witch magic.”

  Nell blinked. “It’s not?”

  I let my mouth curl up slightly. “I’m not even a hundred percent sure it would properly be called magic. More a paranormal gift of some sort, but then, I’m not a specialist.”

  “You’re not human either.”

  My smile went wider and I sipped the tea, letting her put things together.

  “Are you like me?”

  I heard the plaintive tone in her words. I knew what it was to be so very alone in the world. I knew that my answer would cause her pain and leave her feeling even more alone. “No.” My smile slid away. “I only ever met one other like me before. He tried to kill me. I had to kill him to save my life. Now I’m alone. Maybe forever.”

  Nell looked away from my eyes, holding her green glass in both hands. “Forever is a long time to be alone.”

  Nell had been alone since her husband died, according to what Alex had been able to dig up on her—which was next to nothing. Just Nell and her dogs, on this mountain land, for years. “It’s all good,” I said. “Life is good. I do good for humans and for others, outcasts, people in need. I protect the innocent when I can. There may not be others like me, but I found a place for myself. Found friends. People who came to me and we made a family. I have a purpose.”

  “You think I need a purpose. You think that living here, making my way, reading my books, and growing things isn’t good enough.” Her chin lifted. “Proust said, ‘The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.’ I got new eyes aplenty. I don’t want to leave. I’m not a hundred percent sure I even can.”

  I thought about that for a while, as the old bird dog climbed the short steps and curled under Nell’s swing, his tail thumping on the smooth boards. I had been chained to Leo Pellissier once upon a time. I hadn’t been able to leave his side for long without getting terribly sick. Maybe Nell was chained to the land in much the same way. “You never know how far you can travel until you start walking.”

  “Who said that?”

  “I did. And no one said you’d have to leave the land forever.”

  “You already told people about me, didn’t you?”

  “I did. I’m sorry. But the vampires who ran across your mountain felt your magic in the land. Felt it thrum up through their feet. They knew you were something special. To keep them from coming after you, maybe changing you whether you want it or not. I told a friend about you. He’ll be coming to talk to you soon. To offer his protection. To try to get you to work with him. Working with him offers you safety from all the others. Working with him will keep the vamps from sniffing around. Working with him wil
l keep you safer from the church, from whoever takes over for the colonel.”

  “You made the colonel disappear, didn’t you?”

  “Not me. But I didn’t stop the one who did.”

  Nell looked out over her land, the lawn rolling down the sloping hill into the trees, something odd on her face. Something I couldn’t read. “The colonel’s heir is Ernest Jr.,” she said, without looking at me. “He’s evil through and through. Junior hates me with a hatred like a forge, burning hot. Hatred like that shapes a man, and never in a good way. Junior will kill me if he gets half a chance. Kill me and take my land.” She sighed, the sound wistful. “Life is like a train tracks, parallel rails, one side blessings, the other side troubles. I’ve been blessed for years. Now I guess I might have to ride the other rail for a while, again.”

  “And that other rail, it might prove to be a blessing too.”

  Nell shook her head sadly. “Go away, Jane Yellowrock. Go back to your vampires and your witches and your search for whatever you are. Get off my land. Leave me in peace. Please.”

  I stood and set the green iced tea glass on a small table. Beside it I placed a card. “This belongs to the friend I mentioned. He’s a cop in PsyLED. He’s a pretty boy, black hair and black eyes. Up here, he’d be called Indian looking, Cherokee, like me. But he’s mostly Frenchy. He’ll take care of you. Get you introduced to his people. Just don’t fall in love with him. He’ll break your heart.”

  “You already done that, Jane. You already done that.”

  Knowing I had changed this girl’s life forever, I walked down the steps and swung my leg over Fang. “I can’t say I’m sorry,” I said. “I’d do it again. You losing your peaceful life meant getting one hundred thirty-eight physically and mentally abused children out of the clutches of God’s Cloud of Glory Church. And you might not want to admit it yet, but you’d let me do it again too.”

  I had done the best I could, despite shoving Nell out of the shadows and into the limelight. She was no longer off the grid. No longer hidden away. The rest was up to Nell. I keyed the bike on and rode off Nell’s mountain and back into Knoxville. I had a private jet waiting on me, a flight back to New Orleans, and the problems that awaited me there. There were always problems with fangheads.

  Usually I had buyer’s remorse about taking a job with the vamps. Usually I spent a lot of time in self-recrimination and guilt and second-guessing myself and my choices and my decisions. But just this once, I felt good about a job for the bloodsuckers. A job well done. One hundred thirty-eight children set free. And a pedophile and sexual predator gone missing.

  I wondered where Yummy had buried the old man.

  I wondered if he had died on Nell’s land.

  I wonder a lot of things. But I seldom have answers. Rogue-vamp hunters and Enforcers act in a vacuum, flying by the seat of our pants. And now, flying back to New Orleans in the Master of the City’s private jet, I knew I was flying back into trouble. But I was flying with the Youngers. A girl could do a lot worse.

  Read on for a special preview of Broken Soul, the Jane Yellowrock novel coming from Roc on October 7, 2014.

  Chapter One

  Half-Dressed Vamp Gave a Come-Hither, Toothy Smile

  Visiting the Master of the City of New Orleans was always challenging, but it was worse when he was in a mood. Leo Pellissier’s Clan Home and personal residence had burned to the ground not so very long ago, and the rebuilding was taking longer than he thought he should have to wait. Combined with the accidental media release of the upcoming arrival of a delegation of the European Mithrans—fangheads of state to the rest of us—and making the arrangements to house and feed his unwanted guests according to their usual kingly standards, his patience was wearing thin. Any equanimity he might have pretended to was long gone.

  His Regal Grumpiness had demanded my presence. Yeah. I had called him that—from a safe distance, on my official, military-grade, bullet-resistant cell phone. I’m brave and all, but I’m not stupid.

  I parked the SUV I had been driving lately—one of the MOC’s, a heavily armored gas-guzzler, fitted with laminated polycarbonate glass, the stuff often called bulletproof glass—in front of the Mithran Council Chambers and ascended the stairs, checking over the changes in the building’s security arrangements. The razor wire on the brick fence around the property in the French Quarter had caused quite a stir, various injunctions, and political posturing, but the New Orleans’ Vieux Carré Commission had caved when it was pointed out to them that Leo was currently, technically, something like a head of state or maybe a Mithran ambassador, and the property was, therefore, currently, technically, not quite U.S. territory. The political relationships between the Secret Service, the Treasury Department, the United States legal system, and the vamps were murky. Congress was still debating fanghead status and whether to declare them citizens or something else. I was betting on something else as the most likely outcome. It would be cheaper than rewriting the laws to include penalties for human blood drinking; nearly immortal vampires, who were deathly allergic to sunlight, were strong enough to tear out iron bars, fast enough to be difficult to spot on standard security cameras, and had the ability to use their stalking compulsion and their blood to enslave humans and make them want to do stuff. Like let them walk free one night from any high-security prison. It was cheaper to consider them some form of noncitizen and therefore not subject to all U.S. laws.

  I was in the middle of upgrading the security of the council house from an embassy-security precaution level to White House–security precaution level, to provide super-duper protection during the EVs’ upcoming shindig. Hence the razor wire; the increased number of dynamic cameras all over, with lowlight and infrared capability; the new, top-of-the-line automatic backup generators in case of power failure; the new automatic muted lighting that was being installed along all the hallways inside; the replacement of the decorative iron-barred gate in the brick fence with an ugly, layered-iron gate that weighed a ton and could resist a dump truck filled with explosives. Just for starters. The measures I had instituted were not Draconian, but they were more stringent than the historical society liked on the outside and that the vamps themselves liked on the inside. All this for the visitation that no one wanted but no one could refuse. Not even the American vamps themselves.

  A lot of ordinary humans in the U.S. were unhappy about the planned—but as yet unscheduled—visit by European vampires too, and there had been death threats made against the undead, mostly by extreme right-wing religious hate groups, neo-Nazis, fascist groups, one ultraliberal group, and several homegrown jihadist groups. No one was surprised at the reactions, but security preps had to include explosive, bacterial, and chemical attacks—as in weapons of mass destruction—and electronic attack. Even the State Department was getting in on it all.

  But maybe odder than anything was the question that my team at Yellowrock Securities were all asking. Why did the European vamps want to come here anyway?

  As the head of YS and one of Leo’s current part-time Enforcers, it was my job to see that the Mithran Council Chambers—aka vamp HQ, aka vamp central—was secure. Go me. His Enforcer-in-training, Derek Lee, was helping and learning the ropes, even as he was trying to adjust to being an occasional dinner for Leo. Submitting didn’t come easy to any former active-duty marine, but several things had persuaded Derek: money; he’d get to kill vamps; he’d get to play with all the toys Uncle Sam and Sam’s R & D department came up with; his men would have constant employment. But there was something bigger too. Derek’s mother had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer, and Leo had agreed to feed her his blood to help her heal. Family was more important than pride to Derek. More important than anything else.

  It was an uneasy alliance just yet, made worse when Derek’s men had razzed him about the new job as Enforcer requiring him to provide blood-meals for Leo. But the men were settling in as semipermanent secu
rity, and most of them had found a vamp to feed. Vamps were hard to resist when they turned on the charm and the compulsion, and even marines had their limits when a gorgeous, half-dressed vamp gave a come-hither, toothy smile.

  I went through the security precautions at the council house door, relinquished my weapons, and was led through the building by Wrassler, to Leo, who was clearly not in his office, since we went down the elevator, not up the stairs. I’d known Wrassler long enough to expect an honest answer when I asked, “How’s Leo?”

  Wrassler—nicknamed so because he would make a professional wrestler look puny—rubbed a hand over his pate. It needed a shave, and his palm made a rasping sound on the bristles. “He broke a lamp after you hung up on him.” I laughed and Wrassler added, his tone mild, “An original Tiffany worth over thirty thousand dollars.”

  I stopped laughing. “Ouch.”

  “Mmmm. His Mercy Blade was out of touch for an hour, and Leo needed to blow off some steam without killing anybody, so I invited Brian and Brandon to spar with him. Thanks to them, you’ll get to sit this one out and watch, rather than fight him when he’s annoyed.” Wrassler looked down at me from his several inches of height and said, “It ain’t pretty.”

  And it wasn’t. The hot smell of sweat and blood hit me when I entered the small gymnasium and fighting rings, and my Beast perked up at the scent, interested. Brian and Brandon were Onorios, two of three in the entire U.S. They were faster than humans, had better healing abilities than humans, and probably had other mad skills and abilities that I didn’t know about yet. The rarity meant that few people knew what they were truly capable of or what their full abilities were. But it sure wasn’t besting a ticked-off master vamp in full-on kill mode.

  Leo was barefooted, wearing black gi pants of a style I’d see him fight in before, his upper body bare and smeared with blood that hid most of his white scars, his black hair plaited flat to his head, except for loose strands flying as he moved. He was vamped out, his three-inch-long fangs clicked down and his pupils black in scarlet sclera. Despite the vampy-ness, he looked in control. Barely. Drawing on my skinwalker abilities, I took a sniff to determine the pheromone level of his anger and aggression.