by Faith Hunter
She left us there, and Eli pulled his cell, punched a button, and waited. I heard Alex answer, and Eli said, “Silent mode. Sync and record.” He said nothing else, and a moment later Jodi returned with a laptop, an older model, that she opened and booted up.
Eli and I leaned over the table, braced on our hands, watching, as she brought up video and fast-forwarded through it. A dance bar, people having fun, a lot of hip shimmies, a little line-dance twerking, all looking silly in fast mode, some making out at the bar, a lot of drinking and eating. And then Jodi hit a button and the vid slowed down. The people moved at a normal pace now, dancing and laughing, juking and jiving, cuddling and kissing. It was silent, no audio, and the view felt odd with the lack of music and voices. People having fun are loud. Raucous.
A shadow entered the bar, moving fast, and reached the center of the room. The video stopped, and Jodi tapped some more keys, bringing the face into better focus, then tapping until we had two blurred close-ups of the man on the screen, side by side, the bar visible around him.
I had never seen him before, yet I knew who he was. I did.
His complexion was pale and scummy, with deep frown wrinkles at eyes and mouth. Tangled black hair reached his hips in tattered knots. His eyes were scarlet and black, vamped-out, glowing reddish from the lights in the room. His nose was proud, a Roman nose, half-formed but with no nostrils yet, just black holes to either side of the arching bone. He was gaunt, a scarecrow caricature of a man, an illustration from a grisly fairy tale. His beard was thin and scraggly, yet he wore clean, neat clothing, black from head to toe—dress slacks, shirt, and a black iridescent tie that caught the light. I remembered that he had killed humans and drained the young vamps, Liam and Vivian. The clothes looked like something Liam might wear. With my left hand, I pressed deep into the burning between my ribs.
“Do you know him?” Jodi asked, her voice sounding less cold, more worried. More something. “Does he have anything to do with your guys and Leo’s muscle chasing a smoking human-shaped figure down the street today?”
I shook my head. “Yes. Maybe. What . . .” I stopped and swallowed down bile. “What does he look like? After.”
The close-up disappeared and the video started.
The vamp raised his arms and the people all stopped. Just stopped. Skirts and big hair waved, slowing, as the people halted. Only the vamp still moved. The vamp walked to the nearest man and bent him back, over his arm. He opened his mouth, his jaw dropping, angling wide, the way older vamps’ mouths did, like a snake’s jaws, to allow the fangs to click down and up. These were five inches long on top and at least three on the bottom. Like a sabertooth cat. He thrust them into the man’s throat. He drank. And drank. And when he was done, he dropped the man on the floor and moved on to the next person, a woman stopped in the midst of a dance move, her pelvis rocked forward. He pulled the woman to him and seemed to breathe in her scent. He took her head in his hands, and with a move so fast that the cameras couldn’t capture it, he broke her neck and lay her on the floor. On and on he moved through the crowd. Drinking a few, breaking the necks of most. And as he moved, the camera began to pixel out, more and more. And he started to change.
His magic was growing as he drank. His magic was strong enough to create an EM resonance or something similar. The screen was pixelating out in broad, fluctuating blocks. But enough was left. Too much. Joses Bar-Judas—the assumption had to be correct—was healing. His olive complexion now glowed with blood-flush. Luxurious black hair reached his hips in rippling waves, and when it slid forward, it moved like silk. His eyes now looked human, light colored, maybe green, or maybe they glowed greenish from the lights in the room; I couldn’t tell. His nose was proud and his beard was thick and full, with glints that might have been stray white hairs at his chin. Eyebrows like ravens’ wings. He was slender and elegant and utterly gorgeous. If a fallen angel had mated with a raptor and a siren and the three had produced a son, he might be this beautiful. Even in the pixelated photos he was stunning. Magnificent. He’d stop people in their tracks wherever he went, even without vamp compulsion.
When the vamp was done with the dance floor, he stroked his luxurious beard, sliding it through his hand, thoughtfully, as he stepped up to the band. He drained and killed his way through them, one by one, until he reached the drummer; the camera caught his face as he bent over her and inhaled. He closed his eyes, liking how she smelled. I turned away. I didn’t need to see more.
“Yeah,” Jodi said bitterly, her gaze on me. “He’s a piece of work. All that in front of the cameras. As if he doesn’t care he’s on camera.”
Or as if he doesn’t know what a camera is, I thought. “He’s old. Very old. Five-inch upper fangs mean he’s ancient. The way the jaw unhinged means ancient. Bottom fangs only make him older. The way he held the victims still with his mind means ancient, ancient, ancient. Print me a photo or send it to my cell. I’ll do—” I stopped, my throat so dry I could barely swallow. “I’ll get you a name.”
“Leo had a problem at the Mithran Council Chambers,” Jodi said, with the kind of formality she used when talking to a suspect or a person of interest. “We have reports of a human figure running through the streets, smoking and on fire, chased by a bunch of men who sound a lot like Leo’s people and yours. Was it related to this situation?”
I picked through my possible responses and jutted my chin at the screen. “Probably. I could just say yes, but I never saw him in either form, not hungry and not blood-flushed and healthy.”
“So what did he look like when you saw him?” Jodi asked.
I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter. I want confirmation from someone who knew him. Knows him. I need to show this to Leo.”
“No. No way this leaves this room.”
I didn’t look at Eli. He had synced his phone. We had it already. I shrugged, one shouldered.
“Leo needs to call me,” Jodi said, the calm in her voice beginning to crack. “And before you say anything, yes, I know it’s never convenient to drop by and visit with the cops. But if I don’t get a call from him within one hour, I’ll start the paperwork on getting a warrant and haul him in to NOPD. In the sunlight, in the trunk of my car, if necessary. I imagine he would find that extremely undignified. Or you can wait until PsyLED is here and they’ll haul him down. You don’t have many choices.”
Choosing my words carefully, knowing I was walking in a verbal minefield, I said, “Is Leo a suspect? How can he be a suspect based on the footage we just saw?”
“Person of interest. Person who is supposed to know, and have control over, every vamp in his region. Who is supposed to keep the humans safe from predators,” she spat, still holding in her fury, barely, but moving closer, until I could feel the anger radiating from her in heated waves. “Person who may have just lost any ability to keep the vamps out of the human legal system. Person who could end up in the vampire version of Guantanamo Bay,” she said, her voice rising, “in a cave in chains, along with the rest of his species, if certain members of Congress have their way. And this”—she swept an arm to the video of the kill bar on the laptop and lowered her voice—“just made that more likely.”
“Okay. I got that. Suggestion. You could go to the Council House and knock politely and ask to be let in,” I said.
Jodi leaned to me, up against me, so close that her face was in mine though I stood nearly a foot taller, her calm façade cracking. She breathed, “I don’t feel like being polite. I feel like taking a couple dozen guns and walking into fanghead central and shooting everything that moves. And if I feel that way, how do you think the rest of the city is going to feel? How do you think this city is going to react to anything supernatural after this? To the witches?” Her voice lowered, hissing with fierceness. “To my people. To my family.”
I didn’t move away. I didn’t touch her. I simply pulled my wallet and removed my Enforcer cards. I tore them in half and placed them on the table, knowing what I was about to say might get me
killed. By Leo. “I’m a vampire hunter. It’s what I do.” I held Jodi’s eyes with mine, watching hers redden and fill with tears. Tears that didn’t fall. “I’ll start research now. I’ll verify his name. I will track down and I will find this monster. I will cut out his heart and I will bring it to you. You. Personally.”
“And Leo?” she whispered, her breath brushing my cheek.
I didn’t know the answer to that one yet. “He may try to kill me.” A ghost of a smile softened my face. “Get me a go-ahead. Call the governor and get him to give me a contract to cover liabilities. He should have one on file from the werewolf problems in Houma last winter. But I’ll do it even without the contract. For you. For the witches. For these people and their families.”
Jodi’s blue eyes swept my face, and something there must have satisfied her. “I want you on camera with me at a press conference, live for the six a.m. news,” she breathed. “I want you in full regalia. And I want you to announce that you are going after this guy. Maybe that will keep this city calm for a day. Maybe.”
“Fine. Yes. I’ll be there. I need to talk to Leo first, and there’s not much time before six a.m.”
“One more thing.” Jodi pulled an envelope-shaped evidence bag from a pocket and held it out to me. “Do you know what this is?”
I took the envelope, which hadn’t been sealed, hadn’t been timed or dated or initialed, hadn’t been listed according to crime scene number or scene sector, all of which was not according to protocol. I looked to Jodi, who refused to meet my eyes. “Okay,” I said, forcing her to recognize all the problems with my seeing this. I opened the bag and looked inside. At the bottom was a tuft of something white, like a fishing fly, tied and knotted with white string, a bit of stem from a bush or tree caught in it. The leaf was still greenish, though curled and wilted. I pointed at it, the question on my face.
“You can check it out,” she said. “No way can we get prints from it, and it’s been handled by too many of us. DNA is impossible now.”
Which meant the cops had found something somewhere and mishandled it and Jodi had absconded with a piece of whatever they had found. Gotcha. I lifted the hairy tuft and held it to the lamp. The white clump was composed of shorter, furry hair and longer white hairs, the tips so pure they looked almost clear. I knew what it was even without scenting it, but I sniffed anyway, drawing air into my nose, the hairs moving against my nostrils. This was werewolf hair, belonging to a particular werewolf—Brute, a werewolf stuck in wolf form. Brute and I had a long and confusing history, one that involved fights, a little blood, and an angel.
I dropped the hair back into the envelope and resealed it before handing it back. “Smells like a wet dog,” I said.
Jodi stepped away slowly, pulling her control around her like a steel corset, compressing all the frayed ends, hiding all the pain inside. She shoved a strand of blond hair behind her ear and the envelope back into her pocket. “Can you still ride a bike?” she asked. “Herbert has a Harley.”
I couldn’t keep the snark in, though I kept my voice low, for her. “Can I sanitize the seat first?”
The laughter that broke from Jodi was as jagged as broken glass. “I might have a bottle around here somewhere.”
“Then get me the bike. I’ll be back as fast as I can.”
“Move it. Take your partner. We need this space.”
Still side by side, Eli and I left the tent.
While Herbert went for his motorcycle, I called HQ and asked for Del. “You see the breaking news?” I asked her. When she said yes, I said, “A vamp did it. Tell Leo I’m on the way in.” I closed the Kevlar cell phone cover without waiting for her reply.
And dang if Jim Herbert didn’t push up a customized metallic silver Harley Heritage Softail with pillion-style seat. If I thought he hated me before, the look he sent me turned regular ol’ hatred into hatred times ten. “You hurt my baby and I’ll make you regret it for the rest of your life,” he stated.
“If I hurt that bike, I’ll deserve it.”
I had no idea the words came out of my mouth until Herbert glared harder. My comment made him tuck his chin, creating extra chins. It made Eli glance at me from the corner of his eye.
“Seriously,” I said. Herbert might be a pig, but he had great taste in motorcycles. “I’ll take care of her.”
Eli and I helmeted up. I shoved my stakes into a cup holder set discreetly in the bike’s frame. My partner asked, “You’re not going to make me ride the bitchseat, are you?”
“Oh yeah. And it’s pillion, not bitchseat.” I straddled the bike and got the feel of her balance, the weight distribution of her, the soundness of her. She was gorgeous, easy to handle even with one arm not up to my usual strength levels. “This baby’s mine.” I keyed her on and made a low sound of pleasure—this bike was the only good thing in this godforsaken night. I looked up and met Herbert’s eyes. “What’s her name?”
He frowned and hitched his pants up under his gut by his wide leather belt. “Epona. It’s a Celtic goddess. It means ‘great mare.’”
I smiled at him. “She’s perfect.”
Herbert shrugged, just a hint, but there was pleasure in his eyes. “Yeah. She is dat.”
I heard a hint of Cajun in the words and I nodded to him. “Climb on, Eli.”
My partner’s weight settled behind me, his hands at my waist. We roared toward the crime scene tape, our identities hidden behind helmets and faceplates that smelled like Herbert and a woman. Maybe his wife.
* * *
I let Eli off at the SUV so he could swing by the house and pick up my best gear—my only set of vamp-hunting leathers now. Jodi wanted me geared up, and that’s the way she’d get me—geared up to the max. Riding solo, I sped through the predawn traffic to vamp HQ.
Due to security protocols—ones I had devised—I had to unhelmet at the front gate and a guard with a slavering dog met me in the circular drive. It was Tex, a vamp with a knack for dogs and a love for .45 Old West–style handguns. “Miz Jane,” he greeted me, the Texan twang throwing me off, as it always did. The dog wanted to do a sniff-and-growl greeting of his own, but Tex pulled him back. “Miz Adelaide said for you to come straight to Mr. Pellissier’s office. You got any weapons on you, you got to declare ’em at the front.” He smiled at me, a perfectly normal human smile, no fangs, and joked, “Our Enforcer’s protocols, don’tcha know.”
“She sounds like a real pain in the butt,” I said, feeling my face relax for the first time in hours.
“She is that. But I’m a butt man, ma’am, so I don’t mind.” With that pithy statement, he clicked to the dog and returned to his rounds.
I left the helmet on the bike, set my silver stakes in my hair, where they couldn’t be missed, climbed the steps to the main floor, and was buzzed into the new steel-reinforced airlock system and metal detector, where I was met by a vamp and a human, part of Protocol Aardvark, Procedure B. The human was carrying a cross beneath his shirt, one that glowed in close proximity to the vamp beside him. They looked me over and the vamp stepped back, his nose wrinkling.
“Yes,” I said, “I smell like dead humans. Deal with it. I have no weapons on me except stakes.” I ignored the look that passed between them and assumed the position to allow a pat-down, which was done professionally, with minimal handsy stuff, just the way I’d taught them.
There was a time when I’d insisted that every visitor, even me, be stripped of weapons and escorted through the building, but that rule had proven kinda ridiculous when I’d needed my weapons. Now, with few exceptions, we were doing the declare-and-carry program, and so far it was working.
I knocked on Leo’s door and heard him call, “Vous pouvez entrer.”
I took a breath to steel myself and entered. The entrance was wide, with tapestries hanging on the walls, hiding from casual observers the openings to once-secret hallways, stairwells, and concealed rooms. I wasn’t stupid enough to think I’d discovered all of them, but I’d done a good job of find
ing and mapping and putting cameras on most.
The rugs were deep beneath my boots, hand-knotted Oriental, Persian, and Chinese silk, each probably worth twenty K and with the ruined hands of child laborers to show for it. Paintings and statues were displayed all over, hung from the ceiling moldings on wire, resting on easels, posed on pedestals. There was no fire in the fireplace, either because it was already too warm in the room or because Leo was in a mood. I came to the entry to the office and stopped. On the gold chaise longue lay someone I’d never expected to see in this room again, and certainly never on Leo’s feeding couch.
“Wrassler?” But the word got stuck in my throat somewhere and never emerged.
The big guy was stretched out, looking down at Leo, who knelt at the security guard’s feet. Foot. Foot and high-tech prosthetic. Wrassler had lost the lower leg only a few weeks past, and without Leo’s blood and Leo’s contacts and Leo’s money, he’d still be recuperating in a rehab center somewhere, getting physical therapy twice a day and eating crummy food. Instead he was learning how to use the new leg and being healed of the arm damage by the Master of the City himself, Leo Pellissier, who, at the moment, was inspecting Wrassler’s lower arm, holding it close to his face, breathing in the scent of the skin. It could have been a lover-like moment, but instead it looked clinical, as Leo pierced the flesh with his fangs, pulled back to study the arm, and licked the new wound. He took a moment to bite his thumb pad and first pressed the bleeding thumb into the fang wounds, then placed his thumb at Wrassler’s mouth. The big guy sucked the blood away the same way another human might take liquid meds from a nurse. “Thank you, sir,” he said.
I stood with my feet shoulder-width apart and my hands clasped behind my back, like a soldier at rest, watching, listening to the bald-headed giant and his master. Remembering that the fanghead on his knees, healing his blood-servant, had allowed the carnage I had only just witnessed. My emotions boiled like hot tar, coating and scorching me, on the inside, where it didn’t show. But I could smell my own scent, which carried the reek of stale fear and the death stench of fifty-two humans, and I knew that Leo could smell them on me also.