Easy Pickings

by Faith Hunter

  “You are?” he said. Aaah, really, the consonants all swallowed by Southern gentility.

  “Smitten,” I said brightly, then shook myself. “Uh. I mean. Joanne. I’m Joanne. That’s, um.” I looked at Beast-Jane and decided not to go there. “That’s a cat. And you’re. . . ?” Utterly gorgeous. Physically flawless, with striking African features. The back of my brain reminded me that perfect people usually weren’t human, and that I should probably check the guy’s aura out, but his physicality was so much more interesting I put it off for a minute. I didn’t want to find out he was one of the bad guys. Not yet, anyway.

  He grinned. “Lazarus, but you call me Laz, cherie.”

  I deflated ever so slightly. Odds of him actually being named John Henry were, of course, astronomically low, but for a brief shining moment there, I’d had hope. “You better call me Jo.” Because while my romantic life was on an upswing, I still didn’t think it would go over well to explain to a boyfriend so new I wasn’t sure I should even use the word yet just why an unutterably gorgeous Southern gentleman was referring to me as cherie. “Lazarus, huh? Only in the South does that name not even cause a blink.”

  “Oh, it causes a blink.” Jane stalked up beside me. I squeaked. I hadn’t even heard her change—not that I knew if shapechanging made noise, since I’d never tried listening to myself while I did it—and I certainly hadn’t heard her putting all her leather and guns and shiny silver bits back on.

  Lazarus looked at her, all hot and sexy in her leather, and looked at me, considerably less hot and sexy in jeans and a tank-top. His eyebrows rose. “Sisters?”

  Jane and I looked at each other and shook our heads in unison. Laz’s eyebrows went higher. “But power, it runs in family, no?”

  “Different families,” I said after a minute, then edged three steps back, like that distance would make it impossible for him to hear me mutter, “Lazarus is a worrying name?”

  “Anybody who rises from the dead worries me,” Jane muttered back. Since she was the one who came from a world with vampires, I conceded the point instantly and whether I liked it or not, took a good look at Lazarus with the Sight.

  Power flared in him, through him, in earth-rich colors and in a way I’d never seen before. It was like his toes, dug into the earth, absorbed its very strength, and the top of his head, way high up there in the sky—even to my tall perspective—let it flow on out. The reverse happened too, and his fingertips took in the quiet animistic strength of still air and released it as casually, and left the impression that if a hurricane blew his way, it, too, would wash right through him. I had no doubt at all that he could capture and use it for the working of magic, but it didn’t stay in him the way it stayed in me, and it came to him far, far more naturally than it did to the witches I knew. There was no need for a guiding deity, with him. The power just ran through him like a river. Witty as ever, I said, “Wow. What are you?”

  He shrugged big broad beautiful shoulders. The outrageousness of his accent started wearing off, becoming easier for me to understand, though he still sounded as old-school Cajun as anything I’d ever heard. “A conduit, mebbe. A gateway. You?”

  “A shaman.” I wasn’t going to answer for Jane, even though Lazarus looked at her, too. “A gateway, huh. Are you what brought us here? I mean, not here-here, I did that,” I said with a wave at the Lower World, “but to the Middle World we just left? Because it’s not Jane’s world and it’s sure not mine.”

  “Does it matter?” Jane growled. “Stinky is dead. Let’s go home.”

  “Are you kidding? Of course it matters. People don’t just go flying off to different universes without a reason. Or they don’t in my world, anyway. So whatever brought us here has got to be impor—”

  I stopped talking then, because Lazarus opened his hands wide and became a man-shaped gateway right back to the Middle World.

  Passing through the portal—whatever that was—back into the physical world, hurt. A lot. Jo muttered “You’ve got to be kidding,” but she made it look easy, like stepping through a guy who’d turned into a doorway between worlds was simple. Like one step to the next , from light, through a sliver of blackness darker than the armpit of hell, back into a different place was easy, right? Not.

  In that one step, Beast’s pelt roiled under my skin like it wanted to burst through my flesh, and her front and back claws sank into my mind like sixteen knives. I hissed out a breath as I stepped from world to world, and felt more than saw tall, African and gorgeous follow me. He smelled . . . odd. Like magic and animals, but not like me. And not like Jo. And Not like a were. And whatever smelled not-like-the-familiar was usually dangerous.

  I found my balance in the neon-lit blackness and party roar of New Orleans Mardi Gras and looked around. We’d lost time. We had left this plane at daylight. Now it was night. Time in the other place wasn’t linear, which bothered the heck outta me. Jo looked a little nonplused too, and I shrugged at her; she shrugged back, which was nearly a mirror image of mine, and we shared a grin. Time changes were not something I could change, so I’d have to live with it. Seems she felt the same way.

  With Beast still pushing speed and power into my muscles and nerves, I pivoted on one foot and pulled two vamp killers, holding then down at my sides, one backhand, one forehand settling my balance, knees bent. “Jane?” Jo asked. I ignored her, but kept my awareness of her to my side.

  Laz stepped through the cut-away of his own shape, having to twist his shoulders and bend a little to fit. The portal stuck to his hands, flipping inside-out as he came through, then began to shrink. He packed it up, sparkling blackness wedging smaller and smaller between his hands. Not wanting to be pulled back through, or stuffed back through, I waited until the rip in reality disappeared. Then I moved. Fast.

  I twisted, hooked an elbow around his. Slammed one boot against his heel. Stepped behind him and yanked. Twisting him around, keeping him from taking a compensatory step, I let gravity do its thing. He hit hard and bounced, air oofing out of him. I landed atop him, dropping fast, one knee in his gut, but it didn’t sink in nearly as far I’d have liked. Big guy with rock hard abs. Great.

  Almost gently, I put my backhand knife at his throat and my forehand knife at his belly. And I grinned. “You smell like spiders. And snakes. And maybe wolf or coyote, with a little bear in it. Magic that smells like sunshine and soot. And I don’t like it.”

  “Jesus Christ, Jane!” At a guess, Jo disagreed with my course of action. “He came to help us.”

  “Yeah. Coincidently to the same place you went to, but conveniently too little too late.” I put a heap of sarcasm into the word conveniently, just in case he missed my intent. “Can you prove he didn’t bring that thing in the first place? Lure us there?”

  “Of course I can’t, but good God, have you ever heard of ask questions first, beat to a pulp later?” I felt, more than saw Jo take a step back. Smelled her reaction. She liked this, this, thing. This thing that was not human, not witch, not shaman, but was pretty. Dang pretty. I could feel his magics rolling under my hands, against my knee on his belly. With Beast-sight, I could see magic too, easier than in my own world, green and yellow and rainbow colors that reminded me of the ruff on Old Stinky.

  I firmed my blade against his skin. Okay, maybe I pushed a little, because a bead of blood slid out and trickled down his neck. I let my smile widen as if I’d done it on purpose. And maybe Beast had.

  “I was brought heyah, I was.” He laid on the accent and the smile. I could feel a compulsion in his smile, like some kind of “like-me” spell.

  I grinned wider, showing my blunt teeth even as Beast’s claws pressed down on my brain, breaking the compulsion. “Convenient,” I said again.

  “Stepping through a portal, I was, when I felt dis—” his eyes slid away in thought, “—dis power draw. I stop. I listen. And I follow it to dis strange place, and then I follow it again to underworld of yellow grass. Not my underworld, no. But a thing of darkness pull me there.
And any hunter who kill that dark thing,” he nodded and more blood flowed, “is a friend of mine.”

  I smelled truth on him and yet I still didn’t believe him. I rose in one long motion and sheathed the unbloodied-blade. The bloodied one, I wiped off on the hem of my tee shirt, then sliced the scrap off. Folded it. And put it in my pocket. And I made sure Pretty Boy and Joanne Walker saw me do it. If she needed something for a blood-spell, we had it. Joanne stared at me. Laz looked disconcerted and scheming all at once.

  I looked around, and discovered that we had come out in a different place from where we went in. It felt like a few hours had passed too, but my subjective time sense was getting all mixed up, so I wasn’t sure. We were near the Mississippi, the sour smell of its power wet on the air. “I have to eat,” I said. “Shifting uses up a lot of calories.”

  “Calories?” Pretty Boy asked, like he’d never heard of them. “Shifting uses up magic, no?”

  Jo startled. “Oh. Oh. Yeah, of course it does. No wonder . . .” I ignored her and jerked a thumb the direction I wanted to go. “Let’s take a walk along the waterfront. There are some really good restaurants and diners there.”

  Minutes later, we had taken two turns and I came to a dead stop, staring through a window. The diner was one I knew. And in my world, the proprietor, Antoine, was dead. In my world he’d been an African witch or shaman or something, and he’d been killed by one of my kind. By a skinwalker masquerading as a vamp who had gone nutso and started eating people and vamps. Long story I decided not to tell Jo. She might not understand. Whatever Antoine was, he was a magic user and a really good cook. The smells wafting from his diner were amazing. Stomach growling, I led the way inside. “Don’t shake his hand. He reads magic.”

  Joanne shot me a look and put her hands in her pockets. Laz looked interested, but did the same as we skulked through the door. Antoine’s was one long narrow room with a bar on the right and red leather upholstered booths on the left. The place was packed with everything from city blue-collar employees in work boots, to men and women in suits, banker types, out for a bite before heading home to family or empty apartments filled with cats and books. In the far corner sat five cops. A musician perched on a tall stool in a corner played guitar, something Spanish-flamenco and hip all at once. I smelled grass and lots of beer and steamed shellfish and fried foods.

  The cement floor that had been worn in my world was brightly painted in this one—like yellow sand and streaks that might have been yellow grass. Just like the underworld we had just left. The walls were a fresh tan. The ceiling was midnight blue painted with stars and runes and magic stuff. The bar was black Formica with sparkles in it, and a mirror ran the length of the wall behind the bar. Glass shelves in front of the mirror were stocked with a jillion bottles of liquor. A fine set of cooking knives with green stone inlaid handles and wicked-sharp blades, ones I remembered well, lay in an open, velvet-lined tray, gleaming in the overhead lights.

  Conversations wove through the air with the scent of food and inside it smelled even better than out, the heavenly steam of beer, grease, and seafood so fresh it still carried salt and sea.

  The black man behind the counter, Antoine, wore a crisp white jacket, a tall chef’s hat, and a smile. We took the only empty table in front and a waitress, a skinny gal took our order even before we were seated, Jo on the inside, me on the aisle, and Pretty Boy across from us.

  “Three Dixie Blackened Voodoo Lagers, three colas, three waters, a serving of everything fried and a couple buckets of crawfish,” I said. Jo raised her brows and I shrugged. “It’s good. I’m buying.” The waitress nodded and wove her way through the crowd clotting the doorway. We had just beat the next rush. Lucky us. Less than a minute later she slid six red plastic baskets lined with newspaper to soak up the grease, onto the table, followed by the nine glasses. There wasn’t room to eat but I did anyway. A lot. Hot onion rings, hush puppies, and boudin—round fried balls of meat and spices and rice the size of golf balls; it tasted like heaven. Beer-batter crust that crunched like God Himself had made them in His own kitchen. Highly spiced, sizzling with oil. I drank one beer fast to cool my mouth and kept eating. At some point, Pretty Boy Laz started eating too.

  “Boudin, dat is, right dere,” he said. “Good, yes?”

  I nodded. “The cook is Antoine, and according to someone I knew here, he knows everything there is to know about this town.”

  “Handy,” Jo said. Which was exactly the word I had used when I was introduced to him.

  The waitress was back and set two steel garden buckets of crawfish on the table, beer- and sea-flavored steam curling up, hot with pepper and spices. I drew out a crawfish, its red shell curled, pretty sure the crustacean had been tossed alive into boiling beer. I bent the back, hearing the shell crack, and pulled the meat out of the tail, eating, fingers messy and greasy and stinky, loving it all. I saluted my dinner companions with the two pieces of mudbug shell. “Suck de head,” I said, just like Rick when brought me here on our first . . . date? Whatever. And Rick was now not human in my world. I wondered what he was here, and pushed that thought away. I slurped the liquid—spicy with hot peppers, garlic, and onion, and beery—and smacked my lips. Took another crawfish. Jo muttered “Don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs. Or crawfish,” and dug in. Pretty Boy broke his mudbug like an expert and sucked it down, which indicated he was what he claimed—a local boy. For a minute or ten we were all silent except for licking fingers and breaking shells. It was good. Really good.

  When I had eaten enough to quell the pain in my stomach, I asked Jo, “What do you see when you look at Antoine? In my world, he was a good guy. But his smile is different and so is his bar.” I pointed up with my greasy fingers. “And he’s got magic stuff painted up there.”

  “Magic stuff. That’s the technical term, right?” I licked my fingers one more time before eyeing Antoine and his magic stuff. Wow. Morrison, the light and love of my life, probably would think poorly of me eyeing another man’s magic stuff. On the other hand, he wasn’t here, and although I had no doubt I would be telling him about Joanne’s Adventures in Wonderland, I could probably manage to edit the phrase magic stuff out of it. Maybe. I hoped.

  This, I recognized, was procrastinating. Probably the fault of the food: another crawfish had somehow worked its way into my fingers and mouth while I’d been eyeing things, and Jane’s order of “everything fried” had been inspired. I’d gained six pounds just watching her eat, nevermind what I’d inhaled myself. I finished my crawfish, licked my fingers again, and this time wiped my hands on a grease-laden, falling-to-pieces paper napkin just for good measure.

  Then I triggered the Sight.

  Hairs stood on my nape and raced all the way down my spine, over my arms, and up to my cheekbones, sending a deep shiver through me before I registered what I Saw on a conscious level. Part of it was just the room: the vivacious colors, the pounding lifeblood in diners’ veins, the physical hunger and groaning sated delight of people coming in for a good meal. I didn’t normally use the Sight in crowds, and wasn’t accustomed to the sheer humanity of it all.

  But mostly it was Antoine’s flat dead black and silver aura that freaked me out. It reminded me vividly of another aura I’d seen, approximately forever ago in terms of my growth as a shaman, but not really all that long in absolute time. The colors hadn’t been the same, but no two auras were exactly the same in color anyway. It was the feeling of them: dull, slithering, dangerous.

  The word came out of my mouth before I could stop it: “Sorcerer.”

  Jane crunched a crawfish so hard it sounded like commentary. “No. I know witches and maybe Antoine was one in my world, but that’s no witch.”

  I tore my gaze from Antoine, which wasn’t all that hard to do. Sorcerers scared me. “I didn’t say witch. I said sorcerer.”

  Jane shrugged. “Same thing. Boys, girls, they all get their own name, but they’re the same thing.”

  “They sure as hell aren’t.�
� Maybe that came out a little strongly, because Jane stopped eating and squinted at me. Gold eyes. Always gold. I hoped mine weren’t ever going to take on a permanent tint. “Witches,” I said, still forcefully, “are earth magic focused through or on a deity. They’re basically good guys. Sorcerers are blood magic and conduits for a big goddamned bad and there is nothing good about them at all.”

  Jane’s ears all but perked up, even if big cats didn’t usually have unperked ears to begin with. “Witches here are different from my world, then. What kind of big bad?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s all different faces of one—” I stopped right there and backed up. Jane probably didn’t want a lecture on the various faces of evil in my world, and besides, it probably wouldn’t be much help. “The one I dealt with was in thrall to a serpent called Amhuluk.”

  Jane’s eyes narrowed and she jerked her head toward Laz. “He smells like snake.”

  I glanced at Laz. He widened his eyes and made a show of sniffing his arms, then turned his palms up—pale and pink, compared to the blackness of his hands, and his fingertips still shining with crawfish juice—with amusement, as if to say “What does snake smell like?”