Gravel Voice was caught off guard but not ready to surrender. Perhaps he thought the Uzi negated our advantage in numbers. As he swung the barrel around to point at Olive, Lupé and I both launched ourselves with preternatural speed.
She hit him low and I hit him high. The Uzi went off as we all went down, throwing a spray of bullets around the room like a demented water sprinkler.
Somebody punched an alarm button.
We rolled once, twice, and a second and third burst was muffled by the press of our combined bodies. Either one of us would have taken him down and stopped it right then and there. Unfortunately there were three people in the mix making our efforts confused and uncoordinated.
And it was taking way too long. A white-hot poker stabbed me in the thigh as I rolled and then jabbed me again in the left buttock. Lupé cried out and I knew that our time was up. I grabbed his throat with my left hand and squeezed. Correction: I suddenly closed my left hand. Gravel Voice was human so he didn't discorporate and go all dusty.
But he was still very dead.
I rolled off and tried to rest on my right side; the wounds in my left leg and—ahem—hip made any other position untenable for the moment. Lupé just huddled in a ball.
"Honey?" I reached out to touch her and groaned with the effort. She didn't move. Just a little quiver and an abbreviated whine told me that she was still alive.
"Need some help here!" I yelled.
One of the store employees announced he was calling 911 as Mama Samm knelt between us. "Baby, are you okay?"
"Fine as frog hair," I grunted. "See to Lupé!"
As Mama Samm turned to my fiancée I looked over at Archie, who was down on his knees, now. Olive stood just out of his reach, pointing her gun at his head but I don't think he even noticed. The venomous water snakes were still clamped to his hand and wrist and the flesh of his arm was already starting to turn dark and swell.
Mama Samm spoke. "Miss Olive, you think you can hold the fort a few minutes?"
"This bad boy ain't going nowhere!" she said with unaccustomed vehemence. "You okay, boss?"
"We're partners now, Olive. I'm not your boss."
"You're okay," I heard her mutter.
"Well, I'm gonna need some help getting Miss Lupé out to the car," the huge fortune-teller announced. "And we got to get moving."
"Shouldn't we wait for the ambulance?" I asked, trying to turn over and get to my hands and knees.
Mama Samm shook her head. "Uh-uh. I wouldn't send a dog to any hospitals 'round here."
There was nothing wrong with any of the nearby hospitals but I caught the nod of her turbaned head. I followed the motion to gaze at the nape of Lupé's neck: dark hair was starting to sprout along her spinal column. Pain and shock was triggering a lycanthropic transformation. We couldn't take her to any human hospital.
"I know someone," Mama Samm was saying. "Why don't you ask these fine gentlemen to help me get Lupé out to my car?"
I looked over at the frightened faces of the store's staff. "Them?"
"Well, honey," she said, "you sure as hell in no condition to carry her. Or yourself, I'm thinking. Besides, I think you need to be talking to them about what they'll be remembering afore we leave."
She had a point. When the cops arrived, they'd want to know where we went. The last thing we needed was an APB for two gunshot victims fleeing the scene of a crime.
"What about Olive?"
"It's okay, baby. She knows."
I felt dizzy. "She knows?"
Mama Samm nodded. "You need allies. She can't help you or protect herself if she remained in the dark."
"So you told her?"
"A couple of months back. She had her suspicions."
"And she knows everything?"
"Not everything. She doesn't know about Jamal."
"Shit." That was the one thing I'd rather that someone else would tell her.
I eased myself around and looked at the trio of white-faced humans behind the glass counter. "You three—
"—come here and look into my eyes . . ."
Chapter Five
We lay in the back of a 1956 Chevrolet Beauville 210 station wagon while Mama Samm drove—no pun intended—like a bat out of hell.
The adrenaline had worn off somewhere around the city limits. Pain was making a serious attempt to get my attention while shock kept wrapping a fuzzy blanket of disinterest around my mind. Somewhere in between, I felt bad about getting blood all over Mama Samm's car. Despite being a half century old, its two-tone, blue-and-white paint job gleamed like new and the face chrome and bumpers reflected the streetlights like funhouse mirrors. The interior, however, was going to need some serious detailing once we were patched up.
I wasn't supposed to worry about Lupé. Anything that didn't immediately kill her should have been a minor annoyance: her lycanthropy would regenerate any wound short of a stopped heart or missing head.
But I was growing more concerned as we sped away in the storm's backwash and headed south toward thinning cloud cover. My wounds had stopped bleeding almost before I finished crawling across the tailgate to flop. Lupé was still unconscious, however, and her side wouldn't stop leaking blood. I raised her shirt and checked her wound for the tenth time in as many minutes. At least it was a clean "through and through," the bullet apparently entering just inside the iliac crest of her pelvis and exiting just above her hip. Lucky her, I still had two slugs in me: the fun would begin when they had to be dug back out.
"What were you and Olive doing at the jewelry store?" I called to the front seat. A little conversation beyond "Are we there, yet?" was a welcome distraction.
"Saving your ass," Mama Samm answered with a cackle. "But, from the looks of your pants, it done got shot anyway." She craned her head around. "How's Miss Lupé?"
"You're the fortune-teller," I snapped, "you tell me."
"I tried calling your house but you had already left. Couldn't get through to Miss Deirdre, she was on the other phone. Just had time to call Olive and load my purse."
"You're telling me what; you're not telling me how."
The original 235 inline six with its three-on-the-tree and automatic overdrive kept the ride smooth as silk while we were on the highway but now we were on a side road and headed in-country. The wagon's jewel-like suspension couldn't compensate for bad roads once we went rural.
"I had a dream last night . . ." she began.
I shivered—whether from fending off shock or the reminder of last night's dream encounter with Jenny and Kirsten, I couldn't say.
" . . . I saw you at the jeweler's. You and Miss Lupé were trying on rings. A strange man came up and gave you both a pair of real nice ones. When you put yours on, the diamond turned dirty looking. I looked real close and saw it wasn't no diamond after all. It was a bloodstone!" She stopped as if that explained everything.
"So you called Olive instead of alerting the police?"
"You think the po-lice gonna put any stock in the dreams of an old, black fortune-teller?" I couldn't argue the point seeing as I wasn't much on sharing my own dreams these days.
"'Sides, when the papers tell how Miss Olive foiled a jewelry store holdup—her little .22 pistol against two automatic weapons—your detective business gonna make more money than you know what to do with!"
"I already have more money than I know what to do with. And I'm not really keen on a lot of publicity—" My cell phone warbled. "—even if the witnesses have no memories of our part in what happened." I pulled it out and flipped it open.
She chuckled. "You sure are getting good at that mind hypnotizing stuff."
I was. Getting the jewelry store staff to cooperate was easy. Getting them to forget our presence and part in all of this wasn't much harder. I've wondered how many unknowing victims have provided a midnight aperitif to a vampire only to have the memory erased upon their parting. I hadn't applied my own powers of mental domination to such effect—yet. I could tell, however, that I would be more than capable when my transf
ormation to monster was complete.
"You might do well to remember that," I growled at her.
The levity was suddenly gone from her voice. As was the uncultured patois that she affected for the crackers. "And you might do well to remember to whom you are speaking before you go talking trash."
"Uh," I swallowed, "yes, ma'am." I activated the phone.
"Chris?" It was Deirdre.
"Yeah."
"Olive called. Are you all right?" There was a hint of panic and a taste of something more in her voice.
"Been better. But we're alive and Mama Samm is taking us somewhere to get all fixed up."
"How bad is it? Should I put in a call to Dr. Burton?"
I looked over at Lupé. Tufts of sable hair were erupting on her face and her nose seemed longer, broader, darker. She whimpered softly. "Yeah. Not a bad idea. Make the call." I remembered the jar on the mantel at home and Pipt's email with Theresa Kellerman's head serving as his sig file. "In fact, talk to Mooncloud, too. Tell 'em that one of them should make the trip out. Listen, this is not a good time—I'll call you back after we get to where we're going."
"Where are you going?"
I turned my head back toward the front seat. "Where are we going?"
"To see the Gator-man," was Mama Samm's cryptic reply.
"We're off to see the Gator-man," I repeated. "Don't ask me, I really don't know. I just know that we can't go to a hospital with Lupé getting all furry."
"I understand. What I don't understand is what happened. Olive said there was a robbery . . ."
"No. It was supposed to look like a robbery. It was either a hit or an abduction. They knew my name and seemed set on taking me with them."
"What do you mean?"
"Deirdre . . . Archie was one of the two guys."
I heard the catch in her voice. "And the other one?" she asked after a moment.
"Didn't recognize him. He seemed to be in charge. Archie followed his lead, deferred to him."
"It wasn't Marvin?"
I shook my head and hazily remembered that she couldn't see me as I had the video turned off. "No. I saw Marv on the way out. He was still sitting in the Hummer and he looked dead."
The car swerved but caught a bad pothole with its left rear tire and Lupé shrieked. The high keening sound cut me to the quick but at least she was awake now. "Chris?"
I eased back down next to her and gave her a little squeeze. "It's okay, baby. I'm here." I turned back to the phone. "Gotta go."
"Right." Her tone suggested that the remaining security personnel were in for a rough time of it. "Don't go all Jack Bauer on me, Chris; keep me in the loop."
"What happened?" Lupé asked groggily as I clicked off.
"You got shot, honey. You took a bullet in the side."
"It hurts."
"I know, baby. We're gonna get you fixed up real soon." I turned my head and yelled up to Mama Samm in the front seat. "How much longer?"
"Almost there . . ."
"You said that a half hour ago."
"I'm getting there as fast as I dare. A fast bumpy ride's bound to be worse than a slightly longer, smooth one. How you doing, Miss Lupé?"
She coughed and groaned. "Oh, it hurts!"
"I know, honey child. Try and be strong like Mister Chris there. He shot twice as much as you."
Lupé gripped my arm. "Oh, Chris! Are you all right?"
I gave her my best mock scowl. "If I wasn't, would she be doing her Aunt Jemima voice for us?"
For that comment she laid it on all the thicker. "He is grievously wounded. They done shot him in the ass!"
I grimaced and Lupé matched my expression as she started to laugh. "Ah! Ah. Oh God, oh Jesus, oh Mary and Joseph . . ."
I tried to reassure her. "I don't think it's that serious."
Her grip on my arm tightened painfully. "It is serious!"
"I'm sure it feels like it but I've seen worse and—"
"You don't understand," she growled. Her face began to stretch and elongate. "This isn't the first time that I've been shot. I've taken bullets before! Worse than this!" She began to pant. "It never hurt like this though!" Her voice grew harsh as her vocal chords reconfigured with her changing anatomy. "I think I'm dying!" She began to choke and I watched helplessly as she convulsed in a growing pool of her own blood. It was time to think of the unthinkable.
"Lupé, I'm going to give you some of my blood."
"No . . ."
"It will heal you. If you're dying, it can save you."
"No! It might change me . . ." She coughed again but seemed to master the spasms that wracked her body a moment before.
I almost pointed out how ridiculous it was for a shapeshifter to worry about something changing them. "Change you how?"
Her grin was tight and forced, almost like a death rictus. "That's just the problem. We don't know now, do we?"
"It helped Deirdre."
"Deirdre . . ." A slight growl thrummed in her throat. "She was a vampire. Now we don't know what she is. I'm a werewolf. We're different."
"Were-different?" I echoed, trying to coax a smile out of her.
She ignored the bait. "You shared your blood with her before you tasted demon's blood. We don't know how much more that has changed you since."
"It may not have changed me at all."
She gave me a look I could not interpret. "It changed you." She reached out and gave my hand a little squeeze. "Ouch." She released my fingers as if they had grown hot.
More importantly, it might change her. Since my blood had defanged Deirdre, Lupé seemed concerned that her lycanthropy might be compromised. What did that mean? Did my beloved really want to remain a monster? Enough to chance death to do so?
There was a break in the clouds as we came to a dirt road. I was unable to brace Lupé as we bounced between cavernous ruts: I was trying to dodge stray beams of sunlight that were piercing the windows on her side of the cargo area.
"Talk to me," she demanded, as the wagon bucked over twisted cypress roots and the smell of fetid water puffed through the moss-draped trees. "I need a little distraction right now!"
"You talk to me," I countered testily. Her color was better when she was riled. "Where did you go last night?"
"Out," she gasped. "For a run." She didn't mean jogging. "How could I sleep before the most important day of my life?" she asked.
I couldn't tell if she was sincere or mocking me.
"I thought the actual wedding ranked higher on the events list than the ritual 'shopping for the rings.'"
She shook her head and reached for my hand again. "The asking is the only thing that matters. You can bring the justice of the peace over to the house and we can say whatever words you want and have whatever rituals and symbols that please you." She flinched and dropped my hand. "It is the asking that matters."
"Okay. But none of this justice of the peace/small, private ceremony in the backyard crap. We're getting married in a church. With plenty of witnesses."
She shook her head. "I think I would prefer something private . . . intimate . . ."
"You want intimate or safe? If we're in a church, it grants us claims of Sanctuary and keeps the nasties away."
"Even if that were a hundred percent true—which it's not," she argued, "there's no point in tempting fate."
"Actually, there is." I had given this some thought. "If I am to be the Doman of New York, I cannot appear to be weak. I can't skulk around and hide away in the name of security. I have to go out and face my enemies and show the undecided that I'm not afraid of the opposition—whether it's political or homicidal."
"And look how well that turned out for an anonymous little shopping expedition," Mama Samm interjected from the front seat.
"It's important that we have as many witnesses as possible," I continued, ignoring her. "If I'm going to do any good in breaking this particular taboo, I have to do it right in their faces. A vampire marrying a werewolf! It can't be a matter of rumor or hearsay. I
t's important that I rub their faces in it!"
I expected a debate over defining myself as a vampire. I wasn't expecting the tide of anger that washed across her face. "What am I to you? Some sort of campaign stunt? A bureaucratic pawn?"
"Aw, you know that's not—"
"You're politicizing our wedding! My wedding! How dare you—"
"Baby," I pleaded, "I just want everyone to know that you're going to be my wife, not my consort."
"Hold on!" Mama Samm bellowed. "We're going off-road!"
I grabbed Lupé and held her against me, trying to cushion her with my body as we began bouncing over uneven ground. She shrieked and stiffened in my arms. Blessedly she fell unconscious for the last ten minutes of our bone-jarring journey.
* * *
"Don't tell me we're going to find a doctor here."
It looked like someone had tried to back an old Airstream trailer into an ancient clapboard garage, angled it wrong, and ended up pushing both out onto a boat dock before the driver gave up and walked away. Circa 1964. Someone had then attempted to build on a couple of rooms and add windows. Maybe Bob Vila—if he had been extremely drunk.
"Better than a doctor," Mama Samm promised. "A traiteur."
I'd heard the word used before. It was Cajun for "treater" and meant a backwoods cross between a medicine man and a homeopath.
A little, round man emerged from the shack as big, round Mama Samm emerged from the car. His tanned and weathered face split into a dazzling smile, his pearly teeth as white as his wavy hair and bristle-brush moustache. "Sammathea! What brings you out to see the Gator-man on the heels of such a big blow, eh?"
"Trouble, mon ami," she answered, her accent adopting a Cajun flavor as effortlessly as it had the Bryn Mawr tone just fifteen minutes earlier. "I got two in the back that be needing doctoring."
He followed her around to the tailgate and lost his smile as he looked from me to Lupé. "That one don' seem so bad," he said. "Strange—but not bad. But ma petite lupin, she in a very bad way, her! Let's bring her inside."
The tailgate was lowered and I crawled out. Surprisingly, I could stand. More surprisingly, I could carry her into the shack unassisted. Lupé moaned and squirmed as I hefted her. "You be hurting her, you," the little Cajun said as I hurried out onto the dock.
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