by Faith Hunter
“Another on the fire escape,” a second voice said. “Moves like human.”
“Let’s have a chat with our hosts,” Derek said.
The men quick-stepped toward the stairwell but positioned themselves outside. One man threw something. I closed my eyes and covered my ears just in time. The explosion shattered through my hands, against my eardrums. The flash-bang took out the humans descending the stairs. I had no idea what effect it might have on a vamp except to make him mad.
Derek and his boys raced into the confined space and brought down three forms. The humans were on the floor, incapacitated by the noise, but the vamp was fine, if by fine that meant really vampy and ticked. But he wasn’t fighting, which was odd. Derek’s men shackled them all, the humans in steel, the vamp in silver. I stepped into the stairwell.
The vamp hadn’t fought because he had been snared with a silver mesh net formed of tiny interlocking crosses; his face and hands were burned and blistered. Derek had thrown the net, bringing down the vamp with no fight at all. I fingered the glowing mesh. “Now, this is cool. I got to get me one of these.”
“I’ll send you to my supplier later,” Derek said. “Silent alarm went out three minutes ago. We probably got another three minutes before the cavalry shows up. Either make him true-dead or talk fast. The silver mesh will make him uncomfortable enough to maybe chat a bit.”
“Good.” I toed the vamp. He wasn’t pretty, a recent, partially healed scar marking the left side of his face diagonally from outer brow, alongside his nose, across both lips, to the right side of his chin. He looked tough, a warrior, given vampire life for some great sacrifice, maybe. It didn’t happen often, but it did happen. And I had seen him at the vamp party at the Old Nunnery. “Where are the witches?”
He spat at me. Before the spit fell, Derek landed a kick in the vamp’s side. He oofed with pain. I knelt beside him so he could smell my scent. And I pulled a vamp-killer, my favorite knife, eighteen-inch blade with a hand-carved, elk-horn handle, a gift from Molly’s husband. His eyes widened and he met mine, pulling a vamp glamour. “Release me.” The words reverberated through me, aching with need. Beast put a paw on my mind, and pressed down, giving me control I lacked on my own. I took a breath, feeling the sticky command dissolve. He tried again. “Release me and I will give you all that you desire.” English wasn’t his first language, his accent vaguely Italian.
Derek shook his head. “We’re Leo’s. We got protection from vamp mind control.”
“Tell you what, bubba,” I said, “you tell me where the Damours are, and maybe I’ll let you live.”
His eyes bled back to half-human, the whites less bloody, the pupils less black and wide. I was pretty sure his irises would be brown when he wasn’t vamped out. “You do not fall to me?”
“She’s the Rogue Hunter,” Derek said. “She don’t fall to nobody.” He was staring at the far wall, gun at the ready, not letting his eyes meet the vamp’s, a weird look on his face.
“I have heard of this one. You follow her? A woman? She is not even human.”
“She’s more human than you. Now answer the nice lady or she’ll blind you. I know you can heal from it, but it’ll be painful. And time-consuming.”
More human than you? Nice lady? And he didn’t react when the vamp told him I wasn’t human. . . . Great. Can’t a girl keep a secret or two?
“What are you? You do not smell of witch, like my mistress and masters.”
I was right. Renee, her brother/hubby, and currently unnamed other brother were witches/vamps, no longer members of the long-chained, and no one knew how long the adults had been sane. They were witches who practiced dark magic, yet who had survived the purge. And they were killing witch children in spells. More and more, it all made sense.
I pivoted on a heel and went back to the long-chained ones. I sniffed, mouth open, along the bodies of the Damours’ three-hundred-year-old teenagers. They fought and growled, tearing at their shackles as I did so, fought to get to me, to the blood in my veins. I caught a whiff, buried under the scent of vamp. Both children carried the witch gene.
CHAPTER 20
Thief-of-kits. Die.
Ignoring the men and vamp on the stairway landing, I raced up the stairs and into the apartment. I disabled a man with a knife, a chef by the smell of his clothes, bonked him on the head with the pommel of my vamp-killer, and left him unconscious at the entry. The apartment was opulent in red and white, lots of white marble, white-painted wood, lots of red fabric. The color of blood seemed to appeal to vamps as a decorating scheme. Go figure. I breathed the place in, scenting. It reeked of human blood donors, multiple vamps, pain, and sex. I raced from room to room, some with beds, some without, one with a complicated rack hanging from the ceiling, chains and tools of a bloody trade organized on shelves. There was a drain here too. There was no indication in the apartment’s scents that the kits or Bliss had ever been here. I abandoned it for the third floor.
This was a private place, one huge room, divided into sections by furniture groupings. The place reeked of the Damours, their scent patterns overlapping and intermingled. I knew what they wanted now, I knew what they were trying to do, and the knowledge made the stink stronger, darker, permeated with evil, though surely that was only my imagination.
A large dining area was to my right with a table to seat twelve; a larger living space was ahead, with lots of leather. Two sleeping areas were just beyond, each with king-sized beds made up with fur. Lots of real fur. Vamps liked lounging on dead things. By the smell, this was a major lair of the Damours. I made sure the huge apartment was empty, finding a small but ornate bathroom tucked away in a nook, but no other individual rooms. Again the decor involved a lot of marble—floors, walls, pillars holding up the roof—but the color scheme was black and red, with black marble and deep scarlet fabrics. I stopped and turned, scenting with mouth open. Something was wrong. Something was missing.
No humans, Beast murmured. No human blood. They do not feed here.
“Or they don’t feed on human blood here.” My body tightened, hard and sharp.
I walked to the beds and lifted a pillow to me. Bliss’s scent wafted out. Bliss and sex. The Damours were feeding off witches. Fury-fear spiraled up in me, flaming and icy, electric. Angelina? I climbed across the bed, mouth open, dragging in air over tongue and nose with a scagghing sound. Relief shuddered through me. Angie hadn’t been savaged here. But what I did smell brought me up short.
The vamp on the landing below had been in the beds of the Damours, recently. So had other vamps, including Bettina, Rousseau Clan master. I lifted a pillow and breathed in her scent, the stink of her sweat. It was laced with fear. She had not been here willingly. She had wanted to escape them. I should have gone to visit when she asked.
“Princess?”
I twisted on one knee and saw Derek at the door.
“We’re ready to take the heads of the rogues on the cots.”
“Belay that. Until we find the kids, these particular rogue vamps get a pass. If we kill them, then there’s no reason to keep Angelina and Little Evan alive.”
He nodded his head, but it was resigned. “Fine. We can use them as bait.” He looked at his watch. “Time.” He meant time to go.
“One more minute,” I bargained.
“Baldy just disabled one of my men and took off. Sixty seconds and me and my men are outta here.”
Discarding any pretense of human speed, I raced from the bed and slammed open the armoires on the back wall, the doors rocking and banging as I passed. They faced the windows, all of them dark wood, carved with curlicues and flowers and leaves, dragons and gargoyles, faces out of legend and nightmare. Vamp scent roiled out of each until the next to last. And from it witch scent rose, fresh and potent and powerful.
I paused, hands clenching on my weapons. “They were here. The children.” There was a mattress on the floor of the armoire, sheets and a blanket, small shackles on long chains. And a doll. A black-haired dol
l with yellow eyes, like mine. Ka Nvsita. The doll I gave to Angie.
Icy fear sliced through me. Tears stung my eyes. I sheathed the shotgun and picked up the doll. The scent of Angie’s fear and the salt of her tears were ripe in the doll’s clothes. But there was no scent of blood. I thanked God for small favors as I closed the door and secured the doll inside my leather jacket. “They were here only moments ago. How did they get by us?”
I looked at the last two armoires. Maybe . . . ? The next held paintings, stacked in tightly. I yanked one out and saw a witch circle and pentagram. And vampires. And children. And lots of blood. “Derek? Get a couple of men up here and take these”—I nodded to the paintings—“as many as you can.” He started to refuse but I passed him the painting. His mouth twisted down, hard, and he spoke into his headset.
The last armoire wasn’t an armoire. When I pulled the door, a black space yawed open, a narrow stair leading down into darker night. The smell of sex, witch, and vamp led down. I remembered the utility area on the side of the building. I hadn’t seen a door but one could be hidden there easily enough. “Derek?” When he looked at me, his shotgun out, braced across his body, I said, “They went this way. It leads down. Look for a passageway through the garage or a door to the outside. I’m taking the stairs.”
Derek cursed with a marine’s efficiency and disappeared, directing two men to take the paintings and get them into the van. I started down the stairs.
Beast, already close to the surface, shoved her way into my forebrain. Pain gathered at my fingertips as if claws pushed through. Pelt roiled just under my skin, aching, wanting to be free. My eyes adjusted to the lack of light. I can see well in murky dark, but my vision is no match for vamp eyes, which can see in total dark. I found the stairs by feel, the treads deeper than normal with maybe a twelve-inch drop per riser. My steps were slow and careful, my mouth open to scent, short snuffs drawing in air.
According to the scent markers, vamps and witches had come this way only moments ago, but no echo of sound remained except for my feet on the treads. They were hollow like wood, not quite smooth, not freshly sanded and lacquered. The passageway smelled old beneath the reek of vamp and witch-fear, with a moldy undertone of tea, indigo, rice, and cotton. And lots of human women and more human fear, though most from long ago.
Maybe it was an original passageway from the eighteen hundreds, or earlier, and had been remodeled into the back of the armoire as an escape hatch. An image came to me, bright and sharp, though I’m not gifted with vision. Maybe just stuck with a too-strong imagination, mixed with the fear in the smells. But I saw black women, wearing chains and little else, the scents of melanin from their skin, and iron and blood and fear, semen and degradation. A slave ship captain had used this passageway to test out his cargo before he sold them. I knew it with certainty and an impotent fury burned in me, the fury of a people who had served in slavery, much like the imported Africans. The fury of a woman, understanding hopeless captivity. The fury of Beast, feral and untamed.
Anger burned along my nerves and tingled through my skin. I nearly missed a step deeper than the others. And then was brought up short on the next three that had lower risers, as if the stair risers had been sized to create discomfort and confusion. I walked down the narrow passage, my eyes adjusting to the blackness, my other senses expanding, reaching out, testing the air. The echoes dulled, shortened, and I knew I was at the bottom. Ahead of me was a faint line of light. I reached out and found a leverlike handle. Pushed down on it. A door opened. Three men dressed in black ringed the door. I scented Derek and raised my hands. “Just me,” I said, my voiced clotted with fury and failure. “Just me.”
“We never saw this door in the shadows. If they came through here, they’re long gone,” Derek said.
Over his head, the moon was rising, the first night of the three-day-full moon. The three days most usually associated with the dark arts, with the moon change of weres, with Beast’s sex drive. If the Damours intended to sacrifice the kits and Bliss, they’d do it during the full moon for optimal results.
I walked to the curb, smelling the fading scents of vamp and witch. And an overlay of diesel exhaust. They were gone. I had no idea where their captors had gone to find safety. Once again I was back to square one. I took a breath that hurt my lungs. Tears stung my eyes. I was nearly out of time.
I walked back into my house, smelling Evangelina Everhart, the eldest of the witch sisters, and Big Evan, Molly’s still-in-the-closet sorcerer husband. And smelling Molly. She raced to my arms when I came in the side door. Slammed into me, holding me tightly. Over her shoulder Evan looked at me, his gaze murderous, his red beard vibrating with contained fury, promising retribution for the loss of his children. I hadn’t been very good to Evan; I had placed his wife in danger more than once, nearly gotten him killed once, and now allowed his children to be stolen. The fact that I hadn’t been present when they were taken had little relevance in his mind. Or in mine either, if I was honest.
“You don’t have to worry about how to kill me,” I said to him. “If I don’t get your children back, I’ll be dead trying.”
“Better be,” he rumbled. “Or I’ll skin you alive, pelt and flesh.”
Evangelina, who didn’t know I was a skinwalker, looked back and forth between us in confused consternation, then took solace in food and tea, as was her wont. She dished up a hearty stew from a pot on the stove, scooped a round of brown rice in the center, placed small salad bowls at each plate, and dumped buttery biscuits from a steel tray into a basket. Comfort foods. “Sit. Eat,” she commanded. I peeled Molly out of my arms and passed her to Evan, who looked as if he was ready to rip her away from me. I removed the shotgun harness and laid it across the kitchen cabinet, but other than that, I remained fully armed.
I sat, picked up my dinner spoon by feel, and dipped it into the stew and rice.
“Tell me,” Evan said. I put down my spoon and blinked at my tears.
“No. She eats first,” Mol said sharply. “Look at her. She’s about to drop.”
I lifted my spoon and shoveled in the stew. Intellectually, I knew it was good, but it could have been ashes for all I cared. I ate mechanically, emptying my bowl in minutes. Snubbing the salad, I took four biscuits and placed them on the bread plate, dumped honey and butter on them, and applied the spoon to them too. When I was finished, Molly brought me another bowl of stew. And then another. I was eating as tears rolled down my face, and I realized that none of the others was eating at all. They were watching me. When I finished my third bowl, I sighed and pushed away the empty dishes. Without looking at any of them, I wiped my face, took my tea mug in hand, and started talking. I told the tale. All of it except the parts about Beast; I took credit for her contributions and for once she didn’t seem to mind.
As I ate, Evangelina told about the witch coven she had visited. They had claimed they knew nothing about the attack on my house, but there were inconsistencies in the story they told, and Evangelina could tell they were keeping things back. Also, only three members met with her, when there were supposed to be five adult members in the coven. So something was hinky, not that Evangelina would ever use such a term.
Before she finished, while I was still eating, a knock sounded and Rick opened the side door. I’d heard his Kow-bike and knew he was coming. I introduced him around and Evangelina dished him up a bowl of stew.
He sat and dug into the food; halted with mouth full, chewed, and swallowed. “Dang, this is good.” He looked at Evangelina. “You cook this?” When she nodded, he looked at me and said, “No offense, but our date’s off. I have to marry her.” My tears had dried and I twitched a strained smile. He was trying to lighten an impossibly dark situation, and I appreciated that. Not that it would work. He went back to the stew, dipping a biscuit into it and sopping up the juice. He also changed the subject.
“I got news from the files. I spotted something when I was photocopying the witch and vampire files.” Too involved with
the meal, Rick didn’t notice the intense interest of the three witches at the table. I was pretty sure he knew Molly was a witch, but not the others.
“That witch vamp Renee and her husband were once—when they all were human—the owners of the clan’s blood-master, Bettina.” My mouth fell open. Rick grinned at my reaction. “Bettina was sold by Tristan Damours in 1770 to a vamp madame named Bethany who shipped her to New Orleans and put her to work as a sex slave in the Quarter. Bettina had a gift for satisfying customers and she and Bethany ran a successful business.”
Bethany had owned slaves? I shook my head, wondering about the rift between Bethany and Sabina during the Civil War. If it hadn’t been about slaves . . .
“Later she got sick—I talked to a nurse I know and he thinks it sounds like the clap. Bettina was turned at Bethany’s request to save her life.” Rick pulled papers from his leather jacket and passed them to me. I took the pages, opening them to expose a photo of Bettina, decked out in the clothes of a soiled dove, a corset, pantaloons, and a shawl.
“Bethany didn’t turn her?” Evangelina asked.
“No. She’s out-clan, and no out-clan can turn a human. They can’t offer safety during the chained years, so they can’t turn anyone. No protection. And at the time, the info of the Rousseau curse of insanity was still a secret. When he was asked, the Rousseau master agreed to turn her and adopt her into his clan.”
He turned a page and pointed to a line written in a flowery cursive script. “Bettina was set free by accident, here in New Orleans—no one says what kind of accident—when she was still rogue. She went hunting for the Damours to kill them. She failed. When Bettina became blood-master of her clan, she had power over Renee and tried to kill the long-chained Damours. Renee stopped her. No record of how.”
He stuffed half a flaky biscuit into his mouth and talked through it. “Bettina is our way in. We need to talk to her. If we can find her.”