by Karen Chance
Being the hated cross between a vampire and a human had its downsides, Dory thought. Like all of them, all of the downsides of both species and then some. But it had its good points, too.
"I don't know!" The guy with the coffee colored skin and impressive dreads stared down at her wild-eyed. Maybe because he was currently dangling two feet off the floor. "I swear -- they don't tell me anything!"
"Who is they?" Dory asked, hiking him a little higher. And wishing, not for the first time, that she was a bit more statuesque. Five feet two was a hell of a thing when you were trying to be intimidating, although it appeared to be working at the moment.
"Th-the bokors. They run things. I just sell stuff," he gestured around at the voodoo paraphernalia that littered the tiny shop.
Nawlins was lousy with voodoo emporiums of one type or another. Mostly, they all looked the same: tribal masks nailed to the walls or hanging from the rafters, bins of straw dolls with beady little eyes that seemed to follow you around the shop, mojo bags filled with odorous clumps of who-knew-what, and candles of all kinds and descriptions. The usual stuff designed for tourists who wanted a slightly creepier than usual souvenir.
But this wasn't just any old shop. A subtle symbol near the front door proclaimed to those in the know that this was the real deal: a licensed, bonded member of the Guild of Necromancers worked here. One of the tolerated members of an otherwise hated breed, who served the undead part of the supernatural community like doctors did for the living.
Or, at least, that's what they were supposed to do.
But certain bokors had a little more on the menu. Like, for instance, adjusting the aura that vamps projected to others of their kind, the invisible-to-humans field that told every vamp they met what clan they belonged to, what family, what master. It was like wearing a descriptive sign around your neck, one that no glamourie could conceal.
And one that made it very difficult to hide from those chasing you.
Dory therefore hadn't been too surprised when she'd found this place's business card in the jacket of a certain crazy vamp. She'd been hot on his tail all week. He had every reason to want a new aura, along with a new face, and a bokor willing to bend the rules could give him both. It all made sense . . . .
Right up until he killed himself.
Why bother getting a new aura if you're just going to destroy it a few hours later? Why off yourself when you're doing a damned good job of evading your pursuit even without a new identity? And why decide to die in front of her?
Dory didn't know, but the questions had made her curious. And then the cashier had come at her with a baseball bat, and curiosity morphed into suspicion. A simmering little knot of it deep in her gut about her part in this, and her sudden, too-good-to-be-true windfall.
She snarled, and Dreads got a slightly more panicked look on his face. "L-look, I told you. I don't know him from Adam --"
"You attacked me as soon as you saw his photo!"
He swallowed. Thinking on his feet -- or off them -- did not appear to be his strong suit. "I-we've had some robberies lately. I was nervous --"
"You should be," Dory said, baring tiny fangs. They were a damned sight smaller than her Sire's, but still more than enough to rip this guy's throat out. Which was sounding better all the damned time.
Something of her thoughts must have leaked onto her face, because Dreads suddenly turned caf? au lait. "He was in here this afternoon," he said in a rush.
"What did he want?"
"To talk to one of the bokors --"
"About?"
"I don't know. They went in back. And after he left, the boss said anybody asking about him ought to be considered dangerous --"
"But not him? Not the guy himself?"
"No. Boss said he wouldn't be back."
"And he knew this how?"
"I don't know. I don't!" he repeated, looking panicked when her grip tightened. "You'd have to ask --"
"Okay," Dory said, and dragged him through a floral curtain.
The back of the shop was a lot less kitschy than the front, with plain wooden countertops, rows of standing shelves, and an exam table that didn't look like it was getting much use since there were half a dozen cardboard boxes sitting on top of it.
"You-you can't be back here," Dreads told her nervously.
"I'll keep it in mind. Where is he?"
"Who?"
"The bokor!"
"I-he left a couple hours ago. He said he'd be back-you can't look in there!" he added, when Dory's gaze slid over the boxes again.
"Thanks," she told him, and went over to check them out.
The one on top contained bottles of little white pills. The ones below held loose little white pills. They looked like coated aspirin, small and round and innocuous looking. Only they weren't, because nobody got that worried about aspirin.
But as clues went, they kind of sucked.
She didn't care if the bokors were running dope; dope didn't work on vampires. She was looking for . . . hell, she didn't even know. But a quick search didn't turn up anything else of interest.
Maybe, she finally admitted, because there was nothing else there.
The paperwork on dead guy had said he was unstable. That he'd gone crazy and taken out a couple villages, before hightailing it out of the country. Maybe that whole scene earlier had just been more of the crazy coming out. And maybe Dreads, who reeked of ganja and had a back room full of pills, had just been nervous about anybody asking questions. And maybe she should go score some etouffee and locate another bed for the night because she was wasting her time.
Because seriously, if anything was going on, would someone like Dreads have been left to hold down the fort?
And then the curtain was ripped aside, and a dozen guys started spilling into the room.
Dory blinked at them; that was helpful.
"Panic button?" she asked Dreads.
"Panic button," he said viciously, right before her fist plowed him in the face.
He dropped, she swiped an arm across the table, and a few thousand little white pills scattered everywhere, sending the guys in the lead slipping and sliding and crashing into the shelving. That would have been great, since the shelves did not appear to be properly attached, and went down like dominoes, trapping half a dozen guys underneath. But it quickly became a problem when the contents of all those shelves smashed against the floor, sending noxious clouds boiling throughout the room, toxic enough to make Dory's throat close up.
Great.
Even worse, the fumes did not appear to bother her opponents. Like they didn't seem to register the splashes of acidic goo they were stepping in, or the knife she sent into the nearest one's throat, or the bullets that shredded the head of the one behind him. Maybe because they were already dead.
"Son of a bitch!" Dory coughed, and grabbed her lighter.
But she still needed an incendiary, and she didn't think --
Oh, wait.
She slammed a foot down on the clerk, who was trying to crawl away, and grabbed her bag off her back. This, she reflected -- stop to kick a zombie in the chest -- would be easier -- send it staggering back into several more -- if she had put the damned thing -- empty a clip into a guy trying to eat her thigh -- in a pocket! Where the hell --
Oh, there.
Her hand closed on smooth glass, and the next second a nearly full bottle of rum wasn't anymore as she sprayed the contents all over the attacking throng, some of whom were still trying to crawl out from under the shelving.
They didn't make it. A second later, they were sizzling on the floor, and the rest were sizzling on their feet, and the closest few were going up like man shaped tiki torches. Dory smiled in relief.
Right up until the nearest one grabbed her.
The creature's hair was on fire, along with most of its torso, but it didn't seem to notice that, either. Because zombies don't feel pain, do they? And the human body -- even a dead one -- doesn't immediately incinerate.
Might have t
hought of that before, Dory told herself grimly. Because fighting a burning corpse wasn't any more fun than fighting a non-burning one. It might even be worse.
Make that definitely worse, she decided, as her jacket sleeve caught on fire when she punched a hole through its face. And as she was forced to duck under the table to get away from the rest of the bonfire brigade. And as Dreads hopped up from the floor and slammed her in the side of the head with something.
Something that left her less stunned than blinking in confusion.
"A tray?" she demanded, flipping the heavy metal table over onto the zombies.
He looked down at the flimsy aluminum object he was holding, and then back up at her.
"It's all I could reach."
"A tray?"
"Look, I'm not paid enough for this," he said, sounding annoyed. "I'm just supposed to man the register, you know? This isn't my -- augghhhh!" he screamed, as a fiery zombie grabbed him instead of Dory, maybe because the rum had landed in its face and it couldn't see past the flames.
"No, you idiot! You've got the wrong one!" he shrieked. "Her! You're supposed to attack-erk," he added, as the thing got him around the neck.
Dory slammed a new clip into place and shot it in the head. And grabbed Dreads when it staggered back with half its cranium gone. And dragged him behind the last remaining shelving unit still standing. Where they got some solidarity going and began lobbing bottle after bottle at the approaching horde. Some of which did nothing, and some of which actually helped the other side by drenching the flames, and some of which --
"Oh, that was a good one," Dreads said, as a guy trying to flank them from the left suddenly blazed up in brilliant blue flames that licked the ceiling before going out. And reduced him to a column of powder that filtered slowly down onto the floor.
And onto the smoking bodies of the other goons, who had finally taken enough damage to stop moving.
Mostly.
Dory shot a final holdout until it stopped twitching, grabbed Dreads and slammed him against the wall.
"Um," he said eloquently.
"Talk," she grated out.
"Okay," he said, taking a deep breath. And then: "I just got this job, all right? They said there'd been a string of break ins and they needed me to be vigilant -- that's the word they used vigilant, I had to look it up -- but they meant be twitchy with the panic button if anything happened. So I was. And, okay, yeah, I knew some illegal stuff was going on, but you know how hard it is to get a job when you're an ex-con? The Circle's on my ass all the time and my parole officer is a punk -- he's maybe sixteen -- and he hates me, and kept sending me to all these dead end jobs and -- well, a guy's gotta eat, right? But nobody cares. You make one little mistake and nobody --"
"Shut up!" Dory told him, and shoved a gun in his face.
He shut up.
She kicked the nearest bottle of pills with her foot.
"The bokors are running drugs?"
He nodded.
"What kind?"
He mouthed something. She let up on the collar she was throttling him with slightly and he dragged in a deep breath. And then breathed out an answer. "D-designer drugs. You know, for the mages?"
"What mages?"
"Any mages. Well, any with cash, anyway."
Dory frowned. "Why is a bokor selling drugs to mages? They deal with vamps." She glanced at the nearest sizzling pile. "And other dead things."
"But live ones have more money," he pointed out. "You got any idea how hard it is making a living off the vamp community? There's just not enough of 'em. One of the bokors told me he was barely scraping by, 'till he got an offer from someone down south --"
"To distribute illegal magical drugs?"
He nodded. "They sell like hotcakes. We put 'em in the poppets -- you know, those straw men they have outside? And people walk right out with 'em --"
"What do they do?"
The guy frowned. "The poppets?"
"The. Drugs."
"Oh." He blinked. "Depends on what you need. Like I said, they're designer."
"Which means what?"
"Well, like this guy that came in here this afternoon. Not your guy -- another guy. He wanted to become a wardsmith. Make fancy keep out spells for the well-heeled, you know? But he couldn't pass the test."
"The test?"
"To get his license. Nobody'll hire a wardsmith who ain't licensed. Don't you know anything?"
Dory jerked his head down. "I know I'm getting impatient."
The guy swallowed, possibly because the gun barrel was now denting his nose. "Well, anyway, he bought a bottle to help him pass the test."
"How would a pill do that? You either have the talent or you don't."
"No, you either have the power or you don't," Dreads corrected. "You can be as skilled as you like, but skills ain't nothing without the juice. Or maybe you got it, but it's not in the right area. Maybe it's spread out all over, like with most mages. A little in this talent, and little in that-until you take the pill . . . ."
"And it concentrates your magic," Dory guessed.
He nodded. "Pop a pill, adjust the spell that comes in the bottle -- to tell it where your magic's 'sposed to go -- and wait a couple hours. Then for the rest of the day, you're super mage. Good for impressing the ladies, passing tests, winning fights . . . it also gets you high as fuck, which is a nice bonus --"
"And if a non-mage took it?"
He shrugged. "Humans don't have magic."
"But vamps do."
"What?"
Dory slammed him against the wall again, trying to ignore the building rage inside her. It wasn't easy. If there was one thing she hated, it was being played for a fool. "What would happen if a vampire took this?"
"What?" the guy said again, looking confused.
"What would happen?"
"I don't know! I don't know!" Dreads looked at her, wide eyed. "Only the bokors would know --"
"The ones in contact with 'someone down south?'"
He nodded.
Dory snarled.
"Please don't hurt me," he said, in a very small voice.
"Then give me another target."
Chapter Four