by Karen Chance
Bayou, Kit decided, smelled like ass. He glowered at the heavy, moss laden trees, the soupy, opaque water, the rotting vegetation. And what he was fairly certain was the corpse of some small animal floating in a patch of debris a dozen yards off shore.
But he wasn't sure.
He wasn't sure because he couldn't separate one scent from another in this fetid mess, which felt like it was actually assaulting him - physically -- on all sides. It was worse than the bogs in Scotland. It was worse than Sulphur Springs in Colorado, where one of his masters had inexplicably chosen to live. It was worse than anything he'd ever tried to scent through, because it wasn't just one smell, it was all of them!
And it was alive.
"That's . . . really quite . . . something, isn't it?" Heinrich said, with a faintly shell-shocked look on his face.
"Tell me you can scent through it," Kit rasped.
"I . . . think so?" He'd never heard that level of uncertainty in the usually confident voice before. Not about his nose.
"Then get on it," Kit said, and the blond moved off to join the others.
Heinrich had his entire team here, the Baskervilles, as they liked to call themselves, a group he'd recruited and trained for the hardest of assignments. He'd heard about the morass of scents the bayou provided to anyone with a nose, and had thought the trip offered a unique chance to set them a challenge.
Well, they had one now, Kit thought grimly, watching through narrowed eyes as they gyrated around, one even hanging off a nearby tree limb, trying to catch a whiff of the creature they'd tracked here. If they'd been a less able group, they'd have lost her already. First in the quagmire the Old Quarter had become, which thanks to this festival was completely packed with sweaty tourists, and then in that burnt out hulk of a building, the air saturated with charred wood and potions of all descriptions.
Why the dhampir had decided to follow up murder with a spot of arson Kit didn't know, but it hadn't made his job any easier. Not when she scented as a plain human in a sea of them! But track her they had, nonetheless, all the way here, to the edge of a particularly odorous stretch of bayou.
If she was trying to get lost, she'd picked a good place.
Kit's fist clenched at his side, nails biting into the soft tissue, little half-moons of blood blooming against his flesh. He ought to be thanking his men for their dedication to duty. He ought to be deciding on an excuse for deserting dinner so abruptly. He ought to be doing a lot of things.
But all he could seem to manage was to stand here, fighting a rising tide of anger.
He couldn't lose her. He owed a debt to one whose forgiveness he could never ask, because he hadn't been fast enough. He wouldn't fail him again. He wouldn't if he had to slop through every inch of this quagmire himself, on his hands and knees --
"Sir!"
Kit whirled, and barely refrained from jumping. He should have felt Heinrich come up behind him; should have heard him. The man had a nose, but he galloped around like a colt, banging into everything. Hell, he should have smelled him, even thought that had never been his talent, because he was sweating from effort, the shaggy mane limp and falling in his face . . .
A face that was currently beaming with pride.
"We have her."
"Good." Kit turned and strode over to the small knot of people who had gathered at the water's edge.
They were looking at a forest of moss laden trees that led off into a dark, watery jungle. Cypress knees broke the surface here and there, bleached ghostly pale by whatever sun had managed to find its way under the heavy canopy. Huge floating piles of algae and lily pads almost obscured the water. A stray moonbeam hit a pair of alien eyes, not hers, not human, but some gray backed leviathan of the deep, that flashed a maw of jagged teeth at them before turning with a flip of its tail and disappearing into the depths.
Kit heard one of the men swallow.
"It's an alligator," he snapped. "You could break it in half with one hand."
If it left me a hand, floated through the man's mind, before he tamped the thought down hard.
Kit let it go.
There were boats drawn up on shore, ones they'd appropriated from a nearby tourist location that hadn't yet opened for the season. There were canoes, kayaks, and a small fishing vessel -- silent types except for the latter, so as not to alarm her unduly. Kit didn't know her strengths, didn't know what abilities the bogeyman -- or woman -- of his kind actually had, because all dhampirs were different. But some of the old stories said she might match them in sensory ability, and he wasn't going to risk it.
"I heard dhampirs are worse than gators," one of his southern boys said, throwing a shotgun over his back. "I heard they got claws and a tail like an animal. I heard they can see a man in pure darkness. I heard --"
"I don't care what you've heard!" Kit said, studying at the map of the waterways they'd found along with the boats. The place hadn't opened for the season yet because of an undue growth in vegetation, which had made many of the usual routes impassable.
Good; that should limit the playing field.
"We could split up; try to surround her," Liam offered, looking over his shoulder.
"That we could." Kit looked up. "Karl, Adelin, take a canoe and branch off to the right at the end of this leg," he traced a finger along one possible route. "Margo, Alex, take the kayaks and check out this shallower area to the left. Heinrich, David, take the other canoe straight down the main river, or whatever the hell they call this thing."
"And me, my lord?" Liam asked, dark eyes grave.
"You and I will stay here, to make sure she doesn't double back. And to be available to move whenever anyone spots her."
"Yes, sir," Heinrich said staunchly. "And don't worry, sir; we'll find her."
Kit grabbed his arm. "Just remember: no killing."
"Sir?"
"Your job is to locate her, not to take her down. You find her; you call in, understood?"
Heinrich nodded. "And . . . then what?"
Kit felt his eyes go red. "And then she's mine."
Chapter Five