But I'd promised Volpea I'd stay in the passenger seat. And the last thing I needed was for an alpha-male werewolf to be treated to the sight of his partner flopping around on the floor because her body couldn't figure out who was running the show.
So I worked very hard at not doing anything. I was even concerned that too much thinking might distract my host at a critical moment. Instead, I concentrated on the sensations of a change of flesh.
My previous sojourns in female bodies were fleeting—with the one exception of a headless corpse, so that didn't really count. Everybody is different and, in like manner, every body is different, so gender differences aren't necessarily as obvious as one might first imagine. Obviously there were changes in the plumbing. And such physical alterations as height, lower center of gravity, and having bosoms meant posture and locomotion were slightly different, now. Hopefully, I wouldn't have to run for my life without a little practice, first.
And a good sports bra.
As for the endocrine system, it was a little too early to compare hormones.
Though there were these little tingly spots that I'd never encountered in other people's flesh and rarely in my ow, ow, ow—holy crap, I now knew the locations of all of Volpea's silver piercings!
My limited experience with body-swapping was pretty much limited to humans and the undead. Vampires, as a rule, are inhumanly strong. But their strength is cold and machinelike. If Volpea was any example, lycanthropes were vigorous, powerhouses of raw energy, surging and thrumming just beneath their skin. In a cage match, I might bet on the vampires but it wouldn't necessarily be a sure thing in every instance.
Other than the fact that she could probably kick my ass.
Her hearing was very sharp, too. More acute, apparently, than her male counterpart's. Volpea's ears were picking up my snoozy noises just fine. Even Camazotz Chamalcan kept throwing suspicious glances at my cabin door.
It was almost too easy.
Fenris went outside to perform a final check on both vehicles and Volpea gave the demon a quick sketch of how things stood.
Then it was time to go.
Nice, easy, uneventful, and we were on the road five minutes later with no one apparently the wiser.
* * *
Dr. Mooncloud had driven up in one of those trucks badly disguised to look like a car. Mama Samm rode shotgun with her. The werewolves had arrived a few days earlier in a '68 AMC Gold Rambler Rebel. Yee haw. I spent the first few minutes wondering how they got the parts to keep this antique running. Then Fenris spoke.
"Did you have another opportunity to press our cause with the Bloodwalker?" he asked.
"Yes. In spite of too many interruptions," my own ride answered from the passenger seat.
"And would you say he was . . . receptive?"
"Receptive might be just the word to describe the progress of our present stage of negotiations," she said.
Tall, dark, and hirsute nodded and hunched over the steering wheel. No more words were exchanged which left sufficient silence for me to take up the conversation.
>The Boston Commons?< she queried, confused over the real estate reference.
>Well, if you want the plan to go smoothly, I'll need to say whatever it takes to keep certain people happy and unsuspicious. Or would you rather I default to complete honesty and let the chips fall where they may?<
I started to raise mental hands in surrender but stopped as soon as I felt Volpea's hands twitch.
"What's the matter?"
We both looked over at the driver. "What?"
"You look like you're in pain," he said.
"I have a headache."
>Should I mention it seems to be heading south?<
< >
"I need to stop for gas. I'll grab coffee and aspirin, too," he offered.
"Thanks."
Maybe I had misjudged Mr. Grumpy-fur. He was a real gentleman. Gassed up the car, bought two coffees, three different kinds of analgesics, and snagged extra creams, sugars, and napkins whilst V and I were in the ladies room.
This was a new experience for me. I'd never hung around long enough to try out any of the pages in the owner's manual. And you'd think a lady would be kind of shy about company in the can. But I guess it couldn't get any more intimate than we already were—at least not without a little mind mingling. So I did my best to "look" the other way while the essentials were taken care of. I am, after all, a gentleman.
Just not a "perfect" gentleman.
Back in the car, back on the road, it was obvious that we had taken a detour.
"What about Mooncloud? And the juju woman?" Volpea asked between sips of lousy truck-stop coffee.
"Mooncloud didn't require an escort to get here," Fenris answered. "Our job was to make sure the Bloodwalker wasn't inside anyone's head who returned." He turned and looked at us. "They're clean, aren't they?"
We swallowed. And almost gagged. Bad! Bad coffee! Down, boy, down!
"Of course," she choked over the last swallow. "I checked on him, myself."
"Sorry." He turned his attention back to the road.
"What?"
"About the coffee. It's pretty bad." He gestured with his own cup. "But we need something to keep us awake until we get home. Cream and sugar help kill the worst of the taste."
"What's the hurry?" she asked. "We could have caught a few hours sleep; returned in the morning."
Fenris shook his head. "The call came from Pantera. She's hearing the Voices, again."
"That's not good."
"It gets worse. She's built another altar."
"And?"
"He wouldn't say. But it sounds very bad. Worse than any of the other times. He wants us back tonight!"
To say the conversation waned after that would be an understatement. Silence fell in the car like a cold, hard vacuum from the ass end of the universe. It was even still and quiet inside Volpea's head.
>It has been forbidden,< she answered slowly.
>Because it always leads to something dark and terrible happening.<
>Marie, herself. When she is sane . . . <
I thought about that.
A hundred and fifty years ago, before she had been turned by a vampire, Marie Laveau had been a Voudon priestess of great renown and power. So much so that when her daughter took up the practice of Santeria, it was widely believed that she was the original Marie Laveau, immortalized by the loa, themselves. Mother and daughter did share a common interest in voodoo but, the original Marie found that her powers were now limited: she could no longer go about in the day and the "right-hand" path had begun to close as her vampiric nature became ascendant.
According to Mama Samm, the elder Laveau was wise enough to back away at that point, lest the darker, "left-hand" path consume and destroy her. She was content to stay in the shadows, offering advice and tutelage to her offspring so that her daughter eventually surpassed her in power and knowledge.
But not longevity.
The mother did not share the Dark Gift with her daughter. She was still sane enough to recognize that immortality carried too great a price. So Marie II lived a full life and passed away, full of years and, she hoped, went into the Light at the end of her days.
But wisdom does not always grow when it marches in an endle
ss parade of days. As the years then decades then generations passed, Marie I would make occasional attempts to reinvoke the powers and blessing of the loa. Time and again, Mama Samm once told me, the former voodoo priestess had to relearn that the Dark Gift had forever distorted the pathways.
Bad things happened.
Marie Laveau retreated into solitude to nurse her disappointments. And, it was rumored, fight off the madness that whispered from the shadows and haunted her dreams.
New Orleans became an "open demesne" where individuals and gangs vied for turf and, occasionally, supremacy. Marie had her cotillion of undead sycophants and servitors but had not taken a serious interest in power plays for over a century. As far as the other undead factions were concerned, she was a myth, a legend, a boogeyman story the older vamps trotted out to keep the young fangs in line when they got a little too ambitious. But being undead wasn't enough. Unseen and unheard over time pretty much added up to unimportant for the latest generation.
Until she took a consort a few years back.
That's when everything had gone to hell in South Louisiana for a time. Or so I've been told. This was before my time, back when I had a family and went to sleep at night, blissfully unaware that there really were things that went "bump in the night."
The gossip about her new "Latin lover" was sparse and contradictory. The parts that did agree had the Pantera family coming up from some remote place in Central or South America—the stories varied on the finer details—and doing the tourist thing in the New Orleans. It was around the changing of the millennium, during one of the Mardi Gras.
The thing about tourists is they don't know safe territory from the hunting grounds. And they don't know at what hour the boundary lines move and the territories shift. The Panteras had found themselves too close to the wrong alleyway on the wrong street at the wrong hour of the night.
Worse, what preyed upon them was not a pickpocket or a mugger or anything human.
Jorge Pantera lost his wife and son that night. And his own mortality. Only his daughter emerged unscathed—though there are quiet disputations about that, too. Conjecture and supposition; it's all gossip, come out of a city that elevates gossip to a high art form. What was known is that Marie Laveau avenged his family's murders and took father and daughter under her personal protection.
Then it got complicated.
Once upon a time, Marie Laveau had been the "Queen of New Orleans." The return of her libido coincided with her return to that throne. That, in and of itself, would have ruffled a few feathers. She opted for maximum political turmoil by elevating a stranger—a foreigner—who had no experience, no wealth, no power—worse, no history—to rule the Crescent City at her side. To say that this arrangement did not sit well with many would be a vast political understatement.
Much closer to the statistical truth to say it didn't sit well with any.
Still, the survivors of the internecine wars that erupted soon thereafter learned to accept it. Those who didn't, well . . . didn't.
Survive, that is.
Even Sammathea D'Arbonne, who doesn't take crap from anybody, shows the Queen due respect. She doesn't like her or trust her, but neither is she dismissive or careless.
Me? I'm a lot shakier in the "care" and "respect" departments but Laveau and Pantera were giving shelter to my people so I was more inclined to mind my manners.
Right now I needed to mind the scenery: I turned my attention to looking at the passing landscape through Volpea's eyes. I hadn't been carsick since I was a kid but the creeping nausea in my gut suggested that I'd spent too much time on inner contemplation. The key to avoiding motion sickness, I remembered belatedly, was to go with the flow.
Unfortunately, we were off the main road and down some rural back road where there weren't enough lights so show any scenery: looking out the window did little to placate the pit vipers of nausea coiling and uncoiling in the pit of our stomach.
And now our head was starting to pound while feeling curiously light and airy at the same time.
"I don't feel so good," Volpea croaked.
It was true, she really didn't. I didn't feel so hot, myself, for that matter.
"What's wrong?" Fenris asked.
"I don't know. I feel nauseous . . ."
"Carsick?" he asked. "Are you going to hurl?" The turn signal went on. Fenris had to be an import: Louisiana drivers don't use turn signals—I suspect they don't even know what that stick on the steering column is supposed to do. "Crank your window down! You're not blowing chunks all over the interior!" We decelerated and drifted over onto the shoulder. "Do you feel like you're going to pass out?" We rolled to a stop and he opened the driver's door and jumped out.
"Don't be silly," V was muttering as he came around and opened the passenger door. "You don't pass out from carsickness." She dropped the coffee cup from her nerveless fingers. "Uh, oops . . ."
I followed her eyes down to the floor. There wasn't enough liquid left in the paper cup to make much of a spill.
"Come on," Fenris said, extending his hand. "Get out. I'll hold your hair."
We just sat there. "Um," my muddled host said after a moment, "my legs don't seem to be working . . ."
"Are you sure?" Fenris leaned in to take a closer look at our eyes.
"Um, yep; nothing's moving . . ."
Fenris shifted his stance, brought his other hand out of his pocket. "Sorry. I gotta make sure." The device in his hand looked like an old garage door opener. Except it made a stuttering, clicking sound and suddenly there were little arcs of blue electricity dancing between two metal prongs on the end.
He pressed the prongs into our side.
Correction: someone swung a sledgehammer into our side!
And the car flipped over and over and over and over and down into darkness.
* * *
> <
> <
It was dark. And hot. And I hurt like hell!
I'd say "we" hurt like hell but Volpea didn't seem to be in the same room.
Maybe there wasn't room for the both of us: it was tight and I was turned on my side, my arms cuffed behind me and my knees tucked up against my—um—tits. So, I had at least one point of reference for "where" I was.
I tried listening for additional clues. From the ringing in my ears I'd have to guess the bell tower of Notre Dame cathedral.
There was some kind of vibration, though I could only feel rather than hear it.
I tried fumbling behind me but my hands were numb from lack of circulation. Lucky them! The rest of me wished it could be. I was one, medium-sized, pretzeled bruise. My ribs felt like they were snapped where the stun gun had made contact. And my muscles were either stony lumps of petrified tissue or semiliquefied residue that puddled here and there under my sandpapered skin. Speaking of puddles, V had lost control of her bladder during her encounter with Ole Sparky. I didn't know what the big bad wolf had dosed the coffee with but stun guns are the next best thing to whoop-ass in a canister—talking 55-gallon drums, here, not 16-ounce pop-tops. The sensations were akin to being run over us with a car or beaten by a highly motivated chain gang.
At least we weren't dead.
But, considering the way I was feeling, it was a small blessing, at best.
Gradually I became aware of the floor beneath my body. It sagged. Beneath the thin support of carpeted pressboard I could feel the circular hump of a spare tire. We were cuffed and gagged and bound in the car's trunk.
So where were we going?
It was at least another hour before I got the answer to that question. In the meantime, I was on my own: Volpea remained unconscious and blissfully ignorant of how much she was going to hurt when she woke up. Maybe that was best. It wasn't my body and I could disconnect a bit from the pain. And what I was about to do was probably going to hurt like a sonofabitch. Wi
th apologies to my lycanthropic host.
It did hurt.
A lot!
Even if Volpea was flexible enough to pull it off under normal circumstances, her body was now a Gordian knot of bruises, contusions, and still twitching nerves and muscles. Even bent double, I had to dislocate a shoulder in order to scrape ass over cuffed wrists and bring our arms back up in front of us. It wasn't as difficult as you might think. From what I've observed, lycanthrope physiology is one step away from being naturally double-jointed: all those bones, sockets, muscles, sinews dislocate, migrate, relocate every time a were transforms from human to animal and back to human again. Of course it hurts like hell and the transformation unleashes a huge flood of endorphins to attempt to counterbalance the agony of each shift. Dislocating a shoulder while retaining human form: less easy and far more painful. By the time I was able to pop our shoulder back in place and pull the gag out of our mouth, it was practically chewed in half, anyway. Still, a stroll in the park compared to attempting the same contortions with a human-normal physique.
The blindfold came next, partially dislodging the earplugs, and suddenly I could see and hear. Not a lot to see: light leakage from the back of the taillights gave dim illumination to the car trunk's interior. And the sound of tires on old and poorly maintained pavement, told me we were off the main highway.
The handcuffs were tricky. Maybe Volpea could shape-shift and slip them off but something told me that Fenris had already anticipated that: there was a reason she was still out while I was all alert now and "enjoying" the tingly aftermath of 900,000 volts. If it wasn't for the miniscule amperage, Fenris would be transporting tailgate barbecue instead of a slightly singed hostage.
I tested the tensile strength of the anodized steel chain connecting the metal bracelets. Nope. Short of a hacksaw, key, or lock pick, my wrists were going to be treated to an extended period of propinquity.
My ankles and knees were a different matter. If Fenris had used professional leg restraints or even plastic "ties," I might've had a problem. Rope, even in a cramped, awkward space, was easier to work with and our legs were free in a matter of minutes.
Now what? Try to pop the trunk lid and signal for help? Jump out of a moving car? Possibly into oncoming traffic? And if someone did stop to help, would they be equipped to deal with a werewolf enforcer who had already taken down his preternaturally powerful partner? I didn't like the odds. But then I couldn't think of one thing I had liked to far.
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