Blood Trade: A Jane Yellowrock Novel

by Faith Hunter

  • • •

  I came to in the back of the SUV, lying naked under a blanket and feeling great. It was dark out, and the vehicle was parked at Esmee’s under the trees, ensuring my privacy. I had no memory of my time as Beast, but the pain in my arm was gone. Clean clothes were folded on the floor in front of me, and I dressed in the dark—panties, jeans, and a thick sweater that smelled of Rick. I held the knit to my face and inhaled. I hated that I didn’t have him in my life now. There was so much missing. I closed my eyes and buried my face in the sweater for a moment. Only a moment. I had no intention of grieving for him anymore.

  I pulled the sweater over my head and pushed my feet into the oversized flip-flops, which also smelled of Rick. I’d like to think he was scent-marking me, but I knew better. I pulled my hair out of the way and secured it in one fist. That was one thing about shifting: I always came back with clean, smooth hair, no tangles. I opened the door and slid from the vehicle, into the dark of Esmee’s backyard. I padded to the back door, pausing when I scented Eli. I stopped, sniffing until I located him sitting still as a statue in the dark. “Thanks for saving my life,” I said.

  “Turnabout and all that,” he said. I joined him on a bench and sat, my mostly bare feet cold. “Jane? You like George. I can tell. There’s this . . . energy when you’re together.” Not knowing where he was going, I didn’t answer, just turned to him and drew on Beast’s night vision to see his face. He needed a shave, and he looked tired, though he had showered and dressed in fresh clothes. “But your cat, she likes Rick.”

  “Crap. What did she do?”

  “She rubbed herself all over him.”

  I dropped my head. That was why I was thinking of scent-marking. Beast had scent-marked Rick. And now, whether consciously or not, Rick was scent-marking back. Deep inside, Beast rolled over. Mine, she murmured to me. Both mine. “That’s not good,” I said to her, and partly to Eli. “My Beast feels she can have them both, over time. Big-cats don’t mate for life.”

  Eli blew out a breath of derision. “Yeah. Tell that to Rick and George. Two alpha males want the same woman? That’s trouble, Janie.”

  I shrugged. “I know. We’re not human. Not any of us. And we’re extremely long lived. In the wild, cats each have their own territories. The land overlaps with the territories of other cats, and when a female goes into heat, either she’ll go to the male of her choice or they’ll come to her. Sometimes the males fight. If the female wants the winner, they mate. If she doesn’t like him, then she might run away or she might fight him. But she doesn’t keep him forever. Her next heat might take her to another male. But between times, cats are solitary.” Which sounded terribly lonely, all of a sudden.

  “Your men are acting like cats.” He said it as if he were having a revelation. “Circling and waiting.”

  “Yeah. I guess. I don’t want them fighting over me, but when they act like cats, it brings my Beast closer to the surface. It’s all so mixed up.” My voice was curiously dull, unemotional. And I could feel the familiar depression creeping along the edges of my mind. It was a weird feeling, more a lack of interest than unhappiness. How did people live with it? I shook away the thought and shrugged away the lurking depression, but it didn’t go far. It crouched in the corner of my mind like . . . like the shadow of Leo that was binding Beast. Was that significant? I couldn’t see how, but maybe so. Maybe bindings, when left unattended and unfed, became negativity and eventually depression. I hadn’t fed off Leo since the binding of Beast. Maybe—

  “Jane?”

  I looked up, realizing I’d been silent too long. “Yeah. Sorry. Are we hunting anymore tonight?”

  “Rick said you needed to eat and then rest.”

  “Food, yes. I’m starving. But Rick isn’t my mother. Let’s work.”

  “I was hoping you would say that. We need to go to the morgue to make sure Syl took all the vamp heads. And the Kid has one more address we could check out. This one isn’t in Under the Hill. It’s a house just off High Street.”

  I smiled at his calling Alex the Kid. The name was catching even for his brother. “High Street is part of the historical district. How far from the last place?”

  “Mile or so. Jameson is cleaning your leathers. The sleeve is a goner, though.”

  “I had the company reserve some leather from that dye batch. I can get it fixed. Let me get dressed again.” And out of this sweater.

  • • •

  We pulled in to the hospital entrance, my leathers smelling slightly of mink oil. Jameson had tried to care for the leathers with just water, to avoid any chemical stink, but my dried blood was caught in the rough part of the tears. “I’m sorry, Miss Jane,” he had said, while I’d stuffed my face with oatmeal and a rare steak. “But I thought the smell of your blood might be worse than the mink oil. For attracting predators.” He had a point. But I kinda had that new-car smell now.

  Eli spun the wheel and pulled into a space marked for physician parking.

  “A forensic autopsy unit in Natchez Regional Medical Center,” I said. “Who’da thought?” I hadn’t expected to come back to the medical center for any reason, but especially not for this. And if I’d thought about forensic autopsies, I would have thought they would be done in Jackson, Mississippi’s state capital.

  “Let’s chat about taking down revenants,” Eli said. “You suggested earlier that the vamps we’ve been seeing were revenants.”

  “Assuming that’s right, until now I’ve never seen one,” I said. “Never talked to anyone who has. There’s no vid on the Net. Only a description by another vamp hunter. He was typing with the three fingers the revenant left him on his right hand. It ate the left hand.”

  Eli shut off the motor, pulled his phone, and started texting. Ten bucks said it was to Sylvia.

  “They can’t feel pain,” I said. “You know all the zombie movies? Pretty much like that, except they’re deadly fast and they’ll eat anything, not just brains. You have to take their heads completely, and even then they take a while to die.”

  “Yeah. Sounds like our critters.” Eli grunted, and it sounded like cursing. “Silver?”

  “Won’t kill them. They—” I stopped and sat up in the seat. “The whole Naturaleza thing has always resulted in stronger, faster, harder-to-kill vamps. Maybe the spidey vamps are Naturaleza revenants, are a way to make vamps immune to everything. Silver, stakes in the heart, even partial beheading. Traditionally, less than three percent of staked vamps rise as revenants. Maybe the Naturaleza leader is experimenting on scions, making them into revenants, trying new magics forced from the missing witches to see what works. Some have seemed like rogues, newly risen and unintelligent; others have been in control of their faculties. Maybe the spidey vamps are a stepping stone to vamp perfection, or a mistake along the way.”

  “I don’t really care where they come from or who their mommies are,” Eli said. “I just want to kill the suckers.”

  “Yeah. Okay,” I said, thinking. “Me too.” But even I could hear the lack of real interest. For once questions about vamps were more interesting than just killing them.

  “This might help.” He handed me a brown paper bag. It was heavier than I expected, and I nearly dropped it. I looked from the bag to him and back, and reached in. I pulled out a shotgun-shell holder, already loaded with rounds.

  I felt my heart lighten. “Swuuueeet.” I unsnapped the strap and drew the Benelli from its spine holster. Eli opened his tool kit, flipped on a tiny tight-beamed light, and quickly mounted the device on the left side of the receiver while I watched. I now had quick access to an additional six shells. “I like. How much do I owe you?”

  “Not a dime. Consider it a belated birthday present.”

  I felt odd and didn’t know what to say, like maybe . . . shy. Or something. So I drew on my Christian children’s-home manners and said, “Thank you. It’s really, really nice.” Eli snorted, and I ducked my head, realizing that nice was probably not a good description for a weapo
n accessory, but it was all I had. I turned the holder over, admiring it from every angle, figuring out how the holder would affect the way the gun rested on my body from the strap, and how I’d handle it in the holster, and how the slight change in weight might affect firing. The draw would be different, and I worked through the mechanics of it. “Really nice,” I said happily.

  I turned as a shadow caught my attention and watched Sylvia Turpin approach the car. “She’s pretty,” I said.

  “She’s a knockout. And she likes guns almost as much as you do.”

  I gave a half smile. I wish my love life was so uncomplicated. And then I thought about the two together as a couple. Instead of a white picket fence, these two would have a gun range and a fallout shelter with enough food to hide out for a whole year. Right. There was uncomplicated and then there was Eli and Sylvia. Not uncomplicated; just a different kind of complication.

  Eli rolled down his window. Sylvia bent down and rested both arms on the window ledge. She was wearing makeup again, and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. “Hiya,” she said. “The doc’s getting ready to start another autopsy. Come on in.”

  “Coffee anywhere?” Eli asked, opening his door and stepping to the pavement.

  “The cafeteria has a coffee bar this month. Something new they’re trying to beat back the competition. It’s not real coffee—you know. the burnt sludge from the bottom of the pot after it’s been sitting all day—but it isn’t bad. It’s horribly fresh, with all sorts of icky flavorings. And the espresso is made while you wait.”

  “I’ll buy you some of this horrible coffee,” Eli said.

  Sylvia laughed, and I figured all was okay now with their weird relationship. “The doc’s all excited about the vamps’ external characteristics. He can’t wait to get them open.”

  “Get them—” Eli grabbed her arm. “You did take their heads already.” At her wide eyes he added, “Hell. You didn’t get my text. Did you?” Sylvia shook her head. “There’s a good chance the new-style vamps will rise as revenants unless you take their heads.”

  I heard a beepbeepbeep. The sheriff went from dead stop to a sprint in a half second, pulling her police radio. She shouted back to us, “That’s man down! We got trouble in the morgue!” She shouted into the radio as we dashed down the sidewalk, “Take their heads! It’s the only way to kill them!” Over the radio, we heard gunshots and screaming.

  No one stopped us as we entered a side door that had been propped open with a pencil. Sylvia kicked the pencil out of the way and we raced down a hallway as the door closed behind us, took a right down another hall, and flew down a short flight of stairs. We heard muffled screams and more gunshots. Sylvia rammed open the door at the bottom while drawing her service weapon. I reached up and pulled the M4, adjusted the vamp-killer on my left hip, and let out some of Beast as we ran. Her strength and speed flowed into me like a drug, and I laughed shortly, showing my teeth.

  We spun around a corner and stopped. Two cops were lying in a pool of blood, service revolvers out, throats torn away.

  And the first thing landed on Sylvia.

  CHAPTER 18

  The Bad Men Are Gone

  Eli let out a war scream and jumped in front. Stupid man. I nearly shot him. Instead, I adjusted my aim, braced the M4, and fired point-blank at the next thing. They were spidey vamps all right, but next-gen spidey vamps. Faster than lightning and nearly as deadly. The one I shot took the blast midcenter and didn’t even pause except to change direction by shoving off Eli’s back and leaping at me. I fired two shots in rapid sequence. Not gonna get chewed on twice.

  The spidey vamp landed on me, gasping, and I let her slide down me to the floor. I put the shotgun to her head and fired. She stopped moving, so I pulled the vamp-killer and took her head. Eli was lifting Sylvia to her feet. She was covered in gore, and my heart fell. “How much of that is yours?” I asked.

  “None,” she said, and smiled at Eli.

  Young love is so cute, I thought. And then realized I’d said it aloud. I shook myself and jogged away from them toward the sound of screams.

  Most morgues these days don’t use the pull-out, refrigerated, coffin-sized beds, except for new arrivals or bodies still being processed. (That’s what they call it. Processed. Not slicing and dicing, measuring and scooping.) Most modern morgues use a cold room—a walk-in refrigerator where they can store bodies one of two ways: stack them on bunk-style ledges that look like prison beds, but without the charm or the pretense of a mattress, or on roll-in gurneys. In the autopsy suite, I stepped over the body on the floor. Someone had taken the liberty of beheading a spidey vamp, second gen. He was naked and had a hard carapace, like a spider’s, over his chest—or, rather, it was part of his chest. The carapace was brown and covered with coarse hairs, spiked and barbed. If he had ever been human, he’d lost it totally.

  Farther in the room was another one, still alive, her head only half removed. She was sitting on top of a human, her face buried in his belly, slurping. For creatures who had a rep for physical speed, their mental abilities were more along the lines of brain-dead. I reared back with the vamp-killer and yelled, “Hey, fanghead!” The vamp looked up and focused on me. Multifaceted eyes bulged from her face. Fly eyes. I hurled my arm forward with all my strength behind it.

  Though I cut with anger rather than skill, I took her head, the blow sending it spinning, and I could have sworn she stared at me the whole time, until her head whapped into the wall. At my feet, her body was reaching for me. I kicked it away from the human beneath. It was the pathologist, and he was way too dead for any help.

  Reaching for the handle of the cold room, I had a moment’s memory of the building today with the refrigerator and the white witch circle painted on the floor. This fridge was empty of witch circles, but the moment I opened the door, I was charged by more vamp things. I caught half a breath, pulling the M4 into firing position as they flowed across the space like centipedes, a swirling yet jerky motion. The musk they exuded was dry and ammoniac, and they moved so fast I had only an instant of impression before the first one was on me. Naked, every one, and insectoid. Ick.

  The first one latched on to the barrel of the shotgun as if she intended to use it as a straw. Taking her head was easy, and had the added benefit of peppering the vamps behind her with silver fléchettes. It didn’t kill them, but it made three of them jump back. I put a hole in the two still moving forward and slammed the door shut. I had counted only four rounds, but the shotgun was empty and I broke open the M4 to reload from my handy-dandy shell holder. I could hear the creatures screaming inside, even over the concussive eardrum damage from the shotgun. They might not look like vamps, but they had the vamp death scream down pat.

  To the others, who had gathered close, I said, “I count five,” like it was a game we were playing or something.

  Eli removed a metal shim from his go-bag and rammed it under the latching mechanism, effectively sealing them in, and the ease of it had me laughing. “That’s the easiest vamp trap I ever saw.”

  He gave me that little no-smile of humor. “After the last time we were in Natchez, I started carrying extra equipment. Let’s clear this place and come back,” he added to Syl.

  “Yeah.” I loaded the six additional rounds fast, and moved out behind the happy, courting couple.

  There was only one revenant vamp still loose, and he was chewing on a dead security guard. Eli took the vamp’s head with his vamp-killer, a silver-plated machete. He used it like he’d had plenty of practice, and made me wonder about the scars on his chest and neck and face. Not that I’d ask. But I did wonder. And I wondered what he’d tell Sylvia, if anything. The cause of his wounds was classified, so it wasn’t likely.

  The guard was propped against a locked door, an empty can of mace in his lap. “Yeah,” I said. “Mace is gonna do a lot of good. It might make the vamp’s sense of smell less acute, but it won’t stop a brainless killing machine.”

  We turned away, but I heard a w
himper and grabbed Eli’s arm. “What?” he asked. I paused, releasing his arm so he would have full range of motion. He stepped behind me, pushing Sylvia nearer me and protecting the womenfolk, the idiot man, but still covering my back, as Sylvia and I studied the hallway. And this time we all heard it: a whimper. Coming from the guard. “No way,” Syl said.

  I saw a sliver of bloody cloth that had once been white sticking out from under the guard’s blood-soaked navy pants. “Crap,” I whispered. Silently, I stepped back and bent my knees, wedging my hands under his flaccid arms and standing, pulling him away from the corner. A little girl was curled into a ball behind his body, eyes closed tightly, a thumb in her mouth. Whimpering softly with each breath, a rhythmic moan of fear. I dropped the guard to the side and lifted the girl in my arms. “It’s all right, sweetie,” I murmured. “The bad men are gone.” I stepped over the guard, mentally saluting him, cradling the child. She was dark-haired with death-pale skin and a heartbeat I could hear, racing and bouncing. “It’s all right, sweetie,” I repeated. “The bad men are gone.”

  Eli moved in front, guarding our passage out. I handed Sylvia my shotgun and she fell behind, scanning our trail out, walking halfway backward. In the main room, back at the fridge, Eli pulled a flashbang off his vest and nodded at me. “You’re faster than Syl. Give her the girl.” Understanding what he wanted, I switched the child for the M4. The smaller woman cradled the little girl gently, carrying her out of sight of the bodies. “Stay close,” Eli told her. “Just in case.”

  To me, he said, “Make it fast. On three. One.” He activated the stun grenade. “Two. Three.”

  I pulled out the shim and yanked the door open as he tossed in the grenade. Using Beast’s speed, I slammed the door shut, catching the top of a vamp’s head and part of a hand before they jumped back again.