As far as I knew, only skinwalkers could raise ghosts. I’d become one the first time I slept with Sawyer. Besides being psychometric, with latent channeling abilities, I was also a sexual empath—I absorbed supernatural powers through sex. Talk about a mood killer.
While I supposedly had the power to raise ghosts, I hadn’t been able to raise Sawyer—another check mark on our “why we need a skinwalker” list. I hoped Sani could reveal what I was doing wrong.
“I’ll take Faith with me,” I said.
“Not a good idea.” Luther’s great big hand went up, forestalling my inevitable why? “Sawyer stole his mountain, child. You think Sani’s gonna forgive that? You think he’s gonna let the opportunity for revenge pass him by?”
“I can protect her.”
“Maybe you can; maybe you can’t. You don’t know what kind of magic the Old One has found on top of that Lakota mountain. You wanna take the chance he’s strong enough to go through you and get to her?”
“Fine.” I sighed. “I’ll leave her with Luther.”
“He’s a child himself.”
“Don’t tell him that.”
Ruthie’s lips curved. “I’ve brought up plenty of kids, Lizbeth. Along the way I did learn a thing or two about teenage boys and their egos.”
“You could watch her. Just stay . . .” I waved vaguely at Luther’s body. “In there.”
But Ruthie was already shaking Luther’s head. “I got children back home that need me. Can’t just leave ’em on their own when they died the way they did.”
“Jimmy isn’t going to like this,” I said.
“He don’t like much lately. What’s one more thing for his list?”
Ruthie was right. I couldn’t leave a baby with a teenager—no matter how responsible Luther was, no matter how vicious he could become—and the only other person left alive with whom I’d trust a shape-shifting infant was Sanducci.
“Where is he?” I asked.
“The Badlands.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Convenient.”
“Coincidence or fate?” Luther’s shoulders lifted then lowered. “You be the judge.”
“Why’s he there?”
“Nest of Iyas.”
“Some type of vamp?”
Jimmy was a dhampir—the son of a vampire and a woman. His father had been an asshole—I mean a strega—translation, “Italian vampire witch.” No one knew what his mother had been. Probably lunch.
Dhampirs can sense vampires, and they’re very good at ending them. Jimmy was ultra-fast, super-strong, and damn hard to kill. Once again, due to sexual empathy, so was I.
“Lakota storm monster,” Ruthie explained. “Possesses a hunger food can’t satisfy. Only blood.”
Sounded like a vamp to me. “What else?”
“Wherever they walk, winter follows. They wear the heads of their victims as trophies.”
“How exactly do these things blend in?”
Luther’s lips curved. “They’re human when they choose to be. Only in battle do they become Iyas, faceless monsters of the storm.”
“How do you kill them?”
“Sunlight.”
For a vampire storm monster, I guess that made sense.
“We’ll leave this afternoon,” I said. I was going to have to bring Luther along. I couldn’t handle Faith by myself.
“Why not now?”
“I promised Megan I’d be here for her daughter’s birthday party.”
“Tell her you can’t make it.”
“No,” I said firmly.
“Lizbeth—”
“No,” I repeated. “I won’t stay for the whole party but I am going.”
I’d broken one promise to Megan. I hadn’t taken care of her husband. Instead I’d gotten him killed. I’d sworn not to break another promise to her again if I could help it.
Max Murphy had been my partner. He’d trusted my “instincts.” He’d wound up dying because of them, because of me.
I hadn’t been able to stomach remaining a cop after that so I’d taken a job as a bartender in the tavern owned by the widow. It was the least I could do.
“All right,” Ruthie agreed. “How long until you reach Inyan Kara?”
“A day or so. I’ll have to drive.”
Certainly I could shape-shift, and so could Luther, but I didn’t relish carrying a kitten in my mouth all the way to South Dakota. Besides, a lion loping down the road might cause quite a commotion.
We could fly, but I wasn’t sure about the rules for taking a baby on an airplane. I had no paperwork, and I’d need some. Then we’d get to the nearest airport, which I bet wasn’t exactly close to where we wanted to be, and we’d have to rent a car anyway. Better to take one already loaded with the weapons I liked to keep near.
“Can we use the Impala?”
The voice was Luther’s again. His hazel eyes were avid. He loved that car nearly as much as I did. Too bad the powder-blue ‘57 Chevy wasn’t really mine.
“Sure.” I grabbed my still-packed duffel off the floor next to my bed.
“Can I drive?”
“No.”
“But, Liz—”
“No license. No way.”
“If I can kill a prehistoric werebat—”
“Camazotz,” I corrected. “Mayan shape-shifter.”
Last week Luther and I had hopped a flight to Mexico, and I’d let him take the lead when we went after the bat-headed beast. He’d bagged it with his first shot.
“If I can kill a camazotz”—he rolled his eyes—“with a bronze-tipped arrow from a wooden bow, I think I can drive a stick shift.”
I knew letting him kill that thing was going to come back and bite me on the ass. Now he thought he could do anything.
“You get to hold the baby.”
“It’s not a baby,” he muttered.
“Kitten. Kid. Whatever.”
An hour later we were showered, fed, and packed. I’d tried to get Faith to eat something more solid than a bowl of milk but she just turned her nose up at the Chicken of the Sea I scrounged from a cabinet.
“You can’t feed tuna to a baby!” Luther objected as he scrubbed the water from his corkscrew hair with a towel.
“You said she wasn’t a baby.”
“Har-har.” He tossed the towel into the bathroom. It hit the floor with a wet thunk.
“Seriously?” I asked, and with a put-upon sigh he shuffled into the steamy room and hung the towel on a rack.
“How does she become a baby again?” Luther wondered. “The blanket turns her into a kitten but—” He waved at Faith as she chased dust through a spray of sunshine on the floor. “How does she turn back?”
I frowned.
“We have to imagine ourselves ourselves,” Luther continued. “But she’s so little. I don’t think she knows how. And it’s kind of hard to tell her when her vocabulary consists of wah and meow.”
“Fuck,” I muttered. See why I had no business taking care of a baby shape-shifter? I had no idea what made them work.
“You’re going to want to clean up your language or the first word out of her mouth is going to be—”
I lifted my hand. “I get the picture.”
I didn’t plan on being around Faith that long. I was going to Inyan Kara, learning what I could from Sani, raising Sawyer’s ghost, and finding out the answers to a few important questions.
For instance: Who was his next of kin?
There was no way I was raising a kitten-kid.
Megan lived on the east side of Milwaukee, about twenty minutes from Friedenberg on a block of older, closely spaced houses broken up by the occasional corner pub. Back in the day, every neighborhood boasted a tavern—at least in Wisconsin. Murphy’s had been one of them.
Now it was mostly a cop bar, though a lot of locals often hung out. Besides booze, Megan served sandwiches and heart-attack-producing appetizers such as deep-fried cheese curds. For the health-conscious she provided a wide selection of deep-fried vegeta
bles. If you still weren’t dead, the dessert menu offered deep-fried Oreos, Twinkies, and cheesecake. They were really quite good.
However, for her daughter Anna’s party Megan had promised pizza, lemonade, and birthday cake—not deep-fried. The celebration started at eleven am since Megan would have to be at work by three. Saturday night was a big night at Murphy’s, and any tavern owner knew that the only way to make sure everything ran smoothly, and no one dipped into the till, was to be there.
Megan opened the door at our knock, took one look at the kitten in my arms, and slammed it in my face. I blinked, glanced at Luther, shrugged, and rang the bell.
“Go away!” she shouted through the door.
“You ordered me to be here.”
The door flew open with such force, the displaced air blew Megan’s curly red hair back from her cute little face. And if she ever learned I thought of her as cute, she’d slug me. One thing Megan Murphy didn’t appreciate was the depth of her adorableness. She wanted to be tall and voluptuous, dark and exotic—like me.
“Did you get a brain amputation?” Megan’s bright blue eyes narrowed in her Irish-pale face. “We have rules here.” She held up one finger. “No rodents.” Then a second. “No reptiles.” A third. “No animals that say rarhh.”
I glanced down at the kitten in my arms. “Oh.”
“Yeah. Take that right back where you got it.”
“I—um. Well, you see—uh. I can’t.”
“You will. You cannot give my daughter a—”
The sudden bright light was followed by an audible whoosh as the kitten in my arms became human. Megan’s eyes went as wide as pie plates as she finished her sentence with, “baby.”
Said baby waved her arms joyfully and giggled.
“You did that on purpose,” I accused.
Megan recovered from her shock quickly, laughing, although it sounded a little strained. Who could blame her? “That’s a baby, Liz, or at least I think it is. They don’t do much on purpose. Although it does seem, at times, like they’re in league with Satan.”
I winced.
“Oh! Sorry.” Megan had known about the Nephilim even before I’d told her. Meg’s explanation? She was Irish. They believed in all sorts of spooky shit. “Is she—?”
“No.” Or at least I didn’t think she was in league with Satan. Yet.
I nearly bungled the baby when she attempted a swan dive toward Luther, who stood at my side. I muttered a curse that earned me a frown from both Luther and Megan then gathered Faith close and tried to hold her down. She continued to reach in Luther’s direction. I turned just as he held out her kitty blanket.
“Whoa!” I snatched it away an instant before she touched it. “Oh, no you don’t. Bad kitty. I mean, bad girl.” I tossed the thing to Luther. “Put that in the car.”
He did as I ordered. Faith began to cry.
“Give her the binkie, Liz.” Megan put her hands over her ears. “Are you nuts?”
I stepped inside. “Are you? You want her turning from kitty to kid and back again in front of all your friends and relatives? She isn’t a party favor.”
Megan lifted an eyebrow. “What is she?”
Since I’d never told Megan about Sawyer, and didn’t want to now, I decided to stick to the basics. “Shape-shifter.”
“No kidding. Is she—”
“Is she what?” I repeated absently, still doing my best not to drop a squirming, slippery skinwalker.
“Yours?”
I glanced up. “Huh?”
Faith took advantage of my distraction to jerk backward and nearly flipped end-over-end out of my arms.
Megan snatched the baby then turned her so that Faith’s back was against Megan’s side, the child’s butt on Megan’s hip, with Megan’s forearm across Faith’s chest, hand clasping the baby’s opposite leg. The kid had nowhere to go. She stopped squirming and gave me a smirky, toothless grin.
“Well?” Megan demanded.
“You think I could pop out an infant in the few weeks since I saw you last?”
“I think you can do just about anything.”
“Slight exaggeration,” I murmured. Megan lifted a brow, and I hissed in exasperation. “I certainly can’t cook a bun in my oven at the speed of sound.” Or at least I didn’t think I could.
I’d been so focused on Faith since she’d dropped onto my porch that I hadn’t had much time to do the happy dance over not being pregnant myself. I still didn’t have time, so I did a quick one in my head.
“What are you grinning about?” Megan asked. “Whose kid is this if it isn’t yours?”
Luther opened the door and stepped inside.
Megan’s gaze narrowed. “His?”
“Nuh-uh!” Luther held up his big hands in surrender. “No, ma’am.”
“Better not be. You’re not old enough to shave.”
“Am too.”
I pointed my index finger at him. “Stop,” I ordered. I was not having the I’m a man discussion with Luther again. “Meg, this is Luther Vincent. Luther, my best friend Megan Murphy.”
Megan nodded. She had her hands full of baby. Luther nodded back.
“There’s soda in the kitchen,” Megan said. “Snacks on the table.” Before she finished the last word, Luther was gone. “Where’d you get him?”
“Indiana.”
“Parents?”
“Dead.”
“Human?”
“A little.”
Megan made a keep going gesture with the index finger of her free hand. Faith was gumming the heck out of the other one.
“Luther is a Marbas. His mother was a descendant of the demon Barbas—a lion that could become human. His father was a conjurer with the magical ability to keep her that way.”
“What can Luther do?”
“Shift into a lion, fight demons, heal his wounds.” I bit my lip then decided to come clean. “He can also channel Ruthie.”
Megan frowned. “I thought you did that?”
“I did until . . .”
My voice faded. I didn’t want to admit this, either.
“Come on,” she said, striding through the house, stopping in the kitchen to snatch two Miller Lites out of a cooler by the door before stepping onto the concrete slab that served as a deck in the backyard.
Luther was occupied with a plate of cheese, summer sausage, and olives. I hoped there was some left when the other guests arrived.
I sat in the lawn chair next to Megan’s. “Where are the kids?”
“A friend took them for the morning so I could get things ready for the party.”
Megan had another friend besides me? That was new. Her hours at the bar weren’t conducive to a social life, not that she’d wanted one. In the years since Max died I could count on one hand the times Megan had hired a sitter to do anything other than work.
“Enough about me,” she said. “Why is the prince of the jungle hearing Ruthie and you’re not?”
“I’ve got—” I couldn’t finish.
“A cold?” Megan asked. “The flu?”
“A demon.”
CHAPTER 4
Megan, who’d been leaning closer, reared back. Faith gave a ho of surprise. I waited for her to start screaming; instead she peered up at Megan then went back to chowing on my friend’s hand. Lucky the kid didn’t have any teeth yet.
“Let me—”
Megan scrambled to her feet, putting the chair between us.
“—explain,” I finished.
“D-don’t touch me. I’ll . . . Luther!” she shouted.
The kid came to the door, mouth greasy with chips. “Mmm?”
“You know how to kill her?”
His eyes widened and met mine. “Liz?”
“Megan, calm down,” I said.
“Oh, you’d like that wouldn’t you? Calm down so you can . . . whatever it is you do to people before you kill them.”
I sighed. “I’m not evil.” Or at least I wasn’t right this minute. I lifted my
hand to the jeweled dog collar around my neck. “Didn’t you notice this?”
“Of course. I figured you’d gone Goth.”
Considering the collar looked like something you’d find on a poodle, that made no sense at all.
“She went vamp.” Luther let the door bang behind him as he came outside.
I shot him a glare. “Don’t help me.”
Luther shrugged.
“You’re a vampire?” Megan shrieked. The baby started to mew. She sounded more like a kitten now than when she’d been one.
“Keep it down,” I said. “You’re going to freak out the kitty-cat, and believe me, you don’t want to. The lungs on that kid will puncture your eardrums.”
“I don’t care,” Megan snapped, although she did lower her voice. “Just tell me what happened before I cut off your head and stuff your mouth with garlic.”
I lifted my eyebrows. She’d been studying ways to kill a vampire. Good for her.
“It’s a lot harder than you think to cut off someone’s head.” Without the proper tools it was damn near impossible. Right now the only thing nearby was a butter knife.
Megan scowled at Luther. “Why haven’t you killed her?”
He popped half a cupcake into his mouth, chewed three times, and swallowed. “Because she isn’t evil, as long as she’s wearing the collar.”
“And if she isn’t wearing the collar?”
“Hide,” Luther said.
Megan gnawed on her lip, contemplating first me, then Luther, then me again. The baby began to fuss in earnest, and Megan automatically bounced her, which for some unknown reason seemed to work. If I were cranky, bouncing would really piss me off.
“How did you become a vampire?” she asked.
“I told you how I absorb powers.”
She wrinkled her nose. “You slept with a vampire?”
“Yes and no.”
“That’s a yes or no question. Pick one.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Never is with you.” She sat in the lawn chair, glanced at Luther. “Go play on the Internet. Computer’s in the living room.”
“Sweet.” Luther headed for the house.
“No porn!” Megan called. “I have munchkins.”
“Yeah, yeah.” The door banged behind him.
Megan faced me again. “Spill.”
Chaos Bites Page 3