by Faith Hunter
The water was a frothy, muddy mess all around me. I rolled, pushing deeper into the slick slime. Pushed away from the fighting weres. I came up within arm’s reach of the combatants, my lungs full of mud. I threw up muddy water. Breathing between each retch with a frantic, rubbery, tearing sound. I tasted blood, gagged, and vomited again.
Eli held his weapon, ready to fire, the night-vision scope doing nothing to help him differentiate the two mud-covered werewolves. I caught my breath, staying low to the surface of the water, and crawled through the canal, back to shore, again, still, miraculously, holding my useless, mud-caked weapon. I fell, gasping, on the beach. The roar of the wolves made my eardrums shudder.
They fought in hip-deep mud and water, two enormous wolves. Wrestling like grizzlies, biting, fangs raking, claws trying to keep purchase on wet fur, jostling in the water with supernatural speed as the sun set behind them. I smelled wolf blood and heard their harsh breathing, like broken bellows. I was shivering, hard shudders bashing through me. It was still winter. And I’d been in the winter-cold water too long. And I’d nearly drowned in mud. Twice. My body was reacting to the stress with a case of shock.
The werewolves fought onto shore, Eli backing slowly, not daring to take a shot, unable to tell the two wolves apart. Then one broke away. Rushing toward me. Jaws wide. Eli fired, the concussion echoing across the still water. The wolf stumbled. And Brute landed on top of him. Sinking his fangs deep into the back of the other wolf’s neck. With a wrenching motion, he snapped the enemy wolf’s spine with a crack that rebounded across the black water.
Together, the wolves fell, slowly, to the beach. Brute didn’t let go, but worried the wolf’s spine, tugging, tearing, until there was no way that even the accelerated healing of a were could recuperate from the damage. Eli came closer, moving with the careful step and determined stance of the warrior. He placed his weapon against the skull of the dire wolf and said, “Now.”
Brute leaped back.
Eli fired. And fired. And fired.
When there was nothing but pulp left of the dire werewolf’s head, he stepped back. The wolf’s blood flowed into the canal water. Brute lifted his snout and howled, long and lonely. Again and again. No one answered. No wolf replied.
• • •
But across the canal I saw a silhouette framed in the sunset, the bloody, setting sun on one side of him, the bloody, rising moon on the other. It was another werewolf. Silent. Controlled. Watching. He met my eyes across the water, letting me see him, letting me know him. It was the lone wolf, sitting in the shadows of the trees, downwind, absolutely still. Beside him was a dog I recognized, her gaze as intense as the wolf’s. I thought about telling Eli, about getting him to shoot the wolf. But . . . the wolf wasn’t a threat. I knew that. He was a lone wolf, watching, living among humans in perfect harmony and control. I lifted a hand to acknowledge the gaze, and his place in the swamps. He dipped his head to me and turned slowly, trotting into the quickly falling night, PP at his side.
Half an hour later, I heard the whine of the airplane engine, and the coughing thump as the propeller turned over. Moments later, from a mile away, a plane skimmed over the trees, rising into the air, flying beneath a bloody moon. I had no idea how he had masked his scent, but I figured Sarge was a wily old wolf and knew a trick or two.
• • •
It took the equivalent of a fire hose to clean us both off, Brute and me. The mud was caked to us, thick and dry, by the time we got to the hotel, and we were colder than a winter death, even huddled together on the floor of the pilfered wolves’ airboat. Which we stole with impunity. But finally Brute was white in the moonlight and I was . . . at least clean, though shivering so hard I couldn’t talk, even with Beast heating my blood. I managed to climb to my room and stand, fully clothed, under the scalding shower until I was warm again.
It was only then, as the memories of the battle recurred again and again, that I realized that Brute had saved my life. If the werewolf had landed on me, in his leaping attack, jaws open, he’d have caught my throat in his fangs and ripped my head off.
I owed the werewolf my life.
“Well, c-c-c-c-c-crap,” I said to the shower walls.
• • •
I was asleep beneath a mound of covers when I heard my door open. “Don’t shoot. It’s me,” Rick said, his voice a croak. He sounded worn to the bone, and when he crawled beside me into the bed, he was feverish hot, barely strong enough pull the covers over himself after he fell against me. Pea scampered between us, nestling into the angle of hip and thigh.
“Your virtue is safe,” Rick murmured, “this time. I honestly just want to . . . cuddle.”
He curled in beside me and fell asleep against my shoulder. I curled my body around him, breathing in his cat scent, absorbing the heat of his cat. Together, we three fell asleep.
Note from Faith: I hope you liked Beneath a Bloody Moon. I fell in love with the gulf years ago, and have wondered for years about the canals. For research on this subject, I talked with John Jensen, and was given privy to some of his groundbreaking research on the area. If you are interested, search for Earth Epochs.
Black Water
Author’s note: This novella takes place (in the JY timeline) after Blood Trade and before Black Arts.
I took the long, bumpy roads south of New Orleans to the backwaters of Louisiana, in Terrebonne Parish. I had been there recently with my business partners in Yellowrock Securities, Eli and Alex Younger. With us had been PsyLED special agent Rick LaFleur and his supernat team, Brute and Pea. We had been hired to track and kill a werewolf pack, which we had done. We left the place better off than when we found it.
Or so I’d thought.
Until I’d received a text from Harold, who owned the Sandlapper Guesthouse with his wife, Clara. We’d stayed with them partly because Harold was the uncle of my sorta-boyfriend, Rick. Harold’s text was to the point: Man w gun looking for you. Come quick. On the heels of the text had been the news coming from Chauvin, Louisiana, today—video of cops at a crime scene, near the Sandlapper.
The press hadn’t said much except that a rampage had occurred in Chauvin and news vans were on the way with more to follow soon in this “breaking news report.” Harold didn’t respond to my texts back. And Rick hadn’t replied to my texts asking for details. Harold and Clara were part of Rick’s extended family. He would know what had happened. And he wasn’t saying.
So here I was, riding Bitsa (built with bitsa this and bitsa that, from two rotted, rusted Harley bikes) down the horrible Louisiana roads and into danger—a man with a gun looking for me. Lately my enemies all had fangs, and most weres and vamps didn’t use guns. Humans used guns. I had no idea what human I had ticked off in Chauvin, but I was gifted that way—ticking off people. I had cleaned house, and someone wasn’t happy about it.
• • •
I pulled into the parking lot of the Sandlapper Guesthouse, on 56, south of Chauvin, and wheeled between sheriff deputy cars, a CSI van, and video news vans. The deputies looked relaxed and at ease, so they had been there awhile and had everything under control, but the news teams were still active. Crap. I was gonna get filmed, appear on TV news, and then I’d have to explain to my business partners why I’d come back here, alone, without the team. They needed time off. They were human; I wasn’t. And the last job, here in Chauvin, had been draining. But that argument wasn’t going to fly, and I knew it. I’d deal with that later. For now, I needed to get to Harold and Clara.
I cut off Bitsa, set the kick, bungeed my helmet to the back of the seat, stuck my hands in my pockets to appear nonthreatening to the sheriff’s deputies, and headed closer, wearing a friendly smile. I kept my face turned away from the news cameras, but if the media wanted to know who I was, they’d figure it out. There weren’t that many six-foot-tall, long-black-haired Cherokee females anywhere.
The county LEOs—l
aw enforcement officers—studying me wore distinctly hostile faces, hands near gun butts, and I paused at the youngest cop, a redhead with freckles and bright eyes. Trying for innocent, I said, “Hey. What’s going on here?”
“You need to move along, miss,” the older one said, his hand sliding over his gun. The small strap that kept the weapon seated came unsnapped with a tiny click of sound. Somebody was in a mood. But I was smart enough not to say it.
Before I could reply, the wind shifted, and I smelled the sickly stench of old blood. Human. I came to a stop, mouth open, breathing in air over my tongue and the roof of my mouth, scenting as my Beast did, with a soft scree of sound. I took the place in more carefully, smelling the old blood, the fresher stink of injured humans, and the nitrocellulose of fired weapons. By the smells, Harold and Clara were on the premises, wounded. I wasn’t sure how that was possible. Cops usually made sure any injured people were taken to a hospital right away.
I couldn’t shake the feeling this was connected to my last job somehow.
The cops were looking at me strangely and I attempted a smile while I took another breath. A hint of magic tingled on my tongue, an old and weary magic. Crap. Where were Harold and Clara?
The mom-and-pop hotel was built on stilts to protect it from high tides and storm surge. The extra height gave every room fabulous water views, with fish-cleaning stations, parking, and rentable, fenced gear lockers/storage units underneath the hotel proper. Fishermen loved it. So had I. Harold and Clara lived on the far side. And there were other ways in, instead of through the cops.
Not waiting to get permission to enter—which I wasn’t going to get in any case—I lifted a hand in what might have been interpreted as a farewell gesture and headed back to Bitsa. I pushed the bike farther into the shadows under the hotel. And slid into the darkness. I pulled my cell. The unit was top-of-the-line, a communication device built for the military, to deflect bullets and work off anything—Internet towers, satellite, Wi-Fi, anything. It also let the Master of the City of New Orleans, Leo Pellissier, keep tabs on my whereabouts. Which reminded me that I hadn’t called to tell him I was coming here. My bad. Currently I had text messages waiting, most from the Kid. I sent back a quick K, not bothering to read them. Alex was wordy and I could digest them later. Unzipping my motorcycle jacket, I drew the nine-millimeter semiautomatic, slid the safety off, and chambered a round without looking. Muscle memory. Handy thing, that. It was an automatic reaction, probably a stupid one, since I’d just been seen by the cops, but I couldn’t make myself put the weapon away. Instead I added to it. With my left hand, I palmed a blade, a silver-plated, steel-edged throwing knife. Silver was poisonous to most supernatural creatures, and everything that might hurt me could bleed. The TV cameras hadn’t followed me. The deputies were shooting the breeze with a medic crew. I’d been forgotten. Good.
As I ascended the back stairs, I evaluated scents. Except for human blood, the acrid residue from fired weapons, and the salty taste of the Gulf of Mexico, nothing I smelled was familiar. Not were, not witch, not vamp, not anything I remembered smelling before, and my repertory of scents was vast, compared to humans’.
I made my way up the last step, as silent as the squeaky, weather-worn wood allowed. The smell got stronger, but oddly it made me relax. The gunfire had happened much earlier, and someone was cleaning up. I smelled bleach. Heard water sloshing. Heard soft cursing and softer laughter. It wasn’t happy laughter, but rather the kind of laughter humans made when they could either laugh or bust out crying. I recognized the voices of Clara and Harold. I chuffed out a relieved breath.
Inside my Beast relaxed. Humans not dead, she thought at me. I/we knew this.
I slid the small blade out of sight, into its thigh sheath, but thought better of holstering my sidearm. I didn’t want to be unarmed if the couple was under compulsion or had uninvited guests that the cops had missed. I followed the smells to their corner rooms and stopped just outside in the covered walkway. The light was against me. If I bobbed my head to peer in the windows, anyone inside would see me silhouetted against the bright afternoon sky. If there were still cops inside, they wouldn’t like the fact that I’d bypassed their crime scene tape. Weapon by my thigh in one hand, index finger along the slide, off the trigger, I made my way to the door, passing right in front of the windows. The glare obscured everything inside, but no one shot me. That was always a good thing. I tapped on the door and it opened almost instantly.
Harold’s welcoming gaze changed to surprise as it shifted from my face and down to my gun. I shrugged with what I hoped was a good-natured smile, sniffed to make sure there was no magical residue or compulsion on him—just in case—removed the round from the chamber, and holstered the weapon. The extra round went into a pocket.
“Flying carpet?” Harold asked, holding the door open.
“Um.” Which seemed like a perfectly acceptable response to the odd question.
“Thanks for getting here so fast,” he added.
“Oh. Yeah. Sure,” I said, entering the second-floor apartment. I was such a smooth talker.
Except for muscular arms, Harold was a round kinda guy. Round belly, round, bald head, round eyes, and round face, which now had horizontal lines across the forehead and vertical lines along the sides of his mouth. His face reminded me of a pop quiz in a geometry class in school.
The entry was divided by a counter with apparatus and paperwork for guests to sign in. Behind it was the couple’s living quarters. I breathed in the room’s smells and took in dainty, delicate Clara on her knees just inside the door, a bucket beside her giving off the stink of chlorine bleach and soap. She had a sponge in one hand, a small brush in the other, and relief on her face.
“Thank God you’re here,” Clara said.
Before we could get farther, my cell rang, an unknown number on it. I answered and said, “Yellowrock Securities.”
“Jane.”
Inside my Beast sat up and purred. “Ricky Bo, as I live and breathe. You must be calling from your office number.”
“Got it in one, darlin’.”
Instantly, inexplicably, I was irritated, mostly at the darlin’ but also because this couldn’t be good news. I was standing at a crime scene in his relatives’ home. Rick had to be wanting me to do him a favor. Again. Even though I had yet to be paid by Uncle Sam for the last one. I snarled, “What’s with the darlin’ stuff?”
“I . . . uh.” He stopped talking and then seemed to change, as if he put my mood in a box, sealed it up, and tossed it in the basement. If he had a basement. He turned on his business voice. Cop business. “I need a favor in Chauvin. A big favor.”
I blew out a breath and most of my irritation. He was a cop to his bones and a man loyal to his family, traits I liked. I couldn’t—shouldn’t—get upset when the behaviors resulting from his natural inclinations and his job worked against me. A wordless apology in my tone, I said, “I’m standing in front of Harold now.”
“Yeah? Why?” he asked, voice cautious.
“Because Harold texted me that a man with a gun wanted to see me. I figured that whatever happened could be related to my last job here, and if not, then I’d see what I could do to help your uncle. I’m nice that way.”
I could hear the smile back in his voice when he said, “Yes, you are. And what do you think about the crime?”
“No werewolf stink. No one dead.” I shrugged and punched the screen. “You’re on speakerphone. Local LEOs are gone. Press is still out front. Clara is cleaning up human blood.” I meandered as I talked and placed my finger over one of many holes in the front door, measuring. “There’s evidence of a shotgun being fired into the door.” I sniffed the hole and smelled fresh gunpowder and fresh wood. An interesting combo. “Shot came from inside; door was open at the time. Blood on the wall and floor inside. Crime scene tape, but no CSI around, which tells me there was a crime but it was unimportan
t, or the cops were too lazy to work it up, which doesn’t sound like your cousin, the sheriff.” I looked at Harold. “What happened?”
Harold said, “Let’s back up. The real crime took place up Highway 56. An inmate escaped Angola two days ago. John-Roy Wayne’s family was in Alexandria, and that’s where everyone figured he was heading. Instead he came here. From what the po-lice said, he had no reason to be in Chauvin, so the sheriff’s department wasn’t expecting any kind of trouble. Last night he took two young mothers hostage.”
I had heard about the prison break two days before, and about the massive manhunt that had followed. Angola State Prison was up near the top of the instep of the boot-shaped state, near the Mississippi border. The hellhole was for the hard-timers, the most violent prisoners in the state. Alexandria, Louisiana, was in the middle of the state, almost due north of Chauvin. Chauvin was the wrong corner of a triangle. I was doing lots of geometry today, but I was still confused and let that show on my face.
Harold walked to the sitting area and turned off the muted TV. He flopped on the couch and put his feet on the shabby-chic coffee table, with a small groan of relief. He looked exhausted, dark rings under his eyes. I hadn’t known about the kidnapping, which had probably happened just prior to my leaving New Orleans. But even if I’d known about it, I wouldn’t have put those events together with Chauvin and Harold and Clara. “They came here,” Harold said.
“We were checking in two fishermen,” Clara said, standing, holding one hand out to the side, indicating that I should join Harold in the sitting area. She moved to the sink, where she washed her hands, saying, “John-Roy Wayne busted in the door.”
“I was in back”—Harold thumbed at a doorless opening in the shadows of a hallway—“getting extra pillows and blankets. I heard Clara scream. Not a scream,” he corrected. “More a startled, scared yelp.”