by Faith Hunter
I finished my reading of the case notes with, “Mostly, BO is a backwater community of churches, a blood bar, a few shops, a grocery, a couple of restaurants, a B and B, a dozen wild game processors”—which was the polite term for butchers for hunters’ kills—“alligator and boar hunting, fishing businesses for tourists, an airboat tour guide company, and a few thousand citizens spread over a wide area of bayou, swamp, and sinking land. It needs paint, repaved roads, an influx of tax money, and a general makeover.”
“Looks like the town is finally getting that makeover,” Eli said, as the SUV lurched over ruts in the road. He slowed, his headlights taking in the rain-wet dark.
The two-lane state road we turned onto from I-10 had been freshly graded in the last couple of days, judging by the coarse road surface, in preparation for new paving. The heavily armored SUV bounced over the ruts and splashed through standing pools as we rolled past road-paving machines parked on the sides. In the rain, in the momentary clarity provided by the windshield wipers, I thought that they looked like stalled dinosaurs, which made Beast perk up and look out through my eyes.
Want to hunt dino-saucers. Or cow!
Not on this trip. Just vampires and witches.
My Beast curled up inside, closed her eyes, and pouted. She hadn’t been out a whole lot recently, and she was grumpy about not getting to hunt. Could hunt cow from window of ess-u-vee, she finished.
The SUV was part of my gear as Leo’s Enforcer, and it had all the bells and whistles and onboard computer—as well as the bullet-resistant, multilayer, polycarbonate glass and Kevlar inserts around the cab—that Eli’s personal SUV didn’t have. I had been shot at recently and appreciated the protection that the heavy vehicle provided, but the extra weight made a jolting ride on the rough road.
We made it to the small town long after midnight, the few streetlights offering small globes of visual warmth in the downpour. There were dump trucks and construction vehicles and more of the road-grading machines parked everywhere, but in the darkness and the rain, no workers.
The town name meant bird bayou, and the first time I saw the quaint little place, I thought it looked like a love child spawned by the producer of a spaghetti Western and a mad Frenchwoman. The main crossroads were the intersection of Broad Street and Oiseau Avenue, which wasn’t as pretty as it might have sounded. Broad Street was narrow, and the buildings lining its single-lane cousin were downright ugly. There was only one traffic signal in the entire town, and despite the crossroads being the main intersection, tonight there was no social life either. Everything was at a standstill, and not just because it was so late.
A circle of drenched women blocked the main crossing. Twelve women. The scent of magic was strong in the air, tickling along my skin and making me want to sneeze, despite the insulating rubber tires and the pouring rain, not that insulation worked against magic as well as it worked against electricity. Or at all, actually.
Eli pulled to a stop some twenty feet away from the witch circle, the soaking-wet women illuminated by his headlights. Witch circles can be composed of different numbers of practitioners, and I had seen circles with two, five, twelve, three, four, and nine witches, depending on the geometry and mathematics being used to rout the magical energies. Twelve witches made up the most potent kind of circle, and working with that kind of energy and potential could do scary things, including take over the witches and use their combined life force to power the working, leaving dead witches behind and their magic operational but out of control. These witches were bedraggled and dripping and so involved that they didn’t seem to notice or care about the weather. Or us. And oddly, they were standing outside the circle they were working. Which meant that something inside had their full attention.
I tried to make out what it was, even pulling on Beast’s vision, but all I saw were dull kaleidoscopic colors, all in the green and blue part of the color spectrum, with a hint of yellow. It looked locked down, well contained, whatever it was.
“Twelve, eh?” Eli sounded casual, but he had fought beside me when a full circle had changed the local vamps in Natchez into bizarro insectoid creepazoids. Wiping out the vamps had been the worst fight of my life, and I’d had some bad fights to compare it to. “Last time we ran into one of those,” he murmured, “I met Syl. That was a good time in my life.”
Alex made a gagging sound. “Ignore the lovestruck idiot in the driver’s seat,” he said. “Can you see what they’re doing?”
“The circle looks like a form of Molly’s hedge of thorns spell,” I said, “but they’re outside the hedge. I think I see some kind of circle outside the hedge, but it’s weak as well water. There’s something in the middle of the street and in the center of the circle.” I squinted to see it better. Tried to look at it from the edges of my vision, focusing on a tree in the distance to make the blue-green fog of dullness. “Is it a . . . a hat?”
Beast rose from her nap and studied the scene through my eyes. Witches are studying prey. Which was as good an explanation as any I had.
“I can’t imagine why you sound so shocked,” Edmund murmured. “Not so many years ago, most women loved hats.”
“Jane’s not most women, dude,” Alex said for me. “And it isn’t a hat—it’s one of those laurel wreath things that the Greeks and the Romans used to wear.”
At the comment, Edmund sat up straight and leaned across the opening between the front seats to get a better look. As he studied the wreath, he slowly vamped-out, his pupils going wide, the sclera going scarlet, and his fangs slowly dropping with a soft schnick of sound on the hinges in the roof of his mouth. “Well, well, well,” he said. “I do wonder what that can be.”
I couldn’t have said why, but I had a feeling that Edmund knew exactly what it was, and for whatever reason, he wasn’t saying. I thought about calling him on it, but decided to hold my tongue, saying instead, “Down boy. That’s a dangerous circle, so no matter what it is, we aren’t getting near it.”
I gave directions to the bed-and-breakfast where I stayed last time I was in town and Eli put the SUV in reverse and backed a few feet but didn’t pull away. The headlights gave us a clear view of the town and the women, despite the rain, and I could see him taking in everything, the way Uncle Sam had trained him in the Rangers. If he had to, Eli could now draw an exact replica map of the town for house-to-house warfare. Hopefully we wouldn’t need that map or that much bloodshed, but it was a handy skill set.
On the south corner of the intersection, there was a huge, brick Catholic church, the bell tower hiding a tarnished, patinated bell in its shadows. The large churchyard was enclosed by a brick wall, with ornate bronze crosses set into niches in the brick every two feet. On top of the wall were iron spikes, also shaped like sharp, pointed crosses. The sight made Edmund growl and sit back. I just smiled. The church in Bayou Oiseau had been fighting vamps for decades. It never hurt to remind a vampire that he had enemies and that there were ways to fight his power.
To the east of the church, across the road, was a bank, beige brick and concrete, with the date 1824 on the lintel and green verdigris bars shaped like crosses on the windows and door. To my right was a strip mall that had seen better days, brick and glass, with every single window and door in the strip adorned with a cross, either painted or decaled on. The mall featured a nail salon, hair salon, tanning salon, consignment shop, secondhand bookstore, bakery, a Chinese fast-food joint, a Mexican fast-food joint, and a Cajun butcher advertising andouille sausage, boudin, pork, chicken, locally caught fish, and a lunch special for $4.99.
“Is that Lucky Landry’s place?” Alex asked.
“That’s it,” I said. “Best food in fifty miles.”
Beast thought, Good meat smell. Lucky is good hunter to hunt so much meat. Want to hunt with Lucky Landry.
Directly ahead of the SUV, catercornered from the church, was a saloon, like something out of the French Quarter—two st
ories, white-painted wood with fancy black wrought iron on the gallery, long narrow window doors with working shutters, and aged double front doors, the wood carved to look like massive, weather-stained orchids. The building’s name and purpose was spelled out in bloodred letters on a white sign hanging from the second-floor gallery, LECOMPTE SPIRITS AND PLEASURE. It was the town’s blood bar, and the only building without built-in crosses at every access point. I rolled down the window and took a sniff. Unlike the last time I was here, I couldn’t smell beer and liquor and sex and blood, only rain and magic. The bar was closed and someone had nailed a cross over the front doors. Somehow that felt like a bad omen.
Eli backed another few feet and his headlights fell on something that had been hidden in the shadows. A small group of people stood in the downpour, about ten feet away from the witches’ circle’s north point. People, standing, immobile, in the rain. Not breathing. Not doing anything. Suckheads. Watching the witches. Wet and undead and scary silent.
In the backseat, my babysitter vamp cocked his head and studied them. Softly he said, “Interesting.” But his tone said it was more than just interesting—it was unexpected, disturbing, and dangerous. Wordless, Eli backed down the street and turned into a narrow alley to bypass the intersection and the . . . whatever was going on there.
Miz Onie’s Bed and Breakfast was closed for the night, but the woman was a light sleeper and met us at the door before we could even knock, dressed in a fluffy purple housecoat with her graying hair up in twisty cloth curlers. She was not yet sixty, but was using a cane this time, and her gait looked pained.
“I see you come down de street,” she said, her Cajun accent mellifluous. “Come in out de rain. You rooms ready. Wet clothes go hang on de rack,” she pointed. Without waiting, she led the way up the steps and we followed her uneven, slow steps.
“Are you injured, Miz Onie?” I asked.
Woman is sick. Smells old. Cull her from herd?
No!
Beast chuffed, but I didn’t really know if she was being funny or hiding a serious question.
“Broke my ankle back a month ago. Doctor say it a spiral fracture and take longer to heal. Got to wear dis boot, which make clump-clump noise, but I making good progress.” She looked at the Youngers. “You not the same boys what come with Jane last time,” she said as we dumped equipment and gear in the hallway upstairs. “Them boys be U.S. military. Who you is?”
I remembered that Miz Onie had liked men in uniform and had given special attention to the men, including huge breakfasts and food left out to munch on all day. “Former U.S. Army Ranger, Miz Onie,” I said, “and his younger brother, Alex. And Edmund Hartley.”
She looked them all over, nodding to herself at the sight of the Youngers. But her eyes squinted when she got to Ed. I couldn’t tell from her body language or her scent how she felt about the vamp, but she didn’t kick him out. She turned for the stairs and her room on the first floor, walking hunched over, gripping her robe tightly closed with her free hand. “Breakfast at seven. Towels in each bath. This wet weather has me out of sorts and strangely sleepy, so good night, all.”
Once again she gave me the best room, on the front of the house, the green room, with emerald green bedspread, moss green walls, striped green drapery, and greenish fake flowers in a tall vase near a wide bay with soaring windows and a door out to a gallery. The boys were sent into the room Derek had used on the last visit, which had two twin beds and a view into the garden out back. Edmund was left standing in the hallway alone, until she pointed to a third room, a nook at the top of the stairs. He frowned as he took in the windows and the draperies—which could be opened to let in the light while he slept, if an enemy was so inclined to watch him burn to death in bed.
He raised his brows. “Doesn’t like Mithrans, I take it?”
“Not fond of anyone one but military boys.”
“I fought in the Civil War. Does that count?”
“Confederate?”
“No.”
“I’d keep it to yourself, then,” I said, tossing my sleepwear on the bed and my toiletries on the bathroom counter, and laying out my weapons with much greater care.
Patiently Edmund said, “Where am I to sleep, my master?”
Sleep with Beast!
I ignored her and stood straight, staring at him. “None of that ‘my master’ crap. Not now, not ever. In fact, you can take that primo idea and stuff it where the sun don’t shine. As to your sleeping needs, I doubt the B and B has a vamp-sealed room, so I guess that, if the bedroom she assigned to you doesn’t make you all jolly, you get to spend the day in my closet.”
Edmund didn’t sigh, as vamps don’t have to breathe, but his body took on a long-suffering posture.
“Don’t worry. I’ll put a pallet in there with a nice comfy pillow from my bed. Meanwhile, why don’t you go see what the vamps are up to and get the lowdown on their point of view. I’m going to catch a couple of hours of shut-eye and head back out at five a.m.”
“Even when I was human that was an ungodly hour. And in case you haven’t noticed, it’s raining outside.”
“You’ll dry.” I pushed him out of the room and shut the door in his face. “Nighty night, Edmund.”
I texted Clermont Doucette that I was in town, put a nine mil on the bedside table along with a stake and a vamp-killer, kicked off my traveling boots, crawled between the covers, which smelled faintly of lavender and vanilla, and closed my eyes. I was instantly asleep. I woke when the single door to the gallery opened and wet air blew in. The nine mil was targeted on the dim outline before I got my eyes fully opened. “It’s loaded with silver,” I said, my voice gravelly with sleep.
“I would die, then, true-dead, if you shot me,” Edmund said, sounding unconcerned.
“Why are you entering my room from a second-story window?” I asked, as the night breeze fluttered the pale curtains into the room. The curtains were new since my last visit, and they had ruffles. I hate ruffles. “All the novels say suckheads can turn into bats and fly around. I thought it was fiction.”
Edmund made a pfft sound with his lips. “There is a tree outside your window with low branches. You need to put that toy away and come see this spectacle.” The guy really did have big brass ones. At the thought, I couldn’t help but grin, and Edmund’s eyebrows went up a notch. I waved the inquiring look away and rolled to the edge of the bed, my aim not wavering, and hit the floor in my sock feet. The bay window was narrow, and I motioned Edmund back with the weapon. He stepped out into the dark of night, onto the gallery, and I followed. The main intersection of Broad Street and Oiseau Avenue was visible between the waxy leaves of a magnolia in the yard of the B and B.
The witches were still standing in a circle in the middle of the crossroads. Standing behind them were two vamps for every one witch. They were positioned to attack and though the witches were outside the hedge circle—which was weird enough on its own—the vamps hadn’t yet attacked. Weird.
“How long?” I asked.
“Since the rain stopped.”
“How long until dawn?” I clarified.
“Perhaps fifteen minutes.”
“I was supposed to be up before this.”
“According to Clermont Doucette, the witches put a sleep spell on the entire town. Once humans go to sleep, they don’t wake until after dawn.”
I grunted. I wasn’t human, so why was I affected? Miz Onie had still been up when we got here. Or had been woken. I had to wonder if Miz Onie was immune to sleep spells or wasn’t human, to be able to be up and about. “What happens at dawn?”
“The Mithrans attack, moving at speed. The intent is to capture every witch and take back the wreath, which may be magical, though no one seems to know what its purpose is.
“When Shauna brought the wreath to her father, Landry decided that it was a religious artifact instead of a witch
artifact and took it to the Catholic priest, who then called the bishop of Orleans Parish, St. Tammany Parish, St. Bernard Parish, Plaquemines Parish, and Jefferson Parish, who happens to be the same person, the preeminent religious figure in the southeast part of the state. The bishop sent a spokesperson, who kept it all of one day before deciding to send it Rome for exorcism.”
He paused for my reaction, but I didn’t have one to give, except to lower my weapon.
He inclined his head in recognition of his change in status from prisoner of a sort to gossip artist. “It has a great deal of power. I could smell it on the air. When the Mithrans heard that it was to be sent to Rome, they came en masse to the church. But it had been closed up behind the crosses on the walls and doused in holy water.”
I looked back at the gathering on the street and sighed. “Leo sent me into a mess, didn’t he?”
“To be fair to the Blood-Master of New Orleans, he did not know that things had become so dire.”
“Uh-huh. Go on with your story of intrigue, love lost, and magic crap.”
“Someone, not a Mithran, as he was undeterred by holy icons, stole over the wall to the church grounds, and pilfered the wreath from the priests.”
I started laughing softly, though I wasn’t sure it was from amusement or something more dismal. Watching the tableau in the street, the sodden witches and the hyperalert vamps, was like watching paint dry.
“That person took the wreath to the coven of witches, the female witches of the town, and the coven immediately recognized the power of the artifact.”