by V M Black
Levi levered himself onto the seat in the bow, stripped off his jacket, and slotted the oars into their locks. “I guess it’s my turn then,” he said. “If you need to sleep—”
She shook her head. “Need to? Probably. But I couldn’t. Too wound up. You looked pretty comfortable, though.”
There was a slight bite in her voice.
He flashed her a smile as he dipped the oars in the water and pulled. “It’s a gift. We need to decide where we’re getting out. They’re going to figure out where we’ve gone eventually, and we don’t want to be get caught on the open water. Your phone still got juice?”
She pulled it out. “I turned it off when I woke up this morning, so half a charge.”
“We need some place close to the river that’s got plenty of cars to choose from. Even better if we might be able to pick up another SD card reader there and a phone.”
“Going to hijack someone else? At another Walmart?” she asked. “That might be a tall order, finding a Walmart right next to the river.”
“We’ve already got ammo. A truck stop or travel plaza will be fine, like Love’s or Flying J or whatever. They’ll have phones for sure and maybe a reader, if we’re lucky.” He grinned. “And of course we’re going to hijack someone. Unless they volunteer to take us.”
“We haven’t been lucky so far,” she muttered, but she tapped at the surface of the phone. “Okay, yeah, got a travel plaza—it looks like five miles down the river, then a one-mile hike. Can you do that?”
“Sure thing,” he said.
“And let me see what I can do about getting a ride without hijacking anybody,” she added.
“You think you can do that?” he asked, pulling back on the oars and sending the boat sliding a few more feet forward.
She shoved the phone back into her purse. “Now that I don’t smell like the bottom of the river, it’s more likely. I used to hitchhike to Philadelphia and back when I was younger and dumber.” She watched him row for a moment, then a small smile began to curve one corner of her mouth, as if despite herself. “I guess I need a parasol or something.”
“What?” Levi asked. He seemed to be saying that a lot that morning. He shook his head as he realized what she meant—river, boat, rowing man, parasol. “Ha, ha. So very romantic.”
Harper snagged a beer from her purse and stretched her legs out in front of her, leaning back against the edge of the stern beside the quiescent trolling motor. The action thrust her breasts up—probably not in the least bit accidentally, if he had to guess.
“A girl could get used to this, being rowed around the river while avoiding killer vampires. Do we have to avoid killer vampires during the day?” she added.
“Unfortunately, yes, thanks to the modern miracles of sunblock and sunglasses,” Levi said, lifting the oars clear of the water and swinging them back again. “Probably some werewolves, too, since they’ll have to track us from the water’s edge.”
“Shame,” she said. “And I thought that vampires and werewolves don’t get along.”
“Vampires and werewolves get along just fine…just so long as the werewolves do exactly what the vampires want them to,” he said.
She shivered. “Yeah, I could see how they could make you do that.”
“Actually, you don’t,” Levi said. “Vampires can turn human brains into pudding. Doesn’t affect us shifters, though.”
Harper frowned. “So why would a shifter work for them?”
“You have to realize first why a vampire would want us to work for him. If some other vampire corners a regular human employee, he can turn them into a mind-slave. They’re vulnerable. Always. But we’re not. So the bloodsuckers like to have a few of us around as bodyguards or general muscle. In a hand-to-hand fight, we’re pretty evenly matched with other vampires, see, but expendable to them.” Honesty made him add, “Okay, unarmed, a vampire will probably take one of us out nine times out of ten, but we fight in groups, together.”
She looked at him sideways. “You’re not fighting in a group.”
“Maybe I was doing something that wasn’t exactly approved,” he said. “But that’s not the point.”
She rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine, I’d be helpless against a vampire, but you’re super-duper special. But what if another vampire just offers more money? Or what if you decide you don’t like the vampire you’re working for?”
“That’s the kicker, isn’t it? Vampires like the idea that other vampires can’t control their underlings, but they don’t like the idea that they can’t. So traditionally, they controlled non-shifter relatives. Husbands, wives, parents, children who were regular humans. As long as they put the whammy on the rest of the family, they’d keep a hold over the shifters.” Levi kept rowing slowly, rhythmically, betraying none of the welter of emotions that lay behind those bald words.
“Wait. Blackmail? Really? That’s their strategy to make sure the employees are loyal and stuff?” Harper looked incredulous.
He shrugged. “There’s an old term for it—the gilded cage. Any werewolf who works for a vampire has a safe and sheltered life, even if it’s interrupted by moments of extreme excitement and danger. And any werewolf who doesn’t work for a vampire—well, bloodsuckers don’t like that very much. We might make their pets uppity, letting them think that they could have lives apart from them. So it’s open season on independent agents.”
Harper blew out a puff of air. “And you’re an independent agent.”
“Yep. My family has been for three generations now.” Levi shook his head as the ends of the oars cleared the surface of the water. “Every time a vampire shows up, he’ll start throwing his weight around, trying to get us to do his shit. The more skills you have, the bigger risk you are to your family. So a lot of us keep a low profile, take dead-end jobs or wander from place to place. Or we cut ourselves free from our family. Sometimes take other names, even.”
All those words seemed out of place here, on the open river. Levi rowed past a short dock that thrust out into the river, where two big-bellied guys in gimme caps and folding lawn chairs sat with an open ice chest at their knees and fishing rods in their hands. A kid, a preschooler from the looks of him, sat between them on the edge of the wooden decking with his feet dangling inches above the water. The men watched Levi row the boat along with incurious eyes.
“And that’s what you did,” Harper said, pulling his attention back. “Cut yourself loose, I mean. I can’t see you keeping a low profile.”
“I’m still a part of my pack,” he said. “I keep in touch. And I vote on clan matters, too. But I don’t go by to my siblings’ places to kiss babies, if that’s what you mean.”
“That’s kind of sad. I mean, that’s sort of the point of family, isn’t it? Even when you want to kill them,” she added.
Levi shrugged. “It’s better for them that I’m not around. Most of them are hiding out in West Virginia, anyway. All but off the grid—they probably would be if they didn’t need the power for the surveillance systems. I don’t like to hide, though, just because I’m a shifter.”
“So it’s hiding or give up your family. And you hope this will change things?” Harper patted her hip pocket where the card was.
“As long as we’ve got a sword hanging over Mortensen’s head, and as long as the bastard stays in power, we should be good,” he said. “My clan, at least. He’s got enough pull to make us untouchable to just about every bloodsucker on the East Coast. Then we won’t have to jump from job to job or hang out in the backwoods just to stay off the radar.”
“Is that who did…whatever it is to you?” Harper asked softly. “Mortensen?”
He knew what she meant. His scars. They were pretty hard to miss.
“No. That was someone else, from a time in my life that I’d rather not talk about,” Levi said flatly.
“Sure. Fine. Whatever,” she snapped.
Which meant that it was anything but fine. He didn’t care, though, he told himself. There was nothin
g between them that made him owe her answers.
Nothing at all.
She turned away from him, sipping her beer as she stared at the shore where the trees crowded down to the waterline in a wall of deep, undifferentiated green. A bright red canoe was nestled along one shore, a woman with a paperback facing a man with a double oar, going upstream. The rower freed one hand and waved at Levi, and he nodded back.
Finally, Harper turned back to him.
“So, anyways, human relatives, you said?” she asked, switching tactics. He suppressed the urge to smile at her tenacity. “How does this werewolf thing work, anyway? Is it like a contagious disease?”
He snorted. “Vampires will tell you that they created the shifters. That’s why there are several different kinds, pretty much one for whatever big-ass predator lives in a region. And of course, there’s the foxes, too.”
“Were-foxes?” she asked, looking amused.
“Fox spirits, they’re called. Mostly used for espionage, in case you’re wondering, and for, uh, honey traps.”
“Honey traps,” she repeated. “Not as actual foxes, right?”
“Of course not,” he said.
Harper looked out over the river as she took a last, long drink of the beer.
“So is it true?” she asked, dropping the empty can on the bottom. “Did vampires make shifters somehow?”
Levi shook his head. “I don’t think so. At least, not directly. Vampires don’t make much of anything. They’ll hire humans to make stuff for them, or even elves or fae—”
“Wait, what?” she demanded, straightening. “All right, I’ll follow you as far as vampires, but elves? Seriously? You think I’m going to believe that you hang out with Legolas?”
“Believe it or not, I don’t really care what you believe. They’re real enough. They’re just…lower profile. Most of them left a while ago, and the ones that are left are mostly those that couldn’t go because they’re blood’s contaminated. Mixed. They keep trying to breed themselves pure enough to leave, too.”
She shook her head. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”
“Anyway, the other story about shifters that keeps cropping up is that it’s a curse from some deity. There are stories about Greek gods and Indian spirits and Egyptian and African gods. Some people even think that Nebuchadnezzar’s madness is a werewolf story. Of course, that was only temporary, so it’s not really the same thing,” he added.
“Do you think it’s a curse?” she asked.
“First, you have to ask if I believe in a pantheon of gods,” he said dryly. “And the answer to that is no. I don’t think Zeus ever struck anyone down. But a curse, in a non-supernatural sense? Sure thing.”
She shook her head, tossing her hair back over her shoulder. Levi wondered if she had any idea how hot she looked like that.
Yeah, probably.
“How is shifting and magical healing and all the rest not supernatural?” she asked.
“It’s just not. You can talk to my friend Beane about it if you meet him—though I hope you don’t, because if you ever get the chance, it means that something’s gone wrong. He can explain it better, something about trans-dimensional mass and shadow bodies and all the rest,” he said. “All I know is that I could mix herbs and chant spells or will power or whatever all day, and in the end, I’d only end up with a soupy mess and a headache.”
“Oh,” she said. She looked slightly disappointed.
“And anyhow, Beane’s former employer has figured out how to make new shifters. With natural births, it’s a genetic lottery—especially when one parent’s human. But whoever did it in the first place, Zeus or elves, it’s replicable artificially,” he said. “Some families are using it to make sure there aren’t any human culls, so they won’t be vulnerable that way. But most of us think that people should be allowed to make their own choices.”
“Wait. Does that mean that I could become a werewolf, too?” She perked up suddenly.
Of course Harper would think that was cool.
“Don’t even think about it,” he said, pulling harder than was necessary to get the boat to move. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. And it comes with strings, if you’ve been paying attention. A lot of them. When you’re a shifter, there are people who always want something from you.”
“No one ever wants anything from me,” she said. Then she wiggled suggestively. “Well, except for one thing.” She shrugged. “It’s because I’m the family baby, I suppose. Not many expectations.”
“Must be nice,” Levi said.
He couldn’t see her eyes behind the sunglasses, but her face was turned squarely toward his. “No, it isn’t. Not really. People barely notice whether I’m even there.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
Her eyebrows shot up, appearing over the edge of the shades. “Well as awesome as I think I am, it’s true. Cory’s already got a family. Braden’s always got Mom in a tizzy, worried sick about him getting into trouble. Austin’s in the Marines, so he’s practically a hero. And Christina’s about to graduate from college, so she’s special. I got my high school diploma, and then my part-time job waiting tables became two part-time jobs waiting tables, then a fulltime job waiting tables—which I’m pretty sure I just lost because of you, by the way—and here I still am, two years later.”
“Sorry about the job.” He pulled against the oars. They had to have gone at least a few miles by now.
“Eh. It sucked anyway. Really, what I liked best about it was working nights, doing inventory management and putting in orders and stuff.” She changed the subject easily.
Too easily, he suspected. She didn’t want to talk about herself anymore. At least not personal stuff.
Levi realized that he didn’t really know anything about her regular life. Not that it mattered, since they’d soon be parting ways for good. But small talk passed the time, right? And that’s what he was doing. Just passing the time.
“Wouldn’t that be the manager’s job?” he asked.
“At night, I’ve got two. One’s lazy but nice, and he pushed that stuff off on me so he can nap in the office. And the other’s a bitch, and she just makes my life hell.” She shrugged. “I like talking to people, too, and I usually like dealing with them, but it’s not really the sort of thing that’s really enough to make waiting tables worth it because not everybody’s that nice, and one bad table can ruin my mood all night.”
She dangled her hand over the side, trailing her fingertips in the water. “I thought about taking some restaurant and hospitality night courses at the community college and to get into restaurant management—like, real restaurant management—but the hours don’t really get any better, and honestly, neither does the pay, ’cause a good server makes almost as much as a manager as long as you’re working somewhere that will give you five tables.”
Levi decided he needed to rethink the whole small talk strategy. It turned out it only made him like her more, because on top of being hot and clever, it turned out she was interesting, too.
Damn.
“So what do you do when you’re not stealing stuff from vampires?” she asked, crossing her legs at the ankle.
“I research the provenance of art and artifacts, which means that I find out where stuff came from and if it’s worth what people think it is.” Wait. Did he just say that? What was wrong with him?
He’d spent how long keeping the werewolf out of the art business and the art business away from the werewolf side of things? And all it took was an innocent question from Harper, and he blurted it all out, as casual as you’d please. Even his family didn’t know his business. Beane, with all his paranoia, was the only one he’d ever trusted with the information.
“I’ve heard of provenance.” She shook her head at him. “I was totally addicted to Pawn Stars. Is that what you do, then?”
In for a penny, in for a pound. “I used to just do stuff like the experts they bring in, but a little more exciting than that, b
ecause I actually trace things. Like, hunt down old owners, find out where they got it even if they don’t really want me to. That kind of thing. I specialize in stuff that’s really hard to trace, stuff that will be worth five, ten times as much if I can. But I’ve got a boring side of the business, too. We play the middlemen when sellers and buyers want privacy. And I do some buying and selling of my own, too. It’s all auctions now, but it’d be nice to have a gallery one day.”
And there it was—all his dreams on a plate. It sounded so ordinary, even stuffy. But there was more than a little excitement in his work. Not all art was gained through legitimate channels, and those who got it through illegitimate ones usually had a lot invested in making sure their origins stayed hidden. Especially the historic artifacts.
Forgery was rampant, too—and far from new. One historian had estimated that in medieval Europe, there were enough splinters of the “True Cross” that had been pushed onto gullible pilgrims and then enshrined in Western churches to make twenty crosses.
But these days, it was mostly East Asian art where the forgeries were, at times the products of astonishingly skilled studios with all the power of some of the most elite and well-connected organized crime families in China behind them. Levi had almost been killed in Guangzhou over a particularly cleverly faked vase, and he’d been banned from re-entry to China under no less than three names.
“A gallery. Like an art gallery?” She grinned. “I’d like to see you in a penguin suit, waving around a wineglass and giving a lecture on the deep meaning of a toilet bolted to the wall.”
“Yeah, not that kind, though if I thought I could sell it for enough, I wouldn’t say no.” Levi grinned at her. “I’d mostly like to sell the kinds of things I find at flea markets and garage sales, bazaars and thrift shops—the treasures people don’t realize they have.”
“Stuff you sniff out.” Her grin widened.
He smiled back despite the terribleness of the joke. “That’s more accurate than you think.”
But what he wanted was more than what he was doing now—more than the next job, no matter how exciting. What he wanted was roots. Right now, he had an office in which the only things he actually owned were a nameplate, a laptop, and a printer, plus a few shipping containers full of art. Even his furniture and office plants were leased, and his personal assistant was a stay-at-home mother with a dedicated phone line in another state because he never knew when some bloodsucker’s lackey would show up at the office, wanting his cut.