Under the Blood Moon

by Tracie Provost

  “Yes, there was quite a scandal. Madame de Montespan was never arrested, but a number of others, including Andre, were.”

  “What happened?” I gasped.

  “Several of us broke Andre and another vampire out of prison. We could not afford for our secret to get out. My father was already Grandmaster in Paris at the time and ordered it. We smuggled Andre to Calais and sent him to England. We were never sure if Andre was just playing at devil worship or truly practicing.”

  “But you let him live here in New Orleans under your rule,” I said.

  Marc shrugged. “I was always inclined to believe it was just a lark for him. I once asked him and he just laughed the whole incident off.”

  “You are very tolerant,” I said.

  “I am pragmatic, Madame. As long as Andre did nothing to cause problems here, there was no reason to hold a past indiscretion, especially one that happened hundreds of years earlier, against him.”

  “So you saw no evidence of satanic worship while my sire was here?” I found it very interesting that Andre had warned me of the Gautiers and their supposed use of Black Magic to retain power. I have no idea who to believe.

  “Not from him. There have been plenty of humans that have practiced the Dark Arts, and a few have succeeded in summoning demons, but I have seen none of it from Andre or any other Aether,” Marc said. “And before you ask, Frederique said your magic was ‘about as white and pure as it comes,’ and Josh confirmed it.”

  How would Josh know? Maybe he has some special ability. He did sense the spelled bullets in my gun when we went to the gun range.

  “Perhaps the Gatekeepers were wrong,” I offered.

  “I sincerely hope so. I would not like to think that I have harbored a nest of vipers for all these years. Even so, I would like to meet with this Gatekeeper. Maybe we can pool our knowledge and prevent the Gate from being opened. At least we have an ace up our collective sleeve now. Is there some incantation that must be said to seal the Gate? Do you need to research? My library is open to you. It is light on occult, but there may be something useful there.”

  He does not understand that I must die to seal the Gate. I debated telling him but decided against it, saying simply, “I know what needs to be done.”

  Marc nodded, satisfied. “Madame Grammont, you need not worry that your secret will get out. What you have disclosed to me will not leave this room by my lips.”

  I drained the last of my wine. “Thank you, Monsieur. I am sure you know how valuable this secret is. There are only a handful of us in the world, and I do not wish to be a sought-after commodity.”

  “No, I don’t expect you would. How many of you are there?”

  “Thaumaturges? Perhaps eight or nine. I do not think any more. Quite probably less. Those with magic in blood and bone? Seers are rare. Twenty perhaps. That would be on the high side. Necromancers are more rare than thaumaturges. No more than four or five.”

  “You really need a bodyguard.”

  “The sacrifice must be willing to open the Gate,” I reminded him.

  “I would feel better if you had one,” Marc pressed. “Besides, we may need you to close the Gate.”

  “I will think about it. I promise,” I said.

  “Alright. If the Gatekeeper pays you another visit, please set up a meeting. Any time, any place. I will clear my schedule for it, and I would like you to be there.”

  “Of course. I am at your disposal.”

  Marc stood. “Thank you for telling me, for trusting me. It could not have been easy.”

  I rose as well. “I took an oath to both you and the city.”

  Marc smiled as he led me to the door. “Most still would not have told me.”

  “I take my oaths seriously.”

  “As do I, Madame Grammont. As do I.”

  Chapter 12

  BAM! BAM! BAM! Heavy fists pounded on my front door, startling me. Glad that I hadn’t started to spell the bullets yet, I closed the grimoire I was studying without marking the page and hurried to see what the emergency was. Looking out the peep hole, I saw Josh and Beau Roulet standing on my front stoop. I wrenched open the door before more blows could fall.

  “You’re alright. Thank God,” Josh said when I let them into my foyer, his face a mask of concern.

  “Well, yes. Why wouldn’t I be?” I asked.

  “You ain’t answering your cell.”

  I frowned and drew the phone from my pocket. The screen was black and it would not turn on when I pressed the button.

  “Did you forget to charge it?” Josh asked, taking the phone from me to examine.

  “Charge?”

  “Criminy, woman! The battery in this thing ain’t gonna last forever. You gotta plug it in and charge it.” His concern had turned to a scowl now.

  I looked blankly at him, not understanding half of what he had said, except that I had failed to do something important. “Sophie only explained the rudiments of the device when she gave it to me,” I said quietly.

  Josh’s face softened then and he asked, “Did it come in a box or did she give you a cord with it?”

  I nodded. “The box is in the study. This way.” As we crossed to the east door and entered the study, I heard Beau say to Josh in a hushed tone, which I was not meant to hear, “She been living under a rock or sumthin’? She’s pretty, but she ain’t too bright.”

  The phone’s box was on the corner of the desk. Picking it up and handing it to Josh, I said, “Actually, I had been staked in a crypt for the past two centuries, not under a rock, but I believe the effect is quite the same.”

  Beau looked chastened. Glancing around the room at the multitude of leather-bound volumes, he said. “I think I’m just gonna shut up now.”

  Josh laughed as he pulled a black cord from the box. “Don’t mistake it, Beau, she’s pretty and bright. You’d do well not to underestimate her. Juliette, where are the . . . never mind, you won’t know,” Josh said as he looked around the room. Finding what he was looking for low on the wall behind the desk, he placed one end of the cord into the wall and attached the other end to the phone. “Every morning before you retire for the day, you should plug this in to charge. If you don’t, the phone won’t have power and no one can call you. In fact, I’d better call Sophie and let her know you’re alright. She’s mighty worried. She’s been trying to call for a while now.” Josh drew out his own phone. His fingers danced lightly across the screen before he put the device to his ear. “Hey, Soph, it’s Josh.”

  The steward said something on the other end of the line that I did not catch. While my hearing might be acute, if the sound was too far away, I had to concentrate to understand it.

  “She’s fine. Phone wasn’t charged.”

  I did not need extrasensory hearing to make out the expletive Sophie fairly shouted into the phone, although the last bit was muffled.

  “No harm, no foul. I’ve shown her how to charge the phone, so there won’t be any more difficulties.”

  There was another pause and he said. “We’ll go there now. It shouldn’t take but fifteen minutes to get there. I’ll call you when we’re done.” He turned off the phone and said to me, “There’s been another attack. Mike says it’s real bad. That’s why Sophie was calling you. Marc wants the three of us to go take a look.”

  My plans to make hoodoo bullets were immediately put on hold. “Of course. I will get my purse and we can go.”

  IT TOOK US LESS than ten minutes to get to the crime scene. When we pulled up to the warehouse in the 9th Ward, I recognized it as where Marc, Josh, and I had met the werewolf entourage at the beginning of the month. I expected the kills to be in a nearby alley, but Josh led us to a side door. There, blended in shadow, was Vinny Carlucci. Josh stopped for a minute to speak to the Salamand lieutenant. “Thanks for waiting for us.
”

  “Ain’t lookin’ forward to cleanin’ up the wetworks on this one. Christ, I ain’t never seen this much blood an’ I’ve cleaned up some nasty shit in my day.”

  “Well then the sooner we take a look, the sooner you can start cleaning,” Josh said.

  “Watch where you walk. In fact, Mike said to give ya these,” Vinny said, handing Josh something.

  Josh looked at the bundle. “Booties? We’re gonna be all CSI and shit now?”

  “It’s either the booties or lose your boots on the way out.”

  “It’s that bad in there?”

  “Place is coated in blood.”

  “It’s a warehouse.”

  “Yeah. It’s gonna take me all night to sanitize this place.”

  Josh groaned before he turned and distributed the booties to Beau and me. “Just slide ‘em on over your shoes, Juliette,” Josh instructed. I watched Beau and mimicked what he did.

  The stench of blood was overwhelming when we entered the building. How many people died to create this odor? What Vinny had said was a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. We had not walked three steps in the door before having to skirt a large puddle of blood. “Watch your step,” Josh told us.

  Stepping in behind me, Beau said, “Fuck.”

  The scene before us was straight out of one of those horror movies Chris liked to watch. In addition to science fiction, the young man had introduced me to slasher films, zombie flicks, Quentin Tarantino, and British costume drama, although Chris swore he’d deny watching the last until his dying day. The warehouse would have done any Hollywood prop master proud. Viscera and gore were spread throughout the cavernous space. As we ventured further into the building, I saw no whole bodies, only parts. If I were human, I would have been sick. As it was, the sight only made me slightly queasy.

  I looked up at Josh next to me and asked, “Monsieur Marc does not want me to change the bodies, does he? I am afraid this is well beyond my ability.”

  “Nah, that’s why Vinny’s here. Once you and Beau scent the scene, Vinny’ll clean this up.”

  “Whaddya mean ‘change the bodies’?” Beau asked.

  “I can heal wounds magically. I just heal them to look as if something else inflicted them.”

  Beau nodded. “The boogey man and multi-talented.”

  “Yes, but I still did not know to charge my cell phone,” I said dryly.

  The werewolf gave a throaty laugh. “I like you; you’ve got a sense of humor. Ready to put that super-sniffer of yours to work?”

  “Super-sniffer?” I asked.

  “Nose,” he said, tapping his own.

  “Ah, yes.”

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, allowing the smells to permeate my senses. There were so many different human and werewolf traces that I was quickly overwhelmed. I looked at Beau and saw he was having the same difficulty.

  “All of the Strays from the earlier attacks were here,” I said, “and more.”

  Beau nodded. “There’s at least a dozen different werewolf scents in here, but all the killin’ wasn’t done at the same time.”

  “I picked out fifteen different werewolves,” I said. “The five I had previously identified, plus ten more. A pack of Strays?”

  “Ain’t never seen it, but it must be. These Strays seem to have formed their own pack. Usually when two Strays wander into the same territory, they fight it out. Whoever loses is usually dead, but if not, they skedaddle right quick,” Beau said.

  “Could it be a pack from another territory?” Josh asked.

  Beau shook his head. “All packs live outside of cities. We need the wild to run. All those crazy survivalist compounds you hear about on the news? Really werewolf packs that have bought a bunch of land and been idiots, raisin’ government suspicion. Anyway, the weres we’re dealin’ with here are city. Born and bred.”

  “How can you tell?” Josh asked.

  “They smell different. Real different. I think Miss Juliette here said it best when she noted that we smell like the earth we inhabit. Here in New Orleans, we all have a bit of that swamp odor. Go out to Texas and they smell like baked earth. The ones we’re dealin’ with here,” he indicated the blood-soaked warehouse, “smell like city-rottin’ garbage, asphalt, and diesel. We call ourselves the New Orleans pack, but that isn’t real right. None of us live in New Orleans. We’re all out in the swamp. We just use the city name ‘cause everybody knows where that is. Plus it’s easier for outsiders than Atchafalaya.”

  Josh nodded. “So these Strays are tryin’ to form a new pack?”

  “From the smells of it, they already have,” I said.

  Beau grunted. “And that’s a problem. Even though we don’t live in the city, it’s still my territory. Not only have they invaded it, but they’re killin’ humans in it. I gotta stop this and fast.”

  I looked around the warehouse at the carnage. Even though there were no bodies left to be easily counted, I guessed that several dozen humans had been killed in here. “How could so many people disappear and no one notice? And in such a short amount of time? It hasn’t even been two weeks since we met in this building.”

  Josh shrugged. “Good question. Mike hasn’t mentioned a rash of missing person reports but I expect NOPD will start getting ‘em. The Strays probably started with the homeless and then moved on to the tourists. Can y’all tell how many are dead or how long this has been going on?”

  I closed my eyes and concentrated. I did not really need my eyes closed, but it helped me to focus. Scenting a room was a lot like peeling an onion, without the crying. I needed to go layer by layer, carefully picking through what was important, or at least relevant, and what was not. This was much more difficult than finding a specific person in a crowded room or even figuring out that the same Strays were perpetrating the attacks. I spent several minutes sifting through the unpleasant potpourri of odors. In the end I was able to identify that at least forty different humans had been killed here.

  “I got closer to fifty,” Beau said. “This has been goin’ on a while. Since shortly after we all met here. This ain’t no single night’s work.”

  “Why this building though?” I asked. “I mean they must have smelled us when they brought their first victim here.”

  “They want us to know. Hell, they’re daring us to find ‘em. What I don’t understand is why,” Josh said.

  “They want my territory,” the werewolf Alpha said.

  “Do they? Really? Seems to me if they wanted to challenge you for power, they’d show up and fight you straight up. None of this attacking the Grandmaster’s nephew to get the vamps involved.”

  “Perhaps Chris’s attack was random? The wolf did not know he was the Grandmaster’s kin?” Even as I made the suggestion, I knew that was not the case.

  “Let’s get outta here. Vinny’s got some serious clean up to do before sunrise, and we should tell Marc what we’ve found,” Josh said.

  WE DID NOT SPEAK on the way to Gautier House, except for Josh. He called Sophie to let her know of our arrival, and when the car approached the courtyard, the gate slid to allow us entrance without delay. The guard had clearly been told to watch for us. Josh pulled his red Mustang parallel to the other three cars, and we got out. Sophie stood on the loggia near the back door, waiting for us.

  “Marc is in his office with Mike and Gabe. Go on through. Josh, you know the way,” she said. When I moved to follow, Sophie caught my arm, halting my progress. “I just wanted to make sure you were alright.”

  I smiled wryly. “I could do without scenes such as I witnessed in the warehouse but, yes, I am fine.”

  “So it really was just a dead phone battery?” she asked.

  I frowned. “Of course. What else would it be?”

  Sophie pursed her lips and shook her head. “I
don’t know. It was just a feeling. Never mind. I’m sorry I forgot to tell you about charging the battery. It was careless of me.”

  “It is not as if I am your only concern,” I said.

  “I cannot afford to be careless. Not now.”

  “At least it was something minor. There was no harm done,” I said.

  Sophie did not look mollified but said, “You should probably go join the meeting.”

  Marc was standing by the window, staring out, when I entered the room. Josh and Beau were at the sideboard bar, while Gabe and Mike spoke quietly off to the side. As I closed the door behind me, Marc turned from the window. Gesturing toward the seating group, he said, “Please sit.”

  Once we had all taken seats—Marc, Gabe, and I in chairs, and Josh and Beau on the sofa—Marc asked, “What did you find out?”

  The question was addressed to all of us, but Beau answered. “We’ve got a big problem. We all knew we had a problem, but it is larger and more serious than any of us imagined. There are more than a dozen Strays, all Maneaters, and they have formed a pack inside the city. They’ve been usin’ that warehouse for their kills.”

  “Why that warehouse?” Marc asked.

  Beau sighed. “It’s a big ole ‘fuck you’ from them to all of us. It’s their way of markin’ territory.”

  “Couldn’t y’all piss on trees, instead? Way less messy,” Josh asked.

  Marc rolled his eyes at the suggestion. “This isn’t normal werewolf activity is it?”

  “No, and it’s got me mighty worried,” Beau said.

  “OK. What do we do? Double patrols?” Marc asked.

  “That’s a start. Miss Juliette, you got any magic that can help?”

  I thought for a moment. “I have wardings against werewolves, but that would keep all werewolves out of an area, even your pack,” I said.

  “Might be worth it. It would force them out of some areas and then we could corral them.”

  “A warding of that magnitude could take me weeks to create.”

  “Shit.”