by Faith Hunter
Drunken, drugged, a distant voice thought. Mild surprise merged with the drumbeat. I saw the snake resting below the surface, encapsulated in every cell of the hunter cat. In its teeth and bones, in the dried bits of its hardened marrow. A snake, holding all that we sa was. The awareness of where the cat and I differed. Where we were the same. And how easy it would be to shift from my shape, into the bobcat. So simple. With understanding came purpose and desire. Clarity. The longing to shift into the snake within we sa. The desire to become bobcat.
My first beast. My first shift. I let go. I melted, as the stone melted in the cavern above. Taking the shape of bobcat. Pain radiated out, like spokes of the white man’s wheels. Yet distant, caught up in the drums, and so, not quite a part of me. The shadows on the stone merged and glittered, gray and dark and light. All color bled out of the night. And I was bobcat.
The world was grayer, duller to my eyes. But when I took my first breath as we sa, the scents exploded inside me, heavily textured and layered, yet distinct. Smoke, sweat, bad teeth, bear fat, white man’s whiskey, blood, herbs. Hunger tugged at me.
I tilted my head and looked at my father, my pointed ears and tufts of curling ear hair moving shadows on the stone. Edoda, beside me, had shifted as well. The beast he had chosen was tlvdatsi, mountain panther. Killing eyes met mine, round pupils in amber irises. Marauder claws flexed and stretched on the earth. I hunched, making myself small in fear.
Beneath the smells of fire, dancers, and the cat, my father’s scent was all but lost. All but. Not quite. I breathed him in, Edoda caught beneath the pelt of the shift.
My father was there, clinging to humanity as he looked out at the world through the eyes of predator death. Purring, he nudged me, forcing me to my feet, four legs offering better balance than two. I followed him through the no-longer-so-dark cave, into the night.
Scents and sounds were volatile, intense, so full of power they felt like knife wounds. Air touched my pelt, telling me everything about the world around me. The direction of the wind. The moisture content in the air. The nearness of storm clouds. The season of the year. The last rain was still wet in the dirt beneath my padding paws. I heard the running feet of rodents, an owl overhead in a tree, two does up the ridge, chewing. The owl lifted wings. Night birds hunted and called. Every sense was powerful and concentrated. I flexed out my claws, smaller versions of Edoda’s, but no less dangerous to my own prey.
Edoda, tlvdatsi, led me into the rhododendron thicket, trunks writhing from bare earth, leaves forming a canopy less than the height of a man above, teaching me to hunt. I followed, watching, scenting, hearing, learning how to bring down a rabbit. My own prey sat still as stone in the brush. Until a fear-crazed rush. I leaped. My claws sank deep, teeth ripping into the back of its neck. I gave the small prey a single shake, breaking its spine. Edoda teaching me to kill and to eat. The feel-taste-scent of blood and food, the crunch of bone and hot meat.
The night closed in with the taste. All scent wisped away. I lay on the couch in my freebie house, eyes closed. I remembered. I knew. I knew what I was, from the very beginning. When I appeared out of the forest I wasn’t the twelve-year-old girl the white authorities had thought I was. I was far . . . far older. And I had spent a much longer time in Beast’s skin than I had thought.
I shivered. I opened my eyes. To meet the vamped-out gaze of a far greater predator, canines exposed, lips drawn back in a slight snarl.
CHAPTER 12
Naked vamps. And the food was naked too
I should have been alarmed. Terrified. Instead, I stretched and sighed. My pain was gone. I flexed my fist, inspected my arm, watching the play of whole muscles beneath unblemished skin. I tugged gently, suggesting by the action that Leo release me. Not fighting him, not jerking free, none of the motions that prey might make. I knew better than to fight myself free from a predator. Attack or play dead if one wanted to stay alive. Edoda’s lessons. Returned to me. A gift of this predator. This killer. So, gently, calmly, I pulled my arm free of his grip. And Leo Pellissier slowly began to seep back into his own eyes.
I smiled at him. And saw surprise swim into his gaze.
“Thank you,” I said, knowing I thanked him more for the return of a memory than for healing. I reached slowly toward him with my healed arm, fingers brushing the skin of his neck. He breathed out with the touch. I curled the tendril of his hair around my fingers, my tendons restored, healed, the motion pain free.
When his eyes were not human but no longer fully vampy, he turned his face into my palm and rested his cheek against my fingers, his black hair caught between hand and face. “What are you?” he asked, wonder in his voice. When I didn’t answer, he whispered, “Your blood tastes of oak and cedar and the winter wind. Tastes wild, like the world once was. Come to my bed,” he breathed on my hand. “Tonight.”
I watched, knowing he was using his vamp voice on me, but not minding so very much. Not right now. He kissed my palm, his hair still tangled in my fingers, his lips cool, but soft. His eyes took mine, his gaze velvet lined but powerful, like a gilded cell. “Come to my bed.”
“No,” I murmured. “Not gonna happen.”
Slowly, he took my wrist in his chilled hand and pulled me from his hair, bending my arm and draping it across my body. He pressed my hand there, his cold, dead hand on my living warmth. His eyes searched mine. “Tell me what manner of supernatural you are,” he asked. “You are not were, I think. You are something I never tasted. Never heard told of.”
I let a faint smile steal over me. “Again,” I said, knowing I was risking whatever harmony currently existed between the head of the vamp council and me, “I’ll share my secrets with you, if you’ll tell me where the vamps came from. Originally. The very first vamp.”
He seemed to consider my bargain. “Why do you wish to know this?” he asked.
I settled into the couch, feeling rested and lethargic and vaguely happy, as if I’d downed a single chilled beer on a hot afternoon. “Because all supernaturals fear something. According to the mythos, weres, if they still exist, fear the moon, the planet Venus, and the goddess Diana, the huntress. A witch I know fears dark things that go bump in the night, demons and evil spirits and fickle djinns. And vamps fear the cross,” I said. “Not the Star of David, not the symbols of Mohammed, not the sight of a happy Bud dha, no matter how strong a believer’s faith or how certain his devotion. But the symbols of Christianity all vamps fear, even if wielded by a nonbeliever. So it isn’t faith that gives the symbols power. Theologians disagree about why. So I’ll trade. Tell me why vamps fear everything about the Church.”
“Our curse is different from the weres’ ancient curse, and different again from the elvish curse—and curses are what made us all.” Pain shadowed Leo’s face.
Elves? Crap. There are elves? And . . . weres. His words claimed that weres were real.
“No,” he said. He stood, fluid and sinuous, more graceful than a dancer. “You ask too much.” He looked around the room. Squared his shoulders as if they carried a burden. “George, I’m ready to leave.”
Bruiser rose from a chair at the table, the chair legs scraping on the wood floor, and crossed the room. Without glancing my way, he lifted and shook out a suit coat, the silk lining gleaming softly as he held it. Leo Pellissier unrolled his shirtsleeves and shrugged the jacket on. “Have the car brought around,” he said.
George flipped open a cell phone and punched a button. A moment later, he said, “Car,” and flipped the phone closed. Succinct, was our Bruiser.
Leo looked at me from his full height as I lay on the couch, unconcerned by the disparity in our positions, knowing, without understanding why, that I was safe, though my soft underbelly was exposed to his dominant position, his claws and teeth. Leo’s eyes burned into me, unvamped, human looking, yet still forceful, piercing, as if he would cut through the layers of my soul and uncover the secrets at the heart of me.
He said, “I heard drums. Smelled smoke. And there was
this . . . mountain lion? Sitting beside you? But it didn’t kill you.” In a seeming non sequitur, he said, “They say you were raised by wolves.”
I let a smile fill my eyes. “No wolves.”
His head tilted slightly to the side as he studied me. As he considered whatever it was that he had picked up from my memory. “The cat. It wasn’t you.”
He was getting close. Beast stirred, uneasy. I let my smile widen, as if I found his statement even funnier than the news accounts that I was raised by wolves. “No,” I said. “It wasn’t me.” It was my father. It was a memory of my own lost past. And this, this vampire, gave it back. “Thank you,” I said again, offering no enlightenment.
“Healing is one responsibility of the elders among us. A . . .” He paused, his gaze turning inward, far away, as if caught still in my memories. Or his own? He seemed to shake himself mentally and looked at me, his black eyes faintly mocking. “A duty to those who serve us.”
“I work for you,” I said, feeling a bit smug, “for a price.” I eased my elbows under me and lifted my body to a half-sitting, half-reclining angle. “I’m not your servant. In fact, because you’re paying me to do something I want to do anyway, it seems like you’re more the servant than I am.”
Leo laughed, real humor crinkling the skin at his eyes. “Pert. Rude.”
I acknowledged the accusations with a nod.
“In that case,” he said, “I am happy to oblige.” He studied me a moment longer. “I wish you to attend a soiree tomorrow night.” He held up a hand at the derision and denial that spurted up from inside me. “Most of the vampires in the city will be there. It will be a rare opportunity for you to see them all in one place. We seldom gather in such large numbers.”
I watched his face, and if he had ulterior motives in issuing the invitation, I couldn’t spot them. “I own exactly one little black dress. One.”
“I’m certain it will be fine,” he said without expression. “Wear your hair down. No one will notice the dress.”
I laughed, sputtering with surprise.
“George will pick you up at midnight.” He glanced at his bodyguard and blood-servant. “We’re late. I hear the car.”
George nodded and stepped to the front door. I heard the lock click and the door opened on well-oiled hinges. And Leo Pellissier and his henchman were gone, leaving behind the scent of pepper and almonds, anise and papyrus, ink made of leaves and berries, and the warm scent of his blood and mine intertwined.
There was still time to shift and let Beast roam the night, but for once, the animal in my soul was silent, quiescent. I lay on the couch in the silent house, half napping, taking a moment I seldom allowed myself, to relax. Near six a.m. I found the energy to pull myself from the couch and move into the bedroom. I stripped and soaked my party clothes in a few capfuls of Woolite while I showered, letting hot water scrub the scents and blood off of me.
I was spending a lot of time in the shower these days, but I had to rewash my hair to get the vamp blood out, combing the long length before braiding it into a single French braid. When I was clean, partially groomed for church in a few hours, still oddly relaxed, I wrapped up in the robe and checked the new outfit. Amazingly, all the vamp blood and my blood had soaked out. Pleased that I hadn’t thrown away good money, I left the clothes hanging, dripping in the shower stall, and crawled into bed. I lay there, hearing the echoing plink of water, studying my healed arm as my body relaxed into the mattress.
Leo Pellissier had healed me with vamp blood and saliva. Pretty icky in some regards. In others . . . ? One of the reasons I accepted this job, other than the fact that council-sanctioned vamp-hunting gigs were few and far between, was the half hope, half fear that one of the older vamps might recognize my scent and tell me that they had met my kind before. Leo, who had to be centuries old—older than Katie, if vamp hierarchy made any kind of age-dominant sense—had no idea what I was. As far as I could tell, he didn’t know that skinwalkers existed. But weres and elves . . . He indicated they both were real, existing somewhere.
I pulled the covers over me as the air conditioner came on with a low hum, blowing chilled air into the house. The sheets were softer than any I owned. Probably high-thread-count Egyptian cotton or something. I usually slept on polyester pulled over a lumpy old mattress, but I could get used to these. I made a fist again, feeling the pull of tendon and muscle. The healed flesh over the injury was pale and pinkish against my coppery skin. The young rogue had left slashes in the periphery of the wound, around my arm, like the tines of a bracelet. It was a wound like any wild animal with fangs might have left. Not unlike Beast might have left on the arm of someone she attacked.
Beast stirred. Not a vampire. She spat the thought, repulsed in the same way she would have been at the taste of rotten meat. Me and you. Us. More than skinwalker, more than u’tlun’ta. We are Beast. She fell silent, brooding. Not quite sure what Beast meant about us being more than a skinwalker—and Beast not being in the mood to enlighten me—I turned off the bedside light and tucked my arm under the covers.
Lying curled in bed, I let my mind wander through what I knew of myself, or guessed of myself, what Aggie had told me, what Leo had revealed, and what I had discovered online, letting my thoughts drift, knowing that, once I relaxed, seemingly unrelated facts often connected. The most important? I smiled in the dark to finally remember, to finally know, that I was definitely Cherokee. I was from a line of skinwalkers, with a father and grandmother who’d had eyes like mine. The memory proved that not all skinwalkers were evil, despite the legends and stories.
In Western American Indian tradition, primarily Hopi and Navajo, the skinwalker practiced the art of the curse, lured into the murky study of dark arts to control and destroy. The skinwalker practitioner may have begun his studies with the intent to do good, but always gave in to the desire to take the skin of a human, perhaps to obtain a younger body. He became a murderer and went mad. That walker was depicted as a black witch.
In Southeastern Indian lore, primarily Cherokee, the skinwalker had originated as a protector of The People. But in more modern stories, maybe after the white man came, the skinwalker myths changed, and the skinwalker became the liver-eater, the evil version of the skinwalker, sort of like Luke Skywalker going over to the dark side. But the thing I had seen in the alley had smelled vampy, a vampire underneath the odor of rot. Not skinwalker.
And as for me . . . I am a skinwalker. I had lived for a long time, decades longer than the normal panther’s or the normal human’s life span. I had shifted into cat shape as a child, at some point in my life, probably a point of great danger, and had not gone back except to find the human shape and regenerate. That’s what skinwalkers did. We regenerated back to our remembered age each time we shifted, giving ourselves a longer life span. Leo had given me back much memory of the forgotten times.
The shadow of a bush outside the window moved on the far wall as a wet wind blew. In the distance, I heard the fall of raindrops growing harder, faster as they approached, pushed by storm winds. Limbs swept window screens with a scritch, scritch sound. Thunder rumbled.
Under the covers, I opened and tightened my fist again. Released it. A drowsy thought came to me on the edge of sleep. Why did Leo refer to the men tonight as “his,” as in “cost me the temporary use of one good man . . .”? With the rain falling in torrents, pelting the street and roof and windows with furious force, I fell asleep.
I woke to a blue sky and rain-wet streets, bells tolling in the distance. Half asleep, I rolled from bed. It occurred to me that I had killed a young rogue vamp and given away the bounty. I was nuts.
While a kettle sizzled on the stove top, I dressed in jeans and my best T-shirt, pulled on my boots, and rolled the unused skirt up in Beast’s travel pack, hoping it didn’t wrinkle too badly. I drank down a pot of tea and ate oatmeal as I read the paper, the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Weird name for a paper anywhere but here. Here it was perfect.
The headlines pr
oclaimed that a local politician had been caught leaving a hotel with a transvestite. The mayor and his wife posed for pictures with the governor and his wife. The Obamas were being featured at an event in France. New Orleans musicians were raising money for rebuilding more Katrina-ruined houses. The weather for the next few days was going to be hot, hotter, and hottest. And wet. Big surprise there—not. The vamp deaths hadn’t made the news. Sad commentary when nothing that happens in the hood makes the news. Or maybe Leo had quashed the story. Who knew.
At ten thirty I helmeted up, left the house, and kick-started the bike for an early morning ride through the city. I wasn’t Catholic, so I wouldn’t be attending services in the Quarter’s big cathedral. I had never fit in with a big, fancy church. But the little storefront church next to the dress shop had looked promising.
I parked the bike in the shade of a flowering tree, its branches arching over and down to provide shade. I stuffed my leather jacket in a saddlebag, pulled the skirt over my jeans, and shimmied them off. Rolling them up, I stuffed them in beside the jacket and removed my worn Bible, which hadn’t come out since I got to New Orleans. Guilt pricked at me but I squashed it.
Though the boots looked a bit odd with the skirt in the reflection of the storefront windows, the skirt hadn’t wrinkled, and it was better than jeans. Some churches were picky about their congregation’s wardrobe. I had no intention of offending, even if I didn’t like the service well enough to return.
The congregation was singing when I slipped in, late, and took a seat on the back row. There were no musical instruments, which was weird, but the congregation sang hymns I knew in four-part harmony, and with the exception of two loud, off-key voices, it was pretty. Before the sermon, they served the Lord’s Supper, which I hadn’t had in a while.