Skinwalker jy-1

by Faith Hunter

  Bruiser stepped to my side. Placed a proprietary hand on my spine. “The rogue hunter,” he said. At his touch and the words, they stopped. I stopped. Beast went still, but so close to the surface I could feel her killing claws burning in my fingertips as if I were already shifting.

  As if the vamps shared a single thought, their fangs snapped back in place. The pheromones of alarm in the air reduced. I remembered how to breathe but it hurt, as if my lungs had dried out and lost elasticity. I forced my clawed hands to relax. The blonde looked me up and down, slowly, as if committing me to memory. Cataloguing me. The way a cattle baron might remember and catalogue his herd. “Dominique,” she said, her voice heavily laced with French. “Acting head of Clan Arceneau. You may call upon me.” Moving human slow, she turned her back. The others followed suit.

  “Crap,” I whispered. “You may call upon me?” Was that a command? Like hell I’d call on her. Bruiser took my arm, pointed to the food, and murmured, “I’ll be right back; try not to get killed.”

  “Good idea,” I said, breathless, trying to shake off the fear and adrenaline. “Why didn’t I think of that?” He stepped away, gliding almost as smoothly as a vamp. Music started up and I spotted a trio of human musicians with stringed instruments in the corner beneath a huge portrait of a king in robes and crown, slender hunting dogs at his feet. The musicians were playing something classical and vaguely whiny. Not good dance music. I wanted to giggle at the thought. A hysterical, terrified giggle.

  Keeping my back to a wall when possible, and my eyes on the vamp groups, I raided the meat table, adding a wedge of cheese and a strawberry just for kicks, and tried to figure out what to do next. What did one do to celebrate not being eaten? Maybe I could go up to all the vamps present and ask if they knew any rogues. A single adrenaline-laced giggle burbled up, like a terrified heeee, and the waiter behind the meat tray looked at me oddly. I stuffed a hunk of piglet in my mouth and said around it, “Low blood sugar,” to explain the laughter. He set an icing-covered pastry on my plate by way of reply.

  Still shaky, I took myself and my overloaded plate on a house tour. Unlike the homes I visited on my Garden District excursion, here I was an invited guest. I figured that meant I could roam where I wanted. It might not help me kill a rogue vamp, but it might help with future searches and vamp contracts to know how the fanged and moneyed lived.

  To the right of the reception area was a restaurant-sized kitchen. Inside there were two chefs in white hats and at least a dozen waiters coming and going. The pantry and linen rooms were behind the kitchen with a hallway leading to the backyard and a five-car garage not visible from the front. It was full of fancy cars: the limo that brought us here; an old, boxy Mercedes; a 1950-something Chevy, fully restored; an old Ford from the early days of the automobile—maybe a Model T? I didn’t know my old cars. But Leo had a Porsche Boxster in old-blood maroon, which made me smile. It was the Porsche that finally made me relax. That and the protein. I had never tasted pig this good.

  Behind the foyer was a short hallway and a locked door, the room seeming to take up a lot of space. Leo’s personal quarters? Several fresh human blood scents wafted under the sill and Beast’s hackles rose at the smell, but there was no fear mixed in the blood. Curious, I stood in a shadow and watched for a while.

  Shortly, two vamps, a man and a woman, left the room, reeking of fresh blood and sex. They didn’t lock the door or catch my scent, didn’t turn my way. I stepped up, caught the door before it closed, and peeked in. It was a suite with a huge bed, couches, chaise lounges, a studio-sized TV screen, and several humans in various stages of undress. Two were cuddled up with a female vamp who was feeding from them, one at a time. I got it. This was the blood bar. Where vamps came for hors d’oeuvres. And now I knew what to call the donors. Blood-junkies. Yuck.

  I let the door close without making a scene because none of the humans was chained, showed signs of physical abuse—if I didn’t count multiple fang marks—or looked drugged. Well, drugged beyond the blood bliss they experienced when fed upon by a suitably mature vamp. I moved on. Fast. Back to the reception room and a fresh plate of piglet and salmon. This time I added a cracker and three grapes and meandered on.

  A female vamp, walking alone, slowed when she scented me. She smiled, an attempt at humanness, intended to disarm. It worked. I stopped, curious. Waiting. When I didn’t speak, she leaned in, too close, way inside my personal space. I tensed, but her fangs stayed back, out of sight, and she didn’t try to bite me. She only sniffed my neck. So I didn’t react. Much.

  She stepped back and tilted her head. “I am Bettina, blood-master of Clan Rousseau.” I nodded, but couldn’t think of a thing to say. Cat got my tongue. The titter tried to rise yet again. Rousseau was a beautiful woman, with mixed-race heritage, mostly African and European. “They tell me that the rogue hunter is here tonight, as a guest of Pellissier. Are you she?”

  When I nodded, she walked around me, a dance step, like a cat walks, one foot carefully placed at a time. She breathed in as she moved. Taking my scent. “You smell so . . . good. Will you call me when this . . . unpleasantness . . . is over?” She stopped in front of me, looking up into my eyes. “I wish to know you better.”

  There was something in her eyes that said the “know you better” part was in the biblical sense. Lucky me. I swallowed. A smile started in her eyes. And they landed on my throat.

  “Bettina. Pellissier wishes to speak with you.”

  We both turned to the small, rotund human at her side. I had no idea how long he had stood there, but the look on his face said it had been long enough. “Please visit,” she said, extending a card that hadn’t been in her hand a moment past. And she followed the man away.

  “Okaaaay,” I murmured to the walls. “Next time I’ll wear a whole bottle of perfume.”

  To the left of the foyer and food was a bar, three waiters serving real liquor, wine, and beer, not blood. I took a second glass of champagne and continued my tour. Behind the bar, a short hallway led to a music room with some stringed instruments and a grand piano. Probably priceless. I wondered who played, and figured it might be Leo. He looked like the type. As the thought entered my mind, a half dozen vamps walked in the room and a male vamp sat at the piano. He began to play, pounding the keys in something martial, the notes rising to the ceiling and spilling out into the hallway, deliberately overpowering the strings in the reception room. The other vamps laughed at the sophomoric prank and one ran to peek around the corner at the human musicians. I guess they thought it was funny. I left.

  Through a connecting doorway, I found an empty, two- storied library filled with books, leather furniture, and a first-class sound system playing a soft salsa, which is not the way a salsa is meant to be listened to. I shut the door to the music room, impressed when the pounding piano was muted out. Really good soundproofing in the house: You could kill someone and not have to worry about the screams. I hunted around until I found the sound system controls in a recessed console and upped the volume. Alone, I ate piglet and salmon while my feet danced and I studied the titles on the walls. Some were in English, some were French, Spanish, and maybe Latin. And there were a few that looked Greek. Leo can read Greek?

  Inside a glass case were twenty-four fired-clay, metal, and carved-wood tablets on display stands, clearly ancient and valuable. I couldn’t resist looking over their security and waved at the high-tech minicameras focused on them. Pretty good, if the cameras were monitored. When the door opened a scant twelve seconds later, and Bruiser entered, I patted myself on the back. “Not bad,” I said, toasting him with my glass. Which was nearly empty.

  “I think you’ve had enough,” he said with an amused smile, as he stole away the glass and the empty plate. “Mr. Pellissier wants to see you.”

  “Yeah?” I took the dishes back and set them on the console. “Do you salsa?”

  “Not in years,” he said.

  “It’s been a while for me too,” I said, turning and ta
king his hands, ignoring Beast’s amusement at the double enten dre. I placed one of his hands on my hip and kept the other, tapped my foot, and moved into a fast forward step, forcing him into a back step. To give him credit, he followed my lead. And then he took over. Firmly. Salsa is a three-step-pause-three-step dance—a reinvention of the mambo from the original rumba, and it moves.

  Bruiser took me into a side step, dropped his arm down, up into a J, leading me into two simple turns, and instantly into a double turn as we found our rhythm. After that, things got sweaty. The man could dance. It was half seduction, half contest, as if he offered me his bed while testing my footing, my reflexes, and my ability to respond to his vamp-enhanced speed all at once. Our gazes locked, his brown eyes holding mine as I followed his lead. Seduction pheromones, his and mine, filled the air. I wanted to run my fingers through his dark hair and maybe touch the little mole. With my tongue.

  The music swelled. Fast. Fast, fast, fast, Beast in control of my reflexes, which told Bruiser all kinds of things about me. I didn’t care. The volume rose, dropped, went from fast-paced to slow. I missed a step, only because I was unfamiliar with his lead, not because I didn’t know the move. Bruiser’s eyes held mine as his hand slid along my side, over my hip. He took my waist and jerked me close at the finale, a tango move I hadn’t tried since class.

  The music fell silent. We stood in perfect position, chest to chest, breathing hard. A single clap followed in the stillness. Another. Bruiser broke contact, stepping back faster than the dance. My hands were left empty, in the air. I turned to the doorway.

  Leo stood there. The door closed behind him. His eyes were on Bruiser. Something crackled in the air between them. Challenge. Anger. Beast growled. Both vamp and man turned to me. Feeling Beast just beneath my skin, pelt moving in anticipation, I laughed, the sound cruel, a bit wild. “Bruiser is good. Are you better?” I/we challenged the predator.

  Emotion thrummed through the room: anger, disputation, confrontation, alpha pheromones. The smell of violence baited. For a moment I thought that whatever was between the two males would boil over, but Leo broke, taking a single breath, and the scents evolved from censure, to startlement, to curiosity, to . . . eagerness as his eyes studied me. An anticipation as strong as Beast’s rose on the air. All Leo’s. From Bruiser, I felt a trace of sentiment, perhaps disappointment, but overshadowed by his master’s impatience.

  The next track started, a mellow, sex-laden rumba. The rumba is a slower, more formal dance than the salsa, and Leo moved to me, his body already in the dance, his feet in the slow-quick-quick-quick steps of the dance. He took my hands and placed one on his shoulder, starting with an eighth turn of the box step. When the music rose, he pursued it into a quarter-turn box, faster, and then a series of turns and dips, drawing me closer with each measure until only a hint of space separated us. He led me into a difficult cucaracha step, not one I had practiced except with my instructor, but Leo’s lead was flawless, beating Raul hands down, his body balanced so perfectly it was poetry to follow. We finished the set with a fast, twisting pretzel of a turn and a dip, my body bent back over his thigh, his body over mine, his eyes bearing down into mine in a classic predator-prey posture.

  Beast reared up hard, fast, shoving him back. Growling. The sound was lost in the applause. Gazes fastened to one another, we stared, breath heaving. I was vaguely aware of vamps in the doorway, clapping. Cheering. And then Leo vamped out.

  His eyes bled crimson, pupils widening to vampy black. His fangs snapped down. And he growled back at Beast. The crowd in the doorway fell silent, that scary vamp-silence that always presaged violence. Bruiser pushed between us, took Leo’s hand, and mine, and led us forward, hands raised like actors on a stage. Weirdly, totally unexpectedly, Leo and I broke gazes, allowing Bruiser the upper hand. He bent forward, pulling us into a deep bow.

  “Mithrans, I present Leo Pellissier and his . . . human . . . dance partner, Jane Yellowrock.” The pauses at “human” were infinitesimal, but present. The applause started again, uncertain, then growing stronger, more assured, as they believed the growls had been part of a performance. Smiling impeccably, Bruiser led us to the doorway and the accolades of the vamps.

  I slipped away from my host shortly thereafter and made a quick round of the second story, searching for and not finding a staircase to the attic or third story. Not once did I scent rogue. I did catch a hint of the woman the rogue and Rick were sleeping with, and later, one of the underlying taints the rogue carried in his blood, but they were lost in the press of guests.

  I knew Leo wanted to talk to me, but after the dance and the way he looked at me, like I was a tasty treat, I wanted to avoid that. Totally. So I kept a wary eye as I hunted through the house, turning down a hallway or slipping into an empty room when I spotted him, smelled him, or heard his voice. He wasn’t stalking me, exactly, but a frustrated reek pervaded his scent, and I figured I was part of it. But I was able to keep away, and Beast was having a good time helping.

  When a bell sounded over the house intercom and sound system, I figured it was time for the presentation of the guests. Curious, I hid behind a marble statue on a matching marble stand over the foyer and watched. Leo stood with his back to the front door, facing the crowd, who gathered vamp fast or drugged-blood-junkie slow, and smiled at them all, the genial host.

  “I thank you all for gathering,” he said, a slight accent on the word “gathering,”“in Clan Pellissier for this celebration. Our clans may no longer expand as they once did, held to lower numbers by Vampira Carta, U.S. law, and social convention. So when a new Mithran is added to us, it is a blessing. And when two are given over to us to fulfill a contract of marriage and clan binding, it is a significant event.” He flashed a brilliant smile, all human-looking teeth. “Tonight I present to my honored guests my future daughter-in-law and her brother, Amitee and Fernand Marchand, and the bride’s future husband”—he paused, drawing it out, as if in expectation of some huge event—“my son and scion and heir, Immanuel Pellissier.”

  There was startled silence; then the crowd reacted, half in exultation, half in buzzing, whispered dismay. It took me a moment to realize why. Until now, Leo hadn’t named a clan heir. Clearly some of the vamps in the place didn’t like his choice. Despite myself, I took note of who wasn’t pleased and wasn’t afraid to demonstrate it. The most obviously ticked off was a swarthy-skinned vamp I thought might be Rafael Torrez, heir to Clan Mearkanis—blood-master once Ming was declared true-dead. A number of other vamps were looking his way to gauge his reaction.

  Violence and dominance pheromones swirled in the room and Leo looked up, his genial smile still in place. But when he spoke, there was a steel edge to his voice that hadn’t been there an instant gone, though he didn’t look Torrez’ way. “And as my guests, partaking in the hospitality of my house, I trust you will abide by all conventions and protocols in welcoming new Mithrans and my clan heir.”

  It took a moment, but Torrez visibly controlled himself and plastered a false smile on his face. He pushed to the front of the crowd, where he took Amitee’s hand and kissed it, murmuring something I missed. With the kiss, the entire room seemed to relax, and I figured that whatever was afoot in vamp politics, like whatever Leo had going on in the human population of the hood, was going to take a backseat to the celebration.

  I got a look at the new vamps. They weren’t uncontrolled, ready to vamp out and drain the humans; they looked elegant, sophisticated, and rich. So I avoided them like the plague. But I did get a good look at Leo’s son, who appeared genial, urbane, and approachable. However, when I got close, he turned fast, eyes going vampy, sniffing and searching the crowd, so I ducked my head and slipped away. No point in spoiling the engagement if he came on to the little nonhuman in the room for a quick snack. I haunted the back hallways instead.

  Near four, after avoiding Leo and Bruiser in a cat and mouse game of “hunt the girl,” I slipped outside and called Bluebird Cab. Rinaldo, off from his third-s
hift job on Sunday night, picked me up half an hour later, full of startled questions now that his regular passenger had come up in the world. I said something about an invitation I hadn’t realized would be so vampy, and how happy I was to get out of there—all true—then sat silent in the backseat, holding myself separate from Beast and her demands. And for once, I didn’t beg for a trip through a fast-food joint.

  There were violent undercurrents in the vamp social fabric, riptides of political unrest, problems I hadn’t known existed. It was the kind of thing that cop Jodi Richoux would want me to tell her, and that I was prohibited from sharing on pain of that slow and grisly death, as spelled out in my contract. And . . . I had created friction between Bruiser and his boss. I was still beating myself up about both problems when I went to sleep near dawn, without shifting, yet again.

  Monday in New Orleans is laid-back. Not as relaxed as Fridays, but close, though without the dedicated party expectation of the day before the weekend. I elected to stroll, but with purpose, revisiting all the places I had been and places Beast had shown an interest in.

  Wearing my light cargo pants, a tank top, and flip-flops, I tied two crosses around my waist and stuffed a stake in my undies and two in my hair, just in case, though I didn’t really think I’d be out long enough to lose the protection of daylight. I added sunglasses. Dressed like a local, I strolled, sniffed, and window-shopped.

  I don’t wear much jewelry, as a hurried shift will leave it broken in the dust, along with torn and mangled clothes, but when I spotted a silver and stone ring and a nugget-style necklace in the window of a narrow storefront, I couldn’t help myself. I went inside and when I came out, I was wearing the set, along with the gold chain and nugget I seldom took off. The new necklace was made of Baltic amber, warm, yellow, fifty-million-year-old tree resin that brought out the amber of my eyes. The nuggets were as big as pecans and looked really good with the gold nugget. The silver setting of the ring was styled like cat’s claws holding the stone. It was destiny. The set looked really classy against my burnt orange T-shirt, and though I remembered girls from my youth saying I shouldn’t mix gold and silver, they weren’t here to tease me.