by Faith Hunter
I sat at the bar and watched, nursing a beer so they wouldn’t toss us out, Eli with a Coke standing behind me. The waitress bent over Rick and let him get a good look at her cleavage while they chatted. I couldn’t decide if I was jealous or if she was pathetic. Both probably.
Eli leaned over me and said, “So. You want to rip her head off or tear her a new one lower down?”
“Both. Neither. She stinks of mango, jasmine, and roses perfume with a dash of fried fish and horseradish. He can act interested all he wants, but I can see his nostrils. To him? She reeks.”
“Even with those boobs?”
I looked down at my own chest and back to the waitress. “There are the boobs,” I acknowledged. “And the long blond hair.” And the fact that Rick was a pretty boy and generally unfaithful. Minutes later Rick walked back to us, a strip of paper in his fingers.
“Her number?” I asked, hearing the snark in my voice, which—hopefully—disguised the hurt.
“A license number, a credit card number, a name, and an address,” he said with pride and not a little swagger. He handed me the strip of paper.
“And you didn’t get her number?” Eli asked, disbelieving.
“Oh, I got her number.” Rick pulled out another strip of paper and extended it to Eli. “For you.” Eli’s eyes went wide as he looked from Rick’s hand to the waitress. She gave him a little wave. “My good-looking friend who is smitten with her down-home Southern looks and charm, but who is too shy to get her number.”
“You didn’t.” There was a Beast-worthy growl in the words.
Rick tucked the paper into Eli’s shirt pocket and patted it down. “Oh, but I did.”
Chortling with laughter and more relieved than I wanted to admit to myself, I waved to the waitress as I followed the men out the door. “Be sure to burn that,” I advised Eli, “before Sylvia sees it. She wouldn’t bother with ripping off your head. She’d let Smith and Wesson do the talking.”
* * *
The water sped by us in the rented airboat, the moon now cold and icy, bright on the black water. We had given the Kid the information that the waitress had provided, matched it with newcomers to the area and missing persons reports in the parish—information provided by the police—three prime addresses to work with—all easiest to find by boat. Eli drove, Brute sitting beside him, Rick and me on the lower, front seat, his arm around my shoulders, seat belts holding us in place. You really needed the nylon flex straps in an airboat at any speed.
The first place was a vacant mobile home that had been used for target practice by the locals for so long that it was mostly a hole. Neither Brute nor I got a whiff of werewolf. And it felt weird to be working with the wolf, asking him if he smelled our prey. Beast growled low in the back of my mind, and I had to soothe her raised ruff. It’s just for now, I thought at her.
Want to fight wolf. Scratched his nose one time.
You did? I didn’t remember that, but I thought it might be prudent to not continue the conversation. And when Eli whirled the airboat in a tight arc to take us to the next place on our list, I used the centrifugal force as an excuse to hold on to Rick and not respond.
* * *
The second place was more likely. I smelled werewolf stink from yards away. The airboat roared up onto land in front of a house; the engine cut off.
Brute stepped over the back of the seat and shoved his snout between Rick and me, pushing us apart, sniffing, getting dog drool on my shirt. I was sure it wasn’t an accident. I shoved his nose away. “I smell it,” I said. I stepped onto the land, boot heels sinking into the mud. Brute landed beside me, shaking his head, the human gesture looking all wrong on him.
“What?” Rick asked. “Is this the right place?”
Brute nodded.
“Are the weres here?”
Brute lifted his snout and sniffed as the airboat went silent and shook his head.
“They’re hunting,” I said softly.
Brute snuffled agreement. Pea crawled up his back, holding his ruff in her tiny little fists. She sat astride his neck, holding on, and sniffed the air. She chittered, the sound menacing and deadly, strange coming from the green-coated, kitten-sized grindy. She closed her eyes and sniffed, tiny explosions of air. She opened her eyes and looked at Rick. There was an intensity in her gaze that belied her cuteness.
“I haven’t touched Jane. Oh. Wait. You know where the werewolves went?”
Pea sniffed again and pointed with a tiny paw/hand, one finger extended, the two-inch steel claw at the tip. Deep inside, Beast hissed at the sight. I know, I thought at her. I don’t know where she keeps them either, but when she pulls them out, they are scary.
Behind us, silent, Eli started the engine again, the prop deafening in the night. Brute and I leaped back inside, and we followed Pea’s nose and steel claw down the canal.
* * *
Pea directed us to shore along a stretch of water that was black as sin. Eli pulled up and beached the boat, cutting the engine. Another airboat was beached beside ours, and it stank of were. And wolf-in-heat. And terrified human. Female. They had captured a woman. When she was in the boat, she was unharmed, no blood smell. But she had been so filled with fear that her sweat stank of it. And she had urinated on herself. Recently.
Eli turned a bright flash on the boat, where we could see clothing, shoes, beer cans, and jewelry in piles. He moved the light and studied the muddy bank. Close to the boat it was hard to tell what was what; there were human prints and wolf prints. But farther out, one pair of bare, human feet led off into the brush. And three wolves followed.
Eli leaned over the seats and started passing out weapons. The rest of us took them, checking their readiness by feel, holstering them, checking the slide of blades and the position of, well, everything. My M4 Benelli was in its spine holster, the grip above my ear, loaded with hand-packed rounds containing silver fléchettes. They had been designed to kill vamps but most supernats could be poisoned by silver, weres among them. I retied my boot laces. Made sure water bottles were easy to hand. Eli carried a U.S. army med kit, mostly for him and any hurt victim, because the rest of us would be likely to heal fast. He had walked me through everything in it, and their uses. I had managed not to laugh at his description of the uses of tampons—“Great bandages to insert into gunshot wounds. They have their own tail to locate the injury later.” Uh-huh. Kinda knew that.
When we were all ready, we stepped to the bank, and mud sucked at our feet, each step a slurping sound, each foot an effort to lift. With a whiff of satisfaction in his pheromones, Eli pocketed the keys of both boats. The wolves had left theirs. He turned off the flash and we stood to let our eyes acclimate.
There were no lights anywhere. There was only the stink of rotting vegetation, scat, the rot of a dead animal in the distance, and the smell of fear, aggression, violence. No sounds but the rare splash of a water animal, the trickle of slow-moving bayou and tide. In summer there would be frogs croaking, insects buzzing, night birds hooting and calling. Gators roaring. The smell of animals nesting and sleeping and hunting everywhere. From time to time, there would be boats and campsites with lights and fire pits, and the sounds of drunken humans would echo through the dark. But the weather had turned cold in what passed for winter here, and tonight it was just us and the smells and the small round moon on the black water and the silence that was left after the roar of the boat. Until the scream rent the air.
Everyone but Eli jumped. Eli settled his low-light gear over one eye and, with the other one, looked at the tiny kitten and the white wolf. “You take point. Move slow and steady. No matter what you hear.” To us, he added, “Stay together. Jane, you got our six.” It wasn’t a request, and I fell in at the back. When it came to paramilitary operations I was the novice, he was the expert. And he was the one with the fully automatic weapon. I had learned that current Louisiana gun laws didn’t prohibit magazine capacity, and that was why Eli felt so safe carrying them everywhere we went. I hadn’t
asked, and he had seen no reason to enlighten me.
I had also learned that no wet place in Louisiana is similar to any other. Walking through land bordering a saline marsh meant mud, shrubs, mud, stunted trees, mud, broken limbs, some sharp as stakes, mud, sawgrass and regular grasses, lots of them taller than we were, and more mud. It clung to our boots and sucked at each footstep. The white wolf was two toned, his bottom half black with muck, his upper half bright in the moonlight. Pea chittered softly, directing the wolf, using his hair like reins, pulling him where she wanted. It was a weird hunt, to be at the back of a pack, and I pulled on every sense Beast could lend me, from power in my leg muscles, to her night vision, which was much better than mine. Beast didn’t like this hunt. Neither did I. Not with the snarls and yips and screams that came from ahead, in the dark.
The snarls and yips were excited and vicious; the screams were full of terror and agony, and we were taking too long—too long!—to get there. But the muddy terrain set the pace, not the victim, who, by her screams, was being torn apart, eaten alive, so damaged she would die, no matter how fast we got there. I bared my teeth in a killing rage. Forcing my feet to lift high, to run faster. Ahead, Eli did the same, and I could smell his desperation and fury.
The screams ended with a panting, pained moan, over and over with each fast breath, moans that seemed to roll out over the water and the low land, seeming to come from everywhere. “Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Je . . . ssssuusss.” And then there was nothing but the sounds of tearing and growls and the crack of bone. Just ahead.
We slogged out of the low trees into a clearing, Eli firing a burst from his automatic weapon, the sound and the muzzle fire ripping through the night. Yelps, howls, and shrieks followed. Beast flooded me with strength and I raced for the body on the ground. I took it in with a fast glance and didn’t need to check for a pulse. She was dead—very dead, with nothing left inside her abdomen and a pool of blood on the wet ground an inch deep. It trickled off in tiny rivulets, toward the water.
If we had gotten here sooner . . .
I screamed and whirled and dove into the fight. A vamp-killer in one hand and a nine-mil loaded with silver shot in the other.
Brute was battling a reddish wolf, the coat color visible in the moonlight. Rick was side-to-side with Eli, taking on a . . . a monster. I fired into the monster’s side, aiming for his heart, emptying my weapon into him. I slapped the blade flat under my arm and changed mags.
I caught a hint of motion out of the corner of my eye and dropped to one knee, lifting the vamp-killer. The bitch was in midair, midleap. Her body lancing through the space where I had stood. My blade took the bitch along the side of the belly, the point penetrating deepest beneath the back left leg. She screamed with rage and ducked her head, tumbling in midjump. Her fangs snapped close to my face with a click I heard over the deafness of the nine-mil firing. I fell back. Into the mud. Rolled to my knees.
The bitch landed two feet away, spun on three legs, and rammed me. Lifting me high.
I slammed into something. Took a broken branch to my lower ribs. Right side.
I fired at the bitch point-blank. She yelped and raced away, into the sawgrass. The monster whirled and followed her, limping. The third wolf was hanging in Brute’s jaws, dangling and broken.
I was injured. I knew it was bad because I was hung on the broken tree as if I’d been skewered for cooking, bleeding like a stuck pig. I was having trouble getting a breath. Rick and Eli dropped to either side of me. Both turned flashes on me, so bright I closed my eyes. Or maybe it was the sight of the wound, vivid and slick with blood. I smelled bowel. Saw what might have been a strip of liver. Inside me, Beast hissed, and I hissed with her.
“If she was human, we’d cut the limb and take it with us to an ER,” Eli said to Rick. “But maybe she’ll—”
“Pull her off it, fast, before the pain sets in,” Rick said.
Before? I thought. Too late.
“Under her arms,” Rick said. “On three.” They grabbed me under my arms, braced their bodies, and Rick counted. On three they lifted and jerked me off the branch. I didn’t even scream. I couldn’t. I had no breath. My chest ached, heart suddenly beating unevenly and with pain in each contraction. Lung collapsing maybe.
They let me down, gently, into the mud. I was under the branch I’d been impaled on. It was covered in gore for the first five inches. And yes, there was a piece of tissue hanging on the wood that looked suspiciously like part of my liver.
“Idiot damn woman!” Eli spat. “Just because you can heal is no reason to keep dying.” His voice was gruff, not even trying to hide his worry/anger/fear. “You could try to be more careful.”
“What’s the fun in that?” I whispered. Huh. My lips were numb.
“Someday you’re gonna wait too long,” he warned.
I managed a chuff of laughter as he turned my body to the side. I was facing the water. It was closer than I had thought. Just beyond where the girl’s body lay, her blood trickling into the canal. At the edge of the water something glimmered, an arc of bright light, all the colors of the rainbow, swimming through the water, moving with the up-and-down sweeps of a dolphin or porpoise. It was beautiful. Cool and bright and muted all at once, like a rainbow come to life and shot through with silver. I tried to point, but my hands weren’t working.
The light being, so much like Rick’s partner, Soul, but not, most certainly not, cavorted in the cold water, leaping in and out of the canal without a splash. When it came close to the shore, it halted, the light of its spirit body coruscating. It slithered closer, like a water snake, and seemed to dip part of its energies into a trail of the dead girl’s blood. It wrenched itself back, leaped into the air, and was gone. Something indefinable inside me mourned. And the light, what little there was of it, began to go.
“Shift,” Rick said as he cut through my clothing and loosened my holsters and my Kevlar vest. “Shift, Jane. Now!” He unbelted leather and zipped my pants down. Eli unlaced my boots, their flashlights dancing pools of light on the scrub around us. If the wolves came back they’d never know in time. I tried to tell them, but my mouth wasn’t working. I shivered in the cold air. Or in the cold of death. It’s hard to tell sometimes.
I sought the gray place of the change, the place of my skinwalker energies. But it eluded me, like phosphorescent water slipping through my fingers.
Beast? Can you help?
Jane is stupid human. But deep in my mind, I felt her bend and pick me up by the scruff of my neck. Holding me in her killing teeth as tenderly as though I were one of her kits.
And together we dropped into the gray place of the change.
The energies of what I had determined might be quantum mechanics, of the movement of electrons and neutrons and all the trons, were a nimbus of light, arcing and racing and waving and dancing in a silver cloud of light. The energies were struck through with darker sparks of black light and blue-white sparks of brilliance.
The pain increased, but a different kind of pain, sharper, cutting. As if my flesh was being stripped from my bones.
* * *
Beast leaped away from men, shaking free of boots and clothing and racing up a stunted tree. Screamed into the night, big-cat scream. Claiming life and hunting grounds and calling to spirit being that had fled the dead.
“Jane?”
I hissed. Am Beast. Not Jane. Jane is asleep inside. Then smelled blood. Not Jane-blood. Not dead-girl-blood. Not werewolf-blood. Rick-blood. I dropped to ground, sniffing. Opened mouth and pulled air in over scent sacs in roof of mouth. Tasting/smelling mate. He was injured.
I walked to him and stuck snout to arm. Rick held still, not even breathing. Smelled Rick and smelled werewolf. Rick was bitten. Backed away. Hissed, snarled. Turned to Brute and snarled again. Brute and Pea were Rick’s pack. His den-mates. Should have protected Rick like kit against predator, I thought at them. I growled and walked toward them. Angry. Should have protected mate.
Wolf backed away. Lowered head. Dropped dead werewolf. Like offering. Pea chittered from Brute-back. Sounded sorry. Beast looked at Pea. Will mate become werewolf? Werewolf and werecat too? Will mate die?
Pea jumped from Brute and raced to Rick. Climbed up his leg. Studied bite mark. Rick lifted Pea to shoulder and bent over Jane clothes.
“You’re hit,” Eli said, opening box with bandages. Voice was toneless, but Eli-body’s smell changed, unhappy. Thinking many things. He put flashlight in mouth held it with blunt human teeth. Ripped open large bandage. Cussed at sight of wound. “It bit you?” Placed sheet of white over Rick’s arm.
“Yeah.” Rick wrapped wounded arm and bandage in Jane T-shirt. Pea chittered softly. Sad. “Tie it off,” Rick said. Eli wrapped T-shirt-bandage in stinky stuff that changed shape to wrap arm. Pressed on wound. Rick hissed with pain. “He tried to rip off a hunk of muscle, but he got distracted when Jane shot him full of silver.”
“Bad?”
“Hurts like a mother. But I’ll heal.”
“But . . .” Eli stopped. Bent and gathered up Jane clothes and weapons. “Let’s book. We got a hike to make. And two pissed-off wolves between us and it.”
“And you with their keys,” Rick said, laughter in tone. Rick said, “Brute. That thing dead?” Brute nodded head up and down, human gesture. Looked stupid. Pea chittered in triumph, claiming kill.
“Okay,” Rick said. Slung weapons over shoulder. Rick stood, wavering on two feet. Should be on four feet. Would not waver.
Brute looked at girl, dead on ground. She smelled of meat. Of food. Beast was hungry. Needed meat after change. Did not look at girl-meat. Growled at Brute. Wolf dropped own head and turned away from prey-meat.
“Jane?” Rick said. “Let’s get back to the . . . back to the . . . boat.” But Rick dropped to knees. And fell to ground, face in mud.
Pea leaped clear. Landed on Beast. Made soft mewling sound in ear, like kit. Beast chuffed with laughter.