by Faith Hunter
“Yeah, like that they were all a bunch of crazed killers, and it’s only a matter of time before I go nutso too.” I had been trying for humor, but I could smell the tang of worry in my own words.
“You are not a killer, nor are you crazed. You are my best friend in the whole world.” The faith on Molly’s face when she looked up was absolute. “I’d trust with you with my life and with my children’s lives any day of the week, Jane.”
My heart turned over. I’d never had a best friend growing up, but I’d lucked out when I met Molly. She’d welcomed me into her small family and introduced me to the larger family of her sisters’ coven without a single qualm. Her husband, Big Evan, wasn’t so sanguine about me, but he was in Brazil, which was why Molly was visiting me for several weeks, despite the possible threat of trouble from Leo Pellissier, Blood Master of Clan Pellissier, the Blood Master of the City and head of the vamp council. “I’ll think about shifting,” I promised, knowing I was lying.
I looked over at Evan and found him asleep under the chair, his ball in his pudgy hands. I scooped up the baby and Molly gathered up Angelina, and we carried them both upstairs to their room. With the storm as protection, and the wards off, I could enter, settling the baby into his bed, placing the ball in the curve of his arms. I wasn’t maternal, not at all, but I loved Molly’s children.
Beast reared up in me, fierce and violent, her maternal instincts vastly different from any human ones. Will protect kits.
“I know,” I said too softly for Molly to hear. Louder, I said, “Cards? Or a nap?”
Molly yawned. “Nap for me. See you in an hour or so, Big Cat.”
I nodded, and as the storm outside died down and passed and the evening drew in, I went back to prowling the house and worrying. I didn’t know much about my own heritage or my own past, except for the Cherokee stuff Aggie One Feather was teaching me, and that didn’t include her knowing what I was: a skinwalker. The only other skinwalker I had ever seen was dead now, at my hand. He had killed, and taken the place of, Leo Pellissier’s son Immanuel, maybe decades earlier, and then gone even further to the dark side, killing and eating humans and vamps. I still didn’t know why. I worried that it was the nature of skinwalkers that we all went crazy eventually. I’d killed Immanuel’s walker, and gotten myself into the predicament of being on the hate list of Leo Pellissier.
I’m Jane Yellowrock, traveling rogue-vamp hunter, skinwalker-in-hiding, and occasionally muscle-for-hire. I know how to fight, how to protect myself, and how to use the array of weapons that were currently under lock and key in my bedroom, safe from the attention of the children. I wasn’t so good at understanding humans or witches or vampires, and I sucked at social situations, but this gig in New Orleans was giving me a chance to learn a lot about all that. And about myself.
My contract had been extended by the council, to hunt down and kill—true-dead—a master vamp who was turning scions and setting them free, feral, before the years they needed after the change to be “cured.” The sire was releasing the young rogues on the populace with empty minds and unchecked desire for blood that made them crazy killing machines. I’d fought and killed two only a few weeks before. The council had asked me to get to the root of the problem, so I’d signed on the dotted line. And, though my beast was ready for mountain heights and rushing streams and deep valleys, I was beginning to like it here in the city that was made for partying.
Here, where vamps and other supernats had been for centuries, I might even discover another skinwalker. I was coming to understand that it wasn’t likely, as not even the oldest of the vamps had ever smelled anything quite like me, but I could hope.
As I filled the kettle to make tea, I stilled, breathing deeply. Something smelled . . . wrong.
Between storms, New Orleans’s air is heavy and wet, pressing odors against the ground, making them linger, but as the sky had cleared, the air had seemed fresh and salty. Until now.
Closing my eyes, I flared my nostrils, taking in the scent, sharp and biting. It was vamp, pungent and tangy. And more than one. Above the vamp-scent rode the stink of kerosene. And smoke.
Beast rose in me. Fire!
My heart rate bounded and my breathing sped. I looked up. Outside the kitchen window, light flickered. It all came together fast. Because of the fear of lightning, Molly hadn’t woken the wards back up yet. Leo Pellissier was out to get me. The hurricane had knocked out electricity, phone, and cell towers for most of the city. I couldn’t call for help.
Crap.
Flames glimmered and sparkled against the antique window glass, visible through the sheer covering. I moved with the speed of my kind, sprinting to the door overlooking the back and side yards. A chair clattered to the floor behind me. I pulled a silver cross and chain over my head and two stakes from my hair. Ripped open the door. Raced out to the covered porch. As I moved, my hair swung forward, getting in the way, and I slung my head backward, clearing my vision. I counted four torches, widely spaced. Fear shot through me. I should have gotten the guns.
I slid to a stop on the wet porch. Vamps stood in my yard. Unmoving—that dead-body immobility they do. Waiting. Holding torches. Time slowed, growing thick and viscous, the night taking on richness and depth. I absorbed the scene through my senses all at once.
There were four vamps that I could see, fangs descended, fully vamped out. At their feet were five-gallon containers, hazard signs painted on the sides. The scent of several more was carried on the fitful wind. One vamp was opening a container. The smell of kerosene rose.
The breeze was restless, the might of Ada coiled in its currents, but aimless now that the storm had passed. The sky was dark with fast-moving clouds. It was still drizzling; misty drops hit the flames and sizzled. The sound shot pulses of electricity through me. Other than that, the silence and dark of the early night were absolute. No cars, no music, no human noise at all.
I forced down my fear, knowing they could smell it, knowing their excitement would grow. Bravado was my best weapon, and I held the cross high. It glowed bright in my hand, the silver reacting to the presence of vamps. But they didn’t recoil. They held their places, which meant they were old vamps, every one. The wind whipped once and went still. Shadows and torchlight flickered over them, harsh and unforgiving on their skin, pale no matter their original race. My heart rate sped. What were they waiting—
A black silhouette stepped out of the shadows, lithe and elegant. Leonard Pellissier. In evening attire. Here to . . . visit. The most powerful vampire in the city had dressed to kill. A titter started in the back of my throat and I forced it down. Would not be smart to laugh right now. Would not.
Beast rose in me, taking over my reflexes, ready to move, ready to fight. Ready to rush away, back inside to save my guests. If I could. Kits, Beast murmured, protective instincts fighting to get loose. I held her down, but close to the surface. I needed her strength and speed.
A floorboard creaked from upstairs. Thank God. Molly must have seen the flames. She would be bringing up the wards, something defensive that would burn vamp flesh, maybe. I could hope. But it would take time. Maybe too much time.
Leo stepped to the front of the small group that circled my house, his eyes holding mine. His fangs were snapped down, white in the early night; his pupils bled black in bloodred sclera. The silver cross and capering flames reflected in his pupils.
“You killed my son,” he said, eyes fixed on me.
“No. I killed the creature that took his body.”
His lips pulled back, exposing his teeth, a killing grimace. “You,” he whispered. Vamps didn’t need to breathe much except to talk, but he took a breath, deep and slow. “Killed.” Anger built in him. I could smell it, strong and sour. “My son!” he roared into the night.
Beast lifted my own lips, exposing my human teeth. Change, she demanded.
But it was too late. A dozen possible reactions and scenarios buffeted me. I could attack, but they’d set fire to the house. I could run i
nside, but they’d set fire to the house. I could—
“Hi. My name’s Angelina.”
The vamps froze, an unearthly stillness in the fluttering flames. The stillness of death. His head moving slowly, Leo looked up, from me to the veranda above.
“I like the fire. Can I come play?”
Leo breathed in, scenting her. Scenting child and witch. His body tensed. Held.
The eyes of Leo’s scions flickered to their blood-master, then to me. I saw uncertainty, worry. Clearly they hadn’t signed on for killing a child. Two vamps retracted their fangs with little snicks. The one with the open kerosene container looked at it, then back up at the little girl, deliberate and measured. His pupils contracted and he swiveled his head to Leo. Waiting.
“What’s your name?” she said, her footsteps pattering out to the edge of the veranda, directly above my head. “Are you Aunt Jane’s new friends?”
“Angie, go inside,” I said, striving for calm and not succeeding. My heart raced like a doe in flight. Like prey. I knew they could smell my terror.
Leo pulled in another breath, his chest rising, then falling, the sound of the breath whispering through his fangs. We were balanced on the blade of a knife. Leo could go either way: kill his son’s murderer and the witches he now smelled in my home, or withdraw and save the child. The Vampira Carta prohibited the killing of children, even witch children, and killing a witch could revoke the unstable peace between the races. But his grief was out of control. Had been for days now. And witches were the sworn enemies of vampires, though I didn’t yet know why.
“Are you a vampire?” Angelina asked, for once ignoring me.
The torches flickered in a sudden gust, bringing her scent down from the upper porch. Bubble bath and the warmth of her skin caught in the humid night breezes, swirling down to the ground to mix with vamp pheromones and smoke. The vamps with Leo each took a step back. “Mama says you eat people.”
Leo swallowed. “We do not eat people,” he said, his voice carefully neutral, laced with his refined, formal French accent. “And you may not play with fire. It is dangerous. We . . . we will return to visit at a later time,” he said.
He looked at me, his hatred so bright it burned in his black eyes. “This is not finished. My son will be avenged.”
“I already avenged your son,” I said. “I killed his murderer. I paid his blood debt and left you the body of your enemy.” I had said the words before—the last time he’d visited me, insane with grief. They had worked then. I could hope they worked now.
Leo blinked. The fire in his eyes seemed to flicker and die. Something else filled the void, a hint of some softer emotion—confusion, uncertainty, perhaps—swimming through the grief. He met my eyes, held my gaze with that hypnotic focus the very old ones have.
And he was gone. Just . . . gone. Air currents swirled hard after his passage. The vamps stared up at the child on the porch above.
“Come inside, Angie,” Molly said from overhead, her voice rough with fear. “You too,” she said to me, though she couldn’t see me from her position. I heard boards creak, and the door to the veranda closed.
“He would have led us to murder a child,” a female vamp said.
“He didn’t know,” another said, closing the kerosene container he had opened.
“He is the master. He should have known,” the female vamp insisted. “He should not have led us here.”
“Dolore,” a third vamp said. I didn’t know the word, but there was a hushed reverence in her voice that lent it importance. “We must decide.”
“I will not chain my master,” the fourth vamp said. “I will not. I warn you now. There will be war.”
The four vamps looked from one to another. Then, as a unit, they turned to me. And stared. I felt the weight of their eyes, holding me in place, my cross held high.
“We will uphold the Vampira Carta,” the woman said. “It is law.”
The pressure in the small yard drained away fast, as if a stopper had been pulled and the tension and anger sucked down. Much more slowly than Leo, but still faster than any human, the vamps left. Their scents weakened, dissipating on the erratic winds. Down the street, I heard a car start, the sound low, like a powerful growl. Headlights cut the misty dark as it passed my freebie house, and vanished into the night.
I swiveled on a bare foot and went inside, pulling the door shut behind me. I leaned against it and remembered how to breathe, hearing my heart pound in my ears, an uneven pain in my chest. I dropped the cross around my neck, swept my hair out of the way, twisting it up high, and shoved the stakes into a makeshift bun. My fingers were quivering in the aftermath of near battle.
A moment later, I felt the wards snap on over the house, the feel of magic a soft buzz on my skin. I knew Molly would be beating herself up for not activating them sooner tonight.
I hadn’t been ready for attack. I would never have thought that Leo would make such a public, violent move. Which was pretty stupid in my twenty-twenty hindsight.
I went to my room and weaponed up, putting blades through their respective loops in my jeans and strapping on wrist and calf sheaths, checking and adding a new handgun in its shoulder holster, laying the shotgun across the foot of the bed. It wasn’t overkill. It was necessary to cool my fear. Though the wards were back up on the house, and Molly and the kids were safe, I couldn’t banish the vision of Leo, vamped out.
If I’d been properly weaponed earlier, I might have had a fighting chance against the vamps in my yard. Well, I’d still likely have died, but I’d have taken a few of them with me. I’m good. Real good. Arguably, the best in the business. Just not good enough to take on a whole blood-family of vamped-out master monsters alone. Monsters with fire. Hands shaking with the aftershock, I made the decision that I would go rogue hunting that night. If it wasn’t too muggy, I’d wear a skintight skullcap, but that wasn’t gonna happen. I used the hair as a weapon holder instead, shoving in stakes that looked like hair sticks, making sure I grabbed silver-tipped ones for maximum damage. I felt better with each weapon, calmer, more secure.
The kettle on the gas stove emitted a soft, steamy whistle, the precursor to the piercing one that would push through soon. It seemed like aeons since I had put it on. I stopped a moment, bracing a hand on the closet door. I closed my eyes and half prayed a single word of thanks. That had been close. I returned to the kitchen and turned off the gas, pouring the water over the tea leaves in the strainer, into the white enamel pot beneath. I stared at the steam rising from the tiny hole in the whistler spout as shock boiled up in me like the steam in the kettle.
Leo Pellissier had come to burn down my house. He had brought gallons of kerosene, torches, and his undead scions to carry out the burning. He had wanted me to die in the fire. He had been prepared to break windows, pour in accelerant, and torch the place. Literally. I shivered in the night air and put down the kettle. It was almost never cold in the Vieux Carre, the French Quarter of the old town, but the hurricane had brought cooler, wet air from the gulf. At least that was what I told myself. Uncertain, I pulled the elk-horn hilt of my favorite vamp-killer, its silvered blade shining blue in the light of the hurricane lamp. I resheathed the weapon, making sure it was loose and easy to draw.
Knowing tea would help calm me, I poured two cups of hot chai, added sugar and a generous dollop of room-temp whipped cream to each, and placed them on a tray with a stack of cookies and the lit lantern. Moving in a cone of light, I carried them to the front of the house. Another hurricane lamp flickered at the top of the stairs. I set the lamp from the kitchen on the ground floor near the staircase, the flames tossing amber light into the rooms, peaceful and safe, a bright counterpoint to the conflagration that nearly was.
Carefully, carrying the tray, I walked up the shadowy steps. The children’s room was over my own, to the left of the stairs. Tonight it was dark, the wide space unlit by the lion-shaped night-light. Yet, even dark, the room fairly crackled with wards and witch power. In
addition to her warning and protective wards over the property to deflect intruders, Molly had set wards over the children for health and healing.
There was a third type of ward Mol called a hedge of thorns around the rocks in my garden. It was quiescent; the trigger to activate it was my blood, poured over the ground. Pretty macabre, but she wanted to protect me even after she was back home in the mountains, and the hedge was a last-ditch shielding, one that would seal me in over the rocks where I could shift into Beast form and heal, if I found myself in life-threatening danger. Beast was the only animal I could shift into without effort, and without having genetic material from which to take the pattern. She was something outside my skinwalker magic—something I thought a typical skinwalker wouldn’t carry within her. Beast was another soul living inside me, revenant of a mountain lion whose skin I had hidden in for far, far too long, and she had her own goals, memories, needs, and secrets. She wasn’t always easy to live with, but she did help keep me alive.
The inside ward over Angie’s and Little Evan’s room was shaped so that even I couldn’t enter without setting off an alarm. But I could check in, making sure the kids were okay. I’m not the motherly sort, so it felt strange to have children in my home, and even stranger to feel protective. Fiercely, violently protective, as Beast’s maternal instincts, so different from my own, spilled over into my human consciousness.
With my exceptional night vision, I could see well enough into the dim room. Little Evan was stretched out, covers thrown off, his fists tightly balled, arms to either side, his cheeks puffing with each breath. On the bed closer to the door, Angelina was curled into a ball beneath the covers, her face as angelic as her name. Both were, amazingly, already asleep. Kids.