by Faith Hunter
“They won’t disappear in a wisp of smoke,” a soft voice said behind me.
I smiled, feeling rueful, wondering if Molly had set a ward I had never detected, one that notified her when someone even approached the children’s doorway. Probably.
“Just checking,” I said. Holding the tray in front of me, I turned, finding Molly in the shadows of the wide hallway. Her long, thin nightgown fluttered in the air from the open windows; her red ringlets hung down her back. She looked like something from the nineteen hundreds, except for the iPod around her neck. I set the tray on a little spindled table in the hall and offered her one of the mugs. Molly crossed the wide hallway on bare feet and took it.
“No one can get in,” she said, sipping. “Not through my ward. Or at least not without fireworks going off. You don’t have to prowl the house with butcher knives.”
I pulled and flipped a knife. The blade caught the lamp, bright and glittering, the narrow, deep flukes along the blade appearing almost ornamental with their silvering, making the weapon strong, flexible, lightweight, beautiful, the blade’s silver plating poisonous to vampires. A work of art. It was a new blade. I really liked it. “Not a butcher knife. It’s a vamp-killer.”
“It’s a claw, is what it is,” she said, the wry tone becoming drier, sharper. “I counted. You’re wearing ten. Just like your Beast’s front paw claws.”
I shrugged. It was true; I had ten. As a skinwalker, I had a preference for big cats—puma, African lion, leopards, but mostly for the mountain lion form. It was easiest to be Beast. If I ever discover a skinwalker psychiatrist, I’m sure he’ll apply some Jungian or Freudian school of thought to me, and the weapons I choose will be a big part of the analysis.
“Are you going hunting in human form?” she asked, her voice now carefully emotionless. When I nodded, she said, quietly, “Be careful, Big Cat. He’s not finished grieving. If he has laid a trap, you might slip past him as Beast, but not as Jane.”
“I know,” I said. “But I have a job to do. And the sooner I get it done, the better.” I slid the vamp-killer into its loop. “I still wish you and the kids would go back home.”
She hesitated for an instant, clearly remembering Leo Pellissier and his vamp goons. She shook her head. “Not until Big Evan gets back from Brazil and the contractor has the new room closed in. A house with no walls means I can’t ward it properly.” She held up a hand to stop my protests. “We’re in less danger here than we are in the hills without Big Evan. And you know we’ve had . . . trouble lately. My kind aren’t exactly popular. I’ll go back in two weeks like we planned. Besides”—her tone had turned ironic, and she sipped her tea—“you actually need us now. Angie’s the reason why Leo didn’t burn the house down around you. He won’t be back, at least until he can make sure of killing only you and not a houseful of children. And the wards will never be down again.”
I flinched just the tiniest bit. She had a point. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll be careful.” I took my own mug in hand, the stoneware warm and oddly comforting. “See you in the morning. Night, Molly.”
“Night, Big Cat.”
Downstairs, while I sipped hot tea, I put on my silvered chain-mail collar over the gold-nugget and chain necklace I never took off, added a couple more crosses, tied and strapped on my new steel-toed boots, and put on a thick denim jacket I’d picked up in a shop catering to farmers to replace the leather jacket lost in my last vamp fight. Another was on order, but until it arrived, denim would have to do. I holstered my big-ass shotgun across my back. I tugged on my hair to make sure it was difficult to grab. Long hair made a handy-dandy handle to pull in a fight, and once an opponent had it, the fight was over. Rapists and vamps liked victims with long hair. Made them easy to control. I could cut it, but I’d never shifted with short hair and didn’t know if that would alter the process.
Dressed for hunting, I left the house, feeling the wards sizzle across my skin, heatless and bright, like holiday sparklers in the hands of Molly’s children. I helmeted up, fired up Bitsa—my bastard Harley, put together from bits of this and bits of that—and opened the side gate. I re-locked the new padlock with my new key—which hadn’t kept out the vamps—and pulled into the street. Note to self: Find out how high vamps can jump. Build brick walls and gate higher.
I guided Bitsa through the streets, heading vaguely north. Streetlights were out in most of the city, the few hanging traffic lights swinging slowly on their supports. Trash was piled in corners, fluttering or soaked. Signs were down. Water gurgled down gutters from roofs, raced along street gutters, and in some low-lying places flowed along the streets, hiding the pavement. I watched the curbs when I traversed these, keeping Bitsa out of deeper water. I didn’t want to drown her out.
Though most everything was closed—bars, restaurants, shops, and dance clubs—cars were parked all over, along the streets, in the tiny, privately owned parking lots scattered through the Quarter. Lanterns, lamps, and candles lit windows. People sat at tables on second-story balconies, by lamplight, and the smell of food wafted down. Tinny music came from open windows; battery-powered boom boxes perched on ledges shared a soft dissonance of musical tastes. Live music, a guitar, saxophone, and drum came through an open bar door. Tables inside were lit with candles, a generator roaring in back. Small businesses that depended on the tourist trade twenty-four/seven, just to make the rent, were opening, despite the lack of city power. More generators began to hum. As power was restored in some areas, neon lights appeared here and there, advertising food, liquor, and entertainment. I motored out of the Quarter, past the church I attended most Sundays—though not today, no thanks to Ada—and quickly into less fashionable areas.
I had been in New Orleans’s version of the projects before, when I was taking down two young-rogue vamps who were feeding indiscriminately and killing their prey. Rogues came in two varieties: the very, very young, and the very, very old. But both were whacked-out, hungry, and deadly. These young rogues were feral for a different reason from the old ones. Vamps spent the first decade of life chained in a basement—figuratively speaking as Louisiana had few basements because of the high water table—nutty as fruitcakes and dangerously wild. A good master cared for his young until they cured properly—regained sanity and memories—or staked them if they didn’t.
My contract said I was supposed to find the vamp breaking vampire law and tradition and take him out. Or her. I would be paid a bounty for every young rogue I staked and beheaded, and the vamp council had a cleanup crew on standby to dispose of bodies and scrub kill sites, should I need their services. The council wanted to avoid any police involvement, so I wasn’t supposed to call in the cops unless there was just no help for it.
Since I had taken down this sire’s progeny—a young male and his even younger mate—only recently, I had an old trail to follow, but that meant I needed to find safe passage through the projects while I hunted. Which meant I had to talk to some men. Dangerous men.
The half-familiar streets had been dark enough when I last came through here. That time I had been overdressed for the locale, underdressed for the job of hunting vamps. It was a lot darker now, the night lit only by the twinkle of lanterns, flashlights, and candles as I advertised my arrival with Bitsa’s guttural snarl.
The place smelled better than last time, the hurricane having washed away the odors of urine, garbage, cooked cabbage, rats, roaches, and deep-fried foods. The smells of poverty and a food-stamp diet. I passed a heavily graffitied sign that might have said Iberville Housing at one time.
I couldn’t see anyone, but I felt eyes on me as I motored past, looking tough, well armed, and full of moxie. All of that wouldn’t keep me alive, but it might make the locals pause just to see what kind of fool came into their territory at night and alone. When I was pretty sure I had the right housing unit, or at least close to it, I slowed to a stop and killed the motor. Knees knocking, a fine tremor in my hands, I unhelmeted, secured the helmet to the bike, and pulled a vamp-kil
ler and shotgun. It was loaded for vamp, but the hand-packed silver fléchette rounds would kill humans too.
Shouting, I called into the darkness, “I’m looking for Derek Lee, ex-marine, if a marine can ever be called ex. Did two tours in Afghanistan, one in Iraq.”
My voice echoed in the night. From a house behind me, I heard the distinctive sh-thunk of a bolt-action rifle being readied for firing.
CHAPTER 2
Have stakes, will travel
In one of Bitsa’s tiny rearview mirrors, I saw a slice of light followed by a pinpoint of red. A laser-targeting sight. Crap. The killing spot between my shoulder blades began to itch. So I got louder, raised my voice as thunderously as I could. “Derek told me he thought he’d be safe when he came home to the United States. Instead, he found his neighborhood was full of blood-sucking vamps. He had to go back to war just to keep his family out of harm’s way. So I’m looking for Derek. He knows me as Injun Princess.” I didn’t necessarily love the nickname, but it seemed to amuse Derek.
My voice fell away. If Derek didn’t find me now and give me safe passage, I figured I’d be in a lot of trouble. For the second time tonight. Beast rose in me as the seconds dragged by. Minutes passed, feeling like hours. I started to sweat in the humid air, a betraying trickle lazing its way down my side. My heart beat a bit too fast, fear leaching into my bloodstream. I hated being passive. And I hated standing there with weapons drawn, awaiting my fate.
Finally I heard a door open. A voice called out, “Last time you hunted vamp in a dress and party shoes. Looks like you learned something, princess. Yo’ mama mus’ be proud.”
My heart jumped into my throat and did a little tap dance before I swallowed it down and found my voice again. “If I’d ever had a mama, maybe so,” I called back.
“Thought you was a Injun princess,” he said, walking toward me with that measured step grunts learn early.
“Princess of my very own nook in a children’s home,” I said, softer. “Age twelve to eighteen. Now I’m still princess of my domain, but it’s a bit far from here. You in charge of this one?”
He chuckled. “This domain? This lovely, sweet-smelling, clean, and pretty little patch of turf? Nominally speaking. Watchu want, Princess?”
“Safe passage. To hunt for the sire of the rogues we killed.”
He laughed again, this one lower, knowing, and just a bit brutal. “Thanks for the money you sent our way, for the dead-vamp heads. It came in handy to buy more ammo. To kill the ones who came after.”
“There’ve been more?”
“Six.” He flicked a lighter and held it away from his body, using it to see me by before touching it to a cigarette—half tobacco, half weed by the smell—as he drew air through the paper and herbs. His face was lit in the flame, his black skin moist with perspiration, black shirt and dark clothes nearly invisible. The steel butt of a handgun rested in the waistband of his pants. I waited as he evaluated me in the light of the flame. “We got the heads in a cooler, kept that way with dry ice, since Ada came through. Crips are moving in too, some say with backing from a breakaway clan. We’re getting low on supplies and ammo, but Leo ain’t answering his cell. And we ain’t getting paid no bounty.”
“Ah,” I said. He was making a deal. I felt Beast show teeth at the idea of negotiation. She believed in fighting first and talking after—over the blood and guts of her enemies. “Leo’s grieving the death of his son.”
Derek snorted at the term “death.” I acknowledged, “As much as the dead can die. But he’s not himself exactly.”
“Rogue?”
I thought about the face and form standing in my small yard, vamped out. Thought about the dissension in his ranks. “Not yet. But something’s funky. One of his scions used the word or the name ‘Dolore.’ You know it? Or her?” Derek shook his head no. I said, “Yeah. Me neither.
“I can send word of your kills to the vamp council. Get permission for you to talk to them. I’d even go with you to tell them they owe you. Sort of an emissary.”
Derek blew smoke away from me in a long pale streamer. “Now, that would take some balls.” He looked me over. “You got any?”
I grinned and let Beast shine in my eyes for a moment. I didn’t know what he saw in the poor lighting, but he nodded.
“Okay. I’m not interested in talking with any fang-heads except Leo, and I’m not wild ’bout talkin’ to him these days. How ’bout this? You talk, you get a deal, you keep twenty percent for the negotiation. And you leave our names out of it.”
Now, that was interesting—the marine wanted to remain anonymous. “How ’bout I turn in the heads for you on my own bounty, which is twenty thousand a head, keep nothing, but you guarantee me safe passage through here while I hunt? And you back me up if I need help while I hunt for more. Deal?”
Derek thought about it a moment. “We’ll need guns. Like the one you got pointed to the ground.”
“You got six heads at twenty K a pop,” I said. “Get your own.”
Derek laughed. “Yeah, you got balls. May be crazy as hell, but you got balls. Okay. Deal. You get the best you can from the fang-heads, and me and my boys will assure you safe passage and act as backup for your hunt. Course, you cheat us and my boys will carve you up like a jack-o’-lantern.” His teeth showed white in an ugly smile. “I’m accessible by cell. My card.”
His card? I swallowed down a half-hysterical twitter as he pulled a card two-fingered from his chest pocket. I accepted it and tucked it into my own without trying to see the number in the dark. I handed him one of mine; he held it to the lighter and chuckled at the line. ‘Have Stakes, Will Travel,’ huh?” The lighter went out. “You are one crazy chick.”
I just smiled, feeling the lessening of tension in the air.
“If the council puts a bounty on Leo,” he added, “I want in on the gig. Got me?”
Surprise burrowed through me. “I thought Leo was your friend.”
“Is. But if the man’s going rogue, he’d want to be brought down. Told me so once, a long time ago. Deal, Injun Princess?”
“Deal, Derek Lee. Now, how about telling your boy to lower the rifle he has pointed at my back? Being in night sights and lasered up on makes me all itchy.”
Derek laughed. “Juwan,” he called. “Twizzlers.”
I hoped “Twizzlers” was a code word for “A-OK,” and relaxed slightly when Beast’s intuition said the sharpshooter’s interest had moved away from my spine. I wasn’t sure how I knew when I was no longer in the sights of a gun, but it was something to do with Beast’s hunting instincts.
“Nice doing business, Princess.”
“Ditto, Derek.” I kick-started Bitsa, sat, and walked her in a circle before giving her gas. Over my shoulder, I called to him, “I’ll be starting at the place we killed the young rouges. I won’t get shot there, will I?”
Derek shook his head and gave me an uplifted thumb in reply. I took that to mean that I would not get shot and that the place was safe to reconnoiter. I hoped I was reading him right.
The bike at a full-throated roar, sweat drying on my spine, I made my way down the dark, wet streets.
I did my best hunting in Beast form, but didn’t want to take time to go back to the house and shift. It wasn’t something I did easily away from home base, not even when that home was only on loan to me for the duration of my contract. But in human form I still had a few better-than-human senses—thanks to a century, give or take, spent in beast form—and could chase scents fairly well from Bitsa’s back. Having a starting point helped.
I motored to the abandoned housing unit where I had taken down a female young-rogue vamp only a few days past. The place had acquired inhabitants; whether they were bona fide, deed-holding owners, renters, or squatters, I didn’t know or care. I just hoped Derek was right about my safety and I wouldn’t get shot as a trespasser.
Engine thrumming, I eased my bike down the narrow street and around to the side of the unit, cut the motor, and stalked a
round back. The smell of blood was faint, well washed by Ada, but under the scents of fertilizer, grass seed, and the mixed odors of kids and a small dog, I could still pick up the faint tang of vamp blood. I scouted around until I was satisfied I had the scent in my memory, then tracked to the place where Derek and his pals had taken down the female’s sire, a teenaged kid, turned, and left to run wild—the rogue who had attacked a friend of mine and left her for dead. The smell was stronger here, as some vamp blood had splattered onto a brick wall, up high in a spot protected from rain. Standing against the wall, under the eaves, I breathed in the smell, my mouth open, so I drew it in through both nose and mouth, the way a cat takes scent.
And I caught the faint under-tang of another vamp. The teen male rogue’s sire. I hadn’t been looking for it last time I was here, too busy trying to stay alive. And the scent was familiar in an I-may-have-sniffed-it-before kinda way, or a sniffed-its-kid-sister kinda way.
After several long, deep breaths, cementing the disparate scents of chemicals and pheromones in my scent-memory, I walked back to Bitsa and kicked her to life. And I began to backtrack. The scent was pretty well washed away by the rain and I figured I’d have a hard time following it anyway, but the young male rogue had come and gone this way several times, and his scent was on trees and up under porches, places where the rain had missed. It was slow going, but I made my way out of the projects, heading toward Lake Pontchartrain.
It took me more than two hours to track the male rogue’s path, off Filmore Avenue in a wooded area near a bayou, in a park in the middle of New Orleans. As I rode around it, I realized that the park wasn’t that far from where I started out in the projects, yet the acreage was so large that Beast felt at home. I hadn’t known it was here, and from the smell of trees, water, and a multitude of human scents, the park was huge. The storm had dropped limbs onto the paths leading in and torn down signs, but I finally found one that identified it, unimaginatively, as New Orleans City Park.