by Faith Hunter
Cucumber sandwiches. Not thin-sliced beef. Not cinnamon and sugar. Cucumber. And watercress. And soft cream cheese. Raw fish. My honeybunch was making me a soothing treat.
He came to the couch bearing a tea tray and two humongous mugs. One of them said, WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU LEMONS, THROW THEM AWAY AND GET SOME BACON! It was a new mug, and I felt my mouth pull into a smile at the sight. Bruiser’s mug said, I LOVE YOU MORE THAN BACON. Both mugs were full of steaming chai and a big spoonful of melting Cool Whip. My new primo would think we were heathens. My smile fell away. My new primo. For reals. I had bound another sentient creature. Slavery of the worst sort. And Edmund knew a thing or two about slavery.
Bruiser set the tray beside me and placed a cloth napkin in my lap. In the middle of the table he placed a plate of cucumber sandwiches; a second plate of salmon on toast points; a huge, heated, white chocolate macadamia nut sugar cookie on a glass dessert plate; and a single white rose with a long stem and no scent. He took my hand and wrapped it around the mug. The ceramic was warm. My smile came back. I held the mug with both hands and sipped, the taste speaking of good memories and the house mother I had loved best, Belinda. I should have the Kid track her down so I could tell her how much she meant to me. Maybe someday.
Bruiser pushed my legs over, kicked off his leather loafers, and curled up beside me. His Onorio warmth was better than any fireplace, and I tucked my toes under his leg. He pulled the afghan over us both. We sipped. Silent. Content. I even ate one of the veggie cheese sandwiches in between the salmon. The snack soothed me almost as much as the company.
When I was warm inside and the mug was mostly empty, Bruiser said, “Ed will survive. He’ll need to be fed the blood of the Son of Darkness tonight, and by as many masters as will offer, but he should be well in”—Bruiser waggled his hand, his elegant fingers looking longer in the shadows—“two days? Three at the outside.”
A heavy load I hadn’t acknowledged fell off me and my shoulders relaxed for a moment. I licked the vanilla-flavored whipped topping off my upper lip and said, “That’s good. Thank you for telling me. But. I bound Ed to me tonight.”
Bruiser nodded, as if I had said something innocuous, like It rained, or Good tea. “You saved his life,” he said. “Eat your cookie.”
I picked up the cookie and took a bite. It was made with butter, lots and lots of butter. It tasted like heaven. I nibbled as the flavors washed through me, in a color like yellow flowers and sunlight. With the last bite of cookie, I gestured at his mug. “Do I love you more than bacon or do you love me more than bacon?”
“I love you more than bacon,” he said, a smile in his voice.
“I love you more than bacon too,” I said. “Unless I’m hungry. Or Beast.”
“In either of which cases I will bring you bacon.”
My lips pulled up again. “I like my bacon cooked. Beast likes hers raw.”
“Duly noted.”
I finished the cookie, licked my fingers, and picked up the flower. Sniffed it. “I like that you give me flowers that don’t stink.”
“I like that you give me interesting bottles of wine.”
I nearly choked on my tea, making a noise suspiciously like a giggle. Days ago, I had stopped at a wine shop and ordered a mixed case of wine to be shipped to him in a fancy wood crate. He had received the twelve bottles of Boone’s Farm. The flavors had ranged from Orange Hurricane to Strawberry Margarita to Blue Hawaiian to Fuzzy Navel, and the gift was in honor of what Bruiser thought was a dreadful confession. He had admitted to me that in the seventies he and a female vamp-to-remain-unnamed had gotten violently drunk on Strawberry Hill–flavored wine (and Strawberry Hill–flavored Bruiser) and had raced around the city on his motorbike, dancing at every bar they could find, before motoring up to the fountain in Jackson Square and vomiting in it. He had barely gotten the vamp housed before sunrise. I hadn’t known he had a motorbike, or that he had ever been less than suave and sophisticated. I had been delighted with the tale, hence the prezzie.
I’d been even more delighted that we’d shared a bottle of sweet Fuzzy Navel wine with po’boys from Coop’s Place, curled up together on his gallery. It had been a magical night, so much so that I’d shared a few tidbits from my own youth.
I’d talked about Bobby, the sweet little boy I’d befriended and taken under my wing in the children’s home when the other kids picked on him. Had admitted that the phrase taken under my wing was synonymous for beating up several kids who abused him physically or verbally. Admitted that I had practically broken the record for time spent in detention. Bruiser said he found my stories and me “delightful.” And then he had proceeded to kiss along my throat and up to my ear. I’d never been called delightful. I was pretty sure it gave me the quakes.
The next morning I had woken to find a pair of boxing gloves on the pillow beside me, ancient gloves that smelled of sweat and blood and time. They had been his from the same year he drank wine. Now I had them hanging off one of the short posts at the head of my bed, and I fell asleep at night smelling Bruiser even when he wasn’t there.
And now he loved me more than bacon.
That was more lovey-dovey talk than we had said to each other ever. Preceded by BACON complementary mugs, that was, like, practically the magical three words. Almost, I love you. Or maybe even better, because the magical phrase was just a statement of fact without qualifiers. This was more than bacon.
I sipped my tea. He sipped his. He loved me more than bacon. I loved him more than bacon. He wasn’t disappointed with me for binding Edmund. He didn’t worry about me out in Beast form hunting killer vamps; he knew I had the skills to take care of myself. He made me tea and cookies and cute little sandwiches just because.
Life couldn’t get much better than this.
• • •
Around 3:30 a.m. Bruiser took a call and kissed me on the cheek before he left my house. I checked on Eli, who was sleeping with a happy smile on his face. He didn’t wake when I walked up the stairs. He didn’t wake and shoot me when I leaned over him to check his breathing. The former Ranger was out cold, sleeping deeply, with good dreams, for the first time since we met. This seemed like a good thing. I should make him drink vamp blood more often.
Because I was the only protection tonight, which felt odd after so many months with the Youngers living here, I checked the house doors, made sure there was a round in the chamber of the weapon by my bed, and crawled between the sheets. The warm scent of Bruiser on his boxing gloves lulled me into dreams.
• • •
What felt like only minutes later, I woke to the echo of a deep, reverberating growl. I took a slow, still breath, parsing the scents. Someone was in the house. In my room. Two someones. I smelled werewolf and Anzu: Brute, the white were stuck in wolf form, and Girrard DiMercy, who looked human but was not. And magic. I pulled on Beast-speed. In a single move I rolled from the mattress, throwing off the sheets, picked up the nine-mil, and bent my knees into a shooting stance. The sheets were still in the air when I off-safetied and pointed the weapon at the location of the scents. The entire move took maybe half a second.
They stopped, frozen in place like a bizarre tableau in a wax museum. Gee was holding his sword to the werewolf’s throat. Brute was snarling. My closet door was open. So was the side door, and a fine rain was blowing in, filling the house with icy, wet mist. Both doors had been closed when I fell asleep.
Beast’s night vision turned everything into bright silvers and greens and whites. More than enough to see that Gee was wearing all black, with a black kerchief over the lower part of his face. And a brimmed hat. And a black lace shirt with cuffs that hung dripping. He was dressed like a cat burglar/sword master from some Renaissance romance novel. Dramatic, as always. But the sword, that was real. And he knew how to use it.
“It’s loaded with standard ammo. Lead won’t kill you, Gee,” I said, my voice casual
, “but it’ll hurt.”
Gee slowly turned his head to me and pulled down the kerchief to expose his face. Brute kept his predator’s stare on the small, pretty man and growled again, a deep, low vibration that I could feel through the floor and the soles of my bare feet. The wolf wasn’t sopping but wasn’t totally dry either. He’d been here a while. The soaked man was the interloper. “So here’s what I think happened,” I continued, taking in the condition of the house beyond my door. “An hour or so ago, Brute came in through the wolf-door panel Eli installed, because Brute belongs here. Sometimes. Gee does not, but you came by anyway. And then you cast a sleepy-time spell of some sort over the house and walked in. Brute, who for some were-taint reason didn’t succumb to the spell, caught you walking into my house and going through my closet.”
“You have that which belongs to me.” He was talking about a magical item I had confiscated from a big honking witch-versus-vampire fight in a little town west of New Orleans. It looked like a laurel-leafed crown, and it was a powerful amulet. That was about all I knew, but that was enough for me to keep it out of the hands of anyone who wanted it.
“Nope. It may belong to the Anzus as a group or to one or the other of you, but le breloque is mine until I discover its true and full provenance and powers. Put down your pin sticker and step away from the closet. I really don’t want more blood on my floors tonight. I intend to collect on that boon you owe me from way back and don’t want to fritter it away by accidentally killing you.”
“This storm,” he insisted. “It is fed by ancient magic. If you give le breloque to me I can end the storm. I can save your people.”
It could be a pathetic attempt to bargain for what he wanted. Except that the only times anyone wanted le breloque was when there was a storm overhead. Interesting. Did its power increase with storms? Give the wearer control over them? Allow the wearer to gain power from the storms? It was all conjecture; without answers, birdman was getting nothing. “Still no.”
Gee slashed the sword up, around, into the sheath in one single flourish. My finger, which had begun to compress the trigger with the movement, relaxed. Gee said, “I bring a message from Sabina, the outclan priestess of the Mithrans.”
“I’m listening.”
“You are not going to put away your weapon?”
“Nope. Talk.”
“Sabina has had a vision of the bubo bubo. She says, ‘Purify yourselves. Be ready. The time has come.’”
With the storm blowing in, it was chilly in the house, even with the warm, fuzzy nightclothes I had worn to bed. I shivered at the prophecy. Sabina had an in with the spiritual world that I didn’t understand at all. She knew things. She knew I was a shape-shifter. She associated some ancient vamp prophecy with the bubo bubo, the Eurasian Eagle Owl, which I had once turned into so I could pry into secret vamp ceremonies. Yeah. This was from Sabina.
Ancient people purified themselves before battle, or before some great life change, and Sabina wanted me pure. Not good. Not good at all. I wondered how much of this had to do with the girl earlier tonight, the one the vamps drank down and drained and left dead.
“Message delivered,” I said. “Get out of here. And next time you break into my house, I’ll shoot first and ask questions later.”
“As you said, it will not kill me. Rounds are lead.”
“As I said, it’ll hurt like a mama. Get out the way you came in. And shut the door behind you.”
Gee vanished, almost vamp-fast, and the door closed as he left. I slid the safety on and set the weapon on the bedside table, angled for quick access. “Thank you,” I said to the wolf.
Brute tilted his head to me and his tongue lolled out of his mouth, comical in the dark.
“Lemme guess. When you came in and found that the door to the gun safe was closed, you trotted your wet, dog-stinky-self upstairs to the Kid’s bed and made a nice damp nest.”
Brute grinned at me. It was a doggie grin, showing teeth.
“You ever do that to my bed and I’ll kick you out. For good.”
Brute looked at my bed. To a dog, the alpha’s bed was the very best place, the only place, to sleep. I had let him onto my bed on a very few occasions when I was ill or hurt and his werewolf warmth had helped me to heal, but he didn’t have permission to go there at will. I had caught him standing in my doorway more than once, staring at my bed, thinking about jumping up there and rolling his scent all over it, doggie-claiming the alpha bed. But this time Brute looked from the bed to the closed side door. And then to the closet, making a point that he had saved the day. Or the night.
“I mean it,” I warned.
Brute snuffled and sat, looking from the closet to the back door, and then growling, repeating in clear dog-speak that he had saved me. That he deserved a reward. I almost offered him a doggie treat but I knew that this was more than just a desire for a crunchy bone. He tilted his head again and whined, looking at my bed and then at me. This was a werewolf negotiation.
“Fine,” I said, though it wasn’t. “I recognize your service tonight. Therefore I promise to look for a dog bed—” Brute growled again. I blew out a breath that caught the loose black hairs around my face and made them fan out in the dark. “A memory foam mattress I can put in the hallway upstairs for your use—whenever the Everhart/Truebloods are not here, until such time that Evan Trueblood agrees you can stay in the house with Angelina and EJ. Until such time, and when they are here, you will sleep in the weapons room.” I thought over what I had said and figured I had covered most of the angles of a paranormal negotiation. “Agreed?”
Brute snuffled agreement and turned away, to trot back upstairs to his stolen nest. I went to the side door and cleaned up the rainwater. Then I placed a call to vamp HQ and got Del, the primo to Leo Pellissier, the Master of the City. It was the middle of the business day for a vamp household, and the primo sounded confident and in control. We chitchatted for a bit and then I said, “Is the priestess in Council Chambers tonight?” Council Chambers is a more polite way of saying suckhead HQ.
“No. Why?” Del dragged out the words because any proper verbiage from me was always a warning.
“The Enforcer has a formal request to make, of the primo of the Master of the City of New Orleans. May I speak?”
“The primo of the Master of the City of New Orleans is attentive to the Enforcer,” Del said, pure suspicion lacing her words. I was seldom so formal. I was seldom even faintly polite.
“The Enforcer would be honored to call upon, or to receive a phone call from, Sabina, the outclan priestess of the Mithrans.”
“Oh.” Del sounded nonplussed but continued with the proper, somewhat formulaic responses. “I will pass along the message. Is there a subject that should attend the request?”
“Yeah. Tell the priestess that I need to talk to her about Anzus—Anzii?” I queried midsentence, “and le breloque’s purpose—which may or may not have something to do with storms like the ones currently brewing over New Orleans. Please.”
Del repeated it back to me, I said that was perfect, and she went silent, though I could hear her tapping on her tablet. “The primo will happily pass along the request exactly as worded.”
“Thanks.”
“You still owe me a spa day.”
I always owed Del a spa day. “Find a spa with a steam room, massages, and facials, and we can go Saturday and take Jodi.”
“Wait. Who is this and what have you done with Jane Yellowrock?”
“Ha-ha. It’s cold and miserable. A massage, a hot rock to curl up on, and some pampering sounds wonderful.”
The hot-rock part had come from Beast. If Del thought it was odd, she didn’t respond to it. “Deal. And I’ll let you know what the priestess says.”
We disconnected and I found myself staring at my back door. Gee DiMercy shouldn’t have been able to get in. The door wasn’t broken or splint
ered, and the lock hadn’t looked scratched, so either Gee could pick a lock leaving no traces, which was possible, or he had used magic to get inside, which was also possible.
Gee was a bird, an Anzu, a creature once worshiped as a storm god. We had recently hunted together, both of us in Anzu form. I’d had a good long look at Anzu DNA when I shifted into the form, and that DNA was not from Earth, but it did look a lot like arcenciel DNA. Could there be a connection between all the weird stuff? Between Sabina’s bubo bubo prophecy, the storm overhead, the dead female in the small house, the vamp attack on Edmund, arcenciels (rainbow dragons who could shape-shift into human form), and le breloque . . . Nah, I was reaching. Or hoping that I could tie it all together in one lovely package with a bloody red bow. I had learned that with vamps and other paranormal creatures, it was better to be safe than sorry, and nothing was ever easy. So I had lots of smaller problems and not one gigantic problem with a single resolution.
I checked on Eli, who was still smiling in his sleep, trotted back downstairs, and crashed again, sleeping until a rumble of thunder waked me.
CHAPTER 5
You Look Like Shiii—Crap
Torrential rain was blasting the side of the house, and the old structure groaned against the wind. Even brick wasn’t proof against some storms. I checked the weather on my official cell and found that the storm off the coast had moved closer to shore and a second storm that was sliding south along the Mississippi River Valley hadn’t slowed its descent. If one of the weather fronts didn’t change course, we’d have a big one, a storm of the century according to some reports, though no one in New Orleans was panicking yet and no evacuations had been ordered. Since Katrina and Rita, the back-to-back hurricanes that had devastated the state, most Louisianans took evac orders to heart.