Mercy Blade

CHAPTER 7 A Lot of Hooey

Hands in pockets, I walked back to my rental house, taking the long way through the Quarter. The smells of New Orleans changed with the time of day, the tides, and the seasons. Early on a summer day, the prevalent scent mélange was composed of the omnipresent exhaust, the smell of the Mississippi flowing on the other side of the levee, flowering plants and vines in the flower boxes and minigardens beside and behind every building, chicory coffee, beignets, cigarettes, the smell of sex, the smell of bars open twenty-four/seven, and last night’s beer, wine, and liquor, along with urine and vomit left by revelers, though the business owners and the city did a good job of washing away the worst of that.

Though Beast’s sense of smell was far superior to mine, I had a better nose than most humans, probably left over from the years I’d spent solely in Beast-form, and the stench was intense and full flavored. It was something I loved about the city. The incredible heat and humidity were a lot less appreciated, and I started to sweat within a block of the restaurant, perspiration gathering on my arms, torso, legs, trickling down my spine, and oddly enough, beading on my upper lip, which was something new. I’d noticed locals sweating that way. Maybe I was starting to fit in.

As I walked, I thought about all the weird things that had happened, arranging them in a sensible order that might show me the whole picture, something that combined the appearance of weres across the world, werewolves in New Orleans, Leo sending me to deal with a nonhuman who then saved me from weres. That same nonhuman pulling a bait and switch on Leo with the wolves—which nearly got me killed—and then set a find-me charm on me. Last, wolves and a big-cat on Beast’s hunting ground. It was obvious that weres were the key to everything, but did not explain Gee, or why Rick might bring a date to the Royal Street Café. I resisted the urge to call him, but checked my phone. No voice or text messages. Nothing.

I had the house to myself when I got back, and nuked a mug of tea while I called my backup for the night. Derek Lee answered on the first ring. “Yo, Injun Princess. Whatchu need?”

“Duuuude,” I said in an affected surfer-girl twang. He laughed. I laughed. Pleasantries were done. I launched in to the night’s needs, which were muscle-and-weapon security, and hi-tech electronic security.

Derek knew his business. He was an ex-marine with two tours in Afghanistan and one in Iraq during his time in. About five minutes after meeting him I had realized he was more than a grunt. The man had skills and panache that seemed a lot more specialized than the other guys in his unofficial little army. “Weapons?” he asked.

“Silver rounds, stakes, vamp-killers. Weres seem to have the same kind of silver allergy as vamps.”

“How many men?”

“If I was hiring cops, two dozen. With your guys, maybe half that.”

“I can get six. Guys I trust. Guys who can each do the work of two or three.”

Six guys with the level of training Derek was talking about, on such notice? Alarm stole over me on little kitten feet. Softly, I asked, “You raising an army, Derek Lee?”

“Nothing to worry your pretty little Cherokee head about.”

“I wouldn’t want to have to fight you, Derek.”

“Not to worry, Princess. And not to stick your nose into.”

I was silent a moment, then breathed my irritation out into the cell phone. “Don’t kill anyone tonight unless you have to.” Derek laughed and clicked off. I stared at the phone for a long moment before going back to work.

While the laptop booted up, I pulled out research papers. I had photocopies of one entire file cabinet from the woo-woo room in NOPD, courtesy of the last investigation I’d done. Cops didn’t let civilians have access to their files without very good reasons, and I recognized the honor and the trust that had led Jodi Richoux to send them to me. I kept the papers in boxes, padlocked in the bedroom closet with my weapons and other gear.

The files were from the vampire file and included their histories, wars, clans, and info on individuals, as well as a lot of hooey, better known as information obtained from confidential informants. Jodi had included a few folders from the witch file cabinet containing info on the local witches, but a quick search through the boxes that comprised my filing system revealed nothing about weres.

I updated the file on the vamp war of 1915, including the info from Bruiser about his mother, Lady Beatrice, e-mailed it to Jodi for her records, and Googled weres. There was a lot of stuff on the net in just the last two days. A lot of stuff, though at this point, I could find no other types of weres on the Internet—only cats and wolves. I surfed photographs, some of them Hollywood stills, some that might be real, of weres shifting. Found some viral video of the real thing, of a South American were-cat, a male jaguar who looked deadly in either of his forms. There were interviews with were-cats, putting to rest rumors about rabies among the species, discussing mating habits, and a frank discussion of transmission of the were-contagion, one thing that Hollywood got right—a bite. The cats all agreed that biting a human was against their laws and the one crime worthy of a death sentence. Which meant that Leo and Bruiser were probably safe from reprisals for killing Henri and the other wolves, assuming Roul was serious about pursuing Leo only in human courts of law.

Once, while I worked, I felt ... something. An odd reaction, as if I wasn’t alone. I got up and went through the house, stepping silently, a vamp-killer in hand, listening, watching, scenting quietly. But I was alone. Evangelina hadn’t come in. No one was there and no unfamiliar scents lingered on the air to mark intruders. The sensation wasn’t like my predator senses, alerting me as when something, or someone, hunted me, but it was odd. And it faded quickly.

Back at the laptop, I researched real wolves, and discovered that there were only four kinds in the U.S.—the gray wolf (Canis lupus), Mexican gray wolf (Canis lupus baileyi), the red wolf (Canis rufus), and the coyote (Canis latrans). I hadn’t even known the coyote was part of the wolf family. I’d thought they were a type of wild dog. Around the world, the species and subspecies of wolves was varied, with the gray wolf the largest, and the only one that might be big enough to shift, mass for mass, from a modern-sized human to a beast. I’d seen them change, and there hadn’t been any obvious mass transfer, so I was betting on gray wolf for the weres I’d fought, though the coat color differences seemed more doglike, with a heavy shift toward Siberian husky.

The rest of the morning, I studied the history of weres online, looking into the worldwide mythos while keeping an eye out for anything new that might pertain to skinwalkers, not that I had much hope. I routinely Googled skinwalkers and had never discovered anything about a nonhuman or a subspecies like me. There was a lot of nonsense about weres online, but nothing suggested a skinwalker. As usual.

By noon I was hungry again, tired, and annoyed. Rick still hadn’t called. A small part of my brain was whispering that I deserved to be dumped, that I was nowhere near attractive enough to date pretty boy Rick LaFleur. A bigger part of me was whispering that I deserved to be dumped because I’d abandoned my no-sex-until-marriage, Christian-children’s-home upbringing. I was sleeping with him, I’d skipped church to be with him, and I’d caught myself cussing without my life being in danger. Oh, and I’d been having erotic thoughts about Bruiser when I was sleeping with Rick. Guilt. Guilt like a heavy wool blanket.

Other women didn’t have guilt, I knew that with a certainty. My house backed up to a whorehouse and none of the girls working there seemed to have any guilt at all. But a truckload of guilt was dumped on me for sleeping with one guy. Go figure.

Not able to deal with my own traitorous brain, or thoughts about my possibly traitorous boyfriend, I flopped down on the bed and closed my eyes. And when that made the images in my head worse, I grabbed my gym bag and hopped on Bitsa hoping that a good pummeling at the dojo might help.

My new sensei was a hapkido black belt, second dan, with a black belt in tae kwon do and a third black belt in combat tai chi, though he had given up competition years ago. Everyone who trained with him knew he thought competition was for sissies and martial arts were for fighting and killing. His style was perfect for me, because I studied mixed disciplines and had never gone for any belt. I trained to stay alive, not to look snazzy, all belted up, or to show off a wall full of trophies. My fighting style could best be described as dirty, an aggressive amalgam of styles, geared to the fast and total annihilation of an attacker.

The dojo was in the back room of a jewelry store on St. Louis, open to the public only after store hours, but open to a select few students during the day. I had quickly made it from casual sparring partner to serious student and I had my own key. I parked Bitsa at the curb and turned down the narrow service alley. It was all of thirty inches wide, damp and dim.

I keyed myself in through the small door of the dojo and locked it after me. The long room had wood floors, two white-painted walls, one mirrored wall, and one wall of French doors that looked out over a lush, enclosed garden planted with tropical and semitropical plants. Cats were sunning themselves in the garden, seeming to come and go as they pleased, eating from bowls piled with food pellets, and drinking out of the large fountain shaped like a mountain stream that splashed in one corner. A weak smell of fish suggested that koi or goldfish had once swum in the pool at the bottom of the fountain, but the cats had likely made that an unworkable environment though I had never asked the real reason that the pool contained only plants. The garden was surrounded by two- and three-storied buildings and was overlooked by porches dripping with vines and flowering potted plants. Sensei lived upstairs in one of the upper apartments.

I punched the button that told sensei he had a student, dropped my bag in one corner, and stripped off the jacket and pants hiding my workout clothes—stretchy shorts and T, jogging bra and undies beneath. I unrolled the practice mats and started warming up. Ten minutes later, sensei showed up, though he tried not to let me know he had dropped into the garden from his apartment above.

Most of his students weren’t able to tell when the man literally dropped in, but with Beast’s acute hearing and sense of smell, I always knew. The smell of Korean cabbage he loved so much was a dead giveaway. Sensei, whose real name was Daniel, attacked when my back was turned. Leaped through the open doors, seeing me smiling at him in the mirrored wall as he hurtled through the air. For an instant he frowned. Then he was passing through the air where I had been standing and landed cat-footed to sweep out with his leg. I leaped above it. Kicked with the heel of my foot, straight for his nose. He bobbed his head and shifted his body left. Counter-punched with his right. All in about a half second. And the fight was on.

I was still hiding that I wasn’t human, or at least not fully human, and pulled my punches and kicks, keeping them almost human slow, and almost human strength. I was a lot faster and stronger when I drew on Beast’s abilities. An hour later, I was sweating, stinky, breathing hard, and felt a lot better. And if sensei had a few more bruises than usual, well, I blamed it on Rick.

Not ready to head home, I hopped on Bitsa and tooled my way out of the Quarter to the Shooters Club off Tulane Avenue. I paid my fee and bought regular ammo, as the silver rounds used for hunting vamps was too expensive for practice. Luckily, I had the place to myself because I wasn’t in the mood to be with people. I hung my man-shaped targets and hit the button that shoved the target holder out to twenty feet to start. I’d push it back and back until it was finally at fifty feet, though no handgun is worth much at that range, no matter what shooters do on TV.

I blew off a lot more steam working with my H&K 9 mil, going through three boxes of rounds before I was satisfied with my precision. I wasn’t a bad shot, and I knew a good gun and well-practiced hand-eye shot coordination was essential for a vamp hunter, but I preferred blades and stakes and martial arts to bullets any day. With them, I knew a vamp was dead.

Still, when I was done, I felt better, and bought a new holster at the front of the shop, one made of supple black leather with black sequins, of all things, that might fit with an evening gown. I had a party to attend, and permission to come armed. No one said that I had to look unfeminine just because I was loaded for were and vamp. I had never thought of holsters as sexy, but this one came close.

When I left the shooting range, I dropped by Katie’s Ladies, the whorehouse run by my landlady—when she wasn’t in a coffin filled with vamp blood and healing from a mortal wound. Deon, the three-star chef, answered the door.

The slight, dark-skinned man blocked my way in, one hand on the door, the other on the jamb, his brows raised and mouth pursed. “The help don’ use the front door, tartlet,” he said, in his lovely island accent.

I crossed my arms and cocked out a hip. “Deon, you do know that I could break you in two with one hand tied behind my back, right?”

“We could have fun while you tried.”

I burst out laughing and Deon opened the door for me to enter. Deon was gayer than a San Francisco stripper, but he’d taken a liking to me and recently begun flirting in the most outrageous manner. “Troll in?” I asked.

“No, tartlet. The boss man, as opposed to the mythical vampiric boss woman I hope one day to meet and feed, even if she is a she and not a he, went to buy liquor. I have your laundry ready. Want to play in it? We could dump it on the kitchen island and roll around—”

“Deon.”

He shut his mouth and switched his hips with a satisfied air, crooked a finger, and led me to the kitchen. “I got you present, girl. Replace them ugly cotton thing you wear on your Amazonian bottom,” he said over his shoulder, “with silk and spandex pretties.”

“Forget it,” I said, sputtering laughter. “Give it to one of the girls.”

He canted his head slyly. “You will like. I have the best of taste in all things fine.”

“Not happening, Deon.”

He laughed, the sound happy and devious all at once, floating back to me from the dining room. “You will love the way silk feel on that lovely bottom—”

“Stop talking about my bottom,” I said, following him through the dining room into the spotless kitchen.

“Shh. You wake the girls and they need beauty sleep. Where was I? Oh.” He held up a black wisp that shimmered in the light.

I stopped dead in my tracks. “Oh. Oh my.”

Back home, I took a shower to wash off the remaining stink of anger and aggression and flopped on the bed. This time, thanks to releasing my pent-up adrenaline fighting and shooting, and the calming results of chatting with Deon, I was asleep instantly.

I dreamed, knowing it was a dream, but was unable to wake. The sound of laughter bounced off the walls of my mind, the werewolf laughter of Roul Molyneux, though I couldn’t see him. I turned around and around, seeing Booger’s place, though only as my mind saw it, not as it had been. It was dark and empty, and the chain walls were down, enclosing me. This time there were no doors. Roul’s laughter echoed hollowly, rattling the chains with soft tinks all around me.

A man dropped from the ceiling to land on the balls of his feet and his palms, catlike, but his face was a dog face, tongue lolling and canines gleaming. He stood and his face went from comical to snarling in a heartbeat. Other men landed beside and behind him, stood and began to move forward, spreading out, boxing me in. They were all wolf-faced and naked with casual unconcern. Naked and erect.

Instant fear shot through me, faster than my heartbeat, pricking on my nerves. I couldn’t breathe, suffocating. I reached for my vamp-killer. As in the way of dreams, I wasn’t armed.

An electric frisson of magic danced along my skin, as if the air crackled with lightning. I jerked, trying to wake, knowing I was dreaming, but I was trapped. Heart pounding, I tried to back away, but my feet didn’t, couldn’t, move. One of the men leaped at me, covering the space between us in an instant. Fangs bared, long and vicious.

The scene changed, leaving me in a dark room lit by fire. Confused, I sucked a breath and darted my eyes around. No wolfmen. I was sitting, my bottom, feet, and one hand on a clay floor, the room around me dim with dancing shadows. Fear grabbed me, so intense that I heaved. Stomach contents rising fast. Choking me. I swallowed hard, eyes wide in the murk.

A low bed with a thin mattress was against the far wall, a table and overturned stools close by. Windows with moonlight beyond, cloth curtains that moved in the night breeze. The walls were made of horizontal logs, mud chinked. Shadows moved on them, thrown up by the flames in the fireplace. Clothes and gear hung on hooks on the walls and sat on shelves. The shadow of a man, bearded, lunged back and forth, back and forth. Yunega. White man. Hurting etsi, my mother. Her sobs were quiet. Louder was the slapslapslap of his body hitting hers. Another white man stood ready. Waiting his turn. The smells of the yunega suffocated me. Unwashed bodies. Fried food. The smell of bad teeth and wet feathers. And the smell of man stuff on the air.

Watching the shadows, I curled my hands, one on the clay floor of our house. It was cool and smooth. One on warm cloth. Damp and warm. I didn’t want to look. But I turned my head in the dream, and looked beside me. A man lay on the floor, face up. He wore a long woven shirt of many colors, a wide cloth belt holding it closed. Blood covered his shirt, looking black in the dim light.

His eyes were open, staring, as if watching the shadows on the walls and ceiling. Yellow eyes like mine. Edoda. My father. They had killed him. Yunega shot him. He died. Edoda died, before he could change, the change that would have saved him. Only his hands had shifted into his beast, the claws of the tlvdatsi.

“My turn. Get off her. My turn.”

“When I’m done,” he panted. “You can have her when I’m done.”

I shuddered. Dry-eyed. Silent. Staring at Edoda. I opened my hand and placed it over the wound on my father’s chest, into his blood. Warm. Still warm. I lifted it and wiped Edoda’s blood down my face, my cold fingers moving slowly. His blood chilled quickly, bringing the coldness of the dead into my skin. Hand back into the blood; it was cooler now. Cooling so fast. I wiped my fingers down my face again, trailing the coolness of death. Placed my hand back into his blood.

“Hey, kid. What the hell are you doing?”

I looked up. Into the face of yunega. Blue eyes. Snarled hair. Stink of white man. I lifted my hand from my father’s blood, and painted my face. Blood stripes. Holding his eyes. Promising his death.

I hurled myself from the bed. Hit the floor shoulder first. Rolled. Slammed into the wall. And woke up. Disoriented by the dream.

No. Not a dream. A memory.

I made it to the bathroom and threw up everything that was left from breakfast. Threw up. Over and over. Until the dry heaves were all that was left and my gut was wringing with pain. Tears and snot coated my face. I spat the last of the vomit from my mouth and collapsed on the floor by the toilet. Sobbing silently, gasping for breath.

I had forgotten. Forgotten the men who murdered my father. Raped my mother. Forgotten the bloody stripes on my face, cooling and sticky. How had I forgotten? How had I ever forgotten?

The wolves had reminded me. Circling me. Naked and predatory. Like the men who killed my father and raped my mother. Shudders shook through me, rattling my bones. How had I ever forgotten?

Long minutes later, I reached up and flushed the toilet, pulled myself to my feet and into the shower again, taking my toothbrush and paste with me. I stayed there a long time.

Darkness fell while I was dressing. I could smell steak broiling and the tang of whisky beneath it. Evangelina was home, cooking dinner that included something for me, as she didn’t eat much meat. I wasn’t in the mood for food. Every time I closed my eyes I saw the image of the man moving on the log wall. The blue eyes of the watcher staring down into mine. Smelled gunpowder and semen and sweat and wet feathers. I shivered in the cool house as the air conditioner came on.

I had a hard night ahead of me and I needed calories, needed calm. So I shoved the dream into a dark place in my mind, knowing it would come again, knowing there was nothing I could do to avenge my mother or my father. It had been over a hundred years since my memory had been a reality. I was no longer a child denied vengeance and trapped inside the body of another, stronger creature. This time, I couldn’t hide away in Beast-form. I would have to live with it all. Sometimes, not knowing is a good thing.

I shoved stakes into my hair, belted on a robe that had come with the house, and went barefooted to the kitchen. Beneath the robe, I wore the black silk wisps given to me by Deon. I wouldn’t have thought the spandex would stay in place or be the slightest bit comfortable, but they were, moving when I moved. I was going to hate admitting that to him. He’d gloat.

Evangelina was in the kitchen, drinking her whisky straight tonight, no ice, and humming a tune, her long red hair unbound and swinging as she danced to soft music, something Celtic and wild, with drums and trilling flute. She had lit scented candles and they fluttered as she moved, uncomfortably like the images in my dream, but much better smelling.

In the candlelight, Evangelina’s hair looked darker red than Molly’s, with streaks of rich brown in it, and she seemed to emit a soft reddish glow as she danced through the room, like a warm aura. She usually wore staid business suits but tonight Mol’s eldest sister was wearing a loose floral dress that swayed with her dancing and when she looked up at me she grinned and lifted the glass in a silent toast. The grin and the toast were surprising enough, as Evangelina didn’t exactly approve of the motorcycle mama her sister liked so much, but when she hooked her arm through mine and pulled me into her dance, I was more than surprised.

In my shock, my feet took their time finding balance and rhythm but three awkward steps later I compensated and stepped into the beat; I didn’t have a choice, it was dance or fall down. As soon as I was moving, Evangelina let go and swayed around the rectangular table and chairs. I stopped dancing but a half smile pulled at my face and some of the horror that still clung to me from the dream eased away, pushed back by her joy and her half drunkenness. Maybe it was a spell, an enchantment fashioned out of her laughter and the warm scent of whisky, but whatever it was, it eased the melancholy that was riding deep in my soul, the misery of the dream that was really much more. I didn’t like magic not my own, but this I welcomed. It was ... healing. I said, “It was a good day at the negotiations, I take it?”

When she rocked back her head and raised her arms in what might have been a victory dance, I smiled, seeing this stern, conservative woman so carefree. Evangelina was the eldest of the Everheart sisters, a decade older than I was, never married, fierce as a warrior, like Boadicea, the Celt warrior woman. She was also a businesswoman, logical, determined, judgmental, yet able to see a situation from all sides. I was scared to death of her. But I’d agreed to let her stay here because Molly had asked. I do a lot because Molly asks.

Evangelina and the council of New Orleans witches were in negotiations with a delegation from the vamp council about three things: their rights, safety, and legal compensation for the loss of their young to a nutso vamp who had killed witch children for decades as part of dark magic ceremonies, the same ones that had left me keeping a black magic, pink diamond in my safe. It made me feel good to see her so happy when she had such a dark job.

I opened the fridge and twisted the top from a golden wheat beer. Evangelina took a long slow mouthful of her whisky and smacked her lips when she finally swallowed. “Things went exceptionally well today. Yes, they did. They went well because George Dumas likes you.” I nearly dropped the bottle, a fragile laugh skittering up from my belly. My brittle calm shattering. “And I think you like him too.” She laughed at whatever she saw on my face. “A lot. And Molly agrees with me.”

But there was something dark in her eyes that said that mutual attraction—no matter that it hadn’t been acted upon—was a bad and dangerous thing.

“George is ...” I stopped, sipped my beer, thinking. “George is good. A great guy. I’d have snapped him up in a heartbeat, once upon a time. But he belongs to Leo, heart and blood, and—” I stopped and sipped again, hiding my grin. I’d almost said “and big-cats don’t share well.” I settled on, “I don’t share.” Beast huffed with laughter, rolled over in my mind, paws under her chin, and closed her eyes.

Evangelina pointed to a chair and I sat. She had found some good china, so delicate the light seemed to illuminate the plate from inside, old, if the patina didn’t lie. And real silver. The beer looked out of place on the table and I set it aside. She poured me ice water and opened the oven. An oh-my-God scent boiled out, beef and black pepper. Hot potatoes. Broccoli steamed on the stove. My three-star-chef guest put food on my plate worthy of a king. There was sour cream and cheese and bacon bits in the double-baked potatoes, hot bacon dressing on the spinach salad and poured over the broccoli, and I breathed in and sighed with total contentment. Evangelina laughed softly and sat across from me. Murmured a blessing. I didn’t think she worshipped the same god I did, but I didn’t object. I just added a silent one. And dug in.

About halfway through I looked at Evangelina’s plate. It was mostly salad, herbed eggs, and an egg custard. “What are you wearing tonight?” she asked. “I’ve seen your closet and you only have a few things.”

“You’ve seen my closet?”

“You would rather I hired a housekeeper? Or let Deon clean?”

“Oh, heck no.”

Evangelina chuckled and ate some spinach. Without bacon on it. Ick.

“I have orders to wear the one with the sparkly stuff on wide lapels.”

We indulged in girl talk over the rest of the meal, a totally weird experience to be so chatty with Molly’s dragon-lady sister. She poured a dessert tea, tiramisu flavored, and served little bowls of an iced confection with shaved mint on top. It was heaven. And it settled me some way I hadn’t expected, leaving me refreshed and calm for the night’s work.