Skinwalker

CHAPTER 21 The Lord of the Manor

I stood just inside the front door, the window where the rogue entered to my left. A trail of blood splatters marked the wall from the window for six feet, evidence that he’d wounded himself badly on the glass. It was the kind of splatter arterial blood makes, pulsing sprays, arcs that dribbled down the wall. Ten feet inside the door was a blood-drenched leather recliner where a man had once sat. His body had molded the chair to his form; now blood pooled in the depression. It still looked damp, tacky to the touch. There were two slippers on the floor under the foot-rest, which was up, the back of the chair pushed nearly flat, facing the TV.

The man, or what was left of him, was in several pieces. His torso, the largest chunk, was beside the chair, as if he had been pulled to the floor after the kill and feasted upon. The abdomen was gone, all the way to the spine, the pelvic bones exposed. The chest cavity was nearly as clean, ribs ripped up and out of the way, internal organs missing.

I felt gorge rise, a sick reaction to the butchery. I had slaughtered rogue vamps. I had taken down prey with Beast, so blood and butchery weren’t foreign. However, even with that experience, this level of wanton carnage was hard to take.

Beast rose to the surface, taking me over with shocking swiftness. Holding me down, seeing through my eyes, she studied the kill from a predator’s viewpoint. She focused intently on the scene. She parted my lips slightly, so she could pull in the scents, memorizing, breaking them down into their individual protein structures. Learning. Blood, feces, urine, all human. Blood from the liver-eater, rank and foul, old death and rot. And blood from something else. From what the rogue became in the process of taking on the form of the male victim. Some other scent, nearly familiar, tantalizing. Totally free from rot.

It looked like the liver-eater had taken the body apart by brute force, not the way hungry predators ate in the wild. In nature, a predator ate the soft tissue first: internal organs, fat, large muscle mass of buttocks and thighs. Later, feasting down to connective tissue. Finally, tearing at tendons and cartilage, separating limbs one by one.

Hard to tear ribs loose. Usually eat upward from abdomen, then tear ribs apart to gnaw later, or give to cubs to train to eat meat.

We stared. The head was against the wall to the hallway. He still had a thatch of short red hair on his scalp. His face had been eaten away, along with tongue and eyes. The empty cavity of the brain was visible through the sockets, yet the jaw was still attached. I understood from Beast that big cats got at the brain later too. After the soft tissue and jaw were long gone.

I spotted a leg and an arm under the kitchen table, well gnawed. The left leg was in the hallway. Well, two left legs were in the hallway, along with other parts of victim number two. I remembered the thumps I had heard from the house while in raptor form. The sounds made when a body was being pulled apart, tossed around, and consumed?

I became aware of Jodi watching me. I blinked Beast back down and closed my mouth, hoping I hadn’t slurped air across the roof of my mouth like Beast did. I schooled my face into disgust. “This is the . . .” I let my words trail off as if shocked. Beast found that amusing. “This looks like a bunch of animals got to them.”

“Yeah,” Jodi said shortly. “That’s what we thought.”

“Are you bringing in dogs?” I asked. I was curious how trained scent-tracking dogs might react to the smells.

“Tomorrow. I wanted them today but they’re on a bank robbery with shooting victims.”

I nodded. “What did the psy-meter show?”

Jodi unclipped the device from her belt and switched it on, holding it to the room. The dial went wild, the needle flipping up and down, unable to settle. The clicking of the meter, so like a Geiger counter, was staccato and fast. Jodi swept the meter to me, and though it slowed, it was still a much higher psy reading than any human would give. I looked at the readout, amused. I had known it was only a matter of time before she measured me against the background psy levels of the room. “Wanting to make sure I’m not the rogue?”

“Something like that,” she said, clicking off the meter. “This place reeks of leftover magic.”

Yeah, it did. I had seen enough. I backed out of the house to the front porch, took off my PPEs and shoved them into the biohazard container. It and its bloody contents would go to the crime lab to be checked for trace, especially the paper shoes, which could have picked up important hairs or fibers. Then they would be destroyed. I hadn’t stepped in blood, but I could smell it on me, in my hair, in my clothes, and beneath it all, the rot-stink of the liver-eater. The stench roiled around in me like oily sludge.

True dark had fallen. Security lights attracted swarms of insects, neighborhood windows bathed the night with light. The neighbors were inside, behind their closed, locked doors and windows. Lot of good that does a family if a liver-eater wants in.

Bike roaring, I let my hair blow in the wind, trying to clear the stench out of my nostrils, out of my clothes. I was halfway home when I passed a grocery store just off of 90 and pulled over. I bought a stack of steaks and two six-packs of beer, ignoring the stares of the other customers. I had seen my reflection in the dark windows upon entering. I looked pretty rough, a biker chick, attitude on steroids. Outside, the groceries stored in the saddlebags, I finally strapped on my helmet and kick-started the bike. It spluttered and coughed but eventually turned over. I really had to find time to do a little bike maintenance.

Inside Katie’s freebie house, I dropped my clothes where I stood, still smelling the blood. To get it off of me, I took a long shower, standing under the hot water, letting it scald me. I was spending a lot of time in the shower. Too much. There was something almost religious about that, about the need to be cleansed. Afterward, I ate two steaks. Very very rare. With a couple of locally brewed beers. Louisiana beer was really good. I’d miss it when I left.

Near ten p.m., I dressed, tucked a few crosses into my clothes, twisted my hair into a sloppy bun, and secured it with three stakes. Not expecting trouble. But just in case. Suitably dressed, I slid my feet into the new sandals and jumped the fence to Katie’s. Jumping fences in sandals is fine, but the landings can be less than graceful. I was glad the camera was gone.

I stalked around Katie’s, checking windows and doors for security. Like most old houses in the South, it had been built for airflow, not safety. A system had been retrofitted, not that it had done much good. Last time, the rogue had come through the back door. Next time, he might pick a window on the second story. But why did the alarm not go off? Was it because the security system was switched off during business hours? Or did the liver-eater have a key? Or know how to disarm the system? Access. Like Leo had to my house. Could the liver-eater be Leo . . . ? No. Leo was at Katie’s gathering.

Knocking on the back door, holding the doorbell down, I waited for Troll. I remembered my promise to tell Jodi if I ever saw a troll. I had a feeling that nicknames didn’t count, and that she wouldn’t be amused at my whimsy. I let the buzzer go when he opened the door.

Troll looked better, had more color in his face. Someone had given him some vamp blood to help him heal this fast, and Katie wasn’t in shape to offer it. I stepped inside, drawing in the air. I detected Leo. He was here, along with Bruiser and another vamp. They had been here long enough to saturate the place with their scents.

“What’s Leo doing here?” Not that I had to ask. He had been feeding. I could smell fresh blood on the air too.

“You have to tell me how you do that someday—know who’s here and who’s not.” When I didn’t rise to the bait, he said, “He came to feed Miz A and Bliss and me.”

Something like shame swept through me. Bliss. She had been injured while under my protection, attacked by a vamp and bled nearly dry. And I had gone racing off after the culprit while the victim still needed care. I was an idiot. “How is she? And how are you?”

He gestured me toward Katie’s office. “Better now. Bliss has had a hard time recuperating. She needs blood support to continue healing, and with Katie on holiday . . .”

Holiday? Is that what they’re calling it? “And you called Leo.”

“No. Leo came on his own.”

“Oh?” That surprised me.

“Leo brought her home the night she was attacked in his club. He was pulling up to the Mojo when the attack took place.”

Leo probably saw me leave the club, moving with Beast speed. Combined with the taste he took when he healed my arm, he should have known what I was, and he hadn’t. Of course I now knew less about what I was. A skinwalker? Accidental practitioner of black magic? Troll sat down, releasing a pent breath, part exhaustion, part melancholy.

“You cleaned up,” I said, looking around the office. “It looks new.” I remembered the morning the liver-eater had attacked Katie. There had been a fair amount of blood. Not as much as at the Broussards’, the house where Ken and Rose got digested, but enough. I smelled strong cleansers on the air. An air filter hummed in the corner. A big one.

Troll flipped a limp hand. “Lot of experience cleaning up blood.”

I figured he did, living in a whorehouse with a vamp. But I didn’t say it. I was getting better at controlling my natural rude instincts. “How’re the girls?”

“Fine. A couple were patched up at the hospital after the attack, and Leo fed them too. They’re right as rain, now.”

“And Miz A?” In an overlay of snapshot images, I remembered the blood and the extent of the housekeeper’s wounds. She had lost a lot of blood and a good portion of deltoid and other upper arm muscles.

Troll started to answer, but something changed behind his eyes, a flitting of reconsideration. “She’s better. Still with us.” It didn’t smell like a lie, but the little telltale wrinkles around Troll’s eyes suggested that he wasn’t telling the complete truth either.

Better? Still with us? Had she been close to death? Drained enough to be turned? Was Miz A chained in the basement of Leo’s house, a mindless bloodsucking machine? I almost asked. I opened my mouth to ask. And Beast caught the flavor of unfamiliar vamp. Close.

I whirled. Saw a blur of vamp speed. Whipped out a cross. Stamped my leg behind its knee. Twisted. Punched with my left hand, holding the cross. I struck it. Knocked it off balance. Rode it down. Trace of scorched vamp flesh.

Beast screamed. I ripped away the cross. Brought it down. An inch from her face. She howled and swiveled away. Her fangs were out. There was fresh blood on her mouth. It carried the scent of Indigo. The little blonde with blue eyes. I pulled a stake. A hand gripped my arm with steel strength. It stopped me. I growled, scenting Leo.

“Not her, little vampire killer,” he purred. “She is mine. George.”

Bruiser, moving faster than a human, knelt at the vamp’s head and pushed my cross away. He slid his hands under the vamp’s shoulders and pulled. Inside me, Beast slunk down into a crouch, watching as Bruiser removed the vamp. Amitee. Leo’s soon-to-be daughter-in-law. Leo was out . . . drinking . . . with his son’s fiancée. Now that was just sick. . . .

Then . . . had the vamp been at Katie’s gathering? I didn’t remember seeing her. Could a male liver-eater take a female form? I couldn’t take a male’s. I didn’t think it was possible, but I was unlearning a lot of impossibilities.

I let Leo lift me to my feet, like a dance step. He lifted my arm, hand at my hip, turning my body, my feet following, across the vamp’s body beneath me, three steps into Katie’s office. Amitee took off fast. Nearly getting staked musta made her itchy.

Leo’s eyes locked mine as we moved, dark and old, bled black, but controlled. Utterly controlled. Beast liked it. Beast liked the power that flowed over us like a warm hand. “Put that away, if you please,” Leo said, his face so close his breath brushed my/our cheeks. No smell of fresh blood on him. He hadn’t fed off the girls.

My heart pounded, the hard thump of danger, instant fighting, and faster cessation. I forced down adrenaline, fought to control the shakes quivering along my arms and legs; draped the cross around my head; tucked it under my clothes. I pulled my hand free and stuck the stake into my hair. I wasn’t even sure why I was following his requests. I could feel him pushing at me, testing the parameters of my mind, but this didn’t feel like vamp mesmerization. Not exactly. But there was Beast, telling me to let him have his way for now. Beast, testing the waters for something I couldn’t even imagine. “She’d been feeding. I want to see Indigo. Now,” I said, still parsing the scents.

“Tom, would you please ask Indigo to join us,” Leo said.

Tom. Troll. Right. I pushed Beast farther down. She let me, amused. Beast was playing, though I didn’t know if she toyed with Leo or with me. Or with both of us.

Leo led me to the sofa and I sat where he placed me, in the corner, one knee up, sandal in the seat. One arm along the back, so I could push up and over fast if needed. Leo sat on a tall stool near the bar. He was wearing a suit. Tie. Fancy shoes. We waited. Moments later, I heard footsteps clattering down the stairs: heels, one pair; soft-soled shoes, also one pair, that gait Troll’s. Indigo’s voice, giggly, happy. I began to relax and felt my shoulders droop. Felt Leo’s eyes on me when they did. Speculative.

Indigo came through the doorway, her big blue eyes blinking at the change in light. She saw Leo and she smiled. Saw me and stopped. I inspected her, not hiding my perusal. She looked fine, except for tiny dots from a recent feeding. They were closed, nearly healed. No torn throat, just nice clean punctures, the flesh properly treated so the wounds would constrict, the sign of a vamp in control of herself. Then why had Amitee attacked me? Troll stopped behind Indigo, standing framed in the doorway.

“The vamp who fed on you tonight,” I said. “Is she a regular?”

Indigo raised a hand and her fingers brushed across her throat. A smile played across her mouth, lighting her eyes. Sexual awareness, pleasure, and something more. Fondness. I could tell she liked Amitee even before she spoke, answering more than I had asked. “She’s nice. She don’t”—she glanced at Leo—“doesn’t—ask for weird sh—weird stuff. She pays well, tips better, and treats me like a lady.” Her eyes and face went sly and taunting, as if hoping to shock. “A girl likes a little romance sometimes, you know?”

I didn’t react, which seemed to disappoint her. “Thank you, Indigo,” I said, polite.

“I got a client, at the Iberville,” she said to Leo. “You want me to take a cab?”

That caught my attention. Why was Indigo asking Leo about business? Wouldn’t Troll take over for Katie? I glanced at the doorway. Troll was standing stiffly in the shadows, his face a mask. Something was hinky here.

“Until the rogue is brought down, my driver will deliver you all to your assignations,” Leo said. “Let George know when you will want the car. He’ll make arrangements.”

Troll looked down. He was not a happy troll. I grinned at my humor. When Leo raised a brow at my amusement, I waved it away. I had a job to do, and then I was outta here. I was so not getting into vamp politics. As long as I got paid. And as long as they didn’t get me killed.

Indigo said thank you and Leo dismissed her. Actually dismissed her. Like a king or something. He said, “You may be dismissed.” I didn’t bother to hide my snort or the wider grin at that one. Leo did his brow-lift thing. The man was so smooth he wouldn’t slide on an oil slick. He looked at Troll standing in the shadows. “Tell Ipsita to meet me at the door in an hour.” Troll didn’t look happy, but he nodded.

Ipsita was the South Asian girl, delicate as a rosebud, the girl who looked like she might be twelve. She roused my protective instincts. Knowing she was of legal age didn’t help me to see her differently, and the idea of her going on a “date” with an old vamp made me grind my molars. And anyway, why is Leo making off with one of Katie’s girls? I didn’t realize I had spoken that last part aloud until they all turned and looked at me. Crap. Even Indigo stuck her head back in, a look of surprise and puzzlement on her face.

In for a penny . . . “It seems to me that until Katie gets back, Tr—Tom should be in charge.” I looked at Troll. “Does Katie have legal papers written up about who takes over if she is”—stuck in a coffin in a pool of vamp blood?—“indisposed?”

Leo lifted his head. “I am Katie’s master. It is fitting that I assume command for her while she is unwell.”

“Maybe in the Dark Ages, but not in the United States and not now.” So much for me not getting into vamp politics. “Tom? Where does Katie keep her legal papers?”

He entered, keeping well away from Leo, and knelt at Katie’s desk. Using a small key, he unlocked a file cabinet cleverly tucked against the wall, in a shadow. Papers rustled, the silence charged with something volatile, explosive. Indigo disappeared. Smart girl. I wasn’t so wise, however. I stuck around to see what happened to the hornet’s nest I was currently kicking. A moment later Troll withdrew an expandable file and stood behind the desk, the folder in both hands, indecisive. Okay, scared to death. I could smell his fear.

I got up from the spot where Leo had placed me, which suddenly bothered me a lot more than it had, took the folder, and centered it on the desktop. I opened it. “Which ones?” I asked. Troll reached around me and tapped a tab about midway back. I couldn’t read the tab’s print; it might have been French. I withdrew the papers and opened them, scanning the first five sheets of legal mumbo jumbo, not understanding what I saw even though it was in English, but using the time to think. Leo was old. Real old. Maybe even feudal-times old. Back when honor meant something. I held the pages out to Leo. “What does she want?”

I thought I heard Troll smother a laugh, but it could have been a cough. If Leo was an honorable man, he’d read the pages and follow the directions in them. If not, then he wasn’t honorable. Of course, the fact that he wasn’t a man at all might complicate things.

Leo went still, that marble-statue stillness, not breathing, not blinking, not anything. It’s eerie and unsettling to watch, and it probably foreshadows danger of a very messy and bloody variety, but then, my understanding of sane vamps was still limited, and I had three stakes in my bun and a nice selection of crosses on my person. Leo went on not moving. The silence went from unsettling to unnatural, to eerie, creepy, and then scary. His pheromones were pure rage. Behind me, Troll’s breathing was unsteady; his heart beat too fast. The chemical composition of his sweat was bitter; Beast recognized the smell as death terrors. Finally, Leo pulled in a sharp breath. I nearly jumped. Beast flexed her claws. Troll stopped breathing altogether.

Leo slid across the room in a predatory slither, his eyes bled totally black with contained fury. He took the papers and read. Flipped pages. Read some more. He raised his eyes and looked from me to Tom and back again. “Katie has placed her holdings into Tom’s hands.” When he spoke, his words were precise, his voice neutral, so lacking in emotion it might have been an electronic, digitized voice—except for that vaguely European accent that would make starlets swoon.

“All of her accounts, properties, and assets are under his control, including this house and its employees. All business and employment checks are to be written and signed by him and cosigned by me. All have this legal proviso.” He switched his gaze to Tom. “You knew this?” Tom nodded, the motion of his head jerky. “And yet you chose not to inform me. Why is that?”

“I . . . I . . .”

“He needed you,” I said. “He needed your protection from the rogue for the girls, he needed your goodwill for Katie, and he needed your intercession with the vamp council. And he was grateful that you called the gathering and put her to earth.”

Tom swallowed noisily under Leo’s gaze. But the master of New Orleans slowly turned his eyes to me. “What do you know of gatherings and of one of us being put to earth?”

I shrugged. I wasn’t about to answer that one. He’d smell a lie. He wouldn’t believe the truth. Or he would believe it and think how handy it would be to have a skinwalker as a blood-slave. I wasn’t eager to fight him. Not now. If I had to go stake-to-fang with the blood-master of New Orleans, then I wanted my chain-mail collar, studded clothes, and plenty of prep time.

“So,” I said. “Back to the question that started all this. What are you doing making off with one of Katie’s girls? Is she a date, does she get paid for her services, or are you pulling the dark right of kings on her? Because in my opinion, that’s not gonna work for much longer.”

Suddenly, Leo seemed to find me amusing. He chuckled, handed Tom the legal papers, and took the seat I had vacated on the leather couch. He rested his arms across the back cushions, looking expansive, a lord in his domain. “And why should my rights change?”

“Simple. The courts in the United States are already looking at citizenship laws, slavery issues, and interpretation of legal statutes in light of a being with an expanded life span. Eventually, the ‘rights of a master’ ”—I made little quotation marks in the air with my fingers, just in case he missed the sarcasm in my voice—“will come under scrutiny. And they’ll be thrown out, as will the dark right of kings. No doubt about it.” Leo was looking at me, totally focused and unblinking, his mouth smiling, his eyes a deadly snake stare.

Snake poisons do not affect Beast, she reminded me, unconcerned.

“It seems smart for you to start adapting how you do business,” I continued, “altering things from the way you vamps did them a thousand years ago. Good-faith moves, to make any future court take notice that you’ve been changing with the times.”

“The term ‘vamp’ is insulting,” Leo said.

“Get used to it.” And why pick that one tiny part out of what I had been saying? I was tearing up his entire power structure and he gets his panties in a wad over the word “vamp”? I handed the papers to Troll. “I have work to do. Later, Troll.”

He nodded, a single shuddering move.

I was halfway out the door when Leo said, “My time with Ipsita is not by command.” I halted with my hands on either side of the doorjamb, and I didn’t turn around. “I have paid her usual commission, plus a tip, in advance, according to my standing arrangement with Katie. I require an escort to a social function tonight.”

I nodded when he finished speaking, trying to decide how to reply. I settled on, “I appreciate you telling me.” Then I pushed off with my toes and headed toward the back door.

“You are dismissed.” The words floated after me.

The Lord of the Manor just had to add that last bit in, didn’t he. But I could have sworn that he was laughing.