Skinwalker

CHAPTER 24 You should have come when I asked

Multiple emergency sirens sounded in the distance, each distinctive—several cop cars, at least one ambulance. Jodi had stopped yelling for Rick, though the line was still open and some of the siren sounds came through the cell, proving that Jodi was one of the cops nearing, tearing down Privateer Boulevard. Getting close.

“You’re in danger,” he mumbled. “From the vamps. I have to help you. . . .”

He seemed to know he was talking to me, so I nodded, tying an upholstered arm cover and a second drapery tie-back around his arm, the fibers deep in the wound, slowing the bleeding. I rose, standing over him, my feet to either side, his blood pooled beneath and in my thin-soled shoes, squishing with every shift of weight. Blood had soaked into my pants, wicking up like thin fingers. It was under my nails, in the creases of my hands, splattered up my arms. The bleeding at his chest had almost stopped, though I had a feeling it wasn’t because of my great bandages, but because he was nearly bled out. He looked half dead, yet was still breathing.

The cops were nearly here. I had to decide. Go or stay? If they found me with a bleeding cop, I was in trouble. If I took off and Rick remembered that I was here, I was in trouble. If Jodi had heard me while I applied dressings, I was in trouble. If I had left prints somewhere, I was in trouble. I wiped my fingerprints off of his phone, but people touched things all the time that they didn’t remember. No matter what I did, I wasn’t going to get the big meal I needed anytime soon. My stomach growled hard, cramping. I was light-headed. Blue lights flashed through the trees and bushes that covered the windows, growing closer. Decide! I told myself.

Beast does not run, Beast said to me, miffed that I hadn’t figured that out myself.

“Yeah,” I muttered. “Right.” I picked up the phone and spoke into it. “Anyone there?”

“Who is this?” Jodi demanded over the sound of sirens.

“Jane Yellowrock. Who is this? Jodi?”

“What are you doing on this call?”

“Saving a man’s life. What are you doing on it?”

“Stay put,” she said, all business, her tone cop-demanding.

Beast bristled. “Not going anywhere,” I said. Beast huffed with insult. “I see the lights. I’m going to the front door. Tell them not to shoot me.”

Jodi gave a creditable snarl and Beast went silent at the sound.

I stepped to the door and pushed open the screen, standing in the doorway with my hands raised high, open palms visible, if they could see them beneath the blood. The first two cars swept down the short cul-de-sac and swung into the drive. The next car and ambulance bumped into the yard, tires sinking into loamy soil, headlights bouncing up and down, over me. The car doors opened, revealing cops drawing weapons. Beast snarled in warning.

“Do not fire,” Jodi shouted, tumbling from her unmarked. “Repeat, do not fire! Don’t move, Yellowrock. Keep your hands where we can see them.” Like that hadn’t occurred to me.

Jodi and her shadow, Herbert, reached the small porch, Herbert’s hand on his gun butt, eagerness in his eyes. “He’s inside,” I said. “I did what I could for him but he’s in bad shape.”

Jodi pushed past me. Herbert said, “Looks to me like you mighta put him there.” Jodi cursed, I assumed at the sight of Rick. I stepped aside for two stout EMTs and their stretcher.

“He needs blood,” I said, my arms still overhead. “You guys carry units in this state?”

“No,” the fatter of the two said, setting down his gear. “But we got volume expanders and if he needs faster transport, the choppers all got blood.” He took a look at Rick and at the blood on the floor and swore.

“Call the chopper in,” Jodi said. “Get ’em here fast.”

“Yeah. You ain’t kidding,” he said, pulling his portable radio and making the call.

No one was watching me, so I put my arms down and stepped into the corner. The EMTs were fast, starting IV lines, taking blood pressure. Herbert was walking around, his thumbs in his belt, looking the place over. Jodi was talking to the medics, asking the kinds of questions a cop asked in the field, questions medical professionals had no answers for. Questions that cops asked when one of their own was injured in the line of duty. If I hadn’t already figured out that Rick was an undercover cop, that would have decided it. He was spying on the vamps for NOPD. Did Troll know his relative was a cop?

It occurred to me that I had no car here, no visible means of transportation. I’d have to lie about how I got here when they questioned me. I’d have to tell the cops that I arrived with Rick. Or walked. The first lie would be easily disproved, the second wasn’t likely. I really didn’t want to have to lie to Jodi, especially such a bad lie. When Herbert’s back was turned, I casually slipped out of the house. As soon as the shadows covered me, I broke into a dead run.

I called for a Bluebird Cab on my cell, and was lucky that Rinaldo happened to be off from work. I didn’t expect to be lucky again, and so took extra precautions when I stripped and rinsed my clothes in the bayou. Squatting naked on the bank not far from Fisherman Boulevard Bridge, I was totally exposed in the moonlight, had anyone awake been looking this way instead of toward the flashing lights. I heard several neighbors talking and spotted them, standing on front porches and in the road, not getting closer to the action, but not letting it out of their sights either. I hoped the distraction would keep them from noticing me.

Mosquitoes nipped at me as I worked to get the blood out, and I hoped I was successful before I was drained by insects or attracted every gator within ten miles. When moonlight assured me that my clothes and shoes were mostly blood free, I re-dressed. Dripping, I jogged up Privateer Boulevard in my squishy shoes, keeping to shadows, watching for my cab, watching for anyone who might spot me and then report me to the cops. I was hungry, shaky, sticky with blood and sweat, stinking of bayou, and hot, even with the wet clothing.

I crossed Fisherman Boulevard and was almost back to the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park, my breathing coming harder than I expected, my stomach cramping as if Beast had her claws in me, before I spotted Rinaldo’s cab. I flagged him down and waited, bent over at the waist, huffing and trying to control my hunger before I bit into him for a quick snack. Beast thought that was amusing and sent me images of a big cat attacking from the back of a cab.

“You look like shit, you do,” he said, leaning out the open window, one arm on the door.

I huffed a laugh and tried to stand. My back wanted to spasm, and my legs were trembling. “And you’re a sweet talker, Rinaldo.”

“That what my wife tell me,” he said, sounding increasingly Cajun the better he got to know me. “Lemme guess. You want stop at nearest fast-food joint for half dozen burger and three or two shake.”

“Sounds delicious.” I made it to the car. “I’m wet. Where do you want me to sit?”

“Up front fine. I got towel. What you do, go for a bayou swim? There gator in there, you know.”

I eased into the car and quickly shut the door so the interior lights couldn’t pick out the tinge of bloody red all through my clothes. I rested my head back and sighed, smoothing the edges of the towel to catch the spreading damp. “Home. Food. And not in that order,” I said. Overhead, the moon passed behind clouds, and thunder rumbled in the distance.

Rinaldo made a three-point turn. “Best burgers in state coming up. And boudin balls.”

“I’m not eating anything’s balls,” I said, closing my eyes.

For some reason Rinaldo thought that was funny.

I remembered what they were as soon as I bit into a fried boudin ball—spicy meat and sticky rice, shaped into a ball and fried in lard. They were totally wonderful; I had six, each as big as my fist, and only two double burgers. And two large shakes, one order of fully loaded fries with chili and cheese, and two fried apple pies. I treated Rinaldo to a burger and shake, and let him watch me eat as he drove. He was fascinated.

“Where you keep all that food?”

“I didn’t eat dinner tonight,” I said, shrugging, shoving a handful of fries into my mouth and licking the chili off my fingers. “Fast metabolism.”

“Like a damn race car, you is.”

I chuckled and drained one of the shakes through a straw with a long slurp of satisfaction.

Rinaldo dropped me off down the street from my house and I walked the rest of the way, carrying his towel. I had insisted that I be allowed to wash it for him, taking refuge in manners when I really just wanted to keep him from seeing the thin, washed-out blood soaked into it. He charged me an arm and a leg for the after-midnight fare, cash, and I paid it without demur. I also tipped him well, wanting to keep my safe transportation happy. As it was, if Jodi ever discovered and questioned him, Rinaldo would provide a lot of unusual information to the suspicious cop.

When I got inside, I showered off fully clothed, hung up the wet things, and re-dressed in vamp-hunting garb, human style. I had gotten a good look at the rogue vamp in his nonstinky form and I now knew enough to go hunting. The vamp that didn’t stink had been painted on a mural once, decades ago. I recognized him from the naked vamps partying in the mural at Arceneau clan house—Grégoire, blood-master of Clan Arceneau, lately traveling in Europe.

When I left the house, my shotgun was slung over my back, the Benelli still loaded with the hand-packed silver-fléchette rounds. I carried a selection of silver crosses in my belt, which would be hidden under my leather jacket when I zipped it up, and stakes in loops at my jeans-clad thighs. I hooked the chain-mail collar over the necklace of panther claws and bones, the gold nugget necklace well secured. If I had to change again tonight, I wanted all the help I could get. Studded leather gloves protected my hands, steel-toed boots were laced up my legs. Vamp-killers were strapped in leather sheaths at waist and thighs. My hair was tightly braided in a long plait, close to my head and tucked under a skullcap. No vamp would be able to grab me by the hair during a fight. Into pockets went extras: extra crosses, a vial of baptismal water—not that I knew yet how it worked against vamps, but in a pinch I was willing to try it—a camera for proof of death, and extra ammo.

My cell rang five times while I dressed, all the calls from Jodi. Her voice mails went from nasty to threatening. The last thing I grabbed was the wooden box of Molly’s witchy tricks from the top shelf. It was slightly dusty, free of fingerprints, proof that no one had touched the box through the obfuscation spell on it. I unlatched it and studied the charms: petrified wood disks hand-carved in bas-relief, scenes of the cross with a dead Jesus on them. I dropped them down my shirt collar; they slid down my belly to rest against my skin at my jeans.

This time when the cell rang, it was Molly’s number. “Molly,” I said, heading out the door. “It’s the middle of the night. What’s wrong?”

“You opened the spell box,” she said. I thought about that for a span of heartbeats. Before I could reply, she added, “Be careful.” And hung up.

I chuckled. “I’ll do that.” I kick-started the bike and took off. I was two blocks away, the bike roaring beneath me, when the first marked cruiser turned down the street, lights flashing, but sirens silent. I had gotten away just in time.

Even with the leather jacket unzipped and the gloves off, even at fifty miles an hour, the wind wasn’t cooling. It was wet with unspent rain, heavy with fog, the artificial breeze I created as I rode smelling sour and ripe. I was sweating like a ditchdigger, trickles running into my hairline, under the skullcap, streams damping the silk shirt against my skin, pulling with every movement under the vest. I was so hot I was pretty sure I was melting, and the charms resting against my skin added to the sense of sweltering itchiness. As I sweated and drove, I dialed Jodi.

“Richoux,” she answered. “Where the hell are you, Yellowrock?”

“Out and about. How’s Rick?”

“Dying,” she said, the single word brutal.

I felt a chill settle on me, like the chill of death, cooling the sweat that smeared my skin. I remembered the tattoos. I remembered his worry that I was in danger. “How bad?”

“They flew him to Tulane Medical. He’s in surgery. They’ve given him four units of blood and most of that is on the floor. Where the fuck are you?”

I slowed and wheeled the bike off the road. Came to a stop and killed the engine. Into the phone I said, “I’m sending help. Tell the docs.”

“Tell them what?”

I hit END and speed-dialed another number. Bruiser didn’t answer. Leo, the head of the vamp council of New Orleans, picked up his own phone. “Jane.”

I said, “I need a favor.”

“And what do you trade for this favor?”

Beast growled. Leo, hearing the sound, chuckled. I thought fast. I had only one thing the blood-master of the city wanted. Crap. “You still want a taste of me?” I asked, hearing a tremor in my voice. Hating it. Knowing that Leo could hear it too.

“I want to drink of you in every way,” Leo Pellissier said, his voice dropping into spellbind timbre.

I swallowed at the images his voice brought to mind, and managed to say, “No way. But . . .” I took a breath, not quite sure what I was promising. “I need a favor. And I’ll trade a blood meal for it if I have to.”

There was total silence for just an instant. Sarcasm lining each word, Leo said, “What a lovely proposal. I can take an unwilling Valkyrie to sip upon, without true blood exchange, without a true joining, in barter for an unnamed favor. No.”

Blood exchange? True joining? What were they? I did not have time for this. “Look, you sorry, bloodsucking bastard,” I ground out. “Rick LaFleur is dying in surgery at Tulane Medical from a rogue attack. He needs vamp blood. What do I have to trade to get it for him?”

“You should have said so. George,” Leo said, his mouth no longer at the phone. “The car. Now!” The line clicked off.

I started to retort before I realized he was gone. I looked at the phone with its blinking CALL DISCONNECTED notice. “So, am I your dinner or not?” I asked it. Beast hacked with laughter. “Not funny,” I said to her. She just laughed harder. Beast has a weird sense of humor.

I took St. Charles Avenue, tooled in to the Garden District, and entered on Third Street. I stopped three blocks in, zipped up, and went the rest of the way on foot. A gentle rain began to fall as I walked, pattering on the trees overhead, wetting the street where the canopy of leaves parted to reveal the cloud-covered sky. A dog barked inside a house, demanding, not alerting, probably needing to go outside to do his business. Thunder sounded, close now. My feet were almost silent on the street. Music and TV sounds were tinny, so muffled no human would have heard them. Air conditioners and electric wires whooshed and sizzled. Beast was on full alert, energy humming in my veins, my senses ratcheted up.

The house where I had visited with the blood-servant twins was palely lit, the light of candles or maybe lamps flickering between closed window draperies. I was certain whom I had seen in the moments the liver-eater’s gaze and mine were locked, while he shifted. The Cherokee I had expected, but Grégoire was a huge surprise.

I had been in Clan Arceneau’s house and I knew that no rotting liver-eater was using the premises as a lair, but someone there would know where he was. I stopped on the walkway, only now realizing that the iron gates were open and no one had come to the door . . . and the drapes were closed. Drapes closed at night seemed backward. Something wasn’t right. Anxiety raced down my spine on little spider feet. Pausing, I stood in deep shadow, taking in the scents, letting my eyes adjust. The wrought-iron fence glinted in the streetlights like wet blood. The pattern of fleur-de-lis was like the pattern on Katie’s grillwork at the freebie house, and oddly like the brand on Katie’s arm. I wondered when some distant master of Clan Arceneau had turned a skinwalker. And how soon after that he had met his demise, to be replaced by the walker. And if anyone in his clan knew that Grégoire had gone rogue. Useless questions.

I lifted my face to the night, drawing the air over my tongue and through my nose, smelling, tasting the pheromones and subtle chemicals that permeated the night. Same as before. Chemical fertilizers, traces of yappy-dog and house-cat urine and stool, weed killer, dried cow manure, exhaust, rubber tires, rain, oil on the streets. And faintly, very faintly, the smell of the liver-eater when he wasn’t all rotten and stinky. Well. How about that.

I dialed Leo. When he answered, I said, “I’m at Clan Arceneau. Turn off the house alarms.”

“What?” he said, his voice haughty and offended, traffic noises in the background.

“Do it. Now. You got one minute.” I closed the phone, turned it off, and tucked it into a pocket, hoping he or Bruiser would do what I needed. Finding my timing technique amusing, I counted, “One Mississippi. Two Mississippi . . .”

Sixty seconds later, I walked up the front walk, unstrapping the Benelli, not that I intended to fire unless I had to. Collateral damage, possibly killing a twin or another human blood-servant, would mean a prison sentence unless I could prove self-defense. My contract only covered me for accidentally or purposefully killing vamps helping the rogue. I checked the vamp-killers in their sheaths, settling the stakes as I walked. I pulled a cross, one of inlaid silver and wood. On the wide front porch, I rang the bell. Nothing like a frontal approach.

I heard footsteps inside, close together, unsteady, like an aged, human servant. Where the heck were the twins? I remembered the sight of the skull in the underground lair. The liver-eater had eaten at least one blood-servant. Why not others? I felt sick. I liked the twins.

When the footsteps inside paused, I reared back and kicked the door, just over the dead bolt. The bolt held, but the dry wood around it gave, a harsh, splintered sound. The servant screeched. An alarm went off. And was silenced. Cold air rushed out at me like a blessing, cooling my face. But the servant was still screaming.

I turned to the cringing, wailing human. She looked like she was two hundred years old, her face drawn and wrinkled, skin hanging like swags of old cloth from her jaw. “I’m not here for you,” I said. Her screams didn’t abate. She raised a hand. It held a derringer.

I knocked the little gun away with a swift slap of the cross, metal to metal clicking hard. Before it hit the floor, I grabbed her shoulder and shook her, holding the cross in front of her eyes, dragging her to the mural. This was not going like I expected. I ground out, “Shut. Up.”

She did, her eyes on the cross. I pointed at a man in the mural. “Who?” When she looked puzzled, I said again, pointing to the blond man who looked like he was fifteen when he was turned. Wanting to make sure, to confirm my identification. “Who is he?”

“Grégoire. Blood-master to Clan Arceneau.” Her voice wavered.

“Where’s his lair?” I growled, Beast bleeding into my eyes.

“No.” Her shoulders went back; her chin rose. “Never.” It occurred to me that she saw a lot worse than a mountain lion in the eyes of her bosses.

Before I could respond, I heard from the stairs, “Correen?” The voice was grating, sexless. Beast flared through me, into my limbs. I raced down the hall and up the stairs toward the sound, touching the charms to make sure they were still in place. I reached the second story.

“Correen?” The voice sounded weak. Scared. Dominique, the blonde who had commanded me to call on her, tottered from a bedroom, a white nightgown fluttering around her feet. Metal bracelets clinked as she moved. The cross in my hand flared with vicious light. Dominique cringed, hissed, her fangs falling forward. I ran toward her. She wrenched back, her feet landing wrong. Falling, she hit the floor, her wrist catching her weight with a loud snap. Her face twisted into a grimace and she turned her eyes from the cross, holding up a protective hand. “No,” she said. “Put it away. Please.”

“Not yet. Where is he? Where is the rogue?”

She cradled her broken wrist, the hand sticking out at an odd angle. “No. I can’t.”

“You don’t have much choice,” I said, breathing in. “I can smell him. He’s been here. The vamp council gave me authority to kill you without reprisal for harboring him.” Beast rose higher, snarling.

“Harboring him?” She laughed, a wretched gurgling sound, hysterical and despondent all at once. Full of . . . despair? Vamps can feel despair? Dominique turned her face up to me. She was crying bloody, watery tears, trailing down a face so pale that her skin looked transparent. “I haven’t been harboring him. None of us have. We’re his prisoners,” she spat. “You should have come when I asked.”

She held up a foot, displaying a shackle around her ankle. The flesh beneath it was red and swollen, blistered with pustules, torn skin seeping watery blood that made little ssssing sounds as it cauterized against the silver metal. The clinking I had thought was bracelets was a silver anklet, binding Dominique.

I knelt and examined her. She was pale and bloodless. Her skin was faintly yellow, like brittle parchment, and her eyes were hollowed with purple smudges. Her neck showed repeated vamp bites, the skin torn and ridged with scar tissue. She had been bled, often and without recourse to enough blood to restore her. Worse . . . I hadn’t known vamps could break bones. “The silver,” I guessed. “It’s poisoning you.”

“Yes. Me. Three others of my clan held prisoner here.”

I pivoted on one knee and looked back into the hallway. At each doorway stood a vamp wearing nightclothes, looking haggard. I inserted the silver cross inside my leather jacket. Dominique sighed with relief and dropped her head to the floral carpet. “Your human servants aren’t feeding you?” I asked. “Where are the twins? Why don’t they just let you go?”

“Our young blood-servants were bled and taken away. I don’t know if any survive. The ones remaining are old, their parents, or even great-grandparents, unable to fight, unable to help us for fear that their loved ones yet live and will be killed. And we cannot feed while exposed to silver. The poison taints the feeding.” She tilted her head to see the man across the hall from her. “He’s taking so much. There isn’t . . .” She turned back to me, her head moving slowly on the stalk of her neck. An emptiness spread across her features, and I recognized a despondency so heavy it looked like death. A deep, daunting desolation. “There isn’t enough blood in the world for him. Not even Mithran blood. And if he takes more from us, we fear we will rise rogue, that the old tales will be borne out in our flesh.” Her eyes closed and she whispered, “Already each of us takes far too long to find our own sanity at sunset.”

I reached for her shackle. “I can take care of—” Her eyes shot from my face to my neck; my skin went sweat slick. The magic charms instantly grew hot against my stomach, burning in the presence of the danger presented by a hungry vamp. I fought the urge to move away in fear. “If I free you, can you control yourself enough not to drain me dry?”

The man across the hall chuckled. “If you set her free, she will rip out your throat in joy. We all would.” He sniffed the air, raising his head, licking his lips. “I remember your scent from the Pellissier party. Not quite human. Tasty.”

“So much for being kind,” I said. I stood and stepped away from Dominique. “You’ll just have to wait until I kill your blood-master.”

“No!” Dominique said. “Why would you kill Grégoire?”

The vamp across the hall laughed, derision in the tone. “You are a fool, you little ‘not-quite-human.’ Grégoire is not rogue. No! He is prisoner, and has been for these two months and more. He is shackled, as we, with silver. He still lives, though he grows weak. I feel his heartbeat, slow and weak.”

“You should have come when I asked,” Dominique said. “You should have come.”

Understanding slid into place with an almost audible click. The rogue was bleeding Grégoire, which was why Dominique had commanded me to visit, back at Leo’s party. And if she hadn’t felt safe telling me at the party, then the rogue had been there, close by, listening. Could I be any more stupid? I pulled the cross from my shirt. “Where is the rogue keeping your blood-master? And why is he keeping you shackled—other than a blood meal? And most important, who is the rogue?”

The man across the hall laughed. Dominique wept. The vamps in the other two doorways rattled their chains. And Correen moved up the stairs, a butcher knife in her hand.

“Though it surely means the death of my human family, I called Clan Pellissier,” she said to Dominique, as tears rained down her wrinkled face. “The blood-servant of the blood-master of New Orleans is on the way.” Outside, lights drew up in front of the house. An engine died. Doors closed. They must have been close by. I saw my payment for bringing in the rogue’s head flitting away. Correen screamed and raced toward me.

I threw Dominique to the floor of her room, stepped in after her, and slammed the door. Out in the hall, Correen banged the blade into the door, screaming, “Dominique! Dominique!”

I dropped to one knee, so close I was bathed in the sick breath of the vamp. I shoved the cross at her face, blazing a cold, bright light. “Where is the rogue keeping your blood-master? Why is he keeping you shackled? And most important, who is the rogue?”

When she answered, all the breath went out of my body.

By the time the footsteps made the top of the stairs, I was standing in an open window overlooking the back garden. Gathering Beast to me like a cloak, I jumped, hit ground, rolled into a crouch, and took off across the lawn. In a single leap, I took the six-foot-tall back fence and raced to my bike, still hidden in the shadows, three blocks away.