A Girl's Guide to Guns and Monsters (18 page)

 

“I like who I’ve been.” Lena bowed her head. “I remember my former lives. Before Janice, I was a prepubescent Chinese girl who couldn’t speak English. Before that, an improbably endowed blonde with an I.Q. of seventy. But with Janice, everything was different. I was stronger. I could protect myself, protect
her
. I always knew what to do. But now . . .”

 

Lena knew something was wrong the moment she emerged from her tree. She closed her eyes, reaching inward. For nine years, she had carried the memory of her first time with Janice. Crying out together in Janice’s dorm room as Lena uncovered Janice’s fantasies, her unspoken desires, fulfilling not all of them—there was only so much time in the night—but enough to bind Lena to her.

This morning, that memory was a distant thing, the intensity gone.

“Oh please gods, no.” Lena ran for the back door. Inside, she took the steps three at a time. She spotted the police the instant she reached the second floor. Her apartment door had been ripped from its frame. One officer stood questioning the couple from across the hall. He glanced up, spotting Lena.

“Ms. Greenwood?”

Lena ran past him. How could she have been so stupid? “Janice!”

“You don’t want to go in there, ma’am.” The officer grabbed her arm. “You don’t need to see that.”

Even from the doorway, Lena could see enough. The door splintered on the ground, furniture overturned, blood everywhere. Two other uniformed officers moved through her apartment. One carried a chair leg with blood and fur in the broken end. Janice had given them a fight before she died.

“What happened to you, Lena?” The officer’s grip tightened every so slightly. “I know this is a shock. Would you mind coming with me to answer some questions?”

Lena glanced down at herself. Her shirt was still a bloody mess. No wonder he sounded suspicious. “I don’t have time.”

“Where were you last night?”

“With a friend,” she said numbly. “Father Castelo.” Castelo would cover for her if they called. Not that it mattered. Janice was dead, which meant very soon, Lena Greenwood would follow.

She had been through it so many times before, but never like this. Never when it was her own fault.

Within a day, the grief would lose its edge. Two days, and she would begin to flirt with random strangers. A week, and her body would start to change, adapting to the desires of the people around her. Her mind would do the same, and she would float along until someone else claimed her.

“Do you have any idea what might have done this?”

Lena looked at his hand on her arm. “Yes.”

Janice was dead, but Lena wasn’t gone yet. She broke his hold with ease, tossing him through the doorway like a doll. The other officers did their best to break his fall.

Lena glanced at her neighbors. “I always liked you,” she said to the girl. “I wanted you to know he’s been cheating on you. I can smell it.”

By the time anyone recovered, Lena was gone.

 

“You want this. You want
me.
A strong woman to fight the darkness, protect the helpless, and look damn good in the process. One who loves and fights with the same passion. Powerful, but also vulnerable. One who needs you. I need you, Eduardo. I need the strength you can give me.”

 

Elena Madera made her way along the Santa Cruz River toward the Interstate. She spotted the werejaguars immediately, watching her from the darkness beneath the bridge. Gold eyes shone in the beam of her flashlight.

A familiar figure jumped into the water and waded toward her. From a distance, he could have passed for just another vagabond living at the edge of the city, if not for the easy, predatory confidence in his movements. “Go away.”

“Territorial, aren’t you?” Elena smiled. She counted two others in the darkness. “Most cats hate water, but not jaguars. No wonder you love it here.”

He sniffed the air. “I know you.”

“Thank you.” Her scent had changed over the past month, along with the rest of her. But if he still recognized her, it meant something of Lena Greenwood had survived. Her hair was longer now, tied back in twin black braids. Her skin was soft and brown. She wore a long white coat which would be murder to keep clean, but did a nice job of hiding the three feet of Toledo steel sheathed on the back of her belt.

“I’ve been volunteering at the homeless shelters lately,” Elena said. “Strange how many of them talk about monsters, especially here at the river. Creatures chasing them away, hunting them in the night.”

All three werejaguars were approaching now. The mother and her young. Apparently, the family that ran drugs together, stayed together. The mother’s features shifted, fur covering her body, though she remained humanoid. Combining the best of both forms. Her sons simply drew their guns.

This time, Elena was faster. Her coat flew out behind her as she leapt, drawing a chrome-plated .45 and killing the first werejaguar before he could react. She put a bullet into the arm of the second, and his weapon dropped into the water. Undeterred, he charged, slamming into her with his full weight.

Elena rolled back, planted her feet in his gut, and flung him away. By the time he attacked again, she was ready. Her sword hissed through the air, and he fell into the river.

She spun, hurling the sword to catch the mother in the stomach even as she leapt.

“What are you?” the last werejaguar asked, sharp teeth distorting her words.

Elena walked toward her. “Bow down to him, for he avenges the blood of his children and takes vengeance on his adversaries. He repays those who hate him and cleanses his people’s land. Deuteronomy, chapter thirty-two.”

She grabbed the hilt of her sword and planted a foot on the werejaguar’s chest. “Answer my questions, and I’ll be merciful.” Eduardo would like that. Much as he hated the darkness, he also hated suffering of any kind. She would do her best to make this quick.

M
y doorway was filled with a small army of angry bikers, dressed in leathers and tattoos. The one in front snarled at me, his fist still tight from pounding on my front door. “Lady, your van was found with our stolen hogs alongside I-75. WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?”

Uh-oh.

Itty and Bitty, my two white Westies, stopped barking and smelled the biker’s boots, their little tails wagging like mad.

Now, normally, my pre- menopausal middle-aged response would have been to curse and slam the door in the biker’s faces, but it had been a rough couple of days, what with attacks by evil possums and ninja rats, trips to the ER, mysterious doctors who threw lightning, and one ancient Chinese sword-wielding mouse with a magical artifact who still hadn’t explained much of anything. So what the hell . . .

I shushed the dogs, opened the front door wide, gave the group a weary smile, and lied through my teeth. “I have no idea. Would you like some coffee?”

They all just looked at me, and the anger bled from their faces. One of the bigger ones, the bald one with the nose ring, said, “That would be real nice, ma’am.”

Ma’am. Swell. “Please,” I said. “Call me Kate.”

It took two pots of my special stash of Michigan Cherry coffee before they really calmed down. I just kept listening to their outrage, nodding, pouring fresh cups, and repeating my lie. “I have no idea what happened. Sugar?”

They’d thank me and tell me again how their hogs had been stolen from outside the honky tonk where they’d been hanging out. They’d found their bikes gone, and gotten the runaround from the cops and the impound lot where all the vehicles had been taken.

I think they’d have forgiven the thefts, but the bikes had taken the worst of it when the rats had attacked my minivan as I was driving home from the hospital. Bud, the one with the nose-ring, was especially upset, since his ride had been found in the ditch. “Some sumofabitch side-swiped it.” He mumbled into his coffee.

I made sympathetic noises and topped off his mug. In point of fact, I’d rammed the bike from behind with my van. The sparks had been very impressive as it slid across the expressway.

Not the time to offer that detail.

Tiny, who was not, leaned back and made my dining room chair creak in alarming ways. “The world is going to hell, ma’am. Plain and simple, just going to hell . . .”

There was a stirring under my collar at that statement. Wan, short for Wan Su Yi, the aforementioned ancient Chinese mouse, had been riding on my shoulder when they’d knocked. He’d taken cover just before I opened the door. He’d been carrying his sword at the time, and the point was digging into my neck as he squirmed.

“You don’t mean that literally, Tiny.” I said, knowing that Wan would take it as such.

“Well, no, ma’am, but just the same.” Tiny dropped the chair back to the floor with a thud and slapped the table with his palm. “What kind of dirty, thieving lowlife scum would be stealing our rides?”

Well, in point of fact, it had been a possum and his ninja rats, but damned if I was going to tell them that. I just shook my head, kept my mouth shut, and ground the beans for another pot. As the riders all agreed with Tiny, I took a quick survey of the kitchen and the great room.