Easy Pickings (2 page)

Magic. Smell magic. Smell little brother of wolf.

I didn’t have time to ask Beast what she meant. The woman’s eyes were glowing like mine. Yellow. I stopped in front of her, breathing in short puffs and screes of sound. Oddly, she didn’t take offence, even when I leaned in sniffed close to her face, although her eyebrows did go up. She wasn’t a skinwalker, like me. But she was something. “I’m Jane Yellowrock.”

The woman nodded once, and when she spoke I could feel her magic questing out at me. “And I hope that sniffing routine wasn’t commentary. My car doesn’t have air conditioning.” She hesitated before adding, “Joanne Walker. Shaman for hire. Only, you know, not for hire, because it doesn’t work that way. Whatever. Anyway.” She pulled a hand over her face, then looked at me. Waiting.

The way she said it, I knew she didn’t introduce herself that way often. We had just met and she had given me something personal. Which meant I had to give back a gift of equal measure. The words nearly choked me. “I’m a Skinwalker.”

She didn’t even blink, as if she heard people claiming weird crap, like being a mythical supernat, all the time. “Skinwalker, not shapechanger? You’re Native, like me.” Not a question. Not not-a-question, either, though.

“Cherokee. But not a U’tlun’ta.” It was pronounced hut luna, and was The People’s word for one of my species who had gone insane and started eating humans. And Joanne Walker seemed to know what I meant because she nodded, believing me, as if maybe she could see my energies and tell I was telling the truth. Most shamans could truth-tell, and Joanne clearly had that gift to some extent. I said, “Something hinky is happening. Did you do it?”

“No. But I felt something when I crossed the city lines. My magic’s pushy,” she said almost like that was a normal thing to say. “It pulled me here. Wanted me here. Wanted me to see you. And the whole city feels … not like home.”

I looked around at the world. “Well, you get to be Dorothy. I’m the lion—after he got his courage back. And I have a feeling that that,” I pointed to a yellow-orange light blasting up between the buildings several streets over “is why we’re here. There’s supposed to be nothing there but partygoers.”

“That.” Joanne glanced that way, then bared her teeth. “Crap. I saw it earlier, but not with the Sight. I thought it was spotlights, not magic. Lots of magic… .”

I shook myself as Beast’s pelt quivered and lifted. “It looks nasty.” I sniffed. “And I smell something hot and dry.”

“Brimstone.”

“Like in hell-fire?” She nodded. I sighed out the words, “Well, crap.” Louder, I said, “You need a weapon? Bare hands aren’t going to be much help against something from hell.”

Joanne smiled, never taking her eyes from the orange yellow glow. “I have what I need.”

I looked her over again, wondering what hidden weaponry I’d missed. As far as I could see, I hadn’t. “Yeah. Okay. Whatever. I have a bike, but it’s useless in this crowd. We’ll have to walk.” She nodded, and we turned, me taking point, Joanne at my side, as if we had practiced the movement all our lives.

We got a good six feet or so before I noticed the crowd was parting before us. Not that I blamed them. I would part before us too, because my newfound buddy looked like a badass, which gave automatic street cred to anybody hanging with her. Skinwalker. I hadn’t encountered that one before. I hadn’t encountered much with the kind of confidence she exuded, either. I’d fallen in beside her like we’d been practicing our whole lives. I wasn’t often enthusiastic about going to see what was causing obvious magical awfulness, but Ms. Tall Dark and Yellowrock looked so obviously prepared for anything, the whole idea sort of sounded like fun.

We got about six more feet before I saw the name of the bar we were passing by and let out an amused snort. “Vamp Mojo, huh? I kind of thought New Orleans would shy away from embracing the whole Anne Rice motif.”

Jane slid a look at me. Yellow-eyed look that sent creepies crawling down my spine. No wonder the guys back at my garage in Seattle had stopped talking to me once I went all magic and woo-woo. The golden gaze was just plain unnatural. I was relieved when she answered, because it gave me an excuse to stop meeting her eyes.

Well, it did for half a second, anyway, because she said, “In my world it used to be a dance club owned by a vampire. Now it’s a vampire bar.” She sniffed indelicately. “A blood bordello.”

I laughed. She didn’t. All the rich delicious smells in the air suddenly turned my stomach, and I swallowed bile. “There’s no such thing as vampires.”

This time Jane did laugh, but it wasn’t a particularly delightful sound. “I think I’d like to come from wherever you did. Vamps are at the top of the food chain, here. Literally.”

My feet lost their enthusiasm for heading toward the magical block party. Jane surged on a few steps ahead of me, only turning back when the crowd started closing in again. They didn’t matter; we could still see each other easily, what with the height advantage over two-thirds of the population. I swallowed. “There are really vampires here?”

Jane came back, planted herself in front of me, and nodded, jutting her chin down once. The whole action was an emphatic statement. I, much less emphatic, pinched the bridge of my nose. “Okay. Look, before we go rushing in where angels fear to tread, maybe we should try to get some tiny idea of what we could possibly be facing. I don’t have vampires,” I said. “Werewolves?”

“And werecats. Of the African variety. Lions in prides, Leopards in small groups, though they tend to be solitary hunters. Wolves. All predators. No were-gazelles or were-bovines. Witches. Shamans. You?”

My eyes bugged. I felt them. Another quarter inch and they’d pop right out of my head. “You’re joking. Werecats? Isn’t that, I don’t know, very teenage girl wish fulfillment?”

Jane grunted. The sound was weirdly cat-like, and I got the nervous feeling I probably should have shut up about fifteen words earlier. Instead, I rushed on, answering her question. “Witches, yeah. Shamans, obviously. Sorcerers. The occasional demon. Gods of various sizes.”

“Gods?”

I wet my lips. “I take it you don’t truck with them. That’s probably just as well. Probably that means whatever’s down there,” I said with a nod toward the frothing light of doom, “is coming from something that meets us in the middle. Witches. Shamans.” Except I didn’t have vampires, which probably meant we were already in over my head. I didn’t see the need to mention that just yet.

Jane jerked her head in a way that might have meant “Probably” or it might have meant “Stop wasting time, let’s get a move on.” The latter interpretation was buoyed by her turning on her heel and leading the way forward again. “Come on, Dorothy. Let’s see what Big Bad Uglies this world has to offer us.”

I let her take point again. This was her city more than mine, assuming it was anybody’s city at all, tonight. She did the head-jerk thing again, pointing left. “That used to be a jewelry store. Yesterday. And that was an art gallery, not a restaurant. Not my world, not anymore.”

Her words sent more creepies down my spine. Around us, partygoers, some in feathered masks, danced, screamed, showed their breasts in return for a twenty-five-cent strand of beads, drank, vomited on the sidewalks, and swayed into and out of danger of collision like zombies. I took a moment to make sure they weren’t zombies, and came away satisfied they were just stoned. The smell of marijuana was ripe on the air, and mixed with the other scents it was both heady and rank.

Not as rank, though, as a rotted-meat stench that didn’t so much waft as thunder down the street. I automatically held my breath, and somehow the smell got worse, burning my eyes with its power. I coughed, wiped my eyes, and glanced over peoples’ heads in search of the smell’s source.

Sadly, it wasn’t all that hard to find. Something taller than we were was coming up on our right, and I say something, not someone, because it had horns. I knew at least one guy with horns, and he was a someone, but this fellow also had gills. And scales. And a spreading hood, like velociraptors had. A demon velociraptor. Great. I’d gotten yanked into another world where vampires were real and demon velociraptors stalked the streets. Not just demon velociraptors, but demon velociraptors who hadn’t had a fashion update since the 1980s, because the thing’s flared hood was streaked in vibrant neon shades of red, green, blue, and yellow.

It saw us at the same time we saw it.

The smell was coming from it. Whatever it was. It stank of brimstone, rotten meat and the worst body odor I’d ever encountered. Yet the partying crowd didn’t seem to notice, just opened a space in front of him. It. And closed behind, never noticing the stench or the creature bearing it. I drew an eighteen inch vamp-killer with my left hand and pulled the M4 with my right. It was loaded for vamp with silver flechette rounds, but if I got in a neck shot, it would kill most anything. If I could do that without collateral damage. Killing civilians was not in my contract or my moral code.

Joanne glanced my way, then glanced again, eyes popping. “Jesus Christ, you got a carry and conceal for that thing? You can’t start shooting here, we’re in the middle of Mardi Gras, for God’s sake!”

There was a big ugly monster coming our way and she was worried about me shooting people. Really worried, apparently, because the gold in her eyes started blazing, and even more bizarrely, her hands started to glow. Gunpowder blue, that silver-steely blue color that looks a little dangerous just by itself, nevermind with a pissed-off magic user standing behind it. “You got a better idea?”

“Yes. Just …” She eyed my M4 again. “Just don’t do anything rash.” Then she muttered, “I hate doing this around people,” and raised her steel-blue hands into the air.

Magic rippled out from her, visible shields that slithered between people and pushed them to the side, clearing a path between me and the big bad ugly. People did notice that, grunting and swearing and cooing as they got shoved up against one another, and some of the more-stoned ones started ooohing and aaahing at the light show.

For about half a second it looked like a great idea. I had a clear shot, no civilians were going to get hurt.

Then the stench-ridden monster realized he had a clear path to us. His legs bent and he leaped right at us.

Time did that little slow-down phenomenon it does when everything is going into the crapper. The thing was in the air. Coming straight down at us. Bellowing.

The BBU didn’t even look at my gun. Didn’t even look at me. He was focused on Joanne and the pretty sparklies she was drawing up from … wherever. Witch/shaman crap. His hood did this weird thing where it just rippled. Hard. Like a canvas sail in the wind. He dropped, his bellow going up in pitch, a scream of victory as he fell.

Joanne turned a shade of pale girls with our complexions shouldn’t be able to achieve, and ducked sideways. Her shields wavered, partygoers pressing against them. I caught a glimpse of indecision on her face. Then the shields failed and half of New Orleans started closing in on us again.

My heart stuttered. I dropped and rolled, elbow and knee hitting the pavement hard, letting gravity and momentum pull me under the thing. I adjusted the M4, the stock against the pavement. Aimed at his underbelly and his privates, if he had any under the Speedo he was wearing, and fired. The M4 slammed back into me. Boom, boom, boom. Six shots, so fast the concussive reports became only three. And the silver flechettes punched holes into him. His scream went from victory to agony. And rage. Which couldn’t be good.

I continued the roll. He landed. Just in front of me, between Joanne and me. I felt more than heard Joanne and him doing something. Fighting. Blue light exploded out. I came to my knee, one foot and hand braced.