Skinwalker (44 page)

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
ssss
ing 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.”