Skinwalker (9 page)

We rolled down the street, the roar of the engine claiming our territory as much as Beast's scream would announce and claim hers. Her scream, not a roar. African lions roar, panthers don't. Cougar, puma, panther, catamount, screamer, devil cat, silver lion, mountain lion, and North American black panther, all refer to one beast—the
Puma concolor
—once the widest-ranging mammal on the North American continent, and one of the three largest modern-day predators other than man. As fierce as they are, pumas can't roar. They scream, hack, growl, purr, yowl, spit, and make low-pitched hisses, and the young make loud, chirping whistles to call their mothers, but they can't roar. Beast considers the gift of roaring highly overrated and likely to draw in the white hunter and his guns. Silent and deadly is better, with screams to frighten prey. She didn't need more. But she liked the roar of the bike. Go figure.

She would likely stay quiescent—she sleeps nearly sixteen hours a day—as shopping, though predatory, wasn't bloody enough to arouse her hunting instincts. I needed cooler clothes to survive this heat and humidity. The temps had reached mid-nineties, with hotter weather called for later in the week. I also needed to meet the butcher who would deliver my protein needs. To meet the ten-day bonus, Beast and I might be shifting every day, a round-trip ticket, making meat imperative. Five to ten pounds of fresh meat and a half box of oatmeal a day, and that was just to restore from two shifts. If I had to fight or run, I'd need a lot more calories.

As we powered out of the Quarter, accelerating down Charles Avenue, it started raining. From a clear blue sky. I sighed. My hair was gonna look awful.

I arranged an account with the butcher to deliver steak whenever I called in an order, and on the way home spotted a Wal-Mart, where I bought a swimsuit, lightweight cargo pants, shorts, tank tops, and a pair of neon-hued flip-flops. A mile distant, I passed a strip mall with a florist, a small Church of Christ, and a little storefront with calf-length skirts displayed in the window. Intrigued, I stopped the bike, unhelmeted, and went inside.

The skirts were patchwork. Not like something a sixty-year-old hippie would wear, but dainty, flared, delicate confections made of tiny, two-by-four-inch patches of gauze or silk or cotton in vibrant colors. Each one was color coordinated, all blues or teals or reds, and some were embroidered. I lifted a patterned gauze skirt in sea blue and purple and shook it gently. The hem flipped, flirty and cute. I didn't do cute well, but I liked this. The elastic waist would allow it to ride low on my hips if I wanted it to, or higher, on my waist.

“That would look totally rad on you.”

I glanced at the teenaged girl who was sitting behind the counter with a paperback book in her hand. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. But you gotta see it with this shirt.” She slid from a stool, taking a foot off her height, making her just over five feet, and walked to a shelf, pulling a shirt out. It was a peasant top with a drawstring neckline, made of the same sea blue material, but this time partnered with a paler purple fabric. “And this,” she said, holding a purple and teal stone necklace. “Amethyst and chatkalite. Totally cool with these sandals.” She lifted a pair of purple sandals from the front window, with straps for dancing.

I looked at the freckled girl, grinning. “I suck at putting outfits together and you did it in less than a minute.”

“It's a gift,” she agreed. “Try 'em on. You want I should pick out another one for you?”

I turned the tags over and winced as I looked around the small store. “It'll break my budget to leave this store with another one.”

“And it'll break your heart not to,” she said sagely. “I'll find you something just as cute but cheaper. Go on.” She flapped a hand at me and I went. I tried on clothes for nearly an hour, a huge record for me. I left the store with two pairs of shoes, two skirts, three tops to mix and match, and the necklace. Six outfits. How could I say no?

Back at the freebie house, the clothes went into the closet with the rest of my meager gear. I travel light, just what will fit into the saddlebags, and the things I can't live without that get mailed to my new address each time I move, like my tea. The weapons in the closet took up more room than the clothes. A traveling vamp killer has to make do.

I cleaned up and changed into my only other pair of jeans and my Lucchese boots. I had an appointment for dinner at Katie's. I studied the papers in the envelope Troll had given me, including the info on New Orleans' vamps, and read over the fine print in the contract, making sure the clause about collateral damage I had insisted upon in our Internet negotiations was still there. If I found that the rogue vamp was being given safe haven and I had to kill one or more vamps to get to him, I didn't want reprisals. The special clause guaranteed me protection. It was present.

There was also a confidentiality clause stating that I wouldn't share with the media or anyone else anything I learned about the vampires, their servants, or their households on pain of a slow and grisly death. Not that I planned on going on national TV with an exposé of the vampy and fangy, but it did bring me up short. Even knowing that the clause made perfect sense from their standpoint, the “slow and grisly death” line was pretty gruesome.

Near the bottom, there was a welcome line about needing to hire local contacts and a budget to pay sources who might not talk otherwise. From the way I read it, it looked like the council was willing to cover such expenses, pending Katie's approval. Sweet.

In the vamp info folder, I found a toll-road sticker for my bike and a list of New Orleans' seven vampire clans, digital photos of the head vamps, and a breakdown of the vampire power structure. It was similar to a parliamentarian government, with heads of clans sitting on the executive council, and elder vamps sitting on an expanded council. The council made decisions on finances, kept the peace with humans, worked with human law enforcement, and enforced its own laws on its members, including holding down the number of scions, blood-servants, and blood-slaves that one vamp clan might have. Interesting info, but not real useful when tracking one nutso whacked-out vamp that the council hadn't killed off or even managed to identify.

I signed the contract, input into my cell phone the contact numbers Katie had included, and jumped the brick fence. I didn't want the blasted Joe to know where I was. He was back in his hidey-hole, watching my yard, smoking another cigar. Making me wonder who he was working for, keeping an eye on me . . . Well, not for the rogue vamp. They were too mentally unstable to keep someone under thrall for extended periods of time. And the Joe—not Rick, just no-name Joe—hadn't smelled of vamp. But Katie for sure had other enemies. I didn't even have to ask. Vamps always had enemies, and the older the vamp, the more enemies. Living and dead.

I presented myself at Katie's back door at seven p.m. on the nose. Troll opened the door and stood there, staring at me, blocking my way in. I feigned nonchalance, while wishing I had come armed, and said, “Evening. I'm supposed to interview the girls.”

“Join them for dinner. Not interview.”

“You say tomato, I say interview. But I'll be nice. No broken arms or blood.”

I coulda sworn Troll wanted to smile. He pushed open the door, but still kept it blocked with his arm and body. “You disabled all Katie's security devices.”

“Yep. Contractual agreement.” I slapped the contract on Troll's chest. “No spying on the help. I'm sure she just forgot to have the cameras removed.”

“You found 'em all. Fast.” He took the contract, but didn't step aside.

I touched my nose and quoted the short salesgirl. “It's a gift.” I added, “I can smell security devices.” Which was a total lie. But I could scent out where a human had spent a lot of time in an odd place. Like over the mantel, in the closet, in the kitchen, installing the bugs. “Time for my question. Why did Rick LaFleur show up at my place today?”

Troll tilted his head, thinking. I could see things happening behind his secretive brown eyes, but his body language gave nothing away. Maybe working with a vamp teaches you to keep everything inside. “Rick wanted the job hunting the rogue.”

Okay. That was no surprise. “You ticked off that I got the job and not him?”

“I told Katie to hire you. Rick's good but not good enough to take on a rogue. My family knows it and asked me to keep him out. Which I did. You tell him that and I'll gut you like a pig.”

“Thanks for the warning. Any chance he's working for Katie's opposition?”

“No chance in hell.”

“So he's watching my place because he finds me irresistible?”

Troll's eyes went wide, surprised.

“Yeah. That was my feeling.” I tucked my hands in my jeans pockets and wondered how much longer Troll was going to make me stand in the heat and chat. Cool, air-conditioned air flowed out around us and dissipated fast while I started to sweat. I could feel the silver cross under my shirt, the only thing I wore that could be considered a weapon, gathering moisture. Even my scalp was sweating. “He wants to work with me on the rogue deal,” I said, “and I'm interested in someone with local contacts if he's legit. And if the council covers the expense.”

“I'll talk to Katie,” Troll said, shaking his head. “How do you like your steak? Baked potato with the works? Salad?” He finally stepped aside and let me in, shut the door behind me, and locked it.

“Light a match under the meat, and if it's still mooing I won't be insulted, anything full of fat on the potato, and salad is for cows. Cola, with caffeine, no alcohol.” I walked into the house, waiting for him to make a move. He didn't. He just pointed to the right and said, “Katie will leave you alone with them for an hour. The girls gather for dinner in the common room.”

“Okay. And Troll?” He waited. “When I jumped the fence, I noticed that someone installed a security camera recently on Katie's side of the fence, pointed at her house. Within the last month. The scratch is still fresh. They came in from my side of the fence.”

Troll cursed. He disappeared down a darkened hallway.

It was wicked sharp

I'm sure television had cemented my ideas about what a hooker—a working girl—was like. Crass, hard-eyed, crude, probably diseased. And my Christian children's home upbringing had pounded the image in. Katie's ladies blew all that away in five minutes. They were seated in elegant chairs in a formal dining room, around a dark, carved-wood table, sleepy eyed and attired in brocade robes with tasseled belts, their hair in silken waves, their skin perfumed and oiled. They all looked and smelled healthy. Though with a distinct aura of vamp clinging to them.

There were six girls, and a seventh met me in the hallway as I entered. Three girls were Caucasian: a blonde, a crimson-haired beauty with emerald eyes, and a white-skinned, black-haired girl who caught my attention with the witchy energies around her. Three of the girls were dark skinned—one with skin so black it looked blue in the candlelight, one South Asian who looked twelve, and one with coffee-and-milk skin, hazel green eyes, and kinky blond hair. The seventh was different. She jingled as she took her seat, pierced, tattooed, and dangling rings from eyebrows, lips, nose, ears, navel, and nipples. She was wearing low-rise velvet harem pants and a peekaboo bra, so I wasn't guessing. And she wore a braided leather whip over one shoulder. The whip looked so supple it likely left no marks on human skin.

“I'm Christie,” she said. “You looking for work? 'Cause Katie already has a full house.”

Before I could answer, the walls vibrated as if electricity quivered through them. And a vampire screamed. The sound shivered, ear-piercing, like nothing in nature and nothing man had made. So high-pitched it came closest to sounding like a police siren. It was the sound they made when they died.

Beast flashed into me and I whirled, raced down the hallway, faster than a human could follow. I raced past Troll, opened the door, and slid into the room where I had been interviewed. Katie stood there, fully vamped out, claws extended, canines a good two inches long, pupils black and huge in bloodred eyes. The stench of wormwood filled the room.

Cripes
. Beast slid to a halt. Troll pushed me aside and stood in front. The doorway behind filled with lovely ladies.

“Go back to dinner,” Troll murmured softly, a measured monotone. Katie's face flashed to him. She raised her claws and hissed, animalistic. Beast understood.
Fear. Killing frenzy
. I got a single image of Beast attacking a doe. And her fawns. Raging, terrified,
hungry
. I backed out the door and closed it, standing with the girls in the dim hallway, surrounded by their perfumes and whispery clothes.

“I've never seen her like that,” one whispered.

“I have. Tom can handle her.” But there was a trace of uncertainty in her voice.

I said, “Let's go back to the dining room. She can smell us out here.”

“How do you know?” Christie asked, close on my left.

I looked at her, my vision adjusted to the low light. Her eyes were wide and she cradled the whip in both hands, so tightly her knuckles were bloodless. I couldn't exactly reply, “Because
Beast
can smell
her
.” I settled on a shooing motion and took a step in that direction, knowing that herd mentality would make them follow. Beast had once informed me that humans were hunters only by luck and because they had opposable thumbs. Otherwise they were prey. And not very tasty at that. I had been too scared of the inference to question her further. I really didn't want to know if I/we had eaten humans. Really, really didn't.