"Not helping, Hailey," Annabelle interjected.
"Sorry..."
"Put it out of your mind," Cain said. "Has it occurred to you that Devin is a bit stressed right now? Two people he loves are going through serious issues. You and his mother, both. He's probably anxious. A night on the town, no matter who it was with, was probably good for him.."
I sighed. "I know. It's just, you know, he has needs and desires that I'm not satisfying."
"Nicky," Cain said. "If you aren't ready, you aren't ready."
"What the doc says is true," Annabelle said. "I was a virgin, too, until relatively late. Trust me, you want your first time to be special. You don't want it to be a desperate act to try and keep your boyfriend interested. If he won't wait, he's not worth it."
I sighed. "But he is worth it."
"Annabelle gives good advice," Cain said.
"But he told me, himself, that he won't wait forever."
"He may have been speaking out of frustration in the moment," Cain said. "That doesn't mean he would cheat on you, Nicky."
I nodded. "I know he wouldn't. Dammit, I hate this whole jealousy crap."
"Unwarranted jealousy ends a lot of relationships," Annabelle said. "Don't let it come between you without reason."
"You're right," I said. "Never mind that I said anything. We have other matters to worry about right now."
"There's a youngling out in the swamps," Cain said. "One of my favorite places to go on a full moon. There are other rougarou out there, too."
"Rougarou?" I asked.
"A peculiar kind of werewolf, all descended from Cain, of course, but unique to these parts," Annabelle said.
"Until recently, the rougarou remained as wolves persistently. It wasn't merely a condition they experienced during a full moon. Due to an infernal object, only recently removed from the swamp, they were held in their wolf form. Over decades they adjusted to that reality. They accepted their new existence. For these wolves, the true nightmare is living their lives as humans."
"And you don't have them at the Asylum?" I asked.
"We did for a while," Cain said. "But I've found, in their case, counseling them in their own environment was more beneficial. And I have more success working with them over a full moon, in the form they're most comfortable with."
"I met a mermaid this morning, Sariah. You haven't considered counseling her in her own environment?"
Cain looked at me blankly. "I might be good at treading water, but I don't breathe underwater. In her case, I grant, it would be ideal if it were possible. But it isn't."
"So you're taking me out into the woods for a group therapy session?" I asked.
Cain laughed. "You're on to me, Nicky. I think it will be good for you and them, both. You've also struggled to adapt to human life. And they know a few things about animal shifting."
"But you said there's a vampire youngling out in the swamp, too?" I asked.
Cain nodded. "He won't come around while the wolves are gathered. But after the moon rises, we'll track him down."
"When do you need me to meet you out there?" Hailey asked.
"Meet us back here, in Vilokan, an hour before the witching hour," Cain said. "We'll want to catch him quickly and get back when your powers are at their strongest."
"The witching hour?" I asked.
"Around three in the morning," Hailey said. "As Cain said, I get an extra dose of kick-ass juice during that hour. It'll help with the spell needed to free Malinda."
"Are you sure an hour is enough time?" Annabelle asked. "To catch the youngling and bring him back to Vilokan?"
"We have the advantage of working with one of the best vampire hunters in the world," Cain said.
I smiled. "If he's nearby, I'll have a stake in his heart in no time. I figure, a half-hour to hunt. Another half-hour to bring him to Vilokan."
"And I won't need a whole hour to cast my spell," Hailey said. "If Malinda is willing, and we have the vampire, it will only take a few minutes. We're just dealing with a vex here, not a curse. Pretty basic stuff."
"A vex that separates the connection between a witch's consciousness and her body, cast on three people at once, is basic?"
Hailey nodded. "Level one blood witchery. I wish someone would have brought her to my attention sooner. If we knew bloodcraft was behind this, I could have freed her a long time ago."
"But we knew that she'd used her parents' DNA to target her spell. At least, the nurses knew that before, years ago, when I was at the asylum. That wasn't a tell-tale sign of blood witchery?"
Hailey shrugged. "Not really. Voodoo uses DNA, too, particularly when fashioning Voodoo dolls. It's how they link the doll to the subject they hope to affect. Targeting someone with DNA isn't peculiar to any brand of witchcraft. If Malinda had a responsible mentor or belonged to a reputable coven, she'd have known better. Her error, using her parents' blood to target the vex, was a classic amateur mistake."
"But you can free her without freeing her parents at the same time?" I asked. "Malinda is concerned that the witches who've been coming after her want to free her parents from the prison of their minds."
Hailey smiled. "Don't let my cute little skirt fool you, Nicky. I'm a badass witch. I can handle it."
"What's the deal with the whole school girl get up anyway?" I asked.
Hailey smiled. "Gives me an allure of innocence, don't you think? I may be a witch, but I'm also a vampire. This outfit is like my Uber Eats. It practically brings my meals to me."
"Pervs, you mean?" I asked.
Hailey nodded. "Yeah. They taste like ass, but you know, sometimes as a vampire, you have to do what you have to do to ensure that you're only feeding on those who deserve it."
"If they taste bad, is it worth it?" I asked.
Hailey smirked. "When I need a quick feed, it'll do. But the outfit also attracts more age-appropriate boys. Those closer to my human age. The outfit drives them appropriately wild."
"You date human boys?" I asked.
"Date is such a strong word, don't you think?" Hailey asked. "I have my fun. And they give themselves to me willingly. They taste a lot better than the pervs."
"The outfit was my idea," Annabelle said. "Anyone Hailey feeds on either deserves it or wants it."
"Clever," I said. "If all vampires worked that way, I wouldn't have to slay so many."
Hailey nodded. "Mercy and I are different than other vampires."
"Speaking of Mercy," I said. "How is she?"
"She's the same Mercy she's always been. But since she took over the vampire council, she's been busy. Haven't seen her in a couple months. Not since Alice showed back up."
"So Alice was here?" Annabelle asked. "Why didn't you let me know?
Hailey shrugged. "Mercy asked me not to say anything about it. She said it would get your panties in a wad."
I chuckled. "That sounds like Mercy."
Hailey smirked. "Mercy and Alice went to Europe together. Never thought I'd see those two working together, but you know, life is weird. They went, along with a bunch of other vampires Alice brought with her, to take on a particularly rebellious coven of old school vamps who don't accept her new rule."
I nodded. "I don't care how old school those vamps are. They won't stand a chance against Mercy and Alice together."
"Poor old bastards," Hailey said, chuckling.
"Enough banter," Cain said. "We should get going. I'd like you to have a chance to meet with the rougarou while they can still talk, you know, in human language."
"The rougarou speak English?" I asked.
"French is their preferred language," Cain said. "But their English is good enough."
Chapter twenty-two
Cain parked his slightly rusted, black F-150 pickup truck on the side of a gravel road. I climbed out of his truck and followed him through a trail that led to a small cottage at the edge of the swamp. We didn't go in. Instead, he led me around the dilapidated house to a small dock where he had a small rowb
oat tied up. Cain stepped down from the dock onto the boat and, as it rocked back and forth, extended his hand toward me. I took it, and he steadied me as I stepped down into the boat's hull.
Something large moved through the water not far from us. "What is that?"
"Just a gator," Cain said. "Don't get too close. They generally leave you alone."
I snorted. "I'll have to take your word for it."
I sat down on one of the bench seats in front of the one where Cain sat. He grabbed two oars and, running them through two loops welded to the side of the boat, started to row.
The alligator, as Cain promised, didn't pay us much mind. Poking its head out of the water for a moment, as if deciding whether to eat us or go back about his business, slowly disappeared beneath the surface.
If the thing decided we might make a meal, I imagined it would do what I used to as one of the Neck. After knocking our boat over, it would drag us down to the bottom of the sea, to its own domain, and feast away.
My heart skipped a beat anticipating the worst. Nothing happened, though, as Cain rowed around where the gator had been lurking.
We saw a few more gators we slowly floated through the swamp. Each time, as before, Cain rowed around them without much care or concern. His calm demeanor eased my anxieties.
He pulled up next to a small steep hill-several people were gathered at the top of it, five men, three women. The hill itself had several cross-shaped grave markers on it.
"A cemetery out here in the middle of nowhere?" I asked, climbing out of the boat, my nine-inch heel immediately sinking into the mud.
"Long story," Cain said. "But there was a hurricane here more than a century ago. Some believe it came upon the old logging town that used to be here because of a voodoo curse."
I shrugged. "Since we're peddling in curses already, why the hell not?"
Cain smiled. "It's no cause to for concern. That curse has long since passed."
One of the men, a burly man with a long, red, beard came down to help us pull the boat ashore. "Hey there, Doc!"
"Thank you for the help, Donald."
Donald looked at me with narrow eyes. Then he extended his hand. "I suppose you're the shifter we were told about?"
I nodded. "The name's Nicky."
Donald looked down at my foot, stuck in the mud. "Probably not the best shoe choice for the swamps."
I chuckled. "Yeah, I didn't bring any flats with me from Kansas City."
"What you need is a pair of galoshes, like mine," Donald said, gesturing toward his large rubber boots. "Keeps the feet nice and dry. Nothing smells worse than wet feet."
I shrugged. "I imagine wet vampire feet would be worse."
Donald cocked his head. "I've never sniffed a vampire's feet. I wouldn't know."
"Do you have a habit of sniffing feet, generally, Donald?" Cain asked.
Donald stared back at Cain, his expression blank.
"Never mind," Cain asked. "To each his own."
Donald laughed and grabbed me by the arm. "Here, Nicky, let me help you up the hill."
"Thanks," I said as my second foot started to slip in the slick, algae-covered mud on the edge of the hill. Even with Donald's help, it was hard keeping my feet under my body. I kicked off my heels and tossed them back into the boat. She shoots. She scores. In another life, perhaps, I'd make a good basketball player.
I'm not a big fan of going barefoot, generally. In this instance, though, it was better than trying to trek through the mud in heels. With Donald's help, I made it up the hill.
"Quite the group you have here," I said to Cain as he finished climbing the hill behind me.
"We prefer to refer to ourselves as a pack," Cain said.
I raised my eyebrow. "Alright. I suppose that makes sense. Who's the alpha?"
"Cain's sort of the alpha of alphas, you know, being the father of all of us. Not directly, but you know, from the beginning. But when it's just us, you're looking at him."
I nodded. Made sense. Donald was the largest pack member, pushing three hundred pounds and a good six and a half feet tall. They were an eclectic bunch. A sinny guy with a red mohawk and tattoos was hard to miss. The others were a mix of what I suppose you'd expect to find on any trip to Walmart. Several odd outfit choices, most of the men had beards. The women were each just as unique. The smallest of them, probably barely five feet tall and roughly thirty. She wore hiking boots, yoga pants, and a tight tank top. Not an uncommon ensemble, really, apart from the red Rambo-Esque headband she had tied around her brow. Almost six feet tall and a little younger, the largest female was dressed in an elaborate, bohemian dress, fishnet stockings, and rubber galoshes.
"Everyone," Cain said. "This is Nicky, the former elemental I mentioned who'd be joining us tonight."
"I just arrived yesterday. How'd you have a chance to tell them about me?" I asked.
Cain shrugged. "We have a Facebook group."
I nodded. "Of course you do."
The trip out to the swamp took a few hours. I wasn't sure how much time we had left with daylight before the full moon rose. The canopy above us was so thick with foliage I couldn't even use the sun's position in the sky to give me a rough estimate. Still, I imagined it was late afternoon or early evening.
"Welcome," the mohawked rougarou said. "I hope you know what you're getting yourself into."
The woman next to the mohawk guy slapped him on the shoulder with the back of her hand. "Never mind him. We just aren't used to having guests."
"How about everyone gathers around," Cain said. "We only have four or five hours before the moon rises."
I cleared my throat. "Four or five hours of group therapy?"
"That's only a part of it," Cain said. "We have a few exercises to do, things I've found that make the shifting process a little less painful."
"What kind of exercises?" I asked.
"We do yoga," Donald added.
I looked Donald up and down. "You do yoga?"
"You'd be surprised," Cain said. "Donald can do all the balance postures. And he's more flexible than he looks."
"So that helps with the shift?"
"Flexibility makes a big difference. Yoga also clears the mind. It helps maintain control once we take wolf form."
"So, how long have you all been human?" I asked.
"We were all born human," the woman sitting next to Christopher, the mohawk guy, said. "But we lived in this swamp as rougarou for the better part of two centuries. We've only been human for about four years now."
"Well, we have that in common," I said. "I haven't been human much longer than that."
"You might not shift into a wolf," Cain said. "But you do shift, Nicky. And I thought you might offer a fresh perspective on how to assimilate into human society."
"I don't know how fresh my perspective is, but I can talk about what I've been through."
Cain nodded. "Nicky, why don't you introduce yourself to the group. Tell everyone a bit about who you are."
"Well, hello everyone. I'm Nicky. Some people know me as Nyx. But I prefer Nicky."
"Hi Nicky," everyone said in unison.
"Yeah, hi. So, a little bit about myself. Before I became human, I ate people."
"So did we!" Donald interjected.
"I bet," I said, crossing one leg behind the other as we all stood in a circle, graves scattered between us. "But I used to shift into a human form to lure my prey. I sang to them and took them under the water to feast. Until I was bit by a vampire and I got stuck in a human body. I naturally preferred the styles that most humans believed to be feminine. So, I started to dress accordingly. Only later did I learn that I was what the humans call transgender."
"Sounds like quite an insight into yourself," the same woman who spoke before said.
"It was," I said. "So, I found a lot of friends in the LGBT community. I eventually hunted down the vampire who bit me. Her name is Alice. But when I did, I found she'd changed. She wasn't the monster I imagined she was. She act
ually helped me take down a vamp who was a lot worse than she ever was. I met a boy, used to be a member of the Order of the Morning Dawn."
A collective groan spread across the pack.
"I know," I said. "They're insufferable. But Devin is different. We've been together ever since. But after another vampire, the really nasty one I mentioned before, used his compulsion to make me drink Alice's blood, I absorbed some kind of bat shifting curse."
"A bat shifting ability," Cain said.
"We don't refer to what we have as a curse," Christopher said. "Even though we know it is, technically. We prefer to think of what we do and what we are as a gift."
"We've been rougarou a lot longer than we've lived as humans," Donald said. "Now, the form we're most comfortable in is something we can only enjoy on full moon nights."
"So you all just shift, out here, in the swamp, and none of you ever wander into the city?" I asked.
"I did the first few times," Christopher said. "After the change, when we were trying to make human lives for ourselves, my wolf just went there."
"Your wolf is not another person," Cain said. "We've talked about referring to the wolf in the third person and why we should use the first."
"Sorry," Christopher said. "I went back to my new human apartment, all wolfed out, and ate everything in my fridge."
"But at least no one was hurt," Cain said. "We are grateful for that."
Christopher nodded. "But I'd just spent half my paycheck on groceries, so that sucked."
"What do you do for a living, now?" I asked.
"I work as a clerk at a gas station," Christopher said.
"I work the drive-thru at McDonald's," Donald said. "None of us had any education or skills when we turned, so we were grateful for the fake identification Cain secured for us just so we could work."
"You got them fake IDs?" I asked.
"The Voodoo world has many resourceful persons," Cain said. "It was nothing."
"So you said you have a boyfriend?" one of the women, the smallest one, asked.
I nodded. "I do. Are any of you in relationships?"
"Evie and I are together," Christopher said, putting his arm around the woman next to him.
"I married a nun," Donald said. "Well, a former nun."
Bat Shift Crazy: An Ex-Shifter turned Vampire Hunter Urban Fantasy (The Legend of Nyx Book 2) Page 12
