Easy Pickings

by Faith Hunter

  It was a good question, and I turned to Jane with a bit more ferocity than necessary. “Shit, Jane, I probably smell like snake. Snakes are symbols of renewal, healing, medicine, all sorts of things, besides being the bad apple in the garden.” My metaphor had gotten badly mixed there, but I didn’t let that stop me. “The point is you asked what I Saw, and I’m telling you I See trouble.”

  “Just what we’re looking for.” Jane threw her napkin down, got up, and stomped over to Antoine, or she would have, if cats ever stomped. It was more like a slither/slide/hunting/step. I breathed a curse toward the bucket of crawfish and went after her. My people skills left something to be desired, but so far Jane made me look like a paragon of tact and reason. I did not want to be cleaning up evil sorcerer from all over the diner, not if I could help it.

  Well, not unless he was the reason we were here. In that case, I might look the other way for a few seconds while Jane got in his face and ugly about it. Lazarus sauntered up to the counter with us just as Antoine turned back from the grill with an armload of artery-clotting, amazing-smelling food.

  Between us, me and Jane and Laz, we were about eighteen and a half feet tall, and just about that thick with magic potential. Antoine didn’t have to touch us to know it: I could see that in the sudden shift of expressions across his face. Astonishment first, followed hard by resentment and then sly greed, all of which disappeared so quickly that if they hadn’t lingered in his aura I might not have believed I’d seen them. There wasn’t a hint of any of it in his smile as he slid plates full of food onto the counter, spread his arms wide on either side of them, and leaned toward us with what would have been a good smile if looking at his aura didn’t give me the creeps.

  “Welcome to Antoine’s, mes amis. You new in town, yes? I haven’t seen you here before. But not tourists: Antoine’s is for locals. Mardi Gras partiers never seem to find me here.”

  I shot a look at Jane. She’d been a regular here in her own world, but this Antoine didn’t know her. That meant there wasn’t another Jane running around this version of New Orleans. I wondered what had happened to her, and then I wondered if there was a me somewhere up in the Pacific Northwest. I still had my police-issue cell phone stuffed in a pocket. I stifled the impulse to pull it out and call the same number, just to see if one Joanne Walker, Seattle Police Department, would pick up.

  “We asked around,” Jane said. “A woman called Evangelina Everhart suggested we try this place.”

  Antoine’s expression did the same kind of flat dull thing his aura did, again for less than a blink. “Did she now. Master Amaury will have a thing or two to say about that.”

  “Amaury?” That was me, wishing I’d kept my mouth shut when both Jane and Antoine gave me a look. At least Lazarus didn’t seem to recognize the name, either, which made me feel slightly better. This world was more like Jane’s than mine. Maybe it was more like Jane’s than Lazarus’s, too. Once we figured out why we were here—and how to get home—I kind of wanted to sit down and compare notes.

  “The big man,” Antoine said after a pause just long enough to make me uncomfortable. Long enough to suggest he was looking for the right words rather than just having a casual conversation. “New folk ‘round here are expected to pay him a visit. Evangelina should’ve sent you there, not here. Mighty peculiar that she didn’t.”

  “Mister Amaury don’ make crawdads like Antoine,” Lazarus said, sounding very solemn. “Miss Jane here was fierce hungry. Surely Miss Evangelina took pity on d’poor woman an’ sent her here before she had to get gussied up for d’big man.”

  Jane turned an incredulous stare at Lazarus while I turned an equally incredulous one on Jane. She no doubt gussied up well—I did, and we could be sisters—but the idea of putting her in anything but sleek black leather already seemed bizarre beyond belief. From Jane’s expression, the suggestion might have been a killing offense.

  Antoine, creepy aura or not, had the good sense to see when a knock-down-drag-out was brewing in his diner. He lowered his voice. “Well, you fed now. On the house for being new in town, but you go on, get going to Master Amaury. He’ll be wanting to see you, gussied up or no.”

  Jane and I both said “Nuh,” at once and dug into our pockets, throwing cash on the counter until we independently decided it looked like enough to pay for lunch. Neither of us, apparently, wanted to owe flat-auraed Antoine anything. And then we skedaddled, Lazarus tagging along. The door had barely closed behind us before Jane said “Something’s not right. The Antoine I knew would never have called anybody “Master”, and the only Amaury I know about died in the forties. A vamp. If he’s still here, then he’s old and dangerous and—”

  “And running this town,” I finished, and shivered.

  Outside, the smell of water on the night breeze hit me, powerful and sour, fishy and fierce, like a living thing, the Mississippi just over the levee. It was different here from the world I knew, as if it was laced with magic. And then the smell of wolf hit me, musky and wet with rain and straining for the hunt. Beast raised up in me, growling. I turned to Laz, a vamp-killer in one hand, the growl echoing in the street.

  “Jane?”

  I ignored the warning question in Jo’s tone. The smell of spiders hit the wind. Laz laughed at whatever he saw in my eyes, and suddenly he smelled like many animals all at once. Skinwalker? I lifted the blade that had pierced his neck and sniffed the traces of his blood on the steel edge. No. Not skinwalker, Beast thought at me. I do not know what it is.

  “I don’t know what you are,” I said, stealing Beast’s line, my pitch still half-growl, “but you stink something not-quite-right. And whatever you are, Beast really wants to gut you now and be done with it all.”

  “What does he smell like,” Jo asked carefully.

  “Like wolf and spiders and snakes. And now like raccoons and nutria and swamp water full of crawly things. He can change his scent at will and he’s playing with us.”

  Jo said, “Jane, look, he—” She stopped, exhaled noisily, then muttered, “Look, let me try something, okay? I’m a shaman, right? You’re okay with that?” She waited an instant for me to nod, then nodded in return and said “Keep your nose open.”

  Her eyes went gold as she spoke. Mine were gold all the time. Hers were green most of the time, but I could practically smell her pulling power down, and with the pull came the color change.

  And a scent change. It was like she was pulling Beast, or something like Beast, into her. She smelled of snakes, all of a sudden, and then of coyotes, and for half a second I even got an avian smell off her. Not a bird I knew. Something huge. Something dangerous. Her skin shivered a little, but she didn’t change into any of the things I smelled. They were still part of her, right under the skin.

  After a minute she let the magic go and wheezed a bit. “Okay, that was horrible. I don’t usually do that. But—look, did my scent change?”

  I gave a wary nod and Joanne’s shoulder’s dropped. “And does that make you want to stick a knife in me?”

  “Maybe a little bit.”

  She snorted a laugh. “Great. No, see, my point is we’re obviously all three coming from different magic backgrounds. Laz looks like a witch to me. Connected to the earth on a really deep level, and hooked up to some kind of god on the other side. My witches don’t do shapeshifting, but I bet your shamans don’t carry coyotes under their skin either.” Her eyebrows went up challengingly, and I had to nod an agreement. “Okay,” Jo said again. “So can we get past the pig-sticking impulse and accept that Laz’s magic isn’t like yours any more than mine is? We’ve got to find out what we’re all doing here, Jane. We might very well need all three of our talents to do that.”

  Beast huffed and stepped back, claws sheathed. “Not my world,” I grumbled, slamming the weapon back in its sheath. “Looks like my world, smells like my world on the surface, but the magics are turned all inside out and upside down.” I eyed Laz, “And it stinks. Let’s go.”

  “Where?�
�� Jo asked, with that careful tone still in her voice.

  “To Vamp Mojo, the vampire bordello that, in my day, was a rock-n-roll, jazz, dance club, and bar. Any place that smells of blood and sex that strongly has to be central to our being brought here.” I saw Jo shrug and Laz grin. I really hated that grin. It was too pretty by half, and pretty boys were dangerous any way you looked at them. But the other two seemed to think my killing Laz was not a good idea. Which totally sucked.

  I turned and led the way, keeping an eye on Laz and Jo in the windows of storefronts as we passed. As we walked, I talked and braided my hair, which had come back loose and straight as it always did after a shift. Then I twirled the braid up into a bun, and arranged my weapons in it, the stakes working like hairsticks, and my derringer hidden underneath. Insurance, just in case. “In my world,” I said, “Amaury, assuming it’s the same guy, is dead. He was the former Blood Master of New Orleans. Powerful. Old.” The other two considered that as we walked.

  Vamp Mojo was nothing like the bar from my own world. We walked in the front door and were met by two blood-servant bouncers, one a big, former special forces soldier with a bald head and muscled biceps the size of my thighs, and one a small, lithe, Asian guy with cold eyes and hard hands. I leaned slowly in and whispered in the former-soldier’s ear, “Evangelina sent us to talk to Amaury.”

  “Not with the weapons,” he whispered back, “I don’t care if the Devil himself sent you as a present.”

  I started removing the weapons, setting them on a table to the side. It was an impressive pile when I was done. Then I assumed the position, palms flat on the wall and feet spread. The small guy did the pat-down and while his hands cupped my breasts and got a little friendly below my waist, I ignored it. For now. When I picked my weapons back up, it would be a different matter. The muscle ignored Jo and Laz, as if my obvious weaponry was all that mattered. Which was odd, as they had magic that might put my guns to shame. With the hairsticks and derringer under my braids, we walked into Vamp Mojo.

  The place stank of blood and sex, and was mostly in shadow, lit by gas lanterns, the flames protected from drafts by glass globes. The bar ran along the back, serving the usual beer and liquor, but also coffee, tea, and blood. The vintages sat on stools inside the bar, every one of them pretty and mostly naked. Every one of them with half-healed bite marks on their wrists and the inside of their elbows, every one of them severely anemic and blood drunk, happily stoned on sips of vamp blood.

  There was a dance floor and a stage to the side, but set up higher, about three feet off the floor, and there were brass poles with totally naked dancers mounted on each. Laz leered. Jo rolled her eyes. I followed the scents on the air conditioned breeze to a booth in the corner. The stink of unknown vamp and power, and also the familiar—Leo Pellissier.

  Leo was debonair and pale-skinned, his long hair pulled back into a queue, tied with a black silk ribbon. He was wearing black pants and a black silk dress shirt open at the throat, and he looked strangely diminished here, less powerful, less commanding. He looked oddly anguished.

  There was a woman on his lap, blonde and delicate, his fingers tangled in her hair. Katie Fonteneau, and a half dozen other names. She was different in this world. Coarser. She was wearing a scarlet bustier, garter, and panties, with black stockings, and that was all. And though Katie was on Leo’s lap, another vamp was drinking from her.

  He was not as pretty as Leo, his skin duskier, his hair a bit coarser. And he was sucking on Katie’s neck while one hand massaged her breast. Cute. Katie was moaning, but I could see her face and she was not enjoying the attention. She was being abused by someone in power, which just got all over me. Despite that fact that Katie was half nutso in my world, I liked her.

  “Careful,” Jo whispered in my ear. “He’s got some magic in him. Like a sorcerer again. Jesus, what is it with sorcerers in this place?”

  “Great.” I rapped on the table and said, “Hey, fanghead. You got visitors.”

  Amaury went deadly still at the insult. So did Leo and Katie, and nobody does immobile like a vamp. It’s that not having to breathe thing that makes it so effective and so spooky. Slowly, he opened his eyes and stared at me over Katie’s head. Katie rolled her eyes back at me, afraid, and I had never seen her afraid. Only Leo did the expected—sat back in his seat and quirked up a brow, all old-world hoity-toity. He looked me over carefully and thoroughly, taking note of the silver hairsticks with a little quirk of his lips, before turning curious attention to his uncle.

  Amaury withdrew his fangs from Katie’s throat with a little click. He lifted her by her head, up into the air, and placed her across Leo. It was an amazing feat of one-armed strength, spoiled when there wasn’t enough bench seat for her and she nearly fell to the floor. Jo caught her by the arm until she got her feet under her, and helped Katie off toward a door behind the stage.

  I stared at Amaury, maintaining a half-smile and attitude until Joanne got back. Then I said, “I understand we have to talk to the chief suckhead of New Orleans.” When in doubt, go for crass.

  Amaury leaned back in his seat, arms out to his sides, his shirt billowing open to reveal a chest with sparse hair and a gold chain, the disco kind they wore in the seventies. He was typically Frenchy, like Leo, with black hair and black eyes, and the scent of his power was like static electricity on the air, tickling my nose, making me want to rub it. Jo’s eyes went gold and if she was a cat I’d have said her hackles stood up. She got stiff and still, and watched Amaury like he was the Devil himself.

  “I am the one you seek. You will show me proper deference.” He raised the fingers of his left hand and did a little twisting motion. The scent of power grew stronger, harsher, like bees buzzing on the air. “Kneel.”

  His power landed on my shoulders like a weight, and I locked my knees. I pulled on Beast’s energies, and could see from my peripheral vision Jo doing something to maintain control too. Laz just looked amused. I let Beast flow into me, her claws kneading my brain painfully. No way was I gonna kneel to this guy. He’d been dangerous and power-mad before he was killed on my world, and I could tell he was even worse here. He’d had a few decades longer to work his villain-charms in this world. “Don’t think so,” I said. “We’re not from around here, and we’re not yours to control.

  The power shut off instantly. Amaury sat up, clear calculation in his eyes. “Every magic user in this region is mine to control, and their magic mine to use as I choose.” He tilted his head slightly. “It has been so since I held back the waters of Katrina and saved the coast and the city.”

  Jo’s lip curled. “You took their power as payment for saving them?”

  “I did. It was fair recompense for my services.”

  “Sure. Whatever,” I said. “We’ve made the required appearance and now we need to be outta here. We were called here for a purpose. We have business to attend to.”

  “Wait.” Joanne kept staring at Amaury like he was something the cat dragged in, but she still ignored me even when I rolled my head until my neck popped and glared at her. “All the magic here flows through you?”

  Amaury nodded once. Jo made fists and stood her ground. “Then you’ve got to know what called us here. There’s something that needs doing here, and either you know what it is or you’re not as hot as you think you are.”

  The casual insult rolled off her tongue so trippingly it took a moment for Amaury’s expression to go black. Then it shivered back to reasonable so fast I wasn’t sure I’d seen the darkness. Calculation lay beneath the reason, though: he was assessing us, deciding what to say, while Leo watched me a little too intently, a little too much of the predator in his gaze.

  “There has been a disturbance,” Amaury finally said.

  I grinned, thinking, in the force, but I didn’t say it. Go me. Jo sucked her cheeks in like she was holding back a grin herself, and I had a feeling that if we looked at each other, we’d start to giggle. Not gonna happen. I kept my eyes on Amaury and for
ced my lips down.

  “A girl, a voodooine, was given a task. A simple task, and she failed.” His sneer came and went in a flash, which I thought took a lot of cajones from a guy who couldn’t even maintain a power base without stealing magic from other people. “She was meant to create a love spell, and instead I have sensed a rift and the arrival of a thing I do not recognize. A demon, I should say, which not even my power can locate or contain. Perhaps this demon is why you have been called to my territory.”

  I shot Lazarus a hard look and Joanne shot me one. I clamped my mouth tight before I said anything. I might not like how Laz smelled, but if Amaury thought demons were arriving in the Big Easy, it probably wasn’t a good idea to let him know that when I’d said we weren’t from around here, I’d really meant all three of us were from other worlds. He might think we were his demons. Right now he probably figured we were from, like, Pittsburgh. No point in tipping the vamp off—that would be bad for all of us. I ground my teeth and muttered, “Fine. Where do we find your voodooine? If she’s pulling down demons, she’s probably where we should start.”

  Amaury gave us a toothy, nasty smile. “The bayou. Ten miles out. If you’re half the magic-makes you say you are, you’ll feel her when you get close. If you’re not . . .”

  We left before he finished that threat.

  I was very proud of myself. I made it all the way out the door, into sunlight, and halfway down the block before my knees buckled and I had to grab a fence for support. Or Lazarus, as it turned out. I’d been reaching for the fence, but he got there first, and although it would be bad form to mention it to one Captain Michael Morrison of the Seattle Police Department, between the fence and Lazarus, I’d much rather lean on Laz.

  Jane, who apparently had the stamina and stomach of a racehorse, because she didn’t look nearly as affected by Amaury as I felt, stopped with her arms crossed beneath her breasts and frowned at me. Good impression of a brick wall, I thought, and wondered if my own shoulders were as imposing. “Didn’t you see,” I wheezed, but of course she hadn’t. I shuddered all over and wrapped my fingers around Laz’s forearm to prop myself upright. “That bastard is writhing with black magic, Jane. He wasn’t kidding. He’s sucking down every last drop of power in this city. I can See it now that I know what I’m looking for.”