Easy Pickings

by Faith Hunter

  “And just how’s that’s going to work?” As far as I could tell, Jane was happy to forget about our larger problem while she gave Lazarus a good mocking. I sighed, about to interrupt, when the rich earthy brown of Laz’s aura began to crack.

  Power shone through the cracks. Not witch power, not black sorcery, not shamanic power, not magery. He shone gold and black and brown and green, jewel-like earth tones. He got brighter and brighter, until my eyes began to hurt and then to burn. I swore, flung an arm over my face to make myself stop looking, then dropped it again with the Sight safely turned off.

  Laz looked normal again. Well, as normal as any six-foot-six bald man with a body like a young African god could look, anyway. I said, “Well, fuck me,” very softly.

  Lazarus, bless his predictable little heart and soul, leered at me. “Name de time and de place, mon cour.”

  I couldn’t help it: I snorted a laugh. He wasn’t going to distract me, though. “I knew you weren’t a sorcerer. I thought you were a witch. A really strong one, like my friend Melinda. One with a personal connection to her goddess. You’re not.”

  “No.” Laz spread his hands wide, palms up, innocent. “I am not dem t’ings.”

  “No,” I agreed, and started to grin. Jane was over there all but doing the pee-pee dance, dying to know what the hell we were talking about, but before she could ask, we all heard an infant wail from behind the stage.

  Jane, who had the quickest reflexes I’d ever seen on anybody, whirled and yanked the stakes from Grégoire’s belly. I half wanted to stay and watch what happened to an un-staked vampire, but Jane raced along the wall and through the door at the end. Laz and I went after her and the vamps followed.

  Amaury was in the next room, an office with oriental rug, an antique desk covering more floor space than some third world homes, ornate lamps, stone busts, bronze statues. Serena was clasped to his chest, a knife to her throat. Beside him was a screaming baby in a crib. I didn’t speak a lot of baby, but her shrieks were more than just general misery. She sounded hungry and she sounded furious, like she had every intention of laying the smacketh down on Amaury just as soon as she learned to walk and kick ass. I liked her automatically.

  Jane, who maybe liked the infant on general principles just like I did, laughed and pulled her nine mil, pointing at Amaury. It looked like a tricky shot, aiming for the knife instead of the vamp. She started to squeeze the trigger.

  Serena screamed, “No!”

  Jane, who had the best goddamned reflexes in the universe, froze. Stopped with the shot so close I was afraid that if she exhaled, the semi-automatic would fire.

  In the same instant I turned the Sight back on, and the knife flared with damned near as much brilliance as Lazarus had. Grey storm fury danced in the blade, Damascus folds that lived, pulsed and changed. Amaury’s hand trembled, holding the thing. It fought him with everything it had. With the force of a category five hurricane. It fought him with Katrina’s soul, and even with all the magic in New Orleans helping him keep it in line, he could still just barely keep the storm contained.

  “The knife,” I whispered. “It’s the amulet.”

  Jane, millimeter by freaking millimeter, eased off the trigger. Amaury’s smile flashed white and sharp with three inch fangs, and he pressed the knife a little more closely against Serena’s throat. “Now we can settle this, no?”

  I said, “Yes,” so softly that even I thought I sounded afraid. I wasn’t. I was thinking, yes, but mostly I was getting ready to move. Way back in the back of my head, I said, Rattler? and a spirit snake, a sketch of light and lines, awakened in my mind. He was one of three animals that had come to me in my shamanic journey, and he was the weapon in my arsenal. The others carried me through death and time, but it was always my rattlesnake I turned to when I needed to strike with inhuman speed.

  Hey, I whispered to him. I need your speed, Rattler. We’ve got a fight on our hands, and I’m going to have to move faster than I’ve ever done.

  Rattler stretched and coiled in my mind, ropy muscle tensing and relaxing in preparation. He hissed, We ssstrike, with pleasure, and I released my awareness of him so I could speak to Jane again, ever so softly.

  “Get the baby,” I said. “Get Serena. And stay out of the way.”

  Jane, in the corner of my eye, bristled and shifted her shoulders like her hackles were rising. I had no idea what her problem was, but her eyes were pure gold, like Beast had a thing or two to say about my commands. I took my gaze off Amaury for a three-second stare-down with a big cat, and neither of us liked it at all.

  Jane’s nostrils were flaring, her lips curled back like she was a cat smelling something nasty. I bared my own teeth, one hunting animal to another, before recognition snapped in. Beast was smelling something nasty: she smelled Rattler rising in me. I laughed again, and this time it was a warning hiss of its own. “You and me can throw down after this, Beastie girl. Right now we’ve got a cub to save.”

  I looked away, insouciant as a cat. Pretending I didn’t care, pretending she wasn’t a threat. I had to trust Jane to control her Beast, or we were all so much lunchmeat anyway.

  Amaury, clearly enjoying our little tête-à-tête, clearly happy about the dissention in our ranks, had simply watched the exchange. Mistake. Big mistake.

  I said, “I’m sorry,” to Serena, because unless she got very lucky, things were about to go remarkably badly for her. She would survive it—that was kind of my raison d’être—but unless I misjudged things, there would be an unpleasant thirty seconds or so where she wouldn’t think she was going to.

  She had exactly enough time to widen her eyes in alarm before Rattler’s magic filled me and I struck.

  Jane’s commentary had made it clear that vampires were fast. Hell, in my extremely limited experience, I’d seen them pop from one place to another so quickly the air exploded with confusion. At a guess, there weren’t any predators a vampire might normally face that could come anywhere near their speed.

  Too bad for Amaury that not one goddamned thing about this day was even vaguely normal.

  I slammed the sword through his right shoulder before he even knew I’d moved. Serena got lucky: his arm spasmed out, not in, and the knife only left the thinnest scrape across her throat. She still screamed like she’d been murdered. The baby screamed even more loudly, and Amaury put them both to shame with a cry that rocked the heavens and made my eardrums shudder with pain.

  He wrenched his body from my sword and shot backward at speed, leaping up onto the antique desk with such incredible grace that under any other circumstances I’d have applauded. Blood made a thin arc between his shoulder and my sword. I bunched my thighs and leapt, rattlesnake-fast, to tackle him off the desk before the blood had even broken from its flawless arc. Momentum carrying us, we bashed into the far wall.

  Fists flew. Amaury hit like a pile driver, vampiric speed making up for lack of strength, assuming he lacked it, which my aching jaw did not assume. I hammered my elbow into his face, feeling his nose crack beneath pointy bone. He howled, which was gratifying. I’d broken my nose as a kid. It was good to know it hurt a vampire as much as it had hurt me. Then he seized my shirt with one hand, strong-armed me straight into the air, and slammed himself up at top speed, bashing his forehead into my nose.

  Blood spurted everywhere. I couldn’t breathe enough to scream. Amaury flung me across the room and I rammed into another wall, sliding down, half blinded by tears. I managed to catch a breath and my healing magic kicked in, straightening cartilage—ow—and stopping the flow of blood as well as the dripping tears.

  That let me see all sorts of exciting things. Serena had been knocked against a far wall amidst fluttering papers that had been tidily piled half an instant earlier. Jane was still caught in the aftermath of the motion that had flung Serena to safety, one arm extended, her very person bristling with energy and preparation. Amaury was already on his feet again, the knife upraised. Jesus, raised over the baby, who was about to
be a vampire’s sacrificial lamb.

  The biggest cat in the universe leapt on him, and that was all the time I needed.

  Amaury had no fear of Beast. He thrust her away as he’d done me. She writhed in the air, landing prepared to pounce, leaping even as her paws touched down. But I bellowed, “Get the kitten!” and she changed the angle of her jump, her body swiveling in midair, her long stubby tail swiveling opposite for balance. The crib went to pieces under her weight, but she came up with a squalling miserable infant’s onesie caught gently in her teeth. Serena’s screams underlined the baby’s.

  Lazarus, during all of that, just waited, arms crossed over his chest, watching. That was it. He just stood there, calm, handsome, waiting. I gathered myself while he waited, and this time when Amaury came to his feet, I struck again.

  Not his chest. Not his neck. I was pretty sure my sword would obliterate him—it was solid silver, made by an ancient Irish king called Nuada—but I didn’t know what would happen if he died before the amulet was contained. So he spun, protecting his heart, and I—

  —I, as infantile as I was gleeful, yelled, “Unhand me, thou shag-eared villain!” and lopped off his right hand, the one holding the dagger.

  It was an upward swing, so momentum would kick the stump—was it a stump if it was the free-flying end? It didn’t matter. The stump flew upward a few inches. I turned my sword flat-wise toward it and swung like I was hitting a baseball. The hand, still clutching the dagger, made a bright bloody arc through the air.

  Lazarus reached out and caught it as easily as any first baseman, and while Amaury was still screaming with shock, I shoved my sword through his heart and hauled upward, splitting his clavicle, his jawbone, and his brain in two.

  Katrina exploded into the study, a force five hurricane unleashed all at once. Wild wind. Lashing rain. Everybody, everything, in fact I thought probably the whole universe, was soaked to the bone before we could even blink. The desk smashed through a wall, then out of the building. We were all, in that instant, dead, and just waiting to realize it.

  As fast as she’d come, Katrina shut down again, swallowed by a flare of earth magic that came from the whole bayou country. It surged up, rich earthy stench of life, and wrapped around Lazarus, who wrapped it around Katrina, and quenched her rage.

  Beast, not so much dripping as pouring wet, crouched in the silence, a now-silent baby between her paws. The poor kid’s eyes were big as apples, but it gave a sudden happy chirrup and laughed. She reached up and grabbed the big-cat’s ears and tugged. Beast, despite being sopping, licked the little creature, then turned back into an equally wet, none-too-happy, buck-naked Jane.

  Serena cried out and scrambled the few steps to her baby, catching the little girl in her arms and clutching her close. Lazarus, looking satisfied, folded his hands over and over the dagger like he was tucking it away, while I stood there and dripped. A bunch of vampires, one of them clutching a healing chest wound, stood in the doorway of Amaury’s study, wheezing and gaping at the aftermath of what had been, at most, a fifteen-second battle.

  “What,” said Jane, who had not once used a curse word stronger than “crap” since I’d met her. “What the hell. Was. That?”

  Me, I said, “Who are you,” to Lazarus, but it was Serena, cooing and whispering to her baby, who gave me the answer.

  She looked up at Laz, tears running down her face, and said, “Papa, yes? Papa Legba, I call you up, no? The gateway god, the link between here and there. These two, they just got pulled in by accident, but you, you came to save my bebe, my Lissa.”

  I wheezed just like the vampires were doing. Even I knew who Papa Legba was, the voodoo father figure, brought across from Africa and the Caribbean islands to settle in New Orleans with the slaves.

  “Seriously?” I said. “Really? I finally figured out you were a god, but Papa Legba? Really? That’s—”

  It was cool. I hadn’t met any African gods before, and Legba was a trickster character, somebody who should be near and dear to the heart of a shaman. I blushed suddenly and shot a guilty look at Jane. Maybe that was why I’d taken so much more of a fancy to him than she had. He was rather literally my kind of god.

  She looked like I deserved to feel guilty, but not for liking Lazarus, oh no. She got to her feet, pointing an accusing finger at me even as she went to find her clothes. “You knew he was a god? A god? I don’t do gods, Joanne, I don’t—”

  “I swear didn’t know until the last minute! He’s got—you’ve got hellacious shields,” I said to Lazarus, more than a little admiring. “I mean, really, the other gods I’ve met, if I looked at them with the Sight at all they basically burned out my eyes, but you didn’t, not until you had to lose the wraps to get Katrina under control—”

  I broke off, eyeing the knife warily. “She’s under control, right? And now what do we do with her?”

  “I’ll take her,” Leo, one of the vampires said, and Lazarus finally responded.

  Well. He laughed out loud, actually, pure derision. “You think you can control de hurricane, little vampire? Non. She is mine, we are lovers, only I can woo her. You wish to die, you try to dance wit’ her. Otherwise, don’ be a fool.”

  “You promised,” the vampire hissed at Jane. “You said New Orleans would be mine.”

  Jane paused in the middle of getting dressed to lift her hands. “Hey, I said it was yours on my world. Take it up with the god, why don’t you, not me. I’m just a lil’ ol’ skinwalker. Really, Joanne? A god? And you were being all buddy-buddy with him? Really? And you!” she said to Serena. “You got us all here, how are you going to get us home? How are you going to get him home?”

  “Dis my home,” Lazarus said, and we all shut up for a minute. “Dis city, it’s alive,” he said. “Full of magic, full of power. Full of sex and love. Full of food an’ dancing. Dese things, dey feed me. Dey make me strong. I go, the hurricane, she unleashed. I stay, she stay safe, she stay quiet, she come out of her shell bit by bit, when de city need her love. I make her d’ queen of New Orleans, an we dance an party and love all the years long.”

  Leo the vampire said, “But—!” and spat dirt, worms, muck, earth, instead of words.

  Lazarus just looked at him, and when he’d finally cleared his lungs of muck, Laz said, “You dead, son, an I de god of dis here eart’ right here.” He tapped his foot on the wet floor. “You really want to mess wit dat? Cause if you do, I got more bayou I can fill you up wit’. Lot more bayou.”

  The vampire shook his head, wet black curls whipping. Laz looked satisfied. “Dat’s fine, den. You run your business d’way you see fit, boy. Jus’ you don’ mess wit’ me and I won’t mess with you. G’wan now.”

  All three vampires fled, which I didn’t think was normal vampire behavior. Jane crowed laughter as they skedaddled, then remembered herself and gave me another glare. “Gods?”

  “An’ you.” Lazarus, magnificently unconcerned with me and Jane, spoke to Serena. “My little witch who brought me to dis new place. Katrina my queen in power, but maybe you be my queen in life, no? We try it, mebbe, you an’ me. Even ol’ Papa Legba likes a pretty girl.”

  I really, really wanted to say something. Something like, “Oh no you don’t, you scoundrel! Not to an innocent young thing like Serena!”

  Trouble was, I recognized the star-struck expression on Serena’s face. I’d felt it more than once, in the presence of the first god I’d met. Lazarus didn’t hit me the same way Cernunnos did—he was less feral, though not necessarily more civilized—but the only thing keeping me away from the horned god of the Wild Hunt was the very human man I’d fallen in love with long before I met Cernunnos. I didn’t think Serena had a Morrison of her own, and frankly, I wasn’t going to begrudge her a fling with Papa Legba when ninety-seven percent of me dearly wanted one with Cernunnos. So I kept my mouth shut, and kicked Jane in the shin when she looked like she might say something too.

  Not that Serena would probably notice, what with Lazarus leaning in toward
her and murmuring, “I buy you a pretty house all filled with pretty things. Buy you a pretty dress too. Yes?”

  Serena giggled. Honest to god, giggled. I sighed. At least I’d never giggled over Cernunnos. Then again, he’d never offered to buy me a pretty house and a pretty dress.

  “You two,” Lazarus said to me and Jane, absently. “You tell ol’ Papa when you want to go home, an’ I open up a gateway for you. Dat’s my thanks for cleanin’ up my city.”

  “You—your—” Jane descended into strangled noises, then tried again. “You think we’re going to let you stay?”

  Lazarus took his attention from Serena and focused it on us. It hit me like an avalanche, weighty power of the earth pressing down. Jane shifted her weight back, searching for purchase while I strengthened my shields. “You t’ink you can send me back?” Laz asked almost casually. Then Serena, who really was of this world, stepped up beside him and reached for her own magic, just to back up his point.

  I staggered under the combination. Actually staggered, and grabbed Jane’s arm so I wouldn’t fall down. My friend Melinda, who refused to talk about it but implied she had a close personal relationship with her goddess, had thrown some impressive power around a few times in the past. Mel had nothing on the power of a witch standing side by side with her god. Right in that instant, I believed to the bottom of my soul that Serena could crush us like bugs if she wanted to. I wondered if I was seeing the birth of an avatar, one of the rare humans actually blessed with the direct magic of a god.

  I wanted, however, to wonder that from a long way away, so I grabbed Jane’s arm, whispered, “Let’s discuss it outside,” and hauled her away before Laz and Serena got bored and squashed us.

  The street was full of dead things and dazed magic-users. We avoided the worst of both, dripping our way down the road until we found a pool of light beneath a lamp, and together slid down to sit in its bath. Bath being the operative term: we were still drenched to the bone, drops of water sliding down my nose to hang at its tip, then fall. I was too tired to even wipe them away.