by Faith Hunter
I held the coat in front of me, one hand gripping the pocket that held the gun. I could feel it, warm from his body heat, and it did feel like a nine-mil. I held the coat in front of me like a shield, but of course if he had another gun and really wanted me dead, now was the time to fire. He didn’t.
“You told me you had orders to shoot me if I killed a human. I killed a human. Your hand came up. I was shot. Soooo.”
Rick’s face twisted with some emotion I couldn’t name. “You really think I shot you.” He lowered his lids and dropped his head to keep me from seeing what might be on his face. “You killed him in self-defense, not a blood-magic spell or a killing frenzy.” When I didn’t say anything, he added, “I’m a cop. I’m trained to notice little things like that.”
“Who shot me?”
“You call him Diablo.”
I let my mind wander back over the last moments of my life, putting two and two together, and hopefully reaching four. I remembered the humans guarding the remains of de Allyon’s clan. The Tequila Boys. I remembered Diablo, pounding a downed vamp in the pasture after the battle, the night that Leo’s clan home burned to the ground. Had he been putting on a show? Had he agreed to snitch later, in return for something? Drugs? Women? A place in a vamp’s household and the increased life span that offered? Money? Money always talks, and most of the time it talks too much.
“Oh,” I said. Sounding totally lame. “Crap.”
Even I—with my limited social skills—knew I had hurt Rick. I could smell the anger and misery rushing through his veins. See it in his body language, in his expression, in his eyes that were fading from golden green back to black.
“You really thought I’d shoot you,” he said, the sound raw.
“What about my money?” the wino asked.
Rick tossed him a handful of bills without looking, turned on his heel, and walked back down the alley. I slid into the coat, warm from his body.
“Star-crossed lovers, is what you two are,” the wino said. “Or maybe he’s right and you really are a crazy bitch.”
“Yeah,” I said, blowing out a breath. “Right now I’m going with door number two.”
The wolf huffed with what sounded like disgust and showed me his teeth before turning in a sharp circle and lifting a leg on a Dumpster. He huffed again to make sure I knew he would rather be peeing on me. He dropped his leg and padded back down the alley. If a wolf could show disdain, he just had.
“Well, crap,” I muttered.
* * *
The rest of my day just got worse. Bruiser needed me to find and corral the humans de Allyon’s death had left running around without a master. De Allyon had used a lot of compulsion on his servants, and when that control disappeared suddenly, there were a lot of displaced, panicked humans running around, most with some version of PTSD from being in his service.
Someone had to deal with the CDC about the vamp plague. They had joined in with Leo’s private lab, working on finding a true cure. Again, me, since PsyLED was a police agency, not a government health agency. Meanwhile, Rick wrapped up his case and left New Orleans without a word—Rick, his unit of nonhumans, and his Soul. I watched him drive off in a new SUV—the kind that looks like a station wagon. It had rental plates, and somehow it looked . . . domestic. I didn’t let tears pool in my eyes until the rental pulled around the corner. Then I blinked them away and went back to work. What else could I do? I worked around the clock with Wrassler and Bruiser and then, all at once, it was all done. Finished. My job was done.
It was midnight, on the night of the new moon. And I was alone.
I got a job offer two weeks later. It was from the elusive Hieronymus, the Master of the City of Natchez. Seemed he had a problem with the remnants of de Allyon’s ungovernable Naturaleza running amok in his city and the nearby hunting territory. He was estimating there were at least twenty vamps hunting humans, and he wanted them removed. The council of Mithrans had offered thirty thousand a head—literally—to take them down. I was thinking about it. A change of scenery sounded like a good idea, and if I took the Younger boys, it would be a good way to test out this partnership idea. Frankly, I was surprised that he’d want one of the people who had shot up his town and left it in disarray to come back, but maybe he felt I needed to clean up my own mess.
I hadn’t heard from Bruiser. Hadn’t heard from Rick, despite the numerous apologies I’d left on his voice mail. Either I’d hurt him so badly with my accusation and lack of trust that he’d just walked away—maybe forever—or he was already in the field again and hadn’t checked voice mail. I could hope it was something simple, though the more time passed, the less likely it was a voice mail problem. I had told him I loved him and then accused him of shooting me. Go, me.
My life was sublimely uncomplicated right now. Which could be a good thing. But was probably not.
I went that night to hunt, deep in bayou country. In the middle of the shift, as the place of the change took me over, and gray light sparkled with the energies of my magics, I discovered Beast’s secret. I found the chain that ran from Beast, across the floor of my soul house to the sleeping form of Leo in the corner of my mind.
As we stood in the silence of the magics of the change, both fully skinwalker and fully cat, I said, He bound you. Not me. He bound you. How . . . ? Oh, crap. It must have been because his blood was in your mouth, in my mouth when we shifted. Even caught in the magic, I felt my breath hitch. I had vampire blood in my mouth at the time of the shift into cat.
Beast was bound to Leo Pellissier. I stared at the silvered chain and cuff that encircled her foreleg.
Best huffed, amused. Leo will be good mate.
The pain of the shift slid into me. “Well, crap.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Faith Hunter was born in Louisiana and raised all over the South. She writes full-time and works full-time in a hospital lab (for the benefits), tries to keep house, and is a workaholic with a passion for travel, jewelry making, orchids, skulls, Class III white-water kayaking, and writing.
Many of the orchid pics on her Facebook fan page show skulls juxtaposed with orchid blooms; the bones are from roadkill prepared by taxidermists or a pal named Mud. In her collection are a fox skull, a cat skull, a dog skull, a goat skull (that is, unfortunately, falling apart), a cow skull, and the jawbone of an ass. She would love to have the thigh bone and skull of an African lion (one that died of old age, of course) and a mountain lion skull (ditto on the old-age death).
She and her husband own fourteen kayaks at last count, and love to RV, traveling with their dogs to white-water rivers all over the Southeast.
CONNECT ONLINE
www.faithhunter.net
facebook.com/official.faith.hunter
ALSO BY FAITH HUNTER
The Jane Yellowrock Novels
Skinwalker
Blood Cross
Mercy Blade
Cat Tales (a short story compilation)
Raven Cursed
Have Stakes Will Travel (a short story compilation)
The Rogue Mage Novels
Bloodring
Seraphs
Host
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