by Faith Hunter
Inside, it was a madhouse; a couple dozen manacled malcontents reeking of vodka, beer, malt liquor, wine, cheep perfume, and reefer were waiting to be processed. Officers were darting here and there—okay, were meandering here and there—and computer keys were clacking, radios, phones both cellular and landline, were ringing, PCs were beeping, printers were clattering, and the law enforcement 911 radios were chattering. It was oddly cozy, yet I was as nervous as a cat in a room full of wolves.
Beast perked up and paid attention to the organized confusion. Her claws were doing that milking thing they did to my psyche when she was interested in something, claws out, a sharp dig into my mind, claws retracted. It wasn’t comfortable, but it did keep me alert.
Breathing just a bit too fast, starting a nervous sweat, I signed in and waited for the armed guard to look over my credentials and make a phone call. While waiting, I checked my cell phone and saw I still had bars. Cool. Now, if the bars extended further into the walls of NOPD, and if I could get the camera and cell inside, I’d be set to go.
When the armed officer finally waved me through, he had to shout directions over a loud confrontation at the front door. A multipierced cross-dresser in a skintight purplesequined evening gown—and nothing else—had started screaming about his right to go to the ladies’ room, despite the clear evidence of male dangly bits jiggling against the purple dress. Thanks to her—his?—histrionics, I was able to hand off my cell and camera to myself and not set off the metal detector as I scooted through.
Moving fast, feeling a trickle of sweat slide down my backbone, I tucked both items back into my boot, accepted my visitor’s badge, and took the stairs to the third floor, as per the shouted directions. I meandered my way to the back of the room, which was done in office boring and smelled of Starbucks; someone had made a run and the paper cups were scattered among the desks. By the time I saw Rick LaFleur, I was cool and relaxed—or at least I looked that way. Rick was sitting in an uncomfortable-looking desk chair, his feet on the desk, crossed at the ankle. The cop had black eyes and black hair, what the locals called a Frenchy look. And he was gorgeous, by far the prettiest man I’d ever known. He also had intricate tattoos of a bobcat and a mountain lion—my animals—hidden beneath his shirt, on one shoulder, and a ring of big-cat claws on the other. And likely a lot of scars since the attack by a sabertooth lion’s claws.
We hadn’t seen each other since the attack, hadn’t even chatted over the phone, except for the one time when I told him what I could about the violent confrontation he’d barely lived through. Now Rick watched me as I crossed the room. He wasn’t smiling. He looked cold, aloof, and not particularly friendly.
What was it about my male acquaintances and dour faces? Whatever it was, I wasn’t taking it sitting down. That way led to being sidelined and one-upped. Beast had other ideas too, and I could feel her peering through my eyes. Provocative was Beast’s middle name. Following her lead, I slapped Rick’s feet off the desk and took their place. “Long time no see, Ricky-Bo. You look remarkably healthy for cat food.”
He narrowed his eyes and set his feet on the floor. Not that he’d had much choice. His Frye Western boots and ratty jeans had been hanging unsupported in midair until he lowered them. Rick wasn’t happy. Until recently, he had been undercover. I had followed him in beast form, and listened in on a conversation or two, including pillow talk. I had also saved his life, though his memories of that event were confused and befuddled. If he remembered the attack clearly, he’d be more appreciative, I assured myself. Of course, he was still on administrative duty. According to Troll, the majordomo at Katie’s Ladies and Rick’s uncle, he was permanently out of the undercover business now that the vamps in town knew he was a cop. So maybe he wasn’t appreciative after all.
I leaned in to him and spoke softly. “Ricky-Bo, I need access to any files or reports about young rogues roaming free, say, in the last few years. NOPD got any vamp files?”
His eyes sharpened and I could see things taking place behind them. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t like whatever he came up with. “Maybe. What do you have to trade?”
A negotiation. I should have known. “How about your life? Remember that one? And how about the rogue who killed the cops, your friends and fellow officers. You saw the photographs. You owe me.”
Rick’s expression closed down, into that mask they all do, cop-face. “Maybe, maybe not. How ’bout you share what you’re working on for the vamps? If I like it, we’ll see if NOPD has anything you can use.”
I let a bit of Beast shine through my eyes and leaned in. Rick didn’t run, but his body went still and I smelled adrenaline creep from his pores. I spoke low, so only he would hear, and Beast watched his eyes, evaluating him like a predator. “My contract is to bring down a vamp who’s making young rogues and setting them free, uncured, to feast on the populace. I got nothing yet, so sharing is out for now, but the quid pro quo was already satisfied.”
I let my eyes drop to his chest and the sabertooth claw scars hidden beneath his shirt. I had a flash of memory. An image of Rick in a pool of blood in the middle of a ruined room. It was as fresh and cutting as that night.
His eyes darkened, as if he was seeing that night too, the memory of the attack. He swore but the words were without heat, his gaze turned inward, a hand on his scarred chest. I wasn’t sure what he was thinking, but I didn’t like the lost look growing in his eyes. I nudged his knee with mine. “So. You gonna tell me what I need to know? About the vamps?”
With a visible effort, he pulled himself back into the present and his gaze met mine, searching and oddly vulnerable. For a moment, I thought he might reach up and touch my face, but he sighed instead, and the sound had an “I give up” quality about it. “Yeah. I guess you got the QPQ right. I don’t know what it is about you, Yellowrock.” As I had no idea what he was talking about, I said nothing and after a moment he blew out another breath, this one sounding irritable again but without the resigned note. “Come on.” And with that, I was in. Rick LaFleur, former undercover cop, now on administrative duty, led me down several flights of stairs to a room with no name, only a number: 666.
“Cute,” I said of the numbers.
“Yeah, cop humor. We keep the weird-shit cases and the woo-woo files in here.” He sounded like his old self again, lighthearted and carefree, no trace of that night in his voice. He opened the door and preceded me in. And I heard a metal drawer slide open. Over Rick’s shoulder I saw Jodi Richoux. She was sliding a slim red folder into a metal file cabinet and the look she shot me was full of meaning, if I’d only been smart enough to know what the meaning was. But whatever it was, Jodi wasn’t surprised to see me here. In fact, I had a feeling she had been expecting me, had seen me arrive, and beaten me to the room. I sniffed the air, smelling her apprehension as she closed and locked the cabinet drawer.
I’d had beers with Jodi before Mol arrived. We weren’t exactly bosom buddies, but we had ended up on the dance floor, half drunk and whooping it up. It had been nice having a gal pal of sorts, as I had been kinda lonely until Molly came. “LaFleur, Yellowrock,” she said.
“Richoux,” we both said back, in offbeat unison. She nodded and left the room, giving me that look again, and glanced back to the drawer she had opened. And then she was gone.
The room was walled in metal file cabinets painted gray and military green, surrounding a long table and six metal folding chairs. No windows. Just two bare bulbs lighting the room in a harsh blaze. Rick patted the file drawer that Jodi had just closed, saying, “Everything we’ve gathered on the vamps since they came out of the closet is right here.” He jingled a ring of keys, selected one, and unlocked the file cabinet.
Everything was a two-drawer file cabinet labeled 666- 0V. On top of the cabinet were stacked three cardboard boxes. I opened a cabinet drawer to find folders divided into sections with little tabs—Clans, History, Miscellaneous, that kind of thing. My fingers itched with impatience, and I pulled a thick one on history a
nd opened it. Loose pages shifted with a dry, raspy sound like snakes slithering on rock. On top was a police report from 1978.
“Ahhh,” I said, not looking up from the folder, excitement rising. “I may be a while.”
“I’m locking you in.”
“What? No.” I wasn’t crazy about being stuck in a locked room anywhere and Beast didn’t like it at all. I felt her staring out of my sockets, a growl low in her throat that I caught before it erupted out of mine.
“This hallway is full of sensitive information on paranormal investigations, a lot of it old files that are still only in hard copy format. If I had time to babysit you or had a uniform to put down here, it’d be different. For now, the lock has to do. Call my desk when you’re done.”
I looked back at the file in my hand, knowing I needed to stay. Okay, yeah. I could do this.
CHAPTER 5
I was living in a former whorehouse
According to police records, vamps hadn’t been totally in the closet in certain cities across the globe, even before the famous staking of Marilyn Monroe by the Secret Service in the Oval Office while she was trying to turn President Kennedy. That event had revealed the existence of vampires, and shortly thereafter, witches, to the public, but prior to that, vamps had an undeniable—if shadowed and veiled—presence in such cities as Paris, London, Mumbai, Tokyo, and New Orleans. In and around the French Quarter they had attained a clandestine notoriety in the early nineteen hundreds living in Storyville, the section of the city once set aside for houses of ill repute, saloons, gambling houses, honky-tonks, music halls, and similar such places catering to the baser side of human desires.
Vamps had owned and managed at least three houses of prostitution in the district set aside by Sidney Story from 1897 to 1917, houses licensed and operated within the law. According to the Blue Book, which listed the names, descriptions, and addresses of more than seven hundred prostitutes, the vamp houses had been dedicated to “lusty lasses, a bit of blood, and the nick of a delicate whip,” as well as “the finest professors in the land,” professors being the musicians who played in the houses. The names of the three vamp houses were kind of corny: Countess Simone’s Pleasure House, Le Salon du Tigre, and Katie’s Ladies. That last one I knew well.
I looked up to see the empty room, scanned the corners for cameras or listening devices, saw that it was clean, and blew out a relieved breath. I hadn’t realized how tense I was until I let my shoulders slump. Beast might be provocative, but I was a wimp when it came to cops. I blew out another breath and forced myself to relax fully.
I glanced over the photographs of the bawdy houses, pausing at Katie’s. In front of the house a blond woman posed, standing against a light pole, back arched, her skirts and petticoats tossed high to reveal long, slender legs, garters and stockings, and low boots. Her dress was open, displaying a lot of cleavage. It was Katie, her fangs displayed as carnally as her body.
The house she stood in front of was French with lots of black wrought iron in a fleur-de-lis pattern, and had a second-story balcony over the front. Gaslights burned in the early evening, reflecting on window glass. The narrow door had a leaded glass window in the upper half, and was very familiar to me. The house in the photo was where I currently lived. Great. I was living in a former whorehouse.
But a vamp on film? I hadn’t known it was possible, yet, as I thumbed through the pages, I found several vamp photographs, bodies and fangs on exhibition, each one signed by the well-known Storyville photographer Ernest J. Bellocq. Bellocq had managed to photograph a number of famous vamps of the time, despite the inability of vampires to reflect on the silver used in both daguerreotypes and the later wet collodion-process photographs. I wondered how he had done it. Most people thought vamps had been photo-proof until digital cameras had appeared. And yet, here was the proof that someone had figured out how to do it.
Katie might have answered my questions about vamp history, but she was unavailable, sent to earth to heal the wounds that would have led to her final death. My first few days in New Orleans had resulted in pretty major changes in some of my employers’ lives.
I stopped at one erotic photo of two vamps posed together. Katie was sitting on a bar, bottles of liquor lining the wall behind her, her head thrown back in what looked like pure carnal ecstasy. Her breasts were exposed, her skirts hitched around her waist. Her bare legs were spread. A man knelt between them, clearly servicing her with his mouth. The man looked like a fashion plate, even involved in the intimate activity. He was wearing a short-waist coat, trendy in the day, slim pants and boots, and a top hat. The top hat was still in place, as was the long black hair he wore combed back and tied in a queue. Leo Pellissier.
A strange heat pulsed through me. Remembering when Leo healed me of a wound that would have left a human facing surgery, maimed, and in serious rehab. That had been erotic too, and he had only been licking my arm. Chill bumps rose on the back of my neck.
I shook my head and pushed away the memory and the sensations that warmed my skin. I removed the camera from my boot and took photos of the photos. Thank God for digital cameras. I was honest enough to admit that I might not need all of these for my investigation, but an investigator can never know too much backstory.
I drew another file from the history folder. This one was marked Vampira Carta, which was the vamp’s code of law. According to the lawyer who had done the paperwork for my license, in it was the legal justification for hiring rogue hunters, which made my livelihood dependent on it. A notation on the front cover indicated the papers had been found during the construction of the Iberville Housing Projects, on the site of the old Storyville. Iberville was the housing project where I’d killed a vamp, where Derek Lee lived. Curious, I opened the file.
It was set up a lot like the Magna Carta, with a preamble and numbered paragraphs of importance. If I remembered right from high school, the Magna Carta had thirty-seven paragraphs. The Vampira Carta had twenty-two. I wondered which document was actually older. It was written in an old form of English, or maybe Latin; fortunately, a translation started at the bottom.
The first paragraph read:
Preamble: Jules, Blood Master by the shame of sin, Master of the Guilty of England, Ireland, and Aquitaine, sends solemn greetings to all to whom the present letters come. Concerning the liberties of the dead and living, we submit this great charter to the Blood Master of Europe, the lord Lucius, our father of the Mithrans.
I turned the page. There wasn’t another. The translation stopped, or the next page had been removed. I searched through the history folder, but the rest of the translation was gone, or had never existed. I set the pages on the table and quickly snapped off six shots, folded the history info back up, and went to work on other stuff. I wondered if the vamp council would let me have a translated copy of the carta, and what kind of story I’d have to use to get them to hand it over.
At the back of the file was a handwritten list in pencil on lined paper, of names and words titled Anomalies. When I read them, my skin went all prickly.
Anomalies
Sabina Delgado y Aguilera—shaman, Vampire, out-clan (meaning?), Cross? Second gen?
Bethany NLN—shaman, Vampire, out-clan (meaning? related to Sabina?), Cross? Third gen? War?
Sons of Darkness? What the hell are they?
There was no sig line. At some point, some cop had done a supernat investigation, and he’d clearly been left with some loose vamp ends. I wondered if he’d survived being nosy. The words were too faint to photograph. I didn’t recognize the blocky handwriting and when I sniffed the page, the scent signature was unfamiliar, almost obscured by lingering tobacco smoke, as if the writer had been a two-pack-a-dayer. But something about the list felt important, so I copied it into my little spiral notebook, then texted it to myself, just in case I wasn’t allowed to leave with notes, and went back to the files.
The cops had done a history on each of the clans, and rather than read the info here, I took mo
re photos, hoping the picture clarity would be good enough for later reading. I continued searching the cabinets and came upon a stack of old MPRs—missing persons reports—with a reference to file number 666-0W. I checked the other cabinets but all of them were locked. I remembered the ring of keys Rick had carried. Shrugging, I settled to the one I had. And I spotted a red folder. A quick search told me there weren’t many of them in the drawer, and when I sniffed it, it smelled strongly of Jodi Richoux. It was the file she’d been putting in the drawer while she looked meaningfully at me. Inside were more MPRs.
All the missing in Jodi’s file were children and teens, all within the last twenty-five years, ten of them from recently. They had all vanished at night, all were under eighteen, all were witch children. The chill I’d been feeling off and on settled across my shoulders as I stared at the photographs and the reports.
All of them vanished at night. It was circumstantial, but could vampires be involved? I couldn’t see what they had to gain.
The last witch child had vanished three months ago.
The reports were scanty and didn’t go beyond interviews and I wondered how much the cops were doing to find the little witches. NOPD had a well-publicized antipathy to witches that deepened following the witch debacle of Katrina, when a lone witch coven tried to turn a category-five hurricane away from land. They got it down to a cat three, but they couldn’t turn it. Their efforts and power weren’t enough; the old, poorly built levees failed; thousands died in New Orleans and across the Gulf Coast from wind and storm surge. But would human anger be enough to make some cops ignore the continuing kidnapping of witch children for decades? I hoped not. But I had a bad feeling about it.
