by Raven Hart
I also had no idea how he had established himself as the foremost furbearing badass in the south. I tried to ask him about it a time or two, but he always deflected my questions. So I decided I’d better extend him the same “don’t ask” courtesy as I did everybody else. What he did like to talk about was his work as an amateur naturalist and ecologist. He’d raised a lot of green in and around Atlanta for green causes and had a lot of interesting stories to tell about how he went after the more notorious polluters of the Chattahoochee and public lands. He was not above putting someone in their place with teeth and claws if he could do it discreetly.
There was one particularly unlucky politician locked up in the state mental hospital in Milledgeville who as far as I know is still babbling to anyone who will listen about seeing a man change into a wolf and come at his throat. I don’t imagine he’s ever made the connection between that incident and the bribe he took from a chemical plant to excuse them from dumping enough poison into the Hooch for a gigantic fish kill. No matter. He’ll never murder another trout again.
Seth was roughly my height, more than six feet, and your typical—for this part of the world, at least—mixture of Native American and Scots-Irish blood. His brown hair was cut preppy short and those green-yellow eyes looked almost exactly like they did in his wolf form, except for the shape, of course.
Women must have found him handsome because between the two of us—I don’t mean to brag, but I’m not exactly chopped liver myself—we commanded the attention of pretty much every female in the room. Their reactions ranged from sly sidelong glances to out-and-out ogling. They were checking us out in a big way.
“I must be getting sloppy in my old age,” I said. “I couldn’t tell you were even around the garage.”
Seth grinned. “In vampire years, you’re just a tyke.”
“So what was the other reason you didn’t let me know you were in town?” I asked him.
“You know how I like to keep things on the down-low, especially when I’m dealing with other supernaturals,” he said. “I was going to come and say howdy eventually. I just wanted to get this business with the Thrashers finished and keep you from getting involved. Whenever you get mixed up with them, nothing good ever comes from it.”
“I can’t argue with that,” I said. “But now that I am involved, how do you suggest we go after them?”
Seth sighed. “I don’t suppose I can convince you to just stay out of this and leave it to me?”
“Nope.”
“Didn’t think so. Okay, then, why don’t you shake down that Jerry guy and make him tell you anything and everything he knows about the meth operation over at the cabin. Then we’ll compare notes and decide what to do from there.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I said, throwing a wad of cash on the bar. “Come on, fur-for-brains, you can bunk at my place for the rest of the time you’re here. I’m staying over at William’s for a while anyway.”
“That’s mighty neighborly of you. You still sleep in that coffin painted up like Dale Earnhardt’s number three?”
“Sure do.”
“You’re a true son of the south, my friend,” Seth said as we made our way to the door.
“And don’t you forget it,” I said. One of these days I’d get Seth to tell me about his origins. His real ones. That should be quite a tale.
Three
William
As still as standing stones, Donovan and I watched the town house where Hugo and his gang were hidden. Dressed in black, we stood in the shadows afforded by a grove of elms in the park across the street. He had insisted on accompanying me, announcing his intention to be my lieutenant while I was in London.
Olivia’s spies had indeed identified the house where Hugo, Diana, and Will were staying. I could smell them from here. But I also knew that Renee was not in or around the house. I knew this only through the instinctual connection I had with the head of her bloodline, Maman Lalee. The mystical seeing shells Lalee had bequeathed me had failed. I’d brought them with me in the hope that they would show me Renee, or at least the way to her. But they evoked no telling visions. I sensed that they needed to be used on the soil that Lalee had trod, needed that ancient and mystical connection through the earth to her. On this continent, they were as silent as the dead things they were, and my psychic connection to Renee through her foremother would take me only so far. I would have to rely on more or less conventional means to track her down.
I closed my eyes and pictured Renee as I’d last seen her. She was wearing her school uniform of a navy plaid skirt and vest with a crisp white shirt. One of her knees had a scrape covered with a cartoon adhesive bandage. Her hair was carefully plaited, each of the little braids topped with a different colored barrette. She’d kissed my cheek before she headed to the kitchen table to do her homework. My chest ached with missing her, and I rubbed at it absently.
Out of the corner of my eye, I observed this Donovan, if that was his real name. He was an obliging fellow, popular and gregarious judging by his interactions last night with the others in Olivia’s coven. It was clear that she leaned on him quite heavily. She obviously assumed him to be trustworthy and dependable. But I wasn’t in a position to assume anything.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been on a stake- out,” he said with a grin, then cleared his throat awkwardly.
“A vampire joke,” I said, hardly in the mood for jest. “You would enjoy meeting my offspring Jack. He has a much better sense of humor than I.”
“If you say so,” he said.
“What’s your background?” I asked him.
“What do you mean, mate?” he asked, not taking his eyes off the house.
“How did you come to be in Alger’s coven? I never heard him mention you.”
“I only just arrived right after Alger was killed,” he said. “I’m a bit of a wanderer, you see? I’ve spent most of my life in Oz—that’s Australia to you yanks—but I’ve got to go on walkabout from time to time. I travel here and there—stowing away on ships is my specialty—and try to keep one step ahead of the dark lords. I’m of a mind to settle down for a spell now, though.”
“Oh? Why now?”
He glanced at me just as the clouds overhead broke and the moonlight spilled down, illuminating his face more clearly. His skin was very white, whiter than even the natural pallor of a vampire, as if mention of the dark ones had caused the blood to drain from his face.
“I long for what strength there is to be had in numbers,” he said finally.
“Again I ask you, why now?”
“I can feel them coming,” he said in a suddenly raspy voice. “Can’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. “I can.” From the moment I touched down on European soil from my chartered aircraft, I felt the difference. There was a roiling underneath my feet, below the surface of the earth. It felt as if hell itself was mobilizing.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he said.
I didn’t respond. I wondered if Olivia had passed on to her coven members the mythology that had built itself up around me. Algernon had regaled her with so many tales of my exploits through the ages that when she first met me in Savannah, she knelt to me as if before a god. I hoped those in her coven were not looking to me as their sole salvation.
I’d had much time to think on the journey to and through Europe, and much time to stew in my own resentments. I once had great ambitions to help the more peaceful of my race triumph over the dark lords who would enslave them. After having been betrayed by some of those I loved best, I realized that I was beginning to care little whether any of us lived or died. Now my only concern was for Renee. Let Olivia’s clan believe that I was also here to help save them. When they had served their purpose by helping me get Renee back, I would leave them to their fate.
It was a sea change in my attitude. Olivia was right in saying that I had devoted decades to saving my fellow vampires from the dark lords. But I realized that after all that had happened in the past f
ew weeks, I had stopped caring. Let them save themselves.
“Oy!” Donovan jerked his chin in the direction of the house we were watching as Hugo and Diana stepped out of the front door. From behind them stepped Will. He looked thin but well. He had seemed cured by the newly engineered vaccine right before he’d left Savannah. But had he drunk little Renee’s blood to finish repairing himself to this extent? There was no sign of the rotted flesh that had been sloughing off his face that last time I saw him. He still looked like a lean, hard, twenty-something punk rocker, with his close-cropped red-gold hair and pierced ears. He walked with the same swagger and wore the same insolent expression.
Eleanor was nowhere to be seen, much less Renee.
“I’ll follow them,” Donovan offered, and he was off.
I watched the evil little family walk casually down the street, going to feed on some unsuspecting humans, no doubt, while Donovan followed at a discreet distance, too far away for his scent to be noticed by the other vampires, but close enough so that he wouldn’t lose them. He looked as if he had done that sort of thing before.
When the others were out of sight, I crossed the street and entered the side yard of the house. The house was not as secluded as Olivia’s, and I didn’t care to be seen breaking down the front door. Once in the darkened back garden I found a cellar window unlocked, raised it, and lowered myself inside. If there was anyone home, I didn’t wish to alert them. I listened and breathed deeply. The scent of Eleanor’s fear came to me. I followed the odor.
Jack
I strolled into the garage and got myself a cup of coffee. Rennie and the irregulars were playing cards as usual. Rennie was my business partner and the best master mechanic in the great state of Georgia, and he was human. The irregulars consisted of a motley collection of guys who liked to hang out at my all-night auto repair business, Midnight Mechanics. Just why they were almost always here and not in their homes—wherever that was—was anybody’s guess. Like I said before, my policy was not to ask anybody too many questions.
The irregular who had been hanging out the longest was Otis. Otis smells like a human—a human with severe hygiene issues maybe, but a human nonetheless. Still there was something about him that was just, well, different. Different as in supernatural different. He doesn’t have pointy ears or too many teeth, so I haven’t quite figured out just what he is. But one day I will.
Rufus I’m pretty sure is a shape-shifter—not a werewolf, but some other variety I can’t quite identify. Jerry is definitely werewolf all the way. I knew that even before Seth confirmed it. There was something really primal and elemental about werewolves that was fairly easy to spot—or to smell. Plus there’s that full moon thing. Jerry never came around during a full moon. Neither did Rufus for that matter. Whatever that meant.
Then, in a class by himself, was Huey. Huey is the guy who Reedrek murdered, although he’s here every night with the irregulars, playing cards when he doesn’t have any car detailing to do. You might well ask why Huey is still hanging out when he’s been dead for, oh, several months now.
It’s because I accidentally raised him from the dead. Huey is a bona fide flesh-eating zombie. That communication-with-the-dead thing I mentioned earlier can get away from you. It went haywire one night during a voodoo ritual I performed while knee-walking drunk. You know how they say that drinking and driving don’t mix? Well, neither does drinking and beseeching a voodoo loa for extra vampire powers.
Long story short, Melaphia created a spell so that Huey wouldn’t rot any more than he already had. Even though he was past his expiration date when he clawed his way out of the ground, he hadn’t completely turned sour. He could pass for human. A human with a body odor problem and a complexion so bad he looked like he’d at some point come in third in a hatchet fight. In fact, you didn’t particularly want to get downwind of either Huey or Otis, but at least Huey had an excuse. He was dead. Otis was just a slob.
I waited for the hand to be over and then called Jerry to the kitchen area by waving the new issue of Field & Stream and telling him I wanted his opinion on a new shotgun. As soon as he was out of earshot of the others I said, “I need you to tell me everything you know about the Thrashers’ meth operation, and don’t even think of telling me you don’t know anything.”
I like to keep a low profile, but sometimes there’s an advantage to having people know you’re something big and bad. I could tell I wasn’t going to have to shake Jerry down hard. He knew how dangerous I was, and that I didn’t mess around. He blanched and swallowed hard.
“How did you know?”
“Never mind that. Just tell me everything. And while you’re at it, tell me why one of the Thrasher clan hangs around my garage every night.”
“I ain’t a Thrasher,” he said with conviction. “My ma was one, is all. I grew up in their pack when my daddy got run off. I didn’t have no say in it.”
“Who ran him off?”
“The law. Something about a killin’.”
“Uh-huh. He chow down on somebody?”
“He got crazy drunk on Thrasher rotgut whiskey and got sloppy. I never saw him since I was a kid. The Thrashers might have killed him themselves, for all I know.”
It wouldn’t be the first time a pack killed one of its own members for bringing them unwanted attention from the authorities. That was one of the only rules they were damned serious about.
“How did you break away from them?” I asked. Werewolf packs are funny. They treat their weakest members like dirt. They have that in common with regular wolves. Only werewolves then get pissed off when the pack member they treated so bad tries to escape. They can be downright possessive and get all snappish when somebody tries to leave them.
“When my mama died I just went. I wandered around for a while, but I never fit in with any other packs, and being a lone wolf is hard. Besides, I was homesick. So I moved back to Savannah and just tried to stay out of their way.”
I expect life as a lone wolf is hard, at that. You need the support of a pack to help you cover your tracks, as it were. I mean, think about it. You have to stay a step ahead of the law because if you get in criminal trouble, you can’t risk winding up in jail when there’s a full moon. Werewolves can take their wolf form at will, but during a full moon, they have to change—no ifs, ands, or buts. No choice. So they can’t afford to get themselves incarcerated, drafted into military service, or into any other situation where they can’t disappear from prying eyes when the moon is bright. They need their pack members to help them cover their fuzzy asses in all kinds of predicaments.
“How do you manage to steer clear of ’em?”
Jerry blushed. “I hang out here at night.” He shrugged and looked away.
I’ll be damned. Jerry came here every night because he wanted my protection. He was as tall as me, more muscular and broader through the shoulders. It might seem strange to think that a fellow like that felt he couldn’t take care of himself, but nobody knew better than me how vicious the Thrasher clan could be.
Besides, I guess a vampire’s hangout is a pretty safe place to be as long as you can stay on that vamp’s good side. So far, so good.
“So when’s the last time you saw any of them?”
“About two weeks ago one of my cousins came looking for me. He wanted me to help in the business. He said he wanted me to bring that meth shit to town and peddle it. Me and him went a round or two and he went on back to the swamp with his tail between his legs.”
I figured Jerry meant that literally. Werewolves can change real fast when they get riled up. They usually revert to wolf form when they fight, especially if it’s a real knock-down, drag-out. “Do you think you’ve seen the last of them?”
“Oh no. As my cousin limped off he said they’ll be coming back to talk to me again, more than one of them next time. He said it was time for them to start doing business in the city proper.” Jerry shivered, and he looked away from me again.
The Thrashers had always been c
ontent to stay in the swamp and hire outside contractors to do their retailing, no matter what kind of contraband they were dealing in. I know, since I was their moonshine runner so many years ago, that is, until the stuff killed my buddies. Having family members get into selling the stuff on the streets was a major shift in their business plan.
“What are you not telling me?” I asked. Jerry took a deep breath and stared at the ceiling. “Don’t worry. I won’t eat the messenger.” I had to chuckle, and that made Jerry relax a little.
“My cousin Leroy said they figured since William was gone, it was safe to start expanding the operation.”
I felt a bloodred rage sweep over me like a sudden fever. “He said that, huh?” I would make this Leroy eat those words, that plus a bellyful of Georgia red clay, and chase it with swamp water. I had been right when I’d guessed that the beasties were going to come at me once they heard William was away. With our history, I should have known it would be the Thrashers.
“That’s all I know, Jack. I swear it.”
I believed him. Jerry was a shape-shifter and he knew the lay of the supernatural land. He especially knew better than to lie to a master-level vampire. “Who’s the alpha down there now?” I asked. I was hoping against hope that their old alpha had been replaced since I’d had dealings with them.
“It’s still my uncle Samson. He’s a mean sumbitch.”
Didn’t I just know it. I once saw Samson Thrasher tear one of his own wolves apart in an argument over the keys to a stolen pickup truck. I had even tangled with him myself when his negligence poisoned those friends of mine. The only reason I didn’t kill him outright was that William wouldn’t let me. He did, however, let me kick the shit out of Samson and tell him that if he killed anybody else with that rotgut, the two of us would tan his hide and nail it to a tree.
