by Raven Hart
See, you don’t kill an alpha wolf lightly. Because when the alpha dies, you leave his pack without protection, and there’s no telling what might have come along to challenge his betas for dominance. It might even be worse than Samson. Personally, I wouldn’t give you a plug nickel for the whole pack of swamp dogs. They could chew one another to bits for all I care. But William was the chief monster in the region, and he didn’t want to let it be known that he was willing to throw the wolves to the wolves.
There was no point in starting a pissing match between the vampires and the werewolves. The other varieties of shape-shifters might get involved on the werewolf side and then all hell would break loose. We already had our hands full fighting off our own dark lords. William was smart about that political stuff. I just wanted to kick some ass. Now that I was the big kahuna monster-wise, I was going to have to wise up and try to be as clever as William about these things. Lord help us.
But kick ass was what I’d done that time I’d mixed it up with Samson. I’d had some bites to show for my trouble, mind you. My wounds had taken weeks to heal. His bite was as poisonous as his mangy soul. But he was a damn sight worse off, especially after I drained about half his blood. I expect my fang marks are still in his hide.
“Why are you asking about all this?” Jerry asked.
I told him what Ginger had said about Sally’s addiction, but I left out any mention of Seth. There was no point in blowing his cover. Just because I trusted Jerry didn’t mean the truth couldn’t be beaten out of him—or bitten out. “Say, what does this cousin Leroy of yours look like?”
“He’s tall and skinny and he has claw scars down his face on the right side. Is that who you think was following Sally?” Jerry said.
“Yeah, that’s the description. Besides, it all fits. The Thrashers are deliberately targeting somebody who’s under my protection, selling her their drugs and stalking her. They’re taunting me.”
“That sounds like them, the cowards. Using girls to bait you instead of calling you out like men. Or wolves. What are you gonna do, Jack?”
I clapped him on the back. “Don’t you worry about it, Jerry. The less you know, the better. Let me know if any of the Thrashers tries to hassle you.”
“Thanks, Jack. Be careful. I don’t have to tell you how nasty those dudes can be.” He made his way back to the card table and Rennie handed him the deck.
I drained my lukewarm coffee and turned around to pour another cup. Seth was standing behind me. “Hey man,” he said. “Don’t you know that caffeine will keep you up at night?”
“Stop sneaking up on me like that,” I said. “You’re going to give me a heart attack.”
“That would be quite a trick since that heart of yours hasn’t been functional since before I was born.” He sat down at the Formica table and inclined his head toward the irregulars at the card table on the other side of the garage. “You get any useful information out of our boy there?”
“He says he doesn’t want any part of the Thrashers and that he’s been steering clear of them. He knows they cook meth, and they’ve tried to get him to sell it for them here in the city, but he said no.”
“It’s dangerous to say no to them,” Seth observed. “Do you trust him?”
“Yeah.”
“In that case, so do I. Any buddy of yours is a buddy of mine.”
“So what’s the plan?” I got down a clean (more or less) cup from the cupboard and poured him some coffee.
“I’ll take it from here.”
“We talked about this at the bar,” I said, hardly believing my ears. “You’re not making a move without me.”
“This is police business and werewolf business, Jack. I can’t let you get involved.”
“Any nonhuman funny business in and around Savannah is my business. Besides, it’s me they’re after. I’m going to have to face them pretty soon anyway.” I told Seth about Sally’s stalker and about my theory that the Thrashers were trying to draw me out.
“Besides,” I said, “how can you go in by yourself against a whole pack?”
“I don’t have to.” Seth took a sip of coffee. “Damn, Jack, what do you put in this coffee, transmission fluid?”
I started to tell him that it was made by a zombie, so he was lucky it tasted as good as transmission fluid, but I didn’t want to have to explain why I had a zombie for a kitchen maid. “What do you mean, you don’t have to?”
“I only have to take on old man Samson. Any male can challenge him for the leadership position in a dominance fight. He doesn’t have to be pack.”
“A dominance fight? Call it what it is: a fight to the death. Are you smoking some kind of loco wolfnip weed? If you lose, you’re dead, and if you win you’re in charge of shaping up a bunch of lycanthropic lowlifes who don’t know anything but a life of grand larceny. Are you prepared to move into the swamp and ride herd on those flea-infested sons-of-bitches?”
“It’s not going to come to that. I think what I can do is bring in somebody to rule by proxy.”
“Can werewolves do that?”
Seth hesitated. “In theory.”
“Oh, geez.” I covered my face with my hand. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“It is a bit of a social experiment, anthropologically speaking,” he said.
“What the hell…?”
“If it works in business, why can’t it work for werewolves?”
“How long have you been a werewolf anyway? Do you know any besides yourself? If they played by the rules, they wouldn’t be werewolves.”
Seth ran his hand through his hair. “There are all kinds of ways to finesse these things, Jack. Just leave everything to me. Once I get rid of Samson I’ll have that pack eating out of my hand in no time flat.”
“Eating your hand is more like it. That plus the rest of you.”
“If all else fails I’ll threaten to put them in jail. That will get them on the straight and narrow.”
“Who’s going to put who in jail?” Connie stepped from around behind me. This was just my night to be snuck up on. But if I had to be snuck up on by somebody, I could do a whole lot worse. Every time she came along when I wasn’t expecting her—and sometimes when I was—the sight of her shocked my heart almost back to life. She was like a sexy, luscious human defibrillator.
She was wearing tight jeans and a fitted white shirt under a leather bomber jacket. Her long black hair flowed over one shoulder and silver jewelry glittered at her ears and throat. I took a deep breath. Even from several feet away I felt like I could breathe in her light and warmth and humanity.
From the direction she had come, she didn’t see Seth—and he didn’t see her—until she was standing right in front of him. When their eyes locked, both of them went still.
“Seth,” Connie said. “I thought I recognized your voice. But I didn’t figure it could possibly be you.”
“Connie. Well, I’ll be a—” He stood up and made a little move like he might hug her, but he stopped himself. He’d seen the silver pendant and earrings. I’d heard that just touching silver could give a werewolf a nasty burn, not to mention a case of the heebie-jeebies. I found myself feeling really glad that Connie was wearing silver tonight.
Instead of hugging her he just stood there speechless, his arms hanging awkwardly at his sides. I had seen Seth Walker be a lot of things, but speechless was not one of them. He had what you might call the gift of gab, but not now. He looked at her like she was a long, tall drink of water and he was dying of thirst.
“It’s been a long time,” she said.
It was hard to tell if she was glad to see him or not. She was being very reserved, which wasn’t like her at all. I narrowed my eyes, studying her reaction to my old friend.
“I haven’t seen you since, well, it seems like ages.” Seth seemed to have recovered somewhat.
“Old friends, are you?” I asked, trying to sound casual. “Where do you guys know each other from?”
“T
he academy,” Connie answered quickly.
Well, wasn’t this just old home week? “You two couldn’t have gone to the academy together,” I said. Seth had been a lawman for years longer than Connie had been in uniform.
“No,” Connie said. “Seth was one of my firearms teachers there.”
“You mean of all the times Seth here has come down to spend his vacations hunting and fishing with me, you’ve never run into him here at the garage?”
She shook her head, never taking her eyes off my buddy. My good, good buddy.
“I can’t believe I’m meeting up with you again here in Jack’s garage,” Seth said. “I heard you’d moved out of the Atlanta area, but I never heard where.”
Connie shrugged. “Here I am.”
“Here we all are,” I pointed out. I wanted to ask just what the hell was going on between them, but I was afraid of the answer. In my heart I considered Connie to be my girl, but our relationship had become strained lately. For one thing, I’d had to fess up to being a bloodsucking vampire. That would put a damper on any budding romance, let me tell you. I mean, hot chicks never listed “evil dead” amongst their turn-ons in the personal ads.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, turns out she wasn’t 100 percent human either, and what she was and what I was didn’t mix. The only time we’d tried to get it on, when I touched her it was like I’d picked up a live wire. And not in a good way. I ended up with the burn marks to prove it. The best my friend Melaphia could figure, Connie was part Mayan goddess of some sort. The two of them had been trying to discover more about what Connie was—until Renee was kidnapped.
“So, how have you been?” Seth asked her.
“Fine. Actually, I just came to tell Jack my good news,” she said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“I made detective. I’m on duty now, in my plain clothes.”
Her clothes were anything but plain. Not with that bodacious bod filling them out. I could see that Seth was taking in the sight as well as me. And she was taking in the fact that he was taking her in. I thought about how the waitresses at the honky-tonk had flirted with Seth and realized that Connie probably thought he was something special, too. Why did he have to look like that? Cripes, he was a werewolf for Pete’s sake. If there was any justice he’d look like Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy.
I knew what a disadvantage I was at when it came to competing with other guys for Connie’s affections. Regular guys, that is. They had the advantage of not being blood-drinking fiends, damned for all eternity. That is what you call baggage.
But Seth here was not a regular guy—far from it. If Connie knew Seth was a part-time carnivorous, man-eating beast, that might even up the playing field a tad. I could just let that little bit of info slip out accidentally, you might say. As in, Say, Connie, did you know that Seth here sprouts a pelt and a vicious set of choppers at least once a month? And if you don’t mind your dates baying at the moon now and then, why, Seth’s the guy for you.
But there was one problem. The denizens of the dark have a sort of gentlemen’s agreement not to rat one another out to humans. It’s something that all the nonhumans take very seriously, an honor-among-thieves kind of thing. I couldn’t tell Connie that Seth was a werewolf. Only he could do that.
I wondered what their relationship had been. She couldn’t possibly know already that Seth was a werewolf. I mean, she ’bout flipped when I told her about vampires. Like most humans, she clearly had no idea that the shadow world of monsters and their mayhem existed just beyond humans’ reach and understanding. That’s the way God had evidently intended things to be. Those born beasties, shape-shifters like Seth, seemed to understand this instinctively. Those of us who were made instead of born—that is, vampires—had to learn it. Sometimes one of us forgot, went rogue, and had to be reminded the hard way.
“Congratulations, Detective. That’s wonderful news,” Seth said. “The bad guys in these parts need to watch out. You’d better keep on the straight and narrow, Jack.” He elbowed me in the ribs a little harder than I thought necessary for ordinary joshing purposes.
“Yeah,” I said. “You’ve got to watch those bad guys. You never know when somebody’s going to turn out to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
Seth narrowed those yellow-green eyes at me, but Connie seemed not to notice. “I guess I should get going. Your tax dollars at work, yada, yada,” Connie said.
“Let me walk you out.” I put my arm around Connie’s shoulders and steered her gently away from Seth, and she let me. I had the impression that she wanted to put some distance between herself and him. I wondered about that, particularly since otherwise they seemed so cordial. I’d try to get to the bottom of that soon.
“Jack,” she said when we were out of Seth’s earshot, “I really came here to talk to you about something else.”
“What’s that?” We stopped at her car and she leaned against the hood.
“I’ve been thinking about that…talent you said you had. The one I saw you use at Sullivan’s funeral when you communicated with him after he was dead. You kind of acted as an interpreter so that Iban could talk to his old friend one last time.”
“Yeah?”
“I need you to do that for me. Sort of.”
“You mean—”
“There’s somebody in the…afterlife I need to reach. It’s very, very important to me.”
I wasn’t expecting that. It had been so long since I was mortal and without the power to speak to the dead, I never really thought about how it must feel to lose someone forever. I guess it was only natural to try to get in contact. I looked down into Connie’s eyes and saw need bordering on desperation. Maybe William was right after all. Maybe something good could come of my gift if I could use it to help Connie.
“Well, sure,” I said. “I’ll do my best. You know I’d do anything for you.”
“Anything?”
“Yes.” I gently reached out to move a lock of hair back from her face. I just had to touch her. “Anything that is within my power to give you, I will give. If I can act as interpreter, a sort of medium for you to speak to somebody important to you who’s passed on, then consider it done.”
“Thank you, Jack. But you should know, I don’t want to just talk to him.”
Him? “I don’t understand,” I said.
“Ever since you told me you were a…what you are—”
“Vampire. I’m a vampire.” I won’t lie to you. It hurt a little to think that she couldn’t even bring herself to say what I was.
“A vampire,” she said. “Ever since then I’ve been trying to get my head around the idea of someone being dead but…not. I mean, the idea that you are an undead and the fact that Sullivan can speak to us even though he’s dead and buried, well, you can see why it’s blown my mind.”
It wasn’t exactly how I wanted to blow Connie’s mind, but it would do for a start. “Sure, I can understand that,” I said. “It’s a lot to absorb, I guess. But what did you mean when you said you wanted to do more than just talk?”
Connie smiled and her eyes lit with a manic gleam that gave me a bad feeling.
“I want to go there, Jack. Wherever he is, I want you to take me to him.”
Four
William
It is said that of all the senses, smell has the greatest association with memories, assigning certain scents to specific persons, places, and events. As I glided down the stairs, the scents of Eleanor brought back vivid images. The first time I kissed her long, fragrant neck, the musky odor between her legs the last time I touched her sex. The reek of fear and excitement when she’d first tried to stake me in one of our little games.
The odors of sex, fear, and something I couldn’t recognize guided me toward her as my vampire eyes grew used to the darkness. She was here and someone had been at her. Finally I saw Eleanor, my dark angel turned betrayer, chained naked to the ceiling by her manacled wrists. I flipped on a light switch and a bare bulb illuminated the dingy s
pace. She began to stir, as if coming out of a long sleep in the earth. My elegant Eleanor, whose hair was always beautifully coiffed, whose skin was always soft and supple thanks to the most expensive lotions and oils, looked like a rough street urchin. Her hair was grimy and disheveled. Her skin looked lifeless and dirty. The snake tattoo on her torso, which she could make seem almost alive by her undulations when she rode me, looked cheap.
As I came closer I noticed that some of the spots on her body were not dirt but were bruises. When I came closer still, I saw the bites and more. Worst of all, I now recognized the odor I’d been unable to identify. Eleanor’s body had begun to decompose.
“William,” Eleanor rasped. “My beautiful green-eyed angel. You’ve come for me. Thank God.”
“For you?” I laughed harshly. “Don’t flatter yourself. And don’t bring God into this or you’ll be more damned than you already are. I’m here for Renee. Where is she?”
Eleanor looked as if I’d struck her with one of the implements of torture that were hanging on the wall on either side of her. When she recovered her composure, she said, “I don’t know. She’s not here. They took her someplace else. And they go to…visit her.”
“And feed off her,” I said.
“William, I never meant for Renee to be harmed.”
“Yet you helped them take her. You betrayed me in the cruelest way imaginable.”
“You betrayed me first!” She choked back a sob. “When they came to town, you rejected me entirely. I’m a fledgling. I needed my sire to survive. You were slipping away from me.”
“And when you found out that they were leaving town, you knew Diana would be out of my life. Why didn’t you just stay in Savannah? You would have been rid of her.”
“I thought you would go after them, just like you have.” Her voice held a note of accusation.
“Only to get Renee back.”
“You would have come to fight Hugo for Diana even if they hadn’t stolen Renee.”
