“Where’s the kid?” I asked.
“Don’t know anything about a kid. Don’t care. What are you doing in our lair? And why shouldn’t I eat you just on principle?”
“First off, the blood trail led to your door, so I don’t believe you don’t know anything about the missing kid. Second of all, littlest Lannister, I’m in your lair on a rescue mission for a federal agency and the Holy Roman Catholic Church, so I’ve got God and the government on my side for once, and thirdly, Short Round, this is way more than you can order off the kiddie menu, so if you want some, come get some. But you’d better bring a damn army if you’re planning to kick this ass,” I said.
“Actually, Bubba, I kinda don’t have any jurisdiction in Louisiana…” Joe said behind me.
“And I’m on vacation, so I don’t really have any authority, either,” added Amy.
“So you got no Church backup, and you got no government backup, you got nothing but three little pea-shooters and a shitload of attitude and now you bring that crap into my house?” The short dude’s voice made it all the way to full-grown by the time he was done yelling at me, but he was still only about five-seven.
I took a deep breath, then let it out, centering myself.
“You gonna do something, you overgrown jackass, or you just gonna stand there panting at me?” Mighty Mouse said.
I stepped forward, planting one heavy foot on the little bastard’s toes. He yelped and tried to pull back, but I had him pretty well nailed to the floor. Then I caught him on the chin with a roundhouse right that I threw from about three blocks away. He flopped back onto the floor, bending at the knees ‘cause I was still standing on his toes. His head cracked into the floor with enough force to kill a human, or to knock a vampire out for a good five minutes. I didn’t plan on needing any more than that.
I stepped past the knocked-out Napoleon and surveyed the room. There were five vampires and three humans. Two of the vamps looked pissed and two looked confused, like they’d never seen a human fight back before. The last one was sitting on a couch sipping blood through a straw and trying to suppress a laugh. I decided she was probably the one to make it out of the room alive, so to speak.
The two pissed-off vampires rushed me, but 9mm rounds to their legs dropped them before they got close. I heard shots ring out from Joe and Amy behind me, and another pair of vampires dropped. None of these guys were true-dead except for the one I killed when we first walked in. Seems if you do enough damage to the brain, it’ll kill pretty much anything. I stepped forward into the apartment, grabbed a cheap wooden chair, and swung it into the face of the last vampire standing. He spun around once, then stopped and grinned at me.
“You think that’s going to stop me?”
“Nope,” I said. Then I slammed the chair into the floor, breaking it into a million pieces and jamming one of the longest chunks through his chest. He looked down at my impromptu stake protruding from his chest and fell to his knees. I kicked him in the face, and he fell backwards, dead for good.
I made stakes out of the rest of the chair legs and back and tossed a couple to Amy and Joe. I walked back over to where Napoleon was trying to get to his feet and reared back with a stake.
“STOP.” The voice resonated with power, even without yelling. I turned to the window and saw a female vampire standing there, glass tinkling to the floor around her. She hadn’t bothered coming in through the open part; she just took out wood, glass, and anything in her way. I stopped. So did Amy and Joe. I don’t think I could have ignored that voice in the middle of a rock concert, or an avalanche.
She was a whiter shade of pale than anyone I’d ever seen, living or dead. Her hair was a muted auburn and fell down her back in loose curls. Her green eyes flashed with power, and her strong jaw and razored cheekbones spoke of a woman who put up with absolutely zero shit in her life. She walked past Joe and Amy and strode across the room to me, her long legs wrapped in black leather tight enough to be her real skin. A tight black sweater left very few of her curves to the imagination, and it looked like a road that was meant to be traveled. She stepped up to me and took the stake out of my hand, then took the pistol from my other hand, popped the magazine, ejected the round from the chamber, slid it into the magazine, and put the mag back in the gun.
She leaned into me, grabbed my belt just above my Not-So-Little-Bubba, pulled my pants forward, and shoved the pistol into my jeans.
“We won’t be needing to shoot anyone tonight, will we?” she purred, taking a few steps back and shifting so she could see Amy and Joe in her peripheral vision.
“I might agree with that if I knew who you are and what you did with a certain stupid college kid that I climbed all this way to find.”
“My name is Catherine, and I am the Master of the Crescent City. All the vampires in this town are under my protection. Even these. And you have killed several of my people. That must be answered, human.” She gave me a glare.
I gave her a shrug back. “Sorry about your idiots,” I said. “Now you wanna fight some more about the idiots I killed, or you want to count your blessings that you got here in time to save the few you got left? Then you can help us find our idiot, and we can return the very important drinking we were engaging in until a few minutes ago.”
She looked at me for a long moment, then threw her head back and laughed. I laughed with her because, in my experience, when somebody is laughing with you, or even at you, they are way less likely to try to kill you than other times.
After a good belly laugh, Catherine sobered up and looked at me. “You all will come with me, and we will talk about your idiot friend. I will forgive the killing of my idiot children, and we shall be, how do you say it, square?” Her accent got heavier and her eyes got smokier the more she talked, and I decided that going anywhere with this woman was probably a terrible idea.
“Let’s go,” I said, proving once again that I am a man with poor judgment and worse impulse control.
Chapter 3
We walked across the hall, and Catherine opened the door into a well-appointed parlor, complete with two small couches, several armchairs, and a chaise lounge. I stood behind an armchair facing the door and watched everybody take up positions roughly aligned to the points of the compass. Except Napoleon. The little vampire sycophant stood two steps to the left and behind Catherine with his heels together and hands clasped in back like a parody of a guard.
“Are you supposed to be guarding anybody, Mighty Mouse?” I asked. “‘Cause if you are, you oughta think about keeping your feet shoulder width apart and your hands loose at your sides. It’ll help your balance.”
“My balance is fine, human,” the short vampire said, but I noticed out of the corner of my eye as he spread his feet apart and took a more balanced stance.
“So what are we doing over here that we couldn’t do across the hall?” I asked once Napoleon closed the door.
“We are talking, Bubba. Is that so strange between your people and mine?” Catherine replied.
“Well, in my experience, there are only a couple of outcomes of a run-in between ‘your people’ and ‘my people,’ and that’s my people getting eaten, or your people getting dead. And I’ll admit to being the cause of a lot of that getting dead over the years, so yeah, if we’re just gonna talk, I’m a little surprised.”
“We are just going to talk, Bubba, unless you have something else in mind, perhaps?” She stepped toward me and ran her fingers along my arm. Her very long, delicate fingers, tipped in nails the color of arterial blood, the same color as her lips, standing out against her alabaster skin like something from a painting.
“Nope,” I said, taking her wrist and removing her hand from my bicep. “Not only do I not have anything in mind, if I did have anything in mind, I have faith in my girlfriend, the beautiful and lethal federal agent standing ten feet away from us, to correct that shortcoming.”
Catherine laughed again, and I didn’t have to look over at Amy to know she wasn’t la
ughing. “I’m sorry, Bubba, and my apologies to you as well, Agent Hall. I mean no offense. I am simply a very old woman who occasionally likes to tease young men.” I stiffened at her words, not at the flirty bits, but at the part where she knew Amy’s name. This woman had a bad habit of knowing more than she was supposed to, and while I understood that master vampires had their fingers in a lot of pies, I didn’t have to like it.
I glanced over at my girlfriend and knew from the set of her shoulders that she picked up on it, too. We needed to watch our step with this woman or we could end up permanent residents of The Big Easy. “Well, you’ve got us here, Catherine, what are we here to talk about?”
“I need your help.” She said it simply, and it almost sounded like she was asking, but I could tell from her tone this was a woman who didn’t like asking from help, especially not from a man. And a human one, even worse.
“I’m listening,” I said. “But understand that we need to get to Cody before the vamp that took him turns him or kills him.”
“I apologize for that,” Catherine said, “but you are too late for him. You were too late for him before you ever started down the alley.”
“What are you saying?” Joe asked.
“I’m saying that we found his body on the roof of the building across the alley, took steps to make sure he will not rise, and he will be returned to the authorities by sunup.”
“So everything we did hauling ass up here, following a blood trail…” Joe looked confused.
“The blood was mine. I needed to speak with you. About the very vampire that took young Cody, as a matter of fact.”
“You tricked us into coming here!” Joe was slow to catch on, but he’d made it to full-on pissed now. I held up a hand.
“Chill, Joe. She wanted to talk, and that was the safest way to lure us away from the street. Besides, if the kid was already dead, then no harm, no foul. If we find out later that she had something to do with it…”
“Then what, Bubba?” Catherine’s voice was cold.
“Then I put you down like a dog,” I said in a voice equally as frosty. “But until then, go ahead and pitch me your case. What can a set of Church and government monster hunters do for you, outside our jurisdiction, without our tech guru and with no real money or weapons to speak of?”
“Well, you aren’t without your technical wizard. We brought him to you.” She snapped her fingers and a vampire came in carrying Skeeter over one shoulder like a very pissed-off bag of profane dog food.
“Good lord, Skeeter, do you kiss…never mind, I don’t want to know who you kiss with that mouth. Okay, lady, you found Skeeter. Good job, you found the one black gay dude in the middle of the whitest street in America while it’s saluting heterosexuality on every corner.”
“Don’t worry, Bubba,” Skeeter said. “I found my fair share of street corners, too.”
I didn’t want to think too much on that, so I turned my attention back to Catherine. “So you’ve got a rogue. What’s the big deal? It’s your city, just hunt it down or hire a freelancer. No need to trick us into helping.”
“The problem is that this is no ordinary rogue. He is much more powerful than he rightfully should be, powerful enough to take out one of my four-man enforcer teams that went to collect his weekly corkage fee.”
“His what?” Amy asked.
“Just like a restaurant charges a corkage fee if you bring your own wine, master vampires charge a fee to visiting vamps to hunt their territory,” Catherine explained.
“So the rogue didn’t pay and kicked the shit out of your guys,” I said.
“That is an accurate, if unfortunate, summation of events,” Catherine agreed.
“Well, excuse me if I’m fresh out of shits to give, but that seems a whole lot like an internal vampire issue, not a hire a monster hunter issue,” I said.
“I need your help,” Catherine said, a slightly frantic note entering her voice.
“I’m on vacation,” I replied.
“If you walk out that door, there will be war between your people and mine,” she said.
“Do you think we care?” Amy asked. “First of all, we just came out of a war and we’re still standing. Second of all, if you threaten my people again, I will call in a drone strike and nuke every hidey-hole you’ve gotten straight to glass.”
“What about money? I can pay for help.”
“We’re not mercenaries,” Joe said. “We work for the Vatican. You know, the city so rich it’s also a country. If you want our help, you’re going to have to come up with something better than that.”
“Please, I don’t know what else to do. This bastard has killed a quarter, maybe more, of my people, and I’m at a loss. I can’t find him using my typical means, and I don’t want any more of my people to die.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay?”
“Okay,” I repeated.
“You mean you’ll help me?” she asked, her eyebrows knit.
“Yeah, of course. It’s kinda the job. We just wanted you to ask nicely.”
The vampire matron’s eyes got big, and judging from the look on her face, she couldn’t decide whether to crap herself or go blind, but after a few seconds of apoplexy, she got herself under control and stuck out her hand. “So you’ll help me find and dispose of this rogue vampire?”
I shook her hand. “We’ll help you find the rogue, and if it’s the threat you claim it is, we’ll help you put it down. But you gotta play straight with us on everything about this rogue and his activities, starting with the idiot tourist we were looking for.”
“Deal,” she said. “As I said, he will be found by the authorities before sunrise. By the rising star of the New Orleans Police Department Homicide Squad, Detective Louis Ponté.”
“And how will Detective Ponté know where to look?” Amy asked.
“I am very good at my job, Agent Hall,” came a voice from the hallway. A good-looking man in his early thirties stepped into the room, all relaxed lean muscle and perfect teeth. Louis Ponté was the kind of guy that made guys like me grab our women tighter. His wavy blond hair was styled with some kind of gel that kept it in place even in the Louisiana humidity, and his smile made his blue eyes crinkle at the corners. He wore a light gray wool suit, black loafers, and a black belt. Everything on him either matched or coordinated, and I felt very much like the redneck who blows shit up for a living. Which is pretty damn accurate, of course.
Ponté stepped into the room and shook hands all around, finishing with Skeeter. I was a little surprised by that—usually dudes want to introduce themselves to Amy last, so they can linger over her hand long enough for me to growl like a Wookie.
“So where will I find young Cody’s body?” Ponté asked. Catherine handed him a folded piece of paper, he looked at it, nodded, then tossed the paper into the cold fireplace. Catherine stared at the paper for a second, then it burst into flames. I jumped a little.
“I’m not your ordinary vampire, Mr. Bubba,” she said with a smile.
“I’m not your ordinary incredibly well-armed dashing hero with a tendency to shoot first and ask questions later, Ms. Vampire.” I gave her my best “piss me off and I’ll floss with your intestines” smile. She took half a step back before she caught herself, and it was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud.
“So what’s the plan? We don’t know the lay of the land, so a police escort couldn’t hurt,” Amy said. I growled low in my throat, and Ponté looked up at me, like he’d just realized that Doberman wasn’t asleep after all.
“I’ll be happy to help however I’m needed,” he drawled, his eyes barely flickering over to Amy. “But first, I believe introductions are in order?”
“Sorry about that, I’ve been downright remiss,” I said, earning a raised eyebrow from Amy, who probably didn’t think I knew what “remiss” meant. And honestly, I wasn’t exactly sure. “I’m Bubba Brabham, Southeastern Regional Monster Hunter for the Holy Roman Catholic church. This here�
��s my girlfriend, Agent Amy Hall. She works for DEMON, a government agency that don’t exist. This is Uncle Father Joe. He’s my handler, a Catholic priest, and Skeeter’s uncle, thus the whole ‘Uncle Father’ thing. This over here—”
“I’m Skeeter,” he said, stretching out a hand to the newcomer. “Technical wizard, surveillance specialist, whatever you need, tech-wise, I can handle it.” Damn, Skeeter almost swooned over this dude.
And the dude at least had the good grace to blush, but he grabbed Skeeter’s hand and shook it for a little longer than I thought was absolutely necessary and stared in his eyes the whole time. “Thank you, Skeeter. If I need any other resources, I’ll be sure to come to you. First, I mean.”
Amy and I exchanged glances, and I grinned. Seemed like Skeeter’s crush on the pretty detective might be returned. “What’s the plan, Detective?” I asked before the two of them went off picking out china patterns.
“I need to scout the crime scene, both the alley and the rooftop. Then I’ll get back to you with my findings,” he said.
“Fair enough,” I said. “I’m gonna go tell his buddies that they’re down a wingman, then I’m gonna gear up and start looking for clues, Bubba-style.”
“I’ll handle the notifications, if you don’t mind,” Ponté said. “It needs to come down through official channels, and I am those channels. And what exactly does ‘Bubba-style’ mean?”
“It means that he and I go lurk around cemeteries, voodoo shops, swamps, and other places where supernatural creatures are most likely to be found, then he punches them until they give us the information we’re looking for. You’d be surprised how effective it is,” Amy said.
“I think I’ll stay with Detective Ponté and see what we can dig up from the crime scenes. I bet he can get me into their CSI lab as a visiting expert of some sort, and that’ll give me a back door into the police department’s computer system and all their records. That’s about the best I can do working from my laptop,” Skeeter said.
Moon over Bourbon Street - a Bubba the Monster Hunter Novella Page 2
