“Probably a good choice,” I said. “I’m gonna walk down toward Preservation Hall and see what I can find that way. I doubt anything’s going to pick me for a snack with all the easier prey around, but it’s worth a shot.” I started down Bourbon toward the legendary music venue.
“I’m a little too well-known in the supernatural community to be useful in an op like this, so I’ll just walk my rounds and talk to my informants like normal. Skeeter can come with and poke around alleys and opportune snatch points while I talk to my sources,” Ponté said.
“Sounds good. Everybody stay in touch at all times. The trouble word is ‘Vermont’.” I said. I checked my in-ear communicator. Everything was coming through, loud and clear.
“So if we think we’ve found the rogue, change the topic to how much we love Ben & Jerry’s, got it.” Amy gave me a mocking little salute and turned to go into the club.
I wandered Bourbon Street for a while, listening with half an ear at the inept pickup lines Amy kept shooting down, and with another half an ear at the awkward just-started-dating fumbling for conversation between Skeeter and the detective. I was happy for my buddy. It had been too long since he’d had anybody in his life romantically. I reckoned if things kept going the way they seemed to be, I might have to give the good detective a warning about the delicate feelings of my best friend and how protective I was of those feelings. I didn’t mind them dating, but if he hurt Skeeter, all bets were off, and I was out of my jurisdiction.
I walked into The Famous Door to see if anybody I’d heard of was playing. It wasn’t anyone famous, just a little three-piece tearing up jazz standards. The singer was a beautiful woman of indeterminate ethnicity with a voice that could knock your socks off, and I swore I felt a little magic when she sang. Then she turned to me at the end of a note and smiled, and for half a second, she dropped the glamour and I saw the elf standing there in front of me, pointy ears and everything. Then I blinked, and the elf was gone, replaced by the beautiful woman and her beautiful music.
“They say there’s magic everywhere down here,” I muttered under my breath, and I swear she turned and winked at me. I noticed a commotion out of the corner of my eye and turned to get a better look. A couple of vaguely familiar frat boy types were running down an alley across the street, chasing a goth kid who looked like he was scared out of his gourd. I chuckled a little, then caught sight of the stake in one frat boy’s hand and started to move.
I pushed my way through the throngs jamming near-midnight Bourbon Street and finally broke through the crowd on the other side of the street. I heard faint yelling and the sound of glass breaking from deep within the narrow alley, and looked around at just how perfect an ambush site it was. I took a deep breath, let it out in a stream of profanity, and charged down the poorly-lit pathway, Bertha in hand.
I turned the corner to see three young guys surrounding one skinny goth kid. Recognition dawned on me as I remembered where I’d seen these idiots before. I stepped into the light cast by one very dramatically placed light over the back door to a business I probably didn’t want to know too much about and cocked Bertha.
The sound of cocking a pistol is unmistakable to anyone who’s heard it before, and the lead frat boy froze. He turned around to me, very slowly, and when his eyes met mine, I saw the same spark of recognition that I felt.
“Hello, Davis,” I said, holding Bertha with her barrel to the sky. No need to escalate things much further. Davis had a wicked-looking black-bladed knife in his hand, and each of his buddies had broken beer bottles. The goth had a board that looked like he’d ripped it off of a busted pallet leaning against the brick wall of the building behind him. The kid was trapped, with buildings on all three sides, but I could tell from the look on his face that he wasn’t planning on going down without a fight. His threadbare Marilyn Manson t-shirt and baggy black pants marked him as a wannabe, but he had way too much color in his cheeks to be a vampire, unless he’d fed in the last hour.
“Bubba,” Davis nodded back to me. “We’ve got this covered, but thanks for the offer.” He turned back to the goth, but his buddies didn’t take their eyes off me. Good call.
“I’m not here to hunt him, kid. I’m here to protect him. From you.”
“Say what? Since when does the big monster hunter protect the monsters?”
“Since the monster is just a stupid kid with shitty taste in music and not enough sunlight in his diet. This chump is no more a vampire than I am a vegan, and you can damn sure believe I still like a good steak.”
“How can you tell? I mean, shit dude, he’s even got fangs!” one of the other frat boys chimed in.
“Son, when I want your opinion, I’ll beat it out of you,” I said. I holstered Bertha and stepped into the circle of idiots. The goth kid stared up at me like he didn’t know whether to wet himself or hump my leg, but I just held out my hand. “Fangs,” I said, nodding at my open palm.
He reached into his mouth, and with a click, dislodged the bridge holding his fake fangs in place. It was a good prosthetic, but as soon as I knew he wasn’t a real vampire, I knew they were fake fangs. He dropped them into my hand, and I turned to Davis. “You see? Fake as a stripper’s boobs, which is where y’all oughta be, drowning your sorrows in cleavage and cheap body glitter. I’m sorry about your friend, but if you keep messing around in the alleys of New Orleans, you’re gonna find something a lot less friendly than me.”
“That’s right, mortals,” the goth kid hissed from beside me.” The snake queen Nagaru will hunt you down and punish you for harassing her loyal servant. She will—” I didn’t hear the rest of his babble because I flicked out a fist and knocked him out.
“Look, he’s an asshole, but he’s a human asshole. And since y’all obviously can’t tell the difference, you probably oughta hang up the stakes and leave the hunting to those of us whose lives suck enough for us to actually live in this world. Otherwise I’m gonna end up having to save your ass from yourselves, again.”
“And we saw how good you are with the whole saving people thing already, didn’t we?” Davis spat.
“Yeah, I couldn’t save your friend. And that sucks. He goes on the list of all the people I couldn’t save, and that list runs through my head every night before I finally get to sleep. So let’s keep your name from screwing up my shuteye, shall we?”
Before he said anything, my comm crackled in my ear. It was Amy’s voice. “That doesn’t look right. I’m heading in to get a better look.”
“What is it, Amy?” Skeeter asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It might be nothing, it might be a mugging, I can’t tell. But something feels off somehow.”
“What’s your 20?” Skeeter asked.
“I’m heading down an alley a couple buildings down from the Bon Maison, across from the Ambush Mag offices.”
“I’m on my way,” I said. “I’m down by Yesteryears, I can be there in a couple minutes.”
“I’ve got this, Bubba, stay on your end of the Quarter. There’s probably more action off Bourbon down by Pat O’s anyway. Hey, what are you doing?” Her voice got louder. “Hey! Leave her alone!”
I turned away from the frat boys and headed back to Bourbon at a dead run. People scattered out of the way of the giant charging out of the alley. The sounds of struggle rang in my ear over Amy’s comm as I pelted my way north on Bourbon. I turned left and bolted across the street into the alley she said she was going down, catching Joe out of the corner of my eye as I almost took out a hot dog cart.
“Amy, where are you?” I said into my comm. “Amy? Come in, dammit!” I burst through the crowd like it was an ACC offensive line and exploded into the alley, my head on a swivel looking for any signs of Amy. I heard a chorus of “excuse me’s” behind me as Joe caught up and leaned against a wall, winded.
“Anything?” he panted.
“Not yet. Skeeter?” I said into my comm.
“Her comm is down, but she’s moving east, and fast.”
“You can track her?” I asked.
“I’ve got trackers on all of you. In all of you, if you want me to be real precise about it.”
“I’ll let you explain that in a minute. For now, keep tracking her while we check the alley for clues. Let us know when she stops moving and we’ll be there,” I said.
“Why don’t you go ahead and send Ponté there ahead of us so somebody’s got her in sight?” Joe suggested.
“Good idea. You get that, Detective?” Skeeter said.
“I’m on it. You said she was leaving the Quarter heading east?”
“Yeah, they just took a left on Rampart,” Skeeter confirmed.
“Might be heading to St. Louis #1,” Ponté said, naming a famous cemetery just outside the French Quarter.
“Can you get there first?” I asked.
“No? I’m too far away and I don’t have super-speed. Or my car.”
I looked at Joe, who was on his cell waving at me. “What’s up?” I asked.
“Go that way, out to Dumaine Street,” he said, pointing off to his right through a courtyard. “There’s an alley. I’ve got somebody to meet you there. You’ll know her when you see her. She’ll get you to St. Louis #1 and keep you covered until Ponté gets there. I’ll stay here and look for clues.”
I stared at him for a second, until he grabbed my shirt and leaned in to me. “Go!” he almost yelled in my face, and I bolted through the courtyard and down the alley. It was a tight fit, but I came out on Dumaine just as a black Harley roared up onto the sidewalk in front of me.
The rider was a woman dressed completely in black motorcycle leathers, from her side-zipper boots to her jacket. She flipped up the visor on her helmet and said in that French-tinged English that speaks of a life on the bayou, “You Bubba?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Then get on, cher, Joey tells me you be in a hurry.” I threw a leg over the back of the bike and grabbed on as she roared into traffic, weaving through cars and pedestrians like we were in a video game or a movie. I felt something bump into my leg and looked down. She had a Mossberg 500 in a custom-built holster on the side of her motorcycle. I decided right then that any chick that rode a Harley with a twelve-gauge shotgun strapped to it was good enough backup for me.
Chapter 10
We pulled up in front of the cemetery and my mystery partner killed the engine. We got off the bike, and I walked up to the gates, which were hanging wide open.
“That ain’t right,” the woman said, walking up next to me with her Mossberg in hand.
“Yeah, I think we found the place,” I said. “What’s your name, by the way? I figure if I’m gonna let you help me out, I oughta at least know who you are.”
“Let me help you? Let me help you? Cher, did yo boy Joey not tell you who I am? Hell, you lucky I’m lettin’ you walk around in my cemeteries at all, much less packing that hand-cannon you toting under that shirt. I mean, damn, son, what in the world are you compensating for with that thing?”
I just stared at her. It was one of the few times in my life I’ve been legitimately speechless, and I was really glad Skeeter wasn’t there to see it. He heard it though, since my comm link was open, and I could hear him snickering in the background. Finally, after a few seconds of gaping at her like a fish on the pier, I found my words again.
“No, Joe didn’t tell me anything about you, so why don’t you fill me in on why you call it your cemetery, and why you think you could possibly stop me from doing anything I damn well please wherever I damn well please to do it?”
She took off her helmet, and a mass of black curls spilled out and ran halfway down her back. She tucked her gloves into her helmet and put them both on the Harley’s seat. She looked up at me with her huge, oval eyes of the deepest violet, and held out a mocha-colored hand. I took it, and we shook. Her grip was firm, and I had no doubt she could handle that shotgun and whatever else she had tucked away inside that black leather jacket.
“I’m Sister Evangeline, and this is my territory. I’m the Hunter for Louisiana, part of Texas, the panhandle of Florida, and the Mobile/Gulfport parts of Mississippi and Alabama. Basically, I’ve got the Gulf from Tallahassee to San Antonio, and all of Louisiana. I’m you, just smarter and a whole lot prettier.”
“Well, I’ll damn sure agree with you there, especially in those pants.” Black leather pants make an ugly woman look good, and Evangeline was no kind of ugly woman. With milk chocolate skin, curves in all the right places, and a tight black turtleneck that revealed nothing but still left little to the imagination, she was a tall, athletic-looking woman with a strong jaw and cherubic heart-shaped face belying the steel in her eyes and the firepower in her hands.
“So you’re the Hunter for this part of the world?” I mused. “I reckon that makes it as much your cemetery as anybody’s. So, shall we?” I gestured at the gates, and Evangeline stepped through the open portal, her thumb going to the rail-mounted flashlight on the front of the shotgun and flipping it on. The bright xenon beam cut through the darkened cemetery, and we started down the main aisle toward the center of the graveyard.
“Skeeter?” I whispered into my comm. “You got anything?”
“Looks like she’s stopped moving. She’s about a hundred yards ahead and off to your left about twenty yards.”
“How long has she been stopped?” Evangeline asked, and I relayed the question to Skeeter.
“Only a couple of minutes,” he replied.
I passed the word along, and Evangeline nodded. “That’s good news,” she said. “If they were going to kill her, they would have done it in the alley. If it’s a ritual, it’ll just be starting, so we’ve got some time.”
“But not a ton of it, so let’s move,” I said, starting forward. I pulled a small flashlight out of my pocket and drew Bertha, moving down the center aisle of the cemetery with Bertha in front of me, my flashlight hand under my gun hand in a crossed grip. Evangeline was right on my heels, moving through the leaves and twigs without so much as a whisper. We got to about the right place to turn left by Skeeter’s tracking, and I held up a hand. Evangeline froze behind me and I stood motionless for a moment, listening hard into the darkness.
I clicked off my flashlight and pointed off to the left. I looked back at Evangeline and she nodded. She heard it too—the low, lyrical chanting off in the distance. I clicked my light back on, but kept it shuttered in my hand, just letting out enough light to keep me from stumbling all over the place.
We crossed several rows of headstones before we came to a huge crypt with the door standing open. There was a chorus of singing voices coming from within, so I took the chance and clicked on my comm. “Skeeter, are we at the right place?”
“Yeah. According to my tracker, you’re within ten feet of her.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said. I turned back to Evangeline. “That scattergun will be all but useless in close quarters—”
She held up a hand. “Way ahead of you,” she said, leaning the shotgun against a tombstone and drawing a pair of nickel-plated Colt 1911 .45 pistols from under her jacket.
“Good Lord, woman, who do you think you are, Deacon Chalk?” I asked, naming a badass monster killer in Atlanta I’d heard stories about. I’d never met the man despite living in the same state, but he sounded like my kind of guy. Hung out in strip clubs, blew up a lot of shit, had some family issues. You know, typical dude-that-hunts-monsters kind of stuff.
“I don’t know who that is, but these belonged to my Daddy the Colonel, God rest his soul, and I’ve sent many a vampire and zombie to their final resting place with these pistols.”
“Then let’s do that again,” I said. I stepped through the open door of the crypt to see Amy laid out on a sarcophagus surrounded by zombies all swaying in time to the chanting of half a dozen or so humans. The black-clad humans were arranged in a semi-circle around her with a gorgeous woman in a white robe standing directly over Amy’s head and holding a wavy dagger that reflec
ted candlelight all over the room. The zombies made a circle around the sarcophagus, surrounding my girlfriend and the humans. This seemed like a particularly bad idea to me, but since they weren’t currently trying to eat anyone, I didn’t mention it.
“So I heard there was a party tonight, and I wasn’t invited,” I said, stepping to one side to give Evangeline and her pistols plenty of room to work. “My feelings were hurt for a minute, but then I decided that I should probably just kill everybody in the room anyway, so no big deal, right?”
“Finish the ritual!” a pudgy dude in what looked like a black hoodie sewn onto a bathrobe shouted.
I pointed Bertha at his head and said, “Tubby, if you ever want to eat another beignet, you better haul your fat ass out of this cemetery right now. That goes for the rest of y’all, too. In about ten seconds, everybody in this crypt is either gonna be on my team, or dead forever, so if neither of those ideas appeals to y’all, you better run like hell.”
I stepped to the side as four of the humans, amazingly not including Tubby, bolted for the open door. Tubby charged me, his head down like he was a bull after his very first matador. Too bad for him I’d seen that movie before. I side-stepped his charge, turned halfway to my left, and planted a foot in his sizable ass as he went by. He took the turbo boost like a ‘69 Charger just got a shot of nitrous, and dove into the stone wall of the crypt like he was rocket-propelled. He slid down the wall and collapsed in a heap amidst a couple of broken urns and some dried leaves. I heard a thump from behind me and turned to see Evangeline standing over the unconscious body of the other human chanter.
I looked at the blonde woman in the white robe standing over my girlfriend with a knife and said, “If you want to live, you should put that knife down.”
“You can’t shoot me fast enough to save her, idiot.”
“I don’t have to, dumbass. And don’t call people names, it’s not nice.” I said, then said, “Amy, take her out.” Amy, who had been playing possum the whole time, grabbed the sides of the sarcophagus and kicked straight up. Her right foot flashed back over her head and caught the priestess right between the eyes. The blonde woman took one wobbly step back, then sat down hard on the concrete and passed out against the wall. Amy rolled to her feet atop the sarcophagus and winked at me.
Moon over Bourbon Street - a Bubba the Monster Hunter Novella Page 6
