Blood Trade

by Faith Hunter

  He answered with a lazy not-smile, pushed off the wall, and said, “You smelled me?”

  “I heard you. Your combat boots make an awful noise on the carpet. The clomping stopped outside my door. You got the addresses?”

  He nodded and tilted his head to the harness on the bed. “Need help?”

  “Yeah. It gets harder and harder to get dressed by myself.”

  “Well, I’m better at undressing women, but I’ll give it a shot.”

  “You’re a gun whore.” It was the standard chatter between us, comfortable and easy.

  “Turn around. None of this would be so hard if you hadn’t gotten so fat.”

  “I put on muscle. You helped.” I slid into the jacket, the weight settling on my shoulders. The jacket was heavy, with a thin layer of silver-plated links between the leather and the lining. A small surprise for any vamp who wanted dinner. Eli helped me into the harness and started on the buckles and tabs, making sure the weapons were all easy at hand.

  “All the weapons secured. Release straps secured,” he said. “Extra mags?”

  I opened the weapons bag and took out four magazines, inspected them each, and tucked them into the special pockets: two on the right for the nines, two on the left for the .380s, all loaded with standard ammo. Everything about my gear was special and it had cost a fortune. Some women spent money on shoes and mani-pedis. Not me. My next weapons purchase would be to acquire two new nine mils. The .380s had their uses, but in a firefight it was handy to use interchangeable ammo. “You got some of those sleepy-time bombs we used the last time we were here?” I asked.

  Eli yanked the harness to position it midline with my body, so the M4 was straight up and down my spine. I had to raise my arm up high to pull the weapon, but it was out of the way until needed. There was another way of wearing the weapon on the harness that allowed it to hang free, within easy reach, but secured beneath my arm. “Yeah,” he said. “But I can’t get any more, so we have to be thrifty. Okay,” he said, giving my clothes one last jerk. “Good to go.” And he slapped me on my butt.

  The growl from the doorway froze us both. Then Eli moved, and was holding a nine millimeter in a two-handed grip, pointed at the door, his feet positioned, legs braced for firing. He had a bead on Rick.

  “You move, you’re gonna bleed,” Eli said. “You already jumped me once. Not gonna happen again.”

  “He’s not going to jump you,” I said, my voice without inflection. “He’s going to jump me.”

  Eli’s eyes flicked from Rick to me to the bed, and back to Rick as something seemed to rearrange itself in his head. “Same difference, were-cat. She’s on my team, my pack. Back off or bleed.”

  Before any of us could decide to react, a green ball of fur slammed into Rick’s side and knocked him off his feet. Again. I chuckled and walked from the room, stepping over the cop on the floor and the kitten-sized predator at his throat. “Some people never learn. Do they, Pea?” I patted her head and practically skipped down the stairs. “Hey, Rick. I like your pet!” I called over my shoulder.

  Out in the SUV, Eli buckled himself in and pulled into the street. The sun was about two hours from setting, and that gave us plenty of time. I waited, knowing the Ranger was biding his time to say something about the contretemps in the hall. But he said nothing, and as we turned in to town, I caved. “Okay. What?”

  Eli’s mouth did that nonsmile thing and he said, “Your business.”

  I felt myself flush, and the stupid guilt I’ve lived with all my life rose like a whirlwind, even though I had done nothing—nothing—wrong. My own physical responses made me mad, and I shoved down hard on the useless guilt. “Yeah. Mine. My business.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Maggots. I Hate Maggots.

  Under the Hill wasn’t deserted, but neither was it bustling; few people were out and about, with the reports of missing citizens keeping most indoors. In the sunlight, Under the Hill looked odd; it was a place for the shadows, the dark of a new-moon night, hard rains, and stifling summers. By day, the gardens of the earth witches were brilliant with flowers and winter vegetables, and the buildings that were painted were done so in vibrant color—blues, greens, barn red, and one old house that was lilac with pale lavender trim. It looked like something out of a Grimms’ fairy tale, and probably was. It was attractive on the surface, but likely dark and bloody underneath. Cars were parked here and there, but not well-waxed vamp mobiles. These ran from well-kept older models to rusted-out hulks, SUVs and vans, some with conspicuous baby seats, others painted with advertisements for dog grooming, pet walking, personal gardeners, bakers, rune casters, artists of every stripe and kind. The typical witch wagons. Like Molly drove. I shook the thought away. You can’t force someone to forgive you, not even a once-best friend.

  When we parked, I searched for Silandre’s Saloon but couldn’t see it. It was downhill, closer to the water, and faced south. The buildings where we were parked faced north. The warehouse where we met Big H for intros was in the middle somewhere. Except for age, their history as saloons, and association with vamps, the structures had nothing in common. We left the SUV unlocked and walked back to an address the Kid had given us.

  It was empty, containing only the stink of age, river rats, and roaches. The next address was equally empty and disused. But the third one set my Beast senses tingling. The structure was a former warehouse and loading dock, converted into a saloon back in the day when Under the Hill was notorious for the kidnapping of women and young boys and their sale into sexual slavery. It was two stories, the bright sunshine showing a brick exterior and rusted antique iron shutters on both floors, the corrosion gathered in the corners and across the center support bar. The trim was unpainted and mostly rotten, with only traces of green paint showing here and there. The porch was better made, though, rust-stained concrete with terra-cotta pieces set in, like something constructed in the nineteen sixties, but getting to it meant a huge leap where the steps had rotted away. The porch roof was rusted tin, and the rust running down from the constant rains had tinted the rotten wood a deep brown.

  I could smell the dead from ten feet away and wrinkled my nose, making a spitting sound a big-cat might make before I could stop myself. “What?” Eli demanded, sotto voce.

  “Unwashed humans inside,” I said, as softly as he. “And like the last house, DBs. Don’t know how many, but dead bodies.”

  “Reconnoiter,” he said, and motioned me to move counterclockwise around the house while he went clockwise. I wasn’t a witch and I didn’t feel any witch energies, so widdershins was fine by me, but it would be different if spells were being cast here. Witch houses had to be approached very differently. I pulled a .380 and stepped off the sidewalk.

  The surrounding shrubbery, all overgrown and spindly, hadn’t felt the sharp edge of pruning or lopping shears in years. The foundation was cracked and broken in several places, the crawl space narrow and currently unused but smelling of the recent occupation of chickens—wet feathers and chicken poop. The windows at the side, like the front, were covered with iron, but they hadn’t been sealed for as long as the front ones. Air still moved through some of the cracks, smelling of blood and rot, and the sickly sweet, beery, herbal scent of Naturaleza. The mingled stench made my skin crawl. I wasn’t gonna like what we found inside.

  From the building to the side, I smelled onions cooking, overlying the stink of turpentine and glue—the telltales of a live-in artist’s studio. From somewhere upwind I caught the odor of blood magics in practice, harsh and fetid, but the unpredictable winds that always ran along the Mississippi River carried it away, leaving the nearer rot of the warehouse/bar at my right.

  The back of the warehouse had been added onto, hiding the old carriage and wagon bays behind more modern but moldy siding. The new windows were shielded by shutters—the new steel ones designed in Asheville by an entrepreneurial vamp, with electric motors to open and close them. There were two cars parked at the back stoop, shiny and glossy
with very darkly tinted windows, the way vamp cars are supposed to be.

  We met at the cars, and Eli’s eyes asked me if I found anything. I touched my nose and drew a finger across my throat, which made him snort, a breath of sound. Apparently, tough army dudes don’t draw a finger across a throat to suggest a dead body. Still keeping his weapon low but at the ready, he pointed me back the way he had come and he took my path. I shrugged and continued my widdershins way, still trying to work it all out. It was like a video-game puzzle in the back of my mind, the blinking lights and neon obscuring more than revealing what was missing.

  At the curb, Eli gestured to the front door and leaped to the porch. I put away my weapon and followed, stating what was bothering me. “I don’t understand it. I never have. Why kill and dump the humans?”

  “Naturaleza like to kill.” For Eli, that was enough.

  “I get that. When they first start out, there’s the high of a predator stalking and bringing down prey. But at some point there’s got to be a problem with diminishing returns, and someone in a vamp hierarchy has to consider the food supply. Once that’s dead, they can’t recuperate and make a new blood supply.”

  Eli tried the door, and though it was locked, it was also made of rotten wood. Studying the door, its hinges, its construction, he said, “You bring this up now?”

  “We’re getting ready to go kill sleeping vamps. We’ll be busy.” I pushed away my worries. “Are you shooting our way in?”

  “Nah,” Eli said. He reared back and kicked, his heel hitting squarely an inch beside the old lock. The wood splintered, leaving a hole and a crack that traveled up from the kick site to the top of the door and down toward the floor. I heard screams from inside and figured humans were escaping out the back, into the sunlight, leaving behind their employers and masters. Good. They needed to get away. But their screams sounded into the street. Loud enough to wake the undead, let alone the neighbors.

  “Witnesses?” I looked around, but no one was in sight and no one ran out of nearby buildings to look.

  Eli had surely made certain no one was around before the kick, though I hadn’t seen him scan the area. He pulled a sleepy-time bomb—that wasn’t what the military officially called them, but the name worked fine by me—and tore off the grenade’s safety strip, snapped down on the handle, and tossed it inside. Then he taped over the hole he’d made in the door with duct tape, which he carried with him everywhere, looked at his watch, and sat on the porch with his feet hanging down, his body at an angle to see the door and the street out front. Basic security. “We got time to chat,” he said. “Too bad there’s no coffeehouse nearby.” His brow crinkled faintly. “You’re assuming a traditional vamp hierarchy with the killing-prey thing. Assuming someone is in charge to keep the rogues in line. Maybe they don’t have one now that de Allyon’s dead.”

  “Anarchy?” I tried that puzzle piece in the map in my head. It fit, but it wasn’t a firm, solid thunk of info. “But why behead their own leader? Nothing makes sense.”

  I dropped slowly to the porch, my angle allowing me to see down beside the house, where I got a glimpse of someone rushing away. Both cars started in back and peeled out. Thinking, I looked up at the sky. Sundown was in less than two hours. “Three days.” At his puzzled look, I explained. “Most vamps can be killed true-dead with a stake through the heart. But a small percentage will rise the third night as revenants, which is why I always behead my kills. These aren’t normal vamps, so what if the percentages of revenants rising are significantly higher?”

  “Wait. Not all the vamps at the last place were beheaded. Only the one in the front room.”

  “The cops didn’t behead them?” I asked.

  “I got no idea, but I’ll text Sylvia to take the heads.” He pulled his phone, thumbs working, mumbling, “I don’t even know if the law allows LEOs to desecrate bodies. Here’s a new one for the politicians.

  “You ever seen a revenant?” he asked, changing the subject, his eyes on the phone. When I shook my head, Eli said, “Well, let’s kill these, behead them, take pics so we get paid, and get to the county morgue. And you better call your jealous boy toy and tell him to contact PsyLED. They took a few of the bodies in Esther’s basement off with them.”

  Until recently, Uncle Sam had never obtained the body of a vamp for a forensic autopsy. Vamps had policed their own and cleaned up their own messes. But then Lucas Vazquez de Allyon had challenged the status quo of the masters of the cities in this country and the numbers of dead vamps had risen substantially, clearly allowing some into the government’s clutches. A small part of me thought it would be cool to be the proverbial fly on the wall in PsyLED’s morgue when a revenant rose, but the rest of me knew better. Revenants would kill and eat humans.

  “Yeah, no. No calls.” I had no intention of calling Rick. Actual discussions were not something I wanted right now. Big surprise. “I’ll text Rick about the potential problem and see if Big Brother had any difficulties with the last batch of true-dead. You text Sylvia. Let’s see that we avoid a real-life remake of Night of the Living Dead.” I pulled out my cell. Which was so not classic-hero motif. Once I texted Rick, I found a text from the Kid giving us more addresses. I copied them down on the little spiral notebook I carried. If I had to ditch the phone, I wouldn’t lose the info. Inside the house, where the sleepy-time bomb was spreading its knockout fog, I heard thumps, muted and soft, as if several large things fell to the floor.

  “What if—” I stopped and put things together about the new vamps. “What if they’re all revenants? Francis too. What if the magic circle is powering them all to come back? And come back better and more powerful.”

  Eli paused too, in the act of checking his messages, letting that thought percolate through his brain. “Huh,” he said, which pretty much summed it up. He went back to his replies, bent over his phone, thumbs working, texting like a college student—if that college student wore leather and guns. He finished and stood, stretching, drawing a vamp-killer. “We gonna do this?” he asked, and checked his watch. “’Cause we need to get it done before dusk and the vamps get energetic.”

  I put away my cell and rolled my shoulders and my head on my neck as I drew my M4 and checked it, removed the safety, and unfolded the stock before sliding the strap over my head. I loosened the vamp-killer on my left thigh and shoved it back on the straps for a left-hand draw. “Got nothing better to do.” Which was the truth, sadly.

  Silent, Eli drew in his right leg, pivoted on his left foot, and kicked out. His foot hit beside the taped hole and the door snapped in pieces. The top half fell inward, landing with two distinct clumps. The bottom was in a V, leaning inside. Eli ripped away the rest of the door, letting in light and fresh air, letting out the stink of rot. I could hear raspy breathing inside.

  The scent of sleepy-time was still strong beneath the rot, and because Eli didn’t have the gas masks we had used in the past, we stood guard at the door and waited for the gas to clear, which seemed to take forever. When Eli gave the word, I rushed inside and slammed my back against the wall, with Eli on the other side of the door opening.

  Instantly I moved left, the M4 in both hands, held close. The room took up the entire front half of the structure and was lit by low-wattage bulbs in wall sconces. It had once been a tavern, and a tarnished copper bar ran nearly the length of the back wall, with a blackened mirror over it. Someone had graffitied unimaginative erotica on it, mostly oversized sex organs and fangs. It looked like something I might see in a redneck vamp-biker bar.

  The sunlight revealed abused hardwood floors; dark-painted walls, maybe navy; and broken furniture. There was a three-legged pool table propped up on a trash can, a sagging couch, a door laid out on sawhorses as a table, and a few chairs. And humans lay everywhere, some looking as if they’d fallen just now, others as if they’d been there quite a while. There were body fluids puddled under some of them and quivering movement over their flesh. Maggots. I hate maggots. I could hear the buzz of flie
s depositing more eggs, and as I crossed the room, they flew up, disturbed. Yuck.

  I counted eight humans in the old bar, all dead except one, and she was nearly so. Eli pointed to the narrow hallway in back. It ran along the outside of the building, and the iron-covered windows had been boarded over, then painted a hideous shade of violet over the chair rail and an even more hideous shade of mustard below. I took point. Two doors opened into the hallway, and Eli positioned himself to cover me. If a sleeping vamp was using it as a lair, I’d be toast. If humans were hiding there, they probably wouldn’t have inhaled enough sleepy-time to be out.

  I opened the door. The room on the other side had once been the men’s toilet, but the plumbing had stopped working recently and no one had bothered to fix it. I made a face at the stink and the mess and closed the door. Quickly. Shuffling silently, I slid my back down to the next. It was the women’s toilet. And it was where the vamps kept their snacks.

  Three naked women were handcuffed to the exposed pipes, and all showed crusted wounds at every major pulse point, blackened eyes, and bodies covered in pustules, evidence of the vamp plague. One cradled a broken arm. Her eyelids fluttered open and she started to whimper, stinking of pain sweat and fear pheromones. I wanted to curse, but I placed a finger over my lips to silence her. Her eyes went wide and she started to cry, realizing that help had arrived. Five minutes, I mouthed to her, showing her my open fingers.

  She nodded hard and fast, and mouthed back, Don’t leave us.

  I nodded and closed the door. Like I’d ever leave someone prisoner. I held up three fingers to Eli so he knew what I’d seen, and moved on down the hallway. The door at the end hung crazily by one hinge. I ducked my head out and back fast, letting my brain make sense of what I’d seen. Another large room, part storeroom, part kitchen, with a large walk-in refrigerator taking up one corner. Debris and busted furniture covered the floor, but no bodies. Eli joined me at the doorway, still covering our backs, and I moved into the room, checking to make sure I’d missed nothing, no hiding places for a blood-slave with a weapon, no vamp lying in wait for fresh food. I approached the refrigerator. Its door was open and it was empty except for a large white circle painted on the floor. I’d seen one once before and closed the door, making sure it wouldn’t open from the inside. Eli looked curious, but said nothing.