Black Arts

by Faith Hunter

  “So?”

  “So my sense of smell is good. Way better than human.”

  “Keep going.”

  “I should have been able to tell in the hallway that a dead body was on the other side of the door. Just by the smell. I should have been able to smell the blood. I should have been able to smell the perpetrator coming and going. I couldn’t. So I went inside. Stood over the body and smelled.”

  Jodi sat in the chair beside me and said, “Go on.”

  “I got a hint, but it wasn’t much. You know how, if you glimpse something in the next room, out of the corner of your eye, your brain instantly starts to make a picture out of it? Because our brains are pattern oriented?” She nodded. “Well, I do that with my sense of smell. And I got a hint of a vamp I’d smelled before.” I held her eyes with mine. “But I can’t place it. It’s been muffled, like with magic. And no, I didn’t know scent could be tampered with, but it can.”

  “I’m listening.” Which was cop-speak for keep talking.

  “Adrianna, one of Leo’s scions, and the secondo heir to Grégoire, attacked my house tonight, while I was at HQ. She was trying to kill my friends. They’re okay, but it was close. Anyway, one of the humans involved in the attack said that Adrianna wanted something in my possession.”

  I blinked as a puzzle piece resolved itself. It should have been clear sooner, but I’d had too much unrelated stuff on my brain lately and it had hidden in the depths of my mind until I had time for it to push to the forefront. I couldn’t guess what Adrianna had been after—besides death and destruction. It was possible, however unlikely, that she wanted the blood diamond and thought I had it. Which I did. Sorta. I asked, “Do you remember the Damours’ lair?”

  “Oh yeah. The crazy hideout full of long-chained scions and blood and death, which I got to see after a thousand paramilitary trampled all over.” Her voice, which had softened, barked again.

  I hadn’t shown Jodi the Damours’ lair. After my raid and the silent alarm went off, a neighbor called the cops, after seeing vehicles take off with speed, and a motorcycle ridden off by a woman. The uniforms first on the scene had called the NOPD cops in charge of the paranormal cases, meaning my former boyfriend Rick LaFleur and Jodi. Rick had been okay with it all, but it had taken Jodi a while to get past the fact that she hadn’t been part of the team entering the lair.

  The Damours blood family had fallen into disgrace. They’d been stealing witch children and killing them in black magic ceremonies. Blood magic. Which Jodi knew, as she had been cop-on-scene when I killed the Damours. “Leo had to have known something was up with them, but he hadn’t gone in and cleaned house. Until I showed up. And I don’t know why they got a free ride, not yet.” I was giving all my secrets away tonight, it seemed. I sighed and laced my fingers together, trying to look nonthreatening, which was hard with all the weapons I was carrying. Weapons Jodi had let me keep, which was a huge sign of trust in a cop.

  Carefully, I said, “Our killer vamp? Has to be tied in with Adrianna. And that could mean tied in with the Damours. But I can’t smell him—the killer vamp. Actually, I don’t get a real sense of gender, which is odd. The only thing I can tell you with any degree of certainty is it wasn’t Adrianna herself. And I can’t tell Leo, because he let the Damours’ work unrestrained in his city.”

  “Keeping secrets from the MOC in his own council house,” Jodi said, her tone wry and unamused. “Better you than me.”

  • • •

  I staggered out of the vamp council’s HQ just before dawn, still in my sock feet. I hadn’t seen Leo. I hadn’t discovered what the humans might know, the ones who had attacked my house. I didn’t even know where they were being held. Once Jodi showed up, I had been denied all access. It was her case and she was making sure I knew it. And to cap off my wonderful—not—night, all the way home I kept feeling as if someone was watching me, though I took three unexpected turns and never saw anyone. I was exhausted and worn and growing paranoid and wanted only to sleep.

  But that wasn’t to be. The Kid had found something and was sitting at the kitchen table when I entered, the smell of espresso and strong, hot black tea rich on the air. I didn’t even ask. I just poured a megamug, added three spoonfuls of sugar, and topped it off with most of a container of Cool Whip. I sat at the table with a quiet groan and said, “Tell me.”

  “You do know that mug is for soup, right?” Alex asked.

  “Yeah?” I looked at the mug and said, “Hughn.” And drank. The black China tea hit my taste buds and my bloodstream at the same time. Caffeine and sugar are two drugs that have some effect on skinwalkers, and some days I crave the lift they give me just like a human does.

  “And you do know you left your boots somewhere?”

  “I noticed. I also noticed I ruined a perfectly good pair of socks.” I lifted my foot and let him see the hole in the bottom. “I’m listening,” I said, aware that they were the same words Jodi had said to me not long ago.

  The Kid turned his screen to me. On it was typed I drilled into a bank’s security cameras. I got some shots of Bliss and Rachael.

  I knew instantly that we weren’t speaking aloud because we had an air witch on the premises—and because hacking into a bank’s system was illegal, and a surefire way for the Kid to break his parole. And if Eli was listening, we were so screwed. I sniffed, placing Eli by scent. He was upstairs. I nodded for the Kid to continue.

  The screen disappeared. Behind it was a different screen, one with a fuzzy image on it. It was Bliss, her black hair and very fair skin in shocking contrast. Beside her sat a more fuzzy image of Rachael, her head tilted back, her eyes closed in what looked to be desire, but was more likely a bad case of blood-drunkenness. Over her, obscuring the lower part of Rachael’s face and upper body, was another head. From its position I gathered that the vamp was drinking deeply from Rachael’s jugular. The vamp had red hair, though not curly—just long and flowing. “Adrianna?” I murmured the question. But she still had curly hair when she attacked the house. So I was betting no. Some other redheaded vamp.

  The Kid shook his head. He didn’t know either.

  “Any better shots?”

  He gave me a waffling motion with his hand and punched a button. From another angle I could make out a portion of a face, but it was blurry. The nose was distinctive, maybe a bit too long, a tad too pointed for perfect beauty, which was odd for vamps. They usually only turned the physically perfect—no matter how mentally ill the human in question might be. I pointed to the nose and then drew my fingers along my own and pulled them together and out as if elongating my nose. The Kid shrugged and held up a finger to the side of his nostril, as if showing me that it could be something else and the poor quality of the shots might be involved in creating an effect that nature hadn’t provided. So the photo was no help. Ducky.

  The man beside her seemed delicate, his hair spiky, his face in shadow. Only the large nose ring and spiky hair set him apart.

  Alex hit another button and a different car appeared on the screen. He typed out This car was behind them. Following, as per three different traffic cameras and the bank camera.

  “Shadowing or tailing?” I whispered. There was a big difference. Shadowing might mean the lead car knew they were there and they were all working together. Tailing meant two forces in opposition.

  Tailing, the Kid typed. “Way back. Can’t tell that the lead car knew.” He punched a button and a different shot of the second car came up. It showed a quarter shot of a man’s head and part of his jaw—black hair, black beard, the kind that lines the edge of the jaw and usually moves up beside his mouth to form a goatee. His jaw was strong and sculpted, his chin might have been square, and something glinted gold on his neck. Dangling earring? If so it was a big one. Vamp? Not likely. Most male vamps didn’t wear big honking hoops.

  How many vamps have beards? I typed into his tablet. How many blood-servants? Thinking about the limo from out of state, I added at the bottom How many Texans?r />
  Lots, he typed back. Thirteen local fangheads scanned in already, no Texans. I’ll try to do facial matching. At my questioning look he said aloud, “Like facial recog programs, but this one matches parts of a photo with other known photos.” He hit a key and a shot came up. It was from the other side of the street and it took me a moment to realign my brain with the car’s spatial reality. I was looking at the tail car from the other side. Sitting at the passenger window in the backseat was a vamp. The one I’d killed earlier this evening. The now true-dead vamp who had attacked my freebie house had been tailing the vamp who drove off with Katie’s missing girls, which made no sense at all. Another key punch brought up the driver of the second car. Below his face, the Kid typed Macon Brown. Human. Blood-slave, not -servant, this info per your vamp census last year.

  I nodded. Blood-slaves were the hangers-on in a vamp’s household, there for food and sex and odd jobs, and to be passed around to any visiting vamps. Or sold to another vamp to pay a debt. They were addicted to vamp blood and would do anything to get more. Literally anything with anyone. Blood-servants were much higher class. They were attached to a clan, had contracts that laid out their jobs, and were sworn to a blood-master. They were cared for, healed when injured or ill, and usually provided blood meals only to the one they were sworn to. I had started a file on them, keeping track of who was sworn to whom.

  “So. We have a hired car in front, supposedly on the way to a party at Arceneau Clan Home, with one female vamp, an unknown man with a nose ring, and the girls, and a car in back with a former blood-slave, a now true-dead vamp who attacked our home with Adrianna, and an unknown bearded male, possibly a vamp, wearing an earring. Right?” I didn’t expect an answer and I didn’t get one.

  The Kid shrugged, but added, “The girls never got to Arceneau Clan Home. They turned around partway and headed totally in the wrong direction. And the tail car must have lost them as they left the city. When the black cab went over the Mississippi heading west, the tail car was nowhere in sight.”

  “Huh. Keep me informed,” I said. I punched in Wrassler’s number and left him a message on voice mail. “The vamps who attacked my house were involved with the disappearance of two of Katie’s girls, but may not have been working with the vamp who took them. They may have been tailing them, which makes the disappearance of Bliss and Rachael part of this.” I hesitated. “Whatever this is.” I hung up. Softly, I asked Alex, “Anything on Molly?”

  The Kid shrugged, a typical teenaged gesture that was equal parts annoyance, frustration, and exhaustion. He didn’t know and it was eating him up inside. “No,” he muttered. “Nothing new except that I isolated a camera that views the valet parking. I’m trying to get the time and date differentiated.”

  I patted his shoulder, sighed, and rubbed the back of my neck, feeling the tension in the muscles. “On another subject, text Wrassler to call in someone with prison or government experience to go over the protocols in the back parking. The Tattooed Duo were handling that, and now we got nobody in-house, but I’m sure one of the clans has a specialist they can send over. Also, get him to go over all the security upgrades that were seen by the two.” Which was sufficiently confusing, but I figured he could make sense of it all. I closed my door and fell across the mattress, rolling over to strip off my weapons and shove them under the bed. I was crashing. I desperately needed a nap.

  • • •

  I woke to the smell of coffee and bacon. Mostly the bacon. I had slept an hour, and felt worse for it. I rolled from the bed and again stowed my smaller weapons in the gun safe in my closet and the larger ones on the high closet shelf where the children wouldn’t see them. I stripped out of my sweaty clothes, which still stank of blood and gore, and showered, the water almost scalding while I soaped and washed my hair, before I switched it to cold—or cold as New Orleans water ever got. I braided my wet hair and dressed—and because I lived with so many males, I started with a bra. Hated those things. Even a holster felt better most days. Over it went a T-shirt and thin cotton pants. It was March in New Orleans—cold one day, humid, wet, and warm the next. Already I could smell spring flowers over the stench of humans in the city. The house felt stuffy, and it wouldn’t be long before we had to turn on the AC in the daytime. Back home in the Appalachians, we might still have snow on the ground. Deep inside, Beast rumbled something that sounded like Home. Go home.

  Flip-flops and a nine-mil in a spine holster completed my ensemble.

  I left my room and joined the breakfast mayhem in the kitchen, thumbing my cell open to check for voice mails. “Any messages or text from Wrassler?” I asked.

  “Aunt Jane! Aunt Jane! Aunt Jane!” Two midsized projectiles launched through the air at me, in what was becoming a ritual, the strawberry blond one at midthigh and the redheaded one from much higher—directly off the tabletop where he had been standing. Beast shoved into me and I caught EJ in midair just as Angie Baby rammed against my legs. I staggered but caught my balance and hoisted EJ over a shoulder, juggled my cell, bent and picked up Angie, and deposited them in their seats. They were still squealing and the guys eating breakfast stared at me with open mouths.

  Oh. Yeah. A normal woman would have dropped them or ended up in a pile on the floor. “Not human,” I said. “Deal with it.” Just saying the words was liberating. It was like shutting off a loud, out-of-balance motor, one that had caused an unstable vibration all through me, one I hadn’t noticed until it was gone.

  Pretending I didn’t notice the sudden silence in the room, I picked a slice of bacon off the platter in the middle of the table and shoved it into my mouth. Chewing, I prepared myself a plate. It was scrambled egg day and I had regular eggs, Cajun eggs, and Western eggs. Cajun was cooked with red peppers and Western was cooked with onions and bell peppers and jalapeños. I served up most of what was left of each, scooped on a dozen strips of bacon, and sat, adding four pieces of toast to my plate. “Good,” I mumbled as I ate. Around me the men started back eating.

  “Glad you approve,” Eli said dryly.

  I said through a mouthful of eggs, “Report from Wrassler?”

  “The humans who attacked the house have no memories of the attack,” Eli said. “The last thing they remember is a party with some sailors at the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base out in Belle Chasse.” When I looked up, chewing and lost, he added, “Belle Chasse is an unincorporated location in Plaquemines Parish.”

  I stopped chewing and swallowed the bite whole. Which hurt. When I got it down, I said, “Vamps and military guys?”

  “Yeah,” Eli said, concern lacing his tone. “NAS JRB is six nautical miles from downtown New Orleans. It’s home to the 159th Fighter Wing, USCG Air Station New Orleans, a Marine Corps Reserve unit, navy and army units.”

  I felt as if I were being given a military readiness lecture. And maybe I was.

  “Layman’s terms: The base supports both the 159th FW’s NORAD for air defense and Homeland Security, and the Coast Guard Air Station New Orleans search and rescue/maritime law enforcement missions. It contains a military airport known as Alvin Callender Field. I’ve already notified your ex. Or your maybe sometime. Or your—”

  “Rick will do,” I said, sounding more prim than I intended.

  “The info was confirmed by a vamp-feeding and Vulcan mind meld,” the Kid added. “There were vamps at the military party. One had red hair. Wrassler said to call him after four p.m.”

  I snorted into my breakfast as I ate. Vulcan mind meld. It fit. “Hmmph,” I said. “Now wayward vamps want a piece of Uncle Sam? Leo will be ticked. Cajun eggs are the best. More?”

  “Good G—gravy, woman. You just ate a dozen eggs,” Eli said. I shrugged. He got up and opened the fridge for more eggs and milk. I was nearly done when he flipped a pan of steaming eggs onto my plate and I dug in again. When I was satisfied, I pushed back the plate, swallowed the last bite down with a slurp of cold tea, and met Evan’s eyes.

  He was tired and fighting anger, tiny hot
flames in his blue eyes. I said, “The Kid will update you on Molly, but we don’t have a lot to go on. Yet. When is the last time you did a finding spell on her?”

  “This morning,” he said. “And I got nothing. But more like it’s blocked, not like she’s . . . gone.” He meant dead. “Which is a relief of some sorts.”

  “Can you tell who’s blocking her?” I asked. “Like, is she blocking all targeting and finding spells herself, or is someone else blocking her from others?”

  The corners of Big Evan’s eyes pulled down with his frown. I could tell he hadn’t thought about her blocking him out. But now that I’d planted the worm in his skull, it was burrowing deep.

  Go, me. With a little luck, I might make cruelest skinwalker of the year. “Can you tell if she’s still nearby?”

  “She’s within fifty miles,” he said.

  “Mommy’s okay,” Angelina said. “But she’s scared.”

  My mouth came open, but I stopped on whatever I was going to say, when Evan said, very gently, “You can tell she’s okay?”

  Angie nodded. “All the time. Can I have more syrup?”

  “You’ve had enough sugar, sweetheart,” Evan said, his eyes unfocused. “Can you tell where Mommy is?”

  Angie scrunched up her face and thought, chewing her breakfast. “No. She’s okay. But she’s scared. You hafta find her soon. Can I please be excused? Me and EJ’s gonna play in the backyard.”

  “Sure,” Evan said. “Don’t try to leave the yard.”

  “Biscause the alarms will go off,” Angie said, nodding. “From your wards.”

  “Right.” But it was obvious that he wasn’t really hearing her. EJ crawled out of his high chair and he and Angie scampered out the side door, their footsteps hollow on the wood porch into the backyard. Evan looked down, fighting disappointment and fear and despondency so strong it crossed the table in dark waves.