Skinwalker jy-1

by Faith Hunter

Katie was one of those dark ash blondes with long straight hair so thick it whispered when she moved, falling across the teal silk that fit her like a second skin. She stood five feet and a smidge, but height was no measure of power in her kind. She could move as fast as I could and kill in an eyeblink. She had buffed nails that were short when she wasn’t in killing mode, pale skin, and she wore exotic, Egyptian-style makeup around the eyes. Black liner overlaid with some kind of glitter. Not the kind of look I’d ever had the guts to try. I’d rather face down a grizzly than try to achieve “a look.”

  “What’ll it be, Miz Yellowrock?” Tom asked.

  “Cola’s fine. No diet.”

  He popped the top on a Coke and poured it over ice that crackled and split when the liquid hit, placed a wedge of lime on the rim, and handed it to me. His employer got a tall fluted glass of something milky that smelled sharp and alcoholic. Well, at least it wasn’t blood on ice. Ick.

  “Thank you for coming such a distance,” Katie said, taking one of two chairs and indicating the other for me. Both chairs were situated with backs to the door, which I didn’t like, but I sat as she continued. “We never made proper introductions, and the In-ter-net,” she said, separating the syllables as if the term was strange, “is no substitute for formal, proper introductions. I am Katherine Fonteneau.” She offered the tips of her fingers, and I took them for a moment in my own before dropping them.

  “Jane Yellowrock,” I said, feeling as though it was all a little redundant. She sipped; I sipped. I figured that was enough etiquette. “Do I get the job?” I asked.

  Katie waved away my impertinence. “I like to know the people with whom I do business. Tell me about yourself.”

  Cripes. The sun was down. I needed to be tooling around town, getting the smell and the feel of the place. I had errands to run, an apartment to rent, rocks to find, meat to buy. “You’ve been to my Web site, no doubt read my bio. It’s all there in black and white.” Well, in full color graphics, but still.

  Katie’s brows rose politely. “Your bio is dull and uninformative. For instance, there is no mention that you appeared out of the forest at age twelve, a feral child raised by wolves, without even the rudiments of human behavior. That you were placed in a children’s home, where you spent the next six years. And that you again vanished until you reappeared two years ago and started killing my kind.”

  My hackles started to rise, but I forced them down. I’d been baited by a roomful of teenaged girls before I even learned to speak English. After that, nothing was too painful. I grinned and threw a leg over the chair arm. Which took Katie, of the elegant attack, aback. “I wasn’t raised by wolves. At least I don’t think so. I don’t feel an urge to howl at the moon, anyway. I have no memories of my first twelve years of life, so I can’t answer you about them, but I think I’m probably Cherokee.” I touched my black hair, then my face with its golden brown skin and sharp American Indian nose in explanation. “After that, I was raised in a Christian children’s home in the mountains of South Carolina. I left when I was eighteen, traveled around a while, and took up an apprenticeship with a security firm for two years. Then I hung out my shingle, and eventually drifted into the vamp-hunting business.

  “What about you? You going to share all your own deep dark secrets, Katie of Katie’s Ladies? Who is known to the world as Katherine Fonteneau, aka Katherine Louisa Dupre, Katherine Pearl Duplantis, and Katherine Vuillemont, among others I uncovered. Who renewed her liquor license in February, is a registered Republican, votes religiously, pardon the term, sits on the local full vampiric council, has numerous offshore accounts in various names, a half interest in two local hotels, at least three restaurants, and several bars, and has enough money to buy and sell this entire city if she wanted to.”

  “We have both done our research, I see.”

  I had a feeling Katie found me amusing. Must be hard to live a few centuries and find yourself in a modern world where everyone knows what you are and is either infatuated with you or scared silly by you. I was neither, which she liked, if the small smile was any indication. “So. Do I have the job?” I asked again.

  Katie considered me for a moment, as if weighing my responses and attitude. “Yes,” she said. “I’ve arranged a small house for you, per the requirements on your In-ter-net web place.”

  My brows went up despite myself. She must have been pretty sure she was gonna hire me, then.

  “It backs up to this property.” She waved vaguely at the back of the room. “The small L-shaped garden at the side and back is walled in brick, and I had the stones you require delivered two days ago.”

  Okay. Now I was impressed. My Web site says I require close proximity to boulders or a rock garden, and that I won’t take a job if such a place can’t be found. And the woman—the vamp—had made sure that nothing would keep me from accepting the job. I wondered what she would have done if I’d said no.

  At her glance, Tr—Tom took up the narrative. “The gardener had a conniption, but he figured out a way to get boulders into the garden with a crane, and then blended them into his landscaping. Grumbled about it, but it’s done.”

  “Would you tell me why you need piles of stone?” Katie asked.

  “Meditation.” When she looked blank I said, “I use stone for meditation. It helps prepare me for a hunt.” I knew she had no idea what I was talking about. It sounded pretty lame even to me, and I had made up the lie. I’d have to work on that one.

  Katie stood and so did I, setting aside my Coke. Katie had drained her foul-smelling libation. On her breath it smelled vaguely like licorice. “Tom will give you the contract and a packet of information, the compiled evidence gathered about the rogue by the police and our own investigators. Tonight you may rest or indulge in whatever pursuits appeal to you.

  “Tomorrow, once you deliver the signed contract, you are invited to join my girls for dinner before business commences. They will be attending a private party, and dinner will be served at seven of the evening. I will not be present, that they may speak freely. Through them you may learn something of import.” It was a strange way to say seven p.m., and an even stranger request for me to interrogate her employees right off the bat, but I didn’t react. Maybe one of them knew something about the rogue. And maybe Katie knew it. “After dinner, you may initiate your inquiries.

  “The council’s offer of a bonus stands. An extra twenty percent if you dispatch the rogue inside of ten days, without the media taking a stronger note of us.” The last word had an inflection that let me know the “us” wasn’t Katie and me. She meant the vamps. “Human media attention has been . . . difficult. And the rogue’s feeding has strained relations in the vampiric council. It is important,” she said.

  I nodded. Sure. Whatever. I want to get paid, so I aim to please. But I didn’t say it.

  Katie extended a folder to me and I tucked it under my arm. “The police photos of the crime scenes you requested. Three samples of bloodied cloth from the necks of the most recent victims, carefully wiped to gather saliva,” she said.

  Vamp saliva, I thought. Full of vamp scent. Good for tracking.

  “On a card is my contact at the NOPD. She is expecting a call from you. Let Tom know if you need anything else.” Katie settled cold eyes on me in obvious dismissal. She had already turned her mind to other things. Like dinner? Yep. Her cheeks had paled again and she suddenly looked drawn with hunger. Her eyes slipped to my neck. Time to leave.

  CHAPTER 2

  Okay, I was paranoid

  “Where’dju hide the weapons?” Troll asked, his voice conversational.

  I smiled as I slid into my jacket, not ignoring the barrel of the .45 pressed into my neck, but not reacting to it either. “You’re human. Sure you want to risk standing so close to me?”

  I felt him hesitate and whirled. Set my head to the side of the gun. Knocked his right arm across his body with my raised right fist. Twisting my hand, I took his wrist and lifted. And slammed against his left shoulder w
ith my left hand, forcing him to the floor. It took maybe a half second. Deep in my bones, I felt my Beast spit. This was fun.

  “Not bad,” he said, his inflection still composed. I knew I’d been baited. Had known he would want to know if he could have taken me. “What discipline?”

  He was asking what form of martial arts I studied. I thought a minute. “Dirty,” I said. He chuckled. I pressed down just a bit on his shoulder joint. “Put the weapon down.”

  He placed the .45, a well-kept Smith & Wesson, on the floor and pushed it away. He could still get to it, but not before I hurt him bad. I took my weight off his shoulder and released his wrist, stepping back and setting my feet, balanced for his next move. But he didn’t make one. He stood and tucked his thumbs into his waistband, a surer sign of peace than palms out. Thumbs in meant he couldn’t strike out fast, while the universal gesture of peace was an easy way to mentally disarm an opponent and then kill him when he let down his guard.

  “There’s a hapkido black belt, second dan, practices after hours in the back of a jewelry store on St. Louis. I’ll call in an intro if you want.”

  “That’d be nice.” I waited, easing down a smidgen. Just enough for him to see it, but not enough to get sucker punched.

  “Anything else I can do you for?” he asked companion-ably.

  “Sure. Where can a girl buy a good steak for grilling?” Meaning where can I get good raw meat, but phrased in a socially acceptable way.

  “Place I stocked your fridge from is the best. Thirty pounds of sirloin.”

  This time I controlled my reaction. My love of animal protein wasn’t on my Web site. Not anywhere.

  “I left directions to the butcher and a fresh market on your kitchen counter. Butcher delivers,” he said, “seafood, beef, any kinda bird, alligator”—my Beast perked up at that—“mudbug, veggies, you name it.”

  “Mudbug?” I let a small smile cross my face, sure I was being baited again.

  “Crawfish. Best steamed in beer, in my opinion. I left directions to eateries, too.”

  “Much appreciated.”

  He sighed and dropped his weight to one hip. I smothered my grin. “You’re not going to tell me where you hid the weapons, are you?” he asked.

  “Nope. But I promise not to break your knee if you’ll reposition your weight back on both feet.”

  He laughed, the happy laugh of a contented man, and adjusted his weight back evenly. Still dangerous, but not sneaky dangerous. “Not bad, Jane Yellowrock.”

  “Right back at you, Tom.”

  “You can call me Troll. I kinda like it.”

  I nodded. “Sounds dangerous. Mean.”

  “Not me. I’m a pussycat.”

  I glanced at the armoire and back at him with a question in my eyes.

  “Sorry,” he said and took three steps back.

  Without taking my eyes off him, I reached into the armoire and gathered my weapons in small batches, inserting them into the proper straps and sheaths, all but one stake, which I leaned into the darkest corner. I carried the shotgun. I had to work to get its harness strapped on and I wasn’t taking chances with Tommy Troll. I grinned at the thought and he thought the smile was for him. Which it was, sorta. “Thanks for an interesting evening,” I said.

  “Welcome to New Orleans. See you tomorrow night.” He lifted a large mailing envelope off a table at his side and handed it to me. I felt several things inside: what I took to be a stack of cash, trifolded papers (most likely the contract), flat pages, and a couple of keys. “Thanks,” I said. I nodded and opened the narrow door, stepping into the night.

  I stood with my back to Katie’s, remembering to breathe, forcing down the fear I had controlled, subjugated, strangled till now. I grinned. I’d done it. I had faced down a civilized vamp, had lived to tell the tale, and had successfully taken away both cash and a job. Beast found my relief amusing. When I could walk without my knees shaking, I stuffed Katie’s folder into the envelope and went to my bike.

  The night wasn’t dark, not in Jazz City. The glare of streetlights and neon beer signs fell in odd patterns and cast warped shadows across the cityscape, the effect of moisture in the air from the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchar train. The bodies of water bracketed New Orleans, giving the city its famous stink and air so wet that rain sometimes fell from a blue sky. So I smelled the Joe before I saw him. But I knew where he was. Upwind, relaxed. The smell of gun oil and ammo no stronger than before.

  He was sitting on a low brick wall one storefront over, a balcony above him, the old building at his back. He had one leg up, the other dangling, and the shadows hid the left side of his body. He could have a weapon hidden there. Okay, I was paranoid. But I had just bested a vamp on her home territory and then made nice-nice with her bodyguard. My glands still pumped adrenaline and my heart was suddenly pounding.

  Keeping him to my side, I went around my bike and strapped the shotgun harness on top of my jacket, sliding the weapon into the special sheath made by a leathersmith in the mountains near Asheville. I checked the saddlebags and saw the finger smudges on the polished chrome. Gloved. No prints. But I bet touching my locks had hurt like a son of a gun. Making it look like I was getting a closer look, I bent and sniffed. The Joe’s cigar scent was faint, but present. I raised my head and grinned at him. He touched the brim of an imaginary cowboy hat, a faint smile on his face.

  I straddled the hog and sat. He slid off his glasses, and his eyes were dark, nearly black, a sign of mixed European and American Indian lineage. “Still hurting?” I asked, letting my voice carry on the damp air.

  “A little tingly,” he admitted easily. After all, if he had intended me not to guess it was him, he wouldn’t have stayed around. “Witchy-lock?”

  I nodded.

  “Expensive. You get the job?” When I raised my brows politely he said, “With Katie. Word on the streets is the council brought in out-of-town talent to take down the rogue.”

  “I got the job.” But I didn’t like the fact that everyone in town knew why I was here. Rogue vamps were good hunters. The best. Beast snarled in disagreement but I ignored her.

  He nodded and sighed. “I was hoping she’d can you. I wanted the contract.”

  I shrugged. What could I say? I kick-started the bike. Fumes and the roar drove Beast back down. She didn’t like the smell, though she did approve of my method of travel. To her, hogs were totally cool. I wheeled and tooled away, keeping an eye on the Joe in the rearview. He never moved.

  Moments later I switched off the Harley, sitting astride the too-warm leather seat as I looked over the narrow, two-story, old-brick French house. It was around the block and backed up to Katie’s Ladies. The front door had a stained-glass oval window in the center and was protected from the elements by a three-foot-wide second-story veranda with a freshly painted black wrought-iron railing. A similar door opened on the upper porch, and neither looked particularly secure. There was a narrow lane down the right side, locked behind an ornate seven-foot-tall wrought-iron gate. Lots of wrought iron, half the spikes topped with fleur-de-lis, the rest with what could have been stakes. Tongue-in-cheek vamp humor. Before coming here, during the preliminary research phase of this job, I had learned that the fleur-de-lis was New Orleans’ official city symbol and had been popular for ages in France, from whence many of the vamps had emigrated during the pre-Napoleonic purges of the French Revolution. Seemingly useless bits of knowledge often were the difference between success and failure.

  House and gate had to be two, three hundred years old. I tried the larger, older of two keys, four inches in length, a heart shape on one end. The lock clicked and I squeezed the latch, two bars that compressed to unfasten the gate. It opened without a squeak. Boots on cobblestones, I walked my Harley inside and pulled the gate closed behind me. The latch clicked and I relocked it before walking the bike down the two-rut garden lane beside the house. Or storefront, or boardinghouse. From the smells, it had been lots of things at one time or another.
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  A careful driver could have gotten a car back here. A small car. But the lane was clearly intended for walkers, or maybe horseback riders. There were all kinds of plants, some with long stems and elephant ear-sized leaves of various color combinations. There were climbing roses and jasmine and a few other things I recognized, but my knowledge of botany was limited. Several plants were flowering and smelled heavenly. I caught a hint of catnip. Beast made a hacking sound deep inside. I wasn’t always sure what that meant, but it was a reaction of some sort used during both positive and negative discoveries. In this case, maybe it was a sign of recognition.

  The house was narrow on the street side, but long, with a deep second-story wooden balcony covering a ground-floor porch that overlooked the tiny side lane and back garden. I could see chairs on the porch, a few tables. More wrought-iron trellises and rails served to keep people from falling off. The porch on the lower level was slate floored, with more iron. The house had tall windows closed with French shutters, five windows on each story, and there was one door on each floor with stairs near the back leading between. Four doors total, all flimsy. Not much security.

  I could check out the interior of the house later. The back garden first. I pushed the Harley on around. The garden widened into a thirty-by-forty-foot rectangular space at the bottom of the lane, and was exquisite. It was surrounded by ornamental yet entirely functional brick walls fifteen feet high, and was lined with plants of all varieties. A big fountain splashed in a corner, water pouring from a huge marble tulip with a miniature naked woman sitting atop. The sculpture was finely detailed, a masterwork, and I noted the statue’s resemblance to Katie. Tiny fangs were a dead giveaway. I wondered how many houses she owned on this block. Maybe all of them. You could do some powerful estate planning when you had lived over two hundred years. Maybe three hundred. Maybe more.

  Over the city sounds and even with the roar of the Harley still affecting my ears, I could hear the tiny motor powering the pump. Other than that, and the sound of an unfamiliar night bird, the garden was silent.