by Faith Hunter
He gathered Katie in his arms, cradling her, pressing a hand over the gruesome hole in her stomach. Her blood covered him to the wrist. I handed him a pillow to press over her instead. He looked up from her, tears drying on his face. Visibly, he pulled himself together, the poise and self-control of an old soldier. “He busted all the phones. Disabled the security system. Get Leo.” Then he looked at me. “You’re naked.”
“I noticed. Did you see him? Did you get a look at his face?”
“No. All I could see was a blur. Vamp mind games.”
Get Leo, he had said. Not yet. I ran from the room, chasing the evolving scents of the rogue. Trying to understand. I had assumed the rogue’s compound scent was like a human’s, changing due to emotional stress, exercise, spices—or in this case, blood—eaten. But this was different. Its scent signature was actually changing, new scents evolving, wiping out others.
Nothing can change its basic, individual, singular, one-in-six-billion scent. We can wash until it’s faint, cover it with chemicals so it’s hard to distinguish, alter it with fear, illness, or age. But the basic, underlying scent, in its most elemental state, is unique, the distinct chemical reactions in the cells of one person, no matter how layered, masked, or compounded. But this guy’s scent wasn’t just compounding. It was altering. I followed it down the hall.
The crying, gurgling, and odor of fresh blood I had noted when I entered the house came strongly from the dining room. I put my back against the hall wall and checked behind me, swinging the weapon back and forth, up the hall and down. A sconce was broken. I stepped over shattered glass. My heart had stabilized with activity into a fast, hard rate, my breath deep and steady. The smell of my sweat was free from fear, marked by concentration and adrenaline.
The dining room was a shambles. The huge carved table was overturned, chairs tossed and broken. Blood was splattered across Katie’s paintings. But the rogue had come and gone. I said softly, “Who’s here? It’s Jane Yellowrock.”
A blond head came out from behind the table, hair streaked with gore. It was Indigo, blue eyes so wide that white showed all around. When she saw me, she scrambled to her feet, around the table, and into my side, bumping me hard. Trembling so forcefully even her skin quaked. She stank of fear.
“Help Miz A,” she whispered, pointing. “She’s bleeding bad.” A stocking-clad foot stuck out from the overturned table, a house shoe hanging from gnarled toes.
“Is your room upstairs?” I asked, my voice dropping low. She nodded yes, her teeth chattering with reaction. “Go up. Lock yourself in.” I pushed her gently toward the hallway. “Find a phone. Call Leo and tell him to get his ass over here. Then call 911. We need cops and ambulances.” Maybe a SWAT team. Or the military.
Indigo looked from me to the hallway. Her breath stopped.
“If he’s still here, he’s downstairs,” I said, barely controlling a frustrated growl. And I knew it was true. His scent on the air currents veered away from the stairs that led to the girls’ quarters. My lips peeled back. “Go!”
I shoved her and jumped over the table, landing beside a skirt-and-apron-covered leg that was attached to the stock inged foot. Miz A was wedged between the table and the wall, her face purpled with bruises and so pale she looked drained. Blood pumped from her upper arm.
I lifted a linen napkin from the floor and tied a tourniquet above the wound, around her arm. I used a long splinter of broken chair to twist it tight, and saw with satisfaction that the blood stopped pumping. Another body was half beneath her in a tangle of chains and blood. Christie. And she wasn’t breathing. I remembered the sound of gurgling.
I had no choice. I released the tourniquet. Blood flowed again, but more weakly this time. I stepped forward, my hip brushing the drapes away to reveal a slice of window and pale gray light. It was near dawn. Finally. Gently, in case she had suffered cervical spinal damage, I straightened Christie’s head, opening her airway. The instant intake of air was reassuring, but if I let go of her head, it was going to flop back again, closing her airway. And Miz A’s tourniquet wasn’t going to tighten all by itself.
“I can do it.”
I whipped the shotgun one-handed, animal fast, my finger on the trigger. It centered on Indigo’s white face as she danced back, both hands in the air, surrendering. “It’s just me!”
“I told you—”
“I have my cell.” She held out a bright pink, multikeyed phone, and slid around the table and under my arm, slapping the cell into my hand as she took Christie’s head, maintaining the airway. “It’s Leo.”
“You know how to keep a tourniquet tight?” I asked, pointing with the wireless.
I was gratified to see her handle the airway with a knee and the tourniquet with her hands. “Red Cross first aid course,” she said. She was still pale and wide-eyed, but seemed calmer. Sometimes it helped with panic to have a job to do.
“Fine.” I lifted a long splinter from the floor and set it beside her. “I reckon you know how to use a stake too.” She wet her lips and nodded. Not that the rogue would let her. I remembered the cloying tug of his mind. Stopping me. But it might help her to feel a little safer.
I put the phone to my ear as I moved back toward the hallway. “Hang on,” I said, then set the cell on an overturned chair. Once I was satisfied that the hallway was secure, I slung the weapon across my back and retook the phone.
“Okay. I know you can’t do the bat thing, but if you want Katie to live to sunset, you better get here before she goes to sleep.” Lore said that vamps who suffer total blood loss and can’t feed before they sleep either wake up rogue or don’t wake at all. I didn’t think Katie could feed. She was too far gone for that. But maybe Leo could help her.
He hesitated an instant, as if checking the time. “I am close. Open the front door.”
Weapon to my shoulder again, I sped to the front. Opened the door. Dull light splashed across the floor, filtering into the room. The security system was not in its console; it was splinters, the shattered security screens in the corner. A single red light flashed on and off.
From outside, I smelled the changing patterns of the rogue’s scent. He was gone. I slung the shotgun on its strap to rest behind my back and pushed the crosses back as well. Better not threaten the vamp I had just called for help, no matter how innocent the mistake. I could use some clothes, however. I looked at the drapery over two narrow windows and considered pulling a Scarlett O’Hara, but before I could act, I felt a cold wind. It whirled past my body, carrying with it Leo Pellissier’s scent.
“Shut the door,” he said from the hallway. Breathing hard. The list of reasons why vamps breathe is short; I could now add “doing the hundred-yard dash” to it. Leo’s usual papyrus scent was overlaid with a faint, scorched aroma, like browned steak with the juices trapped inside. I pushed the front door and it closed with a heavy thud, shutting out dawn light. I heard Leo move into Katie’s office. Heard him curse. And the office door shut.
Sirens sounded in the distance. I ran to the dining room. “Indigo?” The girl looked up, her face tight with concentration. “Cops and paramedics are here. Leo is with Katie in her office. Anyone who goes in there is likely become supper. Understand?” Vamps are unpredictable at night. I had no idea how bad that might get in daylight, one injured, and the other away from his coffin. Or wherever the old ones slept.
Indigo nodded, biting her cheek as if to keep from saying anything. Or maybe to keep from screaming.
“I’m going to dress and go after the rogue. As far as the cops are concerned, I was never here. Okay?” When she looked uncertain, I said, “If I’m in a holding cell for questioning, I can’t be chasing the rogue. I want to find his lair and stake his ass.”
Her face cleared. “I never saw you.” She looked at the wall and yelled to it, “Tia, it’s safe. You can come out now!” A small, hidden door opened in the wall, about four feet off the floor. Tia’s delicate face ducked down and out. “Get the door and bring the ambulanc
e drivers in here,” Indigo said. “Don’t let them into Katie’s office. Not for anything. And Jane is going after that thing. So we’re not going to mention her. Okay?” Tia nodded with childlike certainty. Indigo was clearly at the top of the pecking order. “Go get the other girls out of hiding. Then open the front door, but only to the cops,” Indigo added. She looked at me. And unexpectedly grinned. “You’d better get dressed or some cop is going to think you’re one of us.”
I looked down, nodded, and lifted the stake in my hand as good-bye. I skirted out of the house, avoiding the broken glass, blood and gore. As dawn traced pink and purple and golden streaks across the sky, I jumped the wall and headed home.
I showered off fast to get rid of the scent of Katie’s blood and dressed for vamp hunting in jeans, leather, boots, silvered vamp-killers, crosses, a vial of holy water. Studded gloves and a collar made of sterling silver jump rings overlapping like chain mail, extra ammo, my Bible, and extra stakes went into the bike’s saddlebags. Within ten minutes after I entered the house, I was helmeted, the Benelli strapped to my back. I kick-started the bike and whipped around the block, past Katie’s front door, past the rolling, siren-screaming emergency vehicles. I picked up the rogue’s changing scent, the face shield of the helmet shoved up, out of the way, sunglasses protecting my eyes.
How did he change his scent? If he changed it so easily, and I lost it on the wind, I might not find him again. For that matter, if he could change it totally, maybe I had been near him and not noticed. I wondered why it changed as well as how. Like, maybe it wasn’t something he could consciously control. Like maybe Beast wasn’t totally wrong about the liver-eater stuff. Maybe he wasn’t just a rogue. Maybe he was something more.
Not only humans were being targeted by the rogue, and every rogue vamp in every case I knew of drank exclusively from humans; but here, at least one vamp had gone missing, the woman vamp whose disappearance had made Katie weep with grief. Ming. Then he went after Katie. Maybe there had been others. Or . . . maybe the rogue wasn’t just crazy nuts; maybe he ate livers for a medical reason. Maybe his diet lacked something that human blood wasn’t providing. Maybe he needed blood-rich vital organs like livers to stabilize him. And maybe vamp organs were better than human organs for that. Did that make him a liver-eater from legend? Crap, no. Part of his compound scent smelled like vamp. Ergo, he was a vamp.
The vision of the rogue flashed into my mind. Eating Katie. Like a wild animal tearing at prey, ripping into the organs. Upper and lower fangs. Beast was silent though I knew she was awake. And I knew she agreed. Beast ate that way, liver, heart, kidneys, lungs first. The most protein-, fat-, and mineral-rich parts first. So, he wasn’t a vamp?
I finally had to admit it; I had no idea what I was hunting. I filled my nostrils with scents as the city came to life, stirring for morning business, school, jobs. I tracked the rogue as he all but flew through the streets, the sun chasing him. If I didn’t lose his scent, I’d find where he slept today, maybe his main lair. And kill the bloody bastard. Collect my bonus. And get gone.
CHAPTER 16
Are crosses weapons?
The rogue’s scent continued to change, growing hotter. I remembered the way Leo smelled when he flew through with the sun touching him—scorched meat tainting his usual peppery-almond-papyrus smell. In one way, the heating scent made the rogue easier to follow; in another it was harder. Breakfast smells of bacon and sausage sizzling were hitting the air too, obscuring the warm meat stink of the rogue. I wasn’t as good at parsing smells with my human nose, but I breathed through my mouth gently as I rode, and found the vamp’s scent evolving, like licorice, but more delicate. Maybe hazelnut.
And a hint of sweetgrass. At the thought, I slowed, breathing through my open mouth and nose, straining to find and separate it from the mix of city and river stink. Sweetgrass. One of the ceremonial herbs most loved by The People. I remembered the glimpse I had of his blood-covered face, eagle-sharp chin and nose. Yeah. Tsalagiyi: The thought burbled up from the dark of my mind. He could be a Cherokee turned by a vamp. I could be chasing someone like me.
I pulled onto the shoulder, stopped the bike, and put my boots to the pavement for balance. Closed my eyes. Smelled with everything I had in me, Beast alert and tense, her claws pricking my mind. Sweetgrass . . .
I pulled down the face shield of the helmet. Gunned the bike. Following.
The scent blasted at me under the edge of the shield, intensified, concentrated by speed as I wove through the streets, heading to the river, the same pathway taken when Beast tracked the rogue from the kill zone where he took down the prostitute. The exact same route. Prey, Beast whispered, picturing an animal track through the brush, low down, well worn. The liver-eater was using the same trail home.
Beast rose into my mind as we roared over the river, part of the I-90 snarl, taking the Greater New Orleans Bridge. The Mississippi was a huge sleeping snake, muddy brown and somnolent. And then, in the middle of the bridge, the rogue’s scent disappeared. Just . . . totally disappeared. Traffic was growing heavier. The breeze across the river was strengthening. I didn’t have much time to find it again.
Had I been in a car I would have been in trouble. Much more maneuverable, I wove from lane to lane, breaking traffic laws all over, to the far shore, still unable to pick up the scent. It took a while to get turned around as the road became the Westbank Expressway, snarled with traffic. In Beast form it hadn’t been rush hour, and I had been riding on top of a truck.
I took the bridge back twice, searching up and down the road, scenting the few off-ramps and smaller turnoffs for any hint of the thing I chased. He could have dropped off the expressway onto the ground below at any point. Or, for that matter, off the bridge into the river. Beast sent me a mental picture of a mountain lion with her face to the ground.
“Air scenting is a waste of time,” I agreed. I pulled the bike to the shoulder, stopped, put my boots down, and shoved back the face shield again. Yanked off my sunglasses. Disgusted.
Beast sent me another image, of a pile of poop. Then a third, of bark torn from a tree as if by claws or deer horns. And yet a fourth, of a big cat, hindquarters bent, forelegs stiff, depositing scent from anal scent glands onto a pile of leaves and sticks.
“Territory. You think I can find him by hunting his territory. Places he’s marked as his. But people don’t mark territory, and from what I’ve seen, neither do vamps.”
And Beast sent me an image of Katie’s Ladies. No sign in the window, no neon, but a street number in brass on the door. I hadn’t paid much attention to it. But I got the idea. Track the rogue vamp by things he does, has, and is, things that he doesn’t even realize are markers. Gotcha. And I could start at Aggie One Feather’s and the sweathouse out back. I strapped on my link-mail collar and my other protective equipment. Now I was loaded for vamp.
Aggie had to have heard the bike puttering down the road. It wasn’t like I could hide the sound of the motor. I half expected her to be waiting at the door, but she wasn’t. The house was silent when I rang the bell, except for the electronic hum of appliances and air conditioner, and the smell of cooked bacon. Twined with it all was the rotten stink of the rogue. Beast came alert, her mouth open in my mind, showing fangs. The rogue had come past the house, his skin probably smoking if the scorched smell was any indication, beating sunrise by seconds. The scorched stink made him a vamp. He was leaving mixed evidence everywhere, confusing.
He was fast, faster than anything I ever hunted. I wanted to ignore the protocol of asking permission and just race around back, following the scent. Eagerness gathered inside me, my heart beating hard. The rogue was close. The woods behind Aggie’s house were not just hunting grounds. He did have a lair near here.
I heard footsteps inside. Aggie stepped back in shock when she opened the door, one hand out as if to ward off a blow. Maybe it was the Benelli slung over my back. Maybe it was my expression. “It’s okay,” I said.
She halted backpeda
ling and swallowed, one fist over her heart, recovering her poise. “What do you want?” she asked, her voice not quite steady. What do you want? Not Come in. She held the door with one hand, barring my way.
I shook my head. There was no time for the polite necessities of dealing with an elder. “The rogue vamp came through your yard. I need to—” I stopped myself, knowing I was botching this, and said instead, “May I hunt in the property behind your house?”
She looked me over and settled herself as I remembered the elders doing, a relaxing of the facial muscles and shoulders, one hand on the door, still holding me out, the other still curled in a loose fist on her chest, the gesture protective. A memory hovered in the back of my mind, foggy, hazy, an old, old woman making the same motions, the remembrance almost in reach for an instant, before it wisped away like smoke. How long? How long ago was that a reality?
Aggie searched my face, her hand now fluttering down like a bird to a branch. I restrained my impatience, riding it into submission, took a deep breath, and blew it out. I waited as she studied me. It seemed a long time, though it couldn’t have been more than seconds.
At last, satisfied, she said, “Yes. You may hunt. But first, my mother wishes to meet with you.” She pushed the door open and stood aside.
“I don’t have time,” I said, my frustration breaking free. “It came by your house.”
“I know. My mother has had trouble sleeping since you told me about it hunting here. She was awake. Listening. She heard it. Felt its hunger. Its anger. We’ve been expecting you.” She stood aside.
Irritated, but not knowing what else to do, I huffed a sigh and started to walk into her house. Aggie held up a hand, stopping me. “Please. Leave your weapons at the door.”
I closed my eyes so she wouldn’t see the flash of fury. I did not have time for this. Then I remembered. To bring weapons into the house of an elder was to bring insult and violence, no matter if the weapons were intended for someone else. Forcing out the words through my teeth, I said curtly, “Sorry.” And though I was in a hurry, I was sorry. I didn’t intend to insult Aggie One Feather. Egini Agayvlge i. But the rogue was so close. . . .
