by Faith Hunter
Fingers cold, I deleted the text and closed the cell. Set it on the bedside table. I rolled back on the mattress and closed my eyes. Overhead I heard the shower start, Stinky/Kid/Alex taking a shower. He was growing up, and his advice, while unwelcome, was on target.
• • •
Sunset was only two hours away when I woke again. I lay on the bed, looking out through the cracks in the blinds, seeing a tourist couple walk by hand in hand. I got only fractured glimpses, but her head was on his shoulder. Their quiet laughter came through the window. They sounded happy.
A spike of jealousy shafted through me. I wasn’t sure what happy felt like. I knew for sure I had never wandered through a tourist town with my head on a man’s shoulder.
Tourists . . .
Not many tourists rambled this far away from Bourbon Street except during Mardi Gras and New Year’s, when they roamed drunkenly all over the French Quarter. And the Garden District. And most of the rest of New Orleans. They relieved themselves on every street corner and passed out in every alleyway and threw up everywhere. They had sex on street corners and in bars and in bathrooms. Most of the locals made a point to be out of town during the holidays and I had heard it was often dirty and stinky and horrible, but I had never spent the holiday in town, despite some intense dream sequences that suggested otherwise. I had taken a vacation of sorts while Fat Tuesday took place this year; during New Year’s—the next-biggest shindig—I’d been working a case, and through a case of depression. I lived in the party town of the nation and I’d never participated. Go figure.
And now I had Bruiser. And I didn’t know what to do about him.
I rolled over, trapping my hair, again, and checked my cell. I had more text messages, including one from Derek. Electrical system. Scorched places on walls on all accessible lower levels. Opened wall with hammer. Old copper wires shorting out. Have called in electrical service, owned by blood-servant family. Security will stay on them, same method, Otis people.
I texted back a short reply and rolled out of bed—again—feeling stiff and sore, and spent half an hour stretching and pulling at muscles that felt tense and all wrong. Odd, considering that I’d been in my Beast form before dawn and that usually left me feeling smooth and toned and svelte, like a cat. It couldn’t be from keeping vamp hours (up all night and sleeping all day) because that was Beast’s natural state, and I’d lived that way for decades at a time. But it could be because I wasn’t getting enough sleep, period. I wasn’t Superwoman. I checked my sternum, and at least that part of me felt good.
I dressed for HQ, with more insight than I’d used the night before. I wore leggings, a tank over a jog bra, and a hoodie over that.
In the main room, I found the Kid bent over his tablets, hair straggling over his eyes, shoulders hunched, making a point not to look up at me. “Hey, Kid,” I said, trying for offhand and casual. “You smell better. And thanks for the boyfriend pep talk. Skip what I said about no pizza; I’m sending out for Mona’s. You want something?”
Mona Lisa’s on Royal Street was, arguably, the best Italian place in the Quarter. And they delivered. Alex relaxed his shoulders. “Deep-dish meat lover’s?” he asked.
“Sounds good.” I called it in and added the eggplant parmesan for Eli. He was a meat lover, but not one of high-fat, pork-based foods.
When I got off the phone, Alex, said, “Check the door, wouldja? Someone knocked a few minutes ago, but I haven’t had time to see what it was. Delivery of some kind.”
I opened the door to find a box with a USPS mailing label. I bent to pick it up and stopped, my hands just above the cardboard. The scent was wrong. All wrong. Wrong! I stood and backed slowly away, easing the door closed. “Kid, call nine-one-one. Tell them we have a possible bomb on the front porch. And get your brother here. Now!”
• • •
The NOPD Bomb Squad, the FBI, the ATF, and a few other initial-agencies took over my house, my yard, and my life. They had insisted the entire street evacuate, but I had refused to go. No way was I going to leave my home with a bunch of cops in it. Not with all the toys in the hidden room. I hadn’t checked it lately, but I had a feeling that Eli had begun keeping bigger and better weapons in there, weapons that the ATF might have been unhappy for us civilians to have. Somebody had to guard the place. The Younger brothers were human and a bomb would kill them, so they had to go; I wasn’t and didn’t, not that the cops knew that. The token firefighter in boots and heavy gear looked over at me, measuring the level of what he thought was my stupidity. Okay. Maybe I couldn’t survive a bomb blast. I wasn’t leaving until I had to.
I sat, alone, at the back of the living room, Bruiser’s huge bouquet in my line of sight, watching the activity in the front part of the house, eating a stick of Eli’s beef jerky, which reeked of spices I usually didn’t ingest, and drinking iced tea. Fingering the business card given to me by the officer in charge. Wanting to rip it into small pieces, except I might need the contact info later on. I was mad, and, well, mad.
The firefighter glanced at me again, and I saluted him with the stick of jerky, ripped off another bite, smiling, or maybe snarling, from the way he reacted. I chewed and swallowed and ate another chomp.
The Kid had called me several times, explaining that the pizza delivery had been rerouted and was delicious, and updating me on law enforcement’s progress. Not that he was supposed to know. He had hacked their communication systems, which (according to him) had only basic, elementary firewalls and protection. He was in heaven; his brother was torn between the need for intel and the need to keep Alex out of jail; I was ticked off that someone had sent me a bomb. A bomb. Really? Couldn’t they do something inventive? Something creative? Like an attack by mutant blood-sucking mosquitoes, a rogue-vamp attack, or even a drone attack? One with a bomb in its fuselage. No. They had to send me a letter bomb. A package bomb. I was too busy for this crap.
My cell rang again. “Yeah?”
“A robotic bomb detection and defusing device is rolling down your street,” Alex said, his inner geek turned up to max. “Can you see it?”
“Not from here. They won’t let me near the front of my house.” But the padded fireman was nowhere in sight at the moment. “Hold on,” I whispered into the cell. I raced to the kitchen window and looked out. Streetlights meant I could see about fifty feet to either side in both directions. The street was lined with marked and unmarked cop vans, cop cars, fire trucks, and sundry emergency vehicles with flashing lights. There wasn’t a single POV—personally owned vehicle—anywhere. Placing my face to the window glass, I could see farther down the block where news vans were blocking the street both ways, and overhead I could hear the steady thump-thump-thump of a helicopter. From the far left, in the middle of the street, something moved.
The robot could have been designed by Caterpillar Inc. in miniature, a long, lean, low, bright orange body with tanklike track wheels. It had a single long arm mounted on the deck, with four tweezer-type fingers on the end, and a tall, slender black box mounted higher, housing a camera and the remote controls and a mini flashlight. The robot was maybe three feet long and a little more than a foot wide, and looked like something a kid would love to get for Christmas. “Cooool,” I whispered, drawing out the word.
“Ma’am. You said you’d stay—” I jolted, guilty, and whirled on the firefighter who had managed to get back in the living room without me seeing him, smelling him, or hearing him. He heaved a disgusted breath. “Never mind. You have to leave now.”
I said, “Are you leaving?”
He made this gesture that probably involved his whole body under the firefighting gear, and though I saw only his hands and shoulders, I could tell he was annoyed. “Yes, ma’am. I’m heading out that side door”—he pointed to my kitchen door—“with you, walking on your own feet, or tossed over my shoulder, however you want it.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, daring him to try, and then heard Eli over the cell. “Jane, you’re acting like a civili
an. Get out and let them do their job.” Civilian was an insult from Eli. I frowned, closed the cell, and walked to the side door and out into the backyard. The padded firefighter followed, leaving the door open behind us as he went out the narrow side drive to the street. Open door . . . to help equalize the pressure should the bomb blow? I took a last look at my house. Replacing windows was getting expensive. I hoped that was all I would need to do before the night was over.
CHAPTER 10
HOT Spelled Out Across His Rump
No one was looking at the back of the house, so I half climbed, half jumped the brick fence to Katie’s. I could hear the sounds of hammers, electric skill saws, and other noisy equipment from nearby, and tracked the sounds to the house near Katie’s. Renovation had started in the old building, and the back attic window was cracked open. The smell of sawdust and old plaster filtered out into the night. Hoping that the new owners knew about Katie and wouldn’t later cry foul about living or having a business next to hers, I went on to the back door and waved at the security camera.
Katie’s Ladies was the oldest continuously operating whorehouse in New Orleans, catering to both humans and vamps. The owner was Leo’s heir, was scary powerful, and wasn’t totally sane—even as far as sane vampires went. Katie was also my former landlady, before I was given the deed to the house. And if I was honest, Katie didn’t like me much.
When Troll let me in, I joined the Youngers. The guys were at the big bar in the huge kitchen, watching raw footage from different vantage points, on several screens, as the robot approached the box on my front porch. I smelled food and tea and coffee and liquor and perfume. Way too much perfume.
“Civilian?” I demanded, as I took one of the tall stools and stuffed a nigiri sushi into my mouth.
Eli gave a one-tenths smile, more a twitch than an indication of amusement as Deon, Katie’s chef, placed a Coke in my hand. “Eat. You bein’ starved, Tartlet, in that house with all that military eatin’,” he said, in his lovely island accent. Eli’s smile widened at the nickname. I pretended to not see it and ate another sushi piece, a ball of rice with a strip of raw salmon on top. Deep inside, Beast chuffed happily at the raw meat. It wasn’t Mona Lisa’s pizza—the box was, not surprisingly, empty—but it was totally delicious in its own raw-meat way.
The slight, dark-skinned chef shoved a full plate at me and batted his eyes. Deon was wearing mascara and some kind of glitter eyeliner. His hair was swept back and around in an Elvis Presley swirl, with little pink bows at the sides that matched his skintight pink tee. “What are you all gussied up for, Deon?” I asked. “You been taking lessons from HBO reruns of True Blood?”
“Lafayette Reynolds is my idol, Tartlet. He be frisky and outrageous. Like me.”
I shook my head and ate another sushi piece as he answered my original question. “These lovely tasteful pants is in case some reporter-man want a ‘hot man on the street’ interview after your house blow up.” He pranced away, showing off his glitter shorts with the word HOT spelled out across his rump. Matching pink sneakers did a dance move, accompanied by a come-hither gesture directed at Eli.
The former Ranger backed almost into the next room. Fast.
I burst out laughing. Deon was more flamboyant than a Bourbon Street cross-dressing stripper, and no way was the local news going to interview him for their Bible Belt viewers. Most of the citizens liked to pretend that the steamy side of the city, with its strip clubs, nudie bars, and cross-dressing musical revues, didn’t exist. As Deon would say, Au contraire, sweetie. Deon’s outrageous antics and excellent hors d’oeuvres were perfect for Katie’s Ladies. Some of the city’s most upright, Bible-thumping leaders and media moguls were regular customers here, and, in private, many of them thought the three-star chef and, um, entertainer, was delightful.
Eli, not so much. I wasn’t sure whether Deon really had the hots for my partner, or just liked yanking his chain. Maybe both. Eli wasn’t generally homophobic, but the recent zealous attention had made him a little gun-shy.
“Civilian,” I muttered the insult to Eli. “Big man can’t take a little honest adoration?”
Eli shook it off and retook his stool, to focus on the screens. Deon turned his attention to making more sushi as some of the girls came down from their rooms upstairs to see what was going on. The set of Eli’s shoulders relaxed as scantily clad females joined the mix, and the scents of lotions, perfumes, hair products, and sex pheromones filled the room. By their scents, I recognized Christie, Ipsita, and Tia, who started to drape herself all over Alex until I cleared my throat. She halted mid-drape and sat instead on a stool, arranging her body over the bar in a languid pose. Alex gave me a nasty glare, which I also pretended not to see.
We had some rules in our little family group. One was no cussing. The other was no hookers, no matter how refined and smart and expensive, until Alex was of legal age, cleared of his legal troubles, and could afford their rates. At that point, any ensuing diseases and emotional and legal fallout were the responsibility of the Kid. Until then, the girls were off-limits.
On the central screen, the robot was nearly at the porch, casting long and tangled shadows from the lighting set up by the emergency workers. Some helpful bomb squad member had placed a six-foot-long ramp from the street to the porch, and the robot made a ninety-degree turn, rolling up to the bomb box. I shifted my attention to the screen whose footage originated from on top of the robot. The black-and-white picture showed the box clearly, an ordinary cardboard box, totally taped up. Innocuous looking to the eye. I’d have picked it up and carried it inside except for the smell of things that shouldn’t have been there. Though ordinary humans wouldn’t have detected it, C4 plastic explosives had a faint but peculiar scent, one that stayed in Beast’s memory.
On one side of his body, the robot carried a miniature X-ray camera and the footage went all shaky as the handler turned the robot, vibrating the top-mounted camera. Moments later digital images appeared on a different screen. Eli sighed, a faint breath of sound, but even without it, I knew it was bad. Eli launched into instructor mode. “C4 is composed of explosives, chemicals used as a plastic binder, a plasticizer, and usually an odorizing taggant to help detect the explosive and identify its source, chemicals such as DMDNB.” I didn’t ask what that was and fortunately Eli saw no reason to educate us. “The explosive in C4 is RDX, also known by the boom jockeys as cyclonite or cyclotrimethylene trinitramine.”
I thought a moment and then let my mouth relax into a smile. Boom jockeys. People who rode the boom of an explosion. “Funny, funny man,” I muttered.
“It looks like you might have four ounces in there, which is enough to do a lot of damage to your house all by itself if you’d brought it inside before it detonated, but the big package of nails inside is the real bad news.”
I felt cold all over. If the bomb had gone off inside, everyone within projectile range would have been injured. Maimed, scarred, possibly dead.
Eli leaned forward, pointed at a shadow on the screen, and added, “That might be a cell phone. If so, then a cell call to the device would be the trigger mechanism.” He pointed to another shadow. “However, this might be tied to a detonator . . . here”—he moved his finger higher—“to go off if you ripped the tape and opened it.”
“Wait a minute. Someone sent a bomb to Jane?” Christie asked, finally waking up enough to understand what was going on. There was near reverence in her voice, as if getting a bomb delivered was cool or something. In her world, maybe it was.
Today, Christie was decked out in yoga pants and a near-transparent tank top. No bra, but spiked matching nipple rings that looked downright painful. She wore her usual metal-studded dog collar, one only a vampire dominatrix would have worn. In the human BDSM community, a dog collar was usually worn by submissives, but in the vamp BDSM community, the dominatrix wore one. Because when a vamp tried to drink her down, it hurt. A lot. Ditto for the nipple rings. There were tiny little barbs on the ends, turned so they woul
dn’t hurt her but would hurt anyone getting too close. Part of me felt, Ewww. A second part of me just thought people were weird. And yet a third part was horrified that I had learned so much about stuff like this—and that it didn’t bother me that I had.
Christie had one foot up tight against her butt on the stool and the other out to her side and up on the bar in what looked like a stretch capable of ripping the average person’s pelvis apart. “A bomb! That is so cool!” she said.
“It’s not something to be proud of,” I said mildly.
“It means that somebody thinks you’re important enough to try to commit a federal crime over,” she said. She had a point. And that should bother me. A lot.
“What’s it doing now?” the Kid asked his brother.
“It’s looking to see if there’s a third trigger beneath the box. So far, so good.”
This looked like a long, drawn-out procedure, so I opened my phone when it buzzed, saw the name, and tapped the Kid’s shoulder. “Trace this.” I showed him the Darth Vader happy face on the screen. It was Reach’s icon, and Reach—the best-known research guy in the paranormal hunting business—had proven to be an inconstant ally, and a sometime enemy.
The Kid nodded, shushed the girl’s conversation, removed one screen from among the pile, and started tracing the call. He nodded for me to go. I hit the call button and said, “Hey, frenemy. You gonna tell me something good today or stab me in the back?”
“Just a word of warning.”
I wasn’t sure the croak was Reach’s voice and trepidation cascaded through me. I put him on speaker and asked, “Reach?”
