by Faith Hunter
“The limbs were disjointed by wrenching, pulling, and biting, the tendons twisted and snapped. The femurs were well gnawed but also cracked open for access to the marrow, indicating that strong bite I mentioned. The pelvic cavity was wrenched apart. I need to see the site to be sure, but I’m inclined to say werewolves, at least three, and one of them a freaking monster.”
Nadine shook her head and rubbed the back of her neck as if to massage away tension. Her skin was tanned, but above her sleeve line her skin was pale olive and very much like Rick’s. She gathered up all the photos and shuffled them into the order she liked and set them in the proper folders. Then she sat in one chair on the supplicant side of her desk and pointed again at the other chair. It put us sitting side by side. She crossed her legs, to reveal a pair of fancy cowboy boots, which I wanted to inspect, but I figured it might be rude for me to grab her foot and haul it up. She tapped the folders on her knee, staring off into the distance.
“Ricky said you have a contract with PSYLed to identify the animals and/or perpetrators and attempt a general location.”
I guessed where this was going. “And kill it or them only if necessity or emergency or exigent situation requires it. At which point I get paid a flat kill fee per head. All liability to be covered by the federal government.”
“How about if I get the governor to one-up that?”
Ah. Negotiation. I was getting good at negotiation. Innocently I asked, “Meaning?”
“What if the state government and the governor agrees to pay for any liability over and above what the feds pay, but you agree to per head cost for kills?” She met my eyes, hers cold and hard and mean. “Those things killed Mason Walker. He was a harmless, homeless war vet with enough medals to decorate a good-sized Christmas tree. He lived under one of the overpasses in town that cross over the canal. There was no reason for him to be down in Chauvin, or none that I could see. He didn’t have transportation, he didn’t have money, he didn’t have anything to offer anyone.”
Except sport, I thought. And didn’t say it aloud because sometimes the truth is unnecessary and cruel. Instead I said, “So someone picked him up. Drove him south. Into the woods or the marsh.”
“And chased him. And killed him. And. Ate. Him.” Her words were harsh, her tone vicious. Okay, so she got the sport part.
“And you liked him,” I said gently.
“He was nice. Would give you shirt off his back. Nice people are few and far between in this world.” She slapped the folders onto her desk with a sound like a gunshot. “I want them dead. Not in a jail where I couldn’t keep them. Not in a court system that would just as likely let them loose because they can’t help it if they are this way. I want them dead.”
“And the way to get the governor to do this?” Because in my experience the governor of a state had a dearth of both money and compassion.
But Nadine smiled, and it would have looked good on an alligator, all teeth and killing intent. “Because I used to be married to him. And because I asked. And because he owes me more than money can ever repay and he knows it.”
Ah. Blackmail of a sorts. Nadine had something on her ex and wasn’t above using it. I gave her a figure and her eyes didn’t bug out, which I thought was a good start. “Per head.” Still unbugged. “Not including all expenses, hotels, ammo, food, lost or damaged weapons to be replaced, all medical costs or burial costs in the event one of my men is injured or dies, all liability costs, and a nice fancy piece of paper that waves any chance of litigation should someone innocent or collateral get injured or killed before, during, or after the takedown. Your ex will be expected to sign a contract and get it witnessed.”
“I’ll call and get the contract faxed.”
“Ricky Bo might get riled at you taking this away from PSYLed.”
Nadine suggested that Rick could do something anatomically impossible with himself. I left the sheriff’s office laughing, with a promise of a call about the governor’s agreement. And the promise of the contracts to be faxed once that agreement was reached. I could probably have gotten the promise of her firstborn if the kid was a big enough of a pain in the butt, but I had the Kid. I didn’t need another. I promised her nothing, except to read any contract the governor marked up and sent back to me. I didn’t expect it to happen, but it would be interesting if it did.
* * *
Twenty miles later I checked the time and the GPS Rick had sent me. The crime scenes and two wolf sightings were south of the small burb of Chauvin. I made the ride through the small town—mostly a fishing and sports enthusiast locale—and continued down Highway 56 another few miles. By then it was getting close to sundown and I had things I needed to do, like check out the hotel that had been donated and see if it was someplace I was willing to stay.
I checked in at the Sandlapper Guesthouse, the mom-and-pop hotel owned by Rick’s family, which usually catered to fisherman—if the fish-cleaning stations and the fenced gear lockers on the grounds were anything to go by. Clara and Harold were nice people and welcomed me like family. I was pretty sure they’d been contacted by Nadine before my arrival, because they didn’t even look surprised when I walked in, though it was off-season and the place was deserted.
The rooms were up on stilts and offered a view of the marsh and open water across the street. It was lot better than a box hotel. It had ambience. And oddly, a small granite boulder near the front steps. It was painted white with the word WELCOME on it in red, but it was granite and it was possible that I might need some mass, if I had to go after a giant werewolf.
I got adjoining rooms, hoping Eli’s eggy gas problem would be over by the time they arrived. I really didn’t want to have to apologize to Clara and Harold for the stench.
After checking e-mail, I took a catnap for half an hour as a stray storm blew through, the rain like a mad drummer at my window. When it passed, there was an odd stillness in the room and outside, as if the world was waiting for something to happen. I shook off the thought and dressed for dinner, which mostly meant a fast shower, rebraiding my hair, and clean undies and T-shirts. I was sliding into my Lucchese boots when I heard the SUV pulling up next to Bitsa. And it was weird how just hearing the engine lightened my heart. I wasn’t sure when the Younger brothers had become family, but it had happened pretty fast. I wasn’t sure how I felt about people having ties on my feelings. It was weird. And maybe kinda scary. The last time that happened was with my best friend, Molly. And she had broken off the friendship. I was hard on relationships and I hated having a broken heart.
I stuck my head out the door and shouted to the Younger boys, “I figure the seafood in this town should be spectacular.” I wasn’t wrong.
* * *
The boys and I still reeked of the wonderful stink of fried fish and shrimp, and fried veggies—onion rings and squash and okra—and hush puppies as we gathered around the small table in their room. The Kid had his tablets set up and my old laptop, and we were studying Google maps and some sat maps from a source known only to the kid. I had a terrible fear they were classified U.S. government maps, but I didn’t ask and neither did his brother. We were viewing from about a thousand feet aboveground, with the crime scenes and wolf sightings tagged in bright red droplets.
“If this was the work of real wolves,” Eli said, “we could trace out a hunting ground from the sites, but since our wolves can drive around . . .” He let the sentence trail off.
“Put dates to all the sites,” I said, “and see if they form a time-stamp pattern.”
They didn’t. The Kid shook his head, his scraggly hair swinging, and mumbled, “We’re missing something. What what what?” He opened the takeout container and nibbled on a cooling hush puppy. “Got it!”
Leaving the maps in place, he opened another program and drew lines from place to place, some curving, some straight. And when I saw what he was doing, I laughed.
Only one thing connected the kill sites, and that was the canals. The werewolves were traveling to p
laces most easily reached by boat and water. Canals were everywhere along the Gulf of Mexico, some long and straight as rulers for miles and miles, some curved in massive semicircles, some with a rare zigzag like something out of a geometry book. “What’s with that?” Eli asked.
“I had always thought slaves built the canals in the Deep South,” I said. “But that looks like something . . . humans couldn’t do.”
The Kid opened another program and traced one canal, a double canal with a raised area between the waterways like the center line on a road. It entered the gulf to reappear, still in a straight line, on an island out in the deep water. “It’s over a hundred miles long,” he said, his voice low as if he were sharing a secret or revealing a sacred mystery. “Holy freaking ancient aliens, Batman.”
“Do a search on ancient canals,” Eli said.
And when the Kid did, dozens of sites popped up, most related to a single site about the canals. He opened six of the sites simultaneously and arranged his tablets so we could see them all at once. There were prehistoric canals all over the world. And the greatest majority of them were right here, in southern Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida. I got the willies just looking at the numbers of canals and their locations.
The Kid read from one site and paraphrased for us. “Some of them are from the early-twentieth-century oil exploration. Probably ones like this and this.” He pointed at some canals that seemed to be of the same width. “But some were there when the Spanish came and they were old even then. Duuude,” he said softly, using the word almost as an expletive. “These other, older canals have been estimated at seven thousand years old, from before the end of the last ice age. The civilization that built them was considered to be a worldwide, water-going civilization, back when the oceans were five to seven feet lower than now.”
My eyes darted from screen to screen, from miles-long canals in straight lines to what looked like building sites in the marsh, as seen from the air, if the canals had been roads. Like water-going neighborhoods. Eli said, “Huh.”
A few screens later the Kid said, “The civilization—assuming it existed—was either destroyed when a massive ice dam in Canada broke and a wall of water twenty feet high flooded the entire U.S., or when the second Storegga”—he stumbled over the word—“methane gas eruption in Denmark and Iceland caused a subsurface landslide six hundred miles long and forty miles wide. That’s been estimated to have created a mega-supertsunami that swept west and buried the entire East Coast of the U.S. under thirty to a hundred feet of water. Like . . . duuude.”
“So basically, archeologists don’t want to consider a geometry-loving, water-going, water-based, monolith-building, higher civilization, prior to the Egyptians, even though there’s evidence all over the world,” Eli said. He snorted softly. “Worse than bureaucrats.” For Eli that was a major insult.
The Kid said, “In their defense, archeologists are academics. They have to publish papers to keep their jobs and funding, and no one is going to reconsider new evidence or old evidence that contradicts what they already put in print and got paid for.”
“Bureaucrats.”
“Scientists with an agenda. And speaking of which, I got accepted into MIT. I’m looking at a new doctorate. I can start when my parole is up.”
The room went deathly silent. No one moved. I forgot to breathe. I had just been thinking about how great it was to have family. Stupid other shoe had just dropped. My eyes went hot and dry. Where was MIT? Up North someplace.
The Kid went on, his voice casual. “I also have an offer from Tulane. They just opened a brand-new computer science doctorate program and they stole three of MIT’s top professors to do it.” I could hear the smile in his voice, when he added, offhand, “I get a free ride at TU. That’s all expenses paid, for you Neanderthals. And I can start at TU this coming fall, even with the parole in place. Just something to think about.”
I remembered to breathe.
Eli said, “You little shit.”
I didn’t comment about language. This time I fully agreed. “What he said.” And I swatted the Kid on the back of the head.
Alex laughed without looking up. “You don’t think I’d leave you two alone, do you? You’d end up dead without me, in like, three days. Two if we had a job going.
“So. Tomorrow,” he went on, “I think we need to take that plane ride Rick told us about and get a feel for logistics. And see about renting a boat. Maybe an airboat, so we can go over marsh.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Eli said.
“Okay,” I said, letting the feeling of relief flutter through me like butterfly wings. “I’m for bed. Let’s start early. Like four a.m.”
The Kid groaned. Eli just thumbed his phone on and threw himself on the queen bed he’d chosen. “Hey, gorgeous. Guess where I am? Nope. Way further south.”
I left for my room, closing the door between the guys and me. Eli was talking to Syl, his girlfriend-of-sorts, and the Kid was uploading a World of WarCraft game up on his tablet. I stripped and fell onto my bed, and was asleep instantly.
* * *
Rick’s family was freaking everywhere this far south. The pilot, Rick’s second cousin on his mother’s side, was a Vietnam vet named Sarge Walker, a grizzled guy about sixty-five years old, who met us at his front door just before dawn, wearing camo pants and a beat-up flight jacket that looked old enough to have been to war with the man, and carrying a satchel that smelled of coffee and snacks. He grunted as we introduced ourselves, and grunted again when he pointed around the house, to the backyard. We turned away and I caught the faint scent of magic, as if someone in the house was a practitioner. I was betting that Sarge’s wife was an earth witch, a conclusion I drew from the look of the lush gardens. Without magic, it was impossible to keep a garden so green, even in south Louisiana. And Sarge didn’t smell of magic. Just coffee.
And then his copilot trotted up.
The two-hundred-pound tan monster was named Pity Party, PP for short. The mastiff-bison mix (had to be, because she was too big to be anything else) had no manners, and sniffed us each in proper doggy-style. No one objected. Though I wanted to swat her nose away, I held very still as the dog took her time with me. I could feel her low-pitched growl at my confusing, mixed, human-predator scent, and waited until she decided I wasn’t going to attack and eat her master. PP was still wary of me, and I made certain to put plenty of room between Sarge and his protection and me, with Eli and the Kid between us. It was often true that dogs and cats don’t get along well, especially a dog bred for war, one who was big enough to give Beast a run for her money in a fight, and a big-cat. And for once, Beast kept her snark to herself and didn’t disagree. PP was huge, menacing, and . . . huge.
The airstrip actually wasn’t. An airstrip, that is. It was a canal, out in back of Sarge’s house, the water a straight strip, blacker than night, the only sounds the drone of insects and the rare splash of fish. The plane appeared out of the gloom like a white swan illuminated by the rising sun; it looked too delicate to survive a takeoff, let alone a flight.
I didn’t like flying in planes. Wings and feathers were different, and I was almost used to the way that flight worked as a bird, the shift of wing and body, the spreading of flight feathers, the angling of wing into the wind, the way my body would plummet when I folded my wings and dove. This was no bird.
The plane was a single-engine Cessna with amphibian landing gear, and the inside stank like PP and fish, a combo that made me want to laugh when I thought about it. The cabin was cramped and tight for four plus Sarge’s dog and the pile of stuff in back. Some of it looked like fishing gear, and some of it looked like plastic wrapped up in twine. One seat was fitted with a seat belt harness for PP, and she seemed as at-ease in the plane as Sarge was himself, and even more taciturn.
I had never made a water-to-air flight and it felt all wrong, so I closed my eyes, gripped the arms of the seats, and swallowed my breakfast back. It had been tasty going down. Not so great coming
back up. Once we left the drag of the water, Sarge spent several minutes talking into his headset about his flight path and altitude and flying stuff, all of which I ignored, just glad he actually spoke airplane-speak.
But the sight that met my eyes once we were airborne and leveled out gave me chills. This was the way the world had to look, back at the dawn of life on Earth. The sun was a golden ball at the horizon, the clouds a dozen shades of pink and plum and purple, with feathery fringes of gray and charcoal. We were low enough to see the black fingers of trees reaching for the plane, low enough to see fishing boats leaving the canals for the open gulf, their wakes rolling with the reflected sun. The water below us was black as sin except where it reflected back the sky’s pink light and the falling, nearly full moon. It looked bloody—bloody moon, bloody water, blood, blood everywhere, and I couldn’t repress a shudder at the sight. It felt like an omen. It was glorious and frightening, and it meant nothing, nothing at all, my brain assured me. It was only the sun rising. But my heart felt different.
The moment we leveled out, Sarge started drinking his coffee and talking to us over the roar of the engine. We got a geology lesson, with an emphasis on why Louisiana had so much oil and natural gas, a geography lesson with the central tenet being the rivers: the Mississippi, the Atchafalaya, the Red , the Sabine, the Calcasieu, and a dozen others, most with Indian tribal names. So much for taciturn, but the chatter did help settle my nerves—along with the sun rising and turning the world golden instead of bloody. I listened with half an ear until the Kid got a question in.
“We mostly want to see the sites of the coordinates of the dog attacks.”
“Werewolf attacks,” Sarge said.
“Why would you think that?” Alex asked.
“You’ll think I’m crazy, I know, but there’s stuff out here in these marshes and canals and bayous, stuff no one’s ever seen before. Stuff the U.S. government won’t let no one near. Places they won’t let no one go to no more.”
