by C. L. Bevill
From across the parking garage there was the abrupt sound of an object breaking. The triumphant snarl that followed clinched the action. Christien had just ripped out the camera from beside the elevator. Don’t have a lot of time now, Jane thought urgently to Christien. They’ll figure it out in a moment. She’ll send someone down in the elevator, or, or— from outside the fence to safely watch us or even worse. It would be easy to shoot a weapon between the iron bars.
Christien snarled again.
Jane pushed at the door and then stepped back to kick it. The jarring motion made her head pulsate with agony. She hauled back and kicked the door again. It shuddered in its frame. Christien could go through it, in his Roux-Ga-Roux form. Christien, we need to break through this door—
Raoul suddenly snatched at Jane, and she tried to shift away from him, but it was too late. She disregarded him in his fear of Christien’s brutish form. Raoul wrapped her into his powerful arms and spun them both so that she was facing the interior of the parking garage and the Roux-Ga-Roux. He held her as he had held her before in the stairwell, with her back to his front.
Producing a switchblade from a pocket with one hand, Raoul held Jane by the neck with his other arm. The entire half of her upper body was forced against his front. He flicked the button on the knife. The blade sprang open, and he pressed the tip to the side of her throat. Jane immediately became motionless.
There was a moment of silence. Jane said, “Big mistake, buddy.”
“Shut up,” Raoul muttered. He moved left and right, looking for the Roux-Ga-Roux’s giant body. While he was peering across one side of the garage, the lights on the other side exploded into darkness. Christien was taking out the illumination, just as he had done before in the stairwell.
Sound thundered across the hollowness of the garage. Christien wasn’t just a little angry, he was furious.
Jane didn’t think anymore. More lights exploded. Raoul muttered, “Nononono,” behind her. “Make him stop,” he added frenziedly.
Tucking her chin down, Jane pushed his forearm away from her throat, preventing Raoul from cutting off her airway with a chokehold. She didn’t question where the need to perform this action had come from. Her hands grasped his left wrist; both hands still restrained with the PlastiCuffs. She twisted her body, turning to her right so that she was sideways to his front. The knife raked her flesh but she ignored it. Her right leg shot behind Raoul’s left leg, calf to calf. She bent forward as she moved, drawing him with her. Jane yanked her head backwards through his hold and took his left wrist with her, holding it firmly in her grip.
The entire movement took only seconds. Jane ended it with a vicious kick to the back of Raoul’s knees while she bent his arm upwards in an unnatural position. The switchblade skittered across the garage floor. Raoul went down with a shrieking yell, and she let go before she went with him. He reached out to stop his fall with his left hand and bashed his bandaged fingers into the hard floor. A high-pitched scream ensued.
Then one would run, Jane thought very calmly, as if discussing the amount of sugar in her tea. One would run because the attacker would get up and go at her again. She comprehended that, once upon a time, she had taken a class in such methods. Someone had told her once how to evade a rear chokehold in this very manner, and she had practiced over and over again because women were vulnerable. But she’d forgotten until this minute how to do it; she’d forgotten that she’d ever learned the maneuver.
Jane’s head came up, and the Roux-Ga-Roux was only a foot away from her. The expression on Christien’s inhuman face was very nearly comical. It was disbelief. She had saved herself without him even lifting a claw in assistance.
Raoul writhed on the ground, absorbed on his pain.
Jane stepped back because she didn’t want to be anywhere near him.
Christien didn’t seem to mind as much. The beast that was also a man reared up on his back legs. He pounced on Raoul with a blindingly swift movement. Raoul shrieked, “Tante! Ayez pitié!”
Christien didn’t wait for a response. He picked the two hundred-pound man up with a motion that appeared effortless and threw him through the door of the booth. Plexiglas and steel screamed as the man went through them like a knife through butter.
Jane gaped. That’s one way to open the door, she thought chaotically.
Christien’s response was a low snarl, and he twirled toward Jane. Coming back to all four legs, he nudged her toward the booth with his great head. She shook herself and made herself move. Reaching inside, she tried to not look at Raoul as she pushed the button she had seen earlier.
The gates began to cascade open.
Christien nudged her again. Jane broke into a run toward the gate, trying to blot out Raoul’s bloody face from inside her mind. The gate lurched, and she slipped through it. Then as Christien paused for a moment, the gate lumbered to a stop.
Jane cursed. Somewhere, someone was trying to stop them. There was another control for the gate in another place, and the act of throwing Raoul through the door hadn’t broken the camera pointed at the gate.
The witch watched them and moved to prevent them.
She braced her leg against the gate and her back against the other side, wedging herself into the gap. The motor whined as it attempted to compensate. There was a great click, and the pressure of the gate was abruptly reversed. She had tripped a sensor that prevented the gate from closing on an object. “Christien!” she yelled. “Move your furry ass!”
The Roux-Ga-Roux forced his way through the iron. The iron made a noise similar to the steel of the booth when Raoul was tossed through it. Jane made room for Christien as the loud click sounded again. Someone had overridden the sensor and was trying to shut the gate on her. She used her body to prevent the gate from going back the other way.
“HURRY!” she yelled.
Christien exploded through, all long legs, scrambling for purchase. His massive head twisted around to her, and Jane shoved herself out of the same area. The gate continued its surging closure again. Jane couldn’t hear Adrienne Viqc swearing at her men, but somehow Jane was certain that the witch was doing exactly that.
“Run!” Jane yelled to Christien. They went back through the alley. The Roux-Ga-Roux could have easily outpaced Jane, but Christien kept at her side. The sounds of his paws hitting the ground were companion to her wheezing gasps and the thuds of her canvas shoes striking the dirt beneath them.
Through the darkness of a narrow alley, Jane dashed, the beast just behind her. She kept expecting to hear a car following them or the noise from stomping feet, but there was nothing.
Where to go? Where? Jane couldn’t think properly. All she could feel was fear and the knowledge that death was nipping at their heels.
They blasted into a street, startling several people who were walking nearby.
Jane paused, and Christien bumped into her, nearly bowling her over.
She heard a man ask, “What the hell kind of dog is that?”
“Is that the one they’ve been talking about?”
Her head spun left and right. They didn’t have a lot of time, and Adrienne’s men probably knew this area much better than they did. They needed to disappear. They needed to hide in a place no one would look. We need—
A battered truck screeched to a stop in front of them. The rear wheels slid to one side as it braked powerfully. The people watching gasped loudly. Philippe peered out at them from the driver’s side window. He said, “Flor said you dint come back from dis place. Said dose two other gals did but not you. Said you was in trouble, bad. Get in!”
Jane looked over her shoulder. Christien was braced at her leg, his immense body pressed against her flesh, drawing strength from her. And in the alley behind them, she saw movement in the darkness. Men ran toward them. Their black-clothed shapes moved in silent synchronicity with their arms pumping in eerie coordination
Christien’s snarl told her he had seen them, too.
The look on Philippe�
�s face told her he had seen not only Christien but the men in the alley. “Get in!” he yelled.
Jane didn’t waste time. She threw herself over the side of the truck into the bed. Philippe hit the gas with a squeal of the tires. A moment later, Christien’s incredible bulk hit the bed of the truck. The springs in the rear of the truck screeched their protest at the added compression. Jane saw Philippe cast an incredulous look over his shoulder and then he floored the V-8 in the well-used vehicle. Jane could smell the smoke from the tires. Finally, they were moving, increasing speed as they shot away.
Peering over the side of the truck bed, Jane saw three large men emerge from the alley. She thought they were too far away to see the license plates. She laid her head down on the rusted bed and sighed gustily. Christien whined and tucked his head under her arm.
“Me, too,” Jane muttered.
Chapter 19
Dogs do not bark at a dead wolf.
– Rumanian proverb
Jane didn’t know whether Philippe headed for Marigny out of habit or simply because the truck had been pointed in that direction. Either way it was fortuitous. The streets were crowded with people and cars, and after the initial speedy exit from the immediate vicinity of the Barbeau Building, he let his foot back away from the gas pedal. He slowed down more, adjusting to the crowds of visitors on a Friday evening. She saw him flinging frequent glances over his shoulder at the strange pair in the bed of his truck.
Christien lay next to Jane. He minimized his silhouette by stretching out, and she didn’t think most people would understand that he wasn’t a dog lying next to her. The compact street of the Quarter that Philippe was using didn’t allow for the passage of bigger trucks, so no one peered down at them from the next vehicle over. Only once did an elderly woman do a bizarre double-take from the back window of an RV. Evidently, she had been watching out the back, looking at the sights in the Quarter while someone else was driving and saw Jane lying flat with Christien alongside.
The older woman’s wrinkled face scanned nonchalantly. Her gaze passed over Jane and Christien and then zipped immediately back. Her eyes got very big and round as she stared. Apparently, dogs the size of horses lying in the back of a pick-up truck weren’t something she typically saw.
Jane didn’t worry about it. The older woman didn’t have a camera in her hand. She had just stared with her mouth wide open. If the tourist didn’t have a camera in her hand when she happened to spot an infamous Louisianan werewolf, then it was her loss. The RV dropped back, and Jane saw the woman move into the interior. Then it stopped altogether when the taxi immediately in front of it halted in front of a jazz club. Several horns honked in protest as Philippe pulled away.
Putting her head back down, Jane let out a deep breath. Nothing was ever as easy as it should have been. If it was easy, then it was a heartless trick of the sneakiest gods of the universe.
I’m going to talk to Philippe, Jane thought to Christien. You have to stay in the back. You can’t jump out. You can’t attack Philippe. Bark if you understand me. Stay.
Christien’s large head tilted at her, and his expression seemed pained. Those bottomless black eyes almost rolled. He put his head down and ignored her.
“Okay, you don’t do tricks,” Jane muttered. She got to her knees and banged on the window of the truck, using both hands because they were still secured by the PlastiCuffs. Philippe leaned his head out the window and yelled, “What?”
“You know where Bubba’s Produce is, right?”
“Sure I do,” Philippe said. He glanced over his right shoulder and tried to see where Christien was before his eyes darted forward again.
“Put us out there. Behind the building. Not on Peters but on Marigny Street,” she leaned over the side as she spoke, trying to avoid yelling, and Christien protested whiningly.
“I can’t stop with…him in back,” Philippe said. Traffic had sped up, but they were catching up to red lights. Cars were backed up going into the party zone of the city on a Friday night. “Jane, chère, that be a dog?”
Jane sighed as the truck slowed. A group of young men waved frantically from the side of the street, showing Jane a handful of beads. They thought she would do anything for a string of shiny bits of plastic. They suddenly stopped smiling, calling, and waving the beads. Jane glanced over her shoulder to see Christien’s head braced on the bed side of the vehicle. His mouth was open, and his horrifying canines were showing threateningly as he glowered at the young men. In unison, the entire group stepped back from the curb.
Stop that, she thought. We can’t get more attention.
“Dat be the dog folks been talking about, oui?” Philippe asked insistently.
Christien growled, ducking back into the truck.
Jane remembered that Christien didn’t trust Philippe. Christien said that the young man had good shoes and that his scrubs weren’t dirty. He’ll let us out near the warehouse, and we’ll sleep there tonight, Christien, she thought reassuringly. He doesn’t know about the warehouse. It’s been safe so far—
It had been safe because Christien had been patrolling outside the exterior while Jane slept. Perhaps he had slept outside her door. He had made it safe for her.
“Just get us to the back of Bubba’s, okay?” Jane asked Philippe. Philippe stared at her for a moment in the rearview mirror and then nodded shortly.
Jane came back beside Christien and looped her arm over his great shoulders. You’re a very big werewolf, she thought. Do you know that? What have you been eating at night? Gators and nutria?
Christien snorted.
“It’ll be alright,” she murmured aloud. Jane wasn’t sure if she believed her own words. “It’ll be alright. Somehow, someway, we’ll get through this.”
Christien the Roux-Ga-Roux whined in response. Jane knew he didn’t know how else to respond.
* * *
Jane woke up feeling cozy. Something draped over her waist and held her tightly. She was curled up on the ground in the warehouse. Something very warm cuddled up behind her. She didn’t open her eyes for a moment. She simply let her thoughts float. The sound of river traffic came in the distance. The freighters were on their way to or from the Gulf. The world was outside of the room she was in, and it felt as if nothing dreadful could get in. For the moment, she felt safe.
Philippe had let them out around the corner from Bubba’s Produce Company, a recognizable landmark bordering the Quarter and Marigny. He’d protested once before Christien had snarled again. When the springs on the back of the truck groaningly popped up after Christien clambered out, Philippe hadn’t said anything else.
He’d taken a moment to jot his cell phone number on the back of a receipt and passed it to Jane. Jane had stuffed it in her pocket with the envelope and the medallion. As she’d walked away, she’d looked back to see if Philippe was watching them but he wasn’t. Instead he was staring intently at the bed of his pick-up truck, as if all the answers of the universe were contained there.
Pleased with Philippe’s disinterest of their path, Jane hurried away.
Herding Christien back to the warehouse was similar to herding cats. Once the threat was gone, he wanted to go and investigate other things. She didn’t. Finally, she’d given up, and he’d followed her to the warehouse with a halfhearted complaint. Tiredly, she’d gotten him to drink a gallon of water and to eat some of the canned food she’d stored there. He’d turned his nose up at the canned corn. But it turned out that Roux-Ga-Rouxs seemed to be fond of Spam.
With a jaw-cracking yawn, Jane had washed the blood off her neck and used a strip of one of her spare shirts as a bandage. Using her hands had been awkward, and she had no idea how she was going to get the cuffs off. She couldn’t get the little knife open with the way her hands were bound. Finally, she had crawled into the corner, using the cheap shoulder bag she’d purchased from the French Market as a pillow.
Christien had inched closer and closer until his huge form bowed around hers. He rooted about
until he was just right. She could smell the strong musk of his fur and something that reminded Jane of the human Christien was during the day.
Jane couldn’t remember if she had pets or not, so she didn’t know if she should be uncomfortable. However, in the morning as she lay there, half awake, feeling as if all was well for the moment, she did remember that Christien wasn’t a pet.
Au contraire. He’s— He’s— What the hell is he? What the hell is between us? Why can we talk telepathically to each other?
The gifts are always strongest between relatives and loved ones, came Christien’s sleepy thought. He was a half a tick above being asleep and didn’t want to move any more than she did.
Jane knew because she could feel his lassitude and his disinclination to move away from the woman he—
What?
The Roux-Ga-Roux no longer was at her back, keeping her flesh temperate against the coolness of the temperature coming off the Mississippi River. Instead it was Christien, and he was again all human. As if he couldn’t help himself, he pressed his face against her hair and sniffed deeply.
It’s something my family says, Christien thought. His fingers drifted through her dark hair, lingering on the curls on the ends. The gifts are always strongest between relatives and loved ones.
Biting her lip, Jane thought about the phrase. The witch had said she lost someone she loved because of Jane. Consequently, Jane lost someone she loved. But what if that someone was Christien, whose memory was also absent?
It feels right, Christien thought. I feel like I know you. I feel like I’ve known you forever, even if I don’t know what kind of perfume you wear or what your favorite color is or that— Damn, it just slipped away from me.
Do you remember what happened after you…changed last night?
Christien’s body tensed. His hand dropped away from her hair and returned to her waist. She could feel the intense heat of his flesh through her shirt. I remember pain and anger. I remember your fear. I don’t know everything I do when the sun goes down. Sometimes I have blood on me, and I don’t know where it came from.
