by Faith Hunter
I went for the gun and picked it up with two fingers. I handed it too to the guy at the door, taking him in with quick glance. Younger than he sounded. Blondish. Jeans and T. Shoulder holster with a nine-millimeter. Scruffy beard. He smelled of coffee and Irish Spring soap.
“What do you want me to do with this?” the guy asked.
“Whatever PIs do with guns they accidently find on their doorsteps, dropped by inefficient muggers, unsuccessful rapists, and dumb-nuts.”
He laughed. It was a nice laugh. “Anton, Wayne, you get on outta here or I’ll call the po-lice on you. And I bet you both got a little something-something on you that the local law would like to confiscate. You,” he said to me, “come on in. I got Cokes on ice and sandwiches in the microwave. I’d have been here sooner, but I was heating lunch and didn’t realize you were in trouble until after the ding.”
It sounded satisfactory to me, and I followed him inside. Closed and locked the door behind me. “My intern, I assume,” he said as he popped the tops on Coke cans and shoved a foot-long club sandwich with bacon toward me over the desk. I nodded and took it and bit in, the taste so good and the bacon so hot that I almost groaned. I ate two more bites, taking the edge off my hunger, watching him, studying the office. He was prettier than I’d expected from the half glance I’d taken outside. The office was less dingy on the inside than it looked on the outside too. Three small desks, three desk chairs, folding chairs in the corner. One of those blue plastic watercoolers. Coffeemaker. Small brown refrigerator with a microwave on top. Unisex bathroom. Lockers. Gun safe bolted onto the floor in the corner. Closet. Iron-bound back door. Not bad. It smelled of mice and bacon and gunpowder, a combo that smelled unexpectedly great.
“Power of observation is important in this business,” he said.
I grunted and kept eating. It had been hours since my last meal, and I’d been eating light since I spent my last twenty on the boots. Stupid move, that. Girly move. But they were killer boots. I grinned at the memory.
“My powers of observation told me that you should have run instead of taking on the neighborhood bullies,” he said.
“Thought you said you were busy at the microwave,” I said around a mouthful of bacon and lettuce leaves.
He shrugged. “Whatever. What did your powers of observation tell you?”
“That you set me up. Most likely,” I hedged.
His brow wrinkled up in long horizontal lines that weren’t visible until he looked puzzled. Or maybe mad? I wasn’t sure. I still wasn’t real good at reading people’s emotions, but he smelled angry. Which was a really weirded-out thought. “Do I look stupid?” he asked. “Or like the kind of guy who would let a little girl get hurt? I was coming in through the back with sandwiches, and sticking them in to heat, when I saw it going down on the camera.”
“Fine,” I said. “From outside, I could see the light on through the cracks in the Sheetrock over the windows. The entry door is steel, set in a reinforced steel door casing. Over the door is a camera, the kind that moves. What looks like a water pipe runs up the outside wall in the corner and into the building through a tiny hole bored in the brick. Maybe for a retrofitted sprinkler system.
“Not that I’ve had much training yet, but the place looks like it was set up to survive attack by small-arms fire, Molotov cocktail fire, and maybe even attack by a rolling dump truck. The people inside might get smoked or crushed, but the files might survive, and the attack would be caught on camera to identify the perpetrators.”
I stopped and ate some more. The bacon was really good. The other meat was beef and turkey. Even the lettuce tasted good. I was starving. I licked mayo off my thumb, slurped some Coke, and went on.
“The neighborhood is on the way down, except for the building on the corner, which is undergoing a remodeling, probably because of the way-cool windows on the second and third story.” I set down the sandwich and held my hands out to the sides at angles. “Like this, with the whaddya call it, the cornerstone? Capstone? Like this.” I reshaped my hands.
“Art Deco. Yeah. The upgrade is the beginning of the end of crime on this street. I’ll miss Anton and Wayne.”
I spluttered with laughter and held out my hand. “Jane Yellowrock. But I guess you know that, what with your mad powers of observation.”
“Charles Davidson, but call me Nomad,” he said. “Your boss and teacher for the next few months. You got a place to stay until your next paycheck?”
“Nope.”
“Money for a hotel? A furnished room?”
“Nope.”
Nomad sighed. “There’s an inflatable mattress in the closet. Towels. Sheets. Don’t let the cops figure it out—I’m not licensed for renters—but you keep your head down and you can bunk here until you make enough money to get a place. Soon as you get a stash, I know a few people who rent places. You can have cheap and dangerous in a few weeks, or more expensive and safer in a few months. We’ll do a drive-by and you can evaluate how much you want privacy. But that’s for later. Now we got a case.” Nomad stood and wiped his face, gathered up all the papers, and tossed them into a trash can. “Keep the trash emptied. Dumpster out back. Place has roaches. Mice. But you don’t look like the kind of woman who runs from either.”
I shook my head. “What kind of case?”
“Cheating husband.”
“You like domestic cases?”
“Hate ’em. But they make up about seventy percent of a PI’s business. Bring your bike inside and we’ll keep it locked up. Safer. Anton and Wayne are aggressive and stupid and they might think about revenge. You pass your CC yet?”
I nodded. I had passed the concealed carry permit the week before I passed my classroom training for my PI license. “No gun. No money. Do I get the internship?”
“Despite the little snafu on the street, yeah. And you won’t need a gun on this trip.” He pointed to the restroom. “Pee while you can. Female anatomy isn’t particularly well suited to long-term stakeouts.”
I nodded.
“Other than answering questions, you’re not very talkative, are you?” he observed, cocking his head.
“Nope.” I went into the restroom and closed the door. And smiled at myself in the polished metal mirror over the sink, my amber eyes glowing gold with excitement. “I’m in,” I whispered. “I did it. I got the job.”
It was in a little run-down storefront security and PI business. The pay sucked. And I loved it. I loved it all.
Cat Tats
Rick raised his head, the tendons in his neck straining. Nausea roiled in his stomach and up his throat at the slight movement, and he dropped his head back. He was lying faceup. The rafters were barely visible over his head in the dusky, gloomy light. The familiar scent of hay and horses was strong in his nostrils, but it wasn’t the hay of his parents’ barn. There was an acrid undertang to this scent, as if the box stalls hadn’t been mucked out in a long while, and it was musty, as if horses hadn’t used the premises recently. He rolled his head to the side and saw a shaft of light filtering through dusty air, falling through a wide crack in the wall. No. Not Dad’s barn. He’d never let it get in this condition.
This place was abandoned.
He almost called out, but something stopped him, some wise wisp of self that wasn’t still hazy from the raspberry Jell-O shooters. He tried to sit up, but pain shot from his hands and pooled in his shoulders like liquid fire. His arms were bound.
He craned to see, blinking to clear his vision. His arms were pulled up high in a V and shackled with old-fashioned iron cuffs chained to rings. His legs were stretched out too, similarly secured, his body making a dual V. He was naked. Instantly his body constricted and his breathing sped. He struggled to rise and discovered that he lay on a wide black square stone, cool to the touch despite the Louisiana heat. On the ground around the stone, touching the four corners, was a circle of metal, bl
ack in the light.
Terror shot through his veins, clearing the last of the alcohol out of his system. His heart pounded. His breath came fast, gasping. He broke into a hot sweat, which instantly cooled into a clammy stink.
He jerked his arms and legs hard, giving it all he had to pull himself free. But nothing gave. The pain multiplied in his legs and arms like lightning agony, at his shoulders and groin with liquid fire. His wrists and ankles burned, the iron cuffs binding him, cutting into his flesh. He turned his head to the side and retched, but his stomach was empty and his mouth dry as desert sand.
• • •
When the nausea passed, Rick dropped his head back. Forced himself to breathe deeply, slowly, despite his racing heart. To analyze. To think. To be calm. He closed his eyes and mouth, and worked to slow his mind, to contain his racing fear. Around him the barn was silent. Lifeless. Where the hell am I?
When he was calmer, he raised his head again, and studied everything he could see, everything he could hear, analyzing it all. The barn was old, of post-and-beam construction, the frame of twelve-by-twelve beams fitted together with pegs and notches and the vertical boards of the walls nailed in place to the frame. There were four box stalls, one on each corner, with a tack room on one side between two stalls, and opposite the tack room, between the stalls on the other side, was a wide space to saddle and groom horses. The center area was an open passageway more than twelve feet wide, with moldy hay stacked on the wall opposite the double front doors. It had to be more than fifty years old, and the wood showed signs of termites and the kind of damage only time and disuse will provide. Foliage grew up close to the sides of the barn, vines and tree limbs reaching into the interior. Part of the tin roof was missing, and birds flew in and out, twittering and cooing. He could hear no sound of engines, which meant he was miles from any highway, miles from any airport, from any city, far from help. He could hear the faint sound of water rippling, echoing, a soft trickle, like a bayou moving sluggishly nearby. Rarely, he could hear a plop as something fell into the water. All of that was bad. But at least he was alone. For now. That much was good.
When he was calmer, he looked down at himself. If his body had been a clock, his arms would have been nearly at ten and two, and his legs close to eight and four. It looked familiar, and from his alcohol- and drug-fogged brain came an image: He was positioned like Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. Like an archetype. Bound in a witches’ circle, on a square altar. Like a goat for slaughter.
Was it the full moon? The new moon? Was he the sacrifice in some black-magic ceremony? A long shiver racked down his spine. Rick had a lot of specialized training under his belt, but nothing he’d learned in his criminal justice classes at Tulane, at the police academy afterward, or in the focused and elite training provided by his current covert employers had prepared him for this.
Judging from the angle of the sunbeam, the sun was setting. Or rising. The beam fell across the barn onto a rat-eaten saddle and bridle, and a bedraggled red horse blanket across a joist. As he watched, a bird alighted on the blanket and pecked, eating whatever it found in the ripped, rotting cloth. It pulled out a bit of stuffing and, with a flutter of wings, carried it away into the darkness of the rafters. To the side, against the nearest stall wall, was a glass of water with a red straw in it. His mouth felt even drier at the sight, but there was no way for him to reach it. Rick dropped back his head.
In the academy, he had attracted the attention of the black suits in the Justice Department. He had been co-opted for an undercover assignment, and given a plausible story and a believable problem that got him “kicked out of NOPD.” He’d jumped on the opportunity, even though it had meant a false arrest for assault, even though his family couldn’t know. And even though, if successful, he’d be alone with vamps, without backup. On the surface, he was a pariah to the cops, but he’d been working to infiltrate the vamps’ organization for the New Orleans Police Department, the local FBI field office, and some high muckety-mucks in the DOJ.
A pretty face and a checkered past, along with the police training and the criminal justice degree from Tulane, had made him the perfect hire as part of a security detail for one of Leo Pellissier’s scions, Roman Munoz. Munoz was a low-level vamp scumbag needing muscle for hire. Rick had worked himself up in Munoz’s organization, and when his new boss went to jail for tax fraud—the first successful vamp conviction in Louisiana, courtesy of Rick’s tips, passed to his handler—Rick had migrated into odd jobs for the vampire community: protection gigs, strong-arm stuff, and security. Watching for the golden opportunity to draw the eyes of the MOC—the Master of the City—Leo Pellissier.
Across the barn, a field mouse with tiny round ears scampered across the floor and into a hole. Above Rick, wings fluttered, sounding larger than the sparrow-sized bird. He tried his bindings again, trying to think. Getting nowhere.
He had proven himself and was now an established and trusted part of the lower-level vampire organization. He knew people. He had skills usually cultivated by thugs and thieves, and yet, thanks to his LaFleur upbringing in New Orleans society, he could blend in almost anywhere, even in the upscale Mithran culture. He was versatile, smart, and willing. The vamps seemed to like him and were using his services. Lately, he had done some work for his uncle, who was security chief and primo blood-servant for Katie of Katie’s Ladies, which put him one step closer to Pellissier.
He’d been undercover now for more than two years, a long time by covert standards. When his successful stint undercover was done, he would be perfectly placed to move up quickly in law enforcement. But the most recent assignment had proven complex. He was trying to discover where the Mithrans kept their rogues, the new vampires who were bitten and turned but not yet ready for public view. And he was trying to find out something—anything—about the MOC’s financial structure. Both had proven elusive, but he had been making headway.
Until his ego let him think he was about to get lucky with Isleen of the cute smile and the bounteous breasts. And the big fangs. A girl. He had been brought down by a girl. He was so damn stupid.
The last thing he remembered was the bar and Isleen, the girl vamp he’d been trying to pick up. And succeeding. Blond, blue-eyed, about five two, and built to please a man, she had flirted steadily with him, even buying him drinks. . . . When did a gorgeous bombshell ever have to buy a guy drinks? Stupid. Yeah, that was him.
He tried to raise his arms; the shackles burned his wrists. He lifted his head again, studying the stone and the witch circle. The stone was polished smooth, not with a high shine but with a matte luster. But it was dusty, as if it hadn’t been used in a long time. And one corner was broken off, with a long crack weaving brokenly toward the center. The circle looked like iron in the dim light, but iron would interfere with any spell casting. So maybe silver, highly tarnished. Or copper? Could some witches use copper? But why had a vampire turned him over to the witches? The two races hated each other.
He checked the shaft of light again. It was less sharply angled, nearly straight across, and tinted with pink. Setting. The sun was setting. He shivered in the warm air. Night was coming. Most witch ceremonies were at night, weren’t they? At least the black spells? He had to get out of here. He fought his bonds. The pain in his wrists and ankles was liquid heat. Blood trickled from his flesh as it swelled around the too-tight cuffs. Something crawled up his inner thigh, tickling its way through the hair. Spider. Had to be. He bounced his butt hard and dislodged the bug, landing on it. Crushing it beneath his buttock. A soft laugh escaped his throat. Sounding more sob than amusement.
Taking only minutes, the sunbeam reddened and thinned and grew fainter. And vanished. And night fell. Quickly. It took only seconds for the dark to smother him. Heart pounding, he heard only the twitter of birds in the rafters, the rustle of small rodents, and the sound of his breathing—too fast, too harsh. Choked with fear.
Dark. Very dark. The n
ew moon, then. A new-moon ceremony. He tried to remember what the new moon meant for the black arts. And then he heard singing. A soft melody, unfamiliar, rising and falling, from outside the barn. And footsteps. Brushing the earth. Swishing, like a dress sweeping the ground and foliage with each step. Fear crawled up his throat again, and he was glad his stomach was empty. If he vomited, he would be lost. Too bad he hadn’t eaten. Maybe it would be a kinder fate.
Something metallic rattled from the double-barn-door entrance. One door groaned as it opened, the echo of the rusty hinges twanging into the night. It was too dark to see anyone enter, but the soft swishing sounds of fabric moving through grass grew stronger, closer.
“You’re awake! Good! I brought you something.” Isleen’s voice.
Childlike, happy, as if he were in her bed and she’d just returned from an errand. “Do you like it?”
Rick licked his lips, dry and cracked, drawing up the short introductory course in hostage negotiation he’d taken at the academy. Keep them talking. Make the kidnapper see you as a person, not a tool. Yeah. Right. That was not gonna work so well with a vamp, especially if she was hungry. Make them do things for you, so they had to associate with you as a person. That one might do. . . .
“I can’t see in the dark,” he whispered.
“Well, poo. Of course you can’t, you dear little human. I’ll fix that.”
In the dark, he heard the soft shush of cloth and the sharper scritch of a match. Light so bright it hurt flamed and lit the barn. He saw Isleen holding a dusty Coleman lantern, the logo in red on the gray metal can. The light gleamed on her face, porcelain in the sudden illumination. She was dressed in white, the bodice close fitting, pushing up her breasts like a corset might. The dress was long with a handkerchief hem, pointed, embroidered, and beaded with white pearls, like a dress one of his sisters had worn to the prom, and it caught the light like satin or silk. Her hair was down, brushed to a golden shine, with a wreath of braided flowers on her head. White orchids resting in green leaves.
