by Faith Hunter
Page 10
When she awakens, Jane decides to visit the church in the strip mall where she bought her clothes. Afterward, she decides to take a ride looking over some of the vampire clan homes—the public ones where they entertained. Her first stop is at the Clan Arceneau location, where she is greeted by a large guy with a big gun. After carefully showing identification, and submitting to a professional search by the big guy’s twin, Jane is allowed to enter the house and have a chat with the two men, blood-servants to the clan blood-master, Grégoire. Jane learns the difference between blood-servants and blood-slaves, and discovers that the twins are unhappy about the rise of blood donors, as they do not have the same kind of ties and therefore leave both parts of the arrangement vulnerable. On her way out, Jane notices a very revealing painting with the twins, Katie, Leo, and Grégoire, and learns that the twins were born in 1822.
You May Call Upon Me: Jane puts on her one black dress (which travels well), and she and Bruiser share an appreciation for each other when he arrives to pick her up. Jane causes a stir briefly, a situation Bruiser defuses by introducing her as the rogue hunter. Loading her plate with food, Jane wanders the house, meeting up with Bettina, the blood-master of Clan Rousseau, who is very interested in Jane. Ending up in a room with a nice sound system playing salsa music, Jane dances with Bruiser, who comes in to tell her Leo wants to speak with her. Leo observes their very intense dance, and claims Jane for a rumba, which draws an audience. A short time later Jane watches as Leo presents the guest of honor and his biological son, as his heir. The latter does not seem to be a very popular idea with many of the vamps in attendance, a fact that Jane finds interesting and files away for further investigation.
The next day, Jane walks around the Quarter, and spots Antoine. Deciding to follow him, Jane trails the man to the Royal Mojo Blues Company, which Jane now knows is owned by Leo. Observing from a short distance at first, Jane then goes inside the establishment and discovers two things: Antoine is meeting Rick and a woman who looks vaguely familiar, and the woman’s scent identifies her as the one sleeping with the rogue. Jane then realizes she has seen the woman’s picture in the paper—she is the mayor’s wife.
Beast Was Born: Jane heads back to the house and shifts, determining that Beast needs to track those she saw together. Beast tracks the scent of Rick and Anna (the mayor’s wife) to an apartment, and when Beast goes inside, it is obvious the two are having sex. When Rick leaves, Beast follows him, and when he gets on his bike to leave, it occurs to Jane that he is likely heading back home and may come looking for her. Beast races home over the miles, and when Jane emerges, she feels sick and overheated. That much of a run is not good for a cat the size of Beast. After showering, Jane goes through the house following Bruiser’s scent, seeing where he had looked when he was in there during her absence.
Exhausted, Jane goes to sleep, and immediately begins dreaming about her time as a bobcat when she was a girl, and comes to realize that this is a memory. She comes upon buried meat that is someone else’s kill, and while eating it, she is interrupted by a bigger cat. The two fight, and to save herself, We Sa, the bobcat, ends up pulling the other cat, body and soul, inside herself. The newly merged Beast goes to take care of the bigger cat’s kits. When Jane awakens, she understands what she did as a child that drew/captured Beast inside her—black magic, though inadvertent.
I Was Still Buck Naked: Screams wake Jane—screams coming from Katie’s. She races out of the house, taking crosses, stakes, and a gun, but realizes she is still completely naked. Deciding that is the least of her problems, Jane vaults the wall between the two yards and runs into Katie’s house. Hearing sounds from the dining room, Jane goes on to the office, and arrives to see Tom restrained while Katie is being fed upon, literally, by the rogue. Jane tries to decide the best course of action, afraid she may hit Katie with some of the deadly rounds in her gun. The rogue looks up and tries to control Jane’s mind, but the momentum she has causes her to crash into him, with Beast’s help to free her mind from his control. Jane tries the stake the rogue, but he gets away. Jane notices that the creature’s scent signature is actually changing in some way, which shouldn’t be possible. Down the hall Jane finds that Miz A has been seriously injured, but gets one of the girls, Indigo, to call Leo and an ambulance. Asking Indigo to not mention her presence at all, Jane leaves and resolves to track the rogue, though she has no clear idea of what she is dealing with.
Are Crosses Weapons? Jane follows the rogue’s scent on Bitsa, and realizes that one of the smells she has been picking up is sweetgrass, an herb often used in Cherokee ceremonies. Beast sends Jane a few clues, about searching for the rogue by some of his habits, which leads her to Aggie One Feather’s place. Once she arrives there, Aggie says her mother wishes to speak to Jane, but she must remove her weapons before entering the house. Jane does so, and Aggie’s mother tells Jane that she is very old, and during their brief conversation Jane glimpses a memory from the Trail of Tears. Aggie’s mother says Jane needs to return after her battle to go through a sweat lodge ritual. Jane searches the woods for the rogue, but is confused when his scent just disappears. She and Beast figure out that he must have an underground lair, and Jane finds the hidden door to a cave. The creature is not in there, and since there are exits in a water main, Jane cannot follow.
Stick a Dollar in Your Garter? When Jane returns to her neighborhood, there is still a strong law enforcement presence outside Katie’s, and given the heavy artillery she is carrying, Jane doesn’t want to be spotted by them. She catches Bruiser’s attention, and over tea inside her house they have a conversation about the fact that Leo has security cameras on the vamps of the city. Jane learns that five vampires have been attacked, but that no one has spotted the rogue to describe him. Since Jane saw him, she gives Bruiser a description.
Woken from sleep by her ringing phone, Jane hears Tom telling her that in order for Katie to be healed, the other vamps are sending her to ground (burying her), and he wants Jane to go and observe. Jane knows that the vamps sense she was nearby, so she decides to shift into a non-Beast form so as to draw less attention. She chooses the form of an owl, which is tricky as it involves an animal of much smaller mass, which is why she has the boulders in the back yard. Unfortunately by taking this form Jane will submerge Beast, meaning Jane will not have the benefit of her guidance.
We Still Search for Absolution: In her form as an owl, Jane flies to the location of the meeting, and is surprised to find what appears to be an old chapel with many freestanding crypts surrounding it. She sees an old woman vampire, dressed in what resembles a nun’s habit, step out of the building. Then vampires begin to arrive, followed by a hearse containing a coffin. The two human drivers make a quick exit. When the ceremony begins, with the priestess, Sabina, making a call for blood donations, one vampire, Rafael Torrez of Clan Mearkanis, steps forward to challenge the call, saying it was Katie’s fault she got attacked. After a back-and-forth discussion between Rafael and Leo, Rafael withdraws his challenge. During the conversation, Sabina makes reference to the vampires’ sin of attempting to steal from God, which puzzles and interests Jane. All of the clan blood-masters offers blood from their arms into Katie’ coffin, and once again Jane is startled when she hears them chanting in Aramaic, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The coffin is shut away, the vampires leave, and then Sabina speaks to Jane’s owl form, wondering if she is an emissary from God, saying that they (the vampires) still seek forgiveness. After Sabina goes inside, Jane sees a figure come out of another crypt, recognizes the rogue, and watches him try to get into the Pellissier family vault. The rogue then begins to shape-change.
I’m Psychic: The rogue changes partway into what resembles a sabertooth, and then notices Jane’s bird form. Down too low and unable to gain height quickly, the rogue takes a swipe at Jane. hitting some of her feathers. Sabina come outside, and the rogue goes after her. Jane rushes at the creature, using her beak on the
back of his neck. As she flies away, Jane sees Sabina wield a cross that exudes a bright light, which scares away the rogue creature. Jane follows him through the woods, watches him enter a house from which she soon hears cries, but sees another man, not the rogue/liver-eater, come out and drive away. Racing back to her house so she can change back before dawn, Jane comes back to her human form, feeling woozy and out of sorts. Angelina calls her, saying she was frightened when Jane was in bird form, asking her not to do it again. Jane agrees.
Waking once again to someone knocking loudly on her door, Jane finds Rick, who asks her to go horseback riding. Since she is starving, Jane says she needs to eat, and makes steak for both her and Rick. After they eat, Jane says she needs to ride her bike out to Westwego, the area of the chapel and the house where the rogue may have committed a murder. When they arrive at the graveyard, Jane and Rick see the damage done to some of the crypts. Since Leo’s security knows about their entrance, given the sensors at the gate, Jane calls Bruiser to warn the team on its way not to shoot and at her and Rick, and gives him some other information. Jane and Rick leave to go to the house the rogue disappeared into the night before.
Crap. I’m Starting to Like Vamps: Arriving at the house where Jane saw the rogue/liver-eater vanish, she calls the police, at which point Rick says he will be leaving. After he leaves, Jane walks around to find the place where the rogue came in, and she spots some very large prints, some part cat, part human. Despite Beast’s desire to cover them up, Jane leaves the evidence intact. While waiting for the police to arrive, Jane looks over the paperwork Rick gave her from the research he did on the property owners. It turns out that Anna, the mayor’s wife, owns a lot of land that borders on Jean Lafitte Park, something that sets off alarm bells for Jane.
After Jodi and her team arrive, they go inside, leaving Jane to speculate on what she has discovered. She thinks perhaps the man she saw leaving the house last night was actually the liver-eater, having taken on the guise of someone else after killing him. Jodi eventually comes back outside to talk to Jane, and after a brief discussion in which each of them shares information with the other, Jodi reluctantly allows Jane to enter the crime scene.
