Cat Tales

by Faith Hunter

  The vamps were introduced in the lobby, which had been cleared of guests and swept for explosives and video and listening devices. Shaddock strode across the hardwood and the silk oriental rugs like the beaked-nosed frontiersman he had been as a human: tall, rawboned, and rough around the edges despite his tuxedo. Grégoire stood with his back to the massive central fireplace, resplendent in gold brocade. I stood to the side, taking in Shaddock’s heir and spare and his primo and secondo blood-servants. I had studied their files extensively and with a flick of a finger I repositioned two of Derek’s men into better position to cover the vamps—not just to keep them alive, but to make sure the newcomers didn’t pull weapons and stake Grégoire. Hey. It could happen.

  “Lincoln Shaddock,” said the vamp. His laconic tone was marked by a strong Tennessee/Kentucky accent, and his scent was unusual for a vamp, smelling like hickory bark, wood shavings, and barbecue. The vamp owned a BBQ joint in the middle of Asheville and he worked there most nights, which explained the scent, though the idea of a job was odd for a vamp. But, then, Shaddock wasn’t as o [wassld as most master vamps. Maybe he had to work like the rest of us poor slobs. “I am blood-master of the Shaddock Blood Clan. Turned by Charles Dufresnee after the Battle of Monocacy, outside of Frederick, Maryland. Currently sworn to Clan Dufresnee and, with his permission, petitionin’ the blood-master of the southeastern United States to acquire territory to include the city of Asheville, North Carolina, and to be granted hunting land and cattle and the rights to rule as Master of the City under his decree.”

  Hunting land meant territory where vamps would hunt humans to drink from. Cattle meant the humans they’d be hunting. Ticked me off, not that I had a say in the wording or the reality of the meaning. The phrasing had been established centuries ago as part of the Vampira Carta, the legal document vamps lived by. The Carta also established the laws that gave me the right to hunt rogue-vamps. That part of the law probably gave vamps the willies. I could only hope.

  Lincoln Shaddock gestured to the tiny young woman standing behind him. “This here is Amy Lynn Brown, my youngest scion.” The miracle-vamp, the reason that Leo had allowed the petition and the parley. The dark-haired, brown-eyed girl looked terrified, and no one did anything to alleviate her nerves. Grégoire stepped to the side and studied her like a piece of meat.

  I hadn’t known Leo was the blood-master of the entire southeastern U.S. until the first time I’d heard the introductions read during my parley training. He held the hunting license of every fanghead below the Mason-Dixon Line, from the eastern border of Texas at the Sabine River, east to the Atlantic and south to the Gulf, with the exception of Florida and Atlanta. The Atlanta MOC was an independent of sorts, and Florida was run by a vamp I hadn’t studied yet.

  Grégoire turned his attention back to Shaddock and bowed slightly, saying, “Grégoire, blood-master of Clan Arceneau, of the court of Charles the Wise, fifth of his line, in the Valois Dynasty, turned by Charles—the well beloved, the mad—the son of the king. Here by decree of Leonard Eugène Zacharie Pellissier, turned by and heir of Amaury Pellissier, his human uncle and Mithran father, now true-dead, to negotiate the petition of Lincoln Shaddock for rights to claim Asheville and surrounding territory as Master of the City. . . .”

  Yada yada. I zoned out on the confab, seeing a flicker of shadow at the front entrance. The protestors were trying to get in, bodies pressed against the glass, voices raised, chanting, “Vamps go home. Vamps go home.” Real original, and no threat unless they had guns or were willing to break in, which I had to consider. I touched my mouthpiece to a com channel and said to Derek, “Moving to the front. Get the principals to the Black Bear Grill, out of sight.”

  “Copy,” my second in command replied. He switched channels and relayed my orders.

  We had two communication channels, a command channel between Derek and me, and a general channel that went to all the security staff. Moving to the front, I listened as the B-twins and Shaddock’s Chen led the way to the hotel’s restaurant, which we’d taken over for the first night of the parley. I felt immensely better as the doors to the restaurant closed with a firm snap. This initial meeting allowed the primary negotiators to chitchat and take one another’s measure while their minions gave a final tweak to the rule [k trie Pes the vamps would operate under and shuffled and finalized the talk schedule.

  I had never been a bodyguard, and I wasn’t looking forward to the whims of vamps changing my security measures on the fly, but that was part of the job too—flying by the seat of my pants, moving my men here and there and hither and yon and trying to keep everyone out of trouble. Playing in the vamp sandbox was an exercise in creative use and placement of assets.

  While the principals did what vamps and their blood meals do, I wandered around the hotel, making sure none of my men were mispositioned or had left a blind spot where trouble might hide. I also triple-checked the communication gear and walked the entire external perimeter of the hotel, the nearby parking garage, and every hallway, stairwell, wine bar, nook, and cranny of the joint. Again. It was obsessive but it also was keeping me awake.

  Near dawn, the first something-unexpected happened. I was checking out the men’s rooms off the lobby when I was alerted over my com headgear. “Legs, something’s up. The blood-servants are going ape-shit,” Derek said.

  Wrassler, my number two guy, and one of Leo’s blood-servant security goons talked over the chatter. All I made out was, “—in here now . . . Leo . . .”

  I hotfooted it out of the john, Beast-fast. “What?” I asked as I entered the Black Bear Grill. They were all watching a TV monitor, local cable news showing a scene of flashing emergency lights: police, ambulance, even an antiquated fire truck with COCKE COUNTY RESCUE SQUAD painted on the side. In the background I could make out a bridge and the reflection of red and blue flashing lights on still water. On-screen was a wild-haired, heavily bearded man, maybe mid-twenties, with multiple piercings and lots of body art. “Dude, it was bad. I mean blood and guts and stuff. The deputy was saying it had to be fangheads, what with the injuries. Like one a’ them rogues that goes psycho and eats people and shi—uh, stuff. Like, sorry, dude. I cuss a lot.”

  “Oh crap,” I murmured. My cell phone rang. It was Leo. “Yellowrock.”

  “You will take any necessary personnel and deal with this. If it is a rogue, dispatch it. If it is something else, you will make this situation go away.”

  “Sure, Leo. But—” The line clicked off. I was just an underling, the paid help. Unlike the vamps, I didn’t deserve good manners.

  Chapter Two

  Vamp-fang and Werewolf-bite Scars

  Eyes gritty from lack of sleep, I knelt on the bank, jeans absorbing the wet from the river-slick rock. Just upstream from me, two commercial rafts slid under the bridge where a couple had been attacked before dawn. The screaming voices of laughing children tore the air. Someone slapped a paddle onto the water, the sound echoing. My Beast flinched deep inside, but I didn’t react. I was too busy studying the scratches on the rock in the early morning lig [y mchoing. ht.

  There were three parallel lines, the one in the center longer than the ones to either side. I put my fingers into the grooves, feeling the rough edges of the slashes. Using the excuse of a better view, I bent lower, getting my nose to the rock. I sniffed. The water smelled of iron and fish, sunscreen, treated sewage, chemicals, and age. The grooves smelled different. Still fishy, but with a particular sour dead-fish stench I recognized.

  Grindylow, Beast thought at me. Water smells of grindylow, not vampire, not pigeons.

  It took me a moment to understand. Beast was a literal creature, and the river was named the Pigeon. To her, it should smell either of the vampires who had been accused of attacking the boating couple just upstream of where I knelt or of pigeons. Not of a grindylow, a creature once thought to be mythical, from the U.K. by way of Africa and New Orleans. A grindylow brought unexpected, puzzling possibilities into the equation. I stared up at M
ount Sterling, wondering just how much responsibility for this attack rested on me.

  I rose to my feet and dusted the wet grit off my hands, watching rafts float toward me. They were filled with families, church teens out on a field trip, college kids lazing away a September Saturday, the river guides looking young and carefree. The water of the Upper Pigeon River rippled and frothed at the end of the run, spilling out into a wide, placid pool beneath the bridge where the attack took place, dividing around islands and curling into smooth eddy pools where commercial rafts could launch or be pulled up the banks. Just downstream the river dropped again, becoming the Lower Pigeon, a slower, easy-paced river.

  I scuffed a boot heel over the three cuts in the rock. I had an idea what supernat had mauled the two people last night, and it wasn’t a rogue-vamp. Proving that would make the local vamps and the parley safer. Despite the territory-marking sign and the grindy scent, the grindylow wasn’t the assailant either. Leo had made this my problem, and it was, but not solely for the reason he thought. Crap. This was gonna be a booger. And if I could prove what had really happened, the incident would clearly be my fault. A sense of dread settled in my gut.

  I held out my hand for the photographs of the couple who had been savaged. The poor-quality, grainy, low-pixel-count photos were clear enough to make my knees weak. Yeah. Provided I could find evidence to support it, I knew what had attacked the couple, unlikely as that might actually be.

  According to witnesses, the young woman, who went by the moniker Itty Bitty, had been attacked first. Though in her twenties, she was tiny enough to look like a very young teen—hence the nickname. In the photos she was swathed in bandages, except for a few superficial wounds on one calf, and those were familiar. I had a few fading scars that looked similar. The man, her boyfriend, was former military, and his wounds were more severe. He’d defended her and paid the price., Neither had been able to identify the creatures that attacked them in the dark of early evening and pulled them under the water, mauling and biting. Itty Bitty had seen nothing at all; her hero boyfriend had reported hairy men, dogs, and vampires.

  Without looking up, I handed the photos back to the deputy. “Yeah. I know what attacked the couple.tacked tۀuple.t Holding in a resigned sigh, I pushed my sunglasses back over my eyes and tapped the scarred rock with my boot heel. “But it isn’t what made this.”

  “So what did?” the cop asked. “Fangheads, right?”

  I pulled my gaze from the water-washed rock to the river guides, the cop, whose name was Emmett Sontag, and my best friend, Molly—here for moral support and curiosity. “These three cuts were made by a grindylow.” At the guides’ blank reactions I said, “Grindies are like the enforcers of the were community. They kill weres who try to turn humans, and keep an eye out on the young weres to make sure they abide by were-law.” When the guides still looked blank, I spelled it out for them, keeping my own reactions inside, hidden. “I think werewolves attacked the couple last night.”

  “We got werewolves here?” a young guide said, his steel tongue stud catching the light. “Awesome.” He turned and looked around, as if seeing his workplace in a new and exciting way.

  Molly’s eyes widened as she took in the implications of werewolves and a grindy in the Appalachian Mountains. From her mutating expressions, Molly was figuring out everything I just had, and most of that information was not something I was willing to share with the others. I caught her gaze, directed it to the sheet of photos in the cop’s hands, and let her read my concern. Her gaze slid up Mount Sterling, as mine had, worried. She did an eyebrow shrug, raising and lowering them in sympathy, saying clearer than words, This is gonna be a mess of trouble, Big-Cat.

  I managed a defeated grin at the sentiment.

  “Werewolves. Damn.” Emmett looked around, eyes narrowed, and rattled off a series of questions that suggested he was more than just gun, swagger, and belly. “Is this grindy thing dangerous? Can you prove it was werewolves? Do we need to pull the rafts?” He resettled his heavy utility belt, one hand on the butt of his 9 millimeter handgun. It was cop body language, looking for trouble and being ready for it. Not. A werewolf would eat his innards for dinner.

  Pulling the rafts off the water would mean a financial hardship for the rafting businesses operating along the river. I started to say it was safe, but closed my mouth on the words. I had no idea what grindies ate or whether they were primarily nocturnal. I was assuming that the grindy was here because of its life mission, but I’d drawn conclusions and made deductions before based on insufficient info, and humans got hurt. I didn’t want that happening here.

  Having weres in the hills wasn’t gonna make the locals happy. Like the itchy deputy, local law enforcement types all over three counties were already agitated—passing out stakes, holy water, crosses, and garlic against vamps—and there was grumbling about taking down all the fangheads in an old-fashioned hunt. Now they’d be after weres too, and I had good reason to want them not to. I said, “Grindies don’t eat people, and werewolves are mostly nocturnal. Keep everyone off the water after sunset, but you don’t have to pull the rafts during daylight hours.”

  Emmett didn’t like it. He wanted action, and he wanted it now, but he was also conscious of Cocke County’s economic situation. He pursed his lips, thinking, fin [thiuntygers tapping his gun butt with little pats of sound. “Mike, Dave,” he said, addressing two river guides, “you’ll see word gets passed? I’ll run patrols down here throughout the night, but I’d rather not have to arrest somebody or pull a dead stoner outta the water.”

  The two men nodded. Mike Kohlenberger, also known as Jedi Mike, or the Old Man of the River, had more than thirty years of rafting experience, and Dave was a raft guide, a Class V kayak paddler, and a Level Four instructor—meaning the two were the best of the best. I’d met them back when I was a mid level investigator at a security company, before I went out on my own. Someone in the small paddling community had been breaking into local businesses protected by RJY Securities, and I’d been sent to look around. They weren’t friends, but, for business competitors, they had a good working relationship.

  Mike squinted into the sun glare on the river, his lined face drawing tight, one hand adjusting the red scarf he wore like a do-rag. Voice booming, he said, “We’ll pass the word.”

  I started the climb back up the riverbank, still looking for evidence of the creature I believed had attacked Itty Bitty and her boyfriend. At the top of the short rise, I stopped, a fresh scent reaching me. My sense of smell is a lot better than most humans’, likely because of the decades I spent in Beast-form before I found my human shape again and reentered the human world. I flipped my hip-length braid out of the way and dropped to my hands and knees in the brush.

  The dead-fishy smell was here too, but this time it overlay another familiar scent, the scent I had expected to find after seeing the pics of the injured. With one hand, I pushed aside the sharp-edged grass, not touching the ground beneath or disturbing the roots, but exposing a partial paw print. I had found my evidence, and I didn’t know whether to be pleased with myself or even more worried. “Werewolf,” I said, louder.

  The cop jostled closer to get a better view.

  I pressed more grass aside, revealing more paw prints. They were as large as my hand, the nonretractable claws leaving long indentations in the damp soil. One forepaw had been bloody, and I could smell dried blood, rank and old. Not much of a leap to assume it was Itty Bitty’s blood. I bent and sniffed. Witch blood. Itty Bitty was from a witch family. I motioned to Molly to take photos of the prints while I crawled forward, pressing the long, sharp grass to either side of the wolf tracks.

  I bent lower, letting my nose tell me what my eyes couldn’t, the musky scent rising to fill my head. And I shivered in the heat. I knew these wolves. I’d fought them. I put it together fast, dread leaping back onto me. I had helped to kill off all the members of the Lupus Pack of werewolves, except for two wolves who had been in jail during the raid. I had fo
rgotten about them until now. They had made bail and tracked me down, and that one forgetful mistake was coming back to bite me on the butt. I had gotten sloppy. Directly or indirectly, they were here because of me. “Two wolves, at least,” I said, keeping my head low so they couldn’t read my face, pretending that it was visual clues giving me the information. “I may know them. Contact Jodi Richoux at New Orleans PD for names and mug shots.”

  The cop cursed and reached for his cell pho [ hi.”

  “Good idea,” I said. Crime scene techs would have been a better idea this morning, before several hundred tourists had access to the area, and before the powerhouse released thousands of cubic feet of water, but who was I to point out someone else’s mistake.

  While Emmett pushed back the guides and gawkers and called the sheriff, I followed the tracks on my hands and knees across a gravel parking area to the small two-lane road. The scent of shifter magic filled my nostrils where the wolves had changed back to human form. Yeah. I knew them. And I knew it was no coincidence that they were here. The attack, here, now, so close to Mount Sterling, so close to the parley of vamps I was guarding, wasn’t an accident. It was a personal challenge and a private threat, issued on the body of innocents.

  A growl vibrated through me—Beast, angry, thinking of the photographs. Yearling human. Not-experienced kit. Her claws milked into my mind, piercing and withdrawing. Too young to fight off pack hunters. Hate pack hunters. Stealers of winter food. Thieves of meat.

  I stood and brushed off my hands again, looking from the street back to the river and the bridge, envisioning the wolves waiting in the tall brush just downstream, slinking into the water in the dark, attacking the young woman, Itty Bitty. The wolves dragging her—bleeding profusely, terrified, screaming—to shore and deliberately infecting her with the were-taint. In my mind’s eye, I pictured her boyfriend leaping from his kayak, seeing indistinct shapes swarming in the night, hearing her cries, rushing in, swinging a sharp-bladed paddle, only to have the wolves turn on him, savaging him for interfering. Other predawn paddlers coming fast. The weres slipping away in the ruckus. Anger burned under my breastbone. This had happened because of me. The wolves were here because of my actions and decisions. My advice. My plans. Crap.