Mercy Blade (Jane Yellowrock #3)

Back online, I did a quick search on the Cursed of Artemis, the proper name for weres. There was a host of info on the goddess Artemis and not much on the cursed. I marked several sites to go back to if needed and studied the dusty ceiling some more, my eyes on a cobweb draping a corner.

Kem had also claimed that all weres were predators. But I was pretty sure skinwalkers could take on forms other than predator. Beast growled at me. Beast is not prey.

“I know,” I murmured to her. “You’re not a dog either, but I appreciate the willingness to let me shift into one.”

Good nose, she said, without adding ugly dog. From Beast, that was excellent praise.

I rolled over, went offline and placed the report on the floor next to the computer, finishing the summary. There were multiple authors, most of whom disagreed on pretty much every issue. But based on an extensive knowledge of myth and the information gained since the weres were revealed, they agreed on several conclusions: weres were one-creature-only shifters; they were bound by the moon in ways not yet made public; initially, weres had been made, not born, originally created from a human who survived a near-lethal bite by an infected human or animal; there was evidence that some weres could now breed true, suggesting that they had become a human subspecies; and the weres themselves had outlawed turning a human into one of them. Skinwalkers, if they had ever existed, were possibly weres’ forebears; and, last, skinwalkers might be extinct.

A shaft of pain pierced me and I closed my eyes against the knowledge that I may have killed the only one like me on the planet. Later. I can deal with it later, I thought. Yeah. Me and that gal from Gone with the Wind, the one in the green drapes with a plantation to run. I forced my mind back to the problem at hand—weres, skinwalkers, vamps, Gee, Rick, and what they all had to do with killing Safia.

Rick had been undercover and after the were-cats, going after what he would think of as the weakest link, the were-female, that much was clear from his scent on Safia’s mouth. Not that I had any way of proving it. Jodi wouldn’t tell me and I didn’t have passwords for the police computer system.

I tapped the page with a fingertip, remembering the way the werewolves smelled. Sick. And early in the past century, they were breaking their own laws, trying to turn human females, all of whom had died. And the wolf-bitch had seemed crazy as a loon.

The were-cats, however, hadn’t smelled sick. Important differences between weres and me—I was born, not made, and I couldn’t make another skinwalker via a bite, at least I didn’t think I could, which put me into a very different category from a were.

There was more blacked out near the bottom of the report, but the writer closed with one further conjecture, and this one caught and held my attention. “Perhaps the weres, who are all predators, grew in numbers faster than their shape-shifter forebears, or skinwalkers. With both blended into human society, there could have been war between them, with the weres victorious, killing off all other kinds of shifters.”

If that was so, it made the werewolves and the were-cats my enemies. Kemnebi had said he didn’t like the way I smelled. And Leo had made sure he got a good whiff of me. Ergo, Leo knew more than he was telling about the weres. And about me.

CHAPTER 16

You Like the Boy Toy

I got a few hours of sleep after dawn and before my cell phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number and nearly didn’t answer, but at the last moment, I flipped the cell open. “Jane Yellowrock.”

“Sloan Rosen,” he said. I looked at the number and filed it to memory. “Jodi would have my balls if she knew I was calling you. But have you heard from Rick?”“No. Not since . . . Tuesday? Wednesday? The day he went back undercover, if I’m guessing right, which also requires an underlying guess—that he was undercover with the were-cats in the first place. Not that I was informed.”

“You didn’t hear that from me. And you didn’t hear this either. He was supposed to check in twice a day and it’s been well over twenty-four hours. If you hear from him, make sure he checks in. I’m starting to worry.”

I sat up in bed and pushed hair back from my face. “I will.” “No connection” appeared on the screen and I stared at the phone for a moment, dread growing in my chest. Sloan Rosen had no reason to call me. We weren’t buddies. And his excuse, “If you hear from him, make sure he checks in,” was specious. For a cop to step out of the established cop fraternity and talk to an outsider, even a wife or parent, about a cop who was undercover, was really odd.

And then I knew. Sloan wanted me to look for Rick. Rick was in trouble, Sloan knew it, and he couldn’t help him, not without blowing Rick’s cover or making things worse for him. So, obliquely, he asked the gun-toting vamp-killer to do it—which meant Rick was under the control of a supernat, and they needed someone involved who was capable of handling a supe outside the law. Cops are sneaky. And Rick was in trouble.

I pulled out the sheet of paper and unfolded the printed photos of Rick and Safia. I studied them without letting emotions rise and interfere with reason and observation, looking for details, hints as to where and when the shots were taken. The trellis shot was the Soniat Hotel in the Quarter. The other hotel looked run-down, cheap; the slice of New Orleans cityscape seen through the breezeway might be a way to locate it. With my cell phone, I took several pics of the photo sheet to compare with the New Orleans skyline.

I geared up for a hunt, which meant carrying all the weapons I legally could, and as many as I could carry that weren’t strictly legal. And I dressed in silk long johns and leathers, despite the wet and hellacious Louisiana heat.

I was outside in the street, straddling Bitsa, when the cell rang again. I looked at the display and thought about tossing the cell into the bushes. I took a breath to keep from cussing and picked up. “What do you want?”

“Is that any way for a servant to reply to her master’s call?” Leo asked.

Servant? Master? “I’m a contract employee,” I ground out, my molars tight, “not your servant. And you are, no way, no how, my master.”

Leo decided to ignore my emancipation proclamation, and said, “Your Department of State has elected not to require that a postmortem autopsy be performed upon the body of the deceased were-cat, this in keeping with the demands of the Party of African Weres. Their investigative arm is at a standstill, stymied by the demands of Kemnebi. Your Jodi Richoux—”

“She isn’t mine.”

“—is unable to take control and unwilling to follow my orders.”

“Go figure.”

“You will discover who killed Safia. And you will bring him to me.” The phone clicked off. I noted that the sun was well above the horizon. Leo’s lair had to be so deeply underground that no sunlight could penetrate in order for him to be active during the day. I’d seen vamps active by day once before, in a cave deep underground. And I’d seen a very old vamp, stinking of sunscreen, strolling the city streets once, just at sunset, when the last rays of the sun still cast a soft gray light. Could all old vamps day-walk? Was the ability to day-walk something only some bloodlines had? I remembered Evangelina’s comment about some vamp blood being poisonous and some not. I was getting the feeling that not all vamps were equal, and lack of knowledge was biting me in the butt again.

And Rick was in trouble. Maybe big trouble.

From memory, I dialed a number in Boone, North Carolina. Maybe I’d say my cell phone bill was a business expense and try to get Leo to pay it. Before now, I’d only e-mailed Reach with personal status and professional kill info; I’d never called him. Reach ran several independent Web sites for PIs and others in the specialized community of security professionals. One site was dedicated to vamp-hunts and hunters, a free, public site where he posted stats, kills, and hunters’ professional information. But if one needed his other skills, they came at a price.

He was a shadow in the world of PIs. If you needed something hacked or tracked, and if you were independently wealthy—like oil-sheikh rich—and if you had even a smidgen of digital info to give him, you could hire his services. But there was no guarantee of success, and he had ways to make sure you paid, success or failure. I took a breath and my financial future in my hands as Reach answered.

“If it was anybody but you,” Reach said, his voice hoarse and granular with sleep, “I’d send a virus to fry your cell, laptop, and brain, in that order. What are you doing up so freaking early, Jane Yellowrock?”

I felt like I’d been slapped. So I got mouthy, which always seemed to work when I was playing with the big dogs. “Late, Reach, not early. No rest for the wicked. I need some help.”

“Not wicked. You’re one of those God-lovers. What do you want? And it’ll cost you double for getting me up so early. You’re with Bank of America, right?” He read me my account number and named his fee. My heart dropped at the amount, but I didn’t dicker. Reach could reach anywhere and do anything, and with Rick in trouble, that was what I needed. “I’ll start a money transfer, if you approve.”

“Yeah, whatever. I need a location of a cell phone, a GPS tracking of its whereabouts for the last seventy-two hours, incoming and outgoing numbers and triangulation of any cells he contacted, the addresses and info on any landlines that he communicated with, and any texts that were sent to and from the number in that time period. If the cell is off, then I need everything until it went off. And if you can reach out like the hand of God and turn it on, I need you to do that too.” Reach started to interrupt. “Yeah, I know it’s gonna cost me big. Take it from the account. And I need a photo location.” With my thumb, I sent the photos to Reach. “Check your e-mail.”

Keys clacked in the background. “I see the number and a sucky-quality photo. The number is registered to Rick LaFleur, who happens to be . . . well, well, well. An NOPD cop.”

“You got a problem with that?”

“Not me. Who’s the babe?”