Shadow Rites

Beast had a much simpler view of things than I did. Kill and ask questions later. No can do, I thought back at her. Deep inside, she extended her claws and milked my brain. It hurt. A lot. But it meant she was close if I needed to draw on her, so I wasn’t going to gripe.

Walking back into the shadows of the kitchen, I muttered, “The scan—if that’s what it is—is nearly done upstairs. That leaves this half of the downstairs. Oh.” Apprehension sped through me. “And the weapons storage and the utility area.” Parts of the house I seldom went into and rarely even thought about.

Eli waited, watching me. He wanted a plan of action, but I didn’t have one to give him. As a rogue-vamp hunter, I had a legal leg to stand on when killing vamps—and their human blood-servants—who presented a clear and present danger to the human populace. The blood-servant ruling was a new one, recently issued by the Louisiana Supreme Court, over a kill made back in the nineties by another vamp hunter, who was arrested, convicted, and imprisoned when he killed three of a vamp’s walking blood-meals while saving a family of four humans. The vamp hunter was free now, though no one could give him back his lost years. The state supreme court decision gave me certain powers, within state law, against rogue vamps and their willing dinner partners. Against sane vamps, law-abiding humans, law-abiding were-creatures, or witches, I had no more power than anyone else.

I didn’t know what to do. My Beast-inspired headache was growing. One thing I knew for certain. The house was old, constructed of wood and old brick, with an antiquated electrical system. If the magics wanted to cause me trouble, burning down the house would be easy. I sniffed again, but the stink of magic-induced smoke was gone. For now.

Alex waved us over and said softly, “I took digital photos of them, but the photos don’t work worth jack through the obfuscation spells.” We stood behind his chair and his boy-man-garlic stink wafted up. Eli swatted him on the back of the head.

“What’s that for?” Alex complained, sotto voce, rubbing his head and straining back to grimace at us.

“For being Stinky,” I said. “So the digitals didn’t work. Why am I here smelling you?”

He scowled at us through his straggly curls and bent back over his screen. “Because the tape is working fine. Both witches are female, natch, and though the light sucks, they might be African-American or mixed race.”

We all studied the camera footage. One witch appeared to be about five-five, two hundred fifty pounds, give or take. She held herself stiffly and something about her stance suggested that she was middle-aged, dressed in a long, full skirt and turban. The other one moved like someone younger, maybe even late teens. She was dressed in jeans and T-shirt, a skinny girl with lots of hair. Alex initiated some kind of electronic conversion, taking the tape to digital where he did something with the brightness and contrast and created stills from the footage.

I pointed at the younger one and asked, “Lots of long curly hair. A wig?”

“Could be,” Alex said. “Or extensions. That is all the still shots can make out.”

“Decisions,” Eli demanded. “Stay here or leave? Call the cops? Call someone else?”

I frowned and walked to the bottom of the stairs again, to see the light of the working moving to the front of the house and the two narrow doors/windows that opened to the small second-floor gallery at the front. We never used the front gallery. I didn’t even know if the doors would open anymore, what with the damp and heat, and the swelling and shrinking of old wood in older frames.

I needed to get close to the witches.

“No,” Eli said.

I chuckled under my breath. My partner had a way of reading my mind. “I can access the Gray Between and bubble time, without much pain, if I don’t try to actually do anything but watch while I’m there.” And maybe Eli wouldn’t realize that this situation might to call for more than that. The witches might have the ability to set the house on fire, so I needed to be able to disable them. And to do that, I would have to move in the Gray Between of bubbled time. The ability to move outside time was part of my skinwalker energies, though whether it was something that all skinwalkers had been able to do, or if I was the only one—because an angel had given me the ability—I didn’t know. I had met only one other skinwalker. And I had killed him. And the angel wasn’t talking.

Bubbling time made me deathly sick, and it wasn’t something that my skinwalker energies healed well. Moving in bubbled time had nearly killed me, leaving me afraid to use the gift. Fear was a new emotion for me and I hated it. But I had to be honest and admit that the fear was one reason I hadn’t made a decision yet. Fear paralyzed.

The pale green swath of light was coming down the stairs. “Well, crap,” I muttered. I was out of time. Ha-ha. I blew out a breath. “Call the cops,” I ordered Alex, “but not nine-one-one. Try the woo-woo room. If someone we know is on, tell them what’s happening. Then do what they say. If no one is in the department, then call nine-one-one.”

Giving up on being discreet, I stepped into the middle of the living room and pointed again, drawing an imaginary line from one part of the house to the other. “The scanning beam is here.” It was about eight feet from Alex, who reacted by grabbing up his precious electronic equipment while dialing the woo-woo department of NOPD, direct. He got through on one of his backup systems to someone in the woo-woo room, the department that handled paranormal cases.