Shadow Rites

I stuck my nose up and pulled in scents in with a scree of sound. “Problem. Put us down over there.” I pointed. Bruiser relayed my orders to the pilot and the helo banked hard enough to throw me into the seat belt. He turned on the landing lights to reveal a small islet with tire tracks across it. Trusting the tracks, he set the bird down gingerly.

I stayed in the helo, wrapped in the blanket and heated by the hand warmers, but the guys got out. It was light enough out to see that there were a lot of gator slides on the muddy banks. Gators push with legs and clawed feet through muck to the edge of a water source and then push off, letting gravity slide them into the water. The trails were long and slithery. And wide. Big gators. I sniffed. “Humans. There.” I pointed. “And dogs.” I wrapped myself more in the blanket and Bruiser and Eli stepped to the muddy edge.

“Skull,” Eli said, jutting with his chin because his hands were suddenly holding weapons. “There.”

“Another,” Bruiser said, pointing.

“I count three human skulls,” Eli said, “that one shattered, probably by gator teeth and jaws.” He took a number of photos of the crime scene. “Portions of several dog skulls. That one is fresh.” He pointed, and took a last photograph.

“Feeding her dogs wasn’t good enough. Tau wanted magic, and for that Ming needed human blood, I’m guessing at least once a month.”

“Why did she leave the first two humans and none of the other bodies?” Eli asked.

I gave him a small shrug, tilting my head to the side, the gesture mostly hidden by the enfolding blanket. “Smell? The first two were bones already and underwater.”

“And the new bodies floated while decomposing,” Bruiser said, “and the smell of decomposition was horrible to her. Good supposition.”

“Four on the surface,” Eli said. “Concur. Likely more bones in the muck at the bottom. Let’s go.”

CHAPTER 16

Dang-Er-Sus?

Back inside the helo, Bruiser said to the pilot, “Pass along these coordinates to the sheriff’s department and the detective handling the investigation of the pit.”

“Yes, sir.”

He switched off the pilot’s access to our coms. “Jane? Love. . . . Clarify for me, please. Were the women here? Was Antoine?”

“Yes. All three. And two human males who were helping Tau bring humans here, but their scents had degraded from rain and the churning of the mud. I think . . . I think that I’d recognize them if I came into contact with them. If I was in bloodhound form. But I can’t say for certain about in human form. There was something awful about their scents. Like drugs, maybe.”

And the stink of Ming, starving and insane and raving. How many had she killed while trapped in the pit? How many were her fault? Any of them? I didn’t know.

“So we can add murder to the long list of crimes committed by Tau and Marlene. The Witch Council of New Orleans could turn over the crimes to the law enforcement authorities,” Eli said.

“Or take them out themselves,” Bruiser said.

“Or call in a hunter,” Eli said.

I knew he meant me. Turning away, I stared out the window at the rapidly approaching New Orleans landscape. “What about the Onorio scent?” I asked.

“I’ll have to ask the priestesses,” Bruiser said. “I don’t know. I’ve never heard of this before.”

“The scent wasn’t just Onorio,” I said. “It leaned toward vampire. Maybe a new kind of vamp.” Vamps had an uncanny desire to play with nature and create new things, things that were not bound by the usual strictures of vamp-dom: daylight, silver, blood, the devoveo. What if the double-gened witch had tapped into that desire in Ming and used it? The witch might have turned herself into anything. Something new. Something so powerful that . . . that I couldn’t fight it. Couldn’t fight her.

Eli pulled his cell and read aloud. “Alex found a last will and testament for Mildred and Eugene Nicaud, in 1957, who left four peacock pins to Simon Nicaud and his wife, Alva. Antoine Nicaud was their sole heir and he inherited the four brooches from his parents.”

Four brooches. And Rick had said Antoine was originally from the Pedro Cays, islands south of Jamaica. Rick didn’t know anything about Antoine’s magic or training except he had maybe apprenticed to an African priestess.

Bethany was an African priestess. Bethany had bitten me, to heal me, once. She had access to every part of vamp central. She could have gone into the women’s locker room and scraped my DNA out of the drain. But Bethany was nutso and I couldn’t quite see her being so linear and driven.

Bruiser asked, “Are the names confirmed? Are there photographs of the brooches? Any proof whether they were sold?”

“Four brooches,” I said. I had thought we were in the clear as to the brooches and the witches’ ability to control vamps. I closed my eyes, imagining all the crazy spells they could throw with the two brooches.

Bruiser nodded. “Do we have any insurance listings to confirm where the missing brooches are now?”

“Alex is searching,” Eli said.

“If she still has them,” I said, “and if she is what I think she is, then we’re in big trouble. Tell Alex to check marriage license for Marlene and birth records for Tau. A will for Antoine. Text Molly and have her get to Lachish, right now, about Marlene and Tau Nicaud. She can’t play games anymore. If we’re right, and Tau is the daughter of Marlene and Antoine’s wife, then she might carry two witch genes.” Like Angie Baby, I thought again. “Meaning that she is beyond scary, crazy powerful. She could be a magical nuclear bomb waiting to go off. And, after drinking blood from a vamp who had been eating rotting human flesh, probably just crazy.”