Skinwalker

I parked the bike in the shade of a flowering tree, its branches arching over and down to provide shade. I stuffed my leather jacket in a saddlebag, pulled the skirt over my jeans, and shimmied them off. Rolling them up, I stuffed them in beside the jacket and removed my worn Bible, which hadn’t come out since I got to New Orleans. Guilt pricked at me but I squashed it.

Though the boots looked a bit odd with the skirt in the reflection of the storefront windows, the skirt hadn’t wrinkled, and it was better than jeans. Some churches were picky about their congregation’s wardrobe. I had no intention of offending, even if I didn’t like the service well enough to return.

The congregation was singing when I slipped in, late, and took a seat on the back row. There were no musical instruments, which was weird, but the congregation sang hymns I knew in four-part harmony, and with the exception of two loud, off-key voices, it was pretty. Before the sermon, they served the Lord’s Supper, which I hadn’t had in a while.

I was letting the cracker soften in my mouth, when something seemed to heat in the back of my mind, and I saw a glimpse of Leo Pellissier’s face in my memory. But the thought, whatever it was, was gone faster than I could grab it.

The sermon was about church doctrine, not exactly a rabble-rousing, heartwarming, or hell and damnation sermon, nothing to get the spiritual juices flowing. But not bad. And the people were nice, most finding me after the sermon and introducing themselves in a confusing blend of faces, names, and scents. The preacher was an earnest man who could have passed for twelve, with a scraggly attempt at a moustache, but he was probably older. Had to be. It was okay. I might return next week. If I was still here.

There was a ladies’ room off the front entrance, where I pulled on the jeans again. I expected the churchgoers to look askance when I emerged in biker gear, but they just smiled harder, if that was possible, showing teeth to prove they wanted me back. No matter what kind of fool motorcycle-gangbanger I might be.

In the parking lot, I chatted about my bike with a few teenagers and an elder who wandered over to make sure I wasn’t selling crack to the kiddies. Bitsa’s a cutie-pie and the boys were entranced. For that matter, so was the elder, though he tried to act all stern. When I caught the eye of an impatient parent, I shooed away the boys and geared up. Waving in the remaining churchgoers’ general direction, I pulled into traffic.

In the packet of papers that came with my contract were the addresses for each of the clan blood-masters. Not their hidden sleeping places, not their lairs, but their public addresses where they entertained, where their mail was sent, and their IRS refunds, and their bills, though it brought a smile to my face to imagine a vamp opening an IRS refund or a Visa bill.

I wanted to drive by as many as I could. Sniff out their dens, in Beast-think. Four blood-masters lived in the Garden District: Mearkanis, Arceneau, Rousseau, and Desmarais. The other masters were farther out, with Leo living the most distant. St. Martin, Laurent, and Bouvier were somewhere in between. The “saint” part of St. Martin was a surprise, but then, what I knew about sane vamps was, well, nothing, until now. I was learning stuff I’d never have believed only a month earlier. Sane vamps were a whole different order of business from rogues.

I motored down St. Charles Avenue and entered the Garden District on Third Street. I zipped up and down the blocks, locating the houses, taking time to park the bike and walk down the street in front of and behind each house, sniffing for rogue, trying not to be too obvious.

Vamp security was good. I was riding past the third house on my list, the address of Clan Arceneau’s blood-master, looking for a place to park the bike for a walk-around, when a security guy stepped outside. He was lean, narrow-waisted, broad-shouldered, and made no attempt to hide the holstered megagun he carried. He wore khakis, a red T-shirt, and a tough attitude that looked military, along with wraparound sunglasses, which looked pretty stupid in the shadows.

I figured, what the heck, I might as well push the boundaries. I gunned Bitsa through the open, six-foot-tall, black-painted, wrought-iron gate, the twisted bars in a fleur-de-lis and pike-head pattern at the top, and braked at the back bumper of a black Lexus parked in the narrow drive. I killed the engine. Kicked the stand and unhelmeted. The guard watched me the whole time, walking out onto the porch, hands at his sides, ready to pull the big ugly gun if he needed to.

Beast awoke at the possible threat and thought at me, Holstered gun, like sheathed claws. No match for us. And, Other one at door. I heard footsteps and knew a second guard had come to the door as backup. If there were only two guards, that left the rest of the house vulnerable.

I smiled at Big-Gun, pulling in the scents of the yard. Chemical fertilizers, traces of yappy-dog and house-cat urine and stool, weed killer, dried cow manure, exhaust, rubber tires, rain, oil on the streets. Big-Gun didn’t smile back, but he must have decided I was harmless because he put both hands on his waist. “Lost?” he asked. He sounded almost friendly. But then I guess you can sound friendly when you’re carrying a small cannon under your arm.

“Nope. I’m looking for Clan Arceneau.”

Slicker than lightning, he drew his weapon. He had clearly been drinking vamp blood, to be so fast. Beast tensed. I stared down the barrel of the cannon. “I’m Jane Yellowrock, the hired gun looking for the rogue vamp. You got a minute? For a nice, friendly visit?”

“Depends. You got ID?” When I nodded, he said, “Real slow. Two fingers. Unzip the jacket. When I’m satisfied, you drop the jacket and turn in a circle. Then you can pull an ID.”

With two fingers, I pulled down the zipper on the jacket, held out one side and then the other, showing that I was not wearing a holster. At his nod, I slid the jacket off and laid it over the leather seat. Holding my arms out, I did a slow pirouette, keeping an eye on the gun. I was certain that Beast could move faster than he could fire, but it wasn’t something I wanted to test.

I stopped when I faced front again and set my smile back in place. Being in the gun’s sights, it had slipped. “ID?” I asked. He nodded. Still using two fingers, I lifted the jacket and revealed the inner pockets. I pointed to one and slid my fingers inside and back out, the ID between them. At his gesture, I flipped it to the concrete pathway and stepped back. He studied it from the safety of nearly six feet in height before backing toward the house.

“Bring the jacket. You’ll be searched at the door. Thoroughly.” He grinned. He was going to enjoy it too. I could accept a little groping or I could leave. Not much in the way of other choices. But . . . this was a chance to see inside.

“I can live with a search,” I said, pulling off my sunglasses so he could see my eyes. “But if it turns to groping, I’ll bust your balls.” Beast rose in me like a wraith. Big-Gun started to laugh, but it disappeared fast, his eyes watching me like I was a bomb about to go off.

“Yeah. Guests in the house,” he said. Which made no sense to me, but seemed to mean something to him. And then I saw his ear wire. The guys were wired into the system.

Big-Gun looked like an instinct kinda guy, the kind who listened to his gut, followed it, and his gut was telling him I was trouble. But his eyes couldn’t see much reason for the reaction, except for the Beast look I had thrown him. Uncomfortable, he kept his eyes on me, as if he thought I might pounce without warning.

To placate him, I smiled sweetly to show I was just a little old thing, female and weak. He wasn’t buying it. I had always wondered what Beast looked like to others. I had tried to see the effect by studying myself in a mirror, but it just didn’t look like that big of a deal to me.

Beast huffed at the thought. Looks like death. Big claws. Big teeth.

Big-Gun waved me in. I picked up the jacket, still with two fingers, and led the way. Inside was another guy, who took my jacket, indicated I was to stand against the wall for the search, and who looked like Big-Gun. Exactly like Big-Gun, except he was wearing a navy blue T-shirt. “Twins?” I asked, putting palms on the wall as I tried to see over my shoulder. They both pulled off glasses and grinned while I did the back-and-forth to compare. “Huh,” I said.

Big-Gun-Red-Shirt did a professional, nongroping search, while Big-Gun-Blue-Shirt went through my jacket pockets. I just smiled when his brows rose at some of the stuff he found, announcing them aloud to the house system. “Four crosses. Small New Testament. Keys, seven of them, two that look like storage unit keys, one safe-deposit key. Three house keys, a gate key, all on a Leo horoscope key chain. One small, pearl-handled folding knife with silvered blade. Velcro tourniquet.” He sent me an interested look. “Tourniquet?” he said again.

I shrugged. “What can I say? Be prepared.” I quoted a Boy Scouts motto.

“Small flashlight,” he went on. “What looks like a tooth. Cuff bracelet, silver.”

“Hey,” I said, delighted. “I thought I lost that. Gimme.” When he placed the ornate silver cuff in my hand, I slid it on my arm and admired the gleam. The twins rolled eyes at the girly reaction, but it had the effect of calming Big-Gun-Red-Shirt down from his Beast-induced state of readiness. “Tooth.” I held out the same hand. It was a tooth from the same panther that comprised my fetish necklace, carried around for emergency shift, when I didn’t have time to do it the easy way, with meditation, in a gold nugget-marked rock garden. He put it in my hand and I tucked it in my jeans pocket. “So. Can we talk?”

“Sure. Brandon,” Big-Gun-Red said, pointing at his own chest. “The ugly one is Brian.” They both laughed as if at an old joke. “Staff quarters are this way.”

Brian behind me, Brandon led me through the three-story house, which was larger and deeper than I would have thought from the outside. Maybe forty-six feet across the front, and twice that deep, the house took up most of the small lot, with kitchen and added-on staff quarters on the back of the lower story.Which was nice, because the walk through the central hallway allowed me to see the layout.

There was a wide staircase in the foyer, leading up into darkness, carpeted with an Oriental rug in shades of blue and gray and black. The dining room and parlor were on opposite sides of the foyer, with hand-carved cherrywood table and chairs and loads of china showing through glass doors of built-in cabinetry in one room, and antique, upholstered furniture, statues, and objets d’art in the other. Our feet made no sound on the carpeted hallway floor. Gilt-framed paintings hung on the right wall in the wide hall, and a mural graced the left. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">