Blood Trade

CHAPTER 18 The Bad Men Are Gone

Eli let out a war scream and jumped in front. Stupid man. I nearly shot him. Instead, I adjusted my aim, braced the M4, and fired point-blank at the next thing. They were spidey vamps all right, but next-gen spidey vamps. Faster than lightning and nearly as deadly. The one I shot took the blast midcenter and didn’t even pause except to change direction by shoving off Eli’s back and leaping at me. I fired two shots in rapid sequence. Not gonna get chewed on twice.

The spidey vamp landed on me, gasping, and I let her slide down me to the floor. I put the shotgun to her head and fired. She stopped moving, so I pulled the vamp-killer and took her head. Eli was lifting Sylvia to her feet. She was covered in gore, and my heart fell. “How much of that is yours?” I asked.

“None,” she said, and smiled at Eli.

Young love is so cute, I thought. And then realized I’d said it aloud. I shook myself and jogged away from them toward the sound of screams.

Most morgues these days don’t use the pull-out, refrigerated, coffin-sized beds, except for new arrivals or bodies still being processed. (That’s what they call it. Processed. Not slicing and dicing, measuring and scooping.) Most modern morgues use a cold room—a walk-in refrigerator where they can store bodies one of two ways: stack them on bunk-style ledges that look like prison beds, but without the charm or the pretense of a mattress, or on roll-in gurneys. In the autopsy suite, I stepped over the body on the floor. Someone had taken the liberty of beheading a spidey vamp, second gen. He was naked and had a hard carapace, like a spider’s, over his chest—or, rather, it was part of his chest. The carapace was brown and covered with coarse hairs, spiked and barbed. If he had ever been human, he’d lost it totally.

Farther in the room was another one, still alive, her head only half removed. She was sitting on top of a human, her face buried in his belly, slurping. For creatures who had a rep for physical speed, their mental abilities were more along the lines of brain-dead. I reared back with the vamp-killer and yelled, “Hey, fanghead!” The vamp looked up and focused on me. Multifaceted eyes bulged from her face. Fly eyes. I hurled my arm forward with all my strength behind it.

Though I cut with anger rather than skill, I took her head, the blow sending it spinning, and I could have sworn she stared at me the whole time, until her head whapped into the wall. At my feet, her body was reaching for me. I kicked it away from the human beneath. It was the pathologist, and he was way too dead for any help.

Reaching for the handle of the cold room, I had a moment’s memory of the building today with the refrigerator and the white witch circle painted on the floor. This fridge was empty of witch circles, but the moment I opened the door, I was charged by more vamp things. I caught half a breath, pulling the M4 into firing position as they flowed across the space like centipedes, a swirling yet jerky motion. The musk they exuded was dry and ammoniac, and they moved so fast I had only an instant of impression before the first one was on me. Naked, every one, and insectoid. Ick.

The first one latched on to the barrel of the shotgun as if she intended to use it as a straw. Taking her head was easy, and had the added benefit of peppering the vamps behind her with silver fléchettes. It didn’t kill them, but it made three of them jump back. I put a hole in the two still moving forward and slammed the door shut. I had counted only four rounds, but the shotgun was empty and I broke open the M4 to reload from my handy-dandy shell holder. I could hear the creatures screaming inside, even over the concussive eardrum damage from the shotgun. They might not look like vamps, but they had the vamp death scream down pat.

To the others, who had gathered close, I said, “I count five,” like it was a game we were playing or something.

Eli removed a metal shim from his go-bag and rammed it under the latching mechanism, effectively sealing them in, and the ease of it had me laughing. “That’s the easiest vamp trap I ever saw.”

He gave me that little no-smile of humor. “After the last time we were in Natchez, I started carrying extra equipment. Let’s clear this place and come back,” he added to Syl.

“Yeah.” I loaded the six additional rounds fast, and moved out behind the happy, courting couple.

There was only one revenant vamp still loose, and he was chewing on a dead security guard. Eli took the vamp’s head with his vamp-killer, a silver-plated machete. He used it like he’d had plenty of practice, and made me wonder about the scars on his chest and neck and face. Not that I’d ask. But I did wonder. And I wondered what he’d tell Sylvia, if anything. The cause of his wounds was classified, so it wasn’t likely.

The guard was propped against a locked door, an empty can of mace in his lap. “Yeah,” I said. “Mace is gonna do a lot of good. It might make the vamp’s sense of smell less acute, but it won’t stop a brainless killing machine.”

We turned away, but I heard a whimper and grabbed Eli’s arm. “What?” he asked. I paused, releasing his arm so he would have full range of motion. He stepped behind me, pushing Sylvia nearer me and protecting the womenfolk, the idiot man, but still covering my back, as Sylvia and I studied the hallway. And this time we all heard it: a whimper. Coming from the guard. “No way,” Syl said.

I saw a sliver of bloody cloth that had once been white sticking out from under the guard’s blood-soaked navy pants. “Crap,” I whispered. Silently, I stepped back and bent my knees, wedging my hands under his flaccid arms and standing, pulling him away from the corner. A little girl was curled into a ball behind his body, eyes closed tightly, a thumb in her mouth. Whimpering softly with each breath, a rhythmic moan of fear. I dropped the guard to the side and lifted the girl in my arms. “It’s all right, sweetie,” I murmured. “The bad men are gone.” I stepped over the guard, mentally saluting him, cradling the child. She was dark-haired with death-pale skin and a heartbeat I could hear, racing and bouncing. “It’s all right, sweetie,” I repeated. “The bad men are gone.”

Eli moved in front, guarding our passage out. I handed Sylvia my shotgun and she fell behind, scanning our trail out, walking halfway backward. In the main room, back at the fridge, Eli pulled a flashbang off his vest and nodded at me. “You’re faster than Syl. Give her the girl.” Understanding what he wanted, I switched the child for the M4. The smaller woman cradled the little girl gently, carrying her out of sight of the bodies. “Stay close,” Eli told her. “Just in case.”

To me, he said, “Make it fast. On three. One.” He activated the stun grenade. “Two. Three.”

I pulled out the shim and yanked the door open as he tossed in the grenade. Using Beast’s speed, I slammed the door shut, catching the top of a vamp’s head and part of a hand before they jumped back again.

The flashbang went off with a massive thump, the concussion and intense wattage muted by the thick walls of the cold room, and followed almost instantly by the pealing, nearly ultrasonic screams of vamps in agony. I jerked the door open again and took out three revenants while Eli took three more. I had no idea where the sixth one had come from. Maybe newly risen since the last time I peeked.

Even though I could practically feel Sylvia’s disapproval, which I ignored, I took pics of the cold room and each of the vamps—or what was left of them—and then left the gore-spattered place and took more pics of the other true-dead. Proof for payment. When I was done, Sylvia handed me the child and started making calls. Lots of calls. Carrying the little girl, I walked outside and sat in the SUV. I turned on the engine and the heater, wrapped the child in a blanket I took from Eli’s emergency supplies, and cradled her on my lap.

Beast sighed at me, murmuring, Kit. Love kit. She lay her head on her paws and looked up at me, her eyes lonely. Want kits. Too long since I suckled kits. She blew out a breath and twitched her ears, smelling the child. Want kits.

Her desire for family stormed up through me, bringing tears to my eyes, tears that rolled down my face and dripped onto Eli’s blanket. I wiped them off, my palm rough on my skin, pulling, hurting, my breathing loud in the SUV. I couldn’t give her kits without being in Beast skin for a long, long time. I couldn’t have a child without staying in human form for a long, long time. There was no easy answer to her need.

Minutes ticked by as I murmured endearments to the little girl. She fell asleep, her breathing soft and regular. She was so exhausted that she didn’t stir when the parking lot filled with emergency vehicles, sirens sounding, lights flashing. Uniformed men and women ran for the building, and most came back out, anger in their postures, faces hard. Their comrades had fallen and there was nothing left to kill. I understood the need for vengeance, and the impotence produced when that was denied.

The SUV was warm by the time Rick drove up, a woman from social services following him. The two stood in the chill night air, talking about the girl, from what I could make out. I turned off the SUV and let the silence cover me as my arms involuntarily tightened on the sleeping bundle in my lap. I was glad I was hidden in the vehicle, so no one could see the anguish I felt over giving her up.

I/we saved her, Beast thought at me, her voice a low growl. She is ours.

“She has a family,” I whispered. “We have to let her go.”

They were not here to protect her.

The security guard protected her, I thought. That makes him family. And his family her family. She isn’t ours.

Molly’s kits are ours. Angie Baby is ours.

“No,” I whispered aloud. “Not anymore.”

Beast growled and paced away to hide deep in my mind, her eyes slit in displeasure.

The girl was asleep in my arms when the social worker came toward the vehicle. I opened the door and turned in the seat, letting my boots hit the parking lot. The woman was short, stout, and motherly. And took the little girl away. I watched the social worker carry her to her car and drive away, my arms feeling heavy and empty. The darkness I’d been hiding from for days rose in me like a storm cloud, looking for something or someone to take out my fury and despondency on.

Instead of a revenant I could kill, Sylvia spotted me sitting in the dark and walked over, her hand on her gun butt, that angry-cop look lurking in her eyes. She said. “Cops are dead in there, and you were taking pictures. So you could get paid.”

She was right. What could I say? It was a stupid waste of time, but I tried logic. “You take crime-scene pictures. So do I. And, like you, I study them later to see what I missed, what I could have done differently. And, like you, I get paid because of those pictures.”

“Don’t compare us,” she snarled.

And I realized what she really wanted. I smiled, showing teeth, and reared back in the bucket seat, half in and half out of the vehicle, crossing my boots at the ankles. I laced my fingers across my midsection, going for irritating snark in both expression and body language. From the way her mouth tightened, I’d say I’d succeeded.

“Why not? You’d stay on the job if the county said you had to serve for free?” I asked.

“It isn’t the same thing.”

“No? If our country was attacked and our marines were cut off from supplies and pay, they would keep fighting, no matter what. They take an oath. You were elected,” I goaded. “Pay stops, I bet you’d stop doing the job too.”

“You don’t know me well enough to insult me.”

“Back atcha, Syl.”

It took a moment for her eyes to register her understanding, and when they did, her mouth turned down as if she’d sucked on a lemon. Then she sighed and sat down on the curb, almost as if she were showing submission, but I figured it was really just exhaustion. “Guess I deserved that.”

“You wanted a fight. I thought about giving it to you. I came close.”

“Eli says you’d win.” She didn’t sound happy about it.

“I’d wipe the floor with you,” I said happily.

Sylvia Turpin snorted. “I can’t decide if I like you or not.”

“Two alphas in the same city. Makes it hard.”

“Long as you stay away from Eli,” she said, “I guess I can live with it.” I started laughing, and Sylvia rolled her eyes. “Okay. That sounded like a high school girl laying claim to the cute boy in class. I’m an idiot. But—” She came to an abrupt stop, clearly floundering with whatever she wanted to communicate.

“But you never met anyone like him, and it worries you that we share a house?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“Friends and family. That’s all, Sheriff.”

“Yeah?” She thought about that a bit, her eyes on the parking lot at her feet. “Okay. I can live with that.” She stood and held out her hand, which trembled slightly. We shook. She didn’t release my hand, but held me in place and searched my face. After what felt like way too many seconds, she nodded and stepped back. “Okay. Later, Jane Yellowrock.”

“Later, Sylvia Turpin.”

• • •

It was after two a.m. when Eli and I drove into the historic Top of the Hill district of downtown to check out several addresses the Kid thought looked promising for containing vamp lairs. Some had basements, one had newly installed vamp shutters, and three had belonged to vamps on the kill list.

Like many old Deep South towns, the rich and hoity-toity lived close to the poor and down-and-out, sometimes only one block away or even one yard down. The socioeconomic distribution had been designed in a time when transportation was a major problem and the poor had to walk to work as servants at the rich people’s big houses and in town businesses and cotton mills and industry.

High Street was no exception to the rich-house/poor-house rule, and the address we turned in to was way off the street, little more than a shack, maybe six hundred square feet, with a tiny, off-kilter front porch, some kind of brick-printed sheeting hanging loose over rotting boards, and boarded-up windows. Eli put the SUV into neutral and we studied the small place in the headlights. “Looks abandoned,” I said.

“Yeah. We can hope.” Eli executed a fast three-point turn so were facing the street for a quick getaway. “Let’s check it out.” He cut the SUV engine, pulled on a baseball hat and a low-light vision scope over it, adjusted the aim of the device, and grunted. “Nothing.” Next he tried a handheld passive infrared system and grunted again. “Still nothing.”

It started to rain, drops hitting the windshield with heavy splats of sound and tiny little ice crystals in the middle of the dollops of rain. Eli handed me a superbright, 2,200-lumen flashlight and cut the motor. The night descended on us, silent and chill. The cold hit my face as I opened the door, a long-delayed weather front bringing the early stages of sleet with it. A slow, icy wind coursed along the ground, wisps of fog scudding around my legs. Something about the half-melted sleet, slow breeze, and the odd fog made me feel as if I were being watched, so I turned, setting my feet deliberately in a full circle, taking in the dark with Beast senses, breathing with my mouth open, scenting, before turning on the flash. Though I held it carefully before me, it still stole my night vision, so I closed my left eye to preserve what I could.

Leaving his door pushed closed but unlatched, Eli moved out from the SUV and toward the house. Bike riders don’t have to think about stuff like getting a car door open for a fast getaway. I copied him and fell in, walking so I could keep an eye behind us, the light illuminating the old street, moss hanging from trees, winter-burned gardens, tilled earth and mulch and lots of brown dead stems, and the shimmer of falling rain. No green plants meant no earth witches, not like Under the Hill, with its lush greenery and tingle of magics.

The dead plants seemed significant somehow, and the feel of emptiness settled on me, featherlight and ominous. The sound of rain intensified and icy drops ran down my face and neck and into my collar. I shivered once, bracing my shoulders against the cold.

Eli stepped onto the front porch, the boards creaking under his weight, and secured his flash to his weapon, so it moved where the gun pointed. With his free hand, he tried the door. It was open. The little hairs lifted on my neck. He glanced at me and I nodded once. He opened the door and moved inside to the left, graceful as a wraith. I followed, moving to the right and setting my back against the interior wall.

The front room was empty except for a bare mattress and drug paraphernalia—needles, syringes, metal spoons, burned matches, stubby candles, a broken glass bong and several that were made out of cola cans, the old scent of marijuana, and the fainter smell of chemical-laced drugs, probably crack and cocaine. The drugs could be cut with so many different products with diverse chemical makeups that they never smelled the same to me. I’d need to be a dog or even in Beast form to detect them well. The dank house smelled of black mold and dead mice and human urine, but it hadn’t been used as a drug house recently. And there was no fresh scent of anything, no old-school vamps, no new spidey vamps, no nothing.

We checked the back rooms anyway. Still nothing but broken furniture and food wrappers and used condoms, the stuff of romance for street people.

Eli was silent throughout the search, his face impassive the few times that reflected light bounced onto him. I was just glad to be out of the rain. I wasn’t sure that Eli had noticed any discomfort.

When we had determined there was nothing of interest here, I followed him to the SUV, wondering how he got to be point man but not really caring. Macho man protecting the little lady, no matter that I was as tall as he and could kick butt just as well. Better, even.

With rain alternating between sputters and downpours, we inspected six other places, addresses that the Kid had sent us. We found more of the same: empty lots, houses with families sleeping inside, empty houses with FOR SALE signs out front. There were no people on the street, human or otherwise; the city had been deserted, less because of the hour than because of fear of being kidnapped and eaten.

All in all, it was disappointing, and we headed home before dawn with only the kills from the morgue to show for our trouble. But hunting vamps was like that. A lot of records work followed by useless footwork, and then by either blood and gore or disappointment. Tonight we had both, and as we rode home, I e-mailed the kills to the MOC with instructions for electronic deposit into my account. Despite what Sylvia had said, money was money.

• • •

When we got home to Esmee’s, I sat in the SUV after Eli went inside, feeling at loose ends and not knowing what direction to take this investigation. I hadn’t discovered who was in charge of the spidey vamps, and I hadn’t found a single insight into where Misha was. I was a failure, and understood that I was creeping up on invisible deadlines that meant I might never find and save Mish, and more humans were dying at the fangs of vamps.

Sleepy, cranky, and angry at myself, I headed inside, not wanting any human interaction. So when Bobby greeted me at the foot of the stairs, sitting on the bottom step with his arms around his knees, I had to smother my irritation. “Bobby? What are you doing up?” I asked, managing to sound unruffled.

He yawned, and that made me more crabby. I wanted my bed. “Jane, I had a dream. It was about a lion.”

I had no idea what to do next. How was I supposed to react to that? Bobby stood and took my hand, pulling me into the breakfast room, where the lights blazed and Eli sat, his weapons on the table before him, one disassembled. He was fieldstripping and cleaning the guns, a nine-millimeter semi in parts and pieces laid out on a bamboo tray and a layer of old linen napkins probably provided by Jameson. Bobby pushed me into a seat, and I sat. I mean, really. What was I supposed to do?

“It was a mountain lion. I think it was you.”

Eli snorted softly without looking up.

“Misha says my dreams are symbic. She says that what I see isn’t always what the dreams mean.”

“Yeah,” I said, feeling better now that I had an out. “Most people’s dreams are symbolic.”

“That’s the word,” he said, pleased.

“What happened in yours?” I asked.

Eli glanced up from his weapons and raised his brows. I grimaced at him and turned my attention back to Bobby.

“You got shot.”

I went still, shock sizzling through me. Eli pushed a tray to me that held a universal gun-cleaning kit, and, with nothing else to do after that announcement, I began to disarm, setting my weapons on the table, mags out, chambers open, barrels pointing at an exterior wall and away from people. Like Eli, I kept one close at hand and ready to fire. More than one gunman had been caught with his pants down and all his weapons broken down, and had ended up dead because of it.

“I got shot?” I said. The M4 required no tools to break it down, and I started fieldstripping the weapon by muscle memory and habit.

“With a dart,” Bobby said. “It made you trip over your own feet and fall asleep. And some men came and got you and carried you away.”

“Hmmm,” I said. Deep inside, Beast crouched and hissed, showing her canines, which was strange. I remembered a few things from the big-cat’s memories and I said casually, “Did they put her in a cage? The lion in your dream?”

Eli looked up at that and focused on me, but I was watching my hands while studying Bobby with my peripheral vision. He was upset.

“Yes. And they took your blood,” he said. “And then it got nighttime, and you turned into Jane and you opened the cage and ran away. But you were . . . you were naked.” Bobby was red-faced and watching my hands on the weapons.

“It’s okay, Bobby,” I said gently. “Thank you. I needed to hear that.”

He looked up and then back down. “We aren’t supposed to look at porn. It’s bad.”

“It wasn’t porn, Bobby. It was just a dream. We can’t control our dreams.”

Bobby shrugged, lifting one shoulder, his eyes still on my hands on the weapon. I pulled back the bolt and unscrewed the nut at the top of the barrel on the Benelli, letting my old friend get over the embarrassment. My hands were sure, and the stink of lube formula was strong in the room that usually smelled of bread and bacon and roast. I began to relax at the familiar activity of weapon care and yawned hugely, which made Bobby smile and relax too. “You used to yawn like that at school,” he said, “and then you’d growl, low in your throat. Mostly to make people stop picking on me.” He looked at Eli. “Jane was my protector. There was this big group of bullies and they were mean all the time when the housemothers and counselors weren’t looking. But then Jane saw them being mean one day and she beat them up.”

Eli’s brows went up. “All of them?”

Bobby nodded, his face lit with some emotion I couldn’t name, but might have been perilously close to hero worship. “All of them at once. And after that, whenever she saw them, she’d yawn and show her teeth and growl and it was so cool. They didn’t bother me anymore after that.”

I pursed my lips and concentrated on my shotgun. The M4 was good for twenty-five thousand rounds of continuous firing, so it didn’t usually need much in the way of maintenance. This time, there was some blood and brain blowback from the spidey vamp who had died while trying to suck the weapon. From the kitchen came the smell of strong coffee—espresso, the way Eli liked it.

I remembered the gang Bobby was talking about, the loosely organized pack that roamed the grounds of Bethel Nondenominational Christian Children’s Home and . . . My hands stilled. Loosely organized.

Vamps were never loosely organized. They were kept in line by blood sharing and bindings and physical and emotional trauma, and that organization always included the heir and spare. I thought back to the meeting of the clans at the warehouse in Under the Hill. “Eli? Did we ever meet Lotus? The MOC’s heir?”

The Ranger was watching me. “Not that I recall. Why?”

“We should have met Lotus.” I tried to remember all the faces I’d seen. According to her original dossier, provided by Reach, Lotus was Asian and slight, with long black hair. She should have been introduced to me by now. “She wasn’t at the reception when we first got here. I vaguely remember Big H’s sons, the Daffodil and the Life.”

“Narkis and Zoltar, respectively,” Eli said, amusement lurking in his eyes as he reassembled a second handgun, the sounds ringing through the silent house. “Though I’ll pay money if you’ll call them that to their faces.” He reached into the kit and removed a small screwdriver, replacing it with another at the same time. He was neatness personified.

I was betting money that Sylvia was a slob, which would have made me grin had my brain not been otherwise occupied. “Lotus wasn’t in Big H’s lair when we gave out the doses of antibody, either,” I said. “So we haven’t met her.” I pulled out my phone and scrolled down to Big H’s primo blood-servant and hit CALL. When he answered, I said, “Where’s Lotus?”

The man didn’t answer. I racked my brain and came up with the primo’s name. “Clark? Where. Is. Lotus?”

“She has been . . . excommunicated,” he said slowly. “That is all I may say.”

“When was the last time Big H drank from his sons?”

“Four days,” he said. “Why—” He stopped quickly. “Narkis and Zoltar have not betrayed their father.”

And if he drank from them, he would know. Drinking from a scion or a blood-bonded servant involved a sort of mind reading. I knew that from personal experience. Francis had said the ones closest to Big H had turned on him. Zoltar and Narkis were not the ones closest to Big H. I had assumed, and Francis had let me. I hung up, spun out of my chair, and pounded up the stairs, feeling Bobby’s eyes on me as I ran. Behind me, I heard him say, “She can run fast, huh?”

Eli grunted. Mr. Conversationalist.

I brought down the papers and the electronic tablet the Kid had given me, both filled with research into the vampire family trees in Natchez, sat at the table, and ran through the list of authorized kills in Natchez. Lotus wasn’t there. I wasn’t supposed to kill her. So where was she?

I scrolled through the tablet to Lotus’ personal info and history, as compiled by Reach, the Kid, and Bodat. Under Lotus’ known acquaintances I found Esther McTavish. And Silandre. I sat back with a satisfied smile. Lotus’ name wasn’t on Hieronymus’ kill list, yet she was involved with all this craziness. Either Big H was in love with her or he didn’t know how far she had gone to the dark side. So unless she attacked me or a human or I could prove she had drained and killed a human, I couldn’t kill her, though she was, maybe, now in charge of the Naturaleza in Natchez.

Like usual, vamp problems and troubles went back decades, sometimes centuries, and untangling the skein of old injury, torment, and conflict was impossible. After a time, old pain became like a living being, with breath and self-determination.

“First we finish the guns,” I said. “Then we nap. Then we go back to Silandre’s Saloon. Tell your brother to concentrate on relationships between all the vamp females.”

Eli shrugged. Bobby smiled happily, his joy like a beacon of contentment in the room, satisfied because I was satisfied. I had forgotten how his inner happiness could radiate and fill up an empty space. Or an empty, lonely heart.