Broken Soul

CHAPTER 5 I Needed That Head Slap

I banged out of the house, needing to be gone. Badly. Or maybe I just needed to get away from the person I had become. Once upon a time, and not that long ago, that would have meant a ride on Bitsa, fast roads, weaving in and out of slow traffic, wind in my hair. Well, under my helmet, but it was the same feeling of freedom. Unfortunately, Bitsa was still in repair, and that meant the SUV.

Which was better than nothing. At first. Then I got stuck in New Orleans’ horrible traffic. Worse, I was pretty sure I was being followed by a black SUV. When I made turns, weaving through the one-way streets to avoid fender benders and snarls, it always showed up again. Or one like it. Fingers banging on the steering wheel in frustration, I pulled out and headed for the river. If the vehicle showed up again, I’d know it.

I meandered a bit to get on the bridge access and crossed the Mississippi, looking down on the churning water and the barges and personal craft. It made me want to get a boat. Like I had time to go play. I reined my stupid brain back in line and checked behind me; the black SUV didn’t show again. But since I was headed in that general direction, I figured I could check in on the clan home property, which was one of Leo’s directives from the meeting the night before.

As I pulled down the tree-shaded drive, the branches arching over the roadway like something from Tara in Gone with the Wind, I wove between workers’ trucks, trailers, and a few beat-up, rusted cars. The SUV Derek drove was also here, so I pulled in behind it, parked, and got out, stretching in the overheated afternoon light before approaching the house. A heat wave was on the way, the temps in the high eighties and the humidity already close to dripping. Living in the Deep South was a sultry experience and not always in a good way. Mosquitoes were buzzing around me and honey bees were invading the blossoms on the azaleas beneath the trees. Birds were calling. It was as peaceful as it ever got around a vamp’s home.

Inside the construction site, the walls rose three stories, the top story under the beams of the mansard roof. Two basement levels were belowground, an uncommon occurrence for a place with a high water table. I still hadn’t asked how Leo was keeping the basements from flooding, but from the tingle of magic on the air, the construction boss had a water witch on payroll.

The workers smelled of cigarettes and old beer and exhaust and unwashed bodies and perfume. A generator had left clouds of exhaust on the air and electric tools had left their own stink. The port-a-potty nearby contained a reek of worse things. But it was all overridden by the smells of fresh wood, chalk, spackling, and turned earth. Faintly, there was brick and mortar, concrete and cement curing—alkaline, earthy scents.

The new house looked nothing like the old one, being brick and stone with a French country feel. It reminded me of the footprint of vamp HQ. I’d been told it was based on the Château de Dampierre, but on a smaller scale. The château must be huge, because this place was oversized enough to make security both a nightmare and easier than normal: a nightmare to wire and put cameras on all the doors and windows and make sure they all triggered an alarm when needed. Easier to position cameras to cover the grounds and easier because I could position safe rooms anywhere I wanted. There were several, one on each level, each with escape tunnels leading out to different areas of the grounds or garage or another exit. During the planning stage, I’d had a ball adding in all the security details and watching the eyes of the architect and the engineers as I moved things around—ignoring things like load-bearing walls and pipes and stuff. They tended to freak. But everything was in place now and everyone seemed satisfied, if not happy.

Today there were probably twenty men and women from all areas of construction represented, electricians and plumbers and carpenters, three guys who were wearing stilts on their boots so they could mud wallboard on the twelve-foot ceilings. It looked like a Larry, Curly, and Moe moment waiting to happen. They were all working hard, no loitering on this job site. I had to admit that when it came to getting things done, Leo’s money and favors talked. Unlimited funds and the ability to help heal a sick loved one meant that he got fast and competent service with a smile.

I confiscated a yellow hard hat and plopped it on, my braid dangling behind me. Walking through the place, I looked up through the unfinished stairs and out through the windows in the mansard roof high overhead. This place took the word mansion to new levels.

Inside the kitchen was a guy with a hard hat and a set of plans under his arm, talking to a woman in jeans and a tailored jacket, and Derek. It looked like a high-level meeting while the plumbers adjusted PVC piping and electricians and heating-and-air guys tested the floor-warming system that would soon be covered by tile. It was noisy and energetic, but the activity looked good-natured and easygoing, unlike the frenetic way office workers often looked. These people were having fun; they liked their jobs.

I tucked my hands in my back pockets and moseyed toward the bosses. Derek was talking security. Separated by a wall made only of studs and nails, I stood behind him listening as he discussed the sprinkler system. It had to disperse enough water to put out a major fire, which meant taking water from the Mississippi not so far away. Leo’s previous house had used Mississippi water, grandfathered in under a law that hadn’t been written when the first house’s kitchen was retrofitted with a sprinkler system. Now the MOC wanted the whole house sprinklered, and had discovered that he needed permits from people like the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers. From Derek’s tone I could tell that Leo wanted fast action but the initial-agencies were balking. Big surprise.

Like all post-active-duty military men, Derek seemed to have a sixth sense when he was being watched. Or he was just paranoid all the time. He turned to scan the surroundings, eyes probably picking out likely spots for snipers, and saw me. His eyes narrowed, and he frowned. I grinned and gave him a little wave. “The Enforcer is here,” he said. “Maybe she can help with the kitchen issue.”

Kitchen issue? Not likely. But I walked over, willing to pretend. Sometimes a cold look and a little Beast in my eyes was all it took to get things done. “Sup, y’all?”

The woman got this look. This “You are not in my league” look. And she was right. She looked chic even in a hard hat, though I’d never have worn three-inch heels to a construction site. I set my hard hat on a counter and slouched against a stud to listen to the problem. The woman was a decorator and her paint colors weren’t matching the tile colors and she wanted something more au courant than beige, white, cream, and snow in the room. She wanted bronzes and coppers and earth tones. Like I cared. But I let her talk and listened with half an ear as I worked out how many cameras we would need to cover the five-car garage. The woman also wanted the two sets of double ovens to be moved across the kitchen from the place where they were in the plans, so she could put a window in the exterior wall. Yada yada.

I glanced at Derek while she chattered and had to swallow down a laugh at the frustration on his face. It wasn’t easy being boss. All bucks stopped with him—and better him than me. When the decorator wound down, Derek said, “If moving the ovens didn’t cause problems elsewhere”—he thumbed at a wall that hid a safe room, and suddenly I understood the problem—“I’d let you have your way on the ovens. But it’s no deal.” He looked at me when she started to speak again, and said, “Jane? What do you say?”

Great. So much for bucks stopping with Derek. To the decorator, I said, “As I understand it, you have two requests—color scheme and light in the kitchen. Right?”

She nodded and I went on. “But you also have a job to do. Your job is to make Leo happy. Derek’s job is to keep Leo safe. And that’s my job too. You can’t move the ovens, because that makes it harder for us to do our job. Putting the ovens there”—I pointed where Derek had thumbed—“isn’t going to happen.”

“But—”

I held up a hand to stop her. “Let me finish. Request number one is color. Leo likes whites and beiges and he’s outlived au courant several centuries ago.” I studied the space and realized that I had the attention of the entire crew. Lucky me. “You can’t change Leo’s white-toned color scheme but you could make the faucets and knobs bronze and put in some aged copper panels in the ceiling if you want. Drop some bronzy lights over the island.” I’d seen that at Katie’s and it looked really good. “Hang some big copper pots over the island or along the wall next to the cook top.” I pointed. “And . . .” I turned in a circle, trying to see the room as it would be soon. “Maybe put in a copper or bronze exhaust hood. Instead of the white quartz or granite cabinet tops like on the rest of the counters, put copper sheeting on the island. You could even get the oven and refrigerator doors done in copper or bronze, all without changing the color scheme.” When the decorator’s mouth fell open, I said, “What?”

“That’s . . . perfect, actually,” she said. Then jumped in quickly with, “But this room needs more light.”

“Yeah. Vamps don’t care about light. They care about security. Why don’t you knock out that wall there”—I pointed to the back of the house—“and put in some French doors and tall windows if you need light in the daytime. Just be sure to get the engineer to work with you on the sizes and necessary measurements of the bullet-resistant glass and the support I beams for the stories above.”

Her red-lipsticked mouth made a moue of surprise. “You’d let me do that?”

I looked at Derek and the construction boss and the architect, who had wandered over to listen. They all nodded. “Sure. So we’re good on not moving the ovens?”

“We’re fine.” She looked down at her notebook and wrote Copper Cladding in big letters.

Derek walked away, shaking his head. I followed, not understanding his reaction. I didn’t usually bother with multisyllabic words like consternation, but that was how Derek looked—consternated. Derek and I had had some issues over the months when I’d been under contract to Leo, and while some matters had worked themselves out, some hadn’t. I wasn’t sure they ever would. As soon as we were out of earshot I said, “What’s with the head shaking?”

“You solved everything. That woman was driving me nuts. She had been driving everyone nuts for over an hour.”

Crap. I really was turning into a girl. When the heck had that happened? I kicked a chunk of two-by-ten out of the way. Maybe a little too hard, in my frustration with my life, as it hit a freshly hung piece of wallboard and bounced back at me. I jumped out of the way, but the wall now had a huge dent in it. Dang it.

But I owed Derek an answer. I said, “You were trying to answer her questions without trying to solve her problems. I solved her problems. It’ll cost Leo another small fortune, but with what he’s spending on this house, what’s a few thou more?”

He looked confused and mimicked me by kicking a cut piece of two-by-four out of his way. His didn’t cause any damage. “So . . . I need to solve problems, not answer questions?” He stopped at a cooler and passed me a can of Coke. He took a Mountain Dew for himself. We popped the tops and sipped as he considered my answer.

Derek led the way out the front door and partway down the steps, which had been salvaged and re-mortared from the burned original house “because they are part of history,” according to the expensive architect. We sat on a step, looking out over the property and the massed vehicles. I listened to the myriad conversations on the work space, watched a helicopter on the horizon, and saw a black SUV drive slowly past the entrance to Leo’s place. Seeing it cleared my head. “Make sure security is here all night,” I said to Derek. “Someone’s been tailing me, and might have been tailing others.”

Derek was instantly alert, and any anxiety over his lack of personnel problem-solving skills slid away. “I can put a shooter there.” He pointed across the property to the barn. “There’s a nice spotter location on top. Flat, protected from wind. We could put another guy inside the house. Talkies and we’re good to go.”

“Yeah. Do that. Now, you want to tell me what else is up? Because you’re—” I stopped dead. Spilling pissed-off pheromones. Nope. Can’t say that. “Upset.” Yeah. That would do. “More upset than just dealing with a construction site and a decorator.”

Derek frowned and studied the barn where he could put a shooter. He didn’t look at me at all when he said, “It’s this Enforcer stuff.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, drinking from my can, waiting for him to get to the point.

“How’d you deal with the blood-drinking part? And the sex part?”

I pulled in a breath that was part Coke and coughed. And coughed. Which wasn’t planned but was really handy for thinking of an answer to the sex part of the questions—which I totally had not expected. After about ten seconds’ worth of coughing, during which Derek’s face told me all sorts of things, I realized that he and Leo weren’t having sex, but that Leo had come on to him, with that whole vamp-blood-makes-it-feel good thing. This was delicate territory. And despite my win with the decorator, I wasn’t so good at delicate territory.

I rolled my Coke between my palms, deciding that the bare truth was my best choice. “Long story short: When I got here, I wouldn’t let Leo drink from me. Not ever.” I sipped my Coke and it burned going down, making me cough more. When I spoke again my voice was hoarse and rough. “I was afraid that if he tasted my blood, it would have given away my skinwalker heritage. But I got mauled when I first got to New Orleans and I couldn’t figure out how to tell him no when he offered to heal me. He healed my arm, got a taste, and he didn’t know what I was. So I was safe. Then I stupidly used a nonexistent Enforcer status to get something done.”

“I remember. You claimed to be his Enforcer without knowing what it meant.” Derek was darkly amused. “That was in Asheville, right?” I nodded. “Not the brightest thing, there, Legs.”

“Yeah. Stupid, I know, especially by Mithran law. When he needed me to be his Enforcer for real—” I stopped. This was way more confessional than I wanted to get with Derek. I didn’t want him this close. I didn’t want to share. I bent my head to my knees and wrapped my arms around them, hugging myself. Thinking. Rocking slightly back and forth on the front stairs.

If I was honest, I didn’t want to say the words aloud to anyone who didn’t already know. And I didn’t want to look at my reasons for not looking at the event again. Meaning I was a coward who needed talk therapy. “Crap,” I muttered.

I forced myself to go on, gripped my knees so tight it hurt, talking so fast it was a garbled strand of words. “When he needed me to be his Enforcer for real, Leo was within his Mithran legal rights to make it happen. Bruiser had been injured and his mind wasn’t working. His ability to do or think anything of his own will was gone. Mentally he was”—my free hand made flapping motions before re-gripping my knees—“basically a puddle of goo.” Bitterness laced through my words when I continued. “Leo used compulsion to force Bruiser to hold me down. Then the Master of the City forced a blood feeding and binding on me.”

My breath ached on the words, way deeper than I’d expected.

Derek cursed softly. I smelled his shock and his protective instincts as they kicked in. It was an odd scent from a man who didn’t trust supernats, and who surely didn’t trust me. I didn’t look at him, watching the helicopter as it moved away on the horizon. Seconds ticked by, neither of us talking, not looking at each other, staring out over the cars and trucks. High over the front drive, a hawk circled, riding the air currents. Gliding. Hunting. Free.

“It’s taken me some time to get over it,” I admitted long after the silence had become uncomfortable. “Okay, I’m still getting over it. I got some revenge, which helped, but not as much as I thought it would, to be honest. Mostly . . . I’ve just had to work through it. I’m a skinwalker. I understand the animalistic need to dominate another creature. In lots of animal life, especially mating rituals and pack dominance fights, one animal dominates another. Animals accept it or die fighting it. But I’m not an animal.” Liar, liar, pants on fire. I smiled cynically at my own thoughts but Derek wasn’t looking at me. I went on. “Resistance is normal for me. I resisted. He partially bound me. I found a way free. Now he’s apologized to me for taking by force what was his by legal right—according to his point of view—and might have been his by a more, mmm”—I searched for the words—“more socially acceptable means, had he tried to go that route.” I glanced at Derek, gauging his reaction.

Derek frowned harder. He had a fresh marine haircut, which was a pretty dreadful lack of style but he made it work, especially with that frown. It pulled his face down hard and made crevices beside his nose and down along his mouth. His dark skin had a slight sheen in the day’s heat. “I don’t understand,” he said finally.

I frowned back at him. “To be the permanent Enforcer, you have to be bound at least a little, but humans have a choice,” I said. “Being a blood-meal doesn’t have to be painful or degrading or sexual. It can be simple. A few drops so he can read you, and know you’re not compromised by another vamp. So he can know and feel your loyalty to him.”

“Like drinking a few sips from my wrist. Nooo.” He flapped a hand. “No other stuff. No sex stuff.”

If Derek had been white, the blush would have been scarlet. As it was, his skin went darker and his flesh smelled of a mixture of anger/shame/worry. “Yeah. Like that,” I said. “It depends on what you want. What you need. What you can handle.” How much of your soul you are willing to give up for the price Leo is offering. But I didn’t say that. Derek was already there.

He held his head in both hands, scratching it. Maybe using his upraised arms to hide his face from me. “I need my mama alive.”

“Ah.” I felt weird being in the position of comforting him, of being all Florence Nightingale or Mother Teresa or one of those loving, caring women that I had no idea how to be. But . . . maybe I didn’t have to be any of those.

I said, almost harshly, “Let me get this right. If Leo’s drinking your blood felt painful, then it’d be okay when he drank from you? But it feels good, and you’re all macho, and so the drinking gets mixed up with the feel-good part of your brain. Then your little brain starts to think sex and your big ol’ macho self goes all homo-terrified on you, right? And that petrifies you because . . . I don’t know. You’re a marine, and your head gets all wonky?”

Derek’s mouth opened as he started to deny it, so I went all guy on him. I slapped the back of his head. Hard. “What am I? Your shrink? Life sucks and then you get sucked on. And sometimes it feels good. I’m not saying to like your body’s reaction if you don’t swing that way. But get over it. Do the job. Get your mama well. Or quit and hope for modern medicine to heal her.”

Derek’s eyes filled with tears, quickly gone. If he’d been a big-cat, the look he gave me would have been a snarl, all teeth. His muscles bunched; his balance shifted, ready to attack me as my words penetrated his thick skull.

“You made a deal with the Devil,” I said, “and now it’s time to pay. As to feelings,” I snorted, “talk to a priest or a counselor about the gay part. Or talk to Leo. Lack of pain and having Leo’s mouth on your wrist isn’t the same thing as getting laid or turned into a sex toy. Drinking from you is the way Leo protects himself. And he knows you don’t like it.”

Derek looked at me in surprise, his anger melting away. “Say what?”

“You had to know that. He’s reading everything you feel as he drinks. Dude. He’s playing with you the way a cat plays with its dinner. It’s his nature. So you can accept that it feels good and decide that it doesn’t have to lead to sex, or you can tell him it bothers you. Honesty might make him quit the predator games. Leo will accept it either way. And like I said, he can make it hurt if that makes you feel better.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Derek cursed, bending his head back down. More embarrassed.

Out front, a black SUV drove in front of the driveway, going the other direction from the last one. To Derek I said, “I think that’s the same SUV that went by earlier. How fast can you get someone out to the road for the next pass and get a look at the plate?”

“I don’t have any of my guys here. I— Wait.” Derek, for all that he was having a crisis of manhood, stood and shouted a name. “Mannie. You still got the feet?”

“My brother, I got the feet and the hands. They wasn’t hurt when I got sacked in my last game.” He tapped his head. “Only the old brain box.”

“There’s a black SUV cruising past out front. Get out there and get a look at the license plate next time it comes by. Make sure they don’t see you.”

“I’ll take a pic with my phone, bro.” Mannie dashed down the drive to the street.

“Mannie Dubose? From LSU? Injured in his second season with the Saints?” I didn’t live with a sports nut for nothing. Eli loved the Saints.

“The same. Nearly lost his eyesight when he had bleeding behind his eyes. Quit with his signing bonus, two years pay, and a well-crafted injury bonus. Now he and his dad own the construction company that his ole man used to work for. They mighta lost a football career, but they used the money right and parleyed it into a family business. He’s good people.

“Legs,” he added, without looking at me. “Thanks. I needed the head slap.”

“Not the tough talk?”

He pursed his lips to keep from grinning. “Eh. I mighta needed that too.”

“Talk to Leo. Or I’ll slap your head again.”

“You need me to hurt Leo for what he did to you?”

This time I smiled, feeling all mushy inside. Derek might not be family—yet—but in his own way, he was a friend and that was good enough for now. “Nah. He gave me a big honking boon when he asked for forgiveness.”

Derek’s eyebrows did that soldier-micro-twitch thing that Eli’s did when he was surprised. “He asked your forgiveness? For real? Leo?”

I shrugged with my eyebrows. Turnabout was fair play.

“A big honking one, huh? Not bad, Legs. Not bad.”

We sat in the sun for a while until Derek’s phone rang. “It’s parked down the street, bro,” Mannie said on speakerphone. “I zoomed in and got the plate. Sending it to you now. Also a shot of the driver, but it’s not too good through the glass.”

“I’ll send it to the Kid,” Derek said to me. “I gotta get back to work.”

“Later,” I said.

We bumped fists. I pulled out of the driveway, passing and waving to Mannie, and then passing the empty SUV. No driver. Or rather, a driver lying down in the seat. That. Because an SUV appeared behind me a mile or so later. I lost him by taking a back road, one that was sinking below the water table in this alluvial landscape. Two turns later, I was free to go where I wanted. People were so stupid sometimes.