Mercy Blade

CHAPTER 14 And He Ripped off My Shirt

Something had scratched at the front door. I rolled, taking up a vamp-killer from the bedside table, shoved stakes into my hair, and palmed my nine mil as I slid my toes through a pair of flops. I moved through the house in darkness, drawing on Beast’s night vision to make my way. I heard a creak from the top of the stairs and, even though it was probable that no one could see me in the dark, I held up a hand. “Wait,” I whispered.

“My wards went off,” Evangelina whispered back. “Something got in through the delivery slot in the front door, where I left a passageway for mail.”

I had never paid attention to the mail delivery slot, the old metal painted to match the wood. I sidled that way, placing my feet carefully, and saw a flat envelope, the size I might use to send a birthday card. Placing my head against the wall where I could see out through a clear pane in the stained-glass window of the door, I saw a running form down the street. Beast woke with a start. Hunt!

“Don’t touch the envelope. I’ll be back.” I ripped open the door and raced up the middle of the well-lit street. There was no keeping to the shadows. No hiding. If the prey looked back and saw me, so what? I lost the flops and took to the sidewalk, my bare soles blistering. Three blocks later I had Jackson Square in my sights, the old cathedral lit up like Disneyland. I puffed to a stop. I had lost him. Or her. Some women run like men. Some Olympic runners. Some college runners. I bent over, hands on knees, breathing hard. The runner’s scent lost beneath New Orleans’s potent sensory brew.

I had hurt my bare feet, what might be a stone bruise on the left heel and a shallow cut on the ball of the right. Ignoring a covey of businessmen coming out of a bar, I scent-searched, mouth open, drawing air in over my tongue and the roof of my mouth and through my nose, the way cats do. Parsing the scents. But there were too many, new and familiar, strong like gasoline and exhaust and vomit and urine and weaker scents like rats, feral cats, and ... Leo Pellissier.

I whirled, seeing only a blur as he attacked. Threw up my left arm, catching both of his. Knocking them high. Ducked under. Stabbed up with the vamp-killer, a clean, swift stroke. The blade passed through his clothing and scored his side. He grunted with surprise. I pivoted on my right foot, smelling his blood, cold and potent on the night air.

Belated adrenaline thudded through me. Beast roared up through my subconscious. Lending me strength, speed. Damping my pain.

Lamplight caught Leo’s face, gleamed on his fangs. Two inches of killing ivory. He brought up a hand, stabbing claws at my side. I slid left, avoiding injury, my body a fluid motion, making a C shape. The knife whipped toward his abdomen.

Leo bent forward. Throwing his midsection back. Avoiding the blade, shimmering silver in the night. My knee came up as I slid past, spinning. Slammed into his face. A sucker move and he fell for it.

Bone and cartilage crunched against my knee. A fang nicked me as I pivoted away. Blood splattered over me, thick and viscous, stinging where it touched me. He whipped around, eyes catching the light, pupils inhumanly wide, vamped out, black in scarlet sclera.

Head back, he screamed. And I smelled the blood that was on his clothes. Old and dried, fresh and still damp. Katie’s blood. A lot of Katie’s blood.

Then he was gone. I whirled around, seeing and discounting the businessmen, standing mouths agape, like so much stupid prey. Seeing the cop standing at the corner, trying to draw his gun. Fumbling. I spun again and leaped over a gate into a narrow, cobblestone passageway between buildings. It stank of kerosene and fertilizer. I raced along it, slipping on moss growing between the stones, pain shooting up from both feet. I slid through huge-leafed banana plants and marijuana plants growing in pots in the tiny garden in back. And out a wider passageway, bounding over the gate, one palm on top, supporting the leap. Within minutes I was racing down the street in front of the house, which was lit inside and out. And I smelled Leo. He had been nearby when I raced from the front door. He had been watching the house, watching me. Or watching Bruiser. And, full of crazy-Katie’s blood, the half-nutso predator had followed the moving target. Which might have been the letter deliveryman, had I not gotten in the way. Crap.

Breath heaving, I sucked warm, moist air, bent over, the H&K still in one fist. I had never taken the safety off, which was a good thing, or I might have loosed a shot during the run. In my other hand was the vamp-killer, the silver plating stinking slightly from contact with vamp blood.

Leo had fed from or fought Katie again. Whatever had happened between them tonight, it had pushed him over the edge. Again. I tracked his scent to the house across the street. It had a convenient, low, brick wall, where someone could sit in the shadows, loitering undetected. Leo wasn’t the only one who had used it to keep an eye on the house.

I didn’t have a key to my side gate, so I limped to the front door and knocked, feeling the house wards buzz against me, recognizing me. My skin glistened with sweat and blood had trailed down my side, soaking my clothes, and down my leg, to puddle on the ground. The door opened. Bruiser stood there wearing sweatpants riding low on his hips and a lose tank with huge armholes. His arms were bare, revealing well-cut musculature, which would have been a nice sight, if I hadn’t been hurting. He was scowling, which wasn’t so nice. But the envelope was still in front of the door, untouched as well as I could see.

“You’re bleeding,” he spat.

I limped in the door and closed it behind me. “Get something to wash away the blood outside. Turn off the lights. A cop saw me fighting and I’m too recognizable. I’d rather not answer questions.”

Evangelina, her eyes wide, was standing at the kitchen doorway holding a serving platter with mugs; I smelled hot tea, raw sugar, and real cream. “Son of a witch on a stick.” She set the tray onto the bottom step that led to the second floor, asking, “What got you?”

“Leo,” I said. Bruiser swore foully and raced to the front door. “Don’t worry. I didn’t stake him.”

“I’ll get my first-aid kit,” Evangelina said. A witch who traveled with her own first-aid kit struck me as hilarious. I couldn’t help the laughter that escaped, hysterical and wild, as adrenaline broke down into toxins and flooded my system with the biological equivalent of poison. She checked her wards, asking, “Vampire blood?”

I looked down at myself and saw the blood. There was an awful lot of it. “Some. I think most of it’s mine,” I managed, huffing between guffaws that seemed to be getting worse.

“Take her to her shower,” Evangelina ordered. “I’ll take care of the blood.” She took the vamp-killer from my hand and held it to the side. Seeing the witch holding the blade in two fingers brought my laughter up harder and Evangelina shook her head in worry. “Hot water. Not all vampire blood is acidic and poisonous but some is.”

“Humans drink it,” Bruiser said in surprise.

“And some blood-servants don’t thrive. And some vampires can’t reproduce except with the bite. And some scions don’t wake up sane. Ever.”

“Leo drank from Katie,” he said, thinking. “Dead blood can make unstable vamps more unstable.”

There was something important in the words, but before I could make sense of it, Bruiser picked me up, his body heated and dry against my cooling sweat. My chuckles stopped as if cut off with a knife. The touch of his skin sent my mind skittering and skipping, like a rock spun out over still water. He carried me through my bedroom to my bath and set me on the shower seat. He tossed a huge bath towel over the door, up high, out of the way of the spray, and turned on the water, holding his hand under the flow while I watched, silent, breathless. From my run. Not from the sight of him. No way.

Bruiser turned the hot water on me and steam burst up from the stall floor and walls, beating me. Drenching me. Heating me from the outside in. Pressing my clothes against my body. Stinging in the deeper cuts and making them bleed afresh, especially the one on my knee. The fang wound. And the one on my side. Claw marks, not deep but long and tearing and bleeding profusely. My left side, above my collarbone. He’d been aiming to rip out my throat. I shivered in delayed response. The Master of the City had tried to kill me. Again. But this time it wasn’t personal. Simply a predator-prey response. He saw me run, and gave chase. I threw back my head and laughed again.

Blood swirled and flowed around my bare feet and Bruiser’s, thick and scarlet, then thinner, weakened by the water flow. I shivered harder, looking up from our feet as Bruiser knelt in front of me, his face on a level with mine. Eyes piercing as blades. Hair and clothes plastered to his skin. Water running over his body like caressing hands.

He traced my limbs, looking for injuries, raised my arms, pulled me forward, so he could see my back, lifted my shirt to check my stomach and studied the lacerations from Leo’s claws. Methodical. Careful. Asexual as a medical technician or nurse. He sat back and held up my feet to see the black asphalt stains and cuts. He winced and took up a bar of soap. And washed my feet.

My laughter stopped abruptly. Tears he couldn’t see because of the shower water gathered and fell as shock replaced the last vestiges of hysteria. He’s washing my feet. His hands moved the soap over my arches, toes, heels and up my calves, massaging and stroking, bubbles rinsing away as soon as they formed. When he was done, he cleaned the fang wound in my thigh, knowing what it was. He had to know what it was. He’d had plenty.

He shook his head as something flashed through his eyes and was gone. “Are you all right?” he asked, his lips moving, his voice lost beneath the roar of the pounding water, his eyes holding mine, requiring an answer. I nodded. “Can you get your clothes off, or do you need my help?” Still no seduction to his words or his tone. Worry. Fear. Anger beneath the surface of that. But no seduction.

But he had washed my feet. And his hands had been ... not casual. Not at all. “I can do it,” I murmured, water pouring into my mouth as I spoke. Bruiser nodded once, the approval of a master sergeant to a trooper. He started to stand and my eyes followed him up. He stopped, midmotion. Becoming as still as the vampire who gave him prolonged life. Slowly, Bruiser leaned forward, gripped my head in both hands. And lowered his face to mine.

He kissed me. Heat arced between us. Sizzling like lightning. A breath left my lungs empty, wanting. I groaned, the sound lost beneath the roar of the water. He yanked me to him, my back arching, his mouth punishing. A bonfire of need exploded within me. I reached for him, his arms and neck slick with water. A rosy glow seemed to envelop me. He leaned into me where I sat, crushing me against the stall wall. I dug in with my fingers and nails, holding him against me. Shower water poured over our faces, our lips.

Liquid and burning, heat flared between us, wet as the shower, intense, building like the steam that billowed around us. He lifted me, one hand sliding under my bottom and taking my place on the shower seat. Pulling me to his lap, my legs around him.

And he ripped off my shirt. Tossed it to the floor. His hands and mouth were everywhere, sucking, pulling, stroking, biting. I arched harder to him, hearing my voice in the distance, buried beneath the roar of the water, “Yes, yes. Please.”

I don’t know how I heard the bathroom door open, but I did. Evangelina! Beast fast, I pushed away from Bruiser and grabbed the towel, covering myself. I pushed open the shower door and stepped out in a cloud of steam, shutting it behind me.

Unable to meet Evangelina’s eyes, I said, “Let me get dried off. I’ll meet you in the kitchen.” I don’t know what she saw in my face, but she left the room without speaking, the door clicking shut softly behind her as bloody water drained off me to the clean floor.

I dropped to the toilet seat and sat. In the shower stall, the water went off. A long silent moment later, Bruiser opened the stall door and stepped out. Dripping, he stared down at me as water sluiced down his face and body, puddling on the tile floor. “This will happen,” he said, a roil of anger beneath his tone.

I shook my head, breaking his stare. He said, “It will.” And he left the bath, wet footprints trailing him, his clothes molded to his body.

I shut the door and removed my shorts, tossing them and the now bloody towel both into the stall on top of my T-shirt. I held a folded washcloth to the wound in my knee and another to my collarbone. The bleeding soaked through the wash-cloths and I added another, pressing to stop the flow, knowing that the terrycloth would give the blood plenty of surface to clot on.

I could shift to heal the wounds, and shift back, but there was no way to explain it to my visitors. Ten minutes later, the flow had stopped. And my heartbeat had slowed and steadied. In the bedroom, I pulled on a pair of shorts, a tee, and my robe. Tightened the belt ruthlessly.

Embarrassed but not willing to show it, I marched to the kitchen and plopped onto a chair at the table, one hand holding each cloth. It was an ungainly march but it was all the pride I had left at the moment.

Bruiser was nowhere to be seen. Evangelina didn’t look up when I entered, as if allowing me the privacy I needed, though I’d never thought her capable of such delicacy of feeling. She pushed away the cloth on my knee, murmuring, “Let me see.” She prodded and pushed at the wound, which welled with blood. She replaced the cloth and worked my leg, as if checking the joint and tendons. “Does this hurt? This? How about this?” I said no to each query and she opened a sterile packet to remove a long metallic probe. Which she inserted into the wound.

I hissed and gripped the chair seat with my free hand to keep myself from slapping her, holding my chest wound tight enough to hurt myself. “Do you have the faintest idea what you’re doing?” I asked.

“Not really,” she lied with a small smile. “I just like hurting you. It’s deep, but it feels like it missed bone and tendon. It needs some stitches.”

“No,” I said, ungraciously. “Put some of that antibiotic stuff on it and tape it.” I didn’t want to worry about stitches when I shifted next. And it was starting to really hurt. And I was mortified about the shower with Bruiser. Could I be any more lewd? Or stupid? I had a bad feeling I could. “No stitches. No doctor.” I pulled the robe open and removed the pad.

Evangelina shrugged and said, “Let me see the ribs.”

Evangelina hissed and said something under her breath. I thought it was a witch curse, a bad one I’d heard Molly use once. I tended to bring out the foul language in my friends. At the thought of friend, I looked up to see Evangelina staring at the parallel, slashing tears on my chest. There were two above the collarbone and two below, angling up, as if Leo had tried to reposition his hand midstrike to take out my throat. He’d come mighty close.

“Don’t bite my head off,” she said gently, “but you’ve got a lot of scars here. And no signs of surgical or medical intervention.”

The scars of previous vamp attacks were fine lines, the scaring all that was left of what would have been fatal attacks. The nonmortal ones hadn’t scarred at all. I pressed the pad back over the wound. “I heal fast. I’ve got extra large sterile bandages in my own first-aid kit.” I pointed to a drawer. “If you’ll get me a large one and smear antibiotic on the cuts, I’ll be fine.”

“I won’t,” she blew out a frustrated breath. “But you are a stubborn ... woman.”

The pause said that Evangelina knew I wasn’t human, but wasn’t certain what form of supernat I was. When she didn’t pursue the get-thee-to-a-doctor-y comment or the you-are-not-human train of thought, and went instead to find my bandages, I relaxed. “You’re okay,” I said, “for a ballsy witch.”

“And you’re okay too, for an ornery whatever-you-are.” She peeled the backing from an adhesive bandage and squirted antibiotic ointment onto my wounds. Carefully, she laid the bandage over them, pressing the edges to seal against my skin. “It’s still bleeding,” she said, and lifted my hand, placing it over the wound, applying pressure. When she took her hand away, I continued the pressure so she could bandage my foot. When she was done, Evangelina washed her hands at the sink, her back to me. “I used to worry about Molly being friends with you. I still do. But more because of the lifestyle and the danger you seem to attract than because of who you are, intrinsically.” She turned back to me, surveying me in the kitchen chair, in my borrowed white robe that came with the house. “Yes. You’ll do.”

I warmed from the comments and smiled at her, a small, uncertain smile.

“Shall we see what the envelope holds?” When I nodded once, she asked, “Why didn’t you want us to touch it?”

“Explosives. Poisons. Anthrax.” I stood. “Let me get dressed.”

Evangelina’s eyebrows went up. “Explosives. Poisons. Anthrax,” she quoted. “My, my. I’ll look it over for signs of magical tampering. From a distance, of course.”

“Good idea,” I said, though I hadn’t smelled any magic either. When I was dressed in jeans, a sweatshirt, and a bra— protective clothing—I met Evangelina at the door. Bruiser, dressed in jeans and a loose tee was squatting before the envelope, studying it. Not looking at him, I knelt beside him and bent as if to see it up close, but I was scent-searching. I breathed in, through mouth and nose. And was surprised when I smelled Girrard DiMercy.

I sat back. “No explosives, no chemicals. I’ll take it into the yard to open it.” Neither of them asked how I knew it was explosive-free, and I didn’t volunteer enlightenment. I carefully lifted the envelope and carried it to the side door and into the yard. Behind me, the porch light came on and I was aware of them standing side by side behind the closed door. Angling my body so the prevailing wind would carry anything within away from me and away from the house, I opened the flap. Three photographs were inside. “It’s okay,” I said without looking up. “I’ll be inside in a minute.”

The photos were originals, one black and white and two in color; one color shot arrested my attention. The tints were wasted by time and sunlight, the oranges, yellows, and reds bright and glaring, the blues and greens muted. It was a picture of Bruiser and a blurred form, maybe Leo, both dressed in clothing from the early sixties, standing over the body of an animal. Or, not an animal. A werewolf. It was caught in half human, half wolf form, and from the distortion, it was changing, or trying to. From the blood, it was dead or dying. Leo and Bruiser were both holding hunting rifles.

The background was not south Louisiana, but a hilly locale. A Land Rover stood in the background, dust covered, rock formations behind it. The photograph wasn’t proof of murder, but it was suggestive of some kind of crime.

The black and white photograph was even older, a posed shot of a woman, probably mixed race, with sparkling eyes, full lips, high cheeks, and tip-tilted eyes. Her black hair was piled up in waves and curls that looked artless and had probably taken a maidservant hours to accomplish, and tresses draped to her shoulders as if accidentally fallen there from the touch of a careless but loving hand. She wore a dress from another time, all white lace and silks and a bow under her breasts. She was beautiful in a way I’d never be. I often wanted to hate women like that, but she looked so happy, so in love, it was impossible to dredge up negative emotion. I turned the photo over and read the faint handwriting on the back. “From Magnolia Sweets to Leo, my love.”

The third photo was actually four digital shots, printed out together on computer paper. They were of Rick. In one, he was standing in the breezeway of a hotel, a thin slice of the cityscape in the background. He was dressed in biker gear, one hand braced high on a wall, one knee bent, in a negligent, masculine pose. He was with a girl, his hand on her nape, as if pulling her into a kiss. She was wearing a short skirt and gold, six-inch stilettos, her upper body hidden. In another, he was kissing her, his back to the camera, only her legs showing. In another, he was following her into a hotel room. She was red-headed, petite, delicate, sexy, and feminine. All the things I’d never be. And this woman I did hate with a spear of pain that stabbed through my chest.

The fourth shot was Rick with a woman in a setting with a trellis and window basket of flowers. In this one, long black hair hung to her thighs, her arms up and twined around him, languorous. Safia. He was kissing her. Distantly, I noted that the woman’s body size and skin tones matched in all four photos. Safia had worn a red wig to meet Rick at a hotel?

My breath ached when I drew it in, belatedly, painfully. A reasonable voice in my head said, He’s undercover. He has a job to do. It’s only a job. A less reasonable voice that had angry Beast-overtones said, Mine. And clawed at my heart. But I’d just narrowly avoided sex in the shower with Bruiser. I had no reason or right to feel pain or betrayal.

I folded the paper carefully, so the photos didn’t crease, and tucked it into my jeans pocket. I stuffed my feelings away too, without looking at them, and shoved the voices, the reasonable one and the angry one, deeper. I had a job to do.

I went back into the house and placed the black and white photograph in front of Bruiser, who was sitting with Evangelina at the table, sipping tea. I added sugar and cream to the third prepared mug and sat across from them.

Bruiser studied the photo and his lips turned up in a winsome smile, the kind people give when presented with a remembrance of an enchanted time. “I remember the day this was taken. There was this photographer, Ernest something.”

“Ernest J. Bellocq?” I asked. I’d seen his work before. He took photos of Storyville and other neighborhoods in New Orleans for years, and had been the first, and so far as I knew, the only, photographer to capture vamp images on film until digital photography became common. Vamps had never imaged well on silver used in the photographic process.

“Yes, that’s the name. Maggie was the sweetest thing I’d ever seen. I was half in love with her when I was a young lad.” I laid the color photo in front of him, and Bruiser’s face changed. He swore and looked at me, his face closed off, thinking. Calculating? Concocting a story? Maybe.

“No one was with Leo and me when we made this kill.” He made it sound like a legitimate hunt, not a murder, but I kept my mouth shut on the comment. “So who took this and why did he bring it to you?”

“Someone with an agenda. Someone who knows most of what’s going on and wants me to figure out the rest for him.”

“Without giving himself away,” Evangelina said.