Mercy Blade

CHAPTER 2 A Fighting Ring

“Morning, Leo. I’m watching the news and the so-called werewolf accusing you of murder,” I said in my professional, all-business tone.

“Good morning,” he said, sounding urbane and wry, the slight hint of French in his tone. “Yes. Such an accusation is unfortunate in several respects.”

No kidding, I thought. But I didn’t say it.

“Envoys of the IAW arrived in Washington, D.C., two weeks ago, and have been engaged in closed-door talks with the national Council of Mithrans and members of Congress about the changing geopolitical situation. At the same time, a high-level member of the Party of African Weres and his assistant were also sent to New Orleans to parley with me regarding their bid for worldwide recognition.”

I narrowed my eyes at Rick, who was watching me, a slight smile playing on his mouth. To Leo and Rick I said, “You didn’t think it important to tell me that were-cats were in town? For two weeks?”

Rick shrugged and mouthed, “Orders. Politics.” As he spoke, he reached for his phone vibrating on the cabinet top.

“The applicable phrase was ‘Need to know,’” Leo said, “and a vampire hunter had no need to know about weres. This unexpected allegation against me of werewolf murder may, however, significantly complicate matters with the cats, despite the fact that wolves and cats traditionally do not get along.”

Which was news to me. Everything about this situation was news to me. I was ticked off because I had been kept totally out of this loop and I shouldn’t have been.

“I require your presence to finalize the security upgrade for the Council building and to research what possible evidence the wolves might have against me.”

“And how am I going to do that?” I asked, just to yank his chain.

“You have access to certain files. You will use them.”

I could almost see his chin jut out in that “don’t push me” manner he has. I was pretty sure Leo was talking about the files from the woo-woo room in NOPD. The Master of the City knew the New Orleans Police Department kept files on all the supernats, including him. While he didn’t like it, he wasn’t averse to using them to his advantage.

“I see that you are still in the mountains near Asheville, North Carolina,” Leo said. “Can you be back in New Orleans by dusk?”

I frowned at the phone, which was a top-of-the-line, next generation, mini-electronic marvel, with every available bell and whistle. Leo had given it to me recently, insisting that the GPS location system in it could save my life. It seemed it could tell him where I was when I had it with me too. I didn’t like being on Leo’s leash, but he was paying me enough to keep me from griping about it too much, though I’d bought a throwaway phone for private calls. “If the rain eases up, and we break all the speed limits, it’s possible.”

“I’ll have George send coordinates, map, directions, and address to your cell,” he said. “A persona non grata is encroaching upon my territory and it is likely that he had contact with the werewolves in the past. Meet with him, find out what he knows, and then send him packing.”

“Yeah, I’ll just walk up to the guy, smile sweetly, and he’ll spill his guts,” I said, heavy on the sarcasm. I’m not the kinda girl guys go goo-goo eyed over, but I didn’t say that part.

“Then obtain his information, and warn him off by whatever means you deem appropriate.”

Now, that I could do just fine. Breaking vamp heads is a personal and professional specialty. “This guy got a name?”

“Several. You will be provided a description. After you deal with the interloper, you will return to the Council building to assist in security preparations for the diplomatic celebration, which will officially welcome the were-cat envoys. You will also address security concerns for the visiting dignitaries and their accommodations.” His words were growing clipped and hurried. Dawn was dangerous to even the most ancient vamps, and Leo would want to be in one of his lairs before the sun rose. “And I expect a report on your investigation into the evidence against me by tomorrow.”

“That’s not enough time—”

“At dusk.” The connection ended.

I looked at the phone and sighed. No one said good-bye anymore.

“Rain’s letting up,” Rick said, setting his cell back on the table and rolling to his feet, lithe as a cat himself. “Want to see if we can get the bikes loaded? I don’t know what your orders were, but mine are to get back to town ASAP. We’ll need to cancel breakfast with Molly and her sisters at the café.” He pulled on his boxers and jeans, and bent, looking for his shirt. Any hopes I’d had of a long, leisurely morning in bed, followed by a hearty breakfast in the Seven Sisters Café, evaporated. And I liked to eat. A lot.

I sat up and dropped my feet to floor. “I hate vamp politics.”

Two hours before dusk, we reached my freebie house, the two-story French Quarter residence where I was living rent free for the duration of my contract with the Master of the City. When we opened the doors and stepped from the rental truck, the heat hit me like a wet, soggy fist. Summer in New Orleans is not for the fainthearted.

Rick wheeled my bike off the truck and I carried my stuff down the narrow two-rut lane beside the house to the side porch and stacked it near the new grill Rick had bought me. The size of the pile surprised me. I didn’t like to think of myself as owning much in the way of worldly possessions, but the kitchen utensils, linens, and clothes took up four extra large shopping bags and two cardboard boxes of middling size. For me, it was a lot of belongings, and I hadn’t realized how many things I had accumulated in the last few years.

Rick, already looking distracted, his cop-face in place, kissed me on the cheek and walked off, leaving me there, on the porch, alone, with a casual, “I’ll drop off the truck. See you at breakfast tomorrow, babe.” I stood there, listening to his booted feet as he walked around the house, got in the truck and drove off. No hesitation or uncertainty in his stride.

Breakfast? See you at breakfast tomorrow? That’s it? Then I remembered the calls and texts he’d received on the trip back. He was needed, and I’d bet my left big toe he was headed back undercover with the visiting were-cats.

Disgruntled, I locked the side gate, hauled my bags and boxes inside, and put away the clothes and other stuff. Little of what I owned was suitable for the heat of a New Orleans summer, and my linens were thrift store purchases—flannel and rough terrycloth—not the six-hundred-thread-count sheets and plush towels I was using as part of the freebie house. I left most of it in the bags and boxes in the back of my bedroom closet, next to the gun safe, where it took up most of the floor space.

The house was empty—my current roomie was out doing witch council things—which was fine with me. I wasn’t happy to have Evangelina Everheart, water witch, professor, and three-star chef, as a guest—except for when she cooked, which made up for a lot of inconvenience—but her sister, Molly, had volunteered my home as a base for the visiting witch. Molly was my best friend, and I had never been able to say no to her about anything.

With the house to myself, there was plenty of time to get weaponed up. Meeting a guest at dusk meant I’d be up against a vamp, and an enemy of Leo’s meant he was a master, so I wanted every edge I could get—bladed pun intended. I unlocked my newly installed weapon cabinet, and laid my arsenal out on the bed. I had a lot of weapons—the Benelli M4, several handguns, lots of blades and stakes, both silver and wood. And a vial of holy water I still hadn’t tried on a vamp. In two velvet bags I also had a pink diamond witch stone used for black magic and a sliver of the vamp’s Blood Cross that hadn’t been requested back. Yet. Weapons of steel, silver, wood, and magic. Not that I expected to keep the arcane ones. They weren’t mine.

By the time I was dressed in my silk long johns and the black leather fighting gear—modified armored biker garb—I was bristling with weapons, some of them new. The gold nugget on its doubled chain was pinching me under the T-shirt and silver chain-mail collar, so I bent forward and wiggled a bit until it fell into place.

My Benelli M4 shotgun was strapped into a harness on my back and loaded with seven 2.75-inch shells in standard configuration, the shells hand packed with silver fléchette rounds. I had three handguns, the Heckler and Koch 9 mil under my left arm, a .32 six-shooter on my ankle, and a two-shot derringer I’d tuck into my braids when I got there, all loaded with silver. I had my favorite vamp-killer—a specially made knife with an elk-horn hilt, a deep blood groove along the blade length and heavy silver plating except for the sharp, steel, cutting edge—strapped to my waist, and nine other silvered blades in various sheaths and loops. A half dozen silver crosses were around my neck, my waist, and tucked into the clothes. My black hair was tightly braided into a fighting queue and I slid four silver-tipped, ash-wood stakes into the bun like decorative hair sticks. It was way too hot and muggy for the skullcap I had worn a few times. It was also too hot for the silver-studded leather, but nothing protected against vamp claws and fangs like silver and leather.

When the last weapon was in place, I relocked the gun cabinet, securing the three remaining handguns, stakes, the sliver of the Blood Cross, and the pink diamond. I stepped into my newest pair of boots, steel-toed butt-stompers. I like Lucchese Western boots, but the soles were slick and I’d recently made the adjustment to steel-toed combat boots for fighting. I adjusted the hilts in the boot sheathes and tied the laces. Stood and looked in the mirror. I’m not vain, but I always love this sight. Me, dressed for vamp-hunting. I looked good. Scary. An Amazon. The last thing on was the bright red lipstick, the only color on me. Red looked great with my amber-colored eyes and my Cherokee coloring, and with the leathers it looked menacing. Daring. As if I was saying, “Come on. Try me.”

Satisfied, I double-checked the info texted to me by Bruiser and left the house. Fired up Bitsa, my only transportation, and headed back out of town. I wanted to get a look at the address before dark.

New Orleans is a big city, spread out in a web of streets, its boundaries and shape determined by the alluvial soil and water on every side, some moving, like the river and bayous, and some more or less still, like the multitude of lakes that were fed by tides and rivers. The place I was going was outside the city limits; way outside.

I crossed the Mississippi River on the Huey Long Bridge, which felt and looked like something constructed back before modern engineering and had spanned the Mighty Miss for decades. The roadbed of the bridge was coarse gravel asphalt and the sidewalls of the bridge were close, leaving no room for error for the vehicles using it every day.

On the west bank I turned right, upstream and north, and took state road 18, River Road, leaving behind the roar and stink of the city and entering a more industrial part of Louisiana. The architecture here had none of the charm of the inner city, tending more toward one-acre homesites with ranch-style houses, abandoned and run-down horse pasture, a few upscale equestrian barns with practice rings, all cheek-by-jowl with chemical plants, industrial plants, engineering, manufacturing, shipbuilding plants, and, over the levee to my right, huge cranes for moving products onto barges. The river itself wasn’t visible unless I took one of the access roads up the levee, and that was frowned upon unless you had a good reason, like a job that took you there.

Despite the country’s bleak economic status, a good number of the factories had Help Wanted signs. Few of the industrial plants were abandoned; there were no broken windows, cracked pavement, weather-stained or unpainted metal buildings. But there wasn’t a lot of pretty either. The place had an undercurrent stink of industry and barge. Add in the reek of dying vegetation, unknown chemicals drying somewhere out of sight, the pong of skunk and other musk-emitting critters, and the occasional stench of roadkill—often as not, armadillo, surrounded by buzzards—it wasn’t a place where I’d want to spend a lot of time. However, this part of Louisiana had survived the wrath of mother nature better than parts of New Orleans. As I rode through the steamy heat, I was struck by the fact that there were no abandoned, storm damaged, roofless houses. No red-Xed signs with a number showing how many had died in the house during Hurricane Katrina. No empty housing units with Keep Out signs warning of black mold. Life appeared untouched by the misery and blight of the storm, while inner-city New Orleans, especially the poorer, eastern part of the city, still looked awful.

I checked the map on my fancy cell and rode on, past a Monsanto plant and what looked like petroleum refineries, and then away from the river into the countryside, into the middle of bottomland and farms. An hour outside of New Orleans and the city was forgotten. Bayous, a distant stink of swamp, and agricultural equipment had replaced the now-familiar smell of the French Quarter.

The sun was a red ball on the horizon when I finally found the place Leo wanted me to go. It was a biker bar. Go figure. Booger’s Scoot, slang for gross stuff and a motorbike, was brand-new, the Grand Opening banner hanging limply in the airless dusk. A former gas station and car repair shop, the place had been remodeled, repainted, replastered, and freshly stuccoed in white with bloodred trim, but the new look kept the original design of a Spanish hacienda, arches at every opening, even the repair bays, which were now filled with window glass and flower-planted window boxes.

The old gas company sign was still up, the ESSO legend faded but legible. A twelve-foot-high chain-link fence was to one side, enclosing bike parking and camping, a place where customers could leave their expensive rides while they drank, played pool, and socialized, and rent one of the tents or the small cabin to stay overnight. The lot was paved, the camp-ground striped with fresh sod, and there was even a shower house in back. I’d stayed in places like it when I traveled. They were cheap, usually safe, and sometimes clean. Booger’s was pristine, with signs posting the rules and a warning to clean up after pets. Booger had done a lot of work, and the number of bikes in the fenced area this early said a lot about his service and his food. The bikes were hard-core, chopped, one-of-a-kind beauties with skulls and crossbones, wild animals, and American flags as part of the paint jobs.

I checked the setting sun and knew I had a half hour to reconnoiter before any vamp might show. For safety’s sake, I elected to park in front with the pickups and the one car, facing Bitsa toward the road for a quick getaway if needed. Sitting astride, I let Beast rise in my mind, and wasn’t surprised when the first thing she noticed was the scent of food: fried fish, fried shellfish, fried chicken, fried potatoes, grilled beef, and onions floated over the scent of gasoline and high performance machines. She approved of the menu and sent me an image of an oyster po’boy on a thick French-bread loaf. She licked her snout happily and I shook my head. I had a feeling I’d better eat first, before my contact arrived, because Booger might not want to serve me in the carnage of after. And with vamps, I always expect carnage.

I strapped my helmet to the bike and adjusted my leathers and weapons. Beast warned me that I wasn’t alone, and so I didn’t jump when a voice from the shadows said, “Nice ride. What is she?” My radar went up because he didn’t step from the dark for a better look. Bike lovers are usually drawn to Bitsa; she’s a sweet little lady. But this guy was talking from safety, only his cigarette giving away his position. White smoke drifted on the windless air from the side, near the chain-link fence. Something about the smell of the guy was odd, not clean, as if he hadn’t bathed in a couple of days and had a sinus infection or something. I quested with my other senses and didn’t see or hear anyone else. It was just the sickly-smelling guy and me, which should have relaxed me, but it didn’t.

Without letting him see what I was doing, I tucked the derringer up under my braids and checked the slide of the stakes for easy removal from the bun as I answered. “She’s your basic pan/shovel, put together from two old bikes, and updated by a Zen Harley Master up in Charlotte.”

“Is that a Mikuni HSR-42 carburetor?”

The guy knew his bikes. I put his accent as a vaguely familiar west Texas, but his scent was unknown, and if he wasn’t standing on a ladder, he was a good six feet six. I hummed an affirmative. “And the lifters are updated hydraulics to eliminate maintenance and help keep the noise down.”

“Why would you want to do that?” he said, laughter suffusing his words.

I faced his spot in the dark. “Not everyone wants to advertise or annoy.”

“Walk softly,” he asked, his tone changing from jocular to something else, something with a hint of a growl in it, “and carry a big stick?” He took a drag off the cigarette, the red ember brightening his face for a moment, ruining his night vision. He had slick, freshly shaved cheeks, ruddy skin, hair pulled back from his face, bushy brows, dark eyes. “Or better still, a shotgun and enough weapons to start a small war.”

“Way better than a stick,” I agreed.

“You gonna start a war in Booger’s?” The tone dropped to a basso threat.

“I’m not planning on it. I’m just here to talk to a vamp. Maybe eat a po’boy, drink a beer, and play a game of eight ball.”

“And if Booger said to leave the weapons at the door?”

“I’d have to respectfully disagree.” I smiled. “Are you Booger?”

“No. Not Booger. Not a vamp. Interested observer. What’s the message?”

“The vamp gets to ask me that. No one else.”

The man dropped the cigarette. Beast’s enhanced night vision picked out his body as the dim light fell. He wasn’t on a ladder. He was built like a fire truck, a solid giant of a man. When he ground the butt out, I heard metal on the pavement, steel on the soles of his boots. But when he moved into the darker shadows, it was silently, hard for a big man with metal on his soles. I heard a door open and noise poured out, a country song on a jukebox, voices, the clink of glass and the smell of beer and grease, and something musky and slightly rank underneath it all. The door shut. He was gone.

“That went well,” I mused. Full night had fallen. I hadn’t gotten inside before dusk. Drat. I glanced at my bike, taking in the faint glow of the witchy locks protecting Bitsa from casual interest or more nefarious intent. I opened the door, and went inside.

The no smoking laws had forever changed the face of drinking establishments, and the air inside was clear. The bar was straight ahead, bottles against the obligatory mirror, and the food ordering station was a bar on the left, with a dry board above it listing menu and prices. Between them was the jukebox, new but looking old-fashioned with neon all around and lots of shiny metallic paint. There were tables scattered between the door and the bars, seating people with food and drinks in front of them.

The floor was concrete, painted navy. Easy to clean. Color scheme was navy and red the color of blood, vamps’ favorite shade. Ceiling was fifteen feet over my head, with exposed vents, pipes, and wiring, painted black. On the front wall, the bay doors’ arches were windowed with seating. To my right was the pool area, with three pool tables. No one was eating or drinking or playing. Everyone was watching me. I took a breath and the musky undertone of the scents raised Beast’s hackles. Deep in my mind, she growled, as if recognizing the odor. She crouched close and looked through my eyes, her paws and claws milking my mind, the sensation unpleasant.

I followed the scent to seven guys and a girl standing in the pool area. One of them was the fire truck-sized smoker from outside. But they weren’t vamps, so not my target. I moved across the floor to the bar, taking position on the far left of it where no patrons sat on bar seats to obstruct my movements. I angled my body, keeping everyone in sight, leaned one elbow on the bar, and placed one booted foot on the raised footrest that followed the bar’s shape. The position looked relaxed but also gave me leverage if I needed to push off fast. I fished a card out of a pocket and slid it to the bartender. He was a little guy, maybe five feet four with a potbelly and tattoos of birds of prey up his arms. His name tag said BOOGER. I hoped it was a nickname and not his mama’s idea of a joke. Booger picked up the card and looked at it.

It said JANE YELLOWROCK in small caps, and below that, the motto: HAVE STAKES, WILL TRAVEL. Vamp-hunter humor. He looked from the card to me. “So?”

“Leo Pellissier sent me to chat with a vamp—average height, slender, black hair. Pretty.”

Booger tucked the card in his T-shirt pocket. “Can’t help you. My place ain’t fancy enough for the fangheads.”

Which was very true, now that I thought about it. But ... Leo hadn’t actually said I was meeting a vamp. The only term, beyond the general description, was a persona non grata. Crap. I’d assumed vamp.

“Course, there’s others he mighta sent you to chat with.” He nodded to the pool area and hit a red button under the bar mirror. Clanking overhead startled me and I stepped away from the bar as a metal wall, shaped like a garage door, but made of short lengths of chain formed in squares, rolled down and hit the floor. It was a security device, like mall stores draw down at night to protect their wares. Another wall did the same in front of the food bar. Two more slid down over the windows in the arched insets. I tensed to sprint into the night, but it wasn’t a cage. The doors to Booger’s had no obstructions. The people sitting at the tables got up and left, letting the night air in. The jukebox went silent. No. Not a cage. A fighting ring. But with a way out if I wanted to take it.

Beast growled low inside. She sent a thought picture to me. A pack of wolves against a snowfall, a full moon overhead.

And I got a real bad feeling.