Skinwalker

CHAPTER 11 We sa . . . Bobcat

I still didn’t know for sure what Leo was driving because I was three blocks away by the time he pulled down the street. The vehicle lights were high off the ground. I figured it was a Hummer. The older, heavier, military model, not the newer, lighter, better mileage version.

I slipped away, taking the girl’s head with me, carrying it by its soft curls. I’d dunk it in a nearby pond or swamp to remove my blood, and leave it where Leo could return it to her family for proper burial. Vamp spit had kept my pain down, but was wearing off. Walking hurt.

Cradling my injured arm at my waist, I was out of the hood pretty quickly, but I stuck to the shadows, dangling the head. I figured even the most jaded and cynical inhabitant might report a bloody girl in a party dress carrying a severed head by its hair.

Two things about New Orleans: There is always water nearby, and the very rich live within walking distance of the very poor. In less than a mile, I found a fenced yard with the scent of koi pond. I scanned the area, didn’t spot any cameras, didn’t smell any dogs on the other side, and hopped the fence. Not trusting my quick scan, I knelt in the heavy shrubbery and surveyed the place. The pond was huge, complete with a miniature waterfall and green plants. The house beyond it was a monster, with arches and lots of screened porch space. It was dark, soundless. I figured it was near two in the morning, so any inhabitants were sleeping.

Concealed behind an elephant-ear plant, I set the head to the side and untied my bandage so I could scoop pond water over my arm, washing off the blood. It was dried and cracking, and had started to burn. I don’t know what pH vamp blood is, but it has to be acidic. More chemistry. Maybe a class in Vamp Physiology 101 would be better.

When I had washed off most of the blood, I stripped and rinsed my dance clothes, wrung them out, and put them back on wet. It didn’t help the pain, but being clean—well, more clean—helped me in some way I couldn’t have explained. The clothes were cool on my skin and smelled sorta fishy. Beast was hungry and informed me she wasn’t averse to fish for dinner. “Later,” I murmured, keeping an eye on the house as I dunked the head into the pool. Dried blood, fresh blood, and bits of vamp floated free. Attracted by the smell or maybe by all my movement, koi swam close and watched, golden, pink, black-and-white, in tabby cat- blotched patterns. One nibbled on a bit of vamp flesh and spat it out in a puff of water. “Smart fishy,” I murmured. I hoped vamp blood wasn’t toxic to oversized goldfish.

When the head was as clean as I could get it without bleach and a stiff brush, I turned it in the water and studied it. She was a light-skinned black girl, delicate of bone structure, with loose curls. Her gray eyes stared at me from the water, still wearing the confusion of death. I reached between her lips and eased her vamp teeth down from the roof of her mouth. They were hinged, like a snake’s, the bony structure growing in behind her human teeth. I let them contract back. With her dead, the motion was slow, as if the small joints were frozen. Rigor mortis, vamp style, maybe. As I studied the head in the pool of water, the surface stilled, reflecting back the security lights. Reflecting back my face beside hers. Cheekbones prominent, hair a riot of braids falling over my shoulders. Yellow eyes next to the gray ones.

I didn’t know her name, only that she was Jerome’s sister. And that she had been twelve. I had just killed a twelve-year-old killer. Did that make it okay? Worse than an adult killer?

If I had waited, would Leo have been able to trap her, chain her in his basement, or the New Orleans equivalent, until she developed self- and appetite control? If I hadn’t gone behind the abandoned house, would she have waited, hiding while her maker was killed? Would she have not attacked me? Crap. I hated morning-after regrets of any kind, especially the ones that arrived before morning. I didn’t know what to feel. Sorrow. Shame. Something.

Beast was silent. She felt no shame, didn’t understand the emotion, considering it a waste of time. Reaching into the still water, scattering my reflection, I closed the vamp’s eyes.

I stood, still hidden by the huge leaves, and spotted a towel draped over a chair, on a short deck. I stole the towel, wrapping the head, awkward because of my arm. Which was now hurting like a misery—a pounding, pulsing pain that, even with Beast’s help, was making me nauseous. I rewrapped the turban around my wounds and loped to the fence, tossed the head over, grabbed the fence top with my good hand, and pulled myself after it. Feeling exhaustion in every muscle, breathing too hard for the exertion, I headed home.

If the U.S. Congress ever passed laws giving vamps complete civil rights, making them something more than monsters, I would have to find another way to make a living. I could go to jail for staking them. Beast showed me a vision of the children’s home I lived in for six years. Beast’s idea of jail. I’d have to show her a real prison someday. Or a zoo. Beast hissed at me.

I made it back to the freebie house by four, and hit REDIAL while standing on the porch, calling Leo’s number again as I unlocked the door. I heard a soft tone from inside just as the smell of vamp hit me. And Bruiser. Beast came alert. Leo Pellissier, head of the NOVC, and his muscle, were in my living room. In the dark. Crap. Crap, crap, crap.

The tone came again. I swung open the door. Located their positions by scent. Leo was immobile to my right, Bruiser to my left. I said, “How you doin’, Leo, Bruiser? You planning on jumping me when I walk in, or is this a social call?”

I heard a click and the phone didn’t ring again. There was a sigh in the dark, from Leo, breathing for effect. “Come in, Jane Yellowrock.”

It wasn’t exactly a command, but Beast and I weren’t in the mood to let a vamp take a dominant position in any kinda way. “You asking or telling?”

After a moment, Leo said, “Please.”

I figured that was the best I was gonna get, so I took a breath, pushed the pain down somewhere deep inside, and gripped the head in the towel. It would make a squishy but effective weapon if needed. I stepped inside and turned on the light. Leo was sitting in a yellow floral chair in the living room to the right, elegant legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, fingers steepled over his chest. No weapon. A suit and tie. Silk shirt. Bruiser was standing in my bedroom doorway, equally weaponless, unless I counted his body as a weapon, which I did.

“You been going through my undies?” I asked. Bruiser’s mouth twitched. “ ’Cause all I got with me are the travel undies. The leather, silk, and lace stuff is all in the mountains.”

“You got leather undies?” Bruiser asked, intrigued. The guy wasn’t here to kill me just yet. He was too relaxed. He crossed his arms over his chest. Nice arms, well-defined pecs and biceps, and the forearms of a man on a very lean diet. Slender, muscular.

I smiled, showing teeth. “Nope.” I held up the bloody towel and indicated it with a minuscule movement of my injured hand. Which hurt like a mother. Bruiser’s arms came free fast. “No weapon,” I assured him. To Leo I said, “I think this is what you want.”

I knew he could smell what I carried. Leo nodded, the gesture imperious; Bruiser relaxed. I lobbed the wrapped head at Leo. The towel fell free in midair. Leo caught the head, watery blood showering over him. The towel landed in a bloody heap on the hardwood. Leo was holding the vamp’s head upside down. Showing great restraint, he raised an eyebrow. I grinned.

“You took the head with you. Why?” he asked, conversational, civilized, a bit . . . droll. Yeah. Droll. The guy was having fun. You coulda blown me away with a feather.

Seeing as how he was sitting in my house, and surely could smell my blood from where he sat, the decision to make off with the head and wash it up to remove traces of my blood on it turned out to be wasted. And not one I wanted to defend. Part of the reason I applied for the New Orleans’ job was a vague hope that an old vamp might know what I was, but being sucked on wasn’t part of my plan. I shrugged, the defense of a recalcitrant teen.

Leo held the head to the side. It was dripping. “George. Would you be so kind.”

George paused. Maybe it was the first time his boss asked him to take a severed head. “There’s dishes in the kitchen, Bruiser,” I said. “I’m sure Katie wouldn’t mind, long as you bring it back all squeaky clean.” Bruiser and his boss shared a look that probably had all sorts of meanings, and the henchman went to do his master’s bidding. Maybe I should call Bruiser “Igor”. I didn’t say it, but I couldn’t help the grin. My sense of humor is going to be my death.

“You are bleeding,” Leo said. His pupils went vamp black. My grin disappeared. Leo Pellissier was probably as good at sniffing out stuff as Beast. He pulled the air into his lungs through his predator nose, little sniffs, like he was at a wine tasting. Which he was, to a vamp. I had an image of glasses of fresh blood and a bunch of vamps sitting around sampling. Or maybe just passing around humans, comparing vintages. Warped. I’m warped. The whites of his eyes bled crimson. And I am so in trouble.

“You went after a young vampire all alone,” he said, his voice silky. “You cost me the use of a good man as he heals and the temporary use of another as he goes after the maker of the male, bent upon revenge. I am not pleased.”

“You let a young, uncontrolled vamp into your place of business,” I said. Leo’s brows went up a half notch, as if surprised I knew he owned the place. I hadn’t till now. But it had been his scent there, and I figured if he had been there enough times to leave his vampy fragrance on the furniture, then he probably owned the joint. Some of the red in his eyes bled away, but I wasn’t about to relax. Bruiser was taking a bit too long in the kitchen and he wasn’t making enough noise to still be searching for a container.

“The Royal Mojo Blues Company used to have a reputation as a safe place in the city that made vamps famous and sexy,” I said. “Tonight, a young rogue had a fast, forced meal there. I followed him to his lair. I hadn’t intended to take him down, but I injured him in the women’s room with a stake. With a wood wound, I knew he’d need blood fast to heal.” I was explaining myself. Which I hated. I stopped.

Bruiser entered before the silence could stretch on too long, and set a plastic bowl on the floor and the head in the bowl. It was a perfect fit. I wanted to laugh, and I knew it was because of pain and blood loss. I had to shift soon or I’d be too bad off to meditate; I had to be calm for the ritual. I soooo didn’t want to shift without it.

“You are bleeding,” Leo said again.

“Yeah. So would you and Bruiser here take a hike? I need some Band-Aids and aspirin.”

“You are a pert and prickly child. George.”

I hadn’t realized it, but Bruiser had eased to his feet and beside me. At the sound of his name, his arms encircled me. Heart rocketing into my throat, I lunged the other way. His fingers clamped down on my wounded arm. I hit my knees. Gagging.

Pain surged through me, waters of agony tiding up my arm, into my belly, pooling and writhing like snakes in a swamp. Black closed in around my vision. For a long moment I couldn’t find a breath. Gorge rose in my throat, and I swallowed it back. I was not gonna hurl in front of the head of the vamp council. Beast clawed her way up, a hairs-breadth from a shift.

George let go of my arm. Pain did a little shake and slide before it settled down a few notches into what was only a throbbing agony. My ribs heaved, the belated breath its own kind of pain. Beast hesitated, uncertain, waiting. When my vision cleared, I was lying on Katie’s floral couch, my injured arm being bathed in icy water by George. Leo stood behind him, his suit coat and tie off, rolling up his sleeves.

“Oh, crap,” I said, my voice full of gravel and bigger rocks, grinding over one another. I cleared my throat and tried again. “I’m too old for a spanking and not quite up to defending myself from a butt whupping. Can we do this another time?”

Leo smiled, the grim expression pulling the flesh of his cheeks tight to his bones. He was an elegant man, his silk shirt catching the light and hinting at the olive-toned flesh beneath. His butt was cupped by the tailored pants like a second skin. He was beautiful. Really beautiful.

He knelt by my side with that fluid vamp grace. “Thank you,” he said, quietly amused. At which point I realized that I had spoken at least some part of my musings about his butt aloud. If I hadn’t been in so much pain, I might have squirmed at the thought. “You are some species of supernatural,” he said, his tone conveying that vamp look-into-my-eyes thing they do when they want to mesmerize prey. “But what kind?” His words slid along my flesh like feathers and silk and heated sex, and I trembled slightly. But I didn’t answer.

He took my arm from George and inspected it carefully. Pain pounded through me like Cherokee drums. I looked at the wound for the first time in direct light and felt an electric shock quiver through me. The muscles and tendons of my lower arm were shredded like so much raw, pulled meat. My heart sped up. My breath rate increased. Small pools of blood welled from the flesh with my reaction, glistening. Leo’s eyes were still crimson, pupils vamp black. But instead of attacking the blood meal, he looked from my arm to my face. Into my eyes.

My heart rate steadied. My breath hitched and stuttered. For a moment, staring into his eyes, I smelled sage and rosemary on the night wind. Saw shadows dancing against cliff walls. And then the images were gone, the living room of Katie’s house and Leo’s cologne and his slightly spicy, vampy scent in its place.

The vampire blinked and broke the gaze, and I wondered for an instant if he had seen the dancing images. He placed his face along my arm and breathed slowly in, his head tilting on his neck, tendons standing out. He had tied his lovely mane back, a black satin ribbon curling over his shoulder with a tendril of hair. I wanted to touch it, and to keep from reaching out, I curled the fingers of my good hand under until the nails pressed painfully into my palm. I tucked the hand beneath me, between my side and the couch cushion.

“Tell me about yourself,” he murmured, tone steely. The breath of his command touched my open wound. It was a balm on the awful pain. The thrumming subsided slightly, a piquant numbness in its place. “Tell me.” And the bad thing was that I wanted to. I really wanted to. This guy was good.

To keep from spilling all my secrets, I murmured, “A Christian.” I felt the shock strike through him, loosening the bonds he was trying to lace into me. I laughed, a bit of Beast in the tone. “I’ll tell you what I am if you tell me how the vamps came to be.”

“Impertinent,” he murmured. “Brazen.” There was a warmth in his gaze that hadn’t been there a moment past. “Cheeky, even.” A secretive smile touched his lips, a smile that was almost, but not quite, human. His head followed the length of my arm up to the elbow as he breathed in my scent. And higher, close to my neck. So close.

His breath exhaled against my face, smelling peppery and slightly of almonds, an odd combination that should have been unpleasant or jarring, but wasn’t. Heat pooled in my belly, conflicting with the pain. “Bold,” he said, his voice dropping low, “rude.” I laughed, the sound more Beast than me. His pupils widened a fraction more. “But you smell so good,” he finished.

He turned his head, his chiseled nose sharp as a stone axe in the lamplight behind him. He bit his lip; a drop of blood eased out, sliding down his chin. He placed his bloody mouth on my arm. The pain receded like a wave drawn back from shore. I gasped, breath hissing in through my lips as if he’d kissed me. He met my eyes and smiled, his mouth curling against my flesh. He sucked gently on my arm, lapped at torn flesh, his tongue laving, our blood mingling in my wounds. The pain vanished fully and I shivered hard at the loss, my muscles easing.

Vamp saliva really is an analgesic, I thought. I relaxed against the upholstered couch. My belly warmed. Fluttered. I sighed, the sound uneven. Leo chuckled against my skin, the vibrations of laughter pulsing through my arm like blood.

He pulled away a fraction of an inch, his lips parted, revealing long, slender canines, white as bleached bone. He placed his teeth on his bottom lip and bit down again. Blood welled in his mouth. And he bit into my wrist at the damaged vein. I gasped and jerked my arm back, but he held on tight. He wasn’t feeding on my blood. He was forcing his blood into me.

The sound of drums returned. Shadows danced on stone walls. Tunics and leggings, fringed and beaded cloth and deer hide, cotton dresses swaying. Sage and wormwood, rosemary and mint filled the air. Sweetgrass smoke billowed around me. Shadows closed over, dancing. Dancing. Cedar and sage burned, the aromatic smoke rising like dreams. Diaphanous, gossamer as butterfly silk, the smoke touched me. Drums beat into my veins. The night wrapped around me like the hand of God. And I fell into sleep. A deep, deep sleep. Dream and memory, both ancient, came together, melded like an alloy into one.

Slowly, I dragged my eyes open, my lids sluggish and heavy. Drums . . . Drums . . . I raised my head. Shadows danced, grotesque and monstrous on stone. Stone everywhere, flickering from campfire flames.

Night. Darkest night. I looked up, searching for the moon, the stars. And saw only the curve of the world above me, stone on stone, melting down like the white man’s candles. Pooling, dripping, melting stone.

Underground. The caves . . . Caves? The thought, alien here, vanished.

My father’s face, half lit by flame, half shadowed, as black as death, loomed over me. “Edoda,” I whispered. Father . . . His eyes were yellow, like mine. Not the black of The People, the chelokay, an alien thought whispered, but the yellow eyes of u’tlun’ta, the skinwalker.

Edoda smiled and I breathed in his pride with the herbed smoke—stern, yet full of laughter. An old woman appeared beside him in the night, her face crosshatched with life and age. Her skin pulled down in long droops and stretched up in sharp lines. And her eyes—yellow eyes like mine—were lively and full of tenderness. “A s dig a,” she murmured. Baby . . .

I breathed in a new scent, burning, sweet, choking. The drums took on depth and power. The beat reaching into my blood, into my flesh, melding my heartbeat with it. Taking me over.

“We sa,” my father whispered. Bobcat . . .

Time passed. The drumbeat mellowed. Edoda sat close, his flesh hot in the chill air. The old woman, his mother, u ni li si, grandmother of many children, sat beside him, her fingers tapping on a skin-head drum. The echoes of her fingertips on the skin beat through me, vibrating deep. Touching sinew, bone, and marrow.

“A da nv do,” she crooned. Great Spirit . . .

“Follow the drum,” Edoda said.

I looked at the cave wall, at the shadows dancing there, swaying with exhaustion. The beat of the drum filled me, slow and sonorous, echoing through the cave.

Warmth settled onto me. Fur tickled me. On the wall of dancing shadows, I saw myself as the cat rested on me, ears pointed, tufts curling out. Pelt brushed my sides. My legs. We sa . . . bobcat. My face. The overlay of cat face, above my own. Settling onto me, a cured skin.

A necklace of claws, bones, fierce teeth—Edoda settled it over my head onto my shoulders. “Reach inside,” Edoda murmured. “Breathe inside. Into we sa, into the snake within.” The snake in the skin of the cat . . . Magic tingled along my sides, into my fingers as I slid down, inside the bobcat pelt. Dreaming. Floating in grayness.

Drunken, drugged, a distant voice thought. Mild surprise merged with the drumbeat. I saw the snake resting below the surface, encapsulated in every cell of the hunter cat. In its teeth and bones, in the dried bits of its hardened marrow. A snake, holding all that we sa was. The awareness of where the cat and I differed. Where we were the same. And how easy it would be to shift from my shape, into the bobcat. So simple. With understanding came purpose and desire. Clarity. The longing to shift into the snake within we sa. The desire to become bobcat.

My first beast. My first shift. I let go. I melted, as the stone melted in the cavern above. Taking the shape of bobcat. Pain radiated out, like spokes of the white man’s wheels. Yet distant, caught up in the drums, and so, not quite a part of me. The shadows on the stone merged and glittered, gray and dark and light. All color bled out of the night. And I was bobcat.

The world was grayer, duller to my eyes. But when I took my first breath as we sa, the scents exploded inside me, heavily textured and layered, yet distinct. Smoke, sweat, bad teeth, bear fat, white man’s whiskey, blood, herbs. Hunger tugged at me.

I tilted my head and looked at my father, my pointed ears and tufts of curling ear hair moving shadows on the stone. Edoda, beside me, had shifted as well. The beast he had chosen was tlvdatsi, mountain panther. Killing eyes met mine, round pupils in amber irises. Marauder claws flexed and stretched on the earth. I hunched, making myself small in fear.

Beneath the smells of fire, dancers, and the cat, my father’s scent was all but lost. All but. Not quite. I breathed him in, Edoda caught beneath the pelt of the shift.

My father was there, clinging to humanity as he looked out at the world through the eyes of predator death. Purring, he nudged me, forcing me to my feet, four legs offering better balance than two. I followed him through the no-longer-so-dark cave, into the night.

Scents and sounds were volatile, intense, so full of power they felt like knife wounds. Air touched my pelt, telling me everything about the world around me. The direction of the wind. The moisture content in the air. The nearness of storm clouds. The season of the year. The last rain was still wet in the dirt beneath my padding paws. I heard the running feet of rodents, an owl overhead in a tree, two does up the ridge, chewing. The owl lifted wings. Night birds hunted and called. Every sense was powerful and concentrated. I flexed out my claws, smaller versions of Edoda’s, but no less dangerous to my own prey.

Edoda, tlvdatsi, led me into the rhododendron thicket, trunks writhing from bare earth, leaves forming a canopy less than the height of a man above, teaching me to hunt. I followed, watching, scenting, hearing, learning how to bring down a rabbit. My own prey sat still as stone in the brush. Until a fear-crazed rush. I leaped. My claws sank deep, teeth ripping into the back of its neck. I gave the small prey a single shake, breaking its spine. Edoda teaching me to kill and to eat. The feel-taste-scent of blood and food, the crunch of bone and hot meat.

The night closed in with the taste. All scent wisped away. I lay on the couch in my freebie house, eyes closed. I remembered. I knew. I knew what I was, from the very beginning. When I appeared out of the forest I wasn’t the twelve-year-old girl the white authorities had thought I was. I was far . . . far older. And I had spent a much longer time in Beast’s skin than I had thought.

I shivered. I opened my eyes. To meet the vamped-out gaze of a far greater predator, canines exposed, lips drawn back in a slight snarl.