Skinwalker

CHAPTER 5 It was wicked sharp

I’m sure television had cemented my ideas about what a hooker—a working girl—was like. Crass, hard-eyed, crude, probably diseased. And my Christian children’s home upbringing had pounded the image in. Katie’s ladies blew all that away in five minutes. They were seated in elegant chairs in a formal dining room, around a dark, carved-wood table, sleepy eyed and attired in brocade robes with tasseled belts, their hair in silken waves, their skin perfumed and oiled. They all looked and smelled healthy. Though with a distinct aura of vamp clinging to them.

There were six girls, and a seventh met me in the hallway as I entered. Three girls were Caucasian: a blonde, a crimson-haired beauty with emerald eyes, and a white-skinned, black-haired girl who caught my attention with the witchy energies around her. Three of the girls were dark skinned—one with skin so black it looked blue in the candlelight, one South Asian who looked twelve, and one with coffee-and-milk skin, hazel green eyes, and kinky blond hair. The seventh was different. She jingled as she took her seat, pierced, tattooed, and dangling rings from eyebrows, lips, nose, ears, navel, and nipples. She was wearing low-rise velvet harem pants and a peekaboo bra, so I wasn’t guessing. And she wore a braided leather whip over one shoulder. The whip looked so supple it likely left no marks on human skin.

“I’m Christie,” she said. “You looking for work? ’Cause Katie already has a full house.”

Before I could answer, the walls vibrated as if electricity quivered through them. And a vampire screamed. The sound shivered, ear-piercing, like nothing in nature and nothing man had made. So high-pitched it came closest to sounding like a police siren. It was the sound they made when they died.

Beast flashed into me and I whirled, raced down the hallway, faster than a human could follow. I raced past Troll, opened the door, and slid into the room where I had been interviewed. Katie stood there, fully vamped out, claws extended, canines a good two inches long, pupils black and huge in bloodred eyes. The stench of wormwood filled the room.

Cripes. Beast slid to a halt. Troll pushed me aside and stood in front. The doorway behind filled with lovely ladies.

“Go back to dinner,” Troll murmured softly, a measured monotone. Katie’s face flashed to him. She raised her claws and hissed, animalistic. Beast understood. Fear. Killing frenzy. I got a single image of Beast attacking a doe. And her fawns. Raging, terrified, hungry. I backed out the door and closed it, standing with the girls in the dim hallway, surrounded by their perfumes and whispery clothes.

“I’ve never seen her like that,” one whispered.

“I have. Tom can handle her.” But there was a trace of uncertainty in her voice.

I said, “Let’s go back to the dining room. She can smell us out here.”

“How do you know?” Christie asked, close on my left.

I looked at her, my vision adjusted to the low light. Her eyes were wide and she cradled the whip in both hands, so tightly her knuckles were bloodless. I couldn’t exactly reply, “Because Beast can smell her.” I settled on a shoo ing motion and took a step in that direction, knowing that herd mentality would make them follow. Beast had once informed me that humans were hunters only by luck and because they had opposable thumbs. Otherwise they were prey. And not very tasty at that. I had been too scared of the inference to question her further. I really didn’t want to know if I/we had eaten humans. Really, really didn’t.

Back in the dining room, a black woman, distant relation to Methuselah, shuffled in wearing a floor-length black dress, a starched white apron, and loose house shoes, her sparse gray hair in a bun. She was pushing a cart laden with salad bowls. Without speaking further, Katie’s ladies filed around the table and sat. I took one of three empty places, in the middle, not at the foot or head of the table. “Thank you,” I lied, when a salad bowl settled on the spotless white tablecloth in front of me. I didn’t have anything against salads—especially when they came smothered in bacon dressing—I just didn’t crave them.

“You are most welcome,” she said, her soft voice accented, but with what native language I didn’t know. She placed a wineglass near the right side of my plate, and a water glass on a coaster to protect the dark wood beneath the cloth. I took one look at all the silverware and felt a faint panic. At the children’s home I used a knife, fork, and spoon. Drank milk. Prayed over my food. Washed dishes. Since then, I had eaten with fingers over the kitchen sink or with claws in the grass and not thought much about it.

I watched the girls as they each lifted a silver—cripes, real silver—fork and started eating salad with oil and vinegar dressing. No bacon. As a guest, I was gonna havta eat it too. It had been weeks since I remembered to bless a meal, which brought on a fit of guilt, and, though it probably made me a bad guest in a vamp’s home, I closed my eyes for thanks before selecting a similar short-tined fork and eating. As I chewed, I took in the room. Paintings hung in gilt frames, all portraits of Katie in various stages of undress. Heavy brown and black striped drapes covered windows on the far wall, tied in place with big tassels and fancy ropes. A thick, modern-looking rug in the same shades was beneath the table, black silky fringe on two ends.

When the salad was gone, I said, “Katie wants me to talk to you girls about the—”

Katie appeared in the doorway. Didn’t move into view, simply appeared. Vamp fast. Beast threw back my head and shoved my chair from the table with a squeal. Katie’s shaking hands braced on the jamb to either side of the door as if to hold her up. Her hair hung down in a snarl. Blood coated her lips and chin. “Jane. Come,” she said, breathless.

Her eyes looked human, and her canines were snapped back into the roof of her mouth, but she smelled of fear and fresh blood. Beast bristled. Not knowing what else to do, I followed Katie to the office, holding Beast down with an effort of will; she hated tagging along to another predator’s den. As I followed, the vamp turned on the sconce, brightening the hallway with a touch of human color. But the scent of blood was growing stronger. Beast fought to get free and my lips curled to expose killing teeth I didn’t yet have. Katie didn’t glance my way.

In the office, the scent of blood and meat was so strong my stomach knotted. Contrary to books and movies, humans can’t smell fresh blood, only old and decomposing blood, but Beast can. She gathered herself and growled, low in my throat. Troll sprawled on the leather love seat, blood clotted on his throat and T-shirt, his outer shirt ripped open. His skin was grayish blue, his eyes rolled back in his bald head. His chest rose with a shallow breath. Beast settled to her haunches in my mind, waiting to see what I’d do.

“I hurt him,” Katie said, her voice astonished.“I . . . I took too much.” She looked at me with empty eyes, the eyes of a child who had made a grave mistake and didn’t know how to fix it. I relaxed my fingers, which had formed into fighting claws, and crossed the room, keeping Katie in sight. Kneeling, I checked Troll’s pulse. Thready and weak, way too fast. His skin was cold and ashen, shocky. I inspected his neck. The punctures were neatly constricted closed. At least he wasn’t losing any more blood. I adjusted his head slightly to open his airway, hoping Katie hadn’t broken his neck while feeding, hoping I hadn’t just paralyzed him.

Among the courses I had taken since I graduated from high school had been an emergency medical technician class, but I didn’t have supplies to help him. I traveled too light. “He needs a transfusion,” I said, “and fluids. Call 911.”

“No.” Still moving on the edge of vamp speed, she knelt, the motion graceful and wilting, and lay the back of her hand on Troll’s cheek. The gesture looked tender and caring, in stark contrast to her refusing her employee medical attention.

“Why not?” I said, keeping my tone steady.

“They will arrest me.” She looked at me across Troll’s body, distressed and helpless. Yeah. Right. “I have supplies,” she said. “I know you are capable of inserting an intravenous needle. You studied medicine. Rachael and he share a blood type. She can donate.”

Katie had clearly studied my Web site well, and had discovered that I was a certified emergency medical technician. I sat back on my heels, though Beast sent me an image of vulnerability, a cat with belly exposed. When I could speak without a challenge, which could stimulate a vamp on edge, I said, “Are you out of your freaking mind?” Okay. Not challenge-less, but better than what I wanted to say. “I’m not gonna start an IV and give somebody blood. If I gave the wrong type I could kill him. Not gonna happen.” I stood and looked down at Katie, at the desperation in her eyes.

“Do you know what happens to vampires in jail?” she asked. “We are chained in a dark room, without blood, and left to rot.”

“That’s just an Internet myth.” At least I hoped it was. Laws for equal rights and legal protection of supernats was not something Congress was eager to push through. Most of their constituents hadn’t exactly laid out the welcome mat to the vamps and witches when they’d been revealed a few decades back. Troll moaned, ashy, his breathing shallow. His carotid pulse fluttered like a dying bird. “Call your doctor,” I bargained, beginning to feel desperate.

“He is too far away. If you will not help with the transfusion,” Katie said, “then at least start intravenous fluids.” She stood and went to the bar.

I swiveled so my back was never turned to her, and watched as she opened a door on the bar to reveal a well-stocked medical supply cabinet. Well, looky there. How handy, I thought, feeling sarcasm ripple through me. This wasn’t the first time Katie had needed to treat a wound. Who woulda thunk it. I wondered how close to the killing edge Katie was. Lore claimed that vamps who started making blood mistakes late in life sometimes went feral, like the rogue I was hunting. Interesting. In a maybe-deadly kinda way. Beast didn’t like this. And neither did I.

Still keeping Katie away from my back, I checked the expiration dates on the saline and the sterile needles and went to work. I tied on a tourniquet and found a vein, inserted an eighteen-gauge needle. It was a large-bore needle, suitable for giving blood, and had to hurt, but Troll didn’t even flinch. I attached the line of fluids to the Jelco valve and turned on the saline, open all the way. Katie watched as I squeezed the bag to force fluid into Troll’s system faster. “He needs a doctor,” I said, hearing the near snarl in my voice.

“Will you make the call?” she asked, plaintive.

“Why don’t you?”

“I don’t know how,” she said. I looked up in surprise. Katie handed me a cell phone. “I know the correct number is in the phone book inside that but I do not know how to use it. And I do not wish to leave him, to go . . . back and find the number.”

Back. To her lair, I thought, deciding it must be too far away to make the trip easily. Yet she was here, on site, before the sun set. That gave me pause, though I didn’t let her see me react. I punched a few buttons on the phone and found the address book.

“Ishmael Goldstein,” she said.

I scrolled down, found the name, and punched SEND. The number rang on the other end and I relayed the message to the man who answered. When he questioned who I was, I gave Katie the phone and then had to show her how to hold it to her ear. She confirmed what I had said and I hung up. “You don’t know how to use a cell phone?” I asked.

Katie shrugged elegantly, her eyes on Troll. “Things change so quickly. There was a time when only fashions changed, not how one lived. Now, to live requires constant adaptation. I do not like it.” She looked at me, and some of the helplessness fell away. Her voice strengthened and her shoulders went back. “I have a telephone. But not like Tom’s. He handles all matters of an electronic nature for me. It is his job. A matter of employment.”

“So I see.” I kept my voice neutral. If she heard a trace of snideness in my tone, she chose not to react. “You want to tell me why you went feral on me?”

Katie placed a long-fingered hand on her throat. “When I woke I knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t place it. And then Leo contacted me.” From my research, I knew Leo was Leonard Pellissier, the head of the vamp council in New Orleans. “He told me that Ming never woke. Her human servant entered her lair. . . .” Katie stopped to breathe, but vamps didn’t need much air except to talk. That alone would have told me she was upset, even without seeing Troll near death. “She was missing. There was much blood in her crypt. Hers, by the scent.” She looked at me. “Leo is on the way here.”

On the heels of her statement, the doorbell rang. I figured with Troll a little under the weather, it fell to me to open the door and provide security. I gave Katie the saline and showed her how to squeeze the bag. With her occupied, I went through Troll’s pockets looking for weapons. I found a specially designed, steel, twelve-inch-long, single-bladed, silver-edged vamp-killer. With a rogue on the loose it made sense for Katie’s bodyguard to carry one. I had a few myself.

Troll had it strapped to his thigh with an opening in his pocket that allowed him to slide a hand in and withdraw the knife. Without getting too friendly, I unstrapped the sheath and strapped it on my own leg. His .45 I carried, safety off, finger on the trigger, from the office into the foyer. On the way, I opened the closet door where I had previously deposited my weapons and retrieved the stake I had left in the corner. It was always smart to have a stake handy when meeting a vamp on unfamiliar territory. I tucked the stake in my waistband and hoped I didn’t hurt myself with it. It was wicked sharp.

There was no peephole in the door—no weak spot for someone to shoot through—but I spotted a modified high-boy; its hinged top opened to reveal a series of monitor screens, part of the house’s security system. There were a half dozen camera screens—most of them showing unoccupied bedrooms—and one was a small screen displaying the front stoop. Early night had fallen and the door lights had come on, revealing two men, a well-groomed guy wearing a dark suit, and a larger, broad-shouldered bruiser. Leo Pellissier and his right-hand man, blood-servant, and muscle. I held the gun out of sight, pulled the small silver cross from around my neck, took a deep breath, centered my footing, and opened the door. The muscle, seeing an unfamiliar face and the suddenly glowing cross, drew a knife and attacked.

I sidestepped fast and stuck out a foot. He tripped. Oldest trick in the book.

I was on him before he hit the floor. Riding him down. Troll’s .45 rammed against his spine at the base of his skull. We hit. Bounced. My heart pounded. Beast growled.

Faster than thought, the vamp’s weight fell on me. His hands encircled my throat. Tangled in my braids. He hissed. Fangs extended with a soft snap. They brushed the side of my neck, a predator’s killing bite.

I rammed back my head. Connected, skull to something softer. Heard an oof of expelled breath. The pressure on my throat lessened. I slapped the cross on the back of the vamp’s hand.

He howled. Fell away. I rolled, pulling the guard with me, until we lay on the floor, the gun at his neck, his body on top of, and protecting, mine. The reek of human sweat and vamp pheromones bathed the air. This one smelled of anise and old paper, maybe papyrus, and ink made of leaves and berries.

“I’ll shoot your blood-servant if you move again,” I said, my voice pitched low and cold. Leo paused, that inhuman, vampy shift from combat to utter stillness that was so startling. “If you listen, I’ll let him live,” I bargained. The stillness went deeper. I felt the servant gather himself and I clawed my hand around his throat, fingernails digging into his windpipe. I shoved the muzzle hard under his ear. “If you resist, I’ll rip out your throat, then behead your master. Pick and choose.” A shocked silence filled the foyer. Slowly, he went limp. “Wise move.

“Leonard Pellissier.” I focused on the dark form, silhouetted by the streetlight flooding the open doorway. “I’m Katie’s out-of-town talent,” I said, using the Joe’s phrase. “The tracker and hired gun the council contracted to take out the rogue. I don’t want to kill either of you, but I will if I have to. The blood you smell was not spilled by me. I am not your enemy.” Well, not right now, but nobody was taking notes. “Back. Off.”

He backed. I tightened my grip on the bruiser. “You gonna play nice?” I felt him swallow under the pressure of my hand.

When he spoke it came out in a whistle from the pressure I had on his windpipe. “Yes.” I heard truth in his tone, smelled it on his body, along with Leo’s scent of ownership, the smell of vamp. I released my hold. He rolled to his feet and I followed him upright, keeping him between Leo and me. He reached around and shut the outer door. When he moved to face me, in front of and slightly to the side of Leo, I switched the safety on the gun. I was lucky it hadn’t gone off while we rolled around on the floor. It was stupid to wrestle while holding a gun, even while facing down a vamp. Not that I could have figured out a better way. I had been between a rock and a fanged place.

“You don’t smell human. What are you?” Leo said. Trying out his vamp voice on me, smooth and honeyed, and promising me a really good roll in the hay.

“Stop that,” I said. “It doesn’t work on me.”

“She growled, boss,” the bruiser said. “When she took me down.”

“I heard her. What are you?”

“None of your business,” I said.

“Whose blood do I smell?” Leo asked.

“Katie—” I stopped, not knowing what to say. Admitting that Katie had made a mistake by taking too much blood was on a par with saying an adult human had pooped his pants or eaten his own boogers. Really gross or stupid. Accidentally killing prey was a young vamp error, not something an ancient vamp did. Ever. And not the kind of thing a good employee said about her employer. The silence stretched, and Leo’s brow went up. Just one. Waiting.

“I was forced to reprimand a member of my staff.” Katie stood in the hallway, wearing a dressing gown that shimmered like silk. She was clearly naked beneath it, the thin fabric blood free and molding to her thighs. Not what she had been wearing. “May I ask that your blood-servant assist with the transfusion?” she asked. “It is not my intent to lose him.”

I understood immediately. It was okay to nearly kill someone as discipline, but not by accident. Feudal attitudes, something the vamps had left over from, well, from feudal times. I understood it, but I didn’t have to like it.

Leo glanced at his servant and the man looked reluctantly from me to him before he nodded. It was clear he didn’t like the idea of leaving me alone with his boss, but he was willing if Leo gave the go-ahead. Leo inclined his head. Regal, giving permission. Bruiser rolled his head on his shoulders, and I heard two cracks as his spine realigned itself. He gave me a hard look, promising to kill me slowly if I acted out again, and went down the hallway, his booted feet silent on the wood and carpets. Predator silent.

“Your new guardian used a cross on me,” Leo said, holding out his left hand. A livid burn, blistered and seeping, marked his hand, in the shape of the cross. Silver. I wanted to grin but that seemed impolitic. Katie moved to him and knelt at his feet.

“Humble apologies, my master,” she murmured, as her blond hair fell forward, hiding her features. “May I be allowed to offer healing, or do you wish to chastise her yourself?”

Crap. I tensed. Leo lifted one corner of his mouth at my faint motion and speared me with his eyes. I stared back, though I didn’t meet his gaze. Black eyes, coffee-and-milk skin, dark hair falling in soft waves to his shoulders. French lineage, maybe. Aristocratic and elegant. His photos lied. In them he looked ordinary. In person the vamp was drop-dead gorgeous. The drop-dead part would have been funny if I didn’t feel like an insect about to be stepped on.

His smile widened, as if he read every thought in my head, from gorgeous to squashed. “If she dishonors me again,” he said, “I will kill her, rogue vampire to be contained or no.” He held his injured hand to Katie. She did something behind the curtain of her hair and I smelled vamp blood. A moment later, she stood and raised her bleeding wrist to Leo. He took it in one hand and pulled her to him, the motion exposing the side of her body as the robe fell open. The whites of his eyes bled red; the pupils expanded black as he vamped out. He put her wrist to his mouth, bit, and closed his lips around the wound. And he sucked. But his eyes were on me.

I felt the pull of his mouth as if he drank from my wrist. Heat blossomed in my belly. Beast rumbled a growl I just barely controlled. Leo chuckled deep in his throat, drinking. I couldn’t help myself. I slid my fingers around the hilt of the vamp-killer. Those red-as-blood, black-as-death eyes followed the motion. And then looked into my own eyes. I resisted everything I saw there. Everything he made me want. Son of a freaking sea lion. This guy was good. Powerful as the devil himself. I looked away, at the floor, knowing he saw it as weakness.

I felt the cross grow warm and tucked the silver icon in my back pocket, hoping the glow didn’t attract Leo’s attention. No one knew why vamps reacted to Christian symbols and the symbols to them, and I didn’t figure that now was the time to ask.

Moments later, Leo pushed Katie away. He raised his left hand, inspected the mostly healed skin, and wiped the blood smear from the corner of his mouth. And licked it. He was laughing at me. I could see it in his eyes. He was also testing to see if the sight of a vamp drinking would shock, repel, or excite me. Beast was interested, from a strictly predator standpoint, but that wasn’t the emotional reaction Leo was watching for.

Katie knotted the belt of her robe, her eyes glittering behind the veil of her hair. “You may go,” she said softly to me. “Report back before sunrise. You may speak to the girls then.”

I was dismissed. And Katie was ticked off. I nodded once and backed down the hallway. In the office, the bruiser was attaching an archaic-looking, Y-shaped tubing from a girl to Troll. The right blood type was the redheaded girl with emerald eyes, Rachael. From her place on the couch, recumbent, she stared at me, expressionless. The bruiser followed her gaze.

I put Troll’s weapons on the huge desk, noting that the center part was darkly tanned leather, worn and distressed. “Troll will need these,” I said. “Tell him thanks.”

“Troll?”

I tried to smile and found my mouth didn’t want to. “Tom.” I pointed to his patient. His expression altered with amusement and he pointed at himself. “You’re Bruiser,” I said.

“I have a name,” he said. “I’m George Dumas.”

I looked him over. Six-four, weight lifter, but not to bulging excess; rather, he was slender and toned, brown eyes and hair. Clean-looking with a sculpted nose, long and sort of bony. I had a thing about noses and his was primo. Not that I would tell him. “So what,” I said, not sure why I was being rude except that I didn’t want to express an interest in someone who might become an enemy. His eyes widened at the insult.

I left the room and took the narrow hallway to the back door, the one that led to the garden. As I pulled the door closed behind me, I heard the doorbell ringing. Probably the first of Katie’s Ladies’ party customers. Not something I wanted to see.

I went back over the wall and got ready to shift. Time to hunt.