“I’m sorry.” I bowed my head deeply as I had seen my father do so long ago. My father! The memory of his face rose in my mind, nose sharp and cutting. I blinked back tears at the new/old memory. As formally as I could, I said, “I give thanks for your help. I’ll provide protection as I’m able. For now, may I know who owns the property behind the house and into the woods and swamp?”
“The property borders on the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park, so the government owns most of it. I’m not sure who owns the rest, though there is privately held land dotted all around here, like my family’s land.”
Park land. Crap. That meant the rogue vamp had acres and acres to roam, and no one to stop him. Except for me. And this stern, delicate shaman. “Thank you for your time,” I said.
“I offer my counsel and the use of the sweathouse. If you go into battle ill prepared, you fight to lose. I sense it has been some time since you went to water. Purification and smudging will help you, center you, let you find what you seek.”
Some time. Yeah, you could say that. The weight of decades pressed onto me, heavy and fraught with pain. “I may take you up on that,” I said.
Aggie pursed her lips. “You’re lying to me. You have no intention of taking me up on anything. Why not?” She cocked her head, little bird fashion. “Is it the same reason why you won’t tell me about yourself?”
I backed to the door, my eyes on hers, my most disarming smile firmly in place. This woman was way too smart for me to hang around any longer. “Thank you, Grandmother, for your help and counsel.”
She made a sound I hadn’t heard in years, but which was instantly familiar. Sort of a snort, a pshaw, and a single syllable of negation. It was very much a sound tied to The People, as “alors” is tied to the French, and “cool” is tied to generations of Americans. “Dalonige’i,” she said, and I stopped at the sound of my name. “It isn’t a traditional name. It means more than yellow rock, you know.” When I lifted my brows in question, she said, “It also means gold—one reason why the Nation was stolen from the Cherokee, why The People were set on the Trail of Tears, so the white man could dig dalonige’i from the earth of the Appalachian Mountains.”
This time I didn’t react to the words, but I knew she still saw more than I wanted anyone to see. “My thanks,” I said again. And I backed out her front door onto her stoop, into the heat and bright sun.
I kick-started my bike and took off for home. As I rode, I considered what I had learned, not about myself—that was for later reflection—but about the thing I chased. Beast was wrong. It wasn’t a liver-eater—I had seen it and it had no long fingernail. It was a vamp. A seriously whacked-out, flesh-eating, rotten-smelling vamp to be sure, but a vamp. A vamp gone way bad. An old, mad, rotting rogue.
Though my nose wasn’t as good as Beast’s, I still had better olfactory senses than any human. Standing in my backyard, I held the bit of cloth to my nose and breathed in, parsing the pheromones and proteins that made up the four distinct scents, three of them human and heavy with fear, alive when their blood was spilled. Perhaps Beast’s memory helped, but I could actually partition the human scents into one female and two male humans. And beneath it all was the scent of the thing I was chasing. I drew in its chemical signature. Vamp. Definitely vamp. Weird vamp, rotting vamp, but vamp. I shuddered with relief, allowing myself a small moment to relax at the certainty. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a skinwalker gone bad.
Returning to the bit of cloth, I isolated the differing chemicals in it, finally detecting the faintest tang of the woman the rogue had been with. Caught the smell of sex. And something even fainter, that I hadn’t placed. Or perhaps hadn’t remembered. I breathed in again. Shivered. Breathed in yet again, this time through open mouth, tongue extended. Chill bumps rose on my skin. My breath stopped. The scent of The People. I sat down heavily, landing unsteadily on the steps to the back porch. Is the rogue vamp I’m hunting . . . Cherokee?
One hand on the top, supporting my weight, I jumped the brick wall over to Katie’s at just after five, over at the spot where the security camera had once been secreted. As I jumped, pivoting my weight on one arm, I took a quick look. No camera. There was a small scar on the brick. Since it was gone, and I therefore wouldn’t give away what I was doing to whoever had put it there, I gripped the top of the wall and let my body swing against the brick, in a rappelling stance. I sniffed the site and was surprised at the commingled scents I found.
On top, fresh and bright, was the smell of the Joe. Rick LaFleur. He had removed the camera, likely at Troll’s command. Beneath the Joe’s scent, however, was another, fainter scent, and the weird thing was, I recognized it. The camera had been placed by Bruiser, the muscle who worked with Leo Pellissier, the head of the vamp council in New Orleans.Why would Leo feel it necessary to keep an eye on Katie? It smacked of nasty politics in the council. Big surprise there. I pushed off from the wall and landed softly. Turned to the house and was surprised to see Troll standing in the open back door. He made a snorting sound, his gaze measuring the wall. He was holding himself up with both hands on the door, his skin the pallor of old parchment, yellowed and brittle, especially the dull dome of his bald head.
I stuck my hands in my jeans pockets and strolled over, trying to look like every human could drop from a fifteen-foot wall without injury. “You look like death warmed over,” I said.
“Anybody ever tell you that phrase is insulting to the members of a vampire’s household?” His rough voice sounded even more scratchy than usual, dry as stone dust.
I laughed, feeling a bit mean, not liking myself for it. “No, but I’ll try to remember that. You get enough blood from last night’s donation?” And that was why I was angry. A vampire nearly killed someone I was sorta starting to like, and he wasn’t ticked off, so I had to be, right?
“Not enough from Rachael. But Katie allowed me a small drink from her wrist.”
I didn’t react, though anger and disgust pinged through me. Yuckers. Troll stepped aside and I walked in. “You still look awful,” I said.
“I’ll survive,” he said. “But you’re in trouble.”
“Yeah?” I felt my hackles rise and wanted to growl. “With who?”
“Katie had to go out last night to feed, to make up for the blood loss. Between what that bastard Leo took, and what she gave back to me—before she fed—she was depleted. She won’t be up early tonight, and she won’t be feeling too well when she does rise. So if you have anything to tell her, you might want to run it by me first.”
Confused, I said, “And all this has to do with someone being mad at me?”
He said, pointedly, “Katie told you to be here by dawn to report. You didn’t show.”
Crap. I remembered that, now. “At sunrise I was on the other side of the river, the Jean Lafitte park, on the trail of the rogue vamp. Unlike Katie, I can’t turn into a bat and fly home.”
Troll chuckled, the sound oddly sad. “Don’t let Katie hear you say stuff like that. She hates the myth that vampires turn into bats. In fact, with the exception of a few fiction writers who happened to get it right, she’s pretty pissed at everything the media has portrayed about her kind.” He turned on lights as he led me through the house. “So. Bat talk aside, you want to tell me what you discovered?” I filled him in, succinct to the point of brevity, with no mention of Beast, of course. He said, “Huh,” when I finished, and pointed to the dining room. I figured I was dismissed and went in.
The girls were gathered around the table again, all of them looking sleepy eyed and a bit wan. Especially Rachael, who was lounging back in her chair. There was a bandage on the inside of her elbow at the antecubital vein. Dark circled beneath her eyes and she was sipping something neon green through a straw in a crystal glass. It looked and smelled like Gatorade. Not the sort of drink that belonged at the formal table with all the silver, china, and crystal. I’d never understand the rich and dead or their servants.
Miz A appeared, her wrinkled face seeming more creased but smiling in welcome. I resisted kissing her cheek as if she were an old auntie, which was a weird impulse and could get me slapped, or worse, and said, “I don’t guess I could have the meal I didn’t get last night?”
A smile repositioned the wrinkles all over her face. “Tonight’s steak is bourbon pepper, but you may order it served rare if you like.”
“I like. And if it’s not asking too much, I’d also like a baked potato and iced tea. No wine.” She nodded.
When she left the room, tottering on legs that seemed weak beneath the long skirts, I looked over the “girls.” I needed to find a way to get them to open up to me. Sorta like I had once needed to get a house full of twelve-year-old girls to open up to me, when I was first sent to the children’s home. I wondered if bonding would be any easier now that I was twenty-nine—according to my totally fictitious though totally legal birth certificate—and spoke English.
Tia smiled sweetly if a bit sleepily at me and ate something green from a salad plate. The silk robe was gone. Tonight she wore a silk lace bustier that shoved her boobs up proudly, an opal necklace nestling in her cleavage.
My gaze settled on Christie, who was wearing about fifty tiny braids—a lot like the way I often wore my hair—and a face full of silver in her eyebrows, nose, ears, even around her collarbone. The silver rings had chains running through them, connecting her nostrils to her ears and points between, all dangling little bells. Bells everywhere, even up under her peekaboo bra, which had the cups sealed with latches tonight. Thank God. The girl, who couldn’t be more than twenty, was wearing a dog collar with wicked-looking spikes. Christie shook her braids back when she took a bite of salad, and the bells tinkled.
To fit in, I tasted the salad, mixed greens with lots of spices in the dressing. Something bacon-y, which I instantly loved. “Christie,” I said, chewing, “I like the bells.”
