23
My boots made a nice sound as I stepped out onto the tile floor of the foyer outside the club’s kitchen. They’re harness boots—black and square-toed with a strap and ring across the instep. They’re a style of engineer boot with a cowboy heel and oil-resistant rubber soles. They are a badass pair of boots. Look up badass in the dictionary and you will find a picture of these boots beside the entry. I’ve owned them for years.
They were a gift from my wife, on a birthday before the kids had come along. She had bought them for me and surprised me with them when I got home from work. I put them on and she liked them. She liked them so much I spent the rest of that birthday wearing nothing but the boots.
Enough of that.
That memory was a dark road with a bad end. Pushing it aside, I kept moving.
I had changed to an old pair of jeans, white-blue from untold washings and threadbare over the knees. The Orion Outfitters shirt remained, tucked in now to stay out of the way of my shoulder holsters. Both Colt .45’s rode under my arms, where they were supposed to be, rows of extra clips stacked below them. Bessie hung heavy on my hip. The leather cords cut into my thigh where they were tied to hold the holster down. The big gun had pitting and corrosion from Were-snake venom splashing on her the night before. Spots of rust scattered on her stainless-steel frame, but she was still serviceable.
In my hand, I carried a katana.
The Japanese sword was past antique. It was downright damn ancient. It had been taking lives for almost fifteen centuries. The scabbard was ebony and wrapped with a crimson and saffron cord that was knotted and woven so the sword could be worn at the waist or slung over a shoulder. The handle was plain yellow wood wrapped in black cord. Inside the blade rode, tarnished and dull, spotted black from gallons of blood drank along its edge. It was a cursed and bloodthirsty blade. Every time I held it I had to fight its call to kill more than necessary.
I didn’t know all of the sword’s history. Kat had looked it up and found out that it used to belong to a Japanese emperor’s executioner before being stolen by a group of Tibetan Demon-monks. I kind of zoned out as she told the story. It was one long of evil that ended in the hands of an asshole named the Kensai. He was a rogue Yakuza assassin with delusions of murderous grandeur. He was the one who had stolen Charlotte’s egg sac a few months back with dreams of bonding with her offspring and using them as tools to assassinate people who cannot be gotten to.
I had put an end to that plan.
Everything ended with him dead and eaten by Charlotte’s young, who then bonded with Ronnie from the club. I wound up with the Kensai’s matched pair of Colt .45’s and the katana, which now was home to an Oni, a Japanese demon I set free from being trapped in a tattoo on the Kensai’s back.
I am not a master swordsman by any stretch of the imagination, but I can hold my own. Especially when my opponents only have claws and fangs. The sweeping curve of a katana makes it one of the most deadly weapons in the world. I wouldn’t take it over a gun, but I would take it over bare knuckling a few rounds with a lycanthrope.
This cursed katana was a bloodthirsty blade. When used, the Oni inside it tries to seduce you over to the dark side. Whispering in your mind, promising you your darkest desires if you will just use it to spill more blood. It pulled to you, making it hard to stop killing, especially if you were prone to killing to start with.
Not that I would know anything about that. No, not me.
It also heightened your speed, your strength, and reaction time. It wouldn’t put me even with Leonidas, but it would tighten the gap. After the level of injury taken the last time we tangled, I wanted every edge I could get. One day I would destroy the damned thing, but until that day I would use it to my advantage.
The smell of pizza filled the kitchen as Kat and Tiff opened flat cardboard boxes and set them on the long table. Larson rolled over with a stack of plates and napkins. My stomach clenched into a knot of hunger. I hadn’t eaten anything in too many hours. My mouth started to water as I walked in.
Tiff came over to me. She reached up, arms around my neck as I pulled her close. She smelled good, warm honeysuckle scent making my head swim. I lifted her up in a hug, squeezed her firmly, then set her back on her feet. We pulled apart, her hand lingering on my arm, my hand still lightly touching her back.
She smiled up at me. “Detective Longyard is waiting for you out front.”
“He probably wants to know what happened last night.”
“I’m sure.”
My stomach growled again. The smell of pizza filled my nose. “Did you offer him lunch?”
“I did and he said he had somewhere to be.” Playfully, she pushed me toward the door to the main part of the club. “Go take care of business. The pizza will wait for you.”
I walked out to find Detective John Longyard slouching against the bar, cigarette in one hand, a lighter in the other. He brought the cigarette up, flaring the lighter to life with a flick of his thumb. Inhaling sharply to get the cancer stick started, he then blew out a thick cloud of smoke.
With a squint he looked at me. “Nice sword.”
I pulled up a bar stool next to him, laid the sword on the bar top, and slid over an ashtray. “Thanks. They’re very fashionable this year; all the cool kids will be carrying them this fall.”
Detective John Longyard. Good cop, good at his job, good man. He had been the investigating detective on the case of my family. He was smart enough to step back and let me do my work now, knowing it saved the lives of police officers to do so. He helped smooth over things when I had been too violent or left too much evidence behind during a hunt. I knew exactly why he was on my doorstep today.
We left bodies on the ground last night.
A
lot
of bodies.
He waved the cigarette in my direction, indicating the sword. “I’ll pick one up for my kid then.” One long drag and he stubbed the cancer stick out in the ashtray. “You got any hooch in this joint?”
I got up and walked behind the bar. “What’ll you have, sailor?”
“Something dark. Neat, and plenty of it.”
I pulled down a bottle of Southern Comfort and held it up. He nodded. Two shot glasses went on the bar. I poured them full, pushed one toward him and picked up the other one. We tossed back the whiskey at the same time. It hit the back of my throat and tumbled down to splash into my empty stomach. The low ebb fire of the liqueur set up residence. I turned my shot glass over and slammed it on the bar.
It had been a while since I drank whiskey straight. Déjà vu swept through me. I had tried to drown my pain through a lake of Southern Comfort when my family was taken. I had talked to Longyard while drinking back then, so this had the eerie feel of the familiar. Bad déjà vu.
I pushed the bottle over to him. He picked it up and poured another shot. As he tossed it back, I studied him. Every time I had ever seen Detective Longyard he had been wearing an expensive suit. Morning, noon, or night, he never dressed casual. For a split second I wondered if his pajamas were three-piece. The one he had on today was a rich cocoa brown matched with a blue shirt and a saffron-colored silk tie. It was rumpled, wrinkled at the elbows and knees like he had been wearing it too long. His light brown hair was still in place but had a slightly greasy shine in the low light of the club. Dark shadows filled the hollows under his eyes.
Normally, Longyard is always the same. Different suit, but the same level of styling, like he was going to a million-dollar executive deal rather than a crime scene. Today, he looked worn and raw, as if his nerves were too close to the surface of his skin and everything in the world was rubbing him the wrong way.
He set the shot glass down. His fingers smoothed down the mustache he kept trimmed above his upper lip. He poured a third shot but left it sitting on the bar. The brown amber liquid quivered in the glass.
I moved back to the bar stool. “Been a long day?”
“Long night. I’m still working from yesterday.” He pulled out another cigarette. He tapped it on the pack, settling the tobacco into the tube of paper. He studied it, watching his own fingers intently. Without looking up, he spoke. “Do you have any idea what kind of mess you left at that motel?”
“Actually, I was pretty out of it when we ditched. So, no, I don’t have any idea. How bad was it?”
He pulled out his phone. His thumb slid across it as he scrolled through information. He read off mechanically. “One motel unit destroyed. Eleven bodies. Approximately two hundred and four bullet casings of various calibers. More blood types than there are blood types.” His phone slipped back into his pocket. He looked up at me.
“Eleven
bodies.” His finger stabbed the bar next to the shot glass. “All of them nude as the day they were born.”
Eleven was a lot. One of the good things about being an occult bounty hunter is that when I handle most monsters I can shuffle them completely off this plane of reality. This keeps too many people from tuning in to the fact that monsters are real. Vampires turn to dust, mummies crumble to dirt, ghosts go into the light, demons go to hell . . . you get the picture. Lycanthropes don’t do that. Kill one of them and all of a sudden you have a dead human on your hands.
A dead naked human.
This can be awkward at the best of times.
I looked at Longyard with a cold eye. He generally took what I did in stride, smoothing things over, keeping the attention away. Was this the time that his help ran out? Had he been pushed too far? If I was on my own with the police, things could get real hard real quick.
I stood up. “Are you about to give me bad news, Detective? If so, just get to it; don’t dance around.”
He looked at me, meeting my eyes. I liked John, but I kept my face empty. I could feel emotion bleeding away, my subconscious preparing me. He broke the stare and picked up the shot glass. Southern Comfort spilled over the edge onto his fingers as he tossed back his third shot.
Grimace on his face, he turned the glass upside down and slammed it on the bar. “I like you, Deacon, and I appreciate what you do, but sometimes I forget just how dangerous you really are.” He looked at me, something sitting dark in his eyes. “Was it necessary to kill all those people?”
I reached down and gave him as much truth as I could. “Werewolves. The dead were almost all Werewolves. They had joined the bad guys and tried to kill us. So, yes, it was necessary to kill all those Werewolves last night.”
He stared at me, searching my eyes. I don’t know what he found, but it seemed to satisfy him. He nodded to himself and stood, picking up his pack of cigarettes. “The official story is a drug-dealing, sex-trafficking ring had a deal gone wrong.” He turned to go. My hand fell on his arm.
“Thank you, John.”
He turned. His eyes cut over to the sword on the bar. “Is your case ongoing? Or do I have another long night in store for me?”
My hand fell away. I shrugged. “It’s not over.”
“Then thank me when it
is
over.” He turned and walked out of the club without a backward glance.
24
Pulling a chair around, I sat across from Sophia. She had run a brush through her hair, pulling it smooth into big, loose locks, making it shine. My shirt still draped around her narrow shoulders, but underneath she had added a pair of black yoga pants from one of the girls. She sat quietly, but returned my smile when I gave it.
Tiff put a glass of sweet tea in front of me, leaning over my shoulder to do it, her warm girl weight gentle on my back. Her lips pressed quickly against my face, the barest kiss and then gone. Fingernails trailed up my arm as she kept moving. The honeysuckle scent of her cut through the air around me, causing my heart to speed up.
I caught Kat shooting me the same look I had given her about Larson with the same raised eyebrow. My chin went up in a small nod to her. She grinned, her eyes slowly sliding over to Larson.
I snagged a wide slice of veggie pizza and dragged it onto my plate, leaving a trail of cheese and toppings behind. I love veggie pizza. Put as many vegetables on there as you can. Anything but hot peppers and I am in like Flynn. The joint we order from does it right. The veggie pizza has thick-cut, fresh vegetables tossed on a sea of cheese over a homemade marinara sauce and dashed with seasonings.
The owner, Mario, takes good care of us. Making our pizzas with extra toppings, never charging us. Why does he hook us up? One, because he has a soft spot for the ladies, and two, a few years ago Father Mulcahy and I exorcised a minor demon out of his pizza oven. It had come in with a bad batch of parts from Indochina. Some Holy Water and a rite of Exorcism, and he was back to making the best pizza in the Metro-Atlanta area.
Kat looked at me while everybody sat down around the table. “So what is the story from last night?”
“Sex-trafficking ring and drug deal gone bad.”
“Hasn’t that one been used before?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Must be hard to sell a drug deal gone bad when there are no drugs around.”
I laughed. “I’ve been to that ghetto ass motel. Trust me, there were drugs on the premises somewhere.” I didn’t share the peculiar way Longyard had acted. I would keep an eye on him. If things went south with the relationship we had, me killing monsters, him covering it up, then I would deal with it. There was no need to worry anyone else with it right now.
Everybody settled in with food, beginning to eat in a companionable silence. Just the five of us gathered around the table.
“Where is the good Father? He loves Mario’s.”
Larson wiped his mouth. “He’s with Boothe keeping an eye on Marcus and Shani and making preparations.”
“Preparations for what?” My pizza was hot, cooling on my plate as I spoke.
“They are getting ready for this Brotherhood group. Boothe and Father Mulcahy have a plan of some sort.” Kat picked up her slice, pepperoni grease dripping onto her plate. Kat is a meatitarian. She will not tolerate a vegetable on her pizza. For her, the pizza world consists of only pepperoni, cheese, and more pepperoni. “Some kind of trap for them that is set up for tonight. I called and told them you were back among the living and they want you to join them.”
“Why didn’t they wait for me?”
“They couldn’t. Leonidas and the other predators have been terrorizing Weres all over town. Nobody has died, but it’s only a matter of time unless they are stopped.” Larson’s eyes blazed bright inside dark circles. “I’ve been treating a lot of shape-shifters in the last twelve hours. They’re escalating. What started as simple cuts and bruises has grown into some serious injuries. I had to shut the clinic. Between the aftermath of yesterday and the injuries last night, we ran out of supplies.”
“I ordered a rush shipment. We will be restocked tomorrow.” Kat’s hand went out and grabbed Larson’s. He raised it to his lips, kissing it softly as they shared a lover’s smile for each other.
“What’s being done to protect these people Leonidas is hurting?” Somebody had better be doing something or there was going to be hell to pay. This had been pushed to the tipping point by Charlotte and the other lycanthropes’ insistence that I get involved. They had given me their word that they were my backup. I had pushed myself over the line to heal them. They had damn sure better be trying to protect people. If not, I had a pocket full of ass-whoopin’s to hand out when I saw them again.
For a spilt second guilt came knocking because I had been with Tiff while people were being hurt.
I looked over at the girl in question, who gave me a sweet smile, and told guilt to kiss my ass. My old friend anger, though? That I held on to, pulling it deep in my chest. It settled next to my heart, warm and cozy in the spot it had held for years now.
“Word has been put out for all the area shape-shifters to go to Boothe’s neighborhood, the Warren, to be safe. They have been showing up all morning from all over the area.”
“Word? How is this ‘word’ getting to them?”
Kat rolled her eyes. “Since Larson has been providing medical services to the Were community, we have put together a network of contacts. E-mail, social media, phone numbers, text chains . . . name a way to contact someone and we have it.”
I should have known Kat would have set up something like that. She had a similar system in place for the few other people around the world who do what I do. Before Kat came along, I had a bunch of scraps of paper with random numbers on them. That was how I kept the contacts for other monster hunters that I had gathered. Kat quickly took those and made a database. Now I could call others in my line of work from my cell phone.
She lives to organize things like that, putting her Internet wizardry to work. When it comes to Web-based things, Kat is a genius.
“What about the predators? Are they with Leonidas or us?”
“We don’t have very many predators here to start with,” Larson said around a mouthful. “The ones that are in the area have gone to ground and are keeping to themselves until this is over.” He looked at me pointedly. “They’re scared of you.”
If they chose to be with Leonidas, then they should be.
I turned to Sophia. She had eaten four slices of pizza while we were talking, with her fifth being brought to her mouth. Lycanthropes eat fast and they eat a lot because their metabolism runs ninety to nothing. Which is why you never see a fat Were. Sophia was eating for four, so I would not be surprised to see her polish off an entire pizza, despite being the smallest person in the room.
“Is this normal behavior for Leonidas and his gang? Or are they taking retribution for the other night?”
The Were-dog swallowed her mouthful, wiping daintily at tiny bow-shaped lips. “He does scare people into going back to the old ways. I don’t know any details, those were kept from me, but this is the first time he has been in a city at the same time as Marcus. Normally he arrives just after we leave and undoes all Marcus works to accomplish.”
“So, what’s the story with you and Marcus?”
“There’s no story. Not really.” Her cheeks flamed crimson, voice falling away. “Not anymore.”
I felt my face grow hard as I looked at her. “We are way past that line of shit.” She flinched like I had yelled at her, even though my voice had remained steady. Ah hell, I wasn’t trying to scare her. I softened my tone to try and take out some of the sting she had in her mismatched eyes. “I need to know the real deal before I go any further, Sophia. You can trust us here.”
Pulling in a breath, she held it captive for a long moment, then slowly, shakily, she let it escape between her lips. “I was his assistant. My job was to go out and make first contact with prey groups before Marcus showed up. I was sent ahead because my other half is a non-threatening predator. I would also arrange our transportation, housing, and upkeep.” Her words tumbled out in a rush. She quickly replaced them with another bite of pizza, moving her eyes away and hoping that was all I wanted to know.
Not that lucky.
I probed again. “Okay, but I know there is more to the story than that.” Tiff elbowed me under the table. I ignored it. Sophia dropped her head, hiding behind a cascade of dark auburn hair. “Does he know that you’re knocked up?”
She nodded slowly up and down just once, hair still a veil.
“Is the father Cash, that Were-dog I killed yesterday when they showed up to take you? Is that why he wants you back?”
Softly, so softly I almost didn’t hear it, she spoke words that crashed like thunder and tilted the whole situation sideways.
“No, it wasn’t Cash. It’s Marcus.”
Larson dropped pizza in his lap.
Without even looking down, he leaned over toward her. “Are you sure? Absolutely sure?”
Fire flashed in mismatched eyes as she looked up. “Yes, I am sure. I have only been with one person my entire life and that’s Marcus.”
I watched Larson carefully as he reacted to this information. His brow furrowed and he removed his glasses, cleaning them with his shirt. Putting them back on, one hand ran through ginger hair, pushing it back and letting it fall. He pulled the glasses back off and began cleaning them again.
Finally, Tiff spoke, “Why is that such a big deal?”
Larson shoved his glasses back on over wild eyes. “It’s a big deal because it is impossible to crossbreed species of lycanthropes. Completely and utterly impossible.”
“Obviously it’s possible,” I said.
Larson turned to me. “You of all people should know that just because something happens doesn’t make it less impossible.” I nodded that he was right. “The implications of this coupled with what happened last night when you healed Charlotte and all the other Weres . . .” Voice trailing off, his big blue eyes were far away as he looked up. “This is huge. Enormous. The implications . . .” And just like that we lost Larson as he began thinking, his brain in mad scientist mode calculating possibilities, probabilities, and repercussions. He hadn’t been quite right since last year.
Tiff’s eyes were narrowed as she studied the Were-dog. I could
feel
the wheels turning in her mind. Her voice was very gentle, softly trying not to spook or scare. “Sophia, did Marcus ever use that creepy voice to get you to sleep with him?”
Shame flooded Sophia’s face like a switch was thrown, blossoming across her cheeks in crimson, big eyes shimmering as they filled, brimming with saltwater, threatening to spill. “No . . . not like the other night.” Tears broke from her eyes and ran wildly down her cheekbones to hang and drip along the delicate jaw. “Sometimes.”
She took a deep breath, drawing it in and pushing it back out. “He is so handsome and confident. When I met him I was scared to talk to him and I knew he would never notice someone like me, someone so plain and scared of everything. But then he did notice me. And he wanted me to help him.”
A small, wistful smile played through her tears. “He made me feel so special. If someone like Marcus, who had people listening to him, hanging on his every word, if someone like him could see me, then maybe I wasn’t so ugly. He said I wasn’t ugly.” Her mismatched eyes sparkled. “He was the only man to ever tell me I am beautiful.”
She took a deep, trembling breath and went on, words coming in a rush, spilling out, cleaning the wound. “I knew he was mated and I felt terrible about that part of it. I was raised in a Southern Baptist home and you just don’t do that. Mated isn’t married, but it’s the same thing. I justified it by telling myself that Shani doesn’t want him, she just wants the position of being his wife. Which is true, but it didn’t make what I was doing any less wrong, only easier to justify. Cash would help us to be together because Marcus was
so
lonely. He wanted
me
. He said I made him happy and that I was beautiful and wonderful.”
A small pale hand wiped away saltwater. “He didn’t have to use any voice tricks on me. Not at first, but once I found out I was pregnant, I didn’t want to keep being his mistress. They might have been conceived in sin, but I wasn’t going to raise my babies that way. The next time he came to me, I told him no.” She choked a little, holding back a sob. Swallowing, she moved on. “He made me submit then, using the voice. But he was used to me just doing it without question, so I don’t blame him.” A sob broke, giving lie to her words. Her voice was small, brittle. “I don’t blame him at all.”
Kat put her arm around Sophia. With her past, she is acutely, painfully sensitive to victims of rape. Unfortunately, it is a sympathy born of experience. I had rescued her from the hands of sexually sadistic vampires who had used and debased her in ways that would have killed a lesser woman. She survived, even to the point of being able to have a romantic relationship with Larson, but because of her past she was attuned to any form of sexual trauma in others.
Sophia folded into the circle of protection, Kat looking at me over her head. Kat’s lips were making low, soft sounds of comfort, but her eyes were flint-hard pieces of hate for Marcus. Tiff moved to kneel behind Sophia and add to the circle. The three women huddled, drawing strength from each other. Larson and I were left out by virtue of our gender, so we sat quietly, reverent in the presence of something we could never fully understand.
After long moments, the three of them slowly broke apart with lingering touches of comfort. Three pairs of eyes red-rimmed and wet. Larson and I watched the birth of a sisterhood before our very eyes. It was something sacred, something holy. Forged in the crucible of shared experience, it wouldn’t break easily. Women already come equipped with a core of steel-fiber strength, depths of resolve a man cannot comprehend. It’s not the dynamic strength men have, all power and show. It’s a strength of endurance, fortitude. It is the strength that allows women to conceive life and to carry that life until the day it can stand on its own. These three women were now one, a three-strand cord not easily broken.