Broken Soul: A Jane Yellowrock Novel (12 page)

“I see. Well . . . if you need me, I’ll have my cell and in-house radio.” She turned on her expensive two-inch heels and left the room. I followed her into the hallway, but she cut me off with a terse, “I don’t have time now, Jane.”

I stepped back fast at her abrupt words. An embarrassed flush shocked through me. I don’t make friends easily and—

“Sorry,” Del said. Her shoulders slumped and she rubbed her forehead. I didn’t get headaches much but Del looked like she was in pain. “It’s been a difficult week.”

Tentatively, I said, “Leo giving you a hard time?”

She dropped her hand. “I’m not the primo he’s used to working with,” she said stiffly, as if she had heard the words once too often recently. “He’s still grieving for George, and there’s nothing I can do to take away the fact that he’s lost his
right-hand man. It’s also taking me a while to get up to speed. I don’t know where things are located, filed, or stored. I made a mistake ordering wine for a small gala Leo has planned. We got a delivery of ‘substandard, even for American swill,’
wine that I liked and that cost a small fortune. He broke every bottle. Every single one. Quesnel was horrified.”

Which sounded like underling-speak for the boss was being a pain in the butt. Was the jealousy a misread on my part? I said, “Ouch. Sooo, because you don’t have instant recall and superpsychic powers of vamp-omniscience, Leo bites your head off?”

She smiled slightly. “Metaphorically speaking.”

“Want me to stake him for you?”

Del spluttered with laughter, which was what I had hoped for, her pale complexion brightening. “I think not. Job security, you know.”

“Yeah. I bet it’d be hard to find a new position as primo in today’s job market.” The words felt familiar, as if I’d said them before. To Del? To Bruiser? Both had changed jobs recently.

Still chuckling, Del stretched her shoulders back and then let them relax. She said, “I’m sorry about my tone in there. Girls’ day out soon? I know this town has excellent spas and I’m dying to try one out.”

I didn’t do girlie stuff, manis and pedis and facials, but I’d had a massage once and it had been fantastic. “Soon,” I promised her with a nod, and then added, “Leo doesn’t understand the concept of monogamous. He’ll protect you with his life and give you anything you want except that.” Without watching for her reaction, I opened the conference room door and slipped back inside.

The lights were off in the room, security footage up on the oversized central monitor screen. A voice in the darkness said, “Legs, I’ll look over the footage again later for anything we might have missed, but so far, nothing shows on the cameras until the rainbow thing, whatever Leo called it, entered the gym.”

“Okay,” I said as I slid into a chair at the head of the table. Belatedly I identified the voice as Angel Tit, one of Derek’s men, a former active-duty marine and IT security specialist. And the scent beside me was Bruiser, silent, watching. He must have come back in through the other entrance. I could feel his eyes on me in the dark. “What?”

“That,” he said.
That
was digital footage from four cameras, taking up half of the screen, two by two. I’d installed the cameras to cover all aspects of the workout room and its two entrances. The screens showed footage that had been aligned by time stamp to show the moment the creature entered the gym in a flash of light. Instantly, all the cameras had splotches of white-out and partial white-out, in the blocky shapes of ruined digital feed.

Angel said, “I’m piecing together sections of footage that are still okay, so we can get a view of the fight. This is all I got at this time.”

A fifth screen appeared on the far right of the TV and showed the creature entering the room. It was a blister of light, a halo of nothingness with glistening movement to the side that could have been wings, followed by a smoky cloud of out-of-focus, thrashing tail. The camera angle changed, and changed again as it flew across the room. It whipped to Gee and bit him.

“It went straight to Gee,” I said. “I thought it was angling for Leo and got Gee instead. But it targeted Gee DiMercy first. Anybody have any ideas about that?” No one answered, but I could feel a growing discomfort in the room as the snake thing attacked Leo, fought, and finally flew away, then did it again, and again, as Angel replayed the footage. The uneasiness might have been the result of the appearance of what would have passed for a dragon in mythology, or maybe the part where Bruiser and I both vanished from the screen into a haze of gray energies, but whatever caused it, the humans in the room were not happy campers. Fortunately, no footage appeared showing me in half-cat form, and though it was strange that no one brought that up, I decided not to mention it. Discretion being the better part of valor, or I am a scaredy cat, or something like that.

We watched the footage several more times before I said, “Okay. Stop. Is it just me or does anyone else get a different impression of the action from what we saw in the room at the time it happened?”

“I thought my eyes were going bad,” a voice said from the front of the room.

“Nothing I see now is what I saw at the time,” Bruiser agreed. His voice wasn’t worried, but it was far more bland than usual, which was telling in its own way.

“Me neither. That’s not what I saw,” another voice said. Others murmured what they had seen.

“I saw a buncha bats. Nearly crapped my pants.”

“I saw bees, dude. Killer bees. Heard ’em too. Scared the shi— Ooof. Whadju do that for?”

“No cussing around Janie,” Angel Tit said, making it sound like a law.

“I just got dizzy, like someone spiked my drink.”

“I started itching. I got outta there.” Others agreed. The spectators to the sparring had cleared the room fast. Few witnesses had been left to see my partial shift. “Interesting,” I said, feeling a weight lift off of me. “So it makes humans forget they ever saw it. Pretty good survival mechanism. Everyone write up a report and send it to my e-mail.”

There were groans from around the room, the soldier’s universal hatred of after-action reports. Beside me, Bruiser chuckled under his breath. I said, “We need to know if it’s messing with our minds, our eyesight, or our memories.” That shut them up. No one human liked to think their minds might be an open book to some supernat.

I said, “I want to know what everyone saw at the time, versus what we just saw on the footage. Keep the reports brief and get them to me by nightfall. Angel, see if you can sharpen the images or fix the interference or whatever you call the blocky white-out sections. Send it to me ASAP.”

“Yeah, I’ll get right on that. Nice work with the tech lingo, Legs,” he said with unrestrained sarcasm. The men laughed, and some of the tension that had been generated by the meeting dissipated. “Just kiddin’, Janie. I’ll let you know what I find and send the Kid a copy.”

“Good. Lights, please.” We all blinked as our eyes adjusted and someone passed around a mega-sized coffee carafe and a tray full of mugs. Boxes of Krispy Kreme doughnuts followed. I wasn’t interested in the coffee but took a vanilla-cream-filled doughnut and bit into it, the sugary, doughy goodness practically exploding in my mouth. Vanilla cream squished out the small hole and I caught it on a finger and licked it clean. I had to wonder whether the local witches had ever heard of light-dragons, and I pulled my cell to text my best friend, Molly, to ask for me. Eventually, I’d have to meet the local witches myself, but so far, I hadn’t had to add that to my supernatural plate.

Mouth still full, I went on. “Okay. Last thing. Everyone knows about the elevator problems. The Otis people did the online diagnostic and pretty much got what Alex did, so they’re sending out repair people, ones who have worked in a vamp’s household before. They’ll be here at eight in the morning, in”—I looked at the time stamp on the monitor—“just a few hours. There will be two of them, and Alex has done preliminary background and social media checks on both. Neither seem to have overt anti-vamp prejudice, but I don’t want our guests wandering around alone. Eli will oversee their activities if they need to go into the shaft itself. Derek, if you’ll coordinate with him and position a couple more people to keep them in sight at all times?” Leo’s new Enforcer nodded, and I was happy to see him looking more confident about his position. Maybe our little chat at the clan home construction site had helped.

I addressed my next question to Angel Tit at the security console. “Angel? Who has day shift on the cameras?”

“That would still be me. I’m on till noon. I’ll stay over until the repair people are done.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I want them in sight at all times.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What do we do if the rainbow-snake-thing comes back?” Derek asked. The room went dead silent at the disquiet in his voice. I leaned back in my chair as if thinking about his question. When I replied I kept my tone dry and amused. “Try to keep it from eating anyone.”

The laughter in the room was quick and a hair uncertain, but Derek smiled and shook his head. “Ask a dumb question.”

“If there are no undumb questions, meeting adjourned.”

It Was a Girly Scream

Eli drove home slowly, watching behind us and up and down the streets we passed. “Problems?” I asked.

“We’re being followed. Three vehicles—two black or charcoal SUVs and one black four-door coupe. They’re playing ABC with cars.” ABC was a method of tailing a subject using a three-man team. In cars it meant each vehicle altered its position according to a prearranged system. The method was difficult to detect because the target subject was never given long enough to recognize any team member. It was hard enough to detect on foot. In cars, with traffic, it was near impossible. Eli was better than impossible. In the ABC system, the
A
vehicle followed the subject car.
B
followed
A
, and
C
paralleled either
A
or
B
. When the parade reached an intersection,
C
would speed up and cross or turn ahead of the target. This allowed the
C
vehicle to keep the subject vehicle in view in case it turned unexpectedly.

As
C
turned the corner,
A
would slow down, while
B
sped up to take
A
’s place. After a decent interval,
A
would pull out, find
B
’s back, and tail him. It could get complicated. “Cars?” I asked.

“
A
is behind us.
B
is the charcoal SUV a block back, and
C
is on Royal. You want me to lose them?”

I remembered the black SUV I had thought might be tailing me earlier and grinned. “Nah. Let’s play with them.”

Eli chuckled and made several fast turns, which had us going back the way we had come, the
C
car, which had tried to
keep up with the turns, in front of us. I took down the tag number. Moments later, the
C
car pulled away and down a side street at speed. The two other cars veered off as well, knowing they had been made. Meanwhile, I texted the Kid with the license number and Eli turned back toward home.

Fun,
Beast murmured deep inside,
to hunt prey with metal bones and bad-tasting blood. Hunt prey now with blood and flesh to tear and eat?

“Yeah,” I said aloud. “Keep the engine running when we get home. I’m going hunting.”

Eli pulled up in front of the house and got out, grabbing an armful of my fighting leathers from the backseat as he did. “Be safe,” he said as I slid over the gear console and into the driver’s seat. I waved my agreement and took off. After a complicated set of turns to make sure I hadn’t been tailed again, I headed across the river. I had three hours, more or less, until dawn. Beast needed to hunt.

•   •   •

I woke on path with dirt under belly and paws. Studied place. Jane had picked good spot to change. Tall grasses and deep shadows. Strange bent and stunted swamp trees. No standing water fallen from sky—from rain. Smelled of fish and rotten things and snake and skunk and opossum and scat of bobcat. Wesa, bobcat, had marked territory on tree. I chuffed with laughter. Jane had been Wesa when she took big-cat’s form and soul. Jane as Wesa had been strong, good fighter.

Looked for Jane in den of mind. She slept. I, Beast, pressed paw onto her and forced her deeper into sleep. Jane did not know Beast could do this. There was much that Jane did not know. Beast could not decide what to tell her. How to tell her. Was confusing. Jane was like Wesa. And not. Jane could need to know much of what Beast knew. But much would hurt her. Chuffed out breath.
Confused
. Did not like
confused
.

Hunger gripped belly like Wesa claws. Was not confused at
hunger
. Understood
hunger
. Stood and stepped over pile of Jane clothes on ground. Stopped. Looked back at thing on top of Jane-shirt. Was supposed to smell thing from fight, thing like scale of fish. Lowered head and snuffled, nostrils fluttering. Opened mouth and pulled in air over tongue and roof of mouth in soft
scree
of sound, taking scent deep.

Strange thing smelled of fish and snake and water of Mississippi. Smelled of burning green things. Knew this creature.
Had smelled one before, many years in past, during start of hunger times, when white man had killed off all animals and cut down all trees, and land itself washed away in rains. Beast had wanted hunter out of territory. Wanted snake/fish/winged-like bat hunter of prey gone. Wanted it dead. But it was too big to fight. Fangs were full of bad things, smelled of danger.

Beast had thought like Jane. Had shared part of kill with creature. It crawled from small pool of water and ate deer. Then flashed with light, like sun. When light went dark, it was standing on two legs, upright, like human. But creature did not smell like human. Smelled like this, fish, snake, water, and fire-burning-grass.

Beast had taken thing-of-light to mouth of river, to show it water-path to bigger water and safety, far away from Beast hunting territory. Beast was not being-doing-thinking emotion that Jane called
kind
. Just wanted thing-of-light-that-ate-prey gone.

Creature was happy and swam away, leaving Beast’s hunting territory. Should remind Jane of this. Thing had scales like fish. Like snake. Like
this
. But could change shape. Like Jane. But was not like Jane. Did not smell like skinwalker.

With teeth, Beast pulled shirt over scale. Hiding it. Patted it with paw.

Yawned. Stretched hard, pulling on front legs and chest and down belly. Felt good, except for Jane gobag on Beast-neck. Did not like bag, but bag held Jane-clothes. Did not understand Jane. Jane could grow pelt but would not. Jane did not like pelt. Jane liked clothes.

Silent, moving with night wind, I, Beast, trotted into darkness.

•   •   •

Later, lay on bank of small pond, water still and unmoving. Not creek, fast and falling through mountains, not bayou, slow and crawling through swamp. But still and muddy and deep. Good place to catch and kill sleeping alli-gator. Alli-gator. Jane-word for big predator in water. But Beast was smart. Did not hunt and try to catch
big
alli-gator. Leaped on small one and caught it in jaws. Fought it. Dragged it to shore by back leg. When Beast let go, little gator whipped back and bit Beast. Took bite of Beast skin from Beast, at place where leg met belly. Now smelled Beast blood on air. Licked wound. Hurt. But had learned how to hunt predator with many killing teeth.

Should not grab leg. Would be smarter to grab gator-face and jaw and muzzle when gator-mouth was closed. And bite down. Hard. Breaking gator-jaw. Pull snake with legs and many teeth to shore. Then could play with injured gator like playing with rabbits.

But did not think
big
gator would be so easy. If
big
alli-gator bit Beast, Beast would die. Did not want to die in many pieces in gator-belly.
Chuffed
. Wanted to live. Did not want to hunt gator again. Small one was enough. It was long as Beast and tail. I pawed gator-foot. Lowered head and bit it. Crunch of claws and bone and thick skin and scales. Tasted like frog-fish-snake. Beast belly was full, and all good meat gone. Buzzards would eat rest. Buzzards and big rats called nutria.

Beast rose and pawed rest of dead alli-gator. Moved its teeth into moonlight. Was good predator, good hunter. But Beast was best hunter.

Felt magic, like Jane’s magic, but not Jane’s. It tingled through air, foreign, strange magic, full of green lights and good smells of blood. It smoothed along pelt. Beast looked up, into night, saw lights, like Jane’s light, but not Jane’s light. Light reached into Beast, to touch Jane’s gray place of change. It wanted gray place, full of power. Beast leaped, high into air and away from light-thing. Growled. Light-thing pulled away, watching Beast. Was same light-thing that bit Leo and Gee. Light-thing had followed Jane and Beast. Had been watching. Like hunter of prey.
Beast is not prey!
Beast raised head and screamed.
Go away! Go away, magic snake. This is Beast’s place. Go away!

Magic coiled back, like rattlesnake on rock, faded like moonlight into fog. Was gone.

Beast padded along pond and lay down facing water. Facing sunrise. Lay down and thought of Jane. But did not know if Beast should tell Jane of magic. Was better that Jane did not know? Was better to keep Jane like kit, safe in den? Jane did not know many things. Must think like Jane. Must decide.

•   •   •

I woke facing a pond and a pair of gator eyes. I jumped backward from prone to standing in one move. I hadn’t even known I could do that. I screamed a little when I landed. I was pretty sure it was a girly scream and I was really glad Eli hadn’t heard it. He’d razz me forever.

The gator was huge and staring right at me. Tiny bumps
broke the water for twelve feet behind it. “Holy crap,” I whispered. “Beast, I’ll freaking kill you.” At the sound of my voice, the gator’s long tail twitched slightly, sending ripples over the smooth, muddy surface.

Deep inside, my Beast chuffed and rolled over. And closed her eyes.

“Faker,” I muttered.

I unsnapped the gobag and pulled out a pair of pants made of thin material, a soft T-shirt, flip-flops, and a hoodie. I had forgotten to pack panties, which I didn’t need but which made me more comfortable. As I moved, I felt the odd place on my chest where the light-dragon scale had rested. The tingling was gone, as was the lingering pain of abdominal muscles twisted out of shape, into a half-cat form. All good and normal, including the hunger that gripped me. I dressed and nudged Beast when I saw the remains of the small gator.
Did you kill that?

Beast yawned and showed me her canines.
Beast is best hunter.

Uh-huh. I smell your blood. How badly were you hurt?

Beast turned away and ignored me. Dang cat.

Am not dang cat. Am Beast.

I looked at the pond.
And that is an alligator. A huge alligator.

Know alli-gator. Alli-gator is not important. Know creature of light. Creature is important. Creature was shape-changer, like Jane but not like Jane. Not skinwalker
. A memory of a denuded world, rock, bare earth, and withered tree limbs appeared in Beast’s memory. It was familiar but distant, like a scene from a book I read long ago. I was inside Beast’s head, watching a light-dragon eat a hank of raw deer, its energies coruscating and shadowed both, its snake tail whipping a small, tree-choked pond as it ate. It was summer, and in the memory I could smell the deer, ripe and going bad. Beast shared her memories as the thing, the rainbow thing, emitted a burst of white light and changed shape. It took on the form of a two-legged female. Almost human. Almost.

“Son of a gun,” I muttered. “I remember that. I remember you feeding it. How many of those things are there?” I asked her.

Beast knows many things,
she thought at me.
Have thought like Jane. Have
decided
like Jane. Jane must know.

Okay
. Confusion melted along my bones, feeling like the
aftereffect of magic, or maybe like worry. Just how much was Beast hiding from me?

Before hunger times, were many light-beings,
Beast thought.
Before white man dumped his waste into rivers and creeks, were many. Before white man cut and killed forest, were many. Before white man stopped rivers and creeks and made lakes, were many. Light-creatures lived in waterfalls, in fast streams that raced over rocks. Most humans did not see, but shamans and magic users could see. Big-cats could see. Pack hunters could see. Deer, fox, bison could see. Light-beings lived in water, played in water. Did not hurt Beast. Beast did not hurt them.

Softly I said, “When the white man came, he brought changes and disease and death to the people and the landscape and the environment. Everything the white man touched was ruined or damaged or killed or wiped off the face of the Earth. And that included the magical beings, the beings of mythology that died or went into hiding. Beings that used to share the Earth were destroyed and vanished into the oral tradition.”

When Beast didn’t answer, I finished dressing and headed back to my clothes and the car. Beast had wandered for a while, and I was well chewed by mosquitoes and had splinters and thorns in my feet when I finally spotted the clothes and, just beyond them, the SUV Leo had loaned me. Beast, paying attention to me for the first time since she revealed the light-being memory, thought my sore feet were sad.
Should have paws and claws and killing teeth,
she thought.
Jane is stupid kit.

Hunting in the brushy, marshy, swampy land west of the Mississippi was easier now that I knew the terrain and knew where I could leave my vehicle without the locals wondering what was up. Some of the back roads in Louisiana, especially this far south, were little used, not much more than sinking tracks in the wet ground. Others were already underwater by as much as two feet. According to reports by the Army Corps of Engineers and any other government agency that cared to comment, South Louisiana was sinking fast, thanks to man changing how the rivers flowed, keeping their waters in place behind levees. With rising sea levels, most of the coastal regions would be underwater in a century, unless something drastic changed. Which wasn’t likely.

As usual, my vehicle had remained safe overnight, except for the fact that it was now mired down in the mud. Fortunately, the armored vehicle came with a heavy-duty winch,
which I knew how to use. However, I was covered in mud and irritated beyond measure, both of which Beast found highly amusing, by the time I had the SUV free.

Mad at the world, not knowing what to do with what I knew, I stopped at a mom-and-pop grocery and glared down the aging couple’s stares at my filthy condition, as I bought most of the breakfast sandwiches they had made. I ate all ten egg-and–Andouille sausage rolls on the way home. Traffic was light. One good thing out of the morning.

I was home, stripped, cleaned up, and in bed, flopping onto the mattress in a boneless heap. The smell of catnip was everywhere in the house, a thick, heavy scent that had both of my souls purring. Every breath a sensual indulgence, I slid into sleep.