“No females who were bitten survived,” I guessed.
“No. They did not. And Lolandes mourned her rash anger for the pain it had brought her animals and was ashamed that humans had been tainted with her curse. But it was too late to stop the change she had brought into the world. A curse cannot be undone.
“Lolandes studied and discovered a way, however, to minimize the damage to the human world, a partial cure that would allow the weres to bring over females and create families and societies, a therapy that would allow them to breed true. The cure”—she paused, as if searching for a word—“mutated the curse into one less easily transferred. She carried the cure to each of the were groups, all but the wolves. Them, she never forgave.”
I’d taken a mythology course as an elective in high school, but I’d never heard this story. When I told Sabina that, she laughed, the sound dry as corn husks in the night. “So much has been lost,” she said. “Yet, the story was told me by an old Roman scholar, one who claimed to have writings from the time of the Babylonians, long before the Greeks stole her name and story and made her a goddess. And it is true that the werewolves are the only moon-touched who carry the original taint, the original curse, unabated by Lolandes’ cure.”
It was a cure that effectively created new species, were-species, human-animal hybrids that could reproduce true. I sat up suddenly, a thought shunting heat through my veins.
A falcon was hunting a doe?
Not likely. I made a leap of intuition, better known as a wild-haired guess.
Sabina must have heard my heart leap and race. She turned her face to me, her eyes focusing on my throat in the darkness. I froze, waiting, fingers on a vamp-killer at my hip. When she didn’t move beyond the stare, I curled up a knee, one boot sole scraping on the shell path, an elbow braced on my knee. I pulled out the multifunctional cell and went online, checking the timelines of Sumer and Babylonia. “This female hunting bird,” I said, redirecting her back to the subject matter rather than my pulse. “Could it have been an Anzu?”
Sabina shrugged and looked away. “I do not know if the cultures shared the Anzu.”
According to the Internet, the kingdoms of Babylon and Sumer had overlapped in time. It was possible, if unlikely, that Lolandes’—or Artemis’—dead bird of prey had been an Anzu. One of which just happened to be hanging around Leo, the werewolves, and the were-cats, trying to bring the groups together. “Now wouldn’t that be a handy dandy coincidence,” I muttered. “Thank you, Sabina. I am, um . . . honored and . . . humbled?” I drew on my Christian children’s school manners. “Yeah. Humbled that you shared your story.”
Sabina laughed low and turned her head to me again. I heard the slight snick of her fangs dropping into place, and because vamps can’t feel amusement and go vampy at the same time, I knew it was deliberate, not a predator response to the pheromones of stunned reaction that escaped from my pores and sped my heart. I tilted my head up to hers. A smiling, ancient vamp, three-inch fangs exposed, is not a warm and fuzzy sight. Sabina disappeared as quickly as she had arrived, with a little pop of displaced air. Old vamps are fast enough to do that—move the air with a snap of sound.
I rehelmeted and cranked up Bitsa just in time to be hit with a blast of drenching rain. Bitsa is my dream bike; I love her like a part of me. But riding in the rain required changing gear into plasticized riding clothes over the leather. I pulled up to the chapel porch, rooted in Bitsa’s saddlebags for the riding gear and a hand towel. Muttering under my breath about the heat and the stink of my own sweat, I dried off under her front porch and pulled the plastic pants and jacket over the leathers. The heat went up another ten degrees, steam-bath territory. As I dressed, my hand brushed the lump in my pocket, reminding me, and I draped the bag holding the sliver of the Blood Cross on the chapel door handle. It didn’t seem like a smart place to leave it, but I wasn’t taking it home again; I called out, telling the darkness what I had done and straddled Bitsa.
My headlight was thin and reedy, catching the raindrops as they slashed across the beam, creating more glare than visibility. Easing onto the dark-as-soot street I gave Bitsa some gas. Rain-riding was dangerous, especially at night, vision impaired by drops sluicing down the helmet faceplate, two tires speeding a lightweight vehicle with less traction than normal, water a slick layer on the road.
I took the roads slowly, back into the city as the rain slanted and the wind thrashed the earth. Microscopic droplets beat back up into the sky, broken from impact with the ground. Rain collected and ran, filling the ditches and bayous and every low place, ponding up in the streets.
Just before I got to the Mississippi River, I was stopped by the sight of a twelve-foot-long alligator, stretched across the street, jaw open, belly on the still-warm asphalt, taking a shower. I sat there, laughing at the sight, Bitsa growling beneath me. Beast shoved up into my consciousness, thinking,
Big teeth. Hard kill. Tough food. I like doe better.
Then she looked up at the rain and hissed. Disgusted with the gator and the weather, she curled up inside me, tucking her paws close and wrapping her stubby tail around her for warmth. Beast did
not
like rain.
I pulled out my camera and snapped a few shots of the gator, which took surprisingly well with the flash. Molly was gonna love this.
Back home, the house was dark. I stripped and hung the plastics and leathers up to dry in the shower, ate, and went online to find a huge zipped file from Reach, waiting in my e-mail box. He’d come through on a host of things, like the list of numbers Rick had called before his phone went dead. I recognized two numbers as belonging to police—Jodi and Sloan—but no others. None to me, for instance. Reach also sent a series of satellite photos of the vamp council headquarters for twenty-four hours before and during the vamp-and-were get-together. It was informative, not only because it showed that someone was willing to pay for satellite time to surveil the vamps but because the surveillance was paid for on the same local bank account that my retainer checks were drawn upon. Interesting. The vamps were paying good money to watch themselves.
And, more important, using Rick’s phone, Reach had narrowed the possible hotels where Rick had been photographed kissing the wigged Safia down to two in East New Orleans. He couldn’t rule out either, but Rick had been there for twenty-four hours before his phone died.
I input the addresses on my handy-dandy cell and got GPS directions on a city map and map app. I wanted to go in right now, guns blazing, and find him, but that would be stupid. It was raining, dark, and I hadn’t reconnoitered either place. I might get Rick or myself killed.
I could call Sloan. Maybe the cops would go in, or maybe they’d just sit outside and watch the place to keep from blowing Rick’s cover. There was no guessing with cops. I had more options than law enforcement officers. I could do things they couldn’t. Lots of things they couldn’t. But not if they were watching. So I didn’t call them.
And that was when the real storm hit. All the rain and wind of the last few hours was only a prelude to the bona fide mama tempest, with gale force winds and rain that beat into the house like the entire Blue Man drum corp. No way was I going back out on Bitsa in this. And Beast didn’t even hint that she wanted to shift. I fell asleep with the raging fury of nature like a lullaby in my ears.
CHAPTER 20
Dang. Brass Knuckles are Cool!
It was Sunday, and I left for church in plenty of time for the early service. I hadn’t gone since Rick and I started dating, maybe because he was Roman Catholic and I was nondenominational, or maybe because I was sleeping with him without the benefit of a ring on my finger and guilt pricked me every time I thought about God. Guilt was one big drawback of religion, I thought sourly as Bitsa pootered along.
I got there at sunrise and parked under the tree in the little parking lot of the strip mall where the church rented space, set Bitsa’s kickstand, pulled my Bible out of the saddlebag, and went inside, using the little ladies’ room to change from riding jeans into a skirt. Not that anyone would have said anything about my jeans, even on Sunday morning, but I hadn’t been brought up that way.
The church was empty and dim, though I could smell the preacher, an earnest, slender little guy who looked about twelve, so he was here someplace. I sat in the third row and closed my eyes, the Bible on my lap. I had a lot to repent of before I’d be clean enough inside to take the sacrament. And some of the things I’d done, like fighting, saying a few cuss-words that had seemed appropriate at the time, and sleeping with Rick, I didn’t really want to repent of, so I had some praying and thinking to do. I’d been brought up to be better than the person I had become. I knew my housemother never imagined, not in her wildest dreams, that I’d be a rogue vamp killer for hire, sleeping with a cop outside of wedlock, making out with a blood-servant in my shower, letting a witch live under my roof . . . Yeah. She’d be unhappy with me. I was unhappy with myself, especially the part about making out with Bruiser.
Light was diffuse in the small church, let in by high windows blocked by overgrown foliage, shrubs that had been left unpruned until they had grown into small trees. The building smelled of paint, dust, mice living in the walls, and the fainter scents of the previous worshippers. The muffled engines of cars going by was the only sound, even the mice were quiet.
Here was one place I could never hide from myself. Not “here in a church.” But here inside, when I stopped and thought about God. I didn’t think he’d be ticked off that I had begun to study my Cherokee heritage, even the more mystical aspects of it, which were a lot more like counseling than about religion. I didn’t think he’d be ticked off that I had let a woman of a different species—a witch—lead me into meditation, despite all that “Suffer not a witch to live” stuff. I didn’t think he’d be ticked off that I killed and ate things when I was Beast, or that I shifted. But the stuff with Bruiser in the shower. And sleeping with Rick. That kind of stuff I figured he’d be ticked off about, despite the fact that the Bible said all sins were equal, lying equal to murder, gossip equal to hating, a healthy roll in the hay equal to drinking one glass of bubbly too many. So it was the cultural part of it all, not the “What God thinks about it” part that was giving me trouble.
Tell that to my brain. Can you ask forgiveness for something you intend to continue to do if you get the chance? Smokers know they’re going to smoke again. Hard drinkers know they’re going to drink again. Did they ask for forgiveness? Was it a waste of breath? Did it amount to lying to God, another sin on top of any sins not being repented for? Something dark and guilty squirmed inside me, like a mass of blind snakes, cold and scaly and hissing softly.
I sat with my head down as the small early service crowd gathered, deliberately projecting a keep-away aura. And kept my eyes down through the service, not singing, not following along in the Scripture reading. Just listening to both the preacher and the silence in my heart. I had issues. I needed to address them. But later. After I solved this dead were-cat case. And found Rick. And decided what to do about Bruiser—who was being spelled by Evangelina. Would a spell have made me more attracted to Bruiser? Had the mad make-out session in the shower been spell-induced? Troubled, I passed the Lord’s supper without partaking when it came around, and slipped out during the last prayer so I didn’t have to talk to anyone.
I changed clothes in the parking lot, pulling the jeans up under the skirt and slipping the skirt off over them. And drove out of the strip mall lot just as the preacher opened the church door, no doubt looking for one of his flock who was clearly troubled.
I pulled up the map app of the hotels where Reach said Rick had been, and followed them to the east side of town. The first place I came to was the right hotel. It looked just like the pics I’d been given, and it smelled like sick, wet dogs. Like a kennel left unattended for weeks. Like dogs. Not cats. Werewolves, not were-cats. I parked and tucked my helmet under my arm, walking around the half-filled, cracked pavement lot, watching for a sentry and checking out the cars and trucks, trying for nonchalance. No new vehicles, nothing green, nothing high dollar. Most had bumper stickers proclaiming the owners supporters of legalized marijuana, promising themselves capable of lead-based self-defense, and advertising various brands of beer, vodka, or tequila. Only half were English, the rest were Spanish. I was really going to have to take a good Spanish class. High school was no help at all anymore.
I rounded the building. In the side lot, I spotted Rick’s Kow-bike. Shock raced up my spine, stinging like fire ants. It was suddenly hard to breathe. The bike looked like it hadn’t been moved in days, leaves and debris on the leather seat. He would never have left the bike here, outside, in last night’s storm. Not if he was alive and uninjured.
Adrenaline poured into my bloodstream as I walked around the bike, but any lingering scents had been washed off in the deluge. Parked next to the bike on either side were pickup trucks, a rusty blue one and a rusty red one. And they smelled like werewolves.
Crap
.
Trying to still the fury and fear in my bloodstream, trying to look less menacing than I felt, I walked along the row of hotel doors, sniffing. I smelled wolf, strong and fresh, and the scent of Rick, weaker, older. My heart skipped a painful beat. I stepped into the small hotel office, which stank of stale cigarettes, old beer, fresh marijuana, and air freshener strong enough to make me gag. Pulling up a pic of Rick on my cell, and a twenty out of a pocket, I slapped the bill down on the counter and held the cell out to the clerk even before he said hello. “Know this guy? Seen this guy? I’m not here to cause trouble.” Leaving the bill on the counter, I thumbed open my PI license, tossed it beside the twenty, and added, “He’s missing. Cops think he’s dead.”