The Vampire's Revenge (4 page)

“I don’t want to be poisoned, hamburger-for-brains! I just want to get rid of these cooties.”

I winced. Ginger had been in a foul—if you’ll pardon the expression—mood since her former boss, Eleanor, had tricked her out of her human body. Ginger’s soul had taken up residence in the nearest living thing. Which, unfortunately, was a female crow, one evidently lousy with biting insects.

When Ginger fixed her beady little bird eyes on me, she said, “Speaking of bloodsuckers—what have you done for me lately, fang boy? Have you found my bitch of a boss yet?”

I sighed. Eleanor used to run a fancy brothel and Ginger was one of her girls. But William had made Eleanor a vampire and, when she’d betrayed him, cast her into the underworld. Eleanor had returned, though, and now Ginger was flapping around as a crow.

“Believe me,” I told Ginger. “I want to find her as bad as you do. If it wasn’t for her, William would still be undead and I wouldn’t be up to my ass in devils.” What I didn’t tell her was that I wasn’t all that sure I knew how to get her body back from Eleanor. One problem at a time, I figured.

Ginger lifted one wing and probed for a mite with her beak. “Seriously, Jack, I’m going out of my mind already. How do you propose to find her?”

That was a good question. Until Eleanor decided to show herself again, there wasn’t much I could do. Unless she made a mistake, like feeding on the wrong human or killing one, I might just have to wait it out. That was not the answer Ginger wanted to hear.

“I’m hunting the double-deads as fast as I can, Gin. I give you my word I’ll get her sooner or later.”

“Make it sooner, or I’m going to go all Alfred Hitchcock on your sorry, bloodsucking hide. I guess I’m just going to have to look for her myself.” With that, she flew off into the night.

“She sure is sore,” Huey said. He was so deep into the hole he was digging that his voice sounded far away. I peered over the rim to discover that he had finally freed up the Chevy Corsica we buried him in back before he’d returned as a zombie. All that was left was for Rennie to haul it out for him with the wrecker hoist.

“Don’t worry about it, Huey. Now that you’ve reached the Chevy, you can find another hobby.” I find that having a pet zombie is kind of like having a pet border collie. You have to have work for them to do or they’re just not happy. Feeding them red meat helps, too.

“I think I’ll just keep on digging. I think something else is down here.”

“Whatever, dude.”

I still felt bad about bringing Huey back. He was having a grand old time in his own personal version of heaven before I accidentally raised him from the dead after a drunken rant. I have certain powers when it comes to fellow dead people, and to tell you the truth, sometimes I don’t know my own strength. A few ill-chosen words in a prayer to a voodoo god and old Huey was clawing his way up out of the ground and making himself right at home again. Melaphia’s anti-rotting spell kept his flesh more or less intact—enough so that the customers couldn’t quite put their finger on just what was different about him. If they knew he was a zombie they’d all run screaming into the marsh, but the policy around the garage had always been don’t ask, don’t tell, no matter what manner of creature you were.

Speaking of creatures, Rennie and the irregulars were at their usual places at the poker table when I walked inside. Despite the way it sounds, “Rennie and the irregulars” are not a garage band. They’re a motley group of hangers-on and hangers-out made up of one human, one werewolf, one other shape shifter of indeterminate species, and one faerie.

The faerie, Otis, and the mystery shifter, Rufus, were best friends. At least they had been until Otis had revealed himself to be a faerie. Not the homosexual kind—the leprechaun kind. Or something close to that, anyway. Otis was a fey creature in the Irish tradition. He could lay on the glamour even better than me. Good enough to masquerade as a coverall-wearing, grease-under-the-fingernails, good-old-boy blue-collar redneck. In reality—if you could call it that—his hair was blue and as shiny as Christmas tree lights and his skin glowed with perpetual youth and otherworldly beauty.

And that wasn’t the half of it.

He’d been sent to watch us vampires for a group of high-falutin’ Sidhe royalty who were afraid our activities had some connection to an end-time scenario.

I had enough on my plate without worrying about the end of the whole freakin’ world, so I told Otis to do what he had to. Hell, he or his supervisors might prove useful one of these days. All he’d ever been good for so far was playing cards and drinking my coffee.

“Evening, boys,” I greeted them on the way to the open coffee area.

They grunted their hellos. “Say, Rennie, can I talk to you a minute?” I asked.

My business partner sauntered over and looked at me from behind his thick glasses. He was walking a little stifflike and rubbing his abdomen.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Ulcers,” he said. “I’m taking medicine. It’ll be okay. What can I do for you, hoss?”

“Sorry you’re sick, man,” I said, patting him on the shoulder. I reckon being partners with an evil creature of the night would be a mite stressful on a regular guy. It made me feel a little guilty. “Uh, the last time I went by the hospital I noticed that the city work crews had finished repairing the street and were working on putting the foundation of the hospital to rights.”

“Yeah, I noticed that, too,” Rennie said.

“Do you feel up to doing a little job for me?” I asked. Rennie nodded. “Okay. Here’s what I want you to do . . .” I gave him explicit instructions for a project I hoped would help me get Reedrek back under control. Now that William was gone, I was going to have to start thinking ahead, anticipating all kinds of situations, and figuring out solutions to problems that might or might not happen. The way William used to.

When I was finished giving him directions, Rennie nodded. “No problem,” he said. “Consider it done.”

“Thanks, man. I knew I could count on you.” I clapped him on the back and waved my coffee cup in the direction of the card table. “I notice Rufus still isn’t making eye contact with Otis.” In fact, he was holding his cards in front of his face like a geisha holding up her fan, giving him a coquettish look that was a mite incongruous on a redneck.

“Yeah. His nose is still out of joint because he had to hear about Otis’s other persona secondhand. He’s mightily pissed.” Rennie rejoined the card game as Jerry was dealing and I walked over to the others.

“Hey, Jerry, Seth’s back in town,” I said, taking a sip of the stiff coffee.

“I’m glad to hear that,” Jerry the werewolf said. “The pack’s driving me crazy, whining about having to get real jobs and stay out of trouble.”

Jerry was the beta, second in command of the local pack behind the alpha, Seth. Together they were trying to get the pack to give up drug dealing and bootlegging for more legal pursuits. It was an uphill battle.

“Hmmph,” Rufus observed.

“What was that, Rufus?” Rennie asked. Although Rennie was the only human in the group, he wasn’t afraid of any of us. He probably should have been, but he wasn’t.

“Real jobs, he said. Not like
spyin’,
I guess.”

Rennie winked at me from behind those glasses that made his eyes look perpetually bleary. “Here we go,” he muttered.

Otis, his face indignant under the bill of his Caterpillar hat, threw his cards on the table. “Why don’t you come on out and say what’s on your mind, Rufus? I’m sick of you sitting there sniping at me night after night.”

Rufus slapped his own cards down as well. “I just can’t believe you’ve been hanging out here for years and spying on us the whole time.”

“I thought I explained all that, you hardheaded coot. Even Jack isn’t holding a grudge, so what’s it to you?”

“It ain’t that,” Rufus said peevishly. “It’s just—well, dang it all, I thought we were friends. And you didn’t even tell me who you really are.”

I drew a chair up to the card table and straddled it. This was shaping up to be a good old-fashioned slap-down. Gods knew I could use some entertainment.

“Oh yeah?” Otis demanded. “And what about you? Everybody here knows you’re some kind of shifter, but nobody knows what kind. We used to play all coy with one another—don’t ask, don’t tell, just like Jack always said. But now we’ve all had to come out for one reason or another—everybody but you. You’re the only one left holding back and you got the nerve to complain about me keeping secrets? So I’m a freakin’ faerie. Now it’s your turn. Do it, if you’re man enough! What are you?”

The silence was deafening. Rufus peered at us like a rat in a trap. Even Huey had appeared in the doorway and was waiting expectantly.

Finally Rufus squared his shoulders, thrust out his chin, and said, “I’m a werecat.”

“I knew it was something like that,” Jerry said smugly.

“Yeah, I figured that, too,” I said.

“Cool,” Huey added.

“What kind of werecat are you?” Otis asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

“What do you mean, What kind of werecat?” Rufus asked.

“I mean, are you a wereleopard?”

“No.”

“A weretiger?” Jerry wanted to know.

“No.”

“A werelion?” I asked, genuinely puzzled now. How many kinds of ferocious werefelines could there be?

“You are some kind of
big
cat, right?” Rennie asked.

Rufus turned beet red. “No! I’m just a were
cat,
all right?
Felis silvestris catus.
”

The rest of us froze in place for a second, trying to wrap our minds around it. I finally asked for clarification. “Dude. You’re just a regular old cat?”

The five of us who were not part-time house cats exploded in laughter. “How in the hell did you wind up as a were
kitty
?” Jerry asked when he’d caught his breath. “That is just so wrong. Shape shifters are supposed to be dangerous, man! What happened?”

“I’m not a regular were,” Rufus admitted glumly. “It’s more like a curse. I have to spend nights as a human and days as a cat. Kind of like those two dogs of William’s.”

“Wait a minute!” Rennie wheezed, holding his side. “Don’t tell me! You’re the red tabby that hangs around here in the daytime, aren’t you?”

When Rufus went all stone-faced and refused to answer, Rennie dissolved into hysteria. “Oh, my gawd! I’ve been feeding you Tender Vittles and table scraps for years and didn’t even know it was you!”

Huey shook his head in wonderment. “I thought y’all knew. I’ve known that ever since I came back,” he said and wandered out again.

I shook my head. “Zombies have a way with animals, I guess. So what was the curse all about?”

Rufus waved his hand. “Never you mind. Y’all done made enough fun of me for one night without dredging up that ancient history.”

I wondered how ancient that history was. You could never tell with curses and spells. Reyha and Deylaud—the “two dogs of William’s,” as Rufus had described them—were hundreds of years old, even though in their human forms they looked to be twenty-somethings. It was interesting that Rufus looked on his lot in life as a curse whereas the Rin Tin Twins considered theirs a gift.

Otis clearly did not agree that Rufus had been made enough fun of. He was still slapping his knees, laughing. “Here, pussy, pussy!”

Rufus dove across the table, scattering cards, chips, and coffee cups in his wake. He hit Otis in the chest, his momentum carrying both of them onto the concrete floor where they grappled, trying to get a clean punch off.

“Will the two of you look at each other?” I shouted. “You’re acting like a couple of damn fools.”

Jerry and I pulled them apart. “Otis, say you’re sorry,” I demanded, holding him by the scruff of the neck.

“Sorry.” He smirked.

“Like you mean it,” I said, shaking him like you would a stubborn child.

“Sorry,” he repeated, looking at the floor.

“Now, Rufus, you say you’re sorry for giving Otis the skunk eye lately,” I said.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

I released my hold on Otis, and Jerry let Rufus go. “Y’all ought to be ashamed of yourselves,” I scolded. “Acting out like a couple of kids while I’m out there fighting demons and trying to hold this city together. From now on you two are earning your keep.”

“Huh? I work for the Sidhe,” Otis said.

“Well, now you’re working for me. And unless you want to be a blood donor, I would suggest you go out there tomorrow and use those faerie glamour skills to find Eleanor.” Otis began to protest but shut up quick when I flashed fang.

“And as for you, hairball,” I said, directing my attention to Rufus. “I would suggest that you use your talents to comb this city in your feline disguise and help Otis sniff out Eleanor’s whereabouts.”

I gathered them up into a man hug, one against each shoulder. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before,” I said, squeezing them until they both gasped. “You guys are going to make a great team.”

Rennie looked up at us, wiping away tears of laughter with his bandanna. “I just love it when a plan comes together for you pointy-toothed types. Especially when it doesn’t involve me.”

“How goes the demon hunting?” Melaphia asked, sipping a cup of coffee.

As usual, I’d made it back to the mansion just as the sun was coming over the horizon. Mel was convinced I was going to cut it too close one day and fry to a crisp. Maybe she was right.

“Not bad,” I said. I didn’t go into specifics. Any mention of Connie created a real tension convention between Mel and me, and I’d had a hard day’s night.

“Tell me again why I can’t kill that woman for murdering my father,” Melaphia muttered into her cup. She had the aristocratic profile and beautiful golden brown skin tone of her foremothers, voodoo royalty all. She—and her ancestors before her—had in fact been William’s adopted daughters, although they masqueraded as servants.

That deception had been necessary in the old days. Now it was just a convenient cover story for why Melaphia had remained in this home, working for William, when she could have done so many other things with her life. It was her home. Hers, and her daughter, Renee’s. In the daytime I slept in the basement vault so I could protect them. Or at least try to. I hadn’t been all that good at it lately.