I understood. In Louisiana there was a lottery for the alligator harvest program, and tags to hunt on public swamp and land in gator country were issued only at certain times. If you missed that time, you didn’t hunt, or you paid your hunting license fee and hunted on private lands. The twins didn’t have access to private land, so this year they were sitting around. “Sober?” I asked.
“Mostly,” Lucky said. I figured that was the best I was gonna get.
“Dey got a sister too. She a sharpshooter, she was. Tough as gator skin. She come along too. You put her in a tree with good line o’ sight, and she provide cover. Her name Margaud.”
After Lucky Landry left, Derek and his men and I created contingency plans for everything we could think of, giving each problem and plan a code name so we would be prepared to act on a moment’s notice. Silver was the code to kill every vamp we could find. Swim was the code indicating that each combatant would have to get home the best way he could. Bogus was the code for our allies telling lies and setting us up. Burn was the code to set everything on fire with incendiaries. FUBAR meant anything and everything. FUBAR was the code I was most worried about. It meant we’d all most likely die.
• • •
The boat shuddered under my feet, the Chevy engine adding its own vibration as well as noise enough to wake the undead, and the propeller at my back sucked air through its cage as we flew over the water—not in a plane, but in an airboat. The boat had almost no draft, maybe six inches when it was sitting still, and it was eco-friendly except for the noise, which was so loud it could deafen a catfish, and which precluded any form of communication except hand signals. The prop, mounted in the cage at the back of the boat, was wood, handmade by Amish people, which felt all wrong somehow, but added an artistic element to a boat that was designed to skim over the bayou, swamp water, or marshy land. This boat was painted in red and yellow with flames along the sides, similar to the flames on Lucky’s arms, and belonged to the twins. It had two bench seats with heavy-gauge steel arms and leather upholstery in the yellow of the flames. Built-in coolers, tackle boxes, and a shotgun rack completed the Cajun dream-boat.
Benoît had led Derek’s men in two hours ago and they were in place on the Clan Home property. Auguste was my pilot, sitting in the bench seat above and behind me, working the controls. Margaud sat beside me, a sharpshooter’s sniper rifle in a sling across her back and a heavy military gobag at her booted feet.
The brothers might have passed for ogres, each weighing in at an easy three hundred pounds, hirsute, sour with last night’s beer, and both smelling of the fish they had caught and cleaned. Maybe days ago. The men wore T-shirts that might once have been white in another universe or decade, old-fashioned bib overalls, and work boots that looked like they had never seen oil, polish, or even laces.
Margaud was as beautiful as her brothers were ugly, with ash brown hair blonded by the sun, deep brown eyes, and skin tanned golden. She was petite and delicate and looked too small to transport or position the rifle for firing, but she was muscular and fit and carried herself with a capable, confident air. The sharpshooter wore a homemade one-piece camo uni that had been made out of strips of thin cotton cloth in green, brown, black, and tan, like a hand-pieced quilt. Irregular lengths of green yarn rippled from it in the hard wind created by the passage of the airboat, and I realized that it worked like a ghillie suit, but looked a lot more comfortable. I had to wonder what a girl needed a ghillie suit for, but I figured it was for hunting. And if it wasn’t for hunting, then I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
The siblings were all human and all taciturn—expressionless faces and none talking much even by my standards. It felt weird going into battle with the silent Cajuns at my back, unknowns in a gig more full of unknowns than usual.
We spun through the bayou, whipping around clumps of trees and over long, swordlike grasses. I held on to the bench seat with one hand, watching the world fly by. The airboat hit something in the water with a hollow, solid thump under my feet, but Margaud didn’t react and the boat neither slowed nor sprang a leak, so I just gripped the seat harder. If we came to a sudden and total stop, I didn’t want to go flying into the dark water or up against a cypress tree.
I had on ear protectors, my fighting leathers, and all my weapons, including the Benelli M4. They had all been brought by Derek, lifted from my gun safe in the closet of my freebie house in New Orleans. Even in what amounted to autumn in the Deep South, I was sweating, and my hair had come free from the fighting queue, blown back by the wind. It was long enough that I was seriously concerned about getting it caught in the prop, and sat holding it twined around my arm and clasped in one hand, a pose that could have serious image consequences if we were attacked en route. Auguste had agreed to idle down a quarter mile out and motor in slowly, which would give me time to fix my hair.
It wasn’t like I was trying for a stealth approach. There was no chance we’d surprise anyone, not in a boat that could be heard two or three miles away. So the slow entrance lost us nothing and might actually help, giving me time to look over the Doucette Clan Home, allowing Derek’s men to carry out their part of the plan, and also giving the appearance of courage and strength. Of course, vamps could smell my sweat, so they’d know I was nervous once I was close enough for them to take my scent. And since they had never smelled me, and since they weren’t Leo’s people, my predator scent would really annoy them as well as make them more dangerous.
Hence, I was loaded for vamp with hand-packed silver-fléchette rounds in the M4 and the nine mils. I had my specially made holsters on and had a Heckler and Koch nine mil under my left arm, one at my right hip, a lovely little red-gripped .380 at my spine, and a .32 six-shooter on my ankle. Most of the weapons were loaded with silver shot. The .380s carried standard ammo; that was for annoying vamps and killing humans, though I didn’t intend to kill any humans. Unless they tried to kill me.
I had six blades on me: four short-bladed throwing knives and two silver-plated vamp-killers. Ash stakes were sheathed in my right boot, for immobilizing vamps if I could manage that instead of killing them. Three silver stakes would go in my bun, three more in the left boot, should killing vamps be necessary. One had the blood-master’s name on it. Clermont Doucette was a dead man. Which was funny in every way I could look at it.
I wore my silver-plated titanium throat protector and superhard plastic armor at elbows, groin, and knees—places where vamps liked to attack and drink. I looked deadly.
The airboat slowed and skewed to the side in an eddy move worthy of a powerboat. Margaud jutted her chin at my hair and climbed from the boat onto a tongue of land, and I started to rebraid my tousled locks. Auguste handed us both bottles of chilled water. We were less than half a mile out, and I could see the yellow of the school bus in the distance.
• • •
It was only minutes later, but when Auguste keyed on the airboat motor and blasted out the night sounds, the sun was setting on the horizon, silhouetting the cypress trees and low-growing scrub on the small islets and islands between marsh and swamp and bayou. Night came fast in the bayou.
We left Margaud perched in the branches of a tree with a clear line of sight of the front door and most of the Doucette Clan Home. She had her rifle and a night-vision scope and several toys that were not civilian legal, and she handled them like a pro. Even so, I didn’t like the idea of leaving anyone alone in the swamp, but the woman’s fierce glare suggested that I should keep that thought to myself.
I went over her report as we made our slow way to the Clan Home. There were heat signatures for twenty humans, and no indications of vamps anywhere, which meant they were still in their lairs. Under the house were dozens of chickens and several large mammals, what looked like pigs. “Be careful of the pigs,” she said, as her last warning. “They’re mean and dangerous.”
Great. Just ducky. Like vamps weren’t bad enough. Now we had mad pi
gs to worry about.
Making enough racket to raise revenants, we motored up to the Doucette place, me sitting so a nine mil was partially hidden in my left hand, and my right was draped over the armrest. The lights ahead went dark, making the house hard to see, but giving an added advantage to the vamps, with their near-perfect night vision.
As we roared up, I looked lazy and unconcerned. But my heart was pounding and my Beast was staring out at the lengthening shadows with her predator’s stare, my eyes showing that odd shade of gold peculiar to Beast. With her added night vision, the dark was all greens and silvers and shades of gray, and I could see with a preternatural clarity.
Security met us at the dock, buff male hunks dressed in jeans, muscle Ts, and multiple guns. They smelled human, or nearly so—blood-slaves who had all received recent, copious, but controlled drinks of blood from multiple vamps. The intake had to be carefully measured or the consequences were problematic. Too much blood would get a human blood-drunk and he’d be useless. Too little blood and a human would have less power to draw on. I wondered why the big bad vamps had sent blood-slaves to meet me instead of blood-servants, and it was just one more reminder that these backwoods—or maybe backwater—vamps would be unlike the vamps I’d met in other places. It was possible that these vamps had never even seen the Vampira Carta. These were like vamps from the Wild West, vamps with their own rules and laws and nasty habits and nastier accoutrements.
Like guns, trained on me.
I lounged back in my seat, keeping the Heckler and Koch nine mil out of sight, a round in the chamber, safety off, and my finger off the trigger and on the guard. I wanted to be ready, but I didn’t want to accidently shoot off a round and punch a hole in the boat. Sinking just off the dock and wading wet and dripping to shore was not the way to make an impression of being strong and in command.
I smelled Derek upwind of me, and as soon as the vamps were up and outside, they would smell my guys too. Best to get inside quickly. Auguste gunned the engine and spun us up to the dock, cut the motor, and let us drift until we touched the rubberized edge.
I tossed away the ear protectors and pushed in the earbud the instant we stopped. The night closed in around me in muggy shadows, mist, and the buzz of mosquitoes. And the chock-a-chock sound of a shotgun being readied for firing. The timing was calculated, and I laughed softly.
“Copy that, Legs,” Derek said into the com unit to the sound of my laughter. I was tied into the system.
With my free hand I tossed my card onto the dock. Muscles One and Muscles Two looked at each other in confusion. The laughter was unexpected, my relaxed posture (legs stretched out with one bent at the knee) was unexpected, my yellow glowing eyes were unexpected, and now they had to figure out how they were going to manage bending over and picking up my card.
After a long, undecided fidget, Muscles Two, who was holding two semiautomatic handguns, holstered one and knelt down, eyes on me, feeling along the wood boards until he had the card, and then stood. He stared down at it, his blood-slave enhanced vision making out the words and his lips moving with the effort. He said, “Dis here say, ‘Jane Yellowrock. Have Stakes, Will Travel.’”
“Vampire hunter? You dat Jane Yellowrock?” Muscles One asked. “Leo Pellissier’s cun—”
Without thinking, I slid my finger around the trigger, raised the Heckler and Koch and shot the guy, a quick, ticked-off two-tap. The first bullet caught him in the left thigh, high and outside, dead-on where I’d intended, in a location where one might do minimal damage but knock out an enemy combatant. The second shot took him in the left elbow. I’d been aiming at his left side, at the waist, where there were few major organs to hit. Muscles One started to fall and lost the shotgun, his breath sucking in for a scream.
Instantly, I moved the weapon to Muscles Two and caught him trying to redraw the weapon he’d holstered. Stupid. He had one still drawn. He shoulda shot me already. When he realized his error, he stopped, nearly as immobile as a vamp, one hand on the weapon in the holster, one with the gun pointed at the dock, his eyes on me, wide like a cat’s. I let a lot more of Beast bleed into my eyes and chuckled again as I gathered my weapon into a two-handed grip, pulled my boots under me, and stood. The airboat wobbled under the weight change and I made sure of my balance before I stepped onto the dock. “I don’t like that word,” I said, over the ringing in my ears.
“Throw it into the water,” I added, nodding to his gun. “Both of them.” I wasn’t leaving an armed bad guy behind me. When he had disposed of both guns, I jutted my chin at the shotgun. “That one too.”
“Herbert kill me, he will,” he said, pronouncing it A-bear, a common Cajun last name.
“And I’ll kill you if you don’t,” I lied sweetly.
Muscles toed the shotgun off into the bayou, and Herbert moaned. I wasn’t sure if he was upset over the gun being tossed, or the pain. Maybe both.
The last light went out at the house and I heard the soft schnick of a round being chambered from the front door. I grabbed Muscles and whirled him, stepping quickly behind him, placing the barrel of my weapon against his spine. Muscles went still as an oak board and it was clear that he knew he had a gun at his back and one ahead. “Think they’ll kill you to get to me?” I whispered to him over the ringing in my ears.
I was six feet, two and a half inches tall in my teal Lucchese boots, and my eyes barely peeked over his shoulder. This close, even over the stink of fired weapons, I could identify the four vamps he had fed from by their herbal signatures—wilting funeral flowers, lemon mint, sage, parsley, and something sweet, like agave. I breathed them in, learning what I could of each: gender, race, relationships. In human form I didn’t have the nose of my Beast, but my sense of smell was far better than any human’s, maybe a by-product of the decades I had spent in her form, or perhaps the result of my natural skinwalker abilities. I didn’t have another skinwalker around to tell me stuff like that.
Ahead of me, I heard more weapons schnick and chock-a-chock in firing readiness. Muscles swallowed so hard I felt it through his spine.
“Call out. Tell them who I am.”
Without waiting for a second prompt, Muscles shouted, “Dis here Jane Yellowrock. She come for . . .” To me he whispered, “What you come for?”
I thought about that. Admitting that I was itching to stake his master would probably not be my smartest move. “As Leo Pellissier’s envoy. He’s heard about the witch girl and wants to talk,” I said softly, knowing that we were possibly close enough for any vamps to hear.
“Leo send her,” Muscles shouted. “She want to talk about Shauna Landry.”
“Tell them we’re walking up to the door. Tell them to stand down.”
“We coming. Put you guns away.”
I didn’t hear any sounds of that, but I pushed at Muscles and we walked toward the front door and up a hill I hadn’t noted from the satellite maps, keeping slightly to the right of the entrance, keeping what I hoped was a clear line of sight for Margaud.
• • •
The hill was a berm of built-up land, and the house was on stilts some ten feet higher. I figured the height was to protect against storm surge from the gulf or flood from upstream.
I stopped fifteen feet from the bottom step and called up, “I’m Jane Yellowrock, Leo Pellissier’s Enforcer, here to talk parley with Clermont Doucette.”
“Parley? What dat is?” A deep voice asked from the door.
Mentally I stopped for a long moment. Right. I’m not in New Orleans anymore. “The Vampira Carta has a special section for parley, meaning that one person asks for parley and hospitality and the other accepts the request and offers and guarantees safety. Both agree not to kill the other or act in violence except in self-defense.”
“I don’ believe in dat Latin paper. We gots our own code.”
“Fine. You wanna talk or you wanna fight? ’Cause you will
surely lose if you choose fighting.”
He laughed, the sound one of silken delight that vamps employ when they want to cajole and charm. Or insult. I could hear the insolent amusement in this tone. From my right I heard the distinctive sound of a shotgun readied for firing. From my left, I heard the same distinctive sound. And I saw a small red laser appear on the forehead of a vamp lost in the shadows until then. The chuckle died away and the targeted vamp stepped back, behind the door and into safety. A silence filled the night where the Doucette Clan Home stood, the silence of the dead, broken only by the breathing of humans. I counted ten, three of them my guys, two of them Muscles and me, making five more on the porch high over my head.
“How you get your men onto my land?” the vamp asked. “Close to my home?” It was a real inquiry, touched with mild confusion, and it identified the speaker as Clermont Doucette himself.
I didn’t answer his question. Instead I repeated my own. “Talk or fight?”
“Talk,” Clermont said. Before the word died, his men had safetied and holstered their weapons, or broken open the shotguns. A match was struck and an oil lamp was lit inside, visible through an unshuttered window, though I was certain the light I had seen earlier had been electric. The men and women who had previously barred my way cleared a path across the front porch and left the head bloodsucker in the center. A woman carried the lamp from the doorway to a table on the porch and set it down before backing away.
“We talk,” Clermont said. “My house de same as your house, my blood de same as your blood, your safety good as my safety. My word on dis.”
It sounded like a formal saying, the giving of his word, and I knew that meant something to people as old as Clermont. I figured I was supposed to say something back, and I thrashed around in my skull for anything appropriate as a rejoinder. I settled on, “Yeah. I won’t shoot you or stake you unless you attack me first.” After a moment I added, “Or behead you.”