I left the house without speaking to Aggie, who had vanished from the doorway of her mother’s room. Sitting in the sun on the heated porch, I pulled on my boots and strapped on my weapons. My fingers shook and the cold still filled my body, remembered cold from the hunger times. The sun warmed me only slowly. I closed my eyes and tilted my face to it, letting its rays touch me as the old woman’s fingers had. Giving myself a moment, just a moment, to breathe. To remember.
The scent of the rogue was fading in the heat. I pushed to my feet and jogged around the house, scenting. The past could wait.
I followed the rogue’s scent into the piney woods, along the nearly invisible path, tracking him into the forest. The soil was heavy with his scent, though with my human nose it lacked the full vibrancy of Beast’s hunt. I passed the places where the elder’s dogs had fed it, their bodies decaying, bones scattered on the damp ground. I smelled the carcasses of four cats, numerous opossums, rodents, and other animals. It hunted here often. And it was always hungry.
I moved slowly. I wasn’t in danger from the rogue . . . providing he was indeed a rogue vamp. He couldn’t stand sunlight. What else could he be? But if he had a human servant, he or she would be near, and human servants had no problem with sunlight. I stopped often and sniffed, rotten meat overlaying the odor of hazelnut and sweetgrass. I dropped to my knees, crawling, nose at the ground. No one was around to notice. The compound, complex scent contained a faded hint of tomatoes, sage, rosemary, and even fainter things I couldn’t name. I circled back where I could push through the brush, and sniffed. Moved from the small path into the trees. It had been a long time since fire had come through, and the underbrush was too thick to go far.
Beast thought the path well trod. To my eyes it was little more than a ribbon of smooth earth. The path was the only way deeper into the woods. Trees and head-high brush closed in. Birdcalls went silent. The slow-moving breeze was saturated with pine sap smell. Mosquitoes found me, buzzing. Was I entering a trap? Beast hadn’t found one, but I wasn’t Beast.
The trees opened out into a clearing remembered from Beast’s hunt. I hunched down, waiting. Nothing moved. As Beast had done, I circled the clearing, but found nothing, no other paths, no trace of scent leaving the woods. Carefully, testing for traps, I moved into the clearing. The soil was rank with the scent of the rogue, heavy with the reek of old blood. The evolving scent had come through here, as if several different beings used the place. Yet I was pretty sure they all were the same being, one undergoing a peculiar metamorphosis that affected his scent in a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde revolutionary way. Not a skinwalker. He didn’t smell anything like me. Not a were, if such even existed. Elf? No. A vamp—a very sick, very wacky vamp.
After several minutes, I was satisfied that there was no trap hidden in the clearing. The liver-eater had come here. He hadn’t left here. I scuffed at the ground. Starting on the periphery, at the edge of the piney woods, I stomped on it, around and around, moving in a spiral, ever tighter, toward the interior. In the center of the clearing, the sound of the earth changed.
It rang hollow. Something was buried beneath the ground.
Cave, Beast thought. She was still awake, though sleepy. Its den. Its lair.
“Yeah,” I murmured. I squatted and brushed at pine needles, but they were stuck, glued to a door, set into the ground. Camouflage. I rocked back, resting on one knee and toe and the other foot. The wood of the door was brown, the same shade of the pine needles, weathered and worn, unexceptional looking, with raised panels and a brass knob, the metal pitted and darkened from weather and sun. It was something a middle-class homeowner might use as a front door. Sweat ran down my back and pooled under the mail collar. My breath was steady but too fast.
I swung the Benelli forward and palmed a stake. Reached for the handle. Not knowing what I would do if it was locked. It wasn’t. The door didn’t open as if hinged, but slid back, revealing a hole about three feet wide and five feet deep. A round tunnel moved from the hole north, like a rabbit’s burrow, but wider, big enough for a man to duck-walk. “Crap,” I whispered. I was going to have to go inside.
The walls of the tunnel were damp, roots sticking through and dangling. Mold smell and the decay of a freshly opened grave wafted out. Footsteps had smoothed and hardened the floor of the tunnel just below the opening. Odd-shaped prints dug into the ground just beyond, where the rogue had dropped to knees and hands, the toes of boots poking the ground. I studied the floor, making out only one set of prints. All boots. All the same. If the rogue had a human servant, it wasn’t here.
Eaten, Beast suggested.
I breathed in, sifting out scents: mold, pine roots rich with sap, water close by, wet earth, and something dead. Long dead. Just ahead. I dropped into the tunnel, landing with bent knees, Benelli at the ready, and knelt, letting my eyes adjust. As far as I could see, I was alone. I slung the shotgun back out of the way and palmed my favorite vamp-killer. Its blade was eighteen inches long, heavily silvered, the fuller deep to channel vamp blood away fast, and the hilt carved by Evan, Molly’s husband, from elkhorn. It felt like silvered luck in my palm. This would be close-in work, if I found the thing I was hunting.
Crawling into the earth, into the dark, along the horizontal part of the tunnel, I spotted a satchel. I opened it, revealing clothing. The rogue’s scents wafted out, the reek of the decay and the scent he had worn when he left Katie’s. Scent of the insane and the sane, maybe. Boots were beneath the satchel on their sides. Knee boots, like English riding boots. Bare footprints moved along the tunnel. The rogue had stripped and gone ahead. Naked. How weird was that.
Just ahead, my eyes picked out something white against the gloom. A skull stared at me. Tissue still clung to the bones, wisps of red hair. Leg bones and ribs, no longer attached to feet or vertebrae, were scattered along the tunnel. I lifted the closest bone. A femur. Teeth had scored deeply into it, predator fangs, upper and lower. I was pretty sure I had found the rogue’s human servant. I dropped the bone and crawled ahead. Into the dark.
The ground became wet; the roof sloped down. My jeans’ knees began soaking up water. The tunnel ended abruptly, the ceiling dipping down sharply onto a cement pipe, a county water main. I looked in, to see black water with only a narrow space at the top for airflow. I snapped a root from the tunnel wall and stuck it into the pipe. It didn’t touch bottom. I dropped it onto the surface of the water; the root was snatched away. Frustration brought a growl to my lips.
I eased through the tunnel, shuffling backward. The rogue had found the perfect daytime hiding place. An underground water main. Probably had dozens of potential exits. No way was I going diving. He might not need to breathe but I sure as heck did.
Back on the surface, I sat with my feet dangling into the pit and breathed shallowly. This was indeed a perfect daytime hiding place for a vamp: multiple exits, dark, the water system itself offering built-in escape routes. And if he did happen to come up here, where he left clothes, he’d catch my scent and be gone faster than I could react, even if I fired the Benelli the moment he broke the surface. I’d only get one shot, and if I didn’t kill him instantly, he’d be all over me and I’d be dinner. No point in laying a trap. He could come out anywhere, and probably had clothes at every opening. I was betting he used this site often because of Aggie and her family.
I sighed, stood, and walked back to Bitsa, mud drying in the steamy heat.
CHAPTER 17
Stick a dollar in your garter?
I motored the bike across the bridge, taking the toll road back to Katie’s. Mud dried on my jeans to a crusty stiffness. My hair uncoiled from its knot and ponytail, and strands whipped in the hot wind. My stomach growled in hunger the whole way.
Outside Katie’s Ladies, the EMTs and ambulances were gone, but law enforcement types were still out in full force, blocking the street with cruisers, talking in small groups of uniformed men and a few women. Yellow crime-scene tape was stretched everywhere. I stopped the bike halfway down the block. I was carrying a perfectly legal weapon, out in public, not concealed. But the Benelli wasn’t just a gun. It was a kick-ass gun. And a violent crime had just taken place. Cops would be itchy.Bruiser was standing apart with a uniformed cop, Jim Herbert, and a woman in plain clothes—Jodi Richoux, Katie’s contact at the New Orleans police department. Maybe Katie’s friend, though I doubted it. She looked harried. Jimmy looked ticked off. No surprise.
But Bruiser. Bruiser’s hands were on his hips, low-rise jeans tight across his butt, boot cut over brown hiking boots. T-shirt tucked in. No butt-dragging, sloppy look for this guy. Buff, muscles bulging, short brown hair. Remembering the twins, I wondered how old Bruiser was. My interest stirred, and I shoved away curiosity; it killed the cat. Feeling an interest in Leo’s favorite wasn’t smart, especially if the blood bond between them included sex.
I lifted a hand to catch his attention. He looked from me to the cops and raised his brow in question. I shook my head in a “No, I have no desire to talk to cops” gesture. I pointed to the back of Katie’s, hopped my hand up and down, as if hopping a fence and dropping down at my house. He almost grinned and nodded fractionally. I wheeled the bike around and took the long way to avoid the cops. I figured Bruiser could find his own way. It wasn’t like this was the first time he’d been there. Or the second, I thought sourly. I’d have to deal with the invasion of my home and privacy at some point. Maybe now. Beast half woke from sleepy purring. Fun . . .
I motored up to the house to find Bruiser at the front door, leaning against an iron support that held up the three-foot-deep balcony overhead. He held himself with the easy balance and readiness of the experienced martial artist, though as I pulled up, he crossed his arms and his muscles bulged. Very nice.
I pointed to the side gate, gave the bike a little gas, rolled over, and let myself in. Bruiser came after and I locked it. Should have asked him to lock it, I thought. I eased the bike into the garden and turned it off, removed the helmet, and shook out my hair. I hadn’t taken the time to braid it before I left hunting, and I watched Bruiser’s eyes follow as it fell. His scent changed, a minuscule shift. Bruiser liked long hair. A lot. “Want tea?” I asked.