Were- Page 25

  * * *

  The problem was simple, and not. Something were-tainted had attacked the local vamps, every full moon night for the last three months. In multiple attacks, three blood-families, vamps and their humans, had been decimated in remote areas, killed, eaten. The MOC of New York had declined to assist. The MOC of Toronto had declined to assist. The MsOCs of Chicago, Montreal, and Minneapolis had declined. In desperation, the local vamps had contracted (for an outrageous sum) the werewolf clan of Wisconsin. The wolves had flown in, taken one sniff, returned the down payment, and flown out. The Montana wolf clan hadn’t returned calls. The local law and the Canadian Mounted Police had declined to assist, calling it a suckhead problem.

  I could see why. The photos of what, in my part of the world, would have been crime scenes were horrible, and I had seen some pretty horrible stuff in my time. “I’m not familiar with many were-creatures. What do you speculate?”

  “If it was a natural creature then I’d say a small, deformed brown bear.” She shuffled the photos and showed me a clear print, one in a pool of dried blood. “Eh. The claws are too long and wide but the paw shape is bear. They grow to a thousand pounds. This one’s four hundred?” she guessed.

  I frowned and pulled the borrowed flannel shirt and down vest tighter across me, swirling the caramel-apple-flavored moonshine she had poured for me. Moonshine was the drink of choice here, not the New Orleans’ tea or coffee. “It smelled like were,” I murmured, “but even at four hundred pounds, the Mass to Energy Ratio is off for the average human-to-were conversion.” And then things came together: the magical fuel for the shift to Anzu, the timing of this hunt. The sight of the twisted ley lines we had seen in the air. Magic here was messed up. So were physics. So were the weres. “Well dang,” I muttered.

  “What?” she asked.

  I waved it away. “Nothing. Leo wanted it taken care of, so I’ll take care of it,” I said, sipping the moonshine and finishing off the pile of smoked elk meat and fresh bread. It had assuaged the hunger from my shift. Anzu magic only worked to fuel the shift one way, and I had eaten enough for four humans, but Namida didn’t begrudge my caloric needs. “I’m on salary. What does Leo get out of this deal?”

  “We align with him.” The words were spare, without emotion.

  “Uh huh.” Namida and Leo had negotiated under the vamp system of parley, kinda like a peace treaty with the white man, with just about that much fairness. I’m Cherokee, so I know how “fair” works. “Fine. I’ll need stuff, to include clothes, weapons, food, maps, and something that carries the weres’ scent. Leo will reimburse you for my supplies.”

  Namida’s eyebrows went up in amused surprise.

  I canted my head, wearing a half-smile. “He sent me in return for your loyalty. I say he pays for expenses. In the long-run, you might have gotten the worst part of the bargain. Of course if I get killed on this gig, then I got the worst part.” I checked my cell phone which displayed local time, so I’d acquired a signal at some point. I still had hours before dawn. If I was lucky, I’d find the weres’ hidey hole before morning, shift, and come back in my human-form and shut them down. Nights were long this time of year.

  “Thanks for the meal.” I handed her my partial list of weapons, and her eyebrows went up again. Yeah. It was a lot. But if I could hit the were-creatures with fragmentation grenades, or their hidey-hole with the C4, I’d injure them enough to take them down, no matter how big they were. And I wasn’t too particular about bringing in magical killers of humans alive and uninjured.

  “Gee, you can come in,” I said, without raising my voice.

  The back door opened and Gee DiMercy minced in. He looked like a twenty-one year old Mediterranean man, delicate and pretty in the shadows, until he got a good look at our hostess and he suddenly morphed into something older and harder. The shift looked like a trick of the light, but I knew better. Light didn’t make you suddenly six inches taller and give you a three-day beard. Gee was now a black-haired, blue-eyed warrior, tough and elegant all at once, the kind of man who can track, shoot, and dress an elk without breaking a sweat, and dance a gavotte at a black-tie soiree in the evening.

  “Madam,” he said, taking her hand and bending over it in European old-world charm. “I am Girrard DiMercy. You are Namida? You are as beautiful as your name. Star Dancer, yes?”

  The vampire tilted her head, amusement sparkling in her black eyes, with a hint of interest. “You speak Ojibwe?”

  “Sadly, no. But I knew a Chippewa woman by that name, many seasons past. She was lovely, but never so lovely as you.”

  Namida laughed and looked at me. “I see why you tripped him.” She slid her hand from Gee’s. “Kill the things that are killing my people and you have my permission to court me, little misericord. Until then, you two need to get cracking, eh?” Namida went to the far corner of the abandoned room and brought back a plastic baggie. The closer she got to us the worse the stink. She held it out. “One of my people managed to hurt the attackers. These are three samples of blood that isn’t human or Mithran. Good luck.” With that, she walked past us and out the back. She paused there, one hand on the door, and said to us, “I’ll have all this stuff,” she waved my list in the air, “by dawn.” She closed the door behind her.

  Gee stared after her, a hand on his chest and murmured, “I am in love.”

  “Uh huh.” I pushed him to the door. Outside, Namida was gone, the night even colder. I opened the baggie and stuck it beneath his nose. Gee nearly threw up, but now we both had the scent. I placed the baggie beneath a rock on the top step. Between retches, he managed to say, “Duba. Kerit.”

  Using a cell phone provided by Namida, I wiki’d it and discovered that the Duba kerit was a cryptid, a creature never proved to be alive, also called Ngoloko, Nandi, Chimosit, and other less pronounceable names. It was a half-bear, half-hyena, and it was carnivorous, vicious, and nearly impossible to kill, except with silver. It also ate the brains of its victims—so, zombie were-bear-hyenas. Bears were solitary except for mothers and cubs, and hyenas lived in groups, making our prey an improbable were-hybrid. One that stank and scared the crap out of Gee. Just ducky. But we had its scent. Anzu had a great sense of smell and were able to follow a scent over very, very, very long distances. We walked out of town and I made Gee turn his back so I could strip, repack my gobag, and shift again. Back on the wing, we soared over Foleyet in widening circles. A snow storm blew in, ice stinging my eyes. I discovered that I had nictitating membranes and the discomfort eased.

  Within an hour, a hundred miles from Foyelet, we caught the scent of the were-Duba. Heard screaming. Gunshots—two shotgun blasts.

  I tilted my head down and folded my wings.

  “Jane! No!” Gee shrilled.

  I dove at the surface. The piercing wind whistled sharp. Lights below were blurred by snow and driving wind. A dozen rounds sounded from semi-automatic handguns. I smelled the stench of blood, human and Duba. The smell of wood-smoke.

  The screams cut off.

  A large log-cabin came into view, metal roof, smoking fireplaces, backyard fenced with tall planks. Cars inside the yard. Children’s toys. A green and blue swing set.

  I landed hard. The gobag slammed forward. My body rocked with momentum, wings slashing out to catch my fall. My wing hit something. Duba. It was holding a human head in its claws. It dropped the head and charged.

  In the moment of attack, everything slowed, a thick, gluey bending of time. The falling snowflakes sluggish. The spin of the head the Duba had been chewing, its long, blond, bloody hair in a whirl, bearded face with two inch fangs. True-dead. My own body still tilting. My chest hitting the ground. The thing in mid-leap, hyena jaw and ears, bear nose and shoulders, hyena forelegs and bear back, paws a mix of the two. Bloody snout. Black-spotted tongue. Huge.

  Scent and sight of a child in the broken window, her face filled with fear and fury. Smoking gun her hands. The stink of silvershot in the were-blood.

  The Duba’s mo
uth opened, roaring. It leaped toward me.

  I’d have died. But Gee hit the earth running, in human form, swords drawn. He attacked. Time crashed back over me. A tsunami of sound. The swords of the Mercy Blade whirled into the arcane forms of the Spanish Circle—La Destreza. The attacking Duba flipped to the side in mid-leap and landed near the Anzu. Already bleeding. The swords were a cage of death that cut and cut and cut. The Duba bled, the silvered blades like acid in the wounds. The stink of silver and Duba blood filled the small area. The Duba screamed in fury.

  Other Duba raced from the house into the black night, carrying various body parts. Dinner. One turned and looked back at us, roared. The reverberation beat on my ears like a bass drum.

  I caught my balance and screamed an Anzu challenge.

  Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Like I could fight in this form.

  The Duba who had screamed raced toward me. I folded my wings and slid between two of the parked cars. And thought about my human form. So very different from the form of the Anzu, so banal and ordinary and…Prey, Beast thought at me. She took over the shift and forced me away, a clawed paw on my mind.

  Bones shifted and broke and slid and cracked into place. Muscle reformed. Feathers became pelt. Beast screamed our challenge.

  Leaped to the top of nearest car, long tail spinning for balance. Saw Duba attack Gee from behind. His head in her claws. She was mammal, and carried milk for young in long teats. The male Gee had fought was dead at her feet. Mate. Duba female killing Gee.

  Leaped again, rotating body and tail. Stretching out front claws. Landed on top of female Duba. Bit her head. Blood was hot and stinky. Like meat of old possum on hot road, long dead. Killing teeth scraped skull, holding. Reached around and sank claws into Duba throat. Ripped with claws, tearing and shredding flesh of throat. Blood flew. Duba let go of Gee. Mercy Blade fell. Bloody heap of flesh.

  You can kill the Duba or help Gee, Jane thought at me. Not both.

  Female Duba shook self like dog in water and raced for broken wood of hole in fence, black night beyond. Beast sank claws in. Duba leaped. Jagged spines of bloody wood bit into Beast flesh at shoulders and back. Should let go. But twisted forelegs in moves had seen Gee’s sword make, claws biting deep.

  Duba fell. Beast tore into throat, savaging flesh. Tore off Duba head. Spine cracking. Carried it to lighted side of fence. Raced to Gee. Dropped head. Gee blood everywhere. Gee could not heal self of injury. Needed Jane. Needed hands and—

  “I got this.”

  Whirled. Paws and claws out, head down. Snarled. Saw little girl who stood at window. Little girl holding gun and rags and…with fangs. Is not child. Was small vampire female.

  “Don’t make me shoot you, eh?” She held up gun. Pointed at Beast. Beast snarled. Looked to Gee. Growled. “Go change shape,” she ordered. “I talked to Namida Blackburn, so I’m unimpressed with the display of teeth. Go.” She shooed with hands as if to a send a kit out to play in grass. Beast snarled again and walked back to cars. Changed.

  * * *

  I was shaking badly, hunger pulling up through my body. It felt as if someone had reached through me, grabbed the soles of my feet, and pulled me inside out. But eating would have to wait. There were injured here, piled among the dead. And not enough saving hands. Using supplies given to me by the small vamp, working with those less injured, I bandaged and applied pressure, squeezed bags of fluid, forcing saline into the living, trying to stabilize blood pressure. It had been a long time since my emergency medicine class and my skills were rusty. But the humans here were skilled, and together we kept the less horribly wounded alive until a vampire could feed them, or heal the wounded with their blood or saliva. It was messy.

  Dawn came before we could finish and I helped the vamps, their humans, and a badly wounded Gee into the narrow stair leading to the lair beneath the cabin. They would spend the day drinking from one another to heal. Seeing a vamp’s lair was a rarity, usually a sign of great trust, but this time it fell under the category of emergency. I was alone when I closed the hatch beneath the kitchen table and heard the bolts ram home.

  “Just me and the bodies,” I said. Which was bad. Vampires who couldn’t be saved had to be killed true-dead or risk rising as revenants—mindless eating machines akin to Hollywood’s worst Zombies. That meant they had to be beheaded, thankfully not a job I had signed up for. I called Namida. She was old and powerful enough to be able to answer the phone after dawn, tell me where I was (at the Johnson Clan, which gave me nothing but a name, though every little bit helped.) She promised human assistance and cleanup via helicopter, which was pretty cool.

  There were four tiny silver linings to the night: no one had died in the kitchen, the kitchen was fully stocked with meats of all kinds, the stove was hot, and so was the shower water.

  * * *

  I was gone by the time the helo showed up. I saw it through the low-lying clouds as I circled the Johnson Clan holdings and found the scent I was chasing. The Duba. I beat my wings and followed the stink. I found their den a hundred miles or so from Foleyet. It wasn’t far as the Anzu flew, but the den was underground. According to the Internet there were no mines in the area, but the opening into the low hillside looked like an old mine, ancient timbers shoring up the entrance, iron rails leading in, the area denuded of trees, spotted with rusted vehicles, buildings in disrepair. The site, whatever it was, had been empty for a long time. I circled, looking for two things—a back entrance and signs of magic. I spotted them both instantly. There were three back entrances, all stinking of Duba and death and broken magic. The mine centered on the crisscrossed ley lines, the jumbled, twisted energies I had seen earlier. It was a place of intense earth magics, where normal—assuming there was a normal—were-creatures had been altered, possibly on the cellular level, by the concentrated, warped energies. Bad place, Beast thought at me. Do not go in.

  Good advice, I thought back. The last time I went into a mine I nearly died. That wasn’t happening again, especially into a mine flooded with sick magic.

  Nothing about this hunt was proving easy. I flew back to the Johnson Clan cabin, shifted, dressed, and checked my cell. I had a signal and placed a call to Alex Younger back home, set the GPS system in the new necklace to broadcast my position, and ate again. Around me, humans carried out the last rites offered to the vamps they served. It was bloody. Messy. Their grief awful.

  I was tired. Too tired. Shifting so many times was using up reserves I didn’t have and eating up more calories than I could take in, even with Anzu magic fueling half the changes. In human form, I ate. And ate. When I could talk, I questioned the visiting humans and found that Namida had sent what I needed. She had also sent a special human, Masie, who had mad skills with explosive weapons. Handy, that.

  Leaving the others burying the dead and cleaning up, we two flew to the mine again, this time on the helo they had come in, the craft loaded with explosives. At each of the three back entrances, Masie set explosives, enough C4 to bring down the tunnels and maybe half the mapped cave. The rumble and slam of explosive might was satisfying and properly climactic, dirt, smoke, and debris flying, the ground vibrating like a drum. There was no way to know if Masie had saved us the trouble of killing the weres. Not yet. We’d have to wait until dark. So we set up cameras at the remaining front entrance to track activity and took the helo back again.

  * * *

  At sunset, Gee and I landed at the mine and shifted shape. This time I had sufficient clothes, borrowed from the Johnson Clan and smelling of vampire and unfamiliar humans, but better than the cold I’d have been otherwise.

  “You found the den,” Gee said, when I came out from behind a dilapidated building. He sounded surprised, which was mildly insulting. Deep inside, Beast hissed at him.

  I said, “Yeah. Their den is a mine that angles into those ley lines we saw, which are twisted and knotted like a snarl of yarn. The energies coiled there are where I figure the Duba came from in the first place. Some were-creatur
e holed up inside and was changed by the magics down to the genetic level. That change was passed along to the bitten progeny.”

  “Ah,” he said, excitement lacing his words. “We will hunt them in the mine?” I could smell anticipation on him.

  “Not exactly,” I hedged. I would fulfill my deal with the Anzu to the letter and not one iota more. My plan was down and dirty but effective, and did not include exposing him or me to the gene-altering energies. Or an underground hunt.

  “What do you mean, ‘not exactly,’ little goddess?” he asked, suspicion in his tone and body posture.

  “Ummm…that?”

  His scent underwent a distinct change at the sound of a helo, the blades cutting the air with a deep thrum. “What have you done?” he asked.

  I didn’t answer, but I didn’t let him from my sight either.

  “You steal the hunt from our bargain?”

  The helo dropped through the cloud cover and hovered twenty feet overhead, the downdraft beating the ground, the thunder of the engine like a thousand drums. This was a big-mother-of-a-bird. From the fuselage, something dropped, stretched out in the air, and landed, softly as a hunting big-cat. And then raced inside the mine. Gee hissed. I laughed.

  “This was to be our hunt,” he said.

  “We hunted.” When he started to object I said, “We flew. We tracked. You killed one. I killed one. I have officially completed my part of our agreement. We. Are. Done.”

  From the mine entrance I heard screams and yowls and sounds that might emerge from a hellpit.

  His voice toneless, knowing I wasn’t to be moved on this, Gee said, “There is no honor in this battle.”