Blood in Her Veins (Nineteen Stories From the World of Jane Yellowrock) (44 page)

The white form of Rick's partner—the white werewolf stuck in wolf form—climbed the steps behind Rick. The irony of a were-cat stuck in human form and a werewolf stuck in wolf form being partners for the Psychometry Law Enforcement Division wasn't lost on me, but that didn't mean I'd cut him any slack. “Hey, Brute. What's kicking? Anyone broken your nose lately?” He snarled at me, fangs white in the darkness, and I chuckled. “Try it, big boy. How many times do I have to break your ugly snout to make you understand that you're
only a wolf
?” I made the last three words an insult, and I heard a chittering in the night, though I didn't see the source. Staring the wolf down, I said, “Sorry, Pea,” though I knew she could smell the lie on me.

I heard a scrape in the hallway behind me as Eli decided to reveal
himself. He knew he needed to be downwind if he wanted to spy on creatures with better-than-human noses, so clearly he had wanted his presence known. “LaFleur,” he said.

“Younger,” Rick said back, measuring the former Ranger.

It was like a testosterone factory out here. I sighed and stood, pivoting on a boot heel and walking down the hallway to my room. Hand on the knob, I pointed three rooms down. “Room fourteen.”

Rick looked at the door of room fourteen and back to me, his face suddenly playful. “Is that a challenge? Because if it is, consider it taken, darlin'.”

Heat sang through me. Pea, Rick's supernatural grindylow, the mythical creature charged with keeping were-animals from spreading the were-taint, chittered angrily and stood up from her perch in Brute's fur. Eli, instead of taking my side, laughed. “She needs to get laid, man, can't say she don't, but my room's right next door, so keep it quiet.”

“Good grief,” I muttered, and went into my room, closing the door with finality. To the empty room I said, “Men.” And not in a nice way. Then I turned to my weapons, laying them out on the bed. These I understood. Men, not so much.

Moments later I heard a tap on the door and soft music from outside. I opened the door a crack. Rick stood in the hallway's yellow light, that same expression on his face—laughter, playfulness, teasing. Dear God in heaven, I'd missed that look. The heat that had started in the stairwell bloomed and spread through me. He leaned in, smelling totally delicious. “You're really gonna make me stay all the way down there?”

“I really am.” The words were more whisper than I wanted, and I cleared my voice.

Rick's smile widened, and I knew he could smell my need on the air. “You gonna join me?”

“I'm really not.”

Rick nodded, his lips drawing into a thoughtful frown. “Well, then. We should take advantage of the moonlight. Let's hunt.”

My Beast reared up in me, staring through my eyes at a man she had claimed as her mate.
Mine,
she purred. I didn't bother to push her down but opened the door to reveal my room with my weapons spread on every surface. “Was kinda hoping you'd wanna hunt,” I said.

Rick whistled and Brute trotted up. I looked at the wolf. “He willing to chase down a wolf who might have been his hunting buddy once upon a time?”

“He's good with it.” Rick nodded to the adjoining room. “Your pals up for a night hunt?”

The adjoining door opened. “Thought you'd never ask,” Eli said. “Where do we start?”

“That restaurant we ate at last. The werewolves have eaten there. I smelled the house-made, Cajun-style rémoulade sauce on them when they changed back to human. By the stink, I'd say they're regulars at Joe's Got Crabs.”

•   •   •

The waitress at the restaurant wasn't interested in talking to me about the threesome who ate there every night. But when Rick walked in, things changed fast. He turned that million-dollar smile on her and I thought she'd toss off her clothes right then and there and take him on the floor.

I sat at the bar and watched, nursing a beer so they wouldn't toss us out, Eli with a Coke standing behind me. The waitress bent over Rick and let him get a good look at her cleavage while they chatted. I couldn't decide if I was jealous or if she was pathetic. Both probably.

Eli leaned over me and said, “So. You want to rip her head off or tear her a new one lower down?”

“Both. Neither. She stinks of mango, jasmine, and rose perfume with a dash of fried fish and horseradish. He can act interested all he wants, but I can see his nostrils. To him? She reeks.”

“Even with those boobs?”

I looked down at my own chest and back to the waitress. “There are the boobs,” I acknowledged. “And the long blond hair.” And the fact that Rick was a pretty boy and generally unfaithful. Minutes later Rick walked back to us, a strip of paper in his fingers.

“Her number?” I asked, hearing the snark in my voice, which—hopefully—disguised the hurt.

“A license number, a credit card number, a name, and an address,” he said with pride and not a little swagger. He handed me the strip of paper.

“And you didn't get her number?” Eli asked, disbelieving.

“Oh, I got her number.” Rick pulled out another strip of paper and
extended it to Eli. “For you.” Eli's eyes went wide as he looked from Rick's hand to the waitress. She gave him a little wave. “My good-looking friend who is smitten with her down-home Southern looks and charm, but who is too shy to get her number.”

“You didn't.” There was a Beast-worthy growl in the words.

Rick tucked the paper into Eli's shirt pocket and patted it down. “Oh, but I did.”

Chortling with laughter and more relieved than I wanted to admit to myself, I waved to the waitress as I followed the men out the door. “Be sure to burn that,” I advised Eli, “before Sylvia sees it. She wouldn't bother with ripping off your head. She'd let Smith and Wesson do the talking.”

•   •   •

The water sped by us in the rented airboat, the moon now cold and icy, bright on the black water. We had given the Kid the information that the waitress had provided, matched it with newcomers to the area and missing-persons reports in the parish—information provided by the police—three prime addresses to work with, all easiest to find by boat. Eli drove, Brute sitting beside him, Rick and me on the lower, front seat, his arm around my shoulders, seat belts holding us in place. You really needed the nylon flex straps in an airboat at
any
speed.

The first place was a vacant mobile home that had been used for target practice by the locals for so long that it was mostly a hole. Neither Brute nor I got a whiff of werewolf. And it felt weird to be working with the wolf, asking him if he smelled our prey. Beast growled low in the back of my mind, and I had to soothe her raised ruff.
It's just for now,
I thought at her.

Want to fight wolf. Scratched his nose one time.

You did?
I didn't remember that, but I thought it might be prudent not to continue the conversation. And when Eli whirled the airboat in a tight arc to take us to the next place on our list, I used the centrifugal force as an excuse to hold on to Rick and not respond.

•   •   •

The second place was more likely. I smelled werewolf stink from yards away. The airboat roared up onto land in front of a house; the engine cut off.

Brute stepped over the back of the seat and shoved his snout between Rick and me, pushing us apart, sniffing, getting dog drool on my shirt. I was sure it wasn't an accident. I shoved his nose away. “I smell it,” I said.
I stepped onto the land, boot heels sinking into the mud. Brute landed beside me, shaking his head, the human gesture looking all wrong on him.

“What?” Rick asked. “Is this the right place?”

Brute nodded.

“Are the weres here?”

Brute lifted his snout and sniffed as the airboat went silent and shook his head.

“They're hunting,” I said softly.

Brute snuffled agreement. Pea crawled up his back, holding his ruff in her tiny little fists. She sat astride his neck, holding on, and sniffed the air. She chittered, the sound menacing and deadly, strange coming from the green-coated, kitten-sized grindy. She closed her eyes and sniffed, tiny explosions of air. She opened her eyes and looked at Rick. There was an intensity in her gaze that belied her cuteness.

“I haven't touched Jane. Oh. Wait. You know where the werewolves went?”

Pea sniffed again and pointed with a tiny paw/hand, one finger extended, the two-inch steel claw at the tip. Deep inside, Beast hissed at the sight.
I know,
I thought at her.
I don't know where she keeps them either, but when she pulls them out, they are
scary
.

Behind us, silent, Eli started the engine again, the prop deafening in the night. Brute and I leaped back inside, and we followed Pea's nose and steel claw down the canal.

•   •   •

Pea directed us to shore along a stretch of water that was black as sin. Eli pulled up and beached the boat, cutting the engine. Another airboat was beached beside ours, and it stank of were. And wolf in heat. And terrified human. Female. They had captured a woman. When she was in the boat, she was unharmed, no blood smell. But she had been so filled with fear that her sweat stank of it. And she had urinated on herself. Recently.

Eli turned a bright flash on the boat, where we could see clothing, shoes, beer cans, and jewelry in piles. He moved the light and studied the muddy bank. Close to the boat it was hard to tell what was what; there were human prints and wolf prints. But farther out, one pair of bare human feet led off into the brush. And three wolves followed.

Eli leaned over the seats and started passing out weapons. The rest of
us took them, checking their readiness by feel, holstering them, checking the slide of blades and the position of, well, everything. My M4 Benelli was in its spine holster, the grip above my ear, loaded with hand-packed rounds containing silver fléchettes. They had been designed to kill vamps, but most supernats could be poisoned by silver, weres among them. I retied my bootlaces. Made sure water bottles were easy to hand. Eli carried a U.S. Army med kit, mostly for him and any hurt victim, because the rest of us would be likely to heal fast. He had walked me through everything in it, and their uses. I had managed not to laugh at his description of the uses of tampons—“Great bandages to insert into gunshot wounds. They have their own tail to locate the injury later.” Uh-huh. Kinda knew that.

When we were all ready, we stepped to the bank, and mud sucked at our feet, each step a slurping sound, each foot an effort to lift. With a whiff of satisfaction in his pheromones, Eli pocketed the keys of both boats. The wolves had left theirs. He turned off the flash and we stood to let our eyes acclimate.

There were no lights anywhere. There was only the stink of rotting vegetation, scat, the rot of a dead animal in the distance, and the smell of fear, aggression, violence. No sounds but the rare splash of a water animal, the trickle of slow-moving bayou and tide. In summer there would be frogs croaking, insects buzzing, night birds hooting and calling. Gators roaring. The smell of animals nesting and sleeping and hunting everywhere. From time to time, there would be boats and campsites with lights and fire pits, and the sounds of drunken humans would echo through the dark. But the weather had turned cold in what passed for winter here, and tonight it was just us and the smells and the small round moon on the black water and the silence that was left after the roar of the boat. Until the scream rent the air.

Everyone but Eli jumped. Eli settled his low-light gear over one eye and, with the other one, looked at the tiny kitten and the white wolf. “You take point. Move slow and steady. No matter what you hear.” To us, he added, “Stay together. Jane, you got our six.” It wasn't a request, and I fell in at the back. When it came to paramilitary operations I was the novice, he was the expert. And he was the one with the fully automatic weapon. I had learned that current Louisiana gun laws didn't prohibit magazine capacity, and that was why Eli felt so safe carrying them everywhere we went. I hadn't asked, and he had seen no reason to enlighten me.

I had also learned that no wet place in Louisiana is similar to any other. Walking through land bordering a saline marsh meant mud, shrubs, mud, stunted trees, mud, broken limbs (some sharp as stakes), mud, saw grass and regular grasses (lots of them taller than we were), and more mud. It clung to our boots and sucked at each footstep. The white wolf was two-toned, his bottom half black with muck, his upper half bright in the moonlight. Pea chittered softly, directing the wolf, using his hair like reins, pulling him where she wanted. It was a weird hunt, to be at the back of a pack, and I pulled on every sense Beast could lend me, from power in my leg muscles, to her night vision, which was much better than mine. Beast didn't like this hunt. Neither did I. Not with the snarls and yips and screams that came from ahead, in the dark.

The snarls and yips were excited and vicious; the screams were full of terror and agony, and we were taking too long—
too long!
—to get there. But the muddy terrain set the pace, not the victim, who, by her screams, was being torn apart, eaten alive, so damaged she would die, no matter how fast we got there. I bared my teeth in a killing rage. Forcing my feet to lift high, to run faster. Ahead, Eli did the same, and I could smell his desperation and fury.

The screams ended with a panting, pained moan, over and over with each fast breath, moans that seemed to roll out over the water and the low land, seeming to come from everywhere. “Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Je . . . ssssuusss.” And then there was nothing but the sounds of tearing and growls and the crack of bone. Just ahead.

We slogged out of the low trees into a clearing, Eli firing a burst from his automatic weapon, the sound and the muzzle fire ripping through the night. Yelps, howls, and shrieks followed. Beast flooded me with strength and I raced for the body on the ground. I took it in with a fast glance and didn't need to check for a pulse. She was dead—very dead, with nothing left inside her abdomen and a pool of blood on the wet ground an inch deep. It trickled off in tiny rivulets, toward the water.