Mercy Blade (14 page)

The rest of the morning, I studied the history of weres online, looking into the worldwide mythos while keeping an eye out for anything new that might pertain to skinwalkers, not that I had much hope. I routinely Googled skinwalkers and had never discovered anything about a nonhuman or a subspecies like me. There was a lot of nonsense about weres online, but nothing suggested a skinwalker. As usual.

By noon I was hungry again, tired, and annoyed. Rick still hadn’t called. A small part of my brain was whispering that I deserved to be dumped, that I was nowhere near attractive enough to date pretty boy Rick LaFleur. A bigger part of me was whispering that I deserved to be dumped because I’d abandoned my no-sex-until-marriage, Christian-children’s-home upbringing. I was sleeping with him, I’d skipped church to be with him, and I’d caught myself cussing without my life being in danger. Oh, and I’d been having erotic thoughts about Bruiser when I was sleeping with Rick. Guilt. Guilt like a heavy wool blanket.

Other women didn’t have guilt, I knew that with a certainty. My house backed up to a whorehouse and none of the girls working there seemed to have any guilt at all. But a truckload of guilt was dumped on me for sleeping with one guy. Go figure.

Not able to deal with my own traitorous brain, or thoughts about my possibly traitorous boyfriend, I flopped down on the bed and closed my eyes. And when that made the images in my head worse, I grabbed my gym bag and hopped on Bitsa hoping that a good pummeling at the dojo might help.

My new sensei was a hapkido black belt, second dan, with a black belt in tae kwon do and a third black belt in combat tai chi, though he had given up competition years ago. Everyone who trained with him knew he thought competition was for sissies and martial arts were for fighting and killing. His style was perfect for me, because I studied mixed disciplines and had never gone for any belt. I trained to stay alive, not to look snazzy, all belted up, or to show off a wall full of trophies. My fighting style could best be described as dirty, an aggressive amalgam of styles, geared to the fast and total annihilation of an attacker.

The dojo was in the back room of a jewelry store on St. Louis, open to the public only after store hours, but open to a select few students during the day. I had quickly made it from casual sparring partner to serious student and I had my own key. I parked Bitsa at the curb and turned down the narrow service alley. It was all of thirty inches wide, damp and dim.

I keyed myself in through the small door of the dojo and locked it after me. The long room had wood floors, two white-painted walls, one mirrored wall, and one wall of French doors that looked out over a lush, enclosed garden planted with tropical and semitropical plants. Cats were sunning themselves in the garden, seeming to come and go as they pleased, eating from bowls piled with food pellets, and drinking out of the large fountain shaped like a mountain stream that splashed in one corner. A weak smell of fish suggested that koi or goldfish had once swum in the pool at the bottom of the fountain, but the cats had likely made that an unworkable environment though I had never asked the real reason that the pool contained only plants. The garden was surrounded by two- and three-storied buildings and was overlooked by porches dripping with vines and flowering potted plants. Sensei lived upstairs in one of the upper apartments.

I punched the button that told sensei he had a student, dropped my bag in one corner, and stripped off the jacket and pants hiding my workout clothes—stretchy shorts and T, jogging bra and undies beneath. I unrolled the practice mats and started warming up. Ten minutes later, sensei showed up, though he tried not to let me know he had dropped into the garden from his apartment above.

Most of his students weren’t able to tell when the man literally dropped in, but with Beast’s acute hearing and sense of smell, I always knew. The smell of Korean cabbage he loved so much was a dead giveaway. Sensei, whose real name was Daniel, attacked when my back was turned. Leaped through the open doors, seeing me smiling at him in the mirrored wall as he hurtled through the air. For an instant he frowned. Then he was passing through the air where I had been standing and landed cat-footed to sweep out with his leg. I leaped above it. Kicked with the heel of my foot, straight for his nose. He bobbed his head and shifted his body left. Counter-punched with his right. All in about a half second. And the fight was on.

I was still hiding that I wasn’t human, or at least not fully human, and pulled my punches and kicks, keeping them almost human slow, and almost human strength. I was a lot faster and stronger when I drew on Beast’s abilities. An hour later, I was sweating, stinky, breathing hard, and felt a lot better. And if sensei had a few more bruises than usual, well, I blamed it on Rick.

Not ready to head home, I hopped on Bitsa and tooled my way out of the Quarter to the Shooters Club off Tulane Avenue. I paid my fee and bought regular ammo, as the silver rounds used for hunting vamps was too expensive for practice. Luckily, I had the place to myself because I wasn’t in the mood to be with people. I hung my man-shaped targets and hit the button that shoved the target holder out to twenty feet to start. I’d push it back and back until it was finally at fifty feet, though no handgun is worth much at that range, no matter what shooters do on TV.

I blew off a lot more steam working with my H&K 9 mil, going through three boxes of rounds before I was satisfied with my precision. I wasn’t a bad shot, and I knew a good gun and well-practiced hand-eye shot coordination was essential for a vamp hunter, but I preferred blades and stakes and martial arts to bullets any day. With them, I
knew
a vamp was dead.

Still, when I was done, I felt better, and bought a new holster at the front of the shop, one made of supple black leather with black sequins, of all things, that might fit with an evening gown. I had a party to attend, and permission to come armed. No one said that I had to look unfeminine just because I was loaded for were and vamp. I had never thought of holsters as sexy, but this one came close.

When I left the shooting range, I dropped by Katie’s Ladies, the whorehouse run by my landlady—when she wasn’t in a coffin filled with vamp blood and healing from a mortal wound. Deon, the three-star chef, answered the door.

The slight, dark-skinned man blocked my way in, one hand on the door, the other on the jamb, his brows raised and mouth pursed. “The help don’ use the front door, tartlet,” he said, in his lovely island accent.

I crossed my arms and cocked out a hip. “Deon, you do know that I could break you in two with one hand tied behind my back, right?”

“We could have fun while you tried.”

I burst out laughing and Deon opened the door for me to enter. Deon was gayer than a San Francisco stripper, but he’d taken a liking to me and recently begun flirting in the most outrageous manner. “Troll in?” I asked.

“No, tartlet. The boss man, as opposed to the mythical vampiric boss woman I hope one day to meet and feed, even if she is a she and not a he, went to buy liquor. I have your laundry ready. Want to play in it? We could dump it on the kitchen island and roll around—”

“Deon.”

He shut his mouth and switched his hips with a satisfied air, crooked a finger, and led me to the kitchen. “I got you present, girl. Replace them ugly cotton thing you wear on your Amazonian bottom,” he said over his shoulder, “with silk and spandex pretties.”

“Forget it,” I said, sputtering laughter. “Give it to one of the girls.”

He canted his head slyly. “You will like. I have the best of taste in all things fine.”

“Not happening, Deon.”

He laughed, the sound happy and devious all at once, floating back to me from the dining room. “You will love the way silk feel on that lovely bottom—”

“Stop talking about my bottom,” I said, following him through the dining room into the spotless kitchen.

“Shh. You wake the girls and they need beauty sleep. Where was I? Oh.” He held up a black wisp that shimmered in the light.

I stopped dead in my tracks. “Oh. Oh my.”

 

Back home, I took a shower to wash off the remaining stink of anger and aggression and flopped on the bed. This time, thanks to releasing my pent-up adrenaline fighting and shooting, and the calming results of chatting with Deon, I was asleep instantly.

I dreamed, knowing it was a dream, but was unable to wake. The sound of laughter bounced off the walls of my mind, the werewolf laughter of Roul Molyneux, though I couldn’t see him. I turned around and around, seeing Booger’s place, though only as my mind saw it, not as it had been. It was dark and empty, and the chain walls were down, enclosing me. This time there were no doors. Roul’s laughter echoed hollowly, rattling the chains with soft tinks all around me.

A man dropped from the ceiling to land on the balls of his feet and his palms, catlike, but his face was a dog face, tongue lolling and canines gleaming. He stood and his face went from comical to snarling in a heartbeat. Other men landed beside and behind him, stood and began to move forward, spreading out, boxing me in. They were all wolf-faced and naked with casual unconcern. Naked and erect.

Instant fear shot through me, faster than my heartbeat, pricking on my nerves. I couldn’t breathe, suffocating. I reached for my vamp-killer. As in the way of dreams, I wasn’t armed.

An electric frisson of magic danced along my skin, as if the air crackled with lightning. I jerked, trying to wake, knowing I was dreaming, but I was trapped. Heart pounding, I tried to back away, but my feet didn’t, couldn’t, move. One of the men leaped at me, covering the space between us in an instant. Fangs bared, long and vicious.

The scene changed, leaving me in a dark room lit by fire. Confused, I sucked a breath and darted my eyes around. No wolfmen. I was sitting, my bottom, feet, and one hand on a clay floor, the room around me dim with dancing shadows. Fear grabbed me, so intense that I heaved. Stomach contents rising fast. Choking me. I swallowed hard, eyes wide in the murk.

A low bed with a thin mattress was against the far wall, a table and overturned stools close by. Windows with moonlight beyond, cloth curtains that moved in the night breeze. The walls were made of horizontal logs, mud chinked. Shadows moved on them, thrown up by the flames in the fireplace. Clothes and gear hung on hooks on the walls and sat on shelves. The shadow of a man, bearded, lunged back and forth, back and forth.
Yunega
. White man. Hurting
etsi
, my mother. Her sobs were quiet. Louder was the slapslapslap of his body hitting hers. Another white man stood ready. Waiting his turn. The smells of the
yunega
suffocated me. Unwashed bodies. Fried food. The smell of bad teeth and wet feathers. And the smell of man stuff on the air.

Watching the shadows, I curled my hands, one on the clay floor of our house. It was cool and smooth. One on warm cloth. Damp and warm. I didn’t want to look. But I turned my head in the dream, and looked beside me. A man lay on the floor, face up. He wore a long woven shirt of many colors, a wide cloth belt holding it closed. Blood covered his shirt, looking black in the dim light.

His eyes were open, staring, as if watching the shadows on the walls and ceiling. Yellow eyes like mine.
Edoda
. My father. They had killed him.
Yunega
shot him. He died. Edoda died, before he could
change
, the change that would have saved him. Only his hands had shifted into his beast, the claws of the
tlvdatsi
.

“My turn. Get off her. My turn.”

“When I’m done,” he panted. “You can have her when I’m done.”

I shuddered. Dry-eyed. Silent. Staring at Edoda. I opened my hand and placed it over the wound on my father’s chest, into his blood.
Warm. Still warm.
I lifted it and wiped Edoda’s blood down my face, my cold fingers moving slowly. His blood chilled quickly, bringing the coldness of the dead into my skin. Hand back into the blood; it was cooler now. Cooling so fast. I wiped my fingers down my face again, trailing the coolness of death. Placed my hand back into his blood.

“Hey, kid. What the hell are you doing?”

I looked up. Into the face of
yunega.
Blue eyes. Snarled hair. Stink of white man. I lifted my hand from my father’s blood, and painted my face. Blood stripes. Holding his eyes. Promising his death.

 

I hurled myself from the bed. Hit the floor shoulder first. Rolled. Slammed into the wall. And woke up. Disoriented by the dream.

I made it to the bathroom and threw up everything that was left from breakfast. Threw up. Over and over. Until the dry heaves were all that was left and my gut was wringing with pain. Tears and snot coated my face. I spat the last of the vomit from my mouth and collapsed on the floor by the toilet. Sobbing silently, gasping for breath.

I had forgotten. Forgotten the men who murdered my father. Raped my mother. Forgotten the bloody stripes on my face, cooling and sticky. How had I forgotten? How had I ever forgotten?