Blood in Her Veins (Nineteen Stories From the World of Jane Yellowrock) (63 page)

The child had been the first vampire-witch baby born in the traditional human way, as opposed to a vamp turning, in ages. His name had been a hopeful blending of the names of the leaders of the witches and vamps in the small town, Clermont Jérôme Landry Doucette, the baby being the first and only thing bringing the two opposing groups together in, well, forever.

I nodded again, showing I understood.

“Shauna, her go anemic. Not have blood for me. I have to feed or I go”—his hand made a circle around his ear—“crazy in de head.”

I thought about that. Two young people madly in love. Baby. Weakness. One not able to feed from the other. Postpartum depression. It made sense, on the face of it, for him to drink from someone else. It seemed right and proper, the gentlemanly thing to do, to get sustenance from elsewhere.
Except that for vamps, feeding and sex were usually synonymous. “Who'd you drink from?” I frowned at him. “I'm guessing that it wasn't from your sire or a brother?” Gabe shook his head, his eyes back down in shame. I blew out a breath, and if my sarcasm was a bit strong, I felt it was well placed. “I take it she was pretty?”

“Yeah,” he said after a pause that went on too long. “She is dat.”

“And you had sex with her?”

“No! I no cheat on my Shauna! Her blood-kin to Doucette clan. I no dishonor her like dat.”

“Sooo . . . ,” I said, thinking, my fingers combing through the mess of my hair. “No fun and games.” And then it hit me. “She walked in on you?” Gabe nodded, the motion as jerky as a human. “And it
looked
like you were having a little too much fun?”

“Yeah. It did dat.”

“Idiot.”

“Yeah, I am dat too.”

“Who was she?” I asked as I started rebraiding my hip-length hair at the base of my head, pulling and slinging each third through the rest.

“You know her,” he said after a few quiet seconds. “Her be Margaud.”

I stopped braiding and narrowed my eyes at him. He glanced up at my silence and the expression on his face said he knew how stupid he had been. Simply put, the three Mouton siblings hated vamps. The three adult children of the family were the former army twins, Auguste and Benoît—alligator hunters and vamp haters from way back—and their sister, who was as beautiful as they were ugly. A trained sniper, Margaud had seen some real-time action in some foreign battlefield. And she hated vamps maybe even more than her brothers did. “Just to clarify. You drank from Margaud?”

“I did.”

“She
let
you drink from her?”

“I at de bar. All alone on Saturday night.
Hongry
, I was. She come in, sit beside me, order her a whiskey. We talk a bit. She buy me a whiskey. We talk some more. She say, ‘How you doin', Gabe? You looking pale.' She smile. She ask, real sof'-like, ‘You need some-a dis?' I stupid.”

I don't cuss as a rule, except sometimes to yank people's chains, but this was a special case. “You're a dickhead.”

“I dat too. Before she sit by me? I found later dat she done call Shauna and tell her to come to de blood bar. Dat why Shauna walk into back room when I feeding from Margaud.”

I yanked on my hair, braiding fast, thinking. “You know she was trying to cause trouble, right?”

“I know.” Gabriel sounded ashamed and devastated all at the same time. He looked at me, and his eyes, still human-looking, filled with pale pink tears. “I love my Shauna. I die now of heartbreak, I am. I die for sure, before I drink again.”

Pinkish tears meant, well, not starvation, but certainly long-term hunger. His body looked thinner, as if lanky had been stretched to its limits. His physical control, under the hunger constraints, was pretty amazing. It left me with nothing to say. Margaud was a bitch and Gabe was an idiot. A starving idiot, but still an idiot. I finished braiding my hair and twisted an elastic band around the tip. “Anything else I need to know?”

Gabe's head dropped even lower, so I couldn't see his face. His voice a mutter, he said, “When Shauna come through the door and see us, she throw a vase at us, she did. Margaud, her run to Shauna and take her hand, like friend. Say she willing to . . . to
share me
with Shauna.”

“Oh.”
Yeah, That's a great way to make everything worse.

“Fight, there was. Catfight. I stupid, and blood-drunk just a bit, so long since I drink my fill, and I laugh. Shauna left. Went back to Clan Home, took Clerjer, took the wreath, and disappear.”

“The wreath outside in the witch circle?”

“De same.”

“Margaud set up the whole thing to mess with the vamps and start trouble.”

“Yeah. I tink dat so too.”

Margaud was a beautiful, deadly woman, with ash brown hair, blonded by the sun, deep brown eyes, and skin tanned golden. She was petite and delicate and last I saw her, she had looked too small to transport or position the sniper rifle she had used to give us cover when my team approached the Doucette Clan Home. She was muscular and fit, and carried herself with a capable, confident air, the exact opposite of a woman who'd just had a baby, all full of baby fat and hormones. No matter how unearthly
beautiful Shauna Landry Doucette was, the sight of her husband in the other woman's arms would have hurt. Bad.

The sharpshooter had played a hand and played it well, and now I had not only to try to fix things with the wreath and repair the damage to the marriage, but figure out Margaud's next move and stop it before it happened.

I frowned. People skills were not among my best talents; I was more a shoot-first-and-bang-heads-together-later kinda gal. “You talked to the witches? To Shauna's daddy?”

“I try. Him come at me with carving knife, he did. And then him throw spell at me from them fire tattoos on he arm. I get away alive, but barely.”

Lucky Landry was one of the rare male witches, and he had full-sleeve tats down his left arm. They were of weird creatures, combos of snake and human, with fangs and scales, mouths open in what looked like agony, as red and yellow flames climbed up from his wrist to burn them. It was like some bizarre vision of hell.

It wasn't commonly known, but spells could be tattooed into the flesh of witches for use, and into the flesh of humans for binding them, all of which was strictly illegal according to witch law, but the supernatural inhabitants of Bayou Oiseau had been cut off from others of their own kind for a century, give or take. Things were different here.
Every
thing was different here.

I heard stirring in the boys' room, male voices, no screaming or shots fired, so Edmund must have been nice in his waking. From the lower part of the house, the smell of bacon rose on the air. Miz Onie was up early, starting one of her amazing breakfasts. I stood and, carrying my vamp-killer, went to the door of the gallery, turning my back on Gabe, which was a pure insult to the vamp, the way an alpha proves strength in the face of a weaker opponent, definitely an insult, almost a dare. One Gabe didn't take.

Dawn was coming, gray streaks across the dark sky, red clouds in the east. The vamps stood two and two behind each witch, vamped-out, claws and fangs and bloody vampy eyes, pupils like pits into hell that I could see even from here, with Beast so close to the surface, aiding my vision. One vamp spot was empty. “Better hurry,” I said.

I felt the air move and swirl as Gabe leaped from the gallery, slower than most vamps. Blood starved. Stupid man. He appeared as if by magic beside his father, both vamps standing behind the witch at the north point of the circle, usually the leader of the coven. It was hard to make out much about the woman because she stood in a shadow cast by another magnolia tree, drenched and dripping as they all were. She was tall and strongly built, an Amazon fully six feet tall—my height, and she had me by fifty pounds at least, and from here, all of it looked like pure muscle. The vamps moved in, closer, so close that one jerked back as if shocked by electricity.

I don't catch scents as well in human form as I do in my Beast form, or in tracking dog form, but even from here I could smell the ozone tingle of witch magic, the herbal and blood scent of vamps, the overriding scent of rain. The smells were powerful and full of the vamp version of adrenaline. The vamps were getting ready to do something.

The shadows changed, shifting, as the sun tried to lift itself over the horizon. Just before the day lightened, the vamps rushed the witches. As one, they slammed into the
dog collar
circle. The ward sparked, flashed, power so bright I spun away, covering my face with my arm. I heard the awful screams of vamps dying—or thinking they were. A chorus of ululations so high that my eardrums vibrated in pain. I heard/smelled meat sizzle.

The first rays of the sun swept in and, with a small explosion of sound, the vamps disappeared, leaving behind the stink of burned vamp, and the echo of vamps in pain as they rushed into the blood bar and what were probably lairs beneath the ground.

I blinked down and saw humans rush to stand in front of the blood bar doorway. Big men in muscle shirts and carrying truncheons creating a barricade of muscled flesh and iron pipes. The protection of loyal blood-servants.

Behind me, I felt a draft of fast-moving air, and the closet door in my room opened and closed. A vamp, God help me, was climbing into his safe haven for the day. In my bedroom. My life was still getting weirder by the day.

Down below, the witches stood straight and stretched. With a gesture, the Amazon woman dropped the inner
hedge of thorns
and walked to the center of the inner circle. She picked up the wreath, holding it like a holy
relic. In the dawn light it was clearly not a Christmas wreath, but just what we had thought—a laurel wreath or olive wreath, like the ancients used to indicate royalty. The haze of pale magics it contained were grayer, duller, less clear in the brighter light. And even from here, I could smell the magic wafting from it like ozone from a power plant or after a lightning strike. An internal shiver raced along my spine at the thought of lightning. I'd been struck by lightning and nearly died. Never again.
Never
.

The Amazon walked away carrying the wreath.
Just ducky
. A magical gadget in the hands of a witch who clearly was powerful all on her own, and who also had the power to draw on the magic of others. A town full of witches, protecting the magical thingamabob. One that my boss would want in his greedy, taloned hands.

This whole thing sucked.

•   •   •

We had a breakfast big enough to last all day, with a slab of thick-cut bacon that had to have come from Lucky Landry's butcher shop, Boudreaux's Meats. Best meat I had ever eaten—well, cooked, and me in human form. Beast had other thoughts about her preference of freshly brought down meat, raw and still kicking. Not my preference. There were also sausage links with the intense spicy flavor of Lucky's special spice and herb rub recipe, free-range scrambled eggs from a neighbor's hens, fresh-baked bread, three kinds of muffins, and a bowl of fruit big enough to take a bath in had the fruit not been in the way. The Kid ate huge servings of everything, even the fruit. He was suddenly putting on weight, the muscle kind, and I was sure he had grown another inch. He would be topping his older brother if this kept up, and I saw Eli glancing at his baby brother from time to time as Alex ate. Eli was no slouch in the eat-his-fill department, and neither was I. We managed to put a hurting on the food before Eli decided it was time to talk.

“Who the hell put a sleep spell on us?” he growled.

“Language,” Alex said.

Eli's eyes narrowed, but he patted his lips with his napkin and placed it beside his plate before taking a tiny sip of coffee. The motions were tight and tense, and I knew he was holding himself in check with effort. Eli had control issues. Spells pushed his buttons. Oversleeping pushed his buttons. Edmund waking him up pushed his buttons. Especially if Edmund was
tossing cold water on him or, worse as far as Eli was concerned, whispering sweet nothings in his ear. I managed not to smile at the thought, but it was a near thing.

“Who the
heck
put a sleep spell on us?” Eli's voice was ubercontrolled.

“The whole town was spelled,” I said, “not just us. And I'm betting that Leo didn't know this part.”

“Why?”

“Because he would have shared this with us. Being put to sleep could mean the difference between success and failure, so Clermont didn't tell him. They're back to playing vamp games.” I told the boys about my visitor and the intel I had been given. At some point in the narrative, Eli calmed down. The fact that the spell had been a general one, and not particular to us, seemed to ease his anger. For me, that made it worse, as it spoke of a huge usage of magical power, but I kept that to myself. When I finished with my tale of love lost and male stupidity and female scorned and revenge, Eli sighed and poured himself another cup of coffee. The small porcelain cups were dainty and pretty, with little pink and yellow flowers on them, and they held about a third of what our mugs did at home, but Eli hadn't let that stop him getting caffeined up. He was steadily making his way through a second pot of Miz Onie's dark French roast brew. “Well, at least we got a good night's sleep.” He gave me his patented grin—a slight twitch of his lips, which, on anyone else, could have passed for indigestion. “Except you.”

“Yeah. Thanks for the sympathy. I also have a vamp sleeping in my closet. No sympathy for that either?”

“Not a hint.”

“Fine. We have a good nine hours of daylight left before the vamps rise. Alex, I want you to find out the historical and/or current relationship between the Doucettes, the Moutons, the Landrys, and the Bordelons, four powerful families that I remember from my last trip here.” Alex pulled out his electronic tablet and took down the names, but he looked at me curiously.