Robert Asprin - Dragons deal

That was it: He sensed an otherness about them. They weren't a hundred percent human. The way the bigger one moved was too sinuous to be ape-descended. And they just didn't seem in enough of a hurry to hunt him down and deliver their message. Almost as if they were waiting for something.

Or someone.

As Jesse reached the corner of Chartres and St. Ann, a figure turned out of the shadows and grabbed for his neck. Jesse gasped. His reactions, which he always prided himself were as fast as lightning, kicked in. He jumped back and dropped into the primary defense stance. Knees bent, he arched his fingers and let his claws grow.

His assailant slashed at him with an open hand. His fingers were claws, too. Jesse grabbed the passing wrist, stepped backward into the man's path, and dragged the arm all the way down. The man's body fell across Jesse's back. His feet went up, and he landed heavily on his back in the street. Jesse ran.

Footsteps rang out behind him. The other two men were coming for him. Jesse had been making for his girlfriend's apartment, but he didn't dare lead these thugs to her. He ducked left along St. Ann, making for Bourbon Street. They couldn't follow him into a bar full of people. Maybe they'd back off and go away. He'd deal with the future later.

His pulse thundered in his ears. The street was dim at this hour. He ran in between the reproduction gaslight lampposts, fearing the shadows. Ahead was a bar with its doors wide open. They wouldn't close until at least four. Zydeco music poured out into the night. Jesse had one pool of darkness to cross to reach it. It was twice as wide as the other voids. A small alley opened to the right between a closed drink stand and a gated apartment complex.

A dark form whooshed over his head. The third man landed in the shadow, his eyes gleaming green. Jesse turned ninety degrees and zipped across the street. A lone taxi missed him by inches. It honked at him. A gate stood ajar. Jesse ducked inside it and found himself in a passage leading to a courtyard. A dozen men and women sat around a fountain in the center. Two of them played guitars. The others were singing along with the music.

"Hey!" he cried. None of them looked up. "He--"

His second cry was cut off. Something had dropped around his throat and squeezed. Jesse gasped for air. He hooked his claws under the narrow ligature and tried to snap it. The person holding on to the ends was strong. He felt himself being dragged backward. He kicked behind him. His heel connected with a shin. Its owner flinched, but the movement only served to tighten the cincture around his neck. Jesse let go of the wire and flailed with all claws out. He connected with an arm, a leg, a rib cage, but his blows had less and less force. A red ring flared around his vision. It grew smaller and smaller. He was running out of oxygen. He felt his body sagging even as he fought for life. The sound of the music thudded against his eardrums. He reached out a hand to the singers in the courtyard. Why didn't they see him?

A knee in the back shoved his neck harder against the ligature. Jesse dropped to his knees. All three figures were around him then. He tried to tilt his head back to see them. One bent over and grinned at him. He thought he knew the face, an oval topped by a cockscomb of shining black hair. The man gave a vicious tug to the garotte. Jesse's vision darkened. He felt himself drowning in a sea of red pain. It swallowed him up and closed over his head.

The guitars finished with a flourish, to the applause of the singers. None of them looked up as the three men slipped out of the darkened passageway and out onto St. Ann Street.

Griffenarrived at the New Orleans Forensic Center, a grim concrete structure between a wig warehouse and an old gray house on Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard. The street was a boulevard in the classic sense, in that it was wide and gracious enough to promenade down, with what must once have been handsome gardens dotted with trees running up the center, but the paint on the houses on the opposite side had peeled into a mosaic impression, and the row of garbage cans on the curb in front of the corner restaurant had not been emptied yet.

Jerome was waiting at the door. Griffen, barely awake, blinked up at him. It looked as if the other man hadn't had much sleep, either. His usually well-styled clothes were rumpled, and his hair was flattened on one side.

"We got troubles," Jerome murmured, as soon as Griffen was close enough to hear.

"Who is it?"

"Jesse Lee."

Griffen winced. "He was a good guy."

"One of our best. I had a lot of hopes for him."

"What happened?"

Jerome tilted his head toward the door. "You'd better come and see."

Griffen had never been inside a morgue. All the television shows had one thing right, though: The smell hit him before anything else. It wasn't decay that made his eyes water, it was antiseptic cleaning fluid. They must have used it by the gallon, undiluted. The industrial beige of the walls went well with the stink. He never believed in restless spirits before he had come to New Orleans and met a deceased voodoo priestess, but no self-respecting ghost would hang out here. All kinds of people, well dressed in suits and dresses or jeans and hoodies, huddling together for support, wept loudly into tissues. The staff behind the desk paid little attention to them. They had to deal with the details of death every day. Griffen didn't think he could ever get used to it. He didn't want to sit down. He had a feeling of deja vu from watching movies all night about animated corpses. If Jesse was really dead, Griffen hoped he wouldn't manifest on him unless he had information on what caused his death.

A familiar face leaned out the door next to the counter. Detective Harrison glared at Griffen.

"What took you so long?" he demanded. "Come on back."

The heavyset detective strode ahead of them on slightly bowed legs that always reminded Griffen of the gait of a longtime biker. His dark hair was thin on the crown of his head, and sweat beaded the thick flesh between his hair and the collar of his shirt. The usual leather jacket must be hanging up somewhere. It was much cooler in this office building than in most of New Orleans, but Griffen put that down to necessity. Harrison indicated a door on the left side and ushered them in.

The gray-painted room was not the kind of viewing chamber set aside for sensitive relatives to identify a loved one under genteel circumstances, with a curtain and a window. This laboratory had steel tables with hanging sprayers and scales, plus plenty of other devices and machines that Griffen did not want to know about.

Harrison brought them to a wall full of square steel doors. He nodded to a young black male technician wearing green scrubs and cloth baggies over his shoes and hair. The technician, whose name was Shore, according to the name badge attached to his tunic, nodded and pulled open a door. From inside the cubicle, he slid out a gurney. A narrow form covered by a white sheet lay upon it. He threw back the white sheet and withdrew to the side of the room out of earshot, but Griffen saw his keen gaze still on them. He looked down. The corpse's face was dark purple, and the eyes seemed to bulge unnaturally under the lids, which were closed, Griffen was grateful to observe. It was almost redundant to note the deep red line on the neck that indicated that Jesse had been strangled.

"Name?" Harrison asked. Griffen took a deep breath, as if to reassure himself that he could still take one.

"Jesse Lee. He was one of my poker dealers. Nice guy. Single. Decent and honest."

"I knew this guy was one of yours," Harrison said. "You are sure some lucky that I was on duty this morning when the call came in from a house on St. Ann's."