Faith Hunter: Death's Rival

I thought about my stomach and shook my head. The smoked salmon he’d served, cold, with toast points, a salad, and a light beer, just after takeoff in New Orleans, was still sitting uneasily in my stomach. “No offense, but I’ll just be happy to get my feet on the ground. Locked in this tin can with the mild turbulence you talked about back in New Orleans has not been fun.”

He grinned. “This tin can is a Bombardier Learjet 85, valued at over fifteen million dollars.”

I gulped and tried not to let my shock show. By the way Tory laughed, I knew I hadn’t been successful. Tory was mid-thirties, not bad looking, standing about five-ten, with a lithe and wiry build, big thighs, like a cyclist, and it was clear that he found me amusing. It had to be the flight nerves.

“If you need anything just press your call button.” He disappeared behind the closed door and I looked around. I was pretty sure most Learjets were not laid out like this one. The cabin was decorated in muted shades of white and taupe. It held four, fully adjustable, heated leather seats, with a galley and full bath between the seating area and the casket in back. Well, not really a casket, and I had been careful not to call it that out loud; vamps didn’t care much for the fictional assumptions that they sleep in caskets filled with dirt from their homeland burial grounds. But the back portion of the cabin was a cramped bedroom with no windows and stacked bunks. It slept four—six in a pinch—strapped in to the single bunks, in perfect security, allowing vamps to fly by daylight, safe from sunlight, the doors and hatches sealed on the inside. But still. Fifteen million dollars. “Crap,” I whispered.

I went back to my reading, trying to ignore the bumpy ride. Fifteen minutes later, at Tory’s polite request, which I interpreted as orders, I yanked the seat belt again, cutting off the circulation in my legs, and grabbed the armrests as tightly as I could. The small jet dropped—this time on purpose, as the pilot descended for the landing at the private airport outside Sedona.

As a skinwalker—a supernatural being who can change into animal shapes, provided I have enough genetic material to work with—I’ve actually flown, and I far prefer wings and feathers to engines and metal. I knew what it felt like and what it took to land, in terms of wing feathering and variation, flight-feather positional changes, reaching out with front clawed feet, back-winging, tail feathers dropping, and I was relatively certain that the tin can—no matter if it was worth a rather large fortune—did not have the ability to do any of that. Or if it did, a human—a being never designed to fly—was in charge, which was doubly frightening. I’d rather be feathered and in charge.

Deep in the darks of my mind, Beast huffed. Beast didn’t like it when I took the form of an animal other than hers—the Puma concolor —the mountain lion. She especially didn’t like it when I changed mass into something smaller, because she didn’t get to hang around for the ride, though I was pretty sure she had made strides in that regard. After a century and a half—give or take—Beast was evolving, something that might have been helped along by access to an angel named Hayyel not long ago. Long story.

Moments later we touched down. Hard. My teeth clacked together. Relief washed over me like a wave. I took a deep breath, released the armrests, and pushed at the leather upholstery that was now twisted and dimpled by my fingers. They didn’t move back into proper position. Permanent damage to Leo’s toy. Crap .

As we taxied to wherever the Learjet was going to hang out while I did Leo’s bidding, I pulled the laptop to me again and sent Reach a text. “Still waiting on Seattle financial info.” It was a nudge that he didn’t need, but needling Reach to speedier work wasn’t something I got to do often, and was not about to pass up now.

Reach sent back a series of dollar signs by way of an answer. “$$$$$$.”

“Funny guy,” I muttered. “Charge Leo all you want.”

I texted back “What about the CS canisters?” The CS canisters were a potential new weapon in the war on rogue-vamps, pressurized colloidal silver water. Vamps didn’t breathe often, but in combat they did sometimes take a breath. If the air had a mist of colloidal silver vapor, the vamps would inhale the poison. It wouldn’t kill them, but it would slow them down. Maybe. And the poison might kill them later. It would certainly hurt them, even maybe burn their skin. I could hope.

Reach immediately sent back “Done. Untested. Delivered to your place soonest.”

An e-mail beeped into my in-box, and I frowned, suddenly feeling helpless and useless. It was from Adelaide, the blood-servant daughter of Dacy Mooney. I opened it and read the short message. It was the same as the last three I’d gotten from her. “Any word? Any cure?” I typed back “Not yet. Will know more by morning.” Of course, her mother and the other vamps in Asheville could die anytime, bleeding out from the new vamp disease. Just another reminder that time was of the essence.

I remembered to unplug my cell from the jet’s battery chargers. That reactivated the cell’s GPS tracking device and gave Leo the ability to track me, my calls, my e-mails, and texts all in real time. For all I knew, it gave him the power to listen in on non-phone-call conversations. But the guy was paying me very well, so I wasn’t complaining. Much. And I had two throwaway cells in my luggage for my private calls.

I tossed my go-bag on the seat as the small jet taxied and slowed. I wasn’t going to be in Sedona long enough to get to shift, which ticked Beast off. She knew most everything I did and that meant she knew that mountain lions had been sighted near here. Two large males, probably litter mates, as they had learned the unlikely ability of pack hunting. Instead of going solitary, they were taking down prey together. Like African lions.

Good hunters. Need strong mate, she sulked. Which she had been doing a lot lately.

They’re too dangerous. They’re being hunted. They’ll be dead soon, I thought at her.

Beast growled in anger, but there wasn’t anything I could do about two wild big-cats who had learned a new trick. Not a dang thing. Snarling, she retreated into the depths of my mind, silent, distant, as she had been for weeks, since that accidental run-in with the angel Hayyel.

When the plane finally stopped and the engine whine decreased, Tory appeared in the cabin and opened the door to the outside. The smells of the world blew in on a hot gust. I stopped. Lips parting, eyes closing. On top of everything was the reek of petroleum products, heated plastic and metal, rubber, exhaust, and asphalt, but underneath that was a blend of subtle scents all fused together, unknown trees, flowers, hot sand, minerals I didn’t recognize, herbs still carrying the heat of the day.

Beast rose fast and took over, holding me down, her claws in my mind, painful. I held on to the seat arms again, breathing in through mouth and nose, smelling, tasting, parsing the scents. It was . . . amazing was too trite a word. Too overused. I had no word for the aromatic mixture. It was yellow like sunlight, and red like iron-rich earth. It sang of scarlet and sun and iron, with rare blues and greens, and the land stretched out farfarfar. Magic tingled on the air, the magic of the earth itself, still alive here in this place. Beast wanted to Hunt! Now!

With a hard shove, I pushed Beast back down and unbuckled the belt. Stood. Pulled on my boots—Lucchese western dress boots, dark green snakeskin with a four-inch toe and a three-inch heel—seriously cool boots, the color matching the green vest I wore over the black silk button-front shirt that was unbuttoned to show off a bit of chest.