Faith Hunter - Easy Pickings

I heard humans coming close. I waited. “Jane?” Jo said. “Are you . . . Um. Are you okay?”

I growled. Hungry.

“I thinkin’ big cat need to eat,” Laz said.

“Yeah. And I’ll let the big kitty cat eat you, too,” Jo said, “unless you agree to talk.”

Witchy woman swallowed, throat moving under teeth, against tongue. Tasted good. “Oui,” she said.

“Talk? No magic?” Jo asked.

“Oui.”

“Don’ believe her,” Laz said. “We wrap her in eart’, no? D’eart’ will stop her magics. Big cat, dis might hurt some.”

I growled and swiveled my eyes to big witch man. Do not hurt Beast. I will kill.

Magics twisted under belly. Burning. I pushed off of witchy woman, shoving down with paws. Heard breath grunt out of her. I did spiral in midair, swiveling with long, heavy tail. Landed in front of Laz and leaped at him. Screaming, Hurt! Hurt! Kill witchy man!

Landed on him, like landed on small woman. But Laz did not fall. Did not move at all. He caught Beast with arm and threw Beast into trees. Beast landed, rolled, and screamed again, screamer cat cry. Angry!

“Stop!” Jo shouted. She had arm out, with claw in hand. Magics surrounded her, hot and blazing like blue fire.

Jane clamped down on Beast mind. Stop. Stop now. Jane pushed down on legs and paws. Beast sat. Growled. But sat.

“Jane? Are you in control?” Jo asked.

Jane nodded Beast’s head. Beast did not like Jane in control. Beast is alpha! Pushed at mind with claws. Beast is alpha!

Not right now. Jo can kill us with that sharp pointy thing.

Beast growled, but lowered body to ground. Lying down. Flicked ears in disgust. Looked away. Bored. Small biting things bit at skin. Mosquitoes. Hate small biting things. Hate stinky magic.

“Okay, lady.” Jo bent and picked up not-kit-doll. Shook it and laughed. She held it to Laz. “Doesn’t look a thing like me.” She touched lock of hair on not-kit-doll. “Where . . . Son of a bitch. This is mine! When did you get this from me? In the underworld? Had to be. How did you get some of my hair!”

Witchy-woman-Jo made stubborn frown. Pointed sharp claw at black magic woman. “I think we were drawn here to stop you from doing whatever black magic you’re doing.”

“I no do black magic,” other witchy woman said. She put hand to throat. Smearing her blood. Laz put hand to his chest. Blood was dried there. Beast wanted to lick it. Hungry!

He’s healed, Jane thought in mind. Wonder when that happened.

“Coulda fooled me,” Jo said.

“Black magic vampire does black magic. No me. Black magic vampire said I had to hurt you, or else he would hurt Lissa.” She rose to her knees, fighting Laz magics on her skin. “Where is Lissa? Give her back to me!”

“Lady, I don’t know any Lissa.” Jo tilted head. “We aren’t from around here. We were pulled here to fix something that went wrong on this . . . in this place.”

“Pulled here?” The little witchy woman sat down the ground. “Pulled here? Oh praise all that is holy. I did that. I pulled you here. I did that.” She started to leak again.

I pulled from Jane’s control and moved silently into bushes. Hunt. I hunger.

No. Not yet. Shift back, Jane thought. We need to know what’s going on here and I think she can tell us.

I hunger! Beast screamed. But Jane pressed down on mind. I lay down beneath sharp pointy plant.

Not here. Oh, crap. Not again. Jane thought about Jane form. Pain hit belly and bones. Pain made much worse by hunger, hunger like from hunger times, when there was no prey to eat.

I came to lying naked under a sword plant, so named because the leaves were serrated on the sides and pointed on the end. Dang Beast and her petty games. The leaves drew blood as I climbed out. And now I had to find my clothes, which would be back at the burned out car. Grumbling imprecations under my breath about cats in general and Beast in particular, I made my way painfully across the rough ground, limping each time my bare feet came down on something sharp—every other step, it seemed—and swatting mosquitoes. Dang Beast.

My clothes were scattered everywhere, and I never found my underwear or my socks. Going commando was not comfortable, but it was better than the naked alternative. I already had damaged feet, and the blisters I’d get from the boots would only make things worse. Still grumbling, I made my way back to the shack.

From the voices spilling onto the air, Laz and Jo had herded the voodoo-gal inside and started an interrogation. It was pretty much one sided, or maybe two sided, with the third side—the voodoo-gal—remaining silent except for sobbing.

I stomped up the rickety steps and stopped just inside the door. I’d seen dozens, maybe hundreds, of these bayou shacks while in Louisiana, but this was the first time I’d ever been inside one. It was a sensory overload I could only call awful.

The unpainted boards on the outside were covered with layers of newspaper on the inside, damp and moldering. The boards between the uprights were piled with things—saltshakers, herbs in glass jars, candles in jars, wicks flaming and fluttering in the night. Bird nests and bird houses sat next to hammers, saws, spatulas and soup dippers hanging from nails pounded into the wood. Pots hung from hooks next to brightly colored dresses or shawls. Mardi Gras masks hung next to bags with cartoon babies crawling on them, next to shoulder bags with university names and mascots on them, next to parasols and umbrellas and hats and plastic containers and books by the hundreds, most mystery or romance. The scents were citronella, kerosene, lighter fluid, chicken, and overcooked grease. The sounds were the snapping of candle flames and the heartbroken crying of the witchy-woman.

I studied her. She was thin, maybe five feet tall, with coffee-and-milk skin and curly black hair pulled back in a messy ponytail. Her eyes were green and intelligent, and her hands and nails were clean.

From the look of her skin, she had been crying a lot. Sitting in a rocker, her knees drawn up and her arms around them, her face was crusted with white from the salt of tears. Her belly was flat. And her dress was stained and wet over her breasts. That’s when I recognized the other smells, hidden beneath the others. Breast milk. And baby.

I looked around fast. “Holy crap. Where’s the baby?” I asked. The woman burst into tears again. Jo and Laz looked at each other and then at me. Their eyes said, Baby? The woman’s anguish didn’t smell like grief. It sounded and smelled like fear.

Someone took her kit, Beast thought at me.

The others went quiet as I went to the stove and turned on a burner, found a pot—amazingly it was clean—and I poured water into it from a huge container marked with a commercial water company logo. Added salt. A 42-ounce box of Quaker Old-Fashioned Oats was on a wall-board over the stove and there was milk in the old icebox. A real icebox, with a block of melting ice in it. The voodoo-gal had no electricity and, if the smell was anything to by, no indoor plumbing. It wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t modern at all.

While the water heated, I prowled, and the other three watched me. There was an outhouse to the side of the house. No car in the drive, but a small electric scooter, which I had no idea how she charged, was leaned against the house.

I found the basinet in the back room, empty and cold. It hadn’t been used recently, but the dirty diapers suggested that the baby had only been gone a day or two. I pulled the bassinet into the kitchen and set it in front of the crying woman with a firm snap of wheels on the wood floor. She stared at it with tormented eyes.

“Lissa is your baby, right?”