Faith Hunter - Easy Pickings

Jo grunted something foul under her breath and gave me a short nod without looking my way. I took that as permission to kill the werewolves. She had one witch down, unconscious, and the other on her knees. That witch looked angry, her hair out in a frizzed cloud, her fingers bent into claws as she fought, but she looked scared too, and I figured Jo would be ticked off if I killed the witch for her.

Serena was fighting a witch too, a tall woman, who weighed three of Serena, maybe four of her, but size is no indication of power, and the skinny witch was holding her own in a fight that seemed to be made of bats and rainbows. Weird.

Laz was standing in a stinking puddle of swamp mud and rotted vegetation, one Swamp Thing creature down and one to go. But this fight didn’t look so good. Laz was injured, his left knee bent at a weird angle, his weight all on his right. If the sparkling bluish glow was an indication, he seemed to be trying to pull at the earth, but it wasn’t helping much, not with the dead Swamp Thing and a half-foot of asphalt between him and the ground.

I had fired three of my seven silver shotgun rounds, so I had four left. And a few more in Bitsa’s saddlebags several streets over. I lifted the M4, aimed it at what might be Swamp Thing’s stomach—assuming Swamp Things had stomachs. I mean, what did they eat? And fired.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then the big bad ugly piece of mud turned to me and charged. “Crap!” I whirled and took off but I made it only three good paces when muddy water and clumps of bayou mud and dead leaves and what might have been a dead rat shot under my feet. I did a quick dance step at the flood and landed on the sidewalk. The muck smelled like the love child of a hundred rotten eggs, that dead rat, and methane gas from the swamp. And maybe a little like vomit. My gorge rose and I pushed it back down. I would not throw up in front of Joanne Walker. Would not. I looked back to see what had happened, and Laz cut me a sharp smile.

“Thank you. I needed dat diversion, oui.”

“You’re welcome.” I scraped the goo off my boots onto the sidewalk curb. It slimed. “I think.”

Jo fell forward, landing on her knees in the muck. “Son of a bitch,” she muttered. “These jeans were brand new.” She looked up at me. “Think I can get the stink out of them?”

“With enough bleach and Febreez. Me? I’m tossing the boots when I get home.”

“Where’s Serena?” Jo asked.

“She’s over—” I pointed and stopped. The hefty witch was lying in the goo, breathing but unconscious. And Serena was nowhere to be seen. “Crap.” We both looked at Vamp Mojo.

A huge fireball of blue light shot out the front door of the bordello. Taking the door with it. I dove to the side behind the protection of the wall. Joanne dropped back into the goo. The heavy hunk of steel door flew over Jo’s ducked head and landed with a clang in the mud, sending a stinking wave of it over the far sidewalk. The magics smelled like Serena, like baby powder and fury.

“Inside?” I said, helpfully.

Jo laughed. “Ya think?”

“I hope Amaury doesn’t mind stinking goo on his floors. Let’s go see what trouble Serena is in.” I pulled a vamp-killer, my new one, with the eighteen-inch, silver-plated blade and steel handle and crosshatched grip. I tossed it up and caught it, checking the heft and balance. I was still getting used to it.

Looking over my shoulder at the sky, I figured we had about twenty minutes until sunset, when every vamp in the city, even the young, unstable ones, would be wide awake. “I’ve only got three silver shotgun rounds and the silver bullets left in this gun. The rest on me are regular ammo, so let’s make this fast.”

“The rest? How may damn bullets do you have?”

“Enough. I hope.”

Jo got a funny look on her face.

“Vamps and weres are hard to kill,” I said.

“I so want to get back to my own world.”

“What, and miss all the fun?”

Jo, sounding like she didn’t want to, chuckled. Laz spread out his hands and cast a silvery light in front of us. It had a concave shape bowing out before us, and the far edge looked nearly solid, like a shield. Jo seemed to be studying what he did and she twirled the silvery blade in an arc. It made a swishing sound, deadly but pretty, as long as she was on my side. Laz went through the vamp-bar doorway, Jo followed, and I took up the rear.

Inside, the place was black, no lights, no torches, no nothing. And while vamps don’t go out in the sunlight, they also didn’t have to sleep by day. I’d killed vamps in dark places by daylight before, and Amaury was an old vampire, so he’d have resistance to the need for sleep. And this place wasn’t exactly a decorator’s dream—no windows, no view, no sunlight.

Laz tossed a ball of blue light into the air. The place still stank of vamp and sex and blood, but there was no one around now, except for Serena kneeling beside a corpse on the stage. It had been burned to a crisp. Not a pretty sight. And the little witch was crying, her eyes wide with shock. I was betting that she had never killed before.

I checked the position of my stakes, sheathed the blade and toed the body over. I blew out a breath. I knew this werewolf. Her name was Maggie Sweets, and she had been the alpha bitch of the Lupus Pack on my world—i nsane and in permanent heat, the true definition of a slutty bitch. On my world, her head had been nearly ripped off: here, here she had been turned into a crispy critter. Fate had it in for her, it seemed, no matter where she lived.

I touched Serena’s shoulder. “She was a torturer, a killer, a kidnapper, and rapist. She was insane and sick, with no treatment, no release, no real life.”

“And so you saying I should be proud of taking a life?”

“No. But there are levels of remorse, and this is one time not to grieve too deeply.”

The little witch turned red-rimmed eyes up to me. “All lives got value. All lives count equal: good, bad, kind, mean, murderers, priests, Satanists, children and doddering old men. This woman I have killed has no chance, now. No chance to change, to make good on her past evil. I took from her any chance of redemption.”

Her words lashed me across the soul like a horsewhip. My face blanched cold. I knew what she was saying. I understood. I had done that too. Often.

Before I could think what to say, I heard a pop, familiar and dangerous as a gunshot. The sound of displaced air made by a vamp moving fast.

“Vamps,” I shouted. I pulled the vamp-killer and cut hard right, whirling my body into place as a shield over Serena. Cool blood splattered over me. Crap. It was sundown.

Beast-sight filled my vision, turning the world into blues and greens and glistening shades of silver. Even without Laz’s witch-light, I could see that I was facing three vamps: Leo, Katie, and Grégoire, all vamps from my world. All friends—if vamps made friends. Seeing them made me hesitate, and Katie slashed in with her talons. I was too slow and took the gash across my forearm. I followed her pivot and popped her on the back of the head with the knife hilt. She fell like a pile of old rags.

I kicked out, my boot heel hitting Leo in the jaw. He went down. Which was way too weird.

I heard the swish of a rapier and ducked fast, behind a pillar holding up the roof. On the other side stood Grégoire, holding a sword. On my world, the beautiful, blond, French vamp, who looked about fifteen, was a soldier, a warrior, and adored battle. And he was probably a lot more powerful than he acted.

His blue eyes laughed at me as his sword danced. “Come out here, beautiful woman, and fight like a man.”

I swore and pulled the nine mil. Fired two shots, midcenter chest, and when his eyes widened, I said, “Surprise!” And stabbed him with an ash stake into the middle of his body, above his navel. He dropped hard, the sword clattering at his side.