Faith Hunter - Easy Pickings

“Oh, it causes a blink.” Jane stalked up beside me. I squeaked. I hadn’t even heard her change—not that I knew if shapechanging made noise, since I’d never tried listening to myself while I did it—and I certainly hadn’t heard her putting all her leather and guns and shiny silver bits back on.

Lazarus looked at her, all hot and sexy in her leather, and looked at me, considerably less hot and sexy in jeans and a tank-top. His eyebrows rose. “Sisters?”

Jane and I looked at each other and shook our heads in unison. Laz’s eyebrows went higher. “But power, it runs in family, no?”

“Different families,” I said after a minute, then edged three steps back, like that distance would make it impossible for him to hear me mutter, “Lazarus is a worrying name?”

“Anybody who rises from the dead worries me,” Jane muttered back. Since she was the one who came from a world with vampires, I conceded the point instantly and whether I liked it or not, took a good look at Lazarus with the Sight.

Power flared in him, through him, in earth-rich colors and in a way I’d never seen before. It was like his toes, dug into the earth, absorbed its very strength, and the top of his head, way high up there in the sky—even to my tall perspective—let it flow on out. The reverse happened too, and his fingertips took in the quiet animistic strength of still air and released it as casually, and left the impression that if a hurricane blew his way, it, too, would wash right through him. I had no doubt at all that he could capture and use it for the working of magic, but it didn’t stay in him the way it stayed in me, and it came to him far, far more naturally than it did to the witches I knew. There was no need for a guiding deity, with him. The power just ran through him like a river. Witty as ever, I said, “Wow. What are you?”

He shrugged big broad beautiful shoulders. The outrageousness of his accent started wearing off, becoming easier for me to understand, though he still sounded as old-school Cajun as anything I’d ever heard. “A conduit, mebbe. A gateway. You?”

“A shaman.” I wasn’t going to answer for Jane, even though Lazarus looked at her, too. “A gateway, huh. Are you what brought us here? I mean, not here-here, I did that,” I said with a wave at the Lower World, “but to the Middle World we just left? Because it’s not Jane’s world and it’s sure not mine.”

“Does it matter?” Jane growled. “Stinky is dead. Let’s go home.”

“Are you kidding? Of course it matters. People don’t just go flying off to different universes without a reason. Or they don’t in my world, anyway. So whatever brought us here has got to be impor—”

I stopped talking then, because Lazarus opened his hands wide and became a man-shaped gateway right back to the Middle World.

Passing through the portal—whatever that was—back into the physical world, hurt. A lot. Jo muttered “You’ve got to be kidding,” but she made it look easy, like stepping through a guy who’d turned into a doorway between worlds was simple. Like one step to the next , from light, through a sliver of blackness darker than the armpit of hell, back into a different place was easy, right? Not.

In that one step, Beast’s pelt roiled under my skin like it wanted to burst through my flesh, and her front and back claws sank into my mind like sixteen knives. I hissed out a breath as I stepped from world to world, and felt more than saw tall, African and gorgeous follow me. He smelled . . . odd. Like magic and animals, but not like me. And not like Jo. And Not like a were. And whatever smelled not-like-the-familiar was usually dangerous.

I found my balance in the neon-lit blackness and party roar of New Orleans Mardi Gras and looked around. We’d lost time. We had left this plane at daylight. Now it was night. Time in the other place wasn’t linear, which bothered the heck outta me. Jo looked a little nonplused too, and I shrugged at her; she shrugged back, which was nearly a mirror image of mine, and we shared a grin. Time changes were not something I could change, so I’d have to live with it. Seems she felt the same way.

With Beast still pushing speed and power into my muscles and nerves, I pivoted on one foot and pulled two vamp killers, holding then down at my sides, one backhand, one forehand settling my balance, knees bent. “Jane?” Jo asked. I ignored her, but kept my awareness of her to my side.

Laz stepped through the cut-away of his own shape, having to twist his shoulders and bend a little to fit. The portal stuck to his hands, flipping inside-out as he came through, then began to shrink. He packed it up, sparkling blackness wedging smaller and smaller between his hands. Not wanting to be pulled back through, or stuffed back through, I waited until the rip in reality disappeared. Then I moved. Fast.

I twisted, hooked an elbow around his. Slammed one boot against his heel. Stepped behind him and yanked. Twisting him around, keeping him from taking a compensatory step, I let gravity do its thing. He hit hard and bounced, air oofing out of him. I landed atop him, dropping fast, one knee in his gut, but it didn’t sink in nearly as far I’d have liked. Big guy with rock hard abs. Great.

Almost gently, I put my backhand knife at his throat and my forehand knife at his belly. And I grinned. “You smell like spiders. And snakes. And maybe wolf or coyote, with a little bear in it. Magic that smells like sunshine and soot. And I don’t like it.”

“Jesus Christ, Jane!” At a guess, Jo disagreed with my course of action. “He came to help us.”

“Yeah. Coincidently to the same place you went to, but conveniently too little too late.” I put a heap of sarcasm into the word conveniently, just in case he missed my intent. “Can you prove he didn’t bring that thing in the first place? Lure us there?”

“Of course I can’t, but good God, have you ever heard of ask questions first, beat to a pulp later?” I felt, more than saw Jo take a step back. Smelled her reaction. She liked this, this, thing. This thing that was not human, not witch, not shaman, but was pretty. Dang pretty. I could feel his magics rolling under my hands, against my knee on his belly. With Beast-sight, I could see magic too, easier than in my own world, green and yellow and rainbow colors that reminded me of the ruff on Old Stinky.

I firmed my blade against his skin. Okay, maybe I pushed a little, because a bead of blood slid out and trickled down his neck. I let my smile widen as if I’d done it on purpose. And maybe Beast had.

“I was brought heyah, I was.” He laid on the accent and the smile. I could feel a compulsion in his smile, like some kind of “like-me” spell.

I grinned wider, showing my blunt teeth even as Beast’s claws pressed down on my brain, breaking the compulsion. “Convenient,” I said again.

“Stepping through a portal, I was, when I felt dis—” his eyes slid away in thought, “—dis power draw. I stop. I listen. And I follow it to dis strange place, and then I follow it again to underworld of yellow grass. Not my underworld, no. But a thing of darkness pull me there. And any hunter who kill that dark thing,” he nodded and more blood flowed, “is a friend of mine.”

I smelled truth on him and yet I still didn’t believe him. I rose in one long motion and sheathed the unbloodied-blade. The bloodied one, I wiped off on the hem of my tee shirt, then sliced the scrap off. Folded it. And put it in my pocket. And I made sure Pretty Boy and Joanne Walker saw me do it. If she needed something for a blood-spell, we had it. Joanne stared at me. Laz looked disconcerted and scheming all at once.