Faith Hunter - Blood Cross

I guided Bitsa through the streets, heading vaguely north. Streetlights were out in most of the city, the few hanging traffic lights swinging slowly on their supports. Trash was piled in corners, fluttering or soaked. Signs were down. Water gurgled down gutters from roofs, raced along street gutters, and in some low-lying places flowed along the streets, hiding the pavement. I watched the curbs when I traversed these, keeping Bitsa out of deeper water. I didn’t want to drown her out.

Though most everything was closed—bars, restaurants, shops, and dance clubs—cars were parked all over, along the streets, in the tiny, privately owned parking lots scattered through the Quarter. Lanterns, lamps, and candles lit windows. People sat at tables on second-story balconies, by lamplight, and the smell of food wafted down. Tinny music came from open windows; battery-powered boom boxes perched on ledges shared a soft dissonance of musical tastes. Live music, a guitar, saxophone, and drum came through an open bar door. Tables inside were lit with candles, a generator roaring in back. Small businesses that depended on the tourist trade twenty-four/seven, just to make the rent, were opening, despite the lack of city power. More generators began to hum. As power was restored in some areas, neon lights appeared here and there, advertising food, liquor, and entertainment. I motored out of the Quarter, past the church I attended most Sundays—though not today, no thanks to Ada—and quickly into less fashionable areas.

I had been in New Orleans’s version of the projects before, when I was taking down two young-rogue vamps who were feeding indiscriminately and killing their prey. Rogues came in two varieties: the very, very young, and the very, very old. But both were whacked-out, hungry, and deadly. These young rogues were feral for a different reason from the old ones. Vamps spent the first decade of life chained in a basement—figuratively speaking as Louisiana had few basements because of the high water table—nutty as fruitcakes and dangerously wild. A good master cared for his young until they cured properly—regained sanity and memories—or staked them if they didn’t.

My contract said I was supposed to find the vamp breaking vampire law and tradition and take him out. Or her. I would be paid a bounty for every young rogue I staked and beheaded, and the vamp council had a cleanup crew on standby to dispose of bodies and scrub kill sites, should I need their services. The council wanted to avoid any police involvement, so I wasn’t supposed to call in the cops unless there was just no help for it.

Since I had taken down this sire’s progeny—a young male and his even younger mate—only recently, I had an old trail to follow, but that meant I needed to find safe passage through the projects while I hunted. Which meant I had to talk to some men. Dangerous men.

The half-familiar streets had been dark enough when I last came through here. That time I had been overdressed for the locale, underdressed for the job of hunting vamps. It was a lot darker now, the night lit only by the twinkle of lanterns, flashlights, and candles as I advertised my arrival with Bitsa’s guttural snarl.

The place smelled better than last time, the hurricane having washed away the odors of urine, garbage, cooked cabbage, rats, roaches, and deep-fried foods. The smells of poverty and a food-stamp diet. I passed a heavily graffitied sign that might have said Iberville Housing at one time.

I couldn’t see anyone, but I felt eyes on me as I motored past, looking tough, well armed, and full of moxie. All of that wouldn’t keep me alive, but it might make the locals pause just to see what kind of fool came into their territory at night and alone. When I was pretty sure I had the right housing unit, or at least close to it, I slowed to a stop and killed the motor. Knees knocking, a fine tremor in my hands, I unhelmeted, secured the helmet to the bike, and pulled a vamp-killer and shotgun. It was loaded for vamp, but the hand-packed silver fléchette rounds would kill humans too.

Shouting, I called into the darkness, “I’m looking for Derek Lee, ex-marine, if a marine can ever be called ex. Did two tours in Afghanistan, one in Iraq.”

My voice echoed in the night. From a house behind me, I heard the distinctive sh-thunk of a bolt-action rifle being readied for firing.

In one of Bitsa’s tiny rearview mirrors, I saw a slice of light followed by a pinpoint of red. A laser-targeting sight. Crap . The killing spot between my shoulder blades began to itch. So I got louder, raised my voice as thunderously as I could. “Derek told me he thought he’d be safe when he came home to the United States. Instead, he found his neighborhood was full of blood-sucking vamps. He had to go back to war just to keep his family out of harm’s way. So I’m looking for Derek. He knows me as Injun Princess.” I didn’t necessarily love the nickname, but it seemed to amuse Derek.

My voice fell away. If Derek didn’t find me now and give me safe passage, I figured I’d be in a lot of trouble. For the second time tonight. Beast rose in me as the seconds dragged by. Minutes passed, feeling like hours. I started to sweat in the humid air, a betraying trickle lazing its way down my side. My heart beat a bit too fast, fear leaching into my bloodstream. I hated being passive. And I hated standing there with weapons drawn, awaiting my fate.

Finally I heard a door open. A voice called out, “Last time you hunted vamp in a dress and party shoes. Looks like you learned something, princess. Yo’ mama mus’ be proud.”

My heart jumped into my throat and did a little tap dance before I swallowed it down and found my voice again. “If I’d ever had a mama, maybe so,” I called back.

“Thought you was a Injun princess,” he said, walking toward me with that measured step grunts learn early.

“Princess of my very own nook in a children’s home,” I said, softer. “Age twelve to eighteen. Now I’m still princess of my domain, but it’s a bit far from here. You in charge of this one?”

He chuckled. “This domain ? This lovely, sweet-smelling, clean, and pretty little patch of turf? Nominally speaking. Watchu want, Princess?”

“Safe passage. To hunt for the sire of the rogues we killed.”

He laughed again, this one lower, knowing, and just a bit brutal. “Thanks for the money you sent our way, for the dead-vamp heads. It came in handy to buy more ammo. To kill the ones who came after.”

“There’ve been more?”

“Six.” He flicked a lighter and held it away from his body, using it to see me by before touching it to a cigarette—half tobacco, half weed by the smell—as he drew air through the paper and herbs. His face was lit in the flame, his black skin moist with perspiration, black shirt and dark clothes nearly invisible. The steel butt of a handgun rested in the waistband of his pants. I waited as he evaluated me in the light of the flame. “We got the heads in a cooler, kept that way with dry ice, since Ada came through. Crips are moving in too, some say with backing from a breakaway clan. We’re getting low on supplies and ammo, but Leo ain’t answering his cell. And we ain’t getting paid no bounty.”

“Ah,” I said. He was making a deal. I felt Beast show teeth at the idea of negotiation. She believed in fighting first and talking after—over the blood and guts of her enemies. “Leo’s grieving the death of his son.”

Derek snorted at the term “death.” I acknowledged, “As much as the dead can die. But he’s not himself exactly.”

“Rogue?”

I thought about the face and form standing in my small yard, vamped out. Thought about the dissension in his ranks. “Not yet. But something’s funky. One of his scions used the word or the name ‘Dolore.’ You know it? Or her?” Derek shook his head no. I said, “Yeah. Me neither.