Mercy Blade

Evangelina hissed and said something under her breath. I thought it was a witch curse, a bad one I’d heard Molly use once. I tended to bring out the foul language in my friends. At the thought of friend, I looked up to see Evangelina staring at the parallel, slashing tears on my chest. There were two above the collarbone and two below, angling up, as if Leo had tried to reposition his hand midstrike to take out my throat. He’d come mighty close.



“Don’t bite my head off,” she said gently, “but you’ve got a lot of scars here. And no signs of surgical or medical intervention.”



The scars of previous vamp attacks were fine lines, the scaring all that was left of what would have been fatal attacks. The nonmortal ones hadn’t scarred at all. I pressed the pad back over the wound. “I heal fast. I’ve got extra large sterile bandages in my own first-aid kit.” I pointed to a drawer. “If you’ll get me a large one and smear antibiotic on the cuts, I’ll be fine.”



“I won’t,” she blew out a frustrated breath. “But you are a stubborn ... woman.”



The pause said that Evangelina knew I wasn’t human, but wasn’t certain what form of supernat I was. When she didn’t pursue the get-thee-to-a-doctor-y comment or the you-are-not-human train of thought, and went instead to find my bandages, I relaxed. “You’re okay,” I said, “for a ballsy witch.”



“And you’re okay too, for an ornery whatever-you-are.” She peeled the backing from an adhesive bandage and squirted antibiotic ointment onto my wounds. Carefully, she laid the bandage over them, pressing the edges to seal against my skin. “It’s still bleeding,” she said, and lifted my hand, placing it over the wound, applying pressure. When she took her hand away, I continued the pressure so she could bandage my foot. When she was done, Evangelina washed her hands at the sink, her back to me. “I used to worry about Molly being friends with you. I still do. But more because of the lifestyle and the danger you seem to attract than because of who you are, intrinsically.” She turned back to me, surveying me in the kitchen chair, in my borrowed white robe that came with the house. “Yes. You’ll do.”



I warmed from the comments and smiled at her, a small, uncertain smile.



“Shall we see what the envelope holds?” When I nodded once, she asked, “Why didn’t you want us to touch it?”



“Explosives. Poisons. Anthrax.” I stood. “Let me get dressed.”



Evangelina’s eyebrows went up. “Explosives. Poisons. Anthrax,” she quoted. “My, my. I’ll look it over for signs of magical tampering. From a distance, of course.”



“Good idea,” I said, though I hadn’t smelled any magic either. When I was dressed in jeans, a sweatshirt, and a bra— protective clothing—I met Evangelina at the door. Bruiser, dressed in jeans and a loose tee was squatting before the envelope, studying it. Not looking at him, I knelt beside him and bent as if to see it up close, but I was scent-searching. I breathed in, through mouth and nose. And was surprised when I smelled Girrard DiMercy.



I sat back. “No explosives, no chemicals. I’ll take it into the yard to open it.” Neither of them asked how I knew it was explosive-free, and I didn’t volunteer enlightenment. I carefully lifted the envelope and carried it to the side door and into the yard. Behind me, the porch light came on and I was aware of them standing side by side behind the closed door. Angling my body so the prevailing wind would carry anything within away from me and away from the house, I opened the flap. Three photographs were inside. “It’s okay,” I said without looking up. “I’ll be inside in a minute.”



The photos were originals, one black and white and two in color; one color shot arrested my attention. The tints were wasted by time and sunlight, the oranges, yellows, and reds bright and glaring, the blues and greens muted. It was a picture of Bruiser and a blurred form, maybe Leo, both dressed in clothing from the early sixties, standing over the body of an animal. Or, not an animal. A werewolf. It was caught in half human, half wolf form, and from the distortion, it was changing, or trying to. From the blood, it was dead or dying. Leo and Bruiser were both holding hunting rifles.



The background was not south Louisiana, but a hilly locale. A Land Rover stood in the background, dust covered, rock formations behind it. The photograph wasn’t proof of murder, but it was suggestive of some kind of crime.



The black and white photograph was even older, a posed shot of a woman, probably mixed race, with sparkling eyes, full lips, high cheeks, and tip-tilted eyes. Her black hair was piled up in waves and curls that looked artless and had probably taken a maidservant hours to accomplish, and tresses draped to her shoulders as if accidentally fallen there from the touch of a careless but loving hand. She wore a dress from another time, all white lace and silks and a bow under her breasts. She was beautiful in a way I’d never be. I often wanted to hate women like that, but she looked so happy, so in love, it was impossible to dredge up negative emotion. I turned the photo over and read the faint handwriting on the back. “From Magnolia Sweets to Leo, my love.”



The third photo was actually four digital shots, printed out together on computer paper. They were of Rick. In one, he was standing in the breezeway of a hotel, a thin slice of the cityscape in the background. He was dressed in biker gear, one hand braced high on a wall, one knee bent, in a negligent, masculine pose. He was with a girl, his hand on her nape, as if pulling her into a kiss. She was wearing a short skirt and gold, six-inch stilettos, her upper body hidden. In another, he was kissing her, his back to the camera, only her legs showing. In another, he was following her into a hotel room. She was red-headed, petite, delicate, sexy, and feminine. All the things I’d never be. And this woman I did hate with a spear of pain that stabbed through my chest.



The fourth shot was Rick with a woman in a setting with a trellis and window basket of flowers. In this one, long black hair hung to her thighs, her arms up and twined around him, languorous. Safia. He was kissing her. Distantly, I noted that the woman’s body size and skin tones matched in all four photos. Safia had worn a red wig to meet Rick at a hotel?



My breath ached when I drew it in, belatedly, painfully. A reasonable voice in my head said, He’s undercover. He has a job to do. It’s only a job. A less reasonable voice that had angry Beast-overtones said, Mine. And clawed at my heart. But I’d just narrowly avoided sex in the shower with Bruiser. I had no reason or right to feel pain or betrayal.



I folded the paper carefully, so the photos didn’t crease, and tucked it into my jeans pocket. I stuffed my feelings away too, without looking at them, and shoved the voices, the reasonable one and the angry one, deeper. I had a job to do.



I went back into the house and placed the black and white photograph in front of Bruiser, who was sitting with Evangelina at the table, sipping tea. I added sugar and cream to the third prepared mug and sat across from them.



Bruiser studied the photo and his lips turned up in a winsome smile, the kind people give when presented with a remembrance of an enchanted time. “I remember the day this was taken. There was this photographer, Ernest something.”



“Ernest J. Bellocq?” I asked. I’d seen his work before. He took photos of Storyville and other neighborhoods in New Orleans for years, and had been the first, and so far as I knew, the only, photographer to capture vamp images on film until digital photography became common. Vamps had never imaged well on silver used in the photographic process.



“Yes, that’s the name. Maggie was the sweetest thing I’d ever seen. I was half in love with her when I was a young lad.” I laid the color photo in front of him, and Bruiser’s face changed. He swore and looked at me, his face closed off, thinking. Calculating? Concocting a story? Maybe.



“No one was with Leo and me when we made this kill.” He made it sound like a legitimate hunt, not a murder, but I kept my mouth shut on the comment. “So who took this and why did he bring it to you?”



“Someone with an agenda. Someone who knows most of what’s going on and wants me to figure out the rest for him.”



“Without giving himself away,” Evangelina said.



CHAPTER 15



Good Nose on Ugly Dog



I looked at the sky out the window and judged that it was several hours until dawn on Saturday. I hadn’t slept a full eight hours in days and my eyes felt gritty and dry, my body jumpy and strained, my mind fuzzy and overloaded. I needed a good sleep or a good hunt. I needed to inspect Safia’s body in the morgue with animal senses to see/smell what I’d missed in human form. I needed to scout vamp HQ with better than human senses too, but with the security cameras on twenty-four/ seven that was going to be impossible. And I needed to get away from Evangelina and Bruiser. Far away.



Ignoring my guests, I booted up the laptop, pulled up a city map, and found the location of the morgue. I finished off my tea, closed the laptop, and stood, the chair barking across the floor. “I’m going out. See you in the morning.” I intercepted the look my two houseguests exchanged but decided to pretend it hadn’t happened. In my bedroom, I grabbed a fetish necklace, made sure the gold nugget necklace was in place, repacked Beast’s travel bag, and added a handwritten note with Molly’s phone number on it in case I ended up in the pound.Beast growled once and put her head on her paws, shutting her eyes, not interested in what I was doing. Maybe a little miffed. She could be part of this excursion if she wanted, but Beast was jealous of any time I spent in an animal form other than her own.



The two visitors were still sitting at the kitchen table, talking softly, when I walked back through, which meant that taking a stack of my own steaks from the fridge and a bag of Snickers wasn’t going to happen, which just brought home to me the fact that my life wasn’t my own anymore. Which really sucked the red off all my candy. I frowned at them, hoping they would take the hint that they were being pains in the butt, but they just sat silent and watched me. I was proud when I didn’t slam the door, and the murmur of their voices picked up when I was outside.