“And you might have been”—I swallowed through the tight pain in my throat—“dead.” I moved toward him and ducked beneath the yellow tape, closing the door after me. We stood in the hallway, close enough to smell his aftershave. “So, I’m bunking with you guys?”
He hesitated, and I could almost see the possible responses move through him, one sarcastic, one innuendo, one that was simply kind. “Our suite has three bedrooms. The hotel opened the third at no charge.” He pulled a card key from a pocket and said, “Leo has ordered a replacement for your Walther. It’ll be here in the morning.” He had settled on a response a friend might use.
A tear fell and I caught it with a quick dash of my hand. I nodded, took the key, followed him into the suite beside mine. It was decorated in warm grays, cool browns, and dull creams. Soothing colors. I went to my room, a predominately gray room with a silky gray comforter and charcoal pillows, and I shut the door, leaning my back against it. I wiped my eyes. I never used to cry. Never. But then, I never used to have friends. I never used to put them in danger. I never used to kill humans. My life was changing and it was all pretty much sucky.
I took a breath and forced calm into me. The room was tiny, less than half the square footage of the adjoining, bloody suite, but my clothes were in the closet, my weapons on the bureau, neatly laid out, which made me smile through the tears, and my toiletries were in the bath, seen through the open door. I pushed from my perch and stripped, moving through the room, dropping clothes where they landed. I stepped under the shower, the scalding water pelting me. And the tears started again. I was changing and didn’t like who I was becoming. I’d never get clean.
How had I killed man and not even spared him a thought? How could I have eaten a full meal, joked and chatted and made a BFF, and not thought once about the man I’d shot. And killed. When the crying jag ended, I dried off and crawled under the covers, dry eyes burning. Beast padded through my thoughts, her gaze golden and steady, her paws silent, weighted, her breath a susurration, almost a purr. Sleep claimed me. Beast’s claws milked my soul.
I woke at six p.m. and lay on the bed, staring at the shadowed ceiling. My own scent had filled the room as I slept, the smells no longer alien. I was calm. Rational. Not grieving over the part of me I’d lost. A killer, the blood-servant of an unknown vamp, had come into my room. His death didn’t make the danger go away. If he had been targeting me, then I was attracting dangers that might hurt the vamps, making me a liability to the job. If the man had been after the vamps, then the unknown vamp master would plan better next time, would send better quality killers. Either way, grief and guilt were wasted and stupid. I put them away.
The most important and overriding factor was that he’d gotten past security. I’d been sloppy or it was an inside job—someone I trusted had let him in. I needed to tighten security, switch around weapons, methodologies, timing, and personnel. Keep more people on duty, make the guys pull twelve-hour shifts.
I crawled from the mattress and dressed, putting on a black skirt that fell to my shins, a tank with a tight vest, lightweight jacket, and dress boots. Into my boot holster went the six-round Kahr P380 and in the other went a sheathed knife with a ten-inch silvered blade and a deep groove—a vamp-killer, which would work equally well against wolves. I rebraided my hair and wrapped it into a bun, tight against my nape, giving my face a severe, harsh angularity. I selected a tube of lipstick at random—they were all shades of red—and smeared it on.
Last, I pulled the box of fetishes from the closet, opened it, and studied the necklaces inside. A skinwalker’s fetish necklaces are made of bones, teeth, beaks, talons, and feathers, each necklace strung with parts from one species. Skinwalkers can shift into most any land mammal or bird, providing we have access to a sufficient quantity of DNA, the coiled helix of genetic sequences specific to each species, each creature, and providing that the mass exchange is close. I’d never tried to shift into a fish, reptile, or sea mammal as Rick had asked, but that might be possible too, I didn’t know. Walkers can also shift into smaller creatures, if we’re willing to lose part of ourselves, depositing mass to be regained when we return to human-normal. Shifting into larger creatures requires taking mass from something with no genetic material and adding it to the shifting process. All mass transfers are dangerous, and I prefer not to attempt them, fearing I might lose too much of myself shifting into a smaller creature, forfeiting memories, abilities, even part of my body. Fearing I might not be able to throw off mass gained after shifting into a larger creature, ending up with an extra hundred pounds of me. So, most of my fetishes were mammalian—predators or omnivores—that massed about one hundred twenty-five pounds.
I studied the fetishes, thinking, undecided. For once Beast had no comment to make, hunched deep in my consciousness, silent, watchful. If I hunted as Beast, scent-tracking would be working against her natural abilities. Puma concolors—mountain lions—are sight trackers, ambush hunters, and I needed something better suited to scent-tracking. Like the bloodhound I had tried once. Excellent nose. But a bloodhound could get so involved with a scent it would forget to eat, drink, or change back before dawn. And no bloodhound had the weapons to fight werewolves if I got lucky and found them. I set the mountain lion fetish in the bag and replaced the box. I unzipped my go-bag, checking clothes, throwaway cell phone, and cash. I picked up my Bible. It felt foreign in my hands. The gun in my boot did not. Something was seriously wrong with my life for that to be so, but I could think about that later. After this job was done.
I called for the valet to refuel and bring around the car I had used last night and then stepped from my tiny bedroom. I stopped and placed a hand on one hip. A chair had been dragged from a seating arrangement and now blocked the exit. One of the twins was sitting in it, dress shirtsleeves rolled up, pants with a razor crease. There was no mole at his hairline, IDing him as Brian. His arms were on the chair arms, one ankle on the other knee, facing my door. Blocking my way out. And one hand held a trank gun.
My thoughts went into overdrive. I hadn’t brought any tranks on this job. Tranquilizers were Derek’s specialty. Seems like my right-hand man had been thinking on his own, and Grégoire’s two right hands had been sharing his equipment. I didn’t know how my metabolism would react to a tranquilizer. I’d never dosed myself. Some things I hadn’t thought I’d need to know. And so far, neither of the twins knew about me being a skinwalker. He hadn’t fired. Yet. I smiled, showing teeth, not trying for sweet. Moving slowly, not taking my eyes from the twin, I set my go-bag and Bible on the surface nearest. A bureau by the height. “Brian. You got something to say? Or do you want to fight me, ’cause it’ll come to a fight if you think I’m staying in tonight.”
“I know you’re not staying in. I don’t intend to fight you. I just want to make sure you listen to me.” His New Orleans accent dropped in, thick as warm honey, the words slow, the emphasis wrong, like the way a Southern gentleman might have spoken a hundred years ago. Polite, despite being implacable.
“I’ll listen better without the trank gun.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Today you killed a man.”
My flinch was internal. It didn’t show. “And?”
His words took on the lilt of that same old Southern man telling a story. “I killed my first man when I turned forty. A priest and two of his laymen came after Grégoire with a stake and holy water and a necklace of garlic; with kerosene and a pistol for me. It was Brandon’s day of rest, and at the time we kept only one blood-servant with him. There hadn’t been trouble for decades. We had become lazy.” He gestured with the trank gun. “Complacent.