Marked Clan #2 - Red (2 page)

Sounds from downstairs told me the shop was gearing up for the day. Most of our business was at night, but we did have regulars with maintenance appointments and consults on artwork. I’d go down once I was lucid. The coffee pot dripped its brown ambrosia until it was all spent, and I poured a cup to take with me to my antique wooden table. Connor had been good enough to pop in and leave me the morning paper. He didn’t agree with what I did, but he also didn’t interfere…much. Night after night I’d come home covered in someone else’s blood, and he stitched me up with minimal questions. Whatever the reason, I was grateful he didn’t lecture me anymore. You don’t have to believe in boogeymen for them to find you.

The city had elected a new mayor—a woman this time. Good for her. I flipped open the front page looking for blood. There it was, on the bottom right column. “Man found dead outside local nightclub.” I pored over the details, but there really weren’t many. Cause of death—apparent gunshot wounds. Unknown assailant. Possibly interrupted sexual assault. Similar to other recent cases. Vigilante? Police want to hear from anyone who might have seen something. Blah, blah, blah.

If the coroner was worth his salt, he’d realize the bullets were post-mortem, but they wouldn’t find anything else. The injection spot would have healed instantly, and it’s not standard procedure to check if a victim has someone else’s blood in them. I couldn’t know for certain, but it’s likely my blood broke down just as quickly in their systems as most drugs. I certainly hoped so.

“Enough of the ego trip, PJ,” I said to myself. I took a long, hot sip from my blue Woodspring Communications mug. “Let’s find another one.”

Further down the page was an article on a missing teenage girl. She’d been found—dead. Her throat was ripped open. The rest of the article just had accounts from her friends at school and an obligatory call for witnesses to come forward. If anyone had seen that poor girl’s end, would they really want to relive it? Would they even believe what they saw?

I flashed to that night outside of Thermal, the night Dree disappeared. No, not disappeared. She
changed.
She became one of them, not just in body but also in mind. She was an animal now, thanks to them. She very well could be out hunting with them night after night, killing women like the one in the paper. Eating their flesh like so much raw hamburger.

A knock on my door startled me back to the here and now. “Bon?” a male voice called on the other side. “You up? We’re having some trouble with the POS.”

“I’ll be down in a minute,” I said. “Let me get decent.”

“We’d probably get some more clients if you didn’t. You know these biker types,” he said. I could almost see his leprechaun grin on the other side of the door. I chucked the morning paper at it and it made a satisfying
THUNK
.

I emerged from my cave twenty minutes later in jeans and a dark green
Celtic Knot
T-shirt. My uncle Connor was in his office (the small private room we used for more intimate work) going over a sketch with one of our regulars. The man didn’t have many bare patches left, from what I could see. At this rate the next one would have to go on his ass. Connor looked up and pointed to the cash counter. I nodded.

“You work in one IT job, and you’re free tech support for the rest of your life,” I grumbled to no one in particular. I unlocked the POS terminal and logged in. The problem was pretty obvious—we had no Internet connection. Without that, we had no way to process credit cards. I reached under the counter and pressed the reset button on our modem. Once the lights stopped blinking, I refreshed the network on the computer. Nothing changed. I rebooted the POS computer (what an appropriate acronym). Still, nothing happened.
Fuck.
With great resignation, I picked up the phone and called my old job. I didn’t even bother listening to the recorded voice—I knew the numbers I needed to press to get a real person. I caught myself chewing on my silver cross necklace and spat it out. I couldn’t wear it when I hunted, but I kept it on me at all times otherwise. It was my mother’s.

“It’s a great day at Woodspring Communications. This is Susan. How can I help you?”

In five years they still hadn’t changed the script.
Why am I not surprised?

“Hi Susan. This is Peggy Mackenzie. I’m a Business Gold subscriber and we’re having some connection problems with our system here.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Ms. Mackenzie. I’d be happy to look at that for you. Can you verify your service address for me?”

I gave her the address to the shop. I heard her typing, and suddenly remembered every screen she was looking at like I was leaning over her shoulder.

“Okay, Ms. Mackenzie. What I need you to do for me is to try rebooting the modem.”

I could feel the veins in my forehead warming. If I didn’t get my anger in check, soon my freckles would be eclipsed by an all-encompassing mask of red. It wasn’t Susan’s fault. She had procedures she had to follow.

“I’ve tried that, Susan. Look, can we go off script for a minute? I know the drill. I want to skip the reboots and reconfigures, and go straight to where you check for service interruptions on your end. Check the tech panel on your bottom right. There’s probably an alert from this morning on your problem queue.”

Susan was quiet for a full thirty seconds. I imagined her staring at the wall of her cubicle as the little hamster in her brain fell off the wheel repeatedly. To her credit, she didn’t try to tell me she couldn’t do what I asked.

“O-okay. Yes, Ms. Mackenzie. I’m showing an outage as of five this morning, and no activity since. I’ve reset your connection from the switch. That should have you back on within three to five minutes. Would you like me to stay on the line with you while we wait?”

“No thank you, Susan. I’ll just call back if I need to. Goodbye.”

I hung up the phone and waited. Sure enough, the red X disappeared and our POS was no longer MIA. I walked over to Connor’s room and stuck my head in. “All done. You can get back to preselling Vinny here on —” I looked at the drawing in front of the men. “Harry Potter? Really?”

Vin Dun Pham, affectionately known as Vinny, smiled at me. “My daughter loves the books. I want to get a Gryffindor crest with her name underneath.”

I threw up both hands and shook my head. “Far be it from me to question. The customer is always right. Except when they’re not.”

Connor laughed. “We could put something on you this morning, Bon. I’ve got some lovely stuff from the Old Country that would complement that lily white skin of yours.”

I turned my back and scratched between my shoulder blades with both middle fingers. The men laughed and went back to their discussion. Connor didn’t understand. He didn’t believe in the wolves, called them “Poppa’s Ghost Stories.” He couldn’t understand why I never wanted to get a tattoo again. I went back upstairs and bent to pick up the newspaper, closing the door with my foot. I refilled my coffee and sat down, circling the article about the missing girl’s body in red marker. It was time to hunt again.

Chapter Three

City lights played sparkling games over the bayou as I walked toward Thermal. Saturday would be a packed house, especially with tonight’s unseasonably cool November weather. I paused two blocks away and looked to the grassy bank. Someone had put a cross there, one of those kinds you see on the side of the road where some idiot flipped their SUV. This one was old. Sentiments only last so long. The wreath that wrapped around it was long dead, and the dry summer had left it a mummified husk. It had surprised me to see it the first time—the man who died there wasn’t worthy of remembering. Apparently someone disagreed.

I hadn’t paused for his benefit. This was the spot where I lost Dreama. I knew her as Dree, my best friend for many years. I saw her change gradually into something subhuman. At the time I didn’t understand. I thought Poppa was just as crazy as Connor said. Then I saw her rip a man’s throat out on this very bank. She was vicious, bestial. She slipped a chunk of him between her teeth and relished in it. She’d looked at me as she ran off. Those glowing yellow eyes did not belong to my friend. She was cursed by my family. I intended to correct that mistake.

I walked back toward Thermal. It was the first of a series of recent urban improvements. Before the fancy converted lofts came in, somebody thought it was a good idea to make an old heating and A/C factory into a club. Most nights it feels like a heater is on. I mostly come back here for Dree—to remember why it is I have to kill the wolves. If one of them is on the prowl when I drop in, that’s all the better. If not, at least I could possibly get laid. It had been much too long.

Hiding a modified epi pen full of my own blood wasn’t an easy task when I didn’t want to carry my purse. Thermal didn’t have a coat check, so I had to shove it between my shoulder blades and under my bra strap. My hair was long enough to cover the bulge. Tall boots hid my handgun, barely. I wore a form-fitting dark green dress with plenty of slink and enough give for dancing. I knew how to complement my coloring. I got more than a few appreciative looks as I showed my ID at the door.

The bartender nodded at me as I came up. He looked like an obsidian statue, all dark muscles and cinched-up dreadlocks in a loose silk shirt. The light from the back of the bar made his skin glow so dark it was almost blue. He smiled at me.

“How’s it going, Henry?” I said.

“I can’t complain, but I do anyway,” he laughed and poured me a Jack and Coke. “Always good to see a familiar face.” His accent was a very deliberate, precise English—the kind you hear among first-generation immigrants. It fit. Henry Ndbuisi was right off the boat from Nigeria. My family had helped with the papers as a matter of fact. Connor had a soft spot for immigrants—one raised him after all.

Henry leaned in and spoke directly into my ear. “Got one for you tonight. Back corner, dancing with the blonde in yellow.”

Apparently my night wasn’t going to be all fun and games after all. I never asked Henry how he could spot them. For me it was the way they moved—like they had more muscles under their skin than they should. Did they have werewolves in Nigeria?

I sipped my drink. Henry always stiffed me on nights he knew I was hunting. I guess he was just looking out for me, but I couldn’t help but be a little annoyed. I got barely a tingle from the cup in my hand. I turned and looked at the dance floor. One corner was darker than the rest, and lined with old bleachers. People sat, sprawled, and leaned on them. Some looked three sheets to the wind already. I zeroed in on the blonde in yellow. She looked like a goddamned bumblebee in that outfit.

Her beau for the night danced much better than her. Of course, he probably wasn’t even buzzed. He could have had a dozen drinks and not felt a thing. That poor girl had no idea what she was getting into. As I watched, he slipped around his date in time with the thumping music. His hair was cut short, almost military style. It practically glowed peroxide blond. He wore the gaudiest Hawaiian shirt I’d ever seen. I could have killed him for that alone. His angle was the bumbling prince charming apparently. From the look of the girl, it was working.

I downed the rest of my drink in a long draw, sneezed from the carbonation, and primped myself for the walk across the club. The DJ swapped styles from upbeat techno to a darker, coursing industrial beat. I slinked slow and fluid through the crowd, dancing briefly with a couple of willing men and one woman. She ground herself into me and looked back at the bleachers. Most of the men’s eyes were drawn to us. I nipped at her earlobe. She raised her hands into the air, leaning back and pressing the two of us together. She was actually smaller than me, so I got to be the big spoon for once.

A man who apparently belonged to her emerged from the crowd and joined us. I’m not into
ménage,
so I excused myself and made my way back toward Hawaiian Shirt Guy. I had his eye. By now the proximity of our bodies meant I had his nose too. That’s right, good puppy. Smells good, doesn’t it? Come closer. I won’t bite.

He stepped away from Girl-in-Yellow, and danced over to me. I saw the daggers she tossed and let them pass over. She’d thank me if she knew the truth. The only way out of a night with a wolf was a back full of tattoos and a tail—or a casket. There was no in-between. Despite his goofy act, he moved well enough. He danced with me like his spine was malleable, slinking around behind to pull me close. If the shape of the epi pen bothered him, he didn’t show it. He had his own bulge, and it was plenty happy to see me.

He pulled my hair back and breathed on my neck. Jesus Fucking Christ, I needed a nice human lay. My back wanted to melt into jelly. I kept it firm with sheer will and the reminder somewhere in the back of my head that this fucker would just as soon eat me, and not in the good way. “You’re a good dancer,” he said. “Very fluid.” His breath tickled the side of my neck, and made its way up to my earlobe. Was that a trace of a growl I heard in this throat? “What say we continue this somewhere a little more private?”

Wolves like to move fast. They rely on their charm and panty-dissolving sensuality to push otherwise unwilling women to follow along. I admit—I’m not totally immune. There’s a crescent scar on my abdomen that’s proof of that. It happened not long after Poppa died.

“I don’t know,” I said with mock chastity. “We just met. Isn’t that a little sudden?”

He turned me around and put one hand on the small of my back. The other went between my breasts. He barely tapped me and I dipped far enough back for my hair to touch the floor. Holy shit, this one was strong. He’s going to have to get his medicine quick or he’ll break my back first. He pulled me back up and breathed another shiver down my spine. I put on my best beguiling smile.

“Well, you’re a pretty good dancer yourself. Maybe you could teach me a few steps. Give me a…” I stood up and pressed the full length of my body against him. “Private lesson?”

An alert observer might have noticed that he heard me clearly over the house music without me having to press my mouth to his ear. Sadly, there weren’t very many alert observers at Thermal. Alcohol and techno dulls the senses something fierce. I took Hawaiian Shirt’s hand and led him through the crowd. Henry winked at me on the way out. It was his slyest way of saying “Good luck. Don’t end up dead.”