Downstairs, while I sipped hot tea, I put on my silvered chain-mail collar over the gold-nugget and chain necklace I never took off, added a couple more crosses, tied and strapped on my new steel-toed boots, and put on a thick denim jacket I'd picked up in a shop catering to farmers to replace the leather jacket lost in my last vamp fight. Another was on order, but until it arrived, denim would have to do. I holstered my big-ass shotgun across my back. I tugged on my hair to make sure it was difficult to grab. Long hair made a handy-dandy handle to pull in a fight, and once an opponent had it, the fight was over. Rapists and vamps liked victims with long hair. Made them easy to control. I could cut it, but I'd never shifted with short hair and didn't know if that would alter the process.
Dressed for hunting, I left the house, feeling the wards sizzle across my skin, heatless and bright, like holiday sparklers in the hands of Molly's children. I helmeted up, fired up Bitsa--my bastard Harley, put together from bits of this and bits of that--and opened the side gate. I re-locked the new padlock with my new key--which hadn't kept out the vamps--and pulled into the street. Note to self: Find out how high vamps can jump. Build brick walls and gate higher.
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 lowlying 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 flechette 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.
CHAPTER 2