My nose was little use in the fog, but I pulled on Beast’s better vision, and the night smoothed out into grays and silvers and greens. The form of a man appeared in front of me, my nose telling me he wasn’t one of mine, though he was facing the house. I walked up to him and bonked him on the head. He fell silently. I searched him quick and came up with a small subgun and a walkie-talkie. They made nice splashes in the water.
I met no one else outside. The house was a two-story mansion on pylons. This close, I could smell people. Humans, lots of them, came and went all the time, but for now, the numbers were few. The night went silent, the voices I had been hearing stopped. I tried the door. I texted Eli: unlocked.
Instantly I got back Go.
I opened the door and stepped inside, into the shadow of a fake ficus tree. Warmth and sensory overload hit me simultaneously, and I looked around, first for people—none—and then for cameras. None also. Which was smart in a way. If you were doing something illegal, you needed to make sure nothing was filmed or recorded. Of course, if you were under attack, the lack of cameras was stupid.
I took a breath. The air reeked of cigars, expensive liquor, pain, fear, sex, and blood. And young females. Beast slammed into me. Kits! she thought at me. Hurting.
She wanted to run straight for the scent, but I clamped down on her. Stealth, I thought at her. Beast snarled but held still. I stepped to the side and took in the foyer. Cypress-wood floors, rugs, smoking lounge to my right, bar to my left. Large-screen TVs in each room. A game room was ahead with pool tables, dartboard, comfy chairs. I moved cautiously into it. And found a stage with a brass pole. No people. Stairs going up and the stink of fear coming down.
A moment later, Eli appeared from the shadows at the back of the house, wearing night camo and loaded for war. He was carrying a pistol with a suppresser screwed on the end, legal in Louisiana. He could fire and the sound, while still loud, was unlikely to carry far. He held up three fingers to indicate how many he had taken down outside, then one finger to show how many he had taken down inside. There was no stink of gunfire or blood, suggesting that he had used nonlethal methods, just as I had. I extended one finger, then used it to point up the stairs. I mouthed, Prison.
My partner’s mouth turned down. He mouthed what I thought might have been No mercy, and he moved up the stairs. I followed. I was halfway up when I heard a woman scream.
Eli ducked right, toward the sound, moving fast in a bent-kneed run. I covered him, seeing a wide hallway running left and right, doors along it, and floor-to-ceiling windows at each, two recliners in front of each window. Which was odd. Until I looked in the closest one and saw a man curled up on a large, four-poster bed, facing away from the glass. Asleep. There were chains on the bedposts and bruises on the young man’s back.
Movement caught my eye and a human-shaped Sarge appeared, coming from the end of the hallway. He carried a shotgun and wore black cotton pants and a T-shirt, his hairy feet bare. PP trotted by his side. There was blood on her muzzle. Sarge began to check all the rooms on the far end of the hall, the scent of his anger strong.
Satisfied that he had my back, I slipped from room to room up to Eli. The recliners in front of the window on the end room both held incapacitated bodies, their heads at odd angles. Not breathing. Very dead. One of them was John-Roy’s cell pal. The other I didn’t know. Sarge had been at work.
Inside the room were two men and two women. The show the men had been watching was ugly. Real ugly. Eli opened the door and said, softly, “John-Roy.” When the man rose, a gun in his meaty hand, the barrel moving toward the door, Eli fired, the sound not much louder than a dictionary dropped flat from shoulder height. John-Roy fell, screaming, a hole in his abdomen. Eli’s next two shots hit the back wall; suppressors made hitting a target at any distance problematic. The second man grabbed a woman and backed from the bed, holding her as a shield.
Eli raced inside. Fast as a big-cat, I followed and centered the sights of my nine-mil on the standing man’s forehead. I didn’t recognize him except for the tattoo of the penis. This was Elvis Clyde McPhatter Lamont, king of the forced sex trade. He wore gold on his wrists and hanging around his neck, but otherwise he was naked, holding a woman, also naked, bleeding, and bruised. But not broken. She looked enraged, her eyes telling me she was ready for anything. Elvis pulled her to the wall.
On the floor, one hand pressing on his belly wound, John-Roy was looking at me. He yelled, “You!” and turned the gun toward me. TV shows where the bad guy always drops his gun are stupid. In real life, it doesn’t happen all that often. Eli shot him, again in the abdomen, off center. Not a miss, a deliberate target. Eli wanted him alive.