Death's Rival

Underneath the usual white-man smells of modern life, Seattle smelled of fish, stone, raw wood, and green earth. It smelled of rain—lots of rain—tropical-forest quantities of rain—and freshwater lakes and the Pacific Ocean and a sense of freedom I hadn’t expected. Though part of that might be from getting out from under Leo’s and Bruiser’s and even Reach’s thumbs. Unless I gave them opportunity, like with the pay phone call, they couldn’t find me tonight without a lot of work and a lot of luck. I stopped for gas and washed more blood, now dry, off my boots. It ran in thin trails across the pavement.

 

Near the Fisherman’s Terminal, at the wharf, I found a coffee shop still open and wheeled the bike in. I got an extra-large chai latte and a big blueberry scone and pulled out the laptop I’d stolen from the vamp house. I went online and did some research into flights out of the city. There were plenty of commercial red-eyes leaving, heading east, but nothing direct to New Orleans until morning. I’d be getting in near ten. I needed to be there a lot sooner, but I had no choice. I booked a direct flight with one stop, but no flight change, which cost me over five hundred dollars, but I didn’t quibble, and—not able to use cash for a flight since 9/11—I used the one credit card I was pretty sure no one knew about. I borrowed the coffee shop’s phone and left a message at the shot-up airport where the borrowed bike would be, then rode the bike to Sea-Tac, Seattle Tacoma International Airport, and left it in short-term parking with a hundred-dollar bill in the saddlebag.

 

With two hours left until my six a.m. flight to New Orleans, I cleaned up in the ladies’ room and ate in a terminal restaurant that served overpriced, overcooked, undertasty food. I settled in for a long night. Having brooded myself into a total funk, I pulled out the fancy, heavy cotton envelope and turned it over. My name was on the front in a flowery, curlicue, old-fashioned script that looked like calligraphy. Old vamps had the best penmanship. They’d had centuries to perfect it. Whoever had written the two words had managed to imbue my name with elegance and menace, or maybe that was just me projecting. Or maybe it was the spot of bloodred wax sealed with the imprint of a bird with a human head, maybe an Anzu.

 

Sniffing the envelope, I detected a faint blood-scent: peaty, spicy, and a little beery—the now-familiar blood-scent of the vamp who drained the first mate. It was an odd scent for a vamp. Even without being in Beast form, I knew it was the same vamp who had sent my attacker in Asheville, and all the ones since.

 

Deflecting a spurt of apprehension, I slit open the envelope and pulled out the single sheet, unfolded and scrutinized it. The words were oddly capitalized, like the way old English words were capitalized in documents to indicate their importance. Again, it was written in the calligraphy of someone who had written in script back when that was a prized skill.

 

You killed my Enforcer, Ramondo Pitri.

 

You will Die with your Master,

 

in a massacre such as you have never seen.

 

This, at a time of my choosing.

 

Ramondo Pitri was the name of the blood-servant I’d killed in Asheville. He had come into my hotel room, carrying a gun with a silencer, and smelling of unknown vamp. I had shot him, killed him, before I ever knew that he was a made man out of New York, not the usual vamp fodder. He hadn’t smelled like any vamp I knew, or been formally attached to any of Leo’s clans. All that had caused us to assume he was a hired killer. But as an Enforcer, Ramondo should have been known to the general vamp population and should not have entered any other master’s territory without proper papers or an invitation. And he should have stunk of his master’s blood and been deeply under the blood-bond, rather than smelling of a distant and irregular feeding. Of course, I was an Enforcer—sort of—and I had no blood-bond at all.

 

I turned the paper over as if looking for clues that simply were not there. I had killed another master’s Enforcer and now I had to die? And Leo had to die? And the blood-slave at the Sedona Airport had to die? And the pilot stuck to the wall of a jet had to die, as did the drained corpse of the first mate? All because I . . . what? Shot first and asked questions later?

 

The grief I had given into on the harrowing bike ride receded a pace, leaving a small blank slate of uncertainty on my soul. Grief, like guilt, may not always be warranted.

 

I folded the letter back into the envelope. I needed a cup of strong tea, but there was nothing in the airport except teabags, so I walked to a bar and ordered a pint of Guinness Draught, not because I could get a rush out of the alcohol—skinwalker metabolism is too fast for that—but because I wanted something in my hands to help me think. Holding the big glass, I sipped.

 

The taste brought Beast to the forefront of my mind again. Smells like vampire, she thought, and she was right, which might, subconsciously, account for me ordering the beer in the first place. Peaty and beery. Yeah. Like the vamp. I drank long, killing half the beer, feeling tension begin to drain away. I was tired and sleepy, but I pulled the letter from my pocket again and studied it. Midnight had come and gone. This read like some kind of vamp-challenge, the fanged Hatfields meet the vamped-out McCoys. If a challenge had been issued to Leo, I hadn’t been notified. I looked at a clock and discovered it was now after five a.m., Pacific time. Maybe the letter meant midnight tomorrow. Or next week. The new moon was days away.

 

Smells like vampire, Beast thought again. Is important.

 

It was the first time she had taken such an interest in my life in weeks, and I couldn’t help my internal smile. Okay, I thought back at her. But why? She didn’t answer. Big help you are.

 

I debated calling Bruiser and asking, and I decided it could wait. This vamp threat would be contained in the Vampira Carta or its codicils, which I had on file on my own laptop back in New Orleans and could access soon enough.

 

Old vampires are patient hunters, Beast thought. Like snakes, lying on rocks all day in the sun. Not moving until a rabbit—or a puma—comes by. Then striking, fastfastfast with killing teeth. Even if snake is too small to eat its prey.

 

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