*
I started work the next morning just after nine a.m., when Derek and his guys motored into town in mud-spattered four-wheel-drive Humvees, vehicles last used in a war somewhere and decommissioned. Derek was a former Marine, still tough as Uncle Sam can make a man, and he ran a group of former military mercenaries who had originally banded together to fight rogue-vamps in their neighborhood in New Orleans. He was muscle and tech support too and had the toys and the know-how to do the job.
Miz Onie, an olive-skinned, dark-haired French woman, was agreeable to renting out her entire B&B, and laid out a huge breakfast for me, Derek, and his Vodka Boys: V. Martini, V. Chi Chi, and V. Angel Tit. Miz Onie might have been pushing sixty, but she appreciated the pretty vision of a man in a uniform, even a paramilitary uniform like Derek’s men wore—camo pants and Marine-green tees. She served up pancakes, several rashers of bacon, two dozen eggs, and a fruit bowl big enough to use as a hot tub.
We cleared the dishes of their edible burdens, then the table of the dishes, and laid out topo maps of the area, the guys using weapons to hold down the corners. “Our intel of the area sucks,” Derek said. “This is all Angel could find on GoogleMaps, and the printed stuff is so pixled out it’s pretty much useless. Everything’s flat so we got only rooftops and treetops to go by, and no one has done a street cam drive-by.”
“No streets,” Lucky said. The former Marine had guns on him in the echo of the first word. “Bayou only way. You want in, you go in by boat or gator-back.” He grinned at his own joke, standing in the door, seeming totally relaxed even with all the guns on him. His bare arms were upraised, holding on to the jambs of the door, the flames along one arm dancing with his power.
I rolled my eyes and said, “Meet the father of the kidnap victim.”
The Vodka Boys made half the guns disappear. The rest went back on the table, holding down the maps. Men and their toys. Of course, I had a vamp-killer in a boot sheath and six stakes in my bun, so maybe I wasn’t much better.
Lucky sauntered over, put a hand on the table, and rested his weight on it as the tattoos danced. “Dat right dere,” he tapped a page, “is Clermont Doucette Place.” The rooftop was reflective aluminum, making it hard to see anything except that there were lots of angles and offshoots, as if the Clan Home had been added onto by whim and caprice for years. The house sat on a narrow tongue of land, a bayou winding around the house on three sides and what looked like swamp on the other. Trash was everywhere, piles of unidentifiable things, but what we could see was not going to make any outright attack easy. Docks large and small were positioned around the house, sticking out into the water, and there were a half dozen outbuildings, animal pens, and even a rusted school bus under the trees. I almost asked how they got the bus out into the bayou, and then changed my mind. More important were the boats; at least six were pulled up to the dock and on shore, and I figured the tree canopy hid more. There were a lot of people at the house.
“I figure he keeping Shauna here.” Lucky pointed to a room away from the moving water, next to the swampy side and sticking out all by itself.
Derek looked at me, his eyes saying what I had figured out. We had way too few men. I stifled a sigh but decided I had to address that now, right up front. “Lucky, we don’t have enough men to launch an attack and get Shauna.” The witch’s eyes flashed fire and his power sparked painfully across my skin, like brushing against cacti. I added quickly, “So I’m going in to talk.”
“Talk is nothin’ to dese suckheads,” he spat. The power in the room skirled like flames and wind, hot, and pulling all the moisture out of the air.
Derek sat back, his arms outstretched along the chair arms, and looked at me, ignoring the angry father. I took his cue and repositioned so Lucky was visible only in my peripheral vision. Sometimes ignoring people’s anger made them calm down. Of course, sometimes it made them shoot everyone in sight. “We can go in just before dusk,” Derek said to me, “when the vamps are waking up and eating breakfast and the blood-servants are busiest. Disable the boats, set up a perimeter. Then you can come in, making a lot of noise. Distract them from anything we might do.” Meaning that if they saw the girl, they’d take her if it was possible, with me being the distraction.
I nodded. “How are you getting in?” I asked. “They’ll hear motors for miles in the flat water and land.”
Derek pointed to what looked like a trail on the map; it was marked with the designation Brown Fox Road. “We drive into there this afternoon and pole in on johnboats.”
Lucky snorted, a very Gaelic and totally dismissive sound, but the burning sensation diminished again. “Polin’ johnboat a skill, not somethin’ you pick up and do.”
Derek lifted a brow. “I poled my first boat when I was five, white boy. I think I still remember how. And my men will do fine,” he added to me.
I nodded. “Okay. Lucky, we need johnboats and something motorized for me to show up in. And before you ask or demand, no. You can’t go with us.” Instantly I felt that spiky power skitter hotly along my skin. “And that’s precisely why,” I pointed at him. “You’re too emotionally involved. You’ll end up getting the men hurt, and maybe Shauna killed.”