I keyed myself in through the small door of the dojo and locked it after me. The long room had wood floors, two white-painted walls, one mirrored wall, and one wall of French doors that looked out over a lush, enclosed garden planted with tropical and semitropical plants. Cats were sunning themselves in the garden, seeming to come and go as they pleased, eating from bowls piled with food pellets, and drinking out of the large fountain shaped like a mountain stream that splashed in one corner. A weak smell of fish suggested that koi or goldfish had once swum in the pool at the bottom of the fountain, but the cats had likely made that an unworkable environment though I had never asked the real reason that the pool contained only plants. The garden was surrounded by two-and three-storied buildings and was overlooked by porches dripping with vines and flowering potted plants. Sensei lived upstairs in one of the upper apartments.
I punched the button that told sensei he had a student, dropped my bag in one corner, and stripped off the jacket and pants hiding my workout clothes—stretchy shorts and T, jogging bra and undies beneath. I unrolled the practice mats and started warming up. Ten minutes later, sensei showed up, though he tried not to let me know he had dropped into the garden from his apartment above.
Most of his students weren’t able to tell when the man literally dropped in, but with Beast’s acute hearing and sense of smell, I always knew. The smell of Korean cabbage he loved so much was a dead giveaway. Sensei, whose real name was Daniel, attacked when my back was turned. Leaped through the open doors, seeing me smiling at him in the mirrored wall as he hurtled through the air. For an instant he frowned. Then he was passing through the air where I had been standing and landed cat-footed to sweep out with his leg. I leaped above it. Kicked with the heel of my foot, straight for his nose. He bobbed his head and shifted his body left. Counter-punched with his right. All in about a half second. And the fight was on.
I was still hiding that I wasn’t human, or at least not fully human, and pulled my punches and kicks, keeping them almost human slow, and almost human strength. I was a lot faster and stronger when I drew on Beast’s abilities. An hour later, I was sweating, stinky, breathing hard, and felt a lot better. And if sensei had a few more bruises than usual, well, I blamed it on Rick.
Not ready to head home, I hopped on Bitsa and tooled my way out of the Quarter to the Shooters Club off Tulane Avenue. I paid my fee and bought regular ammo, as the silver rounds used for hunting vamps was too expensive for practice. Luckily, I had the place to myself because I wasn’t in the mood to be with people. I hung my man-shaped targets and hit the button that shoved the target holder out to twenty feet to start. I’d push it back and back until it was finally at fifty feet, though no handgun is worth much at that range, no matter what shooters do on TV.
I blew off a lot more steam working with my H&K 9 mil, going through three boxes of rounds before I was satisfied with my precision. I wasn’t a bad shot, and I knew a good gun and well-practiced hand-eye shot coordination was essential for a vamp hunter, but I preferred blades and stakes and martial arts to bullets any day. With them, I knew a vamp was dead.
Still, when I was done, I felt better, and bought a new holster at the front of the shop, one made of supple black leather with black sequins, of all things, that might fit with an evening gown. I had a party to attend, and permission to come armed. No one said that I had to look unfeminine just because I was loaded for were and vamp. I had never thought of holsters as sexy, but this one came close.
When I left the shooting range, I dropped by Katie’s Ladies, the whorehouse run by my landlady—when she wasn’t in a coffin filled with vamp blood and healing from a mortal wound. Deon, the three-star chef, answered the door.
The slight, dark-skinned man blocked my way in, one hand on the door, the other on the jamb, his brows raised and mouth pursed. “The help don’ use the front door, tartlet,” he said, in his lovely island accent.
I crossed my arms and cocked out a hip. “Deon, you do know that I could break you in two with one hand tied behind my back, right?”
“We could have fun while you tried.”
I burst out laughing and Deon opened the door for me to enter. Deon was gayer than a San Francisco stripper, but he’d taken a liking to me and recently begun flirting in the most outrageous manner. “Troll in?” I asked.
“No, tartlet. The boss man, as opposed to the mythical vampiric boss woman I hope one day to meet and feed, even if she is a she and not a he, went to buy liquor. I have your laundry ready. Want to play in it? We could dump it on the kitchen island and roll around—”
“Deon.”
He shut his mouth and switched his hips with a satisfied air, crooked a finger, and led me to the kitchen. “I got you present, girl. Replace them ugly cotton thing you wear on your Amazonian bottom,” he said over his shoulder, “with silk and spandex pretties.”
“Forget it,” I said, sputtering laughter. “Give it to one of the girls.”
He canted his head slyly. “You will like. I have the best of taste in all things fine.”
“Not happening, Deon.”
He laughed, the sound happy and devious all at once, floating back to me from the dining room. “You will love the way silk feel on that lovely bottom—”
“Stop talking about my bottom,” I said, following him through the dining room into the spotless kitchen.
“Shh. You wake the girls and they need beauty sleep. Where was I? Oh.” He held up a black wisp that shimmered in the light.
I stopped dead in my tracks. “Oh. Oh my.”
Back home, I took a shower to wash off the remaining stink of anger and aggression and flopped on the bed. This time, thanks to releasing my pent-up adrenaline fighting and shooting, and the calming results of chatting with Deon, I was asleep instantly.
I dreamed, knowing it was a dream, but was unable to wake. The sound of laughter bounced off the walls of my mind, the werewolf laughter of Roul Molyneux, though I couldn’t see him. I turned around and around, seeing Booger’s place, though only as my mind saw it, not as it had been. It was dark and empty, and the chain walls were down, enclosing me. This time there were no doors. Roul’s laughter echoed hollowly, rattling the chains with soft tinks all around me.