Skinwalker by Faith Hunter
To my Renaissance Man,
who knows the songs to sing and the rivers to run
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Guy in the Leather Jacket, for telling me Jane needed a softer side.
Sarah Spieth for helping out with New Orleans settings.
Melanie Otto, for beta reading.
Holly McClure, for Cherokee stories, especially for allowing me to cull info from her Cherokee novel, Lightning Creek.
Randall Pruette, for gun info and for designing the vamp-killing ammo.
Mike Pruette, Web guru at www.FaithHunter.net and fan.
Judith Bienvenu, for coming up with the model for Jane’s bike, and for beta reading.
Stephen Mullen, of Nightrider.com and TuneYourHar -ley.com for bike info and for creating a background for Jacob, Zen Harley Master.
Melissa Lee and Audrey Wilkinson for reading the first chapter and demanding more.
Rod Hunter, for the right word when my tired brain was stymied.
Joyce Wright, for reading everything I write, no matter how “weird.”
Kim Harrison, Misty Massey, David B. Coe, C. E. Murphy, Tamar Myers, Greg Paxton, Raven Blackwell, Chris tina Stiles, and all my writer friends, for taking the writing journey with me.
My Yahoo fan group at www.groups.yahoo.com/group/the-enclave.
My cowriters at www.magicalwords.net.
Lucienne Diver, for doing what an agent does best, with grace and kindness.
And last but not least, my editor at Roc, Jessica Wade, who saw the multisouled Beast in Jane and bought this series.
Y’all ROCK!
CHAPTER 1
I travel light
I wheeled my bike down Decatur Street and eased deeper into the French Quarter, the bike’s engine purring. My shotgun, a Benelli M4 Super 90, was slung over my back and loaded for vamp with hand-packed silver fléchette rounds. I carried a selection of silver crosses in my belt, hidden under my leather jacket, and stakes, secured in loops on my jeans-clad thighs. The saddlebags on my bike were filled with my meager travel belongings—clothes in one side, tools of the trade in the other. As a vamp killer for hire, I travel light.
I’d need to put the vamp-hunting tools out of sight for my interview. My hostess might be offended. Not a good thing when said hostess held my next paycheck in her hands and possessed a set of fangs of her own.
A guy, a good-looking Joe standing in a doorway, turned his head to follow my progress as I motored past. He wore leather boots, a jacket, and jeans, like me, though his dark hair was short and mine was down to my hips when not braided out of the way, tight to my head, for fighting. A Kawasaki motorbike leaned on a stand nearby. I didn’t like his interest, but he didn’t prick my predatory or territorial instincts.
I maneuvered the bike down St. Louis and then onto Dauphine, weaving between nervous-looking shop workers heading home for the evening and a few early revelers out for fun. I spotted the address in the fading light. Katie’s Ladies was the oldest continually operating whorehouse in the Quarter, in business since 1845, though at various locations, depending on hurricane, flood, the price of rent, and the agreeable nature of local law and its enforcement officers. I parked, set the kickstand, and unwound my long legs from the hog.
I had found two bikes in a junkyard in Charlotte, North Carolina, bodies rusted, rubber rotted. They were in bad shape. But Jacob, a semiretired Harley restoration mechanic/ Zen Harley priest living along the Catawba River, took my money, fixing one up, using the other for parts, ordering what else he needed over the Net. It took six months.
During that time I’d hunted for him, keeping his wife and four kids supplied with venison, rabbit, turkey—whatever I could catch, as maimed as I was—restocked supplies from the city with my hoarded money, and rehabbed my damaged body back into shape. It was the best I could do for the months it took me to heal. Even someone with my rapid healing and variable metabolism takes a long while to totally mend from a near beheading.