Skinwalker

“Sure. Dancing at the club you play at.” I offered him a half smile. “Beer’ll be my treat.” Nothing like a girl asking a guy out—looked like I was a modern-day gal, after all, or I just wanted to keep an eye on him and his acquaintances. Rick might be on his own rogue hunt, hoping to bag the creature out from under me, taking money out of my pocket. Maybe make a name for himself along the way. Or he might be on some other mission that could impact mine.

 

“Yeah. Well.” Which didn’t sound like a ringing endorsement for a date. But then he was probably too bruised to dance, from when I tossed him on his keister. Twice now. He turned a key; the engine of his red crotch rocket turned over and purred. I almost said, “Key starts are for wusses,” but I managed to keep it in. My own bike’s engine was running a little rough, so I had no call to be insulting someone else’s. Still. A keyed start? Where was the excitement and mystery in that?

 

I watched him motor off. He didn’t look back. Soon as he was gone, I redialed Jodi. When she answered I said, “You know a local Joe, Caucasian but Frenchy, olive skin, black and black, maybe six feet, slender? Name of Rick LaFleur?”

 

She hesitated. “No. Can’t say as I do. But he may go by other aliases,” she said. “Why?” It was the hesitation that did it. Jodi was lying to me.

 

“A source of mine claims he’s doing some low-level work for Katie and a few other vamps. I was checking him out.”

 

“Name’s not familiar. But I’ll keep my eyes open. ETA’s under an hour,” she said. “Stay close.”

 

“I’ll be here,” I said. I closed the phone and tucked it into my pocket.

 

Was Rick running a scam on me and/or the vamps? Reporting to NOPD? A street source giving the cops inside information in return for help on a past legal problem? Was he ratting out the vamps? And if he was, should I care? Should it bother me? No, it shouldn’t. But it did. It bothered me that he might be sharing secrets. It bothered me a lot. I’d rather he was trying to take my hunting gig. “Crap,” I said. “I’m starting to like vamps.”

 

Leaving my helmet and leather jacket with the bike, I circled around the house, into the woods, sweating in the humid heat. It wasn’t even summer yet and it was in the high nineties. I tried to imagine what it would feel like in August. A steam bath was trite but it was the closest analogy, and sometimes trite just meant true. A city-sized—heck, a state-sized—steam bath.

 

For an instant, the urge for home swept over me. I stopped and closed my eyes as homesickness shook me. I wanted mountains, towering ridges and deep folded valleys. I wanted hemlock, spruce, fir, oak, and mountain maple, babbling brooks and streams spilling off hillsides and under small bridges that echoed hollowly off chasms when a bike clattered across. I wanted cool breezes and nighttime temps that dropped to the forties this time of year. I wanted icy spring showers. I wanted home, not this flat, muggy, wet, heated, miserable place. But here was where I was, and some people loved it with the same passion I felt for mountains. For now, I had a job to do and a way to put money in my pockets. I sucked up the need for home and started into the trees’ shadow line.

 

A mosquito landed on my arm and shoved his proboscis into me for a blood meal, which seemed part and parcel of this job. I swatted it, leaving a bloody smear behind. Wiping it on my jeans, I muttered, “Damn bloodsucker.”

 

A snake slithered away from my approach and I halted midstep. I wasn’t afraid of snakes, but not being afraid didn’t mean that I particularly liked them. If I got bit, and if it was poisonous, I’d have to shift to deal with the venom. And shifting, even into Beast, was hard by daylight, especially without my fetish necklace.

 

I wasn’t familiar with local reptile varieties. The snake was three feet long and blackish, with a sort of diamond crosshatching down its length. Not a king snake. Not a garter snake. It rippled across the grass and turned its triangular, spear-shaped head my way. The arrowhead-shaped skull was the most common sign of a venomous snake. Maybe it was a diamondback, though its tail tip didn’t seem to have rattles. It slithered off into the shade.

 

I moved on, watching my step. If I landed on a snake, the boots would only help if it bit below my knee; above that was skin. I saw no more wildlife and quickly found the place where the rogue came out of the woods. On the lawn there wasn’t much to indicate the rogue wasn’t human, but into the woods a bit, he had run through a muddy patch and left three nice, clear, weird-looking paw prints with claw marks, half human and half something else. Big Cat.

 

The prints were about thirteen inches long, eleven at the widest point, across the toes. Two of the prints had human-shaped heels, which made it look awkward, something a Bigfoot expert would point to with pride. Deep, slashing indentations indicated the length of the claws—way longer than Beast’s. Big prints. Beast’s paws were about eight inches across, nails about an inch and a half across the recurved length, depending on how they were measured.

 

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