I pulled down the face shield of the helmet. Gunned the bike. Following.
The scent blasted at me under the edge of the shield, intensified, concentrated by speed as I wove through the streets, heading to the river, the same pathway taken when Beast tracked the rogue from the kill zone where he took down the prostitute. The exact same route. Prey, Beast whispered, picturing an animal track through the brush, low down, well worn. The liver-eater was using the same trail home.
Beast rose into my mind as we roared over the river, part of the I-90 snarl, taking the Greater New Orleans Bridge. The Mississippi was a huge sleeping snake, muddy brown and somnolent. And then, in the middle of the bridge, the rogue’s scent disappeared. Just . . . totally disappeared. Traffic was growing heavier. The breeze across the river was strengthening. I didn’t have much time to find it again.
Had I been in a car I would have been in trouble. Much more maneuverable, I wove from lane to lane, breaking traffic laws all over, to the far shore, still unable to pick up the scent. It took a while to get turned around as the road became the Westbank Expressway, snarled with traffic. In Beast form it hadn’t been rush hour, and I had been riding on top of a truck.
I took the bridge back twice, searching up and down the road, scenting the few off-ramps and smaller turnoffs for any hint of the thing I chased. He could have dropped off the expressway onto the ground below at any point. Or, for that matter, off the bridge into the river. Beast sent me a mental picture of a mountain lion with her face to the ground.
“Air scenting is a waste of time,” I agreed. I pulled the bike to the shoulder, stopped, put my boots down, and shoved back the face shield again. Yanked off my sunglasses. Disgusted.
Beast sent me another image, of a pile of poop. Then a third, of bark torn from a tree as if by claws or deer horns. And yet a fourth, of a big cat, hindquarters bent, forelegs stiff, depositing scent from anal scent glands onto a pile of leaves and sticks.
“Territory. You think I can find him by hunting his territory. Places he’s marked as his. But people don’t mark territory, and from what I’ve seen, neither do vamps.”
And Beast sent me an image of Katie’s Ladies. No sign in the window, no neon, but a street number in brass on the door. I hadn’t paid much attention to it. But I got the idea. Track the rogue vamp by things he does, has, and is, things that he doesn’t even realize are markers. Gotcha. And I could start at Aggie One Feather’s and the sweathouse out back. I strapped on my link-mail collar and my other protective equipment. Now I was loaded for vamp.
Aggie had to have heard the bike puttering down the road. It wasn’t like I could hide the sound of the motor. I half expected her to be waiting at the door, but she wasn’t. The house was silent when I rang the bell, except for the electronic hum of appliances and air conditioner, and the smell of cooked bacon. Twined with it all was the rotten stink of the rogue. Beast came alert, her mouth open in my mind, showing fangs. The rogue had come past the house, his skin probably smoking if the scorched smell was any indication, beating sunrise by seconds. The scorched stink made him a vamp. He was leaving mixed evidence everywhere, confusing.
He was fast, faster than anything I ever hunted. I wanted to ignore the protocol of asking permission and just race around back, following the scent. Eagerness gathered inside me, my heart beating hard. The rogue was close. The woods behind Aggie’s house were not just hunting grounds. He did have a lair near here.
I heard footsteps inside. Aggie stepped back in shock when she opened the door, one hand out as if to ward off a blow. Maybe it was the Benelli slung over my back. Maybe it was my expression. “It’s okay,” I said.
She halted backpedaling and swallowed, one fist over her heart, recovering her poise. “What do you want?” she asked, her voice not quite steady. What do you want? Not Come in. She held the door with one hand, barring my way.
I shook my head. There was no time for the polite necessities of dealing with an elder. “The rogue vamp came through your yard. I need to—” I stopped myself, knowing I was botching this, and said instead, “May I hunt in the property behind your house?”
She looked me over and settled herself as I remembered the elders doing, a relaxing of the facial muscles and shoulders, one hand on the door, still holding me out, the other still curled in a loose fist on her chest, the gesture protective. A memory hovered in the back of my mind, foggy, hazy, an old, old woman making the same motions, the remembrance almost in reach for an instant, before it wisped away like smoke. How long? How long ago was that a reality?