In between were the humans who had either taken off for safer environs, joined forces with one faction or the other, or hunkered down to fight a war of attrition.
The Youngers both chuckled when I told them I had played matchmaker and peacemaker between the vamps and witches. I had no idea why they thought it was amusing. The wedding had been beautiful.
Edmund, who had appeared with a pop of air just as we were about to back out of our parking spot in front of my house, was unexpectedly romantic. “I am quite certain that it was the social event of the year,” he said. I wondered if there had been a hint of irony in the statement. Eli grunted. Alex ignored us all, still playing his game.
None of us were particularly happy to have Edmund along, but the vamp had insisted and so had Leo. The MOC—Master of the City—had claimed that Edmund’s attendance would be beneficial and give weight and clout to our presence. Whatever. The call was short and unsweet and to the point. “You will take Edmund.” Click.
Not that he had the time, but Leo had said nothing about Edmund being a primo, which made me think even more that the primo idea was Edmund’s alone. A primo would be around often, if Leo gave him to me, and if I accepted him as such, which wasn’t likely. If I took Ed on and he turned out to be a pain in the butt, then I’d have to fire him, which would also be a pain in the butt. So far, the vamp had held his peace and kept quiet, not intruding on the comradery the Youngers and I had established, but no way would a vamp be able to maintain subservience to humans and a skinwalker. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I finished my reading of the case notes with, “Mostly, BO is a backwater community of churches, a blood bar, a few shops, a grocery, a couple of restaurants, a B and B, a dozen wild game processors”—which was the polite term for butchers for hunters’ kills—“alligator and boar hunting, fishing businesses for tourists, an airboat tour guide company, and a few thousand citizens spread over a wide area of bayou, swamp, and sinking land. It needs paint, repaved roads, an influx of tax money, and a general makeover.”
“Looks like the town is finally getting that makeover,” Eli said, as the SUV lurched over ruts in the road. He slowed, his headlights taking in the rain-wet dark.
The two-lane state road we turned onto from I-10 had been freshly graded in the last couple of days, judging by the coarse road surface, in preparation for new paving. The heavily armored SUV bounced over the ruts and splashed through standing pools as we rolled past road-paving machines parked on the sides. In the rain, in the momentary clarity provided by the windshield wipers, I thought that they looked like stalled dinosaurs, which made Beast perk up and look out through my eyes.
Want to hunt dino-saucers. Or cow!
Not on this trip. Just vampires and witches.
My Beast curled up inside, closed her eyes, and pouted. She hadn’t been out a whole lot recently, and she was grumpy about not getting to hunt. Could hunt cow from window of ess-u-vee, she finished.
The SUV was part of my gear as Leo’s Enforcer, and it had all the bells and whistles and onboard computer—as well as the bullet-resistant, multilayer, polycarbonate glass and Kevlar inserts around the cab—that Eli’s personal SUV didn’t have. I had been shot at recently and appreciated the protection that the heavy vehicle provided, but the extra weight made a jolting ride on the rough road.
We made it to the small town long after midnight, the few streetlights offering small globes of visual warmth in the downpour. There were dump trucks and construction vehicles and more of the road-grading machines parked everywhere, but in the darkness and the rain, no workers.
The town name meant bird bayou, and the first time I saw the quaint little place, I thought it looked like a love child spawned by the producer of a spaghetti Western and a mad Frenchwoman. The main crossroads were the intersection of Broad Street and Oiseau Avenue, which wasn’t as pretty as it might have sounded. Broad Street was narrow, and the buildings lining its single-lane cousin were downright ugly. There was only one traffic signal in the entire town, and despite the crossroads being the main intersection, tonight there was no social life either. Everything was at a standstill, and not just because it was so late.