Eli was dressed in Ranger desert camo and weapons. Lots of weapons. Even Alex was tacked up, with tablets in his pockets and my Benelli M4 on its harness up his spine. It looked strange to me for the Kid to be wearing weapons, but it worked. Fully armed, looking like a high-tech, paramilitary gang, we crossed the streets, weaving between an unused grader and a front-end loader. The heavy-duty equipment was beginning to rust—not unusual in the high humidity of Louisiana.
In the square, witches had gathered, standing in a circle. Back from the witch circle, in clumps of three or four, human blood-servants stood, watching, looking menacing, but not doing anything. More witches appeared. No vamps yet, as the sun began going down behind a fresh bank of clouds moving in off the Gulf of Mexico.
I checked my cell. No one had gotten back to us about the wreath. The Kid had worked all day and still had nothing from historical archives, museum archives, or law enforcement archives about a missing corona/wreath/breloque. None of the photos he had found were a match for the one in BO. Nada. Nothing.
It was hard to tell for sure, but the sun was nearly gone when the last witch showed up, rushing in on a bicycle, which she dropped in the street, and raced into place, heaving breaths. She managed a gasping “Engine trouble. Bike. Water.” Another witch handed her a bottle of water and she drained it, still gasping.
Solene, who was standing in the center of the circle looking cool and maybe a little bored by the presence of the blood-servants, bent and placed the wreath on the pavement. The waiting humans tensed, every single one. Preparing for something. Three in one group pulled extendable truncheons and snapped them open. I drew the M4 Benelli shotgun from Alex’s back and slapped the barrel into my palm with a resounding smack. “Think twice!” I shouted.
Eli laughed, the scariest sound I’d ever heard him make, and said, “Leo Pellissier’s Enforcer will have no trouble making mincemeat of you untrained coonass idiots.” They shifted, finding my partner in the falling dark. His voice softened now that he had their attention, and I could practically see their bravado melt away. “And I’ll be pissed, because that means I’ll have to clean up the blood and guts.” His voice went conversational, but with an edge, a little crazy-sounding. I liked it. “It’s hard to get blood off asphalt, know what I mean? Of course, brains are the hardest. They’re sticky; they adhere to the tar like sourdough and Elmer’s glue.”
In the scant seconds that the servants hesitated, Solene said, “Hedge of thorns.”
The words surprised me, because that was my BFF’s family’s spell, but it seemed to have gotten around, even to this backwater.
An inside circle flared up, reddish and sullen in the remaining daylight, the ward enclosing the wreath. A half second later she said, “Electric dog collar.” The outer circle, looking like little more than a pale shimmer, raised up. The witches were protected. I had the feeling that Solene hadn’t needed my help anyway. I had a feeling she had all sorts of offensive and defensive spells ready to toss at the humans, some of them deadly.
“Where the heck did you get that laugh?” I muttered to Eli.
“Borrowed it from a Taliban commander who thought he had us pinned down one night in Afghanistan. He didn’t. But until we filled him full of holes, he had the Bela Lugosi laughter down pat.”
“Gave me the shivers. Keep it in your repertoire. I like it.”
Eli gave me a lip-twitch grin.
The front doors blew off the blood bar.
I dropped to a crouch, Beast slamming into me. Eli dashed for cover. Dragging Alex by the collar. The humans in the street screamed, ran, or were knocked off their feet, depending on where they were positioned relative to the blast. The witches turned as one and looked at the bar, then, while the humans were still reeling, turned back and continued whatever the heck they were doing. The sign that had hung over the bar, LECOMPTE SPIRITS AND PLEASURE, landed in the street and bounced. I couldn’t hear it over the concussive damage to my ears, but it splintered and broke. I snarled and sucked in the wet night air, over my tongue and the roof of my mouth. The smell of explosive magic was an overriding stench filling the street, nearly hiding the smells of blood, sex, and liquor, and the stink of vamps.
Overhead, thunder boomed and the skies opened, not droplets, not drops, but bucketfuls. A deluge like something from Noah’s time, solid sheets of rain like standing under a waterfall during a spring flood, the rain pounding on me. Instantly I was drenched. “Well, crap.”