I had on ear protectors, my fighting leathers, and all my weapons, including the Benelli M4. They had all been brought by Derek, lifted from my gun safe in the closet of my freebie house in New Orleans. Even in what amounted to autumn in the Deep South, I was sweating, and my hair had come free from the fighting queue, blown back by the wind. It was long enough that I was seriously concerned about getting it caught in the prop, and sat holding it twined around my arm and clasped in one hand, a pose that could have serious image consequences if we were attacked en route. Auguste had agreed to idle down a quarter mile out and motor in slowly, which would give me time to fix my hair.
It wasn’t like I was trying for a stealth approach. There was no chance we’d surprise anyone, not in a boat that could be heard two or three miles away. So the slow entrance lost us nothing and might actually help, giving me time to look over the Doucette Clan Home, allowing Derek’s men to carry out their part of the plan, and also giving the appearance of courage and strength. Of course, vamps could smell my sweat, so they’d know I was nervous once I was close enough for them to take my scent. And since they had never smelled me, and since they weren’t Leo’s people, my predator scent would really annoy them as well as make them more dangerous.
Hence, I was loaded for vamp with hand-packed silver-fléchette rounds in the M4 and the nine mils. I had my specially made holsters on and had a Heckler and Koch nine mil under my left arm, one at my right hip, a lovely little red-gripped .380 at my spine, and a .32 six-shooter on my ankle. Most of the weapons were loaded with silver shot. The .380s carried standard ammo; that was for annoying vamps and killing humans, though I didn’t intend to kill any humans. Unless they tried to kill me.
I had six blades on me: four short-bladed throwing knives and two silver-plated vamp-killers. Ash stakes were sheathed in my right boot, for immobilizing vamps if I could manage that instead of killing them. Three silver stakes would go in my bun, three more in the left boot, should killing vamps be necessary. One had the blood-master’s name on it. Clermont Doucette was a dead man. Which was funny in every way I could look at it.
I wore my silver-plated titanium throat protector and superhard plastic armor at elbows, groin, and knees—places where vamps liked to attack and drink. I looked deadly.
The airboat slowed and skewed to the side in an eddy move worthy of a powerboat. Margaud jutted her chin at my hair and climbed from the boat onto a tongue of land, and I started to rebraid my tousled locks. Auguste handed us both bottles of chilled water. We were less than half a mile out, and I could see the yellow of the school bus in the distance.
? ? ?
It was only minutes later, but when Auguste keyed on the airboat motor and blasted out the night sounds, the sun was setting on the horizon, silhouetting the cypress trees and low-growing scrub on the small islets and islands between marsh and swamp and bayou. Night came fast in the bayou.
We left Margaud perched in the branches of a tree with a clear line of sight of the front door and most of the Doucette Clan Home. She had her rifle and a night-vision scope and several toys that were not civilian legal, and she handled them like a pro. Even so, I didn’t like the idea of leaving anyone alone in the swamp, but the woman’s fierce glare suggested that I should keep that thought to myself.
I went over her report as we made our slow way to the Clan Home. There were heat signatures for twenty humans, and no indications of vamps anywhere, which meant they were still in their lairs. Under the house were dozens of chickens and several large mammals, what looked like pigs. “Be careful of the pigs,” she said, as her last warning. “They’re mean and dangerous.”
Great. Just ducky. Like vamps weren’t bad enough. Now we had mad pigs to worry about.
Making enough racket to raise revenants, we motored up to the Doucette place, me sitting so a nine mil was partially hidden in my left hand, and my right was draped over the armrest. The lights ahead went dark, making the house hard to see, but giving an added advantage to the vamps, with their near-perfect night vision.
As we roared up, I looked lazy and unconcerned. But my heart was pounding and my Beast was staring out at the lengthening shadows with her predator’s stare, my eyes showing that odd shade of gold peculiar to Beast. With her added night vision, the dark was all greens and silvers and shades of gray, and I could see with a preternatural clarity.
Security met us at the dock, buff male hunks dressed in jeans, muscle Ts, and multiple guns. They smelled human, or nearly so—blood-slaves who had all received recent, copious, but controlled drinks of blood from multiple vamps. The intake had to be carefully measured or the consequences were problematic. Too much blood would get a human blood-drunk and he’d be useless. Too little blood and a human would have less power to draw on. I wondered why the big bad vamps had sent blood-slaves to meet me instead of blood-servants, and it was just one more reminder that these backwoods—or maybe backwater—vamps would be unlike the vamps I’d met in other places. It was possible that these vamps had never even seen the Vampira Carta. These were like vamps from the Wild West, vamps with their own rules and laws and nasty habits and nastier accoutrements.