and as the storm outside died down and passed and the evening drew in, I went back to prowling the house and worrying. I didn't know much about my own heritage or my own past, except for the Cherokee stuff Aggie One Feather was teaching me, and that didn't include her knowing what I was: a skinwalker. The only other skinwalker I had ever seen was dead now, at my hand. He had killed, and taken the place of, Leo Pellissier's son Immanuel, maybe decades earlier, and then gone even further to the dark side, killing and eating humans and vamps. I still didn't know why. I worried that it was the nature of skinwalkers that we all went crazy eventually. I'd killed Immanuel's walker, and gotten myself into the predicament of being on the hate list of Leo Pellissier.
I'm Jane Yellowrock, traveling rogue-vamp hunter, skinwalker-in-hiding, and occasionally muscle-for-hire. I know how to fight, how to protect myself, and how to use the array of weapons that were currently under lock and key in my bedroom, safe from the attention of the children. I wasn't so good at understanding humans or witches or vampires, and I sucked at social situations, but this gig in New Orleans was giving me a chance to learn a lot about all that. And about myself.
My contract had been extended by the council, to hunt down and kill - true-dead - a master vamp who was turning scions and setting them free, feral, before the years they needed after the change to be "cured." The sire was releasing the young rogues on the populace with empty minds and unchecked desire for blood that made them crazy killing machines. I'd fought and killed two only a few weeks before. The council had asked me to get to the root of the problem, so I'd signed on the dotted line. And, though my beast was ready for mountain heights and rushing streams and deep valleys, I was beginning to like it here in the city that was made for partying.
Here, where vamps and other supernats had been for centuries, I might even discover another skinwalker. I was coming to understand that it wasn't likely, as not even the oldest of the vamps had ever smelled anything quite like me, but I could hope.
As I filled the kettle to make tea, I stilled, breathing deeply. Something smelled . . .
wrong.
Between storms, New Orleans's air is heavy and wet, pressing odors against the ground, making them linger, but as the sky had cleared, the air had seemed fresh and salty. Until now.
Closing my eyes, I flared my nostrils, taking in the scent, sharp and biting. It was vamp, pungent and tangy. And more than one. Above the vamp-scent rode the stink of kerosene. And smoke.
Beast rose in me.Fire!
My heart rate bounded and my breathing sped. I looked up. Outside the kitchen window, light flickered. It all came together fast. Because of the fear of lightning, Molly hadn't woken the wards back up yet. Leo Pellissier was out to get me. The hurricane had knocked out electricity, phone, and cell towers for most of the city. I couldn't call for help.
Crap.
Flames glimmered and sparkled against the antique window glass, visible through the sheer covering. I moved with the speed of my kind, sprinting to the door overlooking the back and side yards. A chair clattered to the floor behind me. I pulled a silver cross and chain over my head and two stakes from my hair. Ripped open the door. Raced out to the covered porch. As I moved, my hair swung forward, getting in the way, and I slung my head backward, clearing my vision. I counted four torches, widely spaced.
Fear shot through me. I should have gotten the guns.
I slid to a stop on the wet porch. Vamps stood in my yard. Unmoving - that dead-body immobility they do. Waiting. Holding torches. Time slowed, growing thick and viscous, the night taking on richness and depth. I absorbed the scene through my senses all at once.
There were four vamps that I could see, fangs descended, fully vamped out. At their feet were five-gallon containers, hazard signs painted on the sides. The scent of several more was carried on the fitful wind. One vamp was opening a container. The smell of kerosene rose.
The breeze was restless, the might of Ada coiled in its currents, but aimless now that the storm had passed. The sky was dark with fast-moving clouds. It