“That obvious?” I asked. When he didn’t answer, I punched in Misha’s number and was shunted directly to voice mail. I said, “Your contact, Ryder, is dead. Call me.” To be on the safe side, I texted her the same message.
With nothing better to do and a gut feeling that things were going to go very wrong very soon, I dove into the research sent to me by Reach and the scant intel collected by the Kid. There was something about this town. Every time I came here, things seemed to get so freaking complicated.
• • •
It was after dark when I got dressed for my interview with Big H. Going into the presence of unknown vamps was never safe, despite the PR that let the world think they were sexy and sparkly and only mildly dangerous fun. I wanted to go in to his presence armed to the teeth, but sometimes carrying a big stick could actually start a fight. For this howdy-doody interview there would be no leathers. I had brought dress pants in a winter-weight wool, and I pulled them on over stretch leggings, and stomped into my green snakeskin Lucchese boots. Into each boot went a sheathed knife, one with the hilt visible and one hidden deeper down. I wore a white silk shirt with billowy sleeves and a velvet vest with slits for the throwing knives and silver stakes, which I limited to three each. The loose-sleeved jacket was tight across my shoulders—all my clothes were, but I would put off a trip to Leo’s designer as long as possible. The old woman terrified me. My hair I braided and twisted up in a high bun, and put more stakes in it, pushed down so I could ride in the SUV without stabbing myself.
From a shelf in the closet, I removed the box I used for my jewelry. It was a Lucchese boot box, old and starting to show the wear, but it did the trick, and though I had no intention of dressing up, the box also held some of my protective gear. I opened the flap, and sitting on top of the socks that protected my small collection of jewelry was a carved bone coyote earring. I had no idea how I’d gotten the earring, which was a mystery for another day. I’d woken up from a crazy dream and it was lying on the bed beside me. Just the one. And I didn’t wear earrings. This one tingled of magics, as if it had been spelled once long ago, but something about it was still magically active, literally. The little sucker moved around. I kept the coyote in a sock. I had put the two magical pocket-watch amulets inside socks too, and now they cradled the coyote on either side. Weird. But then, my whole life was weird these days.
I dumped the pocket watches into a sock together again, and wiped my fingers on my pants. The amulets smelled like meat. Like thinned blood. Kinda gross. They were not something I wanted to keep, but since I had no idea what they did, I was loathe to toss them into a river or something. From beneath the socks, I removed a black velvet box. Inside was my chain-mail throat protector, which I latched on, the silver over titanium cold on my throat and chest. I put the boot box away.
• • •
At seven-thirty, Eli and I were driving through the dark, on our way to the meeting with Hieronymus, bristling with weapons and with Leo’s vamp med kit resting on the back seat. Though silence was usual between us, this time Eli said, “So. How do you want to handle this?”
“Too many unknowns. When I do this kind of thing I just fly by the seat of my pants.”
“And if the vamps go into a feeding frenzy for some reason and attack?”
“We were invited, so I don’t expect trouble. That said, if something goes wrong we shoot, stake, and run.”
Eli actually smiled. “I love my job.”
I answered his grin with one of my own. “Yeah. Me too.” I went back to studying the photos of the vamps I was to meet, photos the Kid had loaded up into an electronic pad that looked like something out of the future. Big H reminded me of a bust of some ancient Greek king, but bald. Like, the guy didn’t even have eyelashes. And then there was his love and heir, Lotus, a lovely female vamp from somewhere in Asia. In one photo, she was standing next to Big H and she looked like a teenager, her black hair a veil of silk drawn to one side and hanging below her waist, wearing some kind of kimonolike robe and scarlet shoes. H’s sons, Zoltar and Narkis, were next in the file. Zoltar meant “life,” which the vamp no longer possessed, and Narkis meant “daffodil.” I shook my head. Vamp names were weird. The boys were prettier than their father, but not by much. I also looked over the profiles of the local clans’ blood-masters, primos, and secondos. There were photos of bars and warehouses and businesses in the file too, properties owned by vamps.
“We’re in On Top of the Hill,” Eli said of the old historical district. “Destination?” I gave him the address, turned off the tablet, and set it in the side pocket of the SUV.
Hieronymus didn’t ask us to meet at his Clan home, which was an antebellum plantation home outside of town, but rather in an old warehouse in Natchez Under the Hill. Under the Hill had been changed drastically by the earthquake of 1811, an earthquake so violent that it altered the course of the Mississippi River. The eddies, floodwaters, violent swells, floating debris—including trees and fully laden, crewless boats carrying whiskey, furs, flour, hardwood lumber, and other items from the North—landslides, and avalanches had taken off over a hundred acres of the old streets. And when they were rebuilt, and then rebuilt again under General Ulysses Grant, they were much different from the original.
There were three Under the Hill streets, each over a half mile long, forming tiers or terraces, running parallel with the river. Each street cut into the slope, making sharp-angled hairpin loops on the ends that put Lombard Street in San Fran to shame, while innumerable little cross-street alleys zigzagged up and down the hill between houses and gardens and businesses. Earlier incarnations of Under the Hill had offered no attempt at beauty, but once vamps came out of the coffin, when Marilyn Monroe tried to turn the president in the Oval Office, it was discovered that vamps had made Under the Hill their home, digging into the earth of the hill, making dwellings and businesses in the half-cavern buildings. With Beast vision overlaying my own, like my version of 3-D glasses, I could see witch magic everywhere—reds, yellows, silvers, and greens all infused with black and silver and gold sparkles of power. It seemed concentrated in three places, one location on each street, the three forming the points of a triangle with the apex at the hilltop.
We were meeting at a warehouse on the middle street, Tin Alley, near the old McHenry’s Gambling Establishment. The building was an old redbrick two-story and was situated on a corner, up against the sidewalk. The twelve-foot-tall wooden front doors were banded with rusted iron and open to the night air. Music, sounding like live stringed instruments, flooded through and into the street. The windows were narrow and covered with solid iron shutters, sealed tight. The place was a firetrap, with limited exits and gas lighting—I could smell it on the night air—and vamps were flammable. How stupid was all this? It had to be something to do with the history of the city and Big H’s clan, something ritualistic. Vamps were big on history and ritual, having lived through most of the former, and the latter allowing the predatory hunter clans to live in proximity to one another without all-out war.
We drove around the block before parking, weaving between the fancy cars of the fanged and wealthy. Vehicles lined the streets, as there was no parking in front or at the side, only a tiny lot in the back that was packed with cars secured behind a twelve-foot-tall chain-link fence with razor wire on the top. Inside it were a dozen black Lexuses, three Caddys, and one old Bentley, its cream paint gleaming under the streetlight. At each car stood a human blood-servant—security types—armed and dangerous. Several smoked, and I lowered my window an inch to test the air. Floating over the herbal scent of vamp and the stink of gas lighting, I smelled cigars, cigarettes, chewing tobacco, and marijuana.