CHAPTER 8

“That so did not go well,” Sasha said, trudging along the sidewalk. “Now what?”

Hunter stopped and looked off into the distance. “There’s got to be some place to start. What are we missing, Sasha?”

“The graveyards and desecrated mausoleums maybe?”

Hunter shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt, but what’ll be left after the Vampires just did their search and, according to Doc, Woods, Fisher, and Winters, had nothing to report?”

Sasha landed a hand on Hunter’s broad back as they continued walking. “I don’t know, but I’m hoping the human factor will kick in.”

He gave her a puzzled glance and she motioned with her chin toward the homeless milling the streets.

“Humans are creatures of habit. Somebody saw something. Graveyards are a great place to rest and hide when you have nowhere else to go. We just have to hope that any eyewitnesses got out of Dodge with their lives when this all went down during the daylight hours and we can find at least one person with some info.”

If it wasn’t for Winters’s genius on the computer, it could have taken days to find Monroe Bonaventure’s grave. New Orleans was a complex series of elaborate aboveground cemeteries. There were just some things, like narrowing down options, that technology easily solved.

“This doesn’t look like a place that a homeless person might wander in and sleep during the day without a hassle, Sasha.” Hunter glanced around at the well-manicured rolling lawns and detailed landscaping.

“Yeah, I know,” Sasha said in a dejected tone. “But a place like this would have groundskeepers and some kind of security to shoo out any vagrants, though.” She glanced up, noting the pitch of the sun, and then began jogging. “The administration house should still be open.”

As they ran side by side along the paths, she tried to memorize every detail of the cemetery that housed a seriously old Vampire, one strong enough to become a sixth viceroy. What would have made Monroe fear his own mansion and come back to his actual grave? He should have had a well-protected lair and not been forced to go to ground. The older ones rarely did that, only keeping dirt from their original burial site to give them extra power. None of it made sense. But one thing she was sure of, someone at the administration house had to be clued in. Monroe Bonaventure would not have come here without human daytime security. Who was not on the job today would be as important as who was.

Sasha stopped in front of the building and glanced at Hunter. “I want to know who was on shift when the mausoleum was desecrated, and who called out sick today.”

“We are thinking as one,” he said, loping up the large white steps of what looked like an old plantation house.

She rang the patron’s bell and then slowly opened one side of the huge white double doors. Although sunshine brightly lit the interior and the entire place gleamed with lemon-scented furniture polish, an eerie feeling settled into Sasha’s bones.

“May I help you?” a heavyset older woman wearing a floral print dress asked. “I am Mrs. Vance, administrator for Golden Estates.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sasha replied, using her most polite voice. “We are here to find out what happened to our late relative’s grave..   We understand from family sources that someone vandalized it yesterday and we’ve arrived as soon as we could.”

The woman raised her eyebrows over the tops of her half-glasses. “You are, uhm, Monroe Bonaventure’s relatives?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sasha said, trying not to smile. She dropped her voice and whispered, leaning in. “A lot of family doesn’t want it known and we respect that, but family is family and when we heard of what happened here we just wanted to see what we could do to make it right.”

“We promise to leave quickly, ma’am,” Hunter said, needling the distressed woman. “If we can find out a little more—enough to report back to the family.”

Mrs. Vance cleared her throat and nodded, seeming relieved. “Well, yes.   yes, of course. It was all such a nasty business, but we’ve replaced the locks and have done what we can to repair any disturbed masonry. Some people are just so sacrilegious and have no respect for the dead.”

“Terrible,” Sasha said, dramatically placing a hand over her heart. “But could we speak to the groundskeeper who was actually here when the discovery was made?”

“He was so upset that he called out sick after the incident. Poor Mr. Romero has been with us for years and he gave a brief statement to the sheriff and then took ill.” The administrator lowered her voice and looked around. “Some around here are very superstitious, and desecrating a grave is considered bad luck. We may well have to go to lengths to coax him back here to work after something like this. But if you’d like to see the progress of the repairs, I can give you the plot coordinates so you can look for yourselves. We can have someone take you out there, if you’d like?”

“Thank you so much,” Sasha said, eyeing the building through the large picture window behind the administrator where groundskeepers seemed to be gathered.

“Then please have a seat.”

Sasha and Hunter crossed the room and waited as Mrs. Vance made the call. They kept their voices to a low murmur to be sure their conversation couldn’t be overheard.

“Romero has to have a locker or something in the groundskeepers’ house, wouldn’t you think?”

Hunter nodded and spoke in a low, barely audible rumble: “I also don’t think one very old man would be the security force for a powerful Vamp. I’m getting weird vibes from this lady, and all the groundskeepers walking toward the building seem like they could double for Marines.”

“I feel you,” Sasha said, watching as groundskeepers suddenly flanked the building. “Maybe I need to go to the ladies’ room and you should walk me, huh?”

Hunter nodded. “Excuse me, ma’am. My wife is a little overwrought by all of this. Would there be a ladies’ room where she can splash water on her face?”

Mrs. Vance offered Hunter a tight smile. “Why, yes, of course, poor thing. Just down the hall to your left.”

“Come on, honey,” Hunter said, lifting Sasha from her chair by the elbow for dramatic effect. “Let’s put some water on your face and then we can go see your late cousin’s grave, twice removed.”

The pair walked down the hall and calmly took the corner and then bolted. Thankfully, the massive plantation-style home was replete with shadows. They slipped into the nearest one cast by the ladies’ room entrance and came out inside the groundskeepers’ shed and then both stared at each other.

The scent of day-old human blood assaulted their noses. Quickly moving from locker to locker and trying to keep an eye on the windows, Hunter yanked locks off the doors with a quick turn of the wrist while Sasha rifled through the contents.

“Ten bucks says Romero is a dead man,” Sasha muttered as she came upon his locker and Hunter yanked it open.

“I’ll raise you five,” Hunter said, showing her sawed-off shotguns that he’d retrieved from several lockers, along with boxes of silver shells. “If he was on shift when it all happened, either whoever did it killed him or his fellow grave guards did for messing up.   or maybe the Vamps did.”

Sasha held his olive green uniform shirt against her nose for a moment and then looked up at Hunter. “Adrenaline is all in his sweat. This man was freaked out.”

“We need to move,” Hunter said, his attention jerking toward the door. “Like now!”

The shack door burst open; Sasha and Hunter were gone.

“They came in here!” a grave guard yelled. “We didn’t leave all this shit out.”

Another grabbed a shotgun. “Comb the grounds; find them. I’m not getting my heart ripped out for nobody. You saw what happened to Romero.”

Hands reached for weapons and shells. Boots thudded against the wooden floor. Sasha held the uniform in her grip tightly, invisibly waiting in the shadows with Hunter until the shack cleared. She dug in the pockets as something crackled within the fabric she clutched. A long rolled-up partial snakeskin fell into her palm and she unfurled it, showing it to Hunter with a puzzled gaze.

“What the hell.  ”

“You owe me fifteen bucks,” Hunter said, and then stepped out of the shadow that hid them. “Romero is dead. But what he had in his pocket isn’t from an ordinary snake. It smells of sulfur.”

“But why would his shirt and boots and work items still be here with this in it?” Sasha continued peering at the strange, translucent skin.

“He was human. If you are going to kill a human that has a day job and pays taxes, you’ve gotta cover it up, right?”

“Right.” Sasha sniffed the skin. “So you’d undress the victim and stash his gear and make it look like he just left work, upset, like it was another day at the job, before you offed him.”

“And if you were working in a hurry, you might not notice some evidence he’d collected at the scene.” Hunter paused. “Also, what better place to stash a body but in the graveyard, where there are thousands of graves?”

She looked at Hunter. “Yeah, especially if you were trying to blame the breach all on one man to save your asses from the vamps.” She spun around in a circle. “Damn. All we’ve got to go on is a snakeskin, which might just be a talisman that has nothing to do with what Romero saw, and a funky shirt. This sucks. But maybe it’s something we can take to the lab and have Clarissa or Bradley do more research on.”

“Agreed. Let’s get out of here. Both Vamps and their human helpers have obviously ruined the investigation scene, and have even put the mausoleum back together.”

“But.  ” Sasha looked around the shadowy locker room. “Dammit. Sunset will be in just a couple of hours and we’ve literally run around all day and have accomplished nothing.”

“Not true,” Hunter said, guiding her into a shadow. “We’ve put an offer on the table for the Vampires to consider—”

“Or laugh at.”

“And we’ve alerted the human military.   and we’ve called in our family to a safe base.” Hunter smoothed her hair back from her face as they stood in the sanctuary of the shadow path mist. “Sometimes, Captain, a good retreat is the most logical strategy at the moment.”

“Can you identify this as a talisman or a ward.   or even tell what kind of snake this is from?” Sasha held out the skin to Clarissa and Bradley and then gently laid it down on the long lab table while the rest of the team gathered around.

“Where did you get something like this, Sasha?” Clarissa said, backing away from it as Bradley leaned in closer, inspecting the partial skin with a large magnifying glass.

“It doesn’t have the markings of any regional snake I know.” Bradley looked up. “What I mean is, the scale pattern is uncommon; look at the depressions in the—”

“Don’t touch it,” Clarissa said, grabbing his arm. “Nobody touch it.”

“We got it from one of the grave guards’ shirt—a guy we presume is dead,” Hunter said, his gaze fixed on Clarissa.

“We think this guy either had it on him as some kinda juju or maybe collected it at the scene, but obviously never got to tell anybody who cared to hear about it.” Sasha looked from Hunter to Clarissa. “You’re freaking me out, ’Rissa.”

Doc moved around the table, keeping his hands back but peering at the specimen closely. “Whatever it is, it came from a huge snake. This is only a partial, but if you extrapolate the size of the scales.   man.”

“You give me a diameter and I can run a model to size the thing,” Winters said, heading toward his temporary computer bay. “I wish we’d had a little more time to get set up here at the NAS, but if you guys are tracking giant snakes, then I’m all for the move of being on a military base.”

Woods pounded Fisher’s fist. “Dude, just tell me and Fish how big that sucker is and we’ll be sure to get artillery that can handle it.”

“Dude,” Fisher said, shaking his head. “I love this job, but remind me to tell you over a beer how much I hate this job.”

“It’s not from a normal snake,” Clarissa said, her blond lashes beginning to flutter.

“The size alone says it’s not normal!” Winters called out as his fingers flew across the keyboard.

“No,” she said quietly. “This came from something that resides in Hell.”

“Okay, now I’m officially freaked out,” Winters said as he stopped typing.

“You’re sure?” Sasha rounded the table and held Clarissa by her shoulders.

Clarissa nodded. “The energy off it is so dark and so thick that I almost can’t breathe.”

“That’s enough,” Bradley said, quickly setting down the magnifying glass and going to Clarissa. “She’d been here before and I swore that I would never allow her to get caught up in a dark divination that could jeopardize her life.”

“Come out of the trance, Clarissa,” Sasha said, beginning to panic as Clarissa swooned.

Doc was immediately at her side and for several minutes team members took turns calling Clarissa’s name, shaking her, slapping her cheeks, until she finally came around.

“Get that thing out of here,” Bradley said. His face was flushed and his expression was stricken as Hunter carefully lifted up the offending snakeskin and slipped it back into the uniform pocket.

“We need to take this to the Vampires—after we record it in the United Council of Entities Hall of Records,” Hunter said. “Sir Rodney and Queen Cerridwen also need to know about this.”

“Good looking out,” Sasha said, and then stared at Doc. “See if Silver Hawk can hurry here to seal this area with a shaman’s prayer. If me and Hunter just bird-dogged something that came up from Hell, who knows what’s gonna happen come sundown.”

They stood in the depths of the Louisiana bayou with a full Fae retinue at their sides. Swamp sounds of frogs and crickets went still as the ancient council hall rose from the mud, disturbing gators and other slithering things that moved in the black water. Then they waited for the old crone who presided over all matters as a neutral party to exit the columns and come down the steps. It was a painfully slow process to watch her shuffle along the wet marble with her huge black book of records under her arthritic arm.

She stopped at the bottom step and glared at those who’d called her before the sunset, seeming genuinely perturbed at the breach of protocol.

“Who dares call a session before the moon has arisen?” she croaked, sending an accusatory glare around the group.

“We do—the North American Shadow Wolf Federation,” Hunter said, and then motioned with his chin to the book under her arm. “We have evidence that could avert a war, if it is heeded.”

“Speak!” the crone yelled out, and then flung the black book into the air.

The book hovered between her and the group and then opened to a blank page, allowing a raven-feathered quill pen to escape its pages with a squeal.

“I am a Shadow Wolf, with full silver aura,” Hunter announced. “Therefore, my testimony requires no blood strike from your pen of truth.”

“Agreed,” the crone said, now seeming more curious than annoyed. “Continue.”

“Our allies have been accused of opening Vampire graves to daylight, but they claim that they are innocent. We, the North American Shadow Wolf Federation, went to the Vampires today—to the Blood Oasis—to offer them our assistance in finding out who could have done this. The Southeast Asian Werewolf Federation is a neutral party and is uninvolved at this juncture. Then we went to the scene of the last crime, to the cemetery that once held Monroe Bonaventure, Sixth Viceroy of Cartel Elder Vlad Tempesh.”

Hunter held out the snakeskin for the crone to examine before he continued on. “We found this in the Vampire human helper’s uniform at Golden Estates, Mr. Romero, who is now deceased and was killed by his own men, we presume. This is all we have at the onset of our investigation, but we are asking the UCE court for more time to investigate before the Vampires are given free rein to retaliate. At this juncture, we need a go-between to keep the peace and to keep the business of the supernatural community beyond the eyes of the already-panicked human population. Open warfare serves no purpose.”

“Aye,” Sir Rodney said, “especially since we are innocent.”

“So they all say,” the crone muttered. “But if you are found guilty of the serious offense of opening Vampire graves to daylight without warrant, there will be no mercy this court can offer. You are aware of the might and reputation of your adversaries.”

“That we are,” Queen Cerridwen said, lifting her chin. “But this evidence is strange. I have been blamed because the locks were shattered by instant freezing.   yet what has a serpent skin from Hell to do with my so-called handiwork? Something untoward is amiss.”

Grumbles of Fae soldiers’ assent filtered throughout the dense foliage and even Garth seemed puzzled as the crone fingered the skin and then held it out for the pen and book to inspect.

“This is a rare artifact, something no human should have had access to—at least not one living.” The crone calmly folded the skin up and placed it under the last page of the hovering book. “Let it be entered into the record that the wolves tracked a very interesting bit of evidence that requires much further investigation. I personally haven’t seen the skin of an Erinyes wreath in more than a thousand years.”

Sasha gave Hunter a quizzical look as the Fae collectively released an audible gasp.

“What’s an Erinyes wreath?” Sasha stared at the crone and then her gaze ricocheted around to look at the others.

“It came from a type of group of demons also known as the Furies,” Garth said in a hushed tone. “They are kindred to the Gorgons, but countless in number.”

“Cousins. The Gorgons have hair made of serpents and turn an onlooker to stone, but the Erinyes have serpent wreaths in their hair.   bat wings and avenge the anger of the dead,” the crone remarked casually, beginning to walk back up the palatial council stairs. She called the book with a snap of her fingers. “One generally does not see those sharing graves or victims with Vampires. Yes, all of this is very curious. You may have a case indeed.”