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CHAPTER 28

Street Life


So there we were in Mardi Gras. People had warned me that if I thought a full moon was insane in New Orleans “just wait.” They weren’t kidding.

Of course, since our crazy monster activity had died down considerably, we were hoping it would be the normal kind of crazy, not the blood-soaked-massacre kind.

The parades and celebrations had been going on since before the Sugar Bowl. They just got more and more frantic and raucous as the month went by. Hoodoo? Didn’t nothing stop the Mardi Gras krewes from turning out. So we were all on station waiting for something bad to happen.

All the parades and second lines and celebrations were just a warm-up for the Fat Tuesday parade. That one shut down the whole damned city. Every hotel from Bourbon to Baton Rouge was booked solid. Every street was packed with tourists and locals. And on every corner you could buy everything from a ten-dollar bag of heroin to a ten-year-old.

Ever try to respond to a supernatural outbreak when there are ten thousand drunken assholes in your way?

I’d say the worst part was I was missing the party, but honestly, I was just as glad to not be attending. It was fucking insane. No, the worst part, seriously, was taking thirty minutes to go two blocks only to find that the sighted vampire had already drunk a tourist and was long gone.

A week before, the SRT had arrived. Oh, what fun, what fun. Because Mardi Gras was such a big national event, and there had been such a suspicious spike in monster activity over the last year, MCB headquarters had dispatched their elite Special Response Team to keep an eye on things. SRT were the ones who could call in the battleships and B-52s, which meant they outranked everybody.

So while SRT was in town, Special Agent in Charge Castro was temporarily in charge of dick. MCB wasn’t going to be lenient or understanding about anything.

With most of this giant crowd being made up of law-abiding citizens happily ignorant of the supernatural—who would go home and tell all their friends about anything weird they saw—Hoodoo Squad had been told to be discreet. No driving around with sirens wailing and purple lights flashing. It meant I couldn’t carry my Uzi or wear my body armor in public, and the indignity of slinging Mo No Ken over my shoulder in a plastic map case.

Higgins had introduced me to a few of the MCB agents who would be stationed here for Mardi Gras. Unlike our locals, most of them had been stuck-up jerks who wouldn’t give us the time of day. I was told Franks was in town too. I had first met him after my initial encounter with shamblers. I got the impression that most of the MCB were a little frightened of him.

The day before, Agent Marine stopped by Maurice’s. He had been given a rookie junior MCB agent fresh out of their academy to be his temporary gopher. I was surprised to discover that it was someone I knew.

It was Dwayne Myers. He had been with MHI for a few years and had even been on Earl’s team. Good reputation, had been tight with Ray. Like me, he had even rated having the little Shackleford kids call him uncle. I had heard he had quit after his best friend, Marty Hood, had gotten killed in a training accident, but I hadn’t known that he’d joined the MCB. There wasn’t traditionally a lot of crossover between our organizations.

I tried to talk to him, but Dwayne wasn’t feeling talkative, looked like he didn’t want to be there, and was basically being an asshole to everyone, but I bought him a drink anyway. Melisent poured us shots.

“Absent companions.” I drank. He didn’t.

“I’m on duty.”

“Higgins doesn’t seem to care.” I pointed my chin at Agent Marine, who was being his usual self. “I heard about Hood’s accident. Sorry, man.”

Dwayne gave me an angry look. “So that’s what Earl is calling it? An accident?”

“Why? Was it something else?”

“I don’t know.” He stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“So why the job change, Dwayne? I know it can’t be because the government pays better.”

From down the bar, Higgins laughed.

“You really want to know, Chad? MHI is a bunch of damned cowboys, pushing too hard, and getting good men killed in the process. They’re not by the book. They don’t even have a book. You’re a smart guy. Get out of MHI while you still can.” And then Dwayne got up and walked out of Maurice’s, his shot untouched.

“That rookie needs to learn to relax,” Agent Higgins said as he came over and finished Dwayne’s drink. “Wound tight like that, he’ll never last long in the MCB.”

* * *

It was just after sundown and I was pushing my way through the drunken mob with a new guy named Caleb Warren. New to New Orleans, but not new to MHI. He was a big, blond Minnesota farm boy from hardy Viking stock. Ray had talked him into transferring here from our team in California.

We were responding to a vamp call right by the freaking Place D’Armes hotel. For those of you who don’t know it, it’s right on one of the busiest streets in New Orleans and right at the height of tourist season on freaking Fat Tuesday. And this vamp throat-bites a tourist right in front of God and everybody. Most of the other tourists thought it was street theater or something. The hotel shut its security doors up tight and screamed for help.

Caleb and I were over on Orleans Street when we got the call. Couple of blocks. Vamps right on the street was a “Go Now” from SIU. We were pretty much matched in terms of getting through the crowds. Caleb had more mass and longer legs and could bull through the tourists. I had agility and could slither through, but it was easier to follow the big guy. Nice to have a plow.

We forced our way across St. Ann Street to the sidewalk on the Place D’Armes side and slowed down. We could see the victim down. Someone, a tourist I’m pretty sure, was doing CPR.

Uh, lady, if you do manage to get him back you are in for the last shock of your life.

Not really—it usually takes a few days for them to wake up, plenty of time to get them embalmed. That’s one of the reasons people started embalming. Keeps the number of surprise vampires down.

As we approached, a young kid in a hoodie walking towards us turned around and started running. Then he jumped up onto a second-story balcony at 635, then up to another second on the corner building of Royal, and up to the third, then up to the roof. Fast. Not humanly fast. Supernaturally fast.

We’d found our vamp.

Now, when he went to the second story, the chase was on. Normally, a vamp easily can outrun a human, but I was going to run this fucker down. One vamp? I was Iron Hand, baby. I wasn’t even going to bother with “stake.” I was going right to “chop.”

A lot of the buildings in the Quarter are flat-roofed. And I have always been agile.

“Boost,” I yelled to Caleb, running up to under the balcony.

“Trevor said stick together!”

“Boost!”

“You’ve got to be…” Caleb said, then shrugged and stuck his hands down, interlocked.

A second later I was up on that second-floor balcony. By then the vamp was disappearing over the rooftop.

Screw that. I burst through the glass French doors into a party for the upper crust.

“Hoodoo Squad,” I said politely. “Sorry about the door. Vamp on the roof. Where’s your roof access?”

“This way, young man.”

Their gentleman was another older fellow like Remi. As the party resumed, he politely but rapidly led me to the ladder to the roof. I could partially hear, partially construct the conversation as I left. The owners of the condominium had out-of-town guests visiting for Mardi Gras.

“What was that about? You just let him barge into your home? Shouldn’t we call someone?”

“It’s a New Orleans thing, cher. Don’t trouble yourself. Henri will clean up the glass when he comes back. More cabernet?”

“It’s a New Orleans thing” explains everything to out-of-towners.

“Please apologize to your patrons and their guests,” I said as I climbed up the ladder.

“We do understand, sir,” the gentleman said.

The vamp had run from the roof he’d climbed and onto the one I was on. But by the time I was up on it, he’d backtracked onto the roof of Place d’Armes and headed in the general direction of the corner of Chartres and Dumaine.

I, of course, gave chase. The weather, for once, wasn’t blazing hot, and up on the roofs I could make good time, unlike in the street.

“Hand, where are you?” Caleb radioed.

“Headed towards Chartres and Dumaine,” I said, sort of panting but not gasping. It had been a pretty decent run so far.

The fang headed over a few more roofs, jumped into the air in a tremendous leap and disappeared.

He was getting away. I ran faster, leaping across the few openings and up onto the edge of the roof he’d flown off of. I looked down. Alley. Dumpster. Top closed. No time to think. I hit it in a roll and then off and onto the ground, landing on my feet.

The vampire was waiting for me.

Correction, all the vampires were waiting for me.

Red eyes appeared in the shadows. They hissed and growled as they circled. I was surrounded.

“I’ve been watching the Hoodoo Squad for a while. I knew you would be the only one impulsive enough to follow a vampire by himself,” said the one I had been chasing. He lowered his hoodie. The fang appeared to be a black male in his early twenties, and he was leaning against a brick wall under the one dim light in the entire alley, looking smug. “I took my time so you could catch up.”

“You think you can kill me?” I drew Mo No Ken. Some of the vampires ventured into the light. They all looked young and made me wonder if we’d missed some of the kids who’d been killed at the university. “Come on then!”

“This is the one who murdered Drusilla!” That vampire, a white kid who was actually wearing a Loyola T-shirt, rushed me. “Let’s turn him!”

Ichor droplets were still in the air when his head went flying into the festive night. There was a brief cheer in the distance that was entirely unrelated. Great timing though.

The expression on his face in the moment before Mo No Ken struck was perfect surprise. I expected him to say, “Wait. What just happened?”

“I am Iron Hand, bitch!” I shouted, spitting on his deliquescing head. “My blood would burn your undead soul!”

“Enough, children,” the leader said. All of the other vampires immediately froze. The severed head had landed between us. He began walking toward me, pausing long enough to dismissively kick the skull into a pile of trash with his Air Jordans. “If I wanted you dead, Hunter, you would be. This is my city.”

“New Orleans doesn’t belong to vampires.”

“Spare me. I’ve been here so long that while I was still alive, we considered Andrew Jackson a tourist. You can call me Jack.”

I struck. It was a blindingly fast downward slash that should have cut right through Jack’s neck.

The vampire caught Mo No Ken. Mourning stopped abruptly, with an impact that I felt in my wrists like I had just tried to chop through a boulder. He had simply clapped his hands together, only he’d moved so fast I hadn’t seen it. A bit of steam rose from between his palms from the consecrated oil.

Oh shit.

If Jack wasn’t a Master vampire, he was probably close enough that it wouldn’t matter. From what I had read on the topic, the best way to fight Master vampires was with artillery.

“I brought you here so we could talk,” Jack said, not sounding upset or surprised that I had just tried to kill him. He didn’t even show me his fangs, but I realized the temperature had suddenly dropped. There was another flash of movement and Mo No Ken went clattering down the alley. He’d effortlessly ripped it from my grasp.

“Okay…” Listening beat dying so I played it cool. “What can I do for you, Jack?”

“Here’s the deal, Chad…”

“I prefer Iron Hand.”

Jack raised an eyebrow. “Whatever, Chad. I’m here to do you a favor. I’ve seen Hunters come and go, and contrary to what you might believe about my kind, I don’t mind you meddlesome little pricks all that much.”

“That’s kind of surprising.” I nodded my chin toward the melting college student.

“Amusements and pets. The vampires you weed out are those too stupid to follow orders or too feral to listen to reason. Basically, Hunters keep out the riffraff. Too much human blood shed draws attention, and attention causes me inconvenience.”

“Then you should tell your little minions to calm down.”

“That’s the problem, Chad. They aren’t listening so well anymore. New Orleans has become a vortex, drawing the darkness in. The uncivilized of my kind feel compelled to come here, their hunger magnified. Every half-wit who has ever played at magic is suddenly a powerful necromancer. It is all the fault of a new player in town. Or perhaps I should say old player, but it has recently turned its malevolent gaze upon us once again.”

“The activity spikes during the full moon…” Too bad, we had hoped things were actually calming down. Ray’s team had even gone back to Cazador. “I thought we were through that.”

“No. Recently you have merely been enjoying the temporary lull of a cyclical hunger. It was full, but now it’s back. What you’ve seen before? It is nothing compared to what’s coming to this town next.”

It was so cold next to the vampire that I was beginning to shiver. “How come you haven’t taken it out then?”

“It is beyond my reach. It is incredibly powerful. It troubles me. This thing is an outsider. A trespasser. It’s a…a…”

“Tourist.”

“Damned right,” Jack said. “Fucking tourists.”

In Seattle I had learned that monsters had turf wars too. After we had taken out that lich, it had been chaos until I’d found our Fey princess to take its place. It sounded like Jack didn’t like being deposed. What the hell? I had gotten monster intel from the yakuza. How much worse could this be?

Well, obviously a lot worse, but Jack the super vampire hadn’t ripped me in half yet.

“Tell me where this thing is then, and I’ll handle it.”

“In time. Don’t worry. I’ll be in touch.” With a nod from Jack, the other vampires retreated. I caught glimpses of them spider-climbing up the walls. In seconds they were all gone. “Right now, you’ve got more important things to deal with. A normally inept priestess has asked for a curse upon tonight’s celebration, and our ambivalent yet powerful tourist god has granted her wishes beyond her wildest dreams. You’ll want to gather all your forces and head toward Royal.”

“What are we dealing with?”

“Something bad enough that if it breaks free, thousands of mortals will perish, and then my city will be crawling with so many government men that I’ll never be free of the annoyance…Assuming the carpetbaggers don’t just pull the plug and flood the whole place. Believe me. If they knew what was here, they would not hesitate. I’ve seen the entire world in ways your pathetic mortal mind can’t even begin to comprehend, but this is, and always will be, my home. There is nothing else like this place, distinct and wonderful. I wish to keep it that way.”

It’s like Trevor said. New Orleans natives always come back.

“We’ll take care of it,” I said.

“Good luck, Iron Hand.”

I blinked, and Jack had already vanished.

By the time I got on the radio, the temperature was returning to normal. Freakin’ creepy super vampires.

* * *

Just as I finished warning the others, Caleb came running up.

“What took you so long?”

“Have you seen the crowds?” Caleb said, bending over and putting his hands on his knees to pant. Big guys. No stamina.

Jack had said we’d need all of our forces, so I was checking if anybody had eyes on the MCB.

“I see some SRT from here dressed up like cops,” Shelbye replied. “I can shoot the big scary one to get his attention.”

The big scary one was probably Agent Franks. Shelbye was up in the bell tower of St. Louis Cathedral with a Barrett, a .30-06 BDL and her M14. So she pretty much had the whole area covered. The bishop hadn’t even blinked when I had asked if she could stay up there.

“I called Castro directly and gave the SIU a heads-up,” Trevor responded sharply. “Hang on, Shelbye, river side. What the hell is that coming over the levee?”

“That’s…crawfish? Big-ass crawfish! Whoo-hoo, we gonna be havin’ another fais do-do!”

“I’m getting close to the water. There’s…hundreds. The river is swarming with them. All teams to the riverfront!” Trevor said.

I could hear fire starting from the bell tower as well as rapid fire from near the river. It was barely audible over the Mardi Gras madness.

“Retransmit! All teams to the riverfront! We’ve got—”

The call cut off.


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