The Wolven. Deborah LeBlanc

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      Lurnell batted a hand at her. “Girl, they trash if they out runnin’ a line of blow while they babies at home alone with no food and in stinky diapers. Oh, yeah, that’s trash. That be a whole damn trash truck if you ask me.”

      “You know her?” Shauna asked.

      “She ain’t like my friend or nothin’, but, yeah, I know her. She works in one of them bars over at the ca sino. They call her Mattress Mattie, ’cause she always spread in’ them skinny legs so she can make that green. She got two babies—two, you hearin’ me? And what you think she be doin’ with that little extra somethin’ she makin’ on the side?”

      “Buying drugs,” High Tea said, her tone definitive.

      “See that?” Lurnell said. “Even Miss Thing got the set up, and she ain’t even from around here.”

      High Tea beamed as if she’d just won a prize.

      Lurnell tapped on the window, apparently to get Mattie’s attention. The woman kept pacing, smoking, talking to herself.

      “Yeah, she hurtin’ right now. Needin’ some blow. Bet she out there waitin’ for her dealer.”

      High Tea gasped. “You allow them to deal drugs out there?”

      “Of course not,” Fiona said sharply. “We can’t control what people do on the street, though. Did you see a drug deal take place in front of this shop? If you did, please tell me because I obviously missed it.”

      With a haughty lift of her chin, High Tea tsked. “Well, if I owned this establishment, I would—”

      “Now what you think that piece of shrimp bait’s doin’ out there?” Lurnell said, planting a fist on a hip. “That boy is trouble all by his ownself.”

      Mattie had company now. She was talking to Banjo Marks, a young vampire who came from an old bayou family. Shauna knew he was homeless and a junkie. The guy eagerly swallowed, snorted, or injected, anything and everything he got his hands on. His weekly regimen consisted of LSD, pot, crystal-meth and cocaine. Whatever he scored in between those primers, Banjo considered lagniappe. He was tall and lanky, and had thin, scraggly blond hair that hung in greasy strands down to the middle of his back. Most of the time he smelled like wet, soured towels.

      As if life hadn’t piled enough on Banjo’s plate, he didn’t fit the standard vampire profile, even for this area. He ate and drank like a human. Shauna didn’t know if the years of drug use had caused him to mutate, which in turn allowed him to digest food, or if he was the byproduct of an accidental cross-breeding. Either way, it was strange to see. He came to the shop often, always looking for a handout. And Fiona, being the Keeper of the vampires and the kind-hearted mother hen that she was, never failed to give him food and something warm or cool to drink, whichever the weather dictated.

      As for Shauna, she never liked being around Banjo, and it had nothing to do with his drug use or smell. He had a high-pitched voice and an odd, twittering laugh that sounded like a hyena mating with a screeching macaw. It sawed on her last nerve.

      Mattie and Banjo were yelling now, standing almost nose to nose. Although Shauna could easily hear their conversation, both were so hyped up that most of it came across as gibberish.

      “—today, asshole, you said today!” Mattie jabbed Banjo’s shoulder with a finger. “You said—I been waitin’ … Where’s at? Where?”

      As Mattie poked at Banjo, he shuffled left a few steps, then turned about and moved up one step in the other direction, as if he were square-dancing alone. Then came that horrid, twittering laugh.

      “Swear, swear to Gawd, gonna be here,” he gibbered. “Little problem, gonna be here, though. Yeah, you gonna see—fresh, fresh, fresh. Gonna come, swear to Gawd.”

      Mattie shoved him, and Banjo stumbled backwards, his arms pin-wheeling for balance. She trapped him against a nearby light pole, jabbing a finger at his chest this time. “You—shit … sonofawhore! You promised, you motherf—”

      The twittering laugh—that God-awful twittering laugh …

      Their fight grew so intense people crossed the street to avoid them.

      “Enough’s enough,” Shauna said, and headed for the door. She really didn’t care if they pulled each other’s hair out. What she’d had enough of was Banjo’s laughter.

      “Shauna wait,” Fiona said. “I’ll call—”

      “Yeah, you best hold up, girl,” Lurnell called after her.

      Shauna glanced back at her, then returned her attention to the street in time to see Mattie throw a punch at Banjo’s face. To her surprise, he ducked in time to avoid getting hit. Instead of his face, Mattie’s fist connected with the light pole—and dented it.

      Shauna gaped. Every light pole in the city was constructed of heavy metal due to the narrow streets, heavy traffic and drivers with little to no peripheral vision. No way a skinny woman with bad aim would be able to do that much damage.

      “Whoa! You see that?” Lurnell said.

      Just then the keening sound that had kept Shauna on edge for the last couple of hours grew in volume. Within seconds, it was all she heard. She saw Lurnell’s mouth moving but heard no words.

      Only that pained, mournful cry … loud and long.

      It sank deep into Shauna’s chest—threatened to yank out her heart.

      She had to find the source.

      No doubt in her mind … something was happening … had happened … would happen. No doubt in her mind, it was bad.

      All of it very, very bad.

      He ran.

      Hard, fast …

      Breathless …

      Mindless.

      It was all Danyon knew to do.

      Act on instinct.

      After Andrea left to find Andy, he and Paul had moved Simon’s body into the thicket. He’d ordered Paul to stay put and keep watch. If anyone came into the area, he was to steer them away from the thicket, by any means necessary. Paul, who’d puked his guts out the entire time they moved Simon, had all but burst into tears, not wanting to be left alone with a dead body.

      With no other choice but to leave him in a sniveling heap, Danyon had followed Ian to a set of pilings off Barataria Boulevard, where he’d found Nicole’s body.

      Ian had been right. She was in the same condition as Simon. Clothes tattered and strewn about, lying in a pool of her own blood, bound about the chest and ankles, and in full were-state, claws and fangs ripped away. There was one difference between the deaths, however. Unlike Simon, heavy cable hadn’t been used to restrain Nicole. Only thin, silver wire.

      The pain from the silver alone would have been excruciating. It had burned through Nicole’s fur and flesh, then lodged itself in bone. Definitely enough to keep her restrained all by itself.

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