Skinwalker

Page 4

House and gate had to be two, three hundred years old. I tried the larger, older of two keys, four inches in length, a heart shape on one end. The lock clicked and I squeezed the latch, two bars that compressed to unfasten the gate. It opened without a squeak. Boots on cobblestones, I walked my Harley inside and pulled the gate closed behind me. The latch clicked and I relocked it before walking the bike down the two-rut garden lane beside the house. Or storefront, or boardinghouse. From the smells, it had been lots of things at one time or another.
A careful driver could have gotten a car back here. A small car. But the lane was clearly intended for walkers, or maybe horseback riders. There were all kinds of plants, some with long stems and elephant ear-sized leaves of various color combinations. There were climbing roses and jasmine and a few other things I recognized, but my knowledge of botany was limited. Several plants were flowering and smelled heavenly. I caught a hint of catnip. Beast made a hacking sound deep inside. I wasn’t always sure what that meant, but it was a reaction of some sort used during both positive and negative discoveries. In this case, maybe it was a sign of recognition.
The house was narrow on the street side, but long, with a deep second-story wooden balcony covering a ground-floor porch that overlooked the tiny side lane and back garden. I could see chairs on the porch, a few tables. More wrought-iron trellises and rails served to keep people from falling off. The porch on the lower level was slate floored, with more iron. The house had tall windows closed with French shutters, five windows on each story, and there was one door on each floor with stairs near the back leading between. Four doors total, all flimsy. Not much security.
I could check out the interior of the house later. The back garden first. I pushed the Harley on around. The garden widened into a thirty-by-forty-foot rectangular space at the bottom of the lane, and was exquisite. It was surrounded by ornamental yet entirely functional brick walls fifteen feet high, and was lined with plants of all varieties. A big fountain splashed in a corner, water pouring from a huge marble tulip with a miniature naked woman sitting atop. The sculpture was finely detailed, a masterwork, and I noted the statue’s resemblance to Katie. Tiny fangs were a dead giveaway. I wondered how many houses she owned on this block. Maybe all of them. You could do some powerful estate planning when you had lived over two hundred years. Maybe three hundred. Maybe more.
Over the city sounds and even with the roar of the Harley still affecting my ears, I could hear the tiny motor powering the pump. Other than that, and the sound of an unfamiliar night bird, the garden was silent.
Across from the fountain, sown with dozens of healthy plants, were three large boulders and half a dozen smaller ones brought in by the crane Troll had mentioned. Katie was right. The gardener had done a good job; the boulders looked like they had been here forever.
I set the kickstand and walked the garden, looking for wires, scuffs on the brick, signs of work other than the gardener’s. I spotted them fast, a scuff near the left back corner, too high to be from a spade, and a well-concealed electrical line running from the security light down to the brick wall.
I pulled off the straps that secured my shotgun and set it aside. The jacket followed, and, sitting down on a conveniently placed bench, I tugged off my boots. I gathered three loose cobblestones and dropped them into my T-shirt. They landed against my skin at my waist, held in place by my belt. Then I pulled the bench to the wall, spat on my hands for effect more than necessity, and leaped.
The brick wall was irregular, with some bricks forming depressions and others sticking out just enough for a rock climber to know what to do with them. I hadn’t climbed Everest, but I’d lived in the Appalachians and had taken a few classes. I had taken at least a few classes in lots of things.
I caught a slightly protuberant brick and swung out, catching another with my toes, pushing up for a second handhold, another toehold. I reached the top of the fence and studied it. There was no barbed wire, no broken glass embedded in concrete, no trip wires. Nothing. A half-assed job, security-wise.
I pulled myself to the top and stood, surveying the yard next door. A small dog, more hair than meat, growled at me. Beast was rising in my mind as the moon rose and darkness fell, and she spat at it, not that the stupid little dog could tell. I reined her back and, because she understood that the safety of the den was paramount, she let me. I was better at human things, and she didn’t mind me taking over as long as it wasn’t dangerous. Then it got a bit harder to submerge her instincts.
I walked along the wall, taking in the scents of the place, the brick warm beneath my bare feet as I scrutinized the garden with eyes and nose and considered the walls on the houses adjacent to my freebie-house wall. I came to the back corner where the scuff was and toed a tiny lump, brushing away dirt that had been carefully sprinkled there. I reached down and pulled the miniature security camera from the duct tape holding it in place. The tape made little snapping sounds as it broke.
The electrical wires powering the camera came free as well, and I turned the camera lens to me, holding it level. I smiled at Katie, or maybe Troll. Or maybe a security firm. I shook my head. I held up the index finger of my free hand and shook it slowly side to side. Then I raised the camera and brought it down on the wall, lens first, and broke it into pieces. I did the same thing to the other two cameras.
I wasn’t worried about ticking off Katie. My Web site was firm about my privacy requirement, and I insisted it be part of my contract. What could she say? “Oh, dearie me, I forgot they were there . . .”? Yeah, right.
When I was sure I had all the ones within easy reach, I positioned myself and studied the camera mounted on the neighbor’s wall. I didn’t want to smash the window next to it. I pulled my T-shirt out and caught the three cobblestones. I hefted them, getting their balance and weight. I had never been as good at throwing as I was at other sports. I threw like a girl. It took all three stones but I smashed the last camera.
Satisfied, I dropped from the wall, not bothering with the brick handholds. With the cameras gone I didn’t need them. I gathered up my belongings and, barefoot, unlocked the door with the smaller key on the big ring. I went through the house fast, locating cameras. I busted two hidden behind grilles, one in an air return, one in a fanlight in the twelve-foot-high ceiling, which I hit with a broom handle. Several others. Finding security devices in a house was a lot harder than in a garden. I’d have to go over it later in better detail, but for now, I had a lot to do. First things first—a call to Molly.
Molly, a powerful earth witch and my very best friend, answered, children giggling and splashing water in the background. “Hey, witchy woman. I’m here. I got the gig,” I said. Molly gave an ululating yell, and I laughed with her.
Vamps and witches came out of the closet in 1962, when Marilyn Monroe tried to turn the U.S. president in the Oval Office and was killed by the Secret Service. There was a witness, Beverly Stumpkin, a White House maid, who ran for her life. The Secret Service quickly set up a suicide scenario for the actress and staked her in her bedroom. Not that anyone believed she had offed herself with a wooden stake to the heart and a garroting wire that beheaded her. The government tried to track down the maid, but she got away clean. Sloppy work all the way around.
Some gossip rag got wind of the real Monroe story and managed to do what the Secret Service couldn’t.They found the maid. Within weeks the lid was blown off the age-old myth. Vamps, and then witches, came out of the closet. If there had been other supernatural beings, it seemed like a good time for them to come out too, but so far no elves, pixies, wood nymphs, or merpeople had appeared. No weres or skinwalkers or shifters of any kind either. I was a singularity in a human world that wouldn’t like me if it knew about me, which meant I had to keep my secret close. And that meant that I had to live without true backup. Except for Molly.
“I’m proud of you,” she said. “Here, talk to the dirtiest child in the world. Maybe she’ll let me finish her bath.” The phone made muted rubbing noises, as if she held it under her arm. I waited patiently.
Molly Meagan Everhart Trueblood, the witch who had spelled my saddlebags, knew all about me. Mol came from a long line of witches. Not the kind in a pointy black hat with a cauldron in the front yard, and not the kind like the Bewitched television show. Witches aren’t human, though they can breed with humans, making little witches about fifty percent of the time, and normal humans the other fifty.
Young witches have a poor survival rate, especially the males, most dying before they reach the age of twenty from various kinds of cancers. The ones who live through puberty, however, tend to live into their early hundreds. Mol was forty, looked thirty, and was fearless.
I had wondered whether witches and skinwalkers had similar genetics.The witch trait is X linked, passed from generation to generation on the X chromosome. About ninety percent of the witches who live to maturity are female; only a few sorcerers, the term some call the male witch, survive in each generation. Nobody knows why witches have such a poor survival rate, but Molly was one of the lucky ones when it came to kids. So far. She had married a sorcerer, Evan, and they had a son, Little Evan, and a daughter, Angelina—Angie. Both have the witch X gene. The girl is a prodigy. And she is only six years old.
Most witches come into their gift slowly, around puberty. Angie came into her gift at age five, and it was atomic bomb potent. Mol postulated that her daughter has a witch gene on both of her X chromosomes, one from her dad, one from her mom, which, if true, would make the girl one of the most powerful witches on the planet, and someone that everyone would want, from the U.S. government’s black ops programs, to the council of witches, to the Chinese, the Russians, you name it. And anyone who didn’t have her would want her dead. Molly kept Angie’s power level under wraps, a lot like I kept what I was under wraps. And she and Evan warded their children and their property with protection, healing, and lots of prayers.
A delicate, sweet voice said, “Hi, Aunt Jane.” My heart started to melt. Beast stopped pushing and sat, panting, in my mind. Kits, she thought at me, happy.