Death's Rival

“Look around,” Wrassler said, his eyes back on the road. “On the backs of slaves and then cheap manual labor, the town fathers kept the place looking both spiffy and old. To supplement tax revenues, the good-ol’-boy town fathers have always looked outside farming, shipping, and transportation. Mississippi might be rife with the usual blunders and nepotism and thievery of any bureaucratic government, but their film commission pushed the beauty of the town to the outside world.”

My brows went up at his vocabulary. I’d had no idea Wrassler could pronounce the words, let alone use them right.

“Natchez made a name in Hollywood. Movies, TV, and documentaries have been made here and the politicians were hoping that the new residents would bring another—the new residents being the owners of a newly renovated three-story building in the middle of historic downtown. Or maybe they call it uptown here.” He glanced up at me again and this time I could see his grin. “All that and I get to go dancing. I am a happy man.”

Wrassler danced? Somehow the muscle-bound burly guy didn’t strike me as the dancing type. “Wrassler, you have a way with words and a way with women,” I said.

We rode toward town, past shacks, trailer parks, and advertisements for tours of plantation homes, and took in the sights. The place was like something out of a Civil War movie, and we spotted some magnificent antebellum homes between the huge trunks and trailing limbs of live oaks. Most of the old homes were the traditional, Tara- in-Gone-with-the-Wind–style of whiteboard with lots of pediments and architectural elements made out of marble and wood, and wraparound porches. Two-story, sometimes with fancy gabled windows in the roofline. Some of the sprawling monstrosities had iron or brick privacy walls, horses prancing in the whiteboarded fields out back, and multicar garages with living space—presumably for servants—overhead. Even in town we saw homes that belonged on the covers of magazines.

We started at Canal Street and worked our way in. For blocks, the town had businesses in old buildings from the eighteen hundreds: art galleries, restaurants, grills, boutiques, a bookstore, and in the middle, we passed by the town’s most recently refurbished three-story building, restored, revamped (pun intended), and once owned by Hieronymus, Blood Master of Clan Hieronymus, now owned by a dead man, and being refurbished by Lucas Vazquez de Allyon, who was soon to be a true-dead vamp.

As we circled the block, Eli slid down the window and took dozens of shots of the building with a camera set on burst mode. The old windows on the ground floor were swathed in silver velvet draperies, hiding the building’s interior. The windows in the two upper stories had functioning copper shutters, all closed. If not for the plans on file with the county, we’d have no idea what the interior was like.

We circled back around and followed GPS instructions to the bed-and-breakfast we had rented on the outskirts of town. It was a huge, three-story place landscaped with the ubiquitous live oaks and magnolias, acres of pecan trees, azaleas, and even flowering trees, which was odd for this time of year. Bruiser leaned close to the dark-tinted windows and said, “Japanese apricot and Higan cherry. Lovely.”

Eli grunted and said, “This place is gonna be a bugger to secure.”

“Yeah,” I said to them both. That’s me, full of chatter.

I left the men to unload and I knocked on the door. I was let in by the owner, a skinny, wrinkled woman with shocking red hair and no fashion sense. She was wearing gray velour elastic-waist pants pulled up over her tiny, rounded belly, a purple shirt, yellow house shoes, and an olive green scarf printed with red and blue flowers. A string of pearls that had to be at least fifty inches long was wound around her neck and rested across her belly.

“You must be Esmee,” Bruiser said from behind me. He leaned past to take her hand and insinuated himself into the foyer. “I’m George Dumas.”

“Ohhhh, Mr. Dumas,” she twittered. “I am so honored to meet you. Anyone who knows the president is always welcome here.”

“He was very complimentary about your home and domestic servants, and I understand that you took very good care of him and Nancy while they were here.”

“Such a nice couple,” she said, her voice high-pitched and girlish. “And even though they were Hollywood types, they seemed quite well bred.”

A Hollywood president, married to Nancy? The Reagans? And Bruiser knew them? Sometimes I forgot that he was over a hundred years old. While he took care of the particulars, I reconnoitered the house. The downstairs was something like out of a movie set or the way really rich people lived, with antique wood furniture juxtaposed with more modern comforts, parquet floors in tri-colored woods, silk rugs, copper-coffered twelve-foot ceilings, and a maid and chef, which meant we wouldn’t leave a mess or have to cook. There was a living room, dining room, kitchen, butler’s pantry, wine closet, coffee bar, wet bar, billiards room, music room, TV room, servant’s toilet, powder room for guests, a coat closet bigger than a small garage, and a mudroom with a full bath off the back entrance. I stuck my head out and saw a six-car garage to the left and a pool in the center of the enclosed garden. The wall around the backyard was over eight feet tall. No one would be getting in unless they could jump like I could or pole-vault in. The upstairs had eight bedrooms and five baths, and slept sixteen easily, more in a pinch—plenty of room for the rest of the men when the gear truck got here. The third story, up under the eaves, was where the servants slept and I backed out quickly when I realized I was in private quarters.

The place was amazing. I did not fit in here. Not at all. But I wasn’t complaining.

I picked the smallest room and crawled into the bed. It was like lying down on air, and I punched the mattress. It swallowed my fist and then slowly returned to a flat plane. It was that memory foam stuff. I kicked off my boots, tossed my bra to the side and my weapons on the bed, curling up next to them. I had a feeling that I would get no sleep while I was here, so I was going to catnap when I got the chance. I was asleep in minutes.

I woke to the sound of gunfire, my hands grabbing for weapons.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN And Then He Changed His Pants

I analyzed the sound patterns as I checked the Walthers, stuck one in my waistband against my spine, and shoved extra magazines in pockets. The gunfire was coming from downstairs, and I hadn’t seen a shooting gallery. It was still daylight out, which meant no vamps, and I was betting there were no weres or witches living openly here; therefore it was a good guess that we were under attack by humans. De Allyon’s people had heard we were here, and decided on a preemptive attack. “Dang small-town gossip factory,” I whispered.

I opened the door and slid into the hallway, trying to get my sleep-clogged brain up to speed and remember the layout of the house. I shut the door behind me and quickly checked the other rooms. I didn’t smell anyone, but it would be stupid to risk leaving an enemy behind me in case the external security had already been breached. Each room was empty and I closed the doors, leaving myself in shadow.

Beast moved up through me, padding softly, her head low and shoulder blades high, stalking. My vision sharpened as she slid into the forefront of my brain. I moved right, to the stairs, and down, my back against the wall, my bare feet silent, listening to the number and placement of shots, and wishing I had grabbed up my nine- mils. The weapons had better stopping power.

The gunfire was coming from the front and the back, which told me that they hadn’t gotten inside yet. By the level of gunfire, I could tell that there were three bogeys at the front entrance, but only one defensive shooter inside. There were at least five bad guys in the backyard. So much for only pole-vaulters getting in over the back wall. A shotgun sounded from the back, a double-barreled boom-boom. We hadn’t brought any shotguns. Had someone gotten inside?

A .380 held at my thigh in a two-hand grip, I stuck my head around the back entry opening, looked around, and stepped back, assimilating what I had seen. Eli and Wrassler were on either side of the back entrance. In the mudroom, the back window was busted out, and Esmee stood there, an old pump shotgun at her shoulder. Her scarlet hair was in disarray, and she had a fierce grin in place as she reloaded. Three pistols were on a tall stool by her hip. Oookaaay. An eighty-year-old Annie Oakley. I peeked back again. A small black low-riding SUV was parked in the yard; it hadn’t been there before. Wrassler was taking aim at the wall of the garage, and when a head peeked out, he fired, a fast three-tap. He killed some brick, but the man jerked back.