Smiling, he patted her on the back. "No more handcuffs, right?"
Selena pulled away. "Well, Bill did say that I could protest with him later in the bedroom and I do owe him for that kick I gave him, so..."
Ash laughed as Selena scooped up the cuffs from the street.
"And you wonder why I'm nuts," Tabitha said as Selena tucked them into her back pocket.
Ash pulled his glasses back down to cover his eerie, swirling silver eyes. "At least she's entertaining."
"And you're way too charitable." But that was what Tabitha loved most about Ash. He always saw the good in everyone. "So what are you up to tonight?" she asked Ash while Selena folded up her handmade sign.
Before he could answer, a large black Harley came roaring down St. Anne. When it reached the turn that would have taken the rider down Royal Street, the bike, stopped and was shut off.
Tabitha watched as the tall, lithe rider, who was decked out all in black biker leathers, held the bike upright between his thighs with ease and pulled the helmet off.
To her surprise, it was an African-American woman, and not a man, who set the helmet down before her on the bike's gas tank and unzipped her jacket. Extremely gorgeous, she was slender but muscular, with medium brown skin and a flawless complexion. She wore her jet-black hair in braids that were pulled back into a ponytail.
"Acheron," she said in a singsong Caribbean accent. "Where should I park me ride?"
Ash indicated Decatur Street behind him. "There's a public lot on the other side of the Brewery. I'll wait here until you get back."
The woman's gaze went to Tabitha, then Selena.
"They're friends," Ash said. "Tabitha Devereaux and Selena Laurens."
"Sisters-in-law to Kyrian?"
Ash nodded.
"I am Janice Smith," she said to them. "Nice to meet friends of the Hunters."
Tabitha was sure that was a play on words that stemmed not so much from Kyrian's last name as from his former occupation of being a Dark-Hunter-one of the immortal warriors like Janice and Ash who guarded the night against vampires, demons, and rogue gods.
Janice started her motorcycle and roared off.
"New Dark-Hunter?" Selena asked before Tabitha had a chance.
He nodded. "Artemis transferred her here from the Florida Keys to help Valerius and Jean-Luc. Tonight's her first night so I thought I'd give her a tour of the city."
"Need any help?" Tabitha asked.
"Nah. I got it. Just try not to stake Jean-Luc again if you meet up with him."
Tabitha laughed at his reference to the night she had inadvertently met the pirate Dark-Hunter. It had been dark and Jean-Luc had grabbed her from behind in an alley while she was stalking after a group of Daimons. All she had seen were fangs and tallness, so she had struck.
Jean-Luc had yet to forgive her.
"I can't help it. All you fanged people look alike in the dark."
Ash grinned. "Yeah. I know what you mean. All you soul-full people look alike to us, too."
Tabitha shook her head at him as she continued laughing. She wrapped her arm around Selena and started toward Decatur, where Selena had left her Jeep across the street.
It didn't take long to get her sister home and situated with a very hesitant Bill, who wasn't sure if Selena would rack him again or not. Once Tabitha was satisfied that Selena would be okay... and Bill, too... she headed back to the Quarter to patrol for Daimons.
It was a relatively quiet night out. She followed her usual habit of stopping in at the Cafe Pontalba and getting four plates of red beans and rice with Cokes to go, then taking the meals down to an alley off of Royal Street where many of the homeless were known to congregate. Since the city had decided to crack down on vagrants and the homeless, they weren't nearly as prevalent as before. Now they, like the vampires she sought, kept to the shadows where they were forgotten.
But Tabitha knew they were there and she never let herself forget about them.
Tabitha left the food on an old rusted barrel and turned to leave.
As soon as she reached the edge of the sidewalk, she heard people scurrying for the food.
"Hey, if you want a job-"
But they were gone before she could get anything more than that out.
Sighing, Tabitha headed down Royal. She couldn't save the world, she knew that. But at least she could see to it that some of the hungry were fed.
With no real destination in mind, she wandered down the lonely streets and browsed in the jewelry shop windows.
"Hey, Tabby, killed any vampires lately?"
She looked up to see Richard Crenshaw coming toward her. A waiter at Mike Anderson's Seafood, which was just a couple of doors down from her own store, had a bad habit of coming in whenever he got off work and hitting on the strippers who ordered custom-made costumes from her.
As usual, he was laughing at her. That was fine. Most people did. In fact, most people thought she was insane. Even her own family had laughed at her for years... until her twin had ended up married to a Dark-Hunter and had faced a vampire who had almost killed her.
Suddenly her family realized that her preternatural stories over the years weren't total hallucinations or fabrications.
"Yeah," she said to Richard, "I dusted one last night."
He rolled his eyes and laughed at her as he walked on past.
"You're welcome, Dick," she said under her breath as he kept going. The Daimon she'd killed had been hovering around the back door of Mike Anderson's, where Richard was known to take out the trash right before he got off work. If Tabitha hadn't killed the Daimon, Richard would most likely be dead now.
Whatever. She didn't really want thanks for what she did and she certainly didn't expect it.
She kept walking down the street, feeling extremely lonely tonight. How she wished she could live her life blindly, never knowing what was out here.
But she wasn't blind. She knew, and with that knowledge came the choice of either helping people or walking away. Never in her life had Tabitha been the kind of person who turned her back on someone in need. Her powers as an empath were too much for her sometimes. She felt the pain of others even more deeply than she felt her own.
It was what had drawn Ash to her in the beginning. Over the last three years, he had taught her several tricks to dampen down others' emotions and to focus on her own. He'd been a godsend to her and had done more for her sanity than anyone else. Still, his tricks didn't silence them totally.
At times it was all completely overwhelming. She was so bombarded by intense emotions that it set off hers and sometimes caused her to lash out verbally just from the stress of it.
So here she was, by herself, spending another lonely night walking the streets as she risked her life for people who mocked her.
Patrolling was certainly much more fun when she'd done it with a group of friends.
Tabitha forced herself not to remember Trish and Alex, who'd both died in the line of duty. But it was useless. Tears filled her eyes as she touched the jagged scar on her face that the Daimon Desiderius had given her. The worst sort of psycho, Desiderius had been out to kill her twin sister and brother-in-law. Luckily, Amanda and Kyrian had survived. Tabitha just wished she'd been killed that night instead of her friends. It wasn't right for them to pay such a high price when Tabitha had been the one to talk them into helping her in the first place.
God, why couldn't she have kept her mouth shut and just left them alone to live out their lives in ignorance and peace?
It was why she fought alone now. She would never again ask anyone to risk their life to do what she did.
They had a choice about this.
She didn't.
Tabitha slowed down as she got the familiar tickle down the center of her spine.
Daimons...
They were behind her.
Turning around, she knelt down and pretended to tie the laces on her boot. Meanwhile she was well aware of the six shadows that were closing in on her...
Valerius pulled at the edge of his right leather Coach glove to straighten it as he walked down the virtually abandoned street. As always, he was impeccably dressed in a long black cashmere coat, a black turtleneck, and black slacks. Unlike most Dark-Hunters, he wasn't a leather-wearing barbarian. He was the epitome of sophistication. Breeding. Nobility. His family had been descended from one of the oldest and most respected noble families of Rome. As a former Roman general whose father had been a well-respected senator, Valerius would have gladly followed in the man's footsteps had the Parcae, or Fates, not intervened.
But that was the past and Valerius refused to remember it. Agrippina was the only exception to that rule. She was the only thing he ever remembered from his human life.
She was the only thing worth remembering from his human life.
Valerius winced and focused his thoughts on other, much less painful things. There was a crispness in the air that announced winter would be here soon. Not that New Orleans had a winter, compared to what he'd been used to in D.C.
Still, the longer he was here the more his blood was thinning, and the cool night air was a bit chilly to him.
Valerius paused as his Dark-Hunter senses detected the presence of a Daimon. Tilting his head, he listened with his heightened hearing.
He heard a group of men laughing at their victim. And then he heard the strangest thing of all...
"Laugh it up, asshole. But she who laughs last, laughs longest and I intend to belly roll tonight."
A fight broke out.
Valerius whirled on his heel and headed back the direction he'd come from.
He drifted through the darkness until he found an ajar gate that led to a courtyard.
There in the back were six Daimons fighting a tall human woman.
Valerius was mesmerized by the macabre beauty of the battle. One Daimon came at the woman's back. She flipped him over her shoulder and in one graceful motion stabbed him in the chest with a long, black dagger. The Daimon burst into a golden dust.
She twirled as she rose up to face another one. She tossed the dagger from one hand to the other and held it like a woman well used to defending herself from the undead.
Two Daimons rushed her. She actually did a cartwheel away from them, but the other Daimon had anticipated her action. He grabbed her.
Without panicking, the woman surrendered her weight by picking both of her legs up to her chest. It brought the Daimon to his knees. The woman sprang to her feet and whirled to stab the Daimon in his back.
He evaporated.
Normally the remaining Daimons would flee. The last four didn't. Instead they spoke to each other in a language he hadn't heard in a long time: ancient Greek.
"Little chickie la la, isn't dumb enough to fall for that, guys," the woman answered back in flawless Greek.