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Eli cranked the wheel hard to the left, and a ripping sound from underneath had me yelling, “Weasel nuts!”
The car shuddered to a halt, engine no longer purring. Eli’s car, for all its charms, was not a battering ram. It was smooth, luxurious, and beautiful. It would also have crumpled if it crashed into the three bodies. As it was, a tree branch had caught the hood when he’d swerved and all but tore the flimsy metal off.
“Are you well?” Eli asked.
“Angrier than a goose on a holiday.”
Eli gave me a look that soothed a few of my ruffled feathers. “Swords, devil’s food?”
“Swords.”
Thedraugrwatched, not approaching but waiting. Lucky for them, they had no need to wait long. I was out of the car with sword drawn in a blink.
Across from me, Eli opened the door and pulled out a heavy brass single-handed sword from the recently added sheath mounted to the driver’s door.
“Iggy, now is a good time to pop by,” I yelled, thought, willed. I’d taken on multiple dead jackasses at once in the past, but I had hoped to avoid stitches tonight.
As I stomped toward them, I felt for corpses, seeking pockets of vacancy that were either the truly dead or otherdraugr.A few scattered animals were all that was nearby. Beyond that was a scattering of bodies who felt like they were screaming in their rest. Murder victims, likely. They were rarely anyone’s first choice to fight.
That left either Eli and me—or assorted coyotes and one puma.
“Furred ones. I offer the chance of a meal.”I thought the words into my magic as I nicked my forearm on my own sword and flung my bleeding arm upward, tossing my blood onto the soil.
“What was that?” one of thedraugryelled. “Why is she tossing blood around?”
“Calm yourself, Tommy.”
“Tommy?” I echoed. “What sort of name isTommyfor adraugr?”
“Piss off,” the woman said. “We’re notdraugr.”
“Yeah.” The third, clearly articulate, one added.
All told the three dead people looked like they were trying to channel the 1980s, and doing the math in my head, they very well might be. Older than a decade, younger than a century, they were the sort ofdraugrthat posed more trouble in the French Quarter. The woman on the left looked like she was trying to imitate a tattered shroud with her flowing blouse and . . .harem pants. The man in the middle had a velvet dressing coat over what looked like a waiter’s uniform and combat boots. Tommy was the least outrageous, unless you thought that mohawks and jeans with bandanas tied around them were outlandish.
As odd as they were compared to today’s more sedate fashions, they could still blend with the crowds in a city—more or less—whereas dead folk like Beatrice exuded an air of superiority, a sort of laissez faire attitude that mimics the nobility mingling with the peasants.
Of course, Beatrice had her meals delivered or home prepared.
As we stood there, the sky streaking reds and golds, the three dead strangers watched us.
“Are you expecting fear?” I asked, waiting for my re-animated animal aids to come to me.
The downside of animal necromancy was that they weren’t conversant in the way of humans. I felt them drawing near, and I thought toward them in images.
“We’re vampires!” the woman said. “You ought to be frightened.”
“Yeah!” the one in the velvet coat said. He was, obviously, not quite as old—or perhaps had a flaw from his re-awakening. Either way he was clearly not the brains of the group. That left Tommy or the woman.
“What do you want?” I asked.
Eli remained silent at my side. He wasn’t usually interested in conversation with the dead—or most people, in truth. He had a sword, and he’d be in the thick of the fight if it came to that.
“Parley.” Tommy jutted his chin out.
“Parsley?” the other man asked.
“Parley,” Tommy repeated. “To negotiate. You killed our masters, and we don’t want to die that way.”
