Page 5 of Death Dance

“What kind of car do you have?”

“I have a Lohner-Porsche,” he announced with great pride.

I blinked. “A what?”

“He has a rectangle with wheels and a complex,” my father grumbled. “It’s one of the ugliest damned cars I’ve seen in my life, but I must respect Porsche’s innovation.”

“Dad,” Eugene complained. “My baby is not ugly.”

“Boy, I cried when you brought that damned thing home. You made me take you to Austria so you could buy that wretched thing. You scraped together every bit of money you could to afford it, and then you expected me to bring it to the United States in a world where transporting cars was not simple. And then you made me babysit your car while you played soldier during World War I.”

“Thank you for babysitting my baby, Dad.”

Our father sighed. “I raised spoiled rotten children.”

How rude. Emerick worked hard to spoil me, but he had not yet succeeded on his mission. “I am not spoiled. I even go out and kill miscreants and drink them to save on my feeding bill.”

That earned me a sigh from everyone in the vehicle.

“We have a long way to go to properly spoil your sister. Boys, you know what to do. If I come around in six months, and she isn’t spoiled…”

I had no idea what my father threatened to do, but my brothers snapped salutes and swore I would be spoiled. “Am I the only sane one in this car?”

“Yes,” they chorused.

Men. I had surrounded myself with men. No matter where I turned, there were men out to vex me. “Father, please explain why I am not napping in the car right now.”

“You’re wired from the hunt, and you resisted sleep for a good reason. Practice alone isn’t a sufficient reason for you to skip out on your favorite daytime activity. Even as a child, you loved napping during the day, but we couldn’t allow it often. The sun cherishes you, much like it does these other brats I produced. Like you, they rose able to go out into the sunlight without issue, although I managed to convince them to act like it’s an issue. It’s not. Young Emerick is sufficiently aged and has grown into his strength to walk properly under the sun, although he could use a little more work. You will find he tires more readily than you. He will not understand that, so do act like today’s activities exhausted you. I am sure you will have no problems handling your introduction to being spoiled this evening.”

“I bet I could get that dastardly husband of mine to come out as a cat for my enjoyment. He keeps withholding his feline self.” I wrinkled my nose. “Are we actually good at shapeshifting?”

“We are, and you will have other shapes to work with. While our line has sufficient alignment with felines, we favor a different species.”

“You can earn a really nice mug if you spill our secrets,” I replied, shooting a glare his way. “I want to surprise him.”

“Our preferred shape is that of hierofalcon, but a species long extinct. As your husband’s maker has surely informed you, I am quite old. I will not bore you with the original species name; we would lose an hour dealing with your wretched efforts to pronounce it to your satisfaction. In English, it translates roughly to the golden sky hawk or the blazing sun hawk of the dawn. How we spoke its name depended on our mood and if we were celebrating a holy day. They were the blazing sun hawk of the dawn on our holy days and the golden sky hawk the rest of the time. Take a lanner falcon but give it sun-gold plumage with black tears and crown with a pale chest. Quite a striking bird.”

I got out my phone and searched for a lanner falcon, whistling over its beauty. “It’s like a Peregrine falcon.”

“They are similar, yes. Eugene, teach your sister the trick of it. That will give you time to discuss merging your brood with hers. You will want safety in numbers in the days to come. Alisander, warn the other hunters that there will inevitably be more miscreants on the rise. History has a tendency of repeating itself, and our primary quarry has stirred the lesser evils. Benoit, you know what to do.”

“I do,” my brother replied. “Do you want the Sleepers to converge with Emerick?”

“That would be wise. Pepper, how much did you learn about the vampire you killed this morning?”

“His name, mostly, as well as his bounty value. I rescued two of his victims so I could get evidence of his guilt before positioning myself to hunt him today,” I replied, wishing I’d been able to work faster and prevent a few of his other killings. “I brought more stakes than sense, as that tends to keep Emerick somewhat calm. But only somewhat. I carved the stake I used just for him. He broke the entire damned tree hitting it with his car! I have an entire tree of wood. He killed a tree.” I hissed over the loss, which had been a five year old apple tree in someone’s yard.

The bastard had hit it escaping from me after attacking the second victim I had saved. Fortunately, the home’s owner had been willing to sell the tree to me for a pittance in the form of buying them a new one.

“Pepper,” my father scolded.

“It was a baby apple tree, and he killed it.” I sighed. “I bought the owner a nice new apple tree and removed the old one. Emerick thinks I am silly for keeping even the roots, but I’ve been cleaning everything, peeling the bark, and preparing it to be carved. It didn’t seem right to waste the tree, and I didn’t just want to see it condemned to be firewood.”

My father shook his head, staying silent while navigating through Manhattan, especially the nastier parts where someone might do something foolish like hit my car, and aimed for SoHo, my new home.

I expected Emerick paced and waited, as the guards would have let him catch a few hours of sleep before waking him and notifying him of my dastardly deeds and my escape from our bed. With a little luck, he would do his best to convince me never to leave our bedroom again.

“You’re attempting to carve an entire tree?” My father pulled into the driveway for our parking garage, pressed the button on the intercom, and waited for it to buzz. “I located my daughter doing questionable things in questionable locations. I will be leaving you with her brothers, and I will be taking Emerick’s daughter for maintenance, so if you can bring his keys, I will be out of your hair in short order.”