VenCo(70)

Meena finished washing the last plate, handed it to Wendy, and turned off the tap. “No, they did not.” She wiped her hands off on a corner of Wendy’s towel and leaned her back against the counter, beside her wife. “It looks like I have to make the tough decisions for now.”

“Like what?”

“Like not warning Lucky that a Benandanti might be after her.” She closed her eyes, waiting for the storm to hit her.

“Meena! But you said . . .”

“I know what I said. How am I supposed to know how many damn hunters there are left skulking around? But I couldn’t very well tell them that.” She began to pace. “I just—I have to think of the bigger picture right now.”

“So you’re choosing the spoon over Lucky and Stella?” Wendy threw the towel down and stood in Meena’s path so she had to stop moving.

“Wendy, dear.” Meena finally stood still and made eye contact. “I have no idea what I’m supposed to do here, other than keep this team safe and focused, and right now that means staying on mission. If things change, if he shows up near them, then I’ll change tactics. But for now, for just right now, please.” She reached out and placed her hands on Wendy’s hips. Her wife rarely got mad, and she hadn’t even told her that she hadn’t been able to reach Lucille since they left Buzzards Bay. “Please, just let me do this my way.”

Wendy didn’t answer. She just turned and walked out of the kitchen, clicking off the light as she left, leaving Meena alone in the dark.



Jay drove 130 mph most of the way to Pennsylvania, slowing down only where the curves were sharp or the traffic got congested. He didn’t know this Rattler Ricky that Lucille had spoken of, but he knew the Tender had been telling the truth. He could smell a lie. Most people could, though they chose to ignore it most of the time. A lie smelled like caramel and butter with an after-scent of shit. “Bullshit,” people would say when someone lied, or, “What a load of shit.” But they refused to acknowledge that falsehoods had an actual scent. Such a stunted species, humans. He was glad he was no longer one.

No, Lucille had been telling the truth. The good thing about torture is that the pain lives on as a blood memory in the generations who come after. It had been fairly easy to push Annie’s descendant into giving up the whereabouts of a sneaky little bitch named Lucky, who was on her way to find the seventh spoon. Apparently, that mission led straight into the ass-end of Pennsylvania. All he’d had to do was take Lucille into the bar’s back room to relive her ancestor’s pain—the pins, the broken fingers, the rope around her neck . . .

“Goddamn wilderness,” he muttered to himself, navigating the car over a chopped-up section of asphalt on a neglected road. He hated this part of the country. Too many trees. Too cold. Too many holes to hide in.

Being the apex predator that he was, Jay had no use for hiding places. They only made his work more difficult. And it was hard enough as it was, being the last of his kind. There was no one to share the work, no one to celebrate with at the end of a successful hunt. It was just him now, which was unfortunate, since the witches were once again on the rise. He really could have used an extra pair of capable Good Walker hands, like the old days when they hunted in packs.

He wasn’t nervous; he was never nervous. But he had never before dealt with a brauche, a powwow person. As he understood it, they were backwoods preachers—if preachers also did parlor tricks and believed in some feminine spirit of wisdom. And he didn’t like how far ahead of him Lucky had gotten. He did not like being out of control. He liked his hunts to be like his sex—he decided when and where. He made the moves. He ended it when he wanted it ended. This was something different, something wild. And it was precisely why femmes were so dangerous. Even when you had spent centuries measuring their responses and timing their emotions, there was always some unknown. They were dangerous because they were always moving, always half in shadow.

He arrived in Schuylkill County after one in the morning but there was no slumber in his body; his muscles held no ache; his head permitted no blur. He was ready to hunt. Now, if he only knew where tonight’s prey was holed up, he could get to work.

He pulled over onto the side of the road, took a piss in the ditch, and paused to listen. Low rumblings from several locations. There were people with some knowing around here, but they seemed to be on a unique frequency. He got back in the rental and drove some more. After an hour, he shut down that part of his brain that made decisions, the part that was specific and careful. He probably shouldn’t have been driving in that state, but he was pretty much on his own out here on these roads, so he let his instincts guide him. Soon, he was pulling into a little motel parking lot with a shitty bar next door. He was wondering where to park when she appeared in his headlights—a short figure in an oversized blazer carrying a mostly empty bottle of wine.

He smiled. “Ahhh, there you are, Ms. Rattler. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

She squinted at the car, holding her hand over her eyes to block the light. For fun, he revved the engine, and she scurried out of the way. From the way she moved, he guessed she had finished that bottle herself.

He cut the engine and opened his door. “Hello, Ricky. So glad we ran into each other.” He got out, gave her a short bow, and closed the door behind him.

She considered his face, looked at the SUV, then back at him. Though they had never met before, her body recognized what he was, and she stood a little straighter. She raised the bottle to her lips, drank it to the bottom, and tossed it behind her. He liked the courage that hung on her. He lowered a cupped hand in front of his hips and moved it up and down, the universal symbol of big balls, then laughed a bit. “You and I need to talk.”