Bite Me: Big Easy Nights Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Author’s Note

  Bite Me: Big Easy Nights.

  by Marion G. Harmon

  Copyright© 2012 by Marion G. Harmon

  Cover by Michelle Monique

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  Chapter One

  Anne Rice sucks. Lord Byron, Bram Stoker, all the rest too. Before they got hold of the horrible legends and turned an unclean spirit possessing a decomposing body into a freaking romantic hero, nobody anywhere thought vampires were nifty.

  An unhealthy obsession with bloodsuckers wasn’t a problem before the Event. Sure, there were a few delusional psychotics who believed they were nosferatu, and a subset of goth culture that wore fangs with their Victorian lace, but what’s the harm? Except for the psychos, I mean. Today it’s a whole different story.

  Jacky Bouchard, The Artemis Files.

  * * *

  This bites.

  It had become a mantra, and I repeated it as I watched the fang-action across the room. I’d been haunting Sable’s for weeks, and the scene Sable and “Evangeline” were putting on was depressingly familiar. She stood beside his chair (throne, really), all blonde curls and lace over crinoline, while he sipped at her wrist and she shivered deliciously. The rest of his court watched him with greedy eyes. I sipped my Coke and ignored the sad hopefuls watching me.

  God. One more night.

  The windows open to New Orleans’ warm and damp spring night didn’t help, and the sweaty crowd around me made me glad I didn’t have to breathe. A deal’s a deal, I reminded myself again. Sable had “requested” my presence in his house three nights a week; in return, he left me alone when I hunted in the French Quarter. Speaking of hunting, it had been long enough between bites that the bodies around me were looking less like people and more like Happy Meals. Time to work.

  Looking around for a likely suspect, I caught the eye of a kid with a face full of freckles under bad makeup and a mop of unevenly dyed raven hair. Without lowering my glass, I pointed at the door with my pinky finger and started moving that way myself. He blanched and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, but he pushed his way out of the crowd and met me in the doorway. Envious stares followed him.

  “I don’t do public fang,” I whispered in his ear, and jerked my head for him to follow me. Down the hall from the crowded parlor was a study where nobody would interrupt us. I took his hand and he flinched a little at my cool grip, but then he squeezed. I almost sighed.

  A single red-tasseled table lamp lit the study; Sable liked it dim and probably didn’t have a sixty-watt bulb in the house. I sat down on the velvet-upholstered loveseat, straightened my skirts, and patted the cushion beside me.

  “I.D.?” I kept my voice low. He looked blank and now I did sigh. “You don’t expect me to risk entrapment, do you?”

  “Oh, yeah.” He nodded eagerly and pulled out his wallet to hand me his driver’s license. I held it up. It looked real enough and declared he was Steve Jansen, eighteen, but I took a picture of it with the camera hidden in my bloodstone cameo broach anyway, then sat demurely while he put it away.

  “First time?”

  “Na— Yeah.” He blushed, and suddenly I didn’t have the patience for it. I reached across his lap and took his right hand, pulled it gently towards me, and locked eyes with him.

  “It’s easy.” I put influence into my words and felt him relax under the suggestion. Drawing his hand around my waist made him lean across me. A polite, or at least cautious, boy, he braced against the loveseat so he wasn’t lying across my frill-covered chest. The move put his head at an angle, neck in front of me, and despite my influence his Adam’s apple bounced again. I added more influence to a gentle “shhh,” and watched his pupils dilate till his irises practically disappeared. The pulse in his neck slowed along with his breathing, and when he was ready I leaned forward, opening my mouth.

  Just a touch of my teeth and his blood flowed, electric copper on my tongue. I wrapped my arms around his waist as he went boneless, made a seal with my lips, and started counting. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four… At thirty I stopped the flow with a lick. He didn’t twitch, and I laughed lightly—mood improved as always by the spike of heat in my veins.

  “Breathe,” I said, and he took a deep convulsive lungful. Pushing him upright, I patted his shoulder. “Hold still.” Pulling a handkerchief from my skirt pocket, I wiped away the two little spots of blood left behind before applying it to my own lips. Standing up, I pulled him up with me and over to the door. I waited, holding his hands; there was no way I was letting him out into the crowd in his current state—people could play cruel jokes on someone who’d just been vamped.

  When his pupils started to contract I kissed him on the cheek. Putting all the influence I could into it, I whispered “Goodnight Steve, now go home and don’t come back,” and pushed him out the door. He went straight down the hall without looking back, walking fast and without answering any of the calls sent his way. Two shakes and he was past Sable’s looming doorman and out the front door. Obviously the suggestion had taken, at least for now.

  I shut the parlor door firmly and put my back to it before reaching into my skirt and pulling out my earbug. Wiggling it into my ear, I pushed off and headed for the second, outside door—the other reason I’d chosen the study.

  “I am so out of here.”

  “Roger that, Night Hunter,” Paul said. “I’m parked three blocks south.” Stepping out into the night, I threw myself into the air, swirling into mist to lift off and climb over the house. I followed the line of wrought-iron streetlamps down Royal Street to where Paul had parked the van just south of St. Louis Cathedral. Floating down and in through the open passenger’s window, I pulled myself back together.

  Paul started the van. “So Steve is another rescue? Can’t do too many of those, you know.”

  I shrugged. “One less donor-boy won’t be missed—and it only really sticks with the first timers. The fang addicts eventually come back.”

  Looking me over, Paul frowned and fingered the gris-gris pouch he wore under his shirt. I knew what he saw; I’d gone Full Goth tonight to fit in at Sable’s. I wore a buttoned-up black skirt, poofed out by an underskirt to give it bounce. Frilled at the bottom, it hugged my rib cage from my waist to just below my breasts, held up by wide shoulder straps buttoned down in the front. My top was a ruffled black blouse with a high neck, closed with my bloodstone cameo—the only splash of color in the whole outfit. Black stockings and button-up boots finished it off. I’d stopped short of putting a bow in my hair and it hung straight and long down my back, but I still looked, maybe, eighteen—younger than I’d been when I died. Certainly too young for the French Quarter after dark, which was why I was here. Talk about entrapment.

  Vampires and werewolves and witches, oh my. Superna
tural breakthroughs weren’t all that rare, post-Event. In the US most strong breakthroughs responded to their triggering episode by manifesting classic superhero-type powers, but enough people had already been into magic as an alternate lifestyle, or were just purely superstitious, or had a thing for creatures of folklore and fantasy, that we had witches and vampires and werewolves and fairies and demons and other less popular and well-known magical types right alongside the superheroes. And if the capes had made Chicago their home, supernaturals made San Francisco and New Orleans, hometown of Voodoo and vampire-goth culture, their own. It was a mixed blessing for the Big Easy and a job for me.

  “Did you confirm Steve’s I.D.?” I asked to break the silence.

  “Yep,” Paul said. “You can spot ‘em. Face-recognition picked him out of the Berkley High yearbook. He’s not Steve and he’s only seventeen. That makes it three for three.”

  “Good.” I smiled and Paul looked away. He didn’t like vamps and I didn’t blame him. Do mice like cats? The buzz had seeped out of my blood, and I slumped in my seat. In Chicago right now I’d be sitting at a high table in The Fortress, sipping drinks with Hope and watching other capes and their groupies. “Take me home, Paul,” I sighed. He nodded and pulled out of his spot.

  I certainly didn’t need the escort home; I could have misted, or if I was feeling peckish, walked home, maybe collecting a rapist or two on the way. Although that wasn’t as easy as it used to be—humans are good at pattern recognition, and the evil-intentioned were acquiring an aversion to young ladies walking alone.

  But Grams—Mama Marie—would put such a hex on Paul if he didn’t see me to the door, he wouldn’t risk it.

  We drove back through the Quarter’s close one-way streets. Mama Marie lived in one of the narrow two-stories on Esplanade, an old house with its back to the French Quarter and its face to the rest of the world where she could keep an eye on it, lest it make any sudden moves. Not that the rest of the world wasn’t useful; when the last hurricane came over the levees and tried to drown New Orleans, capes from all over descended on the Big Easy, got everybody out, and kept the flooding to a minimum.

  Didn’t matter; up in Chicago we joked about Chicagoland—there was us and then there was the rest of the country. To Grams, the Quarter was the center of the world; the rest was foreign and suspect.

  Paul pulled us up half on the curb, and I got out before he could reflexively open my door for me (like me or not, I’m a lady). But he opened the wrought-iron gate and followed me up the short walk that wound through the tiny front yard. Grams kept it covered in planting-boxes and pots full of herbs and climbing plants, with a screen of small yew trees that nearly hid the front porch. He stopped at the porch steps, but stayed while I unlocked the door. Or tried to; sure enough, Grams opened it for me, standing out of my way and nodding to Paul over my shoulder.

  I resisted the urge to turn and give him the finger. Who ever heard of a vampire with a curfew?

  * * *

  Grams closed the door behind me.

  “Did you have a good night, Jacqueline?”

  “Jacky, Grams. Jah-kee.”

  “Well, child?” What she was really asking was, did you kill anyone tonight? There’d only been the once.

  I sighed, kissed her cheek. “Yes Grams, I had a good night.”

  “Best get to your studies, then.”

  Ten minutes after I’d opened my Investigation Procedures textbook on the dining room table, she ambushed me with a brush. One hundred strokes, and she put my hair in a black bow. I didn’t say anything. She didn’t either. When she disappeared into the kitchen, I closed the book and wandered into the parlor.

  I’d never come to New Orleans as a child. Growing up in Southside Chicago, on the other end of the country, I hadn’t known about Grams at all until two months ago. Although Grams was dark Creole, with light mahogany skin from the shores of Africa, high French cheekbones, and startling dark blue eyes from God knows where, Grandpa Bouchard had been all Cajun—pure French Acadian—and Mom had been, to quote Grams, “whiter than white,” which must have made growing up the daughter of a famous voodoo queen tough. She’d rebelled by running as far away as she could inside the US, getting rid of her NOLA accent and marrying Dad, as down-to-earth a man as had ever been born.

  I traced the pictures on the mantle—a cluster of family shots, the most recent of Mom from thirty years ago when she graduated high school. In the pictures, Mom looked just like me: dark eyes and full lips, pale in a way that might have hinted at a romantic ailment in another century. Her midnight-black hair went down to her butt. I only ever remembered her shoulder-length bob, but I also remembered sitting in her lap for one hundred brush strokes until I got too “grown up” to sit still for it.

  Did she used to sit still for one hundred brush strokes, too?

  Stop obsessing.

  Well, if I couldn’t study, I could advertise. Anything to put off writing my weekly DSA report—which amounted to nothing to report. Nearly eight weeks of nothing to report; two months longer than I should have stayed away from Chicago. Before leaving the parlor, I turned Mr. Robinson right side up. Grams had cut the ward-boss’s picture out of the Monday paper and framed it before turning him upside down on a side table—a bit of hoodoo that had to be giving him headaches. Legba didn’t object when I took him out of his room and draped him over my shoulders. An albino python, Legba was Grams’ animal totem for Papa Legba, her patron loa, and she used him in most of her important rituals. Now I took him upstairs and outside on the balcony.

  Esplanade’s north and south lanes were divided by a thick strip of grass and trees with a walk down the center. Nowadays the city’s old and new money mostly lived in the Garden District or in grand gated communities in the suburbs, but in the old days, when riverboats steamed up and down the Mississippi and New Orleans was one of the busiest ports in the world, Esplanade had been the neighborhood and favored promenade of the rich and elite. With the recent re-gentrification of the neighborhood, all the new Old World lampposts and house lamps showing off the restored homes, the street had become a favorite night-walk again.

  I’d left Chicago, left my teammates still rebuilding after the Whittier Base attack, in the middle of a January blizzard. Weather reports said there was still snow on the ground back home. Not here; I stood out on the balcony in the warm spring night, pale as Legba in my goth finery, and passersby got a look at Mama Marie’s granddaughter, le vampir. A few waved, and I smiled but didn’t wave back. Others walked faster. One man stared for awhile before moving on. I actually spotted one of the Big Easy’s few capes flying night-patrol overhead. Him I waved to. Then I frowned.

  A vampire can see like a cat, and down the street I could see Paul’s van, parked in front of a shuttered store. To use Hope’s words, “Hey what?” I might be Detective Paul Negri’s current assignment, but we were both done for the night.

  Even before the Event and the appearance of real vampires, vamps had been part of New Orleans supernatural night-scene and in the last couple of years the “vampire’s kiss” had become the thrill-drug of choice in the Big Easy. There wasn’t much the law could do about it. Make voluntary donations illegal? Most vamps would die since we couldn’t just sip blood from cocktail glasses. Require consent forms? When we could bind consent with our influence?

  But at least the police could keep us away from minors, on the grounds that in Louisiana you had to be eighteen or older to give blood without parental approval. So since I’d been handy and available, the Department of Superhuman Affairs had sent me south, where I could work with the NOPD and Detective Negri to help keep the dumber and more arrogant vamps off the younger stuff—and quietly keep an eye on things for the feds. Which didn’t explain what Paul was doing down the street.

  Watching the house? Why? Nobody in their right mind would have messed with Grams, even before I came to stay. Mess with one of New Orleans’ reigning voodoo queens? She’d hex them till they wished they were dead. No, I
didn’t believe in voodoo. Really.

  Watching me? I was the one vamp the police actually trusted, sort of, even if none of them knew I was Artemis, dark avenger (retired), current superhero (officially), and Scourge of Bad People (Hope’s words) back in Chicago.

  “Jacqueline?” Gran called from downstairs.

  “Coming, Grams.” Going inside, I shut the door.

  I never considered that Paul might be watching the people watching me.

  Chapter Two

  Post-Event vampires are an interesting case of a popular stereotype reinforcing itself. The first public post-Event vampire was Barnabas Cross, the British goth-punk singer. The supernatural celebrity locked in the modern vampire template, and although there have been minor variations since, virtually all vampire breakthroughs display the same superhuman powers: superhuman strength, speed, stamina, the ability to mesmerize victims, turn themselves into mist, and unthinkingly perform the minor application of psychic surgery that allows them to drink blood without ripping their donors’ throats out. They also tend to share the same traditional and expected vampiric weaknesses: vulnerability to sunlight, holy water, religious symbols, and so forth, although there are some interesting exceptions.

  Dr. Mendel, The Psychology of Supernaturals.

  * * *

  “Ouch! Dammit!”

  The Lone Ranger’s theme song went off by my ear and I smashed my head on the lid of my coffin. I fumbled for the light, found my phone.

  “Dammit, Paul! It’s not sunset!” If it was, my phone would have woken me with Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, a gift-app from Hope. Who I hadn’t called since getting to New Orleans, dammit.

  “Dress normal,” he said. “We’re going to Angels tonight.” Click.

  “Shit!” If I’d had room to swing I’d have needed to shop for a new cell phone. Instead I hit the catch, opening the lid, and sat up. Half the reason I wasn’t talking to Hope was I didn’t want to tell her I was living the lifestyle. I didn’t have to sleep in a coffin on top of my native earth, but nobody south of Chicago knew that. The dirt under my thin mattress was from Grams’ garden.