Bite Me: Big Easy Nights Read online

  Leroy closed his phone. “It is nearly dawn,” he said. “Ms. Bouchard? I have spoken to your grandmother, and she knows that you will be spending the day here. Darren? Will you show her to her room?”

  “Sure, boss.”

  “Not an imposition, am I?” I said to his back as he disappeared through the door. Darren laughed.

  “So much for Gaelic charm, right? C’mon, let’s get you settled in.”

  * * *

  Darren took me downstairs. The place had a small basement, not that common in the lower parts of New Orleans. Low-ceilinged, it felt like it had been dug out after the house was built. A steel chest in the corner large enough to hold a coffin had been bolted to the concrete walls and floor. I was willing to bet that, like my coffin, it could be locked from the inside.

  “The boss had all this put in after he bought the place,” he said, following the direction of my thoughts. “Kind of a secure guest-crypt, you know?” He rapped on the steel door that separated the room from the stairwell. “It’s vented so you can leave after dark, but anyone trying to get in will need explosives.”

  The other corner held a sink and shower stall and a wardrobe.

  “There’s stuff you can change into in there—just wash up first. Toss your things into the stairs and bolt the door, and you’re good to go. I’ll get it cleaned before night.”

  He left the door open a crack, and I sagged when I heard the upstairs door shut. Bolting the “crypt” door, I looked at my watch: less than ten minutes till sunrise. Spiking panic fought my creeping lethargy; blood was as good as Red Bull but I needed more than Leroy had given me if I was going to stay up much longer. Could that be why Darren hadn’t offered me anything? Did they want me easy and quiet for the day? I couldn’t stay. I needed to think, I needed to plan, but most of all I needed to be safe and not trapped by daylight with people I didn’t trust, in the middle of a fight I knew nothing about!

  I placed a text on my epad, checked to make sure I still had everything, and lifted into mist before thought could stop me.

  Darren hadn’t been lying about the vent; I found it by the air currents and darted out and up, to the street outside Leroy’s school. The sky above me showed no stars on a brightening blue horizon. I felt thick, heavy, and fought to stay aloft as I fled west across the Quarter, every instinct screaming at me to go back, get down, get solid! Find. A. Hole!

  There! Paul’s van screeched around the corner of Chartres and Ursulines, and I dropped through the window and into the front passenger seat. Paul swore and nearly ran us up on the sidewalk. I couldn’t blame him; Leroy had probably rolled my head up in his suit jacket for carrying; my face was sticky, my hair matted, and I probably looked worse than when I’d been staked, like a chatty homicide victim.

  “Home?” He demanded, speeding up.

  “No!” I gasped, nearly paralyzed at the thought of whoever had attacked tonight going through Grams to get to me. Not again. Think!

  Fortunately, I hadn’t left my own safety completely up to the DSA when I came to town. Quickly dialing a memorized number got a short response and an invitation. I told Paul where to go and scrambled into the back where he kept emergency gear, including an emergency blanket—a heavy, dense blanket good for smothering fires or warming an accident victim, or for keeping the sun off a vamp. Wrapping up and curling into a ball, I lay between the seats and pulled the blanket over my head.

  The killer was direct sunlight; even filtered it burned like a blowtorch, but reflected sunlight was fine. Paul took a corner nearly on two wheels as I tried not to remember the last time I’d been caught out unprotected and in the open by daybreak. I’d spent the day curled up under a rooftop air conditioning unit, killing sunlight inches from my fingertips, a slip away from the worst sunburn ever.

  The top of the blanket warmed and my skin crawled. I focused on the turns and stops, and knew when Paul turned west on Dumaine. His hard right turn slid me to the side and I heard the faster traffic that had to be North Rampart. Left on Ursuline’s, and we were out of the Quarter and into Tremé. Right, much slower and I heard bright laughter, happy kids on their way to school. Right again, almost there…

  A bump as Paul turned off the street, and the school sounds died a little. Finally thinking ahead again, I scrubbed my face against the blanket—not that it would help—as the van came to a stop.

  Lifting a corner of the blanket, I saw only shaded light. Paul opened the door as I sat up. He wasn’t alone.

  He’d parked us right where I’d told him to: in the narrow carriageway between St. Augustine and the new St. Augustine’s Parochial School. The stern priest standing beside him looked down at me.

  “Ms. Bouchard?” he asked in a thick German accent and absolutely no acknowledgement of my axe-victim appearance.

  I nodded. “Father Graff? I—”

  He shook his head, extending his hand. “Inside, mein kinde,” he said. I pulled the blanket around me like a cloak and let him help me out of the van. Paul slid the door closed after me and followed.

  It was hard to believe that Father Graff and the Chicago Sentinels’ team chaplain were men of the same cloth; where Father Nolan was short and, well, comfortably spherical and almost always smiling, Father Graff only smiled when he remembered to and he looked stretched out and tough, a veteran of service in sunbaked countries where a low-calorie diet wasn’t always optional. His close-cut dark hair was only just going grey but he had short parallel lines of white hair above one ear, the kind of streaks that usually meant old scalp wounds. He looked like the kind of shepherd prepared to violently defend his flock.

  When the DSA had asked me to insert myself into New Orleans’ vamp community, I’d given it some thought and called Father Nolan, asked if he knew anybody in the Big Easy. He spoke to Father Graff and arranged for my emergency gear to be sent down before I got here. I hadn’t expected trouble, but after years of Extreme Contingency Planning, having a bolt-hole and an extra stash was second nature; I had five scattered around Chicago, and the Sentinels only knew about the one in my family home’s basement.

  The father took us into the small building standing at the end of the drive—the Archives Building, recently built from the shell of the church’s old carriage house. The main room was windowless but big and open, a mini-museum with framed historic artifacts on the white-plastered walls and under glass in a central display cabinet. A row of computer and microfilm stations stood along one wall. An artificially backlit stained glass window with a rack for votary candles beneath—depicting St. Augustine, I presumed—took up another wall. The opposite wall held an unadorned iron cross, probably connected with the Tomb of the Unknown Slave outside.

  Father Graff watched me closely, nodding when I didn’t recoil from the cross.

  “Father Nolan tells me you’re one of the beati mortus,” he said.

  Beati mortus: the blessed dead. Father Nolan had called me that before—his way of assuring me I still had a soul, I’d thought. Father Graff said it like it meant something more.

  “I don’t fear the symbols of God, father, if that’s what you mean.”

  He shrugged. “Most monsters are men,” he said, turning the deadbolt on the outside door. He gave Paul a smile too grim to be reassuring. “And you, mein sohn? Are you also comfortable here?”

  We both started.

  “Father—” Paul stuttered, and the priest shook his head.

  “You may relax, mein sohn. It is simply that those of us who need to know, know of your gift.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Currently? I am an assistant priest and the school’s athletic director. More to the point, I am a consultor for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.”

  I blinked. “The what now?”

  “The Holy Inquisition.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Too dumb to live” is not a character judgement—it’s an act of Darwinism.

  The Artemis Files

  * * *

 
I nearly drew my Kel-Tec—three bullets left—on a priest. Paul leaped backwards, like the man had, I don’t know, turned into a wolf right in front of us.

  Father Graff chuckled. “I am sorry. I do enjoy a little fun, and I don’t get to do that very often. If the schoolchildren knew my true office, perhaps they would be a little more respectful to their athletic director.”

  He dropped his smile and waved us towards the computer-station chairs. Neither of us took him up on it.

  “The chief role of the CDF is, and has always been, maintaining priestly discipline and doctrinal conformity within the ranks of the Church,” he said. “Historically, we have also prosecuted heresy—which has famously included witchcraft.”

  His academic tone wasn’t making me any calmer, and he sighed, looking tired.

  “Contrary to what most people think they know,” he continued patiently, “the office of the Inquisition did not burn millions of accused witches during the centuries of European witch-hunts. Most convicted witches were accused by their neighbors, for things like the ‘evil eye’ that caused cattle to sicken, crops to wither, and mothers to miscarry, and were tried and executed by their local magistrates or lords. Where the Inquisitorial Courts became involved, they were much more careful; most accusations of witchcraft were dismissed, and those that were upheld usually resulted in only penance or excommunication.”

  He gave us a moment to respond, continuing when we didn’t.

  “My last post was in Albania and the Balkans. Troubled breakthroughs can suffer tremendously at the hands of well-meaning but fearfully superstitious laity, but sometimes I have been called to defend the faithful from breakthrough-spawned witchcraft and sorcery. I have become something of an expert in dealing with superstitions made real.”

  “Given that,” he watched me closely, “I’m sure you can imagine why I was sent to New Orleans?”

  “Grams,” I said coldly.

  “The estimable Marie Bouchard, and many others. Voodoun—and its more…folk-magic forms when either is used for ill. And I do my best to combat the natural impulse of many of the faithful to turn to folk-religion—saint’s medals used as magic talismans, blessed candles for charms. Keeping holy water in the font is a chore.”

  “But the Inquisition?” Paul finally managed to say the word. The old priest ignored him, studying me with eyes that said quite clearly that his Boss might wait to separate the sheep from the goats until the end, but if he himself had been commanded to give me the benefit of the doubt till then, it was a thin benefit.

  And, Father Nolan’s recommendation aside, he hadn’t decided I wasn’t a wolf yet.

  “We had best get you safe for the day, mein kinde,” he said, stepping past me.

  The storage room he took us into was close and cramped, lit by just one bulb. Father Graff pulled on a back shelf, which turned out to be sitting on low casters. Behind it and the fake wall it was attached to, the storage room was deeper than it looked.

  It had no amenities, just a cot, a small table and camp-light, and my emergency stash.

  “The shelf latches,” he said, showing me the lock opposite the hinges he’d installed. “You can pull it flush to the walls and nobody will enter until you unbolt it.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’ll find another place as quick as I can.”

  “I’ll bring you water and towels,” he said, and left.

  Paul watched him go. “Is it me, or were you waiting for him to click his heels and give a Nazi salute? I hate this.”

  “I’ll be safe, Paul,” I said, not so sure but too tired to care anymore. Father Nolan had vouched for him and sent him my stuff to keep; whatever was going on, I trusted the Sentinels’ funny little priest.

  Paul had to leave it at that. “So are you going to tell me why I didn’t take you home?”

  Because I’m not losing family again.

  “Because vampires have minions, Paul, and I’m not leading them back where they can find me in the daytime. You know what a sleeping vampire is? A corpse. Paul? Could you arrange a protection detail for Grams? If you have some friends willing to pull off-duty hours, I can pay. And could you dig up everything you can on Leroy? Quietly. I’ll explain everything tonight, after I’ve found a new hole. Okay?”

  He looked at me funny, but shrugged. “Okay. Call for a pick-up, chèr. I’ll let your grandmère know you’re safe, take care of everything. ” Then he was gone, too. I pulled the shelf back, closed the latches, and sank down on the cot to wait for Father Graff to come back.

  Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn!

  With everything I’d learned from Blackstone, I’d still screwed up by the numbers. Closing my eyes, I stared at the dark inside my lids.

  I’d learned damn-all, really, about the Big Easy and vampire society before I got here, and not much since—certainly no more than I’d thought I needed for my job. Worse, I’d completely failed to appreciate the physical threat someone else with my abilities posed if they decided to get nasty. But I’d been the only vamp in Chicago, and just couldn’t take the goth posers of New Orleans seriously. I’d thought Psycho Vlad had been the nut-job serial killer exception; the rest acted like exactly what you’d expect from anyone whose breakthrough came from an obsession with a kinky romantic stereotype. But that was no excuse.

  I’d been treating my stay in the Big Easy like a working vacation, and it had nearly killed me. Permanently. Doing low-risk undercover work for the local police while mapping out the vampire “underworld” for the DSA had seemed an easy price to pay for a new identity and the opportunity to get to know my Bouchard family and roots, even if playing to the whole Fiend of The Night stereotype made me want to vomit. The few precautions I’d taken had been out of habit.

  And let’s face it—I never wanted to know about my “condition.” Get my supply of liquid iron, stay out of sunlight, don’t think about it.

  I’d finished whipping myself by the time Father Graff returned, and after he left and I locked myself in again I was barely able to clean up and change into the spare clothes in my pack before collapsing back onto the cot. Before I gave in entirely I managed to call Grams’ phone, leave a message. For nearly two months—since learning of each other’s existence, really—we’d lived in the same house like two cats sharing a territory. She’d accommodated me into her life with barely a ripple, and I still didn’t know what we were yet, but we were family. If she’d woken up to find I hadn’t checked in, no idea where I was… Paul wouldn’t be able to run fast enough.

  Turning off the camp light, I dropped into bottomless sleep.

  * * *

  Drunks are easy. They also taste terrible.

  When night fell I woke up so thirsty I could hardly see straight. After texting Mr. Gray to set up a meeting (it would probably be the low point of my night) and unlatched the shelving so Father Graff could get in, I rose into mist right through the ceiling, unwilling to risk meeting anyone I knew. At every twitch of wind, I half-expected to feel other vamps searching the night for me.

  In my first nights hunting for myself in Chicago, before I’d gotten a fake driver’s license good enough to get me into the clubs and pick-up bars, I’d had to find prey on the streets. Give me a minute of good eye contact and a few words and I can enthrall anyone, but the pace is faster in a street encounter; when you’ve got seconds, only a will weakened by drugs or alcohol will fold fast enough.

  I’d scouted Tremé when I first arrived in town. Separated from the Quarter by Rampart Street, it had been the home of free blacks and dark Creoles from before Louisiana became a state (St. Augustine was the oldest African-American Catholic parish in the country). It was mostly residential, though, and the best place I’d found was the Candlelight Lounge. A local hangout except on Wednesday nights when the Tremé Brass Band played and tourists flocked to catch that good Big Easy sound, it sat on a dark and quiet street backed by Interstate Ten. It served beans and rice and cheap alcohol, and had just what I wanted.

  I was way too
white to be unnoticeable, and so thirsty anyone I talked to would feel like he was being stared at by a starving lioness waiting for him to twitch before she brought him down, so I needed prey that was already separated from the herd. Early patrons had parked their cars along the street, and I made my first choice a rebuilt Chevy with tinted windows that made the interior perfectly private.

  Watching the lounge from the roof of the two story home across the street, I waited until a lone patron stepped out, walking unsteadily. He wove his careful way down the sidewalk, fumbled keys out of his pocket, and attacked the door of the rusty and beat-up pickup truck beside the Chevy. Close enough. I dove into mist and swooped low over the street.

  He managed to get his door open and I flowed in around him, catching him mid-heave as he pulled himself in and slammed the door. He jerked as I pulled myself together on the passenger’s side, but before his pickled brain had time to realize the danger I’d grabbed his head and yanked us both face-down below the level of the dashboard, me on top of him.

  He found himself staring at the stick shift while I whispered in his ear.

  “Shhh. Shhh. It’s okay,” I told him, hitting him with all the influence I could muster in my thirsty state. He relaxed, just like that, breathing slowly as I held his shoulders to keep him from slipping right off the car seat and to the floor of the driver’s space. Pulling down the back of his collar to expose his neck, I bit.

  It didn’t matter that he’d been doing heavy labor somewhere today and hadn’t bathed, or that his blood tasted like he’d chugged wood-alcohol. I forced myself to count, to stop at thirty, stayed crouched over him shivering with my thirst for more. Through it all the insects outside made more noise than we did.

  I finally raised my head and scanned the street, listening to his quiet breathing. “Upsy-daisy now,” I said softly, pulling him back upright behind the steering wheel. He’d dropped his keys by his feet, and I retrieved them. His head flopped back and he rolled his eyes to look at me, smiling sleepily. Pulling a fifty out of my pocket, I handed it to him with the keys.