She complied without further complaint.
The older woman sitting across the desk from Sean Canady was very upset. The desk sergeant had tried to explain that she couldn’t fill out a missing persons report, because the missing person hadn’t been missing long enough.
But the woman had been persistent.
Her name was Judy Lockwood, she said. She had raised her niece, Leticia, since she had been a small child and Judy’s brother, Leticia’s father, had passed away. Leticia had grown up to be a fine young lady. She worked at the hospital as a nurse, and she hadn’t been sick a day since she started. She went to church; she always came home at night.
But she hadn’t come home last night. And she hadn’t reported in to her job at the hospital.
Because Sean had insisted on being told about absolutely anything even slightly out of the ordinary, Judy had been shown into his office.
He had put through a call to Mark Davidson the minute he had heard the two keywords “disappeared” and “hospital.”
The woman in front of him was straight and slender, wearing a flowered dress that was clean, smelled of fresh air, and was perfectly pressed. She wore dignity about her like a cloak; she sang in the church choir, and she lived by a code of right and wrong. Sean’s heart seemed to squeeze as she spoke to him. He prayed her niece was fine. He doubted that she was—though, from all he was hearing, she was a far cry from the previous victims whose pitiful remains had been pulled from, the mighty river.
“When was your niece last seen, Miss Lockwood?” he asked.
“Just yesterday evening—and I know, I know, she hasn’t been missing long enough, but I’m telling you, something’s wrong. She said goodbye to Bess Newman, who was taking over her patients. Bess said she left late, because Leticia always stays longer, just to make sure all her paperwork is filled out and all her patients are in good shape. She’s a really good nurse, Lieutenant Canady,” Judy assured him.
“But no one saw her after she left the hospital?” Sean asked.
“No,” Judy said.
“Did she drive to work?” Sean asked.
“Yessir, I was getting to that. Her car’s not in the parking lot.”
“And you don’t think she drove somewhere, and that…something came up?”
She stared at him as if only a complete idiot could have made such a comment. “Lieutenant, you haven’t been listening to me. Leticia is a very good girl. She goes to church. She has never missed a day of work. What can you imagine that would suddenly make a woman like that just decide she wouldn’t go to work?”
“Miss Lockwood, I am worried about your niece, and that’s why I’m taking this report myself.”
Huge tears suddenly filled her eyes. “She’s a good girl. Not that I wish any ill on anyone, but from what I read in the papers…those other girls took chances. My Leticia didn’t. She went to church. She went to work. She’ll go out on a date now and then, but with a good boy, a boy from the church. She’s never had any truck with boys in gangs. So she couldn’t have been taken by…by whatever horrible monster…killed those other girls…could she?” she asked weakly, hopefully.
Sean covered her hand with his. “I’m going to follow up on this, Miss Lockwood. I promise you, I’ll do my very best to find her.”
As Judy Lockwood started to rise, there was another tap on his door. The desk sergeant stuck his head in. “A friend of Miss Lockwood’s is here, Lieutenant,” he said.
Another woman walked in. She was almost Sean’s size and, like Judy, beautifully dressed, down to her straw hat. “Excuse me, Lieutenant Canady, and thank you for your time. Judy, I just got a call from Leticia. She ran late into work, and that was all. She’s sorry you were worried, Judy, and she’ll talk to you tonight. But she’s fine, and that’s what matters, right?” She turned to Sean. “I have a cell phone, you see. The grandkids bought it for me last Christmas. Judy doesn’t like them, so she never got one.”
“Thank the Lord!” Judy said, rising, clapping her hands together. She turned sheepishly to Sean. “Lieutenant Canady, I thank you for your time. And I am so sorry I wasted it.”
“I don’t think it was a waste of time, Judy. We need answers around here right now, and I hoping anyone will come in when they’re afraid, just as you did.”
“You’re a fine young man, Lieutenant.”
He smiled. He was pushing fifty. He wasn’t sure that made him a young man at all.
They left his office, and he had just started to pick up his phone when there was yet another tap at his door. The desk sergeant was back.
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“No. You did the right thing,” Sean said.
As soon as the sergeant left and closed the door behind him, Sean picked up his cell and called Bobby Munro. “Stay there,. Stay in that room and don’t leave until I get there.”
“Right, Lieutenant,” Bobby said.
“Jonas still there?”
“Sir,” Bobby said very softly, “he hasn’t left even to take a leak.”
Let’s hope to hell he’s as decent as he seems, Sean thought, then asked, “So what’s going on there? Everything fine?”
“Yup. The doctor was in this morning. He hopes she’ll come to soon, and that she’ll be fine. It’s looking good. Well, as good as it can look, at any rate.”
“Cansee you the chalk board that lists the nurses assigned to the room?” Sean asked.
“Yeah, I can see it from here.”
“Is someone named Leticia coming on?”
“Yeah, how did you know?”
“Don’t let her in the room,” Sean said.
“Um, actually, that would be a problem, Lieutenant.”
“Why is that?”
“She just walked in. She’s here right now,” Bobby told him.
The pulse in the throat, he had told her. “Find the pulse in the throat. You’re a nurse, so you won’t have any problem. You’re starving, and you will be in this pain until you fill yourself with what you need, but you must be careful. There is only one who can stop your pain. You must go to her room. There will be someone there, so you must be careful, but you are a nurse, and you can go right in and ease your pain.”
The words pounded in Leticia’s head. She had very little memory of exactly what had happened; she only knew that she was supposed to do as she had always done. Go to work. Sign in. Once she had done what he had commanded, all would be well. He would find her again. She would be rewarded as she had never been rewarded before.
She found the patient, Deanna, who was lying there in silence. There were also two men in the room, one sitting by the bed and watching Deanna intently. The other was a cop, but he was on the phone. She had seen him in the room before. Bobby. The cop’s name was Bobby. For some reason, evern though so much was a blur, she knew his name.
She walked over to the bedside and replaced the IV drip, just as she normally would. Then she leaned lower. She could hear the pounding of the woman’s heart, could see the pulse in her throat.
She felt a streak of agony worse than anything that had plagued her so far. A hunger unlike anything she could have imagined before. It tore at her insides like a razor blade. It demanded satiation.
She opened her mouth, and she felt another stark and terrible pain as her teeth actually…stretched. Somewhere, in the very back of her mind, she knew that biting another woman and seeking to drain her of their very last drop of her life’s blood was wrong.
But the hunger…
The hunger was unbearable….
She paused suddenly, terrified.
The pain continued to brutally tear at her stomach, but something worse, something as powerful as an atomic bomb, had exploded within her mind.
She was nearly blinded.
Yet she saw.
There was a chain around the woman’s neck.
A chain and a cross.
Leticia remembered Aunt Judy and Pete, how she’d wanted to be a nurse to save lives, how she had loved
to sing with the choir and…
No! The pain raked her and made her bleed inside. She was insane with hunger, ravenous. She had to feed.
She leaned lower, her fangs closer…
And then heavy hands fell on her shoulders, and she screamed at the agony tearing her apart.
It took Lauren so long to smooth things over between Barry and Heidi that she was ready to scream at them both when Barry at last agreed to speak with Heidi again.
They were on the phone, cooing away to one another, when she finally felt able to leave, Big Jim Dixon accompanying her.
She was glad of his company. Big Jim seemed to take everything in stride, and he didn’t talk much; she was happy just to be with him.
He drove her right up to the front door of the hospital. “Are you coming in?” she asked him.
“I want to get back to the house. I don’t like to leave Stacey alone,” he told her. “Heidi seems just fine,” he said, noticing the way she quickly looked at him. “Honestly,” he added firmly.
“Of course,” Lauren said. “Thank you for driving me here.”
“We watch out for one another here. You go on up and see your friend. She won’t be alone. Bobby will be with her.”
Lauren walked through the halls and down to the elevator. People said hello all along the way, and she greeted them politely in return. New Orleans really was a great place—if you just discounted the vampires.
She reached Deanna’s floor, where there was the usual activity at the nurses’ station. It was a busy place. Doctors, orderlies, nurses, all going about their business.
She walked down the hall.
There was no officer outside the door..
She felt a little leap of fear, then remembered that Bobby was on duty, and he would be in the room with Deanna.
But when she reached the room and walked in, there was no one there.
Just Deanna, sleeping as usual. So beautiful, so peaceful, like the fairytale princess awaiting her lover.
The windows were open, the drapes blowing inward.
There was no sign of Bobby, or even Jonas.
As she stood in the doorway, puzzled, a scream echoed from down the hall.
13
M ark didn’t dare take “Nefertiti” to Montresse House—there was no way he would invite her into the home where Lauren and her friends had found safety. Nor could he take her out to Sean’s house, for the same reason. He would never risk the lieutenant and his fam ily’s safety by bringing such a creature in.
At least she seemed to have decided that he was dangerous to her, and she was quiet and well-behaved, accepting his lead as he moved down the street, trying to find a café with a courtyard and plenty of room—and sunlight.
She protested when he chose a place and picked ouut a table. His chair was in shadow. Hers was not.
“Sit,” he commanded.
“I’m sitting.”
“Talk.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want to know where you go to sleep.”
“I sleep…different places.”
“Who did this to you?” he asked her.
She waved a hand in the air dismissively. “Who knows? Someone with money.”
He leaned back, shaking his head. “You’re a liar. You never worked in that club until you became a vampire. And you go somewhere in particular at night.”
She stared at him sulkily just as a waitress came to their table and looked enquiringly at Mark. “Order,” he said with a shrug. Nefertiti smiled at the waitress. “He’s so rude. But he’s so good in bed that I don’t care,” she said sweetly.
The waitress, an older woman with graying hair, stared at the two of them as if she’d just been faced with the dregs of society.
“An ice tea, please,” he said.
“I’m hungry,” Nefertiti whined.
“Then eat.”
“He really is so commanding,” she told the waitress. “I’ll have a hamburger.”
“Medium? Medium-well?” the waitress asked.
Nefertiti offered her a sugary smile. “Raw, please.”
“You mean…rare? The health code suggests—”
”Not rare. Raw. No bun, thanks.”
“I can’t give you a raw hamburger. The health code—”
Mark slapped a large bill on the table. “Please just bring her a raw hamburger.”
With a disapproving look, the waitress left them.
“Where are you from?” Mark demanded, leaning closer to her.
“Bourbon Street.”
“Where are you from?” he repeated.
She smiled. “Houma, originally. But now I’m from Bourbon Street.”
“So you were created on Bourbon Street?”
“Ooh. Smart fella.”
“So where do you go at night?”
“Wherever I choose.”
He had the water pistol aimed at her beneath the table and let go with a short spray. She nearly jumped out of the chair. “Bastard!” she hissed at him.
The waitress returned with a plate holding a raw hamburger. It was barely on the table before Nefertiti was digging into it with her fingers. The waitress made a soft sound, clearly not intended for them to heard, that was filled with disgust.
“Maybe you can be helped,” Mark suggested when the waitress had gone.
Nefertiti stopped eating for a moment and stared at him, then shook her head. “No. I died, and I rose. There is no help.”
He realized suddenly that she was looking past him, over his shoulder. He turned around but saw nothing. In that split second, she was up and running.
“Stop!” he shouted.
She only kept running. He followed, practically leaping over a table to keep up with her. She turned down a side street, then into an alley. “Stop!” he yelled again.
At that moment a toddler came running out of a door onto the sidewalk in front of her.
Nefertiti stared, then grabbed the child and turned to look Mark straight in the eye.
The little boy started to cry. From inside the house, they could hear a woman’s voice calling, “Ryan? Ryan! Where are you?”
Nefertiti shook her head at Mark with a curious, almost wistful smile.
“Don’t!” he cried.
She opened her mouth and began to lower it, fangs extended, to the crying toddler’s throat.
He shot her with a long, continuous spray. She let out a screech of agony and dropped the boy. Smoke and steam rose from her skin, and she fell, hardly recognizable anymore as a human being but instead a writhing, shifting form, wretchedly decayed.
He heard the sound of police sirens.
Disgusted, Mark turned and quickly escaped the alley. He heard the mother shouting, calling the boy’s name, then screaming in bone-chilling horror, no doubt as she stumbled onto Nefertiti’s remains..
As he turned onto Delphine Street, Mark saw a police cruiser, lights flashing, pass him.
And he heard the flutter of wings overhead.
As he walked quickly away, he thought over what had happened and realized that the woman who called herself Nefertiti had preferred extinction at his hands to facing her master and being branded a traitor.
As he walked, he remembered hanging up on Sean back at the club. Cursing, he drew out his phone and punched in the lieutenant’s cell number.
Lauren was torn. The scream demanded—self-preservation demanded—that she run. At the same timer, she needed to know why someone was screaming. But most of all, she knew that if Deanna were to have a chance, she couldn’t leave her alone again.
That last option won out. She rushed over to Deanna’s bed, wondering if whatever was happening was only a ruse to trick everyone into leaving her friend alone and vulnerable.
Deanna’s IV was still connected to her arm. She still lay on her white pillow and sheets as she had for what seemed like forever. The princess. Unmoving.
Swallowing, her fear nearly paralyzing her, Lauren picked up Deanna�
�s hand and fumbled for the pulse in her wrist.
It was there, regular and strong. She breathed a sigh of relief.
But what the hell was going on?
Lauren had been concentrating so hard on Deanna that it was several seconds before she realized that someone had come into the room behind her.
As she turned around, wary and tense, she heard the door to the room slam shut.
He was there.
Stephan. Stephan Delanskiy. Standing now at the foot of the bed. Ink dark hair fell over his forehead, contrasting with the doctor’s white coat he was wearing. “How is my patient?” he asked very softly.
Lauren looked toward the open window. Shouts and cries were coming from the hallway; the hospital seemed to have turned into Bedlam. But Stephan Stephan Delanskiy seemed oblivious to all that. She didn’t know where he had come from, if he had stepped into the room from the hall, or if he had come through the window.
But it didn’t really matter. All that mattered was that he was there.
She stared at him and flipped the cross she was wearing out from under her shirt.
He smiled. “That will not stop me, you know.”
“Maybe so, but you’re there, and I’m here.”
“Because you must come to me.”
“I will never come to you.”
“Eventually, you will.” He laughed softly. “I have my ways of doing things. Methods. Even madness, you might say. You see, this is a war. Whatever skirmish I may lose to my enemy, in the end, it is a war, and I will win. And you will come to me, because I know you.”
“You cause suffering and death,” she told him. “You hurt people. You nearly killed my friend. You’re evil, and you will not win.”
He smiled and shook his head, as if explaining things to a small child. “What in life has ever led you to believe that what you call ‘evil’ cannot win? Take that silly cross around your neck. I have seen it before, and it failed to stop me then, just as it will now. He is not the salvation you think he is. And I am not death, but rather, eternal life.”
“Tell that to the women you’ve beheaded,” she said softly.
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