by W. J. May
“Do you know you’re called a ‘blood whore’?”
She looked at him disgust. “A blood whore?”
“Yes,” Annette said. “I suggest you stop before it kills you. Unless you want this...” she motioned around to the destruction of the living room furniture, “to happen again. Feeding is sexually arousing to vampires.”
She shuddered. “Ew.”
Leo gave commanding eyes to Annette, who motioned to Christian. “Have a good night, folks.”
The three walked out of the small house, leaving one stunned human and a dumbfounded shapeshifter in the house.
∞∞∞
“In the words of Ricky Ricardo, you have some ‘splanin’ to do, Lucy,” Christian said as he brushed a stray red curl from Annette’s face.
They were sitting in Christian’s apartment, TV on but not really watching it. They had been kissing for a while, mostly because Annette was trying to avoid answering questions about herself but she knew Leo had blown their cover and was trying to find a diplomatic way of telling him.
She smiled at the Lucy comment, as that wasn’t the first time she’d been called that since the popular actress had become a household name. Then her face grew serious. “Here’s the thing. I’m one-hundred and thirteen years old.”
Christian threw his head back and laughed. “Okay, joker, stop playing around.”
A serious looked passed over her features and she untangled herself from his sensuous grip. “I’m serious, Christian. I was born in Oklahoma in 1850. I went to Los Angeles in the late 1800s and got married. Tim was killed by a shapeshifter and an Immortal named Scott found me and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
He raised his eyebrows at her. “An Immortal? You mean a vampire?”
She shook her head, her red curls bouncing freely. “No, I belong to a coven of former humans who police the Fae – vampires and shapeshifters.”
“Fae?”
“Yes, that’s what we call them. We’ve been around for decades. First Immortal was created in 1809,” she said with seriousness.
He clucked his tongue. OK, I’ll play, he thought. “That’s quite a tall tale, Annie. I mean, how do you keep from aging?”
She smiled, her brown eyes twinkling. “I knew you’d ask that. A sylph gives us a magical elixir to drink every five years. It tastes like toxic waste and burns like fire, but it does the trick.”
“A sylph?”
“Yeah, she’s kind of like a witch, or a faerie. I’d never call her a witch, though. They’re kind of temperamental.”
“They?” he asked, still amused by her story.
“There are a coven of them, they live on an island in the Gulf of Mexico.”
Now he was laughing. “Prove it.”
She turned her head at him, getting annoyed. “I knew I shouldn’t have told you. Leo is going to kill me.”
“So how old is Leo?”
“Oh, he’s close to two hundred years old.”
He leaned in to kiss her once more. “So tell me, little miss immortal, if you have this secret group that police the... Fae – what do you need the BSI for?”
Her ruby red lips twisted into a facetious grin. “Who else is going to save your asses?”
He leaned back. “Really. Well, I want in.”
She nodded. “I knew you were going to say that. I’ll talk to Leo. I’m not sure we need two BSI Immortals in this field office, though.”
“Oh, so you think you’re something special, do you?” he asked, running light fingers over her arm.
She raised her chin. “Yes, yes I do.”
He nodded. “I see. Well now that I know about your secret group, you’re not going to have to kill me, are you?”
“I think if you’re not careful, a vampire or shifter will do that for you.”
He shook his head and faked a pout. “Low blow, Russell.”
She leaned over and kissed him once again, giggling into his mouth.
PART III: NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA – 1989
* * *
Chapter 11
Special Agent Lauren Clark stepped out of her late model Ford sedan and wiped the sweat from her upper lip with her fingertip. She absolutely hated the summer. Seems as a Florida native she’d be used to it, and as a kid it hadn’t bothered her, but as she’d grown into an adult, she decided the whole upper lip sweat moustache wasn’t a good look for her.
She blew out a breath, her blonde bangs tousled by the air she blew as she moved them out of the way of her sunglasses once again.
“Black, one sugar, just the way you like it, sugar,” said Tristan Ellis with a smirk, handing her the steaming coffee in a paper cup from the gas station.
She had gone back into the car where the air conditioning was blasting after scanning the parking lot of the Circle-K convenience store. She grabbed the cup and blew on it and said, “It’s too hot for this crap but I need the caffeine jolt. This weather is making me sleepy.”
Tristan nodded. “I heard that. It gets humid in Minnesota, but the summers ain’t no joke here!”
Lauren looked at his shiny bald brown head and nodded at it. “At least you can keep cool without hair. I’m about to shave my own damn head.”
He laughed. “You definitely will not get any play with this look.” He pointed at his head. “Fortunately for me, I can rock the q-ball look with no problem.”
Lauren laughed and put the car in gear, sipping her coffee while steering the ridiculously large, white, government-issued car one-handed. They drove in silence until they pulled up to the BSI headquarters on St. Charles Street, lucky enough to find a spot in front on the street.
As they took the elevator to the third floor, Tristan looked at Lauren and admired her dark green pantsuit and shiny high-heeled, nude-colored pumps. He respected her for dressing so conservatively, versus the ostentatious 80s style of pink and blue floral patterned dresses and blouses with the ridiculous shoulder pads he thought made women look like linebackers. He preferred his football players to be on the field or TV, not in his office.
The elevator dinged their arrival and they made their way to the boss’s office to give a report.
The SAC’s office was large. Glass walls made up the outside with a wooden door Lauren found useless. Why have glass walls and a solid wooden door? The government definitely designed this office, she thought with a snicker she had to suppress.
She knocked on the door and waited for a response. Peering around the solid door through the glass, she saw her boss was on the phone. She put her pinky and thumb up to her ear at Tristan to indicate to him the boss was on the phone.
“I know,” Tristan said. “I can see that.” He pointed at the sparkling glass wall.
“Come in,” said a voice.
They opened the door just as Special Agent in Charge Sheila Morris was hanging up.
“Sit down, you two,” she said, pointing at the chairs in front of her massive oak desk.
Sheila, the SAC of the New Orleans division, definitely did embrace the flamboyancy of the 80s era. With her large gold earrings and bright pink fitted polyester dress, and long, fluorescent fingernails, she obviously liked to be noticed. Her black hair was weaved with braids of synthetic hair and the pink lipstick on her full lips matched her nails perfectly. Lauren suspected her shoes under the desk also matched.
Tristan and Lauren couldn’t help but wonder if they were in trouble by the way she was glaring at them.
“So, what’s the 4-1-1 from my two favorite agents?” she asked, powdering her nose with a compact she’d pulled from her desk drawer.
Lauren tried to hide the incredulous look on her face, as she hardly wore any makeup at all and wondered why women bothered sometimes. She cleared her throat and plastered on a smile. “Nothing, really. We cruised the Riverwalk and weaved our way through the Quarter and even Bourbon Street last night, but didn’t see much.”
Sheila paused the powder puff at her nose and raised her penciled-on eyebrows. “Cruised?”
Tristan interjected, “I think Agent Clark is trying to say that we didn’t run into any shifters or vampires, ma’am,” he said in his most respectable Southern way. Even though he was from the Northeast, Tristan learned quickly that he’d better embrace Southern manners or be treated like a Yankee.
“I see,” Sheila said, placing the circular compact back into the desk drawer and shutting it. She steepled her fingers, which looked a little painful because of how long and curvy her pink fingernails were.
“Where you two ya-hoos headed to tonight?” she asked, seemingly genuinely curious.
Lauren opened up a small manila folder and read from it. “It seems we have a tip about some succubus in a club downtown – she’s making her rounds there.”
Sheila nodded. “I was briefed about this during a telephone conference yesterday with D.C. The succubae are definitely not hiding anymore.”
“I remember hearing about them at the academy. They’re vampires, right?” Tristan asked.
SAC Morris nodded. “Yes, in a way. They are immortal for sure, but instead of drinking blood, they take a person’s... soul. It sounds so crazy to say it like that, but it’s the only way of explaining it.”
Tristan raised a dark eyebrow. “Their soul. Are you serious, boss?”
She laughed a little, her perfectly straight, white teeth on proud display. “Yes, Agent Ellis, that’s all we got for now. It seems the victim will not only lose a lot of his memory of the event, but his emotions seem to be almost dead afterward.”
“His?” Tristan questioned.
“Yes,” Lauren interjected. “Succubae are only female. They are usually very beautiful females and lure their victims with the promise of sexual favors.”
Tristan’s eyebrows raised. “Doesn’t sound like a bad tradeoff. Who needs their soul anyway?”
Lauren punched Tristan in the arm. “Very funny, wise guy.” She looked at her boss. “Men!”
Sheila picked up her pen and started writing. “Yeah, Agent Clark, men. You should try one on sometime. They do serve a purpose...” she shot a glance at agent Ellis, “sometimes.”
Lauren laughed.
Tristan, not so much.
“So I take it you two are going to be staking out this...” she glanced at the folder Lauren had handed her, “Muse Club tonight in the French Quarter?”
“Oh, and what a horrible assignment that will be!” Tristan said with a glint in his brown eyes.
Lauren ignored him and looked at her boss. “Yes, we’ll be there.”
Tristan looked at Lauren. “Mm, mm, mm... I can’t wait to see you in a miniskirt!”
She shot daggers at him with her eyes. “Not on your life, buddy.”
∞∞∞
Lauren tugged at her min-skirt, willing it to be longer. She had to borrow the damn thing from her roommate – Priscilla – who was the complete and polar opposite of her. In fact, Priscilla had begged to come to Club Muse with her tonight. When Lauren informed her it was strictly government business, she had pouted and informed her that Thursday nights weren’t the best night to go, but it would still be ‘happenin’. Lauren had just shook her head with her hand out, asking for the skirt. She was both relieved and disappointed they were both a size 6, as the skirt fit perfectly. She definitely wasn’t going to show any cleavage, though, as she was drawing the line at the short, black spandex skirt.
She met Tristan at the front of the club as MC Hammer’s “You Can’t Touch This” blasted out through the front door. Paying the ten-dollar cover, they both wandered into the club.
The rap music was an assault on Lauren’s ears, but she endured it, all in the name of federal law enforcement. As much as her partner, Tristan Ellis annoyed her, she was relieved he was here, helping her not feel so out of place in the massive club.
Bodies were writhing on the dance floor and Lauren was already scanning the club for the succubus in question, a female going by the name Quinn, who was stealing poor mortals’ souls just to stay alive.
The nerve.
She noticed some eyes on her, and again yanked on her skirt, feeling it was too short.
“Stop fidgeting!” Tristan scolded. “You have awesome legs, be proud of them!”
She gasped. “Ellis!”
He laughed, smacking her arm. “Seriously, take a compliment, girl. I don’t get why you don’t have a man yet.”
She looked at him as if she wanted to slap him.
He put his hands up in surrender. “Okay, maybe I kinda get it. You some lezbo or something? I mean, if you hate men, just tell me.”
She stomped her right foot, which was encased in a flat shoe. “I am not a lesbian! Not that there’s anything wrong with that... I am just very... selective with who I date.”
He raised an eyebrow. “And who is that?”
She looked away from him, the colorful pulsing lights from the dance floor flashing on her pretty face. “Nobody at the moment. I’m single and free to do what I want.”
He admired the way her blonde hair hung down on her shoulders. She always wore her hair up for work and he’d never noticed how pretty it was down – although he’d often wondered.
Tristan Ellis grew up in Minneapolis. His family lived on the wrong side of the tracks, and while his friends growing up were busy stealing cars and slinging dope, he stayed inside to help care for his mother, who was sick with sickle-cell anemia. He secretly admired the Minneapolis PD and all they stood for, not despising them, like his schoolmates did. He graduated from high school with pretty good grades, and when his mother died his senior year of high school, she made him promise he’d go to college.
True to his word, he received a degree from the University of Minnesota in Criminal Justice in 1985 and was quickly picked up by the FBI. He thought he would need some sort of experience to join, but it turned out the Justice Department was quickly learning that young graduates with clean backgrounds and no other training made the perfect clean slates for them to train. They found those with experience in other law enforcement venues were harder to train in the ways of the FBI, and would frequently recruit from college campuses.
One large drawback to joining the FBI was that one had to move away from home – probably for good. They’d have to go to a part of the country where they knew nobody, and where nobody knew them. That person would be a stranger, a nobody to everyone around them, and that made for the perfect undercover agent.
Fresh from the Academy in Quantico, Virginia, Tristan drew the long straw and got selected for the field office in New Orleans, Louisiana. In his first year, he had four unsolved cases – all of them supernaturally related, but he didn’t know that back then. He just knew the cases were strange and unexplainable. Determined as he was, he dug and dug until he dug too deep and got pulled aside by the SAC of the field division, asking him if he was interested in the BSI. Of course he wanted in.
Things became clear to Tristan after he went back to training and joined the BSI. The unsolved cases were picked up and quickly solved. He even got the pleasure of detaining and interrogating a vampire in 1987, which was an eye-opening experience.
It also almost cost him his life. He learned quickly that you can’t treat vampires like regular suspects. You know, superhuman strength and all that.
“Are you listening to a word I said?” Lauren said.
“I’m sorry, girl. What did you say?” he replied, breaking out of his trip down memory lane.
She huffed. “I said, that lady over there matches the description of Quinn, our succubus.”
Tristan followed her line of sight to a very beautiful woman with hair as red as a blood orange – so red it reflected every rainbow color the strobe pumped out, gleaming perfectly off her sleek, sharp haircut. She had cherry red lips and skin as pale as alabaster. Her eye makeup was done jet-black and cat style, and even from a distance, Tristan could see they were a very light color, probably blue. She was surrounded by two men and three women. One of the men looked to be a very young blonde man, probabl
y no older than twenty-one, if that, and he seemed very enamored by her.
Tristan nodded. “Yes, she does seem to fit the description perfectly. What is the plan?”
When the succubus looked their way, almost as if she felt their eyes on her, Lauren and Tristan looked at each other. “We’ll just keep an eye on her. If she leaves with anybody, we follow.”
“Can I at least have a beer?” he asked.
“Negative. We’re on the clock.”
Tristan looked at her and laughed. “Really? I don’t remember submitting an overtime sheet.”
She looked up at him. “We’re on the swing shift tonight, or did you forget that you only spent 5 minutes in the office today with the SAC?”
“Oh, I guess you have a point.”
“Go to the bar and get me a club soda, will ya? And no alcohol for you,” she chided.
He nodded and left her standing alone in a dark corner of the bar with her arm leaned up against a tall round table with no chairs. She was watching the succubus she assumed to be Quinn.
Quinn leaned in and whispered something in the blonde man’s ear and he smiled at her with a gleam in eye, something Lauren could only assume was lust. She had probably promised him something of a sexual nature and the poor sap seemed to be falling for it.
As Tristan made his way to the bar, he looked back once again at the succubus. Quinn caught his eye once more, her pale eyes locking on his chocolate brown ones. Even from across the club, Tristan seemed to be mesmerized by her. His eyes raked over her body. The skin-tight red shirt matched her lips perfectly and showed off her large breasts. Her short, white skirt accented the muscular lines in her thighs while her legs were crossed. She had on very high, glossy red pumps, which swished as she rocked her ankle back and forth as she spoke to the blonde man.
Tristan licked his lips then let out a breath, running a hand over his bald head. “Snap out of it, dude,” he hissed at himself.
“Excuse me?” asked the bartender.
Tristan smiled at the man with the mullet hairdo, which was shorter and feathered in the front, and all party in the back. “Oh, sorry, just talking to myself. A club soda and a Coke, please.”