by J. R. Rain
“Wow,” I said. “You look really great, hon.”
And she did. It hadn’t been a week yet, but the years had fallen away on a diet of raw blood; she’d gained weight and vitality, no longer all skin and bones. She still wasn’t the woman I’d met in my time, but at least I could recognize her as the same person. When she saw me, she gave a happy startled grin full of white teeth. Those were new, too.
“Samantha!” she said. “I have been telling the others about you, and all you have done for me. You are our only hope.”
“Your only hope for what?” I was tired and the hunger was definitely upon me now. The long, long flight downriver had really taken it out of me.
“Saving us from Dominique de Pérignon,” said the old man beside her, rising to his feet. He had a nut-brown complexion like a Spaniard.
“This is my younger brother, Bernard de Marigny, Chevalier de St. Louis,” said Eulalie proudly, and the little man bowed and kissed my fingers.
“We are Americains; there are no titles here, my dear,” he said with a strong British accent. “Otherwise, we would have to call that villain Dominique the ‘Marquis de Grenade.’ He was one of Napoleon’s generals. A very bloodthirsty traitor, famous for his cruelties to the Spanish.”
“He is why we are all gathered here tonight,” said one of the others. “De Pérignon is trying to murder us all one by one, those vampires who will not follow him. It is time now for us to decide how to fight him—or else to flee the city.”
Eulalie turned to me slowly, looking ashamed. “Sam, I have turned my brother,” she said in a low voice. “I am sorry to do it without your permission, but he was very ill, and I was afraid he might die.”
I nodded. It wasn’t like I was any kind of expert—and I didn’t figure she needed my ‘permission’—but I did know one thing from my conversations with Archibald and Rachel Hanner. A newbie vampire was very weak in terms of powers and of health—meaning immortality—and his or her ability to create another vampire was pretty erratic. In other words, her brother might recover his health—even a youthful appearance, to some extent—or he might not. His chances of receiving the gift of eternal life from her seemed pretty slim.
I figured that the reason she hadn’t mentioned him to me that first night we met in the future. He’d probably been long dead by then.
I didn’t tell them this; no point. ‘What’s done is done,’ had been my grandma’s favorite saying. Which I thought was the coolest personal philosophy in the world when I was a kid, because it meant she wouldn’t punish me for spilling or breaking something when my mom would have.
Eulalie took me around the room and introduced to the others. Like Bernard, they all struck me as weak and scared. I hoped Eulalie hadn’t turned them, too.
“So all of you are vampires?” I asked.
“Not I!” said the big black man with the long white beard in a voice deep and booming. His accent sounded Jamaican. I noticed he had bangles and colored bandannas around his wrists and ankles, and wore a necklace made of human teeth.
“Doctor John is the chief of the loups garous,” Eulalie said. “My people.”
“Yo’ people befo’ dis!”
“Doctor John is angry that I have become more a vampire now than wolf. He knows I had no choice. I was dying! All his arts could not save me.”
Doctor John looked sulky.
“He is also the greatest of the houngans, or witch doctors, the king of voudon in the city, just as Marie Laveau is the queen. There is no gris-gris she can make that he cannot make just as well.”
That fact alone made the old guy the most interesting person in the room.
Chapter Twenty-two
Seven of us had gathered. Me, Eulalie, her brother Bernard, and Doctor John. Three other much older New Orleans vampires joined us: a Spanish-looking woman named Arthemise Bouligny, a man named Victor de Boré (bald with a strong resemblance to a big brown toad), and finally, Jules d’Avezac, a tall white-haired man and also president of the College of New Orleans.
“We are refugees in our own city, Madame Moon,” said Arthemise, gazing at me with big mournful eyes. “We are in hiding from the monster Delphine Macarty Lalaurie and that Dominique creature she brought over with her from France. They have taken over our society. They despise us older ones and want to replace us with their creatures. Now, they plan to invite another of their clan from France to be their leader.”
“They call him ‘the Perfect Master,’” said d’Avezac.
I had a sinking feeling I knew who they were talking about—the Count Saint-Cyr! Worse, I knew he and his people had won this particular war. Or at least fought it to a draw. I could hardly say that to these frightened people.
“What is the harm in our sipping a little blood from our servants?” said Arthemise, twisting her hands. “It keeps us young and puts the color in our cheeks. We hurt no one, and it is a tradition in our families. But Lalaurie and Dominique—mon Dieu!—they have no conscience or sense of heritage. They are brutes; they kidnap and kill and torture and give us a bad name. They are animals!”
Bernard de Marigny explained to me that many of the great families of French Louisiana were proud to be descended from ‘casquette girls,’ devout young virgins who had been educated and shipped from France by the government to marry the first colonists.
“But on the last shipment of filles à la casquette in 1728, something went tragically wrong. All the food in the hold was spoiled and had to be thrown overboard; the crew was forced to feast on each other. By the time the ship was spotted floating in the river, the only people found alive aboard were seven of the virgins, all sleeping in their caskets, the coffin-shaped trunks that contained their clothes. Their names were Lucie, Anna, Lizette, Jeanne, Lea, Angele, and Marie.”
“Anna was my grandmother,” said de Boré.
“And Lucie my great-great-grandmother,” said Arthemise.
“They had turned to vampirism to stay alive,” Bernard said. “One of their number must have converted the others. That is how the tradition first arrived in our colony. After their arrival, three of the filles à la cassette married, two turned to prostitution, and one became an Ursuline nun—she is today locked in the convent attic with her disciples. Our three guests are from that tradition. L’ecole Tête de Mort, they call themselves.”
“We called ourselves, before Lalaurie and Dominique arrived. We sponsor a wagon and a series of parties at Mardi Gras, you see,” said the white-haired d’Avezac. He explained they used the term ‘ecoles,’ or schools, for the civic groups that organized floats at Mardi Gras before the word crew came along.
“That is how all this began,” said Bernard. “In innocence. Taking blood seemed such a small thing, especially since it was drawn only from slaves.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so I complimented him on his beautiful English accent.
“That’s because my darling brother went to Oxford University in England,” said Eulalie proudly. She sat beside him and took his hand. “When he was young, Bernard was the most brilliant of men, and the most popular everywhere he went; there was no limit to his talents.”
“Not in real estate speculation,” he said, sounding ashamed. “My dear Eulalie has had to rescue me time and time again—just as she has done now by giving me the gift of life.”
“For that, we both have you to thank, Samantha,” she said.
The only one left still standing was Doctor John, who paced the carpet looking increasingly angry and impatient.
“Why won’t you sit with the others?” I asked, and he spat between blackened teeth, missing the brass spittoon.
“Because dey are bloody damn vampires! I am not—I am loup garou. I will have not’ing to do wit’ dem—or you. I come here only because Eulalie is a sister of our blood. Now I find she is one of dem, too!”
“Back home in California, my, uh, boyfriend is a werewolf—a loup garou—just like you. I love him; I plan to marry him if I ever get back
there again. There’s no reason why you can’t all be friends with each other here.”
He came closer. His nostrils flared and he sniffed at me, his eyes glowing yellow. “Yas, yas, I smell him on you. Dat make you like Eulalie, in de eyes of Papa Limba. One of us. Why should I listen to de ot’er ones here, les vampires françaises?”
“Because you share the same enemy. Isn’t Dominique hunting your people down, too, where they live in the swamp?”
“What do you suggest?” asked Bernard, the newest vampire there, but also likely the smartest.
“A peace treaty,” I said, trying desperately to remember everything I’d heard on this subject back in my time. “Signed in blood between our two peoples. Granting these vampires domain over the city of New Orleans and the loups garous all the countryside surrounding it. In return, we fight the Death’s Heads together.”
A stunned silence fell across the room. Then the buzz of voices, dominated by the deep, angry rumble of Doctor John. This bickering went on, growing louder and louder, until the bonging of an ornate gilt-encrusted grandfather clock rang out five times, silencing everyone.
“It will be dawn soon,” said Arthemise. “We must go—our carriages are waiting on the street. May I offer you a ride to your home, Madame Moon?”
Home? The word had a sad, empty ring to it, since my real home was now so far away in the mists of time. I shook my head.
“No thanks, Mrs. Bouligny,” I said. “I can’t go home right now. If Eulalie doesn’t mind, I thought I’d spend the rest of the day here instead.”
The three older vampires took off, worried about being caught outside in the first rays of the sun. Like most of the wealthy Creole families, they lived along Esplanade Street, Bernard told me, a long avenue running northwest up from the French Quarter.
“Much of it built on property I used to own.” he sighed.
“You should have married more wisely,” said his half-sister, “and less often. We must go upstairs to my rooms now, Samantha; the servants will all be waking presently. My youngest son and his family live here with me, you know. They have been very shocked to see the change in me.”
“Their hopes of inheritance are dashed,” said Bernard in a whisper as we walked up the narrow back stairs.
“You look so pale and tired,” Eulalie said once we were inside her bedroom.
“I—I’ve had a long journey, and I need to feed.”
“My morning meal of raw blood will be delivered fresh from the market, just as you told me, but not for another hour. In the meanwhile… Virgie!” she called softly into the next room, and after a minute a young, pretty, black woman of about seventeen came into the room shyly in her night shift.
I just knew that Eulalie hadn’t been able to resist, in spite of my instructions. Vampirism was as much about sex and power as about sustenance; I guess I was a freak that way, because I considered it a curse. What had started as a weird dietary restriction—you know, like having to go gluten-free—had turned into a way of life. One that had pretty much wrecked my old one…
That didn’t mean I had to play with my food.
Already, Bernard had untucked his shirt and sat back on Eulalie’s bed, tugging the girl Virgie toward him by the hand. I tried to read her thoughts, to find out if they were using her as a vessel or harming her—but received another shock. I couldn’t! I couldn’t peer into her mind no matter how hard I tried.
The ability to read human minds (I couldn’t enter the thoughts of other supernatural beings, like vampires or werewolves) had been a power of mine for some time; I’d assumed it was natural for all vampires. Lately, it had been getting a bit out of hand, since both my BFF Allison and my daughter Tammy not only sent me their thoughts, but read mine, too. To be honest, it had gotten kind of weird, like having an iPhone implanted in your brain all day—the distraction was so huge that I’d started to mess up on cases and make some dumb mistakes.
The moment I’d taken off from LAX, the mental chatter around me had dimmed, so I was only half-aware of it in the background and felt no need to dig any deeper. That had gotten me into trouble with Bordelon and her boyfriend. Or maybe I’d been out of my element and too trusting.
While I was meditating about this, Eulalie took off her robe. “Won’t you join us, Samantha?” I hadn’t seen that coming.
The girl giggled from the bed. I guess that whatever the three of them got up to was consensual, but it looked way too kinky for me.
“No thanks.” I even kind of blushed. “I’ll go back down and wait in the kitchen. I guess us folks in California are kind of straitlaced and old-fashioned.”
Hahaha, I thought on the way downstairs. I never thought I’d say those words with a straight face…
Just like at the Macartys, the house woke up with the first of the neighborhood cocks crowing. The kitchen already bustled with servants, none of whom seemed surprised to see me, maybe because Doctor John already sat at the kitchen table, tearing apart and eating a fried chicken with his bare hands. Buttery grease ran down his fingers.
“Annuddah one!” he called out as I came in, and burped loudly. “You laughin’ at me, girl?”
“Smiling, yes,” I said. “You look just like my boyfriend, wolfing that down.”
I sat down across the table from him as a servant entered with his second chicken. The servants, all of whom were black, since no white would work for a mulatto, seemed fearful of him and made themselves as scarce as possible. They were terrified he might ‘fix’ them, as they referred to a voodoo curse. I started to feel faint with hunger, and Eulalie’s stable boy had not yet returned with a bucket of fresh blood from the market.
“He a big mon, like me?”
“Yep, he sure is.” How I missed Kingsley at that moment! He’d figure out a way to make all these stupid warring factions work together. “Doctor John,” I said, looking him square in the eyes, “I need your help to make this treaty work; without you and your people, Dominique’s vampires can’t be defeated.”
“Dey cannot be defeated anyhow. But maybe… yas, I t’ink I will do dis t’ing for you. You have a great dark power inside you, Mama Sam Moon.” He closed his eyes and groaned; while he did this, he rearranged the chicken bones on the table into a crude pattern. “I can see you have come a long way—a long, long way to be here wit’ us now. You are not like de odder vampires. You are much beloved by the loa Erzulie and have all her moon power inside you. So you tell dat Eulalie yas, I will sign dat paper, but only if you give me you guarantee in de name of de goddess.”
“I will,” I said.
His eyes popped open. “I have fourteen black wives an’ one white, de chiefest one. I would, sure enough, shoo her away dis minute if you tek her place in my bed tonight, Mama Sam Moon.”
Did these people all think about sex constantly? I guess life was short back then, and nobody had much time to waste on anything else.
Chapter Twenty-three
I left Eulalie’s house that morning with my thoughts churning.
I wanted to care about Dominique persecuting her and her friends, but in a way, it still seemed like none of my business. I really wanted to get back to my own time and leave all this crap behind.
For that, I would need the help of Marie Laveau. Doctor John had been very clear about that when I asked him about sending people back—or forward—in time.
“Me, I don’ have dat gris-gris, Mama Sam,” he said. Then, lowering his voice to a hiss, “De king does not have so much power in voudon. Most of my magic is carnival tricks, I admit it—de queen is de one wit’ de true powers. Some places, de king he rule for jus’ one year—den he is kill’ and his flesh it gets eaten. Oh yas, but Queen Marie she cannot kill a loup garou. So it is like a bad marriage between us.”
When I got back to the Macartys’, the newlywed couple had recently arrived from the train station, Lalie still red-eyed and Dr. James unhappy and tight-lipped. They had gotten married in Cairo, Illinois, making that two weddings in three days fo
r Lalie, some kind of Guinness World Record. Hearing the news of their elopement, the servants all screamed with happiness and ‘took on,’ breaking out brandy to toast the happy couple. Lalie went straight to bed, and Dr. James looked grim. The colonel threw a fit. Great, I thought. Just what I needed: more drama. At least my separate return went all but unnoticed in the hubbub.
“I don’t comprehend this at all!” The colonel paced the floor of his study excitedly, his hands clenched behind his back. “No sir! You say she ran off with this scurvy scoundrel of an actor; next he died of a fever, and then you married her instead? What kind of conduct is that?”
“It was my suggestion,” I said, entering the room. The colonel stopped in mid-pace and stared at me, his face dangerously red. “And Dr. James was gentleman enough to come to the rescue of your family honor.”
I felt proud of myself for saying that, like I’d finally made the cast of my high school’s production of Little Women instead of having to paint sets.
Understanding crept into Colonel Bart’s features. It reminded me of watching a lava lamp change color. He coughed a few times, then strode over to Dr. James and embraced him, kissing him on both sandy-whiskered cheeks.
“My dear boy,” he said. “Please forgive the ill temper of a foolish old man. You’ll take a drink with me on it?”
“Yes, of course, sir,” said the doctor stiffly.
“Sam, is it possible you could go upstairs to Lalie and talk some sense into the girl?”
“Oh, just let her stew for a while,” I said. I guess I sounded cross because I had almost run out of patience with all of them. “As soon as she stops being the center of attention, she’ll stop crying and get out of bed.”
Okay, I admit it; my temper got the better of me, nearly all week. I had become more frustrated and impatient being stuck back here. I missed my kids, I missed Kingsley, I missed my real life. I’d already sent two messages to Marie Laveau’s hairdressing shop on Toulouse Street, and both times, they were ignored. My attempts to get the rebel vampires and the werewolves to bury the hatchet hadn’t gotten anywhere, and because of the corpses found in the caves nearby, Congo Square had been temporarily closed. So the Saturday Night ‘African Dances,’ which had been a major tourist attraction, couldn’t go on. They had also been a way for the New Orleans slave population to let off steam. All of the servants, delivery men, and street workers were sullen and furious—ours less than most, maybe, but you could still tell the difference in how they treated everyone.