by Minda Webber
Kneeling, he studied the victim as dozens of scents filtered through his nose. Something supernatural had used this woman and destroyed her; Val could smell it in the scents of night, in a faint damp smell of the grave. He didn't believe a vampire had done this, but something with a similar smell—something probably a close relative to the Nosferatu species.
"A la fin! Welcome to the end," Val hissed, his dark blue eyes fierce. And, shaking his head, he turned away from the frozen scream and wide milky eyes of the corpse. "Who found the body?" he asked.
"Some kids. They were drinking pretty heavily and wandered outside to be sick."
Val nodded. "Coroner?"
Christine glanced down at her watch. "ETA is sometime in the next ten minutes." She turned back to the victim's corpse, sadly shaking her head. "She looks like she's been raped. Who would want to rape an old woman? And why is this old woman wearing red bikini briefs with lace hearts? And look at the old gal's shoes! Four-inch spiked heels? How can someone this frail even walk in them?"
Val shook his head. "The sex started out consensual, I think. And she smells like she's been dead maybe three hours. Not more than four."
Sniffing the air carefully, Christine concurred, her chocolate-brown eyes filled with worry. Lifting the victim's purse, she grabbed the wallet inside.
"What on earth could have done this?" she asked, glancing through the wallet.
"You mean what in hell," Val said savagely. Even after all the years he had lived, death was never a pretty sight. He knew it was never a welcome one for mortals.
"You think we're looking for some sort of demon work?" Christine asked.
Val shook his head.
"A traiteur voodoo?" Christine suggested, holding up the victim's driver's license. "Says here that her name is Caral Jones. She was only twenty-four. Damn, it looks like she got a reverse face-lift."
"Or something worse, much worse," Val agreed. He hated to see this waste. Life was precious, both human and paranormal. This young woman had once laughed, had probably strolled along the French Quarter in the morning, sitting at a cafe with a cup of chicory coffee and a plate of warm beignets. This woman had once loved and been held tenderly by someone who cherished her. Her hopes and potential were now gone forever, all taken by an act of cruel intention and insidious hunger. To stop things like this was why he'd joined the police.
"How was this done? If this is her license… how could she age to death this quickly?"
"With a lot of help from something otherworldly," Val replied. "Something real otherworldly. Something I thought was still sleeping, which was sleeping for over six centuries."
"What are you talking about? What did this? If it was black magic, then it's stronger than any I've ever seen."
Val lowered his head as he studied the body, replying tersely, "This isn't simple black magic, Chris. This was something feeding."
His partner looked incredulous. "Feeding? What feeds on youth?"
"An incubus. A Ka incubus to be exact."
"But I…" Chris hesitated, her confusion evident. "Incubi feed on lust, I thought. And there aren't many of them left."
Glancing back at his partner, Val nodded. "You're half right. Incubi who feed on lust are called Eros incubi. They're very old, and since they can't create more of themselves, they're a dying race. Maybe there are eleven left from the Old World. Those, supposedly, in Europe."
"Then what's a Ka? I've never heard of mem."
Val sighed, adding in a grim tone, "Not many know of their existence. They feed off youth, like the Eros feed off lust. There's only supposed to be three or four Kas left, and they have been sleeping the Big Sleep. Nobody knows where. It was rumored they were around the Ural Mountains. It appears the rumors are wrong," Val finished sardonically. He glanced down at the aged remains in front of him.
"Let me do some checking, and I'll get back with you on this," he said after a moment. If what he was thinking was true, then the Big Easy was in for a world of hurt. Incubi in general felt the world was their oyster. Kas liked to eat oysters raw. They were generally very intelligent, lusty, attractive, and cruel. And hungry. They were always very, very hungry.
Christine started to argue, but Val shook his head and started toward his car. "Look, I've got some research to do, and some calls to make to the League in Europe."
"The League of Vampires?" Christine asked, surprised. Val hated to ask for help, and especially from the League. They always required a favor for anything they did. Sometimes those favors had a decidedly nasty edge.
"Chris, use your paranormal contacts to check out the supernatural community, and see if there have been any more bodies that have aged at a rapid rate. I know there are no cases like this anywhere in New Orleans or even Louisiana, or we would have been contacted. But try out the Federal website for similar crimes and see if anything else is stirring."
Christine nodded and Val left, his thoughts in turmoil. If a Ka incubus was feeding in New Orleans, what a plentiful supply of food the monster had. Partygoers of every age, size, shape, and beauty, everyone was drinking and enjoying the good life, not realizing that paradise always, always, had a dark side, a cruel, ugly side.
Val cursed. The Big Easy was appropriately named.
Chapter Nine
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
After a sleepless night, regrets filling her for both listening to Val and not listening to Val, Lucy had gotten out of bed on the wrong side. Nothing had gone right lately. She hadn't found DeLeon at the Overbite Bar, and Val's comments had been earth-shattering. For four years she had refused to listen to him, and now she was dying to hear his explanation. And if that didn't beat all, she didn't know what did.
Eating a late lunch in front of her television, she found a newscast that caught her attention like the snap of a line when a big old catfish took the bait. The newscaster was talking about the recent violence in New Orleans, the newest death. And Lucy was struck by the description of an old woman who had been found raped and murdered. Her name was Caral Jones. The unusual spelling had stuck out like a sore thumb.
As luck would have it, Lucy had interviewed a Caral Jones eight months ago for one of her shows. Caral had been twenty-four.
In trying to get answers from the New Orleans Paranormal Task Force, Lucy was unsuccessful. She encountered a big blue wall, as if she had run smack-dab into a Blueberry Ogre. No one was answering any questions, which only encouraged Lucy's suspicions. As her mother always said: "You can douse a skunk with perfume, but it still stinks."
Yes, the New Orleans PTF stunk to high heaven. Caral Jones's murder had been done by a preternatural creature unlike any New Orleans had ever seen or smelled before. The perp was a Ka incubus, and the powers that be were keeping mum.
Calling Caral's number, Lucy quickly learned that the girl had died last night, a victim of a foul attack. The chances of two women with the same unusual spelling of the name Caral both dying on the same night were just too much, and so, in typical fashion, Lucy came up with a plan. She had been tempted to tell Ricki, to get her help, but decided at the last moment that tracking down a Ka incubus was too dangerous to include close friends or even enemies.
Putting her plan into action, she dressed in beige khakis with a white lab coat thrown over her blue T-shirt. Her hair was in a tight bun, and she put on a pair of tortoiseshell spectacles, hoping to disguise her looks. She might not be as famous as Sandra Bullock, but she did have some following in New Orleans.
On the pocket of the lab coat she wore, Lucy pinned the name tag for a Dr. Craig. Her badge at a quick glance looked like any other badge worn by members of the New Orleans morgue staff; however, if she was unlucky and someone inspected the badge closer she would be caught for sure.
She was unlucky. Within ten minutes, Lucy had been caught by a junior G-man wannabe, the assistant to the assistant coroner. She had been thrown unceremoniously out of the morgue, and escorted outside by a security guard with a stern lecture on illegally
gaining entrance.
Back at her van, Lucy eyed the hospital building, a huge Gothic-like structure built of cement, limestone, and steel. A small light above the imposing entrance revealed two thick glass doors, a yawning opening like a huge glass mouth.
Lucy stared hard at the entrance, her thoughts tumbling everywhere. At this rate, she thought derisively, she would never get close to Caral Jones. But the old woman's body in the morgue must be the same Caral Jones that Lucy had interviewed, and a person didn't have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that the Ka was on the attack.
Putting on her thinking cap, Lucy reviewed her options. She had to get into the morgue to view the evidence. Just because she had been bodily escorted out, that did not deter her. Campbell women weren't squeamish or quitters. They were, however, adept at adaptation.
Watching an ambulance pull in, Lucy noticed the attendees wheeling a covered body on a stretcher into the morgue.
"A covered sheet… a body. Oh yeah!" she said, her pale blue eyes lighting with inspiration. Jumping into her van, she took off like a bat out of hell.
Thirty minutes later, Lucy had secured a gurney and sheets from St. Elligus Hospital, a parish hospital that was so busy a person could steal a dead body away with no one the wiser. This bizarre event had happened a time or two in the past, as Lucy knew from interviews on her show.
Unloading the gurney from the back of her van, Lucy cursed as she dropped one of the wheels on her toes. "Hell's bells," she said as she hopped around on one foot. "That really hurts." Who knew that a gurney was so heavy? Paramedics should get hazard pay.
Reaching inside her van, she grabbed a king-sized bottle of ketchup and began squeezing it into the sheets. After she finished, she rubbed it onto her pants, T-shirt, and arms, then smeared some into her hair. At last, closing the van doors, she began her secret trek to the morgue by route of a line of trees around the building. She wanted absolute silence, but finally decided that an occasional curse and the sound of twigs snapping under the gurney wheels would be acceptable.
"Damn it all," she said. A gurney had wheels and rolled, so therefore it should be reasonably easy to push across slightly uneven, unpaved ground. Who would have known it would take a bodybuilder to accomplish it? At this rate, she was going to miss her show, which just wasn't acceptable—not to her, and, more especially, not to her boss, Mr. Moody. She sped up, in spite of the protest from her aching muscles.
She had to duck far back into the tree's shadows with the gurney once, as an ambulance came to a screeching halt in front of the morgue. Waiting for the attendants to leave, Lucy began to get impatient, feeling terribly creepy standing smothered in ketchup in the shadows, cavernous darkness at her back.
Suddenly, her scalp started itching and she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, just like in a horror movie. Someone or something was watching her; she just knew it. It was probably plotting how best to eat her alive, or to drink her blood, to drain her dry. And she'd already applied the condiment.
A ghostly whisper of sound had her cringing, and Lucy felt the cold at her back. Beyond that were the black recesses and dark depths of the unknown. Her breathing quickened and she took deep breaths, the metallic taste of fear filling her mouth. She didn't want to be a blurb on the nightly news, "Talk show host found eaten like a hamburger." She didn't want to be any species' food for thought.
Reaching inside her pocket, she found her can of mace. She wanted to turn around and look, but fear held her immobile until the crackling of tree branches behind her preceded the word "Who?" That startled her into reacting.
With lightning reflexes born of fear, Lucy whirled, expecting to see some demon from hell, or some ghoul or ghoulish freak who liked to hang out near morgues. Instead, her eyes, now more accustomed to the darkness, met two other eyes staring at her from the top of an oak.
"Hooo," the sound came again.
Shoving a hand to her mouth, Lucy barely stifled her relieved giggles. Her menacing presence was an owl! Shaking her head, she stepped back and checked again on the ambulance. Its attendants were just now getting inside.
As she stood there, Lucy felt a sting on her ankle, followed closely by another. "Ouch!" She hopped on one foot, swiping at her pantleg, finally managing to raise it. Finding an ant, she moved away from the anthill she had disturbed with her gurney.
"What rotten luck! I'm somebody's food after all. Probably a fire ant too," Lucy grumped. She hated the tiny little menaces. Their bites were painful and left big red lumps. "What else can go wrong tonight?" she asked.
At last the ambulance sped away, and Lucy cautiously tugged and pushed the gurney over the uneven ground until she reached the back parking lot. Glancing right and left, like a sprinter in training, Lucy ducked low and prepared. Then she shoved the gurney hard in front of her, running, the gurney's wheels spinning crazily. Huffing and puffing, she started to feel dizzy. Still, she reached her goal.
Her victorious "Yes!" punctuated the night. With true grit, she had made it to the side of the building that was heaviest in shadows. "John Wayne, you'd be proud of me," she muttered as she stared at the entrance. "Now to wait for another ambulance."
She didn't have long. Within minutes, another ambulance had pulled up to the morgue, quickly and efficiently unloading its cargo and going inside, the glass entrance doors sliding open with a ping.
Lucy pushed her gurney hard, rushing for the doors. Glancing quickly inside, she noted that the security guard had again followed the ambulance attendants down the long hallway to find out all the gory details. Lucy had noted the guard's ghoulish curiosity earlier, after the first paramedics brought someone in. Campbell women had a keen eye for detail. After all, God was in the details—that and in cooking ingredients.
Shoving her gurney through the doors, Lucy pushed it quickly down to the opposite end of the hallway, where she settled the heavy metal stretcher. Lifting the messy sheet, she scrambled onto the gurney and threw the sheet over her body and face. All she had to do now was pretend to be dead, and they would wheel her into the main part of the morgue, right next to the autopsy room. Hopefully the ketchuped sheets would look like a bloody mess, and no one would be tempted to look underneath. Even if they did, she felt sure she could hold her breath for a few minutes. How hard could playing dead be?
More sounds came from the back of the morgue. Lucy listened intently, taking tiny breaths, hoping no one , could see any infinitesimal movements of the sheet over her mouth. She hoped she didn't hyperventilate. How inconsiderate of the paramedics and guard to keep yapping when she might do just that.
Finally she heard the other gurney being wheeled out, its wheels making a cha-chink sound on the worn linoleum tile, and the guard and the paramedics talking about the car wreck that had just claimed two lives. Suddenly Lucy heard them call a greeting.
"You here for the Jones autopsy, Detective DuPonte?" a male voice asked.
Lucy stifled a groan. Of all the morgues in all the world, why did the grand detective of the undead have to show up at hers? She supposed it was because Val had a nose for sniffing out conspiracies. Although her conspiracy wasn't important in the great scheme of things, it was still a conspiracy, which to Val would be like waving a red flag in front of a bull. Or red gunk in front of a vampire.
Remaining very still, Lucy held her breath as she heard him acknowledge the question. He then began walking toward the autopsy room, passing Lucy by.
Suddenly the footsteps stopped, only a few steps past the hallway where Lucy lay in wait. Lucy froze every muscle in her body, her heart pounding. Could this fiendish Don Juan of the undead hear her heart beating like a demented drum in her suddenly very right chest?
Four steps later she had her answer, as she felt the sheet being whisked off her. She didn't open her eyes, wondering briefly if she could just continue to play possum. She supposed things had taken a wrong turn at the condiment tray. Maybe she should have thought it through better.
Chapter Ten
Wash that Man Right out of Her Hair
" Merde." Val laughed as he yanked back the sheet. "What do we have here—Sleeping Beauty?"
Lucy kept her eyes firmly shut, wishing she and her gurney could disappear into thin air. Where was a witch's broomstick when she needed one?
"Well, well, cherie. First I catch you dressing like Elvira, now I find you playing dead in the morgue. Are you trying out to be undead, or just bored?" Val stared, wondering what Lucy was playing at. What was she doing in the morgue with ketchup smeared all over her?
He goosed her. "Rise and shine. And by the way, you overdid the Heinz."
Lucy opened her eyes, the color of her face a match for the condiment in her hair, and Val stared down at her as if she had stepped on his grave. Lines of concern twisted the corners of his mouth. As if she didn't know the gravity of her situation!
Standing directly behind Val was the security guard, whose eyes and mouth were wide open.
Blinking, Lucy sighed. The jig was up, and humiliation was once again her middle name. "How did you know that there really wasn't a dead person under here?" she asked.
Val leaned over and sniffed disdainfully. "How else?"
Foiled, and caught red-handed. And -bodied. And -haired. What wretched luck.
Getting to her feet, she pushed away from Val. "Your nose should be in the Guinness Book of World Records. Are you sure you aren't part werewolf?" she snapped.
She could see a slight grin tug at the corners of his mouth—a mouth she wanted to kiss. Hell's bells! Why couldn't she just forget him? She needed to wash him right out of her hair, along with about thirty gallons of ketchup.
The security guard was scowling at her as if she had stolen the Hope Diamond, and he finally put in his two bits. "You're the lady that pretended to be a doctor earlier." Glancing at Val, he added suspiciously, "Detective DuPonte, I've already had to throw her out of here once. You ought to arrest her for breaking and entering."