Nancy K. Duplechain - Dark Trilogy 02 - Dark Carnival

by Nancy K. Duplechain

  I hesitantly agreed, and Miles let me out the car and told me to wait at the restaurant for Noah. I crossed the street and went inside as Miles drove off. I ordered a beer while I waited for Noah to arrive. Thirty minutes had passed when my phone buzzed with an incoming text. It was from Noah, instructing me to meet him at a bar a few blocks away. He gave me directions from the restaurant. I downed the rest of my beer and reluctantly took off in the direction of my new destination.

  Walking through the streets of New Orleans was different now from when I used to come here. I was born and raised in Louisiana, but I can’t deny that I was a tourist like everyone else who came to the Crescent City. I had always stuck to the popular spots, like the Quarter, and Carrie and I spent more than our fair share of wild nights on Bourbon Street. Now, as I glided through the shadows of the alleyways and stalked the back streets, searching for the place where Noah told me to meet him, I saw the city as a mysterious entity. It was more alive at night, its shadows like whispers, coaxing me into its arms.

  I noticed countless pairs of eyes following me. The eyes belonged to shop keeps closing up for the night, the homeless watching me from their makeshift beds, call girls pretending to wait for their next tricks on the corners, but all the while, wary of my every move. I didn’t belong here and they knew it. I could feel Les Foncés all around me, too, watching me from behind the tombs of the cemeteries, waiting for me around the corners of St. Louis Church. With each breeze that floated off the Mississippi, I could feel their breath on my neck.

  I felt my phone go off. I pulled it out of my jeans and saw that Lucas was calling me. I decided to call him when I got back to Cee Cee’s. I put the phone back in my pocket. In less than a minute, it went off again with an incoming text. I pulled it out and read Lucas’ message: Noah Dallion was in prison for murder. Killed a guy in Metairie. Dangerous! Stay away!

  I froze where I was and stared at the message. I tried to rationalize how he could murder someone. Noah seemed troubled and angry, but I didn’t think he was the type to flat out murder someone. And I don’t think Nadia would have been friends with him, and Miles wouldn’t have sent me out with him. But I knew Lucas better than I did these people. I put the phone back in my pocket and kept walking, vowing to keep up my guard.

  I arrived at the bar, a small hole-in-the-wall that looked like it kept bad company. I cautiously entered and found more eyes on me. I was right about the company in here, and it appeared that company was guarded against anyone not a regular. They were mostly men in their thirties and forties, looking like working-class depressed. The hard lives they lived that led them to seek out this dissolute establishment showed in their eyes. I only saw two women and they looked no more decent than the hookers outside. A jukebox was playing some hard rock by a band I didn’t know. Why Noah would want me to meet him here, I had no idea. Maybe he got a kick out of seeing me out of my element. Perhaps this was just one more punishment from him.

  I scanned the bar, ignoring the stares, but didn’t see Noah. I noticed another room partitioned by a dark blue curtain at the end of the bar. I squeezed through the narrow walkway in between the bar stools and the three booths against the wall. I noticed two men at the bar turn around to watch me as I went into the next room.

  It was very dark. There were a couple of pool tables with fluorescent lights overhead that looked like they burned out long ago. There was a broken jukebox in the far left corner, its glass cracked as well as a few 45’s in the display. The room was empty. I turned to go back through the curtain and was startled to see two men right in front of me, blocking my exit. I caught my breath and tried to play it cool, but my heart was threatening to beat out of my chest. Every instinct in me told me this was not good.

  “Oh! You startled me.” I gave a friendly smile, hoping they wouldn’t read through it.

  The taller one, who looked like he was in his late thirties, with a two-day beard said, “Can we help you find something?”

  “I was just looking for my friend.”

  The shorter one, who had tattered sneakers, smirked and said, “We could be your friends.”

  The taller one snorted. I smiled again, “Thanks, but he’ll be here soon and I can’t keep him waiting.”

  They grinned, and I started to move forward. This should have been a non-verbal cue to step aside, but as I predicted, they didn’t. I halted. “Excuse me,” I said politely, and moved forward again. They stayed put.

  “You from around here?” said the taller one.

  “Lafayette. Been coming here since I was little. Excuse me, but I have to go.” This time, I tried to push through them, but it was like trying to shoulder through a brick wall.

  “Maybe your friend isn’t coming,” said the shorter one, smiling devilishly.

  “Oh, he’ll be here. And he’ll be here soon,” I said, dropping the friendly demeanor. “Now excuse me.”

  As I went to push forward, the taller one grabbed me by the shoulders. That was it. I brought up my right knee as hard as I could and made contact with his groin. He let me go and gave out one yelp as he cupped both hands in between his legs. The shorter one laughed, spun me around, and pushed me farther back into the room. My gut collided with the edge of one of the pool tables, knocking the air from my lungs. I whipped around as fast as I could. They were both coming toward me; the shorter one was a little faster. The taller one was still holding his groin and looked extremely angry.

  I pushed my weight back against the pool table and kicked the short one with both my feet. He flew back into the tall one, knocking them both to the floor. I made a sprint for the curtain partition that led to the bar area. As soon as I crossed by them, the tall one grabbed my ankle and yanked me down to the floor.

  “Get her up!” he said to the short one.

  The short guy pulled me up by the hair. I screamed as he dragged me to the pool table. He let me go long enough to push me onto my back. I popped up and punched him in the face. He punched me back and I instantly felt the blood in my mouth. I went to kick him in the groin, but he anticipated my move and held my legs down while the tall guy, now on the side of the pool table, pulled my hands behind my back. I spit in the short one’s face and he hit me again and pinned my legs with his.

  “Put her arms up,” he said to the tall one.

  The tall guy yanked my wrists up high while the short guy pulled my shirt up over my head.

  “Put her down,” he said. The tall one shoved my head back hard onto the green felt and I was dizzy from the blow. I tried to struggle, but the tall one had my arms pinned over my head. The shorter one spread my legs with his. I felt him unbuttoning my jeans. I heard the zipper.

  “Get off me!” I yelled.

  I heard them laughing. Then I heard a loud thud, and my legs were suddenly free. Then my arms were free, and I heard a loud smacking sound and, in the corner of my eye, saw the taller one fall back to the floor. I picked my head up to see Noah with a baseball bat in his hands. He brought it high over his head and went to bring it down on the tall one. I saw the short one coming for Noah, so I sat up and tripped him with my leg. He fell as Noah brought the bat down on the tall one. I heard a dull cracking sound. And then I heard it again. And again. The short one got up, and I jumped down from the table and punched him in the face again. It stopped him momentarily, but he ignored me, intent on getting Noah. Noah whirled around and smacked Shorty in the face with bat. He crashed to the floor, and Noah kicked him in the gut. He rolled over in agony. I kicked him, too, for good measure. He groaned again and passed out. Noah dropped the bat at his side. I looked over at the tall one. Blood was pooling around him, but he looked like he was still alive.

  “Come on,” said Noah, handing me my shirt. I hurried to put it on and zipped and buttoned up my jeans. He grabbed my hand and led me out of the bar as fast as he could, the bar patrons staring at us.

  “Hey! Where’s my bat?” shouted the bar tender as we exited.

  We stepped out into the cool night. I suc
ked in the air and felt a sting in my mouth. I spit blood out onto the uneven street as Noah grabbed my hand and led me around the corner and one street over. I yanked my hand out of his, and he stopped in his tracks. He turned to me, waiting for me to speak.

  “Where were you?” I demanded. “You asked me to meet you in that horrible place and you weren’t even there!”

  “I got held up,” he said, not an ounce of regret in his voice. “C’mon. We’re late.” He started to walk ahead, but I stayed put. He got a few yards up the street before he turned back to glare at me for not following him. He stopped, and I just stared at him, trying to hold in my fury.

  “I know about the trouble you got into a few years ago in Metairie. About the prison time. I know—” Before I could finish, he ran toward me and was in my face in less than a second.

  “You don’t know half as much as you think you do!” he growled. It scared me, but I held my ground.

  “Why did you kill that man?”

  He was so angry he was shaking, and I could tell it took every ounce of restraint he had not to attack me, but I didn’t back down. “That’s … none of your business.” He took a step back and a deep breath. “We have to meet our contact before he leaves.” He started walking again. As soon as his back was turned, I let out a shaky breath and followed him, always keeping about three paces behind, which was as much room as I needed to get away from that force field of tension he projected.

  Noah led us back down a couple more alleys and side streets that I didn’t recognize. The Mardi Gras decorations were next to nil here. What few there were had seen better days—tattered banners, broken beads hanging sadly from rusted balconies, as though they knew the forty days of Lent could never atone what they witnessed here. I was completely lost and, even though I hated being alone with him, I eventually gravitated closer to Noah, not wanting to find myself completely on my own in this sinister labyrinth. From what I could figure, we were near a park, and thinking of that brought back the memory of what happened to Nadia. The guilt came flooding back, drowning my fear and anger. I glanced at Noah and found myself trying to understand how he felt. Cee Cee told me it wasn’t my fault and so did Miles, but I felt like it was all the same, and maybe I did deserve to be punished.

  We came to another pub, this one closed and shuttered long ago. Noah went around to the back via the alley. I saw his car parked here and wondered why we walked all this way when he could have just picked me up and driven here. He stopped, cocked his head to the door, listening for a second, and then turned the knob.

  As soon as we entered the place, I could feel my skin crawl. Seedy was too nice a word for it. I didn’t think it was possible to find any worse company than what was kept by the last bar, but I was mistaken. It was not a bar anymore; it was now a derelict vessel for the hidden roaches of society. The room was very dark, but what little light there was illuminated hunched-over men meticulously combing through rows and rows of pornography—DVDs and magazines alike. I got the feeling most of it was illegal. When we entered, a couple of men looked in our direction, seeing mostly me. They studied me suspiciously for a moment and then went back to their activities. I heard light music and laughter from upstairs.

  “Stay close to me,” whispered Noah. He led us through the rows of porn and up the staircase, which was near the front door of the bar. The landing was abandoned. It led to a balcony that overlooked the street below. Just to the left of the landing was a shut door with yellow light seeping through the cracks. Noah knocked and then opened it.

  It was a small office with a desk, one chair and a couch. A few men and women passed around a needle while a couple more took hits from a crack pipe.

  “Can we go?” I whispered to Noah.

  He ignored me.

  “Edgar here?” he asked the room.

  “In his office,” said one of the men.

  Noah closed the door, and we continued to the right of the landing where the only other room was. He knocked and opened the door.

  This office was a little larger than the other one. A slightly pudgy guy in his thirties, wearing a stained green sweater and reading glasses, sat reclined behind a desk, reading a worn copy of Dickens’ Oliver Twist. When we entered, the man, Edgar, greeted Noah with a smile that could charm the Devil.

  “Noah. Glad you decided to come,” he said, marking his place in the book and closing it, setting it down on the desk near a little lamp.

  “Sorry we’re late,” said Noah.

  Edgar glanced in my direction. “She’s not a cop, is she?”

  “C’mon, you know me better than that.”

  Edgar nodded, taking Noah for his word, but still suspicious. I found myself wishing Lucas was there with me. I always felt safe with him around. Yet here I was, in a seedy, underground porn-and-drug ring, my security guard a convicted murderer who hated me.

  “So, what you got for me?” asked Noah.

  Edgar reached into his desk drawer and withdrew a pair of tickets. “Krewe of Grigori’s having their Mardi Gras ball next week.”

  “How’d you get those?”

  “A guy came in here yesterday to look around. He didn’t buy anything, but asked me if I wanted a pair of tickets to the ball. I laughed at him and told him I’m not the ball type. Then he starts getting a little creepy.”

  I’d hate to think what this guy calls creepy, I thought.

  “He starts trying to persuade me to join them, saying I can have everything I ever wanted,” he continued. “I asked him how that was possible. He told me they have ways. Then his eyes start moving really funny.”

  “Like how?”

  “Like the pupils kind of—I don’t know—swim. It was weird. Then he holds his hand out, and a pair of tickets appear out of nowhere, like he was a magician or something. I know you deal with all that supernatural shit, so I figure you’d want in on this.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Blonde hair, blue eyes. White as a sheet.”

  “Sam,” I whispered. Noah shushed me.

  “Who?” asked Edgar.

  “How much?” asked Noah.

  Edgar thought it over, rubbing the tickets back and forth between his thumb and forefinger. “A thousand. A piece.” He looked Noah dead in the eyes, practically daring him to bargain.

  “Does it say when this ball is?”

  Edgar nodded. “Written right there on the tickets.” He smiled that charming smile again, and I felt like I needed a shower.

  Noah pulled out his wallet and counted out two thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills, placing them on the desk before Edgar, who then handed over the tickets. Noah looked at them, put them in his wallet and placed it back in his pocket.

  “All right, thanks man.”

  “You got it.”

  We turned to leave, but Edgar said to me, “Wanna stay and have a little fun?”

  “No thanks,” I answered.

  I started to walk out the door, but Edgar grabbed my hand. Noah pulled his hand off of me. “She said no.”

  “Sure, Noah. See ya later, okay?”

  “Oliver Twist?” I muttered as we stepped out into the alley and started walking to his Charger, which was parked along the street in front of the alley.

  “Dickens is the only author he reads.”

  “That’s fascinating, but that guy could win an award for ghoul of the year. So, what do we do now? Just go back to Miles’ and—”

  Noah stopped, cocked his head. His nostrils flared a little as he sniffed the air. I stopped, too. “What is it?”

  “Hush,” he whispered. I strained my ears and sniffed, but noticed nothing out of the ordinary. Noah turned around, and I could sense him bristling. I looked in the direction where he was staring. At the end of the alley, deep in the shadows, were two amber marbles that caught the glare from the streetlight on our side of the alley. They seemed suspended in mid air, and I stupidly thought how that could be possible. I heard Noah’s breathing intensify. “Get back,” he ins
tructed, his voice low and hoarse.

  “Why?”

  Never taking his gaze from the amber marbles in the shadows, he put one arm in front of me and cautiously pushed me behind him. I peeked over his shoulder, and I could swear I heard a low growl come from his chest. Suddenly, the two marbles started to come toward us. Noah took off in a flash, and there was just enough time for me to realize how idiotic it was of me to think those were marbles when he tackled the woman with amber eyes, sending her crashing into one of the dumpsters lining the brick walls. I gasped when I saw her face. It was morbidly gruesome; her flesh looked rotted and her teeth were yellowed and snapped at Noah, trying to bite him. Her fingernails were long and blackened and they scratched at him, trying to fend him off. My first instinct was that this woman looked like she died a couple of years ago.

  They wrestled on the ground for a few seconds when Noah got hold of her head and twisted it until her neck broke with a dull snap. All the growling and snarling stopped and Noah leaned back against the wall, breathless, staring at his work with loathing. I looked away, feeling awkward, like I was spying on some intimate moment. And one person taking the life of another is, I’m sure, a very private sort of thing. Although, that other person lying lifelessly by the dumpster seemed to have not been a person for a very long time.

  I heard Noah get up, lift the lid of one of the dumpsters, heave the body into it and shut the lid. I then heard footsteps approaching from behind as he came into view and continued to his car. I got in, shut the door, and he started driving. I gave him a moment to clear his head of what just happened and then said, “What was that thing?”

  “Reanimated dead.”

  “Wait. A zombie?” I asked in disbelief.

  “I guess if you want to use that word, sure.”

  “You’re telling me there are real zombies?”

  He nodded. “They use them down here from time to time. It takes a skilled Voodoo practitioner to do it, but they don’t use them much. They’re pretty simple and weak. They mostly use them to scare people.”