“Dante?”
“Yeah?”
Was Jacques St. Germain really a vampire? The words had formed on my tongue, but I didn’t utter them. It was still all too unreal. I wasn’t ready to accept that Jacques St. Germain had truly been a vampire. I wasn’t ready to let go of my now tenuous hold on reality just yet. It was still too much.
We continued walking, when—
A thin figure emerged from around the corner of the brick building. His head was covered by a tattered orange hoodie, but his build I recognized.
“Abe!” I shouted. “Abe Lincoln!”
He didn’t acknowledge me. Maybe I was mistaken.
Then—
“Red Rover!”
Chapter Twenty-One
Dante
The young man stopped and turned toward us.
My nose told me nothing, but my vision told me everything I needed to know. I knew this young man. He was the homeless man whose clothes I had stolen the night of my escape.
He pointed at me. “You!”
Erin’s eyes widened. “Abe? You know Dante?”
“He took my clothes. The night… The night I met you, I think. I’m not sure. He hypnotized me.”
“Dante? What is he talking about?”
“Let’s find a place to sit down where we can talk,” I said. “I’ll explain everything.”
“No,” Erin said. “You’ll explain now.”
“We’re out in public. I can’t. Come on,” I said to Red Rover, or whoever he was. “We’ll get you a hot meal.”
Erin gave me a glare but she went along. We walked a block to Café Amelie and got a table outside, where we would be less likely to be overheard.
I hadn’t yet told Erin about my time in captivity. My memories were so fragmented, and what had been done to me… I wasn’t ready yet. I hadn’t even told Bill and River most of it. But she deserved the truth. If I expected her to spend her life with me, I owed her that.
But not today. And not in front of Red Rover.
“Listen,” I said to him. “You’re mistaken about me. But Erin told me that you know a lot of vampires in the city. We’re looking for one, and if you can help us, we’ll make it worth your while.”
“I could swear it’s you,” he said.
“I said you’re mistaken.” I didn’t trust my ability to glamour, and I certainly didn’t want Erin to think I was doing it, but I threw a small wave of energy toward him. Thankfully, it seemed to work.
“Maybe. I know a lot of vamps. Who are you looking for?”
“We don’t know, actually,” Erin said. “But someone has”—she cleared her throat—“been taking my blood. Without my knowledge or consent. My brother’s too. Apparently we smell really good to vampires. And since you seem to know a lot of vampires…”
“It could be—”
A server appeared at our table. “What can I get for you today?”
“Whatever you want, Abe,” Erin said.
Red Rover ordered a meal fit for a king, and Erin and I ordered some fruit and water. We’d just had beignets and weren’t overly hungry.
When the waitress left, Erin turned back to Abe.
“So anyway, we need your help, Abe. And is that even your real name?”
He nodded. “It is. But no one on the street calls me that.”
“No, they call you Red Rover,” I said. “We met Bea.”
“Yeah. Bea thinks it’s funny that I let the vamps feed on me without hypnotizing me. I don’t mind. It feels kind of good actually, after the initial bite of course. Then they give me food. It’s a win-win situation.”
I cleared my throat. “It might interest you to know, Rover, that vampires aren’t supposed to feed on humans.”
“Why not? You do.”
“What?”
“You have the mark. Around your eyes. Bea told me how to recognize it.”
“Bea doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” I said.
“Bea knows more than you think.”
“She doesn’t seem to know how to keep herself off the street,” I said.
Erin touched my arm. Easy, Dante. I could almost hear her words. She was right. I wouldn’t get his cooperation if I slammed the way he lived. He might be a victim of circumstance or shitty luck.
Or he might just be a big loser, but I’d keep that to myself.
“I wish I could help you,” he said. “Erin, you were really nice to me at the hospital. But I don’t know who else the vampires feed on.”
“Do they feed on any of the other people under Claiborne Bridge?” she asked.
“Some. But they hypnotize them, so they wouldn’t be able to help you.”
Erin tilted her head. “It’s called glamouring, Abe. Not hypnosis.”
“Is it? They never told me that.”
This was no help at all, but I was curious about one thing. “Abe, or Rover, or whatever your name is, I’m curious. Why do you let them feed on you without glamouring you?”
“I already told Erin why. Because they buy me a meal. They don’t have to do anything for the others because they don’t even know they’ve been fed on.”
Okay. That made sense on its surface. But I wasn’t buying it. “Are these vampires nice people?”
He shrugged. “They’re nice to me—” He jerked his head toward the wrought-iron gate. “I have to go.”
“Our food hasn’t come yet,” Erin said.
“Sorry. I have to go. Now.” He stood, pulled the hoodie over his head, and walked swiftly out of the courtyard.
“What was that about?” Erin asked.
“I have no idea.” But I was just as glad he was gone. Now I had more time to figure out how to tell Erin about my encounter with Red Rover the night of my escape. And I would tell her. Eventually. The question was when. She was already having trouble accepting certain things about me.
I gestured to our waitress. “We’re going to need to cancel our order. Our…friend had to leave.”
“Okay, sir.”
I laid out some bills for her trouble. “You want to get out of here?” I said to Erin. “You need to get some sleep.”
She nodded.
I stayed next to Erin until she had fallen asleep, and then I got up and fired up her computer. She had given me the login information, and I wanted to research my Rh factor change. Even as I typed, though, I knew I wouldn’t find anything. If Jack didn’t know, I wouldn’t find it on the internet.
I could only get information from her.
What had she done to my blood? I had to find out what was going on with my genetics before Erin and I could even think of having kids.
Wow. That thought had come out of the blue. I’d never given kids a thought before.
I stared at the computer screen until my phone buzzed.
River.
Jay got the blood type of the woman who disappeared from the free clinic. B positive.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Erin
When I woke up to get ready for work, Dante gave me the news about the blood type of the woman from the free clinic. Then I checked my phone. Jay had texted me with the same information, and a little more. Her name was Bella Lundy. I had no way of reaching her, though. Jay and River wouldn’t divulge her address. They said they’d been unethical enough getting me her name and blood type.
Just as well. I didn’t have time to devote to my amateur sleuthing anyway. I had work tonight, and then tomorrow, on my night off, I had to work on Dr. Bonneville’s research—and then I planned to go to Claiborne Bridge to find the vampires. Plus, since we’d found Abe Lincoln, I owed Bea a reward of some kind.
I hadn’t told Dante of those plans. He still thought we were going to the Quarter. He’d go with me, of course. I was counting on that. But I knew enough about my enigmatic man to know he’d try to discourage the little trip. On the other hand, he wanted to know who’d been feeding on me as much as I did, so he’d have a big reason to let me go.
I also wanted to ru
n into Abe Lincoln again. Why had he rushed out of Café Amelie, especially after he’d ordered a gigantic meal? It didn’t make any sense.
For now, though, I kissed Dante goodbye and drove to work.
An ambulance was pulling up as I parked, and several gurneys carrying what appeared to be car accident victims were being wheeled in.
Nothing like getting right to work.
“Erin!” Dr. Bonneville snapped as I walked in. “Get changed quickly. We need you up here.”
Lucy hadn’t shown up yet, but several other nurses were running around taking orders. I hurried. Not for Dr. Bonneville, but for the patients who needed me.
I raced back to the ER and went to work on a teenage girl whose care Logan was overseeing.
The girl was unconscious with facial lacerations. I quickly cut off her clothes, only to uncover a huge gash in her chest that had been stitched up. The impact from the automobile accident had caused it to open.
“Doctor! She’s had open heart surgery. You need to check this.”
“Shit,” Logan said. “Get out of my way.”
I slinked back. A young kid. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen at most, and she’d just had open heart surgery? Crazy.
“Was she the driver?” Logan asked.
“I have no idea,” I said. “I just got in.”
“Damn. This incision looks almost… I think she’s had a heart transplant. Let’s type her right away. She’s going to need blood. In the meantime, get some O neg in here stat. I need prednisone too.”
I looked around for an orderly. Of course, not one in sight who wasn’t busy doing something else. I went to the small fridge and grabbed a bag of O neg.
O neg. What I’d been looking for the night Dante came into my life.
No time to ruminate on that now.
I raced back to the patient, but she was gone. Logan was nowhere in sight. I grabbed Dale, one of the other nurses. “Where’s Dr. Crown? And the patient with the heart transplant?”
“I don’t know. Sorry, Erin. I have to get back to my case.”
Dr. Bonneville walked briskly out of an exam room.
“Doctor, where is Dr. Crown? He and I were working on a case, and he sent me for some O neg”—I held up the bag—“but now he’s gone. The patient’s gone.”
“Erin, I have my own patients to worry about. This accident was brutal. She probably got taken into surgery.” She whisked by me.
In the last five minutes? How long had I been gone?
She turned back to me. “Don’t just stand there like an idiot, Erin. We’ve got emergencies here!”
That slapped me out of my stupor. I took the bag of blood back to the refrigerator, and before I had time to think any more about the girl with the heart transplant, one of the residents grabbed me to assist with an older man who had been involved in the same accident.
He didn’t make it.
But no break for me. I ran back and forth helping with more patients for the next two hours. When I finally got a chance to breathe, I remembered the teenage girl. I didn’t even know her name, and Logan hadn’t resurfaced, which was strange. Even if she’d been taken into surgery, he’d have come back to the ER, where he was assigned. Right?
Lucy walked up to me. “Hey. You okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“You know I don’t believe in that stuff.” Except vampires are real, apparently.
“You know what I mean. What’s wrong, Erin?”
Where to start? Oh, my new boyfriend is a vampire and has been drinking my blood. Some other vampire has been feeding on me and my brother, and a patient I was helping seems to have disappeared into thin air. Not to mention I met a homeless voodoo priestess who apparently can tell my boyfriend has been drinking my blood. You know, nothing much.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Wrong. Something’s got you agitated. What’s going on?”
“Have you seen Logan?”
“Not since I got in. But I’ve been uber busy with that accident, just like we all have.”
“Hey, Luce, what’s your blood type?”
“B positive. Why?”
“So is mine. Weird, huh?”
“Erin, about nine percent of the population are B positive. That equals out to roughly six hundred and seventy-five million people worldwide. Not exactly rare.”
I quickly filled her in on the fact that two of the disappearing women were B positive, and how we always seemed to be out of B positive here at the hospital.
“I guess we should go in and donate,” Lucy said.
“Yeah, we should, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make. It’s like B positive is all around us.”
“Maybe New Orleans just has a higher percentage of B positive people than other places.”
I hadn’t thought of that. “Maybe. But doesn’t it seem strange to you? In fact, what was the name of the woman who disappeared from here the other night? It seems to have escaped me.”
“Sybil Downey.”
I quickly typed her name into the computer. And ice gripped the back of my neck.
“Check it out.” I turned the monitor toward Lucy.
Blood Type: B Positive
“Erin…”
“Come on. This has to all mean something.”
“No, it really doesn’t. Are you feeling okay, honey? Have you been getting enough sleep?”
“For God’s sake, Lucy, I’m not crazy.” Or was I? My boyfriend was a vampire—a vampire who had stayed by my side the last two nights to make sure I slept. “And I’m sleeping fine.”
“Good. Then stop obsessing over nothing, Erin. You’re freaking me out here.”
She had no idea how freaked out she was going to be once I told her everything I was currently hiding from her.
But that wouldn’t happen today.
The sirens blared, and we headed back out to the ER.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Dante
“Riv, come on,” I said. “I need this favor.”
“This is my night off. I’ve got stuff to do, and I want to rest. I’m still recovering from a concussion, you know.”
“Please.” I rolled my eyes. “You didn’t want to take any time off for that. They made you, so don’t give me that BS. Now you’re back on duty, so stop saying you need rest. Come with me to Claiborne Bridge. I need to find the vampire who’s been feeding on Erin.”
“You were gone for a while, Dante, so there’s no way you would know this, but those Claiborne vamps are bad news.”
“Red Rover says—”
“Who the hell is Red Rover?”
I quickly explained. “He says they buy him a hot meal after they feed. He told Erin they were nice.”
“They might very well be nice to a food source. But they’re thugs. They’re basically a gang.”
“You mean… Well, what exactly do you mean? Specifically?”
“They run drugs and pimp out women. That specific enough for you?”
That was a gang all right. “I didn’t know that. But now that I do, I sure as hell need to keep them away from Erin.”
“They’re dangerous. I can take my piece, but you won’t be armed.”
“I’ll take one of yours.”
“Are you kidding? Have you ever even held a gun?”
“Well…no.”
“Then it’s more of a danger to you if you have it. You’re crazy if you want to take on the Claiborne vamps.”
“I don’t want to take them on. I just want information.”
“And what will you do if you find out one of them has been feeding on Erin? You’ll go mental. And Dante, they’ll fucking kill you.”
“I’m going, Riv. With or without you.”
“Damn you. Give me three minutes.”
River had two pistols on him—one in a shoulder holster and the other hidden under his jeans on his ankle. I had only my fists, my teeth, and my sheer will to annihilate whoever had been violating Erin.
&nbs
p; Though logic dictated otherwise, I felt no fear. If I found the vampire who had been feeding on Erin, I’d take him out with my bare hands.
If I didn’t find him? Then we had another problem.
It was eerily dark and quiet under the bridge save for the occasional thrum of an automobile overhead. A nearly burned-out streetlight flickered in the distance, the electric static faint in my ears. Crumpled papers drifted by in the light breeze of the night, and a small animal—a rat?—whisked by my feet.
Most of the homeless were probably snug in their tents, and others snoozed curled up with dirty blankets or newspapers up against the poles or in self-made cubbyholes.
Vampires couldn’t smell each other, so we had no way of telling whether any were lurking around.
River scanned the area. “I think this is a dead end, Dante. I don’t sense any trouble here.”
“There’s no way to tell,” I said.
“Not for you. But I’ve been a cop for seven years. You learn to feel things in the atmosphere. I’m telling you. Nothing is going on here except homeless people sleeping.”
I sighed. Maybe he was right. Still, I wanted to walk the length of the tent city, just in case. “I want to keep exploring.”
“Christ. All right.”
We walked along in the darkness, until two familiar eyes met mine. I squinted.
“You came back, Mr. Vampire.”
Bea, the voodoo priestess.
“You promised to reward me if you found Red Rover.”
“I promised nothing. The woman with me”—I couldn’t say girlfriend. I didn’t want Bea to know how important Erin was to me—“did.”
“You found him though.”
“How do you know?”
“I told you. I’ve got the sight.”
“Maybe. More likely he came back here and told you he’d talked to us.” Still, Erin had promised her a reward. I pulled a few bills out of my wallet and handed them to her. “Thank you for your help. We appreciate it.”
Unhinged: Blood Bond: Parts 4, 5 & 6 (Volume 2) Page 8