“I really could use a walk, something to drink. In fact, I think I’ll run down to the cafeteria and grab a snack, if that’s all right,” she said.
“Of course,” Bobby told her, and smiled. He was thin but wiry, all muscle. He had a lopsided smile and seemed like a good guy, and just right for Stacey.
“You go right ahead,” Stacey said. “Bobby and I know the officer on duty in the hall—he’s a great guy. And we’d never leave your friend. You can trust us, you know.”
I have to trust you, she thought.
“Thanks. I’ll be back soon.”
“Take your time,” Bobby said.
She nodded, offered him a weak smile, and tried not to go tearing out of the room.
Luckily, a taxi was available right outside the hospital, and Lauren immediately flagged him over.
The driver had a Southern accent and spoke English perfectly. He assured her that traffic was quiet, and he gave her a card so she could give him a ring if she needed a ride back later.
He made his way through the traffic easily enough and was able to let her off on Decatur Street, right at Jackson Square.
She walked around.
And around.
Back where they had originally met Susan the fortune-teller, Lauren saw that there was an empty table with tarot cards laid out.
No one was there.
There was no tent set up, either. Maybe Susan hadn’t had a chance to replace her crystal ball.
A young artist was seated near the empty table, sketching idly. She had an easel displaying a number of very good caricatures, but when Lauren approached her, she saw that the woman was working on a realistic sketch of a man.
He was a man like any other, except that…he wasn’t. He wore stylish jeans and a casual tailored shirt, but even in the sketch, his eyes were…strange, arresting.
And frightening.
She couldn’t pinpoint it, but the impression was there. Even in a sketch.
“Excuse me,” Lauren said to the artist, who jumped, gasping.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,” Lauren said.
The girl flipped her sketchbook closed.
“You saw that man tonight?” Lauren asked.
The girl nodded. It seemed she was trying to collect herself. “Would you like a caricature? I’m really good. Just twenty dollars.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t have time, but…” Lauren dug in her purse for a twenty. Once she had been just like this girl, just trying to make enough to get through school. “Here…. When did you see that man?”
The girl looked confused. “I…” She laughed suddenly and admitted, “I don’t know.”
“Think. Please?”
The young woman tried, then shook her head. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.”
“Has anything…strange happened here tonight?” Lauren asked.
The girl smiled with real amusement then. “Come on, this is New Orleans.”
“Please. I could really use some help,” Lauren told her.
“I don’t…I don’t know. I’ve kind of been in a fog all night.”
“What about the woman next to you?” Lauren asked.
The artist frowned. “What woman next to me?”
“Over there. That table. It belongs to a fortune-teller named Susan.”
“Oh, of course,”
“Please, have you seen her? Do you know where she is?”
“I saw her go into the church earlier. But it’s closed now, of course.”
“Thank you.”
Lauren walked quickly toward the church, which indeed looked closed. But at the entrance to the alley that ran beside the church, she saw a sign. She walked over to it, frowning, scanning the announcements.
Choir practice
! And it was going on right now.
She hurried to the front door. It was locked. She raced down the alley and found a side door, and managed to slip in. She wasn’t sure where she was, but quickly wandering along the hall brought her to the side of the main altar. In a small chapel off to the far side, someone was indeed leading choir practice. The sound of the hymn they were singing was beautiful.
She looked toward the rear of the church, searching the pews.
And there was her fortune-teller, just sitting there, staring at the altar.
Lauren made her way down the aisle, then hurried in to take a seat beside Susan.
“What have you done to us?” she demanded in a heated whisper.
Susan turned to her. “This is a house of God. You will not bring venom in here.”
“What have you done?” Lauren repeated.
“Me? You have brought danger and a curse on me, young woman. You shouldn’t have come here. And you should have left when I told you to go.”
Lauren inhaled, wondering just how absurd she was going to sound. “I know there are vampires here. But it isn’t my fault. You knew it, and you didn’t warn us.”
“I told you to leave,” Susan said softly. “But you and your friends refused to believe. You think you are safe in your ignorance, but I will suffer for your stubborness and arrogance. You bring danger to me just by being here.”
“Susan, my friend is in a coma. But she came out of it for two minutes and mentioned you. What do you know? Why did she talk about you?”
Susan turned on her, her eyes narrowed. “Perhaps because she realized that you had all put me in danger. I am afraid to work. How will I live? I have become a target. Because of you.”
“What are you talking about?”
Susan stared at her. Her face seemed impassive, but her voice was harsh. “Stephan. Stephan Delanskiy.”
Lauren was so taken by surprise that she just stared.
Maybe this was all an elaborate ruse. Susan was in on it with Mark. And apparently the cops were in on it, too.
If she hadn’t seen the wings in the sky, the shadows that took form and came after her, fangs bared…
Susan looked toward the altar again. “There will always be evil. There will always be those who combat it. There will always be those, like me, who see it, sense it, are touched by it…but do not have the power to best it.” She stared at Lauren again, though she seemed to be talking to herself. “Evil has come before, and it will come again. Such is the way of the world.” Her eyes cleared and met Lauren’s. “But you have ruined me.”
“You’re the one who had the crystal ball!”
“And through it, he saw you.”
“But he was here already,” Lauren argued angrily, afraid.
“Yes. But now he will stay. Until he has you.”
“This is ridiculous,” Lauren said harshly.
“Is it? Is it ridiculous when a mother wakes in the night and knows that her child has died? Is it ridiculous when a husband suddenly knows his wife is in danger, when a twin knows her other half needs help? Right now you need help.”
“I have help,” Lauren whispered.
Susan ignored her and went on. “Forget what you think of as real, what you see as sanity. Forget it all—if you want to live. I am alive now only because I know that what we don’t see is real, that what we don’t admit can be true. If you want to survive, realize that for your friends, and for yourself.”
“I’m not your enemy,” Lauren protested. “You brought this down on me. You and your crystal ball.”
“He would have found you,” Susan said. “The crystal only let you know he had done so. You should have run while you had the chance.” She shrugged. “He might have followed you, but the danger would have been gone from my life.”
Lauren felt oddly as if she had been slapped, the woman spoke so coldly, with such a dismissive determination. But then Susan turned back to her. “You have help, you say? Take that help and cherish it. You cannot win on your own. Even an army could not help you win if that army did not see and believe. For your friends? Keep them safe if you can.” She stood up, clearly anxious to get away. She pulled a folded paper from one pocket of her long
skirt and thrust it toward Lauren. “I do not know everything, but I research what clues come my way. Read that.. It’s a copy of a newspaper article, and it may help you. But don’t read it now. Get away from here. Go back to those who will help you. If you care anything for others, keep away from me. And when you leave here, bathe yourself in holy water.”
Susan hurried up the aisle.
Lauren rose, more confused than ever. “Susan, wait!”
But Susan was gone.
Lauren hurried from the pew herself. In the aisle, she genuflected and crossed herself. And she didn’t forget to dab herself liberally with holy water before she made her way back to the side aisle and out into the alley.
It was quiet.
Dark.
Shadowed.
Surely there were people nearby, she told herself. It was early, especially by New Orleans standards. Carriages would be clip-clopping late into the night and musicians playing on street corners.
But the narrow alley seemed ancient, shrouded in a strange sense of decaying elegance. There was a breeze, and it whispered in a strangely cool tongue.
She heard something in the air.
Like a flock of birds overhead.
Or bats.
She looked up into the darkness of the sky.
Once upon a time she would have thought only that the night was merely alive with creatures who rested in the eaves by day and hunted by night.
But now she knew better. Now she knew…
That she was their prey.
Bobby Munro was in the lobby when Mark and Heidi returned to the hospital. He looked distraught. Downright ill.
“What’s wrong?” Mark asked anxiously.
“Lauren’s missing. She’s not in the hospital. I’ve looked everywhere,” Bobby told him.
Tension tightened Mark’s muscles, and he clenched his jaw tightly, fighting against fury and fear. “I’ll look for her. You need to get back to Deanna. Heidi, go with Bobby.”
Heidi looked at him, a slow smile curving her lips as she rolled a strand of blond hair around her finger. A look of purely wicked lasciviousness crossed her face.
“He’s coming, you know. He’s coming back. He’s going to kill you.”
“Do something with her, will you?” Mark said to Bobby in frustration. Something was clearly wrong with Heidi, but he had no time to worry about her right now.
“I’ll do my best,” Bobby told him, but Mark had already turned and left the hospital.
He left his car in the lot. It was imperative that he find Lauren immediately, and in the crowded Quarter, he would do better on foot.
Leticia Lockwood finally signed off on her last patient. She bade goodnight to her fellow nurses and headed out to the parking lot. She was probably the last person on her shift to leave, but she didn’t mind. She felt herself blessed to have gotten through nursing school. She loved her work and was happy to do what she could to help others—and get paid for it.
She smiled as she headed for her car. Aunt Judy didn’t know it yet, but they were headed to church tonight. She thought her aunt would be pleased. Thanks to her, Leticia had managed to keep her goal in mind and ignore many a temptation. Like Tyrone Martin, back when they were in high school. Tyrone had been about the best looking guy ever to run down a football field. But he had gotten into drugs. Then shoplifting. And now he was doing six years in the state pen. While others had fallen for him, she had not. She had refused his cocaine, his pot—and his determination to get her into bed, and she was glad of it. He had several illegitimate kids, and their mothers were all on welfare. Aunt Judy’s forceful resolve had made her stick to her books. Her aunt had never threatened her with violence, but Leticia had wanted to please her aunt; so she’d tried hard to do the right things.
But tonight…
She’d promised the new deacon at their Baptist church that she would be there. She was going for the singing. And for Pete Rosman, the man she’d been looking for all her life. And he liked her; she knew it. They were both people who liked to do things. They were proactive and believed that if everybody just put some elbow grease into life, things would be better for everyone.
As she headed for her car, she saw a man. He was bent over by a tree, and he didn’t look well. She frowned, instantly concerned.
“Are you all right?” she called.
He put out a hand and waved weakly at her. She hurried over to him. He was handsome, she decided. Too pale, obviously sick.
She took his hand. “Come on…emergency is right over there. I’ll help you.”
“No, no….” He flashed her an engaging smile. “I’m so sorry, I’m all right. I just need to sit down for a minute. I was out with friends, and I guess I had too much to drink.”
“It’s a familiar story around here,” she murmured.
“You disapprove, I’m sorry. I’m okay. You can…I’ll be all right. I’m going back to my hotel to crash for a while. You’re a nice lady, though. Pretty, too,” he assured her.
She blushed.
“I’ll be all right,” he said. But he was leaning on her heavily. And those eyes of his!
She chastised herself. She was going to help him. And not because he had nice eyes and had paid her a compliment, she assured herself. She was going to help him because he needed help. It would only take her a few minutes out of her way to drop him at his hotel.
“Come on. I’ll give you a ride home.”
“You’re too kind.”
“Come on.”
He held onto her, accepting her aid. She got him over to her car and into the passenger seat. When she sat next to him, ready to put her key in the ignition, he suddenly looked out at the sky and cursed.
She frowned. He was staring toward the Cathedral, so she looked in that direction, too. It looked like there was a swarm of birds overhead.
In fact, even at this distance, it seemed that she could hear their fluttering wings.
“It’s just birds, maybe bats,” she said, intending to reassure him. But in fact he didn’t look nervous. He suddenly looked like a great cat that had realized its prey was trapped nearby.
He looked at her. There was something very odd about him. “Sorry, I’m out of time,” he told her.
“What are you talking about?” she asked, disturbed.
She saw his eyes again and opened her mouth to scream.
Too late.
The bats were coming. Circling overhead, then dipping low, their wings brushing her with just a touch…a terrifying touch.
Yet…
They didn’t settle, didn’t land on her, though she knew it would be a struggle to make it the short distance back to the Square.
Where there would be people. Lots of people. Police cars, maybe even mounted officers. Help.
She judged her distance.
It would be closer to walk back to the church. Sanctuary.
She clung to the wall, sliding back to the door as quickly as she could.
She tried it.
Locked. Now it was locked. She banged at it. But no one came.
She was armed, she reminded herself.
Yeah, right. With a water pistol.
She drew it out of her bag and she took aim at the next winged creature that came her way. She held the child’s toy with both hands.
And she fired.
The thing fell to the ground with a horrible hissing sound, and there was a small explosion, a puff of smoke in the air, and then…
A pile of dust. As she stared at it, she noticed that there was a figure at the back of the alley. Standing there. Watching her.
The other bats hovered above her, so she ignored the m ysterious figure in favor of the immediate danger and began to shoot. She shot and shot, ignoring the shrill hissing and rain of dust, until she suddenly realized that she was going to run out of “ammo.”
She stopped.
The figure in the alley was still watching her.
And then she heard the low sound of chilling laughter.
Mark combed Bourbon Street first, going from bar to bar. He moved as fast as he could, his sense of fear growing greater with every second.
He’d put a call through to Canady, and he knew the cop would be out looking for her, and that he had patrolmen on the hunt, as well. He’d done everything he could conceivably do, but even so, he felt as if he were being torn apart, as if he had failed again.
He didn’t know where the hell she was.
He would find her. By God, he would find her. She was strong. Even in danger, she would be strong. She believed. She knew the truth.
Exiting a bar, he plowed straight into another man.
Jonas.
“You,” he breathed, and reached into his pocket; he couldn’t miss this time.
“Sweet God in Heaven, man, will you just listen to me?” Jonas pleaded.
“I have an entire vial of holy water,” Mark informed him quietly. “And if you make one wrong move, I will destroy you.”
He spoke quietly, because there were people all around them. From inside, he could hear the band playing and a waitress shouting something to the bartender.
As he and Jonas stood there glaring at each other, a woman flashed a smile and asked them to move aside just a smidge—she wanted to get into the club.
Mark caught the younger man’s arm and pulled him out to the street.
“I am not the one you’re looking for!” Jonas said earnestly.
“Where the hell is Lauren?”
“Lauren?” Jonas demanded with a frown. “Deanna’s the one in the hospital Would you just listen to me for a minute? I’m not evil.”
Evil? Maybe not, Mark thought, but he was certainly a vampire.
Mark drew out the vial of holy water. The other man stared straight at him without flinching. “Hit me if you have to, but I’m telling you the truth. I want to help you. I…I care about Deanna. I’ve never met anyone like her. She’s…she’s…” A flicker of fury lit his eyes. “She’s too fine to become the plaything of a vicious bastard like…him.”
“No one here knows you,” Mark told him curtly. “The cops here know that vampires exist—some of them, anyway. But no one knows you.”
Jonas lifted his hand and pulled a chain out from beneath his T-shirt.
He was wearing a cross.
“Could I wear this if I were associated with that monster, Stephan?” he demanded.
Blood Red Page 17
