“I was going home, okay? But that doesn’t help. I still can’t see where he is!”
Colleen smiled. “Not yet. I’ll grab my purse. Your car is out front?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“We’re going to drive home.”
13
Elisabeth
“You will tell me what just happened!” Elisabeth demanded, standing over Kieran. She’d laid him on the couch, hoping he’d wake quickly, and when he didn’t, she slapped him back into consciousness. “And don’t try to deny it, I saw it with my own eyes!”
Kieran’s head bobbed as he struggled to sit upright. “I talked to him.”
“You did what?”
“I talked to him. I don’t know how. He said he smelled the magic on me.” Kieran’s eyes rolled back and this time Elisabeth climbed up onto his lap. She took his face in her hands and moved it hard, back and forth.
“Kieran, wake up!”
“I’m awake,” he lied.
“Tell me. What he said. What you said.”
Kieran’s eyes fluttered open. The way he looked at her set her belly aflame. “I told him to go. To leave us. And he did.”
“No,” she said. “It couldn’t have been that easy. It wasn’t. He was going to come for me, and he was going to turn you into what he was.”
“He’s been the Rougarou since nineteen fifty-two,” Kieran said. His eyes rolled back once more, but he was becoming more alert now.
“What? He told you that?”
“He told me other things, too.”
“Such as?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Kieran reached up and let his hand hover inches from her face. “He was going to kill you, to free me. I told him no. I didn’t need his services.”
Elisabeth settled back on his legs. She dropped her hands. “Why?”
Kieran kissed her.
Elisabeth recoiled at the touch, but when she looked back into his eyes, something pulled her in again, something bigger than her, or him, and this time, she initiated the kiss.
This human had saved her life, when she’d brought him here to take his. He’d shown her a humanity she feared she’d lost in herself.
Elisabeth brought her hands back to his face, spreading her fingers over his temples as she wound them up through his dark red hair, deepening the kiss. Beneath her, he throbbed under his denim and she ground against him, all the while wondering who she was, what she was doing, how this moment was happening at all.
Kieran flipped her and laid her back against the couch. As he hovered over her, desire burning in his eyes, Elisabeth freed herself of everything it was to be a de Blanchefort. She snaked her hands between his legs to release him, knowing very well what it would mean, where it would lead, and wanting it anyway, more than she’d wanted anything in so long.
A flicker of surprise passed over his face when her hand encircled his cock.
“Yes, Kieran, vampires can still do this, too.”
With one hand, he lifted her dress and pushed her panties aside. His hesitation was brief, as he searched her eyes for permission. She slipped her tongue into his mouth and with a soft moan, he entered her.
Elisabeth cried out as he guided the length of his cock into her, retreating slowly, thrusting back in with a sharp show of force. It had been so long since she’d lain with a man, and she had never, not once, lain with one as a vampire.
“God, you feel good,” he whispered as his pace quickened. She looked down to see his thickness slide in, out, and the sight of it made her grow even wetter.
Kieran pulled the dress over her head and took one of her nipples in his mouth, rolling it around gently between his teeth as he sucked. She wound her hands behind his head, encouraging him to be rougher with her, and he responded to her command by biting down, sending a sharp thrill of pleasure straight to her head.
He reached a hand between her legs and twisted through two fingers. Elisabeth bit down as a new wave of pleasure soared through her. He grew harder with every thrust and as she ran her hands down from his head to his shoulders, across the muscles of his back, she knew that if she didn’t feel him come inside her soon she would lose her mind.
As her hands buckled down on his ass, Kieran pressed harder on the bundle of nerves, sending her so close to orgasm she had to grip the couch to stop the wave from overtaking her.
“I can’t hold it,” he panted, slowing his rhythm. It was no use. His cock throbbed hard within her, ready to spill.
“Come for me,” she bade, and it was then that the wave ebbed and she rode right over it, arching toward him as the orgasm ripped through her. Kieran cried out as her muscles gripped his cock. A new heat filled her when he released his own pleasure.
His pace slowed as the orgasm left him. Kieran’s glassy eyes looked down at her, desiring her still, but the spell had waned some. She saw a whisper of his fear return as reality threatened to replace whatever had just happened between them.
Before it could disappear forever, Elisabeth flipped him onto his back and climbed atop him. Her mother’s locket dangled, tickling his nose.
She gazed down at him, locking eyes, and knew, for now, he was still hers, and she could be anyone she wanted.
14
Kieran
Kieran awoke to a violation of light as the sun crested over the bayou beyond the glassless window. He squinted against the blinding yellow, propping himself up against the old paisley couch. He hadn’t noticed the details before. The fading fabric. The tears at every corner. It wasn’t from his time, or even his father’s. Just as Elisabeth was not.
Elisabeth.
He looked around, searching for her. The cabin, in daylight, was even more run-down that it had been lit only by the light of the moon. But it was still just one big room. A small kitchenette, a rickety table with two chairs, a straw mattress lying upon the floor in the corner, and this couch.
He started to call her name, but the words died on his tongue.
Kieran rose. His entire body screamed at him, every bone, every joint. He felt as if he’d been in a series of MMA matches the night before.
Well. Something like that.
His cheeks flushed as the memories of the night before came rolling back. How her soft, unmarred flesh felt as his fingers passed down the curve of her hips. The way she begged him to go harder, to go softer, to go longer. He hadn’t known he had such stamina, but she’d shown him precisely where to find it.
Elisabeth.
Kieran stumbled toward the door. He shielded his eyes and looked around. Sunlight bounced off the standing water of the bayou. The song of the swamp grated on him, splitting his head open as if hungover on the cheapest liquor he could find.
“Elisabeth,” he said, finally, but his voice cracked. He couldn’t wrap himself around any of it anymore. Every second that passed, the events of the night before, from Darcy, to the cabin, to the Rougarou, seemed more and more as if he’d hallucinated them. They couldn’t possibly be real. Not one of those things. Certainly not all of those things.
He stepped back inside. He looked around for a note, and then almost laughed at himself. A note. A vampire wouldn’t leave a note. If she even was a vampire. If last night had even happened.
But if it hadn’t happened, how did he get here?
And where was here, exactly?
Kieran bowed over the counter, searching for his bearings.
The carnival. The details stitched together, slowly. Darcy. All the blood. That poorly stitched bear swimming in it.
Elisabeth.
The car. The boat.
Here. This cabin.
Her story. All those things she’d told him; things he could never learn from a book, or a movie.
Her truth.
His fear.
The Rougarou.
Grandma Lucy is still alive. I’ll go to her. I’ll tell her what happened. I’ll tell her you didn’t leave her—
No. I would rather she believe I ran off than know this was my fate. She would be old
now. She deserves peace.
No, no, no!
Kieran winced as a fresh pain sounded from his back. A new memory ripped through him. Bending Elisabeth over the arm of the couch as he took her from behind. His nose tickled with the memory of her locket brushing his flesh as she moved in perfect rhythm.
This same woman—this vampire—who had killed Darcy.
No, she’s more than that. You saw it in her. She wants to be more than what she is.
But she wasn’t. She was a vampire. Vampire, vampire, vampire.
And yet, she let you live.
Kieran straightened. The realization of his words spread from heart to head. She had let him live. She wasn’t hiding in the brush, waiting to catch him unawares for her next meal. He didn’t sense her at all anymore. She was gone.
He’d saved her life, and in turn, she had spared his.
He should be glad of this. The relief should be so overwhelming to him that it brought him to his knees.
And yet...
“Elisabeth,” he said again, and now a new ache appeared, but this one in his chest. He could say her name a thousand times and she’d never hear a single one.
She wasn’t coming back.
Kieran stepped again toward the doorway. He surveyed the bayou before him, knowing full well that he would never be able to retrace the route Elisabeth had taken to bring them here. Everything looked different in daylight. Everything felt different.
He might never know why he drew the straw that brought him to this cabin, with this vampire, but Kieran couldn’t help thinking that both he and Elisabeth had been tied to this place by their grandfathers. It had to mean something. He’d never been the kind of young man who could accept a world without explanation.
He reached into his pocket for his phone, but then remembered she’d taken that long ago, before throwing him into the trunk in New Orleans. He hadn’t seen it anywhere inside. It was probably taking residence in the bottom of the swamp now.
Kieran looked for the boat, only to discover she’d taken that, too.
She’d spared him, but now he had another death to look forward to.
Kieran hadn’t meant to fall asleep in the rusted lawn chair. It was the sound of something foreign to the swampland that roused him.
Voices.
Human.
“Kieran! Kieran!”
Kieran looked up, but could see nothing through the unrelenting sunlight. He covered his eyes and strained, but the intrusion was all sound, no sight.
Except he recognized the voice.
“Kelley!” he yelled back, just as he saw the series of boats coming through the canopy of trees. Kelley had brought in an entire cavalry.
Kelley leapt out of the boat, scrambling against the tangle of cypress knees. He ran toward Kieran and wrapped him in his arms before Kieran could ask what he was doing there.
“Thank God. I thought she’d killed you. I thought for sure we were too late, that we’d come here and—”
Kieran pulled back. “She?”
“I saw her, Kieran. Your vampire. That’s how I knew you were in danger.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I had a vision. It’s... it’s not my first, but that’s not what’s important right now. I’ve seen one too. A vampire. I know they’re real. You don’t have to worry, I believe you. But what happened?” Kelley looked around, frowning. “Where did she go?”
“I don’t know,” Kieran said, watching his brother as if he were a stranger. Kelley? A vampire? Had it been the one in Seattle?
“She just... let you live?”
Kieran nodded. He swallowed the lump forming in his throat.
“You’re safe now, that’s all that matters.”
“I can’t believe you found me.”
“Did she want to turn you?”
“Turn me? No. That’s not what she wanted.”
“Mine did.”
This shocked Kieran from his funk. “Come again?”
Kelley embraced him again, this time tighter. “I’ll tell you when we’re away from this place, and safe. And you can tell me about yours.”
“She isn’t mine,” Kieran said, not understanding why he felt such an urge to cry.
Epilogue
Elisabeth waited until the boats unloaded, and the army of Kieran’s loved ones poured out. If she’d stepped closer sooner, Kieran would have detected her, and it was better that he believed she was gone.
She edged nearer, careful to shield herself from view. The collection of great power that emerged from the boats—Deschanels, Sullivans, a whole cavalry of witches—was enough to want to send her scattering, but she needed to see him leave, in safety.
She needed to see him.
Kieran and his brother embraced. She knew it was his brother because she could hardly tell them apart. There was a third, too, Kieran said. He was a triplet. He’d told her this amidst his ramblings designed to provoke her to see him as something real, to spare him.
Had she ever intended to kill him?
She asked herself this a lot. As she drove him away from New Orleans. On the boat ride to the cabin where her grandfather had taken her. As she sat astride him, pushing away the reality that would make their connection nonsensical. Wrong.
It was wrong. And undoubtedly, she would pay for it. So would he, if she didn’t get to Victor first and explain to him why this man was untouchable. Not only because he had Deschanel blood running through his veins, but because he had saved her life.
There was no rule for this among the de Blancheforts, but that was because it had never happened. Now that it had, she would be sure this was precedent. Despite her training, despite her confidence, she was no match for the Rougarou. Kieran’s intervention had saved them both.
Now, she was saving him. In doing so, she hoped she might connect again with the humanity she’d laid aside when she accepted a gift she’d never wanted.
When she’d taken lives that were not hers to take. Even Victor’s food chain argument had never eased her of that guilt.
But when Kieran had looked into her eyes last night, he’d seen something other than a killer. He’d seen through that, to the heart of it. To her.
Elisabeth slipped away from the family reunion, unsure what to make of the strange ache in her chest.
She didn’t allow herself a final glimpse.
As Kieran stepped into the boat, a strong sensation gripped him.
“You all right?” Tristan Sullivan, a cousin, asked as he eased him in. Behind him, Colleen Deschanel nodded his way, smiling. She’d been behind this, he was certain, as she was behind all important happenings in the family.
“Yeah. Fine. Sorry.”
Kelley placed a hand on his back, saying nothing. Maybe he understood.
The rip of the motor restarting drowned out all other sounds, but the sensation stayed with him.
Elisabeth. She’d returned. Or maybe she’d never left.
He regretted not telling her that he’d lied about being able to sense her.
But it was what he sensed now that left him unmoored. It wasn’t the tangle of fear and frustration from when she’d kidnapped him and taken him to this strange place, as she battled herself on whether to kill him. It was a sensation that matched the hurt in his chest, where his heart was now on an irregular beat.
Elisabeth. He whispered this without speaking, for himself only.
“The police will want to speak to you when we return to town,” Colleen said from beside him. “About the young woman. Darcy.”
“Oh my God,” Kieran said, as blood rushed to his head. “They think I killed her, don’t they?” Of course they did. He was her date. He’d “fled” the scene. All the evidence would point directly his way.
“We’ve taken care of that. But they’ll want a statement. We should discuss this before you go in, as it will serve no one to tell the truth. Not you, and certainly not poor Darcy or her family.”
No, he didn’t suppose telling the p
olice that a vampire killed her would do much of anything except get him committed. It would do nothing for Darcy.
“There will be no justice for Darcy,” Colleen said, as if reading his mind. She probably was. He was too numb to care. “We don’t live in a world ready to accept the things we know and understand to be more than figments of myth. But I will ensure her family is taken care of, just the same. We will do what is in our power. That I assure you, Kieran.”
“Thank you, Colleen.” He didn’t say the rest of what was on his mind. That though Darcy deserved justice, Elisabeth would punish herself for what she did, in her careless hunger, for the rest of what remained of her immortal life. Her agony at taking Darcy’s life might be what spared the lives of others.
He’d sought a life in law because of his need for precision and clarity, but the last twelve hours had shown him that life was not so black and white. That his ideas of good and bad were not so neatly drawn, with boundaries easy to detect. It had thrown into question everything he believed, and he wouldn’t know the full impact of this for years to come.
Kelley asked him something, but his words were drowned out by the roar of the outboard motor.
“What was that?”
“Will you go after her?” Kelley yelled. “Try to find her?”
Kieran looked out into the swamp, searching for any physical signs of what he felt. She was out there. But she didn’t want to be found.
“Some things are better left alone,” Kieran said, knowing the one who would need the most convincing of this was himself.
Afterword
Thank you for reading Bayou’s Edge. I hope you enjoyed this tale of Kieran Landry surviving his first vampire encounter, though I think we can agree he is not the same man he was when the story began.
The characters in this story are part of the Saga of Crimson & Clover universe, consisting of multiple series spanning many years and time periods. Bayou’s Edge, in particular, is a Crimson & Clover Lagniappe. The word lagniappe is used among the Louisiana French and means, summarized, a little something extra. All twelve of the Crimson & Clover Lagniappes are standalone stories, meant to complement (as a little something extra) the broader world and storylines.
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