22
“THE ORDER OF the Morning Dawn,” I said as I sat on the red antique couch that occupied our living room, my face in my hands. “They’re back. And they found us here…”
“Are you sure it’s the Order?” Ramon asked, pacing back and forth. “I thought they weren’t this far south and, besides that, no one had heard anything from them in decades.”
I shook my head. “It has to be the Order. That crucifix, I’d know it from anywhere. It used to be my father’s. Whoever it was is connected, somehow, to the Order back in Rhode Island. The same group that killed my friend… they were the reason Nico and I fled to New Orleans to begin with.”
“But that was so long ago,” Ramon said. “How is that even possible?”
“I don’t know… And did you notice, the person who attacked me….”
“She didn’t have a heartbeat,” Ramon said.
I nodded.
“Do you think she was a vampire?” Ramon asked.
“I don’t know. I mean, a vampire working with the Order? It makes no sense. The Order exists for the purpose of eliminating vampires.”
“If not a vampire, what could it have been?” Ramon asked.
“I don’t know… I wish I did…”
“But you can compel vampires,” Ramon said. “If we can figure out who it was, we should have the advantage.”
“True,” I said. “But where do we even start?”
“Our target’s roommate,” Ramon said. “Think about it, all this time while we were stalking her, the roommate never appeared.”
“You think it was a setup?”
“Has to be,” Ramon said.
The attacker had struck from a good distance away. If that was by design, an effort to avoid my compulsion, they knew more about me than that I was just some run-of-the-mill vampire. I figured if they thought that, they would have had someone nearby ready to stake me while the first attacker zapped me with the sunlight crucifix.
Beyond that, I didn’t know much. I wasn’t even sure if the attacker was a male or female, young or old. Were they human? I couldn’t hear a heartbeat. Ramon didn’t hear it, either. But there was a lot going on. Deciphering heartbeats wasn’t exactly the highest priority in the moment. But if our target was actually bait… then it could be surmised that the sweet, innocent, prayerful lady we’d hoped to attack was either connected to the Order of the Morning Dawn herself, or she knew someone who was. Or our target was unwitting bait, didn’t realize she was being used as such by the Order, and in that case probably didn’t have a clue who our attacker was.
Either way, the best chance I had to find out was to try and corner our target again—not to feed from her, but to make her talk. And since that was all I intended to do, I didn’t need to try and catch her in a dark alley. I just needed to go to church.
A vampire going to church? Crucifixes don’t affect us at all—unless they’re somehow enchanted to channel sunlight. Holy water doesn’t hurt, either—not like I wanted anyone throwing it on me. I’d rather not get unnecessarily wet. It would piss me off which, generally speaking, isn’t advisable if you’re a human. But it wouldn’t hurt.
Vampires aren’t demons, as much as the Order would like to think it so. We were created from the essence of Baron Samedi. He’s a Loa, not a demon. More like a demigod who, neither essentially good nor bad, serves a purpose at Bondye’s behest. Bondye is the name vodouisants use to speak of the original God, the God Catholics revere, even if by another name.
I’d learned a bit about the Loa from Nico, who’d practiced Voodoo before he was turned, and from other vodouisants in the city. Funny thing is, many of them are Catholics, too. The Loa, whom they revere, are often likened to various saints. Baron Samedi, for instance, is often likened to St. Martin de Porres—a Peruvian Dominican considered the patron saint of mixed-raced persons.
Here, of course, lies a great irony. While many liken the Loa to saints, there are those who mistake them for demons. It goes back to the day when some of the elite in the Church didn’t much care to have Voodoo-practicing slaves amongst the faithful. So, if you think about it, the notion that vampires are demons goes back to colonial intolerance and old-fashioned racist bullshit. Another thing that pisses me off.
When I first arrived in New Orleans, in fact, appearing in public with Nico often garnished disgusted stares. Then they started with the “whites only” establishments in the Jim Crow era—Nico figured out how to use that to his advantage.
He’d patently disregard those signs, which would inevitably result in a few “white boys” who imagined themselves tough trying to corner him in a dark alley. You can imagine how that turned out. Even then, though, Nico exercised restraint. More than I ever could, and certainly more than Ramon ever wanted to.
Now was my turn to prove that I did, in fact, have control over my cravings. No meals today—though I did casually wonder how well drinking the blood of the Eucharist would sit in my stomach. I mean, if it’s Jesus, it would have to be totally sweet, right? Unless it’s true what they say—that he took all the world’s sin on himself. In that case, it would be spicy as hell. Either way, if it really is the blood of Christ like they claim, I expected it to be quite delicious.
I arrived early and lurked in the back of the church. I tried to position myself so that the woman I was seeking—my former target—wouldn’t see me right away. Her name was Charlotte—I gleaned that much by spying on her mailbox.
I didn’t know if she’d recognize me, if she had any idea what had actually happened the other night or not. But I certainly didn’t want to risk it, or worse, give her cause to alert someone connected to the Order. There was a chance, of course, that Charlotte wouldn’t even show. Maybe her whole routine was a part of the ruse, how the Order was trying to lure us out. Worst case scenario, I would sneak out the back door and pay the woman a visit at her apartment.
It wasn’t my first choice—the Order didn’t act against us in public; they were just as inclined to avoid scenes that created a public hysteria as we were. The church was, all things considered, the safest bet.
Not that I’d be surprised if someone from the Order wasn’t waiting for me on my way out. But I had disguised myself well. I looked like a regular southern belle—blond wig, flowers in my hair, a floral dress, and open-toed, two-inch heels. I don’t know what it is about heels. Two inches or so and I’d be a fine southern lady. Go much taller than that and I’d be suspected a whore, or at least a lady of unsavory intentions. What a difference an inch can make…
I saw my target enter the sanctuary. I watched her through my peripheral vision as she entered, crossed herself, and genuflected before entering a pew about midway down the aisle. She sat alone—which was exactly what I’d hoped for.
I casually strolled down the same aisle she took, did my best to mimic her actions—the sign of the cross and the like—and slid in beside her.
Charlotte glanced at me, her eyes meeting mine. I had my contacts in, otherwise it would have given me away immediately. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Do I know you?”
“Do you?” I asked.
“I don’t think so…”
I decided to play the part. “You are aware of the Order of the Morning Dawn, correct?”
“Why yes, of course. Did they send you?”
“After what happened the other night,” I said, “they were concerned for your safety.”
“I do appreciate the worry,” Charlotte said, putting her hand on mine. She immediately withdrew it—a common reaction when someone feels how cold I am. “I thought she was the only one…”
“Excuse me?”
“With the cold skin… your kind…”
“My kind?” I asked, raising my eyebrow.
“You know,” the woman whispered. “Nightwalkers… devils doing the Lord’s work!”
“Ahh,” I said, pressing my lips together. So the one who’d attacked me the other night must’ve been a vampire. But they called themselves nigh
twalkers? Had the Order really recruited vampires to do their dirty work? If they’d pulled it off, I had to admit, it wasn’t a dumb move on their part. It was dumb for the vampires involved to go along with it, of course.
Once they’d done their job, did they really think the Order was going to allow them to go on existing? They’d burn them, say it was a gift, a mercy, to purify them and spare them from hell. Some bullshit like that.
“Do you know which one was assigned to your case before?” I asked. “I just received your file and a protection order.”
Charlotte narrowed her eyes. I knew it wasn’t the best story—I mean, why wouldn’t I know? I could deal with this in a much easier way, in truth. Enough beating around the bush.
I locked my eyes with hers. “Tell me what you know about the Order of the Morning Dawn.”
“They’re a holy order,” Charlotte said. “They have a holy calling to vanquish all of Satan’s creatures—vampires, witches, and sorcerers of any kind.”
“Tell me, how did you come into contact with the Order?”
“My priest… he introduced me to them. He said I could be of great service.”
“What kind of service?”
“To help lure out the creatures of darkness, to bring them out into the light…”
“And the one who tried to take down the vampires the other night. Tell me what you know about her.”
“She’s a vampire herself, but she’s faithful to the Order. She’s worked with them since before she was turned.”
“Tell me her name,” I said.
“I only know her first name…”
“That will suffice.”
“Her name is Alice.”
I bit my lip—I’d known a girl named Alice back when I was in the sanatorium, the same Alice who I’d later discovered worked for the Order. But when she attacked me, I’d bitten her, drained her… The chances of her surviving and turning were slim. But could it be?
“How old is this Alice?” I asked.
“I don’t know for sure,” Charlotte said. “At least a century old, maybe more.”
I took a deep breath. How had Alice survived my bite? If she did, technically she was my progeny… but she clearly had little love lost for Mommy. But more than that, if she really was the same Alice, she knew I didn’t have a heart. She knew everything about me.
Could it be that she’d been looking for me all these years? Did it take her this long to find me? I felt my stomach turn out of suspicion that I’d let this happen. I’d let Ramon convince me to… indulge… to take down the senator. I knew better than that. Why was I so foolish?
“Tell me,” I said, “how does Alice get ahold of you?”
“What do you mean?” Charlotte asked. “She lives with me. She has for a few weeks now.”
I smirked. “Forget everything we talked about tonight. I was never here.”
“Of course,” the lady said as she knelt and prepared for prayer.
I stood and left the church. At least I knew where Alice lived. But if she really was connected to the Order, she wouldn’t make her residence so obvious, so easy for me to discover. She wanted me to find her. I had to wonder, though, whatever made her so confident that she’d be able to take me down? Knowing what she knew about me, I had to believe she had a plan.
Based on the fact that she’d been wielding my father’s sunlight crucifix, that was probably a part of it. But worse… she’d had more than a century to prepare to take me down. If she was just now appearing to me, it meant she not only had a plan, but that she was confident she could pull it off.
23
THERE WERE WAYS to prepare for sunlight. We had methods that, if push came to shove, we could use to go out during the day. Super-thick kevlar outfits that the sunlight couldn’t penetrate. The biggest challenge was the face; most lenses would allow some sunlight through. I’d toyed with the idea of creating a helmet with a camera on the outside, a screen on the inside.
That would work, and there were phones that could come close to pulling that off. The problem was that the only thing we’d attempted so far was a pretty crude model. We literally mounted a phone to the front of a motorcycle helmet. It still limited my sight; I’d have to turn my head, I couldn’t just move my eyeballs to scan my surroundings. Every now and then the phone would randomly close the camera feed and I’d end up without any way to really fix it. It was a promising idea, but it still needed work.
Helmet or not, the kevlar suit would help avoid another crucifix burn to the back. Believe it or not, aloe vera is soothing for vampires, too. It was going to leave a mark, but thankfully it was on a part of my body that was generally covered.
Ramon didn’t like the idea.
“You’re falling for her trap, ma chérie. She clearly doesn’t know where we live, otherwise the Order wouldn’t have needed to use the woman as bait to draw us out.”
“And I don’t want them to find out where we live, either,” I said. “We aren’t the only vampires in the city, and if they manage to convince any of them to talk… it’s just a matter of time.”
We decided to check out Charlotte’s apartment—but we weren’t going to just go knock on the door. I couldn’t be sure, in spite of my disguise at the time, that Alice hadn’t seen me approach Charlotte in the cathedral.
If this really was the same Alice I suspected she was, she’d resisted my allure all those decades ago. Of course, I was still a baby vamp at the time. I hadn’t developed my full compulsion abilities. But if she resisted my allure then, did she have a way to resist my compulsion now? I had to assume she did—it’s always better to presume the worst, prepare for it, and find yourself pleasantly surprised and overly advantaged than to assume the best and find yourself at an unexpected disadvantage.
Ramon and I stood beneath a small tree near the window of Charlotte and Alice’s apartment. We wanted to know who was home before we came barging in.
We didn’t hear voices. We didn’t hear a heartbeat. Charlotte, at least, was absent at the moment.
Alice might still be there, though.
On the other hand, Alice was what Charlotte called a “nightwalker,” a vampire co-opted by the Order to destroy her own kind. Chances were better than not she was out and about—vampires aren’t exactly homebodies, not once the sun has set.
Since we’re forced to remain inside the other half of the day and because our meals don’t exactly fit in Rubbermaid containers and refrigerators, staying home is a hard sell, even in inclement weather. In fact, when Hurricane Katrina struck, the wind and floods were only one part of the threat—dislocated and stranded persons, the fact that bodies were already piling up, all made it that much easier for vampires in the city to feed indiscriminately.
A member of the Order or not, Alice was a vampire. She still needed to feed. Did the Order have specific feeding “rules” for their nightwalkers? Probably. My guess was they probably had volunteers—people who offered their blood up freely to the cause.
There wouldn’t be any terror or fear that way, which is sort of like salt to a vampire—it really brings out the natural flavor. Still, it was a way to survive and maintain control. Not feeding regularly enough won’t exactly kill a vampire, but it will make us insane, mad with craving, to the point that we lack all restraint and control.
Restrain a starving vampire while mad with craving and there’s no telling how much worse they’ll get. It’s also incredibly difficult to do. Nico said that the Inquisition once attempted to restrain and starve a vampire. The cravings became so intense that the chains could no longer hold him, and he went so mad with craving that a small village fell prey to him in a single evening… and the madness never left. Nico ended up having to stake him himself to end the terror.
One way or another, Alice was feeding. Still, that didn’t mean there wasn’t something we could glean by rooting through her apartment.
Ramon kicked open the door—and we quickly stepped to the side, just in case there was some kind of
mechanism or trap triggered by the door. I envisioned a crossbow set to fire a bolt, chest level, the moment the door opened. Or perhaps an onslaught of sunlight lamps. They didn’t hurt as much as the real thing, but they were still quite unpleasant.
But nothing happened…
“Check for trip wires,” I said. Not that I was an expert in things like this, but I’d seen enough movies to know the various ways booby traps might work.
Ramon knelt, turned on his phone’s light, and scanned the apartment at ground level. “I see nothing.”
“Strange,” I said. “I expected something…”
I surveyed the rest of the apartment and, strangely enough, it looked like the place had been stripped bare. Nothing on the counters. No plates left on the table. There wasn’t even a couch or a television—it was like they’d moved out.
“Well, shit,” I said. “How are we going to track them down now?”
Ramon shrugged. “Maybe they’ve moved on?”
I shook my head. “Alice has apparently been looking for me for almost my entire existence. They might have moved, but they aren’t gone.”
We weren’t sure how to track them down. We tried to spy her at the entrance of the cathedral the next evening, but Charlotte never appeared.
We tracked down the landlord of their former apartment and, with the aid of my compulsions, we discovered they’d left suddenly and turned in their keys, which was quite surprising to him because they’d only been there a couple months. Already under compulsion, the landlord made for a somewhat bland but not entirely dissatisfying evening meal. We utilized restraint. We couldn’t risk any unexplained, blood-drained corpses showing up at the local coroner’s these days.
The disappearance of Alice and Charlotte was one of the strangest things I’d ever experienced. For weeks, even months, I lurked in the shadows, waiting… expecting another bolt of sunlight to strike me from behind. They had to be planning something, they had to be waiting until we let our guard down… and suspecting that only extended my paranoia from months into years.
Gates of Eden: Starter Library Page 84
