Book #2
Bluebeard’s Children
Chapter 1
An acid, not a strong one, mind you, but we’ll work our way up. Let us observe.
I woke up from the nightmare, just as I had for the last four months; shaking, sweating, my throat scratched and burning, with my heart trying to escape my ribcage. I reached out as I always do, seeking comfort and knowing I wouldn’t find any. Instead, my heart sank as my hand slid against the cool cotton sheets on the empty side of the bed. I rolled over, pressed my cheek against the pillow, and indulged in my daily ritual of torture. Darkly spiced, earthy yet sweet, the masculine scent was barely more than a whispered memory. Honestly, after four months, I might only have been imagining that there was any reminder of whose pillow this was, but it was the only thing keeping me sane. And I hated myself for that.
The nightmares were to be expected. I doubt anyone could have survived being kidnapped, tortured, and buried alive without serious repercussions. But it was the fact that I didn’t start having nightmares until four months ago, nearly three months after surviving Paris, that bothered me. Although Dara had explained that post-traumatic stress had a nasty habit of showing up months, sometimes years, after the traumatic event, I found it too much of a coincidence that the nightmares began the moment Andre walked out of my life.
A timid knock at my bedroom door jarred me back to the present. I cursed into the pillow and rolled over with a sigh. The only person who had the keys to my personal apartment was Holly, the first modified vampire I had brought into the outreach. The first time I awoke screaming from a nightmare, I had apparently freaked out the resident vampires, leading them to turn my front door into a pile of kindling. For their peace of mind, and mine, I gave Holly a key and modified my sleep schedule to minimize the chance that anyone would be home to witness my episodes.
“I’m fine, Holly,” I called out, hoping that she would just leave. “I just…hit my leg on the bedpost.”
My words had the opposite effect and the door opened with a little more force than was necessary. Holly strode into the room and sat down on the edge of my bed, leveling me with a hard stare that made me feel like a ten year old who had just broken the window with a baseball.
“No, Lucy, you are not okay and I don’t appreciate being lied to. I talked to Dara. She says you haven’t been meeting with her for the last month.”
I winced at that. For Dara Ramos to break with her strict rule of doctor-patient confidentiality, she had to be pretty pissed at me. There wasn’t an easy solution to my problem. Because of my own hybrid genetics, medications that would normally be used to treat PTSD had no effect on me. Months of talking and reliving my nightmares in Dara’s office were getting me nowhere and I knew why. It was cowardly, but I couldn’t bring myself to discuss the correlation between the nightmares and my relationship with Andre to the woman who had raised him.
“Scheduling conflicts,” I lied easily. “Tourism is bouncing back, which means more activity. Besides, Dara’s been pretty busy herself since we started two new groups.” Thanks to me, I added silently. I have had decent results since joining the outreach. I attributed that partially to the debate skills I honed in school, but it was more likely because I’m half-mod myself, which lent some credibility to the arguments I made against a life of murder.
“You’re not even coming to group,” Holly reminded me flatly, “which I might add, isn’t exactly inspiring moral among the new girls.”
Ouch. She had a valid point and I was ashamed that she had to bring it to my attention. The branch of the outreach program that I ran dealt exclusively with rehabilitating female mods, who had suffered both psychological and physical abuse by New Orleans’ notoriously patriarchal vampire clans. It was a role I had imposed upon myself and frankly, Holly was right, I was neglecting a very important aspect of their rehabilitation.
“You’re right and I’m sorry,” I admitted, still unable to meet Holly’s eyes. “I’ll make an effort to come to group more often.”
“And you’ll talk to Dara?”
“I’ll…” I drew a deep breath. I knew I had to, but I still wasn’t feeling very brave. “Tell her I’ll give her a call later.”
“You can come over with me,” Holly suggested. “I’m going in a little early to learn the new program Mike’s implementing. I know Dara’s got a few free hours this afternoon.”
“I would, but I’ve got a few things to do before I head out tonight. I’ve been tracking this vamp for a while and I want to get him over to Ida’s tonight if it’s possible.”
It was a weak excuse, but not entirely untrue. The vampire in question was pretty young and running with a very dangerous clan. I knew that if I didn’t convince him to turn his life around soon, he was going to end up losing it the minute he crossed paths with one of my former colleagues from the Eclipse project.
“Okay but seriously Lucy, call Dara. And hey,” she said and tugged playfully on my foot, “you know I’m here too. I’ll never be able to properly thank you for everything you’ve done for me, but if you want to talk about it to someone without a fancy doctor title, the least I can do is lend an ear.”
I smiled at the gesture, even though I knew I wasn’t going to take her up on it. After the life Holly had led prior to making the transition, my problems probably didn’t merit much sympathy. “Thanks Holly, I mean that. Say hi to everyone for me.”
“Say hi yourself,” she admonished lightly and got up to leave.
I really did need to get up and start planning my strategy for the evening, but after Holly left, I fell back against the pillows and resumed beating myself up over the Andre situation. Part of me was disgusted by my behavior. I’ve always felt that women who need a man in their life to feel complete were cheating themselves out of the dignity and respect they deserved. I hated romance novels and chick flick movies for this very reason. I’ve always been able to walk away from a failed relationship without suffering any earth-shattering setbacks.
Of course, I’d never been in a relationship with someone like Andre before. Sure, we didn’t exactly hit it off when we met. However, a big part of that had to do with the fact that we were both in denial about our attraction for a long time. It was… well, intense doesn’t even begin to describe what we had. It was beautiful. He had a way of making me feel like the most important person in the universe with nothing more than a smoldering look. It only seems fittingly ironic that it was with one look that he broke my heart.
I can’t say I wasn’t partially to blame. When I first resigned from my position as a hunter, Andre didn’t understand my motives, but he was more than happy to see me transition over to the outreach because he thought it would be safer. As a hunter, my hesitancy to kill meant letting the vampires get too close, which meant I had been bitten quite often. Granted, my wounds healed within minutes, and my attacker always died as a result, but it was a pretty big point of contention between us. Even after I passed this talent to Andre, in the form of an emergency blood transfusion, he maintained that I was gambling with my life.
I wish I could say that life as an outreach agent involved less bloodshed, but that was not always the case. Not that I went looking for danger. I chose my encounters carefully and never approached a vampire I didn’t think I could take, if necessary. I still carried weapons, but I was hesitant to use them. I no longer disguised my own vampire heritage, so most mods would just walk away if they weren’t interested in the life I was trying to sell them. Occasionally I’d misjudge my audience, and that's when things got ugly.
Andre was bound to find out eventually. One night, I had made the mistake of trying to engage what turned out to be the leader of the clan to which Holly had belonged. Needless to say, he wasn’t thrilled with me and decided to use his fangs to communicate this point. Andre had been on duty nearby and responded to a watcher’s call about two vampires who had been seen darting into an alley. He arrived just in time to see me push the fresh corpse off my neck.
A year ago, I would have moved on and chalked it up to another in a long line of relationships that failed because I didn’t live up to someone’s expectations of me. Granted, a year ago I didn’t know vampires existed, let alone that I was one. My biggest worry back then was what I was going to do with my life after dropping out of law school. The idea of joining an elite team of professional vampire hunters would have seemed preposterous, but by some fluke of the cosmos, that’s exactly what I had done.
I think it came as more of a shock to me than any of my peers that I was good at it. I had saved many blissfully ignorant lives from ending at the hands of bloodthirsty vamps. But every life I spared meant a life I took and this was something I never could reconcile with my conscience. Certainly, it could be argued that genetically modified vampires, who see humanity as nothing more than grazing animals, had to be stopped at all costs. But there was always a part of me that believed they deserved the chance to change before being written off, despite my colleagues’ assertions to the contrary.
It was in Paris that I learned genetic programming was no match for free will. Because of this discovery, I resigned from the Eclipse project and signed on with the outreach, a grass roots organization started by local coffee legend and natural vampire, Ida Gillman. Back when she was running her famous French Quarter café, Ida started taking notice of the hoodlums that hung around in the alleys behind her shop. Rather than turn a blind eye or alert the police, Ida took it upon herself to deter the mischief-makers with kindness in the form of a meal, a warm place to sleep, and a job if they wanted. It wasn’t until the mid-nineties, when Ida’s outreach began working in tandem with the Eclipse project, that she learned the true nature of her rescues, as well as why she seemed to have an affinity for them. According to Evan Conroy, the head of the project, Ida didn’t even bat an eye. Her calm response was simply, “The Lord and New Orleans work in mysterious ways.”
Working with the outreach had done wonders to clear my conscience, but it wasn’t enough. I’d convinced twenty-seven vampires to take control of their lives and while I’m proud, that number doesn’t come close to the number of vampires I killed as a hunter. It may seem stupid, but I believe that once I’ve saved more lives than I’ve taken, I’ll finally be able to make peace with myself.
Of course, I do encounter setbacks.
Chapter 2
I’m convinced that there is nothing worse than the infernal itch of dried blood. Thankfully, I still had a pack of antiseptic wipes in my bag, so I was able to remove most of it before the itching started. Unfortunately, I also had a good-sized hole in my shoulder and another check mark in my failure column. Erick, the vampire I had been intent on saving, was lying at an awkward angle among the random bits of refuse that peppered the alley and I was irrationally mad at him for being dead.
“Jesus H, Lucy! Not again!”
I looked up from the body of the dead vampire to see Lance Fields, a hunter and good friend, standing just inside the alley entrance.
“Hey Lance,” I said and smiled weakly. “Got a second to help me move this one? I just tagged him.”
Lance leveled me with a look of concern, but obliged, grabbing Erick’s legs while I hooked my arms under his shoulders. We carried him to a convenient dumpster. The retrieval team would later collect the body for cataloging. I offered Lance a wipe, which he used to clean his hands.
“You know, Lucy,” Lance started cautiously, “lab analysis can detect toxin poisoning even if you tag them afterward.”
As a matter of fact, I did know this, which was another part of the reason I had been avoiding trips to headquarters whenever possible. I shrugged nonchalantly. “It’s not like it’ll kill me and I’m not being attacked every night.”
“It’s often enough to concern us,” Lance reminded me sharply. “You have weapons, Lucy, and you know damned well how to use them.”
“And Evan knows damned well that I’m not going to use them unless I deem it absolutely necessary!” I was so over this argument and more than a little taken aback that Lance was starting in on me.
“Hey, stand down, soldier!” Lance said sarcastically and threw his hands up in a defensive posture. “Look, we’re all just a bit concerned for your health and well-being. And by all of us, I do mean all of us.”
I pointedly ignored his last remark. Yet another reason I was avoiding headquarters. Okay, so I had a laundry list. Though Lance meant nothing malicious by bringing up Andre, or the reason he left, it still hurt.
“I appreciate everyone’s concern, Lance, I really do, but I’m no longer a hunter for a reason. I knew that vamp. His name was Erick. I thought I had made some progress last time I saw him, but apparently his mentor, some idiot named Vinnie, convinced him I was lying about both rehabilitation and my own toxicity. I…” I sighed in frustration. I sometimes envied the hunters and their ability to maintain a detached professionalism when it came to their job. Evan and Ida both had warned me that the outreach was an emotionally exhausting career path. Moments like this made me question whether I was cut out for it. “I didn’t want to kill him, Lance, he was just a kid. If I ever meet this Vinnie, I won’t be so hesitant to pump him full of poison.”
“Hey.” Lance pulled me into a brief but comforting hug. “You’re doing an amazing thing with these kids. Ida told me you’ve been instrumental in doubling the number of converts since you started and that’s something to be proud of. I know you can take care of yourself, but I still count you as one of my best friends, so of course I’m going to worry about you. Just try not to jump down my throat for doing so, okay?”
“I know,” I mumbled, “and thanks, for still counting me as a friend.”
“Always.” Lance rewarded me with one of his toothpaste commercial smiles. “I’ve gotta catch up with Evan, you going to be okay?”
“Yeah, I’m good.” It was a lie, but it worked.
It was only a little after one in the morning and I didn’t want to spend the next four hours covered in blood, so I decided to swing by the apartment for a change of clothes and to check on the girls. I wasn’t more than a few blocks away, but getting there was a little dicey. The weather was mild for late July, so the Quarter was packed. Even in New Orleans, where strange is the norm, wandering around in blood-spattered clothes tended to solicit unwanted attention, so I stuck to the alleys.
I had just ducked into an alley off Chartres when someone ran past, close enough to knock me off balance. Before I had a chance to check it out, a much larger someone barreled past and sent me flying face first into a brick wall. I was pretty sure I was sporting a broken nose, but I was more concerned with who, or more likely what, was chasing someone into what I knew was a dead end, so I took off after them. It only took me a couple of seconds to catch up and realize my gut instinct was correct and that I might have been too late. Without a second thought, I unsheathed one of my weapons and ran in for the attack.
But before I could do anything at all, the vampire started to shake violently. I wasn’t at all prepared for what happened next. As he twisted, his face turned toward me and I could see his eyes bulge in confusion as he struggled to breathe through the blood that was bubbling from his nose and mouth. A chalky, white crust was already forming around his mouth; a sure sign of blood poisoning, but that was impossible.
While all hunters carry an enzyme in their blood that is toxic to vampires, allowing a vampire to bite you was strictly against the rules. More often than not, the hunter would die from shock or blood loss well before the vampire had ingested a fatal amount. I, on the other hand, carried a form of the enzyme that worked faster than the cocktail of chemicals administered by my weapon’s auto-injector. Because of this, among other things, I was classified by EJC Research’s top team of genetic engineers as a scientifically implaus
ible anomaly.
I tagged the dead vampire with my weapon and opened a channel to Evan and Lance, knowing that they were still in the area.
“Code Ten; someone needs to pick up this body right away. Cause of death was blood poisoning, but Evan, it wasn’t me.”
I turned my attention to the victim and was shocked for the second time. At first glance, I wasn’t sure if it was a boy or a girl. Their hair and clothes were filthy in a way that suggested hard living, aka homelessness. What shocked me, was that this person was a child, no more than thirteen or fourteen years old.
“If you come any closer I’ll do the same to you.”
Definitely a girl, but the bossy tone I had come to expect from teenagers seemed wildly incongruous with our current situation. I stowed my spent weapon and put up my hands to show I wasn’t armed.
“Don’t be scared, sweetie, I’m not going to hurt you.”
She stuck one hand into her pocket and pulled out a knife. Okay, so I’m not very good at talking to kids.
“Sweetie? If you want to talk, try again. I’m not a child, I’m sixteen and lady, I will cut you with this.”
I tried not to laugh but failed. My friends, Saba and Johnny, had a teenage son who often used the ‘I’m not a kid anymore’ argument. Come to think of it, I was probably guilty of the same when I was that age. Besides that, the blade was rusty and dull, and tetanus wasn’t high on my list of worries.
“I’m sorry,” I said and sat down on a crate so that I could talk to her eye-to-eye. Well, eye-to-eye wasn’t quite right, as I couldn’t see her eyes beneath the wall of dirty blonde hair that hung over her face. “I thought you were younger, but you see, I’m actually twenty five, myself.”
Vampire DNA did have some advantages. I could have easily passed as a high school girl on most days.
The Eyes of the Sun: The Complete Trilogy Page 33
