by Opal Carew
“What the hell is a dead ringer?”
“You never heard the expression?”
“Sure. But it means someone who resembles someone else. What does that have to do with a bell in the cemetery?” I rubbed my arms against a sudden chill. “In the dark, in the night.”
“This place was opened in 1789, back when they didn’t know yellow fever was spread by mosquitoes. People thought it could be passed from person to person, be they living or dead.”
“Understandable.”
“They placed the cemetery outside the city limits in an attempt to keep the fever away. But so many died, and so many panicked, sometimes people got buried before they were dead.”
“Bummer.”
“Times ten. Because of the unique burial practices here, the tombs are opened to inter new bodies. When they started to find fingernail furrows in the doors, they came up with a brilliant idea.”
The bell stopped ringing, and the ensuing silence was so loud, I heard both of us breathing.
Cassandra pointed to a crypt. “They installed a bell on top, with a string leading inside. People were told if they suddenly awoke in a dark, enclosed space all they had to do was find the string and ring the bell. The cemetery attendant would come and let them out.”
“Pretty smart.”
“Except when people began to see the folks they’d only buried a few days ago walking around on the street they were understandably freaked. They coined the term dead ringer to explain the phenomenon.”
I contemplated the now-silent bell. “Who was ringing this one?”
“Let’s find out.”
“Let’s not.” I grabbed at her arm, but she was already gone.
The door to the tomb faced away from us. Before we could turn the corner, a loud thunk split the night. Cassandra stopped so fast, I ran into her back.
“Sounded like a door,” she whispered.
“Are there still cemetery attendants?”
“No.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
Together we peeked around the corner and discovered Charlie helping a woman out of the crypt. The name on the tomb read: Favreau. I filed that away for later use.
“You take him; I’ll take her.” Cassandra stepped out of hiding.
Both Charlie and the woman growled at us.
“Mrs. Beasly,” I blurted.
She gave no indication that she heard me or that she knew her name, just continued to snarl in tandem with Charlie. I hadn’t thought a person could snarl, and while Cassandra and I were too far away to be sure, I could swear both of them had fangs.
Cassandra cut a quick glance in my direction. “You know her?”
“Missing librarian.”
No wonder they couldn’t find her. Why search in a crypt marked: Favreau?
“Is she dead?” I asked.
“You see a lot of live people climb out of tombs snarling?”
“Not lately.”
When the two stalked in our direction, Cassandra lifted her palm and put her lips near her wrist. I did the same.
“Now,” Cassandra ordered.
We exhaled; the powder flew, coating their faces in pale yellow particles. My arm dropped to my side as Charlie and Mrs. Beasly stopped walking and started coughing. I waited for them to shrivel, disintegrate, disappear. But they didn’t.
Charlie smacked me in the chest with the flat of his hand. Any air I had left in my lungs rushed out as I sailed backward and slammed into a crypt wall. I collapsed, too stunned to move.
Cassandra’s knife flashed; Mrs. Beasly hissed as smoke rose from the cut in her forearm. She recovered quickly, backhanding Cassandra hard enough that she joined me on the ground. Mrs. Beasly was far too strong to be a live little old lady.
The two advanced. I tried to get up, but I was still loopy. Cassandra didn’t look much better; she was going to have a shiner in the morning. She glanced around for her knife, but the weapon had clattered in another direction when she was hit. Not that it had done her any good against the superhuman zombie librarian.
Was that redundant?
The two paused a few feet away, their bodies blotting out the light of the half-moon so that a silver halo appeared behind their heads. I couldn’t see their faces, but the mumbles coming from their mouths were more animal than human.
“I don’t think that zombie powder works,” Cassandra said.
Two sharp reports split the night. Charlie and Mrs. Beasly jerked once and then exploded in blazing balls of fire.
“I don’t think they’re zombies,” I said.
Chapter 20
Cassandra and I managed to get to our feet with the aid of the tomb at our backs. My head felt as if it might split in two. The scent of burning flesh wasn’t helping. I tried to catch a glimpse of whoever had shot Charlie and Mrs. Beasly, but I saw no one.
The moon shadowed more than illuminated, and the graveyard was chock-full of tombs. Go figure. The shooter could be hiding anywhere. However, if he or she had meant us harm, he or she wouldn’t have stopped at two bullets.
“Let’s get out of here.” Cassandra snatched her knife out of the gravel.
“Now she wants to leave.”
“Don’t you?”
“I never wanted to come here in the first place.”
She tugged me toward the rear of the burial ground. I hung back, peering longingly at the streetlights. “What’s wrong with the front door?”
“Those gunshots are going to bring cops, if not thugs. I know a less public way out.”
“Of course you do.” I went with her. I didn’t want to explain why there were two flaming dead people in the middle of St. Louis Cemetery Number One either. I doubted I could.
If the police found Cassandra here they’d think she’d been stealing bodies, and then some. I needed her free and able to help me figure out what was going on, not locked up for body snatching and desecration of the dead. If they even locked people up for that anymore, although I kind of thought they did.
She led me past a huge monument, which I recognized from the film Easy Rider. Peter Fonda had climbed up to sit in the lap of an angel. I’d thought the scene a bit sacrilegious even then. Now, in the silver-tinged night, I thought it more so. This was a sacred place, a haunted place, a place where the living did not belong, and I wanted out of here as fast as I could go.
We left the white stone monuments behind and stepped into a small rectangle filled with more traditional markers.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Protestant section.”
No wonder it was so small.
“There.” Cassandra pointed to a path that seemed to cut through someone’s backyard.
‘We probably shouldn’t—” I began.
“What the hell!”
An exclamation from the front of the cemetery was followed by more voices and the patter of feet. Flashlight beams began to flicker round and round. I practically dived out of the city of the dead.
Cassandra and I emerged onto Robertson Street, which divided St. Louis Number One and St. Louis Number Two. From the guidebooks, I knew that where we were now was even rougher than where we’d been. But after what I’d just seen, I had a hard time caring.
We cut down the side of the cemetery, headed for the lights, but when we reached Basin Street we turned in the opposite direction of the increasing number of police cars. A fire engine and an ambulance passed within minutes. They weren’t going to be much help.
“What do you think they were?” Cassandra asked.
“You first.”
“Not zombies. The powder didn’t work and—” She shot me a sideways glance. “As far as I know, zombies don’t explode when they’re shot.”
“What does?”
“No clue. But did you see... ?”
“The fangs?”
She let out a sigh of relief. “I thought I was nuts.”
“Of course you aren’t. It’s perfectly sane to see dead people with fangs
.” And I wasn’t even being sarcastic.
“I saw the same thing you did,” I continued. “But I don’t know what I saw.”
“I think I do.”
“Explain it to me.”
“Dead people rising, growing fangs, and acquiring superhuman strength. You do the math.”
I’d never been very good at math, but I could see where she was headed. “Vampires?”
“This is New Orleans.”
“You keep saying that. It’s still planet Earth, last I checked.”
“Ever hear of Anne Rice?”
“She writes fiction, Cassandra. Vampires aren’t real.”
“Then what the hell was that?”
I didn’t know, but I was damn straight going to find out. “What do you know about vampires?”
“Bram Stoker, Anne Rice, Laurell K. Hamilton.” She shrugged. “I like vampire books.”
“And you call yourself a voodoo priestess.” We made our way to Royal Street. “What’s the common thread in all of the books?”
“The undead live forever. Coffins. Crucifix. Biting on the neck.”
“Charlie was bitten on the neck. By an animal.”
“According to legend, vampires can take the form of a wolf.”
“Bingo,” I whispered.
I couldn’t believe in the short time since I’d arrived in New Orleans I’d gone from searching for an out-of-place wolf in the swamp to chasing zombies and considering vampires. Then again, this was New Orleans.
We reached Cassandra’s shop.
“Do you have any books?” I asked.
“On the paranormal?” She unlocked the door and flicked on the lights. “I think I might.”
I followed her across the shop, skirting the snake cage, even though Lazarus appeared fast asleep or dead. Considering his name, I doubted either one was a permanent condition.
Cassandra opened a glass-fronted case and pulled out one, two, three huge old volumes. Dust puffed as she set them on the counter. Then she bent and yanked another from a bottom shelf. “We can start with these.”
I glanced at my watch. “Okay if I take them with me?”
“Got an appointment?”
“Kind of.”
“Ruelle,” she said.
I was supposed to head into the swamp with Adam tonight. And while I’d already decided to forgo that trip in favor of researching the vagaries of the vampire nation, that didn’t mean I didn’t want to do other things with him once I was through.
“Have you ever seen him in the daylight, Diana?”
I opened my mouth, shut it again. Thought hard. Hell. “That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Seems odd to me.”
Now that she mentioned it seemed odd to me, too. Still— “If Adam wanted to hurt me he could have a hundred times over.”
“Maybe hurting you isn’t what he’s after.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded.
“I don’t know. You still have the gris-gris?”
I tapped my pocket. “Yep.”
“I doubt that’ll work against a vampire. But this should.” Cassandra reached into the display case near the register and withdrew a long gold chain. “Can’t hurt, right?”
“How will that help, hurt or anything else?”
“A crucifix a day keeps the vampires away.”
I stared at the fancy chain. “What crucifix?”
“Well, not a crucifix, exactly. A cross. Times a hundred.” She held the necklace in front of my nose. The links were constructed in the shape of tiny fleurs-de-lis.
“This should work even better than a crucifix in theory,” she continued. “The fleur-de-lis is the symbol of the Virgin Mary and, in some cases, the Trinity. Every little bit helps.”
I hesitated, but in the end, I took the gift and put it on.
“That doesn’t go around your neck,” Cassandra said.
“Where else would it go?”
Cassandra lifted the thing over my head. “Pull up your shirt.”
“What?”
“Haven’t you ever seen a belly chain?” she asked.
“With a belly like mine? You’ve got to be kidding.”
“There’s nothing wrong with your belly. Pull up that shirt.”
The idea of draping jewelry across my gut, of accenting a part of me that did not need any accenting, went against everything I’d learned as a big girl. “Can’t I just wear it as a necklace?”
“Too easy to yank off. A protective amulet is supposed to be hidden.”
She seemed so certain—and really, what did I know about protective amulets?—I gave in and tugged up my shirt.
Cassandra quickly secured the chain. The cool links slid across my skin. Looking down, I was surprised the jewelry wasn’t tight, had in fact disappeared below the waistband of my jeans. Knowing it was there, I felt kind of sexy.
“Thanks,” I said, and really meant it. “What does fleur-de-lis mean?”
“Flower of the lily. Represents perfection, light, and life. Christian symbolism again—always in threes.”
“They do that. Do you have a computer?”
She blinked at my speedy change of subject. “In back. Why?”
“I want to know if Mrs. Beasly was ever found. I also want to research the name on that tomb.”
Cassandra smiled. “You are good at this.”
I wasn’t so sure. I’d never found anything I was searching for. But as dream Simon had told me, I needed to believe. After tonight, I believed, all right. I just wasn’t sure in what.
However, this time I wouldn’t let anything escape my attention. I was going to find a paranormal entity—be it a loup-garou, a vampire, a zombie, or something I’d never heard of—and expose it to the world. Maybe then Simon could rest. Maybe then I could.
I followed Cassandra to her office. Huge, old, and slow, at least the computer worked. Arianna Beasly’s name popped up in today’s obituaries.
“ ‘Heart attack after being bitten by a vicious dog,’ “ I read.
“Sure she was.”
“Her maiden name was Favreau, which explains where she was buried.”
“Although it doesn’t explain how she got dumped in the tomb so fast.”
I glanced up. “What?”
“I don’t know how they do things in your neck of the woods, but down here a funeral takes a few days. And that’s if there are no suspicious circumstances to warrant the police or an autopsy.”
“True. Did you see any bite marks on her?”
“As many as I saw on Charlie.”
“I guess that answers my question.”
“Which was?”
“They were both killed in basically the same way.”
“Wound inflicted by a mystery canine,” Cassandra murmured. “With said wound miraculously disappearing before the body rises and takes a little walk. What does that mean?”
“As soon as I know, you will.” I picked up the books and headed for the mansion.
I didn’t realize how much I wanted Adam to be waiting for me until I came through the door and discovered the place empty.
Do not get used to him, Diana. You have to leave, and he doesn’t want you to stay.
I made a peanut butter sandwich and coffee—you’d think the way I ate, I’d waste away to nothing, but no such luck—then I settled onto my sleeping bag and began to read. Unfortunately, the events of the evening had worn me out, and I didn’t get much done before I succumbed to sleep. As soon as I awoke, I spent the next day and well into the night researching.
The books were antiques, worth a small fortune. They were also full of great stuff.
“Crucifix, holy water, the Eucharist,” I recited.
All Christian items, which was fascinating considering the idea of night-flying, bloodsucking demons was not only pre-Christian but also a belief held around the world.
“How did people protect themselves B.C.?”
Sunlight, salt, and—
“Ga
rlic.” Of course. “A member of the lily family.” I fingered the fleur-de-lis chain at my waist, feeling better about it already.
I continued to read, eating another peanut butter sandwich, drinking way too much coffee. I was hyped beyond belief and chattering to myself nonstop.
“Photos not a problem. However, reflections are.”
I considered the annoying lack of mirrors at Adam’s cabin. I didn’t really believe the man I was sleeping with was a vampire, did I?
“No.”
The sound of my own voice was getting on my nerves. But it was better than the sound of silence warring with the whirring confusion in my head. I’d discovered how to kill them, how to slow them down; what I hadn’t been able to find was—
“How do I know for certain I’m dealing with a vampire?”
A shadow at the corner of my vision made me gasp and spin in that direction so fast my neck cracked painfully. Adam leaned against the wall.
“You think I’m a vampire, cher?”
Chapter 21
I glanced at the door—still closed. Then the windows— broken but not open. How had he gotten in without my hearing him?
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. If he was a vampire, did I plan to put a stake through his heart? I was fresh out.
“How long have you been there?” I asked.
Adam stalked toward me. His hair tangled when he shoved it out of his face; his bracelet caught the moonlight and sparkled. He wore a powder blue short-sleeved dress shirt, unbuttoned, and his chest rippled beneath a sheen of sweat that should have been unattractive but wasn’t. Combined with the ragged jeans and bare feet... I wanted him so much I couldn’t think straight.
He stopped directly in front of me. I had a perfect view of his crotch, which didn’t look half-bad, either. Because I wanted to lean forward and open the bulging zipper with my teeth, I stood. On the way up, my breasts brushed his chest, and he hauled me against him.
“You think I’m a vampire, Diana?”
The question should have been foolish. We should both have been laughing. But we weren’t.
His fingers tightened. His erection pressed against my stomach. His blazing blue eyes seemed to pierce my brain.
“Are you?” I whispered.
