CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Delphine and I walked along North Rampart Street for a couple blocks before deciding to dip into the French Quarter by way of Saint Ann’s Street. Delphine wanted to avoid the noisy, drunken, Bourbon Street crowd, and I didn’t blame her for wanting that. I didn’t want to deal with it either. What I wanted to do was get to know the enigma that was Jean Luc’s sister. What he had told me about the way she was brought into the night both terrified and fascinated me, and this was the first real chance we’d had to share a moment together, alone.
The initial few minutes of our walk had been quiet, though, and whenever she passed in front of me I caught a whiff of what I thought was perfume, but it had a weird quality about it. The scent itself was sweet and flowery, reminding me of bees and honey, and freshly cut roses. Nature.
“So,” I said, as we made a left turn onto Dauphine Street, “I bet New Orleans is way different than you remember?”
“It is,” Delphine admitted, “Although, in truth, I remember little of my life before I woke up a few months ago.”
“Really?”
“I remember snippets, little flashes of memory that may as well be dreams belonging to someone else.”
I fell silent for a second as I pondered my next question. “Do you remember what you used to do for a living?”
“I don’t remember my living days at all. I’m afraid I’ve even forgotten what the sun feels like on my face.”
“That’s… sad…”
“Not if the sun could kill you. But it does leave me wondering why I’ve forgotten so much.”
“Doesn’t Jean Luc know?”
“He thinks I was too young to go into such a long sleep, that it damaged my mind somehow. I suppose he may be right. Many of our kind experience some type of memory loss when they fall into centuries long sleep. But no vampire my age had ever been forced to go through such an ordeal before, so it’s difficult to say.”
We continued down Dauphine Street where the number of people walking dwindled to zero pretty rapidly, leaving the two of us largely alone save for whoever happened to be listening from a window or a balcony. Luckily, most people wouldn’t have taken the conversation we were having too seriously. To do so would have been to confront the existence of the supernatural, and even if they did accept it, the first person they told would think them insane.
“Jean Luc took pretty well to the modern day,” I said, “But he had been awake before. I guess he’d had opportunities to adjust. Was it weird for you?”
She shook her head. “Having only a scattering of memory from the past, it was as if I had awoken into this century from nothing. Everything was alien to me at first, but I learned quickly. Quicker than the others. The benefits of having a sharp mind.”
“You look it. Sharp, I mean. You look intelligent.”
“Thank you. I’ve come to learn that to be a good trait to have in this day.”
“You’re right. Looks don’t get people nearly as far as they think. Not that you don’t have them; you’re very beautiful.”
Delphine smiled again, then she laughed, and when she laughed, her dark curls bounced above her delicate, pale shoulders. Meanwhile, my cheeks started to burn like the sun. I had never met a woman whose presence was so intoxicating, so dizzying. Did she have this effect on everyone, or just me?
We had walked another half-block before I decided to go in for another question, but Delphine suddenly stopped dead in her tracks and perked up like a cat who had heard a distant, foreign sound. She was so light-footed, if she hadn’t grabbed my arm with her ice-cold hand, I may have kept walking.
“What?” I whispered.
Then Delphine spoke one word that chilled my insides as well as my outsides. “Blood.”
“Blood? Where?”
“Ahead somewhere. Close. There isn’t much, but enough for me to smell it.”
“Jean Luc?”
Delphine shook her head. “His feeding grounds are elsewhere.”
I threw a cursory glance around at where we were. The street here was mostly dark, quiet, and residential. Full of innocent people. Blood in the air didn’t necessarily mean trouble, but what if someone had hurt themselves? Calling 911 seemed like a sensible idea, if that were the case. But I was lacking in the sensibility department nowadays, and if someone had been hurt it was far too close to my house for my liking.
“We need to go to it,” I said, “Can you take me to the source?”
She tugged my hand and brought me with her down the street, about another block, before slowing down at the entrance to an apartment building. The door was ajar, it was dark inside, and while I couldn’t smell any blood, the smell had become so potent for Delphine—who hadn’t yet fed tonight—she had to cover her nose with her hand just to be able to handle it.
I was about to approach, when from inside I heard a scared moan that rooted me to the spot and got my heart pumping. I snapped my head around to look at Delphine, wide-eyed and electrified with dread. Without wasting another second, I headed for the door and peered around the corner, but it was so dark in that corridor I couldn’t see a thing. There was someone down there, though—I was sure of it.
“Goddammit,” I said, under my breath, willing a spot of bright, white light to manifest at the tip of my index finger. The light wasn’t bright enough to reach the end of the corridor, but the shapes in the deepest part of it became a little clearer to the eye. What I saw made me almost want to turn around and start running.
Someone—a man—had a young woman, no older than eighteen, pinned to a wall. He had forced her neck to the side and had his mouth pressed against her skin. The light caught the woman’s glistening eyes, her pained face, and the colorful beads falling at her chest, but the bloodsucker seemed to be almost oblivious, as if drinking the woman’s blood was more important than being discovered.
“Hey!” I yelled, and the vampire turned his attention toward me in an instant, his eyes—his eye—glowing with bright, golden light. Then I realized, I knew who this vampire was. A flash of memory played in front of my eyes of me impaling the heel of my shoe into a vampire’s face, and the heel coming away with his eye attached to it.
The thing dropped the girl, hissed, and immediately started to charge to the mouth of the hallway. I barely had enough time to throw myself to the side of the door when the vampire burst out of the dark opening like a bat out of hell. I started to push myself away from the wall I had pinned myself up against, but the vampire moved so fast I hadn’t moved an inch before he was on me, his powerful hands pressing my shoulders against the wall.
He snarled in my face, and his mouth smelled like copper. “I know you, witch,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, heart thumping, “How’s the eye?”
He scowled and grabbed my chin, pressing his fingers so tightly against my face I thought my bones would crumble beneath his hand. Delphine appeared behind him. She grabbed his shoulder and forced him around with her superhuman strength, and as he spun, she drew her splayed fingers across his face and drew four lines of split, bleeding skin into it.
The vampire yowled, but released me, and I fell to my knees, clutching my burning jaw. Distantly, I was aware of the young girl the vampire had been feeding on running past me and into the night, and when I turned my eyes up, I was just in time to watch the vampire shove Delphine so hard the wall behind her fractured when she struck it. Then he started to advance on her, cracking his neck as he went and flexing his fingers.
“I’m going to have fun killing you both,” he snarled as he walked.
I planted my palm against the floor and grit my teeth. “You’re forgetting something,” I said, anger flooding through me now as the thought of what he—what his kind—did to us, to Remy.
He turned his head, his eyes glowing like stars in the night.
A breeze picked up around us, and my fist crackled with arcs of electric light. “It’s an even fight, now.”
The vampire’s brow creased during a momentary lapse of confusion. From my crouched position, I picked myself up and broke into a charge, throwing my crackling fist and hurling it at him as soon as I was close enough to hit him. Arrogantly, he didn’t move, didn’t try to dodge me. Instead he waited for me to get to him, lazily putting his hand up to block the punch, but when my fist made contact with the palm of his hand, a burst of energy surged through him like a thunderclap, with enough force to do to him what he had done to Delphine.
The strength of the hit had been enough to stop me in my tracks. Turbulent air surrounded me, dissipating just as the glow in my hand began to fade. I had never done that before, but doing it sure felt good. When Delphine got up, she ran up to me and stood by my side, facing the downed vampire.
“We should leave,” she said, “We aren’t a match for him.”
“Really?” I asked, “Because I just pounded him into that wall.”
“Trust me, Madison. We must gather the others.”
I looked at her, then, considering her words, and in the split second it took me to bring my eyes back to where the vampire lay, he was gone. My heart leapt into my throat, and panic wormed its way into my heart. The breeze picked up again, only I hadn’t caused it. Instinct led me to turn to the left and put my arms up, to throw the magick shield around myself, but before I could do it something crashed into my lower ribs, evacuating the air out of my lungs and robbing me of the ability to get it back.
I toppled over and hit the ground with the side of my face, eyes wide again, pain like white fire burning with every motion of my lungs as they struggled to take in even a little air—just enough to keep me alive. The street swayed from side to side, and fireflies danced in front of my eyes, conscious of the battle raging around me, though unable to participate.
But if Delphine believed the two of us together weren’t a match for him, then what did that mean for her fighting him alone? I had to get up. Somehow, despite—or in spite of—the pain in my ribs, I had to move. I had to stand up, fight this son of a bitch, and get rid of him before he hurt someone else.
My ribs screamed as I tried to stand. I almost didn’t even make it to my knees, but I persevered and got to my feet, one hand clutching my midsection. In front of me, a fight was taking place between two blurred, dark figures—one much smaller and faster than the other, whose missing eye didn’t seem to make him any less deadly.
I clenched my fist again and let magick fill me, drawing power from the world around me and causing the air itself to cool. Time seemed to slow as I conjured the effect in my mind, to the point where I could distinguish both combatants easily enough. Delphine, nippy and quick, was dodging most of the blows coming her way, but the ones that landed were painful to see and hear.
When the magick was ready, I honed in on my target, stretched my right hand toward him, and sent a bolt of telekinetic energy into his midsection. The vampire didn’t see it coming. When the magick struck him, it did so with enough power to knock him off his feet and send him to the ground. Delphine, though momentarily stunned, turned on the vampire, throwing herself on him and slashing at his face with her claws.
But he was stronger than her, and while she may have gotten in a couple of good hits, the vampire quickly shrugged her off his body and jumped to his feet. He snarled viciously, his one good eye burning with gold light.
He growled, and for an instant I thought he was going to charge at us again, but instead he turned tail and ran.
Delphine hurried up to me and stopped me from falling. “Easy,” she said, “You’re hurt.”
“I’m… fine…” I said, but I could taste blood in my mouth.
My legs went out from under me, and if it weren’t for Delphine holding me up, I would have fallen to the ground hard and passed out. The world was spinning, and my mouth was filling with blood, which I spat out onto the ground.
Delphine spoke, but I couldn’t understand what she was saying. My hearing was leaving, and my vision wasn’t far behind. It was like I was seeing the world through a growing vignette, darkness encroaching upon me from all around. I must have started slipping in and out of consciousness, because Delphine seemed to move in quick, scattered movements; one second she was kneeling by my side, the next she was arching over me, and the second after that, she was holding her bleeding wrist above my face, and I was drinking deeply.