Jean Luc stared at me as if trying to read my face, but didn’t ask any questions. “Very well. But I still insist Delphine accompany you; the streets aren’t safe.”
Refusing her would have probably led him to ask the very questions he had clearly chosen not to ask, so I agreed to let Delphine be my chaperone. She wouldn’t appreciate a good burger like I was about to, but I was sure she’d appreciate the company of someone other than Jean Luc. I liked him, but he wasn’t from this time. I was.
She and I had much we could offer each other.
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.