La Luxure: Discover Your Blood Lust (7 page)

The pain was quick, sharp, and startled Julia
out of the dream. She blinked in the darkness, trying to get a
handle on where she was and whether or not she was dead.

A quick swipe across her neck and the smooth
skin her fingers found reassured her it was only a dream.

Kicking off the covers, Julia stumbled across
the room. The details of her hotel room and the strange events of
the last few days slowly pushed the fog from her head. Sliding open
the window, the cool, moist air that rushed in wiped out the
remainder. The chilly air was refreshing against her overheated
skin. It was just like her to be turned on by what should have been
a nightmare.

She sat on the floor, resting her arms and
chin on the windowsill. It was a beautiful night. There were enough
breaks in the clouds to let a few stars sparkle through. The
courtyard below was empty, the happily gurgling fountain the only
life. She was reminded of the demon fountain in the courtyard
outside of
Luxure
and shivered, suddenly freezing in the
crisp air.

Julia slid the window shut. What a crazy
night. That made two in a row now. She'd wanted adventure, but this
was much more than she'd expected.

She wondered what happened to that girl Eve?
Where did Armand take her? And what was all that talk about blood,
victims and donors?

It was too much to dwell on right now. It was
late, she was exhausted, and maybe even still a little bit tipsy.
There was time to worry about it tomorrow when her head was
clearer.

Climbing back into bed, Julia pulled the
covers tight to her shoulders. As she snuggled deep into the
mattress, she couldn't help but wonder what might be happening at
Luxure
. Was Armand still there? What would a man like him be
doing right now and was there a possibility it resembled her
dream?

* * *

A double shot of espresso was the only thing
that got Julia through the morning. The speakers were more engaging
than they had been the day before, but even a slide show filled
with images of a collapsed highway from a 54" water main failure
couldn't capture her focus. A few scattered notes and some random
arrows labeled with illegible text were the only productive things
that came out of the morning's lectures.

She blamed
La Luxure
for filling her
head with weird dreams and robbing her of some much needed
sleep.

Julia was running on coffee fumes by the time
noon rolled around. Lunch wasn't catered, and she was looking
forward to checking out a French coffee house on Ursulines, reading
her book, and simply relaxing for a while.

Dave caught her eye just as she was leaving.
She smiled, waved, and then quickly ducked out the door. She felt
bad for avoiding him, but she wasn't interested in being social at
that moment. She'd put more effort into it later.

The coffee house was bright and chipper, with
crisp white tile floors and deep blue walls. Plates filled with
pastries, mini quiches, and other delicious looking bread based
items were crammed under the curved glass display. Just beyond the
cashier, there was a courtyard filled with plastic tables and a few
people working on their laptops.

Julia took her coffee and stuffed croissant
to one of several small nooks that faced the street where she could
enjoy watching the foot traffic that passed by. Someone had left a
paper on the table and she thumbed through it, noting the tropical
storm brewing in the gulf and skimming over a few political comics.
Her eyes danced over the headlines: economic troubles, negotiations
in the Middle East, senator busted in DC brothel...

Julia froze when she read the small headline
that was barely a smudge on the page. "Woman's Body Found Drained
of Blood."

She yanked the paper closer.

A woman's body was found early this morning near the
corner of Burgundy and Conti in the French Quarter. The victim died
from excessive blood loss, and was marred with small cuts and bite
marks that appeared to be human in nature.

The woman was identified as Melissa Schwartz, a
24-year-old New Orleans resident. Memorial services will be held on
Saturday at the First Methodist Church in Metairie.

Police are urging anyone with information to please
come forward.

Julia stared at the tiny picture of the
smiling woman with the caption, "Victim Melissa Schwartz". Holy.
Shit. That was Eve, the girl that had passed out at
Luxure
the night before. The one Armand had left with.

Visions from her nightmares skittered through
her head.

The headline scrolled through her mind again.
"Woman's body found drained of blood." Drained. The paper said
drained, not, "Woman dies of blood loss from gunshot wound" or
"Woman dies from blood loss after dog attack." No, she died from
"small cuts and bite marks that appeared to be human in nature."
Like she'd been slowly chewed on.

Or drank from.

The memory of Armand's excessively long and
sharp canines made her shudder.

God, she had to go to the police.

Julia jumped to her feet, her metal chair
scraping loudly against the white, tiled floor.

Wait, no, she had to think about this. She
couldn't just run to the police and point fingers. Two Hurricanes,
a blowjob shot, and a couple glasses of wine didn't facilitate the
clearest memories. Slowly, Julia sat back down and strained to
string them together.

She remembered Eve coming in, looking
extremely disheveled and Armand being angry. He'd told her to
leave, hadn't he? And she'd complained about being full and begged
him to
take
from her.

He'd said no, right? Actually, if Julia
remembered correctly, it was, "Absolutely not." And then he said
something about Eve not having enough blood to donate.

And now Eve, or rather, Melissa was dead from
blood loss and Armand was the last person seen with her.

He might have been pissed, but he'd also
seemed concerned. He'd said she was sick and needed help, and then
he made a speech after she passed out. It was something about not
making donors your victims, and warning everyone to stay away from
Eve or he'd get them. His words had been much more eloquent than
Julia's patchy memory, but they weren't the words of a killer.

Was that what she'd tell the police?

But what if it was all a show? Maybe once
Armand no longer had an audience, it was easier to finish Eve off
and dump the body. Maybe he'd just gotten thirsty...

So what
would
she tell the police? She
imagined the conversation going something like this: "Excuse me
officer, I think I know what happened to Melissa Schwartz. See, I
was in this vampire bar,
La Luxure
, Melissa came in and this
really hot guy, Armand, took her somewhere after she passed out. He
seemed concerned about it but it might've been an act. I don't know
that he bit her and drank what little blood she had left, but he
has really sharp teeth and moves like a panther that moonlights as
a ballerina. So he's probably the vampire you're looking for."

That'd go over well.

First, the police would laugh her out of the
station and then, if by some remote chance the cops actually looked
into
Luxure
, she was sure the gorilla vampire bartender
would go out of his way to find her.

Besides, did she really want to implicate
Armand? What if he'd just taken Eve home or to the hospital? And if
he hadn't done anything to Eve but the cops started looking into
him and found out he was a vampire or something, what then?

The thoughts were absurd. Armand was
not
a vampire. There were no vampires.

Maybe, she should just tell the police she
saw Melissa Schwartz at
Luxure
the evening before she was
murdered and leave it at that. Let the details and the DNA sort it
out from there.

Did vampires have DNA?

Julia snorted, shoving the paper away. A
woman was dead and she was theorizing about vampire DNA.

For all she knew, Eve was a cutter that'd
gone too far. Or it was actually a drug OD the paper had
sensationalized. Whatever had happened, Julia needed to quit
fantasizing about vampires and get back to reality.

Her food and coffee were cold but it wasn't
like she had an appetite anymore. If the barista didn't mind
pouring her coffee over ice, she'd be on her way. There were only a
few more hours left for Julia to be an engineer and then she could
get back to being a tourist. After the conference, she would check
out the St. Louis Cemetery as planned, and then decide what to tell
the police.

Chapter Five

The clouds seemed to be pushing their way
from the sky as Julia wandered through the crumbling St. Louis
Cemetery Number One. Sinking closer and closer to the earth, they
threatened to smother her with their murky dampness. The
temperature was in the 50's, but it felt cooler than that, and
Julia pulled her coat tight against her chest in an attempt to ward
off the chill. Maybe it was the dampness, but she had a sneaking
suspicion it was the eerie surroundings that were chilling her
bones.

The walkways were barely that. Loose stones,
scattered gravel, broken up concrete, empty beer cans and the
occasional discarded shirt made for treacherous footing. Many of
the dates on the worn tombs were from the 1800's but a few dated
from the 18th Century and there were even some from the 1900's,
their bright white walls a contrast to the dull gray of their
ancestors. Some of the tombs had long lost their identity and were
now just exposed deteriorating bricks with melting mortar.

Even after dwelling on the Melissa Schwartz
dilemma all afternoon, Julia still wasn't sure what she was going
to tell the police or if she was going to tell them anything at
all. The good citizen would have already told the authorities
everything they knew. Yet, she hesitated.

She worried if she revealed what little
information she had, it would be bad for Armand. And throwing him
under the bus did not appeal to her.

But why was she trying to protect him?

Sure, he'd been nice to her at
La
Luxure
and made her feel comfortable and welcome in an
unfamiliar situation, but other than that, she had no reason to
protect him. In fact, she should be scared of him. Even if she
hadn't watched him leave with a girl that later turned up dead,
there were plenty other reasons to find him frightening.

That voice, his intense eyes, those crazy,
long fangs, the unnatural, smooth and silent way he moved...

But the only reason she should find any of
that frightening would be if she was ready to believe he was
something other than human.

The mere thought was preposterous.

So, she was just floating in purgatory,
unsure what to think or do. It was better to do nothing than act on
impulse and possibly implicate an innocent man.

However, if he was innocent, letting the cops
know what she'd seen wouldn't harm him. Once again, she had to
wonder why she was protecting him.

She wasn't ready to point fingers at Armand,
though, not yet. The man she'd met last night hadn't struck her as
a killer and it was ridiculous to think he was a vampire. She
needed to see him again, judge his character without so much
alcohol clouding her mind. But the only place she knew to find him
was
La Luxure,
and the idea of going back there alone was
truly terrifying.

All this flip-flopping was making her head
hurt.

The clouds dropped lower, pressing damp,
misty fingers against her already chilled skin, and giving her a
quick jolt of the creeps. It didn't help that she was already on
edge from Melissa's death and the raised graves held a million
places for an assailant to hide. Nor did it help when she reached
the massive tomb in the center of the cemetery and was greeted by
headless statues while crows cried their sad tune from roosts in
the trees behind her.

In spite of being spooked, she found the
cemetery eerily beautiful. There was something to its dilapidation
that was actually graceful. It reminded her of black and white
snapshots of refugee women in National Geographic. Surviving wars
and famines hadn't always aged them well, but they still stood tall
and with whatever strength they could muster.

After snapping a few more pictures, Julia
glanced at her phone. It was approaching six and would be getting
dark soon. Probably a good time to head out.

As she meandered back towards the entrance,
she passed a large tomb marked with dozens of X's, all in groups of
three. Shoes, coins, liquor bottles, beads, lipsticks, and various
other items gathered at the base. The marker read, "Marie
Laveau."

The Voodoo Queen.

A woman of about 50 stood at Julia's left,
her arms crossed tightly against her chest as she studied the
grave. She looked even more the tourist than Julia.

"What are the X's for?" Julia asked.

"You mark them on the wall and then ask Marie
to grant you a favor."

"Do you know what they mean?"

"I think they represent the Holy Trinity: the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost."

It wasn't what Julia was expecting. Besides
adding a little extra creepiness to the lore, what did Catholicism
have to do with the Mistress of Voodoo?

In silence, the two studied the tomb a while
longer. The woman finally wandered off with a few mumbled parting
words, and Julia was left alone at the grave.

She picked up a lipstick. Whether or not it
would help anything, it certainly couldn't hurt. But what sort of
favor should she ask for? There were so many options, love, health,
real
happiness...maybe she could combine a couple.

Mistress Marie, please let me survive my
flight home to find true love.