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The bells of St. Louis Cathedral began ringing, startling me out of the memories and returning me to the present.

  I stood up and started pacing. I wasn’t dizzy anymore, but I needed to replace the blood I’d let Jared have. I felt hollow and empty, and the craving was there again, getting stronger with each passing moment.

  I had to feed again—and I couldn’t make the mistake of waiting again.

  I cursed myself as a fool again. Why had I been so stupid?

  I went inside.

  I pulled my clothes back on, and glanced over at the bed where he lay.

  He was sound asleep—would it be okay to leave him? I didn’t know. It might be yet another huge mistake.

  It was a risk, but I couldn’t think of anything else to do with him.

  I had to feed again—and soon.

  I couldn’t let the desire turn to need again.

  Shaking my head, I slipped out the front door into the warm New Orleans night.

  CHAPTER 3

  New Orleans is a dark city of dancing shadows after the sun goes down.

  I stumbled as I stepped out onto the front stoop of the house, locking the door behind me. I felt a little dizzy, and another wave of nausea forced me to lean back against the house. It wasn’t a good sign, I realized as I waited for my body to shake it off. It meant that my blood loss was even greater than I originally had thought—and I didn’t have nearly as much time as I had anticipated to feed and replace the blood I’d given Jared.

  You’ve really done it this time, idiot, I cursed myself as I took some deep breaths to steady my nerves. This is precisely the situation that caused this whole fucking mess in the first place.

  Of course, beating myself up over it wasn’t going to change, or solve, anything.

  I sat down on the top step and took another, deeper breath. I could hear the music and noise of Bourbon Street just a block and a half away. I could smell the intoxicating scent of human blood. I rubbed my hands over my eyes and glanced across the street at the house where I’d almost died.

  Had I really seen someone in the window earlier, or had it been my imagination?

  I shook my head. You’re just imagining things—you’ve got Sebastian on your mind. Jared’s eyes couldn’t have changed color, and you didn’t see anything in the window. It’s some kind of post-traumatic stress thing, triggered by being back in New Orleans and being on your own for the first time in your life—or else it’s just your imagination working overtime, that’s all. You’ve fucked up, Cord, and you know you’re going to have to call Jean-Paul for help.

  Which, of course, was the last thing in the world I wanted to do—and wouldn’t do until I’d exhausted every other possibility.

  And once I’d replenished, I could undoubtedly think of some options.

  The nausea passed and I opened my eyes. I felt better. I probably had at least a few hours before the desire became need again, and surely I could find someone to quench my thirst long before—

  Before you fuck up again.

  I shook my head and stood up. I breathed in deeply. I could hear the crazy woman who lived in the carriage house next door screaming. I rolled my eyes. She was smoking crack again—my heightened senses could smell it—and sure enough, the man she lived with started screaming back at her. Every night, like clockwork, they’d get high and start their little sideshow. It was annoying to say the least, and when I was trying to relax in my own courtyard or watch something mindless on TV in the living room, it was incredibly distracting. Several times, I’d considered putting them out of my misery.

  Crack-laced blood, though, tasted terrible, like it was rotting, and I didn’t like the effect it had on me.

  Then again, I didn’t have to drink their blood to kill them.

  But that wouldn’t be a smart thing to do, I reminded myself. Vampires don’t kill. That brings attention to us, and—

  “Whatever,” I said out loud.

  Someone was coming—I could smell their blood. It was two people, a man and a woman, and they were almost to the corner at Burgundy. Young, from the scent. I could almost taste it, it was so strong. They both were wearing perfumes from Calvin Klein—Obsession, maybe. It barely masked the stale sweat under his arms and inside his shoes. I could also smell their pheromones—they were terribly attracted to each other and certainly at some point in the evening ahead he would be mounting her.

  I turned my head to the right and watched for them. A few moments later, they came around the corner. I looked back in the other direction toward Bourbon Street. Orleans Street was deserted from my stoop all the way to where the fool in the hand grenade costume was dancing on the corner, trying to get people to go inside the Tropical Isle Bar for one of those lethal green drinks. A car drove through the intersection at Dauphine—a United cab with several women in the backseat. I looked toward the young couple. Cars were rushing by on Rampart Street a block and a half in the other direction.

  The only people on Orleans Street all the way back up to Rampart were this couple and me, standing on my stoop.

  There were no witnesses, no one anywhere to hear or see anything.

  They were perhaps in their early twenties; she was a petite young woman who probably didn’t weigh a hundred pounds soaking wet and needed heels to top five feet. She was wearing a denim miniskirt that barely covered her, her tan, shapely legs teetering on heels so high her back had to hurt. She was wearing a spaghetti strap top with no bra—I could see her nipples through the thin cotton top. Her light brown hair was streaked with blond. He towered above her at well over six feet and over two hundred pounds. His long sandy blond hair tumbled out from beneath the backward LSU baseball cap on top of his head. He was wearing an oversized white LSU football jersey with the gold and purple stripes on the shoulder. His jeans were baggy, faded, and torn at the knees. His arm was draped loosely but proprietarily over her thin shoulders. They nodded at me as they walked past me—both were carrying the large green plastic cups in the shape of a hand grenade with a long handle.

  They weren’t drunk, but they were well on their way. I could smell the alcohol seeping through their pores, and the sweet smell of marijuana hung around them. They’d left Bourbon Street to smoke a joint in their car, I surmised, and now were on their way back to have another drink.

  It would almost be too easy to feed from them.

  I started down the steps after them but stopped myself. I wasn’t strong enough to handle them both—I’d given too much of my blood to Jared. I cursed myself again for a fool. I could handle only one person, and I needed darkness and seclusion to manage even that.

  I listened for Jared, and heard his shallow snoring.

  But I could smell the couple’s blood, could hear the pounding of their hearts, and could feel the desire growing within my chest. There was still time, I reasoned, but I needed to hurry.

  As I watched the couple hurriedly walk toward the lights and noise of Bourbon Street, out of the corner of my eye I thought I again saw movement in the windows across the street.

  I stared through the darkness. The pink clouds had cleared, exposing the velvety bluish black of the night sky and the sparkling of hundreds of stars. The sliver of a moon hung, barely casting any light. It’s amazing, I reflected for perhaps the thousandth time, how dark New Orleans gets at night.

  Miami was always so bright you could hardly see the stars at night.

  The light from the streetlamps barely penetrated the darkness, and the dampness of the air created a hazy halo around the glowing lights.

  Had I really seen something? Had something actually moved in the window, or was I just imagining things?

  I swallowed and walked across the street.

  Vampires have much more powerful night vision than humans. The first time I’d experienced it, it had kind of freaked me out. That first night after my conversion, when Jean-Paul took me out to feed from the house on Orleans, was forever burned into my memory. It was Ash Wednesday, and the sun had already set. It had rained
all day, so the streets and sidewalks were slick and wet. Water dripped from the overhang as I stepped out onto the steps. A cold wind was blowing from the direction of the river, and Bourbon Street sounded muted. But despite the gray fog and the darkness, I was stunned at how vividly I could see. The thick fog was simply like a veil of gauze, and the glowing streetlights seemed to dance with vibrant, living light. I stood there, with the water dripping onto the side of my face, enrapt, looking first one way, then another, unable to fathom and comprehend how amazingly beautiful everything seemed.

  “Come with me, my dear.” Jean-Paul had smiled at me and taken my hand. When I reached the bottom step, he leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “You have all eternity to see the beauty of the world. Come on, it’s time for you to feed.” He led me down to the corner of Dauphine Street, and we turned left. My tongue kept feeling the incredibly sharp points on my incisors, and I could hear a lot of hearts beating ahead of us. He led me to a bar called Good Friends. There had been only a few people there, besides a cute blond bartender who couldn’t have been much older than I was. Jean-Paul ordered us each a glass of absinthe, which he taught me how to sip while he decided which of the few other patrons would be perfect for me to take my first drink of human blood from.

  My preference would have been the bartender. He was so beautiful, with his blond hair and golden skin, with his perky little butt inside his black shorts.

  But Jean-Paul finally settled on a dusky man in his midthirties, who kept looking at us over the rim of his glass of vodka and soda. He got up and joined us, introducing himself as Matt. He said he was from Iowa—Des Moines, to be exact—and came down for Mardi Gras every year. He was tired, worn out from the five days of excess that had preceded Ash Wednesday, but he wasn’t leaving until the next morning. His leg kept brushing against mine under the bar, and I could smell his desire for me—he also desired Jean-Paul but didn’t think the odds of a three-way were in his favor.

  Eventually, the three of us walked out of the bar. It had started raining again, and I shivered. Dauphine Street was filling with water, and rivers of it were cascading from roofs and balconies. The wind had also picked up, and it had gotten even grayer outside.

  Jean-Paul nodded to me, and I allowed Matt to kiss me. He tasted of vodka, lime, and tonic water. I could smell the alcohol his body was trying to expel through his pores. I put my arms around him and closed my eyes. I could hear his pounding heartbeat, and in the gloom the big blue vein in his neck almost seemed to glow. He gasped when I sank my teeth into it, and as his blood gushed into my mouth, I could hear his thoughts.

  Oh my God, that feels so good. How on earth did I get so lucky two sexy studs going back to my hotel room with me this young one my God he is so gorgeous and that ass I can’t wait to taste it put my finger inside of it and the older one, his arms and chest, I want him to fuck me. I bet he can put me through the headboard—

  And then I heard Jean-Paul’s voice inside my head: “Don’t take too much, my little one. This was just a test, for you to get used to it. Now it’s time to stop.”

  I pulled my mouth back from Matt’s neck, and in my head I saw myself biting my thumb, rubbing my blood over the wounds on his neck. I looked at Jean-Paul, who smiled back at me and nodded. I bit my thumb and rubbed my blood over the holes. Matt’s eyes were still closed, and he was swaying back and forth. I watched as the holes closed, leaving only what looked like two small hickeys.

  “Go back to your room and sleep,” Jean-Paul said softly, “and dream of a beautiful young man and a muscular older one joining you—and when you wake in the morning, you will take with you a beautiful memory of the three of us together.”

  Matt nodded and, as I watched in amazement, turned away from us and ran across the street in the pouring rain, running away from us toward Canal Street.

  “And now you’ve had your first taste,” Jean-Paul whispered into my ear, “and tomorrow we leave New Orleans for good. It’s too dangerous for you to be here.”

  I didn’t know what he meant by that, but at that point I would have done anything he told me to do. I simply nodded and returned with him to the house.

  Back in those days, when all Jean-Paul had to do was snap his fingers and I would leap, I thought, shaking my head. I started to cross the street but waited for a blue Honda to drive past.

  I climbed onto the porch and pressed my face against the glass of the window where I thought I’d seen something. I could clearly see the shapes of boxes and sawhorses through the gloom, but there was nothing moving, nothing else except the usual debris of a construction site abandoned for the night.

  It must have been just my imagination. Again.

  I took a deep breath and started walking toward Bourbon Street. Several blocks ahead of me, Orleans Street came to a dead end where it met Royal Street. On the other side of Royal was the iron fence enclosing the yard behind St. Louis Cathedral. The shadow of Christ’s statue loomed over the back of the building. It always gave me a chill whenever I saw it. His arms were spread, and there was something almost predatory about the shadow on the gray slate. Jared had once called the statue “drag queen Jesus,” which had made me laugh, and I remembered that every time I saw the shadow at night or walked past it in the daylight.

  That memory always made me smile. No one had ever been able to make me laugh as hard as Jared could.

  And look how you repaid him for everything he’s ever done for you.

  I swallowed and pushed that thought out of my mind.

  The first thing you need to do is stop feeling guilty, Jean-Paul had lectured me, so many times I knew the words by heart. Let go of that nonsensical Christian bullshit your parents brainwashed you with. Doesn’t your current existence prove that their precious Bible is nothing but a collection of fairy tales put together millennia ago by ignorant desert nomads?

  He’d been right, of course. But it wasn’t that easy to shake off what you’d always been raised to believe.

  Then again, I’d also been raised to believe my sexuality was an abomination and I was going to spend eternity burning in hell.

  Bourbon Street was crowded, as it always was on a Friday night when there was a convention or two in the city. When I reached the corner, I stood there for a moment, taking it all in. The people were of all shapes, ages, races, and sizes. Their smells, the thumping of their hearts, the buzzing of many voices talking at the same time, the clip-clop of horses carrying mounted policemen, and the astonishing beauty of their humanity overwhelmed me a bit, as it always did whenever I encountered a crowd. I allowed myself to get lost in the overstimulation of my senses for a moment, closing my eyes and letting it all wash over me—smell, sound, and taste.

  My reverie was interrupted when someone brushed against me, muttering, “Sorry.”

  I opened my eyes, smiling as the woman weaved her way up Bourbon Street. I forced my mind to start filtering the overload to something manageable. The massive Bourbon Orleans Hotel across the street had the doors to the two side-by-side bars on its first floor wide open. The one on the left, Napoleon’s Itch, was a gay bar and was blasting diva disco music. There was a Lucky Dog vendor on the opposite corner from me, in his red-and-white-striped shirt. He was handing a pair of foot-longs covered in chili, cheese, and onions to a couple of sexy straight boys in their midtwenties who looked like they’d been drinking for a while. A gaggle of young women wearing tight T-shirts and denim miniskirts checked them out as they walked past, carrying forty-eight-ounce Styrofoam cups full of daiquiris. “Hotel California” was blaring from a bar to my right, a few doors down from the corner. I dodged around the dancing hand grenade and could see the couple who’d passed me getting new drinks inside. I smiled and nodded at the hand grenade but didn’t go inside. A loud whoop across the street made me look in that direction, and I saw a group of college-aged boys standing in a circle while one of them chugged a beer in the center.

  He was wearing a Beta Kappa shirt, and I froze for a moment.


  There are Beta Kappa chapters at LSU and Tulane and Southern Mississippi, I reminded myself. They don’t have to be from Ole Miss, and besides, you don’t recognize any of them.

  I stood behind a man wearing a sandwich board advertising BIG ASS BEERS $4 while I searched their faces.

  No, I didn’t recognize any of them.

  That would have sucked, I thought as I started walking toward the corner at St. Ann and Bourbon. Bad enough I already ran into Jared today—and look how that turned out. But I pushed that negative thought out of my head. No sense in worrying about what to do with him until I’d fed and was back at 100 percent.

  “The gay bars are all down around the corner at St. Ann and Bourbon,” Jared had told me at that Mardi Gras a million years ago. “You can’t miss them—they have rainbow flags and everything. That’s where you need to go.”

  Jared had always been a good friend to me. I felt a lump forming in my throat but took a deep breath and forced it back down.

  Jared and I had been pledge brothers. We’d met during Rush Week. It was hard not to notice him—he was so damned good-looking; you had to be blind not to notice him. One of the brothers—I think it was Clark Newton, but I’m not sure—was explaining to me what a “great idea it was for pledges to go ahead and move into the house” when I saw Jared standing on the other side of yard. He was wearing a blue suit with a yellow shirt and a red tie, and was smiling at the two brothers talking to him. He had a name tag outlined in red stuck to his jacket, which meant he was a prospective, and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Clark or whoever it was ceased to exist in that moment, and all I could do was stare at this gorgeous young man.

  I’d had a crush on Bobby Stovall since the sixth grade, but Bobby was not in this guy’s class.

  Not even remotely.

  Somehow, I managed to get up my nerve to introduce myself to him, and he was so nice and funny. We ended up spending pretty much the whole night hanging out. The next night, we met in front of the Beta Kappa house. We went around to some of the other houses, but neither one of us cared for any of the others. Within two hours, we were back at Beta Kappa, and the next night we both took bids.