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  Maybe I’d made a huge mistake in leaving Jean-Paul and the others to strike out on my own. Clearly, there were a lot of things about being a vampire I didn’t know, didn’t understand. Maybe I should call Jean-Paul, swallow my pride and go crawling back to him.

  And I could see the smug look he’d have on his face, the sneer on his lips, the triumph in his dark eyes as he made me beg to rejoin the fraternity. I could hear his voice saying, Why should I take you back, baby vampire boy? So you can defy me, go after the young men I drink from and take their lives like Luis in South Beach—

  I shook my head. I’d left Luis alive.

  Hadn’t I?

  Did you leave him alive, boy? Or did you take so much of his blood that he died after you left him?

  I took a deep breath. Stop imagining things, I lectured myself. You don’t know what will happen if you call Jean-Paul, if you ask him for help.

  “You’re a fool,” I whispered. “Jean-Paul would never make it easy for you.”

  I may have known Jean-Paul for only two years, but I knew him well enough to know he wouldn’t make it easy for me to go back. He’d want to humiliate me, debase me and break my spirit to ensure that I’d never go against his will again. Even though I loved him, I knew there was a cruel side to him. And wasn’t the reason I left because I knew he’d eventually move on from me? He loved young men, didn’t he? Didn’t he always choose a young man to feed from? Hadn’t he’d turned me into what I had become because I was young, so I would stay young forever, trapped in the body of a twenty-year-old, a body that would never age?

  Did I really want to go back to that life, watching him feast upon young men, waiting for the day when he finally tired of me completely and turned some other young man into the newest addition to our brotherhood?

  No, I would rather die than sit by while that happened. I would far rather be out on my own in the world, even if I didn’t know everything that I should, rather than simply wait for the day when he turned my replacement.

  I squared my shoulders and walked up Bourbon Street. I was not going to go back to Jean-Paul. I was not going to ask him for help. Whatever was going on here, whatever had gone wrong with Jared, I would have to figure out for myself. I would solve the problem—even if it meant killing him. It had been weakness to let him feed from me—maybe a sense of loneliness, a need for someone to be my companion so I wouldn’t have to be so lonely. Those were human emotions, human needs—and I had to remember I was no longer human.

  As I walked down the middle of the street, loud music assailed me from both sides. Harsh, grating, slobbering human voices danced on the air as I passed by groups of them in various stages of inebriation. The couple I’d followed was now standing out in front of the Tropical Isle, each holding a long green cylindrical plastic cup filled with liquor. I could smell the alcohol in the air, the sourness of their breath as I walked past them, turning to go up Orleans Street. Their eyes were glassier than they had been when I’d seen them earlier, and my eyes locked with the young man’s for a moment—and I could see curiosity in them.

  Desire was there, too, even though he obviously had no intention of ever acting on it.

  If I weren’t in such a hurry to get back to Jared, I might have played with that young man, gotten him to finally open his mind enough to admit that he had an attraction to other men, set him free from the shame he so clearly felt about those desires—a shame I knew only too well.

  There was a young woman standing on the corner of Orleans and Dauphine. She was leaning against the street sign, facing toward Bourbon Street. She wasn’t what would be considered classically pretty, but she was definitely an attractive woman. Her thick dark hair was braided, and the braids were coiled around her head. There was a purple streak in one of the braids and a red one in another. Her nose was long and crooked, her lips thick and painted a dark red. Everything about her face was pointed—her chin came to a sharp point, her cheekbones stuck out at a sharp angle, even her lips narrowed to points on either side of her mouth. Her eyes were slanted, dark blue with gold flecks. Her lashes were long. She didn’t seem to be wearing much makeup. Her neck was long, and she was wearing a black T-shirt with Who Dat written in gold across her chest. Her breasts were small but firm. She was wearing a pair of jeans that rode low on her curved hips, and she was maybe five feet four. There was a mole just under the right corner of her mouth. She’d watched me walk up the block and was still watching as I stepped off the curb. I waited for a black-and-white United cab to drive by before starting across Dauphine.

  She tossed the cigarette she was smoking into the street as I stepped up onto the curb. I started to walk past her but was aware something about her wasn’t quite right.

  She wasn’t human, I realized as I drew nearer to her. She didn’t smell human, and her heartbeat . . .

  She was a vampire—and I hadn’t sensed her until I was within a few feet of her.

  That wasn’t a good thing.

  “Cord.”

  She said my name before I could think of what I should do or how I was supposed to act. If there was a protocol for what to do when encountering an unknown vampire, I sure as hell didn’t know what it was. It had never happened during the entire time I was with Jean-Paul and the others, and it had never occurred to me to ask about it. I had never thought that we were the only vampires in the world, but now, confronted with a strange vampire, I wondered why we never had run into other vampires during our travels. What were the odds of that—and what were the odds that I would run into one on the street in the French Quarter? Whenever it had occurred to me to ask about other vampires, my question was either ignored or I was told to not worry about it. When I was inside the cocoon of our little fraternity, it really hadn’t been an issue.

  But I wasn’t with them anymore, and now here was a strange vampire.

  A strange vampire who also knew my name.

  I stopped walking and turned to face her. “How do you know my name?” I asked, watching her carefully. I didn’t sense any danger from her, but that was hardly reassuring. I hadn’t, after all, sensed her.

  I cursed Jean-Paul in my head for leaving me so ignorant.

  She stepped into the pyramid of light cascading down from a streetlamp. I took a closer look at her face but I’d never seen her before. I wondered if she’d been the one communicating with me, and if she had been following me for some time and I’d simply not noticed.

  She smiled at me mirthlessly. “Do you really think it’s wise to feed from a stripper in a gay bar?” Her voice was mocking and contemptuous. She stepped a little closer to me, raising one of her eyebrows. “Do you want to be caught, baby vampire? Is that what you wish? Do you hate being a vampire so much you want to die?” She moved even closer to me. “If that’s your wish, there are easier ways to die—ways where you won’t endanger the rest of us.” I could feel her breath on my neck, and it made me uncomfortable.

  I took a step back. “It was dark and to the others in the bar it looked like we were just hugging each other,” I replied in an equally contemptuous tone. “No one noticed anything out of the ordinary, and—”

  “You are a fool, and what’s more, you don’t even know how big of a fool you are.” She cut me off, sneering. “Oh, you can be forgiven much because you’re young. And there are those who would overlook your stupidities because you are beautiful.” She reached out with a cold hand and caressed the side of my face. “And you are quite beautiful, but still, you know nothing.” She pinched my cheek, hard, and involuntarily I cried out. “But for all of those who would forgive you, there are many, many more who won’t be as forgiving. Are you aware of that? There are those who could destroy you with a mere snap of their fingers and would think nothing of it—they’d forget you a moment after your body turned to ash.” She laughed. “Surely you aren’t so foolish, so stupid, as to think that you are the only vampire in New Orleans? In Louisiana?” She shook her head. “You don’t even have guards up. You poor young baby. Every v
ampire in Louisiana knows about you—they can sense you. You didn’t even sense me or where I was, even after I started talking to you back at Oz, did you?”

  “Well, n-no,” I stammered, taking another step back. Violence and anger radiated from her body, and I was growing more than a little frightened of her.

  “Don’t worry, baby vampire, I’m not going to hurt you—no matter how stupid you’ve acted. That’s not why I’m here, although God knows you need some disciplining.” She gestured in the direction of the house. “Care to explain what’s going on in your house?” Her smile grew wider. “The pretty young muscular man with marks on his neck, with your blood in his system that is slowly but surely converting him into an incredibly weak vampire—one, I might add, who will be easy prey for the others?” She shook her head. “Did you honestly think no other vampire knew what you were doing in that house?”

  “I . . . ,” I whispered, but couldn’t think of what else to say. I felt mortified—worse than Jean-Paul had ever made me feel. “Go to hell,” I finally managed to get out, and turned to walk away from her.

  “Not so fast.” She rolled her eyes dramatically and bared her upper teeth, exposing long, sharp canines. “I’m here to help you, you idiot.” She grabbed my arm—her strength was amazing—and spun me around so I was facing her again. She sighed heavily. “I’ve already put up guards around the house and around you, so the least you could do is show me a little bit of gratitude?” When I didn’t answer, she shrugged. “All right, then, manners are clearly not your strong suit. Come on, let’s go check out the damage.” She started dragging me up the street.

  I tried to resist her at first, but she was too strong for me. It was humbling. I’d known the other vampires in our little fraternity were stronger than I was—Jean-Paul could lift me and toss me over his shoulder with little to no effort at all—but to be so much weaker than a woman? Even if she was a vampire . . .

  “Don’t be such a misogynistic asshole,” she growled at me, interrupting my thoughts. “I might be female, but I can tear you to little pieces, understood?”

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled.

  She sighed. “It’s okay. Well, no, it’s not okay.” She gave me a brittle smile. “You need to work on it. I get it—you were raised that way, but you need to remember women are just as good as men. And when it comes to vampires, gender doesn’t matter. It’s age that matters and the strength of the heart.” She shook her head. “Jean-Paul really didn’t teach you a goddamned thing, did he?”

  We walked up my front steps. I unlocked the front door, but she pushed me aside and strode across the front room to the locked double doors. She turned and looked at me, placing both of her hands on the faded wood. “Fortunately, not only is he still here, but also he still sleeps. He’s restless—which is not a good sign for a conversion—but he sleeps.” She crossed her arms and began tapping her right foot. “And fortunately, if anyone else sensed him there besides me, they didn’t do anything before I put up the guards.” She gave me a sad little look. “You really don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

  I sat down on the couch and glowered back at her. “Yeah, I’m just a complete idiot,” I snapped as I kicked off my shoes. “It’s a wonder I’m even still alive.”

  “Truly, you have no idea how right you actually are.” She walked over and sat down next to me. “But it really isn’t your fault, you know.” She nudged me with her elbow. “It’s really Jean-Paul’s. He was incredibly irresponsible—as always.” She shook her head. “And now we have to clean up his mess. As always.”

  “You know Jean-Paul?”

  “You really don’t know anything, do you?” She stared at me. “It’s really unforgivable. And he let you loose, out from under his protection.” She got up and walked over to the front windows and looked out through the curtains. “I understand why he did what he did originally—on an emotional level, that is. But on an intellectual level, and certainly on a political one, it was a huge mistake.” She faced me again. “The Council wants you dead, you know.” She gestured toward the locked double doors. “And when they find out about that”—she shook her head again—“you’re almost certainly going to be executed.”

  Executed? My head was spinning. “What Council? Why would they want me dead?”

  Her voice was sympathetic. “I’m sorry. I forget you don’t know. Anything.” She sighed. “Jean-Paul was so completely negligent. Criminally so. If anyone should be executed, it’s him.” Her eyes flashed. “This certainly isn’t the first time he’s done something so incredibly stupid. It’s a pattern with him—and yet, they never do anything other than reprimand him.” She crossed the room and sat down next to me again. She cupped my chin in her left hand. “You are a pretty boy, of course, which clearly is why he did what he did with you. It’s not your fault, of course, but the Council doesn’t care about things like that—their only concern is protecting our kind, and you’re a danger.” She looked back over her shoulder at the double doors again. “And if you’re going to run around letting humans drink your blood—that’s just going to make it that much easier for them to authorize your death sentence. You can’t just create a new vampire every time you panic, you know.” She took a deep breath and held out her hand. “My name is Rachel, and I’m here to help you—whether you want it or not.”

  I swallowed and took her hand. It was small and cold, but her grip was strong. “Thanks.” My head was racing, trying to digest what she’d said and what it meant, what it might mean, for me. “Can you help me with Jared?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. He might have to be destroyed.”

  I goggled at her, unable to speak.

  Destroyed?

  “Oh, come on, don’t act so shocked. You thought it yourself when you walked out of that bar—that you might have to kill him.” She smiled and patted my hand. “You need to learn how to close your mind so that other vampires can’t read it.”

  I nodded, biting my lower lip.

  “As for destroying him, I hope it won’t come to that, Cord, really I do. But you have to be tried, you know.” She moaned and slammed her fist down on the arm of the sofa. “No, of course you don’t know.” She looked away from me. “The Council is comprised of thirteen vampires. Every continent has a Council, and their word is law over vampires. They don’t usually involve themselves in individual affairs.” She looked at me. “Jean-Paul never mentioned the Council? Did he ever say anything about the Nightwatchers?”

  “The Nightwatchers?” I shook my head. “No, he didn’t. What are the Nightwatchers?”

  “Of course he didn’t.” She slammed her fist down again and took a moment to compose herself. “Jean-Paul really is the one who should be destroyed. Or sent back to Europe—let them deal with his stupidities. That’s where he belongs, anyway.” She smiled at me. “I’m sorry if it seems as though I am taking my anger with Jean-Paul out on you—he just makes me so angry.” She sighed again. “All right, let me try to explain this to you.”

  There was, she explained, a Council of thirteen older vampires on every continent—and it was their job, as assigned by the Nightwatchers (“I’ll explain them to you later,” she told me), to police the vampires under their jurisdiction and make sure they followed the rules. The rules have been in place for centuries—millennia, actually—and their purpose was to protect vampires from exposure. “Because we frighten humans, and it’s been the goal of their religions to destroy us from the very beginning.” Vampires who break the rules are called before the Council and tried, with no chance of appealing their decisions.

  “But what are the rules?” I asked, confused but fascinated at the same time. “How am I supposed to know the rules if no one told me what they are?”

  “It’s your maker’s role to explain everything to you,” Rachel replied. “Now do you understand why Jean-Paul makes me so angry?” She ran her hands through her hair. “The first ten years of a vampire’s life are crucial. They should never be allowed out
of their maker’s sight. You’re very weak at this point, Cord. You haven’t come into your own as a vampire yet. It’s no different than expecting a human baby to feed and take care of itself in the first year of its life. You aren’t strong enough. You don’t have your strength yet. You are easy prey for those who hunt us.” She gestured in the direction of the ruined house across the street. “Before you even finished converting, you were easy prey for the witch Sebastian, weren’t you? Had Jean-Paul not come to your rescue, Sebastian would have achieved his foul purpose. Vampire blood—even that of a baby like yourself—is powerful. Had Sebastian succeeded, he would have achieved immortality and eventually would have had the strength of a vampire along with the powers of a witch.” She shook her head. “And as much as we would like to believe a powerful creature would work for the well-being of the humans, I tend to think he would have been a monster. And we would have had to destroy him.” She gave me a terrible smile. “Many vampires could have been killed.”

  “So why hasn’t anything been done about Jean-Paul?” I asked, worried. I was angry with him, yes, but that didn’t mean I wanted him dead.

  “The Council has been occupied by other things,” she replied. “Which is why the Nightwatchers are becoming involved. Which is why I am here.”

  “Are you a Nightwatcher, whatever that is?” I asked. I thought I heard movement from behind the locked doors.

  She heard it, too, and crossed the room so quickly I didn’t see her move. One moment she was by the window, the next she was in front of the doors.

  She was right. Much as I hated the sound of it, much as I’d resented it when Jean-Paul had called me that, I was a baby. I couldn’t move that quickly. I couldn’t read minds unless I was connected to the other person’s life force. I couldn’t fly.

  I was more than human, but I was less than vampire.

  I got up and gave her a sardonic smile as I turned the key in the lock and rolled the pocket doors open.

  Jared was sitting up on the bed, still naked.