Blood Sacraments (7 page)

Fuck if that didn’t seem like a really hot idea.

“Will you be okay if I leave you here for a couple minutes?”

Lee nodded as his eyes slid close.

“I swear I’ll be back really fast. Stay awake.”

“There’s no traffic this time of night. Besides, who would stop for two teenage boys in this part of town?” He wrapped his arms around his stomach and rocked. “Damn, that hurts.”

I knelt in front of him and held his face in my hands. “Trust me, I can get someone for you. Just hang on till I get back, okay?”

“The corpse in the BMW? I can’t feed off him if he’s already dead.”

“Him? Hell no. I got something better, someone who owes me about a thousand pints of blood. So feel free to drain him.” When Lee opened his eyes, I smirked. “Kells.”

He ran his tongue over his fangs and nodded, smiling. “Kells.”

The damp air was thick with the scent of blood.

It had been days since I had last fed, and the desire was gnawing at my insides. I stood up, and my eyes focused on a young man walking a bicycle in front of the cathedral. He was talking on a cell phone, his face animated and agitated. He was wearing a T-shirt that read
Who Dat Say They Gonna Beat Dem Saints?
and a pair of ratty old paint-spattered jeans cut off at the knees. There was a tattoo of Tweety Bird on his right calf, and another indistinguishable one on his left forearm. His hair was dark, combed to a peak in the center of his head, and his face was flushed. He stopped walking, his voice getting louder and louder as his face got darker.

I could smell his blood. I could almost hear his beating heart.

I could see the pulsing vein in his neck, beckoning me forward.

The sun was setting, and the lights around Jackson Square were starting to come on. The tarot card readers were folding up their tables, ready to disappear into the night. The band playing in front of the cathedral was putting their instruments away. The artists who hung their work on the iron fence around the park were long gone, as were the living statues. The square, so teeming with life just a short hour earlier, was emptying of people, and the setting sun was taking the warmth with it as it slowly disappeared in the west. The cold breeze coming from the river ruffled my hair a bit as I watched the young man with the bicycle. He started wheeling the bicycle forward again, still talking on the phone. He reached the concrete ramp leading up to Chartres Street. He stopped just as he reached the street, and I focused my hearing as he became more agitated.
What do you want me to say? You’re just being a bitch, and anything I say you’re just going to turn around on me.

I felt the burning inside.

Desire was turning into need.

I knew it was best to satisfy the desire before it became need. I could feel the knots of pain from deprivation forming behind each of my temples and knew it was almost too late. I shouldn’t have let it go this long, but I wanted to test my limits, see how long I could put off the hunger. I’d been taught to feed daily, which would keep the hunger under control and keep me out of danger.

Need was dangerous. Need led a vampire to take risks he wouldn’t take ordinarily. And risks could lead to exposure, to a painful death.

The first lesson I’d learned was to always satiate the hunger while it was still desire, to never
ever
let it become need.

I had waited too long.

He started walking again, and I began following him, focusing on the curve of his buttocks in his jeans. The T-shirt was a little too small, riding up on his back so I could see the dimples in his lower back just above the swell of his ass. He was a little more slender than I liked, but it didn’t matter since I wasn’t going to fuck him. I was just going to pierce his neck for a moment and drink from his veins until the desire faded and I returned to my normal state.

You haven’t been normal in over two year
s
,
a voice whispered inside my head.

I ignored it as always.

He crossed St. Ann Street and continued on his way up Chartres, still talking on the phone, completely oblivious to everything and everyone around him. There weren’t many people about on Chartres Street as darkness continued to fall on the Quarter. I felt power surging through my body with each step I took. The darkness is the vampire’s friend, making us even more powerful, stronger. My eyes adjusted to the darkness. At first the clarity of my night vision always caught me off guard, but now I was used to it. I started walking faster, figuring I could catch up to him and pull him into one of the many shadowed doorways. Anyone passing by would assume we were simply enjoying a public display of affection—and the groans of pleasure he would emit as I drained off some of his blood would give further proof to the lie.

The blood scent was so strong I could almost taste it, the need rising in me, and I knew I had to catch him soon—

“Cord?”

I froze, stopped walking.

“My God, it
is
you.” A hand grabbed my arm from behind and spun me around. “I—I thought you were
dead
,
man.”

“Let me go.” I growled, the need beginning to push everything else out of my mind, and I was dangerously close to losing control.

“No way, man!” My old roommate from Beta Kappa, Jared Holcomb, was smiling at me. His entire face lit up with the smile the way it always had. His thick blond hair was longer than I remembered it being, and his muscles were thicker, stronger. He was wearing a tight pair of low-rise jeans and a tight blue shirt that hugged his torso. “Where have you been? My God…I’m so glad to see you!”

Always feed before the desire becomes need
,
my maker, Jean-Paul, had lectured me, over and over again.
When it becomes need, you cannot control yourself and you will take risks you usually don’t, you put yourself at risk.

It was too late.

I grabbed Jared with both hands and pulled him into an unlit doorway, wrapping my arms around him and pressing my body up against his. He made a shocked noise, squirming a bit before I sank my teeth into his neck and drank.

I could feel my cock hardening. I could feel his hardening against mine as he began to moan as the delicious warm blood filled my mouth from the little wounds I’d made, as his precious life force entered my body.

I pulled my head back, wiping at my mouth, gasping.

Jared remained leaning against the door, his breath coming in shallow gulps. His eyes were half-closed, and blood was dribbling down his neck from the holes I’d left in his throat. I took a few steps back and checked the street. There was no one nearby, no one closer than Jackson Square a half-block away.

“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath. I’d gotten lucky. I shook my head, furious at myself. What if he hadn’t been alone? What if someone had come walking along at just the right moment, or a police car had come around the corner at St. Ann just as I grabbed him?

When desire becomes need, a vampire forgets everything but the blood. He makes mistakes, takes risks he shouldn’t—and frequently gets caught. It must never become need, else you risk everything. Most vampires are caught—and killed—when they’ve gone too long without feeding. Don’t let that happen to you.

I must have been crazy to let it go so long—especially when there were always people about in the Quarter to feed on. What had I been thinking?

You weren’t thinking, that’s the problem
,
I scolded myself.
Seeing how long you could go? That’s madness, and a one-way ticket to death.

I shook my head again, then pricked my right index finger with one of my teeth and rubbed my blood over the two little holes the way Jean-Paul had shown me.

The holes didn’t close the way they usually did.

I stared at the wounds. It couldn’t be. They
always
healed.

I could feel the panic rising in me as I rubbed more of my blood over the punctures. I heard myself muttering “come on, come on, come on” over and over again, but the wounds weren’t healing the way they were supposed to. Instead, Jared’s blood continued to seep slowly out through them, dribbling down his neck and staining his shirt. The pale blue was turning dark just below the collar, where the running blood came into contact with the tightly fitting cotton. His nipples were erect, and all of his weight was leaning back against the wall. His eyes opened a little wider yet were still half-closed. Other than the bleeding neck, his eyes looked like so many others who drank more than they should in the Quarter. They weren’t focused and looked a little cloudy to me. “What”—he swallowed, his throat working, the Adam’s apple bobbing up and down — “wha —happen? Cord? I feel—I feel funny.”

I couldn’t just leave him there, with his neck bleeding and his shirt getting darker with wetness every passing second. Something was wrong, something was seriously wrong, and I had to get away as quickly as I could, but I couldn’t just leave him there.

Modern society might not believe in vampires, but when the police found him—and he would certainly wind up in the hands of the police—they might not go for the notion of a vampire attack, but I couldn’t take the risk he would remember seeing me and mention me to the cops.

And since Cord Logan had died in a fire two years earlier on Lundi Gras, that was a can of worms best left unopened.

I put his left arm around my shoulders and placed his head down on my neck. At least the wounds were hidden that way, and in the growing darkness maybe no one would notice the bloody shirt. “Come on, buddy, you need to walk with me,” I whispered to him.

His head tilted back for a moment and his face lit up with a crazy grin. “Cord, buddy. I knew you weren’t dead. I tole them all you weren’t dead.”

“Come on, it’s just a couple of blocks.” I smiled into his eyes, willing him to start walking. “Use me for support if you can’t stand up.”

“Okay, buddy,” he replied, and started walking. Most of his weight was on me, and had I been a mortal, we probably would have both fallen to the ground. But I was no longer mortal, and while I had not matured into my full strength as a vampire—Jean-Paul said it would take another fifty or so mortal years for that to happen—I was still stronger than I’d been when I was a twenty-year-old college student. We shuffled our way past the Presbytere, no one really paying any attention to us. It was a common sight in the Quarter—Jared looked like another young man who’d had too much to drink and needed to be helped back to his hotel. We turned and headed down the alley between the Presbytere and the Cathedral. The alley was empty and silent other than our footsteps against the stone. Even though I was stronger, I was still having trouble drawing breath by the time we reached Royal Street. We headed up Orleans, past the crowds on Bourbon and the dancing hand grenade in front of Tropical Isle, and before I knew it we were climbing the steps of Jean-Paul’s house. I put the key in the lock and helped him inside, setting him down on the couch.

As I turned to shut and lock the front door I stared at the little cottage across the street. It was still in the process of being rebuilt after the fire. It was there that Jean-Paul had rescued me from the witch Sebastian, and brought my dying body back across the street to his house. It was on that very couch where Jared now lay that Jean-Paul had opened the vein in his arm and had me drink his blood, the blood that transformed me into what I am now, no longer human. I shut the door and drew the curtains shut, flipping the light switch. The overhead chandelier came to life, casting strange shadows into every corner.

I knelt down beside Jared. His eyes were now fully closed and his breathing was shallow. His skin felt cold, and I pressed my fingers against his wrist. His heart was beating, but not strongly. The wounds on his neck had stopped bleeding but still were open and angry. I put my hand up to my mouth in order to open another wound in a finger but stopped.

Think about it, Cord, you must be doing something wrong. You’ve done this before a thousand times and it always, always works.

But as much as I thought about it, hard as I tried to remember, there was nothing else I could remember doing differently I wasn’t doing now. It was very simple—you merely opened a wound and rubbed some of your own blood over the mortal’s wounds. Within seconds, those wounds would close just as your own would. I shook my head and punctured my thumb.

I pressed my thumb over his wounds, rubbed gently, and pulled my thumb away. Even as the wound in my own thumb closed, the wounds in Jared’s neck remained clearly visible.

I took a deep breath and tried not to panic.

Jared opened his eyes again and smiled weakly. “Cord, buddy. I knew you weren’t dead.” He reached up with a cool hand and touched the side of my face. “I just knew. Everyone said you were dead, they had a funeral and everything, but I knew.” His face clouded with confusion. “But how…I don’t understand…”

“Shh,” I whispered, my mind racing as I tried to figure out what to do.

This was precisely why Jean-Paul had forbidden me to return to New Orleans. He was right again, as usual.
Yes, I know you’re not from there, but you do know people who are, and they all think you’re dead. You cannot risk going back there. What are you going to do if one of them sees you? How are you going to explain being alive? There is no explanation, Cord, and you will have to kill them.