Santiago: three

Bourbon Street, New Orleans. Is there anywhere else like it in all the world? It is a stinking flower, a putrid playground, a wanton whore of a street--dirty, but still festive, attractive, and filled with lovers. Had Bourbon Street been a mortal, I would have taken her for my fledgling. What a seductive tribute to human debauchery--what an invitation to lose control! The tourist is easy, willing prey to her ugly charms.

Block after block of enticements call out with loud voices...the bars with their blaring music of all types: blues, jazz, rock (did I hear a hint of one of Lestat's old "hits" on a jukebox somewhere or was my anger with him causing me to think I did?) Cajun, karioke--a brand of "music" which undoubtedly sounds better to the singer than to the audience, even if well intoxicated...and so many poisons available for mortals to make themselves drunk with. I almost laughed at the thought of how readily humans pushed themselves into my arms, losing their senses in garish Hurricanes and daiquiris, in gallons of beer sloshed into "Go" cups--one need not even drink in a bar, but could stagger off down the street with cup in hand.

A vampire could become a glutton here, I thought. How these sheep waited to be slaughtered. Yet I knew that my mission of revenge would be endangered should I allow myself to feed on too many drunken tourists. No, I needed to keep my wits about me. To find prey who had not yet succumbed to that demon alcohol--who was perhaps seduced by one of Rue Bourbon's other pleasures. There were the sex bars, with names like "The Orgy" and "Maiden Voyage," and the accompanying shops which sold the accouterments de l'amour. There were the restaurants in such profusion that it was clear to me that dining in New Orleans had been elevated to an art. There were the shops filled with plastic trinkets for the tourists to bring home to their loved ones--if they indeed made it home.

What a magnificent menu! What variety! From businessmen in suits, to college boys, to older couples and young families with wide-eyed children. Yes, expose them to this while they're young, I thought mirthfully. Let them mingle with the whores, the exotic dancers and drag queens, with the ragged street rats and dark, beautiful Goth children who admired my white skin, my pointed nails, my long black hair and sharp teeth as I passed. Why trouble to hide it? I fit right in!

And among them, too, the nuns collecting for charity (I'll come back for you another night, Sister--what an amusement!) and the religious protesters, trying to pass out pamphlets and consequently adding to the thick layer of garbage that littered the street. They clung to a huge cross they had erected, hand-lettered with warnings to the sinners that surrounded them. I remembered hearing of vampires who were afraid of such icons, and the idea struck me as so funny that I stopped and stood laughing aloud in the middle of the road. A frightened looking child-of-God attempted to force a leaflet on me. I turned her away.

"Ah, but you need that more than I do, cherie," I chuckled.

"God loves you," she called after me in a quavering voice as I walked away.

I didn't look back, but my amusement suddenly ceased. Armand had died for this God of hers. My hands clenched into fists so tightly that I punctured them with my fingernails. A thin trickle of cold, ichorous blood seeped out. I relaxed my fingers and looked down at my palms at this stigmata of sorts. I was shaking with anger.

Time to find an innocent to kill. Armand had died in the name of God? Let some hapless soul die in the name of Santiago!

"I would have been your God, if only you had let me," I whispered, watching the marks on my palms fade, then disappear completely.

I walked, looking for prey. Soon enough, I found myself in front of Marie LaVeau's Voodoo Shop, where the scent of incense for a moment overpowered the stench of alcohol, urine, vomit and garbage. The shop seemed another tourist trap, despite the more *interesting* souvenirs it offered--magic candles, alligators' feet, saint medallions, voodoo dolls and assorted other components for "spells." Surely, I thought, the real voodoo was not bought in such a place but was passed down through generations from the slaves, to the free colored people, to their modern "African-American" grandchildren...surely it was something more closely guarded than what was flaunted here. In any case, there was something or other about the shop which caught my attention.

Perhaps it was the woman framed in the doorway.

She was turned away from me, standing in profile as she admired some item or other in the glass case before her. Her auburn hair was cut short in a soft, feminine style, and perhaps it was merely that the color that reminded me of Armand that made me decide no other would do for this night. I judged her to be perhaps in her thirties. She was pretty, if not beautiful, rather conservatively dressed, and did not sport a wedding band. She smiled at something the shop clerk said to her, but the smile did not reach her eyes. They were deeply sad, and her sadness, too, reminded me of Armand...but I pushed him out of my mind. Tonight would belong to this woman, not to the dead boy I had loved and who had betrayed me both by sending me to my own death and by dying himself.

*Mine,* I thought as I looked at her, and she looked up at me with large, startled eyes, as if she had heard. My lips twisted into a smile and she looked away, a faint blush appearing in her cheeks. I moved up beside her so quickly that she jumped when she found me at her side, just inside the doorway of the shop.

"How did you--" she began, but then she cut herself off. "Excuse me," she mumbled, taking a step away. I took a step closer to her and lounged against the counter.

"Looking for a voodoo spell?" I asked, lifting an eyebrow. Despite my years in Mexico, my accent is still tinged with the French. Reading her thoughts was simple enough--almost impossible to avoid, really, and I knew that she was intrigued, yet also wary of me, this tall, macbrely attractive stranger. She also knew she shouldn't be out alone at night, even on crowded Bourbon Street.

Alone. Ah, good. Perfect, even.

"More like a curse," she answered my lazy question crisply.

"Ah, oui? What sort of a curse?" I drawled. If she liked the French, I would play it up.

"A curse to place on men who try to pick me up in voodoo shops."

I smirked. "Is that what you think I'm going to do? I'm wounded. I'm merely a fellow shopper and I was only going to ask your advice on the saint medallions...which one will best protect me from evil."

She couldn't tell if I were serious or not...and part of her wanted to believe me. Another part was disappointed. "I'm afraid I don't know," she said wearily. "I seem to have fallen away from religion lately. And if that is indeed the case, that you were simply...looking for advice...then I suggest you ask the sales clerk."

"Hm, perhaps." I tried to look bored.

"And," she added stiffly. "I do apologize."

I grinned. "If you wish to apologize, then let me take you for a drink." I tried not to laugh. Oh, this one needed me badly--Passionate Death. I was suddenly sure she had never tasted true passion in her entire life.

"I knew it," she said, trying to look offended. "You *are* trying to pick me up! You can just forget about it."

"Very well," I said with an expansive gesture. I left before she could blink...and heard her gasp "Wait!" as I disappeared.

And I did wait for her, on the next corner. She was so wrapped up in her thoughts of me that she nearly bumped into me before she saw me. She sucked in her breath, and I chuckled.

"You, sir, are annoying me."

I bowed grandly. "Alas, I have a talent for that."

A few moments of silence passed while she struggled with herself, knowing she should run from me, but not truly wanting to--not at all. Finally I offered her my arm. She took it. We strolled back to her hotel, which was on Royal Street, mere blocks from my rented rooms. I didn't ask where she was staying, merely plucked it from her mind. She didn't ask how I knew. I took her into the bar, ordered her a martini with Stolichnaya, watched her sip it. This refined place was much more her element than the seedy joints on Bourbon, and no one was here to share it with us save a bored bartender who moved away and gave us our peace.

She rested her arm upon the bar. I turned her wrist over, studying the pulsing blue vein just visible beneath the creamy surface of her flesh. I traced it with a cold finger and watched goosebumps appear. Her pulse increased. I lifted her wrist to my mouth and ran my tongue over the vein. She picked up the martini with her free hand and drank it straight down. Before she could set the glass back on the bar, I sank my fangs into her wrist.

She dropped the glass so violently that it shattered. Her blood was like molten fire in my mouth. Ecstasy of the kind only a vampire can know! She screamed and I let her drag her arm out of my mouth. She jumped up and ran out of the bar. The bartender blustered his way over and I explained that my companion had cut herself on her broken glass. He accepted the lie and began cleaning up the mess as I ambled out after her.

Licking her sweetness from my lips, I listened for her, my delicious bride of this night. She was in the elevator. I took the stairs. As I approached, she fumbled with her room key, her wrist bleeding and tears streaming from her luminous eyes. She shrieked as she saw me, and then I was upon her, unable to hold back my delighted laughter as I plucked the key from her fingers, unlocked the door to her room, and thrust her inside.

"No!" she screamed, falling on her knees as I locked the door behind me. "Please!"

"We've passed the point of no return, my love," I said, grinning wickedly. I lifted her to her feet and kissed her tearstained cheeks. She whimpered slightly, and I dropped her onto the bed.

I gave her only one second's repose as I admired her prone, desperate form, her heaving chest, her open, rosy mouth...I admired her through the eyes of the killer that I am.

And then I destroyed her.

I fell upon her like a lion and savaged her throat. No genteel double-puncture--I laid her open from chin to collarbone, opening my mouth to the spray which bathed my face in welcome gore. Her body bucked and writhed beneath me, then fell still. I drank and drank, caressing her shredded veins and the slender bones of her neck with my lips and tongue, my face buried inside her throat. Ah, the beauty and bliss of drinking away another's life!

I pulled myself off of her quite dead body and got up, taking a few staggering steps as my own corpse processed her life. Heat flowed inside me once again and I felt alive--more than alive. I turned and looked back at her still form, the auburn hair glistening with blood.

The auburn hair that had reminded me of Armand.

"We are the only Gods that exist!" I cried out.

My words bounced uselessly off of the hotel room walls, unheard.

Four