Beneath the Skin

31 WITHOUT A RIPPLE

NEW ORLEANS, THE FRENCH QUARTER

March 26

A TRUE BLOOD. AND right under his nose all this time. Mauvais stalked the river’s edge, the Winter Rose some distance behind him. Moonlight shivered across the river’s sleek surface. Red lights winked as freighters glided upriver, sluicing through the black water.

Perhaps True Blood was the reason the Fallen, in the imposing form of Lucien De Noir—the Nightbringer—had chosen to stand beside Dante Baptiste.

Mauvais halted. He breathed in the Mississippi’s scent of mud, moss, and fresh rain. He recalled Giovanni Tosca-nini’s accented voice:

A True Blood can perhaps be forgiven many things?

Perhaps, perhaps not. But Mauvais was willing to be persuaded.

The Mississippi slapped against the rocks lining its banks and against wharf pilings. Mauvais caught a faint whiff of decaying wood.

And the world decays around us.

He resumed walking, hands clasped behind him.

The mortals destroy the planet that nurtures both our species and we do nothing; we who move through time, but are forever lost to it. Our society stagnates.

Dante could be a force of chaos, of change. He might divide us, awaken us.

Mauvais increased his pace, blurring past mortal strollers; gone in the blink of an eye. He abandoned the river for the beating heart of his beloved New Orleans: le Vieux Carré. Like a cool gust of air from the river, he breezed past streets choked with honking cars, past sidewalks thick with mortal crowds reeking of alcohol, lust, and abandon—and underneath, faint but present, the lingering odor of decay.

Mauvais strolled past the throng in Jackson Square, its iron fence decorated with colored lanterns. He walked Pirate’s Alley, still amused after all these years at the name. Pirates had never congregated along that cobblestoned stretch except, perhaps, to urinate. He flew past Dumaine Street, then on to Chartres stopping at last beside the haunted walls of the Ursuline Convent.

Gaslit streetlights flickered orange on the rain-wet cobblestone street. Down the block, a horse’s hoofs clopped as a carriageful of tourists headed back to Jackson Square. For a moment, Mauvais almost believed he’d stepped back in time to the New Orleans of two centuries ago. Back when the streets had never been this clean. A smile touched his lips.

He’d discovered Justine here just after the Second World War when he’d returned to the city after abandoning it for nearly a century. Beautiful Justine, a French refugee, heartbreakingly young and all alone.

Mauvais’s heart contracted; his love for his fille de sang, his only blood-daughter, was a physical anguish at times, as sharp as a knife. With her white skin, dark eyes framed by thick black lashes, her cherry-red lips, he’d never known a moment of regret for her making. He couldn’t say that for most of his fils des sangs.

But Justine had threatened to contact the Conseil du Sang if Giovanni and the Cercle de Druide allowed Dante Baptiste to walk away from his crimes unpunished—True Blood or not.

In truth, Mauvais doubted most members of the law-enforcing Conseil du Sang had ever laid eyes upon a True Blood. He had, centuries before, when he was quite young, and he’d never forgotten the intoxicating taste of a born vampire’s blood. Or the strength it’d given him, for a time.

True Bloods, few as they were, seemed to be solitary creatures, rarely longing for the company of others. Dante was different even in this with his band and his Club Hell; not so solitary.

Perhaps True Blood aloofness could be attributed to the fact that they’d never been human. Never suffered the doubts and agonies of a newborn vampire remembering what it was to be mortal. Never experienced the anguished realization that draining the lifeblood from those they loved wasn’t at all difficult.

Defiant and disrespectful, his every action brimming with anarchy, Dante might very well be the chaotic and violent infusion of life that their decaying societies–mortal and vampire—needed in order to survive.

The sound of hurried footsteps drew Mauvais’s gaze. A young woman wrapped in an old-fashioned black cloak sprinted down the sidewalk. As she passed beneath the streetlight, the flickering flame etched gold light into her blonde hair. Shadows danced across her anxious face. Small hands held her black and purple lace skirt up as she ran.

As she drew near him, Mauvais stepped forward. “May I be of assistance, m’selle?”

She stopped. She met Mauvais’s gaze with deep green eyes outlined with kohl. Her crimsoned lips curved into a hesitant smile. She smelled of lavender and lilac. An exquisite doll.

“I’m so late,” she said in the clipped tones of a Northerner. “The ghost tour, I mean. We’re supposed to meet at Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop and I— Could you point me in the right direction?”

“I can do better than that, m’selle,” Mauvais said with a courtly half-bow. “I shall escort you.”

The girl’s lovely face lit up when he offered his arm. All trace of her previous anxiety vanished. She looped her arm through his.

“A real live Southern gentleman,” she murmured. “I’m April, by the way.”

“Enchanté, M’selle April,” Mauvais said, smiling. “A lady should never walk the streets alone after dark.”

She looked away, cheeks flushed, dazzled. “And why is that?”

“It is the vampires, m’selle,” Mauvais whispered. “You see, they are everywhere in this city.”

She giggled. “Then it’s really good I ran into you.”

“I’d call it destiny, m’selle.”

Her sweetness, her darling white face tugged at him. For a moment, he thought of giving Justine a sister. But only for a moment. He’d offered to escort her and so he, as a gentleman, would. She would never be safer.

Once April had been delivered to the candlelit tavern, Mauvais strolled the Quarter’s sidewalks, listening to the mercurial heartbeat of the crowds filling the streets, listening for the single rhythm that would both drum up his hunger, then end it once more.

As he walked and listened, his thoughts looped back to Dante Baptiste, possibilities sparking like fireflies through his mind.

One: Win the favor of the holy Cercle de Druide and Renata Cortini in particular by doing everything that she and her fils de sang asked in regards to Dante.

Two: Allow Justine to voice her complaint to the Conseil du Sang and sow a few seeds of chaos, enough to rip open the rift of antipathy between the holy order and rigid vampire law—a rift the Elder judges of the Parliament of Ancients would be called upon to bridge. And in the confusion?

Possibility number three: Keep the True Blood for himself.

A heartbeat, as strong and as fast as a dragonfly’s transparent wings, caught Mauvais’s attention. He looked up.

She stood in front of the voodoo museum, a plastic Hurricane cup in her hand. A smile lit April’s face when she saw him. She waved.

Destiny.

Mauvais waved back, amused that he’d lost two hours or more to his restless thoughts. He crossed the street to join her. “Did you enjoy your tour, m’selle?”

“Very much,” she said. “It was totally awesome. I love this city.”

“As do I. Would you grace me with your beautiful presence, m’selle, and accompany me on a walk along the river?”

Deep rosy color blossomed on April’s cheeks. “I’d like that, kind sir.”

Arm in arm, they ambled to the banks of the Mississippi. There Mauvais wrapped his arms around April—such a fragile and fragrant spring bouquet—and embraced her.

She never struggled and her body went into the black water with hardly a ripple.

And the world decays around us.

Yes, perhaps it was time for a change. Perhaps it would be a change he could direct and control. Perhaps.

But not until after Justine had her revenge.