Blood Red

“I can’t give you a raw hamburger. The health code—”

Mark slapped a large bill on the table. “Please just bring her a raw hamburger.”

With a disapproving look, the waitress left them.

“Where are you from?” Mark demanded, leaning closer to her.

“Bourbon Street.”

“Where are you from?” he repeated.

She smiled. “Houma, originally. But now I’m from Bourbon Street.”

“So you were created on Bourbon Street?”

“Ooh. Smart fella.”

“So where do you go at night?”

“Wherever I choose.”

He had the water pistol aimed at her beneath the table and let go with a short spray. She nearly jumped out of the chair. “Bastard!” she hissed at him.

The waitress returned with a plate holding a raw hamburger. It was barely on the table before Nefertiti was digging into it with her fingers. The waitress made a soft sound, clearly not intended for them to heard, that was filled with disgust.

“Maybe you can be helped,” Mark suggested when the waitress had gone.

Nefertiti stopped eating for a moment and stared at him, then shook her head. “No. I died, and I rose. There is no help.”

He realized suddenly that she was looking past him, over his shoulder. He turned around but saw nothing. In that split second, she was up and running.

“Stop!” he shouted.

She only kept running. He followed, practically leaping over a table to keep up with her. She turned down a side street, then into an alley. “Stop!” he yelled again.

At that moment a toddler came running out of a door onto the sidewalk in front of her.

Nefertiti stared, then grabbed the child and turned to look Mark straight in the eye.

The little boy started to cry. From inside the house, they could hear a woman’s voice calling, “Ryan? Ryan! Where are you?”

Nefertiti shook her head at Mark with a curious, almost wistful smile.

“Don’t!” he cried.

She opened her mouth and began to lower it, fangs extended, to the crying toddler’s throat.

He shot her with a long, continuous spray. She let out a screech of agony and dropped the boy. Smoke and steam rose from her skin, and she fell, hardly recognizable anymore as a human being but instead a writhing, shifting form, wretchedly decayed.

He heard the sound of police sirens.

Disgusted, Mark turned and quickly escaped the alley. He heard the mother shouting, calling the boy’s name, then screaming in bone-chilling horror, no doubt as she stumbled onto Nefertiti’s remains..

As he turned onto Delphine Street, Mark saw a police cruiser, lights flashing, pass him.

And he heard the flutter of wings overhead.

As he walked quickly away, he thought over what had happened and realized that the woman who called herself Nefertiti had preferred extinction at his hands to facing her master and being branded a traitor.

As he walked, he remembered hanging up on Sean back at the club. Cursing, he drew out his phone and punched in the lieutenant’s cell number.

Lauren was torn. The scream demanded—self-preservation demanded—that she run. At the same timer, she needed to know why someone was screaming. But most of all, she knew that if Deanna were to have a chance, she couldn’t leave her alone again.

That last option won out. She rushed over to Deanna’s bed, wondering if whatever was happening was only a ruse to trick everyone into leaving her friend alone and vulnerable.

Deanna’s IV was still connected to her arm. She still lay on her white pillow and sheets as she had for what seemed like forever. The princess. Unmoving.

Swallowing, her fear nearly paralyzing her, Lauren picked up Deanna’s hand and fumbled for the pulse in her wrist.

It was there, regular and strong. She breathed a sigh of relief.

But what the hell was going on?

Lauren had been concentrating so hard on Deanna that it was several seconds before she realized that someone had come into the room behind her.

As she turned around, wary and tense, she heard the door to the room slam shut.

He was there.

Stephan. Stephan Delanskiy. Standing now at the foot of the bed. Ink dark hair fell over his forehead,