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CHAPTER 8

Let’s Dance


For a change of pace, my next call was not a loup-garou.

“What the hell is a zoo-nu…?” I asked as I headed for Little Vietnam.

New Orleans wasn’t just French. The French had settled on top of Native Americans. Then Americans, northern European/English derivative, moved in on the French. And there were two kinds of French. The Creole, who were descendants of the French aristocrats and such who were the early owners of trading companies and plantations, and the Cajun—Acadians—who were resettled from Newfoundland, before the British got Canada.

Then there were the slaves, West Africans from places like modern Ghana and Ivory Coast, by way of the Caribbean Islands and French Guyana.

New Orleans really was a land of immigrants.

And every immigrant population brings three things: its own native infections like malaria and yellow fever, its own food and its own hoodoo.

So, just as New Orleans had more different kinds of food than you could find anywhere else in the US, at least at that time, it had more different kinds of hoodoo. We’d at least gotten rid of most of the infections. (Although AIDS was a bit rampant.)

Since the slavery days there had been more and more groups that came there for various reasons. Oil was and is big. Goes up and down but there’s oil in them there bayous. Lots of fishing.

There were Hungarian enclaves and who knew Hungarians were fishermen? (The country is landlocked.) They’d brought their food, culture and hoodoo. There were pure African enclaves and they’d brought their kind of food, culture and hoodoo. Lots of Spanish influence. Food was good. Señoritas were foxes. South American hoodoo? Some of that is insane, brother. Guara hoodoo is fucked up.

Then there were the Vietnamese. They were recent transplants, refugees of a failed war. They’d settled, heavily, in the coastal regions of Texas and Louisiana to fish the fertile waters of the Gulf. And, yup, they’d brought their hoodoo.

Mostly they lived out US 90 in a little neighborhood near Michoud Boulevard.

I was already on I-10 doing my usual 130. Even though 90 was a main downtown street, it was actually faster to get on the 10 and go waaay out of your way then down to the 510 to get out there. At least if you could do 130 and the cops left you alone. US 90 was always chock-a-block traffic and streetlights. Yes, I’d blow red lights. Also a good way to get T-boned. I’d take the interstates.

“Zoovnuj Txeeg Txivneej,” Trevor said over the phone. I could tell he was fluent whatever the hell the language was. “Man of the Forest in Hmong. Some villages treat them like minor fertility gods, and leave offerings to appease them. Sometimes they carry off the local girls.”

I may be a little short but I always take no for an answer. “Vietnamese hob.”

“Right,” Trevor said. “Orang minyak, kukobomo, they’re all over the world. There’s all sorts of ritual offerings necessary to dispel it from an area. You’re on your own for this one, but they aren’t too dangerous if you know what you’re doing. In Laos we discovered that filling it full of lead or silver just pisses it off. On the other hand, it also knocks it down long enough to throw a Willie Pete on it. And fire does for them.”

“Roger,” I said, sliding through the I-10, 510 interchange. I had to be somewhat aggressive with an idiot in a minivan at the merge point. He and his idiot family would live. The rest of the lane was clear, smooth, with a curve designed for about 75.

I did it at 112. Then I was on the 510. Traffic was light. My foot was not.

“It’s outside Tot Tot Thuc Pham,” Trevor said as if I knew what that meant. “Just go out US 90 past Michoud, look for the blue lights. Number 13612 Chef Menteur Highway.”

“Got it,” I said.

I finally made it to the 90, 510 interchange, blew through a red light at the intersection, nearly getting T-boned, and hammered it up Chef Menteur until I saw the blue lights. US 90 in that area was a semirural US four-lane highway. There were scattered buildings along the road, some strip malls, a set of crappy apartments. Lots of low scrub. Just to the south was the NASA Michoud Assembly Facility where they did the fuel tanks for the Space Shuttle.

It’s generally considered to be about twenty minutes from downtown to that area in light traffic. I did it in seven. Did I ever mention how much I hate the double nickel and how much I enjoy violating the hell out of it?

I slowed down as I passed the state trooper car, then started looking for whatever was causing the issue. It was a sign that caught my attention. Most of the lettering was Vietnamese, which I hadn’t learned, yet. Very small on the bottom it said TOT TOT THUC PHAM and even smaller was GOOD GOOD FOOD HERE.

Ah. Tot Tot Thuc Pham. Thanks, Trevor.

The building was long, low, cinderblock, painted salmon, with small windows, heavily barred, a heavy steel door and a window AC in the front. There was a flashing neon OPEN sign in one of the small windows. It looked less like a restaurant than a pawn shop. The parking lot was gravel and dirt.

The food was either going to be incredible, or kill you with botulism, and probably both.

There were a few parked cars. Off to one side, well to one side, was a cluster of people, Vietnamese, looking scared and ready to run.

Outside the steel front door was a small, bright purple, pot-bellied humanoid. It was screaming and ranting and pounding at the door. In front of the door were dozens of broken dishes and a bunch of scattered food. Not as much as should be from the dishes but the place was a wreck.

As I watched, the door cautiously opened and another dish was shoved out. The humanoid dove into the food, gulping and chewing and in the process tossing bits of it all over the place.

When it was done, quickly, it shattered the plate on the steel door and started hammering again.

I got out, walked over and shot it in the back with my Uzi.

That got its attention.

It turned around. Its face was shaped like a bat with a very long nose and huge tusks jutting from its lower jaw. Call it a pig-bat face. Ugly. I’d seen so much worse in my time. I’d seen Fey queens and Huntsmen without their glamour. There ain’t no ugly like Fey-ugly.

The Forest Man howled at me and charged.

I emptied the rest of the magazine into it. That put it down.

Purple haze was in the air from its blood but it was shaking off the effects quickly. It got back to its feet, shook its head back and forth rapidly, its jowls shaking and going Blablablablabblable, then hissed and charged again.

I’d reloaded. More .45. Down again.

This time it was far enough away from the building so I pulled a white phosphorus grenade off my belt, pulled the pin and lobbed it across the parking lot to land at its feet. I was just outside the bursting radius. I reloaded.

The Forest Man got up again, shaking his head, and looked at the hissing grenade at its feet. Then it picked it up and held it over its head, gobbling in Forest Man gobble, shrieking and hopping up and down as if it had captured my soul or something.

Then the grenade went off and it was covered in burning white phosphorus.

It ran around in circles, burning and howling, trailing white smoke.

I walked over and put a full magazine into its head. It stopped moving.

Just in case, I put a thermite grenade on it and walked about ten feet away.

Everything went white. Probably should have warned the witnesses to cover their eyes.

When the light died down I walked back. All there was left was a burned circle.

“Is it done?”

I looked at the building and just the cutest little Vietnamese girl was framed in the light from the doorway. She was wearing a skirt but no slip as was obvious. What a body! Nice legs!

“Yeah,” I said, walking over. I handed her one of my special cards. The kind with my personal phone number written on the back. “Chad Gardenier. MHI,” I said, shaking her hand. “All done. No need to worry about it anymore.”

“Thank you,” she exclaimed, throwing her arms around me. Nice boobs for an Asian chick. Very squeezable. “It had come for me! We were trying to appease it with the offerings of food, but…”

“Those things are a pest,” I said smoothly, hugging her comfortingly and patting her on the back, “but we’ll always be here to protect nice girls like you.”

“Stay please, eat!”

I was starving. I hadn’t eaten since three. I’d eaten a lot at Sasson’s, but I’d also been expending a lot of calories. The Vietnamese food smelled great.

It was…and I didn’t even get ptomaine poisoning. The owner—and the young lady’s dad—wouldn’t take a penny.

And she was very grateful. Very, very, very, wow, grateful.

I am such a schmuck.

* * *

The Goth club Orpheum was a shambles.

While we had been out chasing an absurd number of new werewolves recently, the vampires had come out to play. According to the survivors who had made it out, there had been at least two of them. One male was the leader and probably a higher form. One of the new vampires, female, was a regular at the unlicensed club. She was somewhat articulate and had talked their way in through the heavy security door.

To keep people from letting friends in without paying cover, the two other doors out of the basement were chained and barred. Classic example of the sort of club where a hundred people die in a fire. Some of the patrons had their throats ripped out. The rest made it out alive.

“This is going to be bad,” Ben said.

“Why?” Greg asked. “Besides it being nighttime.”

Jonathan was already in the hospital. Werewolf had shredded him up bad. Claws only, we hoped. So far the tests were negative for lycanthropy. Somebody had created a lot of new werewolves during the last month.

“Vampires almost never do anything this blatant,” Ben said. “They’re too good at surviving, so they pick off victims one at a time, people nobody will miss. Overt slaughter draws too much heat.”

“So we’ve got a stupid or crazy vampire?”

It was barely 2 A.M. on the first night of the full moon. I understood now why Trevor was so insistent on everyone being in top form. I was beat up and I’d hardly had a single physical encounter.

“They won’t have gone far,” Ben said. “I’ll put out the word to NOPD. But we need to find them, fast, or find their lair in the daylight.”

MCB agents were already splashing gasoline on the club walls.

* * *

One of the survivors had a car phone and came running over as we were leaving the club.

She was about twenty at a guess—I’d want ID this time—heavy-set, dressed in a corset, PVC skirt, fishnets and stilettos. She had about two hundred pounds of make-up on and was just about popping out of her corset. Also nearly incomprehensible.

“The crypt!” she screamed. “The crypt!”

“There’s about six million crypts in New Orleans, child,” Ben said gently. “Which crypt?”

“The crypt, they’re at the crypt!” she kept screaming, her black goop mascara running down her face.

“Now, take a deep breath, miss,” I said calmly, looking her in the eye. “Where is the crypt?”

“On Decatur Street,” she said, sniffling.

“There ain’t no cemeteries on Decatur Street,” Ben said.

“It’s a club,” she said as if we were morons. “I was calling around saying that Drusilla had turned to the dark side. She was my friend! And she turned!”

“That’s what happens with vampires. More information, less sobbing.”

“Lord Vordon called. They came to the Crypt but the Guardian would not let them pass.”

“Bouncer wouldn’t open the door,” I translated. I spoke semifluent Goth. “Lord Vordon’s probably the manager.”

“Where on Decatur?” Ben asked.

“By Governor Nichols. About half a block towards Ursulines. Across from Fiorella’s.”

“Go home! Lock the doors!” I shouted to the girl as I ran for Honeybear. “Don’t let a friend in unless they’ll drink holy water!”

I got in and peeled out, hoping I remembered where Ursulines was.

As I was heading in the general direction, weaving in and out of traffic, siren and lights going, I got a call. It was Trevor.

“Chad,” I answered, swerving around a Nissan that looked like the driver was drunk.

“This is even worse than last month. Another loup-garou in City Park. Vampires on Decatur. Choose.”

“Fangs,” I said.

“You’ll be on your own. Can you?”

“They’re as good as staked,” I said. “Question is, can I find the club? And are they still there?”

The answer was, eventually, and no.

* * *

I banged on the door of the club with the butt of my Uzi. It was a good old-fashioned, metal security door with the good old-fashioned slide-bar vision slit. I decided I wanted one of those in my house if Madame Whatsername ever came up with one.

“Who dares disturb the Dark Portal?” the man inside boomed.

“Hoodoo Squad,” I said. “Open up or I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll get two blocks of C4 and blow your house down.”

He opened the door.

“Are they still around? If not, do you know where they went?”

Lord Vordon was tall, pale and wearing a top hat, tails, and carrying a silver-headed cane. He had implanted canines that nearly had me staking his ass but I’d run into that shit in Seattle. I was surprised to see it in New Orleans since everybody in this town knew damned well fangs were real.

“They did not pass the Dark Portal,” Lord Vordon intoned over the caterwauling of the horrible Dark Wave band that was playing. I like everything about the Goth movement except the music. The Cure needed one. “We were warned that Princess Drusilla had entered the eternal night.”

We didn’t let them in. We got told Drusilla was a fang. Okay, and the weird pretensions. Just speak English for fuck’s sake!

“I need you to call all the clubs she might go to and warn them,” I said, passing him my card. “Give them this number. The moment she shows at one of them, have them call me.”

One of the bouncers—a tall dude, with a shaved head, and a bunch of piercings, wearing fatigue pants, jump boots and an overstrained T-shirt—grabbed Lord Vordon by the arm and shouted in his ear.

“They have appeared at the Ossuary!” Vordon boomed, holding his hand to the sky. “The Dark Night has come to the Ossuary!”

“Where is the Ossuary?” I asked.

“731 Miro Street,” the bouncer shouted.

I had no idea where Miro was and no time to read a map.

“You,” I said, grabbing the bouncer by the shirt. “You’re coming with me!”

* * *

“So…” the bouncer said as we were flying down Esplanade. His name was Dave King. He went by Decay. “You get paid for this?”

“Shit, yeah. Tons. And no time to spend it.”

“Nice Uzi,” Decay said. “I’ve never seen one like that before. Is that a full auto .45?”

“Custom design of mine,” I said, passing it over. “On safe.”

“Yeah. Sweet. How’s the handling?”

“Great,” I said, taking it back and clipping it on one-handed. I nearly sideswiped a Chevy, then nearly got T-boned in a red intersection again. Fucking minivans. They were the hot new thing. Bane of my existence. I’m probably going to die at the hands of some suburban housewife bringing her kids home from dance class. Damn you, Lee Iacocca.

“Get ready to take a left,” Decay said. “I hear they shred .45 ammo.”

“There’s a fix for that,” I said as he pointed to the turn.

“Up here on the right,” Dave said.

“You in or out?” I asked. “You’re in, you get part of the bounty. You’re out, stay out.”

“I’m in. I heard about the Orpheum. Guy on the door was my friend.”

If he lived, I was going to point him in the direction of MHI. He’d fit right in.

I parked in the street and left the lights going. There was traffic. They could just go around.

I opened the trunk, rummaged, and came out with a shotgun for Dave.

“Think this explains itself?” I asked, handing him a bandolier of shells and stakes.

“Yep,” he said, breaking the action. “You carry them loaded?”

“Always,” I said. I handed him a Boy Scout canteen on a strap. “Holy water.”

“That works?” he asked.

“That works. Just burns but it distracts them. Oh, wait.”

I rummaged some more and came up with the dog collar.

“Best I can do for armor,” I said, handing it to him.

It barely fit around his gorilla neck.

“That’s your main and easiest-to-access artery. They like to climb. Keep an eye up. Stakes through the heart paralyze them. I’ll take the heads,” I added, tapping Mo No Ken.

“Works,” Dave said. The guy had balls.

The entrance was around the corner.

So were the vampires.

Princess Drusilla, AKA Amanda Worthly, 17, lived in a nice house on Charles Street. She had attended private schools where the primary teaching was in French. Her father was a managing partner of Lornton, Crouse, and Barrande. Her mother and father were divorced. Her mother had taken off to India to “find herself.” Amanda was trying the same thing through the Goth movement. Her father, a workaholic, gave her a generous allowance and essentially no management.

Princess Drusilla was well known in the New Orleans Goth movement. She always had money, always had access, and thus always had friends. At a club, she had met the absolutely fascinating Lord Mornington, AKA Tedd Roberts, originally of Durham, North Carolina—a vampire.

Princess Drusilla, starting to recover her wits after slaking her raging thirst on a half dozen of her closest friends, was not someone to be denied entrance to one of her favorite clubs.

“You will let me in or I will rip this door off, Thomas!” she shrieked. She was wearing a silk little black dress that barely covered her assets, fishnets, and stilettos. Her fangs were out and she was hungry again. “I shall not be denied! Je vais boire votre âme!”

There were two of them. “Cover up and six,” I said, looking over my shoulder. Mo No Ken slid from its sheath with a nearly silent hiss.

“Got it,” Dave said, a touch nervous. Good.

“Hunters!”

The other vampire had been a rotund man in his fifties with a heavy beard and dark brown hair. He was wearing an incongruous opera cape and top hat.

That’s what she found attractive? Some girls just have daddy issues.

“Your silver shall not avail you!” he screamed and leapt, arms wide, fangs out.

Ben Carter had been right. Our senior vampire didn’t have a very good survival instinct.

“How ’bout two-hundred-year-old Japanese folded steel?” I asked as “Lord Mornington’s” head hit Dave in the arm.

“Incoming!” Dave said.

Now the newly turned Drusilla, on the other hand, was a beast.

It was on like Donkey Kong.

Three minutes later I was wiping down Mo No Ken with holy oil. Drusilla had been shot, staked, and was missing her head. Dave and I were both out of breath and covered in blood. She had bit him on the arm, but hadn’t hit the artery.

I wrapped his arm up tight and patted him on the shoulder. The coroner was on the way.

“You just made about ten grand,” I said. “Bad side is, when you die you’ll rise as one of them unless your head gets cut off first.”

“I can live with that,” Dave said. “Ten grand?”

“Might be more,” I said. “Part of it is based on kills and there are quite a few bodies in the wake of this group. Ten grand minimum.”

“You guys hiring?”

I miss Decay. Good man.

I dropped Decay off at an all night doc-in-the-box, all he really needed, gave them a couple hundred for the stitches and headed back out. The zombies were rising in Greenwood and we’d just lost Greg Wise.


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