Page 92 of Beyond the Temptation: Vol 2

COLT

BY C.J. PINARD

CHAPTER ONE

COLTON

I lifted my hand in a wave. “See you tomorrow!” I said to my coworker, Jeb, a fellow bartender and what I would consider a friend. I’d only been working at the Thirsty Parrot for ten months, but I was fairly happy there, trying to make some money while I decided what to do with my life.

It was a nice night in the French Quarter, so instead of taking my bike, I decided to walk the twelve blocks to the apartment I shared with a roommate, Joey, as I usually did when the weather wasn’t too hot or too cold.

Looking down the street, I made sure it was safe to cross and jogged across Decatur. It was quiet in the Quarter—well, relatively quiet since it was a Tuesday night—and was grateful I wasn’t stepping in questionable things on the sidewalk, as I’d often had to dodge while walking. My cell rang with a video call in the pocket of my black jeans.

“Hey,” I answered with a smile upon seeing my beautiful girlfriend’s face on the screen.

“Hi. You just get off?” she asked, sliding some dark-brown hair behind her ear and gifting me with a smile that showed off the dimple on her left cheek.

I nodded, trying to look at her while watching where I was walking. “Yes, heading home now. Did you get all your studying done?”

She held up her calculus book. “I sure tried. It’s down to luck at this point. I think my brain is at max capacity.”

“Well, once you pass your finals, you can relax that big brain of yours. I’ll take you out to celebrate.” I kept the phone down low, near my stomach so I could watch where I was walking. I turned the corner and almost bumped into someone. “Sorry,” I muttered to the stranger with the hoodie over his head and most of his face.

“Oh, the pressure to pass now!” Ava giggled.

“I’ll take you anywhere you want,” I added as I kept walking. I had about four blocks to go.

“Anywhere?” she asked flirtatiously.

I chuckled. “Of course, beautiful. You just pass those exams!”

“I’m thinking Cuban?—”

I didn’t hear the rest, because someone grabbed me from behind with their arm around my neck, and my phone went clattering to the ground.

I cried out, but was silenced with a gloved hand over my mouth, and I watched as the bright screen of my phone with Ava’s cries screaming from it faded from view.

Kicking and fighting, I tried to twist out of this person’s grip but it was iron-like and was not budging. I tried elbowing him in the gut, but he didn’t budge. Finally, he stopped dragging me and slammed me up against the brick wall of an alley, his hand still on my mouth.

I brought my knee up to incapacitate him, but he simply grunted and then punched me in the nose. Stars exploded behind my lids as blood gushed down my face and over his glove on my mouth. I screamed behind his hand but he simply sneered at me.

“Shut up, this will only take a minute.”

Then, the most unbelievably terrifying thing I had ever seen caused me to blink several times in disbelief. The man had no whites to his eyes at all; they were completely black. With fangs protruding from his gums, and without another word in a blurry motion too fast for me to follow, he jammed them into my neck.

I hollered, but his hand remained over my mouth. I kicked and thrashed. I tried to knee him again. Nothing worked. He made disgusting suckling and slurping sounds as he drank from me, and I prayed that this was a nightmare I’d wake from.

A vampire? Seriously? This city was rife with lore about them, but I’d never given it a second thought. I had zero belief in the paranormal. I didn’t even believe in ghosts, for fuck’s sake.

The longer he had me pinned, the sleepier I got. I relaxed and my world went black at the edges, until my mouth dropped open as a full-body relaxation took over my entire nervous system. Then the blessed darkness took over.

I blinked my eyes open and found myself in an unfamiliar bedroom. What the hell? I looked down at myself, lying on top of the covers on a small twin-sized bed, and saw I was still fully clothed, boots and all. Then, pain in my neck and shoulder caused me to put a hand up, where there was only a bandage. Wearily, I rose from the bed, spying a bathroom. My reflection in the mirror elicited a gasp. Dried blood coated the collar of my white Thirsty Parrot T-shirt, with spatters across the front. I pulled it off over my head and tossed it onto the bathroom floor. I also noticed I had blood around my mouth.

What the…

I quickly turned on the faucet and, spying a black hand towel, I snatched it from the rack and wetted it to clean myself up. There was no shower or tub in this bathroom, only a sink and toilet.

A sudden wave of nausea overtook me, and I violently vomited, barely making the toilet. Then, my body told me it needed to evacuate everything in my bowels and bladder, and hardly reached it in time to sit on the vomit-splashed seat.

---