Page 27 of The Child of Rue Royale
“Stop it right now. That’s in there?”
I nod, sipping on the tea, not realizing how thirsty I was. “He hasn’t been turned yet; Cassius is still getting to know him. But he just told Nicola and Cassius he wanted to be a father.”
Chantal walks to the kitchen, grabs a napkin, and brings it to me. I pat the tears on my face, the whole picture Cassius has painted making me feel a spectrum of emotions.
“Okay, don’t let me keep you. Keep going!” she says and disappears down the hall.
My hand falls upon the tiny mountain that has become my baby. “Did you hear that, baby boy? Your daddy wanted you. He wanted you so much.”
I swallow back the tears, place the mug of tea on the coffee table, and dive back in.
New Orleans 1956
That’s how it was for a few months. Bastian, Nicola, and me during the night. Dancing the Lindy Hop, crowds gathering to hear “that new musician play downat Comey’s.” We were busier than ever and soaking up every second of our success thanks to Bastian and Piano Jack.
Bastian grew on Nicola as he tended to do. One night she looked at me, eyes shining, her pink lips pulling tight with longing.
“He reminds me of my first son,” she whispered. But there was no sadness inside her, just a fondness for the young man I brought into our lives who served no other purpose than bringing us joy. We didn’t usually keep this kind of relationship with humans, and the threads of attachment sewed in my heart.
Nicola rarely spoke of her son, a teen she lost to malaria. But I knew at that moment that we were both in trouble. This human man, getting sicker every day, filling our lives with a happiness we found addictive. Addictive and dangerous. Because as I watched Bastian with affection, he also plagued my worries. His recklessness, his drinking. The fights I saved him from, the floors I scraped him off. Walking into his apartment, his body lying face down on the bed, my heart stopping as fear consumed me, until I heard the ragged breaths, faint as a clock ticking.
The sick was like an aura around him, his blood tainted with alcohol and fumes of near-death. I watched as he grew weaker, eyes more yellow than when I met him, frame thin, face gaunt. I was going to lose this friend, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Until…
It was a December night. Our short winters granted respite from the sweltering summer days. I was upstairs at the speakeasy when Jolie ran up to me, a look of panic on her face.
“Your boy is laid out in the bathroom at King’s Bar,” she said, her hand resting on her pencil-skirted hip. “King told me to tell you before he kicks him out on the street.”
“Thanks, Jolie,” I said and rushed out the door.
“Kid’s a problem,” King said, shaking his head as I stormed past him.
“Not now,” I yelled and burst into the bathroom, expecting Bastian to be dead. But dead, he was not. On his back with two legs sprawled out on the floor, his head cradled in the lap of a woman.
“Out,” I ordered as she stared up at me.
“Who the hell are you?” she retorted, but I only slid closer to her, my eyes a warning.
“Out.”
“Some thanks I get for staying with him,” she yelled, sliding out from under his head, climbing to her feet.
“Thank you, goodbye,” I said, grabbing her purse from the counter and pushing it into her chest while she screamed a drunken “Fuck you,” bursting out the door.
“Why are you lying on the floor, for God’s sake?” I muttered, leaning over him.
“There wasn’t a couch,” he whispered, eyes unfocused, mouth wreaking wet with liquor.
My frustration seethed and boomed inside me like magma. He had no will, no desire. I was losing him. I pulled him up by his collar, leaning him against the filthy tile wall.
“Get the fuck up,” I ordered. “Did you hear me? I said get the fuck up!”
“I can’t,” he choked. “I can never get up. Don’t you see? I will never get up, brother.” His eyes glossed over as if he were to cry, and a piece of my heart shattered because losing him was imminent. It wouldn’t have been that night, but one night soon enough. If not from alcohol poisoning, then whatever damage was pulsing through his body.
These pulsing thoughts were the catalyst for what was to ensue. And they bared on their own accord, the fangs he had never seen, had no idea existed. Wholly against my will, the blood in my veins began to pump like a river… vibrating, aching. He leaned against the pink-tiled wall, coughing in the quietest, most pathetic way. The desire to keep him overcame me like a shield I couldn’t breathe through, like a cage confining him. With anger throbbing through my veins, I wanted to hit him, should have hit him, but instead, the hunger took over. Not for his blood, but for the life he had shown me in the months since his arrival, the pursuit of happiness, the existence of joy I hadn’t felt in years.
And before I knew it, my fangs were sinking into his skin, his blood flooding my mouth, putrid with sick and liquor. His hands grabbed mine in a sudden fight for survival, but I was too strong, and he slid deeper to the floor as my tongue lapped up his life force.
His heartbeat went from a panicked frenzy to a calm drip as I drank and drank, swallowing his blood until it hit my stomach, his silence allowing me to fall into the dreamlike state feeding evokes, even as unappetizing as his blood was.
