After taking one look at the massive Indian, Jesse was damn glad to have Maddox separating them. The man looked mean—and mad. Not crazy mad, but bone-snapping, flesh-tearing mad. There was no doubt he was one badass dude, either. He was totally hard-core in his looks. The sides of his head were shaved and tattooed. A thick strip of black hair ran down the center of his head, commencing in a long, thick braid that snaked down his back. His eyes were black and looked as empty as bullet holes.
Jesse had no doubt he was very, very mean.
Beneath the table, Maddox gave her leg a reassuring squeeze. It was a silent signal that he was on top of things. “Yeah, we all know you’re pissed,” he said in an attempt to protect her. “But have a little respect, please. She’s still a person with feelings.”
The vicious scowl deepened. Displeasure emanated off him in waves. His hatred of her couldn’t have come off louder if he’d shouted it through a bullhorn. “If she’s infected, she’s not human.” He took a long, deep draw of the stale air. “She reeks of demon.”
Jesse felt her cheeks redden with embarrassment. Her feelings of security abruptly vanished.
Good grief!
Did she really have a distinctive odor? It was true that living on the streets didn’t offer many opportunities to bathe, but she’d caught a shower this morning, steeling herself against the ice-cold water to soap her body from head to toe—not once, but twice. “I—I’m sorry if I offend you.”
“Ignore Reyen,” Maddox said, flicking away his ashes at random before turning a narrow gaze on his friend. “And back off her. She doesn’t need your flack. She’s already got more than enough problems without you busting her chops.”
Reyen snorted. “You’re just hanging on to her because she’s female. It’s the Frenchman in you. If she were a man, you’d have already sent her back to demon hell.”
“But she’s not,” Maddox pointed out. “What she is, is something we haven’t run into before—someone who isn’t a Palindrome who’s managed to survive the demonic infection.”
Listening to the men argue, Jesse briefly considered getting up and leaving. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out these men weren’t going to welcome her with open arms.
It’s true
, she thought, discouraged.
I don’t belong anywhere
.
Maybe she would be better off dead.
Even though Maddox had warned Reyen to take it easy on Jesse when she arrived, he could already tell that wasn’t going to happen. In a surly mood, Reyen was doing his best to be rude, ugly, and thoroughly unpleasant to Jesse.
“That’s enough,” he warned. “Think about how you would feel if you were in her position.”
Reyen bared his teeth. “I was in her position,” he snapped back. “She isn’t the only one who was infected.”
“But she doesn’t have a Palindrome’s immunity,” Maddox reminded. “Despite that, she’s alive. Her will is stronger, and she controls its impulses. She’s never fed, either. It’s all her own will keeping her alive.”
Reyen reluctantly eyed the girl. “She can’t go on much longer. It’s sucking her dry.”
Maddox bit down on the filter of his cigarette. So far he’d smoked half a pack, and the evening was only beginning. It was stupid to throw good money away on a bad habit, but he needed the nicotine to help take the edge off his nerves. Hanging with Reyen always made him antsy. If he kept up this pace, he’d soon be up to two packs a day. Not that he worried about his bad habits; it wasn’t as if they were going to kill him.
“I think she’s got a chance,” he countered. “It’s why she should join us. Our numbers are still so thin, while theirs are increasing daily. Having another set of willing hands would be helpful.”
“I thought you said she could barely handle the fledgling last night.”
Maddox ignored Reyen’s ugly attitude. The Indian was a ticking time bomb, just aching to go off in someone’s face and ruin the person’s day. “She could’ve done the job if she’d had the right weapons,” he pointed out, trying to give Jesse a much-needed boost.
Reyen swigged down the last of his brew. “A stake,” he scoffed, releasing a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “The stupid little fool actually tried to stake it.”
Jesse bristled. “Nothing in all the books I read at the library said anything about shotguns.”
Sam Chen cleared his throat. “It’s not as if any of us were given a primer on how to fight these things,” he reminded his prickly friends. “The most any of us have, outside our own experiences, is the lore and legends. As you both know, almost every culture in the world has them, because most every culture in the world has dealt with these things at one time or another.”
“Then vampirism is really that widespread?” Jesse asked.
Sam nodded. “That’s my belief, yes.”
Reyen frowned at him. “Oh, here we go again with all your posturing and theories. I need to take a leak,” he groused.
“Oh, by all means,” Sam Chen said, making a shooing motion with his hand. “Don’t let us interrupt your meditations.”
Sliding out of the booth, Reyen ambled off. He disappeared into some dark recess of the bar, slipping into the shadows. Even the biggest and burliest bikers in the place didn’t get in his way.
Once Reyen was safely out of earshot, Sam rolled his eyes. “Man, he’s in a mood today.”
Jesse’s lips tightened. “He really doesn’t like me,” she said, swallowing hard to hide the disappointment in her voice.
“Reyen doesn’t like anyone who isn’t Native American,” Sam told her. “Don’t take it personally.”
Jesse reached for a handful of pretzels filling a bowl. “Maybe he’d like me better if I told him I had some Cherokee in me.”
Maddox reached out and slapped her hand away. “And don’t touch those. They’re just for show.”
“They’ve been there two, maybe three, years,” Sam added, scooting the bowl out of her reach. “They aren’t fit for human consumption.”
Jesse backed off. “Then why do you guys come here?”
“It’s dark, it’s private, the booze is cheap, and nobody bothers us.”
She considered. “Good enough.”
“Speaking of which,” Maddox said, gesturing for the waitress, “what’ll you have?”
She thought a moment. “Let me have a screwdriver.”
As soon as it arrived, she took a large gulp. “I could use a stiff drink or two.”
“Or ten,” Sam Chen cracked. “The drunker you get, the easier it is to forget about vampires.”
Jesse winced. “I wish I could forget,” she said in a low voice. “Maddox told me you guys were born with a system that throws off the demon. I’d give anything to be a—What did you call it?”
Sam chuffed. “Maddox calls us the
Fils de la lumière
, or Sons of Light. You know, the faithful followers who carry out suicide operations without question.”
Maddox snorted. “Oh, bullshit. It isn’t suicide. It’s our holy mission. Besides, I don’t like being called a Palindrome.”
Jesse looked from man to man. “Maddox told me a little bit about you guys. He said something about your DNA being different.”
Sam Chen immediately waved his hand. “As the token science geek, I reserve the right to answer that one.”
Maddox blew out a breath. “Be my guest.”
Getting ready to deliver the how and why of things, Sam braced his hands on the table. “Well, to begin with, Palindromes are men who are born with DNA sequences that copy an original strand—only backward. A Palindromic structure allows the Y chromosomes to repair themselves if damaged,” he explained. “It may also explain why all known Palindromes are male. Females, of course, don’t carry the gene. My theory is that it’s this unusual genetic sequence that gives our bodies the ability to absorb the parasitic demon when we’re infected. A natural immunity, if you will.”
Jesse appeared to grasp the complex explanation. “I see.” She took another sip of her drink. “So do you have any idea what causes this genetic defect, and why it’s so rare?”
Sam’s brows rose. “Intelligent question, actually. I can offer you legend or theory. Which would you prefer?”
“Let’s start with the legend and work our way toward the science,” she said.
“I always preferred the legend myself,” Maddox added, tuning half an ear to the ongoing conversation. He’d heard it a thousand times before.
Sam’s expression turned thoughtful. “The lore is pretty simple,” he began to explain. “It’s said that when the Enlightened One banished Xaphan from the Sacred Haven, Xaphan and the fallen angels who followed him came to Earth. At the time, mankind was still ensconced in the paradise of Eden and had no fear from the dark invaders who’d also settled on Earth.”
“But man didn’t stay in Eden,” Jesse broke in. “Xaphan and the dark ones tempted him with knowledge of a wider world outside of paradise.”
Sam nodded. “So you’re familiar with the common stories that have been handed down through the ages?”
Jesse made a derisive face. “I can’t call myself a true believer, though given the little bastard inside me, I do have to concede that perhaps there are a lot of things in this world that science can’t explain.”
Maddox’s and Jesse’s gazes met candidly for a moment. The touch of her gaze upon him was almost as personal as a physical caress.
Clearing his throat, Maddox hastily broke eye contact. “I’m sure we all feel that way now and again,” he said, trying to ignore the heaviness building low in his stomach.
“Exactly.” Sam laughed. “Anyway, mankind supposedly departed Eden to explore the vast wilderness. It was then the Telave began to attack. To give her beloved humans a weapon, the Enlightened One supposedly sent her archangels to mate with selected human females, engendering a new bloodline among humans. One that would level the battlefield, so to speak.”
Jesse scrunched her nose. She seemed to always want to investigate a matter from all angles. “But is it true, or did some other perfectly logical mutation through evolution occur?”
Sam sipped his beer. “Another good question.” He shrugged. “If you’re asking for the exact science, I really don’t have the answer. We know our genetic structure is different. We just don’t know why. It’s a mystery we may never have an answer to. But whether or not you choose to believe the paranormal side, the facts are grim. A plague is on the loose, and people are dying. And those formerly presumed dead are spreading vampirism like wildfire.”
Maddox blew out a frustrated breath. “It’s getting worse, too. There’re only three of us in the New Orleans area. Right now our resources are running pretty thin.”
“Why’s that?” Jesse asked.
“We think there were more at one point, but they might’ve been extinguished by the Telave,” Sam Chen answered.
Jesse shivered. “So they’re killing off your kind, even as they continue to multiply?”
Maddox lifted his own drink, swallowing a healthy mouthful. He wished he could consume enough alcohol to forget the evil undead. No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t manage to wipe out the knowledge. “That’s the trouble. We just don’t know.”
She eyed him suspiciously. “So you were bluffing when you told me your crew of men would kill me if I left the apartment last night.”
Sam Chen laughed. “He told you that? Gee, Maddox. You really have balls of steel. Most of the roaches in that neighborhood you live in would slit your throat if they got the chance.”
Maddox studied his friend for a minute. “That’s why I carry a lot of weapons. The crime rate in this city has skyrocketed since Katrina.”
“A lot of times people just disappear, never to be seen again. And if they are found, you can bet they often aren’t the people they used to be.”
Maddox sucked in more smoke. Surely after two hundred and some years his lungs were black as tar. Being a Palindrome wasn’t wonderful anymore. In fact it had become one long, boring grind. It was literally the same old shit, different day. “The truth of the matter is that we’re outnumbered about a hundred to one. The odds aren’t good on any given day.”
Jesse bristled. “It sounds like you guys don’t exactly bust your asses to even out the odds, either.”
Maddox lifted a hand, pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. He’d had a long, hard day at work, and listening to Reyen bitch hour after hour before Jesse’s arrival hadn’t exactly put him in the best mood.
And then there was Jesse. He was a fool to think he wasn’t attracted to her. Keeping his hands off her and keeping his distance was going to be difficult. Even as she mouthed off at them he wanted her—bad. Bad enough to kiss her silent.
Several times
, a little voice inside him whispered.
He took a deep breath, then released it slowly. “We do the best we can,” he said quietly. “Just like you, none of us chose to be in this position.”
Maddox’s words caught Jesse short. She’d been so busy busting their balls that she hadn’t stopped to think about how being plunged into the realm of demons had affected their lives.
Hope you like the taste of shoe leather
, she thought. She’d certainly put her foot in her mouth.
“I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “Of course none of us wanted to be touched by these things.”
Maddox sighed. “As much as we’d like to have an army behind us with a lot of shiny silver swords to swing, the truth is Palindromes are few and far between nowadays.” Theirs was a legacy long believed to be extinct. Beyond their mortality, beyond their very blood, were souls handpicked by the Enlightened One. To help her chosen find their way, the goddess frequently sent a sentinel to help guide them through the often-confusing changes in mind and body. Serafina had served that purpose for him. He’d been a victim who’d survived the Telave infection, but he didn’t understand how or why he was different from other men. Serafina’s wisdom, drawn from her spirit-guided visions, had helped lead him through his own treacherous journey.
“So there have been only the three of you?” Jesse asked.