“Merde. Merde. Merde. I think he’s dead,” one of my assailants said. Now that it was quiet, I recognized Cajun accents.

“You think? Head’s hanging on by a got damn thread.” The other chuckled and kicked me, causing my view to shift.

I gazed straight up at the underside of one of the metal tables. The reflection was murky, but I pieced it well enough together after hearing what was said.

“Hanging on by a thread” was no exaggeration. The shotgun had blown through more than half my neck, leaving my head lolling off to one side from a severed spine. All my nerves were cut off, explaining why I couldn’t move a thing except my eyes.

“It ain’t funny,” the first said. “This ain’t the job.”

My arm was lifted by one of them, then dropped with a thud. Then the ingrate took my jaw and puppeted my mouth. “You shot me, mista,” he said like a poor English beggar. I could’ve chomped his fingers off, but it didn’t seem wise, being as exposed as I was.

“I said it ain’t funny, Demars.”

“He look like a doctor?” Demars spat a wad of something inches from my eyes. “Nah. Some grave-robbing scoundrel who no one’ll care about.”

“Sounds familiar.”

They both cackled. “We’ll load him up with the other. That greedy mortician won’t ever have to know. And he can scrub out the blood.”

I heard the short, stout one—the one not called Demars—shuffling around me, then I was heaved up. He grunted a few times as he got me up over his shoulder.

“Light for his size,” he exhaled.

My head swung to and fro like a pendulum. Demars—the skinny one—scraped his foot across where I’d been.

“Weird, I don’t see no blood,” he said.

Right, he wouldn’t. Because running through my veins is no more than stray air and dust, though sometimes I like to believe it’s ash. More biblical that way. Hands of God, reborn as we are, don’t bleed.

“That’s ’cause you can’t see in the dark,” the one holding me remarked.

“This ain’t funny, Nello,” Demars said.

“It’s a little funny,” Nello said.

“Don’t smell none either.”

“Just hurry up, for Christ’s sake. I said he ain’t heavy for his size, but that don’t mean I wanna stand here holding him. Besides, someone might’ve heard them shots. Mortician said the marked body’s a girl. Washed up in the gulf last night. All bloated. No one’s claimed her yet.”

Demars moved away from where I’d been and started checking beneath each table, holding his hat so it didn’t fall. One by one, he went through, similar to how I had, but somehow their intentions were far more sinister. If only I could get my new lasso around them.

“Here it is!” Demars shouted, slapping the table. “An X. That’s gotta be it, right? Woo-wee, she’s fresh.” He pulled the cloth down to get a look at her naked body beneath. It was the young woman who’d thrown herself to her death after losing a child. If my brain was connected to my fists, they’d have balled unconsciously.

“Bet she looked mighty fine, too, before the bloat,” he added. “Even with it…”

“You got something wrong in the head,” Nello said.

“You know you wanna peek.”

“No way. No how. I like my ladies how I like my oysters. Alive.”

They snickered again as I was carried over. Demars fully lifted the cloth away, and Nello dumped me down on top of her. The way I was twisted with my dislodged head, I stared right into her serene, dead face. Heaven protect these men if they tried something with this poor girl besides laying her to peace.

Then the cloth went back over us, and it was pitch black. Wheels rolled, rumbling over stone. A door unlocked.

“Hold that end.”

“Watch it.”

Then I heard a cranking sound I assumed to be some kind of lift used to get the bodies down here. Another door opened, and by the light pouring in, my eyes adjusted. It was still dark beneath that covering, but part of my gifts allows me to see quite well in near-darkness.

My head bounced as we were pushed somewhere. The eerie quiet of the morgue was replaced by the din of Crescent City nightlife: horse-drawn carriages screeching, men and women carousing, drunks pissing.

The cloth was momentarily peeled back, and in the silver moonlight, I watched as myself and the dead woman were slid into a secret compartment beneath a food cart with a sign up top that said OYSTERS: FRESH SHUCKT 3¢ EA.

Stunk like it too.

No level of muted senses could mask the wretched stink of seawater and brine. I’d never been a fan, though I’d never felt the need to live by the water. Men are meant for the land if you ask me. But visit any pub around here, and oysters are practically thrown at you. Snotty things always had challenged my intestinal fortitude.

And that was that. A trap door shut behind us, the cart rumbled on, and we were being smuggled across the city for God knows what.

I couldn’t hear the men masquerading as oyster shuckers over the noisy cart. Just muffled voices and a few low cackles. I could tell when the wheels transitioned from rolling on cobblestone to dirt. It was smoother, but for natural divots here and there.

It wasn’t a brief journey, but I didn’t mind. The longer they left me be, the more time for the gash in my neck to heal, thanks to Heaven’s blessings upon my unliving body, and I’d be right as rain again. I hoped. Truth was, I’d never had my head blown off before. Part of me always wondered just what extent of damage my body could take before it failed to reassemble itself.

I’d lost digits, chunks of flesh—all those returned with a vengeance. But a whole head? It was a good sign I wasn’t unconscious at this point, but would I be forced to live, unable to move, with my head hanging off my body like some kind of trampled-over dandelion?

My mind whirled, contemplating my mistakes. I knew better than not to lock doors behind me when I Divined. I’d made myself damned vulnerable—wait. I had locked it. I remembered that. These men had been granted access.

What was it they’d said? The mortician marked the girl’s body? There wasn’t much more I could’ve done differently to avoid this predicament if the morgue master himself was in on this little grift. Perhaps if the White Throne didn’t feel the need to make me experience every ounce of the dying’s sufferings, I might’ve reacted faster.

At least I’d gotten far enough to see what I needed to. That vamp wasn’t some monster. She was highborn for sure—something I’d only heard talk of and never witnessed firsthand. And intelligent enough to be sadistic. Shar had mentioned the Betrayer being male, but a vamp that pure ought to be able to lead me to her kin.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

The room she’d holed up in could’ve been the bed chambers of any Victorian house in Crescent City, but as I focused back on the memory, I recalled hearing lots of voices outside the door. Moaning too. And it didn’t sound like the bad kind.

A brothel, perhaps? That’s right, she’d mentioned him getting what he paid for. There were more than a few whorehouses in Crescent—famous ones even. No way of knowing which it might’ve been, but there were far fewer of them than private homes. That narrowed things down. Finding her was my best option.

“Follow power,” as Shar so vaguely put it.

This vamp certainly had it.

A particularly violent bump smacked my head against the roof. Worked out well for me. I was no longer staring at the poor dead girl, and it squeezed together the gap in my neck, which would only expedite my healing.

There was a tapping noise. My own finger against the metal table. I couldn’t feel it, but my will was returning. Saints and Elders, what a surprise those two bastards were about to be in for. Would be nice if Shar could summon some of her heavenly wrath to get me out of this bind, but as usual, I was out for myself.

* * *

The call of crows rang clear. We were outside the city limits. How far, I couldn’t be sure. But suddenly, the ride got unexpectedly steady before it abruptly stopped. I could move my arm at the elbow by now. Only a matter of time before all the little nerves and veins and what-have-you sealed themselves back together, and I was ready to drive Demars’s and Nello’s teeth through their assholes.

Voices grew louder as the trap door below the cart fell open.

“Rough couple of corpses,” Demars said.

“Just help me dump them out.”

The men strained, the cart tilted, and the young woman and I went tumbling off the table and out onto smoothly paved stones. Bright moonlight illuminated everything around me now, and I could finally get a sense of where they’d taken me.

We were in front of an old plantation, and I do mean old. Abandoned, by the looks of it. The fountain in the center of the turnaround didn’t spew water and was instead overwhelmed by encroaching vines. The walls of the main house were no different—cracked windows, busted doors, and not a lantern or candle in sight.

Trees dotting the long driveway in the opposite direction had long since died. Now withering husks with bare boughs danced on a light breeze like naked skeletons. Weeds grew everywhere. This place hadn’t been tended to for a decade or more.

Started to wonder if somewhere deep inside this mansion awaited the red room where that vampire seductress had claimed her prey. Had she come for me for snooping already? Their kind were known to be fast, and our entry into Crescent City wasn’t as subdued as I’d have preferred, thanks to the grunches and all the eyes on Laveau. The more untoward and unsavory portions of society were bound to hear about new arrivals.

My head still stuck as I healed, I watched the two shuckers approach the front doors. It was a tall entrance—taller than the men—painted white at some point like the rest of the trim. The paint was all peeled now, and lichen grew like cancer. Standing there, at the stairs on the front porch, all their giddiness and bravado melted away.

“You go,” Demars said.

“No, you,” Nello retorted.

They pushed each other like children until Demars decided to suck it up and grasp a bronze knocker carved in the shape of a fleur-de-lis and gave a few quick raps. Blackbirds cawed and flapped away, causing Nello to scurry back down the stairs to the circular driveway.

“Goddammit, mother fu—”

“Shhh. Quiet, you!” Demars chided.

A mail slot flipped open.

“Leave her,” a deep voice said from the other side. A few bills flittered out. I wasn’t sure what denomination.

The shucker swallowed audibly. “We… uh… got two, actually. Caught a man robbing the dead. So…” He stood quietly as if waiting for an answer.

“So, we should be paid for two,” Nello barked, regaining confidence. “And then some for his weapons. Could’ve made a mint on them back in th—”

The door shook. “You will be paid as agreed upon!”

“That ain’t fair,” Nello said, only a bit deflated. “It’s supposed to be easy. In and out. We ain’t killers like you folk.”

“And yet, you killed, then brought that trouble to our doorstep.”

A dark hand jutted through a hole in the door, grabbed Demars by his skinny arm, and pulled him against the wood. He sniveled in fear.

“Do you not understand how this works?” the voice asked. “Crescent City belongs to us. Leave, or we will show you exactly how replaceable you are.”

“Any chance we—”

“Leave!”

Demars was pushed back, crashing into Nello. They scampered away, then stopped to crawl back to collect the money on the ground. Slipping and skidding across the porch, they fell over each other in the race back to their cart, too terrified to even consider taking my guns. Lucky me.

Then, from the thicket all around the property, small figures emerged. Children, all of them, throwing rocks at the shuckers as the men started yanking on the cart, not bothering to look where they were going. One wheel ran over my leg and hip, causing me to roll so I could only see the plantation exit.

“Tell me again why we agreed to this, brother?” Demars asked.

“Cash. Protection. Now, c’mon!” Nello growled.

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Demars paused for a moment and looked back at me and the naked girl. A fleeting wave of grief crossed his features.

I knew the look. Some rewards have too high a price. I learned that the hard way working with Ace Ryker.

Cash doesn’t mend a broken soul.

When they were gone, the mansion’s door squeaked open on rusty hinges. Heavy feet slapped across the stone. I desperately willed my head to turn, but I wasn’t whole yet.

“That’ll be that, children,” the voice said. A choir of groans followed. “Take them.”

All at once, the pitter-patter of a dozen feet clattered toward us.

The young woman’s body slid away first, thudding up the steps amid giggles. Then my world raced by as I followed. Nobody even bothered to heave me up onto a shoulder, just dragged across the ground like a sack of garbage.

Up I went, inside the derelict mansion. The whole thing was in disrepair. Made Marie’s place look like a palace. A chandelier had fallen in the foyer, little crystal shards left where they’d shattered. The kids dragged me right through them, stopping only to readjust their grips.

Light shimmered in the reflection of one of the glass fractals.

“This is what happens when you dawdle,” Shargrafein said, her imprecise form flowing from one bit to the next.

I nearly spoke, not sure if I even could. However, if I had, I’d have immediately blown any chance of figuring out where these people were taking me without causing a fight.

After getting jerked around, I found myself staring straight up and through the lofty ceiling where a gash revealed a silver-lined moon. A painting of whatever family had owned the place was torn above the grand antebellum staircase, one side of the two treads totally collapsed.

Must’ve been quite the tale, whatever happened here—slave revolt, maybe. Maybe caught on the wrong side of a property feud. The place would have been better off razed, but it ain’t cheap these days, purchasing land like this. Plus, this is Crescent City. Abandoned home with some sort of gang squatting in it, creepy trees on the way in, kids by the dozen just milling about?—city folk would be frightened it was haunted.

If only they knew what kind of things really lurk in the dark.

“Two-for-one special thanks to those morons,” someone said. As my body was dragged by children, I caught glimpses of larger shadows moving. Nothing more.

“Boss’ll be happy,” said another.

“I don’t see why we’re being so careful anyway. Got a city full of prey.”

“You know why. That senator vanishing opens up more eyes than usual.”

“Let ’em come. Then we can feast for ages.”

“Boss hears that, you’re dead.”

“You gonna tell him?” No answer. “Thought so.”

Besides these two and the kids still hauling me along, the house seemed empty.

“We got him,” one of the voices said. “Go on ahead.”

Immediately, my limbs collapsed to the wood floor, and the sound of children chattering disappeared into the distance. Then, the two adult figures came into view.

“The hell’s this one?” one asked. I could see him now, hair the color of barley and a face that looked more akin to Timperina than a man. His long nose and chin drew down in a dire expression, two buggy eyes staring at me. “Fancies himself an outlaw.”

“He did,” said the other. “Dead now.” This one was totally unremarkable except for the chain dangling from his neck. Looked like a tooth or a talon of some kind.

The horse-face hauled me bodily through the remainder of the house while his buddy took the girl.

“Just like you to take the light one,” my conveyor said.

“Shit, she’s so bloated, you might’ve lucked out.”

I bounced down a long corridor with doors on either side, through an expansive dining room in the home’s rear, the kitchen, and finally, out the back door. What used to be a vast field of crops had been infested by mire and swamp.

“I’m sick of this already. My arms hurt.”

A second later, I found myself rolling down stone steps. Apparently, I can still get dizzy—or maybe just disoriented without all the ear fluids, but it’s something. The girl and I splashed into a pit of mud at the bottom. The muck got into my mouth and throat. Under my nails. Everywhere.

Before I gained a sense of what was what, or if I could move more than an arm, I found myself being pulled again. By the time the mud shed off my face, we entered the open gate of an old stable.

“Took you long enough,” a voice growled. It was deep and throaty and, somehow, familiar to me. “My children are starving.”

They placed us down, and there I saw them. The eight children that had dragged us most of the way through the house lying on blood-stained hay. Children—but not. These were pint-sized werewolves.

Youth gave them fuzz that almost confused me into thinking they were cute, but their sharp fangs told a different story. Not baby teeth. The real things.