MIDNIGHT THIRSTS
Books by Greg Herren
BOURBON STREET BLUES
JACKSON SQUARE JAZZ
Books by Michael Thomas Ford
LAST SUMMER
LOOKING FOR IT
MASTERS OF MIDNIGHT
(with William J. Mann, Jeff Mann, and Sean Wolfe)
Books by Sean Wolfe
MASTERS OF MIDNIGHT
(with William J. Mann, Michael Thomas Ford, and Jeff Mann)
MAN OF MY DREAMS
(with Dave Benbow, Jon Jeffrey, and Ben Tyler)
Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation
MIDNIGHT THIRSTS
GREG HERREN
MICHAEL THOMAS FORD
TIMOTHY RIDGE
SEANWOLFE
KENSINGTON BOOKS
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com
CONTENTS
THE NIGHTWATCHERS
Greg Herren
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
CARNIVAL
Michael Thomas ford
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
THE VAMPIRE STONE
Timothy Ridge
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
VAMPIRES, INC.
Sean Wolfe
Thanks and Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Epilogue
Author Bio
THE NIGHTWATCHERS
Greg Herren
Chapter One
Go home, old man, Rachel thought, tapping her black fingernails on the counter.
It was a quarter till nine, fifteen minutes before she could lock the doors. Everything was clean, and the cash register was already counted down. All she really had left to do was dump the remains of the day’s coffee down the sink, lock the cash drawer in the safe, and turn everything off. She’d be gone by ten minutes after at the latest.
She glanced out the big windows fronting the coffee shop. The streetlight just outside cast a yellowish glow in the thick mist pressing against the glass. She shivered and looked back at the old man. He was sitting at one of the tables in the far corner, with the same cup of coffee he’d ordered when he came in around seven thirty. He hadn’t touched it. It was still as full as when she’d filled the cup, only no steam was coming off the black surface now. He didn’t seem to be watching for anyone, or waiting. He never glanced at his watch, which she’d spotted as a platinum Tag Heuer, nor did he ever look out the window. Every once in a while he would look up from his newspaper and catch her staring. He’d smile and nod, then go back to his reading.
Apparently, he was determined to read every word.
She stood up, bending backward so her back cracked. The night had been really slow. The Jazz Café, even on weeknights, usually was good for at least thirty to forty dollars in tips. Tonight, when she’d counted out the tip jar, it yielded less than seven dollars. Just enough to get her a pack of cigarettes and a twenty-ounce Diet Coke at Quartermaster Deli on her way back to her apartment. It wasn’t, she thought, wiping down the counter yet again, even worth coming in for.
Usually on this kind of night, cold and damp and wet, Rachel was kept hopping with orders for triple lattes. The tables would be full of people who would come in shivering, bundled up against the cold wetness in the air, which seemed to penetrate even the thickest coat. They’d hold their steaming cups of coffee with both reddened hands, talking and laughing. Some would be doing their homework on laptops.
She liked busy nights, when the orders kept coming and the tip jar filled. Then, the time seemed to fly by, her closing shift passing in the blink of an eye. She hated the slow nights, when every passing minute seemed to take an eternity. She glanced back at the clock on the wall, then back at the old man. If you would just leave, she thought, I could go ahead and close early.
He’s kind of good-looking, she thought as she sipped her tepid cup of green tea, for an older guy.
At that moment he looked up, and their eyes met. His were blue, a deep blue with some green in it. Once again, he nodded his head to her and smiled, but this time he didn’t go back to his newspaper. He held her eyes.
Not to worry, my child. I’ll be gone soon enough.
She turned away, shaking her head, the hair on the back of her head standing up. She felt a little nauseated. All she’d eaten was a bagel with cream cheese. The damned tips, she thought. She’d hoped to get enough money tonight to get something to eat after work. That wasn’t an option now.
That’s it, she decided. Her blood sugar was low.
He couldn’t have read her mind; he couldn’t have talked to her without speaking. That was crazy; that kind of thing didn’t happen in real life. No, her imagination was working overtime because she was bored and her blood sugar was low.
She turned back to the counter. He was standing there. He was smiling at her. He was handsome—she amended her earlier thought. There was something kind in his smile, and his pinkish-white face was free of lines. He might not be as old as she’d thought, despite his thick white hair, which hung past his ears. His clothes were immaculately pressed and looked expensive. There was a big sapphire ring on his right hand.
“I didn’t mean to startle you.” He inclined his head slightly to her. “My apologies.”
British, she thought, or maybe Australian.
“It’s all right.” She forced an awkward smile, the kind she usually used on difficult customers who didn’t seem to know what they wanted or changed their mind when she was halfway through making their drink.
“Trust your instincts.” He bowed his head, then turned and walked out the front door.
She watched him for a moment, hugging herself tightly, until he disappeared into the fog outside.
“Get a grip, girl,” she said aloud, walking faster than necessary to the door to turn the lock and drop the blinds. She stopped at his table to pick up his coffee cup.
Beside it sat a hundred-dollar bill and a small cream-colored business card.
She stared at the money, then reached for the card.
“Nigel Witherspoon, Nightwatcher.” She turned it over. Written on the back, in a spidery hand in red ink, were the words “Your friend is in danger. Trust your instincts.”
She slipped the card into her pocket. Crazy old man, she thought, picking up the hundred-dollar bill and smiling at it.
Looked like she could have that cheeseburger after all.
For a moment she thought she smelled roses, then shook her head and went back to closing up the shop.
Philip Rutledge turned up the collar of his black leather jacket as he stepped outside his apartment building on Ursulines Street.
It’s like stepping back in time, he thought as he stood looking up and down the street. The mist hid the telephone lines hanging overhead. The lanterns on the fronts of houses, glowing through the whiteness, could have been gaslit. A horse-drawn carriage rode by, empty except for the driver, and in the sile
nce all he could hear was the clomping of horseshoes against the pavement. To his right, he could hear the clicking of boot heels against the sidewalk, but even squinting he couldn’t see who was making the sound, until he suddenly appeared, the mist seeming to part. The man was in full nineteenth-century attire, from the top hat to the cane, to the boots, to the cloak flying behind him. The man nodded at Philip as he went past, a slight smile on his face. Philip stood there and watched the man continue on his way up the street.
The man disappeared into the mist at the corner. Philip grinned to himself. Maybe he’s a ghost, he thought, reaching for a cigarette as he carefully made his way down the five concrete steps from his building’s front door. He stood there for just a moment, staring into the mist where the man had disappeared, lighting the cigarette and walking down to the corner at Burgundy. The man was gone, vanished as if he’d never been there at all. Definitely a ghost, he thought. Everyone knew the French Quarter was full of ghosts, and on a night like this it was even easier to believe. He ran a hand through his thick, dark blond hair, which was cut short on the sides and long on the top. His hair was already damp from the mist. Condensation was forming on his jacket. The night air was still; there was no breeze; there was no sound anywhere.
I love New Orleans in the mist, he reflected as he started walking up Burgundy Street. He loved the timelessness, this feeling that he was walking in a different era. The spell of the mist could last for a while. The streets were deserted—no tourists anywhere, no one out walking their dogs. It was easy to imagine the women in their hoopskirts just inside the walls of the old houses lining the sidewalks, sipping wine out of crystal and laughing at the jokes of the men as they ate by candlelight. Every house’s shutters were closed and latched against the night.
As he approached the corner of Burgundy and St. Ann, he heard footsteps echoing behind him.
A chill went up his body. He stopped walking, standing there, his head cocked to one side, listening.
Nothing. There was nothing to hear except the distant sound of cars driving down Rampart Street, a block away.
Stop scaring yourself, he thought, dropping his cigarette and grinding it out beneath his boot. It’s just a weird night, that’s all; stop letting your imagination run away with you. You’ll never be able to get hard if you keep this up.
He lit another cigarette, turning and looking behind. He couldn’t see more than a few feet; it was pointless. But again, his senses seemed to trigger something, a feeling that something was back there, watching, waiting…He peered through the mist, squinting, straining his eyes. Nothing.
He took a drag on his cigarette and started walking again. Just nerves, that’s all it was, the mist so thick and damp and, well, cloying. He inhaled and blew the smoke out through his nose. He passed under a streetlamp and stopped there for a moment. He cocked his head, straining to hear. He could have sworn…
There! A cautious footstep, then silence.
His heart began to beat faster.
Maybe it’s just someone walking their dog, he thought, looking back down Burgundy Street. But then, why don’t I hear the dog?
He started walking again, trying to keep the sound of his own steps as silent as possible. Surely, he reasoned, no one was going to be out trying to mug people tonight.
The French Quarter wasn’t completely safe. Once away from the neon and crowds of Bourbon Street, in the silent darkness of the lower Quarter, muggers plied their trade, pulling knives or guns or simply jumping the unsuspecting solo pedestrian after night fell. Attention must be paid to surroundings, awareness at its peak for safety. Philip had never been mugged, but he rarely came staggering home drunk in the wee hours of the morning alone.
There. Another step, then another stealthy one followed.
He fought to keep his breathing under control. Just because there was someone back there didn’t mean he was going to be mugged.
St. Ann was only a half block away. There would be people around; the Rawhide Bar was there on the corner. Safety.
He started walking just a little faster, trying not to break into a run.
The steps behind kept pace.
His breathing started coming quicker, beads of sweat forming at his brow line. There was dampness under his arms. He tossed the cigarette away into the street.
A car went by, its headlights glowing against the white blanket, illuminating shapes and forms. He stopped and looked back as the lights swept along the sidewalk, until the glowing red taillights vanished.
There was no one there.
He took several deep breaths and started laughing as his heart rate slowed.
Idiot. He grinned, heading for the corner. You just heard your own footsteps echo; that’s all it was.
He flagged down a United cab at the corner, which was a lucky break. He was running a little late. On his way out, his phone had rung. Once he heard his mother’s voice on the other end, he regretted not letting his machine answer. It was the same conversation it always was: “When are you going to get a real job?…You can’t work at a coffee shop forever…We didn’t spend all that money on college for you to spend the rest of your life making lattes.”
“How are you ever going to buy a house?” she would ask. “A car? What about retirement? You’re young now; you think you don’t have to worry about these things, but you have to start planning, Philip. You have to think about your future.”
His future. He’d applied for plenty of jobs since graduating last summer. Nothing.
His mother, of course, didn’t know he made plenty of extra money. The ad in the local gay paper, with his bare torso and a beeper number, was quite successful. It had been running now for several years, and his mother would be quite shocked if she knew how much money was sitting in his savings account at the Whitney Bank.
He ground his cigarette out on the sidewalk. Arthur, the man in Uptown he was going to see, would give him several crisp brand-new hundred-dollar bills.
What would his dear Southern Baptist mother say if he told her that he could make three hundred dollars, cash, for doing nothing more than standing in front of an old, lonely man while wearing nothing but a jockstrap?
He climbed into the cab. The driver was a black woman with feather earrings dangling down to her shoulders. Thick dreadlocks hung down her back. “Where to, darlin’?”
“Fifteen twenty-three Octavia.”
She nodded and turned the meter on.
Other than the employees, Rachel was the only person in the Quartermaster Deli.
Sitting at the long table, waiting for her mushroom bacon cheeseburger to cool off enough to eat, she kept watch out the plate glass window. Her cigarette burned in the metal ashtray coated with the resin of thousands of previous cigarettes. She took another drink of her Diet Pepsi. The half joint she’d smoked on her way through the Quarter had mellowed her out…although she had this eerie feeling, as she’d walked through the thick mist, that someone was following her.
Paranoia will destroy ya, she thought, her eyes still fixated on the swirling mist outside the glass. She shook her head. Stop looking for something that’s not there.
“Looking for ghosts?” the woman behind the cash register called over to her. A Marlboro dangled from her lips. Her curly black hair stood out at all crazy angles from her scalp, and she was wearing too much pancake makeup and too much black eyeliner. Her body seemed shapeless in the battered old LSU sweatshirt hanging almost down to her knees.
Rachel turned and smiled at her. “It’s a haunted night.”
The woman shrugged. “If you believe in that stuff.”
Rachel turned back to her window. She believed. The big old house on State Street that she’d grown up in was haunted. Her parents and older siblings didn’t believe her, and she eventually gave up trying to make them understand. She saw them everywhere: the old woman in black who paced the halls upstairs, the lovers who met in the gazebo in the backyard around midnight, and the young boy playing in the garden just o
utside the dining room windows with a ball just after sunset every day, who sometimes would smile at her and beckon to her to come and play just for a little while. They’d even sent her to a psychiatrist once, thinking she was emotionally needy, a little too desperate for attention—perhaps that was why she made up the ridiculous stories.
She’d hated her family then, for not believing her, for finding it easier to believe she was unbalanced or insane than to accept that their house was haunted.
Philip was the only one who believed her, and sometimes she wondered if he did or was just humoring her out of friendship.
At least if he doesn’t, he has the decency to pretend, she thought, picking up her burger and taking a bite.
Trust your instincts.
She spun her head, looking out the window again. The old man was standing on the opposite corner, staring at her through the glass. She forced herself to swallow, even though her stomach was turning. He nodded to her, then turned and walked up Bourbon Street, vanishing into the mist.
Trembling slightly, she stared down at the burger, appetite gone.
The radio in the cab was tuned to an R & B oldies station. Gladys Knight and the Pips. He remembered the song vaguely but couldn’t recall the name.
He looked out the window as the cab drove out of the Quarter and headed Uptown. The black jock he had on underneath his baggy jeans was pinching him slightly below the right cheek. He shifted in the seat, trying to get the strap to move down.