rhodielady_47

I found the little vampire about where I'd been expecting to find him. He was in one of those strip joints in the French quarter. He left presently. It was getting close to dawn. If he wanted any more action before his long day's sleep, he had to hustle. I stood up to follow him. Not too quickly; I didn't want to spook him. I tossed off the last of my virgin mary and set the glass on the bar together with a twenty. I met the bartender's eyes in the mirror behind the bar. His twisted away from me like I'd thrown acid at him. Bartenders don't have much use for folks that don't drink. The nocturnal predators present didn’t so much as glance in my direction either. I admit I do sometimes wonder what they saw when they did look my way. Oh well, time to quit wasting time.
I stepped out into the hot, thick night air and let my senses reach out. He was just around the corner. I strolled up to the corner, turned it, and there he was.
He was a pretty little thing; his unbuttoned shirt showed off his flawless skin and shoulder length hair thick and dark. He still had that soft look that boys in their late teens have before the testosterone gets through coarsening them up. He looked all of seventeen or barely eighteen. Just old enough for his first kiss when the vampire that made him raped away his life.
He tucked his thumb in the already too low waistband of his tight jeans and gave me one of those sexy smiles the male strippers wear when they're not wearing anything. "Hey lady, would you like a good time? For the right price, I can do things your old man only dreams about doing." He was just a child; a baby really; and here he was trying to peddle his ass.
"No way, kid. I'm not a pedophile and I'm not a necrophiliac and I'd damn well have to be both to want you." I stepped closer. I dropped my shields; letting what I really am shine out. Where his aura touched mine a solid wave of pain and suffering splashed through.
He flashed his fangs then.
He looked at me suspiciously. "What are you, some kind of Bible-beater?"
"Uh, no. Wrong religion. I'm a follower of the old religion. I was sent here tonight to offer you a way out. You won't be alive again but you won't be stuck here anymore. It's your choice. I just want to warn you about one thing. If you willingly refuse what I'm offering you, you stop being a victim. You'll be a true vampire and redemption will no longer be an option for you."
For the first time I saw what looked like forlorn hope flare in his eyes. "Look, you didn't choose to become a vampire."
"You don't know that. Anyway it's too late to argue about it now. I am a vampire." The forlorn hope in his eyes dulled down and died before he jerked his face away from me.
"There's a world of difference between a vampire that willingly chose to become a vampire and somebody that was in the wrong place at the right time. The first is a true vampire. You're not. And I do know the difference. Besides you hate what you are and what you do. If you refuse what I'm offering you tonight, you will really become what you think you are already."
It took a long minute; I felt him stealthily reach out and touch me aurally. You can't lie to the person who has the ability to touch an aura. Chances were the vampire who'd had him chose him for that little extra kick psychic ability gives.
The stripper's smile disappeared. “I don’t want to go to hell,” he choked out, close to tears.
“Like I said before, wrong religion. But just for the record, real Christians don’t punish the victim." I held my arms out to him and he took a step closer to me.
“Will you tell my brother goodbye for me?” He asked standing there like an uncertain child. Odds were he'd been rejected before by someone he'd loved once.
I nodded and he took the final step into my arms.
I hugged him. His cold tears washed down the side of my neck as I spoke my invocation. Just before he died, he whispered a name. I kissed him gently on his cheek and then he grew still. I held a corpse in my arms.
Dawn came. To my dismay, he turned completely into fine ash with the first of the morning light. He'd been caught in vampiric half-life for too long a time. There'd be no getting in touch with his family; family stories don’t tend to last more that a couple generations at best. The living are usually too concerned with the business of living to fret much about Great Aunt Agatha’s brother or Great Grandpa Zeb’s sister who suddenly disappeared without a trace.
I wondered if he'd worn a zoot suit once and danced to swing or perhaps rode with his family in a beat-up model T down Route 66 headed for California or maybe danced the Charleston with his Sheba in some twenties speakeasy. For all I knew he could have been one of Daniel Boone's son Israel's bosom buddies. I'd never know now.
"Sorry kid, but even I can't talk to the dead," I told his dust as it swirled away with the damp morning wind coming in off lake Ponchatrain. I felt a twinge of regret that I hadn’t taken the time to ask him his name but sometimes it’s better this way. This way I can brush off his memory as easily as I can brush off his dust before I head for home back across the causeway.