The Blood That Binds (A Short Story)

(Part/CH 1)

Weight.

The heaviness of packed earth was the first thing to touch my awareness. Secure. Protected. Safe. I could lie here forever without a care in the world.

The world...

There was one, wasn't there? Somewhere beyond the warmth of the dirt and the faint wriggling of the worms, it waited. It could keep waiting. The worms were no bother. More polite company than most people. And quieter. What was left for me out there? Why should I bother leaving my comfortable patch of earth after I'd been resting here for—How long had I been resting here?

Coralene.

My eyes tried to open. Dirt pressed against my lashes. Cor. Why wasn't she here, lying beside me? My creation. My daughter. In every way that mattered at least. Mine to raise. Mine to teach. Mine to love. I'd given her eternity, and she'd given me something I'd never expected—a family.

Juls and Cor. That was how everyone knew us. Never one without the other from the moment she turned. I shoved an arm through the earth beside me, fingers clawing blindly through damp soil in search of another body. Nothing.

Coralene?

My hand swept farther. Still nothing. The comfort of the earth disappeared, replaced by a cold, sinking feeling in my gut. Cor wouldn't have left me. Which meant someone made the decision for her. Where was she?

For that matter—Where the hell was I? I stopped digging. I… couldn't remember.

The realization came slowly at first, an irritation scratching at the back of my mind. I chased the thought, searching for something, anything, that might tell me how I'd gotten here.

My jaw tightened. What was the last thing I could remember? Lucie. The Casket Girls. The Dragon's Den.

We'd been drinking. Laughing. Cor had been—No. After that. We'd gone home. Jacques was waiting for us at the gate.

I could see him now. Leaning there with that fucking smirk on his face, like he was still master of the house. And then.

Nothing.

I dug deeper... nothing.

No blur of half-forgotten memories. No blood-drunk haze. No fragments waiting to be pieced together. My life simply stopped at Jacques' smile.

And sometime afterward, someone had put me in the ground.

Without Cor.

I didn't bother to keep trying for further memories. There weren't any.

Fine.

Answers could wait until I wasn't six feet under. I maneuvered both hands above me and pushed. The earth resisted at first, packed tight from its own weight. Dirt crumbled around my wrists and slid into my sleeves as I forced my arms upward. I twisted, clawed, shoved, working by feel until something gave above me. Air touched my fingertips.

There you are.

I dug harder. Soil collapsing around my shoulders as I hauled myself upward, clawing through roots and damp earth until one hand finally broke free.

Humid night air slipped between my fingers.

New Orleans.

I knew before my head cleared the ground.

You don't spend decades in this city without learning the feel of her against your skin. Thick air clung to me like a damp sheet, heavy with earth, old stone, and vegetation. Somewhere beyond the walls, tires hissed over pavement.

Home. I dragged myself the rest of the way out and rolled onto my back. For a moment, I simply lay there.

Above me, the sky stretched black between the branches of an old oak. Moss stirred lazily in the night breeze, and stone figures watched from every direction. Angels. Saints. A woman bowed eternally over a marble grave.

I sat up.

Rows of elaborate tombs spread out around me, pale beneath the moonlight. Marble monuments. Ironwork. Sculpted crosses. Family crypts built like miniature temples for people who'd apparently decided death shouldn't interfere with showing off.

I knew this place.

Metairie Cemetery. There was no mistaking it. I looked down at myself, then at the ragged hole I'd just crawled from.

"You son of a bitch."

Jacques had buried me in a cemetery. A fucking cemetery.

I climbed to my feet and brushed dirt from my clothes, accomplishing absolutely nothing. Soil clung to every inch of me. It filled my boots, my sleeves, my hair. I could feel it beneath my nails.

The bastard could have at least put me in a crypt. I glanced around. Nothing moved between the tombs. No Coralene. No Jacques.

No welcoming party waiting to explain why I'd apparently been planted among New Orleans's respectable dead.

Just me.

I turned back to the hole.

Something about it bothered me. I'd assumed I'd been buried. But there was no coffin. No vault. No shroud. Someone had put my body directly into the earth.

Why?

My gaze dropped to my hands. The dirt packed beneath my nails was dark and damp. My clothes should have told me something. So should my body. I searched myself for injury.

Nothing hurt. My fingers found my throat. Nothing there either.

That was almost worse.

If Jacques had attacked me, there should have been something. Torn flesh. Broken bones. The lingering ache of healing. Instead, there was only that clean, impossible break in my memory. Jacques at the gate. His smile. Then earth.

Jacques knew burial wouldn't kill me. And dirt alone sure as hell couldn't keep me down. Which meant the grave wasn't the prison. Whatever he'd done to me was.

A slow anger began working its way through me.

"What did you do?" I growled.

The cemetery offered no answer. Of course it didn't. Dead people. Still preferred them to most.

Then my stomach clenched.

Hard. I doubled slightly, one hand pressing against it as something hot and vicious twisted through my insides. Hunger.

Not ordinary hunger. Not even the gnawing irritation of going a few nights without feeding.

This was hollow. Ancient. My throat burned. Every sense sharpened at once, searching the cemetery for something warm enough to have a pulse.

Oh.

That wasn't good. I straightened slowly.

However long I'd been underground—it hadn't been a few hours. Or a few nights. Fuck. And suddenly Jacques burying me wasn't the question that frightened me most.

How long had I been gone?