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Johnny gave her a distracted nod, but he didn’t protest when she started dragging him the three feet to the barstools. He held out a stool for her, then continued his conversation with Dick, which seemed to have left the field of handcuffs and ventured into the territory of online gaming. There was a lot of weaponry discussion and strategizing going on.
“Okay, thanks.” Benny followed her as well, pool stick in tow. “I’ll have a Heineken,” he told Nigel.
“Riesling, please,” she ordered, crossing her legs after she climbed onto the stool. While the bartender moved to get their drinks, she turned back to Benny. “When I meant memory loss, I was thinking more along the lines of when someone drinks to excess, or perhaps has something slipped in their drink that makes them lose their memory of the night.”
“Oh, gotcha.” Benny nodded. “I totally understand. I had that happen to me once, you know. The night of Johnny’s wake. I totally didn’t know any of these guys until that night.”
“Really?” she asked politely, though she wasn’t particularly interested. Her focus was on the night prior, not what antics Benny had gotten into in the past. “So Saxon didn’t mention anything like that about last night?”
“Nope. He said the wedding was a blast and Zelda tore him up in bed. He was smiling and looking good.” Benny grinned.
Now that was odd. So Saxon remembered the night, but no one else did? How had that happened? “Did he say where he was going when he left here?”
“Nope. So the night of Johnny’s wake, did he ever tell you about that?”
“Not specifically.” Which was the truth. He had told her why he had faked his own death, but he hadn’t described the outcome or how quickly he had come clean with his friends and family. Obviously not before they’d had a wake for him. That must have been awkward, and Lizette found herself in sympathy with Stella. It must have been horrific for her to plan her brother’s funeral.
“So it’s really a funny story.” Benny thanked Nigel and took his drink from him. “So like I said, I had never met any of these guys in my life, and I just went to work as usual, except it was Tarts and Vicars night at the club so I was dressed like a priest, crucifix and all. I forgot to bring a change of clothes, so it was either walk home in a Speedo or the costume, so I left the robe on. Then I don’t remember a damn thing until I woke up the next night in a bathtub three blocks off Bourbon with a chick screaming and a bunch of hungover dudes all arguing with each other. Then a bat bit me. I mean, just swooped down out of nowhere and bit the shit out of me, and while she’s biting me, she just turns into a hot babe. Like bam! There she is—hot babe sucking on my neck and I thought, ‘Whoa. These people are vampires. Could anything be any f**king hotter?’”
Lizette almost fell off her stool in a dead faint, her panic growing with each and every word he spoke. “What do you mean?” she managed, a strange buzzing sounding in her ears.
“I mean it was like my fantasy come to life, man. Stella is smokin’. I’ve been trying to get her to bite me again ever since, you know what I’m saying?” He winked. But then he sighed. “But she’s all into that Wyatt guy. It sucks. Where am I going to find another vampire chick like her? She’s my Dark Angel.”
Lizette felt hot, her fingers gripping the edge of the bar. She forced herself to take a sip of her wine to collect her thoughts, though the sweet liquid almost made her gag. “So are there a lot of women who pretend to be vampires in New Orleans?”
“Sure. But this isn’t pretend. Stella is the real deal. So are Johnny and all those guys I hung out with that night.”
This was a disaster. An absolute complete and utter disaster. It was a breach in security of epic proportions. This man was just casually mentioning to her that vampires existed. He was mentioning names. To her, whom he didn’t know at all. If he was willing to disclose such information to a total stranger, how many people had he told thus far?
It was catastrophic.
She didn’t dare look at Johnny. She felt like if she did, the entire truth of who they were would be written all over her face, and there would be no way out of this situation. She would find herself tied up in a laboratory like Jean-Baptiste had, being dissected alive. Johnny and Dick seemed to still be stuck on gaming, so she didn’t think he had heard her conversation with Benny.
Suddenly it also occurred to her that it was a rather alarming coincidence that on two separate occasions where a large group of vampires had gathered, multiple people had been drugged to the point of no memory.
That terrified her. Was it a conspiracy? Were the mortals out to kill vampires? Vampires out to expose and eliminate other vampires?
She did not know what any of this meant.
“I cannot believe this,” she whispered.
“Wait a minute.”
Her head snapped up. She realized Benny was staring at her. “You’re one too, aren’t you? Of course you are! God, I’m so stupid.” Then he put his hand over his mouth. “Sorry, am I not supposed to say the G word? Ever since I gave Saxon that crucifix burn on his forehead I’m always worried I’m like causing you pain or whatever.”
“I am not . . . a vampire,” she managed to say, though the words stuck in her throat. Her entire life had been spent hiding the truth, to the point that no one had ever suspected what she was. In two hundred years she had never once been accused of being a vampire, and she found the direct question overwhelming and frightening to the point of paralysis.
“You don’t have to deny it. I should have guessed it before. You’re pale and you’re from Paris.”
What did that have to do with immortality? “I am just French. I wish I were immortal,” she said, with an attempt at deflection. “Then I wouldn’t have to worry about watching my weight.” It seemed like something a mortal woman would say, but Benny seemed to immediately dismiss her words with a wave of his hand.
“Whatever. Your secret is safe with me.” His eyes lit up in a way that only deepened Lizette’s fear. “You can bite me if you want. Drink my blood. I’m down with that.”
That snapped her out of her stupor. “Don’t be ridiculous!” she said to him. “No one is going to be biting anyone.” Of course, that had not been the case ninety minutes earlier, when she and Johnny had been sinking their fangs into each other. But this was why their identity needed to be a secret, why the VA was so important. Benny was most likely harmless, albeit a nuisance, but for every Benny, there would be a mortal who could present a real danger to their very existence.
