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As far as I knew,I was the only person in all of New Orleans who offereddraugrservices. Ours was one of the proclaimed havens for the again-walkers. We rebuilt after losing ground to a series of hurricanes and fires about eighteen years ago. For us, rebuilding required tourists, so New Orleans had decided to embrace the dead, which was unheard of for a smaller city, but we weren’t justanycity. We had a history with the dead and with magic.
Elsewhere in the world, only the large cities had been so accepting ofdraugr. New York and London. Prague. Berlin. Lima. Moscow. Manila. Sydney. Rome. Cape Town. Tokyo. Vancouver. The reveal of thedraugrspanned continents, cultures, and races. Admittedly, conservatives claimed the larger cities only accepted them as a ploy to thin their populations, but I figured it was simply impossible to ferret thedraugrout in such vast cities. Why start a losing war?
Despite the romanticized attitudes of some people,draugrwere not the sparkling angsty vampires of popular fiction. They weren’t crypt-napping, bat-transforming, cape-wearing creatures of the classic stories either. They were creatures out of mostly forgotten Icelandic folklore. Modern people, injected with a venom that had peculiar bio-magical traits, woke and eventually carried on as if they were alive.
It was the decade-plus gap between waking and clarity that was the main issue.
The youngest ones had no ability to control their hunger—or their venom. Whatever rules defined thedraugr, they had a fail-safe: venom from a creature under a century old was unable to infect the living. Enough venom from any of the olderdraugrand a person woke up after death.
I stopped them when they did so. It was myraison d’être. And I was damn good at it. I was vague on the right terminology, but the meat of it was that magically reassembled corpses would push their way out of their tombs and follow me like a ghastly second-line parade. All the foot-shuffling, but none of the jazz.
These days, though, I mostly just killeddraugr.
“Alive,” I texted to Eli. I’ve rejected his help the past few months, but we have a peculiar friendship. He was—for reasons I had no desire to know—living in this world, although he had more than enough fae blood to cross over totheirworld any day he chose. Instead, he stayed in New Orleans.
“Headed to Karl’s,” I sent in a group text to my other three closest friends.
That text was more of a formality than anything. Most nights, I met my very human friend Sera at her work if she was finishing when it was already dark. We’d been friends for years, and despite her insistence that she was perfectly fine, it took only a few minutes out of my week. I’d spend almost as long worrying, anyhow.
The walk was almost four miles, so after a quick scan to be sure it was safe, I let myselfflow.I was careful not to do it around my friends—or most people. Seeing a living person move like adraugrwould raise questions I preferred not to address.
Tonight, I covered a couple miles in mere moments.
I slowed before I reached the dense tourist section that was the French Quarter, but the streets were mostly empty at this hour. Curtains were drawn. A few cars passed. The government of New Orleans bought cars and hired drivers, as well as built walls to protect our beautiful cemeteries—and by extension, both the tourists and locals.
I walked along Lafitte, heading toward the French Quarter.
My phone buzzed. Eli texted, “Injured?”
“No,” I texted back. I paused and added, “Thanks.”
Before the fateful day when the world discovered that not every dead thing was a cause for mourning, tourists were still strolling day and night. They dropped their dollars at strip clubs and restaurants and marveled at Mardi Gras. A century or so before all that, they came in droves to visit the city with the first ever legal red-light district. My city was and had been all about tourism for almost as long as we were here. Ours was a bold cry: Come, come to our swamp, and leave your money with us.
These days, tourism is more of a daylight activity or restricted to the patrolled zones. Fifteen years ago, after the first international news incident from our city—"Handsome Young German Ripped Apart on Bourbon Street”—the wise souls with marketing minds reconsidered their approach to drawing tourist dollars. We were and are still dead-friendly, but the city added even more taxes to pay for increased police to patrol the still-flourishing tourist area and played up the “vampire” aspect as ifdraugrwere the same thing.
They aren’t.Draugrare reptilian, cold-blooded, and venom-spewing.
But the allure of immortality was strong—as long as you didn’t think about years of drooling, biting, growling existence or an eternity with the urge to tear throats out. I didn’t get it, but death tourists came to New Orleans hoping to see adraugreither for the fantasy of eternity or the titillation of being close to a predator. They roamed close to the perimeter of the patrolled areas in hopes of spying something grisly—safely seen through the lenses of their over-priced cameras.
Tonight, I was far too aware of the blood on my trousers to want to get near the tourists. Even now, the group I’d been trailing was moving around obstacles almost as one entity. They were almost to the French Quarter, the section of my fair city that was so heavily patrolled that tourists could still feel secure in the dark. Post-Reveal, the Quarter had become a tight clutch of stores, bars, and restaurants. Busking musicians worked every intersection. Neon and crowds filled every space so there was no chance of shadows that could hold fanged surprises.
I’d reached the well-patrolled greenspace of Louis Armstrong Park, so I sped up and passed the tourists. They were safely in sight of the patrols, and I was late to meet Sera.
“She’s armed,” one said in that shocked way as I passed.
Of course I was armed. Necromancy was terribly alluring to things that had been—and honestly, still were—dead. Night or day, I felt far more at ease with weapons in reach. I’d walk naked in the city before I’d go unarmed. Long before the rest of the world knew that the night held surprises with sharp fangs, I was watching in the shadows.
As I walked, I slid between another tour group and a double-parked car to avoid ending up in a photo. The first “blue-haired ghost” image to go viral was enough lesson for a lifetime. I wasn’t a ghost. I was a witch with oddly pale skin.
Several street patrol officers standing on corners met my gaze as I passed, and I gave a small nod each time. Our silent conversations, inquiries on if there were anydraugrnearby, were reason enough to escort a few tourist groups. I wasn’t really guarding the tourists, just traveling in the same direction. I wasn’t even actively looking for trouble. If I happened to get to behead adraugralong the way to the patrolled zone, it was just a cherry on my evening. Better me than one of the officers who wasn’t innately equipped for combat.
My phone buzzed. Eli texted, “I’m available if you want me.”
I smiled, despite my better judgment. There were plenty of things I might want from Eli, a few of which made regular appearances in my dreams. But I also knew what Eli wanted—and needed—out of life, and I could never give it to him.
I shoved my phone in my jacket pocket and sent out a pulse of magic, feeling fordraugr.They registered as blanks in the canvas, spaces where there was no life, but somehow motion. At best, I usually could scan a couple blocks. Considering the speed at which they moved, that offered a blink of warning. Not always enough, even for me. It was still more than humans got.
I felt nothing, so I darted around the line trying to get into Karl’s Cajun Coffee. I waited for Sera to notice me. The line extended far enough that I knew she wouldn’t be ready for a good fifteen minutes. It was her shop, and she never left when her staff was this deep in the weeds. Like Karl, the original owner, she was devoted to both her staff and the brand’s recognition.
