The vampires approached again, this time with murder in their eyes. They wanted to finish this—to finish us both off. I had Remy in my arms and knew he was bleeding badly from his many wounds, but there was nothing I could do to help him. Nothing I could do to help myself. Just as I was about to resign myself to death, a roaring brightness erupted from the ground and surrounded us both. I shielded my eyes from the light, but when I dared to look, I saw it wasn’t light but fire—green fire.
They didn’t dare approach it. The fire burned bright and hot, roared like a wild animal, and lashed out at the attackers, pushing them back. From within the flames I watched a new contender enter the room—a woman who, seen through the flames, seemed to almost float and shimmer like a mirage. But she was real, and when she brought her eyes to bear on me, I almost wanted to turn away.
“This isn’t over,” she said, with a voice like death itself—cold and cruel.
“You have no right!” I yelled, “You’ve just attacked and hurt innocent people, and you’ve got no right!”
“Innocent?” she scoffed. “The man in your arms is a murderer, or have you forgotten?”
I almost tried to stand, but I knew doing so risked hurting Remy further. He was unconscious, he wasn’t breathing as much as he should have been, and his skin was turning an ashen gray. But the shifting, green flames were keeping her and the vampires at bay, at least for now, and for that I was grateful.
“Take your vermin and leave,” Jean Luc said, “This man has repented. And you? You turned him into a murderer.”
I hadn’t seen him come into the room. But when I looked on him now, he was covered in blood, his shirt and jacket had been ripped, and his long hair was caked through with blood and sticking to his face. Beside him was Jared; his eyes burned with green light as he concentrated to keep the flames alive.
The woman turned her head to look at Jean Luc, and she sneered at him, disgust evident on her face. “You’re a disappointment, Jean Luc. You always were.”
When she made as if to leave, the other vampires followed, all of them seeming to almost disappear as they ran at superhuman speeds out of the house through the side door. An instant later, the green flames Jared had conjured snuffed themselves out, leaving faint white smoke and the fleeting scent of freshly blown out candles in the air.
Remy, I thought, snapping my relief like a brittle twig. Jared came up in front of me, as did Jean Luc.
“Is he breathing?” Jared asked.
“He has a weak pulse,” Jean Luc said, presumably able to hear Remy’s heart beating even though he was standing.
“Remy,” I said, tapping his face. He opened his eyes slowly, blinking repeatedly, like a baby seeing the world for the first time.
He smiled, and when he did, blood spilled from the side of his mouth. “Hey sugar,” he said, but his voice was weak, and it rattled.
“It’s going to be okay,” I said, finding one of his hands, “It’s going to be okay.”
“It will be, kid. This place will be a whole lot better without me in it.”
Jared pulled his phone from his pocket to dial 911, but Remy stuck his hand out. “You have to let me call an ambulance, Remy,” Jared said.
“You crazy, boy?” Remy asked. “That’ll get us all into a world of trouble.”
“We need to get you some help,” I said, “You need a doctor.”
“You call an ambulance and they’ll bring the cops. Cops will ask questions, and we can’t have that.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying it’s time for me to pay for the things I did.”
“How is this even possible?” Jared asked, “Aren’t you immortal?”
Remy coughed, and blood stained his lips. “I never said I was immortal; only that I wouldn’t age.” He turned his eyes up at me, and smiled again. “I enjoyed tonight right up until this last part… but I guess it’s not so bad either.”
“Remy…” I said, but his eyes turned misty and gray before I could figure out what else to say to him.
I listened to him breathe his last breath, and then he died in my arms.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
didn’t think I would. All thoughts of who he was and what he had done before we met him evaporated under the weighty idea that—for better or worse—Remy, powerful witch and icon in New Orleans, had been killed.
What the hell do we do now, came to mind more than once following his death, though I found myself unable to do little more than worry Remy wouldn’t be able to sleep with the rest of his family. What the hell do we do with him was a more valid, pressing question in urgent need of an answer.
But a letter had arrived at my house the very next day, almost as if by magick, outlining exactly who to contact in order to facilitate his burial. The letter, written in Remy’s own hand, had been signed just a few months ago. In it, he outlined the steps he had taken to ensure ownership of his family’s vault would follow him through the decades and centuries through the clever use of aliases and forgeries of his own personal documents.
That he had acquired a family vault back in the day, considering his origins as the descendent of slaves, was impressive enough, but that he had made it follow him through the centuries was even more impressive. Remy was prepared and thorough, and he had contingency plans established surrounding his death.
He knew it was coming; the only question for him was when.
The fact it arrived at my doorstep so soon following his death led me to believe that, sometime after I arrived in New Orleans, he had started to make plans for this eventuality. Whether he thought I would kill him, or that I would be the death of him, I didn’t know. But he did. He knew he would die, and soon.
Per his request, there had been no service, no eulogy. I was the only one there. Remy had left instructions for no one else to be present at the burial, and I had fought hard to honor them. The caretakers then sealed the vault up, all in silence, and that was that. In a year and a day, the vault would reopen, and Remy’s corpse would have turned to ash.
After his burial, many of the witches of New Orleans gathered at the Scarlet Cat where he wanted us to have one last drink on him. It made sense. He wasn’t the kind of guy to have wanted a group of somber witches, all clad in black and circled around his vault, watching his body get interred like a pizza into an oven. He wanted a celebration, with alcohol, merriment, and most of all, Jazz.
And that’s exactly what we gave him.
A live band was playing some of his favorite Jazz tunes, plates of boiled crawfish were being served by the dozen, and the bar was churning out Hurricanes like it was Mardi Gras. The only problem were the people. Everywhere I looked, no one seemed to be enjoying themselves. In fact, the people in the club were almost as still and as quiet as statues, drinking their alcohol and eating, but not talking to anyone else.