La Luxure: Discover Your Blood Lust by Cd Hussey Page B

she
begged. "Just talk to me. I have so many questions. I'll pay
you."
    "I don't want your money. It's tainted."
    "What are you talking about?" Julia said
exasperated. "I haven't done anything."
    Finally, he turned towards her. "But you
will. I've seen what you become."
    "And what is that?"
    "Even to speak of the most unholy act brings
bad luck." He shook his head and spit on the ground next to her.
"Don't play dumb, you know what you're getting into, I see it in
your heart."
    "This is ridiculous."
    "You know what happened to that girl, don't
you? You saw her the night she died."
    "How -?"
    He smiled at her shocked expression. "I saw
it in my tea leaves."
    This entire conversation was like a page from
some bad sci-fi book.
    "Just stay away from me," he said with firm
finality, spitting on the ground again. He flashed the "horn"
gesture at her, fingers pointed downward, before turning and
disappeared into the crowd.
    Julia rolled her eyes. So much for getting
answers.
    She glanced around at the few fortune tellers
set up near her. Maybe one of them would share a little insight.
Except every time Julia managed to catch their gazes, each and
every one immediately, and very deliberately, looked away.
    "Fine," she said out loud to them, not caring
that she probably looked like a loon since no one was actually
looking at her, and she was talking into the air. "Whatever. I'll
find my answers somewhere else."
    She headed towards the cathedral and sat on
one of the metal benches facing the entrance to the massive,
off-white church. What a pain in the ass. Couldn't the fortune
teller just give her one direct answer? Like, "Aaack, you're going
to turn into a vampire!" Or, "You will meet a sexy vampire and fall
for him." Or even, "You are a crazy bitch, filled with delusional
fantasies about said, sexy vampires." Instead, she got some vague
mention of an unholy act. For all she knew, this unholy act could be sex before marriage or a hit off a bong.
    The jazz band kicked into another peppy tune,
but it didn't help her sour mood. The problem was, Julia was really
beginning to believe Armand might be something more than human, and
that Eve, or Melissa, had met her fate by someone like him. But she
felt like such an idiot for even considering it. So what if there
were tons of clues indicating that possibility might be the truth.
So what if random people seemed to be confirming it as well. No
reasonable person believed in vampires.
    Julia sighed. No reasonable, close-minded
person believed in vampires, she corrected. There were plenty of
things in this world proven to be fact that "reasonable" people
didn't use to believe in. Dark matter, black holes, a round earth,
water on Mars, Sasquatch...
    Okay, so maybe Sasquatch was a bit of a
stretch, but there was some pretty compelling evidence on-line that
made Julia wonder and she wouldn't be the least bit surprised if
hard evidence suddenly surfaced.
    Whatever, it really didn't matter. As silly
as it seemed, she couldn't confirm or deny the existence of
vampires. And even if thinking they might actually exist made her
feel foolish, she couldn't ignore the evidence.
    But what evidence did she have? A few folk tales, a
dead girl drained of blood, a guy that "acted" like a vampire and
shunned the sun, some silly fortune teller? She might as well
derive her conclusions from one of those gossip magazines in the
checkout line at the grocery store.
    " Woman gives birth to alien
baby ..."
    Julia sighed again. Here she was in one of
the most beautiful cities in the US obsessing over something
completely inane. Couldn't she just enjoy the brass band, flirt
with the cute guy at the seminar, drink a damn Hurricane without
bitching about it, visit the Louisiana State Museum...?
    The tan building that butted up to the
cathedral with thick columns and sweeping archways caught her
attention for the first time. Taking in a museum was a great idea,
and the perfect thing to distract her trivial mind.
    Julia rose