Chapter 11
THE LONG LIFE OF CASSIUS DELACROIX
I HAD NEVER LOVED A man before, not in my vampire life, at least. Abandoned by my father, cast out to the consuming streets of New Orleans during a time when survival was no easy feat, even if you came from the most privileged of lifestyles.
He sat at the end of the bar, shouting his name. “I’m Bastian DeZaiffe, dream weaver, life-giver, fairy godmother!”
With a closed fist, he pounded the bar top for another round. The woman next to him smiled, a tall thing with beautiful legs, and he wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her to him tightly.
Bastian DeZaiffe…French, of course he was French, and perhaps that’s why I was initially drawn to him.
The French were a dime a dozen on the streets of New Orleans, but not quite as much in a random bar in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco.
There was every kind of race and creed within the walls, and that’s one thing I loved about California.
The southern ways of my beloved New Orleans could be stifling, so I went west in the summers so I could breathe.
Curious why this Bastian exclaimed he was a dream weaver, I sat in silence amongst the scent of stale beer, analyzing, eyeing Bastian’s every move.
Reckless, he was absolutely reckless. The way he pressed against the girl, how he consumed her when he kissed her.
My lip rose with a jealousy that tantalized me.
To be so free, so jovial, that was not who I was, but more who I longed to be.
My fangs ached in my gums, the desire for his blood capturing me. I often fed from what I was jealous of, so it surprised me I longed to stay.
“Get a room,” a man yelled from a stool before me, and I rolled my eyes.
Envy made men act out, and Bastian was the type to command all the attention in the room.
Though sloppily drunk, DeZaiffe possessed a beauty, an authenticity that I wished I could emulate just for a night, just to experience how that felt. To be so free.
The man grumbled, stomping up to this Bastian and his female companion, but before anyone could step in, Bastian cocked a large fist back and sent it straight into the man’s nose.
I scoffed, covering my mouth with my hand, a wicked smile curling on my lips, completely invested in how this would play out.
I calmly watched as Bastian was swiftly pulled out of the bar and thrown atop the hood of a taxicab. I found it amusing, I did, but the fight wasn’t exactly fair. The gargantuan bouncer had at least four inches on Bastian, and double that in width.
“Bastian DeZaiffe sleeps with gutter rats,” the bouncer proclaimed as Bastian slid down the front of the taxi, reminiscent of how an egg slides from a spatula, his body plopping in the street.
I approached him under the glow of the neon bar sign, hands in my pockets, as Bastian rolled over and vomited closer to my shoes than I would have liked. I bounced back, meeting eyes with Bastian’s girl. I thought she would bend over and help her man up, but she only giggled.
“He can never hold his liquor.” Her voice was deeper than I thought it would be, rich like butter.
“I’ve learned that liquor is a terribly hard thing to hold,” I said as the man writhed on the floor.
“Yeah,” she said softly, eyes looking at Bastian in a forlorn way. “Yeah, I guess it is. Guess you can’t fix someone just cause you want to.” She nodded, coming to some sudden philosophical conclusion in her mind, then spun on her heel, taking off down the street.
“Well, shit…” I groaned as Bastian rolled on his back.
“Shar?” Bastian yelled, eyes on the heavens. “Shar?” His head attempted to roll up.
“Shar left,” I said, licking my lips and kneeling next to Bastian.
Green eyes, dark hair, yellowed skin. And I smelled it immediately.
The sick permeated from him. Too young for liver damage, yet there it was.
Vampires can’t generally diagnose disease, but I’ve been around long enough to know the signs.
Yellow where his eyes should be white, an odor of unwell blood.
I desired him as a meal, but sick blood is far from appetizing, so I expected to be completely put off.
Bastian’s hand shook, and there was a puffiness to his face, as beautiful as it was.
The young man was ill, something irreversible.
His liver would fail and eventually claim him, and it made me melancholy on a whole new level, as if something was just within my grasp and then suddenly gone.
Vanished. Never to return. Because I wanted him—not in a sexual way, not in a romantic way.
Yet it was a desire not only for his blood but for his essence.
I wanted to know what his beauty tasted like.
A devotion stirred inside me I couldn’t put a name to or recognize.
“You’re sick,” I said as Bastian wiped spit from his chin, head pressed on the cool cement.
“No shit.”
“I mean, you’re really sick. Possibly terminal.
Do you know what that means?” I was known for asking impossible questions, a trait I was familiar with and accepted.
I enjoyed making people squirm, seeing the shock on their faces.
But Bastian didn’t squirm, didn’t look shocked.
He just licked his lip, heavy-lidded, and stared straight into my eyes.
“We’re all sick. Dying a little every day.” Bastian’s voice was raspy, the acidic vomit undoubtedly burning his throat.
“Most of us.” My long hair hung over Bastian’s face, as I took him in. “Perhaps you should eat.”
“How ’bout vodka?” Oh, he reeked of vomit and liquor, and I had to pull away from him to keep from gagging.
“How about some food?”
I took him to a diner, where he swayed as he spoke, pushing French fries in ketchup and missing his mouth fifty percent of the time. I was forced to stare at a grown man with ketchup everywhere on his face but his mouth.
“Where do you live?” I asked, presenting a napkin and pushing his cup of water closer to his hand.
A slow smile graced his wet mouth, yet his eyes looked nothing but solemn. He had a scar on his forehead I deduced was likely from another bar scuffle. “I live quite a ways…away.” He laughed at that, taking a sip of water. “I was supposed to stay at Shar’s.”
“I can get you there. What’s the address?” What was I saying? Why did I care about a drunk getting someplace safely?
“Yeah, she never told me. So I guess that’s unfortunate. Got a car...somewhere.”
“How did the two of you wind up at the bar?”
“I have no idea.” He chuckled, shaking his head. What was it like to be so carefree? To not be so controlled? It was something I had pondered for years. Humans like this always perplexed and enthralled me.
I clasped my hands in front of me and considered walking out. Leaving this pathetic spirit close to where I found him. But then he smiled at me, this ridiculous goofy smile, so I leaned in and spoke forcefully.
“You are a lost soul. And so am I. I call them when I see them. What are you doing with your life?” I was intrigued, curious if mortality had given him something worth living for. Perhaps he was an artist, a philanthropist, or a scientist on the verge of discovering something spectacular.
He looked up at me then, wiping the ketchup from his face, leaving a tiny red droplet on his chin, like a trace of sweet blood. “Well, I’m merely surviving, sir. Slogging day to day through the most dreadful yet glorious gift one gets. I am simply surviving.”
The combination of his pitiful face and his answer impaled my heart.
It wasn’t poetry. It wasn’t a theoretical response to a question about one’s purpose.
But it was real. And we relate most to what’s real, don’t we?
My own answer would be identical. I am surviving.
I am simply making it day-to-day. So complicated yet so simple.
I cleared my throat, twisting the malachite ring on my pinky. “Surviving isn’t a winner’s sport, is it?”
“It’s not. Eventually, everyone loses.” He smiled, the corner of his mouth lifting, and there was something innocent there, something deeply benevolent.
“Don’t I look like a winner to you?” It was riddled with sarcasm, yet Bastian Dezaiffe had a vulnerability to him, a gentility I rarely saw in other men.
He was mostly right. If you lose the game of survival, you’ve died. But that wasn’t my reality.
“I appreciate you getting me food. It was needed.”
I bowed my head, acknowledging his gratitude as he continued to speak.
“What’s your name?”
“Cassius Delacroix.”
“I’m Bastian DeZaiffe.” His eyebrows lifted, as if we had some kind of brotherhood, two men of French backgrounds in the melting pot of America. “Is your French father an asshole too?” He laughed, and my mouth pulled into a smirk.
“The worst.”
“To French asshole fathers,” he said, lifting his water glass and drinking it. “Are you from around here, Cassius?” He finally wiped the speck of ketchup from his chin with his napkin.
“I’m from New Orleans,” I said, the mention of my city brightening his eyes.
“I’ve heard of Storyville,” he whispered as if any listening San Franciscan would be appalled.
“The red-light district of New Orleans? The war forced its closure years ago. But there is still much fun to be had. Burlesque shows, dinner shows, jazz. You should come sometime,” I said, wanting desperately to offer to bring him back with me like he were some sort of souvenir.
But he wasn’t, he was a grown man. I could not save him.
Of the thousands of people I had met in my ancient life, there were a few that left a mark on me, that held my attention for even this long.
Bastian DeZaiffe was one of them. I wanted to see him again, but time was not on my side.
I needed to feed, and the sun would be up soon, and after a long sleep, I had to make it back to New Orleans.
A patron walked into the diner, the scent of their sweet blood causing my stomach to roil, so I gathered myself for a moment, then spoke with a sigh,
twisting my wrist to look at my watch. “I must go.”
“No, let me buy you a drink,” he said, and I laughed at that.
“I think you’ve had enough for the night, don’t you?”
Looking down to his plate, his face turned serious. “It’s never enough.”
I inhaled, smelling the alcohol in his blood, feeling the flutter of his heart.
He would die at the rate he was going. But there was nothing I could do about it.
I learned many years ago, you can’t fix people just because you want them not to be broken.
But you could still offer help, and then Fats Domino played on the jukebox, and I took it as a sign.
“If you ever find yourself in New Orleans, this is where I’ll be.” I handed him my card for the bar my mother and I ran, a speakeasy in the French Quarter.
He held it between his fingers, sobriety taking hold of him more and more.
“Comey’s,” he read from the card.
“That’s the bar we own on Bourbon Street. Just say ‘Nosferatu’ to whomever is at the bar, and they will lead the way to the speakeasy.”
He repeated the password, his inebriation not allowing him to grasp the word he was probably familiar with. The word that would come to mean everything to him, much as it was the definition of who I was. Nosferatu.
Vampire.