My only Christmas story to date, and of course it’s about a vampire. The short story was written in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina was still weighing heavily on everyone’s mind.
Enjoy the snippet. And Happy Holiday!
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Noelle Moyaux questions her gift of sight until a chance encounter with a mysterious stranger sets her on a path to save his soul.
Magnus Thornton is a millennium-old vampire who has found evidence of an old foe’s evil at work in the demolished city of New Orleans. Weary of the fight, he decides to greet the coming dawn after a night reveling in his favorite things–a bottle of Bordeaux and a willing woman.
Noelle seems the answer, but she quickly creeps into his heart-the vampire, so jaded from life he never speaks, must now persuade Noelle to flee the city before it’s too late.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Noelle Moyaux flicked off the battery-powered Christmas lights that ringed her metal cart, folded her purple tablecloth into a small tidy square and tucked it and the folding table inside the cart before latching the lid closed.
She wheeled the cart across the busy street and waved to her friend Gerard, the owner of a small Cajun restaurant. Continuing around the back of the eatery, she stowed her palmistry kiosk in the storage unit she’d rented from Gerard since before the troubles.
Today’s earnings were slim, despite the unseasonably warm weather that allowed the thin-blooded residents of the city to roam the streets in light jackets. No one believed in a future amid the chaos—and some questioned her ability since she’d received no divination of the coming catastrophe. Indeed, Noelle questioned her gift daily as she sat beneath her umbrella in front of the embroidered cloth advertising “Noelle’s News”.
If not for the little nest egg of money she’d saved from substitute teaching before the flood, she’d be in dire straits.
Clutching her purse close to her side, she headed down the street toward home.
One last night. One last chance to lose myself in The Hunger, a fine glass of wine and the body of a willing woman. Before my last sunrise—the first I will see in nearly a thousand years…
Noelle heard the quiet, fleeting thought as she passed through the crowd ambling along Bourbon Street and spun to find the owner. The inner voice that accompanied the thought was masculine and raspy. Added to the familiar spark of connection when her skin had brushed against his was a wash of the blackest melancholy she’d ever sensed. It nearly drowned her in despair.
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