BENEATH THE CRESCENT MOON

by Aleta Boudreaux (Copyright 2007)

Someone wanted to kill me. I had no proof, just an odd feeling of doom in the pit of my stomach.

Your life is supposed to pass before your eyes the instant before you die, except my past had been lingering in my thoughts, plaguing my dreams. Something was going to happen to change my life. Someone was going to kill me, or at least make the effort.

It didn’t help that since I’d left the Café du Monde and passed the deserted flagstone mall behind Jackson Square that my steps had been shadowed. My stalker was skillful, clever, disappearing when I turned around.

If I believed in the supernatural, I’d have sworn a phantom was following me. But, I believed only in the here and now, that the dead were simply dead and the living were the only creatures threatening our survival.

It was foolish to wander the French Quarter alone, especially with my premonition of doom. But in the hours just before of dawn, when reality is suspended in time, only the truly decadent haunt the streets of New Orleans and I can’t resist being among them. It’s my favorite phase of the night, when illusive sleep is the drug of choice.

I pushed aside the dead flowers and black candle offerings on the sidewalk and punched in the code numbers on lock of the iron gate leading into my courtyard. The gate moaned on ancient hinges when it swung it open, then the Voudou charms and Mardi Gras beads adorning it jingled as they hit the metal. These were gifts from my fans, tokens of appreciation for the dark fantasy and erotica that flowed from my imagination.

My readers, from gothic youth to daydreaming housewives, claimed to adore me, though I knew it was the characters in my books that enthralled them. They could live vicariously through the pages of my books and never leave the safety of their homes.

I stole a final glance over my shoulder. No one was following me. No specter hid in the shadows. No mugger with a knife or gun.

Sighing with relief, I slipped into safety. I’d successfully gathered another night of ideas and I’d eluded death one more time. Or had I?

The lights lining the cobblestone pathway and circling the central cascading fountain were out. There were no lights on in my downstairs tenant’s apartment or in my rooms upstairs. My pulse quickened.

I side-stepped away from the gate and leaned against the cool stucco wall that separated my life from the streets of the Vieux Carré. Flickering light cast from the gas lamps on the street threw odd patterns into the courtyard. Wind whipped shadows scurried like deformed creatures along the ground and wide-winged phantoms flew in the treetops.

Closing my eyes for an instant, I tried to still my heartbeat and my imagination. I listened to the slow trickle of water in the fountain and took a deep breath. There were reasonable answers to the odd darkness. I didn’t need to panic.

Anything could cause the lights to be out in a hundred year old building. Faulty wiring, blown light bulbs. It was nearing dawn. The courtyard’s light timer might be slightly off track.

All these were sound reasons. Yet, I couldn’t make my body move. The darkness between the gate and my stairway seemed like a mile.

Only Jesse, my downstairs tenant, and I knew the new pass code, and the courtyard gate had been locked. Gathering my wits I stepped away from the wall and stumbled my way down the sidewalk toward his apartment. "Jesse." I pounded on his door. "It’s Erika. Wake up."

When there was no answer, I realized he was probably working the morning shift at the police station, getting ready for the Mardi Gras crowds that would descend on the Crescent City in a matter of days.

There was nothing else to do but chance the darkness or wait in Jesse’s doorway until dawn. Feeling silly about my fears, I stepped away from the building.

A shadow stirred in front of me, then a high pitched screech rang out above my head. I took a frightened step back just as the courtyard’s lights flickered to life.

I looked around. I was the only human standing inside the high walled area. I heard a meow and a bird’s echoing call then Mieux, my calico cat, ran to greet me. I realized she’d been chasing the runaway parrot that had taken up in my courtyard a few days earlier.

God, I really needed some sleep.

I picked up Mieux and climbed the stairs to my apartment,

adrenaline still racing through my veins. I knew I’d be up now until daylight.

Mieux hopped onto the bed and swiped at a small padded envelope with her paws. She was nearly frantic, flicking her long tail with anticipation as though wondering why my curiosity hadn’t killed me yet.

The truth was, I had no interest in seeing what my father had sent me. It was the first communication from him since I’d moved to the French Quarter in New Orleans five years ago.

The package, shipped priority overnight from Canada, had been sitting unopened on my bedside table for nearly a week. I hadn’t been ready to resurrect that part of my life.

"Go ahead," I said, as I placed my jacket over the back of the sofa. "Open it if you can’t stand it any longer."

With the cat’s final swat the package landed on the floor and she pounced on it, wrapping her furry body around her prey. Mieux glanced at me over the edge of the package, then grabbed it with her teeth and back claws and ripped it open. The fiber padding flew around her, covering her with a dusting of gray debris.

Mission accomplished, Mieux walked out of the room.

I sighed, looking at a small white box sitting in the middle of my rug. My past was staring me in the face. I couldn’t hide from it any longer

****

"You’re looking in the wrong place for ideas. You need to be more careful wandering the streets. One of these mornings someone really nasty is going to follow you home."

My friend Helena sat across from me at the marble topped table in the Café Du Monde. Words of warning rolled off her tongue in a soft and easy Louisiana drawl. "You need to take another lover to keep you home at night."

To Helena this statement was a matter-of-fact, like lovers were something one picked up at the French Market along with a string of garlic or cheap T-shirts. She was convinced her insight into the human psyche, especially my psyche, was indisputable. No one would dare argue with her but me.

I took a sip of my rich, chicory flavored café au lait then set it down on the table. "A new lover is not a complication I need."

Helena shrugged, lit a cigarette and blew the smoke away from the table. "Suit yourself."

We’d been sitting in the café for nearly an hour, nursing our coffee and beignets, and I was beginning to feel insecure behind my dark glasses. I didn’t go out in public during the day, especially with Helena. Tall, amply endowed, and always dressed in flowing robes and lavish silk scarves, she drew attention from tourists. She had the look of an Earth Mother goddess and played the part to perfection, gathering around her a flock of women who doted on her every word. To compliment her generous Trust Fund income, Helena taught meditation and gave psychic readings for the socialites Uptown in the Garden District. She practiced her own style of spirituality, mixing and matching whatever religions suited her purpose.

"Why do you think I need to take another man into my life? Are you tired of sharing Henri with me?" I asked.

Henri was Helena’s older brother. He and I had a unique relationship. We were friends and occasional bed partners. We slept together, played together but lived our separate lives with no commitment other than the bond of friendship between us. The arrangement suited us both.

"No, not at all," Helena continued. "You keep him occupied and out of my business." Drops of creamy liquid slid down her coffee spoon as she shook it in my direction. "But you should consider a change."

"Has Henri said something?" We had a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy between us when it came to our very private lives, but I still wanted to know where I stood. "I haven’t spoken to him this week. Is he seeing someone?"

Helena stabbed her cigarette into the small metal ashtray. "He doesn’t tell me much about his love life. I suppose he thinks I’d tell you what he’s doing. He’s a free man after all." A mist of powdered sugar escaped from the tops of the sugary beignet as she took a bite of her doughnut.

Helena was right. I had no hold on Henri, nor he on me. He dated other women and I dated other men, but her suggestion that I look for a new lover was out of the question. "I may write about casual sex, but you know I don’t sleep around."

Helena chuckled, her mood seemed to lighten. She peeked at me over the top of her large red sunglasses as she licked the sugar from her fingers. Bright auburn hair slid against her cheeks. "The right man just hasn’t captured your interest, Honey." Her smooth Louisiana drawl slipped out of her mouth like spun sugar.

I fished another sugar packet from the china bowl on the table and tried to keep from thinking about my past. I once had the right man. He was kind, generous, and passionate. His generosity and passion had cost him his life and had made me a different person.

I took a sip of my coffee but it had grown cold. The bitter chicory taste, like Helena’s suggestion of finding another lover, had too sharp an edge.

Helena sighed, took off her glasses and swung them idly by the handles. "It was worth a thought. I’m just concerned about you. You keep hanging around with Henri and you’ll end up an old spinster, living in the French Quarter with lots of cats and wondering where your life went wrong."

"Thanks for the prophetic image." Helena was right. It had been over five years since I’d moved to the French Quarter and I was still in the same place, looking for love while I wrote about men and women with fatal character flaws and deadly passions.

"You’re thirty-six, Erika. You’ve sold the movie rights to your last book. You’ve got money and fame, but sooner or later you’ll have to venture out into the real world again and find a life partner."

"Not today." I looked up to the sky, searching for an excuse. "I need to concentrate on my writing, I’ve got a deadline."

"If it wasn’t for Henri and me, you’d have no social life at all. You need to cut the computer’s umbilical cord and get out of that apartment."

Until today Helena hadn’t known about my late night prowling of the French Quarter or how I often walked until the bars and restaurants closed and the street lamps dimmed for dawn. I was addicted to gathering information, stealing scraps of reality like the vampires in my novels steal the souls of their prey.

"What about you?" I asked. "You don’t date much anymore. What will you do about a life partner?"

Helena smiled at me. "Well, the way things are going, I’ll have to take care of you and Henri and all your cats." She shook her spoon at me. "But you’re going to start an affair with a handsome man soon. I’ve read it in the cards." She laughed. "You should go down to St. Martinville. I bet your grandmother could set you up with just the right Cajun. I can see you now, babies, and beer, and LSU football games on the weekends."

I grimaced. "Id rather have the cats."

"Why don’t you come stay with me Uptown? I can introduce you to unmarried men with seven figure bank accounts. Men who prefer polo to football and Moèt to Miller Lite. You wouldn’t believe the people who come to my séances."

"Thanks, but I’ll have to pass." Much as I loved her, I stayed away from Helena’s séances and psychic healing sessions. I didn’t want the ghosts of my past to have an open invitation to visit. "Besides, you’d get tired of me after a few days and I’d never get any work done at your house."

Helena knew I could write anywhere, but I preferred to hide in the heart of New Orlean’s French Quarter. Behind the high wrought iron gates and pastel colored stucco walls of my apartment, it was easy to coax the ghosts and gremlins hidden in my subconscious into the pages of my novels. I was content.

I ran my fingers over the carved jade pendant hanging from a long chain around my neck. Flat and rectangular shaped, it was the carved head of a woman wearing a feathered headdress and large looped earrings. The pale green jade was smooth and cool, like a sedative, comforting to the touch. "I’ve almost finished the new novel. I only have to write the last few chapters and send it off to my agent."

Helena didn’t seem to hear me. "Is that your mother’s necklace? The one your father sent you?"

I sighed, wrapping my fingers around the hard stone, as if doing so would somehow connect me with my mother. She’d been dead since I was twelve years old. "I finally found the courage to take it out of the box. I couldn’t believe it when Dad sent it to me. I’d nearly forgotten it existed."

"Really?"

I nodded. "The note he sent with it said he came across it in a box when he moved to Canada after the flood." I didn’t tell Helena there was no ‘I miss you’ or ‘I love you’ on the note, just: ‘I found this in a box when I unpacked. Thought you should have it.’ They were cold words, but I expected nothing more. My father, Luis Perin, a survivor of Hurricane Katrina, had lost his home and had relocated to Canada. We hadn’t been close since my mother’s death. I was an only child and after my mother died, I’d attended boarding schools in other cities, lived in college dorms out of state and moved to France for graduate school.

"The pendant has been passed down through the women in my family for generations." I unfastened the necklace and handed it to Helena. "My father should have sent it to my grandmother when he found it. It belonged to her before my mother died."

"Oh, you should keep it." Helena turned the pendant over and looked at the mirrored carving on the back. She ran her fingers over the smooth stone, tracing the image. "It is fascinating. What’s its history?"

"The family legend says that one of our ancestors, a healer, traveled with the Spanish Conquistadors to the New World. He saved the life of a Mayan priest and was given this jade pendant in gratitude. As long as it’s in one piece, it’s supposed to give the wearer special powers.

Helena handed the pendant back to me. "How special?"

"Since I’ve received it I’ve been writing non-stop. My characters are coming to me in my dreams." I laughed. "Of course it’s the pressure of my editor’s deadlines, not some mythical power."

"Honey, if it’s working why mess with a good thing? Maybe you can conjure up a few good looking men for us."

"You know I don’t believe in magic," I whispered.

"Of all the people I know, you’re the one person who should believe in the occult. You write about it. Your mother was a great spiritual healer, a traiteur. Your grandmother still is. How can you not believe?"

"Spiritualism is not my specialty," I said. "I’m a story teller, not a palm reader."

"Let’s have a séance," she said with excitement. "It’ll inspire you."

Helena was famous around the area for the séances she held at her home. The wealthy and the desperate came to her to seek guidance and resolution with their lost loved ones. I’d attended her gathering only once and she gave a good show. She believed in what she was doing, and so did her patrons.

"No, no séances!" I said. "Once was enough. The paparazzi bothered me for weeks afterward, wanting to know if my inspiration came from the ‘other side’."

Helena shrugged and leaned back from the table. "I think you should consider it. We’ll conjure up that Mayan priest and get the real story on the pendant."

Past caring if someone noticed me, I took off my glasses and pushed my unruly brown curls back from my face. I only half-listened to her ramblings as I watched the tourists stroll in and out of the small shops lining Decatur Street, noting the intricate details of their dress and behavior.

That’s what I do for a living. I steal bits and pieces of peoples’ ordinary lives, blend them together, color them with intrigue, then regenerate them into characters in my novels.

My gaze shifted past the wrought iron banister surrounding the cafe and toward the corner where a group of young people gathered, talking and smoking, and waiting impatiently to cross over to Jackson Square.

Most were in their late teens and early twenties, dressed in a mixture of long black cloaks, black leather clothing, silver chains, boots, and multi-colored hair. They looked like my fans, shaped, dressed and guided by my fantasies, lost in a dark world that existed on paper, on film, and in my imagination.

It was the waist length, dark hair of one of the youths that caught my attention. A gust of cool breeze swept from the Mississippi River over the nearby levee and whipped the dark mane into wispy tendrils. It was only when the person turned and cast an amused look in the direction of the offending wind that I realized the beautiful tresses belonged to a man.

He wore a fashionable black ankle-length trench coat, a dark purple shirt and black pants. Unlike the unfettered youth around him, he carried an artist’s portfolio under one arm.

Several moments passed as he waited for the early morning traffic to break its unending stream of chrome and steel. Then, as though drawn by my gaze, he turned and looked into the café.

A smile crossed his face as our eyes met and in that instant I felt a sensuous warning that left me wanting to know more.

He nodded acknowledgment only a second before he began to walk toward the café. The breeze lifted his hair and pressed the long coat around his body. His shape seemed to waver from male to female, strong to subtle, yet he was unmistakably masculine. The energy he projected pulled at my soul like a dark phantom from my past. I shivered.

Oh God, I’d done it again. I’d captured someone with my web of curiosity. I hoped he wouldn’t want to sit and make inane conversation about vampires, living in perpetual darkness or courting death as a way of survival.

"I didn’t realize you knew David." Helena’s enthusiastic words shattered my panic. "He came to one of my séances last week. He’s one of the brightest new artists in the Quarter." She leaned slightly toward me and whispered. "A bit on the dangerous side I’ve heard. Sexy. Artistic. Just right for you."

"Not interested." I swallowed the knot in my throat and reached for my bag. I was leaving.

Helena placed her hand on my arm, gently holding me back. "I’ll bet that pendant of yours pulled him to us," she said, shaking her head. "At your age, you shouldn’t let any opportunity pass you by."

He was nearer now. It would be rude to simply leave. I sank back into my chair. "I’m definitely taking off this necklace and sending it to my grandmother."

The urge to look at him was irresistible and I watched as he laced his way through the maze of tourists. I cleared my throat, wondering if there would be any way to refuse a man whose simple glance sent an instant chill up my spine. A man whose lean form and graceful stride reminded me of another time and another place.

"I don’t have time to get involved. No time and no desire." I cast a final warning glance at Helena and she released my arm.

"Well you’d better make time."

Archetype of the new Southern woman, Helena slid a chair out beside her, offering the young man a seat. He smiled and lowered himself to the chair with all the elegance and grace of a dancer. I glimpsed the ragged edges of watercolor paper in his portfolio and the shiny texture of photographs as he leaned it against an empty chair.

He glanced briefly at me then turned to Helena. "Señorita, a pleasure to see you again." His voice matched his composure. Intriguing. Exotic. A cosmopolitan voice. I couldn’t place his accent. It sounded like a patois from a small island or perhaps a dialect from the Spanish countryside.

He lifted Helena’s hand, brushing a kiss across its back. Over her hand his gaze locked with mine in a look that went past my eyes and straight into my soul. His dark, violet eyes were set proudly in his exquisitely chiseled face. His hair, once tossed by the wind, now lay perfect on his shoulders. When he extended his hand, I took it, and he placed his other hand on top of mine. Though he held it gently, a dynamic force rushed through me.

"David Argent, at your service, Señorita Perin."

I wasn’t surprised that he knew who I was, but I was shocked by my feelings. It was as though one of my characters had stepped out of my imagination and walked into real life. He was the type of hero I wrote about, sensitive, seductive and often deadly.

I knew then that keeping this man out of my life, and my bed, was going to be difficult.

****

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