dhampir seeing thousands of years ahead. Her brother once brought a man back to life after drinking his healer blood. Whatever made their victim great made the dhampir greater, for a while.
But though they didn’t need blood, too long without it and they felt somehow less than... less than their best, than themselves. Diminished was the word her grandfather used. And he was right… she often did wait until she was already diminished before drinking, and that made her sloppy. It caused her to choose victims poorly and kill them ineptly. It left witnesses.
The man in her trunk continued his orchestra of panic against the back lights of her car. She wasn’t as worried about that now. They were out of New Orleans, past Kenner, and heading toward the bayou, where she could sort this problem properly.
Her grandfather had emphasized her whole life, both before and after she became a blood drinker, that there were more of “them” than vampires. Dhampir were not like the vampires of myth. They were an ancient race, their life gifted from the font of the Master’s Tree. It was there that dhampir were born, and died. Those two things worked in tandem, as new dhampir could not be created without the end of another. None knew why the Master, whoever he was, kept their numbers finite. Her grandfather seemed to think it was a limit to the magic that made them what they were; that to spread it further would be to dilute it into nothing. But it was only a guess. There were no answers. Only rules.
Too many times she’d threatened to find her own replacement and deliver them to the Master’s Tree, swapping her gift for eternal rest. Each time, her grandfather mistakenly mistook this desperation for loneliness, renewing his search for a husband she could bring into her immortality, unlike her first one.
The other de Blancheforts treated marriage in different ways. Some found mates worthy of the gift, others went through a long line of partners throughout the years. But Elisabeth desired neither. She was horrified at even the thought of bringing another innocent person into the family. For once they were given the secret, they had either the choice of becoming one of them, or death. Which was no choice at all.
At some point, they would run out of dhampir ready and willing to surrender their gift, and there’d be blood wars between them all as they fought for who was worthy to retain the gift, and who should step aside for the new. Victor insisted they were yet far from this happening, but time was a funny thing when you were immortal.
She didn’t want a mate.
What she did want was a replacement.
And as her grandfather loved to remind her, you have but two choices when a man has seen you for what you are.
Turn him.
Kill him.
She was surprised her navigation skills had held so well over the years. A hundred years had passed since her grandfather had taken her here to hunt the infamous Rougarou, the fearsome beast of French Louisianan legend, with the head of a wolf and body of a man. Victor said for a hundred and one days the beast was under sway of the spell forcing him into such an unnatural state, and during that time would kill indiscriminately. Man, woman, child. Tales of infants carried off from cradles were rampant in these parts. Dogs, goats, sometimes even cows, missing from farms or yards. When the spell ended, he retreated to a deep slumber until the curse awakened him once more.
The Rougarou was one of the only natural threats to a dhampir.
But in all the years Victor de Blanchefort had been taking his granddaughter to the small, lean-to cabin deep in the St. Charles Parish bayou, they’d had only one sighting of the foul beast. One and only one.
She parked her car between the two familiar old cypress trees. Back when Victor first took her here, it was a carriage he’d slide into this spot, leaving the horses untethered in case the beast did show. He thought they might be able to outrun it, and deserved that chance, he said. He had more compassion for horses than men.
They’d have to take a boat the rest of the way. Frowning into the gloaming darkness, Elisabeth prayed she still remembered this part, or they’d find themselves victims of an unforgiving midnight swamp. For one unfamiliar with their path, it was a one-way trip.