Typical
, Charlotte thought.
Truly fucking typical.
It was bad enough trying to hold down a job as a waitress in a shitty restaurant in the Quarter, without the busses deciding not to run in the middle of the night. She couldnât exactly walk home; her apartment was almost two miles away and her feet were already killing her. Unfortunately, no better ideas were coming to mind. She could go and find a friendly tarot reader and make him (or her) even friendlier, but sheâd recently broken up with one of them and the rumors about her had started. Rumors are hard to quell around here, no matter the source.
Thinking about breaking up with Gladerunner only made her disposition worse. He was a prick, no bones about it.
Goddammit, I let him fuck me up the ass.
Charlotte had been living with Glade for seven months before he kicked her out, and the lengths to which she had gone to make him happy were very high as far as she was concerned. Sitting there in the cold recesses of Bourbon thinking about this wasnât helping. She had to get to her shitty apartment on the other side of town and bitching about it wasnât going to do any good. She decided to torture her feet a little more. There were no other options. She got up from the dilapidated bench and started the long stretch home.
From nearly a block away, it stood from itâs own perch on the rooftops and started keeping pace. Nearly consumed with hunger, the thing would feed tonight. No more waiting, no more morality issues, no more denying. Its prey had been chosen, and only an act from a god it no longer believed in would stop it from taking her. Tonight, it began, and there was no turning back. Not for either one of them. Dressed in a T-shirt, khakis and sneakers, she didnât look like a whore. It hated whores. Filthy thingsâŚ.
Itâs amazing the things one thinks about when walking a long distance without a soul in sight. Charlotte knew she was a slut. There was a time when she was proud of it, but those days were long passed. She was convinced that no one had lived as much a hard-knock life as she had, but it wasnât made better by the fact that no one cared. No one ever cared. The only thing anyone ever cared about concerning Charlotte was when sheâd sleep with them. A half smile crossed her face as she remembered the lyrics. â
She only knows when someone wants her.â Hmm. Maybe she and I should get together sometime over coffee.
She was so wrapped up in her own thoughts and physical pain that she forgot what part of town she had to walk through to get home: the Eighth Ward. The last thought that passed through her head, ironically, was that there wasnât a soul she could think of that would give a flying fuck towards a rolling doughnut if she up and vanished.
âAre you lost, little girl?â
Despite the initial fear of hearing an unexpected voice from a direction she couldnât confirm, Charlotte was still made of nails and broken glass. âIâm not a little girl, asshole. Iâm 20, for your information.â
All that and you keep walking. Maybe your screaming feet will pay off after all, girl
, she mused to herself.
âI wouldnât count on that. Pain will only slow you down right now. And I can follow you no matter where you run.â It was enjoying this. Why had it waited this long? Two hundred yearsâŚand it felt so much better already. It was finally happening.
Charlotte stopped dead in her tracks. The fear welling up in her nearly drove her to the depths of insanity right then and there. Where was he? Who was he? How many times had he done this? The thought that no media stories had been told about anything recently frightened her even more. If he had done this more than once, no one knew, which meant no one had survived. The fact that he had just responded to her thoughts didnât rise to the surface just yet.
âWhat do you want?â she asked the dark voice as she turned and looked around, terror in her eyes.
âWell, now, why donât you take a guess, little girl?â
The fear was only slightly pushed at by the anger of being called that again. But she wasnât about to get confrontational with an assailant she couldnât see. âIâd rather not. If itâs money you want, I donât have much. If itâs sex you want, pleaseâŚIâm not the best find you can get. Iâve been around the block.â Her feeble attempt to divert his sexual attention succeeded only in embarrassing herself.
It had to laugh at this. The infernal growl in its laughter nearly drove its prey to run. But she wasnât going anywhere it could catch up to her. âWhat makes you think that? You may have âbeen around the blockâ, as you say, but youâve wandered around the wrong block. Besides, werenât you chuckling inside just a moment ago about how no one would notice if you justâŚâ It waited to see if she would finish the sentence.