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True Blood S4

Chapter 21 Cool Zone

Saturday Nite. New Orleans.

It was a beautiful spring evening in New Orleans. The vampire Blackburn sat in the bar in a booth alone, "nursing" a gin and tonic, waiting. It was 7:30 pm and already most of the tables were packed; tourists and locals were crammed on the small dance floor dancing and whooping it up as the lively zydeco band on stage fed their need to party. Blackburn had no feeling for these silly humans, or the music that that was filling the cozy establishment and spilling out into the street. Soon, the two blood bags that had sat near Cromwell and Sewell's abductors would make their appearance and take their regular seats at a table in the middle of the bar.

He had arrived in New Orleans the same night of the meeting and found the two women at their post, on the hunt for men buying drinks and paying attention. He thought of Jessica, suddenly, the fascinating little red-headed baby vampire and King Bill's progeny. Now there was a woman who would never have to resort to being such a blatant attention whore.

He hadn't the time he'd have liked to talk to her after Nan Flanagan's departure, but there was no way he was going to leave Fangtasia without taking the opportunity to do so. She was a curious mix, that one: she looked almost virginal and human, standing in a corner unassumingly in a demure pink tank top, tight jeans and flat sandals, her skin obviously flush from a fresh kill, when all vampires could pass more easily for human. He had been drawn to everything about her, from her long burnished locks to the wicked little upturn at the corner of her mouth as she smiled at him when she thought he was not looking. The silhouette of her body begged for him to reach out and touch her as his eyes drank in the curve of her bare shoulders, her arms, the swell of her thighs in the dark blue jeans that fit her like a second skin, before his gaze traveled down the rest of her long beautiful legs. Yes, I must know that one, he had thought to himself as he caught her gaze finally and smiled a wicked smile at her. They'd made plans to hunt together upon his return to Shreveport and he was anxious to be done with the assignment at hand.

The assignment at hand. He did not need a week to scope these two sorry specimens out. They were two typical human twenty-something females: young, free and under the impression that their fleeting beauty required them to do little more than sit and bat their eyelashes while they sat about in public in various states of undress, unable to think much past the next free drink or the next hard cock between their legs. He truly missed the days when whores looked like whores and not like every other woman walking down the street and vice versa. As if on cue the two women entered the bar. He rose from the booth and signaled a waitress to accompany him to their table.

"Ladies, don't you look lovely this evening?" Both women ate up the handsome vampire with their eyes immediately.

"Thank you," said the one with the blue dye in her black hair and wearing a black dress that looked more like a t-shirt that had been run through a commercial meat grinder—she was Taryn Polk.

"May I buy you both a drink?" he smiled at one and then the other.

"Yes, you may," said the voluptuous brunette sitting across from her friend, who had on an ultra short pleated denim skirt and a white plunging cowl neck halter that was hanging on only by the grace of her small erect nipples, waiting for even a hint of a breeze to set its charges free. "I'll have an apple martini and she'll have a banana daiquiri." Blackburn nodded to the waitress and paid her two with two twenties immediately. The happy waitress dashed off thinking he was just another stupid horny tourist.

"Sit down...what's your name?" asked Sylvia James.

"Blackburn," he said simply as he joined them.

"That's an odd first name, but kinda sexy. Blackburn what?"

"Now, ladies, are last name really required?" he asked with a with a devastatingly knowing smile.

"Well, I guess not. I'm Sylvia," the girl said as she stuck out her hand to shake his, which he took and held as he reached for that of the other young lady.

"I'm Taryn," she said as she took his other hand. Blackburn took them each and kissed them.

"Oh my God, you really aren't from around here, are you?" Taryn blushed. Blackburn could smell the aroma of her blood as it rushed to her cheeks.

Just then the waitress returned with their drinks. She knew the two girls and felt sorry for them as they ate up the smarmy stranger's act. Power to him if they fell for his shit, she thought to herself with a nod of her head as she left them.

"So, Taryn, Sylvia," he began after each of them had taken a sip of their drinks, "I'm on my way to a private party—here in the Quarter...would you both honor me with the pleasure of your company?"

Both women looked knowingly at each other.

"Uh, we know a little something about 'private' parties in the Quarter, Blackburn. How about we just stay here and get our party on?" suggested Taryn with a sly smile.

"Yeah, we're kind of waiting for the next band that's going to play tonight," said Sylvia, almost apologetically. So, Sylvia was the stupid one, he realized. Blackburn took Taryn's hand again in his own and leaned closer across the table towards her and looked her dead in her eyes.

"Taryn, you want to go with me, now," he commanded her as he spoke softly to her.

"I want to go with you, now, Blackburn," she agreed easily.

"Really? Great!" squealed the other girl with delight. Blackburn then took her hand and forced his gaze intently upon her.

""Yes, really, Sylvia. You will both get up now and go with me to my car."

"C'mon, Taryn, let's go," she said, in the trance that she was in, as the three of them rose and walked out into the cool night.

"Again!" he commanded the sultry brunette as he circled her in her chair. "What did the man say about the park?"

"Something about 'it was a shame'...he kept saying it was shame..."

"What was the name of the park? Think, damn you!" he yelled at her.

They'd been at it for three hours already, locked away in a barren cargo hold inside a ship off of Algiers Point.

"I don't know," whimpered Sylvia now, exhausted from the rigorous questioning, her fear rising as the effect of the glamouring was beginning to wear off some.

"Six Flags," said Taryn calmly, sitting beside her. "He said it was a shame about Six Flags New Orleans. The park was destroyed by the storm and has not been restored. It's a scary, abandoned ghost town now."

"When did the man make this comment? Right before the left the bar? Early in conversation? When!" Blackburn demanded.

"Right before they left the bar."

Finally, something. Blackburn let out a sigh of relief. He would have time before sunrise to go with the guards and check the place out.

He grabbed Taryn by the throat with the strength of one hand, lifting her, gasping for air and kicking her feet wildly.

"Under other circumstances I would fuck you both mercilessly first, but unfortunately I don't have that kind of time now..." he hissed into her ear. "Too bad for me...what a pretty little play thing you are..." he said as he tore into her neck, drained her and threw her to the floor when he was done. Blackburn licked his lips salaciously as he turned his attention now to the other. "Mmm, first course down..."

Sylvia, rooted in horror to her chair and in full control of her faculties, screamed as if all the hounds of hell had found her and had come to punish her for all of her sins.

"Oh, I really could have had some fun with you, my Sylvia..." he growled as he advanced upon her. He took her hand and raised her from the chair, then savagely ripped her joke of a blouse away from her full swollen breasts, heaving now as she hyperventilated with fear. "Yes, such a shame that I must content myself with you only as dinner..."

Blackburn cupped her huge, sweet creamy mounds in his hands and kissed each breast, dared to suckle at each tiny little sensitive nipple. Sylvia's fear rose to a whole other level as she tried in vain to pry him off of her, but it was as if she slapping at a hard immovable stone statue.

"Uh, uh, uh," he said only as he looked up at her, still clamped to a nipple; he cradled her in his strong embrace and then bit into her, drinking from her as a babe from its mother.

They arrived at the abandoned park less than an hour later. To humans the place surely looked a fright, like a set designed in the deepest bowels of hell for a zombiepocalypse movie; graffiti scrawled all about and also in some of the most unlikely and inaccessible places; the silhouette of the rusted and dilapidated rides looking unwelcoming against the backdrop of the night sky. But this horrible place was real, and Blackburn, having no such feelings for the place, found the ruin rather charming.

A contingent of guards were posted at the entrance of Main Street and others posted themselves strategically throughout the park as Blackburn set off to start a sweep of the place, using his preternatural speed to search through every accessible building, crack and crevice for what, he did not know. He found hoards of cockroaches in every rest room, their numbers so great that one would not have to be a vampire to hear them teaming about in dark corners and crawling in a frenzy in other areas of the mold and the muck; when he approached the fun house he waved up at the sinister Jester, who was truly now at home in his role as Host and Guide To Your Worst Fucking Nightmares. Blackburn laughed to himself. Hello, friend, he greeted him silently as he raced by and in to the wreck of a building. Nothing. At least, nothing that jumped out at him. He laughed again to himself, crazily. Maybe this horrid place was having an effect on him, after all, he mused to himself.

There seemed be nothing out of the ordinary in the ruin—what had the two abductors been alluding to? The mention of the wretched place had to be a code for something...

Blackburn came upon a shell of a structure being completely taken over by nature, a dead roller coaster looming behind it destined never again to relive its glory days when the park was filled with happy patrons; never again would the happy shrieks and bloodcurdling screams of child and adult, tourist and local alike, fill the park; never again would this place spark the happy memories of visitors—old or new. Blackburn was acquainted with the concept of such a place and for a brief moment he could almost hear those happy shrieks of humans, the whoosh of the roller coasters, the clackety-clack of the wheels upon the track. But it was just his imagination. The place was having an effect on him and the feeling was foreign and unwelcomed. He looked up at the frame of the concrete structure and upon it were the words 'Cool Zone'. Well, what the hell had that been? Impossible to tell, now. He was at the end of his search. He hadn't even known what he could have been looking for. He was about to speed away when he spied a rusty barrel almost completely overtaken by weeds. He went to it, dislodged it and pulled it out into the moonlight, where he might view it better with his own preternatural eye sight. It was most definitely a storage drum, and liquid was still contained in it. On a small patch of the unrusted tin he could barely make out the unmistakable print of a logo and Russian type beneath it.

Well, this was most definitely out of the ordinary. He picked up the drum easily and raced with it back to the waiting guards.

Shreveport. Sunday at sunset.

Blackburn sat at the table, waiting. Damn it, he was always waiting. On that particular evening he was at Fangtasia, waiting for Dr. Ludwig, along with Ginger and Chow, to conclude her initial analysis of the contents in the drum.

She was a crusty old human bitch, but Blackburn had always liked her. She feared nothing and especially not vampires. She had been working with them too long and had also simply seen too much life.

She had worked with the AVL for over sixty years and she was trusted implicitly. Amongst many other things Dr. Ludwig, was a top forensic pathologist. She had worked alongside people such as Thomas Noguchi, the Los Angeles coroner who had handled the case of Marilyn Monroe's 'probable suicide'. It was common knowledge within vampire circles that Monroe had been the pet of a psychotic Cuban vampire and had turned down his invitation to become his vampire bride; she was staging a come back to her career and wanted to live her life. The vampire killed her in a fit of rage. Because she was such a high-profile victim with major political connections and because he had brazenly jeopardized vampire protocols of the time, he was sentenced to the true death. The ensuing chaos around her murder was a result of the need thoroughly contain the details; it had been an extensive exercise in glamouring and manipulation of the media and the government as she was such a huge part of the collective consciousness. The many rumors that abounded regarding her death were propagated by the AVL to divert attention further away from the truth and Dr. Ludwig had been a major part of that effort.

She pulled away from her microscope at last.

"It's refrigerant—a mixture or all three classes and a compound I need more time to identify."

Blackburn was not going to be the first one to ask a question.

"Well, what could it possibly mean?" Chow asked exasperatedly.

"How the hell am I supposed to know, vampire?" she shot back at him irritatedly. "Look, cool your fucking jets. Give me forty-eight hours to try and isolate and identify this other compound and maybe—maybe—part of the puzzle will come together." Dr. Ludwig gathered her instruments and carefully packed up her samples. She left Fangtasia without a backwards glance, which was her way.

"Good work, Blackburn," said Chow, his brow creased with worry. "We haven't heard from Eric yet..." he looked to Ginger.

"No. It's 3 am Monday in Minsk now—if we don't hear from Eric or King Bill in the next couple of hours then we'll call them before they go to ground—agreed?"

"Agreed," Chow and Blackburn answered in unison.