Blood Warrior (The Arcadia Falls Chronicles #4) Read Online Free PDF Page B

it
disappeared.”
    I raised an eyebrow, “So, the place is
haunted by the ghosts of these slaves?”
    Anthony turned to me with a curious
eye. “Why, little Hunter, are you implying that you do not believe
in ghosts?”
    “ I don’t know.” I
shrugged, but my mind went right to Sostrate, the warrior woman,
even though she insisted that she was not a ghost.
“Maybe.”
    “ In any case,” Anthony
continued, screams and moans have always been heard from this
house. There were several people who went inside and never came
out, there were owners who had all of their things destroyed and
the apparitions of slaves wandering the halls have been seen by
many occupants over the years.
    Since the LaLauries abandoned the
home, no one has been able to withstand residing there for very
long.”
    He smiled, “Oh, I almost forgot, the
not so pleasing end to this story is that in a recent remodel of
the mansion, bodies were found underneath the floorboards.
Scratches and pieces of fingernails were found on the underneath of
those particular boards, implying that the bodies had been buried
while they were still alive.”
    I wanted to vomit. “Why … the hell are
we going in there?”
    Anthony ignored me. “It is a tragic
tale that has become a large piece of the haunted history of New
Orleans.”
    “ Good Lord!” Gavin
grimaced, “if it’s that haunted, why would the survivors hole up in
there?”
    Anthony shrugged. “It is possible they
think that is the last place the vampires would look. It is in the
French Quarter, perhaps the resistance is taking the ‘they will not
look right under their noses’ approach. I would also assume, with
the way the mansion is set up, that it would be fortifiable. The
survivors would obviously need to be in a place where they can
erect a substantial defense.”
    I nodded. That made sense. But, from
what Anthony told us about the history of the place, I wasn’t sure
that I really wanted to go inside.
    “ New Orleans has a deep
history, full of ghost stories and tales of witchcraft.” Anthony
stared out the window at the tombs in one of the cemeteries as we
passed. “At this moment we are making another chapter in the
history books. I intend to record the events for the world to know
of later on. In the future, when children go back to school they
will learn of the battle for the city … for the world, and they
will hear how the Hunters joined with the survivors to fight the
vampires. It will be a magnificent story, of that I am
positive.”
    No one said anything after that,
probably because nothing seemed appropriate. What did seem
appropriate was leaving the conversation on that note … the one
where we succeed.
    We parked the cars in a parking garage
on the outskirts of the French Quarter, deciding it would be safer
and not as noticeable if we went the rest of the way on foot.
Nobody spoke as we followed Anthony over the broken sidewalks into
the heart of the city.
    As we passed the shops, bars and
restaurants, I wished that I had been able to see New Orleans
before the Vampire Apocalypse. I would have loved to sit at one of
the tables outside the Café Du Monde and have their famous beignets
and coffee. I wanted to take the tours of the plantations, with
their trees draped in Spanish moss and picture perfect beauty. I
wanted to eat authentic Cajun food and listen to live music. I
wanted peace, I wanted normal, and I wanted a vacation from hunting
vampires.
    Anthony didn’t always stick to the
streets, he took us through several alleyways in order to be more
discreet. He led the way, but I brought up the rear, since he and I
both had super hearing it just made sense that way.
    Just as we were exiting one of the
alleys, Anthony stopped short. I heard it at the same time as he
did … voices. Anthony held up his hand in a fist, signaling to
stop. The group halted between us. I filtered my concentration onto
the voices, gradually I heard footsteps and then
breathing.
    The voices were