Burning Desire

Chapter One

In the pre-dawn light of the January morning, fog clings to the banks of the Mississippi. The British and American armies have been camped across the river for over two weeks, staring at each other across the Line Jackson. The skirmish that will be recorded in the history books as the Battle of New Orleans is about to take place.

Before the British are quite ready, however, the fog lifts. The call goes up and down the Line Jackson, cries for the Americans to open fire on the advancing British regiments. Even here, on the west bank of the river, the sound of the cannonade is overwhelming. Soon, the British bagpipers recover enough to begin their music, adding the drone of their ancestral instruments to the surreality of the morning.

Whether intentionally or no, the sounds across the river admirably disguise the brigade of Redcoats quietly advancing on the American flank positions on this shore. From the croft where you and your companion observe the proceedings, the Redcoats seem to flit like angry ghosts between the cypress trees, obscured by the distance and the dispersing fog.

The Battle of New Orleans is joined.

The wall of the croft from which the two of you have been observing the nearby skirmish explodes inward, showering the room with plaster and timbers, glass from the shattered windowpanes cutting your face. The stonework chimney teeters precariously, showering sparks on the palmetto fronds that were once the roof, but which are now mostly scattered across the floor.

Your companion is a vampire. A blood-drinking creature of the night, several centuries old, who has recently taken you as a companion.

The collapsing house pins one of you under the wreckage. The fronds are already starting to smoulder from the errant sparks. Consider carefully, which of you is the one that is pinned?

He is the one that is pinned.
You look down at this creature of the night, now almost pitiful in his plight.

Not that you are in a position to throw stones. You too are a vampire, and this creature is the one who made you; he granted you immortality at the point of his fangs. Not long ago, he made you like him, condemning you to this living death-your heart is still, your lungs have atrophied-and yet you still hunger.

He reaches towards you, calling your name...

I rush to his rescue!

You bend down, put your arms around him, and using strength you didn't realize you had, pull your maker from the wreckage.

He stirs just long enough to point out the door to a demi-cellar of which you were previously unaware. Throwing open the door, you drag him into the moist darkness, where you will be safe until nightfall.

In the darkness, you reflect on what brought you here, hiding in the earth while the armies of the American Republic and the British Empire clash above.

When you first glimpsed him, you felt a certain thrill. Taking in the sight of him, you knew that your life would never be commonplace again. Extending his hand, he introduced himself as...

"...Padre Carlos. My child, when was the last time that you confessed your sins?" His cassock cut an imposing figure in the room, while he seemed to burn with an inner fire.

In life, Padre Carlos was a Catalan missionary. He spent many years traveling the Caribbean, seeking to convert the heathens to Christianity through the power of his own faith.

You remember his gaze-bypassing your skin and your sex as being irrelevant-eating its way through to your soul. You know that in the world, these things are not irrelevant, and yet he judged you on some criteria which you could neither perceive nor understand...and when he was done, he spat you out again, altogether lessened by the experience.