Le Sang Vert

 

The bass thumped low and steady, like a heartbeat buried in the swamp.

 

Rio stood outside the shack, its roof sagging like it had given up decades ago. It leaned over the water on crooked stilts, half-swallowed by moss and time. Above him, a flickering neon sign sputtered in sickly green letters:

 

LE SANG VERT.

 

The Green Blood.

 

He didn’t know what it meant. But it called to him.

 

His golden eyes glinted faintly in the dark, catching the pulse of the sign’s light. He hadn’t always had those eyes. They were new. Like the things he was hearing. The sensations crawling under his skin. The hunger that didn’t go away with food. Or sleep.

 

He didn’t know what was happening to him.

 

But he knew this place was part of it.

 

He stepped forward, boots heavy on the damp, warped dock. His frame was tall and powerful, but exhaustion tugged at the edges of his posture.

His once sun kissed Cajun skin was now a pale tone and his wavy dark hair soaked from the humidity stuck to his rugged face like a wet cloth. He looked like a man running from something he couldn’t outrun—guilt, death, himself.

 

His hand lingered on the burn scar along his cheekbone. It was healing faster than it should have. Just like everything else since that night in the water.

 

The door creaked open before he even touched it. A long, thin man with skin like candle wax and jaundiced eyes peered out. His smile was wide, crooked, and unnerving.

 

“You sure you belong here?” the man drawled.

 

Rio didn’t answer.

 

The man’s eyes narrowed on his face. “Mmm. Thought so.”

 

He stepped aside, and the door groaned open. The air that poured out hit Rio like a fist—blood, wet wood, perfume, and something wild and wrong underneath it all.

 

He stepped inside.

 

The narrow staircase was carved deep into the ground, slick with condensation. Lights pulsed green and red along the walls, casting twisted shadows that stretched like fingers reaching out to him.

 

He descended, step after step, into the belly of something old and alive.

 

The room below opened wide and low ceilinged, the stone walls dripping with swamp moss. Red chandeliers flickered above the crowd, casting the whole place in a haze of blood-colored light.

People...if they were still people moved with a liquid grace, dancing, swaying, whispering. Their skin was too smooth, their teeth too white, their smiles too sharp.

 

Glasses clinked. Blood shimmered in them, dark and warm.

 

His stomach twisted. Not from disgust.

From craving.

He didn’t want it. But he did.

 

He stumbled back a step, bumping into a stone column.

 

And then he saw her.

 

At the far end of the room, seated on a throne made of twisted vines and bones bleached pale, was a woman who made the whole room dim around her.

 

Odessa.

 

She sat like she ruled it all—the bar, the blood, the night itself.

 

Her skin glowed like burnished gold, kissed with undertones of deep cocoa and smoke. Thick coils of black hair framed her face, wild and alive like the bayou itself had grown from her scalp. Her lips were painted the color of fresh blood. Her eyes—dark, deep, dangerous—found him instantly.

 

She rose from the throne like a queen standing to receive tribute.

 

And walked straight toward him.

 

He couldn’t move.

 

He didn’t know if it was awe or fear or the thing inside him that stopped him.

 

As she neared, the air thickened. The music faded. It was just her, and him, and the beat of something ancient pressing between them.

 

“Look at you,” she said, her voice low, rich, slow as molasses but sharp as broken glass. “Didn’t take long to find your way to my door.”

 

Rio stared at her. His mouth felt like sand.

 

“What is this place?” he rasped.

 

She didn’t answer. She stepped in closer, eyes locked on his like she was reading pages no one else could see.

 

“You’re not dead,” she whispered. “But you’re not living either.”

 

He swallowed hard. “What did you do to me?”

 

Odessa smiled, and it was beautiful and terrifying all at once. “You were drowning in guilt. I gave you breath. You begged for an ending. I gave you a beginning.”

 

“I didn’t ask—”

 

“No,” she interrupted, brushing a finger along the line of his jaw. “But you were begging. Your soul was bleeding. The swamp heard it. I heard it.”

 

His golden eyes darkened. “I don’t want this.”

 

Her smile faded just slightly. “Doesn’t matter what you want. The blood’s awake now.”

 

Rio clenched his fists. “You don’t even know me.”

 

Odessa leaned in close enough that he felt her breath on his neck. “You don’t even know yourself. Not yet.”

 

He could smell her—sweet and smoky, like jasmine soaked in bourbon and secrets. It made his head spin. Made something inside him ache.

 

“I’m not like them,” he said, glancing at the others in the room—the dancers, the drinkers, the watchers with hollow eyes.

 

“No,” she murmured. “You’re something older.”

 

He flinched. “Older?”

 

Odessa tilted her head, eyes gleaming with something between curiosity and hunger. “You think this was an accident? You think I save just anyone? The blood in you isn’t clean, Rio. It remembers things. It has a history.”

 

“I don’t want any of it,” he snapped.

 

Odessa stepped back, studying him like a puzzle she couldn’t quite put together.

 

“Then walk away,” she said. “See if it lets you.”

 

Silence stretched between them.

 

The music resumed, low and rhythmic. The dancers moved again. The room went back to its dark song of wine, whispers, and wet heat.

 

Rio stood there, breathing heavy.

 

Odessa turned to leave, back straight, curls bouncing at her shoulders.

 

Then—

The lights flickered.

Just once.

The air shifted. Thickened.

 

Somewhere deep in the dark, below the music, beneath the stone and blood and moss—

He heard it.

A voice. Low. Impossible.

Not behind him. Not beside him.

Inside him.

Whispering.

 

“The blood is awake.”