RIGHT TURN ON DEAD

Hurricane Katrina has shredded New Orleans. Politicians are scrambling to toss responsibility for the fiasco on anyone but themselves.

The two great undead world powers are about to square off for the final conflict.

Just outside the fabric of reality, ancient beings strain against the unraveling barrier holding them back from destroying all life on earth.

And in the nexus of all dimensions, Meilori's, the doomed Samuel McCord ponders just what one lone undead Texican can do to stem the tide of death ...

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

RIGHT TURN ON DEAD

"I move in all kinds of circles, meet all sorts of people. I learned

engraving from a counterfeiter, accounting from a swindler.

A succubus once tried to teach me the tango. But nothing doing. I didn't have the

hips for it."

- Samuel McCord


I turned around and faced my newly re-born night club. Meilori’s was back. And it had only taken a small fortune to make her return breath-taking.

Luckily, I had stumbled across more than a few lost treasures in all my manhunts. When the last owner of a fortune is several centuries dead, it made giving it back harder than just keeping it. But I spent it wisely. Or tried to.

My night club shimmered in the dim illumination of spinning, sparkling chandeliers. Meilori’s stood on a busy French Quarter corner. But even so, it seemed to go on for much longer and wider than it appeared from the outside.

Which made sense. It was wider and longer within than without.

Courtesy of Rind, the Angelus of Death, my place led into a crossroads of dimensions that only a few could enter and from which even fewer could return.

Everyone was safe who stayed up front. Those who ventured deeper did so at their own peril. The sign to my place read : HERE BE MONSTERS. TO VENTURE DEEP WITHIN IS TO CHANCE NEVER RETURNING AT ALL.

Not that many paid much attention to the words, mind you.

But they had only themselves to blame if they never returned from the shadows. Besides, New Orleans had lost a good many visitors long before my place showed up.

The city had just lost a cite more since then was all.

Hicock was playing poker in the far table, his new spectacles gleaming on his nose. He nodded. I nodded back.

He gestured to an empty seat beside him. I shook my head. I kept my gambling limited to my life not cards.

Major Strasser, immaculate in his black Nazi uniform, sat closer to me. I ambled to his table. He smiled with sharp white teeth.

“Still hold Casablanca against me?”

“Not so you notice. Remember I shot you in your withered heart, not in the acupuncture point that could have killed you.”

“Just so. Is it really the year 2005 out past those doors?”

“Yes, but I’d advise against going out there. Go back the way you came. You’ll still have years of blood and madness across all of Europe if you return that way.”

He stared at me curiously. “You know how the war ends?”

“Yes ... everybody loses.”

"I come as representative of both the Fuhrer and Empress Theodora ..."

My face became the stone my heart felt. "One's already dead. The other will be if she touches New Orleans again."

"You are a fool."

"Lot of that going around."

I turned from him and made my way to the gleaming bar. And yes, if you are wondering --- there were mirrors on the walls -- when you could see them.

Each table surface was reflective as were the steps of polished marble scattered in random spots along the length of the red carpet sweeping it seemingly into eternity. Elu got lonely sometime.

And he also got --- hungry.

What can I say? Meilori’s is that kind of place.

I was in my dress black western suit. Black shirt, black tie, long coat, slacks, boots. Even my broad Stetson was black. I sighed.

I missed Sammy in his all white attire. Samuel Langhorn Clemens was probably having them all in stitches somewhere in a far better place than my night club of the damned.

I blinked back hot tears. Sixty odd years is a long time to know a friend. I missed him.

I slowly moved through the room that seemed to become larger, wider, deeper the longer I was in it.

The president of modern France sat with his young love. They were chatting with Marie Antoinette, her slender throat neatly stitched so well only I could see the slight scar of the incision. She smiled coldly at me.

I tipped my Stetson to her and moved on. That was one of the problems to my night club.

Every aisle led to a place you’d rather forget. Every table brought back memories of what you had done or should have done.

And every woman reminded you of another woman. Or in my case, one woman. The only woman. Meilori.

Off to the left was one of my internet jazz stages. Erin Bode was singing in the middle of its spotlight.

She was an up and coming jazz vocalist. She didn’t like to be type-cast as a jazz vocalist. There were worse things to be called. I should know. I had been called most of them.

I liked her. Meilori would have, too. Erin had called me up and volunteered to sing at my place.

She had wanted her fee to go to the Katrina Relief Fund. All the money from the live internet feeds of tonight and the nights to follow would help the hurting in my adopted city.

As Erin was singing “Alone Together,” Toya, the club's manager, swayed up to me. I smiled wide at her, the image of the six year old I had found out by my dumpster settling over her Cleopatra features.

Skin the color of milk coffee gleamed under the swirling lights above us. Her black dress was so short that it could have qualified as a long blouse. Any shorter and it would have been a wide belt.

Tonight she was dressed as a buccaneer. Lafitte would have made her captain of his ship, if not his heart.

Me? My compass had left me seven years ago. And I was lost, so lost.
**************
Wander too far into Meilori's and this song will become your theme :