heart.
Acid blood spurted. Damian didn’t flinch, only watched the Morph collapse. Grimacing, he rolled the body into the Mississippi, watching it disintegrate into gray ash before it slid into the water.
Dragging in a deep breath, Damian muted pain from his injuries. His magick was powerful and the wounds slowly scabbed over. He waved a hand, replacing his ruined Versace shirt, silk trousers and leather loafers with faded jeans, a black T-shirt and scuffed biker boots. Anonymous New Orleans garb.
The Morph’s words rang of truth. Damian felt a sickening jolt to his stomach. He’d heard ancient tales of the porphyry spell. Victims exhibited lethargic tendencies at first. They ate anything to give them energy, especially sugar. Just as quickly as they ingested the food, it passed out of their systems. They cried sweet tears, their blood …
Their blood turned sluggish, their skin gray, their internal organs eventually to granite. It was an agonizing end.
“Merde,” he said softly.
Damian raced back to where he’d bought the crayfish, searching for the vendor. The man had vanished. Hot anger spilled through him. He’d been tricked. The seller must have been a Morph.
Jamie … dying. And Morphs openly roaming the city? What the hell was going on?
Were they everywhere, cloaked as humans? Bad news. Even his powerful Draicon senses couldn’t detect them like that.
He lifted his nose and inhaled, trying to track the vendor’s scent, when a teasing smell drifted toward him, floating on the wind. Honeysuckle and warm female skin. Jamie.
Instinct kicked into high gear. He had to find her. In weeks, she’d be dead. No, worse. Frozen into stone, a living hell.
Whirling, he dragged air into his lungs. Stronger now, there, coming from the south? He shouldered aside a tour group enjoying the banjo player’s music.
The lost Book of Magick had a cure. Containing white and dark magick, the ten-thousand-year-old text held ancient secrets. Damian’s father had hidden it from the Morphs. Every seventy years one spell must be used to keep the magick active.
If Damian didn’t find the book in the next three weeks, the spells would vanish forever.
If he didn’t find the book soon, Jamie would suffer an excruciating end.
I promise I will save you, my beloved draicara, even to my last dying breath.
Wolf senses on alert, he followed Jamie’s scent.
How much could someone lose? Jamie Walsh wondered. Plenty.
So many had died before. Her parents. Her brother. Now, her magick.
She felt numb. Dead inside. Gray, her flame extinguished. Her world. Gone.
Jamie leaned against a broken lamppost to catch her breath. A bone-numbing wind penetrated through her thin Textually Active T-shirt. The walk to the grocery store had never tired her. She set down the plastic bag, rubbed her hands against her faded jeans. Lead weights dragged at her feet. No one to lean on. No one to help. She was alone.
A knot squeezed her stomach. Alone was good. She could survive the odds better on her own. She didn’t need anyone.
A familiar scent teased her senses. Fresh lake water and warm, sensual spices. The enemy. Damian.
Adrenaline pumped energy into her tired body. Jamie’s gaze whipped around. But only tourists wended their way down the street in the bright, sharp afternoon. Wary of exposure, she turned toward home.
Her brother Mark’s original French Quarter house near Jackson Square looked innocuous from the outside with its forest-green walls. Jamie unlocked the gate, slipped inside and bolted it. She hurried through the dark corridor, reaching the inner courtyard with a relieved sigh. Dumping the groceries on a wrought-iron table, she sank onto a chair.
Centuries-old walls surrounded her, a safe exposed-brick cocoon. Little could penetrate her refuge, except perhaps Damian. A cold chill snaked down her spine. Draicon were ruthless. What would Damian do if he caught her? Would he exact punishment?
You did try to kill him.
What did he want?
The answer came back in a rush of remembering. Sex. It came back to sex, and mating.
Arousal rasped against fear as she thought of Damian, his large body heavy with muscle. He’d taken her virginity, now he wanted her as his mate. He would hunt her down and never stop until he caught her. Brought her to his bed, pushed his hard, heavy body against her, nudged his hips between her bare thighs and claimed her once more in the most primitive way.
The space between her legs felt tender, wet and ready.
Her brain pushed aside desire and concentrated on self-preservation.
Right now she was a fortress with broken defenses, open to storming by Damian. Damian, who wanted her body, would claim her spirit, as well, drag her back to his dangerous pack of vicious werewolves as his mate. She had no weapon but her wits. A plastic sword against an invading army of sharp, lethal steel.
After trudging upstairs and putting away the groceries, she went to a battered desk cluttered with cables, software, parts and cell phones. Jamie retrieved a new laptop and an aircard and stuffed it into her backpack. She headed for the Petite Maison Voodoo Shop. Mama Renee knew about the secret underworld of magick beings like the Draicon, just like Mark had.
A small brass bell tinkled over the door as Jamie entered. An altar devoted to Marie Laveau sat off to the side, candles burning steadily to honor the long-dead voodoo priestess. Jamie advanced to the back and rapped on the closed door.
Mama Renee opened the door. “Chère,” she cried, throwing her arms about Jamie. Jamie hugged her back.
“I brought you a gift. I bought a wireless PC card and put you on my cellular service so you can e-mail your granddaughter. It’s time you joined the information age. You’re two decades behind.”
The old joke brought a smile even as Renee shuddered at the laptop and the slim card Jamie thrust at her. The woman set them down as gingerly as handling a spider and ushered her into the kitchen where she plied Jamie with homemade herbal tea. A large black cat wound around her legs. Giving the silky fur a reassuring stroke, Jamie smiled as Archimedes purred.
“He’s looking fat and healthy now,” she observed, a little sad as she remembered how she and Mark had found him, skin and bones, living on the porch of a house wrecked by Hurricane Katrina.
The woman’s gaze sharpened. “You and your brother worked hard to rescue stranded animals and find them good homes. If not for you, they’d have died. He was a remarkable person, loving and with a good heart, as you are. The world suffered a great loss when he died.”
Desperate, aching loneliness filled her. Mark rescued her from a hellish childhood. He was all she had. And you killed him, Damian. You murdered my brother.
A lump clogged her throat. Her own heart wasn’t good, but pitch-black. What kind of woman tried to kill her lover?
Renee
