then turned his head quickly when Nikoli scowled at him.
“One of them is responsible for the Loup Garou, another for the Nosferatu and the third the Chenilles.”
“Wow,” Gavril said. “You’re talking original breeds there, cuz. Before vampires, werewolves and zombies and shit.”
“I know,” Nikoli said. “That’s why this mission was put together so quickly. Those breeds have never been hit by Cartesians. The Triads always kept a tight rein on them.”
“So what happened,” Lucien asked. “Who screwed up and how?”
Nikoli shrugged. “No idea. Guess we’ll find out when we get there.”
Lucien whistled through his teeth. “Must have been a pretty huge screw-up to cause a rift big enough to let that many Cartesians through.”
“Not necessarily,” Nikoli countered. “All it takes is a miniscule tear. Once one gets through, any number that want to follow can.”
“How many of the Originals have been destroyed so far?” Ronan asked.
“By the time we land and get to the Triads, over a hundred Loup Garous.”
“Since they’re witches,” Lucien said, “can’t they just cast some hoodoo spell and close the rift themselves?”
“Nobody can mess with a Cartesian except a Bender,” Gavril said proudly.
“True, but they don’t even know what’s about to hit them,” Nikoli said. “The tear hasn’t been completed yet.”
Ronan leaned back in his seat. “Are they ever in for a surprise.”
“Sadly, yes,” Nikoli agreed. He felt bad for the Triad he’d yet to meet. Chances were she’d created the rift by accident. Probably didn’t even know that rifts existed—or Cartesians for that matter.
As they closed in on New Orleans, Nikoli sensed a circling of sorts. Like the four of them were pioneers, traveling out west by wagon and surrounded by a massive tribe of banshees they could not yet see.
Nikoli sensed something big was about to break loose. He feared this fight might be bigger than any Bender generation had encountered before, and there had been many.
He looked over at his cousins, who were talking softly among themselves. Except for Ronan, of course. Mr. Sole Man was staring out the window, probably thinking about the quest ahead.
The four cousins couldn’t have been closer if they’d been brothers. And in his heart of hearts, Nikoli trusted each one with his life. They were equally strong, talented and vicious warriors against the Cartesians.
Regardless, a small nagging voice inside his gut warned that four of them were heading to New Orleans ready to fight, but only three would be returning home.
By the time Viv had ferried to the opposite side of the river, it was almost ten o’clock in the morning. She smelled coffee and beignets from nearby cafes, and it made her stomach rumble. What she wouldn’t give for one of Evette’s special hickory-blend coffees and chocolate-drizzled beignets right about now. But food had to wait, she realized as she hurried to her home in the Garden District.
She shared the Victorian with her sisters. It sat on the corner of St. Charles and Washington Avenue. The house had belonged to their mother, who’d died in an airplane accident when they were nineteen.
They never knew their father, as was often the case with Triads. For some odd reason, the fathers of each generation of Triads took to the hills as soon as they discovered their wife was pregnant. Wrong men? Wrong timing? Who knew. Not that it made any difference to Viv.
Although she was definitely heterosexual and struggled with raging hormones from times to time, she didn’t need a man to make her life complete. She had enough on her plate. Maybe her ancestors had felt the same way for none of them had remarried, which was why the François name still held strong today. Although exhausted, Viv picked up her pace, anxious to get home. Each sister had a floor with a bedroom and bath to call her own. Evette, whom they called Evee, had the first floor; Viv, the second; and Abigail, whom they called Gilly, had the third.
Evee owned a café off Royal Street called Bon Appétit. She opened at eight o’clock in the morning and closed at two o’clock, right after the lunch crowd dispersed so there was a good chance she wouldn’t be home.
Gilly, on the other hand, would be home. She owned a bar-and-grill off Iberville Street called Snaps. It opened at two o’clock in the afternoon and closed at two o’clock the following morning. Those long hours gave Viv some confidence that Gilly would still be sleeping right now, which meant she had a good shot at getting into the house and into her bedroom undetected.
Thinking about her sisters and the broods they were responsible for made the twinge of guilt Viv carried for her Loup Garous grow stronger.
She’d left without tending to those who worked during the day at construction jobs or city maintenance. Certainly by now, especially at this hour, many would be wondering when they would be released from the compound to go about their chores. The only good thing was that Loups were infamously resilient. If no one released them for duty, they’d make use of the day by napping, prowling or watching Stratus get her fill of Warden.
It seemed to take forever for Viv to finally make it home. Just as she pushed open the back door, Socrates ran past her into the house. She hadn’t noticed him on the ferry nor on her walk to the house, yet here he was, skittering around the kitchen toward the hallway, where he started caterwauling at the top of his lungs.
Viv released her partial invisibility spell, which was useless around her sisters anyway.
“Stop that!” she demanded in a loud whisper. “What kind of familiar are you, trying to get your own mistress busted?”
Gilly slept on the north end of the third floor, so although Socrates was loud, Viv doubted Gilly heard him. What she didn’t count on was Elvis, an albino ferret with ruby eyes and a pink nose and ears. Gilly’s familiar.
Viv barely made it to the stairway when Elvis came streaking down the stairs like a bolt of lightning. The moment he spotted Viv, he came to an abrupt stop, flipped over one step, then jumped up and started racing back up the stairs, letting out a shrill chirping sound as he went. She knew he meant to fetch Gilly, and Viv tried to outrun the inevitable by taking the stairs to the second floor two at a time.
She raced into her bedroom but before she had a chance to close the door, Gilly shoved against it and pushed her way inside.
Dressed only in a pink silk sleep shirt, with her black pixie cut spiked from sleep, Gilly’s mouth dropped open when she saw Viv.
Before her sister uttered a word, Viv had a peculiar thought about Hollywood and witches. Had anyone been watching a movie, they would have expected Gilly to immediately cast a spell that would wash the blood from Viv and have any wounds appear in purple neon so they’d be easily detected.
But there was no spell-casting, and this wasn’t Hollywood. Witches were human, just a different race, and just as each race had their
