Authors: Adrian Phoenix
“Beautiful,” he whispered.
A dark satisfaction curled through him. Soon. Very soon. With a severed bond and a
creawdwr
’s deep sea dive into madness, the Second Fall would begin—and then the air would fill with weeping and wailing and gnashing of Elohim teeth.
Turning, Teodoro strode from the room.
N
EW
O
RLEANS
T
HE
W
INTER
R
OSE
T
HE FALLEN ANGEL WAS
gone.
Guy Mauvais stood in the doorway of the riverboat’s workroom, his fingers clenched around the crystal goblet of stove-warmed blood he held—never microwaved, since the damned contraption destroyed what little flavor and nutritional value bagged blood possessed—as he stared in disbelief at the wooden table.
Empty—save for bits of white stone scattered across its surface and the melted stubs of candles left by the hoodoo woman, hardened tendrils of wax hanging like pale icicles from the table’s edge.
The smoky aroma of incense and wax mingled with the fading scent of the hoodoo woman’s hex-removal potion—mint and wintergreen, salt, and the lavender-clove-citrus spice of Florida Water.
“Mon Dieu,”
Mauvais breathed. “It actually worked.”
Excitement tingled electric along his spine. He entered the room, powdered stone gritting beneath the soles of his dress shoes as he hurried over to the table. “It actually worked,” he repeated.
It’d been nearly three nights since Mauvais had chiseled the stone from the fallen angel’s nude body, revealing black leathery wings, waist-length red hair, and taloned fingers and toes. Celtic designs—concentric circles, triskelions, delicate loops—were silver-inked along the motionless figure’s right side from torc-collared throat to hand.
Freed of stone, then, but not the spell that had trapped him within it, the fallen angel’s mouth had remained frozen in a silent scream, the moss-green eyes unseeing, the tight-muscled body locked in a crouch.
So, last night, refusing to give up or admit defeat, but lacking any magic useful to the situation, Mauvais had ordered the riverboat’s return to New Orleans. Once the
Winter Rose
had docked at the Esplanade Avenue wharf, he’d sent his mortal servants into the Quarter and out into the bayous to find someone—be it hoodoo conjurer, Vodou
mambo
, or nomad
shuvano
—possessing the necessary magical skills to shatter the thrice-damned spell.
Mauvais’s servants had returned first with a Vodou
houngan
who’d taken one look at the
Winter Rose
, then declared it and its master cursed. Refusing to step on board for any amount of money, the
houngan
had shouted his sincere condolences up to Mauvais, then turned and walked away without another word.
From where he stood against the wood railing, Mauvais regarded his chagrined servants with thin-lipped displeasure as they scurried away to resume their search.
They returned a few hours later with Clèmentine, a slender hoodoo dressed in chocolate brown cords and a mustard-yellow sweater. In her mid-thirties with a wild mass of auburn curls and sky-blue eyes, she seemed to have no qualms about working for a man rumored to be a vampire or about breaking a hex on what appeared to be a fallen angel.
She’d studied Mauvais for a long moment, her blue gaze taking in the wheat-blond hair tied back at the nape of his neck with a black satin ribbon, the aristocratic features, his elegant, if old-fashioned suit, the pale skin and lambent eyes.
“Well, madame?” he’d finally inquired. “Do you also believe I am cursed?”
“Oh, without a doubt,
M’sieu
Mauvais. You got an angry
loa
on dis here boat, one I want nuthin’ to do wit’, but I’ll take the job.”
Mauvais had arched a skeptical eyebrow. “Even with an angry
loa
on board?”
“Got a mortgage, me,” Clèmentine had replied with a philosophical shrug of her shoulder.
Mauvais had chuckled. “I appreciate your forthright and practical nature.”
Clèmentine’s lips had curled into a smile. She’d extended her hand, palm up. “And I appreciate cash,
m’sieu
.”
Once she’d been paid, and paid well, she’d immediately gone to work with her potions and powders and gris-gris, her juju bags and holy water and oil-anointed candles, promising Mauvais that his fallen angel would rise once again.
But when the conjurer had finally left shortly before dawn after murmuring one last Psalm over the angel’s utterly unchanged form, Mauvais had been disappointed, and believed himself duped perhaps.
The empty table was proof that he’d been wrong.
Which begged the question—where had the angel gone?
Mauvais drained his cooling breakfast, grimacing at the blood’s flat, lifeless taste, then set the goblet down on the table as he glanced around the room. Faint glimmers of light from the wharf filtered in through the porthole—more than enough to see that he was alone in the room. The taste of blood turned bitter on his tongue.
He picked up the chisel. Particles of pale stone still dusted its end. If, after everything, the damned angel had simply flown away without even a word. . . .
Mauvais hurled the chisel across the room. It struck the wood paneling at the far wall, driving in deep, handle quivering.
From the corner of his eye, Mauvais caught a flicker of blue light and spun to face it. He saw only the stone-littered table, the goblet glinting with ruby light from the porthole, and shadowed shelves filled with boxes and coils of rope and tools.
No blue flickers. No ghostly movement. Nothing.
He was merely jumping at shadows—or, more accurately, blue light. Again.
Ever since they’d docked in New Orleans last night, he’d been catching odd glimpses of blue light in his peripheral vision, along with disturbing whiffs of ozone and heated metal. On a couple of occasions, his skin had prickled as though lightning crackled in the air right above him, filling him with an odd and inexplicable dread.
You got an angry
loa
on dis here boat
. . .
“Non,”
Mauvais refused with a shake of his head.
“Pas ici. Pas possible.”
He marched over to the light switch and slapped it on. Nothing. He uselessly hit the switch a few more times, as if that would make a difference. Annoyed with himself, he dropped his hand and blew out a long, frustrated breath.
Yet another thing that had happened ever since they’d docked at the Esplanade Avenue wharf—lights blew out, equipment short-circuited, and computers—navigational and otherwise—glitched.
And now the fallen angel, the one he’d rescued from being a good-luck charm for tourists, drunks, and the desperate visiting St. Louis Cemetery No. 3, the one whose mere presence (grateful, of course) at his side could’ve elevated Mauvais in status far beyond Lord of New Orleans, was just . . . gone.
This riverboat and its master are cursed. My sincere apologies
. . .
No damned curse—not unless the
houngan
or conjurer
had hexed him in hopes of making more money, which seemed unlikely, since the problems had begun
before
either one had arrived. And no angry
loa
. Just a run of mechanical problems and bad luck.
Closing his eyes, Mauvais rubbed his temples, forcing his body to relax, coaxing the tension from knotted muscles. Like it or not, the angel was gone, and there was nothing he could do about it.
He needed a good stiff drink of fine bourbon, then he would go into the Quarter and dine. Perhaps a naïve tourist as an appetizer, followed by a full-course meal, in the form of the hunt, chasing down a more canny New Orleans native, and feasting on their fear and adrenaline-simmered blood.
Feeling the tension drain from his muscles as he pondered his meal options, Mauvais gave his temples one final circular rub before ending the massage. Eyes open once more, he left the workroom and climbed the stairs to the deck, his shoes soundless against the iron. He breathed in the river’s cool, muddy scent.
Perhaps Laurent and Rafe would finally track down that betraying
bâtard
Vincent, and bring him home as a flesh-and-blood gift, one offering superior tension-releasing opportunities. Perhaps Vincent could even be the dessert capping a night of fine dining. Mauvais smiled at the thought.
Lanterns hung from hooks spaced evenly along the riverboat’s length, casting wavering pools of pale yellow light across the teak deck and infusing the air with the pungent aroma of kerosene. Even though it meant the generators still weren’t working, Mauvais felt nostalgic at the sight of the lanterns, the sound of their steady hiss, remembering a time when there were no such things as electricity or GPS or computers.
Once we relied on only the moon and stars to guide us.
On our instincts. Our hunger. Our blood.
We’ve become lazy. Complacent. Stagnant.
An image flashed through his mind, one nearly four nights
old: Dante Baptiste on his knees, held in place by Mauvais’s vampires, his pale face defiant, a smirk on his bloodied lips as he jerks his chin free of Mauvais’s grasp and meets his gaze.
Dante, Dante, Dante . . . You refuse to recognize my authority.
Authority over what? Wharf rats? Ass kissers?
You’re disrespectful. Defiant, and rude. You even break
our
laws.
Fuck your laws.
Another smile curled across Mauvais’s lips.
Well
, he amended, as he remembered the intoxicating taste of Dante’s blood—copper and pomegranates, heady adrenaline and sun-warmed grapes—and the power that had surged through his veins, courtesy of the True Blood’s unwilling donation.
Perhaps not
all
of us have forgotten our instincts
. His smile deepened.
Nor our hunger.
As Mauvais strode toward the wheelhouse, he heard the familiar tread of his majordomo hurrying behind him. An acrid tang—concern, unease, perhaps—smudged the man’s scent of cedar and Irish moss.
“What is it, Edmond?” Mauvais called lazily, not bothering to slow his pace for the mortal. “I am not in the mood for any more problems.”
“Not a problem,
m’sieu
,” Edmond said in hushed, if somewhat breathless, tones as he drew up alongside Mauvais. Tall, lean, and in his early forties, he was impeccably dressed in his usual uniform of black morning coat and vest, sharply creased black trousers, and shoes polished to a mirror-bright gleam. “Well, not exactly, I should say.”
“Then what is it exactly? Spit it out.”
“
M’sieu
, it’s the tailor—”
“The
tailor
? Why are you bothering me with the tailor? Has he run off to design his own fashion line? Everyone seems to be doing so these days.”
“No, he has not. But it’s not the tailor, per se,
m’sieu
, it’s—” Edmond’s words stopped cold at a warning shout from one of
the guards at the riverboat’s gangplank, a warning answered with a contemptuous string of fluid and very imaginative Italian.
Giovanni Toscanini.
Mauvais sighed. Whether he was in the mood for it or not, another problem had just arrived in the form of Renata Alessa Cortini’s emissary, her
fils de sang
; a guest Mauvais had, admittedly, lied to and deceived and had hoped to avoid for a while longer.
Perhaps he was cursed after all, he mused ruefully. Well, nothing for it, but . . .
<
Please allow
Signor
Toscanini onboard,
> Mauvais sent to his guards. <
And do not insult him with an escort—he is still my guest.
>
“
M’sieu
, the tailor,” Edmond persisted quietly, “he—”
Mauvais flapped a dismissive hand. “Can wait.”
Edmond shot a glance toward the stairs leading belowdecks, then gave a nearly imperceptible shrug. “As you wish,
m’sieu
. I shall fetch brandy for you and your guest.” Turning, the majordomo left in a brisk stride.
Mauvais crossed to the railing and leaned against it, elbows resting on the gleaming wood, the night-blackened waters of the Mississippi at his back. Giovanni blurred to a stop in front of him a mere moment later, fragrant with the scent of the sea—salt, sand, and deep waters.
Dressed in a black, silver-buttoned short-sleeved shirt, and tight designer jeans, Giovanni folded his arms over his chest, biceps defined against the black material. He looked down his proud Roman nose at Mauvais, his hazel eyes no longer warm or full of playful mischief, but narrowed into an icy glare.
“Tu sei un bastardo mentendo,”
he said, voice tight.
Mauvais arched an eyebrow. “And a good evening to you, as well.”
Giovanni snorted. “I don’t want to play the innocence and denials game. I haven’t the patience.”
“Actually, neither do I,” Mauvais said, somewhat relieved. He usually looked forward to the verbal chess playing and mental sparring between vampires, but tonight—between the ungrateful and missing fallen angel, the bizarre electrical mishaps, and claims of curses and angry
loas
—he just didn’t have it in him.
“You knew I wanted to be notified the moment Dante Baptiste returned to New Orleans,” Giovanni said, dark brows slanting down in a scowl. “Yet you sent me off to the French Quarter like a drunk tourist, knowing that Baptiste was not only in town, but right here”—he stamped one boot against the deck—“right under my feet. And against his will, no less.”
“A necessary deception,” Mauvais replied, “for which I apologize.”
“Playing me for a fool was a necessary deception?”
“Unfortunately. Again, my apologies. I truly had no choice.”
Giovanni laughed, darkly amused. “No choice? How is that possible? You’re the Lord of New Orleans.”