2

Simone Charvez walked hand in hand with her date through the thick night air. The deep-wine-colored dress she’d designed herself draped over only one shoulder and the hem was cut on a bias so as she walked a lovely slice of her thigh showed. The shoes had delicate straps and tied around her ankle. Her lipstick and nail polish matched the dress. She was as lovely as the evening smelled.

New Orleans was throbbing with life once again. The tragedy of Katrina brought the residents of the vibrant city to their knees but the city hadn’t given up and so they hadn’t either.

Music danced on the evening breeze and stars were bright above their heads, even with the light of the city. Magnolia and honeysuckle enveloped her senses—seduced her.

In fact, the heady scents of New Orleans were doing a far better job at seduction than the man at her side. Empath that she was, Simone could feel his calculations at how he’d get her into bed. And it bored her.

She was more than what he thought her to be. More than the voluptuous woman with big golden eyes and deep brunette hair. More than the sexy, smoky voice and the sensual way she walked. Yes, she was beautiful—she knew that—but she was more. Why didn’t they see that? It was like they were all hypnotized by her breasts or something.

It wasn’t that she thought men were all the same or that they were bad. No, it’s just that dating when you were aware of the other person’s feelings was a minefield of all sorts of unpleasant surprises. She didn’t mind that they wanted to have sex with her. Fine. She wanted to have sex with some of them too. No, it was the calculation. The intense mental planning they did. Some men spent so much time with their intricate plans at bedding her that she wanted to nominate them for the Nobel Prize. Geniuses really, some of them.

Oh, and well, the ones that just sort of muddled through were bad too. It wasn’t that she was high maintenance really. Oh, all right, so she was high maintenance! But darn it, if you don’t have high standards for the person you want to spend your time naked with then why have standards at all, she’d like to know. Unlike her cousins Em and Lee, she didn’t have dreams of the perfect man. Unfortunately, also unlike them, she didn’t have any prospects for a husband much less anyone long-term.

And so okay, she was just fine without a man. She had The Grove with her family, she had a fairly booming side business as a seamstress and she was opening her own shop within the next few weeks. Professionally, she was quite satisfied.

Family-wise, it was good. Although she’d lost her father two years before, she was very close to her mother and brothers and cousins. The Charvez women were a law unto themselves—strong, powerful, close-knit, magical—special. She belonged to them as assuredly as they belonged to her. The unity of her family provided much sanctuary in her life and she was quite aware and thankful for it. But she wanted to share her life with a mate, a partner. She was fortunate enough to be surrounded by loving relationships and she wanted that for herself. It wasn’t that she thought she’d be lost without it, but she wanted to wake up next to someone, to memorize every line in his face, to be thrilled and comforted by his taste, the sound of his voice.

She sighed and her date turned to her with a handsome smile and she weighed just how horny she was.

* * * * *

Blood. The metallic stench of it filled the air. So thick, so much, that it was cloying. He panicked, drowning in it. Filling his mouth, his nose, his throat. The sticky ooze of it coated his skin. It was drying in congealed clumps on his arms. Sticky and beginning to harden, it was as if the blood itself was what held him immobilized. He lay there, unable to move as he watched. The white flash of sharp teeth in the darkness. The sounds of moaning and screaming dug into his gut. Maniacal laughter. Flesh tearing. Sobbing. Then nothing but the laughter. So scared. His muscles wouldn’t work. He was ashamed because those things were hurting his family and his body wouldn’t even let him cry. He wanted to cry. He knew he was going to scream. He felt it in his stomach, trying to get out, getting bigger and bigger. And his fear got worse as he worried that the noise would call their attention to him.

The thing with the gleaming sharp teeth turned and surveyed the room. Its eyes, god, its eyes. Monsters weren’t real. His mother had told him that monsters weren’t real. Moms weren’t supposed to lie. A monster, that monster had just ripped his mother’s head from her body while it laughed.

The monsters sounded so happy as they walked out of the room, the sounds of their feet sucking through the blood on the carpet wet in his ears. The sob continued to build, pressing, looking for a way to escape his body, gaining power, getting larger and larger until it was like a hurricane buffeted his insides. A storm of rage and fear and agony. Feeling rushed back and he opened his mouth and it escaped. He screamed—if the sound he made could be given any name at all. Screamed and screamed until he was hoarse. And then he continued as the empty, hoarse sound filled the room where once laughter reigned.

“Kael! Wake up!”

Sanity broke back in, reality reasserted itself and he opened his eyes and looked up into the face of a human. A face nearly as familiar as his own. Regular teeth. No monster. A killing machine most assuredly, but no monster. He sat up slowly, scrubbing his hands over his face, the metallic taste still on his tongue. His chest, covered in colorful tattooed runes, heaved as he struggled to get past the fear lodged in his throat with the bloody taste. That storm, born that night twentyfour years before, still raged within him.

“The dream again?” Jagger asked as he placed a cool cup of water in Kael’s hands. Kael Gardener drank, concentrating on the here and now. It was over. Had been over for two decades. But the sweat of a six-year-old boy fell from his forehead, ran down his back. The scent of his own terror was as recognizable to him as the stench of blood by now. He gave a short nod to Jagger, a nod that answered the question and thanked him for the water and reassurance before he lay back down. The rhythmic swaying of the RV as it drove slowly lulled him back to sleep as Jagger watched, lips drawn tight against the words he wanted to use.

* * * * *

Simone looked back over her shoulder but saw nothing. Still, the feeling of dread that had intermittently crouched at the base of her spine pressed at her. What the hell was going on?

Her heels clicked rhythmically on the sidewalk and the music of Bourbon Street washed over her. The heady scent of the city rose from the very earth beneath her feet. The bag she carried from Central Grocery emanated with the scent of the olive spread from the muffalettas she was bringing to The Grove. It was her day to provide lunch and she’d been craving one of the big, hearty sandwiches for the last week. As she walked, she let the huge rush of sensory information flow into her and as her gift sorted it, she calmed. Summer in New Orleans and everything was sluggish. The open air near the river carried emotions to her senses like a feather brush. The more narrow streets as she moved into the heart of the Quarter brought stronger impressions as the confined space held it all in. She caught things from storefronts and alleys until she emerged on Bourbon and things opened up again. All over, the emotions she picked up were lazy, dazed by the heat. Even the anger, the betrayal and jealousy were thick where in the winter they were sharper. The tourists from the North were on barstools all over the city, holding icy glasses of tea to their foreheads and wondering how any place could feel so hot and humid that it felt like the very air was sitting on your chest. Despite the fact that she was a Louisianan born and bred, the weather affected her too. The humid air hung against her skin like a wet cloak. The shave ice she’d had after her fitting had helped a little but she’d be glad to see October. She should have taken a taxi but the tourists were giving them a fine business and she just wanted to get back to the shop. Stupid in retrospect.

Really, she wanted to get out of town. Escape the oppressive heat and stay at the beach house for a few days. But she had work to finish up. She could take vacation from the shop but as a clothing designer, she had to go with the work she could contract, and summer was a big time for wedding and party dresses. She had three big orders to finish and they should keep her in Jimmy Choos for the rest of the year. Not to mention that the exposure was really good. Two of the dresses were orders for society women and if people liked them, Simone knew there’d be more. Work enough, she hoped, to keep the shop she’d just created in business.

She wasn’t a brilliant painter like Lee or mega-brain like Em but she was a whiz with a needle and thread and she’d been making things for friends and family for years. The previous September, she’d decided to try and pursue her own business and she’d slowly been building up contacts and clients and upgrading her equipment ever since. Simone had found the storefront when she’d been in the Faubourg Marigny to visit a friend. They’d been walking and chatting, laughing, and suddenly she’d come to a halt and turned. It had been there with a “for sale” sign in the window. She’d called right then and left a message about the place, and when she’d gone the next day to look at it and the large apartment above she’d known it was the place for her. It was close to the colorful life of Frenchmen Street but not directly on it. She felt it was a great location.

Buildings often kept the echo of the emotions of the people who lived there and her building felt right. Yes, some tragedy here and there, but the building was nineteenth century and had generations of happiness too—children born and reared, love made—it embraced her and she’d embraced it in return. They’d be giving her the keys the following afternoon and then she’d get her shop together with a lot of help from friends and family.

She smiled at that—at the knowledge that she would build STyle together with the hands and effort of those she loved and trusted most in the world. She only hoped that it would come to fit her the way The Grove fit her.

Still, the dread, the foreboding she felt was sharp. She frowned as she was pulled from her happy ruminations. The dire nature of what she felt culled it from the other myriad things she picked up on a daily basis. Each time she felt it, it was more defined and that was concerning.

She wished she could talk to her cousin Em about it. As another empath, Em was someone Simone could check her own impressions with, just to get a barometer on the situation.

But Em was still off on her honeymoon with her new husband and all-around hot studly dude, Con, and they were who knows where. It was likely they weren’t even on this plane of reality so it wasn’t like she could call her and see what she thought. Distracted as she walked, she gathered up her thick hair with one hand, pulling it into a loose knot and holding it with the clip that she had pulled from the bottom of her bag with the other. She pushed her sunglasses up more securely and was mightily glad she’d chosen the peach-colored skirt with the handkerchief hem and the sleeveless shell to match. There might be magical weirdness afoot but that was no excuse to look raggedy.

Relieved, she took that familiar right off Bourbon Street and saw the green-andwhite awning over the door of the Charvez family shop, The Grove, and took comfort in that. Knowing that her family was there and that protection lay just on the other side of the door, she hurried her pace.

The cool of the shop enveloped her like an embrace and the magical music of the chimes that sang as she walked in lifted a weight from her heart. She was home, she was safe. The Grove was sanctuary.

Simone saw that Lee was in the back of the shop talking with Simone’s mother, Lou. Her mother’s distress sliced through her senses. She and Em were unable to read Lee but it wasn’t hard to see from the pinched look on her face that there was something to be concerned about brewing.

Despite her worries, Lee couldn’t help but smile when Simone came into a room looking like a magazine layout. Even better, she came bearing a big bag with the familiar blue Central Grocery emblazoned on the front. Worries aside for a split second, her stomach approved with a hearty growl.

“Afternoon, Maman,” Simone said as she kissed her mother’s cheeks and turned to Lee and did the same. She looked at them both and then her grandmother as she came to join them, bringing out a pitcher of icy sweet tea.

“Simone, bébé, have you felt anything odd lately?” Grand-mère asked as she began to pour glasses of tea for everyone.

“Dread. A shadow of dread. Foreboding. I was just thinking about how I wished I could check in with Em to see what she thought about it. It’s here.” She reached around and touched the small of her back. “Started a few days ago, just snippets. Now I feel it more often. It doesn’t seem to be connected to any one person or place that I pass by. I was just doing a fitting at an office building in the Central Business District and I felt it there and then as I was coming up from Central Grocery. It’s almost like someone is behind me, watching.”

“Like you’re being watched?” Lee had alarm in her voice.

“You want to tell me what is happening, Lee?” Simone asked, a perfectly shaped eyebrow arched up.

“I had a dream last night,” Lee began and told them not only about the nightmare but about the Oathbreakers too.

“Wow. And here I thought they were all safe.” Simone shivered. “Well this is something we have to deal with. I mean, rampaging bands of killer vampires? Yikes!

That’s the stuff nightmares are made of.”

Lee raised her brows. “Yeah. Let me tell you, these vampires are not anyone you’d want to meet in a dark alley at night.”

A sick bolt of fear rode up Simone’s spine for a moment and was gone.

“Lou and I did a reading. It was dark, shadowy. There is something approaching. It feels like a storm,” Grand-mère said.

“Not here yet?” Lee asked.

“It will be here,” Grand-mère said with utter certainty in her voice.

“Right now, it feels…” Simone paused as she tried to explain it, “like ripples. What I’m picking up is the forward edge of what’s coming. I have to tell you, it’s scary. Has Tante Marie dreamed?” Simone knew that her aunt was a powerful witch dreamer too. They needed to start adding up the pieces here.

“She and Papa have gone to the mountains for a few weeks. I don’t want to call her and scare her if we don’t have to. She and my dad don’t get much time for vacations.”

Simone shrugged. She had a feeling it would be necessary to bring her aunt back and sooner rather than later but she, like Lee, didn’t want to disturb her peace until it was absolutely necessary.

“Well, there’s not a whole lot we can do right now. What’s meant to happen will come to pass in its own time.” Grand-mère shrugged her shoulders, an echo of the shrug Simone had given moments before.

“Just be vigilant. I can’t help but think that this is going to focus on us.” Simone looked up as the chimes sounded with a customer coming into the shop and moved to assist him.

Lee snorted and said quietly, more to herself than anyone else, “Doesn’t seem to be any other way these days.”

* * * * *

The big RV pulled into a diner just outside Dallas. They’d been driving for fifteen hours straight and it was time to stop, eat and regroup. Minx set about getting them several rooms at a nearby hotel. Kael knew that they had to sleep in real beds sometimes. The RV was nice enough, but a bed that didn’t move and a shower that lasted longer than three minutes were things you had to have every few weeks or morale would start to sink.

And it was sinking fast. Kael knew it was time to stop a while. He saw how much they all needed a bit of stability, even if only for the rest of the summer and maybe a bit into the fall. So they’d rented a nice-sized house just outside the French Quarter for a few months.

“We should roll into New Orleans in two days if we allow ourselves a bit of a stop here,” Jagger said as he put his beer back down on the table. “And we need the rest. Cap will take the RV in tomorrow to get an oil change. Let everyone swim in the pool, maybe pick someone up at the hotel bar for a quick fuck. They need to remember they’re more than killing machines, Kael.”

Kael looked into his friend’s perceptive green eyes and nodded. He could use a bit of fucking himself. It had been months since he’d had sex—with another human being anyway, and his hand could only provide so much. He craved the soft flesh of a woman beneath him, the sweet smell of her hair, the sound of a feminine voice that wasn’t shouting orders or that he didn’t feel related to.

“I know, Jagger. We need to stop for a while. New Orleans is a way for us to take a break but to keep on task too. We haven’t stopped for longer than a week since…” His sentence drifted off as everyone at the table remembered the night in Mexico City when Charity had been taken. They’d found her too late and she’d started the transformation. Those bastard vampires hadn’t killed her, they’d toyed with her, torturing her and then transforming her. That was their M.O. Kael’s crew had had to kill three of their own because of this in the last five years. Jagger had to stake his woman as she screamed for mercy.

He sighed. “Anyway, we’re gonna take some months off this time. No tracking until the fall. Let’s just do some recon and enjoy the break.”

“I just plan on drinking some hurricanes and eating a lot of good food. I love New Orleans.” Cap was the oldest of the crew. At forty, he bore the marks of a man who’d been at war for most of his life. His wife had been killed by vamps when she was pregnant. They’d made him watch and left him alive to bear the grief. He was twentythree when he staked his first vampire, twenty-five when he’d hooked up with a very green fifteen-year-old Kael. Cap sported a scar that ran from the corner of his eye to the corner of his lips. The vamps had given it to him while they made him watch as they tortured his wife, feeding on his fear and impotent rage. He’d staked fifty vampires in the nearly twenty years he’d been a hunter.

It was a hard life. None of them had roots but those they built with the crew. They’d all lost someone to the vampires and their numbers swelled and dwindled as people died or went their separate ways. Theirs wasn’t the only group of hunters, there were three others in the US that Kael knew of and several others across the globe. It was the same story—loss, desolation, pain and an insatiable need for revenge. He sighed and looked at his oldest friend, Jagger, who’d lost his wife five months before. He’d had grown up in the same foster home that Kael had, taken Kael under his wing. Together they’d soaked up all the knowledge their foster mother, a hunter herself, had given them.

When the DCF workers had come to get him from the hospital, his foster mother had been there. He’d found out later she’d heard on the police band and had known what had happened. She’d called in a favor with a friend and had the six-year-old survivor placed in her care.

That woman had become his lifeline because she gave him an outlet for his grief and rage. She’d reared him, honed him to be a deadly weapon to vampires. There wasn’t a lot of love there, but he’d had a roof over his head and food to eat. She’d understood him in a way that he wouldn’t have gotten anywhere else, and when he’d turned fifteen he and an eighteen-year-old Jagger had hit the road on their first hunt.

Jagger’s family, too, had been slaughtered. He’d wedged himself into a dresser drawer and the cops had found him there three days later in a state of shock and near death. He had been four at the time.

Kael shook his head as he remembered that first nest they’d come upon. Those were not memories he wanted to replay right then. Distractedly, he rubbed the tattoo above his heart, his name, which meant “warrior” in Gaelic, surrounded by the first protective rune he’d gotten inked. That was twenty runes ago. Each death, each vampire he removed from existence, and he’d gone and gotten a new tattoo. For Kael this break was something he could feel he needed desperately. Each time he went out on a hunt he felt less and less. Less fear, less sympathy, less guilt. All he had was the pain and the rage and the big dead spaces where he knew other things should reside.

Yes. They all needed a rest, needed to be humans, needed to laugh and play and forget the death for a while. They all needed New Orleans for a whole host of reasons, each one necessary to retain their sanity.