The Dragon of New Orleans

by Genevieve Jack

  “What are you saying?”

  Richard tapped his eyetooth. Raven had never considered that Agnes and Richard had also received a tooth from Gabriel. Was that how he obtained all his employees? That was one hell of a recruitment strategy.

  “He bought my freedom,” Richard said. “I was owned by the master of a tobacco plantation. The man was cruel. He planned to whip me to death as a lesson to his other slaves. Gabriel caught wind of his intentions and gave me the money to buy my freedom. Gave it to me. He did not buy me, mind you, although he could have back then. No, he gave me the money and disappeared. No strings attached.”

  Raven shook her head. Was he speaking metaphorically? Slavery hadn’t been legal for over a hundred years.

  “Living free was hungry work. I contracted yellow fever that year. Gabriel was there for me again. He offered to cure me if I would work for him, not as a slave but as a wage-earning employee. I agreed. He fed me his tooth, and here we are. I’ve never regretted it.”

  Raven rubbed her eyes. “Excuse me, but did you mean you were an actual slave? You personally?”

  “We struck our bargain in 1799,” Richard said.

  Raven couldn’t breathe. She searched Richard’s face and found nothing there to suggest he was joking. This couldn’t be real.

  He placed his hand on top of hers. “Raven, honey, I know this is a lot to take in, but that tooth he gave you is the gift that keeps on giving. Gabriel is not a bad man. He’s simply not like us. Who is? Heaven knows, everyone in New Orleans is flying their freak flag high.” His fingers slid slowly off hers as he leaned back in his chair and looked at her over his sunglasses.

  Raven couldn’t get her mouth to stay shut.

  Agnes tore a corner off a piece of pita bread and popped it into her mouth. “My husband died in 1965. The two of us were quite good at spending money at that time. Once Harry was gone, I found out we’d been living well beyond our means. We were in deep financial trouble and I thought I’d solve that problem with a bottle of sleeping pills. I used to go into Blakemore’s frequently and had ordered something for the house. When I called Gabriel to cancel it, he must have heard something in my voice. He showed up at my home and picked me up off the bathroom floor. I struck the bargain with him just before my heart slowed to a stop.” She sighed. “Turns out I had more to live for than I thought I did.” She lifted her wine and swirled the cabernet in the bottom of the glass.

  Raven pinched her thigh. She didn’t wake up. “You too?”

  “Yes. And Duncan, the driver.”

  “And the tooth has made you live longer than normal?”

  “Our lives and yours are now tied to his. We will live as long as he does,” Richard said.

  Chewing her lip, Raven wanted to scream. How could this be real? “But you work for him.” Raven scowled. “Aren’t you both just a different kind of slave?”

  Richard scoffed. “Do I look like a slave to you?”

  Agnes placed a steadying hand on Richard’s arm but looked straight at Raven. “We’ve both come to love Gabriel. That’s why we’re here, talking to you on his behalf. Yes, we are bound to him, but he has never abused that power, Raven.”

  “We know you’re scared,” Richard said. “Everyone is at the start. But if you give this a chance, you won’t regret it.”

  Raven shook her head. “Being trapped in that room…” She grabbed the base of her neck.

  “It must have been terrifying for you, but believe me when I promise it will never happen again.” Agnes replaced her glasses. “You are too important to Gabriel for him to do anything to scare you away. I suspect he’s kicking himself right now at the prospect.”

  Richard straightened. “Agnes…”

  “No, Richard, she needs to know. She is too important to all of us.” She squeezed Raven’s hand. “We can’t let you quit, not just for Gabriel’s sake but for ours and for your own.”

  “I don’t understand.” Raven rubbed her temples.

  “The curse on Gabriel’s ring is eating his magic from the inside out. That ring allows Gabriel to stay in our realm. When his magic dies, he will either have to return home to the place he came from or he will perish here,” Agnes added. “Either way, we lose.”

  “What do you think will happen to each of us if Gabriel’s magic fails?” Richard asked.

  Raven’s breath caught as realization dawned. “You mean the tooth. The magic of the tooth will also fail.”

  They nodded in unison. “If Gabriel’s magic is gone, the magic keeping all of us alive will also be gone. Richard will age rapidly and most certainly die, as will I. You—”

  “I’ll have cancer again.”

  “We’re not sure how it will happen,” Richard said. “If the effects will fade gradually or all at once. But, girl, the results will not be good.” Richard rubbed a hand over his short curls, looking exhausted.

  “You are our last and final hope to break the curse. Gabriel is no longer strong enough to bind another helper,” Agnes said.

  “But that’s the problem,” Raven said. “Gabriel chose me because he thought I was psychic. I’m not. I don’t understand how I can help any more than the two of you. Flipping through books all day—books I can’t even read—it isn’t going to work. You must know that.”

  They fell silent, both staring at her, competing in an impromptu contest of who could look the most forlorn.

  “What about the person who did this before me?” Raven asked. “Was she a real psychic? Maybe we can convince her to return.”

  Agnes nodded. “As real as they come. A medium too. She spoke to spirits.”

  “Why did she leave? Can we talk her into coming back?”

  “She’s not coming back.”

  “Why not? Did Gabriel heal her as well? Doesn’t she know what will happen?”

  Agnes and Richard looked at each other for a moment before Agnes spoke again. “Kristina was a troubled soul. Sometimes she didn’t seem completely… sane. Gabriel tried to help her, but one morning she didn’t come in to work. A few days later, we were visited by a police officer. She’s gone missing, Raven. No one, not even her family, knows where she is.”

  Raven held her head. It was so much to take in, so much pressure. She wasn’t a medium and she couldn’t talk to spirits. There was nothing remotely magical about her. But if what Agnes and Richard told her was true, her life as well as theirs depended on her finding a way to shatter this curse.

  “I hate to break it to you guys, but we are doomed. There’s been a huge mistake. I don’t have any supernatural abilities.” A thought came to her. “How did the ring get cursed in the first place? Wouldn’t undoing the source of the curse be the better option?”

  Richard lowered his chin to look at her over his sunglasses. “The source of the curse is one dangerous, badass witch, and she would be the last person to lift it.”

  Raven leaned forward, resting her chin on her fist.

  “Don’t tell Gabriel I told you about this,” Richard said. “Nothing pokes the dragon in the scales like talking about her.”

  “I’ll keep it to myself,” Raven said. “Her who?”

  “Have you heard of Crimson Vanderholt?”

  The name sounded familiar, but Raven couldn’t place it.

  “The voodoo queen of New Orleans?” Agnes clarified with a raised eyebrow.

  “Uh… you don’t mean the one that does bachelor parties and backyard ceremonies?” Crimson Vanderholt was nothing like your stereotypical voodoo queen. She was blond and blue-eyed and covered in tattoos. She was the type of person Avery would have commented had “led a rough life.” As far as Raven was aware, she was commonly believed to be an entertainer rather than a true voodoo priestess. Her entire shtick was scammy. For fifty dollars, she’d come to your house on your birthday in a red bustier and flowing black skirt, wave a snake in the air, and call it a spell to prolong your life.

  “That’s the one,” Richard said. “She’s the real thing, darling. Into some dark sh
it too.”

  “What’s her beef with Gabriel?”

  “Crimson took a shine to Gabriel a few decades ago. She’s much older than she looks. She’s been around almost as long as Gabriel. He claims she was once an acolyte of Dr. Jean.”

  “Whoa, the Dr. Jean?” Dr. Jean Montanee was as famous as Marie Laveau when it came to the history of voodoo in New Orleans. He was considered the original and most powerful voodoo priest to have ever graced the city. If you followed the religion, he was a big deal. “So she’s immortal too?”

  He nodded. “A dark witch. She is extremely powerful and absolutely obsessed with Gabriel.”

  Agnes leaned forward and lowered her voice. “She asked him to marry her in the early 1900s. He refused. She asked again several years later. Apparently, that time he embarrassed her enough that he pissed her off royally. Over the years Gabriel had to defend himself from all manner of love charms from the woman. I caught her putting a potion in his coffee once. Completely out of her mind.”

  Richard leaned forward and spread his hands. “You would think the witch would give up after a hundred years of hearing no, but she won’t. And every year she grows stronger. Enter women’s liberation, and Crimson became even more obsessed. Now she says she just wants sex. On Mardi Gras last year, she disguised herself as another woman and tried to lure Gabriel into her bed. He refused, but because he didn’t know who she was, he let her get too close. She cursed his ring.”

  Agnes shook her silver hair. “Now she says if he won’t have sex with her, he dies. She’s given him a year. That year is almost up.”

  “Talk about desperate,” Raven said. “All this for one night with him? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “We think it’s about voodoo,” Richard said.

  “Oh, she claims she loves him,” Agnes added. “Claims she wants to marry him. But she is incapable of love. Her true goal is power. We’re not sure how the sex will make her stronger, but judging by her past behaviors and comments, we’re sure magic is her motivation.”

  The distaste that filled Raven steeled her resolve. Even the thought of Crimson forcing herself on Gabriel turned her stomach. A primal urge to rip the woman to shreds made her fingers twitch. Raven had no right or reason to feel possessive of Gabriel, and she suspected it was their bond that was the source of the feeling, but at that moment, she pictured him hovering over her that first night in his bed, the heat of his hand radiating against her ribs, and she had the illogical thought that no one else belonged in her place.

  “We have until Mardi Gras to break that curse, Raven. Will you help us? All of us?”

  Raven was unable to stop the tears from rolling over her cheeks. As much as she wanted to help, she could not go back there. Not today.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I need to go home and think. Tell Gabriel I need time.”

  Chapter Eight

  “You told her everything?” Gabriel stared over his desk at Richard, his heart dropping like a stone. The man must have drawn the short straw because Agnes had volunteered to help the customers in the store while he delivered the bad news.

  “She said she needs time.” Richard rubbed his palms together slowly.

  “It’s been almost twenty-four hours.” Gabriel’s fingers drummed beside his desk blotter.

  “I think she’ll be back,” Richard said confidently.

  “You think… You think she’ll be back.” Gabriel grabbed a pen off his desk and hurled it across the room where it lodged in the wall an inch deep. His fists came down hard on the desk, the handsome piece of furniture groaning under the pressure. Richard bounded from his chair in the blink of an eye.

  “Gabriel, my friend, I love you, man, but your eyes are telling me you need some alone time.” Richard backed toward the door. “Don’t give up on her. She seems like a decent person.”

  Gabriel’s insides coiled and writhed, his dragon’s scaly flesh brushing the underside of his skin. He was the dragon and the dragon was him. Fully and completely. Only sometimes the beast demanded his own way, a crabby alternate personality that Gabriel struggled to keep under control. His inner dragon was all about primal urges and living in the now, punching first and asking questions later.

  It scared him a little how close that part of him was to the surface these days. He didn’t blame Richard for making himself scarce. When Gabriel got angry, the dragon knocked on his internal door. Like the night he found Raven in that alley. No wonder she’d run. He’d brutally beaten those men and left them to die, without remorse. Raven probably thought he was a killer, and she wasn’t wrong. He’d killed before when he had to. And the truth was, the closer they came to Mardi Gras and the culmination of the curse, the less human he’d feel. No wonder she feared him.

  He closed his eyes and rested his face in his hands.

  Footsteps entered the room and the door closed. Probably Agnes checking on him.

  “Leave it open. I’ll be fine in a minute.”

  A cruel laugh cut through the room. “Oh, I doubt it.”

  His gaze snapped up, the cloying scent of saccharine-sweet perfume filling his nostrils. Crimson. She was leaning across his desk, her overfull bust spilling out of the front of her dress within the frame of her ratty blond hair. Another man might have found her voluptuous or simply taken her to bed for the distraction. Gabriel found her repellant.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “A month, Gabriel. That’s all you have left. Isn’t it time you were reasonable?” She drew a nail down the side of her neck and over her right breast. “One night, that’s all I’m asking. I have a spell that will ensure once is enough.”

  “Enough for what?”

  “Enough for me to harness your power. Simple as that.”

  Looking at her now, it was hard to believe they used to be friends. For close to three hundred years they’d lived in the same city, and as immortals, there were times they’d had to rely on each other for protection and support. At one time, he’d considered her his closest friend. It might have been more if he hadn’t seen her for what she was, hadn’t caught her removing the still-beating hearts of dying soldiers on the Civil War battlefield, hearts that she used to bolster her own power. These days she was a warped version of herself, whose magic was dark enough that the stink of it turned his stomach.

  He looked her straight in the eye. “No. My answer hasn’t changed. I will never sleep with you, Crimson. Never. Even if I didn’t find you repulsive, the thought of giving you my power would be.”

  Her smug grin morphed into a sneer. “Repulsive?” She stood and tugged at her dress so that her breasts bounced. “I’ve never had a man say that before. As I recall, you used to find me quite comely.”

  “You’ve changed. You are nothing to me but a walking corpse.”

  “Could it be that your interest in the male employee out front goes further than friendship?”

  Clearly she meant it as an insult, but Gabriel didn’t flinch. He was completely okay with her assuming he was Richard’s partner. She could spread it all over town if she wanted. “Yes,” he lied. “I am gay. As gay as they come. I cannot stomach being with a woman. Now remove your curse from my ring.”

  “Liar.” She snorted. “Besides, if that’s your game, I have ways to get around it.” She cupped her hands over her face and smoothed them up and over her hair, giving her body a little shake. When she was done, a male version of herself stood before him. Even her clothes had changed. She now wore a three-piece suit. “I assure you, my illusions are strong enough to fool even you.” Even her voice was an octave lower.

  He scowled. “What have you done to yourself? This is dark, even for you.”

  She swaggered toward him around the desk. “As dark as it comes, darling. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.”

  “The answer is no. Never. Don’t come back here again.”

  She shook herself and the illusion broke apart and dissolved around her. “Never say never, Blakemore. The worst is yet to come.”
She eyed his ring, stepping closer.

  Gabriel rose from his chair and backed toward the wall to put space between them.

  “You’ll be begging me for mercy in a few short weeks.”

  The door opened. “Gabriel, I…” Raven stood on the threshold, her eyes darting between him and Crimson. “I’m sorry. Richard and Agnes are with customers, and I didn’t know you had… company.”

  His chest swelled with hope. She’d returned! All was not lost. He smiled at her, pouring all the warmth he felt for her at that moment into his expression. “Crimson was just leaving.”

  “Who is this lovely little bird?” Crimson’s artificial nails clicked as she reached for Raven.

  A growl rumbled in Gabriel’s chest. When had his fangs dropped and his fingers extended into talons? “Leave, now.”

  Crimson’s eyes widened for a fraction of a second. Her gaze roved over Raven, her lip twitching. “Interesting.” She snorted. “She’s more pitiful than the last one, and I suspect will last half as long.”

  Gabriel leaped over the desk, sweeping Raven into the office and behind him. With a deadly growl, his talons slashed out and tore through Crimson’s chest. Right through it. Her form rippled like water, and then she was whole again. No blood. No injury.

  “Oh please,” Crimson said. “I know all your tricks, Gabriel. You can’t hurt me.” She swaggered out of his office and disappeared.

  Gabriel whirled to face Raven. “Are you all right?”

  “Is she gone?”

  “Yes.” Gabriel could no longer detect the voodoo queen’s acrid stench.

  Raven let out a deep breath. “So, that’s the infamous Crimson. She’s a theme park princess gone wrong.”

  “That’s one way of putting it.” He scanned her from head to toe. “Thank you for coming back. You are back, aren’t you?”

  Her back was straight, confident; she was not a bit afraid even though she’d watched him try to tear Crimson apart. “I have decided that I will help you, Gabriel Blakemore,” she said. “On my terms.”