“Well, yeah, I’m alone.” Once again, my eyes threatened to do a barrel roll in their sockets, but somehow, I managed to keep them in check. “As for love, it doesn’t seem very likely. I’m here to work. I don’t have time for a social life.”
“It will be a dangerous love,” she said, ignoring my protest. “Dangerous for you as well as for him.” She leaned in, patting my hand with her index finger. “Hmm. Very soon you will face your first test, and so will he. It will be difficult…and painful.”
Okay, at least the story Lola was inventing was intriguing. The fortune teller had begun sucking me in. “What do you mean?” I asked.
Her fingers tightened their grip around my hand. She was remarkably strong, given how frail she looked. “He is already in danger,” she said, ignoring me again.
“He who?” I asked, leaning forward to stare at my palm, as if I could possibly gauge anything by looking. “Who is he?” My mind reeled with thoughts of Trick, but I pushed them aside, reminding myself that I didn’t even know him enough to call him a friend, let alone a love interest…no matter how much I might have fantasized about him over the course of the last hour or so.
“He has been in peril since the day he was born. Threatened at every turn by an ancient enemy. But your presence here makes the danger far, far worse.”
“What do you mean, an ancient enemy?”
She looked at me again, this time with laser focus. “The Seven,” she said. “The Seven will come. And when they do, the city may burn again. His power is his curse, this lover of yours. He and those who are loyal to him, they are all in peril.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why would anyone want to hurt him?” I had no idea why I was asking such a stupid question about a man who probably didn’t even exist. But for some insane reason I wanted—needed—to know.
“Vengeance,” she said. “Revenge for an act of cruelty that occurred two hundred years ago.”
“That seems like a long time to hold a grudge,” I said, relieved to realize that she was just spewing nonsense now. There was no way in hell that someone had a two-hundred-year-old vendetta against Trick. The guy looked like he was all of thirty years old.
Madame Lola spoke softly now, eyes glazing over, her voice dissipating into the air around us like distant music. I wasn’t even sure anymore that she was aware of my presence. “Some things are never forgotten. Some curses never die.”
I pulled my hand away and sat back, crossing my arms over my chest. “So tell me, who exactly is this man I’m going to love?” I asked. “Because I’m kind of on a tight schedule here.”
The fortune teller turned her head away, slamming her eyes shut as though she was in pain. “I can’t say,” she replied. “I must not push you towards him. It would be kinder to tell you to leave this place, this city, for good. To defy your fate. Abandon your work. Find a new project. You should run.”
I began to open my mouth, intending to say something vaguely snide. But as I stared at the strange woman, a chill settled into my bloodstream that I couldn’t fight back. All of a sudden, my skin was coated in goosebumps, my mind dark with thoughts of death and destruction.
Wow. She was good. She’d freaked me right out.
“Go, now,” she said, shooing me away with her hands. “Leave this underground place, and don’t look back. Go and live your life in peace. Forget all that you’ve seen here.”
“Why should I forget?”
Madame Lola’s eyes popped open, and she turned to me, her irises glowing emerald green.
“Because the man you met tonight—the one you want so badly—he will only bring you pain.”
Chapter 6
Trick
The moment I told Sierra to make herself scarce, I regretted it.
Damn it, I’d meant it more as a joke than a serious request. She wasn’t exactly a threat, even if she was eavesdropping. She’d have no way of knowing who the Marquis or Tristan were, anyway. Hell, if she hadn’t figured out by now that the Undercroft was swirling with near-immortals, there was no way she’d catch on to what Louis and I were talking about.
Still, Layla had been right about one thing—if I was going to vie for the Alpha position, I had to start being more cautious, which meant keeping my cards close to my chest. That meant watching what I say and being careful about where I said it.
It also meant not getting too close to a woman who gave me a raging erection every time I sniffed in a whiff of her devastating pheromones.
I turned to Louis, grateful to have a moment free from the scourge of feminine allure. The temporary bartender was my closest friend and my only employee at my boat tour business, not to mention the second strongest wolf shifter in town. If I failed to secure the Alpha position, he would be the next logical contender.
Which meant we shared most of our secrets.
“The blonde is something, isn’t she?” he asked, nodding to the far end of the chamber while I sat staring into space.
“Hmm?”
When I realized what he was talking about, I swiveled in my seat just in time to watch Sierra disappear into Lola’s special room at the back corner of the Undercroft.
I should have guessed she’d head there. Humans were always suckers for fortune tellers. Only someone oblivious to their fate would actually want to hear someone tell them their destiny.
We shifters never needed to hear ours. We knew perfectly well how things were going to go for us:
You will live a long life. Or—and this is much more likely—you’ll die horribly because a wolf, or a dragon, or a lion or a bear shifter has ripped your throat out. If you’re really fucking lucky, it’ll happen fast.
“She’s something, all right,” I replied. “She’s seriously sexy. But she’s also way too inquisitive, which means she’s dangerous. Too many questions.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Louis chuckled as he wiped a beer mug with a white towel. “The only thing she really wanted to know about in this entire place was you.”
My eyebrows arched upwards, and I shot him a look of surprise, pointing my thumb towards my chest. “Little ol’ me?” I asked innocently. “Now why would a pretty little Red Riding Hood like that want to know about a big bad wolf like me?”
“Because she thinks you’re pretty fucking hot, I assume,” he said. “Like all the ladies do.”
“Pfft. Ask a Valk if she thinks I’m special,” I said, nodding towards Layla, who was still sulking by the far wall. “She’ll tell you she’d like to see my head on a spike.”
“Yeah, but that’s just so she can display it over the bed and fantasize about you while she does forbidden things to herself with her Valk fingers.”
“You’re an ass.”
“So are you.”
“Ha,” I replied with a frown. “Well, now that we’ve established that, it’s time to get down to business. I should probably tell you that it looks like the Dragon Lady’s coming out of the woodwork.”
“Really?” Louis asked, the blood immediately draining from his face. “What’s that about?”
“I have no idea. All I know is it can’t be good.”
“Agreed.” Louis was leaning against the bar now, an earnest look replacing the shit-eating grin that had occupied his face since Sierra had gotten up and left.
“As for the Marquis,” I said, “it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what he’s up to.”
Louis nodded and slid a beer down to a patron who was waiting at the other end of the broad bar. “No shit. He’s the whole reason this place has been a living hell for two hundred years. If someone took the bastard’s head off, I wouldn’t shed a tear. Maybe that’s why Tristan Wolfe’s planning to head back down this way; he might want to finish things off. Maybe he thinks he’d be doing you a favor.”
“Possibly, yeah. Tristan does have more reason than anyone on the planet to hate the fucker. But Wolfe can’t afford to piss off the Seven right now, so somehow I don’t think that’s what his
visit’s about. I have a feeling he doesn’t want to attract too much attention. I suspect we’re on our own when it comes to dealing with our old enemies.”
I ground my jaw for a few seconds. I’d never liked thinking of the Marquis, let alone the fact that one day I might have to fight him. He was an abuser of shifters, of humans, of everyone who made the mistake of walking into his life. He’d been an asshole for hundreds of years, but he’d mostly managed to do it in private. For some reason, he seemed to want to make his status as local fuckwad permanent and official.
“Just watch your back, man,” Louis said. “I don’t need to have a session with Madame Lola to know something bad’s about to go down.”
“Don’t worry about me.” I took a final swig of beer and pushed myself away from the sarcophagus that was currently doubling as a bar. “Listen, I think I’m going to head up and grab a breath of fresh air. Suddenly this place is feeling claustrophobic.”
The truth was that I’d lost any desire to hang out with the shifters and Valks in the Undercroft. Somehow, I wasn’t in a particularly festive mood. Some dark, shadowed thought was lurking at the back of my mind, but I hadn’t quite figured out what had brought it on.
Besides, only one creature in the place interested me in the least, and right now she was holed up in Madame Lola’s chamber, no doubt learning about her lifeline or some shit. She’d be better off if I wasn’t around when she came back out.
Louis frowned, seeming to understand my need for space. “Look after yourself, Brother,” he said. “You’re the next Alpha, after all. We need you.”
“Yeah. Like you need another hole in the head,” I chuckled. “Look, if I don’t see you again tonight, I’ll catch you at work tomorrow morning. Eleven a.m.”
“I’ll be there with bells on. And quite possibly a hangover.”
After making my way upstairs past Karl the bouncer—who was half asleep but still looked afraid that I was going to pound him into oblivion—I found myself trudging across the damp grass and through the tangle of weeds in the cemetery, wandering aimlessly among the tombs. The place was dark and gloomy, laced with long shadows cast by the moonlight.
I could see why humans would be uncomfortable in a place like this. With their dull senses, they’d never hear, see, or even smell an attacker getting ready to leap out at them. My senses, on the other hand, were on high alert.
Every now and then I sniffed the air, not exactly sure what I was looking for. All I knew was that something had set me off. Maybe it was talk of the She-Dragon or the Marquis. Either way, my wolf was on high alert. I could all but feel the fur bristling on the back of his neck despite the fact that he was concealed somewhere deep inside my human form.
All he was waiting for was a chance to burst out.
I stopped pacing and pressed a fist to my forehead. Think, man, think. How are you going to fix this? How are you going to win the fight that’s about to land on your doorstep?
The Marquis was a pain in my ass, but the She-Dragon might prove an even bigger problem. I’d never met her, never seen her in the flesh. I knew her only by her reputation, which was a horrific one. Legend had it that she was hundreds of years old and that she could kill a man just by looking at him. Of course, I’d also heard that she was so beautiful and so manipulative that no man she’d ever set her sights on had been able to resist her.
From the sounds of it, meeting her would be like encountering the mythological creature Medusa—the one with snakes for hair and the ability to turn men to stone. The thing was, the She-Dragon seemed worse. Instead of getting converted into rock, I’d end up as a pile of ash and embers.
It wasn’t a fate I was particularly looking forward to.
Another surge of dread rose up in my chest—a warning from the wolf who lingered all too near the surface of my skin. Something was definitely wrong.
As I began pacing again, I couldn’t help thinking that I should have canceled the bash this year. It was an act of arrogant idiocy to gather the town’s most powerful wolves and Valks all in one vulnerable place like this. A big strategic mistake, one that could prove deadly. The Undercroft provided a perfect locale for an enemy to strike our entire pack at once. A blow to this place would be devastating to the entire shifter community of New Orleans, not to mention that it would leave the Marquis with all the power. The south would fall to an oppressive regime of sadistic shifters who moved in shadow, taking down their enemies in secret. There was no telling what kind of damage they might do to the human population.
To people like Sierra.
I took another sniff at the air, my body tensing. This time my nose picked up a distinct, vaguely familiar scent. But it wasn’t an enemy, nor was it entirely unpleasant. Something about it was enticingly feminine and off-putting at once.
It was the aroma of a Valkyrie.
But not just any Valk.
“Hello, Patrick,” said a feminine voice that seemed to come from several feet behind me.
I spun around, wondering how I hadn’t detected her on the air until she’d come so close. But of course I hadn’t. Kara was a genius at stealth, able to move around the entire world quietly, secretly. Always under the protection of Tristan Wolfe, the shifter to whom she devoted all her energy. For some reason, she was unflinchingly loyal to him.
Then again, so was almost everyone who knew the guy. He was legendary for his level-headed control over shifters and Valks alike. It was the reason he was Alpha to the entire northern half of the country. The guy commanded respect.
“Hello, Kara,” I said as she stepped out from behind a cracked and weathered monument and made her way towards me. “You’re looking well.” She was wearing a form-fitting blue dress that accentuated her lean, statuesque runway-model physique. One would hardly have guessed by looking at her that she could throw a man my size to the ground as if I weighed no more than twenty pounds.
She let out a quiet laugh. “Thanks,” she said. “But you don’t have to be nice to me. I know perfectly well that I’m about the last person you want to see right now.”
I shook my head. “You’re wrong about that. The last person I want to see looks like he’s made of beef jerky and smells like moldy cheese and the grim stink of death.”
“Well,” she laughed, “I definitely hope that doesn’t describe me.”
“Not at all. I’m curious, though. What exactly are you doing here?”
Kara hesitated for only a moment. “I need to talk to you about Tristan.”
I’d expected to hear his name, but my body still tensed at the sound of it. A purely Pavlovian response. I’d learned over the years that a healthy fear of Tristan Wolfe sightings was a smart and necessary instinct. Danger gravitated towards the guy like moths to a flame. “Yeah, I figured as much. How’s the northern Alpha doing, anyhow?”
“He’s…okay,” she said with a strange look that told me she wasn’t sure if she was telling the truth or not. “He’s good, actually. But he needs to come back down to New Orleans for a few days. It’s kind of important.”
The tension in my frame amplified. My muscles felt like they were made of steel, my breath trapping deep inside my lungs. I leaned back against one of the taller marble monuments, my arms crossed over my chest.
“It’s a bad time,” I protested. “The Alpha Trials are coming up, and I need to focus on my training instead of whatever disaster he’s going to unleash. I’d really prefer that he didn’t come.”
“So would he. Believe me on that one.” Kara turned her gaze to the silhouetted trees in the distance. She seemed nervous, which was an unusual state for the normally stoic Valkyrie. “This place holds a lot of ugly memories for him, as I’m sure you know. The thing is, he’s hoping to change that. He wants to start a new life.”
“Yeah, that’s kind of what I’m afraid of.”
Kara shot me a narrow-eyed look that told me I was being a jerk. “Look, he’s doing it for a nice reason.”
“Nice? What could he possibly have
planned for New Orleans that’s nice? The kindest thing he could possibly do for this city is leave us alone.”
“He will, after he’s done. The thing is, he’s getting married. There’s a woman…”
I put my hand up, halting her in her verbal tracks. “Yeah, I know,” I said. “I met her.”
Her face softened, relaxing into something close to a smile. Interesting. Apparently Kara was fond of Tristan’s human lover. But then, it shouldn’t have surprised me. I’d detected the Valkyrie blood running through Ariana’s veins the day we’d met.
“So you met Ari when they were here?” Kara asked.
I nodded. “Yup. Nice lady. Deathly afraid of gators. Likes jumping up onto chairs. She’s a little…emotional.”
Kara laughed. It was nice to see her face morph into a happy expression, if only for a second. She always seemed so damned serious…but there was a sadness in her, too. I couldn’t help but like her for it. In our own detached way, we were like two peas in a pod. Both of us lived lives that were fucked up for reasons beyond our control.
“It’s fine,” I said. “About Tristan, I mean. If he has to come for a day or two, tell him he’s welcome. He has my protection, as much as I can possibly offer it. But in return, I might ask a favor or two of him.”
“Thank you, Trick. I’ll make sure to let him know.” Kara looked like she was ready to turn and walk away, but she paused for a second and added, “Hey, by the way…do you know anyone who works in construction?”
My shoulders jerked up in a quick shrug. “Sure. Why do you ask?”
The Valk’s face lit up like it was Christmas morning and she was getting her first pony. “I have a favor to ask. Actually, not a favor—it will be a very well-paying job. The only thing is, it needs to be done fast. And well.”
“Well, whatever it is, I’m sure I can find the right people. I do run this city, even though it looks like my reign might end very fucking soon.”
Chapter 7
Sierra
Southern Alpha Book One (Southern Alpha Serial 1) Page 4