Just like it took my mother.
But years before that, when I was only four, I came to this place to say a final goodbye to a man I never truly knew.
The man that fathered me.
Even then this place scared the shit out of me. Charity Hospital was an intimidating structure for such a young mind. It never occurred to me that they shouldn’t have allowed a kid into the ICU, but they did.
On a hospital bed, with half of his body burnt to a crisp, my deadbeat father had begged for a forgiveness he never deserved.
Drug-addict.
Criminal.
Deserter.
He left my mom when she was eight months pregnant with me and only showed me his face in his final moments.
Fucking coward.
I hated this place ever since.
Hate it now.
Yet that isn’t the most important thing in my life at the moment.
As always, it’s the woman on my back. With her gorgeous thighs around me, smooth legs, even smoother voice in my ear . . .
“You can stop now, werewolf.”
Oh, I’m going to.
Speeding past the deserted emergency room, I send a corroded medical tray flying into one of the nursing stations. It collides with a bang as I reach behind me, grab hold of the witch—
And press her into the wall.
“What in the fu—”
“My name is Silas. Learn to fucking use it.” I duck my head to kiss her.
She barely dodges my lips in time.
That’s fine. Her golden neck looks just as delicious and I’m planning on having a mouthful.
She slams her hand against my lips and pushes my head back with all her might. “Are you fucking crazy? What are you doing?”
“Mfastinew,” I mumble against her palm. I’m tasting you. Okay, that didn’t come out how it should’ve, but I’m sure she gets the gist of it anyway.
She bucks against me, back coming off the wall, and instead of budging me, the only thing she manages to accomplish is pressing that sweet pussy right into my groin. “Get off me, you fucking crazy werewolf—”
Wind blasts me in the back, shoving me onto her.
The others caught up to us.
“Pathetic,” I hear Sabian scoff. “Slumming it with his kind. She deserves to die.”
“Excuse me?” My head snaps around, teeth enlarging, but it’s my vision that changes first. A stretching in my eyes that brings with it every detail of him—every vulnerable part I plan to tear into. “What the fuck did you just say about her?”
The other two witches stand inches from him, feet on the molded ground, hands twitching at their sides with tendrils of multi-colored power.
That’s not all. In the shadowed hallways beyond the broken, dilapidated doors, figures move, ambling back and forth.
People?
My ears twitch, senses torn between two sources of danger.
“No mortals to stop us here.” The blonde witch laughs and the air around her crackles with mini-shocks of energy. “No witnesses.”
She has a point.
But if that’s true, then what are those shapes I see out of the corner of my eyes?
As if in sync, I back away from the witch, and she lowers herself to the ground, light-blue irises glowing with the beginnings of her fire.
“You don’t say,” she purrs, as a trickle of blue-orange blazes up the length of her bare arm.
Alarmed expressions flicker across their faces.
My eyes jump from them to the shadows that continue moving around us, and I swear, the closest one is wearing nurses scrubs.
It’s a woman. It has to be. Her hair is held back in a pony tail and she’s going about her business, oblivious to the fight about to go down.
“None of you are strong enough to take me down. That’s the real reason you’re here.” My nameless obsession jerks her head toward me. “It has nothing to do with him.”
“And, yet, here we find you, slumming it with him, cher.” Sabian’s lip curls with disdain on the last part.
“Oh Sabie, look at you all surprised. Don’t forget—” She steps forward, eyes flashing with literal fire and malevolence, her foot leaving a flaming imprint on the ground behind her. “I once slummed it with the likes of you. Werewolf, and all, he’s a step up from that. Isn’t he?”
She said what now?
I zip across the room, faster than I’ve ever been. Sabian raises a hand to defend himself, twisting sideways to avoid me, a grid of yellow energy symbols sparking at the tips of his fingers . . .
The same fingers I take with me as I miss the rest of him by mere inches.
Blood squirts instantly from the tips of his amputated knuckles. “Ahhhh! You worthless beast!”
Madness erupts around us.
I spit the three fingers I bit off onto the floor and spin around with my claws bared.
My witch bursts into an outline of sheer fire.
Sabian and the blonde witch surround themselves with their power, geometric grids of energy like the one he threatened me with, yet instead of attacking, they put distance between us.
They can’t take on my witch. That’s a given.
Only the dark-skinned witch remains in place and she raises her hands sideways, chanting in a language I’ve never heard before.
“No!” My witch growls, sending a volley of fire in her direction.
The shadows pop to life around the chanting woman, forming a shield around her, and I’m rooted in place as I take them in.
Male and female nurses in scrubs.
A few doctors in their coats.
Patients, old and young, in gowns.
Others in regular clothing.
Some of the outfits seem modern.
Some of them seem completely out of this time.
Every single one of those people is nothing more than an outline. See-through.
Ghosts.
People who’ve died here. During Katrina . . . and before.
Oh God. I’m seeing the fucking dead and that witch just called them to her!
As translucent as they are, they make an impenetrable shield, absorbing the stream of fire before it can impact the witch that controls them.
The flames retreat and my witch cries out in rage, light blue eyes glowing. “Fucking necromancer!”
Necromancer? I thought they raised the dead back to life.
Fuck it. Doesn’t matter what I thought. Reality is definitely different than the fiction humans are fed.
Another group of ghosts merge into a shield around Sabian and the blonde witch. His hand is no longer bleeding, the stumps of his finger cauterized, and the glare in his eyes is laser focused on me.
I bit off his fingers.
He hates my kind.
But this is also because of the witch. Because he fucked her and he’s convinced I’m the one getting that from her now.
Good. Let the motherfucker die with that image in his head.
“I’m going to feed off every ounce of your death,” he promises me, as the witch next to him spins her hands and the grids of power she’s manifesting grow larger.
“Yeah . . . well,” I roll my shoulders, fingers flexing open and closed, and connect to the murderous instinct inside me, “I already took your fingers, so you have some catching up to do. Don’t you?”
It’s a premeditated dig, and it works to perfection. That fucker is jealous of me because he still wants my witch.
He should’ve never let me see that.
Shouting in fury, he pushes past the blonde witch, destabilizing her footing and her aim. He clears the translucent line of ghosts that were shielding them and flings a disc of energy my way.
His aim is sheer shit. It takes a mere jerk of my upper body to avoid the blast. I barrel straight for him, pounding steps eating the distance, timing my change just right—
It’s the first time I effect the change of my own free will, instead of blind instinct, and it takes over me with shocking speed.
Not that it helps.
The necromancer witch shouts what sounds like a command in that weird language and the ghosts slam into me, sending me skidding back on all four legs.
Fire whirls through the air in response, my witch sending a tsunami of it toward our enemies. Eyes burning from the brightness, I duck my head, expecting to hear their screams following.
Nothing but the roaring sound of the flames and the chants of the necromancer.
How can something so incorporeal provide such an impenetrable shield?
The flames clear and I blink open my eyes, a mere millisecond before the blonde witch slices her hand toward my face, energy swirling like blades around it.
Sabian and her pose a serious danger, especially that pathetic, jealous warlock, yet I’m powerless to stop them with this intangible mess of ghosts surrounding me.
Even worse, my witch’s flames are harmless to them as long as that chanting witch is still capable of speaking.
My intention shifts faster than I can keep track. It’s as if I was born to fight, or like I’ve been doing it for years. There’s no second guessing my new objective. Snout low to the ground, I aim myself at the puppet master of these ghosts.
A lot of good that it does me. If I thought the wall of dead souls protecting the other two was impassable, I’m in for one heck of a surprise.
My entire face collides with what feels like a steel wall and I’m pretty sure I hear bones breaking on impact.
With a high-pitched yelp, I jerk back, vision pounding from the pain.
The ghosts are unreactive. Nothing more than floating visages of what once was. Yet they’re the most effective fucking weapon that woman could possibly wield. While I’m still shaking off the shock of slamming into them, a bolt of power slices along my back.
The skin is instantly cut open.
I throw my head back, howling toward the ceiling.
Even in that shock, I remain cognizant of the approaching danger. Of Sabian trying to sneak up on my other side.
Cocksucking asshole.
I’ll deal with him later.
“Werewolf, get your ass back over here!”
“Of course you’d call for him,” Sabian shouts back at my witch.
She sneers at him, fire trickling off every inch of her.
Stumbling, I make my way to her, aware that they can stop me at any moment if they so choose.
Without the shield of the undead, we’d probably stand a chance. But how the fuck do you kill something you can’t touch?
The fire-witch faces off with the necromancer. The look of disdain on her face rivals the disgust I saw in Sabian’s when he judged her for being close to me. “You dare attack me for being more powerful than every single one of you, yet there you are, flaunting forbidden power.”
“You became an abomination. An unexplained one. You have yet to confess what foul spell you worked to be given control of hell’s flames.”
I abandon the wolf form and imagine clothes on my body. The three of them approach, gaits calm. Controlled. I’m admittedly impressed, considering Sabian is still nursing his maimed hand.
Then again, they have us cornered. Our only other option is to start running again.
If those freaking ghosts let us.
My eyes dart around us. A flare of heat tickles my back—it’s my witch, moving closer to me, her back facing mine. Fire-framed hands held up in an identical position to my own.
Each of us weighing our options, how we’re going to get out of this—
One by one, the ghosts begin to disappear. It comes as a surprise to us, especially the witch that was controlling them. She begins a frantic, new chant. It isn’t hard to guess that she’s trying to make them return.
“Pitoyable,” a woman grouses in a heavy accent.
I flip around to locate the source.
Next to me, my witch starts laughing, a slow, mocking sound that gains volume.
Half covered by shadows, a true voodoo priestess leans against the wall next to an isolation room, arms crossed. Her eyes glow all-gray, and her braids reach down to her hips. Her crossed arms are covered in tattoos that shine in the same shade, made even brighter by her caramel-colored skin. “You dare play with my magic, little girl?” she asks the necromancer.
Although, she’s a necromancer herself. A much more adept one. Nearly all the ghosts are gone from the room at this point.
“Y’all done it now,” my witch sings lightly, delighting in the looks of terror dawning on the faces of the others.
“How—no. This is a trick!” Sabian seems the most terrified of the group. “She’s dead. I saw to it myself. The coven turned on her.”
The new arrival chuckles, pushing off the wall. She steps into a beam of light, a staff materializing in her grip. A skeleton’s hand hangs from the necklace around her neck, boney fingers reaching down into the V of her black gown. “Sabian of the Oak Valley plantation. Nothing more than a poor slave until Momma made that deal and got you some powers.” She slams the end of her staff into the floor. The ground shakes and ripples as light-gray power scatters through. “If I had never answered her call, you would not even be alive today, boy. How dare you think you could ever take me down?”
Now it’s the three of them that stand horrified. They didn’t flinch at the presence of real ghosts, at watching a man turn into a werewolf, or watching a being controlling pure fire.
Yet this priestess terrifies their very souls.
“Ma—Marie . . .” Sabian shakes his head back and forth, denial morphing into desperation.
Marie?
Wait a goddamn minute.
Voodoo priestess.
Old enough to have been on a plantation?
Marie.
Eyes bugging out of my head, I stare at her once more.
It can’t be.
No way.
“Do you understand now? What happens when you try to turn on those that are more gifted than you?” My witch flexes her claws, showing off the flames at the tips. “What it’ll cost you to aim so high?”
No one answers her.
None of them have managed to rip their attentions away from the priestess.
“No? Let me spell it out for you.” As she closes the distance, each step taken leaves a fire imprint in her wake. “You think you can kill us, but watch us feast on your putrid souls.”
Without moving her lips or uttering a word, the one named Marie brings an army of ghosts back into the room.
My witch snaps her fiery fingers near her hips.
In seconds, our attackers are overrun, their screams echoing off the walls.
The blonde witch is shoved into the nurses’ station by a wall of the dead and the rotted structure gives way. Fire streaks in a straight line toward her.
Her haunting scream as she’s engulfed lasts mere seconds. That’s how long it takes for her body to burn down to nothing but her skeleton.
Commanded by my witch’s willpower, it begins a rapid crawl toward the others.
Sabian and the young necromancer witch.
Somehow, although they’re surrounded by what seems like thousands of souls, they manage to dematerialize right as the fire makes it to where they were.
Sabian throws one last promise our way before he goes. “This isn’t over, Laveau. The Bestowers will know you’re alive.”
CHAPTER 9
“Laveau?!” My scream shoots up and down the first floor of my home, ricocheting back to us. “Marie-fucking-Laveau?!”
The two women ahead of me share an amused glance, but they don’t pause to acknowledge me.
“This is some kind of joke,” I fume.
It’s not a joke. I know that.
What the fuck did I ever do to deserve my life being turned upside-down like this?
Oh, right. I sold my fucking soul. “But I was freaking high!” I shout, although this conversation is supposed to be taking place in my head.
My very fucked-up, possibly traumatized head.
“Is he high right now?” Marie asks my witch—who I’ve decided needs a fucking nickname since she won’t tell me her actual name.
For now, Brat will do nicely.
“I wouldn’t be surprised. It is a huge part of his history. Old habits die hard and all that.”
Another invasion; the proof that she knows way too much about my past grinds me raw. “Funny how you’ve seen that part of my history—”
“I’ve seen way too many pieces of that.” They turn into my kitchen, where they both pause to stare at the large size of it.
“Save it. I’ve seen where your coven is,” I snap at them. I will no longer be judged for living in luxury.
Or for selling my soul to get there.
Their kind dangled the offer in front of me, while I was fucking blitzed and desperate.
“You act all fucking high and mighty compared to me—”
“As ridiculous as this all is”—the brat waves a ringed-finger around the two-hundred square foot kitchen—“your money isn’t the problem, werewolf. You sold your soul to cheat your way to the top.”
I sold my soul so I could have a shot at you! Although I believed her to be a figment of my imagination. “I sold my soul to escape my miserable life, but if you want to get technical, I went along because I thought I was hallucinating off the fucking drugs.”
A stillness falls over the two women in the kitchen, although I can’t really look at the one claiming to be the infamous Marie Laveau alive and in the flesh. I hear the bones of the skeletal bracelet around her wrist clicking together as she turns to the other witch. “They’re allowing those types of deals now? Child, I know I’ve been gone nearly fifty-years, but I never thought they’d fall that far.”
The brat throws a scowl my way, bristling from head to toe. “Of course they aren’t allowing that. He’s lying.”
The sudden tension in the room makes no sense to me. They’re both acting like me being intoxicated changes the reality of whether I sold my soul or not. It’s a done deal . . . isn’t it? “I don’t have a reason to lie. I was high off my ass. You saw for yourself, didn’t you? I was always high in those days.”
Marie slaps her staff onto the kitchen island. “Alright, child. It’s time we consider this deal might be rotten.”
“I’m telling you! He’s lying. Seril knows damn well what the rules are. Even she wouldn’t be dumb enough to break them.”
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