“I should thank you. You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do this.” Her voice was excited and breathy, like she was getting off on killing me. Hell, she probably was. “I’ve dreamed about it so many times, but Brad thought he was in love with you and I couldn’t do anything to hurt him. Now though … well, you’ve gone and broken his heart which makes you fair game, bitch.”
I was facedown on the dirty ground, a pool of my own blood spreading around me, and she grunted with the effort required to roll me over. Deadweight was a hell of a thing, or so I heard.
“Perfect,” she panted, once I was on my back and staring up at a hastily drawn pentagram on the roof. Caroline fancied herself a voodoo priestess, like so many other fanatics in New Orleans. No one actually took her seriously though. She was hoodoo, not voodoo. Little more than parlor tricks and con jobs.
Until now.
The deranged chick began chanting in French, placing small objects on the tips of the pentagram that I then realized I was lying on top of. A direct mirror image of the one above me.
This was bad. Was this honestly how I was going to die?
There was no pain, which was a blessing, but my educated brain knew it was because the wound was that bad. My body had gone into shock and all I could feel was cold.
“What …” I tried to speak, but my voice was no longer obeying my commands. She got the drift though.
“What am I doing? Besides killing you, of course?” Her eyes gleamed in excitement as she bent low, bringing her nose to touch mine. Close enough to kiss.
“I'm damning you. I'm sending your soul into torture. Where or how, I have no idea, but I assure you … it'll suck.” She grinned wide, then kissed me—the sick fuck—while sliding her lethal knife across my neck and severing all the vital veins and arteries that would ensure my death.
The pain was all-consuming, my lips parted to scream, but all that I achieved were bubbles in the spurting blood pouring from my neck and bathing Caroline.
Darkness crept in with merciful speed, but as my life slipped away, the sketchy runes glowed with an ominous light. Hoodoo or not, Caroline’s spell was somehow working … and in my final moment, I knew true fear.
I woke up surrounded by a different sort of darkness, a soft charcoal color that, if I blinked enough, could be penetrated. It was easy, lazy darkness, the black of a winter night in Louisiana.
“Ciarah,” I whispered aloud, testing the sound out on my tongue. Two perfect little syllables—KEER-ah—trailed across my lips and floated around the quiet room. I was sitting upright in a large bed that smelled like black musk and amber, the smoky hint of vetiver teasing my nostrils when I lifted the navy blue blanket to my face.
Pausing, I closed my eyes and listened to the distant stirring of a car's exhaust.
Ugh.
The thought of getting in a car again made me feel nauseous, all of the metal surrounding me, trapping me inside. I felt like … like maybe once upon a time, I hadn't had these issues. Once upon a time, I'd wanted a car more than anything.
“I just don't fucking see how this girl could be Le Gardien du Voile,” a voice said from outside the window, muffled by the echo of motorcycles outside the clubhouse. I thought it might've been Arlo, Caley's not-boyfriend-but-brother, but I wasn't sure.
“Like you would know, you,” another voice said. This one was clearly Reece; the accent was unmistakable. “You were born on this side o' da Veil. What d'you know about Le Gardien du Voile?” Hearing the differences in the way the two men spoke, it was clear Reece had a bit more skill with French. “Wait till my Mère gets a look at her, then we'll know for sure.”
“Seems like an easy fucking coincidence. After more than a century of looking for her ass, she just drops out of the sky like it's no big thing? I call bullshit. What a crock. I've probably got the enemy sleeping in my damn bed.”
“You always got an enemy in your damn bed,” Reece said with a deep chuckle.
“This from the man who had a ballistic pixie on his ass today? I don't fucking think so, bro.” There was the sound of a door opening and closing, footsteps … and then the bedroom door cracked open, spilling light into the room. “You're awake,” the man said—it was Arlo for sure. He sounded almost disappointed.
“Ciarah,” I said, taking several long, deep breaths to open up my throat. “Ciarah O'Rourke.”
“Ciarah O'Rourke?” Arlo asked, pausing at the edge of the bed—his bed, apparently—and staring down at me with a strange mixture of fascination and disgust. “Doesn't sound like no Veil Keeper's name to me.”
He made a noise under his breath.
“You got a few hours left until dawn; this is your chance to get some sleep before we start grilling your ass.” I couldn't remember a lot about who I was—even now, the dream I had was fading away, the edges burning like a sheet of parchment exposed to flame—but I did know this one thing.
Arlo was a prick.
“I've been sleeping for years,” I said, and I wasn't quite sure where the words had come from. They were rough, and it was still painful to speak, but it was better than being silent. I'd been silenced for a long time; I wasn't about to keep quiet a moment longer. “What's a Veil Keeper?”
“For the love of fucking Christ,” he said, shaking his head and putting his hands on his hips. I couldn't see him well in the dark, just shades of gray that made up a mountain of a man, but I had to admit that his smell was intoxicating. “You gonna keep playing this amnesia crap?”
I just stared at him because I didn't know what to say to that. It felt as if there were two people living inside my brain, two voices fighting to be heard. At this moment, they were both still whispers, barely audible gasps of memory that floated to the surface like bubbles. If I tried hard enough, I might be able to pop one and get a little tidbit, but that was about it.
“Well, if you're done sleeping then get the fuck out of my bed. I'd like to get some sleep before this shit goes south. Go keep Caley company; she's a fucking insomniac.”
I moved the covers away from my bare legs and noticed that Arlo's gaze dropped down to them, sliding up to my bare thighs. A small part of my borrowed panties was visible beneath the baggy t-shirt I'd worn to sleep in. I'd shed Caley's denim shorts; they just weren't very comfortable.
Arlo stepped back, closer to the window. A shaft of moonlight peaked through the curtain, falling across his face, leather vest rustling as he shrugged out of it.
As soon as he did, I noticed the color of his skin shifting from sun-weathered brown to a shimmering silver, like moonlight on a dark lake. It reflected back at me and made me blink, my mind taking in the horns that had appeared on the top of his head, a rack of antlers fit for a king of the forest.
“The Horned God,” I whispered, but I had no idea where that information had come from. I scrambled to my knees and reached out to him, my fingers curling in his black t-shirt. “You're the new Horned One, the Lord of Death and Resurrection.”
“Sure seems like that memory of yours is on its way back,” he told me as I leaned close and breathed in his scent, that same muskiness I'd picked up on his blankets. But this close to him, there was the fresh smell of green things, of the wild … of me naked pressed into the dirt while the Horned One pleasured me with his cock.