Chapter 2
Chapter
Two
The French Quarter thrummed with pre-Halloween energy as Rowan’s Harley rumbled to a stop outside Café du Monde.
Even at ten p.m. on an ordinary Monday, with Halloween some weeks away, tourists wandered the streets in costume: vampires with all-too-perfect white fangs, witches with plastic cauldrons and besoms, and shuffling zombies with artfully applied fake wounds.
The irony of their make-believe wasn’t lost on Summer as she dismounted from behind her werewolf mate.
“Where’s the scene?” she asked, pulling off her crash helmet and running her fingers through her squished hair.
“Royal Street, near the cathedral.” Rowan’s alert amber eyes scanned the crowd. “Maurice wants us to take a look before NOPD cordons everything off.”
They walked deeper into the Quarter, past shops already decked out for Halloween: skeleton garlands draped across wrought-iron balconies, jack-o’-lanterns grinning from every doorway, and hand-painted signs advertising “Authentic Voodoo Readings” and “Ghost Tours Nightly.” The air was thick with the scent of beignets, coffee, and another aroma Summer was learning to recognize: supernatural tension.
“Is it always like this?” Summer asked, watching a group of college students dressed as angels stumble past, their wings dragging in the gutter. She had been very young when her father sent her away from New Orleans. In any case, her mother would never have allowed her into the city at night.
“Halloween week in New Orleans?” Rowan’s mouth quirked in a humorless smile.
“This is just the warm up. Halloween is like Christmas morning for things that go bump in the night. All this energy, all this belief in the supernatural—it makes the veil between worlds so much thinner. Real vampires can walk around with fangs showing, and people think it’s just a really good costume. ”
Summer shivered despite the humid October heat. She’d been living in the supernatural world for months, ever since she found out she was the last witch in her line of Le Voile, but she was still learning its rules, still discovering how much more dangerous her new reality could be.
They turned onto Royal Street, and Summer immediately spotted the police tape stretched across the entrance to a narrow alley between two antique shops. A city werewolf, Officer Ray LeBlanc, stood guard, his expression grim. When he saw Rowan approaching, he shook his head.
“Your Alpha called this in fast,” LeBlanc said by way of greeting. “But I gotta tell you, this ain’t like anything I’ve seen before.”
“How so?” Rowan asked.
“Come see for yourself. But Doc?” Le Blanc nodded toward Summer. “You might want to prepare yourself. It’s… messy.”
LeBlanc held up the tape, and they ducked under it, and Summer immediately understood what he meant. The alley was narrow, barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side, with brick walls rising on either side. About halfway down, a shape lay crumpled against the left wall.
It had once been human.
“Jesus,” Summer breathed, her medical training warring with her very human revulsion.
The body was twisted at impossible angles, limbs bent backward, chest cavity torn open to expose ribs that gleamed in the streetlight.
But what made Summer’s stomach clench wasn’t the violence; she’d seen plenty of trauma cases in Boston.
She massaged her palm with her left thumb, frowning in concentration.
It was the wrongness of this scene, especially how the wounds shifted and blurred when she wasn’t looking directly at them.
She peered at her palm; it was unmarked, no signs of burning, but she was sure she’d seen silver flames.
“The victim’s name was Thomas Bergeron,” LeBlanc read from his notepad. “Twenty-six, tourist from Dallas. According to his friends, he was last seen around eight thirty, said he was going to find a bathroom.”
“And?” Rowan kneeled beside the body, careful not to disturb the scene but close enough to examine the wounds.
“Found him like this about an hour later. No witnesses, no sounds of struggle. Just…” Le Blanc gestured helplessly. “This.”
Summer forced herself to look more closely, switching into professional mode. “These lacerations,” she said slowly. “They’re not from any animal I’ve ever seen. Look at the claw marks—five parallel gouges, but the spacing is wrong for a bear or big cat. And the depth…”
“Goes clean through to the brick wall,” Rowan finished. “Whatever did this was strong. Incredibly strong.”
“That’s what worries me,” Le Blanc said. “Because we got three similar attacks in the last week. All tourists, all found in alleys, all torn up like they went ten rounds with a wood chipper.”
Rowan and Summer exchanged glances. Three attacks meant a pattern, and patterns in the supernatural world often meant something much worse than random violence.
“Any witnesses to the other attacks?” Summer asked.
“That’s the strange thing. Each time, people reported seeing someone in costume running from the scene. But the descriptions don’t match. First one was a guy in a werewolf mask; the second was someone dressed like a vampire; the third looked like a zombie.”
A chill hit Summer’s stomach. “Different costumes each time?”
“Yeah. But here’s the kicker… In each case, the costume was too good. Too realistic. The witnesses said the wolf mask had actual fur that moved in the wind, or the vampire’s fangs looked too long and too sharp for plastic.”
Rowan stood slowly, his expression grim. “Ray, I need you to keep this scene locked down for another hour. Can you do that?”
“For Maurice? Yeah, I can give you some time. But the feds are already asking questions about these attacks. They think we might have a serial killer working the Halloween crowd.”
“If only it were so simple,” Rowan muttered.
As they walked back toward the street, Summer caught Rowan’s arm. “Those descriptions: werewolf, vampire, zombie. You’re thinking what I’m thinking? That we’re looking at hybrids again?”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Rowan’s jaw was tight. “You know the transformations were never stable. Victor’s experiments created creatures who shifted randomly between forms, never able to hold one shape for long. They were in constant pain, driven mad by the process.”
“But we killed them all,” Summer insisted. “You, me, Maurice, Fabian. You told me you were sure they were all destroyed.”
Trinity fire. Le Voile magic, along with the wolf’s untamed strength, the vampire’s more cultivated nature. The color of the living flames. We destroyed them all. Didn’t we?
“We thought they were.” Rowan pulled out his phone and speed-dialed a number. “Maurice? It’s me. We’re at the scene… Yeah, it’s what we feared… No, worse. There have been three attacks this week, all with the same signature… I know, but the timing can’t be coincidental…”
While Rowan talked to his Alpha, Summer studied the Halloween festivities around them with new eyes.
A group of teenagers dressed as monsters posed for photos near a historic mansion, their fake blood looking disturbingly realistic under the streetlights.
A man in an elaborate wolf costume wandered past, and for a moment Summer’s breath caught—until he pulled off the mask to reveal a sweaty, very human face underneath.
But the next figure, a woman in a tattered wedding dress with too-pale skin and eyes that reflected the light like an animal’s, made Summer take an involuntary step backward.
The woman smiled, showing canines that were definitely not fake fangs, before melting into the crowd of costumed revelers.
The vampire was clearly making the most of Halloween.
“We need to go,” Rowan said, ending his call. “Maurice is calling an emergency pack meeting for tomorrow night. But first, he wants us to check out the other attack sites.”
They spent the next two hours visiting crime scenes throughout the Quarter.
At each one, the evidence told the same story: incredible violence, inhuman strength, and witness reports of figures in unbelievably realistic costumes, bordering on perfect.
Summer began to recognize a pattern: each attack had taken place near a location associated with Mardi Gras or Halloween celebrations.
All were close to parade routes, or outside costume shops, or in alleys behind venues famous for their supernatural tours.
Summer yawned. “It’s getting late or really, really early. We should stay in the city overnight. Drive back in the morning. Clearly, they’re hunting in plain sight,” she said as they stood by the third crime scene on Dauphine Street. “Using the Halloween chaos as cover.”
“And getting bolder each time,” Rowan agreed. “The first attack was hidden, tucked away in a side alley. This last one? Right on a main street, twenty feet from a crowded bar.”
Around them, the Quarter pulsed with life. Jazz music spilled from open doorways, mixing with laughter and the clink of glasses. A group of tourists dressed as zombies shambled past; Summer watched them carefully, searching for signs that the costumes might be more than fabric and makeup.
“How do we tell the difference?” she asked. “Between someone in a really good costume and something else?”
Rowan stilled for a moment, watching the crowd. “You have good instincts. Trust them,” he said. “Your medical training, your supernatural senses—they’re both trying to protect you. If it feels wrong, it usually is.”
As if summoned by his words, a figure emerged from the shadows near the cathedral—tall, elegant, and his pale skin glowed in the light of the waxing gibbous moon. Summer recognized him immediately.
Fabian Delacour, the vampire lord of New Orleans.