Cursed to Death

by L. A. Banks

  “I thought it was just me, just second sight kicking in stronger this time for some reason,” Clarissa said as she glanced around the table. “But Ethan is also wigging out and won’t say what he needs to speak to Sasha and Hunter about.”

  Woods’s line of vision was still on the retreating waitress’s butt, however. “She sure is a pretty young thing, though.”

  Bear and Crow pounded each other’s fists as Fisher nodded and released a low whistle of appreciation.

  “Is it just me, or do you guys with a little canine in you seem to be inordinately preoccupied with tail?” Bradley folded his arms over his chest, drawing snarls. “Seriously. Plus, we’re told to sit outside of The Fair Lady for over an hour with no explanation. Something went down. It’s clear from the little bit of Clarissa’s conversation I could hear that something else happened at Ethan’s establishment—something he’s not willing to discuss with us, and our fearless leaders are AWOL. All of this is just a little coincidental for my liking.”

  “Dudes,” Winters said, his gaze ricocheting around the group, “not being judgmental but, you all have been a little extra . . . just a tad over the top. Like, on edge.”

  Clarissa nodded and then closed her eyes. “Winters is Winters, Bradley is Bradley . . . I’m all right.” She opened her eyes. “But anyone with some paranormal in their DNA just feels a little off center, energy wise. I can’t explain it.”

  “Do you think that’s what hit our alpha, some funky mojo?” Fisher said, wiping egg yolk off his plate with his toast and then stuffing it into his mouth. He held up his hands when Crow Shadow snarled at him. “Hey, hey, hey, I’m trying to be sure that everything is cool. I admit, I wasn’t feeling altogether a-okay when the big guy came out of the bar.”

  “Honesty will keep us all alive if something untoward is happening all around us,” Clarissa said, giving Fisher a high five. “Talk to me. When Hunter exited The Fair Lady, what did you notice?”

  “Aw, man, it’s personal,” Fisher said, taking a big slurp of coffee. “Let’s just say I was really hungry and cannot wait for this party in a few nights.”

  “Woods?” She stared at him, but his gaze was still fixated on the blond’s backside.

  “Yeah. Me, too,” Woods muttered, not looking at Clarissa as he spoke. “I definitely need to walk the dog tonight. I won’t last three days.”

  “Ooookay, that was TMI, but appreciated data. Bradley?” Clarissa folded her arms over her ample breasts, clearly becoming perturbed.

  Bradley held up both hands in front of his chest. “Don’t look at me; I’m cool as a cucumber.”

  “Winters?”

  “I’m good. No issues here, just looking forward to the party like any good soldier would, but I’m cool.”

  “Bear?” Clarissa said with less attitude in her tone as the huge enforcer’s gaze locked in on hers.

  “I need to hunt.” Without further comment, Bear Shadow stood, slapped a twenty-dollar bill down on the table, and walked out of the diner.

  All eyes went to Crow Shadow.

  “I respect you as my half-sister’s closest female companion . . . as her team’s third eye,” Crow Shadow said in a low, sensual rumble. “I think you know the answer to the question. None of the wolves in this pack are settled this morning. And the longer I am in your presence, dear lady, the more unsettled I become.” He stood slowly, still holding Clarissa’s stunned gaze, dropped cash on the table and then left in a graceful, fluid, wolf move.

  “Okay,” she said, releasing a shallow breath with her eyes on Crow Shadow’s retreating, athletic form. She tried to stop looking at his fantastically tight ass as he walked away, but miserably lost that battle.

  “That clinches it. There’s something floating in the air that’s affecting some of the supernaturals.” She fanned her face and looked around at her teammates. “Okay, so maybe we humans are a little affected too.”

  Sasha looked down at her cell phone the moment she and Hunter came out of the shadow lands. It was vibrating so insistently once a signal had been restored that it was practically making her teeth chatter. Eight missed calls from Ethan and Clarissa combined, and they’d only been gone at most forty minutes. Not wanting to waste time, she began reading text messages from her cell phone out loud to Hunter as he loped by her side.

  “Ethan just said to get in touch—repeatedly said that. Fisher left our ride in the back.”

  Hunter didn’t comment. His gaze was straight ahead on their parked jeep that was sitting just where Fisher said it would be.

  She glimpsed Hunter from a sidelong glance as they entered the parking lot of what used to be Elf Dugan’s Bed & Breakfast. Her entire team was put up there, along with Hunter’s men. Thankfully, Doc and Silver Hawk would be coming in soon, too. It would be good to have everyone with a concentrated set of skills in close proximity, given the strange circumstances. Dugan had to be spinning in his grave. She was just glad that the little rat bastard’s estate had lost his establishment to Ethan for siding with Vampires in the double cross against the wolf packs.

  Seemed a fitting punishment—Dugan had done a foul deed and would have been banished from New Orleans under Sir Rodney’s Fae martial law, had the baron not blown the greedy black heart out of his little weasel chest in open court. Vampires hated being snitched on. But since Dugan had acquired his B&B via Vampire blood money, literally, it was seized by Fae Parliament and awarded to the one who’d turned state’s evidence—Ethan.

  Poor old Dugan had also lost Finnegan’s Wake, his prized bar across the street. When the sentence was levied, she could only guess that he’d probably put up a pitiful fuss from Hell. Taking material goods from Dugan was worse than having him drawn and quartered. Same held true of Baron Geoff Montague, Vampire extraordinaire. Word on the streets was that he’d paid a hefty tax for his troubles, enough to almost cost him a premier blood club.

  Satisfied that justice had prevailed, Sasha jumped into the jeep, curious that Hunter had yielded the driver’s side. “So, where to first?” she said with a smile. “The diner to catch up with the team, or Ethan’s . . . although I seriously don’t want to talk to Ethan until he calms down and we have more answers for him.”

  “Would you listen to yourself?” Hunter said, closing his eyes and rubbing his temples. “Your mood . . . is . . . odd.”

  Sasha sat back in her seat, fighting not to pout. She kept her hands on the wheel and then fished under the visor for the keys. “Odd.”

  “Your voice is . . . singsong, happy. You just heard that our allies are panicked, your squad is trying to locate you . . . and you act like we haven’t a care in the world. Odd.” Hunter turned and stared at her. “You almost sound like you’re high, or something . . . but I was with you the entire time and know you didn’t ingest anything that could have been spiked.”

  “Whoa . . .” Sasha sat back quickly and then leaned forward so fast that she almost bumped her nose on the rearview mirror as she tried to study her own gaze in it. “You’re right. My mind has been jumping all over the place . . . I feel almost giddy, you’re right . . . like I haven’t a care in the world.”

  Hunter rubbed his palms down his face and then banged his head on the dashboard. “You do not want to know what I feel.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  He released a long, weary breath. “Yes. Precisely.”

  “Then why don’t I feel that way if you feel that way?” She looked at him squarely and shrugged.

  “To make me crazy,” he said flatly.

  “Are you serious?”

  Hunter closed his eyes and leaned his head back on the headrest. “Sasha . . . believe me, it’s working.”

  “Okay, I’m sorry. I just feel like I’ve gotta be on the move, gotta go hang out . . . do something other than be cooped up inside. It’s so nice out here, man . . . It’s summer!”

  “You are not yourself . . . I am not myself. Two Phoenixes are dead from the same establishment that turned state’s evidence at the United
Council of Entities trials. Sir Rodney confirmed there is dark magick afoot—it is in the sigils they cannot decipher. We are out of our depth, if we are so affected that we cannot even focus on following a warm lead.”

  “Wow . . . yeah . . . you have a point,” she said, turning on the ignition. “But, hey, why didn’t you wanna drive?”

  Hunter looked away, sending his gaze toward the Spanish moss–laden trees. “I can’t,” he admitted quietly.

  Sasha cocked her head to the side and stared at him, her brows knit. Then slowly but surely she understood, covering her mouth with her hand. “Going from the gas to the brake would hurt that bad?” she asked in a shocked murmur.

  He abruptly turned to stare at her, fury in his gaze. “Just shoot me.”

  “Okay, guys, it’s on us this go-round,” Clarissa said, marshaling the team that was left around the diner table, and then setting down her cell phone very carefully, “Sasha won’t exactly tell me what’s going on with Ethan, or her, for that matter, but she admits that her mood and focus is all jacked up—Hunter is messed up, just like the two Shadows that left us to go God knows where. And, since it would be a death sentence to go busting into Vamp lairs looking for clues, despite the daylight factor . . . I say we start with the local scuttlebutt we can get from area covens, Voodoo practitioners, snake charmers, Tarot experts, and the like. If Fae archers are being sighted in frickin’ diners, then somebody has heard something. They always do, and if, by logical deduction, we all know that from our last trip down here, Vampires have the biggest axe to grind, we’re gonna need evidence—as well as a way to reverse whatever they’ve probably done to out the Fae.”

  “I’m with you, ’Rissa,” Bradley said, folding his hands around his lukewarm cup of coffee. “But I think we need to let Sir Rodney know that his Fae community is in full view of the general human population.”

  “True, but that’s really Sasha’s call, not ours. Either that, or we might have to leave that up to Ethan, because I haven’t the foggiest idea how to find Sir Rodney or the beginning of his yellow brick road, so to speak, that’s in the swamps.” Clarissa looked around the table, keeping her voice low and private. “We don’t even know how long we’ll be able to function until what’s affecting the supernaturals hits us.”

  Fisher bumped Clarissa’s fist. “I, for one, am not voting for us going into the swamps without a full and stable Shadow Wolf escort. Who knows what the hell is out there this time?”

  “Last time, something came through the demon doors and opened up a can of whoop ass on alpha-class wolf fighters—and they had the advantage of a full shape-shift. An M-16 is a good piece of artillery, but I’m with Fisher—it ain’t worth jack shit if your arm isn’t attached to your body.”

  “So we take the nerd approach,” Winters said, smiling. “Go to the places where the worst that can happen is you get zapped by some bad juju, or maybe zombified . . . but I’d prefer that to a quick and painful death by dismemberment.”

  “I hear you,” Woods said, knocking his coffee mug against Winters’s. “So let’s fan out—two-by-two detail. Put our ears to the ground and see what we come up with before the sun drops. Winters, you come with me and Fish.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Sasha held the cell phone tightly in her grip, listening to Clarissa’s urgent tone of voice. Hunter had been right—she was off her game, seriously so. But as her squad member thrust hard-to-ignore facts into her ear, Sasha felt her reasoning return.

  “Have you told Ethan?” Sasha asked quickly, the moment Clarissa drew a breath. She waited, hearing what she already knew to be true—Clarissa hadn’t contacted him. Sasha pushed the mute button for a second and turned to Hunter, watching him draw in slow breaths. “Ten dollars says that’s why Ethan was blowing up my phone. He’s in town and had to see the glamour fading all around him.”

  Hunter just nodded as she took the remainder of the information from Clarissa and then ended the call. Without waiting, she speed-dialed Ethan, and just listened, after announcing herself, while he filled her in through hysterical bursts.

  “You’re going to have to tell your constituents something,” Sasha said. “There’s no other way. So get a missive to Sir Rodney that he, or one of his top advisors, or captain of the guards, or whoever, is gonna have to come tell these folks something.” She pulled the phone away from her ear when Ethan’s voice hit a decibel that made the hair on her arms stand up.

  When the call ended, Sasha simply stared at the telephone for a moment. “That went well,” she said sarcastically.

  Hunter had not said a word since they’d pulled over and parked. He was reclined in the seat, eyes closed, with his head leaning against the headrest.

  “This thing is messing with my mind,” Sasha said, staring across the green field.

  “Tell me about it,” Hunter muttered.

  She shook her head, allowing the irritable comment to pass. whatever was going on with them personally wasn’t of paramount concern. The facts surrounding the deaths were worrying her mind like a dog worries a bone. Fact one—sorcery of some sort was involved . . . but probably not Fae, because of the iron gate thing the Pixie explained. Fact two—both Phoenixes had been in the company of Vampires, which had access to covens that could have been involved, and the Vamps certainly had enough of a motive. It was their style, and Desidera had mentioned them in passing to Sir Rodney.

  Next fact that needed more exploration was the feral scent at each site . . . If working with Vamps to deliver bad juju, Weres could certainly pass through iron; they wouldn’t have a sulfur trail like a Vamp, but they might have been able to get some magick razzle-dazzle dropped on them to throw any wolves off the trail. Buchanan Broussard’s people, the Louisiana clan—or what was left of it—certainly had an axe to grind with Hunter and Shogun . . . more so than the Fae. But an unholy alliance between the Vampires and what was left of a rogue wolf clan wouldn’t be a first. At this point, all their enemies would be scrambling to create hemorrhages in the strong three-way alliance among the North American Shadow Wolves, Southeast Asian Werewolves, and the Fae. Then, there was also this Unseelie queen, an ex-wife for God’s sake. Sasha flopped back against the seat.

  “You know what—”

  Hunter held up his hand. “Before you launch into a fullblown mental download, give me a minute. All right?”

  Sasha blew out a breath, forcing a damp curl off her forehead. The shade from the tree gave a little respite, but not much. Her mind raced ahead of Hunter’s, unable to get the gears to slow down. She looked at the telephone, wishing that a signal could go through to Sir Rodney’s castle. Talking by cell phone by day didn’t worry her in this remote, sunny location; if it was Vamps, the only way they could intercept her call was at night or through human helpers.

  Impatient, she dialed Ethan again, this time speaking to him more calmly as she let him know her list of suspects, which was pretty much every enemy they had in New Orleans. Although she talked on the phone to Ethan, she faced Hunter as she spoke. The message was really for him. He had to get this mental download; he had to help her figure out how many hands were in the pie at one time. More importantly, they had to figure out how to reverse the bad spell.

  “They will not force my hand!” Sir Rodney shouted.

  “But milord, we must employ patience,” Thompson Loughlin warned. He rubbed a meaty palm over his salt-and-pepper thicket of hair, adjusting his uncomfortable human businessman’s attire. “I have been to town; the humans are still unaware.”

  Sir Rodney’s gaze narrowed. “Patience, you say? You heard what Ethan McGregor said that Sasha told him. Her humans saw the absence of a glamour on Fae archers at a diner! Ethan’s missive was fraught with histrionics! He had to shutter his doors at The Fair Lady to human patrons in the French Quarter, because none of his glamour is holding. Human workers are managing Finnegan’s Wake, and the bed-and-breakfast has been turned over to Sasha’s and Hunter’s squads to fend for themselves, man, because the Fae worker
s cannot be seen behind the counter. In the last twenty-four hours, something has happened, something insidious to speed up this dark magick, and we’re still chasing theories and ghosts!

  “If the Seelie glamour is fading in the human streets, we must warn our people,” Sir Rodney said, pounding his fist in his hand. “Also, Sasha Trudeau’s list of suspects is formidable. At this point, who has done this is not as much a priority as how we can stop it.”

  “Sire, we must find the culprits; they cannot go without redress,” his top advisor warned.

  “But knowing how to stop it has everything to do with who cast this madness against us!” Sir Rodney shouted, totally contradicting himself. “How can you possibly come up with an antidote if you cannot even break the code on the sigil? If we know who our enemy is, then we know the extent of their capabilities . . . It’s as though they are one step ahead of us at every turn, as though they are reading our minds!”

  “Indeed, sire,” his advisor said calmly.

  The two men stared at each other in the king’s private chamber.

  “Milord, as you are aware, this could cause an uprising amongst the citizenry, if they felt your power was fading, thus affecting theirs, and they were not duly warned. Two rare Phoenixes are dead, but that is not our fault, as tragic as that may be. No one could have foretold those events any more than humans could have stopped Jack the Ripper. But if our Fae community were to learn that you had foreknowledge of our weakening powers and did nothing to alert them so that they could seek shelter and safe haven, that would be grounds for impeachment, sire.”

  When the king only looked at him, the elder advisor pressed on. “It is our primary responsibility to make sure that our constituents are safe from outside harm . . . That the wolves uncovered a sigil means that this is worse than we’d originally concluded. If those outside of the Fae community found a sigil, you know what that means . . . the perpetrators are baiting us, mocking us.”