LITMIR.BIZ

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Fils?” Izzy suddenly felt very dizzy. The world canted left, right, as if the fire escape had pulled from the building and was swinging freely. Le Fils, Le Fils…

      It was all there, in an instant. Everything they were doing right now could not be happening. If Le Fils was down there, they could not be in New York. And she had never told Pat about Le Fils. Le Fils du Diable—the Son of the Devil—was the king vampire of New Orleans, terrorizing both Gifted and Ungifted alike. She hadn’t known about Le Fils until the day she had left New York…

      Oh, my God. I left New York. I never went to the Police Academy. I’m not NYPD.

      She felt another wave of vertigo.

      The floor beneath them was not metal. It was wood. As Pat shifted his weight, she lifted her swirling head and saw men in tuxedos and women in gowns rushing past the two of them. A leathery creature in a hood bobbed past. It had been at the dinner, when Jean-Marc had presented her to the family.

      Jean-Marc…where is Jean-Marc?

      Another explosion rocked the floor. She smelled smoke. She heard screaming.

      “Let me up,” she woozily ordered Pat.

      “No, stay down, darlin’,” he told her. Pat’s face was backlit by a shimmering curtain of blue. The curtain darkened with purple; then another bolt of purple-black burst through and hit the white wooden wall behind them. “He’s attacking.”

      He already did attack. Le Fils and his accomplice, Julius Esposito the voodoo bokor, attacked us last night. Here, in New Orleans. Why is it happening again? This is more than a dream. Is this a vision?

      With a burst of strength born of determination, she forced his weight off her body and slowly got to her feet.

      Surrounded by familiar faces, some standing still as white light poured from their palms, others rushing through the chaos, she and Pat stood on the verandah of the de Bouvard mansion on the outskirts of the bayou—her blood family’s home for nearly three hundred years. She was not wearing her police uniform, but the white satin gown embroidered with flames on the bodice she had worn at her presentation.

      The flame-shaped brand in her left palm glowed and pulsed, and she remembered the rest: she was no longer simply Izzy DeMarco; she was Isabella Celestina DeMarco de Bouvard, the daughter of the flames. Her biological mother, Marianne, the guardienne and titular protector of this House, lay downstairs in a coma.

      And this was her battle.

      Around her neck, Izzy wore protective talismans: the rose quartz necklace Sauvage had given her, and the chicken-foot gris-gris of Andre the werewolf.

      Andre…Jean-Marc… She looked for the Cajun werewolf and Jean-Marc, the passionate magic user who had tracked her down and brought her here from New York. The men who should be here. She searched the throng for Sange, the elegant vampire. She saw none of them.

      She reached out a hand to Pat and said, “You’re not supposed to be here. You need to go inside.”

      “No way,” he replied. Then his sea-green eyes widened and his lips parted in a silent grimace. Silently, he sank to his knees and fell forward, hard, onto his face.

      The back of his jacket was shredded, and blood gushed from an entry wound.

      “Oh, my God, Pat!” she cried. She placed one hand over the other and pushed to stem the geyser of blood. It was spraying her face. Pat’s blood was spraying her face!

      “Officer down!” she yelled. “Officer down! I need assistance!”

      No one seemed to hear her. Nor even see her.

      You’re on point, said the voice inside her head. Get up and kill Esposito. Do it. Now. Or others will die, and this House will fall.

      In a daze, Izzy stared down at Pat. His head was twisted to one side; his eyes were fluttering shut, and his face was a deathly white.

      “This isn’t happening,” she whispered. “This can’t be happening!”

      But it was happening.

      Do it.

      “I’m not leaving him,” she said aloud, putting her arms around his broad shoulders. He was gasping like a beached sea creature. His lips were cyanotic.

      Shoot Esposito or everyone will die.

      “I won’t leave you,” Izzy promised Pat, as she burst into hoarse, wild wails. “Pat! I won’t leave you!”

      Chapter 2

      P at can’t be dead. He shouldn’t even be here. He can’t be dead….

      “Oh, my God, he bit me, didn’t he! That freakin’ vampire bit me!” Sauvage cried.

      Izzy jerked awake, tears streaming down her cheeks. Sauvage, in her red-and-black goth attire, was sitting about five feet away on a white plastic chair in the corner of the OR, which was located in the lower depths of the House of the Flames. Ruthven, her boyfriend, knelt before her in black leather pants and a black T-shirt, scrutinizing every inch of her exposed flesh for vampire bites.

      “Pat,” she whispered, knowing already that he wasn’t there. That he wasn’t dead. It had been a horrible nightmare—horribly real, but just a nightmare—one of the many that had plagued her of late. New York, Sauvage and Torres, Pat and the apartment building—all that had been a dream—or perhaps another vision of things to come. Since arriving in New Orleans, she had been plagued by dreams and visions. But Sauvage had definitely never been in protective custody, and Esposito had never dragged her through the streets of East Harlem.

      But last night, on the verandah, Izzy had shot and killed Esposito. In the melee, Esposito had been about to slit Sauvage’s throat. Izzy had taken aim, and with one clear shot from her Medusa revolver—an enchanted .9 mm cartridge—she had shot him in the chest.

      And he had burst into purple fireworks.

      He exploded . Thinking of that, seeing it again in her mind, Izzy trembled. Two weeks ago people in her world didn’t die like that; there were no mansions filled with people with magical powers or werewolves or vampires.

      Two weeks ago her world had been the borough of Brooklyn, where she lived in a row house with her father and worked as a civilian in the property room of the Two-Seven. Gino, her brother, was studying to be a priest in a seminary in Connecticut. And the little family of three had shared the memory of her beloved mother, Anna Maria DeMarco, who had been dead for ten years.

      And then the real nightmare had begun. Izzy had learned that she had magical powers, and that she was the missing heiress of the ancient French magic-using family, the de Bouvards—the House of the Flames. Jean-Marc de Devereaux des Ombres, Regent of the Flames, had saved her life, told her who she was and brought her here, to New Orleans, to take over leadership of her family.

      Now Jean-Marc lay a few feet from her on an operating table, hovering someplace midway between life and death. He, not Pat, had been badly wounded during the battle.

      “Patient’s BP still in the basement,” someone muttered at the OR table. They moved inside a magical sterile field of white light. Within it, everyone was dressed in white—white scrubs for the surgical team and white gowns and veils for the Femmes Blanches, the legendary de Bouvard healing women, who were as silent as ghosts as they held each other’s hands. The two women on the ends of their line clasped Jean-Marc’s hands as well. They were transferring their magical energy to him.

      As the surgeon shifted to the left, Izzy caught sight of Jean-Marc’s sharp profile, and she drew in a sharp breath at the instant, riveting rush of…intensity overtaking her. Jean-Marc had searched for her for three years, and once he had found her, a link—physical, emotional, magical—had formed between them. One touch, one smoldering look, reduced her to a fine trembling. Her engulfing attraction to him frightened her.

      And then there was Pat. When Jean-Marc

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