SWNOVELS Chapter coven orleans
After her vision, Delilah woke with a start. Martha was standing at the end of her bed.
“The coven is ready to depart. We need to head south. Paul insists on going with us. They can’t reach anyone at the Pearl River Coven Plantation.” Martha stated, then she frowned, “You’re as stubborn as Essie. Ketsu is pissed that you went on the Tides here and the changed halfling found you on the floor after you screamed.”
Del nodded. Her forearm ached and she rubbed it. Then she noticed two punctures just inside her elbow.
“One of them bit you,” Martha announced unhappily. “Paul, I think…” And she jumped as he materialized at the door.
“Yes, it was me.”
“Why did you bite me?” Del asked him.
“Forgive me, Delphi. But we needed to know what you saw, and Ketsu said you would allow it,” Paul apologized. “The place you saw the burning wolves enter it’s a nightclub called Dante’s Inferno. My brother is rigging a phone to clone the one that gets the text message. If we can get close to those you saw in your vision, we can get the address straight off the phone and rescue the vampires before they realize we are onto them.”
“So, you saw my vision?” Del asked.
Paul’s mouth made a thin line, “I did. What was the yellow smoke? The stuff that hurt you?”
“Witchcraft,” Del said firmly, “The very thing that is the reason you should not come with us.”
“Forgive me, Delilah, but you do not know New Orleans as I do.” Paul declared. “Orleans is home to my cousins, the one you saw being abused is one of them. I will help you rescue them.”
“When do we leave?” Del demanded, rising from the bed. She ignored that the vampire watched her dress. Nudity meant nothing to wolves but always seemed to catch the attention of vampires.
Paul licked his lips before he answered, “It will take over an hour to get there so we need to leave as soon as possible. We can stop at Pearl River to see if the coven was attacked.”
Del nodded. “Martha, get the bikes ready. Tell Ketsu, I want the coven on the planes and then find an airport as close to the south side of New Orleans as possible in case we need to leave in a hurry.”
Martha bowed, giving Paul the stink eye for staring at the Delphi and left.
“They are ready to leave,” Paul stated, “But I …”
“You wanted to talk to me alone and we are alone, just ask,” Del demanded.
“By the Goddess, you are a strong female.” Paul said appreciatively. Then sighed at her annoyed glance while she laced up her boots. “Do you know if the witch’s magic will affect me, as a halfling?”
Del stood and shook her head. “Max and Jack weren’t affected when the witches attacked, but neither of them had been changed into vampires. Lanea’s grandmother believed changing them might kill them.”
“Not if done by their sire. Why didn’t their Vampire parent change them?” Paul asked.
“Their parents died.”
“How?”
“You can ask them when you meet them,” Del responded.
“I am asking you,” Paul retorted.
“I don’t gossip,” her tone was tart.
“Does it hurt you to talk about the Augur and her Beloved because they have something you never believe you will have again?”
“I am happy for her,” Del insisted.
“You are but you’re also a liar, Delphi. An envious, self-pitying person who resents your friend’s happiness and your sister’s freedom.” He caught her hand as it flew at his cheek. “I saw more than your vision. You purposely choose to live in pain and emptiness after your mate.”
“I don’t need your sympathy,” She growled.
“You don’t have to spend your life alone.” His eyes entreated her to give him a moment of consideration.
“The Delphi can only be with her true mate, once he has gone to the Moon, she must finish her duty before choosing another or risk her gifts,” Del repeated the lie her grandfather had told Louis.
“Mmmmm,” Paul hummed as if he didn’t believe her. “A female such as yourself should be worshiped and lavished with attention… If you change your mind, Delilah…” Her name rolled off his tongue like he was savoring the flavor of it.
“I won’t and you’re leaving after we rescue the survivors of the Coven Orleans,” Del declared then she marched past him and out to where the others waited.
Seventy-five minutes later, the group which included Paul’s youngest brother Ponce, stopped in front of a gated property. Ponce looked at Paul in alarm as they put in the gate key. Just inside, they could all smell the residue of witchcraft. Zane stripped and shifted to his wolf. When Del started to follow, he growled negatively then bolted toward the main house.
Paul handed Del his motorcycle helmet. “Stay here, Delphi. Ponce, protect her.”
Del opened her mouth to protest but Paul was already moving away as fast as a wolf could run.
Ponce shook his head. “I never thought my brother would be coming to rescue Orleans.”
Del turned back from watching Paul. “What do you mean?”
Before he could answer, Martha called out from where she walked along the overgrown fence. “Del, over here.”
There was a scorched patch in the grass in a strange pattern, and strange fiery footprints charred to the dirt. Del followed them through the woods to a depression where a pond had once been, it had been scorched dry, but water was seeping up from the cracks in the soil. It was filled with the burnt husk of bodies. Ponce let out a strangled sob as Martha howled for Ketsu. Del stumbled down the embankment falling to her knees next to the charred corpse of a child.
Her tears dripped on the ashen form as she reached out. The impact of the moisture of her grief caused the child form to collapse into dust. The horror caught her before she could resist. Her voice became distant as she narrated.
I can feel the deaths of these vampires; the agony of the wounded being piled with the dead, and the terror the only child forced into the waist deep water. The sun-worshipping ones were stabbing them to force them to bleed out into the water. As they were dying, the water began to boil then burn… At the edge of the pond stood the Sunwolf and his witches. Beyond them, four vampiresses knelt, staring at nothing.
In the vision, the Sunwolf turned and smiled at her, ‘Come to me, taste real power.’
“No,” Del breathed out, quietly anguished to keep from screaming.
Someone dragged her to her feet and away from the mass grave. Zane shook her, bringing her back, “Delilah… Delilah!”
“Zane… He was here.” She sagged against him. “He took four prisoners. He put the others of the Coven Orleans in the water and then burned them alive.”
“You should go back to the other coven, Delphi. If anything happens to you, Essie will kill me.”
Del shook her head, “No, we have to get that address and rescue the others and get them away.” She walked back toward their bikes.
Paul was the first to turn and follow Del, then Martha. Ponce and Zane walked back last. They rode in silence to an upscale apartment building, parking in a gated garage.
As they dressed to go to the club, Martha was shakier than Del had ever seen her.
“Martha, are you okay?”
The Wanderer’s haunted eyes looked ashamed. “How do you do it, Del? Essie says you see things that are terrible. Are… are they worse than that? A pair of renegade vampires killed my mother, then my father when he hunted them down. I didn’t agree with saving them but… but no one deserves to die like that.”
“No, they didn’t. And he’s doing it to our kind too, to the missing packs. We don’t have the luxury of choosing who to save and who not to because he intends to kill us all,” Del revealed. She put her hand on Martha’s shoulder. “Martha, I know these assignments have been hard on you. But once the Sunwolf and his witches and followers are done with the vampires, they are going to come for us, then the humans. He uses doubts and desires to lure followers, he promises them their heart’s desire and they feel like he keeps his promises until he kills them. All the wealth, all the power, it comes from death and evil, and we must stop him or none of us will have a future.”
“Yes, Delphi.” Martha bowed her head.
Out on the balcony overlooking the downtown district, Paul stood quietly as Del joined him.
“Do you always eavesdrop on your guests?”
“I have spent my life surrounded by enemies. My own cousins tried to kill me and my family more than once because we aren’t pure bloods. I came to show them that I was better than them, that I would help my kind but to find… that…” Paul admitted. “I never imagined working with wolves, we are supposed to be enemies, but you are doing more to save the vampires that other vampires… and making wolves who hate us help us… Why?”
Delilah blinked at him, the blue-gray of her cornflower eyes reminded him of the evening twilight over her shoulder. “Because it is the right thing to do.” She answered honestly.
The shifting of the on-shore off-shore breeze caused her pearl-like hair to flutter around her like a halo. She looked so beautiful, ethereal; the vampire wondered why the male wolves weren’t killing each other to be with her.
“Let’s go,” Paul said suddenly.
A towncar dropped them down the block from the nightclub, as they approached Martha tipped her head considering the glowing neon sign. “I wonder which level of hell we are about to enter?”
Zane growled, “Does it matter?” Paul snorted derisively.
“No,” Del answered. Her jaw ticked. “Find the vampiress, and the two Sunwolf followers. We need to know where they are holding the others and stop the vampires before they get ambushed.”
Ponce held up his modified phone. “I just need to get close enough to clone theirs.”
Zane looked over the crowd slowly, he didn’t see Helios in the crush of dancing humans. “You’ll have to wait to rescue her until the same time we are saving the others so they don’t know we wolves are here.”
Martha glanced at her phone, “Ketsu says the first plane is away, the second is almost ready.”
Zane nodded. Del looked around, “I don’t sense the use of witchcraft, but it doesn’t mean they can’t start at any time. Be careful.” She noticed a wolf with a burning aura walking toward the back.
Paul followed her line of sight. “There is one of the two you saw in your vision. Ponce…”
The halfling headed toward him with Martha following.
“Find the other one,” Del ordered and she started toward the dance floor. Zane went one way, Paul went the other. Del walked past the bar and smiled at the bartender. “So, this is a nice place, who owns it?”
“My brother and I do, Delphi.” She was turned roughly by the arm to face Charlemagne Des Rues. She tried not to be freaked out that he knew who she was with her hair bleached.
“I think you have my sister and I confused,” Del said in her best imitation of Essie.
Charlemagne leaned in and sniffed her, “I don’t think so, Delphi. Esther smells of autumn leaves and lust, but you, smell of purity and snow. I know you won’t give up being Delphi to be my Luna, but perhaps you can persuade your sister to give up being a traveling whore. I can protect her from this mate she is so afraid of and you too.”
“Where’s your brother?” Del demanded calmly. She feigned being not afraid, wondering where Zane was. “I was expecting him to be here.”
Charlemagne sneered, “Why? Did you have a vision?”
She blinked at him once, very slowly, “Yes. He was standing over there on the stairs, he smiled at me. That’s why I came personally to ask him to give me the vampire female he has restrained upstairs.”
“My brother is attending other business.” Charlemagne’s eyes narrowed. “You should not concern yourself with the vampires, Delphi.”
“I concern myself with the wishes of the Moon as you should, son of an oracle.” She noticed Paul approaching but gave him a slight negative shake of her head. “You can stop your brother’s madness, Charlemagne. You can save the packs of this land.”
Charlemagne leaned closer, “What good would it do to save them if they won’t serve me? Declare me monarch, Delphi, I will give you everything your heart desires.”
Suddenly, he was knocked away from her with a force that broke the wall he collided with.
Paul glared at Charlemagne, “The Delphi’s heart only desires to serve the Moon.”
“How dare you attack me! Who are you, vampire?” Charlemagne snarled.
“I’m Lord Le Moyne, the Delphi’s date tonight. Excuse us, we have reservations.” Paul wrapped his arms around Delilah, and she had the bizarre sensation of damp cold and spiderwebs on bare skin, then they were standing outside. “We have to go. Ponce rescued the girl before they could hurt her further, she is his beloved. Zane killed the wolves. Martha and Ponce are taking her to the airport but…”
“But we’re blown. Let me guess, Zane took off to face Helios on his own.” Del growled. “Goddess dammit, he’s going to get himself killed. Where’s the car?”
“If you’ll allow me, Delilah, I can travel far faster than we could through traffic.” Paul offered as he lifted her into his arms like a bride. His eyes glowed scarlet when Del instinctively looped her arms around his neck. “Don’t worry, I would never drop a female as beautiful as you.” The world shifted strangely around them while Paul carried her toward the warehouses near the river.