CHAPTER 7
DAHLIA
The acrid smell of burnt flesh still clung to my clothes twenty minutes after the harvester had vanished from Jackson Square. And we were still standing there like we'd just watched our last hope disappear into thin air. Cyran's ringtone cut through the humid night air at the same time my hands started shaking as the adrenaline finally crashed.
My heart jumped to my throat as I hit the button answering the call. "Please tell me you're calling with good news."
"My cousin Margot just called," he said without preamble. "She thinks she’s being hunted. She said something with glowing eyes has been stalking her family for the past hour. They're in their car, driving toward your plantation. They were originally headed for a friend’s house but redirected when they saw it. Whatever's following them isn't giving up."
"How far out are they?" I was already jogging toward my SUV, my sisters falling into step behind me.
"Ten minutes, maybe less," he replied.
Unlocking the car from a few feet away, I threw myself behind the wheel and pressed the ignition. I gunned it as soon as everyone piled in. "We're heading to intercept them. Geteveryone you can reach to Willowberry. There will be safety in numbers, and we have the houses in the back forty."
The drive out of the Quarter was a blur of narrow streets and screeching tires. I pushed my SUV harder than I should have, but the urgency in Cyran's voice had crawled under my skin and made itself at home. Whatever was hunting his family might have been another harvester. However, it felt bigger and more dangerous.
“Holy shitballs,” Kota blurted as her hand shot out and pointed out the front window.
It hadn’t been necessary. There was no mistaking the creature chasing a silver sedan on four legs. It had to be Margot. The thing moved with predatory grace and managed to move up alongside the driver’s window. In the backseat, Dea gasped and then grunted. She had to be feeling the fear of the people inside the vehicle. My foot pressed the gas pedal all the way to the floor. They were five minutes from the plantation. If they could get there it shouldn’t be able to cross our wards.
The streetlight flickered once, twice, then blazed to life, casting harsh shadows across the cracked pavement. In that split second of brutal illumination, I saw it clearly—matted, oil-slick fur that looked like it hadn't been groomed in decades. It also had eyes that didn't just glow red, theyburned. Like someone had shoved hot coals into empty sockets and called it a day.
My stomach dropped to somewhere around my ankles.
"Holy shit. It's a Rougarou," Phi whispered. I could hear the academic excitement warring with very real terror in her voice. "I've read about them in half a dozen supernatural bestiaries, but we haven't encountered one yet. All the sources—every single one—said they've been extinct for decades. Like, completely wiped out."
"What the hell are they?" Dre asked. She'd gone rigid in her seat, leaning forward like she was preparing to launch herself at the creature.
A flash of silver caught my eye in the rearview mirror. Dre's dagger was already in her hand. Her knuckles were bone-white against the handle. At least one of us was thinking clearly.
"Okay, so—" Phi's voice took on that rapid-fire, professor-mode cadence that meant she was pulling from her mental library. "The book I read said they were local supernatural predators back in the day. Like, apex predators. They originated in Louisiana bayou country, but they spread across the South sometime in the 1800s. Think werewolf, but not. These things were full nightmare fuel."
She paused to suck in a breath, never taking her eyes off the darkness ahead. "They're not like shifters. They're stuck in that form—part human, part wolf, part something else entirely. The human part is what makes them so dangerous. They're smart. They hunt in packs. They can use tools. And it’s said they hold grudges."
"And the something else part?" I managed to croak out.
Phi's smile was grim when I met her gaze in the rearview mirror. "That's the part that lets them track their prey across state lines and through magical wards. They can sense supernatural energy like bloodhounds on steroids. Once they pick up your scent..." She shrugged, but there was nothing casual about the gesture. "Well, according to the folklore, there's only one way to stop being hunted by a rougarou."
"Please tell me it involves running very, very fast in the opposite direction," Dani joked.
Phi snorted and shook her head. "It involves killing it first."
Dre and Kota both lowered their windows at the same time I gunned the engine. I managed to pull alongside the sedan just asthe rougarou bunched its muscles. It was preparing to pounce on Margot and her family. "Throw that!" I shouted at Dre.
Dre didn't need to be told twice. She hurled her dagger like a pro. That was one good thing about constantly fighting evil creatures. We’d gotten good with weapons. At the same instant, Kota's arm drew back, and she lobbed a small cloth pouch with the accuracy of a major league pitcher.
The pouch exploded on impact in a shower of blessed salt and iron filings that sparkled like deadly confetti in the streetlight. The Rougarou's howl of pain and fury could have shattered glass three blocks away as it went tumbling ass-over-teakettle into the drainage ditch beside the road. Score one for the Twisted Sisters.
I slammed on the brakes and put the SUV into park the second we stopped. My sisters were out before me. My boots hit the asphalt just as a scent hit me like a freight train. It was the stagnant, rotting smell of backwater swamps where things went to die and never quite managed to stay buried. The smell clung to the air where the Rougarou had retreated. My stomach rolled, but I forced myself to move toward the sedan to check on Margot.
Between one step and the next, my vision began to waver. "Shit! Smell-o-vision coming," I gasped as I was yanked away from the roadside and into somewhere infinitely worse.
I stood in Congo Square, but this wasn't the tourist-friendly park where street musicians played jazz and vendors sold overpriced beignets. The air writhed with supernatural energy so thick it was like trying to breathe through molasses mixed with grave dirt. Centuries ago, the place had been sacred ground where enslaved people gathered on Sundays to dance, sing, and keep their cultures alive under the suspicious eyes of their oppressors. It had been a place of joy stolen from sorrow for a community forged in chains.
Before my eyes, the ancient oaks twisted into unnatural shapes. Their branches clawed toward a sky that pulsed with sickly green light like an infected wound. In the center of it all, a massive rift had torn reality apart like wet paper. Through that tear, I saw the Collector.
It was a writhing mass of absorbed souls. There were thousands upon thousands of them, twisted together into something awful. I wonder what it started as. A humanoid being? All I could focus on were the eyes that had once belonged to yellow fever victims. They were staring out from its shifting surface. Mouths that had once screamed for help now whispered the Collector's hunger. Arms and hands that had once embraced loved ones reached toward our world with the desperate, grasping need of the eternally damned.
