Black Heart Loa (23 page)

“You eat. Mama be right back,” Angélique told them.

Ember smacked her lips happily and wrapped her fingers around her bowl’s daisy-etched rim and banged it against the tray. Chance kept poking juicy pieces of sausage into his mouth without pause.

“Chew,” Angélique commanded.

“Tew!” Ember shouted, banging her bowl, her nomad father’s daughter with her dark curls and caramel skin and bicolored eyes—one brown and one green.

Chance’s skin was lighter and red highlights glimmered in his dark curls, his eyes emerald green like his mama’s. His cheeks bulged with sausage.

“Chew,
p’tit,
” Angélique repeated, hands on her jeans and apron-covered hips. “Your daddy may be from Squirrel clan, but that don’t mean you need to store food in your cheeks.”

“Tew!” Ember crowed with another bowl bang.

With a sigh, Angélique strode out into the front room in time to see her husband, Merlin Mississippi, swing open the porch door to admit a worried-looking René carrying a limp form over his shoulder.

“Shuvano,”
René greeted Merlin. Then his deep-brown eyes sought and found Angélique. “
Traiteur
Angélique,” he murmured respectfully.

“René,” she replied with a nod.

Merlin stepped aside as Jubilee, Moss, and a Siberian husky followed René inside the house, the smell of damp fur and clothing breezing in along with them.

Amusement flashed across Merlin’s dark brown face, slanted his full lips, and crinkled up the nomad clan tattoo—the slim silhouette of a running squirrel. “When y’all said you were going hunting, René, I assumed you meant deer,” he said dryly.

“You and me both,” René said.

Jubilee waved a hand at the husky. “We decided to chase her for a while instead. Bad decision, that.”

“Hush, you,” René growled.

Scowling, Jubilee padded barefoot over to the cold fireplace and leaned one arm against the mantel. Her damp jeans and short-sleeved pale green blouse clung to her curves and her waterfall of silver hair was in disarray. She glared at René for a moment, charcoal brows knitting over cobalt-blue eyes, before folding her arms underneath her breasts and looking away. A muscle ticked in her jaw.

Angélique studied Jubilee’s muddied and angry aura, the tension in her body language, and realized that this was something more than just the teasing arguments and quibbling she usually witnessed between the girl and her uncle.

What’s going on? What’s Jubilee so worked up about?

Jubilee’s identical twin, Moss, looked like a very masculine version of his sister, taller and broader, with short ash-gray hair and a clean-shaven face—and, unlike his sister, cheerful. He sniffed the air hungrily, his nostrils no doubt sucking in the spicy aroma wafting from the kitchen.

“Smells good, Angélique,” Moss said hopefully.

“I’ve got fried cornmeal mush and
boudin blanc
in there along with blackberry jam and scrambled eggs. Got buttermilk biscuits and ham too,” Angélique said. “You finish feeding the twins and you can eat right along with them.”

Moss’s blue eyes gleamed. He grinned. Without a word, he scampered off to the kitchen, bare feet whispering against the hardwood planks. Ember’s happy shriek greeted him. “Tew!”

Merlin looked at Angélique and winked. They both knew that
she
had come out on the good side of
that
deal.

The dog trotted over to where Angélique stood and started talking in drawn-out and urgent
whoo-whoo
s, inflections rising and falling, sounding for all the world like she was giving instructions—or orders—on how to care for her pack member.

Merlin laughed. “She’s got all manner of things to say.”

“That she does,” Angélique agreed. Taking in the
dog’s bicolored eyes, amusement curled through her. She looked at her husband. “You never told me that you had Siberian husky in your bloodline.”

Merlin regarded her for a moment, his eyes—one a startling and breathtaking sapphire blue, the other deepest brown—glinting. He winked. “You never asked, hun.”

Angélique laughed.

“Here, girl,” Jubilee said, calling to the dog. “C’mere.”

But the Siberian husky ignored her and padded back across the room, nails clicking against the floor, to sit, tongue lolling, at René’s bare feet, her intent gaze of blue and brown fixed on the person slung like a bag of potatoes over René’s shoulder.

All Angélique could see of that person were mud-smeared jeans and T-shirt and mud-caked boots—no, make that
boot,
since one seemed to be missing. A soiled sock was all that still clung to his left foot.

“So who is he?” Merlin asked, folding his muscle-corded arms over his chest and eyeing René’s passenger.

René shook his head. “Never got his name, me. But he be in a bad way.”

Angélique’s nostrils flared. A subtle olfactory stew of sweat and pheromones and musk marked René’s burden as a young adult male. Whoever he was, he was seriously injured. The coppery scent of blood curled thick into her nostrils. And not just blood. She sniffed, drawing in his smell, picking apart his recent history.

Fevered sweat, deep earth, dank mud, wet denim and cotton, the sour stink of a body pushed beyond endurance and shutting down, the musky pheromones of Change.

“That he is.” Angélique unknotted her apron ties and tossed the apron into the armchair beside the fireplace.
Pulling a hair tie from the pocket of her jeans, she tied back her long russet hair.

She had a feeling a long day lay ahead of them.

“Take your friend to the back and put him on the table,” Angélique instructed, her voice all business and no-nonsense.

“No friend,” Jubilee said before René could speak. “We found him planted in the earth just outside o’ Chacahoula, and potioned up with bad juju to boot.”

Merlin closed the porch door, then glanced over his shoulder at Angélique, his eyes holding hers, his expression grim. “Sounds like black work, hun.”

Angélique nodded. “It does. But he’s also Change-sick. He reeks of it.”

Merlin blinked, startled. “Change-sick? Then that means he’s a—”

“Half-’n’-half,” Jubilee finished. “And we’re all wasting our time. He’s too old for the Change. He ain’t gonna make it.”

“We’ll see about that.” Angélique pierced Jubilee with a fang-sharp stare.

“
Tais-toi,
girl,” René snapped, his gaze also locked on Jubilee.

There was no mistaking the tension in his voice, in his broad, powerful shoulders, and in his brown eyes. Taller than the majority of the pack at six-five, his wild tawny locks curled to the nape of his neck; his sideburns and beard were the same shade as his hair. And right now, his hair was bristling with quiet fury.

Jubilee pushed away from the mantel and met René’s gaze. “He’s a half blood. Dangerous. Unpredictable. A fucking freak.”

Brows knitted together, jaw tight, Merlin started forward, expression furious, but Angélique’s reflexes were faster, her speed quicker than her human husband’s, and she beat him to Jubilee.

Baring her fangs, Angélique snarled. Her warning was unmistakable:
You have stepped out of place.

Jubilee dropped down into a crouch, panic flashing across her face as she realized exactly what she had just said, and lowered her head submissively, her gaze aimed at the floor. Her body tensed, muscles quivering.

“I was only talking about the
chien de maison
we dug up,” she explained hastily. “I never meant Ember and Chance. Never.”

Fingernails morphing into black claws, Angélique dropped down beside Jubilee and grabbed her by the back of the neck, her claw tips pricking the girl’s skin. The bright smell of fresh blood floated into the air.

“Say anything like that again,” Angélique said in a coiled whisper, “and you will no longer be welcome in my home.”

“She ain’t welcome right now,” Merlin said, his voice cold enough to start another ice age. “Get your ass out of my house, Jubilee Fontaine.”

“Merlin, I’m sorry,” Jubilee said, her gaze still on the floor, her voice low and contrite. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“Damn straight you weren’t thinking,” Merlin agreed. “Now get the hell out.”

Angélique slid her claws away from Jubilee’s neck, the tips dotted with blood, then stood. She curled her hands into fists, claws biting into her palms, and swallowed back her anger as the younger woman jumped to her feet and bolted from the room.

The porch door slammed behind her.

Angélique’s belly knotted. Jubilee wasn’t the only
loup-garou
who believed half bloods to be inferior and, worse, dangerous.

She felt Merlin’s strong hands on her shoulders, the warmth of his palms through her blouse. She leaned back into him for a moment, drawing strength and calm from his solid, reliable presence, and closed her eyes.

“You okay, hun?” he asked softly.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m okay. Pissed. Exasperated. But okay.”

“I’m still with you on the pissed part. And if this closed-minded bullshit ever gets aimed in the twins’ direction, we split. We’ve got options, woman.”

A familiar argument-slash-discussion, one they’d been having for the last two years, ever since the twins had been born.

We can join my clan. I refuse to let anyone treat our kids as less, as inferior.

We’ve got time to educate the pack, show them the flaws in their thinking.

And if we can’t? That flawed thinking runs deep, hun. Thousands of years. We ain’t got much time before the twins are old enough to realize they are being looked at differently than anyone else in the pack. And why.

We can do it. We
have
to do it. You’ve been raised in a human pack—a clan. You know how it is.

Yeah. I do. I understand the ties of kin and clan. I gave up the road for you. Will you give up the pack for our children—if it comes to that?

The pack needs me, Merlin. I’m their
traiteur.

Then train another healer and let the pack need
them.

Angélique drew in a breath, pulling her husband’s warm
and masculine odor—oakmoss and musky amber—deep into her lungs. She opened her eyes. “Later,
cher.
Right now we have someone to take care of,” she murmured, sliding out from under his grasp and swiveling around.

“That we do, but remember, we ain’t finished with this conversation, woman.”

Angélique lifted an eyebrow. “Now you’re starting to annoy me,” she warned.

“And that’s different from every other day, how?” Merlin teased.

“Ask me that in the bedroom tonight, bright boy. And I’ll show you.”

“Maybe I’ll sleep on the couch. Play it safe.”

“Oh, it’s much too late for that, nomad.” Shoving past her grinning husband, Angélique walked over to René and the dog sitting patiently at his feet.

“I apologize for Jubilee,” René said with a slight shake of his head. “Somet’ing’s bothering dat girl, for true, since I know she t’inks de world of yo’ kids.”

“
Merci beaucoup,
René, I appreciate that,” Angélique replied gently. “But it’s a problem for another day,
oui
? Now let’s get that boy in back and on the table.”

With a nod, René strode from the living room and into the kitchen, the dog right beside him. Ember burbled “Doggie!” then “Tew!” as he passed through, a declaration that Moss echoed in a deep voice: “Tew!”

Giggles and bowl-banging were his applause.

Shaking her head and smiling, Angélique followed René through the sausage-fragrant kitchen, past her laughing grease- and jam-smeared children and a mugging Moss and into the back room, her husband just a pace behind her.

René stopped in front of the first of two hand-carved oak examination tables and eased the unconscious half blood onto its padded surface. The young man’s dark hair partially veiled his face in damp tendrils. One mud-streaked hand dangled over the table’s side and René gently placed it back on the table, murmuring, “
Lâche pas,
you.”

Angélique slipped past and went to the sink beside her worktable with its neat jars, boxes, and bottles full of healing herbs and roots, the room awash in the scents of dill and coriander and frankincense.

Merlin’s worktable was opposite hers, a rootworker’s version of a partner’s desk, and his side was a swirl of clutter and chaos. She usually avoided looking at it. Otherwise her hands would itch with the need to organize it.

“I’ll get his clothes off,” Merlin said, beelining for the examination table. “Wet and muddy ain’t helping. We’re gonna need a bowl of warm water and rags to clean him up a bit too, hun.”

“Already getting it,” Angélique replied, pulling a clear glass bowl down from the cupboard above. She placed it on the sink and twisted on the faucet. As the bowl filled, she gathered clean rags from the drawer.

Bowl brimming with warm water, she carried it and the rags over to the examination table and placed them on the oak instrument tray beside it. The Siberian husky sat on her haunches near the table’s head, panting. Her watchful blue-brown gaze was aimed at the young man sprawled on the table.

René lifted the half blood’s body up so Merlin could peel his black T-shirt off his lean-muscled torso—or Angélique
supposed
it was black, it might’ve been a different
color before all the mud—revealing dozens of shallow cuts sliced across his chest, belly, and arms.

Merlin whistled low, then said, “Christ. Cut up, potioned, and buried. Somebody truly hated this poor bastard.”

“Enough to make him into a true zombie,” Angélique agreed, “caught in the twilight between death and life and bound to the will of another. But,” she added, casting a quick smile at René, “it looks like the potion didn’t work and you saved him from suffocating to death.”

Looking grim, René eased the half blood back down on the table. “We was following de dog, us. Playing a game, trying to figure out what she was chasing mile after mile after mile.”

“Damned good thing for him,” Merlin said.

With the half blood flat on his back again, Angélique moved in with a wet rag to clean his face while Merlin stepped down to tug off his sole remaining boot.