Page 51 of Curse in the Quarter (Bourbon Street Shadows #1)

The Votum Aeternum shifted against his side, its shadowed crystal alive with a slow, deliberate thrum.

Not a call to sever, but a recognition—a binding sense—that something in the world’s hidden lattice was under strain.

The silver-threaded veins within the blade brightened, responding to pressure on bonds older than any mortal covenant.

No ward shimmered; no incantation hung in the air.

This was deeper. The very framework of existence was flexing, settling into an alien design, as if unseen hands were redrawing the lines that kept reality itself intact.

"Movement ahead," one of Vincent's scouts reported. "Civilian evacuation in progress. NOPD trying to establish safe zones, but they don't understand what they're dealing with."

Bastien ran his hands through his thick, dark hair as he watched the police officers struggle to maintain order while reality collapsed around them.

Squad cars floated three feet off the ground, their radios broadcasting in languages that had never existed.

Officers fired tasers at shadow-creatures that consumed electricity and grew larger.

Paramedics treated injuries that defied medical understanding—patients aging in reverse, wounds that bled light instead of blood, consciousness displaced into parallel versions of themselves.

"We need to help them," Roxy said, her instincts demanding the protection of innocents.

"We help them by stopping the source," Bastien replied, though the decision felt like betrayal. Every minute they spent on rescue operations was another minute the Collectors had to analyze the Archive, to prepare whatever extraction protocol they intended.

The team pressed forward through chaos that rewrote itself with every step.

Jackson Square had become a temporal maze where tourists from different decades wandered lost among monuments that remembered alternate histories.

The cathedral's spires reached toward sky that occasionally opened onto star patterns from other galaxies.

Street musicians played instruments that produced colors instead of sound.

"Archive in sight," Vincent reported. "But there's a problem."

Bastien crested the rise and saw what had stopped the vampire short.

The Archive building stood intact, but it was surrounded by space that simply wasn't there.

Not empty space—absent space, a void that created nausea just by being perceived.

Reality bent around the building like water around a stone, creating a pocket of dimensional stability that was most definitely deliberate, controlled.

In that void, shapes moved with purpose that belonged to no earthly design.

"Three Collectors," Roxy confirmed, her pack's enhanced senses translating impossible phenomena into terms their minds could process. "They're not attacking the building. They're studying it."

The entities moved with fluid precision around the Archive's perimeter, their forms shifting between states of matter that human physics couldn't define. Where they passed, space itself took notes—reality learning new rules from teachers that existed outside its normal parameters.

"Learning what?" Bastien asked, though dread was already providing answers.

"How to extract what's inside without damaging the container," Maman replied, her face pale with understanding. "They want her consciousness intact. Whatever they're planning requires her memories, her accumulated knowledge from multiple lifetimes."

One of the Collectors paused in its circuit, turning toward their position despite being a quarter-mile away.

The weight of its regard locked him in place, as if the air itself had thickened, each breath forced through a lens of ancient scrutiny.

The ancient intelligence evaluated them with the clinical interest of a scientist observing lab specimens.

"They know we're here," Vincent whispered.

The radio crackled with updates from the command post. More breaches were opening throughout the city—small tears in reality that allowed additional entities to observe and analyze.

The Harvester was manifesting additional mass, its presence creating stability fields that allowed lesser Collectors to maintain corporeal form.

Reality storms were erupting in residential neighborhoods where ordinary people had no protection against forces that made physics optional.

Through it all, regular life continued with surreal determination.

Bastien watched a tour group move through the French Quarter, their guide explaining architectural history while gravity failed intermittently around them.

Tourists took photos of monuments that existed in seventeen different time periods simultaneously.

Street vendors sold beignets that occasionally became sentient and pleaded for freedom.

"We need to move before they adapt to our presence," Bastien decided. "Vincent, can your people create a distraction? Something that draws their attention without getting close enough for direct contact? "

"Leave that to us." Vincent's smile revealed fangs that gleamed with predatory satisfaction. "Vampires have been avoiding cosmic forces since before humans discovered fire. We know how to be dramatically visible without being genuinely accessible."

The vampire contingent split off, moving with coordinated precision toward the void's perimeter.

They began what could only be described as an elaborate supernatural dance—appearing at the edge of perception, triggering the Collectors' analytical protocols, then vanishing before meaningful contact could occur.

The entities turned their attention toward these new variables, trying to catalog beings that existed between life and death.

"Pack, with me," Roxy commanded. "We approach from the south entrance. Low profile, maximum stealth. These things process reality through alien logic—maybe wolf senses will read as background noise."

Her pack moved like liquid shadow across terrain that kept changing its fundamental properties. They navigated by scent and sound when visual landmarks proved unreliable, their supernatural instincts adapting to dimensional instability better than human perception could manage.

Bastien and Maman took the main entrance, the Votum Aeternum blade carving through spatial distortions that tried to redirect their path. The ceremonial weapon recognized forces it was designed to counter, its edge glowing with purpose as they approached the void.

"One thing," Maman said quietly as they reached the Archive's outer boundary. "If we enter that building and the Collectors realize what we're doing; they won't just study anymore. They'll act."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning they'll reshape local reality to prevent our interference. We could find ourselves existing in a version of New Orleans where the Archive never existed, where Delphine was never born, where this entire crisis was resolved through methods that don't include our survival."

The implications were staggering. Entities that could edit reality at will wouldn't need conventional weapons or strategies. They could simply rewrite causality to eliminate opposition.

"Then we move fast," Bastien decided.

They stepped through the void's boundary and immediately understood why the Collectors had created it.

Inside the pocket of absent space, normal physics applied with aggressive determination.

Gravity pulled consistently downward. Time flowed in proper sequence.

Light behaved according to established wavelengths.

It was like stepping from chaos into a museum exhibit labeled "How Reality Used to Work. "

The Archive building rose before them, its Victorian architecture unchanged despite the cosmic forces surrounding it. Through tall windows, Bastien could see lights on the third floor—the research section where Delphine spent her days cataloging history that was becoming increasingly unstable.

"Radio check," he called softly.

Static answered from all channels. Inside the Collectors' analytical field, electromagnetic signals couldn't penetrate the boundary between dimensions.

They were on their own.

Vincent's vampires continued their distraction dance at the void's perimeter, their movements creating patterns that demanded the entities' attention.

The Collectors responded with increasing focus, their analytical protocols engaged by phenomena that challenged their understanding of local reality.

Roxy's pack had reached the building's service entrance, their enhanced senses confirming human presence on the upper floors. Through hand signals, she indicated multiple civilians inside—archive staff, researchers, possibly security personnel.

Bastien approached the main entrance with the Votum Aeternum in hand.

The veins of silver light within it pulsed in rhythm with the space itself, sensing the strained bonds that kept the realms apart.

The blade’s purpose was not to cut, but to weave—drawing hidden threads together until a path between dimensions revealed itself.

The lock turned under his touch, not through any supernatural ability but because the building itself recognized his purpose.

The Archive had been built on ley lines that predated European settlement, its foundation stones placed according to principles that Charlotte Lacroix had understood instinctively. It wanted to protect what it contained.

Inside, fluorescent lights hummed with mundane reliability. Computer terminals displayed normal screensavers. The elevator played generic music that belonged to a universe where cosmic forces weren't rewriting local physics. Everything aggressively, deliberately ordinary.

Except for the footsteps above.

Two sets—one human, moving with familiar rhythm. The other something else entirely, its gait following patterns that suggested a different relationship with gravity and momentum.

Bastien's radio crackled to life as he entered the building's electromagnetic field. "Boss ," Vincent's voice carried new urgency. "The Collectors are adapting faster than expected. They're starting to ignore our distraction."

Through the Archive's windows, Bastien could see the entities turning their attention back toward the building. Their analytical dance was complete. They'd learned what they needed to know.

Now they were ready to collect what they'd come for.

"All units converge," Bastien commanded, taking the stairs three at a time. "Emergency extraction. We're out of time."

Above him, the footsteps quickened—one set moving toward what sounded like a defensive position, the other pursuing with inexorable patience. The human voice, muffled by distance and architecture, carried notes of confusion and growing fear.

Delphine's voice.

The real battle was beginning on the third floor of a building that existed in a pocket of enforced normalcy, surrounded by forces that could rewrite the fundamental rules of existence.

And somewhere in that impossible space, the woman whose consciousness held the key to dimensional stability was about to discover that her quiet research job had placed her at the center of a cosmic war.

Bastien reached the third floor landing as reality began to shift around them. The Collectors had completed their analysis.

Now came the harvest.