Page 56 of Curse in the Quarter (Bourbon Street Shadows #1)
G abriel Jr.’s howls cut through the bayou night. The phone shook against Bastien’s ear as Roxy’s voice cracked with exhaustion. “Wolves have begun hearing voices through their bond magic, and one has gone feral.”
The Votum Aeternum hummed against Bastien’s palm as he dressed, responding to disturbance in the spiritual atmosphere.
Outside his window, the Quarter writhed with unnatural shadows that moved independent of wind or light source.
Street lamps flickered in patterns that suggested interference from forces operating beyond electromagnetic explanation.
Whatever infection had reached Crescent Moon territory wasn’t staying contained within pack boundaries.
The drive through empty streets felt like traveling backward through geological time, civilization falling away to cypress and Spanish moss as asphalt gave way to gravel roads that wound through wetlands older than human settlement.
When he reached pack territory, the sky held phosphorescent wrongness that reminded him of glyph flares but spread across the entire dome of heaven like aurora borealis displaced from polar regions.
Roxy met him at the tree line, her usually immaculate appearance disheveled in ways that spoke of hours spent wrestling with forces beyond normal comprehension. Dirt caked her fingernails, sweat darkened her shirt despite the cool night air, and panic lived in her eyes like something with teeth.
“Started yesterday evening,” she said, leading him deeper into the wetlands along paths worn by generations of pack members moving between human and wolf forms. “Pack bonds carrying voices from decades past. At first, we thought it was just interference from city’s magical activity.
” She paused beside an ancient cypress whose trunk bore fresh claw marks gouged deep enough to expose heartwood.
“Then Gabriel Jr. shifted without the moon or choice and started speaking languages none of us recognized.”
Bastien examined the gouges, running fingers along edges that felt wrong beneath his touch.
The wood was corroded as if something acidic had eaten through more than bark, leaving channels that pulsed with faint bioluminescence.
Whatever had marked this tree possessed properties that violated natural law in ways that made his skin crawl with recognition.
“Where is he now?”
“Secured in the hunting cabin. We had to use silver restraints.” The admission broke something in her voice, pack bonds recoiling from necessity of containing one of their own with materials that burned werewolf flesh on contact.
“He’s our youngest. Barely two years since first shift.
If whatever this is can break a new wolf so completely . . .”
They walked deeper into pack territory past landmarks that now felt alien under the strange half-light.
Ancient burial mounds built by indigenous peoples before European contact rose from swampland like sleeping giants, their earthwork geometries disrupted by new patterns that twisted the mind and eyes.
The bayou had fallen unnaturally silent, predatory quiet that suggested even insects and amphibians recognized the presence of something that didn’t belong in natural ecosystems.
The hunting cabin sat on stilts designed to withstand seasonal flooding, its weathered planks bearing fresh scratches and what looked like burn marks arranged in spiraling configurations.
From inside came continuous growling punctuated by bursts of movement that shook the entire structure, wooden joints creaking under stress they weren’t designed to handle.
Tib Thibodeaux emerged from shadows as they approached, his alpha presence somehow diminished as if the pack bond that usually gave him such steady authority had been compromised at its foundation.
Lines of exhaustion marked his face, and his hands trembled with barely controlled rage at his inability to protect a pack member from forces operating beyond his understanding.
“Every time I establish connection, something else pushes back,” Tib said, voice hoarse from hours of attempted communication. “Not Gabriel Jr.—something using him as conduit. Something that knows our bond structure well enough to turn it against us.”
Through gaps in the cabin’s wall planks, Bastien caught glimpses of movement that defied normal werewolf behavior.
Gabriel Jr. paced in patterns that formed geometric shapes, his footsteps wearing grooves into wooden flooring according to mathematical principles rather than animal instinct.
Between growls, he spoke in linguistic fragments that made the air itself seem to thicken.
French phrases from colonial periods. Spanish words that belonged to conquistador expeditions.
What sounded like Choctaw ceremonial language, though twisted into configurations that no native speaker would recognize.
And something else entirely that made Bastien’s skin crawl with recognition—ancient formulaic phrases that belonged to working magic rather than ordinary speech.
“Glyph resonance,” Bastien murmured, understanding flooding through him like cold water. “Pack bond is amplifying tether energy. Whatever’s building in the city is spreading through existing magical networks, using established connections between consciousness as transmission medium.”
He looked at Tib with growing alarm as implications cascaded through his awareness. “Show me your sigil stones.”
The pack’s protective sigils were carved into cypress trees at regular intervals around territorial boundaries, each one blessed according to traditions that stretched back to first werewolf settlements in Louisiana.
They should have been clean geometric patterns, simple but effective wards against hostile magic designed to maintain barriers between pack lands and forces that might threaten community stability.
Instead, Bastien found himself staring at corrupted symbols that made his stomach turn with recognition and dread.
The original sigils remained visible, but they’d been overlaid with additional marks that transformed protective geometry into something else entirely.
Delicate spiraling patterns wound around the traditional symbols like parasitic vines, their curves following mathematical progressions that suggested intelligence behind their placement.
At the center of each spiral sat a perfectly formed Lacroix family crest, rendered in lines so precise they might have been carved by master artisan rather than mystical force.
Charlotte’s influence, which had spread through the city’s ward network like spiritual infection, had found the pack’s most sacred protections and claimed them for purposes they were never designed to serve.
“How long have they looked like this?” Bastien asked, though dread in his chest suggested he already knew the answer.
“Two days ago they were fine,” Roxy said, touching one corrupted sigil with cautious fingers before jerking back with sharp intake of breath.
“I check them personally every week as part of my duties. These new marks appeared overnight, all of them simultaneously across our entire territorial boundary.”
She held up her hand, showing fingertips that now bore faint traces of the same spiraling pattern that decorated the stones. “They’re warm. They pulse with their own rhythm. And they’re spreading.”
Bastien pulled out the Votum Aeternum he’d begun carrying at all times, and immediately the corrupted sigils began glowing brighter, responding to the weapon’s presence like iron filings drawn to magnetic field.
The steel thrummed in his hand with intensity he’d never felt before, pulling his attention toward patterns of energy that became visible when filtered through the weapon’s ancient properties.
What he saw made him understand the true scope of what they were facing, and why Charlotte had been so confident in her preparations.
The tether energy connecting him to Delphine wasn’t just growing stronger—it was spreading outward through every established magical network in the city like root system seeking nutrients.
Charlotte’s original ward work, embedded in dozens of protective sites across New Orleans during her lifetime, had become delivery system for awakening power.
Every church blessing, every cemetery consecration, every protective charm she’d ever touched now served as a node in the vast web designed to amplify soul connection across impossible distances.
The glyph outbreaks weren’t random events but coordinated manifestations of single expanding magical influence.
Every otherworldly sanctuary was becoming resonance chamber for her approaching consciousness, tuned to frequencies that would make denial or resistance impossible once full awakening began.
Memory struck him without warning, vivid as a motion picture; a summer evening in 1906 when such concerns belonged to a different world entirely, when love seemed like such a simple thing that required only honesty and courage to sustain.
And for a time, when he’d earned Delia’s love, he’d believed that to be true.
Delia was at the neighborhood piano during one of those spontaneous gatherings that happened in those days, when music and laughter could fill streets without planning or permission.
She wore a yellow cotton dress that caught lamplight as her fingers moved across keys, transforming classical composition into something uniquely hers through subtle alterations in tempo and phrasing.
Every note carried piece of her soul, making music seem natural as breathing while crowd gathered around instrument in appreciation of talent that transcended technical skill.
She played with complete absorption, lost in creative act that connected her to something larger than individual consciousness.