He paid the cab fare, then looked at Lilliane beside him. “You sure you’re ready to do this?”
“I’ve never been ready for most of the things that have happened to me, and yet here I am. Hunting lowlifes with a vampire. Next stop, Disneyland.”
“Yeah. You could be one of the attractions.”
“I feel like I should be offended by that.”
“I’ll let you make jokes about me stopping off at the blood bank for a snack if it makes you feel better. In the meantime, we’ve got work to do.”
He wasn’t used to bringing civilians along on patrols with him, least of all an unarmed woman of questionable powers who might slow him down. As one of the Breed he could traverse miles in mere minutes. He would have done so on this mission, but Lilliane had made it clear before they left the candle shop that this was her problem as much as his and she wasn’t about to sit on the sidelines. So, like it or not, and for the record he didn’t, he was saddled with a partner.
“I repeat,” he said. “Are you ready?”
“Do it.”
They stepped out and the taxi rolled away.
He’d hoped to have the element of surprise on their side, but as they crossed the street, Ricky Dubois glanced over and spotted the incoming threat. His face paled to a ghostly shade of white.
Then he bolted.
Straight into the crowded bar.
“You take the front entrance,” he told Lilliane. “Flush him out toward the back. I’ll cover the rear of the building and make sure our little rat doesn’t slip his trap.”
She nodded and they split up.
He knew he didn’t have to wait and make sure she made it inside. The woman was strong and capable of handling herself. He only hoped she’d stick with the plan to collar Ricky so they could interrogate him, not coldcock the idiot into next week the way she’d done to Danny.
Not that he blamed her.
It wasn’t so long ago that his famous temper had ruled him too. He’d been angry at the world. Angry with himself for all the ways he’d failed in life, and for all the things he couldn’t change. Meeting Gabrielle had changed that. She changed him. He couldn’t help wondering if some of Lilliane’s fury might be from self-inflicted wounds as well.
In another place, another time, he might be interested to find out.
Right now, all he wanted to do was fix this situation, then get home to his mate and team.
Lilliane Smith’s problems were her own to solve.
Calling on his Breed genetics, he flashed past the crowd near the front entrance like nothing more than a chilled breeze. He was waiting at the bar’s back door when Ricky crashed through from inside and stumbled onto the rough gravel.
Lilliane emerged right behind him.
Her eyes glowed with that same unearthly fire she’d shown him when he first bared his fangs. For a moment the effect was so jarring, Lucan might have mistaken her for Breed.
But she was something else.
And this time she was truly pissed.
Lilliane pushed the human several feet in the air with a sweep of her hand. Screaming as he sailed high in the air, Ricky came down hard on a rickety old dock at the river’s edge. The rotting wood groaned from the crash, some of the boards cracking as they heaved and rocked over the dark water. Her hands fisted at her sides, she stalked forward onto the dock. Ricky’s wide eyes were locked on her in terror. Beneath him, the old dock swayed as he frantically crab-scrambled for the farthest edge. The wood started to break. The dock pitched violently to the side. Ricky lost his hold. The platform gave way, dumping him into the murky drink.
Only then did she pause.
No. More froze.
Watching, stock-still, as their quarry started swimming away.
Lucan plowed past her and dove in.
“YOU WANT TO TELL ME what that was about back there at the dock?” Lucan asked, shrugging out of his soaked black leather trench coat.
To avoid attracting any more attention, after fishing Ricky Dubois from the Mississippi they’d immediately brought the human to an abandoned house a few blocks away. Inside the neglected ruin that likely hadn’t seen inhabitants since Katrina, they’d conducted a tranced interrogation. He’d given them the name and address of the local private investigator who hired them tonight, but like his pal Danny, Ricky didn’t know how or why Lilliane had ended up on the PI’s radar.
Now, with Ricky mind-scrubbed and unconscious following his questioning, she watched as Lucan set his coat aside then pulled off his shirt and squeezed the foul water from his clothing. She couldn’t help noticing the complicated pattern of skin markings that danced and swirled over the Breed male’s torso and muscled arms. They weren’t tattoos, not the way their colors changed and moved.
There was a lot she didn’t know about his kind.
And vice versa.
Yet here they were, forced to work together to protect the secrets of both their people.
“I don’t swim,” she said, belatedly answering his question as to why she froze.
“All that power and badassery, but you don’t know how to swim?”
“I know how to swim. I said I don’t swim. Not anymore. Not since . . .”
Her words trailed off.
“Not since when?”
“Since I became what I am.”
“Which is?”
“I’m called a Radiant. Fifty-odd years ago I was just a woman. Mortal.”
“What happened?”
She shrugged nonchalantly, but the taste of regret hung bitter in her throat. “I made a terrible mistake. One I cannot correct.”
“Does your mistake have something to do with that strange candle shop back in the Quarter?”
She nodded, seeing no need to hide the facts from him. “One of those candles, the one meant for me. It found me. The shop. The man who runs it. The ghost who runs it. They all found me. Light this flame at the scene of your greatest passion and your heart’s desire will be yours.”
“Did you?”
“My heart’s desire was the white son of the family I cleaned house for. It was 1959. What do you think our chance of success would have been?”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I lit it. And something came out of it I had no words for. I thought they were ghosts at first. But they weren’t. They were more like a force, a force from the spirit world itself. I was supposed to give myself over to it. It filled me, literally. It filled me with a desire to go to him, to make my feelings known. Feelings I knew he shared. But I was one of the few people strong enough to resist. As a result, I was changed forever. Changed into this.”
With a flick of her wrist she caused the remains of the nearest rotting door to slam shut on its weak hinges. For added effect she flicked her index finger against the ball of her thumb and sent a little trail of gold dust shimmering through the humid air.
“It’s like the force that came out of the candle that night is trapped in me forever. But it’s more than that. I was offered a chance at true love, and I denied it. I was afraid. I wasn’t ready to risk everything. This,” she said, gesturing to herself, “is my punishment. Alive, but loveless. My powers, my gifts, if you can call them that, I use them to help others find their true desire. But as for me I can’t love anymore. Not like that anyway. Not like I loved him.”
“What was his name?”