Total pages in book: 134
Estimated words: 124479 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 498(@250wpm)___ 415(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124479 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 498(@250wpm)___ 415(@300wpm)
She had expected him. Bastien had not called ahead, had not sent word, but a coffee pot sat warm on its hot plate, two cups already poured into ceramic that predated the Louisiana Purchase.
He took the chair across from her reading table—the massive slab of cypress wood scarred by decades of ritual work. Burn marks from candles that had tipped. Knife scores from ingredients prepared directly on its surface. Stains from oils and blood and liquids whose origins he had never asked about. This table had witnessed more magic than most practitioners performed in a lifetime.
Bastien set the photographs between them, arranging them in sequence. Four faces. Four words in a sentence he could not read.
“Tell me what you brought,” Maman said, though she was already studying the images with attention that suggested she saw more than paper and ink.
“Four murders. Vampires, all of them. Their bodies did not disperse.”
Her eyes lifted to meet his. The weight of that fact registered in the slight tightening around her mouth. “I’ve heard a bit about it. That’s not natural. Not for their kind.”
“No. The killer prevented it. Left the bodies intact, positioned with care, marked with sigils I’ve documented.” He touched the photograph of Armand Fontenot. “The first. Dumaine Street, five days ago. Throat cut, heart punctured, blood drained into channels carved into the ground beneath him. The Marchande-Levesque symbol over his heart.”
“Marchande-Levesque. That bloodline was destroyed over a century ago.”
“Their symbol survived. Someone is using it to sign these deaths.” Bastien moved through the photographs, pointing to each in turn. “Solange Vidal. Thierry Arceneaux. Marguerite Deschamps. All minor status. All descended from bloodlines that attended a tribunal in 1847, when the Marchande-Levesque family proposed a feeding compact that was rejected. Forty-four years later, that family was hunted and destroyed. Now their descendants’ descendants are being killed with their symbol carved into the bodies.”
Maman absorbed this in silence, her fingers resting on the edge of the first photograph without touching it. “Historical grudge finding new expression.”
“That’s what the evidence suggests. But the method requires knowledge most practitioners don’t possess. Prevention of dispersal alone would take study. The sigils are archaic, the blade work precise, the preparation of each site conducted days or weeks before the killing.”
“You said you documented the sigils.”
Bastien withdrew his notebook and opened it to the pages where he had sketched each marking from each scene. Seven sigils per victim, always in the same sequence. Binding marks, containment glyphs, anchoring signs. The Marchande-Levesque symbol placed last, always over the heart.
Maman pulled the notebook toward her, studying the drawings with attention that made the air around her grow dense. She traced one sigil with her fingertip, not quite touching the paper, and a candle on the shelf behind her flickered despite the absence of any draft.
“Old work,” she said finally. “Older than the 1847 tribunal. These forms predate the Louisiana Purchase, predate the French colonial courts. Someone has been studying texts that should have been lost…or destroyed.”
“Can you identify the source?”
“I can tell you what tradition they come from. But the practitioner...” She shook her head. “They’ve disguised their signature. Every mark carries the scent of the work itself, not the worker. Someone careful. Someone patient. They’ve been planning this for some time to be able to cover up the magic this well.”
Bastien let the silence hold for a moment, feeling the warmth in his forearm pulse in response to the proximity of the sigil drawings. The mark recognized something in those shapes. A connection he could not name.
“There’s more,” he said.
Maman’s eyes lifted from the notebook. She studied his face with the particular focus she reserved for things that concerned her. “Show me.”
He pushed his left sleeve up to the elbow and turned his forearm toward the light.
Maman went rigid.
Her hand rose to his arm as though to ward off an approaching threat, and the color drained from her face until the deep brown took on an ashen undertone. She stared at the darkened skin — its boundaries more defined now than even yesterday, the lines within it curving and intersecting in patterns that carried no meaning he could recognize — and the fear in her eyes was not a thing he had expected to see there.
“How long?” Warmth had vanished from her voice.
“It appeared after the first murder scene. I assumed residual contamination from the ritual magic. Tried to cleanse it three times with materials that have worked before.” Bastien kept his voice level, watching her face for information. “It responded to each crime scene. Warmed when I approached. Flared when I examined the bodies. At the fourth site, the heat spread to my extremities and nearly brought me to my knees.”
Maman approached him with the deliberate care of someone handling hazardous materials. She did not ask permission before reaching toward the mark, and he did not pull away.