“Now what you think that piece of shrimp bait’s doin’ out there?” Lurnell said, planting a fist on a hip. “That boy is trouble all by his ownself.”

Mattie had company now. She was talking to Banjo Marks, a young vampire who came from an old bayou family. Shauna knew he was homeless and a junkie. The guy eagerly swallowed, snorted, or injected, anything and everything he got his hands on. His weekly regimen consisted of LSD, pot, crystal-meth and cocaine. Whatever he scored in between those primers, Banjo considered lagniappe. He was tall and lanky, and had thin, scraggly blond hair that hung in greasy strands down to the middle of his back. Most of the time he smelled like wet, soured towels.

As if life hadn’t piled enough on Banjo’s plate, he didn’t fit the standard vampire profile, even for this area. He ate and drank like a human. Shauna didn’t know if the years of drug use had caused him to mutate, which in turn allowed him to digest food, or if he was the byproduct of an accidental cross-breeding. Either way, it was strange to see. He came to the shop often, always looking for a handout. And Fiona, being the Keeper of the vampires and the kind-hearted mother hen that she was, never failed to give him food and something warm or cool to drink, whichever the weather dictated.

As for Shauna, she never liked being around Banjo, and it had nothing to do with his drug use or smell. He had a high-pitched voice and an odd, twittering laugh that sounded like a hyena mating with a screeching macaw. It sawed on her last nerve.

Mattie and Banjo were yelling now, standing almost nose to nose. Although Shauna could easily hear their conversation, both were so hyped up that most of it came across as gibberish.

“—today, asshole, you said today!” Mattie jabbed Banjo’s shoulder with a finger. “You said—I been waitin’… Where’s at? Where?”

As Mattie poked at Banjo, he shuffled left a few steps, then turned about and moved up one step in the other direction, as if he were square-dancing alone. Then came that horrid, twittering laugh.

“Swear, swear to Gawd, gonna be here,” he gibbered. “Little problem, gonna be here, though. Yeah, you gonna see—fresh, fresh, fresh. Gonna come, swear to Gawd.”

Mattie shoved him, and Banjo stumbled backwards, his arms pin-wheeling for balance. She trapped him against a nearby light pole, jabbing a finger at his chest this time. “You—shit…sonofawhore! You promised, you motherf—”

The twittering laugh—that God-awful twittering laugh…

Their fight grew so intense people crossed the street to avoid them.

“Enough’s enough,” Shauna said, and headed for the door. She really didn’t care if they pulled each other’s hair out. What she’d had enough of was Banjo’s laughter.

“Shauna wait,” Fiona said. “I’ll call—”

“Yeah, you best hold up, girl,” Lurnell called after her.

Shauna glanced back at her, then returned her attention to the street in time to see Mattie throw a punch at Banjo’s face. To her surprise, he ducked in time to avoid getting hit. Instead of his face, Mattie’s fist connected with the light pole—and dented it.

Shauna gaped. Every light pole in the city was constructed of heavy metal due to the narrow streets, heavy traffic and drivers with little to no peripheral vision. No way a skinny woman with bad aim would be able to do that much damage.

“Whoa! You see that?” Lurnell said.

Just then the keening sound that had kept Shauna on edge for the last couple of hours grew in volume. Within seconds, it was all she heard. She saw Lurnell’s mouth moving but heard no words.

Only that pained, mournful cry…loud and long.

It sank deep into Shauna’s chest—threatened to yank out her heart.

She had to find the source.

No doubt in her mind…something was happening…had happened…would happen. No doubt in her mind, it was bad.

All of it very, very bad.

He ran.

Hard, fast…

Breathless…

Mindless.

It was all Danyon knew to do.

Act on instinct.

After Andrea left to find Andy, he and Paul had moved Simon’s body into the thicket. He’d ordered Paul to stay put and keep watch. If anyone came into the area, he was to steer them away from the thicket, by any means necessary. Paul, who’d puked his guts out the entire time they moved Simon, had all but burst into tears, not wanting to be left alone with a dead body.

With no other choice but to leave him in a sniveling heap, Danyon had followed Ian to a set of pilings off Barataria Boulevard, where he’d found Nicole’s body.

Ian had been right. She was in the same condition as Simon. Clothes tattered and strewn about, lying in a pool of her own blood, bound about the chest and ankles, and in full were-state, claws and fangs ripped away. There was one difference between the deaths, however. Unlike Simon, heavy cable hadn’t been used to restrain Nicole. Only thin, silver wire.

The pain from the silver alone would have been excruciating. It had burned through Nicole’s fur and flesh, then lodged itself in bone. Definitely enough to keep her restrained all by itself.

Danyon hadn’t had the opportunity to examine Simon fully yet, but he suspected that, initially, the same silver wire had been used to incapacitate him. Since he was bigger and stronger than Nicole, the cable would have been necessary to keep him securely restrained while they removed his claws and fangs. Nicole, on the other hand, was petite. Even when fully transformed into were-state, she had been no bigger than a six-month-old German Shepherd pup.

Seeing the young female were stuffed between two pilings had been bad enough, but what really got to Danyon was her fur. She was double-coated, covered with beautiful light brown fur streaked with different shades of gold and white. She literally sparkled when she ran through the sunlight. Seeing that beautiful coat covered with blood, the deep-set eyes once filled with innocence and ease now frozen in terror, had been his undoing. Rage overtook him, and he transformed almost instantaneously.

Fortunately, part of his brain had remained rational, reminding him that he had to tell August Gaudin, the leader of all the were packs in the South, about the deaths. That human thought battled with his feral nature as he ran toward the city, toward the French Quarter, where he would find August. That thought was the only thing that kept Danyon from hunting anything breathing just so he could slaughter it.

Running helped him push past the pain of what he’d witnessed.

By the time he reached Orleans Avenue, which was six blocks north of the Quarter, he had calmed enough to return to human form. His clothes were nearly non-existent, since he all but doubled in size as a wolf, so he’d had to dodge in and out of alleyways and behind buildings to avoid being seen.

He’d gone straight home, which was the entire fifth floor of La Maison Pierre, a five-storey hotel he owned on the south side of Ursulines. Once there, he’d slipped through the back entrance, took a private elevator to the top floor then quickly changed into slacks and a button-down shirt.

Now he headed for Canal Street and August’s office complex. He kept his walk brisk, his head down, watching his shoes as a maelstrom of questions blew through his mind.

Why would anyone want to kill Simon and Nicole? Neither one would ever have harmed a soul.

Is someone targeting my pack, or were Simon and Nicole simply in the wrong place at the wrong time?

The biggest question that plagued him, though, was who or what had been able to capture them. It would certainly have taken more than one human to keep Simon under control once he transformed into were-form, even if they had subdued him with silver before wrapping him in cable. In human form, Simon had been six foot one and weighed at least a hundred-seventy-five pounds. As a wolf, he towered over seven feet, and just the additional flesh and muscle mass added another seventy-five pounds or more to his weight. No, it would have taken more than an entire army of men to hold Simon down.

Another thought crossed Danyon’s mind, and it nearly stopped him cold. Both death scenes had been covered with blood, but aside from Simon and Nicole being declawed and defanged, he hadn’t noticed any other major injuries. No gunshot wounds to the body or head. No blunt force trauma. He hadn’t examined either close enough to check for stab wounds, which he planned to do when he met up with Andy later, but aside from that possibility, what had actually killed his two weres?

Danyon was still deep in thought when a woman suddenly appeared in his line of sight, only inches away from his face. Instinctively, he reached out and took hold of her upper arms to minimize the collision.

“Excuse me,” he said. “I…” The sight of her fiery green eyes sent a jolt of recognition through him. It was Shauna MacDonald.

He’d met her a few times at the bi-annual council meetings, when the underworld subcultures in New Orleans and the surrounding area met to discuss communal issues. He knew Shauna owned A Little Bit of Magic, the mystic shop on Royal, along with her sisters, Fiona and Caitlin. And he knew all three were Keepers.

Every time he saw Shauna, her beauty captured his attention to the point of distraction. She was tall and slender, her long, strawberry blonde hair usually up in a ponytail. Her skin, although fair, had a healthy glow. Only a dead man wouldn’t take notice of her.

Even more problematic for Danyon was Shauna’s scent. It was a pheromonal tidal wave of passion, femininity and latent sexuality. It drove him mad with desire, and he had to struggle to resist it.

Shauna, on the other hand, appeared to have little or no interest in him at all. Whenever they were in the same room, she refused to make eye contact with him and usually kept her end of the conversation brief, clipped, as though being around him irritated her, and she couldn’t wait to get away.

It was just as well.

Even if Shauna were interested in him, nothing could ever come of it.

She was human.

He was a wolven, and an alpha at that. That was a vast chasm to overcome. Danyon knew those differences would always keep her from fully understanding the depth of his true nature, even if she was his Keeper.