Page 80 of Curse in the Quarter
As the alliance dispersed to their tasks, Bastien stared at the tactical map. Red circles marked confirmed Collector sightings, expanding outward from the breach point like ripples from a thrown stone. At the center of the map, a blue pin marked the Archive where Delphine worked, unaware that entities from beyond reality were systematically searching for her.
The radio crackled. “Boss,” Vincent's voice carried new urgency. “We've got movement at the breach. Something big is coming through.”
Bastien grabbed his binoculars and rushed to the warehouse's upper windows. In the distance, the swirling vortex above the Garden District pulsed with malevolent energy.Through its center, a shape was emerging—larger than the individual Collectors, more substantial, carrying authority that made reality itself recoil.
“What am I looking at?” he whispered.
Maman joined him at the window, her face pale with recognition. “A Harvester. They're what Collectors report to. If one is manifesting directly . . .”
She didn't need to finish. A Harvester's presence meant the entities weren't just searching anymore.
They'd found something worth manifesting their command structure.
Bastien's radio erupted with panicked voices from across the city. Reality storms were erupting at multiple locations. Gravity was failing in three-block radius around the breach. Time itself was becoming unstable.
And somewhere in the chaos, forces from outside reality were closing in on the woman who held the key to dimensional stability—or catastrophic collapse.
The alliance had minutes, maybe less, before New Orleans became the epicenter of dimensional disaster.
“All units,” Bastien commanded. “Emergency protocols. We're out of time.”
The true battle for reality was beginning.
Twenty-Four
Reality shuddered.
Bastien felt it in his bones as he coordinated the evacuation—that fundamental wrongness when forces from outside normal space-time pressed against the boundaries of existence. Three blocks from the breach point, gravity flickered like a dying light bulb. Cars lifted briefly off asphalt before crashing back down. Street lamps bent in directions that didn't correspond to any earthly wind.
"Status report!" he barked into his radio while helping an injured vampire stumble toward the command post.
"Breach expanding," Vincent's voice crackled through static that shouldn't exist on digital frequencies. "Harvester's still manifesting. Whatever it's looking for, it's not waiting for permission anymore."
Through the warehouse windows, Bastien watched the swirling vortex above the Garden District pulse with malevolent purpose. The opera house was gone—not destroyed, but edited out of reality, leaving only space where it once stood. Around the breach, emergency vehicles satabandoned as their crews fled phenomena that had no names in any human language.
"Pack status?" he called to Roxy.
"Wolves are holding the perimeter, but barely." Her voice carried strain that went beyond physical exhaustion. "Something about these entities is making our senses scream. It's like they're made of antimatter for consciousness. They’re trying to scramble our signals."
Maman Brigitte approached with a handful of crystals that were smoking despite not being near any flame. "The wards are failing faster than we can rebuild them. These forces don't just break magic—they make magic forget how to exist."
Bastien processed the reports while his mind raced through impossible calculations. The alliance had prepared for supernatural conflict, not dimensional warfare. Their weapons were designed to fight vampires and fae, not entities that existed in the spaces between realities.
"Where's Delphine?" The question that had been burning in his chest since they'd fled Maestro's trap.
"Archive reported all-clear twenty minutes ago," Vincent replied. "But if these things are hunting her specifically . . ."
"They'll find her." Bastien grabbed the Votum Aeternum blade, its celestial edges humming with recognition of approaching crisis. "I'm going to get her."
"Bastien, no." Roxy stepped into his path, her pack authority blazing. "You walk into the Quarter now—you might not walk out. Reality's becoming soup between here and there."
She was right. The dimensional instability was expanding in concentric circles from the breach point. What had started as localized distortions was spreadingthrough New Orleans like cosmic cancer. Buildings aged decades in seconds. Street corners led to different neighborhoods than they should. Time itself flowed in currents that trapped pedestrians in temporal loops.
"Then we bring her here." Bastien turned to the tactical map, marking safe routes through the chaos. "Vincent, I need four of your fastest. Roxy, six wolves who can navigate by scent when visual landmarks become unreliable. Maman?—"
"Will provide protection that might actually work against entities from outside physics," she finished, pulling items from her ritual bag that seemed to exist in more dimensions than could be comprehended.
As the extraction team prepared, Bastien's radio erupted with panicked chatter from across the supernatural community. The Collectors weren't just searching anymore—they were testing reality's boundaries, probing for weaknesses they could exploit.
