Page 89 of Curse in the Quarter
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 inlinguistic 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 parasiticvines, 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 confidentin 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 creativeact that connected her to something larger than individual consciousness.
He’d watched from the doorway, unwilling to interrupt but unable to leave, mesmerized by how she made ordinary transcendent through simple attention to beauty. When she finished the piece—something by Chopin that she’d transformed into folk melody through creative interpretation—she looked up and caught his gaze across the room.
The smile she gave him radiated pure joy, untainted by shadows that would define their story or complications that would make their love both eternal and impossible. In that moment, surrounded by friends and music, she embodied everything he’d thought lost when he fell from grace.
“Play it again,” someone called from gathered crowd, but Delia shook her head, attention still focused on Bastien with intensity that tightened his chest with emotion.
“Some things are more beautiful when they only happen once,” she’d said, and he knew she wasn’t talking about music but about moments that gained meaning precisely because they couldn’t be repeated or preserved.
That touch of her fingers against piano keys, the way she made the ordinary transcendent through creative attention, the absolute presence she brought to everything she did—it echoed in him still, more than century later. Every time Delphine hummed without thinking, every time her hands moved with unconscious grace, he felt that same resonance reverberating through connection that had survived death and reincarnation.
Echo of her touch had become a permanent part of who he was, woven into his essence so thoroughly that separation would require fundamental alteration of his nature. Charlotte had designed their connection to ensure it always would be, creating magical frameworks that made forgettingimpossible and remembering inevitable. She gifted him the ability to live this life.
The blade flared with sudden heat, jolting him back to the present crisis with force that left him gasping. Corrupted sigils were responding more aggressively to his proximity, Lacroix crests spinning faster and glowing brighter as tether energy built toward critical threshold. Gabriel Jr.’s howling from the cabin took on desperate quality that spoke of consciousness trapped between human reason and wolf instinct, and he could feel the feral glyph trace starting to spread beyond pack territory toward surrounding communities.
“Stand back,” he warned Tib and Roxy, then began delicate work of using the blade’s reflective surface to trace protective circle around corrupted stones.
Reflected wardwork was a technique Charlotte had taught him during their brief time together—a method of using a weapon’s properties to create barriers existing partially in physical world, partially in realm of spiritual energy. While he had acquired this blade long after Charlotte and Delia had passed, the magic worked the same with intention. The process required absolute precision, since errors in symbolic geometry could destabilize protective matrix and release contained forces in ways that would make current crisis seem trivial by comparison.
The Votum Aeternum was never forged for beauty. It was built for finality—designed to sever bonds that should never have been made, from blood oaths and soul tethers to the ancient bindings between realms. Its edge carried no enchantment to compel obedience, only the cold certainty that once it cut a connection, there was no going back. He’d begun carrying it in case he needed to sever the bond between himself and Delphine, but it would do now tocreate new wards and barriers for Gabriel Jr. All he needed to perform the magic was a strong instrument of magic like the blade to channel energy from.
The blade’s polished steel caught traces of moonlight even under phosphorescent sky, allowing him to draw protective patterns that glowed with inner light as they formed geometric configurations around corrupted sigil stones. Each symbol he traced created anchor points for a barrier designed to contain tether energy while preventing its spread to unprotected areas.
Pack resonance corruption fought against his efforts with intelligence that suggested conscious opposition rather than random magical discharge. Tether energy infecting the sigil stones didn’t want containment—it wanted to spread, to grow, to awaken every sleeping connection between past and present until boundaries between lives dissolved entirely and individual consciousness became part of larger pattern spanning centuries.
