Page 93 of Curse in the Quarter
Other practitioners were emerging from buildings along his route, some trying to contain the damage, others simply fleeing. Maman Brigitte's silhouette movedfrantically on her gallery, hands working rapid patterns to reinforce protections around her block. The air around her property shimmered with defensive energy, but even her considerable power was being tested by the magnitude of the breach. Further down Royal Street, Marcelline directed two younger vampires toward what looked like damage control, their preternatural speed allowing them to reach affected areas before human authorities could arrive and complicate matters with inconvenient questions.
A city bus careened through the intersection ahead of him, its driver slumped over the wheel as the breach's psychic pressure overwhelmed his unprotected mind. Bastien threw himself against a lamppost as the vehicle mounted the sidewalk and crashed through the window of a closed boutique, glass exploding outward in a shower of glittering fragments.
The certainty that Delphine was being drawn toward this epicenter of magical chaos made his ribs ache with desperate urgency. The tether between them was resonating with the breach energy, creating feedback loops that would feel like urgent summons to any soul carrying fragments of past incarnations. She would follow that call without conscious choice, her sleeping memories responding to the magical pressure with the same inevitability as flowers turning toward sunlight.
The ritual site was nightmare made manifest when he finally reached it. The amateur who'd triggered the breach lay unconscious near their makeshift altar, blood still seeping from deep cuts on their palms where they'd tried to grip their shattered chalice. The air above them rippled with cold distortions, and through those temporal fractures Bastien could see glimpses of other times, other places—shadows of the riverbank as it had existed in decades past,complete with figures who'd been dead for generations moving through spaces that no longer existed in present reality.
The breach was pulling energy from across multiple temporal boundaries, using the Mississippi's profound spiritual significance as an anchor point to access memories embedded in the landscape itself. Every tragedy that had ever played out along these banks, every moment of transformation or loss, was bleeding through the damaged Veil like ink through torn paper. The effect was hauntingly beautiful, but also lethal for anyone caught in its influence without proper protection.
Windows in nearby buildings had blown out from the pressure waves. Fragments of glass covered the street like fallen stars, each piece reflecting the ethereal light bleeding through the breach. The air itself seemed to thicken and thin in irregular patterns, making it difficult to breathe consistently. Street signs twisted into impossible angles. Fire hydrants wept streams of water that flowed upward before dissipating into mist.
And at the center of it all, Delphine lay collapsed at the ritual circle's edge.
Her face was peaceful despite the chaos surrounding her, as if she'd simply decided to rest in the middle of a war zone. But when Bastien knelt beside her and checked her pulse, he could feel the tether rupture wave moving through her system like electricity, causing her muscles to spasm involuntarily and her breathing to come in shallow, irregular gasps. Her soul was being pulled in too many directions at once, responding to the breach's call while simultaneously trying to maintain connection to her current physical form.
The scent of smoke—not from any fire burningin the present, but from temporal echoes bleeding through the breach—triggered the memory with violent clarity.
1906. The Saenger Theatre.
Smoke thick enough to choke on filled the backstage corridors as Bastien fought his way through collapsing timber and twisted metal. The ritual had gone catastrophically wrong, and the flames consuming the building weren't natural fire but something far more destructive—spiritual energy that could burn through the connections between souls as easily as it consumed wood and cloth.
“Delia!” Her name tore from his throat as he pushed through debris toward the stage where the ritual's focus burned brightest, silver light pulsing through the smoke like a malevolent heartbeat.
He found her standing center stage, motionless within a circle of that same silver fire. Her brown dress remained untouched by smoke or flame, but her eyes stared straight ahead with the blank expression of someone caught between waking and dreaming. The life-thread severance was already beginning—he could feel their magical bonds starting to fray under the pressure of the chaotic working, each severed connection sending sharp pain through his supernatural essence.
“Delia.” He approached the circle carefully, testing its boundaries with outstretched fingers. The silver fire burned cold against his skin but didn't completely repel him. “Delia, can you hear me?”
Her head turned toward his voice, but her eyes remained unfocused. When she looked at him, he saw no spark of recognition—only the growing confusion of someone whose memories were being torn away by forces beyond human comprehension.
“Who . . .” she whispered, her voice barely audible abovethe roar of collapsing timber and the crackling of magical fire. “I know I should remember, but I can't . . . why can't I remember?”
“It's me,” he said, stepping through the circle despite the agony that lanced through his essence with each movement. “It's Bastien. You know me. You've always known me.”
But she didn't. The ritual had carved away not just their connection, but her memories of him entirely. Every shared moment, every laugh, every gentle touch, every whispered endearment—all of it was being systematically erased as the arcane working prepared her spirit for binding to another consciousness.
He gathered her in his arms as the circle collapsed around them, silver fire dissipating into ordinary flame that caught at her dress, her hair. She was dying, and the worst part was that she was dying without knowing who held her, without understanding why this stranger seemed so desperate to save her from forces she couldn't even perceive.
The building groaned around them as support beams gave way to supernatural fire. Chunks of burning masonry crashed down, forcing him to shield her body with his own as they became trapped in a pocket of relative safety that wouldn't last long.
“I'm sorry,” she whispered, her lips barely moving as smoke filled her lungs. “I wish I could remember why you seem so important. There's something . . . something I should know . . .”
“Bastien—” The name came out as barely more than a breath, the single syllable carrying all the love and recognition that had been stolen from her consciousness. Her final word, spoken with the last air in her lungs, carrying his name like a prayer, like forgiveness, like a promise that somehow this wouldn't be the end of everything between them.
The soul rupture hit him like a physical blow as their connection severed completely, leaving him holding her lifeless body while the theater burned around them and the ritual's chaotic energies finally began to dissipate into harmless smoke.
The memory faded, leaving him kneeling beside Delphine's unconscious form in the present-day ritual circle. Her breathing was still irregular; her soul still being pulled apart by the same kind of chaotic forces that had killed Delia over a century ago. But this time, he had the tools to fight back.
He'd failed to save her then. He would not fail again.
Lifting Delphine's unconscious form, Bastien carried her directly into the heart of the ritual circle despite every instinct screaming that bringing her closer to the breach's epicenter would only make things worse. But the Votum Aeternum was pulsing against his side with increasing urgency, and through their tether he could feel her soul being torn apart by conflicting energies. The only way to stabilize her condition was to place her at the circle's center, where the magical forces were strongest but also most focused, and use the blade as an anchor point to channel those energies in controlled directions rather than letting them continue pulling her consciousness apart.
The ritual circle itself had been carved into the earth with amateur enthusiasm but surprisingly accurate technique. Whoever had triggered this disaster had done their research, creating a pattern that would have been elegant and functional if they'd possessed the skill to control what they were summoning. Instead, their inexperience had transformed a simple communion ritual into something approaching a dimensional breach, opening pathways thatshould have remained sealed and inviting in forces that belonged to entirely different realms of existence.
Bastien placed Delphine carefully beside the remnants of the shattered chalice, positioning her so that her heart chakra aligned perfectly with the circle's central axis. The Votum Aeternum grew warm in his hand as he drew it from its sheath, the ancient metal recognizing the spiritual configuration they'd found themselves within. This was exactly the kind of situation the blade had been forged to address—moments when soul tethers became dangerously unstable and threatened to pull their subjects apart at the most fundamental level.
Words Charlotte had taught him decades ago poured from his lips without conscious thought, syllables older than English, older than French, older than most human languages. These were sounds that had been used to bind souls together since before recorded history began, passed down through generations of practitioners who understood that some connections transcended the boundaries of individual lives. As he spoke, the blade's silver glow intensified, casting ethereal light across Delphine's still features and creating intricate patterns in the air above them that seemed to calm the chaotic energies swirling through the breach.
The stabilization ritual required him to trace specific geometric patterns above her chakra points, using the blade's tip to draw connecting lines between energy centers that existed in spiritual rather than physical space. Each movement had to be precise, each word pronounced exactly as Charlotte had demonstrated during their secret lessons, because any deviation from the proper form could result in permanent damage to either Delphine's soul or his own. The magic involved was profound enough that failure might sever their connection permanently, leaving hercompletely cut off from the memories and experiences that defined her truest nature across multiple lifetimes.
