Immortal Danger (Night Watch 0.5)

Inviting? Maya stepped over the threshold.

Adam froze.

He glanced down and saw the red dust. The thin line that went all the way across the entranceway.

Shit.

Mambo.

Maya glanced back at him, brows lifted.

His jaw locking, Adam gritted, "This Marie, just what is she?" Why had Maya wanted so badly to see her? The power from the house, from Marie, swept around him.

Hell, no.

Josette's power had been weak, but she'd still sensed his deception.

This woman, Marie-she was too strong for him to fool.

A man's laugh rang from the darkness.

Maya wet her lips. Her own gaze fell to the line of dust. "Don't you know?"

Yeah, he did.

The woman was a voodoo priestess.

Sonofabitch.

"Let's get out of here." His skin was prickling, the hair on his nape rising.

"No, you don't understand." She leaned back over that line. "Marie knows things. She might be able to tell us which vampires took Cammie."

"Yeah, and we can also just go and find some feeding rooms and start kicking ass until we round up the vamps who know." Going into the mambo's house-that wasn't an option for him.

And he didn't want Maya out of his sight.

A half-smile curved her lips. "That's plan B, Slick. The slow plan. For Plan A, I wanna see what Marie knows."

A growl rumbled in his throat. The men around them slipped back even further into the shadows.

Shit. This hadn't been part of his plan. "Next time, you go over Plan A with me, f**king thoroughly, before you act." When she went in the house, he wouldn't be able to protect her.

And since when did she need protecting? He shook his head, but couldn't shake the feeling that he needed to watch over her.

Bullshit. Utter bullshit.

Maya didn't need anyone's protection.

So why did he want to shield her? "Go in," he finally snarled, fighting to control the rage coursing through his veins. He'd never be able to cross that red line, but if he sensed any trouble, if he so much as heard Maya cry out-

He'd tear the house down.

Then no damn magic line would keep him out.

The beast within him began to roar.

CHAPTER 4

Marie Dusean could have been anywhere from fifty to a hundred. Her face was lined, but eerily beautiful in the flickering candlelight.

She stood when Maya approached, holding out her hands. "Child, it's been too long." The sound of her native Haiti flowed richly in her voice.

Maya took her hands, felt the delicate bones, the fragile skin.

"You've fed well." Marie's eyes swept over her. "And you still look so young."

Maya stared back into Marie's faint, crystal blue eyes. Eyes that were completely covered by cataracts, and had been, for as long as Maya had known the priestess.

She forced a laugh. "Gonna keep looking that way, Marie. We both know things aren't gonna be changing for me."

Unlike Josette, Marie didn't hate all vampires. Or, at least, she didn't hate Maya.

Back when she'd been human, Marie had even tried to warn Maya about the fate that waited for her.

That first night, when she'd brought Josette back home and found Marie waiting with her pale eyes and knowing voice, the lady had whispered, "Beware of the night, child. He'll wait for you, hiding a monster, behind the face of man. He'll take you. Change you. Destroy what you've been."

She hadn't listened to Marie's words. Hell, she'd thought the lady was crazy. She remembered mumbling something and trying to get the hell away from Marie as fast as she could.

It was only later– too late –that her words had made sense.

Marie Dusean was a very special woman. Maya didn't doubt her powers even for a minute.

Marie knew things-things no human should know.

Very slowly, Marie lowered into a faded red velvet chair. Her eyes never left Maya's face.

"You've come about the child."

She nodded.

Marie's hands flattened on the round table before her. "Dreamed of her. Child of light, taken by the dark."

Tension tightened her body as Maya leaned forward. "Her uncle thinks she's being used as a gift for Nassor."

Marie hissed at the name, and her fingers curled into gnarled fists. "Rises soon."

"Yeah, I thought he might." Dammit . "So the vampires who took her, where are they? Have they already gone back to his-"

The mambo's hand shot across the table, grabbed Maya's. "You will have to choose, child. Life or death."

Well, shit. Wasn't she already dead? Well, undead? Her heart had stopped during that fateful attack. She'd seen the faintest glimpse of another world-then she'd been yanked back to hell. "I already chose once." She wasn't particularly in the mood to do so again.

"The desert. Seek the vampires there." Her nails dug into Maya's wrist. "Hiding where the rocks have bled."

Where the rocks have bled. Excitement pumped through her.

"They keep the girl, waiting." Marie's voice lowered to a whisper. "Not much time before the Born Master rises."

Then the shit would hit the fan.

A hard sigh shook Marie's chest and her hand slipped away as her body sagged against the chair.

Maya knew their talk was at an end. The Mambo's strength wasn't what it used to be. "Thank you, Mambo," she said softly and reached into the right front pocket of her jeans. Carefully, she pulled out a small ring. A ring of pale gold, crowned with a delicate oval ruby.

Marie's lips trembled. She lifted her hand. " Carline." Grief choked her voice.

Maya pushed the ring across the table. "Thought you might want this back."

Marie's trembling fingers closed over the ring. A lone tear slid down her cheek. "It is done?"

"Yeah, it's done." She'd had to track the vampire to Louisiana. He'd stayed on his hunting grounds all these years. She'd tracked him, found him with his necklace of trophies-rings, earrings, jewels of all sorts. He'd had his next victim in his hands, a girl, barely eighteen. Her blood had been on the ground.

Blood was precious. It wasn't to be wasted in a slaughter by a beast who'd long since lost touch with good and evil.

But the beast wouldn't hurt anyone else, she'd made sure of it.

The pale eyes closed for just a moment. Marie brought the ring to her heart. "It is I who owe you now, child."

Shaking her head, Maya rose to her feet. "No, you don't owe me a damn thing." Marie had been the one to help her after the change. The one who taught her how to survive.

The wooden floor creaked beneath her feet as Maya walked across the room. She stopped in the doorway, glanced back. A question had been nagging at the back of her mind. "Mambo, I brought a man with me. Why wouldn't he come in?"