No. Not possible. I’d know.
Her gaze on the TV and the banner rolling along the bottom of its screen, Divinity punched in Kallie’s cell phone number with a numb but steady finger.
FIFTEEN
HOODOO LOVE TRICKS
Belladonna Brown struts into Dallas Brûler’s hoodoo shop and into his dreams, a black leather catsuit just like the one that had clung to Halle Berry’s mouthwatering curves in Catwoman hugging her own. The catsuit squeaks and creaks enticingly as she crosses to his powder-dusted and herb-sprinkled worktable in spike-heeled boots, her luscious boobs shimmying with each step.
Watching her slinky, jiggly, squeaky approach, all Dallas can think is: Mmm-mmm-mmm. Lucky catsuit.
Standing on the opposite side of the worktable, he sets down the candle he’s busy dressing with van van oil, then wipes his lemon-scented fingertips against his jeans. He feels the heat of Belladonna’s autumn-dappled gaze as she looks him up and down, literally stripping him to his …
A quick glance down reveals a surprising pair of black boxer-briefs instead of his usual boxers and Dallas frowns, wondering if his subconscious is trying to tell him something.
But he has a few words of his own for his subconscious: Dreams like this? Skip the damned boxers, podna, and go for buck-ass naked.
“We need something from you, Doctor Snake,” Belladonna purrs.
“Of course you do, darlin’.” Dallas quirks up one eyebrow. “‘We’?”
A gorgeous woman with strawberry blonde locks teased into a sixties sex-kitten bouffant sashays through the door to stand beside Belladonna. She looks like a Bond babe, a double-oh-seven bedroom treat in her tight paisley blouse, black miniskirt, and thigh-high boots.
Belladonna and Felicity Fields. Dallas applauds his subconscious.
“We indeed, Doctor Snake,” she affirms in a British-spiced accent. It thrills Dallas to notice that her blouse is unbuttoned enough to reveal ample cleavage dewed with perspiration.
“Well, hell, ladies. I’m sure Doctor Snake can accommodate you both.”
“I’m sure you can,” Felicity breathes, putting additional strain on the buttons valiantly struggling to keep her blouse closed. “One bottle of your legendary love potion, please.”
“A big bottle,” Belladonna adds with a slow wink.
“Oh, I’ve got all manner of big, darlin’,” Dallas promises.
Felicity draws in a breath and, much to his delight, a button pops from her shirt, exposing another inch of bra-cupped, freckled breasts.
“My, my, my,” she murmurs, glancing down at her blouse. “Another one gone. How embarrassing.” But no blush of embarrassment rosies her cheeks.
“Hey, no apologies necessary,” Dallas says as he walks around his worktable to the compact refrigerator parked beside it. “Not with a view that fine,” he adds, bending over and pulling a corked blue bottle out of the fridge.
“Mmm. Speaking of fine views,” Belladonna and Felicity say in sultry unison.
“Just a word of caution, ladies,” Dallas says, straight-ening—to soft, feminine sounds of disappointment—and turning around, chilled bottle in hand. “This potion’s potent as all hell. So don’t be giving it to anyone you don’t plan on spending a lot of intimate time with.”
Both women exchange a lingering look, their gazes sliding over each other. “Oh, we won’t,” Belladonna says. “We promise.”
“Oh.” Dallas stares, his heart using his ribs for a xylophone, his boxer-briefs suddenly too tight. “Um … Y’all need someone to film this intimate event?” he asks, dry-mouthed. “Give you a little artistic direction? Keep you company?”
Felicity glances at him from beneath dark lashes. “Possibly.”
Dallas thanks his subconscious, swears never to question it again.
“What do we owe you?” Belladonna’s fingers wriggle into the cup of her crisscross leather bra and Dallas’s pulse does a steam whistle blast through his veins. A look of dismay flashes across her face as she gropes herself. “Damn. I can’t find my cash.”
“I’ll be glad to help search, sugar,” Dallas volunteers, joining them and handing the blue bottle to Felicity. Her scent is heady and all woman—an enticing blend of musk, light sweat, and rose petals.
“What other forms of payment do you accept, Doctor Snake?” Felicity asks.
Dallas leans against the table, hands braced on its edge behind him—noticing as he does that his boxer-briefs have mysteriously been replaced with his blue-striped boxers—and allows his gaze to take a slow pleasure cruise along Felicity’s curve-blessed form. He nods at the sign posted on the wall behind her.
CURRENCY ACCEPTED: LOCAL CHECKS WITH ID, MAJOR CREDIT CARDS, CASH, TOP-GRADE BOURBON, FRENCH KISSES.
“French kisses it is, then,” Felicity says. “I second that choice,” Belladonna tosses in, her hand no longer in her bra—to Dallas’s disappointment. “They don’t need to be confined to the mouth, do they?”
More steam whistle blasts. Dallas feels himself grow hard. Feels his boxers tent.
“Feel free to warm up on each other,” Dallas encourages. “Maybe y’all ought to take a sip or two of that potion first.”
“Maybe,” Felicity concurs. Her fingers lift to the next button on her paisley blouse. Linger. “But first, any other warnings about the potion?”
“Only that it’s a lot like me, sugar. Very intense. Long-lasting. Difficult to control. Whoever you give it to will want nothing but your sweet body, will crave only your lips. And they won’t take no for an answer. They’ll ravish you, eat you up, and leave you hollering for more.”
“Oh,” Felicity breathes, her heaving chest threatening another button. “My.”
“Until you can’t holler no more,” Dallas adds, a smile sliding slow across his lips.
The button zings across the room as though fired from a catapult. A thrill courses through Dallas, heating his skin, simmering his blood.
Unhooking one of the few remaining buttons, Felicity pushes the blouse’s silky material aside to reveal the bottom edge of her black lace bra and the pale, rounded flesh curving above it. Her stiff nipples jut against the black lace—as if begging for his warm, wet mouth.
No need to beg, my mouth is all yours, baby doll.
Then Dallas imagines Belladonna’s lips nuzzling Felicity’s perky nipples. His mouth dries. And he believes his boxers have nearly exceeded maximum tenting allowance.
“My, my, my,” Felicity murmurs, her gaze dropping to his crotch. A coy smile plays across her glossy red lips before she lifts her gaze again. “Wouldn’t you say that it’s time we rendered payment to Doctor Snake, Belladonna-luv?”
“Mmm-hmm. Oh, definitely.”
Felicity presses in on Dallas from the left, Belladonna from the right, and he finds himself surrounded by firm, rounded flesh—white and freckled on one side and black and smooth on the other. Lips like ripe cherries. Lips like succulent plums.
Dallas feels delirious. And happy. Very, very happy.
“What’s in the potion, anyway?” Felicity whispers, her lips grazing the edge of his mouth.
“You’re asking trade secrets, baby doll,” he replies. “But, hell, for you … Wine, basil leaves, red rose petals, cloves and apple seeds, vanilla extract, strawberry and apple juices, and ginseng root. But the magic comes in with the measurements, the timing, and the spell fixed upon it.”
“Mmm. I bet you know how to fix things real good.”
“That I do, darlin’.”
He catches a whiff of sweet red wine, cloves, and strawberries from the bottle. A deep breath and, just as Dallas imagined/hoped it would, Felicity’s bra bursts at the seams and her tits jiggle free and into his waiting hands.
His boxers rip apart and go the way of her bra.
“Oh!” Felicity gasps, fumbling the bottle onto the table as Dallas lowers his head, his mouth closing hungrily around one hard pink pearl of a nipple. He hears the slide of cloth as her skirt and panties mysteriously tu
mble to the floor.
“Oh. Oh. I see how you be, Dallas Brûler.” A fist knuckles into his shoulder, staggering him back against the table’s edge. “Trying to stick yo’ dick into any bit of female flesh dat catches yo’ eye. Pretending like I don’t even exist.”
Her British accent, all posh and cream, is gone, replaced with musical Creole pepper. Her new voice is strangely familiar.
And disconcerting.
Dallas jerks his head up, the off-balance sense of a suddenly shifting dream swirling through his awareness. Felicity stands in front of him, hands on her bare hips, her nipples aimed at him, accusing nubs, fury in her hazel eyes—eyes that darken to a deep brown as he watches.
Disappointment curls through Dallas as he realizes that Belladonna has vanished.
“Is dis what you want? Women fawning over yo’ sorry ass?” She gestures with one hand at her very naked and very luscious body, a look of disgust rippling across her face. “Dis pale, red-headed bit o’ fluff?”
Dallas grins, thinking, Well, yes, ma’am, at the moment, very much, but before he can utter those words, alarm Klaxons blare through his mind: Danger! Danger! Danger!
As he pauses to reconsider his answer— I want you as you are, baby doll, or, You did something different with your hair, didn’tcha? I love it —she starts to change.
Her strawberry blonde tresses shift to black ringlets. Color deepens her skin to a sun-warmed caramel. Her curves become even more lush and bountiful; dark curls shadow the juncture between her legs. She smells of magnolias and dying leaves.
And around her throat, a pendant hangs—a vévé depicting a heart pierced with a knife.
Dallas goes cold. Waking memory nudges at him— surface, surface, surface! But his dream isn’t quite ready to let go of him yet. And neither is his swollen dick.
Erzulie, the loa of love, passion, and sex, locks her hand tight around Dallas’s dick and, despite his dream’s sudden twist into the dark, the damned thing remains hard, hoping things will still work out—nightmare or no.
“I tole you when I found you bleeding yo’ life blood out on de floor,” Erzulie whispers into his ear, her stroking fingers encouraging his dick’s delusions, “you be mine, Dallas Brûler. And mine alone. You ain’t never gonna betray another woman, ’cuz dis t’ing in my hand? It belongs to me now.”
SIXTEEN
TEMPORARY SHELTER
Dallas jerked awake on the strings created by the loa’s words: Bleeding yo’ life blood out on de floor. He stared at a white-tiled ceiling, blinking in the daylight gloom, his heart trying to punch its way free of his rib cage.
Memory unspooled like old-fashioned film through a vintage projector, looping images onto the floor of his mind. He remembered following the man he suspected of stalking Kallie from the May Madness Carnival and into the hotel. And losing him somewhere on the sixth floor near Belladonna’s room.
But in truth, he hadn’t lost the sonuvabitch at all.
A steel-muscled arm around Dallas’s shoulders. A stranger’s pale green eyes, cold and amused. “You ain’t worth wasting magic on, boy.”
Three quick, breath-stealing punches. Dallas stares at the blood-smeared knife in the stranger’s hand. He presses a hand against his belly, feels something warm and sticky soaking his shirt.
Street light slants along the knife’s bloodied length as it slashes across Dallas’s throat. He hears his own blood gushing from the wound, smells it thick and cloying in his nostrils.
Dallas squeezed his eyes shut and stopped the flow of memories. Enough, goddammit. A cold sweat popped up on his forehead. He swallowed hard. Pain prickled across his throat. Reaching up, he gingerly traced shaking fingers across the gauze bandaged from one side of his throat to the other.
Unbidden, the vision he’d had—a dying dream—while sprawled in a warm pool of his own blood played itself out behind his eyes.
A black-veiled woman—woman, hell, make that a loa —in a scarlet dress rides into the room astride a wild-maned white horse with embered eyes, a pendant etched with a vévé of a dagger-pierced heart resting against the brown skin of her throat.
“You be mine, Dallas Brûler. And mine alone.”
And even as darkness enfolds Dallas, as cold seeps into his bones and skates across the frozen wasteland of his soul, Erzulie lays claim to him.
Opening his eyes, Dallas studied the ceiling above him—institutional ceiling tiles, no brown outlines of water stains—as his trembling hands traveled from his throat to the bandages taped across his belly.
Looks like it wasn’t a dying dream, podna. And if that’s the case, if what you experienced wasn’t just a blood-deprived hallucination, then a certain curvaceous and fierce loa has you by the balls. Literally.
The steady, quiet beep of the equipment monitoring his vitals, the nostril-stinging scent of antiseptic and pine in the air, the bustling activity he sensed in the halls beyond his room, confirmed his diagnosis of being alive.
Not sure how he had survived, but more than a little grateful, Dallas relaxed back into his pillows. What surprised him was how good he felt—oh, not just good because he was motherfucking alive—but good as in rested, clearheaded, with strength surging through his muscles. What pain he felt, and that was only slight, came with movement.
He eyed his IV bags, zeroing in on the one with a little button/pump attached to the line so he could feed himself more pain-numbing meds. Whatever’s in that bag, it’s working miracles.
“My, my, my. I wasn’t expecting you to be awake yet, Mr. Brûler.”
Hazel eyes. A sleek and shining fall of strawberry blonde hair. A sprinkle of freckles across the bridge of her nose. A Bondalicious babe of a woman in a tight purple blouse and black pencil skirt. And the recent subject of his lust-fueled dreams.
Disappointment curled through him when he noticed that not only was her blouse completely fastened, none of the little pearl buttons appeared to be in any danger of popping loose. As she stepped closer, he caught a trace of her scent, natural and clean—roses warmed by the sun.
Mmm. All woman.
A voice whispered into his ear. You be mine, Dallas Brûler.
Pain burned through his abdominal muscles as Dallas bolted upright in the bed and swept a frantic look around the room. Empty. Except for the woman standing beside his bed, her head tilted to one side, curiosity in her eyes.
“You looking for someone?” she asked. “A nurse, perhaps?” She reached for the call button.
Dallas shook his head, pain twinging across his throat with the movement, then stopped her hand with his own. Her skin felt warm and rose-petal soft beneath his. “No, darlin’, I’m fine,” he rasped from a dry throat, just as her name returned to him—Felicity Fields, assistant to the Hecatean Alliance head honcho, Augustine, the man who’d taken a bullet meant for Kallie, and died doing so.
Just as he himself had nearly done.
Words spoken by the knife-wielding stranger with the pale green eyes uncoiled through Dallas’s memory: You’re the lucky one. You’ll get to keep your soul. Kallie and her cousin won’t be so fortunate.
Fear flashed through Dallas, icing his marrow. “Holy shit. Kallie—is she all right? That bastard didn’t find her, did he?”
“Yes,” Felicity replied.
“Yes? To which part of my goddamned question?”
“To both.”
Lifting her hand free of his, Felicity smoothed her skirt, then sat down in the bedside chair. With an elegant shift of her legs, she crossed one slim ankle behind the other.
“Ms. Rivière is all right and Doctor Heron—the aforementioned bastard, the same bastard who tried to kill you—did indeed find her. Though I’m not sure he had time to regret doing so.”
“You saying he’s dead? Not that I’m complaining.”
“I am.”
“And that the bastard was the infamous Doctor Heron—Jean-Julien St. Cyr?”
“Again, I am.”
Dallas frowned, trying to make sens
e of her words. Why would a root doctor sent to prison for poisoning and killing a few clients—what, twenty-five plus years ago?—be seeking soul-killing revenge on Kallie and her family?
His memory kicked up a chilling response, more words spoken to him by the stranger that he now knew to be Doctor Heron: You’ve got your teacher Gabrielle to thank for this, Dallas Brûler. You’re gonna die because of things she did long before you ever knew her.
From outside, Dallas heard the low mutter of thunder and the click of rain against glass. He glanced at the windows, but thick curtains hid the storm from view.
Shifting his gaze back to Felicity, Dallas croaked, “Gabrielle? She okay too? And Jackson—the sick sonuvabitch threatened Kallie’s cousin too.”
Felicity picked up a small pitcher with a crinkly straw protruding from its lid from the bedside table, then leaned over and handed it to Dallas. “Ice water,” she informed him.
Dallas accepted it gratefully, and sucked down several strawfuls of cold, soothing water. As he drank, Felicity brushed a smooth wing of hair back from her face and studied him, her cool and assessing gaze traveling his length several times.
“Fascinating,” she mused. “For a man who’s just had his throat ruthlessly cut, in addition to being stabbed three times, you look incredibly well, Mr. Brûler. A little pale, yes, but nothing like a man who nearly bled to death only twelve hours ago.”
“Thanks for reminding me,” Dallas muttered. “Appreciate it.”
“You’re quite welcome, and given your questions, it seems we need to bring you up to speed on a few things, Mr. Brûler.”
“You can call me Dallas, darlin’. No need for the ‘Mr. Brûler’ bullshit.”
An impish smile dimpled Felicity’s cheeks. “All right, Dallas darling, if you insist. The first thing you need to know is that your mentor is not Gabrielle LaRue.”
As Dallas listened, stunned, to Felicity’s recital of recent events and revelations—the true identity of his hoodoo mentor, another woman’s stolen years ago leading to a fatal case of mistaken identity; the removal of Kallie’s soul by her own mother to make room for a sleeping loa—his disbelief crumbled beneath a growing sense of outrage.