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deeply desired to find love,
real love. The problem was finding the right man in the twenty-first century.
The pickings were slim. No more meeting the “right young man” at a Sunday
Social, snaring the boy next door, or bringing home a date for dinner. For
Angie, there were only the noisy pick-up bars, the well-meaning friends
arranging introductions, and the internet dating services.
    “Why do you suppose he let her live?” the Frenchman queried the air.
    “To return for her later?” the priest shrugged.
    Angie stared at them aghast, a new horror in her heart. He had said she
gave him power. Was it something he would want again? Like a narcotic drug?
Would his prison of want demand he return?
    “Surely he wouldn’t!”
    The Frenchman turned to her. “There has to be some reason De LaCroix let you live.”
    “You know him?” she cried in surprise. “You know him?”
    “Oh, yes, we know him,” the priest said.
    “Maybe he was—afraid—to let me die,” she answered hesitantly. “I—can’t
remember—”
    The Frenchman’s eyes narrowed. “There is little that would cause a vampyre fear.” He appraised her slight frame. “And I don’t
think it’s your size.”
    “I’m a mystic,” she finally admitted.
    “That would not deter Henri De LaCroix .”
    “Then I don’t know,” she said, her shoulders slumping unhappily.
    The Frenchman’s eyes studied her intently. “At any rate, you can’t go
home.”
    He sat on the bed and began to question her, about her life, her
childhood, the crazy grandmother she inadvertently mentioned, and her “gift.”
    “Do you know what you have been given?” the priest asked her.
    “A curse. Apparently, it
almost cost me my life.” She touched the side of her neck where the vampyre had struck, then gazed at the small bottle of holy
water and a tiny branding iron in the form of a cross on the night stand. There
was no longer any visible evidence she had been bitten, but the knowledge was
there as deep and raw as any wound that would not heal.
    The priest approached the side of the bed. “Perhaps it’s time for
introductions,” he said. “This dire little Frenchman is known as Andre DuPre , a master slayer. And I am Father Stephen—De LaCroix .”

 
 
 
    6.
    A fireball of fury
rose up in Henri, white-hot. He had not given Stephen the mystic so that horse
butt, Andre DuPre , could proselytize her!
    Angry and disappointed in his cousin, Henri stomped through the rain
and mud and churchyard gravestones to the rectory. Sequestered by a crepe
myrtle, he peered in past the front window drapes.
    Irons of fire erupted in his eyes behind the veils of rain beading from
his thick, black eyelashes. Sitting around in the parlor light, congenially
drinking brandy and beer, and laughing, and getting to know the mystic, were DuPre’s slayers, his “Shadows” as he called them.
    Oldest of the troupe at twenty-six, James Lauren sat across from her in
a thumb back chair. His crossbow rested beside him, and his lanky legs
stretched out comfortably in front of him. He swilled a brandy and took off
every stitch of her navy leggings and beige satin tunic with long, easy glances
from his beer-bottle-brown eyes.
    Henri felt his blood burn.
    A vampira in alliance with DuPre stood behind the crossbow slayer, her hand relaxed on
his shoulder.
    Her azure eyes moved to the window. The Vampyre of Light had sensed the Royal’s presence.
    Not that Henri cared. He knew Kathryn Beucherie would not betray his presence unless he posed an open threat.
    A skinny little Nebraskan with a pouch full of stakes strapped to her
waist leaned against Stephen’s credenza and sipped a sweet, white wine. She was
a black belt; she could leap high and come down tight. Beside her, DuPre’s stocky, cocky, street-wise nephew from Northern
Ireland cleaned his nails with a stake point.
    Brandi Davidson and Mack MacKenzie .
    Henri curled his tongue across his lips. If he had not been in
atonement, he would