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“What is your name?” I growl, my rough voice shredding the silence of the night.
“Artemis,” she whispers, her voice so soft that if I didn’t have shifter blood I’m not sure I would have heard it.
“Tell me why you’re here? Where I can find you?”
Her head shakes, the long platinum strands shimmering like moonlight in the dark. “I can’t tell you. I’m not from here.”
“I need to find you.”
She backs away. “I have something I need to do first.” She fades away into the shifting shadows around us.
“I can help you.”
“No. This is something I need to do alone.”
“I’m your mate. You’re supposed to want to be with me every second of the day.”
The twist on her lips makes me want to spank her curvy little ass. “I’m not telling you anything. If you’re really interested, you’ll find a way.”
“Come to me, dammit!” I growl savagely, reaching out for her retreating figure.
“I’m on the trail of something bigger than both of us. I can’t back away from whatever this is. Or what it could be. But for now I have to put all of it on hold.”
“No!” I scream, running towards her. Only to stop and stare when I realize that no one’s there. The fog drifts around me, shifting and elongating until I sit down and let the tendrils of mist hide my big body.
“Where are you, my princess?”
Of course she doesn’t answer. Maybe she doesn’t care.
Maybe all of the feelings roiling around in my gut are totally one-sided.
But if she’s my fated mate I don’t think that’s true. She just doesn’t understand what’s happening here.
So I might have to get a little creative and show her. As soon as I find her.
CHAPTER5
Artemis
It’s the middle of the night and I’m outside New Orleans in a little cemetery. It’s dark and cloudy, mist and fog like wraiths in the chilly night air.
Holding up a lantern that I’m carrying, I stare at the ground, trying not to trip.
I shiver and stare at the old family names on the ledger stones. I was told that someone by the name David McDermott is buried in this cemetery so I’m searching the headstones. But already, after only five minutes I can feel the sorrow and anger roiling around me. Rising up from the poor souls that refuse to leave their earthly bodies decaying in the ground. Refuse or can’t. A few of them feel trapped. As if no matter what they do…they can’t find peace. Can’t leave their poor human remains.
There’s a tap at my shoulder and I close my eyes, shuddering. I can’t look. I just can’t. I know it’s bad. I know it’s horrifying and that if I look, I’ll want to run.
My grandmother used to say that I’d get used to what followed me. What found me no matter what I did.
But I never have. She used to say it was a gift. It’s not. It’s a goddamned curse. I’ve never had a minute’s peace. Or at least not until I learned to block some of the voices out of my head.
But they’re still there. Still screaming and begging me for attention and help.
“Please go away,” I whisper into the night air, praying that for just one time, they’ll listen.
I send up a mental block to keep them out. But this one is strong and they keep pounding on it, trying to force their way in. Trying tomakeme pay attention to their needs.
There’s a cold breath across my face and I automatically open my eyes to find myself face to face with a nightmare. She must have been beautiful once but now she’s a cold version of her living body. A cold version with dead eyes and a gaping wound in her throat.
