[Bayou Gavotte 03.0] Heart of Constantine
Read [Bayou Gavotte 03.0] Heart of Constantine Online
Authors: Barbara Monajem
| [Bayou Gavotte 03.0] Heart of Constantine | |
| Bayou Gavotte [3] | |
| Barbara Monajem | |
| DP (2012) | |
| Rating: | ★★★★☆ |
Vigilante Native American rock star Constantine Dufray has hit rock bottom. His telepathic abilities have spun out of control, and destructive rumors about him run rampant. Some are true—he caused a violent cop's suicide, and telepathy destroyed his marriage—but he didn't poison his wife, and he couldn't have caused riots at his concerts, killing his fans...or could he have? Now an unknown enemy is trying to frame him for rape and murder. Meanwhile, aura reader Marguerite McHugh finally gets a close encounter with the mysterious star, but it's nothing like she expected. When Constantine finds her after she's been drugged at one of his shows, Marguerite's pulled into his quest for the truth. As danger mounts and murders pile up, Constantine and Marguerite are forced into an ever-more intimate relationship. Only by facing their fears and working together can they unmask the killer before more innocent people die. Secrets, lust, and magic converge in this sexy, fast-paced tale.
5
*
"I can't say enough good things about this book. Don't miss it! It's a super read!" -- Manic Readers
5
*
"This is the third book in the Bayou Gavotte series and was every bit as good as book one and two." -- Paranormal Romance Reviews
Barbara Monajem spent most of her childhood on the west coast of Canada, a place she continues to feel deeply connected to, even as she’s wandered and lived all over the world. After a year living in Oxford, England, which gave her an early taste for historical fiction, she spent many years in Montreal. She now lives in Georgia. She has a deep affection for New Orleans, which provided the inspiration for Bayou Gavotte, where her paranormal romances take place. In addition to her three paranormal romances, she is the author of seven Regency romance novellas and has won numerous awards for her work including the Maggie Award (Georgia Romance Writers), the Daphne du Maurier Award (Kiss of Death Chapter), and an EPIC e-Book Award.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2013 Barbara Monajem
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
ISBN-13: 9781477834770
ISBN-10: 147783477X
To all birds everywhere—even ostriches, of which there are none in this book. If I’d thought about it earlier, there would have been.
CONTENTS
Spirit guide:
An intangible life-form charged with guiding a human being. Guides may remain in spirit form or take temporary possession of living creatures—most commonly, birds. Spirit guides have their work cut out for them, as human beings are notoriously unwilling to listen to advice.
– D. Tull,
Encyclopedia of Not-So-Mythical Beings
CHAPTER ONE
C
onstantine Dufray stood, brushing pine straw off his jeans, and told his pesky spirit guide to take a hike. The guide took possession of an owl and flapped away to a bald cypress by the bayou. Constantine sucked in the moist dawn air at the top of the Indian mound, where he’d spent the night trying to center himself. He doubted the spirit’s choice of vehicle had anything to do with the last shreds of darkness. Being a bird of ill omen was just its damnable sense of humor. Although no one had died at Constantine’s impromptu midnight concert, the night was not quite over.
Look on the bright side,
the spirit said from its distant perch.
You didn’t annihilate that fan. You didn’t even snarl at him.
Fine, but it didn’t mean he’d succeeded in controlling the powers of his mind. After the tightly built, dark-haired youth at the front of the crowd had gawped at Constantine for a full hour, giving him a knot in the solar plexus and a tingling in his arms that made him long to strangle or punch or… Instead, he’d given the guy his guitar.
So what? Everybody gave away guitars. The ecstasy on the guy’s face had made Constantine want to puke, which was annoying since he’d thought himself long past caring one way or the other about hero worship, but that wasn’t the issue. Something about the young man’s eyes, maybe, or his
stance, had given Constantine a sensation of worms crawling through his gut, awakening the anger that always nested inside him.
But he’d mastered resisting the urge to smash through the worship with terrifying thoughts. If Constantine imagined the guy pulling a knife and stabbing himself, the guy might really do it. Instead, he’d channeled the anger into passionate treatment of his sappier songs and sent out terrifyingly
positive
thoughts: love, peace, harmony. It was a crock of shit, but…
Unlike the catastrophic concerts of several months earlier, there’d been no riot, no fights or knifings, no one carried away broken and bleeding or dead.
In other words, success. Right?
Someone’s coming
, the owl said.
Constantine cocked his head; the tree frogs and katydids had sung their last chorus before dawn, and all he heard were the morning’s first birds. Dancing Dude again? The guy who sang and prayed on the mounds by night had idled his black van on the far side of the biggest mound earlier, but departed without performing one of his rituals.
No, it wasn’t the familiar rumble of the van that greeted him now, but the soft thud of footsteps. That damned fan again! Constantine didn’t have to see him clearly against the faintly pink sky to know. A worm pinged at his gut once more. He ignored it, stretching his hamstrings as the guy pounded across the grassy top of Baby Mound, the smallest of three built by prehistoric Indians. More by ear than sight, he sensed the guy’s sure-footed leaps down the scrubby sides of the hill and his steady progress across the long field below and up the side of Mama Mound. Constantine blended
with the tattered pine under which he had spent the last few hours and waited for the guy to be safely out of the way.
The youth thudded past him and down the other side toward Papa Mound. A huge live oak dominated one corner of the sixty-foot-high hill. Right outside the perimeter of the tree, a foot or two from the edge of the mound, something moved. A pale female form wavered on hands and knees, head hanging, long hair brushing the grass.
The guy reached the base of Papa Mound and started upward with all the finesse of a freight train. At Constantine’s warning shout, the guy shot a glance behind, then pounded even faster toward the flat top of the mound. Too late, he hesitated, tripped, and dove over the girl, toppling her, and landed in a lopsided shoulder roll on the lawn.
The dark van hurtled toward Marguerite McHugh, purring its deadly message.
I’m coming for you, you’re next, you’re next, you’re
—
It slammed into her, and she burst from the dream she’d had almost nightly for the past two weeks. She took a few deep, shuddering breaths and tried to open her eyes. All she needed was to be calm. She was safely in bed, not dead on the road like Pauline, and in a few seconds she would wake properly, and everything would be fine.
“Marguerite?” She knew that voice. He sounded desperately frightened, but she had no idea why. Fingers fumbled at her wrist. “You can’t be dead.”
No, no, I’m not dead! Pauline is the dead one.
But Marguerite’s mouth refused to move.
“
Please
don’t be dead!”
Zeb?
Marguerite felt her eyelids flutter, but she couldn’t break the surface to reassure him. She heard Zeb say, “Thank God” and felt him let go of her wrist. She must be alive. Relief washed over her.
“What am I going to
do
with this shit?” Zeb said. “Oh, fuck, he’s coming. I have to go, but he’ll help you.”
She heard Zeb hasten away, his footfalls pounding into the distance. Her mattress was too lumpy and the birds were too loud, and she couldn’t figure out what Zeb had been doing in her bedroom, but her eyes still wouldn’t open, and her brain felt like sludge. She drifted into an uneasy doze.
She woke again. Now… someone else was near.
She blinked away the fuzz in her eyes and her mind. She wasn’t in her bed but outdoors, lying near a vast tree. Under her was a blanket, with blades of grass pricking through here and there. A crow cawed high above her. She hadn’t been run over by the dark van of her dream.
She wasn’t dead, like Pauline.
What time is it? Where am I?
Somewhere a car door slammed, followed by urgent voices. She sat up and looked around for Zeb but remembered his retreating footsteps. Then she saw the man. Her heart thumped dizzily against her chest. He stood a few feet away, silhouetted against the pink and gold of dawn. He wasn’t looking at her but toward the voices. Blinking again, she followed his gaze but saw nothing but a vast field and, in the distance, the haphazard tops of a stand of pines. She was on a hill… She returned her eyes to the man. He was tall and wide-shouldered, with a long, dark ponytail hanging down his back.
What the hell is going on? How did I get here?
She didn’t remember a thing.
Then her sixth sense woke up, and she really saw him: a cacophony of colors, a spiked wheel of rage and despair. It hurt. God, it hurt. She clutched her hands to her head, gasping, and the rage withdrew, the spikes of the wheel turned inward, and the man shuddered as if he truly were impaled.
“Sorry,” he said softly, his tone tight and flat.
The other voices neared. Two men, one with untidy blond curls and a darker guy carrying a camera, appeared over the brow of the hill and charged across the lawn. Fully alert now, Marguerite bristled with loathing. There were always a few paparazzi in town, and she recognized these two. They were obsessed with Constantine Dufray, and—
oh!