The Mortal Heart

Macon slammed his palm against the tree, frustrated. “Dammit, Jane. That’s an old wives’ tale. There’s no way it doesn’t end with you dead.”

“So we can’t be together physically—I don’t care about that. We can still be together. That’s all that matters.”

Macon pulled away, his face twisted in pain. “Once I change, I’ll be dangerous, a Blood Incubus. They thirst for blood, and my father says I will be one of them like he is and his father before him. Like all the men in my family, as far back as my great-great-great-grandfather Abraham.”

“Abraham, the one who believed the greatest sin imaginable was for a Supernatural to fall in love with a Mortal—to taint the supernatural bloodlines? And you can’t trust your father. He feels the same way. He wants to keep us apart and make you creep around in the Tunnels like your brother. Like a monster.”

“It’s too late. I can already feel the Transformation. I stay up all night listening to the thoughts of Mortals, hungering. Soon I’ll be hungering for more than their thoughts. Already, it feels like my body can’t hold what’s inside me, as if the beast might literally burst free.”

Lila Jane turned away, her eyes welling up with tears again. But Macon wasn’t going to let her ignore him this time. He loved her. And because he loved her, he had to make her understand why they couldn’t be together. “Even standing here, the light is beginning to burn through my skin. I can feel the heat of the sun with such intensity, all the time now. I’m changing already, and it will only get worse.”

Lila Jane buried her face in her hands, sobbing. “You’re saying this to scare me, because you don’t want to find a way.”

Macon grabbed Lila Jane’s shoulders, forcing her to look at him. “You’re right. I am trying to scare you. Do you know what my brother did to his Mortal girlfriend after the Transformation?” Macon paused. “He ripped her apart.”

Without warning, Macon’s head jerked back, his golden-yellow eyes shining around strange black pupils, like the eclipse of twin suns. He turned his head away from Jane. It was the first sign of a Dark Caster.

The eyes of the monster that he was.

Then Macon Ravenwood did the only thing he could do.

He ran.





VII. The Arclight


Leaving Lila Jane was the hardest thing Macon had ever done. Still, it wasn’t enough. Silas was unpredictable and Hunting was sadistic. Macon’s breaking up with the girl he loved might not be enough for them.

If they go after Jane, she won’t be able to protect herself.

But Silas and Hunting weren’t the only threats. One day soon, he could be dangerous, too.

The only thing he cared about now was finding a way to keep Lila Jane safe—and there was only one person who could help him.

A powerful Diviner, a Caster capable of predicting the future. A woman with voodoo roots, who lived in the heart of Louisiana and knew the heart of an Incubus.

His mother.

And she will understand.

Macon’s parents had fallen deeply in love when Silas was away at college in New Orleans. And like Macon, his father had fallen in love with his mother before the Transformation. Before Abraham had convinced Silas a relationship with a Light Caster was an abomination against their kind.

It had taken Abraham years to tear Macon’s mother and father apart. By that time, he and Hunting and Leah were born. His mother had been forced to use her powers as a Diviner to escape Silas’ rage and his uncontrollable urge to feed. She had fled to New Orleans with Leah. Silas would never have let her take his sons.

His mother was the only one Macon could turn to now. The only one who would understand that he had fallen in love with a Mortal. The greatest act of sacrilege against his kind, the Blood Incubus.

The Demon Soldier.

Macon hadn’t told his mother he was coming, but she would be expecting him. He climbed up from the Tunnels into the sweet heat of a New Orleans summer night. Fireflies blinked in the darkness, and the smell of magnolias was overpowering. She was waiting for him on the porch, in an old wooden rocking chair, tatting lace. It had been a long time.

“Mamma, I need your help.”

She put down her needle and hoop, rising from the chair. “I know. Everything’s ready, cher.”

There was only one thing powerful enough to stop an Incubus, aside from one of its own kind.

An Arclight.

They were considered medieval devices, weapons created to control and imprison the most powerful of the Harmers, the Incubus. Macon had never seen one. There were very few left, and they were almost impossible to find.

But his mother had one, and he needed it.

Macon followed her into the kitchen. His mother opened a small cabinet that served as an altar to the spirits. She unwrapped a small wooden box, with Niadic script, the ancient Caster language, around the perimeter:

The One who seeks it shall find it.

The house of the Unholy.