Kat waited until David and everyone else was gone before pulling back the sheet and looking at her bandage. It was saturated with a pinkish-tinged fluid. She’d felt it gush when she tried to stand up, but if she had told David, he would have never left. The nurse told her that she should only worry if the drainage was bright red, so she wasn’t worried, but the bandage was saturated and needed to be changed. She also needed clean sheets. Between the drainage and the fact that David made her have a huge orgasm earlier, she felt a little creepy lying in the bed.

She got up slowly, sitting at the edge of the bed and dangling her feet. Then, using the walker that she was given at the hospital, and hated, she walked into the bathroom. She grimaced when she caught sight of herself in the mirror. She couldn’t imagine what David…and Angel…must have been thinking while they were talking to her all morning. She looked like hell and that was putting it mildly. She wasn’t supposed to shower for a few days yet, but there was no way she was going to walk around looking like this for a few more days. She remembered what she’d seen the nurse in the hospital do to her roommate’s wound. Slowly making her way around the small apartment, she found a trash bag, some duct tape, and a pair of scissors and made a plastic patch to cover her wound dressing. She fixed the water so it was tepid and not hot and then she stripped off the tank top she was wearing and climbed in. A contented sigh escaped her lips as she stood underneath the spray and let it cascade down over her back and shoulders. She had to hold on to the bar against the wall and move slowly, but by the time she was finished washing her hair and scrubbing her body, she felt like a new woman.

She changed her dressing, fixed her hair in a braid, and put on a clean pair of underpants, shorts, and a t-shirt. The reflection she saw then was no beauty queen, but it was a hell of a lot better than it had been…and she smelled better too. She had to look through every closet before she found where David kept his clean sheets, but once she did, she stripped the bed and remade it. She was feeling light-headed by that time and her vision was getting gray and foggy, but she told herself that once she was finished, she’d rest a lot easier.

Kat had just finished making the bed and tucking the dirty sheets into the laundry hamper when there was a knock on the door. She mumbled a curse underneath her breath and, using the walker for support again, she went to answer it. Assuming it was one of the club girls, or even Angel returning, she didn’t even check to see who it was before flipping open the lock and pulling the door inward. She had to blink her eyes a couple of times to get a clear picture of the man standing on the threshold; her vision was getting blurrier and her head was heavy. “Can I help you?”

The man smiled. He had dark skin, but his teeth were huge, and almost blindingly white. “Hello, Katrina.”

“Who the—?” That was all Kat got out before the man grabbed her and pushed her back inside the apartment. She was on the verge of passing out and when she heard the click of the lock as the man closed the door, panic consumed her. Who the fuck was this guy and what did he want?

“You don’t look so good, Katrina. You shouldn’t be up wandering around so soon after surgery. Here, let me help you back to bed.” The man had hold of her arm and Kat jerked out of his grip, knocking herself back into the wall. She was sliding down to the floor when she felt his hands back on her. She tried to kick out at him, but her legs were too weak.

“Who are you? What the fuck do you want?”

“Let’s get you back to bed and then we’ll talk. We don’t have much time and I’d like you to be conscious…at least for a little while.” His tone was soft and even, and that gave Kat the creeps almost worse than the fact that he kept using her name. Is this one of Tucci’s guys? That didn’t make sense, since her first payment wasn’t due for weeks. She didn’t have the energy to fight this guy physically. Her only chance was cooperating, at least until she figured out what he wanted…or David came home. She didn’t try to fight him as he walked her down the hallway. “Which room?” he asked. She pointed toward David’s room and he led her inside. Once they were at the edge of the bed, he let go of her and she sat down. “Go ahead and lie down and get comfortable, Katrina, this won’t take long and then you’ll be free to sleep…peacefully.” She didn’t like the way he said that, or the way he smiled afterwards. Who the hell is this guy? She scooted back on the bed, but left her feet out of the covers and sat up against the headboard instead of lying down.

“Okay, now tell me who you are and what you want.”

He sat down on the edge of the bed and Kat automatically moved over. He smiled, like she amused him. “My name is Olden Tanis. Does that mean anything to you, dear?” The panic moved from her chest into her throat and she felt like she couldn’t breathe. Of course that name meant something to her. He was the tattoo artist that had given her mother that voodoo tattoo all those years ago. The one that David now suspected of being the killer. Fuck! She had to stall him until David got back. This is why I shouldn’t go fucking anywhere without my gun!

“You gave my mother a tattoo years ago.”

He looked pleased that she knew who he was. “Yes, I did.” He touched her arm and gooseflesh rose up instantly. “And you got the same one.”

“Yes. In her honor,” Kat said.

“Do you know what that tattoo stands for? Or, I should say, who?”

“Some voodoo god.”

He snorted. “Baron La Croix is not a ‘god,’ as you call him. He’s a loa.”

“Fine, he’s a loa. Did you come here to give me a lesson in religion or…?”

“You have a smart mouth.”

“True story. I’m bored with this conversation.” Kat tried to scoot out the other side of the bed, but the man grabbed her and pushed her back down on the bed. She had an excruciating pain in her side, but she refused to cry out and let this asshole know. “What the fuck, man? What do you want?”

“As I was saying, Baron La Croix is a loa. He is the loa of death, lust, obscenity, and sexuality. That means that he oversees ushering those who have lived an unclean life into the afterlife. Along the way, they will be punished. It’s up to him if they are allowed to be reborn as an animal, a diab, which is a demonic creature, or in cases where he feels their death was punishment enough, he’ll give them another chance at being a human. They’ll have the same temptations, but it will be a second chance for them to do it right. In some cases, when a person’s soul is free at night to dream, it can be stolen by a diab. I’m sorry to tell you that was what happened to your mother.”

It was Kat’s turn to snort. “You’re crazy.” The man put one big hand on her throat, and suddenly the panic was back and it consumed her. He wasn’t pressing hard enough to cut off her air, but as soon as she started to struggle, he increased the pressure.

“Be still and listen!” he ordered. Kat lay still, but only so that she could buy herself some time. If this son of a bitch killed her, she was going to go with as much of his DNA underneath her fingernails as she could manage. “It happened to your mother, and once Marta told me…”

“Who’s Marta?” Kat croaked out.

“Marta was a blessed hounsis. She could see the darkness in your mother…and others…and she taught me how to do the same. I can see it in you, right now.”

This guy was off the deep end, and as afraid for her own life as Kat was, she was even more angry at him for killing her mother and acting like he’d done the world a favor in turn. “How many of these ‘dark souls’ have you seen?” As he talked, he loosened his hold on her. Kat wanted to keep him talking until she figured out a plan. She knew David had a service revolver that he carried with him, but she also knew he had a backup gun somewhere in the apartment…she just didn’t know where.

“The first one was my own sweet Lauren. We were married at eighteen and I thought she was the perfect woman. When she asked for the tattoo of Baron La Croix, I should have known. But I was young and in love. I gave her the tattoo on her thigh and one day while Marta was performing a ritual at our place of worship, she saw it…and she was able to travel with the Baron inside of Lauren and see the darkness there.”

Freaking lunatic, Kat thought. “So what did you do…to Lauren?”

“I ended her suffering. It was a few years later that Marta directed me to the next one and a year later, the one after that…” Jesus fucking Christ…he’s a serial killer! Fuck! “Marta and I spent our lives in Louisiana, mostly in the Quarter. But when the detective started digging, I had a feeling I should watch him and make sure he didn’t stir up the darkness.”

“You think he did? You think it’s in me?”

“I know it is, and your darkness is attracted to the light in that young man, David. I have to save him, the way I did your father so many years ago…” He put his other hand on her throat. His hands were big and her neck was slim. Kat figured it would take him less than five minutes to crush her trachea. She had to move if she was going to have any kind of chance at all. She took a deep breath and braced herself for the pain as she pressed her body down into the mattress and rolled out of his grasp. When he reached for her, she brought her leg up as far as she could and kicked him on the chin. He cursed her in a foreign language—she thought it was French. She scrambled on her knees toward the door. She was almost there when she was grabbed from behind by her ponytail. He pulled her backwards, and Kat clawed at the floor. When he got her close enough, he wrapped his beefy arms around her middle and this time she couldn’t hold the cry back as he squeezed the spot right over her surgical incision. Channeling the pain as well as she could, Kat fought, kicking and clawing at his arms. When he threw her on the bed and pounced on top of her, she could see that she’d left deep scratches on his arms. At least this time, they’ll be able to identify him. He had both his hands around her throat again and he was using all his weight to hold her down. Kat knew as he began to squeeze that she had no chance of getting away. This was it, and the only thing she had to be thankful for before she died was that Dillon was going to live, and David didn’t still hate her. She couldn’t look at the man as he killed her, so she closed her eyes and thought about David and how much she loved him. As he squeezed harder, it was instinctive for her to reach up and grasp his wrists and try to fight…but he was too strong. She was going to…

The sound of the gunshot made her body jerk, and a scream tried to escape from her injured throat. Simultaneously with the shot, the big man fell off her and she clutched at her neck and began to gasp for air. She tried to sit up, and the blinding pain in her side joined forces with the pain in her neck and her inability to breathe…and suddenly, the lights went out in her world.