Первородные: Восхождение

PROLOGUE

1713

VIVIANNE LESCHERES WAS not afraid of the dark. The night felt like a warm cloak around her shoulders. The nearly full moon bathed the bayou in black and gray, hiding and shifting its truths, but Vivianne’s feet were sure and her heartbeat steady, even as a girl of ten. In the darkness, she was free.

Vivianne, born of both a witch and a werewolf, had both clans as her protectors, her family. No danger could come to her, even from New Orleans’s roughest residents. There had never been any part of the city where she feared to tread.

Yet on this night, as she got closer to the wide, lazy river, all she could smell was death. She slowed, scanning around her for what was amiss. The night couldn’t keep secrets from her eyes for long, and she watched as a ghost ship crept along the edge of the swamp. She set one boot down in front of the other, wading closer to the open water of the Saint Louis River.

The ship looked small, but sturdy enough for an ocean crossing, if not big enough to journey in any comfort. Yet even Vivianne’s sharp eyes couldn’t spot a single soul on board. It just slid through the water, timbers creaking slightly with the gentle roll of the midnight current.

She reached the edge of the bayou and heard a shout go up from one of the watchmen. Finally, they had noticed the ghostly vessel. Slipping behind a stand of cattails, Vivianne felt a powerful impulse to set the ship on fire and let the water sweep it back down to the ocean. Whatever it was and whatever it carried, she didn’t want it in her city.

The ship stalled at the banks, inviting the watchmen to come to it. They wasted no time, clambering up the ladder built into the side of the ghost ship’s hull. She thought about calling to them, but she could not imagine what warning a child might give that could turn the men away from what they believed was abandoned treasure.

The moonlight glinted off the pale skin and golden hair of a man sneaking across the deck as he followed the guards below. He moved with inhuman speed and strength as he pulled a man up into the ship’s rigging. Screams began to rise from the deck. The warm night air turned clammy and clung to Vivianne’s skin, making her shiver. The coppery smell of blood drifted across the river to her, and she’d seen enough: She ran.

The darkness closed in on her, roots and hillocks reaching up to catch at her feet as she flew across the swamp. Something new had come to New Orleans, and the night would never be safe again.