Distorted Affliction

Chapter Twenty Three

I had never been on a plane before. Sin, who was thousands of years old and had somehow been on more planes than he could count, had promised it was nothing to worry about. The anxiety welled up inside of me as we boarded our flight, though I didn't have much time to really stress about the possibilities of crashing when the weight of responsibility was overwhelmingly present. This was only the beginning, I reminded myself. The start of a journey that I could only hope would bring some sort of end to the looming threat that hung over all of us.

Our flight was seven hours long with a three hour layover in Denver, Colorado that gave us enough time to grab lunch before departing again. The view was gorgeous, but I didn't feel as though I had time to truly appreciate the experience before we landed at the Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans. From there, we picked up a rental car that would take us into the heart of the city. The car was nothing like Sin's, which may have been the reason he allowed me to drive, but it would get us where we needed to go.

Vanessa had come with us, and though she didn't explain, I knew she wanted more than to just be in on the action. She was here on behalf of our coven, to ensure that Sin and I would get the job done without bailing. I didn't hold any resentment towards her at the idea of not being trusted, because I knew that I had done plenty of things to earn me the doubt the others so openly held for me. I wanted to utilize the opportunity to prove myself, to prove that I was worthy of the name I held. There was power in the Bishop name, as everyone liked to remind me, and I needed to prove that I deserved to carry it.

It was early afternoon when we made it to our little motel room where we would plan our next course of action. This would be one of the harder parts of our plan, considering I had no real idea how I was going to find the Voodou Priestesses now that we were here. Since they tapped into a different kind of magic than we did, we never maintained any sort of contact with them. In fact, they held reign over the majority of the state, and their community was much different than ours, at least from what I had heard.

"I might have a lead on the Priestesses," Sin announced, sliding back into the room and shutting the door behind him with a soft click. I glanced up from where I had been staring at the bare wooden floor, lost in my own thoughts for longer than I cared to admit.

"That's good news," I encouraged, watching as he pulled the chair out adjacent to me to sit. Vanessa was in the shower and the sound of the running water was louder than the television playing quietly on the wall behind me. Flashes of the predicted weather rolled across the screen and I was happy to see that the weather this far south was much warmer than anything Montana had to offer this time of year.

"There's a bar down in the French Quarter," he explained, his voice low as if he didn't want to be overheard. It was absurd, considering the sounds beyond the window seemed to drown out any possibility of his words being discernible to anyone who might be eavesdropping. "I was talking to the receptionist about the voodoo practices here, and where one might find history into the old witches. After digging through some of her cheap memories inside Marie Laveau's voodoo shop, I came across a suppressed memory of a conversation she overheard about the Priestesses and the way they handle the French Quarter.

"Long story short," he continued. "They seem to have made some enemies in the area with the Mouri here, and I believe if I can poke around a bit in the French Quarter, I might have some luck figuring out where to find them."

"That seems like a really lucky find," I noted, frowning at the orange curtain covering the window. "They really just have conversations like that out in the open? Where anyone could hear?"

"It's New Orleans," Sin reminded me, leaning back in his chair slightly. "Mouri aren't exactly worried about being discovered, since people flock from all over the world to find creatures just like them. The bar I mentioned, well it's a front for Mouri to feed. Willing humans looking for a new kind of high are brought to the back, and the Mouri get their fill before releasing them back into the night. No compulsion needed, who would believe them if they said anything? A missing human here and there wouldn't raise any red flags either, people disappear in this city all the time."