Free Daughter of the Thirteen: Bourbon Street Witches Book 1 by Lorraine Kennedy Page B

cuddle him, tell him bedtime stories, even kiss him goodnight.
    His mother did all of this, as if she were completely unaware of what he was.
    He suspected that his mother pretended. In her mind, he was just a normal little boy.
    Monique St. Claire was one of the most beautiful women to ever grace Louisiana, but she was a witch, as was her sister, Natalie. The St. Claire family had been witches for generations. They were part of the Coven of Lazar.
    Life in Louisiana was good to the St. Claire family; at any rate it was good until the War of Northern Aggression.
    After the war, life changed for everyone, including the coven. To regain even a semblance of their former lives, each coven family offered up a daughter to the Dark Prince.
    His mother was chosen to be the sacrificial lamb for the St. Claire family.
    The daughters of the coven brought forth the children of the Dark Prince. All would have been well if Annette hadn’t betrayed them.
    He should hate Laurel for her mother’s betrayal, but he didn’t. Laurel was as much of a victim as his mother had been.
    Marcos closed his eyes, trying to shut out the image of the raven-haired beauty that was his mother, but as usual, closing his eyes wasn’t very helpful. He could still see that nightmarish scene as clear as if he were reliving it all over again.
    That was the night Hell came to the world of man.
    He could still hear his mother’s voice as she told him his favorite troll story, but then he’d drifted to sleep. The next thing he recalled was his mother’s screams.
    Scrambling from his bed, he ran to the window, where he could see the front courtyard.
    Monique St. Claire was being dragged out of the house, kicking and screaming.
    “Please don’t take me from my son!” she begged.
    Her please were ignored.
    Even now his insides would shrivel when he thought about what they’d done to his mother. It was the same as they’d done to all the daughters of the coven.
    She’d been burned as a witch.
    The memory of her shrieks was so real that he would still hear them at the oddest times.
    Was his mother’s ghost haunting him - blaming him for what happened to her?
    The coven killed his mother and the other daughters, but they did so to save their own lives. They knew what Annette’s betrayal meant.
    Demons had been unleashed from Hell, and they would come for each of the girls, tearing them to bits, along with any family members. Offering the girls as a sacrifice was the only way to save the coven.
    The Dark Prince didn’t care that twelve of the daughters had given birth to his progeny, it was the betrayal of the thirteenth daughter that mattered.
    “Where’s the witch?” The gravelly - female voice drew him out of the memory.
    Marcos turned to see Sue Bennett standing behind him.
    When he was a child, he’d called her Sooie. Her pug nose reminded him of a pig’s snout, but he’d only dared do it when she wasn’t around.
    As she stood there glaring at him, she looked exactly the same as she had the first time he’d seen her, over two decades before.
    Her stout body had a little too much ham on it in the wrong places, and her hair was the oddest red color he’d ever seen, kind of a sickly, yellow - orange.
    One day she’d appeared on the doorstep of Cypress Grove, offering her services as nanny to the son of the house. It was no coincidence that each of the coven’s special children got nannies at about the same time. All of these women arrived, demanding entrance into the lives of the Dark Prince’s progeny.
    At first he hadn’t realized what she was, but over time it became clear. Sue Bennett was really a demon sent to nurture him to be what he was born to be. She was constantly pushing him to bury his humanity and embrace his dark nature.
    As he stared at her now, he could see traces of her true form beneath her human disguise. Her blue eyes had a red sheen to them that was noticeable only at certain times, such as in a dimly lit room, or when she