Simon & Schuster Gallery Books
Featuring: Kallie Rivière; Doctor Heron
384 pages ISBN: 1439167923 EAN: 9781439167922 Mass Market Paperback Add to Wish List
This series started off with a bang in Black Dust Mambo and has moved forward with one twist right after another. BLACK HEART LOA is a mind blowing read you shouldn't miss!
I love the way that Phoenix's books start off right where the last one left you. There is no confusion trying to figure out a timeline or what may have happened in between stories, simply put the story is all on the pages and nothing gets left out! BLACK HEART LOA brought even more mystery and intrigue into the life of our hoodoo princess Kallie and her never-ending fight to figure out who, or what, exactly she is. The added plot twists and paranormal creatures of all types only enriched the story. I found myself swept away by the language of the bayou and the lure of Layne. The action is non-stop from page one and left me breathless until the last page! The complexities that Phoenix has created keep getting better and better with every printed page!
Carnival has ended and so should have the excitement and murders that went with it. Unfortunately for Kallie that means losing Layne so that he can continue his search for revenge on his best friend's killers. Coming home to her Aunt Divinity, who is also her Hoodoo Priestess, Kallie is ready for some good ole R & R. But nothing can be that easy in the world of hoodoo. Just because your life didn't end yesterday, doesn't mean that it won't end today! Coming home to find Jackson kidnapped and his dog missing Kallie knows that rest is not something she is getting quite yet. When her home gets invaded by men with guns Kallie decides that finding Jackson is not her only worry, its finding him alive that counts. One spell after another is going array, a hoodoo loa has been accidentally let loose on the world. The wards protecting New Orleans seem to have gone as screwy as everyone's magic. And don't forget that the hurricane has turned from harmless to head straight for 'em overpowering in just a few short days. The threats to her life, home, and family simply will not wait for another day.
Running from one loa, Kallie and Belladonna trek across the bayou to begin the search for Jackson. A girl can only deal with one life threatening event at a time. Just in the nick of time the girls find Layne along the way. Only Layne is now carrying two ghosts and no one knows who is in control. Just when Kallie is wondering what else could possibly go wrong, it does. The darkness inside Kallie is threatening to escape and holding it together may be the hardest thing she's ever had to face. An old story Jackson once told her is haunting Kallie's dreams and the only way to save him just may lie with things that go woof in the night. It's hard keeping a boyfriend when everyone is trying to kill you!
Sensational hit! The magic of hoodoo and the sizzling romance between Kallie and Layne just keeps getting hotter! When everything is going to chaos family always pulls together and that warmth is carried throughout the story. I met the end of this book hoping for another thrilling escapade and I don't think that author Adrian Phoenix will ever let me down!
βAn eye for an eye is never
enough.β
Kallie Rivière, a Cajun
hoodoo apprentice with a bent for trouble, learned the
meaning of those ominous words when hoodoo bogeyman Doctor
Heron targeted her family for revenge. Now, while
searching for her still-missing bayou pirate cousin,
Kallie finds out the hard way that someone is undoing
powerful gris gris, which means that working magic has
become as unpredictable as rolling a handful of dice.
The
wards woven to protect the Gulf coast are unraveling,
leaving New Orleans and the surrounding bayous vulnerable
just as an unnatural stormβthe deadliest in a centuryβis
born. As the hurricane powers toward the heart of all she
loves, Kallie desperately searches for the cause of the
disturbing randomness, only to learn a deeply unsettling
truth: the culprit may be herself.
To protect her family
and friends, including the sexy nomad Layne Vallin, Kallie
steps into the jaws of danger . . . and finds a loup garou
designed to steal her heartβliterally.
And had nearly cost Kallie her
own--body and soul. Or would've if she had a
soul--and that was another goddamned matter altogether.
Another matter for another time. Right now, she needed to
find her cousin.
Kallie shuffled the cards, Jackson's words looping through
her mind like a mantra, a fervent prayer.
Gotta go. See you on Sunday. Love ya.
She pictured Jackson as the cards ricocheted against her
palms--eyes the color of heated honey and brimming with
laughter, slightly tilted like her own; sun-bronzed skin;
coffee-dark hair brushing against his muscle-corded
shoulders in thick waves; lips slanted into a pirate's
wicked smirk; he stood just a whisper under a lean-muscled
six feet.
He was the same age as she, twenty-three, but just a couple
of months ahead of her. And in love with the restless sea he
had once called--in a rum-sodden moment--his briny bride.
Kallie saturated her cousin's image with her desire to find
him. Alive. Intact.
Love ya back, and I'm goddamned holding you to Sunday,
Jacks.
She'd finished shuffling the cards, and Kallie's fingers
stilled on top of the blue deck. She opened her eyes. Her
pulse raced through her veins. Her heart kicked hard against
her CPR compressionβinjured and aching ribs. She felt the
weight of each set of eyes settling like anxious doves along
her shoulders.
Her tante and hoodoo teacher, Divinity, stood behind
her along with the woman whose identity Divinity had stolen,
a woman Kallie had met only an hour or so ago--Gabrielle
LaRue.
Kallie didn't know whether Gabrielle was a rootworker like
her and her aunt or a voodoo mambo. But it was Gabrielle
LaRue who Doctor Heron had blamed for his time in prison;
Gabrielle LaRue he'd blamed for poisoning his clients and
leaving him to take the blame.
"An eye for an eye is never enough," Doctor Heron
whispers.
But the bastard had gone after the wrong woman, the wrong
family, because of that goddamned stolen identity.
Kallie's throat tightened. Several people had died because
of that mistake, more than one in her place. Gage had been
the first.
He lies on his belly, his face
turned to the side. Blood masks his fine features, glitters
in his black curls. All color has drained from his
espresso-brown skin, leaving his blue-inked clan tattoos
stark on his muscular back, ass, and thighs.
The sexy conjurer from one of the freewheeling nomad
clans--a pagan blend of biker and Gypsy--had died body and
soul upon her hex-poisoned hotel bed in New Orleans after a
night of sweaty, bendy, hot-blooded play, while she'd been
in the bathroom sick on too much champagne.
Then Lord Basil Augustine, the leader of the Hecatean
Alliance--a fraternity of magicians, conjurers, and
rootworkers--had taken a bullet meant for Kallie, a bullet
fired in desperation by Doctor Heron's doomed, crazed
daughter, Rosette.
Rough hands latch onto Kallie's shoulders and spin her
away. Augustine's suit jacket whispers against her robe as
he twists his body past hers. Thunder cracks through the
room. Augustine grunts. He stumbles against Kallie . . .
And Dallas. Kallie drew upon a deep well of relief when she
thought of the hard-drinking root doctor and how he'd
survived Doctor Heron's murderous attack--a knife across the
throat--thanks to the skill of the Hecatean Alliance
surgeons and healers who'd saved his life. He was currently
hospitalized at the medical center on the twentieth floor of
the Prestige, fresh out of surgery, and hopefully drugged to
the gills.
Oh, and let's not forget Belladonna--poppet-bound and
kidnapped.
And speaking of whom . . .
Belladonna Brown, mambo-in-training and Kallie's best
friend, sat straight-backed on the floral-patterned sofa
Kallie was kneeling beside, her face with its flawless
chocolate-colored skin composed despite the worry flickering
in her startling hazel eyes.
"You okay, Shug?" Belladonna asked. "You look like you're
about to start throwing punches."
"Not a bad idea," Kallie said. "Just wish I had someone to
throw them at."
"Mmm-hmm," Belladonna sympathized.
She'd been snoozing on the sofa after the night's events
when Kallie had awakened her with a frantic shake of her
shoulder.
It's Jacks. And his ass is in the fire, for true. Hellfire. Then we gotta pull his fine ass out.
mouths and tell me where the hell
that bastard Bonaparte hid our shit."
Belladonna snorted. "Outlaw, please. Which is it? Shut up or
talk? Because you sure as sin can't have both."
"He's sounding like an eat-his-cake-and-have-it-too kinda
guy," Kallie said, switching the cards to her left hand and
leaving her right empty. If he got close enough for her to
throw a punch, she wanted to hit him with her strongest. She
might not get a second shot.
Belladonna's curls bobbed. "Mmm-hmm. That he is."
"Christ," Cash muttered. "I got a feeling shut up is
beyond y'all." He raised the shotgun to chest level and
aimed the barrel between Kallie's breasts. His
old-sweat-and-tobacco odor deepened. "You're that fucking
thief's hot little cousin, ain'tcha?"
"Sounds like you got all the goddamned answers," Kallie
replied, lifting her chin. "Why don't you tell me?"
Cash's gaze, burning with a fire stoked by a self-righteous
wrath, scorched a path from the top of her head to just past
her cut-offs and back up along her snug black tank to her
face. A smirk tugged up one corner of his ski-maskβframed lips.
"A pretty little thing with that long, dark hair, and them
purple eyes, ain'tcha? Yeah, you're Bonaparte's cousin, all
right." His smirk vanished. "So sit your pretty little ass
down and tell me where the hell the sonuvabitch stashed our
shit."
Kallie narrowed her eyes. "What makes you think I'd know?"
"Ain't playing games here, sugar," Cash said, glancing
pointedly at the shotgun in his hands. "Y'all live in the
same house. Can't be many secrets."
"Oh, you'd be surprised," Kallie muttered, lancing a dark
look at her aunt.
Keeping her attention on Cash's nervous ceiling-scanning
buddy, Divinity tsked and shook her head. "Stop yo' pouting,
ungrateful child. I did what had to be done and dat's de end
of it."
"No, that ain't the end of it, goddammit," Kallie said,
knotting her right hand into a fist. "We're just getting
started. But later, I mean. Not now."
Thunder boomed through the house, ricocheting off the walls
and Kallie's eardrums. She winced in pain. Chunks of plaster
from the ceiling exploded against the hardwood floor. The
pungent scent of cordite peppered the air.
"We are now officially back to
SHUT! THE! FUCK! UP!" Cash screamed, neck tendons cording.
Smoke curled from the shotgun's barrel. "If anyone makes a
fucking peep, except to tell me where that goddamned Jackson
Bonaparte hides all the shit he steals, I ain't gonna be
blowing holes in the ceiling! Y'all got that?"
"Jesus Christ, Cash!" Kerry yelled, hands over his ears.
"You trying to make us all deaf?"
"You can shut the fuck up too," Cash snarled. "You ain't
been no kind of help, you fucking superstitious mama's boy."
"Hey," Kerry protested, yelling, an injured expression on
his face. "Ain't no call to be like that. I'm watching your
back, ain't I?"
"I don't know--are you?"
"I got a stake in this too, dammit! I just don't wanna get
my ass hexed, that's all."
Kallie felt the tap of fingers against her calf. Glancing
over her shoulder, she saw Belladonna nod at the floor as
she mouthed: Look, the urgency in her hazel eyes
directing Kallie's gaze down.
The eight of clubs rested on the hardwood floor between the
sofa and the beer bottle and candle-cluttered coffee table,
bits of white plaster sprinkled across its surface. It'd
slipped free from the deck in her hand. Her heart thumped
against her chest.
Go ahead with the situation or person. Take the chance.
From over Cash's tension-taut shoulders, Kallie noticed her
aunt sliding a hand into the pocket of her long, Gypsy-style
skirt, her fingers no doubt seeking a powder or potion she'd
tucked inside. Anything would work on twitching Kerry. Hell,
baby powder would probably scare the man into a dead run out
the front door.
Eight of clubs. Take the chance.
Kallie looked up. Kerry stood on the other side of the
table, close to her aunt and Gabrielle, while Cash stood on
Kallie's side of the coffee table, his smoking-barreled
shotgun once more aimed dead center at Kallie's chest now
that he and his partner were done quibbling.
"You'd better pipe up with something useful, darlin'!" Cash
shouted. "I'm all out of goddamned patience!"
Needing to lure Cash into right-hook range, Kallie decided
to go for demure and helpless. She lowered her eyes, then
bit her lower lip. "I don't know anything about my cousin's
doings," she lied, speaking in a whisper and hoping his ears
were ringing as bad as her own. "His business is his own.
But . . . he does have a storage unit."
"What?" The floor boards creaked as Cash took a step closer.
His battered cowboy boots came into Kallie's downcast view.
"Repeat that. He's got a what?"
Kallie lifted her gaze. "A cousin who ain't gonna put up
with this shit."
She flipped the deck of cards in her left hand at Cash,
while simultaneously swinging her adrenaline-cocked right
fist into the bastard's ski-masked nose as he flinched away
from the hailstorm of sharp-edged cards. Bone crunched
beneath her knuckles.
Kallie grabbed the shotgun barrel, wrenching it free from
Cash's grip despite the pain rippling through her chest from
her injured ribs, and aimed it at him as he staggered
backward, both gloved hands cupped over his broken nose.
"Fuck!" he screamed.
From the other side of the coffee table, Divinity yelled,
"You put dat shotgun down, boy, or I'll be hexing you and
yo' future offspring down to the seventh generation!"
Kallie heard the clunk of metal against wood as Kerry
wordlessly--as far as she could tell with all the goddamned
ringing in her ears--rested the shotgun on the floor.
Followed a heartbeat later by a jarring thud.
Divinity tsked in disapproval. "Dey don't make men like dey
used to."
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