Chapters (33)

Teaser chapter

Turn the page for a look at THE TAKING the next paranormal romance by Erin McCarthy. Coming soon from Jove Books.

NEW ORLEANS, 1878

The latest yellow fever epidemic held the city in its iron grip for nine days and nights, the bodies piling up like corded wood in the cemeteries, in the hospitals, and in the streets themselves, as ordinary business and cheerful living bowed in deference to death. With nary a streak of sun in the sky, the shrouded city was quiet save for the constant clatter of carriages carrying corpses and the roar of cannons in the square to clear the putrid air. The tally of dead raised daily—dozens each hour—and the endless opening of doors to bring out a parade of victims to the carts and wheelbarrows waiting on the streets contributed to a weary denizen of despair, of darkness, of numb drudgery.

No stores, businesses, or banks were open, as those who could fled to the country, and all other conveyanceswere pressed into service as hearses, while the cloud of the smoke from burning bodies created a stinging mist that lingered for days. The agony of melancholy and the silence of profound grief crept into every corner, every house, as the disease swept mercilessly from block to block, taking the young, the old, the rich, and the poor with equal enthusiasm—the sick, the dying, and the dead all intermingling.

I performed innumerable Last Rites from morning to night each endless day as the plague raged on, both on those I knew and victims I had never before laid eyes on. Children I had only recently baptized, adults seeking absolution for their final sins on earth, those with no one to grieve them, and whole families who left this earth together, all received my prayer.

Specific tales of tragedy abound everywhere, from the death of a young bride on her wedding night, to the unfortunate end of the wealthy and proud Comeaux family that dominated Louisiana business and politics for decades. Seven members of the Comeaux family sat down to dine, hearty and hale and confident in their place of power in our city, on the second day of the infestation,and twenty-four hours later all save one were dead. Camille, the Comeaux’s youngest and unmarried daughter, is left at the tender age of twenty void of her entire family. One can only ask what such a loss would do to the state of one’s mind and heart, and how many will be forced to confront such a future in the epidemic’s aftermath.

—From the diary of Father John Henri, Catholic priest

Camille Comeaux lit the candles on either side of the French doors to the gallery, igniting taper after taper, and watching with pleasure as the flames cast dancing shadows on the wall behind, framing the doors with a moving, undulating arch of darkness.