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She was light. He was darkness. She believed in everything good. He believed in nothing at all.

Despite their differences, Cypress Bernard and Drake Benedict needed each other. Though she found the legendary warlock impossibly arrogant -- and darkly irresistible -- Cypress had to rely on his powers to save her beloved hometown. And though Drake found the earthy beauty a bit naive, he soon learned the extent of the danger they were both in . . . Because evil in Stagwater was laying claim to his soul, even as Cypress's magic charm warmed his icy heart, demanding that he believe in her, in light . . . in their love.

The Circle:Four friends, four magical gifts, four loves to last eternally.

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Forest Of The Night

Harlequin Enterprises Limited

Chapter One

Like an inaudible whisper, it had taunted him every night, interminable and increasing, like a conquered but never-forgotten addiction. From somewhere beyond the city, it called to him still.

A lesser man would have gone mad, but Drake Benedict did not have that kind of luck. Damnably sane, he stalked across his shadowy living room and turned his stereo up. Way up. He had been listening to Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Now the "Allegro" of "Winter" blasted like the Rolling Stones out of state-of-the-art speakers.

But noise did not help, any more than would closing his eyes. This call was not sensory but extrasensory, like a psychic beacon. Whatever originated the call, sentient or inanimate, it transmitted on a particularly dark frequency. Whatever the source, it was unmistakably evil.

Deep within Drake, something stirred in response to it: Curiosity, anticipation ... longing. His own evil?

Unsettled, he pushed past louvered doors out onto his balcony and into the mild January night. He scowled past the still French Quarter courtyard below him. Perhaps some fool should investigate whatever miscreation hatched across Lake Pontchartrain, in the swampy woods north of New Orleans. The ring he wore - adark-gold dragon with emerald eyes - implied this to be the wearer's job. But he knew better than to set his own unique abilities against something so unknown, so dangerously enticing. Should he fail, should this evil convert him, there could be literal hell to pay.

He'd seen better magic users than himself - the best he'd ever known, in fact - destroyed because they pitted themselves against evils that should not have concerned them. It had helped no one.

But to give up and go abroad, that would be cowardice. From Bourbon Street, too few blocks away, the strains of jazz music and drunken laughter mingled with the frenzied scream of violins from Drake's stereo ... and with his constant, unwavering awareness of the evil. Its call throbbed through him, dark and nauseating and full of promise, battering a headache out of his resistance. Should it continue much longer, he might be forced to attempt silencing it - or to answer it. Or truly go insane.

Insanity might prove preferable to failure. But no, insanity did not run in Drake's family. Only magic ran in Drake's family: white magic, black magic, and power. And the proven ability to abuse that power. Children of alcoholics oughtn't take a single drink, and the only offspring of the most notorious British magic user in recent decades oughtn't to trifle with evil, no matter how tempting the challenge.

Across the miles and through the night, as it had every night for months now, the entity beckoned to him, with its offers of strength, of immortality - of a dark and overpowering silence.

Drake straightened from the black wrought ironwork of his balcony. No. He would answer the beast's dark bidding no sooner than he would protect innocents, benefit mankind, or - Fates forfend! - spread a little joy in the world. He would remain his own master and serve no other, black or white. He knew the consequences of joining either camp in that particular struggle.

As he had for months, Drake turned his back on the summons. As it had for over a year, the spine-crawling awareness of it followed him back into his home.

Expectant. Incessant. Eternal.

Evil.

* * *

Shadows guarded the corners of the so-called voodoo shop. The ceiling, shaggy with drying herbs, cast an exotic potpourri of fragrances into the murky air. Bowls of semiprecious stones covered one table; another display offered a rainbow of candles, mostly black. And a wall of shelves held big jars, like in an old candy store, naming ingredients like cat bones and graveyard dirt.

Cypress Bernard, slowly turning to take in her eerie surroundings, caught the heel of a dress shoe on the rough plank floor. What, she asked herself, is a down-to-earth woman like me doing in a hocus-pocus joint like this?

Goddess jewelry. Goat skulls. Runes. Books on finding your soul mate. Voodoo?

Anyone who knew anything about magic could see that this place, mixing its traditions with the subtlety of a Cuisinart, favored voudun in decor only. Not that Cy held anything against eclecticism, let alone magic - with her diverse heritage.

The pot calling the kettle black, for sure. Cypress knew magic. Nothing fancy, just good, solid folk magic. She'd had what Granny called "the gift" for longer than her memory reached. And she sure knew the difference between machine-sewn, cotton-stuffed "voodoo dolls" and the real thing.

But that was the French Quarter for you - all flash, and little substance. What on earth could Granny have been thinking in sending her here?

She glanced at her watch. Despite being up for a promotion at work, she'd used half a vacation day to run errands in New Orleans. She felt a heap more foolish here than she had at the costume rental shop, probably because she didn't like asking folks for help - but here she stood.

A young couple bought his-and-her voodoo dolls before strolling, hand in hand, out of the shadows and into the gray January rain. The proprietress, an ebony-skinned woman wearing vivid Caribbean colors, eyed Cy's tailored suit. "And what might you be needing today, miss?"

Her Jamaican accent sounded real enough, as far as Cypress could tell. "Can you tell me where to find the, uh, magistra?"

Bracelets jangled when the woman planted her fists on her hips. She cocked her head as if Cy were eccentric. "Come again?"

Cy's heart sank. She'd hoped her dear old witch of a grandmother had come through this latest illness as clearheaded as ever. "I was told," she said firmly, just to be sure, "to find your shop and ask for the magistra, whoever that is."

And she dug into the Daytimer she carried in lieu of a purse and produced the seal Granny had given her. The paper - not even parchment - held a dollop of hardened black wax with a Chinese dragon stamped into it. "I'm supposed to show you this."

The clerk had reached to accept whatever Cy offered, but now she hesitated. Then her fingers - long, dark fingers that made Cy's look pale in comparison - gently closed around the seal. "Mmm-hmm."

The shop seemed suddenly very hushed, very expectant. Granny wasn't senile, after all. This woman knew something, which put her one up on Cy.

The magistra, was all Granny'd say. Since her pneumonia, she hadn't had breath for much more. Someone that can help us.

Cy had always been the one to help Granny, until now. The proprietress beckoned her through the curtained doorway, into the back rooms. As soon as Cy left the shop's commercial front, she realized that she'd jumped to conclusions. Back here, in far-less-flashy shoe boxes and reused food jars, lay legitimate signs of voudun - unnamed spices, to be recognized by their smell, and sure-enough tufts of Spanish moss for real, handmade dolls. A hefty boa constrictor, kept in its terrarium only by a screen weighted down with a brick, coiled patiently.

And the lady who led her here, back straight and head high, was a far sight more than a clerk. More likely a priestess.

The pot had definitely called the kettle black. The priestess whirled on Cy. "What could you be wanting with the magistra? If it's who I'm thinking it is, that man, he means to be left alone. And what he wants, he gets, girl. All of us 'round here know it."

But Granny didn't live 'round here. Usually she lived north of the lake, like Cy. Had Granny been left out of some kind of pagan loop?

Or did she think the town needed help too badly to care? "I'll have to hear that from him," Cy decided, using her best business voice. "I'm here about something very important."

"Mmm-hmm." The woman had likely heard that one before, about everything from love spells to curses. Cy met her gaze steadily, letting the priestess feel her own power. The blood of Hispanic brujas, of Indian shamans - and, yes, of voudun priestesses - ran thick through her own veins, designer suit notwithstanding.

The woman narrowed her amber eyes, eyes that looked eerily at and beyond Cypress. "Who sent you?"

"My granny, Deeny Vega."

"Deeny Vega from Stagwater? You're lying." Cy continued to hold the woman's gaze, unfazed. She knew she didn't look like her black granny, any more than she looked like her white father. Her features were always too ethnic or too Caucasian, her skin too dark or too light, depending on who did the looking.

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Excerpted from Forest Of The Night by Vaughn Copyright © 2002 by Harlequin Enterprises Limited
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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