by Raven Hart
“Connie, it’s me. There’s something awful wrong with Mel, but I’m going to have to leave right away to go back Seth up. Can you come over to William’s and look after her? Deylaud and Reyha are useless. I think they’re scared or in a trance or something.”
“Jack, is this a ploy to keep me away from the fight?”
“No. I swear it on Maman Lalee’s grave. Will you come?”
Connie didn’t hesitate. She knew a serious oath when she heard it. “Of course I will. I’ll be right there.”
I raced back to the porch, feeling all prickly, my flesh tingling and popping like when you shuffle your feet across the carpet and then touch the wrong thing. The twins were more frightened-looking than ever. Whatever was happening, they felt it, too.
Melaphia twirled, her colorful robe billowing around her with each rotation. Then she stopped dead. She looked heavenward, reached into the pocket of the robe, and removed something.
It was the strange little beaded doll.
Connie was there in a matter of minutes. I met her at the front door and motioned for her to follow me.
“Jack, what on earth?”
“Come see for yourself.”
She followed me onto the porch and stopped short. I had to take her hand to lead her to the edge where she could see better. The twins were still where I’d left them, but now they were wailing, a hair-raising sound that within seconds turned into the howls of the canines they were.
Connie looked at me. “Jack, what the hell?”
“I don’t know what’s going on,” I said. “For all I know, Mel might be in danger.”
“I’d say somebody sure is.” She pointed to Mel. “Unless I miss my guess, that’s a voodoo doll.”
Mel held the doll up high, and I could see that her other hand held something sharp. It was one of her beading needles. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and muttered something in a tongue I didn’t recognize. Then she opened her eyes and shrieked with crazy laughter.
And plunged the needle into the doll.
William
Ulrich touched Renee’s forehead, and I felt her stir in my arms. “Don’t,” I said weakly, “touch her.” I would never have thought that with my power I would be vulnerable to glamour. But I had never met as ancient a blood drinker as Ulrich. I now realized that he and Diana were combining their glamour, and it seeped into me like an insidious toxin.
“You know what you must do, grandchild,” Ulrich murmured seductively.
“No. I won’t.” I tried to think of a reasoning that could convince them to spare her. “You would kill what you don’t understand. You know only of the mystical ways of ancient Europe. Renee carries a powerful magic from places you have never been. The voodoo blood must be preserved.”
“Of course,” Diana said. “But think how much more powerful her blood would make her as a vampire.”
“You don’t know that,” I insisted. “You could be killing the goose that laid the golden egg.” I looked down at Renee, loath to describe her in those terms. “Keep her alive, let her grow to adulthood, and utilize her blood sparingly so it will last.” I was grasping at straws, and Ulrich and Diana knew it.
“Nonsense. She must become a blood drinker herself. Think of the havoc that kind of hybrid could wreak with the world. But I grow impatient.” Ulrich locked eyes with me. I tried to close mine, but they remained open despite my best efforts. I was becoming weaker.
“You won’t catch me unawares a second time,” Ulrich muttered. He grasped me by the arms as if to wrench Renee away from me. As he did, a loud rumble came from above and a rivulet of loose dirt tumbled down the steps that Renee and I had just descended.
“The earthquake should have stopped by now,” Diana said.
“Did you cause the cave-in?” I asked.
“The old lords wanted to make sure you did not escape. Ulrich and I could have accomplished that, but they wanted to impress you with a show of force. Over the centuries they have learned to call the elemental forces.”
“So they manufactured an earthquake,” I said.
“Yes,” Diana said. Her confidence seemed to be waning, however, and she dropped her part of the glamour. Something was wrong. A thunderous crack came from overhead and she flinched.
“But this part is not their doing.” Ulrich looked above him and lost concentration on his own glamour. Still holding Renee, I took advantage of his lapse to back as far away from him as possible. And as far away as possible from the stairway.
A high-pitched whine like the howling of wolves came whistling down the passage from upstairs. It was strange, yet familiar. Renee stirred despite her promise to sleep. The sound was calling out to her.
“Mama! Deylaud! Reyha!” she cried, her eyes opening wide.
The rivulet of earth falling down from the level above became a river. A boulder caromed off the walls and came straight for Diana. She screamed and dodged it, losing her balance. Ulrich caught her in his arms before she fell. The mammoth rock came to rest directly in front of the entranceway leading to the level below, cutting off the only exit that wasn’t caving in.
If I wasn’t so afraid for Renee’s safety, I would have laughed at the panic on Ulrich and Diana’s faces as Ulrich backed up against the far wall, still holding her in front of him as if to shield himself. They were powerful enough to burrow their way out of many landslides, but they were both becoming concerned that a power had been unleashed that even they could not claw their way free of.
Just then a primal scream split the air. Renee’s face lit up with recognition and delight. If what I now imagined was afoot, never in my half a millennium had I seen such a display of mystical power. And I knew in my bones that this was not the doing of Lalee. This remarkable cataclysm was being caused by Melaphia.
Tumbling end over end down the stairway amidst the rocks and dirt came the broadsword I’d seen hanging from the wall above. It shone like Excalibur, traveling in slow motion. Its hilt struck a stone on the floor of the cavern and it took flight, changing trajectory and sailing directly toward Ulrich and Diana. The metal sang like a siren as it made its flight.
Diana ducked her head to escape the blade an instant before it pierced Ulrich’s throat precisely over the scar from my century-old blow, pinning him to the wall.
The falling dirt and debris closed the space between us as Diana screamed, “Damn you to hell, Thorne! You won’t stop me from getting my due!”
The last thing I saw was her formerly beautiful face twisted by hatred and horror. The last thing I thought before I lost consciousness was how the magic of the shells may not have been able to work from across the sea, but the magic of a mambo robbed of her baby surely could.
Jack
“I’d hate to be whoever that doll represents,” Connie said, wincing.
“Me too. It looks like she’s working some kind of strong mojo on somebody. William says Mel is the most powerful mambo in the hemisphere. Maybe on earth. I’ve seen her do some amazing things when she gets all worked up, and I’ve never seen her as worked up as she is now.”
“Is that so?” Connie knew that Melaphia was a mambo, of course. But she still looked at Mel now with a new kind of respect.
“Look, I can watch Mel and make sure she’s all right,” she said. “You go on to the swamp. And make sure you and Seth come back in one piece.”
“No problem,” I said. “I’ll be back in a few hours.” I tried to sound nonchalant, like a werewolf challenge fight was no big deal, even though either Samson Thrasher or Seth Walker wouldn’t survive the night.
“Okay, Jack, I got it. You only went over it three times. This isn’t exactly rocket science, you know,” Werm said.
“Pardon me for being overly cautious. It’s just that Seth’s life is riding on this plan,” I told Werm. I’d picked him up at the club, and on the way to the swamp I went over what I wanted him to do, ad nau-seam to hear Werm tell it.
Tonight Werm was wearing so much silver that he looked like
a poor man’s Mr. T. I wasn’t sure even that would help him if a werewolf got close to him, but who knew?
“Are you going to be able to run with forty pounds of silver around your neck?” I asked.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be able to run like a scalded dog if a werewolf gets after me,” Werm said.
“Have you been practicing your invisibility?”
“Yeah, I can control it pretty well now.”
“Please tell me you haven’t been practicing in the locker room at the YWCA.”
“Would I do that?” Werm pretended to be offended. “Like William might say, being blood drinkers doesn’t mean we can’t be gentlemen.”
“Uh-huh.”
Werm had discovered quite by accident that he could go invisible when he got embarrassed, usually by a female, but now he had learned to do it at will. All vampires have their own unique power to some extent. But those of us with the voodoo blood have super-duper revved-up powers, or so William says. William can do lots of things, like what he calls remote viewing with the help of the magic shells Lalee gave him. I needed to practice my flying skills, which I hadn’t been doing much of just lately. All these abilities can come in right handy, as you might imagine.
Anyway, it was Werm’s invisibility that gave me my bright idea at the bar the night me and him and Seth got drunk. I hoped it would enable Werm to help me and Seth—potentially a lot—without actually having to get involved in the fight. I mean, the little guy would have to learn to fight sometime, but preferably not when somebody else’s hide was on the line.
“We’re here,” I said.
“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” Werm said.
“We can’t exactly drive right up to the place. We’ve got to sneak up on it.”
“Oh, okay. Sure.”
“Be on your toes. Seth said he’d stall as long as he could, but we’re running late so the wolves may already have changed. They should all be at the clearing where the fight’s going to be, so you might not need your invisibility at all, but if they’re not, just remember their sense of smell is top-notch.”
“Oh, man, I didn’t think about the smell thing. You mean that even though I’m invisible they might be able to sniff me out?” Werm sounded every bit as concerned as he should be.
“That’s about the size of it.” I found a place to pull the ’Vette off the side of the road between two cypress trees and parked.
Werm got out of the car and came around to my side. He slung the bag I gave him over one shoulder. “What’ll I do if that happens?”
“That’s what fangs are for.” I clapped him on the back. “No more talking. Their hearing is pretty good, too, but their night vision is nothing to ours. Speaking of night vision—you see that path right there?” I pointed at a small trail worn bare by the tread of many wolf paws. He nodded. “Follow that and you can’t miss the place.”
He looked up at me. “Wish me luck.”
“Good luck, man. You’ll do just fine. When you do your thing, come straight back to the car. I’ll meet you right here when it’s over.”
“Uh, Jack?”
“Yeah?”
“What if one of us runs into trouble and isn’t back in time to get to Savannah by daylight?”
I realized I had been lazy in teaching Werm how to be a resourceful vampire, but what with marauding grandsires, rogue vamps, rotting plagues, kidnappings, and so forth, I just hadn’t had the time. “If you can’t find any light-tight shelter, then I’m afraid you’re going to have to dig yourself a bed and lie in it. That’s what we call old school, son.”
Werm looked doubtfully at the swampy ground, gave me a wan smile, and started up the trail. When he was out of sight, I put my nose in the air, sniffed for werewolf, and set off through the swampy woods. Before long I began to see a flicker of light in the distance. A bonfire at the fight site, I guessed. I adjusted my direction about the time the wind changed and I smelled werewolves close by. Very close by.
Two pairs of golden eyes came out of the undergrowth. The larger one gave off a low growl. The smaller one, a female, I guessed, eyed me with great interest. Being outnumbered by werewolves was bad enough. But it was the dark thing rising up out of the swamp behind the wolves that had my undivided attention.
I was at the place where the boggy bushes and loblolly pines gave way to the pools and prairies of the actual swamp. The light of the full moon shone on the water, casting reflections of the overhanging cypress trees and creating eerie shadows of everything else. But the thing slogging toward me wasn’t a shadow.
I blinked. Damnation, it must be the creature from the black lagoon. It was dripping with swamp water and muck, rotting vegetation streaming from its outstretched arms as it lurched toward me. The wolves paid it no mind. They must have been immune to whatever power this being possessed.
I’d fought vampires, witches, shape-shifters of all kinds, even a fey creature or three. But I didn’t know how to fight this thing, because I didn’t know what it was. If I bit it, exactly what would I be biting into? A vampire needs to know these kinds of things. People think that having superhuman strength and a good pair of fangs will get you out of any situation, but everything’s relative. When you meet up with a creature with unknown powers, things can get interesting.
As it kept coming, I shifted on my feet. There was nothing to do but unsheathe my fangs, try to look really scary, and prepare for the worst.
“Is that you, Jack?” the thing asked in a watery but familiar tenor.
“Huey?”
“I can’t see you too good. I got mud in my eyes.”
Huey couldn’t see too good under the best of circumstances with that little semi-detached roaming eyeball problem of his, but now that he was covered with muck, he was profoundly visually challenged.
“I can see that,” I said. I walked closer and let the two wolves sniff my hands for solidarity’s sake. Then I reached into my back pocket for my bandanna and mopped the mud out of Huey’s eyes.
“Thanks. I accidentally fell in the swamp and mired up to my neck just about. Wanda and Jerry pulled me out.”
The big male werewolf gave a friendly woof, and the female wagged her tail. I should have known it was Jerry and Wanda. The Swamp Thing, also known as Wanda’s faithful bodyguard and my pet zombie, gave me a big grin. I guess I should have realized who he was, too. But hey, even vampires get spooked now and then.
Huey said, “Jerry and Wanda were afraid to come back to the shop after the dance. Jerry said that Nate might figure out where Wanda was staying now that he knew she was with Jerry. Jerry came by the garage a little bit ago looking for you and said I could come with him and Wanda tonight. I’m going to bodyguard Wanda and help you and Jerry in the fight with the bad wolves.”
“Well, that’s real good of you, Hugh-man,” I said. “The more the merrier.” It did make a certain amount of sense. I mean, Huey was already dead, so it’s not like he could get killed…again. If he took on some damage, we could probably just patch him up with a needle and nylon thread like we did with his old wounds.
“Here,” I said. “Let me help you get some of that off.” I wiped him down with the bandanna and some pine straw until he wasn’t so weighed down with muck. “That looks better.”
“It’s all good,” Huey said.
Jerry woofed, pawing at the ground.
Huey looked at Jerry. “Yeah, we’d better go.”
“Can you understand him?” I asked Huey.
“Sure. Can’t you?”
“Not a woof. But I’m glad you can.” So zombies could speak werewolf. At least this one could. Who knew? “Jerry, you and Wanda lead us to the fight site.”
Jerry and Wanda took off and I followed at a trot. Huey tried to keep up, but it looked like he would just have to follow our trail and do the best he could. He couldn’t run much better than he could dance.
Within half a mile or so we stopped at the edge of a clearing. Two huge wolves—one Seth and the other Samson with
the ice blue eyes—were circling each other. In a ring around Seth and Samson were the wolves of the pack—six females and eight males by my count. I wondered which one was which. For Sally’s sake I wanted to take a big bite out of Nate, and I wouldn’t mind teaching the one named Leroy a thing or two for stalking her.
Seth the wolf looked in my direction and nodded his huge head. Then in a flash he lunged at the throat of the blue-eyed wolf. Samson twisted, but Seth was able to sink his teeth into the nape of his neck. The two wolves went rolling and writhing in a solid mass of fur and fangs until I didn’t know where one wolf ended and the other began.
Samson was finally able to wrench himself free of the death roll; he came up limping and bleeding from the back of the neck. One of the big males in the outer circle started howling. I can’t say how, but I knew this was Nate. He was probably urging his father on.
While Seth still had the advantage, he lunged again. Samson tried to dodge him, but Seth latched on once more, this time a little nearer the front of Samson’s throat. Way to go, you fuzzy bastard, I silently cheered my friend.
Seth must have had a tighter hold on Samson this time, because he started waving his head violently, shaking the other wolf like a rag doll. That’s when Nate and one of the other big males, a red wolf, stepped in. They left the circle and the red wolf nipped at one of Seth’s rear ankles. The move distracted Seth just enough for him to lose his grip on Samson, who was able to squirm away again.
“Time to join the party,” I said to Jerry and Wanda. As one, we stepped out of the cover of the forest and into the clearing. All the wolves stopped and looked at us. The diversion allowed Seth to put the bite on Samson again, but Big Red got back in the game quickly and bit down savagely on Seth’s flank.
I dove onto Big Red and put a headlock on him. I felt like I was riding a bucking bronco as he leaped into the air to try to shake me off. The second time he leaped I arched my back and landed on my feet, forcing him onto his back legs in front of me. I sank my fangs into the side of his throat and felt his blood run free.
The wild, gamy taste of werewolf hit my tongue and stunned me for a moment, sending primal images through my mind. I’d almost forgotten the flavor of this mythical beast that, like my own kind, had been the stuff of nightmares since the dawn of humanity. Biting down harder, I no longer tried to capture the rising font of blood, instead choosing to savor the tang of feral flesh, losing myself in the primitive taste.
