“Not my end.”
Sosa leaned in close, so close that the smell of rum and tobacco on his breath made her stomach churn. His nose almost bumped hers, and she could count the red veins in his bloodshot eyes. “You will do as I command.”
Daphanie shook her head. “No,” she said quietly, her voice as resolute as her heart. “I won’t.”
“You have no choice,” he hissed and jerked away. “You forget, putain, I brought you here, and if I have to, I can make you beg for the coup poudre .”
Stepping back, he raised his hand as if to strike her, and she could see for the first time that he gripped something tightly in his right fist. Her eyes fixed on the object and she frowned, an uneasy feeling clawing through her belly. It appeared to be a lump of clay or wax, crudely molded into an approximation of a human form.
The sorcerer followed her gaze and laughed, the high, evil cackle of a witch or a madman.
“Ah, yes, you see my ’tite Daph’nie, non ? She looks just like you, doesn’t she? She should, since she is wearing your clothes and your hair.”
Daphanie recognized the glittery fabric of her tank top instantly; she’d almost expected to see that. But it took a moment for his words about her hair to sink in.
An image flashed into her mind, absent of all context save a bowl of white porcelain. Her hairbrush in Danice’s sink, balanced drunkenly in the shallow curve, shed hairs clinging to the bristles.
Her heart stuttered to a stop.
How stupid of them.
She and Asher had just assumed because they had noticed nothing missing after the break-in that nothing had been taken. A few fingers full of shed hair from a brush was only so much trash. Why would they even have checked?
It would be unlikely a doll could control you unless the bokor had something of yours to bind the doll to you , Erica had said. A warning, if she had only listened. Something you’ve had for a long time and used or worn frequently is usually preferred, because the closer it is to you, the more of your energy it will have stored.
What could be considered closer to Daphanie than her own hair? It had literally been a part of her. And now it decorated the doll a madman intended to use to march her toward her own living death.
“Oh, yes,” Sosa hissed, the firelight casting his features in sharp relief, making his eyes look as black as a well and his mouth as red as blood. “Maman Manon will be suitably grateful, especially when she looks upon her image and sees herself exactly as she remembers. In the beginning, I had thought any girl would do, provided she was not too old, not too fat or too ugly, but now I see that fate made me wait for you. The loa knew you were coming, and they made me bide my time until you came.”
And here, Daphanie thought desperately, she had always believed fate was on her side. Had it deserted her now? Had it returned her to Manhattan, to her home and her family, and introduced Asher into her life only to end it now?
It hadn’t, she assured herself. It couldn’t. Men like Sosa might be crazy and cruel, but fate was impartial. Fate would always deliver what a person deserved.
Clinging to that thought, Daphanie hoped fate still believed she had been a good girl.
With her eyes on the madman and her heart with Asher, silently, earnestly, Daphanie began to pray for a miracle.
Twenty-four
The highly specialized variety of Other known as a Guardian is not to be confused with the human conception of the “guardian angel,” something a Guardian would be the first to tell you. The Guardians of the Others are not sent by a benevolent deity, or any deity at all, but rather are assigned their duties of protecting humans from supernatural threats by the oldest and most respected member of their kind, an ancient and awe-inspiring figure known only as the Watcher. What he watches, no one is precisely certain, but given the success rate of his army in protecting and preserving the humans under their protection, one assumes it must be the human race in its entirety.
Not every human will fall under the protection of a Guardian during his or her life; in fact, very few of them will. But those who do find themselves under one of these creatures’ sheltering wings can rest assured that while that Guardian lives, that human shall come to no harm.
—A Human Handbook to the Others, Chapter Nineteen
Asher had never known fear like what he faced when he returned to the Upper East Side and found the bed in Missy and Graham’s guest room cold and empty. Unless it was the fear he felt when he stood with his back to the front wall of the Church of St. Mary the Consoler and heard Daphanie’s voice calmly challenging the man who intended to end her life.
When he got his hands on her again, he was going to kill her. And then he was going to make love to her until she was permanently crippled and would never again be able to walk away from the safe place where he had left her. Just see if he didn’t.
But first, he had to find a way to rescue her from the clutches of Emmanuel Sosa, something that he feared would be easier said than done, since the man would have made a hell of a military strategist. He had set himself up in a place that was both spiritually significant and easily defensible. Asher, Rafe, and the Lupines had discussed it as soon as they had gotten word of where Daphanie had been taken. Getting his woman out wouldn’t be easy, but few of the important things in life were, and he knew nothing would ever be more important than this.
Thanks to the quick thinking of the female Silverbacks Samantha Carstairs had handpicked to guard the Winters’ house while Daphanie was inside, her midnight stroll had not gone unnoticed. The Lupine who had been stationed across from the front door had been surprised to see it open just before eleven o’clock and even more surprised when Daphanie had emerged apparently under her own power. Surprise, though, hadn’t kept her from doing her job.
Robin, the guard in question, had taken note of Daphanie’s solo state and her awkward, shambling gait and gotten curious. Although Asher might have preferred that she had simply stopped his woman and marched her right back into the house, at least the Lupine had made sure to follow her, keeping Daphanie in sight as she entered the small fenced park a few short yards from the door of Vircolac.
The men there had taken Robin by surprise. She had seen three of them surround Daphanie and immediately leaped forward, only to feel a sharp blow to the base of her skull and then see nothing but the inside of her eyelids for approximately ten to fifteen minutes. When she’d regained consciousness, Daphanie had been gone, but her scent had been fresh. Angry and ashamed, Robin had followed the trail on foot all the way downtown to the Flatiron district and Mary the Consoler, tucked into a side street between Madison Square Park to the north and Union Square to the south. She had taken one look at the situation in the churchyard and run back uptown at top Lupine speed. By the time she’d collapsed in the front hall of Vircolac, Samantha’s call had been made, Asher and the others had returned, and Robin—all of twenty years old and stupid with it—had been cowering on the floor at Graham’s feet with her paws tucked to her chest and her belly exposed.
Asher had resented the five minutes it took to calm her down enough to tell her story, about the poor decisions she had made in allowing Daphanie to leave the building and then allowing herself to be taken by surprise when she should have been providing a rescue. Eventually, though, she had spilled her guts and Rafe had nodded, turning to Asher with purpose.
“I know the place. Not the church, but the area, and it makes sense. Broadway was one of the few major roads that existed in Manhattan during the eighteenth century, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that an east-west road intersected with Broadway in that vicinity. It would have provided access from the farms to the populated area at the tip of the island. When Manon Henri was slain, that could very well have been a crossroads, and her killers would likely have considered it to be so far outside the city that a grave wouldn’t be found or disturbed.”
“They’ve taken Daphanie to Manon Henri’s grave,” Graham said, cursing and making Robin shake so badly
her teeth rattled like castanets.
“What better place to raise her than at the site where she was buried?” Rafe asked.
Five minutes later, they had organized an army of Lupines and set off for the church.
At least Robin’s description of the space had been accurate. Asher could almost have wished she had exaggerated the problems inherent to getting inside unseen.
The buildings on either side and the high brick walls in front of and behind the churchyard narrowed the possible means of access to strolling through the main gate—which was easily observed and even more easily defensible by one man with a sharp right hook—and scaling over the walls. The second option offered more secrecy, but it also left the invaders vulnerable to being picked off by bullets or spells fired by the voodoo priests inside.
The best way to go, he had finally acknowledged, would be to follow Rafe’s risky plan, an idea he liked only marginally better than no plan at all.
Rafe’s two-pronged assault relied on the combined forces of stealth and might to carry the day. The first ones into the yard would be he and Asher, but they wouldn’t go over the walls; Sosa and his men would be expecting that. Instead, they would come down from the sky, relying on the cover of the elm tree to block them from view and on the fire to weaken the men’s night vision. Asher would fly them up there and deposit himself and Rafe in the branches of the tree. Thankfully the thing was so huge and old, it would take their weight easily, and the breezy night air, the beat of the drums, and the crackle of the fire should combine to mask any sounds they would make.
Once inside the walls, Rafe would descend on the dark side of the tree, relying on his stealth, the uneven light, and the camouflage of his jaguar form to conceal him as he made his way to the rear wall of the church. Tucked into that rear corner was the small door that gave access directly from the sacristy to the graveyard. The Lupines would wait in the church and be ready to attack the minute Rafe reached the door and gave them the signal.
As Asher had grudgingly admitted, it was better than no plan at all, but only barely.
His own goal was Daphanie, pure and simple. Let Rafe worry about evening the odds against the angry witch doctors; all Asher wanted was to grab his woman and drag her to safety so he could beat the living hell out of her. Or kiss her bloody senseless. One or the other.
Taking a deep breath, Asher stepped away from the wall of the church, caught Rafe’s eye, and nodded. The Felix returned the gesture and motioned silently for the small pack of restless werewolves to head into the church. Glancing quickly up and down the deserted street, the man nevertheless took the precaution of stepping back into the dubious privacy of the church’s recessed entryway before he stretched, shifted, and blurred from the form of a tall, dark-haired man to that of a sleek, muscular jungle cat. By the time he padded back onto the sidewalk, Asher had done his own stretching and released his wings from their confinement along his spine.
Someone had asked him once how he folded his wings back into his skin so that it was almost impossible to detect them, even with his shirt off and his naked back exposed. Asher couldn’t explain it. He just knew that when he folded them tightly behind him, they sank down into his flesh like the mattress of a convertible sofa bed—not the most glamorous of images, but a fairly accurate one. His body had been designed to hold his wings, and he could feel them inside him even when he wasn’t using them.
Now, he would definitely be using them.
With a sharp jerk of his shoulders, Asher unfurled the full span of the feathered, white appendages and felt the thrill at the freedom of stretching muscles too seldom used. Wings were less of an exciting gift in the modern world than one might think; they tended to attract attention even when one was trying to be discreet, so Asher seldom used them for anything other than effect; and he’d found they had a perfectly satisfactory effect even when fully or three-quarters furled. But now he got to open them full and wide, and he saw a glint of envy in the Felix’s eyes.
If the other man only knew what it felt like to truly fly, that envy would grow to more than a glint. Right now, though, Asher had a mission, and his mission was Daphanie.
He reached for the jaguar, pausing for permission before hefting the enormous cat in his arms and swaying a little under his weight. As a Guardian, Asher had been gifted with the strength necessary to bench-press a city bus, which he discovered in that instant was good, because Rafe felt like he weighed as much as one.
Grunting, Asher shifted the Felix in his grip, earning himself a pointed glare. Satisfied that he had balanced his load as well as possible, the Guardian bent his knees, flapped his wings, and launched himself toward the sky.
* * *
Daphanie stared at the doll in Sosa’s hand, unable to look away. It was like staring at one of her own internal organs and seeing the blade of a madman’s knife pressed against it. Only instead of a human heart, the voodoo doll looked like a deformed hand—Sosa might have a talent for magic, but he clearly lacked any talent for art—and the weapon the bokor pressed against it was his own index finger.
“I made you join us here.” The man grinned, teeth flashing sharp and white in the firelight.
He ran the tip of his finger over the doll’s legs and Daphanie felt the touch on her own skin. Bile rose in her throat and she fought the urge to shift her feet. She refused to give him the satisfaction.
“I made you lie still and I made you walk, chère . Shall we see if I can make you beg?”
His eyes glinted and his fingers bent the doll’s legs in half. Daphanie fell to her knees with a sharp cry.
“Very nice.” The bokor laughed. “If I had more time, I would make you dance, but the hour grows late and Maman Manon grows restless. Can’t you feel her? I promise you, you soon will. She hungers, chère . It’s time pour le mangé loa !”
Sosa shouted to the other men, who took up their drums and launched into a driving rhythm. There was no hesitation, no buildup. The only one not ready for tonight’s ceremony was Daphanie, and about that, no one else would care.
The fire crackled, flames shifting in the night breeze. The same wind rustled the branches of the elm tree as Sosa grabbed her by her ponytail and dragged her toward the granite obelisk. Manipulating the doll, it seemed, was too much work. Sosa had grown impatient. He tucked the poppet into the pocket of his baggy trousers—the pocket on the side away from Daphanie, damn it—and relied on brute force rather than magic to compel her forward.
He began to chant even before he reached the pale monument. This, Daphanie now knew, was where Manon Henri’s body had been hidden. Her killers might have taken the secret of the location to their graves two hundred and some odd years ago, but since then someone had discovered the truth and marked the spot with a statue. The Xs on the base, Daphanie could see, were drawn in groups of three, like those on Marie Laveau’s tomb in New Orleans, in order to beg favors from the spirit of the priestess. Daphanie wondered hysterically how many of those requests had been in vain. She couldn’t imagine that the woman who wanted her body for her own corrupt spirit felt particularly moved to help anyone but herself.
If Daphanie had hoped to make a break for it while Sosa was occupied with his ritual, she had hoped in vain. Instead of the way she remembered in her dreams, Sosa had the others dance. He occupied himself with chanting as he gripped her hair in one hand and grabbed a handful of powdered ash in the other.
“Madame Manon, fille de Kalfou,” he called, his voice echoing in the small yard, “Ouvrey baye. Ouvrey baye pou muem, Kalfou. Maît d’baye, gran Carrefour. Frè d’Legba. Modi Legba. Vo la gran maît tu! Kalfou, Manon gaye. Gaye asteur! Mange! Bwè! Gaye!”
Sosa dragged her close to the fire and began to scatter the ashes on the ground where the grass had been burned away. At first Daphanie thought the motions were random, but as she watched she saw a pattern begin to emerge, then two. The first looked like a compass with arms that curled at the ordinal points instead of pointing straight. Stars decorated
each of the ordinal arms as well as the corners of the drawing, and a circle enclosed the intersection of the arms with two smaller circles within so that it resembled a round, blank face staring out into the night.
The second pattern also sprang up around two crossed lines like the most basic of compasses, but instead of two ordinal lines, a single long snake slithered from west to east across the northern arm. Touching the belly of the snake, the point of an inverted heart seemed to pierce the animal, just as the blade of a knife pierced the heart. Below the heart, a crescent moon hugged the southern arm. Again, stars twinkled in the corners.
The patterns should have looked pretty, or at least intriguing, but Daphanie could barely bring herself to look at them. Just the sight made her stomach heave, and when she looked at the second drawing, her head began to spin and her knees to weaken.
“Gaye, Maman Manon!” Sosa shouted, the excitement building in his voice. “Gaye e pran ce ko po ou! Gaye, Maman! Gaye! Retournen a mwen! Gaye! Viv!”
Daphanie could understand not a word of his hoarse, frantic shouts, but she didn’t need to in order to understand the way the ground beneath the churchyard began to tremble. She didn’t need to speak his language to feel the cold, thick blackness of that dreaded fog begin to seep into her consciousness; and she didn’t need to understand to know that he had called on the spirit of Manon Henri to rise from her grave and take Daphanie as her sacrificial lamb.
Too bad the lamb had no intention of going quietly.
In her head and her heart, Daphanie fought. She fought harder than she’d ever fought in her life, drawing inspiration from the fresh breeze that shook the branches of the elm tree over their heads. She pictured the breeze stirring inside her mind, pictured it gathering strength until it became a steady wind and began to blow the insidious, heavy fog away. She concentrated until the wind became a gale, but still the fog crept forward until it threatened to pull her under the dark, oily blanket.
Black Magic Woman Page 24
