Black Heart Loa

by Adrian Phoenix

QUEEN OF SPADES

  Augustine felt the nomad’s consciousness switch off, even through his protective bubble of static. Neurons pulsed and flashed in the darkness, a ferocious lightning storm of pain—which he, fortunately, couldn’t feel. But if he abandoned his bubble and climbed into the driver’s seat, he would, and he might very well black out, just as Valin had.

  Of course, attempting to replace Valin at the controls without his cooperation and without their precise little avoidance dance could lead to some very ugly consequences—the meshing and/or unthreading of their personalities.

  The images he’d caught from Valin—a rain-blurred truck, an anxious-looking Siberian husky, the sliding Harley, lambent-eyed wolves—told Augustine that they’d been in an accident. And, given the dubious presence of the animals in Valin’s vision, that the nomad had thumped his thick skull dangerously hard.

  Several questions pinged through Augustine’s mind in rapid succession: How serious were Valin’s injuries? Had the driver of the truck stopped to render assistance? And if he/she hadn’t, how could help be summoned? Only one way to find out on all accounts—he would have to leave Valin’s body and assess the situation.

  Augustine hesitated, a conversation nearly twenty-four hours old swirling through his mind, a conversation between a just-murdered man and an unoccupied (and determined to stay that way) Vessel.

  Permission isn’t required, and Vessels aren’t supposed to be capable of resisting. At least, that’s always been my understanding.

  Most can’t. But I’ve learned how, and you ain’t getting in.

  I believe you’re bluffing. You’re a Vessel for a reason, Valin. You are a natural and needed resource. And, since I don’t believe in coincidences, your arrival here when you were needed most shouldn’t be wasted.

  But in the end, a gun strategically placed against the head of Valin’s fierce pixie of an ex-wife had produced the result that Augustine’s calm, rational arguments hadn’t—Valin had stopped resisting.

  While it was a shame the gun had been necessary, Augustine had no regrets. The nomad hadn’t been harmed and their arrangement was only temporary.

  However, given what he now understood about the nomad’s strength and force of will, Augustine suspected that Valin hadn’t been bluffing when he’d claimed that he’d learned how to keep from getting shanghaied by desperate ghosts.

  So what if Valin awoke while he was outside of his body and refused to let him back in? What then?

  Augustine thinned his static bubble, then erased it entirely. A risk he’d simply have to take. Valin’s injuries could be critical. He could even be dying. Of course, if that was the case, he didn’t really know what he could do to help. But he had to try.

  Which presented another very important question: How does one leave a body? Wish upon a star? Snap one’s fingers three times? Click one’s heels?

  Ghosting into the nomad had been like pulling on a crisp new shirt, a cool and irresistible glide into silken flesh and rippling muscle. Valin’s presence had radiated a magnetic, magical quality, like a human ley line, like a curved Hey, sailor finger, and even if Augustine had decided to cross over after his unexpected murder, he would’ve been quite helpless against the nomad’s allure.

  Would that magnetic lure make it difficult to free himself from Valin’s unconscious body? Only one way to find out.

  Drawing in a breath—a figurative one, anyway, a mental girding of the (also figurative) loins—Augustine visualized sieving out of Layne Valin’s body, imagined streaming out of his pores, mouth, and nostrils, in countless curls of pale mist.

  Or smoke, he amended, thinking of his much-missed cigarettes and yearning for the taste of vanilla-spiced dark tobacco.

  Right. Here we go, then.

  Augustine snapped his fingers three times, then tossed in “Olly, olly, oxen free” just for good measure.

  A Velcro ripping sound, then Augustine felt himself peeling away from the nomad’s familiar and comfortable flesh. He blinked. He was out and standing in a mudpuddled dirt road in a pouring rain he couldn’t feel as anything more than a generalized cold sensation.

  Well, that was bloody easy.

  Had it been the visualization, the finger snaps, or the childhood chant? All three? A puzzle to ponder another time, he reminded himself. Otherwise you and Valin both might be without bodies and utterly homeless.

  Augustine looked down. Valin lay crumpled on his left side, his long, thick dreads snaking across the rain-soaked ground like honey-colored vines. His body rested beneath a rain-dripping palmetto bush beside a canted and dented mailbox.

  Augustine noted that a crack split the back side of the nomad’s matte black shorty-style helmet and wondered if he’d smacked his head against the mailbox’s wooden post.

  Dammit, Valin. Not good.

  Kneeling, Augustine examined the nomad closer. Breathing. Small trickle of blood from his mouth and one nostril. None from his ears—good sign, that.

  He tried to remove Valin’s rain-beaded goggles so he could lift one eyelid to take a peek at the pupil, but even though his fingers gripped the protective gear, nothing happened. They didn’t move. At all.

  Hmmm. Apparently I lack what it takes to be a poltergeist. A shame. Hurling things and moving objects might’ve come in handy.

  Abandoning the pupil-gazing attempt as lost, Augustine slid his hands along the nomad’s limbs, feeling for broken bones, but succeeding only in sinking elbow-deep into the handsome and tattooed Valin’s oh-so-comfy flesh as his ghostly body responded to the nomad’s magical pull.

  I’ll bet if Valin weren’t a Vessel, I could feel him up without any bother.

  His ghostly body responded in another way entirely at the memory of his/Valin’s heated hands exploring the nomad’s freshly possessed body.

  Mmm. Dear God, yes. But no. No. Not now.

  With a sigh of frustration, Augustine gave up his search for injuries and patted Valin down, fingers seeking his cell phone. It wasn’t tucked into a pocket of the nomad’s storm-drenched jeans. Nor in his leather jacket.

  Blast.

  Rising to his feet, Augustine automatically brushed at the knees of his gray trousers and scanned the wet grass, palmetto bushes, and scrub for any sign of the phone, not sure what he planned to do with it even if he located it. If he couldn’t lift an unconscious man’s eyelid, odds were against his being able to use a cell phone.

  But one never knew until one tried.

  A searing flash of lightning painted the sky blue-white and Augustine froze. He’d felt that. A prickling, pins-and-needles sensation surged through his body—essence, spirit, whatever you wished to call it—an energizing and electric energy.

  Thunder grumbled and boomed. Augustine looked up, excitement curling through him. Hadn’t he read something once about how ghosts drained energy from objects and the living in order to communicate or manifest?

  Maybe if he drank in enough energy from the storm, he would be able to pick up and use Valin’s cell phone. Provided he found it, that was.

  Augustine studied the angle of Valin’s body against the post and visualized possible trajectories for items bounced free from his pockets by the force of impact. His gaze traveled beyond the fractured, listing mailbox.

  A rutted dirt driveway wound past oaks and elms to a house with a wraparound porch shaded by palm trees. The uncurtained windows looked like dark, empty eyes, and seen through the rain, the house looked weathered, desolate.

  Augustine frowned. The place seemed familiar even though he was positive he’d never seen it before. He mentally thumbed through his recall, seeking the reason for the unsettling familiarity—had he seen a photo? Read/heard a description?

  Then Kallie Rivière’s voice, low and grim, sounded through his memory.

  There’s another woman involved as well.

  Another? Do you know who?

  No. But I have some ideas I need to research online.

  A deep unease curled along Augustine’s spine. I
t seemed Valin had found the home of Doctor Heron and his long-dead bride, Babette St. Cyr, after all.

  So who had been driving the truck that had blasted out of the driveway as though fueled by an illicit tank of nitrous oxide—or chased by a ghost? And why hadn’t they stopped after Valin bit the road?

  More important, where was Babette St. Cyr?

  Energy prickled through Augustine as lightning flared overhead in a strobing series of strikes, temporarily bleaching the ground; and glinting in the rain beside a clump of yellow dandelions, he spotted what looked like a cell phone.

  A crash of heart-stopping thunder rolled for several long seconds across the storm-bruised sky.

  Glancing at Valin’s motionless form, Augustine sent a thought to his unconscious mind.

  When Augustine returned his attention to the driveway, his figurative heart kicked against his ribs. A dark-haired woman wearing a black and flowing gown was bending over the little clump of dandelions. When the late Mrs. St. Cyr straightened, she held the cell phone in her hand, a smile glacier-cold on her lips. Straightened black hair swept to her shoulders and framed a toffee-brown face. Her eyes were nearly iridescent with captured storm-energy.

  “Finders keepers, dead man,” she said.

  “Good morning, Mrs. St. Cyr,” Augustine said, casually tucking one hand into his trouser pocket. He nodded at the cell phone. “If you’re hoping to call your husband to check in on the progress of your various murderous schemes, I’m afraid I have sad news for you. Jean-Julien is dead.”

  Babette stared at him, her smile dying upon her lips. “When?”

  “Just a few hours ago. He received what he was so busy dishing out, I might add.”

  “That man’s been a corpse in my heart for over two decades now. Ever since he took up with that harlot, that witch, Gabrielle. I quit mourning him a long time ago.”

  “Your daughter is dead also,” Augustine said quietly.

  Grief crackled like frost across Babette’s face and she closed her luminous eyes. She touched her fingers to her breast, above her heart. “I felt my baby cross over,” she whispered. “Jean-Julien’s fault. He couldn’t be a man and take care of things on his own. No. He used Rosette to do his dirty work at the hotel. And he cost my baby—my only child—her life.”

  Augustine shook his head, unmoved. “I believe your daughter’s death is as much your fault as your husband’s—perhaps even more so.”

  “How dare you? I had nothing to do with Rosette’s death, dead man.”

  “Oh, I disagree, Mrs. St. Cyr.” Drawing upon the conversation he’d “heard” between Layne and Kallie last night—eavesdropped is such an ugly word—Augustine took a gamble.

  “You poisoned your husband’s clients after you learned of his affair, didn’t you? Then you allowed him to take the fall and be sent to prison, knowing he was innocent of the crimes he was charged with. You let him think Gabrielle had betrayed him. Let your daughter believe the same, poisoning her heart and soul with your lies. Even on your deathbed.”

  Fury rippled like oil across Babette’s face. “Of all the things Jean-Julien was, he was never innocent,” she spat. “Who are you, dead man, to speak to me this way?”

  “I’m a man your daughter murdered by mistake,” Augustine replied.

  “By mistake?” Babette glided forward, the hem of her black dress a spill of ink trailing the muddy road. Her body flowed and undulated, her shape suddenly fluid.

  Augustine felt a moment of uncertainty. Babette St. Cyr had been dead for ten years, he for less than twenty-four hours. Ten years removed from life and humanity. He had no idea what she was capable of.

  She halted in front of Augustine. A lightless corona danced and flickered like black flame around her body, crowned her lovely head. “How did my Rosie kill you by mistake?” Her hand lifted for his face, tiny sparks of incandescent energy arcing between her fingertips.

  Augustine took a controlled and, hopefully, nonchalant step backward, placing himself out of touching range. “I got between Rosette and the woman she intended to shoot.”

  Babette frowned. “Shoot? Rosette didn’t have a gun—only spells and tricks that Jean-Julien taught her.”

  “Trust me,” Augustine said dryly, “she found a gun when her hex failed. Oh. Wait. It didn’t fail. She killed an innocent with her hex as …” His words trailed off when Babette blinked away.

  Where did she—His heart leapt into his throat. Valin.

  Whirling around, Augustine saw Babette standing beside the splintered mailbox post and Valin’s body. Wonder thawed the ice from her expression. Energy danced from her fingertips in electric Frankenstein flickers as she reached a hand toward the nomad.

  “He feels like sanctuary, like an invitation,” she breathed. “Like a hearth-warmed home after a long wandering in dark and icy woods.” Turning her head, she lifted her gleaming gaze to Augustine. “He your Vessel?”

  Not wishing to startle Babette into action—by sliding into the nomad’s body, for instance—Augustine suppressed his intense desire to sprint, and forced himself to amble over to Valin’s crumpled form.

  “Yes. But he’s injured and unconscious. An accident with the truck that barreled out of your driveway.”

  Babette snorted in irritation, then waved a hand. “Foolish creatures and a doomed boy, but I expected more from the dog.”

  Augustine blinked. Maybe Valin truly had seen a Siberian husky and a pair of wolves in the back of the speeding hit-and-run truck. “It was my hope to use the cell phone to summon help for him,” he said.

  “The dog?”

  “Yes, absolutely, the dog and I chat on a regular basis.” Augustine flipped his hair out of his eyes with a flick of his fingers. “No. The nomad bleeding on the ground.”

  “Won’t do you no good. You don’t have enough juice in you to use this phone, dead man,” she said, tossing it into the palmetto bush.

  “Name’s Lord Augustine, not dead man. Although it does have a certain cachet.”

  Babette snorted. “How does Lord Dead Man suit you?”

  “I could do far worse, Lady Murderess.”

  “Think you’re smart, think you’re clever,” Babette murmured, returning her gaze to the nomad. “Think you’re all manner of fine things, don’t you, dead man?”

  “I try not to blow my own horn.”

  Lightning licked across the sky, a jagged white snake’s tongue. Augustine felt his body suck up the residual energy charging the air and crackling like static electricity along his body, but it wasn’t enough. Not yet.

  Her eyes brimming with radiant storm light, Babette slid a coquettish look Augustine’s way as she bent over the nomad once more and said, “Finders keepers.” She lowered her hand to Valin’s face.

  Knowing that a Vessel could carry only one ghost at a time, Augustine hurled himself at Valin.

  TEN

  FIXED BUT GOOD

  “Hellfire!”

  Belladonna slammed on the brakes and Kallie grabbed the back of Kerry’s seat to brace herself, her other hand locking around the shotgun. The Dodge Dart stuttered to a halt, gravel scrunching beneath its tires and pinging against its undercarriage.

  “Jesus. Is that a motorcycle?” Kerry asked, leaning forward and trying to peer past the rain and the furiously tocking windshield wipers.

  Unease snaked along Kallie’s spine. The black-and-chrome object lying in the road like a kissing-game bottle that had been spun, then abandoned, was a motorcycle. And it looked like Layne’s Harley.

  “Sure is,” Belladonna affirmed.

  And crumpled at the road’s edge beside a damaged mailbox post, a helmeted and leather-jacketed figure. “Layne,” Kallie whispered.

  “Shit,” Belladonna breathed.

  Fumbling with her seat belt, Kallie pushed at the back of Belladonna’s seat. “Let me out.” But her best friend was already swinging the door open and ducking into the rain.

  Kallie sh
oved the driver’s seat against the steering wheel, then climbed from the car, shotgun in hand. Sucking in a breath of air thick with the smell of wet greenery and gravel, she ran to the side of the road and the man lying so still at its edge, the rain soaking her to the skin in the brief time it took her to reach him.

  With a wordless glance at Belladonna, Kallie handed the mambo-in-training the rain-slicked shotgun, then dropped to her knees beside Layne. She touched her fingers to his throat, seeking his pulse.

  His heart beat, slow and steady, beneath her fingertips.

  Kallie sighed, relief draining the tension from her body like a tossed-back shot of premium whiskey. What the hell was Layne doing in Chacahoula anyway? When he’d left her place, he’d been headed for New Orleans and Gage’s cremation. Given the driveway he’d ended up in—the same one Kerry had directed her and Belladonna to—a dark suspicion simmered at the back of her mind.

  I told him Doctor Heron’s dead wife was involved in the attack that killed Gage by mistake. What do you wanna bet he decided to go looking for her? And what do you wanna bet it’s no coincidence that we ended up at the same place?

  “He still breathing?” Belladonna asked, crouching down beside her. Glimmers of rain jeweled her blue and black curls.

  Kallie nodded. “So far.”

  Belladonna tsked. “Saving his sexy nomad ass is starting to become a habit, Shug. Not that I object,” she amended, eyeing his unconscious length. “Not at all. But this just underscores the point I was making the other night.”

  “Which point was that?” Kallie unstrapped Layne’s cracked helmet and removed it with slow, easy care, trying not to aggravate any injuries he might have. She hoped the helmet had spared him from anything more serious than a temporary loss of consciousness.

  “Oh, you know, the one about how helpless men as a species are,” Belladonna replied. “Falling into pits. Knocking their thick skulls against, from, on, or off all manner of hard-ass things. Hurling themselves out of objects moving at high rates of speed and/or altitudes. Poking sticks at things they shouldn’t.” Bottles clinked as she searched through her bag. She tsked. “Without us …”