Black Heart Loa

by Adrian Phoenix

  “Shit. Any way to be sure?” Kallie raked her fingers through her hair. Mud flaked to her thighs and onto the seat.

  “De ward hoodoos be looking into it now.”

  Kallie heard her aunt draw in a slow breath, a careful intake of air just before expelling something painful. She felt tension band across her shoulder muscles as she waited for the other shoe to drop.

  “Dere be a hurricane headed for de Gulf, a hurricane named Evelyn, and she’s nearing a category three. Dis storm be building with a speed and fury like I ain’t seen since Gaspard.”

  Fear ice-picked Kallie’s heart. Memory unspooled. Nine years ago. A month after the shooting. Divinity’s low and grief-heavy voice.

  “Yo’ Tante Lucia and Nonc Nicolas didn’t survive the blowdown, hun. Junalee and Jeanette be gone too. But Jackson, he survived, him. I’m going down to what remains of Morgan City and bringing yo’ cousin home. We be all he has left.”

  But the boy Divinity brings home isn’t Kallie’s cousin, at least not the wild, laughing, reckless cousin she’s always known. This boy is silent and still, an amber-eyed shadow who refuses to speak, and Kallie even wonders if he’s forgotten how, his speech shocked away by unthinkable loss, a loss he will never be able to give voice to.

  But he does, weeks later, standing outside in a thunderstorm, rain lashing his face, his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists.

  A wordless scream of savage and furious grief claws free of his throat and into the wind-lashed night and, for a moment, out-howls the storm.

  Kallie stands at the screen door and listens, her pulse pounding at her temples. She wants to join Jackson in the rain. Wants to shriek and yowl like a wild thing fighting its cage. But she’s pretty damned sure if she starts, she’ll never stop.

  Not wanting to end up in the Guinness Book of World Records for longest uninterrupted scream or in a padded room next to her mother’s, Kallie remains at the screen door. Listening. Her unvoiced rage piling up in her throat.

  “Kallie-girl? You still dere?”

  Divinity’s voice snapped Kallie back into the present. She swallowed hard. “The wards, the magic, do you think it’s because of me? Because of the loa?”

  “I ain’t sure, me,” Divinity said, speaking slow. “But I don’t t’ink so. Yo’ loa ain’t awake.”

  Cinnamon curls. Pale bones surrounding a heart. The thunder of hooves.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I wouldn’t be speaking to you if it were and I never woulda let you leave de house if I’d a had any doubts.”

  Kallie shivered, the quiet certainty in her aunt’s voice breathing ice down her spine. She thought of the unfinished poppet on her aunt’s worktable.

  “Dere ain’t nothing I wouldn’t do to help you, Kalindra Sophia. Teach you. Guide you. Lie to you. Bind you …”

  “Maybe you should finish it,” Kallie said.

  “Finish what?”

  “The poppet. Maybe you should finish it—in case.”

  “You let me worry about dat, girl. We gonna get dat loa out of you. We’ll figure it out. For now, just get over to de botanica. And, Kallie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Tell Belladonna to drive dat little rusty bucket o’ bolts o’ hers careful, y’hear?”

  “I hear.” Kallie beat her aunt to the punch and ended the call.

  Tucking her cell phone back into her pocket, she caught Belladonna’s concerned gaze in the rearview. “Divinity called your car a rusty bucket of bolts and hinted that you’re a reckless driver doomed to kill your passengers in a fiery crash.”

  “Aw, she says the sweetest things.”

  “She also said that the goddamned coastal wards might’ve fallen victim to the magic backfires,” Kallie updated, “and they might fall or become goddamned hurricane magnets. And—guess what?—a huge storm’s already on the way.”

  Belladonna’s eyes widened. “Hellfire.”

  “Exactly.”

  Kallie looked at Layne for a long, lingering moment, hoping once more that he would be okay and wondering if Belladonna’s potion had also doped up the ghosts inside him, since all she’d seen in his eyes during the brief moments he’d been conscious had been himself.

  With a sigh that she felt down to her toes, Kallie let her head fall back against the seat. She glanced out the side window, not really seeing the greenery blurring past. The soothing quiet Layne had gifted her with unraveled and fell away.

  She aimed the rest of her waning focus and energy at her cousin, a final and flaming arrow fired into an endless night as she struggled with the exhaustion trying to weigh down her eyelids.

  Goddammit, Jacks, where are you? Give me a sign. Please.

  But the road rolled past, silent and utterly lacking in burning bushes.

  Jacks …

  As Kallie lost her battle, the memory of Jackson’s furious scream into the storm that long-ago night—Here I am, you sonuvabitch, come get me!—morphed into a wolf’s soul-scraping howl.

  TWENTY

  FIRE AND DARKNESS

  Two voices—one male, one female—both low and easy, hooked into Jackson’s bonfire dreams and slowly reeled him up from the burning darkness like a catfish caught on a line.

  “Sounds like he’s finally done screaming, him.”

  “Done screaming or dead, maybe.”

  “Nah. Ain’t dead. He still sucking in air.”

  The speakers slid into Cajun as easily and naturally as an oar sluicing through water. A comforting murmur that folded around Jackson like his mama’s arms had when he was sick.

  A man whispered into Jackson’s ear, his breath a shock of ice. “Lâche pas. Lâche pas la patate. Ça va comme ça devrait. Lâche pas. We’re almost dere.”

  Don’t give up. Hang in there. Things are going as they should.

  Jackson drifted on a fevered tide, a distant fire licking at his even more distant body with tongues of orange flame. A boat rocked underneath him, his shoulder blades pressing into wood planks. He heard the low drone of a small outboard engine, felt its vibration thrumming deep into his bones.

  Somewhere nearby, maybe right beside him, Jackson heard a steady and comforting panting, and knew he should be able to name her, his Siberian husky with her thick coat of black, white, and gray, her triangular ears and bicolored eyes, but her name pranced away from him. He decided to wait for it to prance on back.

  A medley of odors swirled around him, familiar and intimate—lily pads floating on still, green water, the cool silver scent of fish beneath the surface, pungent diesel from the humming engine, fresh sweat slicking bare skin, the musky aroma of wet dog fur, rank mud, and the thick, coppery reek of blood.

  “He ain’t gonna make it,” the woman said, her voice a low swell of silvery sea tones. A name bobbed to the surface of Jackson’s dreaming mind—Jubilee. “He’s burning up something fierce.”

  Jackson wanted to disagree, but couldn’t remember how. The fire was still raging, sure, but he’d risen high above it like a hot-air balloon, fueled but untouched by the flames beneath him.

  “Tais-toi, you. You ain’t helping. And he’s damned well gonna make it.”

  “Bet you twenty he don’t,” Jubilee challenged.

  “Dat’s cold, girl. But you on.”

  Jackson hot-air balloon drifted away from the bet-laying conversation, thinking he wouldn’t mind getting in on a little of the action, but then the desire dropped away like a sandbag cut from its rope.

  Daddy?

  A wet nose nudged Jackson’s hand, so cold, he gasped. Her name made its prancing return across the field of his mind. Cielo. He tried to pet her, but couldn’t figure out how to lift his hand.

  Daddy?

  Jackson shivered convulsively as Cielo licked his face, her strangely cold tongue smearing stickiness and the smell of briny fish across his cheek. Seemed someone had been feeding her sardines.

  Good girl, you. Which earned him another fish-stinky swipe of the tongue.

  H
e remembered something about a potion, remembered rough hands seizing his hair and yanking his head back and pouring a dark, oily liquid tasting of decay and bitter oranges down his throat.

  “Smell that?” a female voice asks. “Sulfur and piss and anise? Black juju.”

  Jackson felt himself descend with each remembering, felt the bonfire heat below, drawing his skin tight as he sank.

  He remembered the schunk of shovels into the ground. Remembered the weight of the earth squeezing the air from his lungs.

  Dead man.

  Skin-searing heat roared against Jackson as consciousness did him a major disservice and returned. He forced his eyes open and caught a glimpse of a cloud-trailing gray sky through the canopy of Spanish-moss-bearded tree branches arching above him and tracing cool shadows across his fevered face.

  He was in a boat, maybe a pirogue.

  Cielo’s head lowered over him, her ears tilted forward, her gaze intent and full of concern. Jackson tried to speak to her, to reassure her, but it hurt even to swallow; his throat was scraped raw and burning with thirst. He tasted the old-penny tang of blood on his tongue, licked it from his lips.

  “Ça va, boy?” a man asked, and Jackson recognized the voice that had whispered Lâche pas in his ear. But he couldn’t see past Cielo, lacked the strength to lever himself up.

  “Water,” he croaked, throat aching. “D’eau.”

  “Didn’t bring none with us,” the man said, regret thick in his voice. “But we’ll be at Le Nique soon. You can drink all you want dere, you.”

  Le Nique—the den.

  Jackson knew that name, but couldn’t quite grasp the memory of when or how; it scampered away from him, coy and slippery, playing hard to get.

  Then, without warning or preamble, it started again.

  The pain.

  His eyes snapped shut and his body bowed.

  Burning worms writhed underneath Jackson’s skin, searing his muscles, ashing the blood in his veins, and melting tunnels through his fevered brain. Charring his thoughts. The edges of reality scorched black and wisping away. The past whispered to him in words of fire.

  A monster’s on the way. Tell your mama to head north, cher.

  Love ya back, Jacks. See you Sunday and keep safe.

  Careful, asshole! He’s supposed to bleed out slow.

  Might be too late for this little chien de maison …

  Wanna know a secret? But you gotta promise never to tell.

  Jackson’s worm-riddled thoughts fell apart, curled together again, mismatched and blind. The past and his own mind as incomprehensible as hieroglyphics etched into a desert-dry tomb wall.

  Jackson’s body twisted again and again, jackknifing, torquing brutally. He felt like a Ken doll bent backward in a monstrous child’s hand. Muscles tore. Ligaments popped. Bones cracked. Blood filled his mouth, hot and metallic.

  A long and mournful whoo lifted into the air.

  “Get dat dog back!”

  Someone was screaming, a barely audible and agonized cry wrenched from a hoarse throat. A dispassionate and unriddled part of Jackson’s mind politely informed him that he was the person screaming.

  “Quick, before he tips us all over.”

  Icy hands touched Jackson’s face, others—winter-frosted and hard—held his shoulders, his legs. His blazing body strained against their hands, then suddenly folded up and fell back like a fire-gutted log crumbling onto the grate in a shower of sparks.

  Jackson found himself floating again in a heated dream, seeking the darkness.

  “Lâche pas, lâche pas.” Soft and soothing like a lullaby. “Hold on. Lâche pas, you.”

  “Told you, René,” the silvery-toned voice said. The freezing grip on his legs tightened. “He ain’t gonna make it. It’s come too late for him. We should just give him to the bayou and the gators. Only merciful thing to do.”

  “He’s one of ours, Jubilee. We can’t just give up on him. We found him for a reason.”

  “Dammit, he’s been poisoned with bad juju. Hexed. Did you forget that we dug him up from the ground? We should end his misery before he finishes becoming whatever he was spelled to be.”

  Careful, asshole! He’s supposed to bleed out slow.

  Smell that? Sulfur and piss and anise? Black juju.

  Caught in eddying currents of pain, Jackson thought the woman with the sea’s restless voice had a valid point about ending his misery and giving him to the gators and the bayou, even though he had a feeling he’d normally protest a comment like that. With everything he had.

  Problem was, he felt gutted and hollowed and scraped dry. Nothing was left.

  “Jubilee’s right,” the other male voice said. “What if he’s going zombie right now?” His voice dropped. “Or worse.”

  “C’est ça couillon.” Disgust deepened René’s voice. “Fools. Both o’ you. Boy’s poisoned and Change-sick and dat’s all.”

  “And that’s more than enough to kill him,” Jubilee said quietly.

  Silence descended over the boat, except for Cielo’s panting, the rush of water past the boat’s prow, and the rapid pounding of Jackson’s heart. Pain tiptoed away, a monster seeking a hiding place to pop out from later. Gotcha!

  Jackson heard the engine cut off, its vibration vanishing from his cindered and broken bones, then he felt a small bump as the boat butted up against a dock or maybe the shore. The boat rocked as people stood and started moving.

  His thoughts skimmed away into a deep twilight, still seeking the cool dark. He became aware of cold hands latching around him, lifting him up into air cooled by the rain and savory with the smells of mint and rosemary and frying bacon. Felt himself tossed over a shoulder as easily as a duffel bag.

  Feet thumped up a set of stairs and across a wood porch. Jackson heard the twang of a screen door being pushed open. Heard the click of claws against wood, the jingle of a chain collar.

  Daddy. Cielo’s nose iced Jackson’s face.

  Still here, he thought, then made a liar of himself when the darkness he’d been seeking finally rose up, a leviathan from an ice-sheeted abyss, and swallowed him.

  TWENTY-ONE

  NOMAD BONDS

  McKenna Blue’s stomach dropped when she saw the matte black shorty-style helmet turtled in the grass beside a badly listing and fractured mailbox.

  Bugger all. I was bloody right.

  And on one of the rare occasions when she didn’t want to be.

  McKenna guided her Triumph Speedmaster to a stop on the dirt road’s edge and dropped the bike down onto its kickstand. Killing the engine, she swung off, then pelted over to the helmet and picked it up. Her heart drummed so loudly in her chest, she barely heard Maverick and Jude pull in behind her on their bikes—engines rumbling, tires crunching over gravel.

  McKenna stared at the helmet in her now numb hands, her worst fears realized as she took in the crack splitting along one side.

  Layne.

  “Shite,” she whispered.

  About an hour after her last terse conversation with Layne, she’d felt a profound uneasiness, a deep, intuitive knowing binding McKenna to her ex-husband. Divorced they might be, but some ties could never be severed.

  Layne is in trouble. Nocht but darkness and disaster surrounds him. And I’d bet my right tit that sodding swamp witch Kallie Rivière is the reason.

  McKenna always heeded her intuition, especially when it concerned Layne.

  When she hadn’t been able to reach him by phone, McKenna had gone to Augustine’s Bondalicious assistant, Felicity Fields, and had learned that Layne had phoned in a report for Augustine.

  “Chacahoula? To banish a fooking ghost?”

  Felicity tilts her head, her shining curtain of strawberry blonde hair sweeping against her face. “Both Lord Augustine and Mr. Valin believed it best not to leave any loose ends, Ms. Blue. And besides, wasn’t it you who invoked Daoine shena liri in the first place? I believe Mr. Valin is simply doing as that pledge requires.”

  Clan
law of the People. A nomad blood pledge. A promise to avenge a death, no matter how long it took, or how far, or how many needed to be killed. And aye, she was the one who invoked it following Gage’s death.

  “But as for banishing it,” Felicity continues, “it seems doubtful at the moment. Magic seems to have short-circuited. Perhaps Mr. Valin ran afoul of some spell.”

  “Give me the address in Chacahoula,” McKenna growls.

  Address tucked into the hip pocket of her jeans, McKenna had then gone to the Fox clan chieftain, Frost Valin—Layne’s mother.

  “I’m sending a pair of riders with you as an honor escort and in case you run into trouble,” Frost says, her green eyes—as always—cool and steady. “I know Gage’s family will want their son’s best friend and the clan shuvani in attendance at his wake, so I shouldn’t have any problem getting them to postpone it until you return.”

  And McKenna notes that there is no doubt in Frost’s voice that they will return. The chieftain’s already lost one child to unthinkable violence. She refuses to lose her sole remaining child.

  “I’ll keep ye posted,” McKenna promises, throat tight. Unspoken: Neither of us will lose him.

  “That Layne’s helmet?” Jude asked, her voice tight with concern. She unstrapped her own helmet, ash-blonde locks tumbling free.

  Maverick stepped up beside Jude in an earthy swirl of wet leather and patchouli, his red hair rolled into a wind- and helmet-frayed topknot. Rain goggles hid the clan foxes inked beneath their right eyes.

  “Aye.” McKenna scrutinized the ground around the busted mailbox post and where the helmet had been lying. “Look for anything tha’ might tell us where he is.”

  “You got it, shuvani,” Maverick replied.

  Leather creaked as Jude and Maverick moved away and started searching the area, walking carefully through the wet grass to avoid stepping on anything that might help them figure out what had happened to their clan brother.

  McKenna crouched and touched her fingers to the splintered post—impact damage. Question was, had Layne walked away on his own or had he been rushed to the nearest hospital, an ambulance summoned by concerned witnesses to the accident?