Black Heart Loa

by Adrian Phoenix

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  BOUND TO ONE FORM

  Slipping an arm behind the half blood’s neck—no, not just a half blood, this was Jackson, her long-lost nephew—Angélique lifted his head. Heat radiated from his body in intense waves, a dangerous, Change-wrought heat that she knew would eventually result in either transformation or death.

  But with First Change coming so late, the odds favored death.

  “Fight,” Angélique wished her nephew, then she repeated the words René had whispered earlier, “Lâche pas.”

  She lifted the uncorked blue glass bottle containing the pain potion from the table’s edge. The bitter scent of vervain prickled against her nostrils as she tipped the bottle against Jackson’s lips. “Here, drink,” she coaxed. “C’mon, Jackson.”

  But, lost to fever dreams and pain, eyes closed, he turned his face away from the bottle’s cool touch and the temporary relief it would give him.

  “Hold on, hun.” Merlin cupped Jackson’s burning face between his large hands and gently centered it again. Then he pushed his thumb against the young man’s chin to open his mouth. “I’d just upend the bottle if I was you,” he said.

  Liking her husband’s advice, Angélique did just that. Tilting the bottle, she carefully poured the honey-sweetened liquid down her nephew’s throat.

  Jackson coughed, then swallowed convulsively, taking the potion. Angélique lowered his head back down onto the table, then eased her arm free as her husband cleaned dribbled potion from Jackson’s face with a practiced swipe of his washrag.

  Having managed to wrestle off Jackson’s wet and muddy jeans—leaving him in navy blue boxer-briefs—Merlin resumed cleaning the dozens of cuts sliced into her nephew’s limbs and torso, applying an antiseptic tincture containing cinnamon bark, clove oil, sweet clover, and myrrh, the pungent spicy-sweet odor filling the room.

  “What the hell is taking René so long?”

  “My guess would be that Jan and Ambrose went hunting or Outside to restock supplies, and he’s waiting for them to get back,” Angélique replied with a shrug. “They’ll get here when they get here.”

  “It’s a shame that the mind-to-mind thing y’all have doesn’t work long-distance.”

  “A damned shame,” Angélique agreed. She studied Jackson’s still face, the bright roses of fever blooming on his cheeks, the muscles twitching and rippling beneath his skin. A heaviness settled like ash in her heart as she remembered the honey-eyed little boy so excited about his new duties as a big brother.

  Why did Lucia bind her son to only one form? And why did that binding fail now ?

  “Why don’t you let me finish up here while you go check on the twins and Moss?” Angélique asked.

  Merlin never even looked up from his work. “You go, woman. Ain’t nothing here I can’t handle.”

  Feeling uneasy, Angélique shook her head. “You’re wrong,” she said softly. “You’ve never dealt with a First Change before, let alone a half blood’s First Change, and one so late to boot. You’ve got no idea how careful you need to be.”

  Merlin looked at her then, indignation in his bicolored brown and blue eyes. “I’m always careful with my patients. And you know that I’ve treated loups-garous before, so—”

  Angélique leaned across the examination table and pressed her fingers against her husband’s lips, effectively closing them. “Of him, cher. You need to be careful of him so that he doesn’t hurt you.”

  Merlin’s gaze dropped to the unconscious young man lying between them, then returned to Angélique, comprehension lighting his eyes. His warm lips moved against her fingers. “Oh.”

  Angélique felt a smile quirk up one corner of her mouth. “Yup. Oh.” Sliding her fingers away from her husband’s lips, she turned her palm up and nodded at the washrag he held. “Let me do this, and you tend to the munchkins, you. Make sure that Moss has survived.”

  Merlin snorted. “Trust me, Moss is egging them on. He’s nothing but an overgrown cub, that one.”

  “For true.” Angélique inclined her head at her waiting palm. Arched an eyebrow.

  With a sigh, Merlin shook his head, a few of the beads at the ends of his short, thick braids clicking together with the movement, then reluctantly piled the washcloth in her hand. “You be careful too, hear?”

  “I will,” she promised him.

  With a wink, Merlin turned and walked out of the room. As he headed into the kitchen, Angélique heard him calling, “Where’s my babies? Where’s my chubby little road riders? I don’t see them. Did you gobble them up with the scrambled eggs, Moss?”

  “Yup,” Moss replied cheerfully. “And they was tasty, them.”

  “Here, Papa, here!” Ember and Chance shrieked happily in unison. “Papa!”

  Smiling, Angélique bent to her task. By the time she’d finished cleaning Jackson’s many wounds, a deep anger burned in her gut. Whoever had done this to him had intended, had planned, for him to suffer, long and slow and hard, his blood seeping into the earth.

  And that blood loss worried her. Jackson would need every ounce of strength if he was to have any chance of surviving what she soon would no longer be able to stop with potions and drugs.

  With the twins cleaned up and herded, giggling and shouting, into the playroom where Moss was keeping them company, Merlin strode into the room, a bowl of breakfast leftovers in one hand, a bowl of water in the other, and placed them in front of the watchful Siberian husky who lay at the examination table’s head, her muzzle resting on her paws. Her nose twitched as she breathed in the tasty odors.

  “Eat up,” Merlin encouraged. “I have a feeling you’ve earned this and more.”

  The dog vaulted to her feet, but it wasn’t the food that held her attention. A low warning growl rumbled from her throat—an unnecessary warning, since Angélique had heard too.

  René and the Alphas had finally arrived.

  “They’re here,” she told Merlin. Trusting her keen senses, he just nodded.

  “Sit, girl,” Merlin said, snapping his fingers at the Siberian husky. “These are folks we’re expecting.”

  The growling stopped, but the dog remained on alert. Ears pricked forward.

  “Definitely got a mind of her own,” Merlin said, voice amused.

  “Hmm. So do you. Seems like I was right about that Siberian husky bloodline.”

  “Hush, woman.”

  Angélique snorted. “Like that’s ever going to happen.”

  Hearing the door creak open in the living room, then snick shut again, Angélique counted three sets of quiet footsteps as René and the Alphas—her sister and brother-in-law—crossed to the back room in urgent strides.

  “You sure it’s him, traiteur?” Ambrose Bonaparte asked as he entered the room, his whiskey-smooth voice pitched low and tight.

  “After all this time?” January added, following on his heels, and glancing at her sister with vivid jade-green eyes. Her glossy, snow-white hair had been twisted into a French plait that hung with precision between her shoulder blades.

  “Positive,” Angélique replied. “Take a look yourself.” She stepped back from the table.

  Ambrose stepped up beside Jackson in one long-legged stride, his six-foot frame dressed in rain-spattered black jeans and a faded blue workshirt whose rolled-up sleeves revealed sun-browned and muscle-corded arms. His intent amber eyes swept his nephew from head to foot. Studied the cuts. Lingered on the tattoo inked into his arm.

  “Mon Dieu,” Ambrose breathed, raking a hand through his shoulder-length chestnut waves. “It is him.” Old grief shadowed his face. “He looks so much like Nicolas …”

  “He was conscious for a little bit,” Angélique said. “But he didn’t know me.”

  “How could he?” January asked. “He was little more than a toddler the last time Nicolas brought him here.” She joined Ambrose at the table. Their mingled scents—juniper, ripe apples, and damp cotton—washed over Angélique.

  René lingered in the doorway, one ha
nd touching the threshold, as if uncertain whether he should stay or not. Or, Angélique reflected, if he wanted to. She felt a twinge of understanding and sympathy. He knows what’s coming.

  “Moss is in the playroom with the twins,” she said. “He might need a hand.”

  A smile brushed René’s lips, but he shook his head, refusing the out she offered him, pretty much as Angélique had figured he would. He’d found Jackson and felt responsible for him.

  Decision made, René leaned his shoulder against the threshold and folded his arms over his hard-muscled chest.

  A muscle flexed in Ambrose’s jaw. “René told me where and how Jackson was found. Do you know what was done to him?”

  “It looks like someone went to a lot of trouble to make him a true zombie,” Merlin replied. “Ain’t exactly sure why the trick failed, but we’re gonna fix him with an uncrossing to make sure no trace of the hex remains.”

  “Before you send him to the cage,” Angélique added quietly, “he needs all the help he can get.”

  Ambrose lifted his eyes to hers, looked at her from beneath his dark lashes. His nostrils flared. “That’s wise,” he said. “But I suggest you hurry. Your potions ain’t gonna hold him long. See how he’s twitching? He reeks of impending Change.”

  Angélique didn’t need to look. She knew. Ambrose was right—time was running out and they needed to get Jackson over to the solid stone cottage they called the cage and shackle him in steel chains before it was too late.

  Turning to her husband, Angélique instructed him to prepare an uncrossing bath while she readied her spell. Merlin nodded, then silently went to his worktable and set to work with his mortar and pestle. Just as Angélique started for her own worktable, her sister spoke.

  “He’s too old. He’ll never survive. We should spare him the agony.”

  Angélique froze, not sure she’d heard right, then hoping she hadn’t. Slowly, she swiveled back around. “You don’t mean that. You can’t. He deserves the chance.”

  “Thanks to his mother’s binding, Jackson would’ve been better off if Gaspard had taken him along with the rest of his family.” An odd blend of despair and icy fury washed across January’s pale face. “He’s finally returned to us and we’re going to lose him again, just as quickly. Lucia murdered her own son.”

  “That remains to be seen,” Ambrose growled. “Your sister’s right—the boy deserves the chance his mama stole from him. No one’s giving him the coup de grâce unless he fails. No one.”

  As Ambrose locked into a stare-down with his wife—amber eyes versus jade—Angélique felt the Alpha’s powerful aura—primal and commanding and rooted in the deep, dark earth—sweep over her like an invisible wave. Tension stretched between the Alphas, thickened like cold molasses.

  January finally ended it when she looked away. “A chance he’ll have, then.” Her cold gaze landed on Angélique. “Where is it?”

  Angélique frowned. “Where’s what?”

  “The binding his mother marked him with.”

  “I didn’t notice anything …”

  January leaned over Jackson, sliding her hands over his nearly nude body, her fingertips searching for the scars that had chained him into one form and denied him the other. Ambrose’s long, callused fingers searched alongside his wife’s until he tugged down the waistband of Jackson’s boxer-briefs and revealed a tiny series of crisscrossing scars on his left hip.

  Angélique joined them in studying the age-whitened scars—a seemingly random arrangement that wasn’t, but nothing that Jackson would’ve ever realized carried meaning beyond an old injury he no longer remembered.

  Angélique noticed that her sister’s thick, black claws now curved from the tips of her fingers, and before she could even blink, January slashed her claws across the scars, severing their pattern. Dark blood welled up on Jackson’s skin.

  “Great Mother,” Angélique muttered, glaring at her sister. “I don’t think that was necessary. He’s been cut more than enough already and lost more blood than he can afford. Obviously, the binding no longer works.”

  “Now it won’t for true,” January replied unapologetically.

  Angélique’s pulse sped through her veins when Jackson’s eyes flickered open and he looked around, his dilated honey-colored eyes glassy. He squinted against the light, then his attention locked onto Ambrose, expression puzzled. After a moment, his face smoothed, and he whispered, “Hey, Nonc. Ça va bien? Comment les zaricos?”

  TWENTY-NINE

  STRENGTH, SOUTH, FIERCE ANIMALS

  Cielo let out a happy but anxious string of whoo-whoos.

  Daddy!

  Still here, girl.

  But given the familiar face above him, Jackson was pretty sure he was still dreaming, caught up in the fever’s blistering and thought-warping heat, pain chewing on his bones with sharp little rat teeth.

  For a moment, he thought he was back in the hurricane-rocked pickup, Jeanette clutched against his chest, his papa yanking open the door and reaching for Mama—and a different kind of pain pierced his heart.

  No, ain’t going there. No.

  Then a rusty cog of a memory slipped into place and an image rolled through his mind: amber eyes. Chestnut hair falling in waves to his broad shoulders. The sharp smell of juniper and ashes. Teeth flashing white in a quick grin. Strong hands hoisting him into the air. Tossing him up into the sky.

  “Ah, there he is, mon neveu préféré. Comment les zaricos, eh?”

  “Les zaricos est salés, Nonc Ambro. I wanna keep flying. Throw me again!”

  The memory faded and Jackson closed his eyes again, tasted honey and bitter herbs on his tongue and at the back of his throat, felt himself drifting above the fire while distant teeth nibbled on his muscles and bones.

  Ice-cold fingers brushed against his forehead and Jackson sucked in a breath, inhaling the earthy and familiar scents of juniper and ashes, ripe apples and cinnamon. A husky voice—one from long-ago dreams—said, “Les zaricos est salés, cher. Jackson. Can you hear me?”

  Jackson forced his eyes open again, squinting against the light. His uncle Ambrose still stood over him. Persistent dream, this. But—no harm in double-checking. “You real?” he croaked.

  A sad smile brushed Ambrose’s lips instead of the joyous grin that Jackson remembered. “Oui, boy, I’m real. Your tante January is here, so is Tante Angélique. You finally found your way home.”

  “Home?” Jackson looked past his uncle to the woman with the ivory hair standing beside him in a tight purple T-shirt over jeans. Remembered her mesmerizing eyes, the lullabies she would sing in Cajun. Remembered her white fur and fast paws. Tante January.

  “I’m in Le Nique?” he whispered, feeling like he’d slipped in time. He saw shelves behind his uncle, stocked with jars and bottles of potions, powders, and salves like at his tante’s botanica, then realized he lay on a sheet-draped and padded examination table.

  “Yes,” a woman’s voice said. “René and the others followed your dog and found you where you’d been buried. Do you remember any of that?”

  “Cielo …” Jackson began, alarmed. A cold, wet nose nuzzled his hand, reassuring him.

  Daddy.

  “That her name?” the woman said. “She’s fine. She’s been fed and watered and she’s refused to leave your side.”

  “Good girl, you,” Jackson murmured, giving his fingers to Cielo’s warm tongue. He felt himself falling toward the bonfire raging just beneath him. And shook himself.

  Stay awake. You need to get a grip and figure out what’s going on.

  “Do you remember what happened to you?” the woman asked again.

  Images flashed behind Jackson’s eyes, stabbed at his thoughts—a desperate and brutal fight, an oily potion, a knife slicing into him, shovels, dirt. No air and bad memories and a woman’s voice—all silver sea tones.

  Might be too late for this little chien de maison.

  Lâche pas, lâche pas.

  “Musta pissed someon
e off royal, me,” Jackson whispered. “Zombie-hex and a fucking grave.”

  “The hex didn’t take, near as we can tell,” the woman said. “But we plan to follow up with a cleansing, make sure you’re uncrossed for true.”

  “C’est ça bon. Merci,” Jackson rasped. Despite the potion he still tasted on his tongue, pain throbbed at his temples. Fire smoldered beneath his skin.

  “Here’s some water.”

  Jackson felt an arm slide beneath his shoulders and ease him up so he could drink from the glass someone pressed against his lips. He drank the cold water down in long, grateful gulps, icing his aching throat and cooling—for a moment—the fevered heat behind his eyes. When he finished the water, he was laid down again.

  “Better?” the woman asked.

  Jackson turned his head, following the sound of her voice to the other side of the table. A woman with warm, emerald-green eyes met his gaze. Her long hair was tied back, but a single auburn ringlet had escaped to frame her pretty face. He didn’t recognize her at first, not until her lips curved into an encouraging smile. She’d been a freckle-faced teen when he’d last seen her—a lifetime ago.

  “Tante Ange,” he breathed.

  She nodded, her smile widening, only to fade as concern flickered in her eyes. “Do you know what’s happening to you? What comes next?”

  Fear iced Jackson’s spine. “‘Next’? I thought you said the hex didn’t take.”

  “It didn’t,” Angélique assured him. “That’s not why you’re hurting, not why you’re fevered. Did your papa ever talk to you about your First Change?”

  Jackson stared at her. “First Change?” he repeated, pulse racing through his veins. “Just that I ain’t …”

  The words turned to ash in Jackson’s throat as the bonfire blaze snapped up from below and engulfed him. Pain wrenched at him as his muscles spasmed. His eyes snapped shut. Hands as cold as Arctic icebergs grasped his shoulders, pinned him down. His body twitched and thrummed—a live wire.

  The spasm ended as abruptly as it had begun and Jackson gasped in relief. But the freezing hands remained on his shoulders, heavy as steel.