“Yeah,” Charlie replied. “Yeah, I was.” His voice sounded strange, forced. Charlie's breathing came faster, and Max was sure he heard the beginnings of a sob. Then it became muffled as Charlie covered the mouthpiece at his end.
“Charlie, I need your help,” Max said. “The Tordu. I need to know what you know.”
“There's nothing I can tell you.” Charlie covered his mouthpiece again, as if afraid the truth would bleed through the lines.
“They're more than gangsters, Charlie. More than drugs and violence, aren't they?” Charlie said nothing. “You have to tell me!” Max continued. “Don't do this, man. They're after me.”
For a while, Charlie's end of the line remained silent. No heavy breathing, no shuffling of his hand over the mouthpiece. Eventually he said, “I know.”
“They warned you off.”
Silence again. And then, “My family needs me here. There's nothing for me in New Orleans anymore, and there's nothing for you there, either. I told you, Max—
“I can't leave.”
“Then that's on you. If I were you, I'd get the fuck away from there, and never even think about going back.”
“Charlie—”
“That's me talking as a friend.”
“It's gone too far for me to leave.”
“You're still alive, aren't you, for fuck's sake? It hasn't gone too far yet.”
“Why would they cure the yellow fever?” Max asked.
“Because they think the city is theirs!” Charlie shouted.
“Its people are theirs! And you sticking your damn nose into places it shouldn't go …You've pissed off Mireault.”
Mireault? The name those nuns were calling before they hanged themselves? Max frowned and shook his head.
“Mireault ran things two hundred years ago. Unless you're telling me he's risen from his grave.”
Charlie said nothing. From shouting to silent, as though scared that someone would hear.
“Charlie?”
A man came around the corner from the bar, staggering slightly, pushing himself from the wall and through the door into the men's restroom. He didn't even seem to notice Max.
“Charlie?” More shuffling on the other end of the phone, more breathing, and in the background Max heard one of Charlie's kids screeching. “I'm only asking for your help. You're away from here now, and—”
“He doesn't have a grave, Max. He'll never need one.”
Max frowned. “What are you—”
“I can't keep talking to you. It's not safe for me. No one's beyond their reach,” Charlie whispered. “Just because they can't leave the city doesn't mean they won't send someone for me.”
“Jesus, listen to you. I don't get it, Charlie. Why doesn't anyone do something? Talk to the cops, something? You need to help me!”
“You aren't listening. You need to comprehend what I'm saying. You can't fight them! Nobody can. The only thing they're scared of is Seddicus…”
He trailed off, and Max waited for Charlie to say more. The man stumbled from the bathroom and back out into the bar, and just before he disappeared around the corner he glanced back at Max.
“Everything I find out confuses me more,” Max said.
Silence from Charlie; breathing; something scraping the mouthpiece.
“They kill people,” Max rasped into the phone. “Rip them open and take their organs.”
There was a click as Charlie hung up. Static for a while, then another click and the fast, annoying tone that came with disconnection.
Max hung up, then picked up the phone again. He dialed the number and let it ring and ring. No one answered. He imagined Charlie sitting there in his parents’ home in Houston, his kids bustling around him, his wife pleased that they were together again and doing her best to make home of somewhere far away …and Charlie staring at the phone, perhaps regretting what he had said, and fearing everything else he should have said.
Max hung up and dialed again, just in case he'd gotten the wrong number. He got a busy signal, so rare in these days of call waiting. The phone had to be off the hook. Charlie had unplugged Max from his life.
He stared at the graffitied wall and thought through the little that Charlie had told him. The Tordu were old, he knew that, and it seemed that they were run by the Mireault family. So was it really just that? A crime family, twisted by their dabblings in dark magic, and using fear to control the people of New Orleans? Because they think the city is theirs,
Charlie had shouted. Its people are theirs! And what was that business about the Tordu not being able to the leave the city? And Mireault …He doesn't have a grave.
Max shivered. Did Charlie believe Mireault was still alive? He hadn't just said Mireault didn't have a grave, he'd said the man would never need one. So he was …immortal?
Only days ago, Max had not believed in magic at all. He'd been forced to change his view. But even magic seemed to have rules, patterns, and limits. Immortality …that was something else entirely. Could anyone or anything really live forever? He couldn't imagine it. The first rule of the universe was entropy. Things fell apart. Deterioration, death, and rot, these were constants. All anyone had to do was walk the streets of New Orleans in these days of disaster and learn a little about the sinking of the city, the ruin of the wetlands, the negligence of the government, and it seemed obvious that sooner rather than later everything ceased to be.
It was the way of things.
But rejecting the idea of immortality didn't necessarily mean Charlie had been wrong. Hell, maybe Mireault really was still alive. Or maybe it was just a myth the Tordu created about themselves, with the man's descendants posing as him down through the years.
Max realized it didn't matter. The answer to that riddle would not keep him alive.
He stood and walked back out into the bar. The fat barman nodded at Max's coffee, steaming on the bar. Max dropped a five-dollar bill and went to leave.
“Not staying?” the barman said.
“No, I've got to—”
“Best coffee in New Orleans.” The man was smiling, but it was as if someone had painted the expression there; it touched only his mouth. He was sweating more than ever.
Max looked around at the other patrons. A couple were watching him, and they glanced away casually, lifting drinks to their lips. Am I really so paranoid?
He left the bar, jumped back into the RAV4, and pulled away. There were no more reasons to wait. Charlie had told him little, but the very fact of his fear communicated plenty. Just because they can't leave… he had said, and whatever that really meant, the same words now applied to Max.
For the first time in his life, he wished he owned a gun.
He drove back into the French Quarter. The sun was sinking behind him, but there was still an hour of daylight left, and he was determined to progress on to the Fifth Moment. He'd go back to the rooming house or find somewhere else to sleep. He'd worry about tomorrow when the Moment had passed.
Max reached over, grabbed the map, and sat up straight as a car slewed across the street in front of him. He stood on the brake, the RAV4's tires skidding, thinking, I'm driving like an asshole.
Then he recognized the vehicle. Last time he'd seen it, a guy with crushed legs had been collapsed in front of it, with Coco kneeling over him. And as if conjured by Max's memory, Coco stepped from the passenger door on the far side and stared across the car's roof at Max.
The bastard even smiled.
Max had an instant to make a decision, and in the blink of an eye, whether it was the right or wrong thing to do, he was committed. He stamped on the accelerator and gave thanks that he'd belted up.
Everything slowed down. He was aware of the startled looks of several pedestrians as they realized what was going to happen, the feel of warm air lifting his hair through the open window, the face of the car's driver—a man he'd never seen, black, with an ugly burn on one side of his face—as his eyes and mouth opened in surprise. And Coco, still smiling, and mak
ing no apparent attempt to escape the collision that would certainly hurt, if not kill, him.
Max braced himself back against the seat, clutching the steering wheel tightly and bending his elbows slightly. At the last instant he had a panicked thought: air bag! And then metal ground on metal, the world twisted and rolled, and something punched him hard in the face.
Someone groaned. There was blood. His mouth tasted of it, he felt it sticky on his face, and the groaning was coming from him. It sounded close and contained. And though he could see daylight, it seemed very far away.
The air bag started to wilt and deflate, and Max managed to move a hand to his face. He groaned again when he touched his nose. It did not feel broken, but it had taken a hard knock. His eyes watered, his face sang from the impact. Blood flowed freely. I must look dead, he thought, and then he remembered the Tordu.
Max tried to work his way out from behind the air bag. The RAV4 had spun across the street, and what little he could see consisted of the front of a two-story building, faces lined at the windows. They seemed ghostlike behind the glass, distorted and lit pink by the setting sun's light. At least the car hadn't rolled.
He reached for the keys, but they were swallowed behind the deflating bag.
Everything was silence. No shouting or screaming, no calls for help or voices raised in concern. No gunshots. He reached around painfully for his seat-belt catch and managed to click it open, releasing some of the tension across his chest and stomach. He pushed the bag away from him, hands slipping in his own blood, and looking to his left he saw what had become of the other car.
His RAV4 had knocked it aside, spinning it across the road and lifting its nose up onto the sidewalk. He could see the silhouette of the driver nursing his head in the front seat; in the back, someone else was kicking at the door, trying to get out. He hadn't noticed the person in the back before.
Of Coco, there was no sign.
People started running. Someone appeared at his open window and asked if he was all right, and when Max turned to her, the woman's eyes went wide and she staggered back a few steps. Max blinked slowly and lifted his hands to his face, wondering what he would find. Everything was in place. But blood dribbled and bubbled from his nose, and the flow did not seem to be lessening.
The faces at the windows of the building before him did not move. They disturbed Max, and then he realized that they were cut-out images, placed there to lure tourists into some tacky souvenir shop selling “real” voodoo dolls, potions, and spells. Each face seemed to laugh at him.
Someone shouted, a deep, throaty roar.
Max looked across at the Tordu car again and saw a short, fat man climbing from the open back door. He waved one hand before him, and for a beat Max thought he was asking for help, looking for a hand to hold. But then he saw the flash of a blade in the man's hand, and the worried bystanders suddenly forgot their concern. The man locked eyes with Max. Even from that distance, maybe forty feet, Max heard the grunt.
Where the hell was Coco?
Max reached for the ignition key, praying that the RAV4 had only stalled, rather than having a chunk knocked out of the engine by the impact. When he turned the key the engine coughed, shuddered, then came to life.
“Hey, maybe you should…” the woman who had come to his window began. She was standing ten feet from the vehicle, hands clasped beneath her chin as if in prayer. Her eyes were wide, and her smooth coffee skin reminded him of Gabrielle.
“You don't want to get involved with me,” Max said. He shifted the gear into reverse and backed quickly across the street.
The fat man was kneeling beside the Tordu's car. The driver was out now as well, and he, too, fell to his knees, looking under the car. Both men reached beneath the vehicle, and Max saw shadows moving there. They seemed to writhe and thrash, like the silhouettes of landed fish, and the two men quickly withdrew their arms.
Against every screaming instinct, Max paused with his car pointing directly across the street. Drive! he thought. Get the fuck out of here, go, lose them, take the advantage and get the fuck out of here!
But as Coco emerged from beneath the car, Max could only watch.
The two men stood back as Coco lifted himself to his knees, then up to his feet, like a marionette being drawn upright. He inspected himself for a few seconds, running his hands down the front of his legs, across his stomach and chest, then finally around his head and onto his face. There was no blood, no apparent injuries …only that smile.
He was still smiling at Max.
And then he started walking toward him.
Max threw the gear into first and slammed his foot on the gas, lifting the clutch too quickly, jerking the car across the road and stalling. He glanced to the left and saw Coco running at him now, the smile morphing slowly into a grimace as one hand emerged from his jacket pocket, a blade catching the setting sun as he drew it down by his side.
Max started the car again, slipped back into first, and pulled away.
An arm came in through his window and clamped around his neck. Coco squeezed. Max gagged. Then he pressed his foot on the gas, looking through squinted eyes at the lamppost at the edge of the sidewalk. He turned the steering wheel, front wheel mounting the sidewalk and heading for the lamppost.
Coco growled, then let go. A beat later the lamppost scraped along the side of the RAV4, snapping off the wing mirror and scoring paint from metal.
Max swung back onto the street and accelerated away, gasping in breath through his bruised throat but realizing, with a sickness that threatened to erupt at any moment, that it was fear that had stolen his breath.
He glanced in his rearview mirror and saw the three men climbing back into the car. It reversed from the sidewalk, and the tires smoked as its wheels spun, launching in pursuit.
“Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck!” He was in a car chase. However ridiculous that was, he was in a car chase through the French Quarter of New Orleans, and trying to think of somewhere to hide, only one place leapt to mind.
The Fifth Moment. It was maybe three blocks away, he could be there in minutes, but could they follow him in? He had no idea, and it was not the sort of thing he could discover by experimentation. He had to believe that no, they could not. But Coco was Tordu, and the more Max saw of these moments, the more he knew that the Tordu were inextricably tied to the magical history of New Orleans.
He turned right, swerving across a road junction and hoping that nothing was coming the other way. The car behind him was out of sight for a beat, then it, too, drifted across the junction, and came after him.
Trying to shut down his panic, concentrating, Max attempted to think his situation through. A car full of men was chasing him, and if they caught him he'd be dead. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. Since coming to New Orleans his life had been disintegrating like the city around him. It was as if Gabrielle's death had drowned the comfortable confines of his normal life, breaking the levees at the edges of his consciousness that held back the unknown and the dangerous.
These men knew the city well. They had likely lived here all their lives, and since Katrina they had seen what their home had become. They would know the streets that were closed, the buildings that were no longer there, and he could not delude himself that he had any advantage over them whatsoever.
The Fifth Moment was the only place he could think of that would take him away for a while.
He drove hard, dropping down a gear to take another junction, steering into the skid and amazing himself by keeping control of the vehicle. Jackson Square was to his right, and two blocks from here he would turn right again, heading for wherever the Moment might lie. He swiped blood from his mouth and chin with the back of his arm.
Don't let them come in, he thought. Let it only be me …let it only be me …
A sneeze was brewing. Max tried to hold it back, but it exploded, spattering the windscreen with blood and sending a lancing pain across his face and through his head. He groaned, but
concentrated on keeping his eyes on the road. Blood dribbled down over his lips and into his lap.
He reached for the map from the seat beside him and spread it over the wheel, glancing down as he drove, looking in the rear view mirror at the car gaining on him, and he realized just how close he was to never getting away from New Orleans.
He skidded right, and when he saw the Beauregard-Keyes House, his memory reached forward to help him. He had heard this story before. Gabrielle had told it to him, one night when they sat in a smoky, bustling bar, and she talked him through the mixed history of her beloved New Orleans. He had listened, rapt, as she spoke of ghosts and battles, magic, and the wars that had swung through and around the city. The story of the Beauregard-Keyes House had made her smile. This one's for the tourists, she had said, relaying to him a tale of Civil War spirits reenacting a supernatural version of the Battle of Shiloh in the main hall, complete with mangled bodies and slaughtered mules.
Max screeched to a halt and leapt from the RAV4, knowing he would never drive it again. Hearing the screaming brakes of the Tordu's car behind him, he ran up the steps and plunged through the front door of the house, and into somewhere else entirely.
chapter
12
When Max saw the man without a face he could not contain his scream. Perhaps it was fear that carried him through the familiar disorientation, or the adrenaline pumping through his system from the chase. One second he was in the reception hallway of the house, fading dusk bleeding through the windows, dust motes swimming through the air, Coco's car still squealing to a halt outside; a beat later, everything had changed. It was dark, silent, and cold, as if the house had never known the comforts of warmth. And a ghost walked before him.
The dead man wore the remains of a tattered uniform, and his left hand held the barrel of a rifle, its shattered stock trailing along the ground behind him as he walked. If he had been a living man, he would have been dead, because most of his face had been blown away. His teeth, streaked red with blood and gore, peered through the side of his face, and where his nose should be was a hole, home to blood and smoke.
The Map of Moments Page 17
