The Map of Moments

by Christopher Golden

  His whole body felt like that now. The effect upon him was so powerful that he found it astonishing none of the others seemed to notice. The stern woman walked ahead, but Lamar and gun-toting Gerard were behind him. Whatever magic or mojo he'd accumulated was invisible to them.

  They marched him up to the sedan and he thought they would stop there, that Coco would be sitting in the car. But they kept going. There was no one behind the wheel. Exhausted but shuddery with manic energy, Max nearly stumbled walking down the grassy incline toward the water. Ahead of him the woman turned right, and he followed, Lamar shambling along behind him. They were single file and Gerard had the gun. With Lamar between them, Max could have made a break for it. But, really, where would he go?

  The old Civil War fort rose up on the right, taller and more imposing now that they were right beside it, and to the left the moonlight painted dark water. The river had to be a hundred feet across, and in his imagination alligators cruised its banks.

  Max wished he could call his sister one last time. She'd shown him nothing but love and tenderness, tried to look out for him, and he'd repay her now by washing up dead on some marshy shore. His heart ached for her. And for himself. He'd acquired an intimacy with magic and an unwelcome knowledge of some sort of vague afterlife. It might have comforted him once, to know that perhaps he could see Gabrielle again, but his memory of her was tainted by the things he had discovered. And this wasn't how it was meant to be. Ray had given him an impossible hope that he might speak into the past, deliver a message to her and interfere with her fate.

  Instead, he'd come to his own end.

  They arrived at an angle in the stone wall where the space between fort and water narrowed. Ahead of him, the woman went around the corner first. Max followed, but a moment later he heard a scuffle behind him and Lamar let out a little cry of fright. Turning, Max saw Gerard gripping Lamar by the arm, tugging him toward the wall of the fort, both of them staring at the edge of the footpath—at the water's edge—with eyes full of terror. Lamar had stumbled, but the two of them behaved as though he'd nearly fallen off a Himalayan precipice.

  Gerard noticed Max looking at them and pointed the pistol at him. “Walk.”

  Max obeyed, tumblers clicking in his mind as a door opened there. Ahead of him, the silent woman walked carefully, back rigid. She didn't want to be here any more than her companions.

  The path widened into a point of land protruding from the shadow of the fort. In the moonlight at the water's edge, a man stood waiting for them, a single silhouette. He cocked his head toward them and his profile confirmed what Max had already known. Coco smiled at him, handsome as ever. With his hair cut so close to his scalp and the carefully groomed goatee, he looked more like a lawyer than a killer, magician, serpent in the garden.

  Coco wore expensive-looking trousers and a sheer white sleeveless undershirt. Max could picture the backseat of the man's car, where Coco's shirt would dangle neatly from a hanger. The image in his mind did not seem quite like something imagined; it was more as if he knew without seeing. Whatever work Coco was doing out here, he expected it to be messy or sweaty, or perhaps both.

  And the man had been busy. Fat white candles burned and flickered, set in a circle that would have been romantic in another setting. But Max doubted Coco had romance on his mind. Without a word, he crouched down, hands out, palms hovering over the soil, chanting whispered words that Max did not understand.

  Coco picked up a small metal bucket, thrust his right hand into it, and drew out some kind of paste. Slight though the breeze was, it was sufficient to deliver to Max the awful stink from that bucket. Coco cupped a handful of stuff that reeked of piss and rot and burnt things, and, underneath those smells, of spices that ought to have made the odor less wretched but instead convulsed Max's stomach. He breathed through his nose and glanced at the bucket, wondering and yet not wishing to know.

  As the silent woman led Max, Lamar, and Gerard to the edge of the circle of candles, Coco reached out with that filthy, disgusting hand and smeared it onto something that Max couldn't see.

  Max realized that in the darkness, despite the moonlight, he'd somehow missed the other significant object there at the water's edge. The rock thrust up from the ground like a jagged, broken tooth. It tapered upward, and Max had the feeling it was like an iceberg, and that most of it extended far underground.

  As he stared at it, the rock faded a little. Max narrowed his gaze and concentrated. His skin prickled with a frisson of magic, and the stone resolved itself in his vision once more.

  Coco chanted his song, the tone rising and falling from whisper to guttural invocation. He reached into the bucket, cupped another handful of the filth, and smeared it across the face of the rock.

  Smooth stone hissed and steamed, and shapes began to reveal themselves beneath the mucousy film. Coco traced the outlines, digging them more deeply, carving into the stone with his finger. Throughout this process, the rest of the Tordu observed in respectful silence, and Max watched in revulsion and fascination. Gerard kept the pistol more or less aimed in his direction, though his attention was on the man they'd all come to see.

  Coco dipped his hand in the bucket again, but instead of coating the rock's face, he dropped the muck in a straight line from either side of the stone, marking off the tip of the shore that jutted into the river and creating a kind of boundary.

  He crouched again, wiping his filthy hand off in the dirt. Then he paused, studying the work he'd done.

  Max was tired of the silence. Tired of waiting.

  “Ironic, isn't it?” he said.

  Coco froze. The candles fluttered in the slight breeze, but none went out. He turned and looked at Max.

  “You care to elaborate?”

  Max glanced at the strange, almost hieroglyphic symbols etched in the stone, and then he met Coco's gaze. The man's eyes were wide and inquisitive, dancing with a kind of wild light that might have been a reflection of the candles, or something that came from within.

  “The last time you almost lost a ward was also in a hurricane. And here you are, repairing one of them again …”

  He trailed off because he saw Coco flinch, eyes narrowing. The light in them went out, and his gaze turned flat and reptilian.

  “Well, that's what you're doing, isn't it?”

  Gerard cocked the pistol. The silent woman took a step away from Max. Lamar said nothing, but Max could feel the tension in all of them. Coco only stared at him expectantly.

  Max shrugged. “I'm betting this isn't the only one that got damaged by Katrina. Just seems ironic to me that you've spent all these years making them, hiding them, and protecting them from your enemies. And pretty successfully at that. But every time, it's Mother Nature who fucks with you.”

  Now Coco smiled, but those alligator eyes remained. “Yeah. What do you make of that?”

  “I don't know. But maybe there's a message there. Natural versus unnatural, that sort of thing.”

  Coco shook his head, laughing softly. “You think you've got it all worked out.”

  “More than you know.” Max delivered the line with such calmness and precision that it brought Coco up short. The Tordu man—a leader amongst them—paused and regarded him more closely. Then he shook his head again, but with less confidence this time.

  “You don't know shit. Gabrielle told you nothing; that was part of the deal, part of the price. And whatever you think you learned since coming back to this city, you only see what New Orleans wants you to see. That's the way it's always been.”

  Coco looked at Lamar. “Give me the map.”

  The Fat Man had taken it from Max back in the ruin of the Ninth Ward, and now he tugged it out of his back pocket and handed it over.

  Coco opened it in the moonlight, scanning it carefully. “This just some tourist map,” he said, frowning, speaking in a patois that had been absent before, losing his cultured edge. “No juju here. Just shit.”

  He shot an accusatory glance at Lamar
, who opened his hands in supplication.

  “You said get the map, Coco. I got the map. He didn't have anythin’ else on him.”

  Coco stared at it a moment longer and then began tearing the map into long strips, tossing them into the air. Some fluttered to the ground, others danced on the breeze and landed in the river, eddying away.

  Max still felt that new sensitivity coursing through him, the strange clarity of thought, and with each new piece of information he felt doors opening in his head. Gabrielle told you nothing, Coco had said. That was part of the deal, part of the price. But the price for what? Ugly thoughts entered his mind, but he sealed them away for the moment, needing to focus.

  “You're right, Mr. Corbett,” Coco said, his tone polished again. “Ever since the bitch blew into town, I've been checking on the wards, each and every one. This is the sixth one I've found damaged or weakened, and I've repaired them all. But none of them broke. They're strong. Very strong.”

  Max silently agreed. The wards would have to be strong.

  But the Tordu had not just forged them in the physical world. The rock had been invisible to him when he had arrived, and even now he doubted he would see it at all were it not for the static he'd picked up following the Map of Moments. Anyone else coming this way wouldn't even know the rock was there. Max figured some of the spells that had been cast would keep people away, make them avoid the place without even knowing why. The ward was both physical and mystical, and it would probably require a combination of both forces to destroy it.

  “I've been out here three hours,” Coco went on, “but you're wrong about one thing. I haven't finished repairing this one yet. There's one last element missing.”

  Max didn't want to ask, but heard his own voice say, “And what's that?”

  Coco smiled. “You, Mr. Corbett. Whatever errand you're after, whatever map you're following, however you know what you know, all that matters is that you're asking the wrong questions. People see you're not afraid, and we can't have that. But just killing you would be wasteful. The wards get their strength from death, and from blood. So you and I are going to finish repairing this one together.”

  Max shivered. His skin felt terribly cold all of a sudden. A leaden sadness pressed down upon him, not despair so much as sorrow and exhaustion, and some of the static he'd felt crackling in him diminished.

  He'd known they would kill him out here. They had made no secret of it. But the conversation was winding down. He didn't interest Coco anymore. The time had come.

  Coco reached into a shoulder bag at his feet and withdrew a filleting knife. He let its sheath fall back into the bag and looked at Max. The moonlight glinted on the blade, a steel smile.

  He stepped out of the circle of candles.

  “Coco, wait,” Lamar started. “I claim him.”

  “Lamar,” the silent woman warned.

  But Coco looked at Lamar, narrowed eyes. “For Donte?”

  Lamar nodded.

  Coco considered a moment and then nodded in return. “All right. You can carve him. But we share the rest—

  “He fucking killed my brother!” Lamar snapped.

  Coco shot the Fat Man a glance that cowed him. “We share the rest, as we always do.”

  Max blinked, glancing back and forth between them, but then he caught the way the silent woman stared at him, the eagerness in her eyes, and he remembered what Lamar had said in the car about eating his heart and liver. He thought about the way Joe Noone had died, and a vision of Corinne's bloody corpse flashed across his mind, body torn open, organs ripped out. More tumblers clicked over in his mind, more doors opened that he wished had remained closed.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Max whispered. And for a moment, the frisson he felt was entirely the prickle of fear, with no mystical static to interfere.

  Coco grinned, eyes widening. “Oh, so there are some things you don't know.”

  Max had only one card to play. “Don't you want to hear the message I have for you?”

  Coco sighed. “Lamar, Gerard, bring him into the circle.”

  “Wait,” the woman said.

  Coco looked at her. “Felicia?”

  “In the car…” She faltered, glancing away from him, looking frightened. “He said he had a message from Seddicus.”

  Coco lowered his head, brows knitted, and then slowly lifted his gaze again. “Did he?”

  He walked toward Max, filleting knife rising. That mad light danced in his eyes again, and this time it was clear that it was not a reflection. The candles were behind him. “What's your message, then?”

  Max swallowed. He'd barely thought through what he might say, but there were some secrets of the Tordu he knew for certain.

  “Seddicus says that if you repair the wards, you can also break them. He offers you a bargain. If you destroy one ward—if you let him in—he'll spare you when he comes for the others.”

  For a long moment, Coco stared at him, blank-faced, and Max had hope. The others seemed to hold their breath.

  Then Coco laughed, and Max felt the others relax. And he knew that he was dead.

  “You keep revealing what you don't know, Corbett,” Coco said, his own grin matching the curving glint of the knife. “That isn't how it works. My fate has been sealed for more than a century. And Seddicus doesn't bargain. He only eats.”

  Coco stepped up to Max and pressed the filleting knife against the side of his throat. When he spoke again, it was in a whisper.

  “You're a long way from home now. You come to a city you don't know, you really ought to take what it's offering, what it wants to show you, not try to look under the mask. Especially this city. ’Cos under this mask, it's ours.”

  He nodded at the candles. “Step into the circle.”

  Max held his breath. Gerard still held the gun, but in a second he was going to have to choose between that or helping Lamar restrain a screaming, panicked college professor. And I will be screaming, Max thought. He didn't want to die. Anyone who wouldn't scream for their life probably didn't value it very much.

  He blinked, trembling. His skin prickled with that mystical energy, but fear raced through his veins, and his stomach churned. His perception had been altered, but he wondered if all along it had been adrenaline, and this was just what terror felt like. Perhaps he'd been a fool to ever perceive anything magical in it.

  Open your mouth, he told himself. Breathe.

  But he couldn't. The fear had closed his throat. No breathing, so perhaps he wouldn't scream after all. He'd just run, and if they caught up with him, he'd fight. Escape was too much to hope for, but he would rather force Gerard to shoot him than be pinned to the ground while Coco cut him open, carved him alive.

  “I said, Step. Into. The circle.” Coco pricked him with the point of the filleting knife, and Max felt a bead of blood run down the small of his back.

  He stared at the ward, and then the circle in front of it.

  Enough space separated each candle that he could have walked between them, but Max stepped over them as though they created a barrier to be hurdled, setting his left foot inside the circle. Coco and his knife were right behind him. Felicia watched, but the other two Tordu were moving to follow. Max might be cooperating now, but every one of them knew that wouldn't last. Lamar, at least, clearly relished the idea of having to hold Max down while Coco cut him open.

  “Gerard, put away the gun,” Coco said. “He's not going anywh—”

  Max brought his right foot down inside the circle, and Coco's voice ceased, cut off in the middle of a word without even leaving an echo behind.

  The air shifted. Max's skin prickled again, but differently. It felt as though a thousand butterflies had been at rest upon him, and now the brush of their wings was the last thing he felt before their absence exposed his skin to the elements.

  The sensation overwhelmed him and he bent slightly, shaking. The stink of the paste from Coco's metal pail remained, and he pressed his hand over his nose and mouth to block it out. He stare
d at the candles at the edge of the circle.

  Motion in his peripheral vision drew his gaze up to the bent, twisted figure now standing in front of the ward. Without turning toward Max, he dipped a clawed hand into a black metal pot and smeared it across the rock.

  Mireault.

  Max froze, taking a tiny breath, barely a sip of air.

  Mireault stiffened. Slowly, eyes narrowed, the twisted little man turned. For a second, he peered at Max as though uncertain of what he might be looking at. Then he muttered something in French and returned to his work.

  Beyond Mireault, the river looked different. Its banks were more ragged, more overgrown, cypress trees hanging out over the water. Taking long, slow, silent breaths, Max turned around, half expecting a poke from Coco's filleting knife. But deep down he knew that no such assault would be forthcoming.

  When Max turned, Coco and the other Tordu were gone.

  He trembled, glancing back at the busy Mireault, then looked again at the place where the Tordu had been an instant ago.

  No, not had been. They're still there. You're still there.

  Max stood now in the space between Moments. He felt flushed, his skin warm as though radiating heat from within. The hair on the back of his neck stood up, filled with static.

  The stone and gray brick of the old military fort shone in the moonlight, clean and new. Its upper portions were ragged, but not because the fort lay in ruins. Though all work had ceased for the night, the place was still being built. Max turned once more toward Mireault, mind racing, wondering how this was possible.

  This can't be one of the places Ray had in mind. It's beyond the edge. We're off the map. This wasn't the Seventh Moment, yet here he was. Whatever power Coco had put into this spot, whatever magic Mireault had invested the ward with over the previous two centuries, it resonated. Max was tuned in, humming along on the frequency of New Orleans’ magical history.