by Debra Dunbar
Adeyemi respected Boukman, but this woman was no spirit. She was flesh and blood. Just as the Tainos had never known the white men before the boats landed on their shore, just as his mother’s journey across the waters had been filled with frightening, magical new experiences, so was this. It seemed magical, of the spirit world, because it was unknown. Once he figured it out, it would no longer be magical, only different, then eventually a normal part of his life. There were women with long sharp teeth who bit men and drank their blood, who somehow made the experience enjoyable for their victims. He’d seen the numbing of insect bites, the plants that made men and women open their eyes to the spirit world. There must be something this woman had, like the insects and the plants, that ensnared her victims so they didn’t resist. And if the woman had to ensnare her victim, then she must have a weakness that could be exploited. He just had to find something that would allow him to resist her, then he could destroy her before she could kill again.
Although, if he were completely honest with himself, the whole thing had been very arousing. It had been too long since he’d had a lover. Maybe he needed to make the time for one. And ask if she’d do that…thing with her mouth. Not the biting thing, but the other.
“Found him.” Soeh strode into the room, her eyes fierce with anger as she dragged JanJak by the arm. With a shove, the man fell to his knees. Looking around in bewilderment JanJak caught sight of Adeyemi, then stood, hunching his shoulders and staring at the floor.
“Who is the woman you met tonight?” Adeyemi demanded.
JanJak flinched as if he had struck him. “Her name is Madeline. She and her family just arrived from France. They have no slaves, they know no one. She came up to me in the woods outside of town, saw me even though I was in the darkest of shadows. She spoke kindly to me, she…I love her. She has done no wrong, Lidè. I have told her nothing about us, about you.”
Adeyemi caught his breath, wondering how long it would be before they were hunted down, forced to move or slaughtered in their camp. He believed that JanJak did love the woman, but he didn’t believe that there had been no inadvertent slip of secrets in a moment of passion.
“Thinking with your prick again,” Soeh sneered. “You’d sell us all to our deaths just to bury yourself in some woman’s softness.”
“I wouldn’t,” JanJak cried. “I swear. She and her family have just arrived. They know no one on the island. Her father and elder brothers and sisters were away for the evening. She snuck away to see me.”
“And bite you,” Adeyemi added. “You wouldn’t let her bite your neck this time, so she bit you on the leg. They are the same bites that Goue and the others had. She will kill you just as she killed them, just as she’ll kill the rest of us.”
Was the rest of her family like this too? How many were there? Taking down one woman, even one with magical powers, wouldn’t be difficult. Killing a family of four, or six, or more, was not as easy. Maybe if he brought her in alive, used her as bait to trap the rest of her family they could all be killed at once, they might be able to eliminate this threat before any others died.
JanJak cringed. “It’s not the same. Goue and the others were bitten by a bat or something. Madeline wouldn’t kill anyone.”
Before he could comment further, Adeyemi heard the alarm cry. He and the others ran outside to find Ronil staggering in through the gate, clutching his neck. The man shook, dropping to his knees.
“Who was it? Who did this?” Adeyemi demanded.
Ronil gasped, breathing heavy. His skin was cold and dry, his eyes glassy. “A woman. She attacked us. She killed Melky and when I ran she chased after me. No knife cut her skin. She had teeth like an animal, and she drank my blood.”
Adeyemi had Boukman take Ronil away to a room to provide him with whatever medicine they could. Then he looked back at the two-room house he called his home, the house where JanJak stood in the doorway, pale and twisting his hands together. This beast-woman may have held back from killing JanJak, but she’d caused four deaths so far, possibly five if Ronil didn’t survive the night. That was five too many.
He’d catch her and he’d kill her, but he wasn’t fool enough to approach a woman who could enslave men with her words, who blades couldn’t harm, without adequate preparation. And for that, he’d need Boukman.
Chapter 2
The next night Adeyemi crept to the town with Boukman and Soeh. The spirit-talker had put mud on his face and hair and had a bag bulging with unknown objects. Soeh carried a knife, convinced that she’d need the weapon. Adeyemi carried nothing beyond a small bag of his own. At first he meant for them to grab this Madeline, have Boukman take away her powers, then kill her. If that didn’t work, Boukman had insisted there was a special cave only a few hours away where the woman could be sealed in. There she’d remain, unable to harm another until some poor wanderer came across the cave and inadvertently let her out. Personally, Adeyemi was hoping he could just kill her, although after thinking through his plan, he decided to hold off and see what information he could get from the woman. Was the rest of her family like her? Were there more blood-suckers coming to the island? Adeyemi had enough to worry about with the plantation owners and the freed mulattos who would turn him in for the price on his head, he didn’t need to worry about murderous French who came off a boat and prowled the night, sinking their fangs into his maroons and Tainos.
It would be better to know what he was up against long-term. He could sustain decades of raids against the plantation owners, building the strength of his army and wearing them down, but he couldn’t do that while fending off these other predators. Hopefully it would only be her or her immediate family. And hopefully no one would come sailing across the waters to avenge their deaths.
Adeyemi motioned for the others to hold back when he saw her. Then he followed the woman as she went into the burned-out building. There she waited in the dark, the cold lantern next to her. He watched her, wondering what she would do when she realized JanJak wasn’t coming.
After an hour, she left, her shoulders slumped. Could he have been wrong? He’d seen the teeth, seen the bite marks on JanJak. The man hadn’t denied what she was, only that she wasn’t a killer.
He followed as Madeline walked down the streets that were now empty. Shopkeepers had closed up. Light and the smells of cooking food came from the living quarters above the shops. Slaves were all under curfew at this hour. A few free mulattos walked by carrying bundles, all of them casting a wary look at the woman and crossing the street to avoid her. She didn’t look like a killer, she looked…forlorn.
The woman paused in the street, looking up at the lights in the windows, then at the backs of the retreating mulattos. Then she sighed and turned around, leaving town. Adeyemi signaled for the other two to follow as he trailed behind the woman, far enough away that she wouldn’t see him, but close enough that she wouldn’t lose them. Outside of town, she took a dirt road that led to a sprawling house above the port that had once belonged to the harbor master. Adeyemi saw her round a bend, and then she was gone. Vanished. It was as if the ground had swallowed the woman up.
“Why are you following me?”
Adeyemi spun about, his heart nearly tearing through his ribs at the sight of the woman right behind him. He hadn’t seen her, hadn’t heard her. Nobody moved that fast. And nobody moved that silently.
But the woman didn’t seem threatening, or even frightened. In fact, she appeared curious, tilting her head as she looked at him.
“Are you friends of JanJak’s? You and the other two hiding near the bushes over there? Is he all right? He’s not hurt, is he?”
How had she seen Boukman and Soeh? Adeyemi made a quick motion with his fingers, hoping the other two heeded the signal.
“JanJak is one of our friends. Would you like us to take you to him?”
It would be so easy if she just came along with him. In his experience, even the most brazen of French women usually walked with another. They were always in pairs,
and sometimes even with an armed man by their side. But this woman walked around alone in the middle of the night without a care. Although if he could move as quickly, as silently as she could, if he had her eyes that saw in the dark as well as he saw in the light, he too might strut around without fear. Actually if he had all that, he would steal every last animal from the plantation owners along with their weapons, then push them into the sea to drown or swim back to their homeland.
“No.” She drawled the word out as if she wasn’t sure whether to accompany him or not. “I shouldn’t. Not three nights in a row. Are you-” Her eyes lowered for a moment before looking up into his. “Would you like to join me inside for some wine? Or food? Your friends could come too, or just us.”
She reached out a hand to touch Adeyemi’s sleeve and he let her, uncertain as to what the woman meant. Was she one of those who performed sex for money? If so, she could hardly be soliciting him since those women didn’t bother with slaves or maroons. Perhaps this was her ruse, to draw men in with the promise of sex only to kill them and drink their blood.
Even knowing this, even though this woman was not the type he would have normally been attracted to, he found himself tempted to go with her. It was like she’d snagged him with an invisible fishing line, pulling him in. Seductive as she was, Adeyemi wasn’t lost to her spell.
“I won’t be joining you,” Adeyemi told her, reaching inside his pocket to take out the cloth bag Boukman had given him. “And I must insist that you accompany me.”
Now the woman looked afraid. She tensed, her eyes darting from him to Boukman and Soeh, still in the shadows. Then she looked at the bag and hissed, her huge pointed teeth elongating as he watched.
“Now!”
Boukman sprang forward, grabbing the woman, whose eyes widened in alarm. “Why can’t I get free. Who are you? Why can’t I get free?”
Her voice was loud, so Soeh shoved a rag in the woman’s mouth, tying a rope around her hands. Boukman took the cloth bag from Adeyemi, draping it over the woman’s neck then stepping back.
As soon as Boukman let go, the woman ran. She didn’t run as quickly as she would have without the bag around her neck, but with her long legs, the woman was still fast. She dove off the path, crashing through brush as Adeyemi chased her, until she tripped on the edge of her skirt and fell face-first into the dirt.
He pulled her upright, worried that she’d somehow hurt herself, but the woman appeared fine, a scratch across her forehead, and smudges of dirt all over her face, but no real injuries. Soeh caught up with them, dropping an old grain sack over the woman’s head, then between the two of them, they picked her up, carrying her into the forest and up the mountain.
Two miles in, Adeyemi gave up and let the woman walk, leading her with a rope as she staggered around blind, the bag still over her head. Every now and then she’d make a muffled noise against the gag, but he ignored her.
Everyone had stayed up late to see their prisoner. They stared as he led her through the gates and to his home. No doubt they were worried that he’d gone too far, that he’d kidnapped one of the plantation owner’s daughters and they’d all die for it. Adeyemi would discuss Goue’s and the others’ deaths tomorrow with the rest of his crew and explain this woman’s presence, but right now he needed to know if this woman was the only threat on the island, or if he needed to muster his army to take out an entire city of them.
“Tie her to the chair,” he instructed, pulling the hood from her head and the rag from her mouth. The woman didn’t say a word, but now that she could see, she was taking notice of her surroundings. Madeline might seem a pampered, helpless French woman, but Adeyemi got the impression she was far more shrewd and enterprising then she led on.
And now to get right to the point. “Why do you drink blood?”
The woman met his eyes and lifted her chin. “I don’t.”
Soeh walked forward and grabbed the woman’s cheeks, pressing her mouth open. The fangs were there, not quite as large as they’d been when Adeyemi had first seen them, but still bigger and more sharp than human teeth should be.
“You bit JanJak, originally on the neck, then last night on the leg. You pierced his skin with your sharp teeth and drank his blood.” She’d done other things too, but he wasn’t about to start a discussion on that.
Soeh let go of the girl’s face. “Do we need to bring JanJak in here? I’m sure he’ll confess once he sees that we have you as our prisoner.”
Madeline slumped in the chair. “I didn’t hurt JanJak. Ask him. He’ll tell you that he enjoyed it, that he would be happy for me to do that every night. I haven’t hurt anyone. Let me go and I won’t see him ever again. I won’t tell anyone about you.”
Adeyemi stepped closer, watching the woman carefully. “Liar. Four of our men have died. All the blood was taken from their bodies, and the only injury they have is a bite mark on their necks – the same type of bite mark as the one you gave JanJak.”
Something flickered in her eyes. Worry. Fear. “It wasn’t me. I haven’t killed anyone. In all of my life I’ve never killed anyone.”
He got the impression she was telling the truth. She hadn’t killed anyone, but she knew someone who had. “And those you arrived with? Your family? Are they like you? Do they bite with sharp teeth and drink the blood of their victims?”
“They came on a ship of dead, Lidè” Soeh told him. “Eight of them on a ship where nearly all of the crew had died on the voyage over. I’m betting the remaining crew members had bites on their necks too. I’m betting the dead were drained of their blood.”
The woman paled. “It wasn’t our fault. The ship…we didn’t realize how long the voyage would be. It wasn’t our fault.”
“Then whose fault was it?” Any shred of sympathy he might have had for this woman was gone. She preyed upon others. She’d entranced JanJak and turned him into some sort of milk-cow for her own use. One of her family had most likely killed the others, and she was covering for them. The woman might not have killed anyone, but it was just a matter of time before she did. And no doubt, JanJak would be her first.
He wasn’t about to let that happen.
“You fed upon the ship’s crew, eventually killing them. You feed upon the people of this island, upon my own men. Four are dead, one very ill. One who survived said a woman attacked them, a woman who was fast, who knives could not hurt. If not you, then who of your family is responsible?”
She set her jaw and lifted her chin defiantly. Adeyemi put a hand on either side of her chair and leaned forward. “You will answer my questions or I will take you apart piece by piece. With Boukman’s magic, you won’t be immune. You won’t heal. When morning comes, if there’s anything left of you, I’ll deliver it to your family. Then I’ll hunt them down one by one and do the same.”
Fear flickered across her face. The edge of her lip trembled. “We were starving on the ship. We didn’t want to kill them, but there weren’t enough sailors to keep us all fed for the voyage and we took too much blood. Even then we arrived here starving. Starving is bad – for us as well as everyone else. If we’re too hungry we lose control and turn to gluttony. If we lose control, hundreds could die. But if we can feed just enough, we’ll maintain control.”
“Parasites,” Soeh spat. “What are you?”
Madeline clamped her lips shut again and glared at the other woman.
Adeyemi took the woman’s chin in hand and yanked her head back to face him. “You say your family was starving. Perhaps one of them lost control. Who among your family besides you is a woman? Or do you shapeshift and change your sex at will?”
“We don’t shapeshift or change our gender. We were once human, and that’s how we always appear.” Her face twisted as if she were trying not to cry. “There’s no possibility that one of my family lost control. Even if they did, I wouldn’t betray them. They’re my family, they’re all I have. I’ll tell the Master about the circumstances of your dead, and if one of us is killing and putting u
s all at risk, he’ll take care of the situation.”
Adeyemi recoiled at the familiar and distasteful work. “Master? He owns you? You’re his slaves?”
Madeline shook her head. “He takes care of us. He’s like a father to us, a leader. We follow him because he’s the strongest, the oldest, and he’s the one who turned most of us from our former human lives.”
“He cursed you, and yet you follow him?” Adeyemi turned to Soeh. The other woman shrugged, equally perplexed by these odd French strangers. Even Madeline’s accent was peculiar, not like the other French on the island.
“It’s a blessing, not a curse.” But something in Madeline’s eyes led Adeyemi to believe the woman often felt the opposite.
“So you used to be human, but this Master cursed, or blessed, you and made you something that looks human but is fast with skin that heals in a breath and needs to drink human blood to live?”
She nodded. “Aubin, our Master, made my Sire, Jean-Marc. I was human, an English girl visiting relatives in Paris, and had never met anyone like him. I thought I loved him, I would have done anything for him. When he asked me to run away with him, I gladly left to join him in his world, to become part of his family.”
Loved him. Like JanJak loved her – obsessively, self-destructively, willing to throw everything aside just to be with her. From her tone, he could tell she no longer loved this Jean-Marc, that there were times she regretted her choice, that there were times she didn’t quite trust her own family.
“Who? Who among your family killed my men, Madeline?” he asked softly.
“No one. And if the impossible happened, and one of my family was responsible, then Master Aubin will take care of the problem. This is a family matter. I won’t be the one who brings human hunters down upon us,” she snapped, her eyes shuttered.
It was time to back off and switch course. He’d come back to this later. “So, what are you? You said you were once human, but what are you now? And where did you come from?”
