She fell to her knees, cradling her hands to her chest. “Damn it,” she whispered to herself. “Damn it all to Hell.”
No, she reminded herself. She was already in Hell. This was as close to Hell as anyone could get, and still be alive.
Not that she would be alive for long, once Laveau took over her body again.
She couldn’t think like that. Her thoughts kept wavering back and forth between this being real, and this being all some sort of nightmarish dream, and she wanted so badly just to know this was a dream and she was going to wake up in Carlson’s bed again with his arms around her and one more lame excuse about how this was all in her head.
“Snap out of it, Katie,” she growled at herself, there in the dark.
Mockingly, Madame Laveau said the same thing back to her.
Snap out of it, Katie.
Laughter followed, ringing in her ears, deafening her, pouring up from some place inside that Katie had never known was there before the dark spirit of a voodoo queen had chosen to ride inside her.
Around her, the room began to brighten. Katie held her hands at her side, willing this to be the end of it. If there was a way out she would take it and never look back and never come back here to New Orleans ever and the rest of this nightmare could stay here and burn just like that house of cards the ghost had showed her.
Shadows became objects she could barely make out. Pipes as wide as her waist. Boxes stacked on themselves. Cinderblock walls. Racks of metal shelves.
The basement. The bottom of Xavier’s house, where a voodoo temple once stood. The magic of New Orleans had brought her here from Carlson’s house. It would never let her go. Ever.
She belonged to it now.
Just like you belong to me, Madame Laveau said in her mind.
“No, I won’t let you.”
You’ve no choice.
“The Hell I don’t.”
In front of her, shadows detached themselves from the stacks of things against the wall. It lurched and moved toward her in jerky, halting motions that were freakish. Monstrous. Twisted.
When it fell into view, Katie was looking at what was left of Xavier Holsten.
His flesh had turned a pale shade of brown with the dried blood around the wound in his neck creating a black stain. That insipid top hat was barely perched on his head, slipping low over his forehead.
Blank eyes glared at her. Impossibly cold hands gripped her arm like a coiled metal band.
His mouth fell open, and the breath of the grave flowed out.
“You are here. You are returned to us.”
Katie tried to pull away. Katie tried to scream. The world spun around her as a zombie held her fast.
And then she smiled, and she relaxed. She was back. Now the world would know her power.
From behind her own face, staring out through Madame Laveau’s eyes, Katie screamed where no one could hear her.
Chapter 35
In the middle of the basement, the naked people stood. These were the ones from before, with their robes still piled on the floor, their eyes still blank. They had been here the whole time, waiting for her.
Queen Marie Laveau.
From further back in the room, Carlson emerged, holding a red wax candle in one fist. His smile was full of pride and desire. “It is you, my queen? I waited, as instructed.”
“You have served me well.” Katie heard the words coming from her lips, spoken independent of her own thoughts. “I am stronger now. I won’t pass out, next I use my magic. My acolytes here have been waiting for me to turn them completely. For now, they exist between the two worlds of life and death. They wait for me to make them fully dead, and fully mine. I am strong enough now to bring them over. Yes.”
Carlson nodded at her. “I stayed in the bedroom with you--I mean, with her--for as long as I could stand it. I swear she was going to try making love with me again.”
The scene played out around Katie, like she had paid her ticket to watch this show, and she was powerless to stop it.
Madame Laveau turned all the heat of her soul onto Carlson with a stare that would have withered a lesser man. “You will never speak of her again. She is gone. The remnants of her soul are trapped within me and will soon disappear into the vasty nothingness of Hell. There is a spot reserved there for my enemies.” She moved very close to him and cupped his chin in her hand. “You aren’t my enemy, are you Carlson?”
His smile stayed set in place, but his eyes betrayed how suddenly terrified he was. “No, Madame. Of course not, Madame. I am forever your faithful servant. I found this girl when she came here, as I promised I would. Didn’t I bring her right to you? Here, where your magic was always strongest. I brought Katie Pearson right to--”
Her hand came around in an arc that sliced through the air with a humming sound to land against the side of Carlson’s face.
He spun off his feet and tumbled to the floor, sliding along the poured concrete until he was laying in the center of the pentagram, surrounded by the mindless, blank-eyed minions of Madame Laveau. The candle in his hand dropped hard, and cracked at the middle. Its flame went out.
“I told you,” she said in a quiet fury, “never to speak her name again. She is dead to me, and to you, and to this world.”
From somewhere in the prison of her own mind, Katie latched onto those words. Dead to this world. She was dead. Her spirit would evaporate away, and there would be nothing left but the loa of this psychotic voodoo queen.
She drifted, unable to catch herself.
“Now,” Madame Laveau said. “Let’s begin.”
She didn’t offer a hand to help Carlson up. She turned her back on him, circling in place, examining the room.
“I need a mirror,” she told Carlson. “I wish to see my glorious body while I perform this ceremony.”
He sat up, rubbing the back of one hand against his cheek where she had struck him. “Of course, my queen,” he muttered.
Then his eyes got wider as he realized he was sitting in the middle of the pentagram. He went to stand up, but his hand was about to touch one of the red painted lines and he stopped himself.
“Uh,” his voice waivered, “Madame...”
“Oh, for the love of the spirits,” she swore at him. “Get up, Carlson. The circle is not closed, and my power only hurts my enemies. Again I ask you, Carlson. Are you my enemy?”
He swallowed, and slowly shook his head. “No, Madame. I am most definitely not your enemy.”
He gently placed his hand down on the floor next to him, cringing when his fingers barely brushed one of the lines of the pentagram. Nothing happened, and he picked himself up, hopping over the outer circle of the voodoo design.
Madame Laveau curled her lip at him. “Now, go fetch me my mirror. Or should I send Xavier to do it?”
The monstrosity that was the corpse of Xavier Holsten shambled forward, aiming a hateful and blank stare at Carlson.
“No need, Madame,” Carlson answered. He bowed low from his waist. Somehow, he made it clear that he would do anything for her, in a way that barely concealed he was terrified, and was only now realizing he was in over his head.
He scampered off into the basement. The space had never been fully cleared out and a lot of the things that had belonged to Xavier’s family still sat around collecting dust.
“It needs a little work, I admit.” Madame Laveau spoke to herself as she stared around the room, scowling at what her one-time voodoo temple had become. “My followers will recreate the former glory here. I will have my power. I will have my respect. This house will be torn down and rebuilt in my honor. Hmm. Too bad Carlson didn’t get his little girlfriend to give him tips on how to refurbish this place. Katie Pearson was supposed to be very good at that. Isn’t that right, Katie?”
She laughed, and shook her head, feeling the loose ball of fading thoughts and emotions rattling around in her brain. That was all that was left of Katie Pearson. Just a tiny shadow of what used to be a person.
> Soon, she would be gone. Then there would only be the voodoo queen, Marie Laveau.
It didn’t take long for Carlson to return dragging a full length standing mirror with a thick wooden frame, carved and painted in gold. She vaguely remembered that mirror belonging to her family years and years ago. He set it so it was facing the pentagram, and the naked men and women standing there, waiting for Laveau to pour her magic into them.
She faced herself in the mirror. Beautiful black hair. Hazel eyes. A body that men would fight over. A smirk that showed humor and disdain in equal measures. This body would do. Yes. It would do very well.
The thing she wasn’t used to was that light skin. It wouldn’t be suited to the heat and the humidity of New Orleans. Not at first. It would take some getting used to.
Well, no one had ever accused Marie Laveau of shrinking away from a challenge.
Chapter 36
It was time for the magic. Deep within her black soul, dark things coiled and stirred. She remembered the power of voodoo. She had been born with it. The power to hurt. The power to crush.
The power to ruin lives.
She stepped into the middle of the pentagram, and took a deep breath.
Somewhere in her mind, Katie Pearson was trying to scream. Madame Laveau heard the noise like the buzzing of an insect, and ignored it. This was her time. The world was going to be hers.
Starting with these few people here.
“I call upon the loa,” she said on the exhale of her breath. “I call upon the spirits of the sun and the moon. I call upon the dead of New Orleans to rise to my command.”
The blood in her veins became slimy as it rushed through her racing heart. It was sludge churning through her body, hot and oily and seething with the powers of heaven and earth.
Not far from her, Carlson eagerly rubbed his hands together as he watched.
Next to him Xavier slumped, breathing shallow and ragged breaths into his dead lungs.
Madame Laveau kept chanting. She felt her blood. She felt it connect to the people attending her, waiting to be made more than they were.
Waiting to be made immortal, in exchange for their souls.
She felt Katie Pearson open one single eye, deep inside, to watch this all happen. Let her watch. She was already dead. She just didn’t know it yet.
But Laveau did.
In Haitian Creole, and in English, and in languages that had been forgotten since the time of the written word, Laveau continued to chant at her naked followers. Their blank eyes teared, and their muscles tensed, and their faces contorted in agony.
The nipples of the two women under her thrall stood out bulging and stiff.
There was a sexual feel to the spell, to be sure. Being used like this. Giving yourself over completely to the voodoo queen who would ride you until you died--it was like being on the cusp of an orgasm, and never being allowed to find your release.
Laveau found herself turned on in a similar way. Her core was an inferno of rising heat. It spread through her limbs, and into every little fold and recess everywhere on her body. She was alive like never before. She wanted to experience everything. In that moment, she wanted to throw Carlson on the floor and take him until he cried for mercy.
Then she would take each of the naked men waiting to serve her and teach them what that really meant.
Then, the women.
Her hips twisted as she concentrated on the words she was speaking. She gasped as she felt the raw power, both physical and spiritual, running through her. Her hands paused in the intricate motions they were making to weave the spell, and she felt over her own body for a moment. From her shoulders, down her chest and the firm roundness of her breasts, across her flat stomach, down the slope of her hips...
She caught Carlson staring at her with hunger in his eyes. She laughed to see how badly he wanted her. He would leave him there, wanting her, until he begged to speak her name for just a taste of her lips. Until he agreed to kill anyone who stood in her way, just for the pleasure of laying in her bed.
Then she would make him stab himself through the heart, for the honor of seeing her pleasure herself.
NO.
Laveau shook her head. That thought had not been hers. The one she rode, this Katie Pearson, was waking up.
She scowled. It couldn’t be helped. The more of her magic she drew on, the less control she had over things like that. No matter. If need be, she could always put herself in a voodoo trance, staying in a coma-like state for months.
During that time, her new body would meld with her completely, while Katie Pearson withered away and disappeared.
“You are dead,” she whispered to the roiling, formless ball of Katie’s soul. “Accept your fate.”
No.
Even now, the voice was weaker. There was less of Katie Pearson now than there had been just a minute ago.
I won’t let you...
Laveau smirked, and ran her hands tantalizingly over her body again. “You have no choice. I am all powerful. You are nothing. Less than the dirt I step on.
Her hands settled on her hips. Wouldn’t this be more fun if she was naked, too?
The men and women who chose to give their lives to her were now completely blank shells waiting for a word from their mistress. Without her, they would all cease to be more than just empty flesh.
Now, with a few words and with a pulling motion, she hooked her fingers into the souls of those mindless followers.
And pulled.
They came to her, each and every one, filling her with energy and power like few mortals had ever known. The oily blackness of her blood surged with the souls of these men and women. She gasped in spite of herself. The power.
The power!
Throwing her head back and laughing hysterically she gloried in the feeling of it. This was life. This was her life!
Now she turned to her reflection in the mirror, prepared to throw off her clothes and see herself in the glory of her new, energized body.
What she saw looking back at her, was the face of Katie Pearson.
I said no!
Chapter 37
Katie could feel herself, but only just barely. She was here. She was still here, and Laveau had not taken her away. Not yet.
Not yet.
Her hands were feeling over her own body in a lewd way and she wanted to stop but she couldn’t. Now they rested on her hips, at her ass, and she liked the way it felt. There was something else. Something that her hand was touching. She wondered why she could feel something else, something besides the sexual arousal and the gut-wrenching filth in her blood.
Madame Laveau performed her magic, putting her concentration into controlling her mindless followers. The more she put herself into her voodoo, the more Katie was able to come back to herself.
She was terrified. She was caged and she was trapped. She had no control over her own body.
But when her fingertips touched that thing in her back pocket, she felt something else. Like she might have a power of her own.
What power? she wondered to herself. She wasn’t a witch. She couldn’t use magic. She couldn’t stop Laveau.
Her fingers felt along the edge of the thing in her pocket, and a memory came to her. Something about the ghost of the fortune teller. The cards, stacking themselves into a replica of this house. It had burned from the bottom up, from the basement where she stood staring out of her own eyes, up to the attic.
The cards.
Her spirit, her soul, that part of her that was still just her--whatever it was called, it stirred and swelled when she realized what she had in her pocket.
The cards.
One card, in particular.
“Are you watching, Katie Pearson?” Her voice was mocking. She turned her gaze inward, and glared at Katie. “Do you see what I can do? I can command even life itself. What can you do to stop me? Nothing.”
Katie cowered back from the baleful hatred in those eyes, and tried to think. What about the cards
? What had Madam Parlander said to her during that sham of a fortune telling session?
Laveau’s face pressed inward, and her teeth snapped at Katie, and then she snapped back to the outside again. Katie was left alone, looking out through her own eyes. Stronger, and weaker, and completely lost.
She was going to die, if she couldn’t get out of her own body.
The card. The card!
Now that Laveau’s attention was elsewhere again she could see the room around her. The naked people standing and withering as Laveau took her lifeforce. The face of Carlson, watching with a hunger that showed exactly how depraved the man was. The deformed, dead body of Xavier.
The mirror, reflecting a body that was hers, being ridden by the loa. Used and defenseless, she looked into her own eyes.
Her fingers caught hold of the card in her pocket, and pulled it free.
She faced it toward the mirror, and the smiling face of the joker stared back in the reflection.
A scream split her mind, and Katie thought it was her making that godawful sound--but it wasn’t.
It was Madame Laveau who screamed.
“Put it away! Don’t do this! Put it awaaaaaaay!”
The joker card terrified her. There was power in the voodoo tarot cards, even if they looked like just regular, ordinary cards to anyone else.
To a voodoo queen, they were pure magic. A gris gris that would banish her from the world once again.
Carlson saw what she was doing, but too late to stop her. His body lurched toward her and now Katie knew that she only had seconds to act before he got hold of her, or Madame Laveau took control of her again, or she simply lost her mind. It was a miracle she could still think at all. After all those haunted houses in her past, now she was the one who was haunted.
She needed to save herself.
It felt like she was moving through molasses as she made one step, and then another, toward the mirror. Time slowed to a crawl around her. Every noise became a buzzing drone in her ears. A single breath stretched out into infinity.
Madame Laveau threatened her with eternal damnation, a never ending horror of pain, if she didn’t stop.
Sight Unseen Complete Series Box Set Page 95
