by D. M. Pratt
The girl stopped, looked at Eve and spoke.
“Once you come to Madam Toussaint’s, you always know the way back. She puts that into your blood. Just the way it is,” the young girl said. “And no, it don’t matter that I’m out this late and all alone. Just the way it is. I’m Aria.”
Eve blinked, knowing she didn’t say one word out loud.
“Did you just read my mind?” Eve asked.
Aria stilled and gave the slightest smile. Without moving her lips, Aria spoke to Eve, thinking each word as clearly as if she’d said them out loud. “Everyone can do it, just most people too lazy to try. You’ll get better. You gonna need it for what you got to do. Nice to make your acquaintance Eve.” And then Aria stepped back into a shadow and vanished.
Eve looked around and found herself alone and standing in front of a rusty gate at the edge of the cemetery. Beyond the gate a cobblestone path snaked forward. It was adorned in lacy shadows made by streams of cream colored moonlight that fell through the trees and guided her forward.
“You better be worth all this insanity, Beau Le Masters,” she said out loud.
Eve knew she was speaking more to calm herself than anything else.
At the end of the path stood a lonely grey wood frame house with broken shutters and cluttered with rocking chairs and cats. The wide portico that stretched across the front of the house was truly from another time. Blankets of Spanish moss hung down from the trees and draped protectively across the roof and dripped down the eaves of the porch. Some even crawled around the pillars and hung like spiky brown curtains, shielding the windows from her view. As she stepped onto the portico she could see a warm yellow glow that beckoned to her from inside.
Eve raised her hand to knock on the door. A lion face door knocker with a patina of verdigris green, worn and weathered from years of existing in the moist elements of the bayou, stared back at her.
“You a fool, but you a brave fool,” Madam Toussaint’s voice said softly to her left. “I give you dat.”
Eve turned to see the old woman sitting on the porch swing, smoking a pipe and stroking a black cat. It had enormous green eyes that never blinked, Eve was sure she hadn’t been there when she crossed the yard.
“Were you right there all along?” Eve asked.
“Does it matter?” Madam Toussaint asked. “Sit.”
Eve crossed to her and sat; the black cat with the unblinking eyes rose and stepped into her lap. The cat’s face came level with Eve’s and it’s shiny black nose twitched as she smelled Eve then curled into Eve’s lap waiting to be stroked.
“Dat a very good sign,” Madam Toussaint said. “Maybe you ain’t gon die after all.”
Eve stopped stroking the cat and looked at the old woman. The woman’s hair was long, loose and silver white, wild and wiry as if she’d stuck her finger in an electric socket and let it explode.
“Can you help me save him?” Eve asked.
“Only you can do dat,” Madam Toussaint said.
“I don’t know how.”
There was a sad longing in Eve’s voice that surprised even her. She cared about this man. Eve could see by the old woman’s expression that she heard the deeper meaning too.
“How can you be in love with someone you ain’t never met?”
“I have met him,” Eve said.
“Have ya? Or have ya met the demon dat got him?”
“I’ve seen them both and I know the difference,” Eve said.
“He showed his incubus self to you? You lucky you are not dead,” Evine said.
“It was the charm. I held it up and the incubus came out. It was frightening… hideous,” Eve said.
The thought of what she’d seen still sent a shiver through her.
“You really want to know dees’ tings?”
Eve nodded.
“Incubus be a demon, made full of the lust by the devil hisself. Devil send that demon out to go out and he prey on woman. You know, dey got Succubus, dat the female version of dese soulless creatures that take de sex of men. And when they got the victim ready, if the devil wants he steps in through that demon and the devil he takes you hisself and do what he want even if dat mean killin you.”
Eve looked at her.
“But Beau is not a demon,” Eve said.
“Maybe he’s just possessed by one. You seen wit ya own eyes and felt with you own body, yours for sure, he an Incubus. Lissen child, I had many a young girl come and tell me how a fine young man come slippin into their dreams. First you feel them gently roll over you like a warm, silky wind. Demon’s breath, blowin’ over your skin, feelin’ like soft, dry liquid, caressing every inch of you from the tips of your toes to ya hair but all at once dey feel like dey everywhere. Lips and tongues, smooth hands and velvet fingers that swirl over your body and spiral around your breast and nipples and genitals; it’s gentle at first, licking, pulling, probing, filling you up and taking you in its hand and mouth with tiny bites. You tink it’s a dream until you feel it pull you from your sleep. Sometimes it doesn’t wake you, not yet. Not for a while. So you writhe in da sheets, your body growing hungry for more. You drift back into dis dream you tink you havin’, but you not dreamin’ and maybe you need this caress and maybe you just don’t care. Then, dat tongue a his starts; so hot, firm and wet, it starts. It licks up your neck and slides into your ear. You feel full, sensual lips, pressing everywhere seducing your body, kissing your face, arms, stomach and thighs until your body feels electric. He is makin you feel hot and wet and ready. Dis all just a little tease, a prelude to what gon come next. Den, just one firm finger slides up inside of you and out - again and again and again until you are writhing. Now your conscious mind is starting to know, dis is more dan a dream. You want to wake but dis dream it feels so good so you slip back into it and dat finger goes into you but dis time it goes places you never thought da finger could go and your body give itself over wantin’ more. Dat hot mouth sucking on you, drinking from your breasts, weakening you with each pull and flick of its tongue; maybe you feel dat forked tongue wraps around you, doin’ tings no human man can do. Your breathing gets hard and heavy and dat lets dis creature of the damned know your body is ready. You give your power over and it slides inside you, throbbing, huge, wet, alive and hungry for you. Da demon inside you. If you don’t fight, maybe it goes easy at first, takin’ it’s pleasure, slipping in and out, holding you down, you don feel da claws diggin’ into you flesh as it build faster and faster until you cannot take no more and let go! You release in pounding waves of passion and orgasmic throws. Dat is when you wake from you sleep and see dis hideous creature from hell on you, feel it inside, pounding you into the bed. You fight but you can’t stop. Its claws wrap around your throat, hold your arms, grab your ass and lift you up. You are on fire and de next thing you know you are vertical. The wall of your room slams into your back. You’re pinned by his massive body as waves of pain and pleasure burn through you, driving you insane with pleasure. Dis ting, dis monster, go so deep inside ‘til ya feel like you gonna rip in two! You can’t breathe and the room is spinnin’. Your world starts to fade. You beg for it to stop, but it don’t, it take you deeper, harder, biting, scratching, tearing at your flesh and den… if you’re lucky… maybe you die. If you not lucky, it gonna comeback until…”
There, in abject silence, Eve sat motionless, her jaw slack, hanging open, speechless. Terror dripped from her in the form of beads of sweat, more from understanding what she was dealing with than the oppressive heat that swelled around her.
“If you not dead, you black out and if you wake, you crawl into the bathroom to see what he’s left of you,” Evine says with tears filling her eyes.
Eve knew this was not a story from one of her clients, it was her life: Evine’s survived experience.
“You stare at your face in the mirror and know it ain’t over, dat dark demon gon keep comin back until he rips you apart, ‘till it goes deep enough so dat you beg for death. Cause nobody gon believe you. They ti
nk you crazy and maybe you are. But he not gon let you die, he gon give you his seed and make sure you know he can come take you for the rest of your life, until he sucks the soul from you and den and only den he gon finally let you die.”
“How long ago did he do this to you?” Eve asked.
Madam Toussaint looked at Eve. Her eyes said everything. Somewhere in the deep, mismatched colors, Eve saw a young girl stripped of her youth, drained of her life and left at the mercy of a demon. Madam Toussaint pulled open the side of her dress and in the flood of light from the candles, scars stripped her torso. Keloid scars and whelps so vicious it looked as though she’d been whipped with a cat of nine tails and half eaten.
“Aria? The child? That’s its child?” Eve asked. “But you, you’re too…”
“…old?” Madam Toussaint replied. “Am I too old for a demon who is as old as time?”
“But Beau isn’t…?” Eve started to speak.
“Beau ain’t what or who you need to fear.”
Suddenly, as if a violent cramp had stabbed her, the old woman lurched forward, bending in pain and grabbing her heart. It took her breath away. A long moment passed as she recovered from the flash of pain that surged through her body. She struggled to her feet and called out to the swamp.
“You cannot touch me! Not now. Not ever! You hear me demon,” she shouted.
Madam Toussaint stood in rigid silence looking into the darkness as if she were fighting a fierce wind that only she could see and feel. Her eyes widened and she turned her face to Eve.
“The old demon, he got your friend,” Madam Toussaint.
“Cora?”
The woman reached at her neck and pulled her grigri talisman off and handed it to Eve.
“Maybe you can save her. Take it…NOW,” Evine said.
Eve looked at the ancient brown fingers grasping the weathered bag of beads and dust.
“No, you need it,” Eve said.
“I got me another. Go! Now, before it’s too late. I told dat girl to shut up.”
Eve took the bag and turned to go then stopped. She turned back.
“Can he be saved?” Eve asked.
“Dat up to your will,” Madam Toussaint replied.
“No more games! Can you help me save him?” Eve asked.
“You gon have to find him first,” Madam Toussaint told her. “Go save what’s left of your friend.”
Eve turned and ran through the city of the dead. Aria was right, something in her knew exactly where to go. If Evine was right and Cora was hurt, Cora’s only chance for survival lay clutched in Eve’s hand.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Back in the car, Eve hit the speed dial on her cell phone again—still no answer, only voicemail. It was her tenth call. She wove her way through traffic across the bridge that connected Algiers to New Orleans and zipped through the traffic until she reached the most elegant neighborhood in New Orleans, St. Charles Avenue. Cora’s home had been in her family for two hundred and fifty years and sat at the heart of the old street. There was the plantation in St. Martinsville, but that was a museum now; the penthouse condos in New York and London and the villa in the south of France were all left to Cora by her grandparents, being their only heir when Cora’s parents died in a boating accident near Ibiza, Spain.
Eve turned the last corner and the color drained from her face. Multiple police cars and an ambulance blocked the street. Eve got as close as she could, pulled over and raced from the car still holding the grigri talisman Madam Toussaint had given her. Eve pushed through the crowd of neighbors looking to see what they could and find out what was going on. As she made her way closer she heard bits and pieces from the frightened bystanders.
“…and those horrible screams…” one woman said.
“…if they are dead or alive…” a man said.
They? Eve thought.
Through the crowd Eve could see the coroner bringing out a gurney. A sheet- covered body tossed around enough as it came down the steps that a bloody hand fell out. There was an audible gasp from those closest to what was unfolding. Eve pushed forward until a pair of strong hands stopped her.
“Ya’ll need to stay back. You too Ma’am,” the officer said in a thick southern drawl.
“She was my… sister,” Eve said, lying.
The officer looked at her.
“Stay here,” he said and then crossed to a man in a suit.
A Detective or Captain or something, Eve thought. After all, Cora and her family were well known in this city. Eve’s eyes stayed riveted to the body on the gurney as it was loaded into the coroner’s van.
The man in the suit listened to the officer and then let his eyes trace back to Eve. He broke away from the others and approached Eve signaling for her to be allowed closer.
“Is she alright? Cora? Is she…” Eve said.
Suddenly, tears choked her throat and cascaded down her cheeks.
“Ms. Bouvier is alive. Barely, but she is alive.”
“Where is she?”
“Xavier Hospital,” he replied.
“I…I saw a body? Was it Ms. Rhodan?”
The officer eyed Eve carefully before he spoke.
“Look… Ms…. Not-really-Ms.-Bouvier’s-sister…” he said.
“Dowling. Eve Dowling. She’s my best friend,” Eve said. “Can I go to the hospital to see her?”
“Probably not, because you’re not family and she’s in ICU. You’re Eve Dowling the columnist from Southern Style,” he said.
“How’d you know that?”
“You think cops don’t read?”
“No, I just… I…”
Eve looked at the man before her for the first time: mid-thirties, good features, tall with a sandy complexion. He was at least six foot three, with green, deep-set, inquisitive eyes. The kind of eyes that looked deeper than most people ever even try to look, but he was a cop and that’s what cops do, she thought. He had a fuzzy shadow of a beard that dusted his jaw that, along with the well worn and very wrinkled suit he was wearing, told her he was on his second shift.
“I just want to know she’s okay and I want to be there when she wakes up,” Eve said.
Eve understood the only way she could get in to see Cora was through this cop.
“Her best friend, huh?”
“I need to see her. Can you help me? It’s very important,” she said.
The detective took her to the side.
“Don’t you want to know what happened?” he asked.
Eve didn’t answer. She knew he didn’t have a real clue as to what had happened and she also knew he wouldn’t believe a word of what she was beginning to understand if she was stupid enough to share it.
“She’ll tell me. I just want to be there so she’s not alone,” Eve said insisting again. “May I go?”
“Wait here,” he said and then crossed to another man in an even more rumpled suit and talked to him about Eve.
He knew she knew something. How do cops do that? Good cops anyway.
Eve stepped back into the crowd. She needed to get to Cora and get the talisman around her neck before ‘it” came back and finished what it started.
The next thing she realized, she was running down the street, through the people, past the barricade and into her car. The crowd had grown larger but it didn’t take long for her to get into her car and make her way through the streets to Xavier Hospital.
Eve looked at the grigri talisman in her hand then reached up and touched the one that hung around her neck. In the rear view mirror she could see the crystal beads that caught the light of the moon shimmering a message to her. Hurry, time for all of you is running out, it seemed to be saying. Hurry. Please, hurry.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Eve arrived at the sprawling hospital and searched for a spot to park. It was nine o’clock and the visiting hours were still in full swing. She needed her best parking karma to find a place and it wasn’t happening for her. Five more minutes wasted away until someone came out
from the main hospital and headed into the vast sea of cars. Eve followed them like a stalker, watching as they made their way to their car. She waited for them to get in, get settled, strap in and take off. She pulled in, unbuckled herself and stepped from the car.
Please let her be okay, Eve thought and then looked at the complex of buildings that stretched out in front of her. It would be like finding a needle in a haystack. Okay, fine, the emergency room, that had to be the place to start so that’s where she headed. If the detective was right and Cora was in critical condition, they wouldn’t let her in to see Cora unless she could prove she was family. She’d done a piss poor job lying to the detective. This time she’d just have to do better.
Eve headed into emergency. The place was full of the dregs of humanity, the bloody and bruised, people who’d been in fights and car accidents occupied chairs and gurneys and held themselves up against the walls as they explained their pains and troubles to a nurse or admittance person only to be triaged and sent to wait for what must feel like forever when you are in pain.
Eve saw the main desk and approached a sweet young nurse who was organizing meds with charts. Just as Eve was about to speak to the young nurse, an older nurse stepped in front of the sweet nurse; it was Nurse Ratchet. This woman had more testosterone than many of the men she knew. It was the fine black moustache that crawled above her top lip like a baby caterpillar that really gave her away. The uni-brow didn’t help, but it was the black lifeless eyes of a predator shark that made Eve want to turn and run.
“Can I help you,” Nurse Ratchet said.
“Yes, no…I…” Eve said or blubbered.
“She’s related to Cora Bouvier,” a man’s voice said.
Eve turned; it was the detective.
Nurse Ratchet looked at the detective as he flashed his badge and then back to Eve.
“You need to get into a gown and a mask,” Nurse Ratchet said. “She’s still unconscious. We’ve been able to stop most of the bleeding but the last thing we need is infections.”
