“As well as to be expected,” the woman said with a warm smile. She pulled off her gloves and balled them up in her hand.
“I can’t thank you enough, Sissy.”
“No thanks needed. You’re my brother.”
“Can I see her?” he asked.
“She’s waiting for you.”
Without another word, he bolted into the master bedroom to see his wife.
Toni side-stepped her aunt and followed her father into the room.
Just like every other space in the house, the master bedroom was warm and inviting. A king-sized, canopy bed with fine lace pulled to each of the posts sat in the middle of the room atop of a designer rug.
The walls were the color of fine burgundy silk. The drapes were also a burgundy and gold heavy material. Red and white roses sprung out of crystal vases on each side of the bed, placed on small wooden end tables.
In the bed, sat a majestic, Black woman. She was tall, long legs, brilliantly bright, almond-shaped eyes, a lush mouth, a perfect pearly white smile.
She was happy. Holding a baby girl, freshly wrapped in white cloth, she glanced over at her husband and extended a hand for him to come to her.
Toni walked up to the bed and watched her parents.
There seemed to be so much love between them until it was hard for her to imagine that they would have ever put her up for adoption.
Leaning over the bed, she glanced at the baby and without being told, she knew the little girl was her sister.
Gratefully, her father kissed her mother on the forehead, then took the baby in his embrace and held her tight. The smell of innocence wafted up to his nose and he inhaled a deep breath.
Rocking the small child, he whispered, “Bless you.”
While her parents were busy inspecting their new baby, Toni noticed something behind her mother, cradling her like a soft cocoon. At first, she thought it was a bunch of pillows that needed adjusting. But pillows didn’t flinch.
Getting closer, she saw a long feather peeking out of the cover. Then another.
“What is that?” Toni asked, eyes narrowing.
They were white, large…
Wings!
Toni examined them closely, transfixed and mystified by the appendages attached to her mother’s back.
Stepping back, Toni absently placed a hand over her mouth in disbelief. Her heart began to race, and her fingers trembled.
“Bring the girls, Sissy. I want them to meet their sister,” her father called over his shoulder, eyes still fixed on his newest daughter.
Toni looked toward the door as her aunt escorted in four girls, one of them was her.
She was the oldest, at eight years old; the other girls were like stepping stones, ages six, four, two and the youngest in her father’s arms.
Toni walked over to the side of the bed where her father stood to get a better look at her sister and noticed a clover mark in her little inner thigh.
Toni had no recollection of this. Any of this, but at that moment, she felt so close to them all.
She reached out to touch her sister, but her fingers moved through the image.
“Mom,” she whispered. She looked over at her father. “Dad,” she said, tears running down her face.
How she wished that they could hear her.
The feel of blood below her feet and images blurring around her was a warning. She was about to leave them.
“I’m not ready,” she said, tears flowing down her cheeks. God only knew if she would ever see them again. “Not YET!” she screamed, trying desperately to hold on.
But the pull was too strong.
Suddenly, everything disappeared, and the light had her in its clutches again.
Before she knew what was going on, she was swept into another image in another place not far from the first.
***
Across town, in the distant future of her sister’s birth, Toni’s feet landed in cool, damp earth. She looked down at the dirt around her and then trailed her gaze up to a cloudless sky and fat yellow, Harvest moon.
“What fresh hell is this?” she asked, looking around to discover she was in a cemetery full of old, elaborate stone crypts and towering, limestone sculptures.
“Wait, I know this place,” she mumbled.
St. Louis Cemetery.
She had heard about this historic site and intended to visit while she was investigating her story, but nothing had prepared her to show up here in the middle of the night naked and alone.
Talk about freaky…
The mood of this hallowed place was eerie and filled with intimate and mysterious gloom. She knew right then that while her first vision was meant to be loving and kind, this new vision was going to be quite the opposite.
A chill shot up her spine when she heard the grunt of a man and the clear, distinct sound of a scuffle.
“Who’s there?” she asked, snapping her head toward the noise. Her long hair flopped over her thin shoulder while her bangs danced in the wind.
Breathing hard, she closed her eyes and tried to remember Jericho’s words.
“I won’t let anything happen to you.” She could hear his words whispering in her ear, but she could not see him. How she wished he was here now, especially since he had gotten her into this mess.
Opening her eyes, she took a step out from her planted position and made herself move.
The scuffle was getting louder. More voices started to come alive, driving the urgency inside her.
Walking slowly toward what had to be an epic fight, she eked through the maze of littered crypts until she saw a circle of men and women in an open space.
The moon was shining down bright on them. With their backs turned to her, they were focused on someone else.
The clang of steel hitting stone was deafening. The chorus of angry voices grew louder and louder, chanting and chiding the fight on.
Running up to the commotion, she recognized one face in particular.
“No!” she screamed as a stream of air exploded from her lungs.
Her father was fighting a group of people and losing, only because of the numbers.
With every ounce of strength that he could muster, he swung his strong arms, blocking strange rays of blinding light that came toward him along with the blade of a sharp sword.
The mob circled around him like a litter of hungry vultures, all chanting and wielding bolts of light out of their hands at him at one time.
With smirky, thin smiles and faces wrought with twisted malice, they devoured him.
“Stop this!” Toni cried out in vain. “You’re hurting him, you BASTARDS!” She tried to hit some of the strangers but her body past through them like a mist.
“STOP NOW!” she screamed louder. Still, no one could hear her.
They were strange, malevolent beings, all with the same bleach white hair. The same hair of the woman she had seen in the bar the day before.
“Your end has come,” one of the blonde men said to her father. Triumphantly, he held his hands out and gathered the same magnetic energy that Jules had summoned in the bar.
A man across from her father sent a bolt of lightning that knocked him from his feet, sent him in the air backwards before landing. The thud of his bones against the ground suggested his lungs were punctured.
Wheezing, he fought to get his footing. Refusing to give up, mouth bloody and cut, he ignored the tears that danced over his open wounds.
Her father took a deep breath and then scowled at the collective group. Although his body was shattered, his voice was not. “Your end will come through my seed. You will bend to my daughter’s will. Litha will not deny me my vengeance.”
The man approached her father. Standing over him victoriously, he smiled in satisfaction at the defeated man.
“Your seed will not live long. No daughter of yours will see her birthright,” the evil man promised, eyes blazing.
But Toni’s father would not lose hope. “It has been written in the prophec
y, and it will come to pass.”
With that, the blonde man pushed aside his long black leather trench coat and pulled a shiny sword from his side.
Grabbing it with both hands, he plunged it through her father’s chest until it exited out of his back and stabbed into the concrete below him.
The circle became quiet. Watching as her father took his final breaths, they reveled in the void they had temporarily created.
Her father’s large, limp body fell over and his eyes faded into the distance. All life had left him, and his soul had exited this plane.
Toni ran through the circle to her father and tried to hold him, but her fingers floated through the image like sand. She fell to her knees, crying out in anger.
“Why!?” she moaned in despair.
As the crowd dissipated, disappearing beyond the crypts to leave the body alone, she noticed the name on the grave he had died on. It was a lovely crypt with a six-foot angel holding a sword toward the sky.
Her heart sank in her pain discovering it was her mother’s grave.
“Daddy,” she whimpered like a child. “I’m so sorry.”
There were not enough tears, not enough time, not enough of anything to protect her or make her understand why this had happened to her family.
She sat quietly sobbing, broken by the idea that no one could help her, but she vowed, even in her sadness to seek her father’s revenge and not let his death be in vain.
This time when the warm, red blood splashed against her knees, she knew it was time to leave.
Exhausted, she allowed the light to take her without a fight.
***
The next vision brought her to Our Mother Catherine Adoption Agency.
It was a year after the murder of her father, and the sun was shining bright as kids played wildly out on the jungle gym on the orphanage grounds.
Toni found herself inside of an office of dark woods, simple furniture and shelves of leather bound books, looking out of the windows at the children and the nuns watching over them.
The rays of the sunlight passed through her, but she was still glad to be out of the darkness of the cemetery.
Any place was better than there.
She turned from the window to find a little girl sitting at a small wooden chair across from a large credenza.
It was her.
She knew it, just as she had known everything else in her vision.
Walking over to the child, she looked down and marveled at how young and innocent she used to be.
Her younger self was reading the daily newspaper and kicking her feet against the desk. She wore a blue uniform skirt, a simple white cotton top and blue cardigan and a red ribbon in her curly hair.
“Why don’t I remember any of this?” Toni asked aloud.
Just then, the door flew open and a white nun in full, traditional habit came stalking in. Closing the door behind her, she quickly darted across the room, and knelt on one knee in front of young Toni.
“We don’t have much time,” the woman said, checking over her shoulder.
“Am I going away?” Young Toni asked, putting down her newspaper.
“Yes, just as we planned. You’ll be safe there. But you must never come back, no matter what,” the woman instructed.
“Why?” Young Toni asked, eyes bright with curiosity.
“Because you’re the key to it all, baby,” the woman said cryptically. “We can’t let anything happen to you.” A tear fell down her cheek for the girl’s troubles. “I promised your mother and father that I would take care of you, if anything ever happened to them. And I’ve tried so hard to keep my promise, Antonia. This is the only way I know how. I have to send you away.”
The sound of feet in the distance, echoing down the hall, made the woman hurry. There would be no time for farewells. No time for the woman to explain how much she loved the little girl.
“But I don’t want to go,” Young Toni pleaded. “I like it here with my sisters and you.”
The nun’s heart was broken, but this was not the time to lose sight of all they had worked for to keep the family safe.
“This is for your own good. It’s for the prophecy, little one. Close your eyes,” the nun instructed.
Young Toni did as she was told – she’d always been taught to mind her manners and respect her elders.
Unable to help herself, the pretty young nun planted a kiss on the girl’s forehead, then spoke words in another language before her eyes went ablaze like Jericho’s. The room began to spin, the lights flickered, and time stood still. Putting her index on Toni’s forehead, she reluctantly wiped the child’s memory clean.
As quickly as the lights flickered, they were on again. The room stopped spinning and time proceeded.
Still, sadness lingered between the gaps of unspoken words.
“You won’t remember anything about me but know that I will always love you.” The woman stood up and wiped her face. “God be with you, child.” Looking down at the girl, she crossed herself and turned away, unable to dwell on her action, lest it break her completely.
Young Toni sat quietly in her chair, still in a daze, with her eyes closed and her little fingers gripping the small desk as the woman quickly opened the door with a smile painted on her face.
“She’s all ready for you,” the nun said with a dip of her head, moving out of the way as the Head Mother and Toni’s new family came in to collect her.
“So, that’s why I don’t remember,” Toni whispered, looking at a younger version of her adopted family as they walked over to embrace her younger self. “My memory was wiped clean.”
The blood was thick around her feet again. It was time to go. Evidently, she had seen what she needed to see.
Toni didn’t think she could take anymore, but she continued her journey, hoping soon for it all to end.
***
The next vision landed Toni at a place much more familiar.
She was back at the New Bourbon Hotel in a room she had never seen. Marble floors were under her. A deafening reverberation made her grab her ears.
“Agh!” she cried out. “What is that?”
Sounds of partying visitors on the street flooded the space. The darkness of the room was illuminated by a strange light. But there was something else in the room, something powerful that felt like it would split right through her brain at any moment.
Walking up the stairs that led to the master bedroom, she stopped as a young Black woman came down the stairs past her. Her skin was the color of mahogany, her big brown eyes red and tired.
It was the woman from the coroner photos.
Moving to the corner of the stairwell, Toni allowed the woman to pass her and step on the balcony.
Toni followed curious to see what would happen. As soon as they stepped outside, the agonizing ringing in her ears stopped.
Outside, the night was clear, and the late evening breeze carried over the stench of stale beer and cigarette smoke.
The young woman seemed to be in a trance. In her night clothes, she bent and tied a rope that was already there on the balcony, and then wrapped it securely around her neck.
“What are you doing?” Toni asked, screaming at the young woman. “Stop!”
The woman’s motions were mechanical as though she was mindless in the matter.
Balancing her feet on the balcony railing, the woman looked down at the crowd, then leaped off the side without a thought.
Toni ran to the edge and gripped the iron railing. Looking down, she saw the woman dangling, her feet kicking under her white night dress as her hands flailing, before finally her body went limp.
Toni tried to grab the rope and untie it, but again, her image was like a shadow in the place.
Screams could be heard below. Some ran over and tried to crawl up to the woman to free her. Others stopped in the street with their hands over their mouths.
Toni stepped back from the edge of the balcony speechless. She knew this part of the story wel
l. Her entire body was trembling, her heart racing. Guilt filled her, because there was nothing she could do.
It was then that another woman came out on the balcony and did the same, followed by another and then another. The vision shifted her from one event to the other in a mind-warping speed. Showing her time-after-time how her sisters had plunged to their untimely deaths.
Toni sat in the corner covered in tears, traumatized by the vision and paralyzed in fear.
In the background, she could hear chanting, but not the voices of Jericho and his family. It was the same people who had killed her father in the cemetery.
In her mind’s eye, she could see them, just as plain as day. They were in a circle in a small room chanting in a circle. Their chants entranced each of her sisters, sending them blindly over the edge until all that was left was her.
Standing up after the last sister had jumped, she walked to the edge and looked out at the street. No one was on it. No visitors, no workers. It was a ghost town except for one blonde-haired woman who looked up at her with a grin on her face.
Toni looked down and realized that she could see her. Her heart started to thud louder. Snarling, she spat over the edge at the woman.
“Don’t be rude,” the woman taunted. “It’s not in your nature, young one.” Her long hair danced in the night air behind her.
Toni’s voice carried. “I’m going to kill you,” she said to the woman.
“You’ll try,” the woman mouthed.
Just then, blood drenched Toni’s feet and the light pulled her in and yanked her back through time.
***
When she finally came to from her vision and was back in the middle of pentagram at Cypress Pointe plantation, she was screaming wildly and holding on to Jericho while his father and brothers chanted and held the circle.
She gasped for breath and let out a long painful moan.
“Toni,” Jericho said, moving the hair from her face. “Toni, it’s me,” he said, shaking her.
She stopped screaming and looked around her, realizing that she was very naked and very hysterical.
The sun had set on the horizon, and the darkness of night overshadowed the room.
“How long have I been gone?” Toni whispered into Jericho’s chest.
“Hours…eight, I think,” he answered.
Warlocks: The Creole Coven (The Laveau Coven) Page 10
