On rainy days, which came often during the stormy season, Oksana would sneak away from the plantation where she and her mother were slaves. She would sit with the mambo, an old woman who lived in a hut not far from their owner’s property.
Oksana was a mere girl, and far below the old woman in station. Yet the mambo had schooled her, always treating her with respect and kindness.
“You will be very powerful, Oksana. I can already sense it. Far more powerful than I am.” The old woman spoke quietly, brushing Oksana’s braids back from her forehead.
“But that’s not possible,” Oksana answered in her clear, girlish voice. “No one is as powerful as you!” Even so, she preened a bit under the praise of the woman whom she had begun to see as both grandmother and guide.
“We all have our time, child, and yours is just beginning. If you continue with your studying and your prayers, you will become a favorite of the loa.”
Oksana stood and hugged the woman around the middle.
“My goodness! You are getting big,” the woman observed, patting Oksana’s shoulder. “How old are you now?”
“I’ve seen nine summers,” Oksana answered looking up at the woman with adoration.
“Nine, eh? Well, now! May you see many more, little one.”
The memory flashed through Oksana’s consciousness in the space of a single heartbeat. She and Duchess had been about the same distance from Mama Lovelie when the undead child attacked; Xander was a bit further away. Had the girl been human, they might have had a chance of stopping her in time.
But she wasn’t.
An instant before the tip of the knife would have sunk into her chest, the mambo raised a hand, palm out. A wave of power exploded from her, and Oksana felt as though she had flung herself head first into a pile of pillows. The very air around her absorbed her momentum and she fell to the ground, unable to move any closer.
“What the—” Xander hissed. She could sense that he and Duchess had both met the same impenetrable force.
Oksana stared at the tableau in front of her, wide-eyed. The girl stood frozen, the knife halted mid-arc.
“Oh, child. You have been gone for some time now, haven’t you?” There was compassion in the voice emerging from Mama Lovelie’s mouth—but it was not the voice of the mambo. It was the voice of the powerful loa who now possessed her. “It is time for your soul to rest.”
Oksana heard her start to mutter in tongues. The undead child who had been standing before her, still as a statue, crumpled to the ground. Her unseeing eyes rolled up, and she lay unmoving. In the distance, a plaintive wail of despair rose and fell on the wind before trailing off to nothing.
Some of the people who had been standing near the fire moved forward to examine the body, wearing expressions of the deepest disgust.
“Sprinkle the corpse with bitter herbs and wrap it up, but be careful not to touch it,” the possessed mambo instructed. “Also, the knife is coated with poison. Throw it in the fire.”
With that, Mama Lovelie’s body sagged. The power holding Oksana and the others back disappeared at the same instant, and Oksana scrambled upright. Only the mambo remained, now. The loa who had possessed her and saved her life was gone.
Mason jogged up to Oksana. Electricity crackled between them as he took her upper arm. He gave her a quick once-over before turning his attention to the girl. Two men were already rolling the small body up in a blanket.
“Wait, I’m a doctor,” he said. “I should check on her first—”
Oksana shook her head, lifting a hand to catch his and hold him back. “There’s nothing to check, Mason. Believe me. Let them deal with her.”
He resisted for a moment, but a glance at the girl’s milky eyes and decomposing flesh before the blanket covered her face seemed to stop him. She felt a faint shudder travel through his body.
Xander had recovered himself enough to approach Mama Lovelie, who still appeared disoriented.
“Are you well, Madame?” he asked, a hand hovering near her elbow. “The knife didn’t break your skin?”
She waved his offer of support away, shaking off her moment of weakness. “Of course not. Erzulie Fréda Dahomey would never allow her servant to be harmed in such a way. As the spirit of love, she is far stronger than a single child tainted by darkness.”
“Why was the girl sent?” Oksana asked. “This was hardly a random attack.”
Mama Lovelie raised an eyebrow. “I expect she was meant as a message.”
Mason was still watching, with sick fascination, as the child was taken away, but now his attention turned back to the mambo. “A message? From whom?”
Bael? Oksana thought to the others. But… that doesn’t really make sense, does it?
No, I agree, Duchess replied silently. Bael prefers grand gestures. If this had been his doing, that poor enfant would have been strapped into a bomb vest, or something equally horrendous.
Mama Lovelie’s dark eyes played over them, as though she were somehow aware of their silent exchange. “There is a powerful bokor in the village west of here. He is a twisted thing of pure evil, who has committed heinous crimes in the name of money and power. This was his doing, I am certain.”
“And he is the one you planned to speak with us about tonight… if the spirits favored us?” Xander asked, his voice level.
“Just so,” Mama Lovelie confirmed. “Come. I must complete the ceremony to close the door between our world and the spirit world. When that is done, we will talk.”
*
It was not yet midnight when the five of them returned to Mama Lovelie’s home. Their hostess waved them into the main room before collapsing rather abruptly into a rickety chair by the table.
Is she all right? Both concern and curiosity colored Xander’s silent question.
Oksana gave the mambo a quick once-over before sitting across from her. I think she’s just drained from the ceremony, she replied. I’ve seen similar things before.
That was a lot of power she was hosting, Duchess put in.
Mason, meanwhile, had been poking around until he found a pitcher of water and a cup. He set the drink before the mambo, who shot him a glance of thanks.
“You’re certain you weren’t injured at all?” he asked her.
Oksana felt the now-familiar ache take up residence in her heart again. Why did Mason have to be so kind? So earnest? So intelligent?
So damned handsome?
Mama Lovelie waved him off, though not as brusquely as she might have done the previous day. “Of course I wasn’t, blan. Don’t fuss.”
“You said there was a… what was it? A bokor?” Xander asked, getting them back on track. “Forgive my ignorance, but what exactly is that?”
“A sorcerer for hire,” Oksana said. “Someone with both power and a lack of scruples, who is willing to perform dark magic for money.”
“Don’t tar all bokor with the same brush, child,” Mama Lovelie said severely. “Nothin’ wrong with taking handouts in exchange for a bit of spirit work. Lots of bokor out here, you know, and not all of them are Dark.”
Oksana had definite opinions about anyone who charged money for what the loa would willingly give for free, but airing them would only derail the conversation.
“This one is Dark, though?” Duchess prompted.
Mama Lovelie’s lip curled. “This one is twisted. He has committed heinous crimes without fear of reprisal.”
“Crimes like what we saw tonight?” Xander asked, looking vaguely ill.
“Just so. Rumors are circulating that he is hunting at night, plucking children out of war-torn areas and destroying their souls.”
“Destroying their souls? How is that even possible?” Mason asked, and Oksana could sense him struggling to reconcile what he’d seen with what he believed about science and medicine. “How could that girl have been walking and holding a knife, when her body was obviously undergoing the decay of death?”
The mambo looked at him with an expression of pity
.
“The soul, while in some ways a discrete entity, is also two-fold, blan. The two parts are known as gros-bon-ange, which controls the body, and ti-bon-ange, which is the personality. While they are united, the person exists in balance, with the body’s base needs held in check by the conscience.”
“Two parts? That sounds familiar,” Mason said, turning his eyes towards Oksana, who nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “The Light and the Dark.”
Mama Lovelie shook her head. “It’s not that simple, child. Ti-bon-ange and gros-bon-ange are not good and evil. They just are.”
Mason frowned. “So, again, what exactly happened to this child?”
Mama Lovelie sat back in her chair, regarding him. “Through dark sorcery, a powerful bokor can divide the soul, literally ripping out the ti-bon-ange and leaving simply a body that moves and functions without a will. There is no moral compass to moderate behavior. The victim becomes extremely impressionable. This is what is happening to the children of our villages.”
“Their souls are being ripped in two and the ti-… ti—” Mason stopped, as if trying to remember the word.
“Ti-bon-ange,” Xander offered helpfully.
“Yes, that. The ti-bon-ange is just… gone? Forever?”
A troubled expression filled the mambo’s face. “Gone forever? I believe so, yes. There are still some practitioners who believe a person can be reunited with their missing ti-bon-ange, but I have never seen this. I do not know how it is done.”
Mason sighed and rubbed the heel of his hand over his forehead. “Okay. Let’s say that I believe this. You’re basically talking about turning children into… zombies.”
He looked like he wanted to choke the word back as soon as it passed his lips, but Mama Lovelie only nodded.
“Yes. It is slavery in its worst form. Our people knew slavery for many centuries, but nothing the whites did to us was any more horrific than this.”
“And these children are being bought and sold?” Oksana asked, aware that if the man they were after was a bokor, there must be money involved. Already, this seemed like a much more organized venture than simply creating child zombies and turning them loose on a war-torn country.
“Oh, yes,” said the mambo. “Some of the children, he sells to the military commanders and militia men. They do their superiors’ bidding better than regular child soldiers because they have no emotional needs.”
Mason’s face had gone pale, Oksana noticed, and she knew he must have been thinking of the battered and damaged children in his care back in Port-Au-Prince.
“You can’t help these children, Mason,” she said quietly “The best we can do for them is stop this bokor before he adds to their ranks any further.”
“That’s true,” Mama Lovelie agreed. “There is nothing a foreign doctor like you can do to save the gros-bon-ange from their fate. All they need is burying.”
The words were innocent, but Oksana couldn’t help the faint shudder that snaked along her spine. She was aware of Duchess shooting her a concerned look, but she ignored it.
Xander cocked his head. “I notice you said that only some of the children were being sold to the military. What about the others? What happens to them?”
The mambo sighed. “Therein lies a strange tale, nightwalker. Some, he sells to the soldiers. But others are packed onto boats and shipped away. People say he is sending them across the ocean; selling them in faraway lands.”
A chill went through Oksana—one that had nothing to do with the temperature. This sounded frighteningly familiar.
“Selling? To whom?” Duchess asked, her usually mellifluous voice sounding strangled. She was staring hard at the mambo, blue eyes unblinking.
“There is talk of some rich European man who seems to be a—” the mambo paused as if considering her words. “—collector.”
“Bastian Kovac.” Xander’s words emerged as a hate-filled growl. “It has to be.”
The noose closed a little tighter around Oksana’s neck, as the full weight of the danger she’d put Mason in became apparent.
“Who’s Bastian Kovac?” Mason asked, frowning.
“A rat bastard in serious need of burning, staking, beheading, and anything else I can come up with before the next time we meet,” Xander grated.
“The man behind the attack in Damascus,” Oksana said simply.
Mason’s eyes widened. “Wait. You’re saying that the three of you had a run-in with this bloke in Damascus, and then you randomly came to Haiti only to find that he’s somehow involved here as well?”
Xander cocked an eyebrow. “We didn’t randomly come to Haiti.”
Mason’s gaze moved to him. “Okay. So why did you come here?”
“Because you’re here, Ozzie,” Xander said. “We followed Oksana’s bond with you.”
Oksana leveled a glare at him. Shut up, Xander, she sent, her eyes burning holes in him. Seriously. Not. Another. Word.
In her peripheral vision, she saw a faintly glazed look come into Mason’s gaze for a moment before he appeared to shake it off.
“Let the crazy roll right off your back, mate,” he murmured, low enough that a human wouldn’t have been able to hear it. He cleared his throat. “Okay, then. So we’ve got this bokor arsehole trafficking children, both locally and internationally. But… how is he getting away with it? I mean… that girl was…”
“A walking corpse?” Xander supplied helpfully. “Not all of them are like that. Not… the newer ones.”
Mama Lovelie nodded. “That little girl had been gone for ages. A fresh gros-bon-ange might look pale or sickly, but not dead.”
Mason ground the heel of his hand against his left eye socket. “This whole thing is…” He trailed off and shook his head.
“Horrific,” Duchess agreed quietly. “And we’re stopping it.”
There was silence for a moment before Mama Lovelie levered herself out of her chair and nodded.
“Let me think on things for a while,” said the mambo. “This bokor. This man—if he even can be called that anymore—he is a very formidable practitioner. I am drained now. I must rest and figure out what to do. We will talk again later.”
Without another word, she turned and walked slowly toward the back room.
Silence settled over the group once more, after her footsteps had faded. Oksana tapped her fingers against the worn surface of the table—a thoughtful rhythm.
“Should we call the others here?” she asked eventually.
Xander and Duchess shared a look, but it was Mason who spoke first.
“The others, meaning your friends who stayed behind in Damascus?”
She nodded. “Yes. I’m sure they would come to our aid without hesitation, but with the state of things in the Middle East, it might still take some considerable time for them to book travel and get here.”
“Not to mention the fact that what they’re doing is important,” Xander said. “Bastian Kovac is obviously a big part of this puzzle, and they’re already trying to track him down.”
Duchess’s blue eyes flashed. “We can’t wait. How many more children will be defiled and subjugated while Tré and Eris are trying to arrange connecting flights?”
“Agreed,” Oksana said, fighting another shiver of unease. “We can’t just rush in blindly, though. You saw tonight what kind of power a talented bokor might wield. We’ll need an edge of some sort.”
Xander leaned back in his chair and crossed is arms, looking unhappy.
“Yes, I for one am well aware of the capabilities of vodou practitioners,” he said, and Oksana knew he was once more thinking of Madame Francine, his eccentric acquaintance in New Orleans. “We’ll just have to wait for our mambo friend to recharge her batteries and come up with something for us. Best if we get some rest, too, I suppose.”
Oksana’s mouth tilted down. And how many more children will be defiled while we nap here, safe and comfortable? she wondered, echoing Duchess’s sentiment.
Of co
urse, neither of the others could offer an answer.
Mason looked around the table, taking in their expressions. “Xander’s right. It won’t do these children or anyone else any good for us to go blundering in and get ourselves captured or killed by this bloody wanker, whoever he is. We’ll come up with better plans when we’re rested.”
Duchess pushed back from the table abruptly and stalked off toward the back of the house. Xander rose as well, but spared Oksana a tight smile first.
She’s just upset about the children, he sent.
I know, she replied. We all are.
A moment later, Oksana found herself alone with the man who was the reincarnation of her dead soulmate. The bond between them, which she had been trying all evening to ignore, tugged painfully at her heart.
Over the decades and centuries, she had grown used to being alone, even when surrounded by her friends. She carried the guilt over what had happened all those years ago walled up inside her damaged soul, jealously guarding it as though it were some kind of sick treasure. By pushing that pain down deep inside, she was able to continue.
In some ways, she prided herself on being a happy person—at least, to all outward appearances. Cheerful Oksana. Eccentric Oksana. The vampire who dined on Crackerjacks, Twinkies, and pinot noir, with only an occasional blood chaser as required. Yet, after a scant couple of days spent in Mason’s presence, she had already turned into a sharp-tempered emotional wreck.
No wonder Duchess and Xander were worried.
And now, here was her soulmate, sitting only a few feet away from her. Hale, hearty, and whole… and still with that old, unconquerable drive to help those less fortunate than himself. No doubt about it—Oksana was completely doomed.
Mason sat back, regarding her with interest. “So. Rescuing people from collapsed buildings. Stopping evil witch doctors and battling knife-wielding zombie children. Is this just a typical day for you lot, or what?”
There was a hint of despair behind the choked-off bark of laughter that slipped past her control. “It’s starting to feel like it, I’m afraid. Though… it wasn’t always like this. For many years, it was just the six of us—wandering around, pursuing our various interests, and occasionally trying to make a little excitement for ourselves to relieve the boredom.”
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