“You know why I’m here, Marcos,” I answered as I stepped around the counter and in his direction. “We got another call.”
“From those damn Christians that can’t keep their noses out of other people’s business, right? That damned Baptist Church again?” Marcos asked as he moved out from within the threshold, the beads clinking against one another as they swayed back and forth in his absence.
“It doesn’t matter who logged the complaint, Marcos. I still have to stop in and take a look around.” I paused, knowing he wouldn’t like what I had to say next. “And I need to speak to your grandmother.”
“Hmmm.” He didn’t say anything else or make another noise as he moved toward one of the shelves behind me that was lined with charms to bring about love and passion. “You know how she feels about you Van Helsings. I’m surprised she is able to tolerate even you.”
“Trust me, I’m shocked just like everyone else.”
I watched him carefully as he ran his index finger over the glass shelf that housed the charms, inspecting his finger for any dust that he may have picked up, finding nothing.
“If you’ll give me one moment, Miss Van Helsing, I will see if she is taking visitors. She has been rather weak lately.” He turned to go back through the doorway he had come through to the adjoining room where Constance typically remained while the shop was open, pushing the beads aside.
“Does that have anything to do with the zombie we have been told she raised?”
He froze in his tracks, the entire shop going quiet as we stood there. Turning his head, he looked back at me, and I could see the truth in his eyes without even having to say a word.
“I’ll come get you if she wishes to speak with you.”
Then he disappeared into the near darkness beyond the doorway and silence infected the space again like a living, breathing thing. It caressed my flesh, causing anxiety to ripple through my muscles and my mind. The influence of whatever she had brought into this world was something I could feel here whether she had done the deed in this place or not. It clung to you and never let go, sucking you dry until you were nothing but a broken shell. I let my eyes and my attention wander, stopping only on the darkest corners of the shop that could house anything and everything. There were always things waiting in the wings that you couldn’t see, especially in the shadows. I squinted into the darkness, the candle light making it difficult to see anything more than a faint outline in one corner. Possibly another patron scanning the shelves for something of use; something to conjure up a demon or to cause pure agony to anyone they wished. An energy I couldn’t decipher reached out toward me, stroking my own as I stood and stared.
The beads moved again, swinging on their strings and startling me out of the thick of the darkness in that very corner. Marcos drew my attention and waved me forward.
“She’s ready to see you,” he said as he stood to the side of the doorway, holding the beads up and out of the way so I could enter the seemingly pitch black room.
I took a step forward and froze in place, turning my gaze back toward that profound and dark abyss in the shop, nothing there to reflect the small flickering light of the candle now. Taking a deep breath in, I moved to the doorway that would lead me to Constance. She was the best practitioner in New Orleans, if not the state of Louisiana, and I did not want to keep her waiting. As soon as my feet crossed the threshold something in the air changed, causing my skin to prickle and my vision to ripple ever so slightly. The room flickered with candle flames, causing even more shadows to ebb and flow along the walls as I imagined shapes that couldn’t have been there. Or could they have been? The walls were normally a dark, blood red to mask any splatter from the sacrifices she was known to make in this room; the dark wooden floors coated in a black sheen in the corner. Blood. And it was fresh. There was a circular table sitting in the very center of the room, covered with a table cloth with trinkets, feathers, and other supplies scattered on its surface.
“Come in, Isabelle. You are always welcome here, child,” Constance cooed when the energy in the room caused me to stop, almost knocking me from my feet. She was sitting in a chair just behind the table, the candlelight reflecting off of her lovely skin that was the same color as her grandson’s and deepening her wrinkles. Her eyes smoldered with the flames as if they were within her.
“I see you’re up to the usual, Mrs. Rillieux,” I said as I took a hesitant step forward, gaining more confidence with each one I made in her direction.
With a wave of her hand, she dismissed Marcos and said, “You can close the door. She means us no harm.”
Once the door closed behind me, there was no one left but her and me. Well, us and that nervous energy that was forcing my heart to race and my forehead to break out in a cold sweat.
“Sit down, dear. You look as if you are about to pass out.”
I took her advice and sat in the chair opposite from her, feeling instant relief once I sat down and felt as if a heavy weight had lifted from my shoulders. My eyes had adjusted quickly to the light inside this room, the darkness no longer an oppressing force around me holding my own energies inside of my body like a glove.
“A file with your name on it came across my desk today, Mrs. Rillieux, so I can assume you already know why I’m here.” I sat stick straight with my hands in my lap, making sure not to touch or disturb anything on the table in front of me. There was no telling what any of it had been used for, and I did not want to incur the wrath of anything she had called on.
She nodded and let out a heavy sigh, her shoulders slouching just enough so I could see her guilt, but then they rose again, and she held herself up proud and vigorous like any other Voodoo priestess would in such circumstances. In the face of oppression and accusation, she was always a strong force within the community, even if she was the one that was having the finger pointed at her.
“I suppose I do. What have they accused me of now? Sacrificing a chicken like last time?” she asked as she watched me carefully, waiting to see if I would falter.
We usually played this game when we saw each other. She wanted to see how well I held up against what she pressed on me with her magic. I was in no way magical, but I was made of some tough stuff and had never once bent to her will before.
“Actually,” I paused, my eyes meeting hers with equal gusto, “zombie raising. Would you happen to know anything about that, Constance?” She was silent, so I pressed on; her lips pursed together like the words were attempting to escape her control. “Marcos said you were tired lately. Is that why?”
Her gaze flicked away from mine for all of a second, and then her brown eyes bore into mine as she fought to keep her composure. This was going to be one of those times I would have to search the premises and find that the complaint that was logged was indeed true. I didn’t want to have to bring her in, but raising a zombie was a criminal offense in the states. Mostly because of what it took to do it. She still didn’t answer so I got to my feet and stalked around the room, stopping in the corner just to her right where the black pool of what I was assuming was human blood had congealed grotesquely. I kneeled down on the floor and inspected the blood further, not touching it, but trying to see as best as I could. I knew that this wouldn’t confirm it, but maybe if she thought I was more than a little suspicious, she would fess up to what I could tell she had done just by watching her. I turned my head just enough to see her looking at me, her eyes in slits with anger as she fumed with it. If I didn’t know better, I’d say smoke was coming out of her ears.
“We can make this easy, Constance. Or we can make this difficult.” I stood and took a step toward her, making sure to keep at least a little distance between the two of us. There was no telling what she had up her sleeve. “Which way do you want this to go?”
She remained silent, her eyes staring out in the darkness as if she were weighing the pros and cons of
what she had done and was about to do. For me, this was enough of an admission of guilt as anything she could say, but the courts wouldn’t convict her based on a look. Even if she confessed, sometimes that wasn’t enough. What it actually took to prove a zombie raising was what was left over from the actual zombie and I knew she wouldn’t have killed it just to avoid going to prison. It had to be around here somewhere. She would never risk leaving it in her home. I sighed and kneeled in front of her, trying to get her to look me in the eye even though she refused. She was attempting to remain strong as if not speaking would save her from a life in prison. It wouldn’t.
“Mrs. Rillieux. Are you trying to protect yourself or someone else?” I paused. “Marcos? Did Marcos raise it?”
She looked at me then, her eyes penetrating down to my very soul as her rage filled the room like water and just as suffocating. I felt it pressing down on my ribs, threatening to crush my entire body under its weight. I took a deep breath and held onto my composure as best as I could, choosing not to let her see that she could affect me in any fashion.
“You do not understand the gravity of what it is I do here, Miss Van Helsing. Neither do those Baptists down the way and you can bet your lucky stars that, if I am arrested and taken away to that horrible prison you all have set up for us, that the wrath of Voodoo will fall upon you,” she explained, her voice never once raising above a whisper. I almost had to strain to hear her.
“Is that a confession, Mrs. Rillieux?”
“Take it however you want, Miss Van Helsing. I only do what I am hired to do and who am I to turn down money? Who am I to turn away from power?”
“Were you employed to raise it?”
She licked her lips nervously and replied, “No, I was not.”
“But you did raise it.” It wasn’t a question. At this point, I was certain she had done this. “Where is it?”
Her gaze moved to the right, past me and the flickering darkness around us with the weight of her power still pressing down on me. I was doing what I could to ignore it, but I wasn’t sure how much longer I could do that. I followed her gaze and found that there was yet another closed door beside the one I had come through that led out into the shop itself. I rose to my full height and took a step toward the door, taking my cell phone out of my pocket and quickly finding the office in my call history. Depending on what type of zombie this was it wouldn’t require the retrieval team at all, but I wanted to be prepared just in case.
“Are you willing to tell me what kind of zombie is beyond this door? Is it corporeal or no?” I asked, looking back at her as I waited for her answer.
“Does that really matter, Isabelle?” She was mocking me, and I knew it, but I needed her answer before I made a move.
“That depends. Do you want just little old me here, or a whole team of massive men tearing your storefront apart, one of them being enormous and very Scottish. And trust me, I’m much nicer.”
Her eyebrows rose in curiosity, and she seemed to think about it for a moment, almost as if she didn’t even remember the type of zombie she had risen. There were two kinds: the kind that was slow, dead, rotting, and took orders, and then there were the ones that were the souls of the dead kept in jars to bring success and money. They could be used for other things, but those were the most common.
“It is corporeal and will only answer to me.”
“And where is the body of the person you killed to raise it?”
“It is one and the same, hunter.”
Shock took over, causing my mouth to fall open, my jaw nearly hitting the floor like one of those cartoons. This was something new, but I was hoping that it would take the same solution to resolve.
“You mean to tell me that you killed someone and used that same sacrifice as the host?”
She nodded, not saying a single word after she made her revelation to me. This made her the most powerful Voodoo priestess in the entire United States, none of the others that were registered having ever achieved something like this in human history. I walked toward the bookshelf along the wall and scanned its contents, some shelves filled with books and others with supplies. I knew exactly what I needed. I just hoped it would work. That was if I could find any among the supplies in the room without resorting to stealing from the actual shop. I spotted it nestled in between a book and a Voodoo doll, which I made sure not to touch as I grabbed the salt and stalked toward the door, hitting the little green phone button on the screen of the device and putting it to my ear. Jane picked up after the first ring.
“Van Helsing Extermi…..”
“Jane, it’s Izzy,” I interrupted. “I need McGrady. Now.”
I didn’t have time for pleasantries. Even if I were able to kill this zombie with the salt, it would still need to be picked up by a qualified team. I could arrest Constance for her creation and the murder it took to do it, but the receiving and disposing of this creature was far beyond anything I was trained for.
“Right away,” Jane quipped and then the line went straight to the hold music. It played for all of a second before hearing McGrady’s profound and sensual voice on the line.
“McGrady, speakin’.”
“Hey, I need you at Rillieux’s shop as soon as you can get a team together, the word soon being the most important one,” I rambled into the phone, barely even taking a breath.
“Wow, wow. Slaw doon, Izzy. Whit ye got?”
“A corporeal zombie. I’m about to salt it, but I need you guys here to haul it off. I’m not trained for anything like this, and you are,” I explained.
I turned around and looked at Constance, who was sitting in her chair in complete silence, staring at the spot on the floor that could never be cleansed. It made me wonder where the remainder of the blood had gone, but I shook my head attempting to shake away the thought that I knew where it had gone. When a zombie is raised, it needs blood to seal the deal. That sent a shiver up my spine. I didn’t see a bandage on Constance herself, but that could be covered up easily enough.
“I’ll git a team together right noo. Don’t salt it till we git thur. Aam on mah way.”
With those words, the line went dead. I hung up and slid the phone back into the back pocket of my jeans, my attention never leaving the elderly Voodoo priestess in front of me. It wouldn’t take long for them to get here from the office, but I was getting antsy, clenching and unclenching my empty fist as I stood there staring at her still form. I walked to her and knelt down in front of her again, placing the salt beside me and resting my hands on her knees, beckoning to her to explain why.
“Why did you raise this zombie, Constance? You knew the consequences if you were caught. Why risk it?” I asked, begging her in a way to answer the many questions that were now flooding my mind.
No response. Her eyes didn’t even meet mine, but then something changed in the room in that instant, causing the fine hairs on my arms to stand on end. Constance’s hand grabbed mine as she jumped in her seat, seemingly startled by something that she had seen or felt. When I looked at her, my heart beating much faster than it already had been, there was sweat beading on her top lip and along her hairline. Her pulse was like another heartbeat in my throat and heaviness dampened the air around us, making it hard to breathe.
“Darkness is coming, Hunter. Darkness you have never seen or experienced before. Something that will bring you and this world to its knees,” Constance whispered as I stared into her deep brown eyes, the light casting evil shadows across her dark skin.
I wouldn’t have believed her if it weren’t for the feeling of despair that settled within my chest, making a nest there that I wouldn’t be able to dislodge it from. Something flicked behind her eyes. Something evil. Something unwanted. Something sinister. I stood up and backed away from her, back connecting with the wall in just a few small steps as she rose to her feet and moved toward me, kicki
ng the salt across the floor. I watched it roll to a stop in the very center of the room with finality, feeling as if it was my only hope where there was none. When I looked at Constance again, she was no longer the old woman I knew her to be. Rage filled her, her eyes wide and open, screaming mouth taking all of the air from the room. I was trapped with no way out except to kill her, which I couldn’t do. She may have raised something inhuman and wrong, but she was still a human being. I squeezed my eyes shut, prepared for anything.
“Grandmother, no,” Marcos’ voice boomed from the blackness beyond, another revolting scream coming from Constance as I heard her hurried steps back away from me and to the other side of the room.
I opened my eyes to Marcos’ back, one arm outstretched with something that I couldn’t see in his hand to ward off his grandmother. She seemed possessed, like a wild animal as we looked on helpless to do anything as she flailed, her body twisting in such an unnatural way. She was distorted, the woman I came to know over the years completely gone and replaced with something else. Was it because she had raised the zombie? Or was this thing rolling around inside of her the cause of her actions? We wouldn’t know until we were able to exorcise whatever it was if it could be done at all.
Before either one of us could act to help her, she fell to the ground, quiet and unmoving like a sleeping child.
“What the fuck was that, Marcos?”
He pushed whatever he had in his hand into his jeans pocket and fell to his knees beside Constance, placing a hand on her shoulder in a comforting gesture.
“I have no idea.”
I had a decision to make. Did I wait for McGrady and his team to arrive like he had asked? Or did I salt the zombie now just on the off chance that it had something to do with what I had just seen? I went with the latter. Spying the container of salt in the middle of the floor, I walked to it and picked it up, taking the last few steps to the door leading to the room that housed what she had raised. A corporeal zombie who was the same sacrifice she had made to raise it to begin with. That was something I had never heard of before, so I wasn’t even sure if salt would be enough, but I had to try something. I could not let that soulless form walk around taking her orders no matter what they were. With zombies, either type, they were missing a piece of them that made them human whether it be a soul or flesh and I had only run into a couple of zombies in my time with the Initiative. I knew which was worse if there was a way for one to be worse than the other.
Chasing Shadows (The Initiative Book 1) Page 5
