Aces & Eights

by Dale Lucas

  The pods burst. Their tacky contents unfurled: a quartet of leathery, translucent wings, criss-crossed with spiderwebs of black veins and the ghost of a taut-but-elastic musculature.

  A new knot of pods on its flesh-vines swelled and burst, revealing bloodshot, glaring eyes that leaked crimson tears and sought the Dread Baron’s crouched form with malevolent assurance. More pods burst and revealed flexing, ragged, crab-like appendages that Dub supposed were fingers. A pair of pods at the center of the writhing mass tore open with sounds like ripping farts and revealed the assimilated skulls of the curse engine beneath, now clothed with thin veneers of alien skin, the jaws hanging askew from their roots and the gaping mouths quailing like the maws of hungry baby chicks.

  Fear. Revulsion. Horror. Wonder. All these assailed the Dread Baron in the same instant. Then, a moment later, he felt the weight and heft of the flaming Machette d’Ogou in his grasp, felt the towering walls of heat that surrounded he and the beast, and he knew that the fire would not stay contained for long. It would spread and consume the whole cellar, then all of Aces & Eights above.

  And here he crouched, at its epicenter, trapped with a fiend from beyond hell.

  “Well, shit,” he muttered. Dr. Dub Corveaux let the man in him shrink to a pinprick. He was the Dread Baron now; a horse of Ogou and Samedi and the Ghede; saber of the lwa. If this thing was Fury made flesh, he was fiery, fearless justice. A lopsided grin split his skull-painted face. He launched himself toward his quarry.

  The tendrils lashed out. The wings swooped toward him like razor-edged folding fans. The strange, grasping fingers sought his softest exposures and extremities.

  Then one of its insectile finger-blooms contracted into a fist. It rocketed toward him, faster than he could raise his blade or skate sideward. He took the blow in the sternum. The Dread Baron’s breath left his lungs; his feet left the floor. He landed in the cordon of fire and lickety-split, his top hat, dreadlocks, and the mantle of his coat were hosting hungry flames.

  So much for self-confidence.

  The Baron rolled forward and thrashed, eager to put himself out. From the corner of his quaking vision, he saw a pair of the beast’s tendrils and another of its razor wings dive toward him. The Machette d’Ogou flashed amid the inferno surrounding him and hot, thick juices from the pair of hacked tendrils sprayed his face.

  But the wing still dove. He got his feet under him just as the barbed edge of the flesh-fan dug deep into his left shoulder, tearing through his coat and drawing blood from his bare flesh beneath. His flesh burned from the inside out as though the thing’s barbs left some infernal acid in their wake.

  Pain. Blood. These were new to the Dread Baron. He took bullets all the time; occasionally knife-wounds or mortal blows. But Ogou absorbed these; Ogou took their pain, and their force, and so long as Dub Corveaux made it home before sunrise, the wounds were healed and left no marks.

  But the damned thing towering before him, shrinking from the fire surrounding it (and him), striking at him with all lethal intent—that thing had dealt him a bleeding, painful wound while horsed.

  “Ogou?” the Baron snarled through gnashed teeth.

  You’re gettin’ everything I can give you, Ogou answered.

  The beast struck again. The Baron danced backward from the lurching blows and almost tripped into the flaming cordon again. Even the Serpent d’Ogou scarf around his throat cringed from the flames at his back.

  And that seemed to save him. The Serpent’s dangling ends rose in protest as they swung near the flames. Again the beast before him lurched forward and brought a knot of its whipping tendrils whistling down toward him. The Serpent d’Ogou rose, its ends like two striking snakes, and caught the thickest, longest tendrils, holding them. The three shorter tendrils between them stretched, trying to reach him, nearly whipping some foul venom from their oozing ends into his eyes.

  The Baron struck. The lesser tendrils collapsed and the thicker strands broke from the Serpent’s grip, retreating, and the beast squealed.

  You don’t retreat anymore! Ogou barked in the center of Dub’s fevered consciousness. The air’s hot and thick, you got flames at your back and a fiend in your path—attack! No retreat, and no surrender!

  Dub felt a surge of strength and fury flow through him and knew he couldn’t resist it, fear and good sense notwithstanding. He submitted to that red wave and charged, leaping right up onto the towering malignancy’s foul bulk.

  The Machette d’Ogou swept left and right in broad, smooth arcs. Its flaming iron hacked horror-flesh. Its flames boiled black blood and ichor. When its wings dipped to encircle him, he thrust with the machete and tore them like old drapes and their juices painted him. When the grasping, crab-like fingers curled to ensnare him, he kicked and quelled them with the heels of his gravedigger’s boots; with his flaming machete from beyond; with his bare, brawling fists. When its gaping, toothy mouths and mewling orifices sought his flesh to feed their hunger, he drove the machete and its flames in deep. He tore at its joints and crevices with the flaming blade and reveled in the demon’s shrieks and gibbers of agony.

  Twice more the beast struck and wounded him. He went down on his knees when the thorny tip of one of its tendrils drove point-on into the meat of his right thigh. Down in a half-crouch, another knot of tendrils sought his throat, coiling with startling speed and trying to strangle the life from him. But the Serpent d’Ogou came to his aid, wrestling the constrictor vines loose with its own considerable strength and freeing him for a final, desperate onslaught.

  He couldn’t even see anymore. The flames made him squint. The smoke stung his narrowed eyes and filled them with tears.

  He felt the heat of the flames and breathed the poisonous smoke of the cellar, but he didn’t care. His mortal mind knew a fiery death or a choking one lay just around the corner if he didn’t soon finish his business, but all he saw was the wounds that he opened in the flesh of his enemy, and the murky red haze that ebbed and flowed across his vision in answer to the bloodlust inside him.

  Soon enough, though, he was crusted in gore—its foul, alien, all-blackening gore. Without faltering, he fought and hacked and slashed and thrust. He tore and he pummeled and his own heartbeat thundered in his ears and nearly drowned the hungry, gathering roar of the flames as they spread through the cellar in all directions, devouring everything in their path.

  At last, the thing had no more tentacles to grasp with; no more talons to tear with; no more wings to flap or flounder. Its mouths and orifices worked, but they were like the gills and mouths of a fish out of water. Beneath him, though he could still feel some foul life pulsing through it, the Dread Baron knew that the whole beastly mess was somehow shrinking; diminishing; collapsing inward on its own vascular bladders and withering knots of cord and limb. He threw himself off of it, landing hard just beside the encircling wall of flame, and watched as the Furies were drawn from the shriveling flesh like poison from a wound; drawn right out of their plane of existence back into their own; and then, staring, he knew that he’d won. All that remained was an empty remnant of lifeless, ruined tissue.

  And the fire; all around him, a fierce, roaring blaze that leapt and devoured every scrap of fuel in its path. Now the fire was the beast, and it would not be satisfied until the cellar, and the club above, had sated its voracious, charcoal appetite.

  Breathing was torture. His eyes were two pools of boiling water. His leg throbbed. His shoulder burned.

  “Time?” he asked Ogou.

  Time, the war lwa answered. High-tail it, soldier. You’re needed elsewhere.

  The Baron sheathed the machete and stood best as he could. “Elsewhere?”

  Papa House still got off with the Queen Bee... ‘less you wanna leave her to him.

  The Dread Baron drew the deepest rattling breath he could in the smoke-choked cellar. It was hot and thick as an iron foundry.

  “What gives?” the Baron asked. “I ain’t feelin’ tip-top here, Papa Ogou.”

&
nbsp; We’ve just spent a heap ‘a maji. I’m givin’ you all I got, horse, but even I get tired.

  The smoke was thick now, the fire roaring. “Reckon you can give me a little more?” the Baron urged. “Take me through to dawn?”

  Why you still talkin’? Ogou countered.

  The Dread Baron smiled in spite of his weariness... in spite of his pain. What was one more miracle? He launched himself through the roaring wall of flames, seeking the shortest path to smokeless autumn air.

  Chapter 15

  Gideon and company arrived at the Foree Imports Ware-house right after House and his goons did. Gideon saw the Queen Bee, now conscious but with her hands bound and mouth gagged, being dragged into the warehouse, a cavernous brick-and-steel structure on east 132nd Street, just south of the Park Avenue Bridge, fronting the lazy, slate-gray Harlem River. House took her inside, flanked by Wash and Timmons. The rest of the West Indies made a cordon of their cars across the face of the warehouse, entrenched, and opened fire. Gideon and his boys were pinned down from the first, and though they gave as good as they got—making mince of House’s auto fleet, downing a couple of his men, and generally making a hell of a racket—the stalemate persisted and would not break.

  Gideon cared little for the ache in his leg from the bullets he’d taken at the club. All he cared about was doing right by his employer; the mother of the streets who’d found him, raised him, and made him a better man than he had been when found. For all he knew, the firefight had gone on too long; she could already be dead within, and House miles away, fleeing in a boat up or down river, or crossing to disappear into one of his safe-houses in the Bronx.

  But what of it? Gideon couldn’t give up; not now; not when the Queen needed him.

  So he hollered orders to his men, saw ammo spread among them, and kept the hot lead flying.

  And it was in the midst of that stalemate, when their ammo was dwindling and Gideon thought he heard the faraway whine of police sirens, that a bounding shadow swaddled in a billowing black coat and serpentine red scarf came leaping into the fray from a nearby tenement roof. The Cemetery Man cut a fast track across the peaked roof of a nearby warehouse adjacent to Foree Imports; slid down the sloped forward eaves; steadied himself; then launched himself into the fray on the far side of the West Indies’ automobile cordon.

  “Down!” Gideon screamed, making it clear he wanted his men out of the line of fire. As they all stopped firing and hit the deck, they heard House’s soldiers cursing and shouting from their entrenchment; then, the savage snap, crackle, and pop of gunfire, now directed inward, criss-crossing the warehouse forecourt. Little by little, the gunfire dwindled, and men died under a new hail of thunderous gun-music made by a pair of smoking, fire-tongued, cold, black .45’s.

  And just as quickly, there was silence. Gideon raised his head in time to see the Cemetery Man—that darksome, carnival figure with a skull face and a jauntily-angled top hat—walk through the quiet warehouse forecourt toward the front entrance. The cocky bastard was almost strutting. Or was he limping? Either way, the door didn’t even stop him. The Cemetery Man just lowered his shoulder and barreled right through it with a bellow. There were some choice words and a quick volley of gunfire from within, then silence.

  The Dread Baron was inside, and the cordon was down. Gideon told his men to spread out. “Snap up any ammo on these sons of bitches and meet me at the door.”

  “We’re goin’ in there?” one of the boys whined. “With the Cemetery Man?”

  “Goin’ in?” Gideon snarled. “Shit, Cleve, we’re gonna back him up—come on!”

  XX

  House heard the noise from out front, but he didn’t care. He was seconds away from his vengeance, and he’d have it. He would’ve preferred to see the Queen Bee ruined in the public eye first: bankruptcy, scandal, the loss of power and turf by increments until she was left with nothing, begging to be put out of her misery.

  But as he had her here, now, in his grasp, he supposed feeding her to Napoleon would have to do.

  House and his goons were gathered on the high wooden catwalk that encircled Napoleon’s muddy pen below, a sunken pit that gave out onto a stretch of the cold, quiet Harlem river. The gator looked a might pernicious; annoyed by the change of seasons or just plain hungry, House couldn’t tell which. He gave orders, though, and his men set to stringing the Queen Bee up by her wrists on a hook and winch. The plan was to swing her out over Napoleon’s pen and lower her little by little. House knew the big bastard could jump if the right food was dangled above him. He wanted the gator to start with the Queen Bee’s feet and work his way up.

  The Queen Bee bucked and floundered in her bindings, cursing through her gag. As the men had her prepped, House stepped forward and tore the gag off her. He wanted to hear her beg for mercy when the gator took her pretty little yellow feet off; wanted to hear every curse and cry as she was dipped lower and lower, disappearing in large, ragged chunks down the gator’s throat.

  “Hell on earth is comin’ your way,” the Queen Bee snarled. “Hell on earth such as you never dreamed of! You hear me, House?”

  “Well, come it may,” he said, “but I’m guessin’ it won’t arrive before Napoleon’s had his fill of your long, pretty legs, Queen Bee.”

  The Queen Bee turned and saw the gator then. The beast saw her as well. House let himself believe the toothy beast grinned, then bellowed as though in search of a mate. It slid forward through the cold mud.

  “Swing her out,” House said.

  The goons nearest her lifted her legs. Another worked the long, steel arm of the little crane that she was roped to. He swung the arm sideward and the Queen Bee’s body tipped over the wooden railing and she went dangling out over the empty air above Napoleon’s pen. Her legs kicked and wheeled in the empty air, and her high heels fell free, bouncing harmlessly off Napoleon’s long, blunt, upturned snout.

  “Forward!” House ordered. “Get her farther out there!”

  Two more of his boys laid their backs against the crane and the whole mess slid along its track. The arm from which the Queen Bee dangled moved forward, outward. Now she was farther from the railing, still dangling a good 12 or 15 feet above the gator and his cold, muddy pen.

  Eager, Napoleon sounded another throaty bellow, rocked back on his thick tail, and launched himself skyward, jaws gaping wide.

  The Queen Bee drew up her legs, screaming. She missed losing one of her dainty little feet by an inch or two. Napoleon’s jaws snapped shut with a thunderous finality and he fell back to the mud, snarling from somewhere deep in his gullet.

  House and his men all laughed. “You got good reflexes, Queen Bee!” House offered. “I do believe we’ll just have to settle in for a long, slow show, eh?”

  “You can go to hell, House!” the Queen Bee spat.

  “After you, mam’selle,” he said coldly, and lowered his eyes.

  Napoleon was preparing for another spring.

  Suddenly, the laughter of House’s men was swallowed in the roar of gunfire. The three stationed by the crane sagged against the machinery, then slid to the floor, all having sprung crimson leaks.

  House and his fellows spun on their heels, searching the vast, cluttered gloom of the warehouse for the source of the gunfire. House heard voices in the distance: a volley nearer the warehouse’s entrance. The Queen Bee’s men had broken through!

  But they still seemed far away... just pouring in through the front doors...

  House turned as Napoleon sprang again. The Queen Bee drew her whole body upward, snapping her legs nearer as she did. Napoleon missed her by a hair-breadth and fell back into the mud. She got a quick, terrifying glimpse of her left shoe tumbling down the gator’s gullet.

  “Somebody get on the crane,” House ordered. “Lower the boom. She’s goin’ all in.”

  Two of his men moved to answer his orders. They were shot down, too, and House saw the muzzle flashes this time, bright, white-hot flames cast out of the rafters down toward their
place on the catwalk.

  “Up there!” he said, pointing toward the source of the sniper fire.

  His boys all raised their weapons—Tommy Guns, shotguns, pistols—and prepared to fire.

  Then a thick swatch of shadow loosed itself from the darkness and plunged toward them, letting loose with a pair of roaring .45’s in its night-black hands.

  House threw himself sideward. His boys opened fire, but the shadow had the drop on them, every shot a winner. Blood sprayed the catwalk, stained House’s camel-hair coat. His men withered, snapping off shots in their death throes as they collapsed.

  Then the gunman hit the deck on all fours, like a cat. It was the Cemetery Man—the same bastard who’d busted into House’s headquarters the night before. He staggered but quickly steadied himself, the landing from the twenty-foot fall seeming to trouble him a little.

  Maybe he was mortal after all. House would find out.

  There was more gunfire from below, moving nearer by the moment. The Queen Bee’s men were inside. His own men were thinning, skinning out. Only half a dozen remained around him who hadn’t fallen in the first volley from the Baron.

  House threw himself at his nearest henchmen, snatched a Tommy Gun from one goon’s hands, then wheeled round behind them to use the little crowd of henchmen for cover. “Take him out!” he shouted.

  As they moved to do his bidding, he snapped back the bolt on the Tommy and swung the muzzle toward the dangling Queen Bee.

  Then the world was a storm of fire and smoke, and House barely knew what was happening.

  XX

  The Dread Baron saw the Queen Bee dangling over the leaping gator; saw the half-dozen henchmen now lowering their weapons to ventilate him; saw Papa House beyond them, using their bodies as cover, taking aim at the helpless Maybelle Meriwether.

  “Speed, Ogou!” he snarled, and didn’t wait to see if Ogou would listen.