Vendetta (Deadly Curiosities Book 2)

by Gail Z. Martin

  One set of banners traced the history of Voodoo from its African and Caribbean roots. All around the space were large paintings of Loas like Papa Legba, Baron Samedi, and Erzulie Dantor along with their veves and the Catholic saint associated with that Loa. The glass cases held candles, dolls, shrines, and charms, showing how the practice of Voodoo – or Voudon as many preferred – differed depending on the time period and the location. The exhibit was fascinating and before I knew it, I had made my way around the room.

  I found myself staring at a life-sized effigy of a woman sitting in a chair. Her eyes blazed red, and all around the chair were paper flames. A taxidermied black goat lay at her feet along with dried salvia, sprigs of lavender, and a bowl of candy. Behind her was a picture of Erzulie Dantor and a painting of a black pig. ‘Brule Marinette’ the small sign said, and explained that Marinette had been a mambo who helped to start Haiti’s slave revolt when she sacrificed a black pig and called on the spirit of Erzulie Dantor to free her people. Marinette, the sign added, was caught by the slaveholders and burned alive, and each year, an effigy of her was burned to honor her martyrdom. I stared at the papier-mâché face with its red eyes and shivered.

  I heard the hoot of an owl, and a ghostly gray creature flew past me, brushing my face with its wing feathers before vanishing. When I looked back at the figure in the display case, real flames burned all around the chair and effigy, yet there was no smoke, and nothing inside the case was catching on fire.

  I watched, terrified, and realized that the woman seated on the chair was no longer made out of papier-mâché. She was real, and I could see the rise and fall of her chest. Marinette’s blood-red eyes fixed on me, and she rose to her feet amid the flames. I backed away, certain that a glass case could not contain the power of an angry Loa.

  The figure took a step toward the glass, and the fire licked at her bare feet and the hem of her dress, but did not burn. Marinette raised one hand and pointed directly at me. Her mouth began to move, but I could not hear what she was saying, although from her expression, I figured it couldn’t be good.

  “Arretez!”

  Lucinda’s voice came from behind me, strident and commanding. She continued speaking in a Caribbean patois, and then her voice began to rise and fall and she closed her eyes, raising her hands. Her whole body shook, and when she opened her eyes, her expression changed and I had the distinct feeling that someone else was looking out at me. I caught a whiff of citrus and basil, and knew I was in the presence of a second Loa who had possessed Lucinda.

  The flames in the glass case surged higher. The paper figure and wooden chair should have been burning, but they weren’t. Marinette’s lips pulled back to bare her sharp, discolored teeth, and her gnarled hands scratched at the inside of the glass with yellowed nails. There was a reason ‘Marinette Bois Sech’ meant ‘Marinette of the dry arms’. As I watched, her body withered in the flames, skin stretching across her bones tight as a mummy, showing every rib and bone. Her fire-red gaze was fixed on me, and she reached toward me, closing her fist in a grasping gesture.

  I could not breathe, and my stomach clenched. It was a struggle to stay standing, and I felt as if I were being squeezed by strong arms so tightly I feared my ribs might break.

  That’s when I realized two more people were chanting, and saw that Lucinda’s assistants had come out of the meeting room. They stood against the wall, letting the mambo work, but their eyes were closed, faces uplifted and hands open, quietly reciting the Lord’s Prayer and the Hail Mary, a reminder of Voudon’s long, interconnected relationship with Catholicism. I couldn’t speak aloud as I struggled for breath, but I silently started to chant along with them, hoping that it would help Lucinda gain the power she needed to repel the entity in that case before it broke free.

  Flames filled the glass case, though I felt no heat. I thought that surely the sprinkler system would turn on, and I feared that the museum would catch fire. Marinette’s hold on me tightened, and I dropped to my knees, gasping, as the world spun around me. A new scent, pipe smoke, told me that Papa Legba was nearby, and I hoped it was not so that he could see my soul across to the afterlife. I gasped once more and fell face-down onto the museum floor. Everything went red as my air-starved body fought to stay conscious, and then black as I lost my fight.

  “CASSIDY.” LUCINDA’S VOICE seemed far away, but I followed it, hoping to find my way out of the darkness. “Come to me.” I couldn’t see where I was going, but I held tight to Lucinda’s voice and the sound of chanting. Gradually, the darkness grew lighter, and with a gasp and a shiver, I came back to myself to find that I lay face-up on the cold tile of the exhibition room.

  “I’m glad you found your way back,” Lucinda said. She was kneeling next to me, and from the worry in her eyes, I knew that what I had seen and felt had been real.

  “Is she –” I turned toward the glass case, but the figure and the flames were once more just made of paper.

  “Shh. Don’t say the name. She’s gone,” Lucinda said. Her white pantsuit and pink silk blouse were the perfect background for the large silver necklace she wore, a powerful protective amulet.

  “I need to talk to you,” I managed.

  Lucinda nodded. “I didn’t figure this was really a social call. But let’s get you off the floor and settled first, shall we?”

  Lucinda helped me to my feet and one of her assistants brought a chair from the meeting room and another gave me a glass of cold sweet tea, then her staff went back to work without a word, sparing me more embarrassment. Lucinda waited until I had finished the tea and gotten my breath back before she spoke.

  “Did you touch anything before the Loa manifested?” she asked. Lucinda knew my talent, so it was a reasonable place to start.

  I shook my head. “No. I knew better. I walked around and looked at the displays and read the signs, but that’s it.”

  She glanced toward the glass case again, but nothing had changed. I drew another deep breath and realized that I did not feel bruised or damaged, although in the middle of the attack, I could have sworn that Marinette was going to break a rib or two. Lucinda seemed to guess my thoughts.

  “It was a psychic projection,” she answered my unspoken question. “Nasty stuff, and something that takes a lot of power to pull off. But not real. A warning – or a threat.”

  I nodded. “And the spirits you called, where they really here?”

  Lucinda laughed, a deep, smoky chuckle. “Oh yes child, they were here! If you want to thank them, send over a bottle of pink champagne for Erzulie Freda and some rum for Papa Legba.”

  I resolved to stop and pick up both on my way back to the store that afternoon. “Did Caliel talk to you, about what happened at the power plant?” I asked.

  Lucinda shook her head. “I’ve been mostly ignoring my phone for the last couple of days trying to get the exhibition ready. Fill me in.”

  I told her what happened at the power plant, and she listened with a worried expression. “If someone’s conjured… that Loa…” she said with a nod toward the case, “they’re playing a dangerous game. You do not want to mess with her.”

  “Why would someone involved with Nephilim and Watchers call for… her?”

  Lucinda frowned and thought for a moment. “You know that Voudon – like all religions – has picked up bits and pieces from a lot of influences over the centuries, right?” I nodded. “That’s especially true with the Catholic saints, since African slaves weren’t allowed to pray to their own gods, so they represented their gods with saints to be able to worship without being punished.”

  That much I knew. “Over the years, people have said a lot of things about Voudon, much of it mistaken,” she continued. “But there is a belief that comes up, time and again, that says that at least some of the Loa were once fallen angels.” She shrugged. “It’s a very gray area for practitioners and scholars, tied up with strange texts like the Book of Enoch and its Watchers –”

  “What did you say?” I looked
up sharply. “Watchers?”

  Lucinda nodded. “Why?”

  I didn’t think I could possibly explain the Briggs Society and figured that I shouldn’t try, so I left out details and told Lucinda about the summoning circles found at the power plant and the Tarleton House and what Henry and Jonathan’s ghosts had told us – and the possibility that a Watcher was about to enter through the Old Jail.

  “You really have stepped in it this time, haven’t you?” Lucinda said, shaking her head. “My, my, my.”

  “Do you think there’s a real connection between… her… and the Watchers?”

  Lucinda shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what I think. What matters is that whoever is summoning the Nephilim and bringing through the Watchers either believes there’s a connection or just wants help waging war. And… she is always pleased with blood and fire.”

  Great. Just great. Bad enough that we’ve got killer evil angels and a scary-powerful sorcerer with a grudge running around, now there’s a bad-ass Loa to worry about.

  Lucinda laid a hand on my shoulder. “Sorren’s been fighting these kinds of things for a long time,” she said. “Trust him. And remember – you’ve got friends with some pretty cool talents.” She gave me an encouraging smile. “Charge up that agate necklace of yours in the moonlight. It’ll help protect you. And you know that Caliel and I will be glad to help whenever you need us.”

  “Thanks,” I replied. “And I really did enjoy the exhibition – well, at least until it attacked me.”

  “Take it as a compliment,” Lucinda replied. “You and Teag are both important to Sorren, and so is Trifles and Folly. If one of his enemies is behind this, you’re going to be on his hit list. So walk softly, and carry a big wand.”

  WE HAD A store full of customers when I got back, so Teag couldn’t grill me on what happened at the museum, although he seemed to pick up on my jitters as soon as I walked in. We sold some estate jewelry to vacationers from New Hampshire, a beautiful old mirror to an interior decorator, and a fancy French clock to a guy from Seattle, although I have no idea how he planned to get it home on the plane. We had a lot of browsers as well, so it took Teag, Maggie, and me to keep everyone happy and answer all the questions. When five o’clock came and I flipped the sign in the window, we all let out sighs of relief and leaned against the cases.

  “Wow! What a great day!” Maggie said after we had locked up the valuables and closed down the register. “But I’m beat. I’ll see you on Monday – I’m going to go home, put my feet up and order pizza!” With that, she hobbled out of the shop, still on crutches but doing a lot better. Teag and I looked at each other.

  “Your trip to the museum lasted quite a while,” Teag said, arching an eyebrow. “And I’m betting you and Lucinda weren’t just chit-chatting. So, spill. What happened?”

  “I promise to fill you in over dinner, but I’m starving. And if we’re going to kick Nephilim butt tonight, I need to fuel up.”

  I caught Teag up on everything that happened as we ate, and then he dropped me off at my house so I could take care of Baxter and get a quick nap before it was time to go to the Old Jail. I slept on the couch, but my dreams were dark and I woke up to find Bax licking my nose, looking at me worriedly.

  “Just bad dreams,” I reassured him – and me. I held him for a few minutes, stroking his silky white fur. Since the trouble with the Nephilim, we had stopped taking our nightly walks around the block, which meant Baxter only had our small backyard garden to explore. We played a lot of Frisbee. I figured that counted a bit for weapons practice, since I now had the chakram, but I missed the freedom of a good walk and the conversations with neighbors, and I’m pretty sure Baxter did, too.

  “Not too much longer, I hope,” I told him as we came back in from the garden. “Once we save the world, you and I can go back to taking nice, long walks.” I hoped it would be that simple.

  Midnight came faster than I would have liked, and Teag pulled up in front of my house with Sorren riding shotgun. I slid into the back seat, with a sack that held all my gear. I guessed that Teag had his weapons in the trunk. We didn’t have too many more ‘special’ bullets for Josiah’s guns, but both pistols were reloaded, and I had a few spare rounds in my pocket. Along with the new weapons Teag and I had gained at the Briggs Society, I should have felt more confident, but I’d had my fill of Nephilim, and I knew the war hadn’t even really begun yet.

  We parked several blocks away from the Old Jail and walked. Charleston is a pretty safe city, if you don’t count the ghosts. Our path took us past one of the old cemeteries, and a shower of pebbles reminded us that the ghosts remained terrified of the Reaper threat. The living would be afraid and angry too, if they knew how much danger they were in.

  The Old Jail is a big, imposing structure in daytime, and more so at night. It’s been a cursed site for a long time, since the land beneath the Jail was used as a hospital and a pauper’s cemetery before the Jail was built back in 1802. The front section is a boxy stone castle, with an octagonal tower in the back. Until it was finally closed in 1939, the Jail held about three times as many prisoners as it was designed to house. Evil, grief, and misery are steeped into the stone. It’s no wonder the Old Jail is considered one of the most haunted sites in a very haunted city.

  I had toured the Jail in daylight, and even though I’m not a medium like Alicia, I was sure we were being watched by unseen eyes. The pictures I took were full of orbs, even though it was a clear afternoon without rain or fog. The Jail once housed Charleston’s most notorious prisoner, serial killer Lavinia Fisher, who was hanged in the back courtyard. Many people thought Lavinia’s spirit never left, and her ghost is one of the most frequently seen. Confederate and Federal prisoners of war were held at the Old Jail, along with pirates, leaders of slave uprisings, and common criminals. Conditions were brutal, and some inmates didn’t survive long enough to meet their date with the hangman.

  Dark place. Bad ghosts. Chains from the ceiling. No one could argue about the Old Jail being a dark place. Even now, a lingering sense of doom pervaded its shadowed passageways. Plenty of the people whose spirits might have remained here certainly qualified as ‘bad’. But I knew right away where Harry’s ghost meant when he talked about chains.

  There’s a room near the entrance that was once an interrogation chamber. Historians debate exactly how things were done, but many folks believe prisoners were suspended from chains and either left to hang painfully in their bonds or beaten to coerce confessions. It’s one of the most haunted rooms in a spookapalooza building. And that’s where we were heading.

  I was surprised when Caliel and Chuck Pettis – Clockman – met us just inside the Old Jail walls. “We’re the cavalry,” Chuck said. I could hear him ticking from a few paces away, which meant he wore hundreds of watches sewn into his military-issue Kevlar vest. He once had a premonition that if his clocks ever wind down, he’ll die. From the sound of it, he was pretty safe tonight.

  “Lucinda told me what happened at the exhibit,” Caliel said with a nod in my direction. “Bad stuff.”

  “This place is hotter than usual,” Chuck grumbled, and I knew he meant supernaturally, not temperature-wise. Although the grounds around the Old Jail were empty except for us, I felt as if I were suffocating in the press of a large crowd.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Caliel opened the lock with a flicker of magic, and the door swung wide. We used the tour entrance, and it led us straight into one of the Jail’s narrow stone corridors. The temperature inside was noticeably colder than the warm evening air, and the hairs on my arms and neck rose with the sense that we were not alone.

  Down the hallway, a door slammed shut. A flash of light zipped through the darkness just at the corner of my vision, and I glimpsed a greenish yellow orb in the distance down the long corridor, bobbing up and down in midair as if daring us to chase it.

  It sounded like the spirits of the Old Jail were waking up. I could hear the
sound of chains dragging across the floor above us, while in the distance, a metal cell door rattled violently as if shaken by a prisoner desperate to get out. Sorren led the way. Teag and I were right behind him, while Chuck and Caliel brought up the rear.

  I felt something brush against my arm, but no one had passed by. The Old Jail’s shadows crowded around us, and our flashlights did not seem up to the task of pushing away the unnatural darkness. Off to one side, I thought I glimpsed a woman standing next to one of the narrow windows, but when I turned my head she was gone.

  More thumps sounded above us, sending my heartbeat racing. Since we had no idea of what – or who – we might encounter, we came well-armed. I had my athame in hand, and Bo’s ghost already walked beside me, head down and hackles up as if he expected trouble. Teag and I both wore our protective woven vests along with our amulets, and he had both his staff and his urumi. The chakram Colonel Donnelly had given me hung in a scabbard at my belt. I didn’t want to set the place on fire, so I had left my walking stick at home tonight, but both Teag and I carried Josiah’s dueling pistols. I noticed that Teag had his jack ball out and was twirling it to fend off unfriendly spirits. I pulled my jack ball from my pocket and did the same.

  Chuck depended on technology for protection. He had an EMF grenade in one hand and an odd homemade weapon in his right hand that looked like a ray gun out of an old-time science fiction movie. Sorren had a sword in each hand. He had healed already from the wounds he had taken at the Briggs Society. Teag and I still sported bruises.

  Caliel was dressed in a black shirt and dark jeans, but when he removed a charcoal scarf from around his neck, I could see that he wore a large necklace made of pieces of mirror set into metal that made a wide collar. I knew it protected him against spirits and witches, who could become trapped within the mirror and lose their power. Around Caliel’s left arm was a black band with the veve of Baron Samedi, the keeper of cemeteries. I picked up the scent of rum and cigar smoke, and I bet Caliel had made an offering to the Baron for our protection before he set out this night.