Headhunters

by Mel Odom

  Trey nodded. “Close enough. Voodoo first came to flower in the West Indies, taking up influences from Christianity, Catholicism, and African tribal beliefs until it became a mixed concoction all its own.”

  “Get to Papa DeBit,” Skater said.

  “He’s a houngan,” Trey explained. “A mage in the voodoun religion who walks with the loas and is generally regarded as a spiritual leader among his people.”

  “What’s he doing here instead of in New Orleans?”

  “Nobody knows.” Trey shrugged. “I’ve heard rumors of a feud down in New Orleans between Papa DeBit and a Haitian bocor. I’ve got mixed reports who won.”

  “A bocor?” Skater struggled to get a grasp on all the information he was being given.

  “A houngan who’s basically used up his welcome mat with the loa.”

  Skater lifted an eyebrow. It was the second time Trey had used the term.

  “Loa are the voudoun spirits,” Trey said, “and some believe them to be gods. I couldn’t say which they are. They represent the personification of deities and beliefs.”

  “Anything else I need to know?”

  “Don’t get them slotted off,” Trey said. The glints in his eyes suggested he was only halfway kidding. “They’re very vindictive when they’re mad.” He lifted his knuckles and worked them against the door.

  48

  A gentle fog of dust rained from the bas-relief on the voodoo man’s door and swirled around Trey. Skater didn’t figure the houngan got much company.

  “Enter,” a voice ordered. The word sounded old and unused, possessing the Same husky rasp of an unoiled lock.

  Trey twisted the knob and followed the door inside.

  His hand only centimeters from the Predator’s butt inside his waistband under his coat, Skater followed. His nose wrinkled up at once in response to the thick incense that hung in the musty air. Sunlight from the open door behind him only penetrated the gloom staining the doss for a meter or so.

  Skater breathed shallowly, sure he’d be overcome by the heady mixture of scents if he wasn’t careful. He tripped the infrared circuitry in his head and stripped away the darkness. Still, for some reason, the infrared vision wasn’t as sure or as clear as it usually was. He wrote it off to fatigue, to too few hours spent in sleep, but the primitive part of him that had stood up and taken notice of the door told him that wasn’t all he was experiencing.

  “Welcome to my home, magic man,” the voice said.

  “You know me?” Trey asked.

  “I know what you are.”

  Skater peered through the gloom and finally tracked the voice to a cadaver of a man seated on a heaped arrangement of pillows in the center of the floor.

  The man’s skin was so black it held blue undertones, the true black of an elkhorn that had been burnished to the deepest ebony over a controlled fire. He looked like he was made of sticks, hodge-podged together in a semblance of a skinny old man. The head was much too large for the body. Bright electric blue tattooing gleamed against the anthracite parchment of flesh stretched tight over the thin bones that looked so brittle they’d break if he moved too suddenly. He wore only a stained white loin cloth.

  “You are Papa DeBit?” Trey asked.

  “You could seek no others here in this place,” the small, shrunken man said, “for this is my place, clearly marked for others to know they take their lives in their hands should they seek me out for the wrong reasons.”

  A necklace of what looked like finger bones hung from the old man’s scrawny neck. Skater hoped they really belonged to some kind of fowl or some small mammal that belonged in a casserole dish. He raked his gaze over the rest of the room, taking in the talismans and fetishes hanging on the walls. Shelves lined the walls, the sills of the closed windows, and the corners of the room. All of them were covered with partially used candles. More candles covered the flat spaces of the furniture and small tables. Even plates on the carpet held candles.

  Only a few of them burned, unbothered by the breeze that strolled in through the open door behind Skater.

  Even with the fresh air, the earthy smell lingering in the room wouldn’t dilute. If not for the door opening onto the street behind them and letting in the gray sunlight from the overcast morning, Skater would have sworn he and Trey had just stepped into an open grave.

  “We come for purposes of our own,” Trey said. He kept his hands open and away from his body.

  The sickly figure on the pillows didn’t appear to think himself vulnerable at all. “Sit then, magic man, and tell these ears what you wish.”

  Trey sat cross-legged, drawing his cape around him.

  Skater couldn’t believe the old man seemed so in control of the situation.

  “And I, young warrior,” the old man said, swiveling his head up to face Skater, “can’t believe you walk into my abode so blithely, without the proper fear you should have before me.” Skater looked into the man’s gaze, suddenly realizing one of the houngan’s eyes wasn’t really an eye at all, but a red skullfaced die inset into a black rubber ball. The nickname, “young warrior,” had been something only his grandfather had ever called him.

  Papa DeBit smiled, revealing age-blackened teeth and stumps left where teeth had been worn away. The strands of saliva trapped in the grin glinted silvery. “There is much I can know about you, young warrior, should I so choose.” Skater kept his voice lean, hard, knowing he believed the man. “We didn’t come here about me. And I don’t have an interest in getting my fortune told.”

  Papa DeBit reached into a small pouch under the bone necklace. The worn strings gave way easily. He held a pinch of something between his thumb and forefinger. Speaking in a low, chanting voice, the houngan flicked the dust into the air toward Skater. Less than a meter from his fingertips, the dust particles burst into green dots of flame and quickly winked out, leaving gray smoke patches in their wake.

  “Too bad,” the old man said. “It would be a challenge for me to read all the portents I see in you, and it would surely be an interesting tale. Both in what has occurred with you, and what is yet to come.”

  Art unexplained chill thrilled through Skater at the old man’s declaration.

  “And you, magic man?” Papa DeBit said. “I see you already know some of what is to come, and how your destiny lies with that of this young warrior.”

  “You’re speaking in riddles,” Trey said, but he didn’t deny the charge.

  “I speak in truth,” the old man replied, “and you know it.”

  “We’re here on another matter,” Trey said.

  Reaching back, Papa DeBit snatched a candle from under the edge of the patched plaid couch behind him. Carefully, he set the candle into a gnawed plastifoam cat dish between himself and Trey. The bones of a small rodent lay draped inside the dish. Leathery bits of meat still clung to the ribs and hindquarters.

  “You’re here about the dead man,” the houngan said, “a dead man you have taken into your possession.”

  Trey nodded.

  Skater watched, knowing Trey hadn’t told Papa DeBit about Caber. They’d come without calling.

  “What do you know?” Trey asked.

  “Only that you need an answer from this dead man,” the houngan said. He made certain the candle was straight in the cat dish, then arranged the rodent’s bones more properly. The candle was straight as a dagger and as dulled black as decade-old roofing tar. A twisted tuft of a gray wick looked like sinew that had been yanked from a rotting corpse.

  “A name,” Trey said. “Only a name.”

  “You make it sound like so small a task, magic man.”

  “Not really,” Trey replied. “It’s all that we dare ask for.”

  “Was this name known to the dead man?” Papa DeBit asked. “We believe so.”

  “Then bring him in so that we might find out.”

  “The price,” Trey said.

  Skater wanted to shake himself. He was so entranced in the conversation between the two that he
wasn’t paying attention to his combat senses. He was supposed to be covering Trey’s back, instead he was gawking like some wannabe.

  “For bringing a man back from the dead?” Papa DeBit smiled expansively, a silvery sheen of saliva across his teeth. “And what would you think the cost would be, magic man?”

  “That’s why I’m asking.”

  “And if I name something too high?”

  “We can’t pay.”

  The houngan’s eyes darted between Skater and Trey. “Or you won’t.” He cackled quietly, amused. Then he turned his attention back to Trey. “As you’re no doubt aware, money no longer intrigues me as much as it once did. I know they say that about me on the streets of this sprawl. Along with other things, some true and others not so true.”

  Trey said nothing.

  Skater felt the weight of the seconds ticking past them, never to be reclaimed. He wanted to close the deal and get on with it.

  “There is, however, a prize I’ve been seeking for a very long time.” Papa DeBit shifted among his pillows. “I’ve not found it, but I continue the search. Should I find it, magic man, I want your promise—and that of the young warrior—that you will do all in your power to return it to me at that time.”

  “A run?” Skater asked. “That’s what you want?”

  The houngan turned his gaze on him. “A salvation. Make no mistake, nor think of it as something so trivial. Lost souls are painful to think of.”

  “Who would we be up against?” Skater asked, but it was only to buy time and he had the feeling the old man knew that. With the heat coming down on them, there was no real room for negotiation.

  “I don’t know in truth. Only parts are clear to me.”

  “That’s not good enough.”

  Papa DeBit gestured with an empty hand. “What you yourself seek is no easy matter. It is, as they say, the only deal on the table.” The unlit candle at the center of the three-way conversation appeared to draw in extra light from the room, making the apartment even darker.

  Trey looked up at Skater. “It’s your call.”

  “I can’t bind both of us,” Skater replied.

  “Very well.” Trey looked back at the houngan. “You have my promise.”

  The old man nodded, still regarding Skater. “And you, young warrior? The bargain can’t be completed without your acceptance as well.”

  “I agree,” Skater said reluctantly. Taking a run before he saw it and knew at least some of what was at stake and where it would take them was against every rule he’d made for himself.

  “Then bring me your dead man,” Papa DeBit said, “and let me bid him answer your question.”

  Skater moved out to the landing and walked down the steps while Trey stayed behind. He still felt curious eyes on him from the nearby dosses, but the portent behind them was much easier to take than the atmosphere kept at bay in the houngan’s doss. And, according to Trey, Papa DeBit was one of the good guys among the voudoun.

  He left Wheeler at the truck while he and Elvis toted the crate back up the steps. Inside the apartment, they laid it before Papa DeBit.

  “Take off the top,” the houngan ordered. He leaned forward among his pillows and pulled out a small bottle of ash-gray liquid from inside one of them.

  Skater and Elvis used their knives to pry the lid off the crate. When they had it, they set it aside.

  Norris Caber’s corpse had turned fish-belly white from death, looking impossibly swollen from the noxious gases that had gathered in his blood vessels and stomach. Twenty-four hours did ugly things to an unpreserved corpse.

  Chanting in a language that Skater couldn’t recognize, Papa DeBit poured some of the ash-colored liquid onto his palm. Skater couldn’t shake the feeling that he somehow knew the foreign words. With quick strokes, Papa DeBit painted a skull on his face, using the broken planes of his features to exaggerate the curvature.

  “Open yourself to the loa, young warrior,” the houngan entreated. “Else they may not come at all. The loa are very fickle to begin with, and any negative energy they perceive in this doss will be an affront to them.” He lifted his arms high over his head, palms pushed outward toward the ceiling. “The loa we seek is a very special one.”

  Skater glanced at Elvis. The big troll looked uneasy with the whole arrangement. He flexed his huge fists, only millimeters away from popping open the forearm snapblades.

  Taking a deep breath, Skater forced himself to sit in a lotus position on the floor, waving at Elvis to do the same. A flowery smell curled his nose, bringing with it an astringent after-scent. He assumed it came from the fluid.

  “Good, good, young warrior,” Papa DeBit said. His face was toward the ceiling, highlighted by the gray ash-fluid. His eyes were closed. “You must sometimes bend in order that you may learn to be strong.” He flicked his forefinger again. This time the fiery sparks leaped to the flat black candle.

  The wick ignited, creating an impossibly huge smoke cloud that hovered over the four men in the room and the corpse.

  Skater gazed into the smoke, almost believing there were twisting, turning shapes in the rolling gray clouds. The shapes were vibrant, alive, and as primitive and ferocious as the figures trapped in the bas-relief on the door to the doss.

  “Come to us, Damballah,” Papa DeBit said. “Come to us, O mighty serpent, that we might appease your hunger and ask a favor.” He lowered his voice as he reached out for a set of bongo drums almost hidden by the pillow-strewn couch. “Damballah is my mait tete loa, my patron. We have known each other many years.” He slapped his palms against the genuine leather tops of the drums. The beat was frenetic, savage.

  Skater’s eyes grew wider as he watched the smoke pouring from the candle create a cloud against the ceiling above them. Misshapen things fought and warred in the smoke, perhaps even lived and died. He didn’t know, but the imagery was stark and powerful.

  Papa DeBit resumed chanting. After a bit he stopped and put the drum away as well. “Damballah is here,” he said in a tight whisper. He gazed at the smoke cloud hugging the ceiling and smiled.

  Peering at the smoke, Skater watched as the images roiled and coalesced. In seconds, only the outline of a huge snake hung in the air, coiled around and through itself.

  “Quickly,” Papa DeBit said. “We must make an offering to appease Damballah’s hunger and win him to our cause.” He pulled a pack of nicosticks from the pillows and shook two of them out. “Give me something of yours that you cherish.” He placed the two nicosticks in the cat dish beside the candle. When he pulled his hand back, both of them lit without visible means, their smoke curling up to be breathed in through the giant snake’s flaring nostrils.

  Trey reached into his pockets and took out a fetish. “A favorite of mine,” he explained. The sandstone carving made a ring, three fish each chasing the other, barely overlapping. “One I crafted a long time ago.” He added it to the dish.

  Hot wax dripped from the black candle and ran black threads over the sandstone. The fetish ring disintegrated.

  Elvis added a stiletto with an inlaid pearl handle from his boot. “Carried it with me a lot of years.” Once in the dish, the pearl blackened and shattered, and the blade seemed to rust away in seconds.

  “And you, young warrior?” Papa DeBit asked, fixing his one eye and the skull-faced die on Skater.

  “Nothing,” Skater replied. “I have nuyen.” He showed a roll of bills he carried. “I don’t acquire keepsakes.”

  “Empty your pockets,” the houngan ordered.

  Skater did, dumping everything unceremoniously onto the carpeted floor.

  Papa DeBit scattered the coins and bills across the carpet, searching, his one eye sparking with intent. “We must hurry. Surely you have something of worth.” He stopped when he found the ceramic teddy bear button Skater had discovered near Emma that morning. He plucked it from the coins. “This.” Skater almost said no. The teddy bear button was from one of the outfits Larisa had put aside for Emma. It had been in the c
ache of clothes at the apartment where Larisa had been killed. Skater had hired a scavenger through Kestrel to raid the debris after things had quieted down a few days after the ReGEN run. Nearly nothing had remained as far as Larisa’s personal effects went.

  Instead, he kept quiet and watched as Papa DeBit put the button in the cat dish. All of them waited for the button to be consumed.

  It wasn’t.

  After a moment, the houngan reached into the dish and took the button out. “Not this one,” the old man said. “Damballah feels you are being too generous with this, young warrior.” Skater gratefully took the button back from the man, closing it tight in his fist. He wasn’t one to hang onto material things, but the button meant something. And rightfully, it was more Emma’s than his to give.

  “Now,” Papa DeBit said, “now Damballah will mount your dead man.”

  Turning into a swirl of activity, the smoke cloud funneled into the crate with the dead man, sending tendrils into the body through the nose, ears, and mouth.

  “Mounting,” Trey said in a low voice, “is a form of possession the loa use. Normally they mount the houngans themselves, or the serviteurs—the mundane followers of voudoun—and manifest themselves on the physical plane.” Trey’s words reminded Skater that the mage could assense the astral world as well. If he saw a giant snake in the smoke, he had to wonder what Trey could see in the astral. There was no time to ask, and he promptly forgot about it when Norris Caber’s corpse suddenly jerked to motion inside the crate.

  As bloated as the dead man was, he moved with sinewy grace. Caber’s hands gripped the sides of the crate, forcing the body upward.

  At first Skater thought the corpse was having trouble moving because of the bloat, shifting uncertainly back and forth on legs that threatened collapse. Then he noticed that the corpse actually moved with grace, coiling and uncoiling as it straightened to its full height.

  Norris Caber swayed to an inner beat that echoed the rhythm set forth by the drums Papa DeBit had played. Restlessly, the corpse stood within its make-shift coffin, illuminated only by the candles, beads of sweat running down his face like hot drops of wax.