a terrible beauty

by Unknown Author

  Alek shrugged. “You know. About that cat or whatever it was called Sandro, and the boys disappearing with Sara thinking they were dead, and Gene and Jean getting shot and killed, and Guillaume Sam being a bokor-”

  ’’Crazy stuff,” Kris said, looking down at the floor as if unwilling to look the others in the room in the eye.

  “Maybe you’re right, Kris,” Paul Narcisse said softly. “Mt/be it’s all
  He looked up, anger.an his eyes. “Are you telling me the boys are dead, Paul? Is that what you’re saying? Because they can’t be dead. They can’t be!”

  Paul looked at him. Everyone looked at him.

  “Why not, Kris?” Paul asked in a gentle voice.

  “Sam, he wouldn’t—” Kris caught himself, and finished sullenly, “They can’t be. That’s all.”

  “Sam wouldn’t what, Kris?” Paul asked again. “He wouldn’t hurt them? Have them killed? What kind of deal did you make with Guillaume Sam, Kris?”

  Kris Gervelis looked at him stubbornly. “Deal?”

  Paul nodded while everyone looked on, silently. “You seem unwillingly to believe that the Stems were hurt, maybe even killed. But you don’t deny that Guillaume Sam is a bokor, do you?”

  Kris glanced around the room, then laughed weakly. “Of course he’s not. Who’d believe such a thing?”

  Alek sat back heavily on the sofa. “You were always a bad liar, Kris,” he said in a low voice. “Always.”

  Kris turned on him angrily. “Do you know what it takes to launch a band nowadays? Huh? Do you? Of course not. No, for you it was the music. Always the music. But what about paying for the instruments? The sound system? Demo records? A tour? Drugs for those goofbail Stems? Where do you think that money came from, Alek, huh? The two-fifty a night we got playing lo~ cal gigs? Do you have even the slightest conception of what it took? Do you?” ■*

  Alek, not looking at him, shook his head. “No, Kris. No. I don’t.”

  Kris snorted. “Of course not. You just expected it to be there when you needed it. And I made sure it was.”

  “At what cost?” Father Baltazar asked quietly.

  Kris sat back in his dbair, his defiant gaze back on the floor. “Not much,” he said. “I let Sam do the band’s books.”

  Sara knew instantly what that meant. “You were letting him launder money through the band,” she said.

  Kris shrugged, but the defiance was gone out of him. “The band—we were doing okay, but maybe not as well... not as well as Alek and the others thought. Sam let us keep some of the money we ran through our accounts, for expenses. He said we could pay him back when we hit it really big.”

  “My God,” Alek said, closing his eyes.

  Sara could hear the pain in his voice. She put a comforting hand on his arm, but he didn’t react. He didn’t even look at her.

  “It’s not like we were doing badly, Alek,” Kris said, a pleading tone in his voice. “We’ve doing better, really. It’s only a matter of time. We’re getting there. Soon we’ll be able to do without Sam entirely. Then we can pay him back.” ' '

  “That’s why you say he wouldn’t hurt the boys,” Sara said.

  “Of course,” Kris said eagerly. “He has as big a stake in Mountains’ success as we do.”

  “Except,” Paul Narcisse said quietly, “he is riding the lightning. He thinks he controls it. He might even control it sometimes, for a little while. But sometimes he must feed it, even when he doesn’t want to.”

  “What do you mean?” Sara asked.

  “Bakula-baka has needs of his own that must be satisfied, Even the marassa, the' Twins that Guillaume Sam employed had to be paid in more than money.”

  “Marassa?” Alek asked. “You mean Gene and Jean?” Paul Narcisse nodded. “They’ve worked for Guillaume Sam for years. In the beginning they just had a reputation as sadistic killers, but under the bokor’s tutelage they walked far on the left hand path. Twins, you see, are sacred. They can have great powers. They can switch bodies, enjoy an inhuman vitality that allows them to survive terrible wounds that would kill anyone else. But to stoke the fires of their magic, they must drain the powers of others-preferrably twins such as themselves.”

  “Rog and Jerry,” Alek whispered. He looked at Paul Narcisse with an agonized expression.

  “So you think they’re dead. You really think they’re dead.”

  Paul Narcisse looked at him as if gauging how much he could really take. “I don’t know,” he finally said quietly. “But I fear their situation may be even worse.” “Worse than death?” Alek asked incredulously. “There is worse than death?”

  “Oh, yes,” Paul Narcisse said. “Much.”

  There was a protracted silence that no one seemed willing to break. Sara could feel an emotional vortex running through the room threatening to snap out in unspeakable violence between brothers and friends. But she sensed that they hadn’t plumbed the depths of revelation yet. And they had to. They had to get eveiything out in the open. ' : ■

  “But,” she said into the pregnant silence, “all of this doesn’t explain why Kris isn’t surprised that Guillaume Sam is a bokor. Does it?”

  “No,” Father Baltazar and Paul Narcisse said simultaneously. Alek just looked at his brother, who glanced wildly from face to face. ;V

  “Well...” he said. “Well... we did have some talks.” “What did he promise you?” Alek asked. “What did he offer you for the soul of Mountains of Madness?”

  “It’s not like that!” Kris Gervelis protested, but everyone could see that despite what he said, it was indeed exactly like that.

  “I know,” Sara said quietly, again breaking the awful silence.

  Eveiyone looked at her, except Kris, who in his agony looked at nothing.

  “Magda Konsavage.”

  The look on Kris’s face, his awful silence, confirmed her suspicions.

  Alek sighed as if all the life had gone out of him. Even Father Baltazar slumped in his chair. Paul Narcisse wearily rubbed his eyes.

  “He said,” Kris said thickly, “he said that she would love me. Love me as I loved her. He would give me this when we paid him the money we owed.”

  “He lied, Kris,” Paul Narcisse said softly. “He can’t make her love you. Not really. It would be a hideous simulacrum of love that wouldn’t have fooled you for a second.”

  Kris began to cry. Tears ran down his face, although it was hideously blank of emotion. He made no sound as he

  wept, but said in a voice as blank as his face, “I knew that. I think I always knew that. I just couldn’t help myself.” With that admission he covered his face with his hands and broke down into great wracking sobs wrenched from the bottom of his heart and soul. Alek broke also. He slid

  ■L ”■

  off the sofa to his Knees and lurched to the chair where his brother wept inconsolably, gathering him into his embrace, weeping and murmuring, “My brother, oh my brother.”

  Sara wept herself, wiping away tears, surreptitiously glancing at Father Baltazar and Paul Narcisse. Father Baltazar was grim as an Old Testament prophet. Only Paul Narcisse wore a trace of a smile, a sad smile burdened by the grief that had been loosed in the room, but a smile just the same.

  . ‘‘The bonds snap,” he said, almost to himself. “One by one he loses his allies. He weakens—yet becomes all the more dangerous for it.”

  “Guillaume Sam?” Sara asked, wiping the tear tracks from her cheeks.

  Paul Narcisse nodded. “Oh, yes. Weep not, friends, for we have sundered another cord of the bokor’s power, weakening him ever more.”

  Emotions spent, the Gervelis Brothers slowly regained control. Father Baltazar tossed them a box of tissues, and Kris blew his nose and rubbed his eyes.

  “A good cry cleanses the soul,” the priest said. “Too bad our society frowns upon it.”

  Paul Narcisse leaned forward and put his hand on Kris’s arm. “You’ve done nothing that’s irredeem
able. But if you move to our side, Guillaume Sam will grow desperate. We sit here in the eye of the hurricane, my friends, and when we pass through it into the storm again, it will blow upon us like a wind from hell.”

  “Do we wait for this wind to blow,” Sara asked, “or do we take it to the source?”

  “We have to know where to strike,” Paul Narcisse pointed out. “YoUr search of Club Carrefour turned up nothing,” he said. “The .abandoned subway station belonged to Gene and Jean.’ It was their headquarters, not Guillaume Sam’s.”

  “That means,” Father Baltazar sai i, “that his hounfort is probably still hidden. Could he have held his ceremonies at the Club or the subway station?”

  “Hmmm.” Paul Narcisse considered the matter. “No, probably not. The club is too open. Anybody could find their way there. The subway station is too limited, the cats are too small to host ceremonies of any size. Besides, there was no poteau-mitan, no sanctuaries. Only the one altar to Baron Samedi.”

  “We can call on Papa Legba again,” Sara said. “He owes me a third boon. I can ask him to send Sandro to lead us to Sam’s hounfort."

  Paul Narcisse frowned. “Papa Legba’s boon is not an advantage to be used lightly. I’m not saying we shouldn’t call upon Papa Legba. I’m saying we should hold back from using that card as long as we can.”

  “And if we don’t play it before the game ends?” Sara asked.

  “Then it’s wasted," Father Baltazar said.

  “We don’t have to waste an> hing," Kris said quietly. “I’ve been to Sam’s hounfort. I know where it is.”

  They all looked at him. His face was set, his expression that of a man who had made up his mind after a long period of uncertainty.

  “Excellent!” Paul Narcisse said. “If we can destroy his hounfort, Guillaume Sam will be greatly weakened. He may be panicked into a desperate move. Do not underestimate his powers. They still are great But if we can strike quickly, while hp is off-balance, that will certainly be to our favor.”

  “What kind of resources would he have at the houn-fort?” Alek asked. “What can he do there?”

  Paul Narcisse shrugged. “There’s no telling for sure. Perhaps, though, you will learn that there can indeed be a fate worse than death.”

  Sara nodded. She knew that that was true. And so did the bodiless, soulless voices twittering in her head.

  , tCHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  T

  l hey assembled in the back office of The Serpent and the Rainbow: bookstore owner, priest, police officer, musician; and Goth Rock band manager. It was, Sara thought, an unlikely and motley group with which to storm the gates of hell.

  Sara thought for about a second of bringing Jake along. He had a steady nerve and a cool head and God knows he owed Guillaume Sam personally, both for the death of Juliette and the beating he’d taken at Sam’s orders, but ultimately she decided to leave him out of this party. He’d come along willingly, but he’d be confused by the utter weirdness of the situation and any confusion on his part would probably cost him his life. Sara couldn’t have that on her conscience. She couldn’t live with Jake’s blood on her hands.

  “I’ll have to ask you to look the other way, Detective,” Paul Narcisse asked.

  “Why?”

  He gestured at the closed box that rested on the top of

  his desk. “You’re armed,” he said;. “But the rest of us shouldn’t go to that place emptyhanded.”

  Sara sighed. He was right, of course. Their lives, and perhaps even more, were on the line. But once you started to compromise your vows, Sara wondered, where did it end? Of course, she hadn’t just started compromising her oath to the police department She started long ago when she first picked up the Witchblade and slid it, gauntlet-like, over her right hand. But now was not the time to get squeamish. Now was not the time to stop compromising, either, though someday, she realized, that time would probably come.

  She only hoped that she’d be able to stop when she really had to.

  “Are you two familiar with guns?” Paul Narcisse asked the brothers.

  They glanced at each other and Alek shook his head.

  “I’m a city boy. I played with guitars when I grew up, not guns.” He jerked a thumb at his brother. “His weapon of choice was a pocket calculator.”

  “Better take these, then.” Paul Narcisse lifted the lid of the box and removed two firearms and handed them to the brothers.

  “Jesus,” Sara said. “Where’d you get those?”

  Alek looked at them, took the one Paul Narcisse offered him, and turned it over in his hands like he was uncertain which end the bullets came out of. “What the hell are these things? They look like props from some Italian after-the-holocaust movie."

  “They’re Jackhammers,” Kris said. “Twelve-gauge automatic combat shotguns. Ten round plastic magazine placed behind the trigger. On automatic the full magazine will empty in two and one-third seconds with a Cutts-style compensator on the muzzle brake off-setting barrel jump and also acting as a flash eliminator.” He looked at the others, who were ah staring at him in surprise. “What? I read an, article about them in Soldier of Fortune magazine once.” '

  “Have you ever fired one?” Paul Narcisse asked.

  “No.” ' ?

  “Better select single-round fire then. And stick to it.” Kris tried to hide his disappointment. “All right.”

  Paul Narcisse turned to Father Baltazar. “What about you? Are you armed?”

  The priest patted his windbreaker’s side pocket. “I have everything I need right here.”

  “All right then.” Paul Narcisse gazed at the small band. All- looked solemn, all looked determined. “There’s no doubt that this will be dangerous. Perhaps even deadly. Some of us-” and here he looked right at the Gervelis brothers “—are not exactly trained for this sort of thing. Damballah knows I’m not, particularly. But if we stay alert, have faith, and listen to Detective Pezzini, we might all come back in the end. And in the end we all might have done the world some good.”

  Not a bad speech, thought Sara. She only hoped that she could live up to her part of it.

  We hope so, too, the voices chorused in her brain. We hope so, too.

  Paul Narcisse drove them to the hounfort in a battered old Volkswagen van that looked to Sara as if it had survived, though just barely, more than one previous foray into urban warfare. Or perhaps those holes in the body were just rust spots.

  Indian summer had .finally broken. There was a distinct chill to the air. Everywhere across the city people were sitting down to dinner and looking forward to a movie or a Mets game to round out their evening. Or perhaps they were just planning a long, quiet night at home with their loved 6nes.

  Meanwhile, she and* her companions were facing the promise of violent dea'th. Not that Sara loathed the adrenaline-laced excitement that was already warming her stomach with a nervous energy that belied her calm exterior. But sometime it would be nice, she reflected, to see what that quiet evening at home would feel like.

  She found herself looking at Alek Gervelis. He looked up and met her gaze.

  “You’re probably used to this sort of thing,” he said.

  -“Maybe too much so.”

  “Well, I’m just hoping that I can get through this without peeing my pants.”

  She put a hand on his forearm and squeezed it gently, reassuringly. “You’ll be okay.”

  He leaned toward her and put his head close to hers. “If we get through this,” he said in a soft voice, “how about we go somewhere quiet, just the two of us? Have a nice dinner. Maybe a few drinks. Then just relax and get to know each other a little better.”

  Sara smiled, amazed at how his thoughts seemed to parallel her own. “Sounds good,” she said. “It’s a date.” “Good.” Alek leaned back against his seat. “Now just make sure I live through tonight so we can actually make good on it.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “That’s it,” Kris said. He
was in the shotgun seat in front, guiding Paul Narcisse through the streets of Brook-!yn. They had moved from residential neighborhoods to a blasted industrial warehouse zone made up of huge block-like stone and brick structures of a peculiarly ugly neo-penal style of architecture. None seemed to be the centers of particularly successful industries or businesses, and many looked abandoned. “

  The building that Kris indicated was well up the block and across the street. Paul Narcisse guided the VW into an adjacent sidestreet that was actually more alley than street. He maneuvered the van so that they could watch the front of the building through the windshield while they themselves were hidden by the darkness of the unlit street.

  Paul Narcisse made a sound of disgust deep in his throat.

  “This is a vile place to have a hounfort,” he said. “There are no trees, no grass, no plants at all, no clean running water. Only concrete, cement, and dirty brick. There is nothing to nourish the loa, or their people. Such a place would only find favor with those like Guillaume Sam, who worship death and decay.”

  He spit out the van’s open window.

  “Someone’s going in,” Father Baltazar said.

  Two figures scurried from the dark side of the street to a door in the center of the warehouse’s front facade. They paused there for a moment, then apparently were admitted. They disappeared inside.

  “Perhaps there’s a ceremony tonight,” the priest said.

  “I think we can count on that,” Paul Narcisse replied. “I think we can count on the presence of Guillaume Sam and many of his zobops—” he turned to glance back at Sara and Alek, in the back seat “—those are the low-level cultists in his bizango, or secret society, probably recruited from all over the city and beyond.”

  They watched for a few minutes as seven or eight of what Paxil Narcisse had termed zobops entered the structure, alone or in small groups of two or three.