by C. L. Bevill
Flor’s startled eyes came up and stared at Jane. Then surprisingly, she did exactly that. She ran. Jane spun around and Adrienne bellowed, “STOP, JANE!”
Jane tripped as she stopped, and she cursed herself with every bad word she knew. She’d had a chance to escape from Adrienne again, but she’d wasted it on Flor. It really wasn’t a waste, but Jane would never be able to make it up to Christien.
Above them, the storm was gathering strength anew. Jane saw Flor dash into the deeper shadows going toward the boat and she sighed. Maybe Flor would get away.
“Jane, come back over here,” Adrienne ordered loudly.
Jane came up like a string puppet. Something scraped against her side, and she looked down to see that she was still holding the little pocket knife. As for weapons, it wasn’t the most optimal but it was something.
Right now, I think I’d rather have ear plugs, she thought mutinously. Beside her Christien whined again. It was odd to hear such an anxious noise out of such a large, ferocious beast, but the animal was the man for the moment, and it was clear that Christien didn’t think like a man while he was the animal.
She turned her body around and marched over closer to Adrienne. Jane saw that Adrienne rubbed at her jaw and looked around ruefully as she sat on the ground. “That’s far enough, Jane,” the witch said once Jane was within twenty feet of her.
Jane stopped. Adrienne would say the dreadful words before Jane could even get within ten feet of her.
Jane could sense that Christien was pacing back and forth behind her, confused and enraged. The beast knew something was wrong, but he couldn’t imagine how he could fix it.
“The little Latina can throw a punch, oui?” Adrienne asked of no one in particular. Her gaze came to rest on Philippe, and she said slowly, “What happened to Philippe?”
It wasn’t an order, but Jane answered all the same. “Flor was very angry,” she said. “Apparently Lyle and Philippe didn’t think to search her pockets.” Jane closed her hand around the little knife, effectively concealing it.
Adrienne wasn’t completely stupid. “Do you have any weapons in your pockets, Jane?” she asked commandingly.
Jane nearly laughed. If the witch didn’t ask the right questions, she wouldn’t get the answers she wanted. “No. I don’t have any weapons in my pockets. More’s the pity.”
The older woman considered this and nodded. She got to her feet and brushed the debris off her clothing. She smoothed over her hair, trying to soothe it back into the hairstyle it had been before she had been knocked down. Finally, she looked up and gauged the storm. It roiled above them as if segregated from the fort. Lightning strikes hit trees all around them but seemed to avoid the interior area where Adrienne had marked off her five-pointed star.
“You,” she pointed at one of her black-clothed bodyguards, “find the little Latina girl and bring her back. Don’t kill her.” The man she’d indicated unfroze from his position and melted into the shadows.
Christien snarled at the bodyguard as he passed.
Jane blinked. The man appeared as normal as any man she would pass on the street, but when he passed her, there was a stench that lingered. It smelled as though something had died. She had thought that the three bodyguards were simply men who had been cursed in a similar manner as Jane had been. But perhaps it was more than that. Their eyes appeared…dead.
Adrienne stood there for a long minute considering the situation. She looked up again and judged the skies. “I believe Philippe was correct. Perhaps I didn’t give the boy his due.” She ran a fingernail over her lips. “I will call the loa to me, and they will bring me what I was promised.”
I can move. I can speak. I can’t order Christien to attack the witch. I can’t order Christien to leave me, to run away. Jane’s insides broiled with rage. I’m tired of being a victim. I’m tired of all of this. What can I do?
Adrienne located the grimoire and the Vodoun doll. She held them in one hand while she mumbled words. She moved closer to Philippe’s body and dabbed her fingers into his blood. She smeared the blood over her cheeks, taking the time to make certain the streaks were approximate to each other.
Kneeling awkwardly in the dirt, Adrienne began to speak in Cajun French. Jane couldn’t understand most of it, and she had a difficult time following anything she was familiar with. It sounded like French but it wasn’t. Some of the words were the same, and some of them were bastardized. The accent wasn’t like anything Jane could remember.
“Obfuscate the mark of the witch. Disable her strongest magics. Cause the witch to recant her spell. All would work. Possibly all of them together. Possibly one might do the trick.” The words came to Jane in a rush. Dr. Armand Sorrell had said them, throwing them out as a possible method of breaking a curse.
“Obfuscate the mark of the witch.” Jane’s fingers inched upward to her neck, and she felt the tattoo there. Her other hand concealed the little pocket knife. She looked at Adrienne and saw that the witch was completely unconcerned with Jane.
“Obfuscate the mark of the witch.”
Jane brought the knife up and sensed the rightness of the action. Adrienne had blocked every other potential effort, but Jane could do this. She would do it.
She twisted the knife and felt the contours of the tattoo. Then Jane gritted her teeth and began to cut.
Christien howled in utter anguish.
Adrienne glanced at the Roux-Ga-Roux and once she saw that Christien wasn’t paying attention to her, dismissed him. Christien threw himself upon the ground and howled. The storm began to gear up again. A few fat drops of rain began to splash the earth.
“I don’t have a rooster,” Adrienne said, “but I have the blood of my only remaining son. Come to me, Mambo. Come to me. I have questions to ask you.”
The roar of lightning striking nearby trees was Adrienne’s only answer.
Jane continued her grisly task. She wanted to scream with the pain. Even worse was that she wasn’t sure if she was doing it correctly. She couldn’t see what she was cutting, and she couldn’t very well ask Adrienne or Christien to see if she was doing it right.
Christien came close and settled into a huge lump at Jane’s feet. He whined as he nudged her legs.
Then Jane saw the two bodyguards returning with their loads. One carried Lyle’s limp body. The other one had a fighting Flor over his shoulder. She cursed him roundly and struck him wherever she could. She kicked and fought, but the man merely adjusted his grip. Both victims were dropped yards away from where Adrienne made her petitions. Lyle stayed in place. His head lolled to one side and stayed there. Flor crab walked away from the bodyguard. He bent and grasped her ankle, yanking her leg into the air, so that she couldn’t move further. Flor struggled and kicked, but she couldn’t get out of his inexorable grip.
Adrienne began to draw symbols in the ground, using Philippe’s blood as a medium. Jane was occupied with pain and getting the job done, so she didn’t concentrate on what Adrienne was doing, but it looked complicated and precise. The witch had performed that act many times before.
Jane’s knees nearly buckled as she sliced anew. Blood slithered hotly down her neck, onto her shirt and down between her shoulder blades. Her hand trembled and spots appeared before her eyes. She forced herself to continue.
Lyle’s body twitched, and Jane’s eyes caught the movement. Then Lyle began to convulse as if he had gone into a violent seizure.
Flor spat something vehement in Spanish then began to shake. The bodyguard released her leg as her entire body replicated Lyle’s actions. Beyond them, Adrienne watched and nodded in approval. The two forms bounced and juddered. Time stretched into eternity.
Jane took a breath and sliced again. The fingers of her left hand traced the shape of the tattoo on her neck. One more cut to go. Her stomach churned in concert with the heavens above them. She felt everything slip to one side and realized she was starting to fall over. One more cut. One more cut. Please, just let me make one more cut.
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br /> Lyle stood up slowly and towered over Adrienne. His eyes snapped open, and they were completely white, without any iris at all, glimmering in the illumination caused by the lightning bolts. It was as if a caul had covered them, or the eyeballs had rolled backward into the sockets. The eyes were full silver moons.
Flor’s body battered the ground. Then she abruptly stopped convulsing. Slowly, she came to her feet and shook herself. Her eyes fluttered open and were the same crystalline white, seeing nothing and everything at the same time.
The Guatemalan girl opened her mouth and boomed, “WE ARE HERE, WOMAN!”
The voice was neither Spanish accented, nor was it Flor’s. Indeed, it wasn’t even a woman’s voice.
Jane pressed down on the knife and, with sickening certainty, made her last cut.
Chapter 26
When blood appears, it is apt to run.
– African proverb
Something wet and squishy came off in Jane’s hand. She grasped it, and the knife dropped from the other hand at the same time. A moment in space unfurled like a grand flag. She saw everything around her. Christien curled at her feet as the Roux-Ga-Roux. Adrienne started to answer the strange voice that had come out of Flor’s mouth. Lyle stood nearby, his weird white eyes staring. Philippe’s body lay to one side, still and silent.
A great cloud slipped away from Jane’s vision. It didn’t pour back into her brain. It was simply there. All of it. Every bit of her missing life was present. She glanced down at Christien and saw that his tremendous shape contorted on the ground, the magic began to fade away from him. He was changing back into the man.
Christien. Jane could remember the last night they’d spent together. It was a time she knew exactly who he was, and he knew exactly who she was. They’d shared their first kiss and a promise for the future.
Jane blinked. The event rolled out before her, from Christien’s perspective, as he had seen it, as it had happened to him. She even knew she was getting it from him now, as the curse leached away from them.
* * *
The couple strolled hand in hand down Royal Street, ignoring everything else. They chattered about the evening, about the woman’s business in the French Quarter, and about nothing important at all. Their voices were low and intimate; they were engrossed with each other’s company.
The man took a moment to pause, gracefully drawing the woman to a halt in front of a side street. She moved into a position close to him but not too close. He brushed his hand across the silky skin of her cheek, savoring the luxurious sensation of her flesh.
His thumb and index finger wrapped themselves in a strand of her blonde hair, and he considered the color for a moment. The woman was a natural blonde. He didn’t know how he knew. Perhaps it was the fairness of her skin; the porcelain ivory of her flesh could be likened to the beautiful Mardi Gras masks sold by artisans in the Quarter.
But her skin isn’t cold, he thought. Not in the least. And her hair. It’s like the moon cried tears, and they splashed upon her. The pale color of lightlessness. Her eyes were a brilliant blue with gray highlights. Her cheekbones slashed in a triangular pointing at a ruby-tinted mouth. That mouth was a work of art with pouting plump lips. Certainement, she’s a work of art, both inside and out.
They’d met two few months before. The woman had visited an old friend of hers in the small town of Unknown, Louisiana. Unknown was located in the northwest section of the state, near the wondrous black lake that all of the family called theirs. The man had been invited to an uncle’s house there. Who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, notice the tall blonde with her striking blue eyes? She certainly didn’t resemble any of the Lake People. Not all of the Lake People, those who came from the area of Unknown and the mysterious body of water, Twilight Lake, had black hair and gold eyes, but a lot of them did. The gene was generally dominant and branded them for what they were.
The attraction was instantaneous. Initially, the man’s family wasn’t thrilled because the woman wasn’t one of them, but she was charming and warm, and even the man’s mother smiled ruefully upon their budding relationship. The woman might not have been famille, but she was good and kind and très beau.
Furthermore, she lived and worked in New Orleans. It wasn’t Houma, where he lived, but it was much closer than Unknown. The weekly trips to New Orleans, and vice versa, began shortly after their first meeting.
The woman was just as happy going for a walk through the quarter and eating something from a cart, as she was dining in a restaurant. Sometimes she cooked for him, although he understood she didn’t always want to cook. After all, she owned a restaurant in the Quarter. A boudin from a vendor was sometimes the best cure for the rich fare she was used to eating.
Her capacity to find humor in situations appealed to the man. She laughed at her inability to gain weight in spite of anything she ate. “Can you believe my cholesterol is borderline?” she asked him before taking a bite of the fully loaded Cajun specialty.
“New Orleans food is hard to turn down,” he said laughingly back. “We’ll walk around the block twice to make up for it. Maybe down to the square and see what all the vendors are doing for fun.”
The man grasped the woman’s hand a little firmer, and she looked up at him with an easy smile. He brought the hand up to his mouth and pressed a kiss there, lingering with his lips against her soft skin.
“You’re going to get me all heated up,” the woman said, waving a hand at her face. The lovely smile teased in a way that made the man’s chest thump all the harder.
“That’s the idea, ma chère,” he replied with a cheerful leer.
Her expression turned serious. “You know I had a bad relationship not so long ago.”
“Yes, I know.” She’d brought it up initially. The man hadn’t really cared as long as the relationship was unmistakably in the past.
“It’s not that I don’t want to go to the next step.”
The man sighed forcefully. “Ah, jolie fille, I know.”
The man pressed a kiss to her hand again and let the entwined pair fall to their sides. They began to walk again. Their hands continued to be connected as if they couldn’t stand to not be touching. The evening was full of moist air blowing off the mighty Mississippi River. People stumbled out of a narrow bar along Royal Street even though it was only 10 p.m. The man gently guided the woman to avoid them as they called noisily for a cab.
“Anna said,” the man paused, then started when the group had stepped into a cab, “that it’s been a few years since you broke it off with this man.”
“He wasn’t faithful,” the woman said simply. The words were loaded with emphasis. Certainly, she was sharing something with the man, an important something that he couldn’t afford to mistake.
“Ah,” the man replied. The other man had been a fool to play around on this woman.
She glanced at him sharply. Then she looked across the street at the three-storied building there and stared at the elaborate wrought iron railings curling into complex designs, framed by huge potted plants twisting lazily in an evening breeze. It was April, but everything was ready to bloom in New Orleans.
Life thrives no matter how the heart feels, the man thought. Surely, she’ll see that. I’m not that man who stabbed her in her exquisite back. I’m not he and never will be.
“Has Anna talked about the family?” he asked instead. The woman wasn’t a member of the far flung family but she was beloved. It wouldn’t be the first time one of them had married out of the family, and it wouldn’t be the last. The woman wouldn’t be able to speak to the man as some couples could do, but the man had never felt so intensely for another. If she wasn’t meant for him, then he was as blind, deaf, and dumb as the black-iron streetlamp they’d just passed.
“A little,” the woman said. “You’ve close ties there. You look similar, too. Black hair. Dark hair. And those eyes.” She glanced at him. “Gold. Gold like the color of an old coin. If I had a child I would want him to have that color.”
Her free hand came up to cover her mouth as if she had misspoken. “Not that I was hinting about anything.”
Good. She wants children. “Of course not,” he replied smoothly. “I know what you mean.”
Her eyes rolled contritely. “Good thing someone does.”
They walked a bit more. The woman stopped to look at antique cameos displayed in a store window. The store was little bigger than a breadbox and built as an addition to an alley. Every inch of space was utilized in the oldest sections of New Orleans.
“La Famille is very protective of their members,” he said. “They tend to be closed off.”
“Anna is one of you,” the woman said; her tone was neutral. “She’s happy with Gabriel. Happier than I’d ever hoped. Since the accident with the salt mine, she seems so content.”
The man clucked his tongue. The business with the salt mine was all bad. Très mauvais. Good family and innocent outsiders had died and for the stupidest of reasons. How to explain that to her when Anna did not?
“Mon oncle, my uncle, speaks nothing but good of Anna. She is well liked.” The man paused again. “And my family speaks well of you.”
The woman looked away from the jewelry and toward the ground. “I like your family. You’re lucky to have them.”
And that was something I shouldn’t have brought up. She doesn’t have a family. She hasn’t since she was eight years old, except Anna, who has been her closest friend ever since. “I’m sorry, chère,” the man said. “I didn’t mean to cause you pain.”
The woman flashed him a doleful grin. “I know. It’s just that when you’re an orphan it’s easy to be envious of people who have families.”
“A big family,” the man said with ease. “And they all want to get to know you. Copy you, too. I have a little sister who decided that peroxide was the only way to go.”
The woman’s free hand went to her hair and almost involuntarily stroked the pale strands. “Oh no, not Patrice. She tried to bleach her hair?”
