Narcisse was right. He didn’t even prepare them for a proper burial.
“Are you certain you can do this?”
One of the grieving sisters clutched at Dominique’s arm, too-thin fingers grasping like claws, digging into her flesh in a painful grip. Her brown eyes showed far too much white, glowing in the burgeoning moonlight all the more for the tears glistening in them. Her raw emotion did nothing for Dominique’s attempts to center herself in preparation for the ritual she was about to attempt—a ritual she had believed herself incapable of until this night.
She hid her thoughts as best she could as she put a hand over the woman’s, gently eased her fingers from her arm. “You will have your answers.” She pressed against her shoulder, urging her to step back. She had to be careful not to press too hard since the woman couldn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds soaking wet and would likely fall over if Dominique wasn’t gentle. “Now, go stand with your sister. I need to prepare for the ritual.”
“And they’ll be able to tell you what happened?” the girl pressed, taking only a small step back. The thin skirt of her simple black dress swayed with the movement, rushing against sandals that would offer little protection slugging through the bayou. “They’ll be able to tell you he—”
“They will tell me everything. Please, go stand beside your sister.” A little voice inside Dominique’s head that sounded remarkably like her mother scolded her for speaking to the grieving girl that way. She was in need, in need of a service only Dominique could provide—that it was Dominique’s duty to provide. The fact that her duty may very well end up proving that her husband was a murderer did not justify treating these girls with cruelty.
But even her mother’s voice couldn’t soften Dominique’s face to an expression of understanding, couldn’t bring words of comfort to her tongue. Not when an image of Julien haunted her, the sight of his face twisted with pain, his voice begging her to free him. The vulnerability she’d seen, so rare on his smug face, did more to her heart than any number of grieving sisters could manage. A fact that would plague Dominique for the rest of her days.
The loa seemed to take pity on her, because the girl sagged with visible relief, her makeup still smudged from her earlier hysterics. It had been less than ten minutes ago that she’d finally stopped sobbing, ceased her wailing over her poor murdered sisters, shrieking her pleas for justice that only Dominique could provide. She sucked in a shuddering breath, and seemed to pull herself together a little bit, even went as far as to right her veil over her face. The other sister stood several yards away, observing Dominique with a face like carved steel. She didn’t show her pain as much as her sister, but it was there in the way her shoulders hung as though there were weights tied to them, the way her eyelids drooped. She held out an arm, offering her living sister solace even as her eyes remained on Dominique. A silent challenge to make good on what she’d claimed she could do.
Her mother’s book weighed heavily in Dominique’s hand. Less of a book and more of a journal, it contained her mother’s thoughts, experiences, and rituals. She had kept careful records of the services she’d performed, taking detailed notes on each situation and her reasoning for approaching the solutions she did. Dominique had never read her mother’s book, hadn’t wanted to know if what the people said about her was true. Now she’d spent the entire day pouring over this journal and many others, studying her mother’s records, learning what she would need to do, what had to be done.
Shaking off thoughts of her mother and the burgeoning suspicion that performing the desounen would make her exactly what she had always sworn she would never be, Dominique faced the sisters.
“I’m going to begin now. Please stay back and do not approach the circle. No matter what happens, the circle must remain unbroken and uncrossed.”
The girls held on to one another as if needing to pool their strength for what was coming. Dominique knelt beside the bag of supplies she’d brought with her, and anointed her forehead and wrists with the cane spirit, lips moving in a silent prayer to the loa. She grasped a small pouch of salt and slowly rose to her feet. Continuing the prayer, she walked a circle around the mausoleum, careful to include her supplies within the boundary. At each cardinal point, she offered droplets of the kleren to seal the magic.
As the last droplet fell on the fourth point, the magic snapped into place. Energy crackled down the line of salt like a spark following a trail of gunpowder. The hairs on Dominique’s arms and neck rose, her skin buzzing with awareness. If the gasps were anything to judge by, the two living sisters had felt it as well, though they remained blessedly still, obeying Dominique’s command not to approach the circle.
Returning to her bag, Dominique withdrew three candles and her ason.
She lit the first candle. “Fabienne Monique Villemont.”
The name fell into the space around them like stones into a pond, ripples flowing outward through the magic. Dominique lit the second candle.
“Gaelle Christine Villemont.”
More power, rising like a swelling tide. The air thickened. Dominique breathed evenly through her nose, blinking to clear the haze hanging over her eyes. The veil of the dead. She lit the third candle.
“Esther Lillian Villemont.”
She scooped up the ason, shaking the rattle at each candle and then at the woman it had been lit for. Each flick of the ason was sharp, quick, a sound to get the attention of the dead. Then she shook the ason in a steady, vibrating motion, drawing out the sound as she held the rattle over her own head.
The stirring of her gros bon anje, the half of her soul that animated her body, was a strange, heavy sensation, like a beast uncurling from a nap deep in her chest. Dominique breathed through the brief nausea that came with the sensation, concentrating on that spark. Gently, she coaxed it to a brighter flame, fed the energy out into the first waiting body. Words of power fell from her lips, sealing the connection.
Fabienne moved.
A small flare of power puffed into the air, the flickering of the woman’s ti bon ange—the half of her soul that held her personality, her spirit. It was that part of her soul that remained trapped on this plane, unable to move on past the grisly nature of her death. Dominique’s power pulsed inside Fabienne, replacing the half of her soul that had been lost in death—the gros bon ange. When Dominique took her power back, her body would rest again, and if she performed the ritual correctly, this time her ti bon ange would be free as well, able to move on to what waited beyond this life.
The air around her filled with warmth, raising the hair on her arms and neck as her power infused every fiber of her being, connecting her to the dead with thin golden threads of power. Glowing heat to chase away the chill of death.
“Fabienne Monique Villemont, rise up and speak.”
The power inside Fabienne flickered. The connection between her and Dominique thickened then shot like a flaming arrow from Fabienne to her sister Gaelle. Dominique clenched her jaw, the sensation of her power being drawn further out of her a sickening feeling, like a thread tied to her organs being tugged on, pulled. Dominique’s legs trembled, as the connection pooled and then continued on to the third sister, Esther. There were no panicked screams as Dominique had half expected from women waking to find themselves in their own tomb. Instead, all three sisters very calmly slid themselves down the stone shelf they lay on, rising one by one. They brought the scent of the grave with them, but underneath that scent was the sour smell of old wine, moldy bread, hardened corn, curdled milk, and the sickly sweet tinge of syrup. Those scents, strong even over the coppery scent of blood, plucked at Dominique’s memory. Something familiar about those scents, something from her mother’s books…
Exhaustion dropped on Dominique like a leaden blanket, bending her knees. Her heart pounded, her pulse a lump in her throat. She braced herself against the grass, tried to swallow, couldn’t, tried again. Panic tried to take her over, but she pushed it away. It took the last of her strength to strai
ghten, to face the women she’d called from the grave.
Moving as one, the sisters watched Dominique like birds eyeing a small mouse. It was hard to tell what they’d looked like in life. Not that they were decomposed—quite the contrary, what Dominique could make out under the gore appeared pristine. Their hair was all black, all long, and their clothes had once been rich fabrics of silk and furs. Their mahogany skin was smooth and unblemished in the moonlight, marred only by the flaking dried blood.
There was an intelligence in their eyes that shouldn’t have been there, too much personality for the dead. Unease rolled in Dominique’s stomach, the unpleasant sensation increasing as the women turned their attention to the rest of the clearing. Almost as though they were looking for something, someone?
Dominique followed their gaze and her veins froze with sharp shards of ice. The two living sisters were gone, not a sign of them remaining. And the salt circle had been broken—smudged, as if by a foot.
Deliberately.
Warning bells went off in Dominique’s head. Cold sweat coated her forehead, her nerves binding so tightly around her limbs she felt frozen in place. It took every speck of willpower she had to remain calm, not to give in to the icy panic rising like a fountain of frost inside her. She should have felt the circle break. Her power had bound it. She summoned more of her power, desperately trying to figure out what was going on even as she prepared to defend herself. The power flowed from her grasp, pouring down the line that connected her to the sisters. It was like trying to hold water in a sieve, it flowed away faster than she could fill it.
The dead women finally met her eyes again.
“Where is Julien?”
The speaker was Fabienne, and her voice was hoarse, dry. It was to be expected from someone who’d been dead only moments ago—who was still dead, Dominique told herself firmly. She cleared her throat, keeping her spine straight, projecting a picture of calm confidence. Staring into Fabienne’s eyes, she gripped the glowing cord inside her and held on, ready to start reeling her power back.
“Julien is not here. You are safe.” She stepped closer to the woman, pulling on the thread of power as she moved. It gave, some of the current curling back inside Dominique in a warm comforting ball. She breathed a little easier. “I have brought you back from the dead to bring you justice so that your soul can finally move on. Can you tell me what happened to you? How did you die?”
Ceramic shattered. Dominique whipped around and found Narcisse standing a few yards behind her, one foot raised over the second of three ceramic pots lying on the ground. The symbols were familiar, resembling sketches from her mother’s journal. Po tets, small pots that contained hair and nail clippings. They were used to house the souls of the dead before they were released to move on to the next world. But that couldn’t be. They’d been murdered, not given a proper burial. Who had made their po tets?
Narcisse kept his gaze locked on the ceramic pots, avoiding her eyes as he brought his heel down, smashing the second as he had the first, quickly doing the same to the third. She opened her mouth to call out to him, to demand he explain himself, explain what was going on, but the string of her power grew taut, heaving painfully hard on her power, her core. She bit back a cry and bent over with her hands around her stomach, cradling herself against the pain. Footsteps, muffled by the grass, heralded Narcisse’s abrupt departure. His abandonment.
The three sisters sucked in deep breaths and after a moment, a new energy rolled over Dominique like a heat wave. Sizzling, skin-scalding power. It was suddenly harder to breathe and for a moment, all she could do was huddle there, struggling to regain her bearings, feeling in a way as though someone was trying to burn her alive, roast her in pure magic.
“Stop,” Dominique choked out. She concentrated on the familiar hum of her power inside her, then reached out for the pieces of it that she had put in the other women. She tried to call it back, to take it inside her as she had with Julien, but as soon as she touched the power pulsing in the dead women, it flared and shot away from her like the bait on a fisherman’s hook being ripped viciously from her grasp.
Dominique bit back a cry as each woman pulled on the connection between them, forcing the trickle of energy from her to them to flow faster, becoming a flood. She floundered in the current, desperately clamping down on the thread of energy, fighting to keep them from drawing any more.
All three sisters faced her then, smooth dark skin appearing as velvet in the moonlight. Despite the bloody state of their once fine clothing, they held themselves with a regal bearing, shoulders back and heads held high. They raised slender arms, palms up, beseeching. A chant fell from their full, blood-stained lips. The words were familiar, but foreign. It was a dialect similar to her father’s, but more like…more like the tongue of Ville au Camp.
A scream tore from Dominique’s throat as a sickening sensation washed over her. Cold. Cold like the grave, cold like…death. Something hard and solid caught on Dominique’s ribs, something that had been buried deep inside her and she hadn’t even noticed it until now. The sisters pulled and that hard object jabbed painfully at Dominique’s tender insides. Again and again they pulled, each time harder, more violent than the last.
Horror lanced through Dominique like a frozen spear as she realized what she was feeling. She opened her mouth to scream just as the object came free.
Her ti bon ange flew from her body. Shining like a burning star, the half of her soul that was her personality, her hopes, her dreams, her power… They’d torn it free.
As it left her, Dominique’s flesh and bones grew heavier. Her eyelids drooped, her face slackening, sinking in on itself. She had just enough time to feel that horrible feeling of death and then she was suddenly weightless, bodiless. Her consciousness flew through the air, bobbing like a speck of pollen in the wind, tossed helter-skelter in a stomach churning series of swirls and dips.
Fabienne held up a sleek carved glass bottle, though Dominique couldn’t remember the woman having anything in her hands just a moment before. The flask’s mouth yawned like a mouth, ready to swallow Dominique whole. She was helpless to stop herself, helpless to fight it as she catapulted into that open blackness.
A new voice tickled her ears, faint, too far away to help her. Julien’s voice. It was the last thing Dominique heard before the world was silent. And she was alone.
Chapter Eighteen
Julien broke through the tree line in an explosion of cracking branches and his own blood. Sharp twigs and briars snared his skin, each one demanding a toll for his passage like some inanimate guardians of the mausoleum looming in the center of the clearing. A black void yawned between the open doors, dust filtering from the entry like specs of dust and ash. It was empty, the dust smeared with the impressions of where the bodies had once been.
No.
Fabienne, Gaelle, and Esther stood in a triangle before their crypt. His three former wives were still covered in grime, but very much alive. Their clothes—only the finest silks and furs, of course—were stiff with blood and their decaying flesh…
But there was no decaying flesh. No decay. Their skin and clothes were marred by dried blood, yes, but the skin itself seemed…full, plump…healthy. These were not the dead wives he had imagined so many times, not the corpses that he had reassured himself were all that was left of the women who would have made themselves his masters.
Darkness flashed over his eyes as he relived the last time they’d stood over him, hands extended, trying to strengthen the bond they’d forced on him. Their hair shone with health, their dark skin smooth from the imported creams and glistening with fresh oils.
The spell hadn’t been magically powerful enough for instant victory, but with the three of them combined, it had almost been enough. He could still feel that cold, sharp power digging into his flesh like fishing hooks. He remembered that moment, that endless moment when he’d made the irrevocable decision, brandishing his beak to score their skin, dig out their throats, their
eyes—he’d even ripped Fabienne’s squealing tongue from her mouth.
This isn’t right, can’t be right. His memories, the injuries he knew he’d inflicted. There was no evidence of them now. Only the dried blood gave evidence of the violence he remembered, but even that…Dominique.
Dominique’s body—for even he could tell it was no more than a body now—swayed on its feet, unseeing eyes open, unblinking. He choked on a sound he’d never heard from a human being, stumbled and fell. The ground rushed up to meet his hands, slamming into the heels of his palms as he viciously pushed off into a dead run, determined to keep going. Fabienne held out a bottle of some kind, and a flicker of light vanished into the bottle, sealed inside as his former first wife wedged the cork snuggly back into place.
“There you are, husband. We’ve been waiting for you.”
Fabienne’s sweet and sultry voice scratched over his nerves like rusty nails, as three sets of eyes narrowed on him.
Dirt gave way under his heels as he fought to halt his momentum and barely avoided landing on his ass. He skidded to a stop, breathing hard, his ankle still throbbing from Parlangua’s ill-timed bite. Thoughts fired too fast to concentrate, the inclination to shift was dismissed immediately. He needed more time. Shifting again now would leave him weak, and he needed every bit of strength he could muster if he was going to face the three—again.
“Let her go.” His voice remained strong—thank the gods—but his desperation was plain enough on his face, he knew. “You have no quarrel with her.”
“Are you sure?” Gaelle, the middle child, holstered her hands on her hips with attitude, and dragged an appreciative gaze up and down his naked body. “After all, she’s sleeping with a married man.”
He recoiled, struggling not to cover himself as her gaze lingered over his manhood. “Hello, husband,” she purred, cracking the mask of dried blood with a smile. “Did you miss me?”
Blue Voodoo: A Romantic Retelling of Bluebeard (The Hidden Kingdom Series Book 2) Page 17
