Travis Déjean smiled at the display of lightning bolts. He was once the handsome head of one of the richest families in the bayou . . . until he got knifed in an alley, leaving his placée mistress’ apartment. Now, like all the undead—brought back from the black by voodoo or magic—his once-handsome blue eyes were a bit brown and buggy, and his fine Louisiana tan had turned to a pasty gray. He stared at the little pixie and laughed out loud. Then he said, “Why, Suzette Wiltz, you are simply dazzling, darling. Were I to have known you at ten times your size. . .” Undead or not, Travis hadn’t lost his wicked philandering ways.
But Suzette had made her point. She smiled at Travis and flew back to her place in the clearing.
Unlike princess Suzette, Zoé Beau Pre was a queen. Leader of the sensual ones who knew the flesh and knew the blood, she wasn’t your average vamp tramp. In fact, behind her black veil and beneath her jet-black dress, Zoé was unbelievably sophisticated and even more beautiful. Any man, mortal or magic, who stared into her big baby blue eyes long enough, would hardly realize or care when she sucked out all their blood.
Despite being the highest order of her kind, and because of the bats and the rats and the lower-level bayou bleeders, Zoé had reluctantly learned to endure being referred to as a “sucker,” right along with the rest of them. She pulled her black veil up and over to the back of her head. “If you two terrible teasers are finished fiddling with your sticks,” she said, “I’ve got a”—she pursed her lips and gently touched her finger to the corner of her mouth, pretending to wipe some leftover blood away from it—“ ‘appointment’ I’d like to keep.”
Suzette didn’t care for suckers . . . of any sort. “Said the sucker to the simpleton.”
“How quaint,” Zoé said, staring now at Maxxine. “Yet, I believed we’d already sent the solution to our little sister’s protection problem just this last night.”
Maxxine cocked her head only slightly and simply smiled back. She knew better.
— 6 —
A FEW OF the town boys dragged Magnolia by her arms, up the side steps and back into the schoolhouse. Then they marched her up the steps to the pulpit and put her in the box.
“The box,” as Father Felixx called it, was made of silver bars and wooden slats, all coated in copious amounts of sulphur, just for good measure against magic. It was constructed, in theory—it had never been tested—to restrain any magic, mystic or morphing creature that Father Felixx might have the good fortune to capture.
The entire rest of the school’s students, be they Maplewood snobs or morphers and mystics hiding in plain sight. . . Anyone who didn’t have the good sense to run when they had the chance, shoved and bumped their way back inside the schoolhouse after them.
They all filed back into their seats in the pews. The murmurs and whispers continued. Most of them weren’t quite sure what had just happened, but Mabelle Mae Johnson kept screaming about crocdogs and witches, and if a snobwood was doing that, someone was going to get whooped at the very least. The entire schoolhouse quieted down when Father Felixx stepped out of his back office. He turned and whispered something back through the doorway, and then shut the door and took his place at the pulpit.
One of the town boys, the bigger of the two, locked the big gate to the box and rushed back with his partner to their own seats in the front pews.
“Thank you, brothers,” Father Felixx said. “Your service to the Saints is well-noted.” Then he stepped down from the big pulpit and walked silently around the box, carefully studying Magnolia, like a wolf trying to figure out how to get into a horse’s corral to eat it. He stopped with his back to the school pews. Then he stared at her. “Well then, Magnolia . . . Montgomery”—from there, it wouldn’t matter what he said, it was all accusation—“consorting and covering up for your conjuring friend.”
Mabelle Mae was beside herself with delight. She shouted from her seat, “Don’t forget those mangy crocdogs, Father.”
After she said it, a few of the burb boys and girls adjusted and fidgeted in their seats.
Father Felixx waved his hand behind him at Mae-mae, and she promptly shut her mouth. Then he went back to staring down over his glasses at Magnolia. “What are we to make of this evil possessing you, then?”
Magnolia wasn’t about to let the Father use her to further his power and influence over them. He fed off fear. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. “La poule qui chante est celle qui a pondu.”
Father Felixx’s eyes widened for a split second, then he turned and looked behind him at Mabelle Mae. “Her?” he said. He hadn’t actually seen anything that happened in the hog grass, but now it was up to him to figure out what had happened and then assign guilt. “She’s no more dazzling devil of darkness than I am.”
Mabelle Mae’s eyes got wide and her entire body tensed up.
But Father Felixx turned back to Magnolia before Mae-mae had a chance or need to defend herself. “You’ll have to hoodoo up a story a little better than that. Now . . . where’s Dixxon off to? And where are those two. . .?” He turned around and looked at the two boys who locked Magnolia in the box. “What were the names of those bogbarkers?”
The bigger boy answered, “Bane and”—he leaned over to his slightly smaller and less confident-looking partner, whispered something, and then listened to whatever the boy whispered back—“Chianne, sir.”
Father Felixx surveyed the entire congregation, looking for reaction. “Bane and Chi . . . anne,” he said. “Mangy . . . morphing swamp mutts from the Frasch”—he slowly shook his head back and forth—“hiding right here amongst us simple Saint-fearing folk. It’s just as I warned you—evil among us!”
The gasps were what he expected, but he was looking for something else. It was clear that everyone was nervous, and given the situation, rightly so, but he still needed someone to start it.
He quickly found the hesitation he was looking for and pointed a long finger at the girl next to the two empty seats in the pews. “You there,” he said, “sister.”
The girl stirred then froze.
“You’ve sat right next to the both of them for how long? And you never suspected? Never smelled that nasty cypress swamp on them? Never questioned who your neighbors were?” He tilted his head back and stared up at the ceiling of the schoolhouse. “Ya see, brothers and sisters, this is exactly what the Saints warned—vigilance!” The accusations came out so fast the girl wouldn’t have had time to answer them even if the Father wanted her to. He looked back down his nose at her. “Sister, you’re either not paying attention”—picking her was a wild guess, and one he didn’t care whether he was right or wrong about, but sometimes his good luck . . . was someone else’s bad—“or you’re a filthy little crocdog yourself.”
There was a low growl next to the girl. Then another one, louder this time. And then the boy who made it grabbed the back of the pew in front of him and squeezed hard with both hands, and the wooden top rail broke off and splintered in his fists. He threw his head back and growled louder than the hall could handle.
The pews around him filled with screams and shouts and students shoved against one another, hopping rows of pews to get away.
Then the boy’s spine cracked and popped like all the bones in it were breaking at once. “Aaaaaaaaahhh!” he screamed. And his ears popped straight out to pointed tips and the skin covering them fell to the floor, and his mouth and jaw shot out, fangs sprouted through his teeth and he whipped his head back and forth, like he was trying to shake off his skin.
The two boys who’d put Magnolia in the box raced to the armory at the side of the room. The bigger one fumbled in his pocket for the key, then opened the door and ran inside.
A boy and a girl next to the growling and groaning burb boy grabbed the railing in front of them too, and then screamed and growled until all three of them had morphed into hairy hounds of claws, jaws and paws. For a split second every one of their eyes glowed red and stared back at Father Felixx.
Then they
all leapt up and over several pews, nipping at and knocking down any students who got in their way. They ran and smashed into the big white double doors at the entrance of the schoolhouse.
The two boys raced out of the armory, both holding crossbows. “Get down!” the bigger one yelled at any student who might be in the way.
The three crocdogs clawed at the wooden doors. Splinters flew everywhere.
The biggest boy aimed carefully, gently squeezed the trigger, and loosed a single crossbolt. T’chi! He was never known to miss.
One of the clawing crocdogs let out a terrible scream, “Yiiiiipe!”
Then the front door busted apart and the three of them raced out and across the grounds, disappearing into the hog grass. Then they all howled their way toward the Frasch. “Ow-ow-owooooooooo!”
Father Felixx had had no idea, but now that he’d seen it with his own eyes, he wondered if there were more. “Hounds in the holy house!” he shouted. “Get your crossbows and torches, brothers and sisters. Hurry now, before the dogs of darkness damn you to the Frasch with them!”
None of the students moved. They just stared up at the pulpit. But they weren’t staring at who was up there—Father Felixx stared back at them—they all gawked, speechless at who was missing.
None of the students saw him or they might have been confused, but when Father Felixx turned around, he smiled the slightest grin at the empty box. Magnolia was gone . . . just the way he’d planned it. “Run along, little witchy,” he said under his breath, “back to your friend.”
— 7 —
I RACE UP the steps, barely whiffing the skunks. Then I beat my palm against my mansion’s front door. “Mangy, open the door! Baxxster! . . . Broom!”
Mangy moans open the door so slowly that I keep slapping it until I can squeeze through. Once I’m inside, I yell, “He’s gonna burn Magnolia!”
The mansion doors moan and boom shut behind me. And there’s no one. “Baxxster!” I shout up the staircase, then run up a few steps. “Broom, where are you? Get”—I fall down to the steps, exhausted from running—“down here. . .” Need to get back to flying. I have no idea where that thought came from, I haven’t flown for. . . I stare down and I didn’t notice it, but . . . I’m crying. And my tears flow slowly across the steps and . . . any piece of dilapidated wooden plank they touch is . . . new and shiny again?
“Chérie?” Broom says from behind me.
It startles me a little and I wipe my eyes before I turn around. He’s standing in the foyer, right next to Cat. I don’t know how I missed them.
“Who got who, chérie?”
“What’s all this, then?” says Cat. “Magnolia? Why would that evil. . .? What happened?”
I try to catch my breath between blurting out the details. “I was shooting. . . I tried to miss it, but then Mae-mae got killed and . . . and Magnolia said I had to do it.” I take a deep breath this time. I feel dizzy. “I didn’t wanna. . . She said it would be okay. I didn’t want her to stay behind. Now he’s gonna burn—”
Cat’s entire body goes stiff and he stares at me and cocks his head. “Dixxon, slow down. Tell me . . . exactly . . . what happened.”
I tell both of them the entire story . . . as best as I can remember it, because my head’s throbbing and the dizziness is worse. When I’m through, Cat turns to Broom and says, “The burning bastards on Bile Island, Broom. I asked them for help weeks. . . I swear if he harms one whisker on her—”
Boooooom . . . boooooom . . . boooooom! Our heads jerk toward the front doors. I’ve never heard a knock that loud before. Come to think of it, no one’s ever knocked on the front doors to the mansion before . . . ever.
Mangy moans, but the doors stay closed.
Cat spins and races to the front doors. He licks his paw and rubs it over his head and whiskers. Then he stares up at the big handles. “Finally,” he says. “Who did they send?”
Mangy moans and groans an awful and dark sound.
“Never heard of her,” mumbles Broom. He bristles his way in front of me. I have to lean sideways to see Cat and the front door. Then Broom turns around, reaches down, and helps me to my feet.
Two steps above him, I can barely see over the top of his handle.
“Pouponer, chérie,” Broom says, “they’re a formal sort, they are.”
Cat paces back and forth in front of the door. “Well,” he says, “come on then, let her in.”
Mangy moans again, louder than before. The doors remain shut.
Cat stops pacing and looks up at the chandelier. “Oh, you miserable moochon, open this door! She’s here to help.”
When Mangy finally moans open the front doors. . . I’ve never seen anyone like her.
The woman is wickedly witchy, and she’s not trying to hide that at all. She must be a witch, because Cat surely wouldn’t let anyone else in the mansion. . . Would he?
She hardly moves. I don’t know how she would anyway. Her long purple cloak is the only thing not razor-rigid on her. And that hat and umbrella. . . Just looking at them makes me shiver.
Cat clears his throat. “Ahem.”
She stares at me for a few seconds, before looking down at her feet. “Baxxster Boyette, I presume.” But she stays on the steps.
Cat stares back up at her. I’ve never seen him at a loss for words before. The tip of his tail twitches a little and he stiffens.
The woman cocks her head and raises her eyebrows at him. “Humff,” she says. “You’ll have me skulking out here with the skunks, will you? Come along, invite me inside so we can magic this messiness back to the Black Lake where it belongs.”
Cat steps to the side and bows his head. “Won’t you come in, Mada—”
“Maxxine Levine,” she says. Then she walks straight past Cat a few steps, stops, and takes off her cloak. She holds it to her side, like there’s some invisible coat rack there. But the iron coat rack, just to the right of the front doors, doesn’t move, and when she lets go, the entire long length of it hovers in mid-air.
Cat scampers around to get in front of her, and then he looks up at Broom with wide eyes. He tries to whisper, but it comes out as a hiss, “Get her coat then, you knocking knot.” And he motions his head toward the hovering cloak.
Broom doesn’t move.
The woman takes a couple of steps toward the stairs. “Isn’t that just like a bristling switch. Good . . . good. At least someone around here’s got their stick stuck between her and the Blue Moon.” She holds out the back of her hand in front of Broom. “Formal introductions then.” She bows her head slightly. “Good afternoon, Knoxx, I am Maxxine Levine, Dixxon’s aunt from the Bla—”
“My hearing’s well-waxed,” says Broom. “I heard you the first time.” He’s not budging and Cat’s eyes are bugging like the undead.
“My aunt?” I blurt out. “You’re my mother—but I don’t have a. . .” Cat will have some explaining to do.
Her mouth moves, but before she can answer, Broom says, “All witches is aunts, chérie. This one here knows that.”
Maxxine lowers her hand. “Right you are, Knoxx, sir,” she says, “and as such, we all take care of our own kind.” She looks down at Cat and then back at Broom. “Black and white, living and lying and lasting together since the Great Purge. Isn’t it wonderful?” She doesn’t seem like the sort to ask questions, and Broom doesn’t answer.
Cat on the other hand. . . He’s more nervous now. “Get . . . her coat,” he says again. “Now, if you please, you rude railing duster!”
Broom hesitates—it’s awkward for us all—but he eventually waves his handle and the big iron coat rack clanks over to the floating purple cloak, grabs it down, and then he clanks his way back to the corner of the foyer, next to the front doors.
“Auntie” Maxxine has moved to the bottom of the staircase, only a few steps below me. “Now that that’s sorted,” she says, “Dixxon . . . darling, what’s all this about bringing someone back from the black?”
Every few years, hurri
cane season pushed the rivers of Louisiana over their banks, flooding the Frasch Forest full. When the waters receded, the cypress tree stumps were left even more moss-covered and rotting.
Full of tales of voodoo and hoodoo and horse-eating hounds, deep in the Frasch, the air was so damp that it felt like you’d have to drink it to breath. There were few places in the Frasch high enough to dry out after a flood, but one of them was the den of Bane’s pack of howling crocdogs.
Technically, in the shapeshifter world, the pack wasn’t his, it was La Bete’s, his pack’s angry, though ever-increasingly inept, alpha. And La Bete was never angrier than when Bane, Chianne, and the other two beta crocdogs following them arrived carrying the body of yet another slain member of his pack. Soon, every lichenthroat he led would begin to question his power to protect them . . . if they weren’t doing that already.
Not a day after several of them had been wanded by a black witch, defending the pack’s territory in the Frasch, now another had been slain.
“How did this happen?” La Bete growled at the two crocdogs. “Who’s responsible?”
The two cowering betas set the girl’s lifeless and morphed-back-to-mortal body down at La Bete’s feet. The crossbolt sticking out of her stomach left little doubt as to how she’d died. The only question left was who in the pack would get the blame. They both looked at Bane.
Crocdogs communicated more with scent and body language than they needed to with sound. La Bete knew exactly what that meant. “Bane,” he growled, “what new hate have you brought down on my hounds?”
Bane was an easy scapegoat for the alpha. He rarely went along with the pack and constantly bit and nipped in protest of La Bete’s decisions. But La Bete could only blame betas for so long. A lack of results in the crocdog world eventually and inevitably fell on the fangs of the alpha. He would answer to Varg. The pack gathered with nervous glances and skittish steps. The dissent and distrust in La Bete’s hounds was growing.
Metal and Magic: A Fantasy Journey Page 7
