“I can imagine.”
“You know nothing. When we came to this city, we believed in our cause. We believed him. He told us we could combine our knowledge to become like the Loa. To be Loa.”
“That’s breaking the Edicts,” I said.
“I care nothing for these things. I care for my homeland. Every hardship, every disaster that affects Haiti, there are those who blame my faith for it. They say our magic is not real, yet condemn us when disaster strikes. You know a little of this, I think. To be outcast for who you are.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You turned the city against me. Did you think I’d come running to join you after that?”
He turned to face me, and his intense eyes were like two white pearls in the dark. “Bettany and I saw a kindred soul in you. An outcast. I wanted to approach you as a friend.”
“You picked a hell of a way to do it.”
“That was not my decision,” Samuel said. “He forced all of our hands.”
“Jesse?”
He nodded. “And now he prepares his end game. My brothers, the Loa, they all spoke, but I did not listen. They warned me about this man, but all I heard were his promises.”
“Ascension? Cheat your way to godhood?”
“Ascension is not a guarantee,” Kincaid said. “Only a few mages have the potential, and it takes centuries to grow into that power. Most die long before it can manifest. Haiti, Vodou, and all I hold dear could die before then.”
“So you’ll murder hundreds to skip a step or two? How noble.”
“It is a chance to serve my people. To become Loa who do not sit idle and ignore the plight of their servants. To spread the faith, and to teach them how to take the reparation they are owed. I would have seen my homeland thrive, my beliefs flourish. The debts of the past repaid in full! As a man, I am a heretic and a criminal. But who is the Society to tell a Loa not to speak to his people? Not to serve them?”
He took a calming breath. “None of that matters now. Jesse’s lies have led me on a blind path, and now there are only two deaths before me. One at his hand, or one at yours. Either way, I have prepared my grave.”
I frowned. “I would rather not kill you, but I won’t let you do this.”
He rose to his feet. “It is not your choice to make.”
A gunshot went off, like the clap of an angry god. Kincaid collapsed on the shrine, scattering its implements.
I whirled to face Jesse, who stood at the exit with a smoking pistol in hand. Behind him were two of his blank-faced zombies, holding a bound and gagged Jocelyn and little Eddie Breckenridge. The two-year-old was startled awake and began to cry.
“I guess it was my choice to make,” Jesse said. “Drop it, Fossor.”
I put the gun on the ground and raised my hands. “In five minutes, the police will have this place surrounded. And once the Society realizes you’re here, they’ll come in force.”
Jesse smirked. “Don’t know how you found this place, but it doesn’t matter. You can’t stop what I’ll become.”
“A god? A Loa?” I asked. “What’ll they call you? Jesse, Loa of Raves?”
“Loa,” Jesse sneered. “Did Sammy give you his little ‘pity-me’ speech? I sold him bullshit, and he bought it for the sake of his cause. Oh, he saw the writing on the wall, but by then all his bokor buddies were nice and obedient.” He gestured at the zombie holding Eddie. “Now it doesn’t matter what they believe. I’ve got a ship full of addicts, and a gaggle of zombies. All ready to slit their throats and help me Ascend.”
“They aren’t worshipers. They’re slaves.”
Jesse shrugged. “What’s the saying about tomatoes? A soul is a soul, all I need is their power. That little spark of magic that exists in all of us, but most people can never tap into.”
“How?” I asked. “That magic I felt in the old woman?”
He nodded. “The darkest of dark magic. The kind that was forbidden before the Society even existed. Hell, they created the Society just to bury it.”
“How did some punk like you get your hands on it, then?”
“Well, that’s the funny thing. Would you believe it came to me in a dream?” He paused, then snorted. “What’s it fucking matter? I’ve got it. And the ritual is almost ready.”
I gritted my teeth. “So what now? You kill me?”
He smirked. “Me? Nah.”
From behind, hands my wrists in an iron grip. I twisted my head to see a gaunt young woman in punk-goth garb staring back with empty eyes.
“Madelyn,” I grunted. “You’re a real bastard, Jesse.”
“I never knew my drugs could control a wight. But we know now, don’t we? C’mon, sis, destiny’s waiting.” He pointed at Madelyn. “You. Kill him.”
With inhuman strength, Madelyn flipped me onto my back and planted a knee on my neck. I tried to wrestle her off, finding it absurd that a scrawny little girl could overpower me.
‘Alex!’
The zombie hadn’t spoken, but I’d heard Madelyn’s voice.
‘Alex! Up here!’
The air swirled, and Madelyn’s incorporeal soul appeared above her body, transparent and glowing with pale blue light.
Kid? I thought. You gotta help!
‘I can’t stop me!’ She shouted in my brain. Her spirit clawed at her physical form, but Zombie-Madelyn didn’t so much as flinch. ‘The drugs are keeping me out of my body!’
It was up to me, then. I remembered how to breach Jesse’s control and charged my magic. But they must have briefed their zombies in self-defense, because Madelyn grabbed my arm and twisted it away from her.
My lungs were being squeezed, and my vision turned blurry and dark. I was going to meet my end from a rotten-luck girl while her own disembodied spirit watched. But dying like that wasn’t so bad. Suffocation is kind of like falling asleep. You start to just drift away...
Besides, I thought. How many people could say they died with a woman straddling their chest?
Madelyn’s spirit choked and snorted through tears.
Hey, you made her laugh.
Madelyn’s ghost-light shimmered when she laughed, reflecting off a shape beside her, the scattered bones and other implements from Kincaid’s shrine to the Loa.
Waitaminute. I couldn’t touch Zombie-Madelyn, but I didn’t need that kind of contact for my usual brand of death-raising. I kept my eyes focused towards the shrine and made a clawing gesture with my pinned hand.
Samuel Kincaid’s body jerked, shifted, and twisted towards us. Zombie-Madelyn didn’t see him coming until he yanked her off of me. I rolled away, gasping for air.
Madelyn kicked and thrashed, but I had Samuel’s corpse pull her into a full-nelson. Her spirit watched the bizarre sight with a grimace.
‘This is too much,’ she sighed. ‘Alex, are you okay?’
I nodded and sucked in more air. “Oxygen deprivation sucks.”
‘Can he hold her? Me? Fuck, this is confusing.’
“For now,” I said. “But if I stop concentrating, the corpse will stop moving.”
‘You mean he’s not like me?’ She asked.
“Kincaid is dead. I’m just moving his corpse around.” I pushed myself onto my hands and knees. “His grave is dug.”
‘What?’
“Nevermind.” I got to my feet. “How are you that?”
‘I don’t know! When he kicked in your door, he took one look at me and did something. Next thing I knew, I was floating over my body! I couldn’t get back in, so I followed it. I didn’t know what else to do!’
I pressed my thumb against Madelyn’s forehead. The hurricane of Jesse’s power waited for me within. I sent my own power into the center of her mind, to the eye of the storm.
“Try now.”
Madelyn’s spirit touched my outstretched hand and rushed through me—talk about a strange sensation—into her body. When her consciousness appeared in the center of her mind, I pulled her to the surface.
Whole again, Madelyn gasped and t
ouched her face. “I’m me. I’m alive!”
“Sort of,” I grunted. Dizziness hit me, and I dropped to my knees. Samuel’s body went limp and collapsed over Madelyn.
“Hey!” She shoved the corpse aside and shuddered. “Gross!”
“Sorry,” I panted.
She winced. “I can still feel him in my head. It’s like he’s squeezing my brain.”
“Try to hold it together until the drugs wear off.”
“What about you? Alex, you don’t look so good.”
I shook my head. “Jesse’s got Jocelyn, Eddie, and all the people on this boat. He’s gonna kill them all, Madelyn.”
“How do we stop him?”
“The permanent way.” I found my gun on the floor, and we hobbled back to the lounge. “Any idea which way he’d go?”
“You’re asking me?”
“You must have seen what they were planning,” I said. “Or were you not paying attention while you floated around?”
She winced. “I was scared, okay? Bite me!”
“Then we try to distract him,” I said. “Find a fire alarm and hit it, then go to the bridge and start hitting buttons. Maybe it’ll cause a problem they have to fix.”
“What about you?”
“I’m gonna find Jesse.”
Madelyn took a breath. “Okay, okay, I can do that.”
“You can do it.” I offered my fist.
She bumped it with hers and grinned. “I can do it.”
“Don’t go zombie on me again. It was pervy.”
“You’re the perv.” She rolled her eyes and headed towards the kitchen. I took a port-side exit, which led into another hallway of passenger cabins.
If I were a heartless megalomaniac looking to become a god, where would I do it? I wondered. The ballroom? Or somewhere more dramatic?
A door at the end of the hall swung open, and I hurled myself into an unoccupied cabin. Three of Jesse’s goons—Tyler among them—emerged from a door at the end of the hall. Tyler carried a crying Eddie at arm’s length.
“Man, how do you shut this stupid kid up? I’m about to pistol-whip it!”
“You hurt him, and Kendall will kill you,” said the first thug.
“Whatever.”
“You’d suck as a dad,” said the second.
“Don’t mean I ain’t one,” Tyler said. “Let’s put it downstairs.”
“Think that motherfucker is dead?” Thug Two asked, as they passed my hiding place.
Tyler snorted. “I was about to whack that sucker. Comin’ at me with that little popgun. Almost wasted him myself.”
“Yeah, it was impressive the way you pissed yourself and ran,” said Thug one. Thug Two laughed.
“Fuck you both, man,” Tyler groaned.
I didn’t want to leave Eddie with them, but no one was safe as long as Jesse was still free. When the coast was clear, I crept to the door they’d exited, marked ‘Lido Deck’. Sounded like a good place for a raving madman to execute his diabolical plans. It opened into another stairwell.
How high does this stupid boat go? I thought. Between physical exhaustion and vertigo, it was a rough climb.
A swimming pool dominated the lido deck, overflowing with murky water. Wooden crates, loaded with tools and repair supplies, offered plenty of cover. The sky was heavy with black clouds, broken by the occasional peal of lightning, but the bone-chilling rain had finally slowed to a trickle.
Jesse knelt next to a shrine of his own. It was bigger than Kincaid’s, and a monument to cruelty. He’d hammered dead snakes and human skulls to a wooden pole that dripped with layers of melted candle wax. Large glass jugs, full of scorpions in filthy yellow brine, sat at the base of the grisly totem.
Hundreds of bottles surrounded his mockery of a shrine, like mementos from the victims of a massacre. Leather cords bound paper and coins to the bottles. Zombie astrals. There had to be hundreds. A thousand. Souls packed together like cheap wine.
Enough to make a man a god? I wondered.
I had six rounds, and almost no magic left. He still had his pistol, the whip at his belt, and his necromancy was souped-up on drug-induced worship. Worse, as I got closer, I saw Jesse’s loaded assault rifle set against a crate.
No room for errors, then.
I didn’t trust my aim, so I closed the distance, using the crates for cover. Jesse checked the bottles, tightening their corks or the leather cords around them. He didn’t notice my approach until the lightning cast my shadow against the shrine.
As I leveled the gun at his head, I felt like saying something badass.
“The Lido Deck is closed.”
Whatever. It had been a long week.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Jesse’s lip curled as he turned. “Fossor. You truly are a pain in my ass. Should’ve shot you.”
“Dumbass badguy mistake.” A wave of fresh dizziness hit me, and I had to steady myself on a nearby crate.
He smirked. “Running on empty, are we?”
“Shut up. Toss the gun in the water.”
He drew the pistol with two fingers and underhanded it into the pool. The smile never left his face.
“My life was real cozy before you showed,” I growled. “And you gotta go piss all over it.”
“You lived in a box,” he spat. “You squandered your power. A home? A job? You’re Versed, for fuck’s sake. Act like it.”
“Like the Archmage?” I asked, and he winced. “Like the Society? Like you? Lording power over people? Turning them into puppets?”
“It’s how power works. Ask that pack of wights you keep in the sewer. That zoo.”
I thought about the Gallows, and the quiet fear they’d shown as I justified Max’s execution. “It’s not a perfect system, but it’s better than what you offer.”
He snorted and took a step forward. “So what now? Arrest me? Should I surrender and clear your name for you? Or do you wanna kill me?”
I grinned. “Yeah. Figured I’d shoot you.”
“And break poor Jocelyn’s heart?”
“Whoever her brother was, he never came back.”
The smugness vanished. “You don’t know a damn thing.”
“I know she wanted to spare your life. But how many Edicts have you broken, Jess? Consent, Life, Sanctity. To say nothing of how you’ve pissed off the Loa. The one I talked to wasn’t too keen on you joining the club. From what I’ve read, they have strong opinions about slavery.”
He spread his arms. “If they don’t like it, they can strike me down where I stand.”
I aimed the revolver at his chest. “Poor choice of words.”
Jesse took another step, then dove behind a crate as I fired, missing him by inches. He reappeared with the assault rifle and opened fire.
I dropped flat as bullets tore apart crates and dug gouges into the floor. When his weapon clicked dry I scrambled to my feet, but he ducked before I could return fire.
“You’re screwed, Fossor! How many bullets have you got?”
Five, I thought.
“Plenty,” I told him.
“My boys are gonna hear the gunshots and come runnin’. Just give up and die!”
“Fuck you!”
Jesse dove and rolled, like some kind of Hollywood commando. I took the bait, firing two rounds that flew wide. He fired off a burst that drove me behind cover, and I lost sight of him.
He had a better gun and stronger magic. Meanwhile, I had three rounds left and was seeing double. Some distant, sane part of my mind chastised me for being such an unprepared fool.
We stood at the same moment, drawing a bead on each other. I fired first, but the bullet hit a support beam to the side of Jesse’s head. He sneered and squeezed the trigger, and I dove out of the way. The crate was shredded, spilling sheets of metal siding over the deck.
Jesse kept his finger on the trigger, twisting the gun my way, but it clicked dry again before it could perforate me.
“Fucker!” Jesse snapped. He crouched and dug into his
pocket for a fresh clip.
I charged. It wasn’t a game-winning tackle. I screamed like a scared, angry, crazy person and we smashed into each other. My left knee twisted under his weight and we both fell. Jesse grabbed my gun, so I went for his. He yanked the revolver from my hand, aimed it at my face and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened. For a heartbeat, we stared at each other. Confused, he pulled the trigger twice more to no effect. With a sneer of amusement, I pulled the rifle from his hand and flung it behind me. He clubbed me with the pistol, then battered me with a flurry of punches and kicks until I had to let him go.
I went crawling for the assault rifle, then I heard a crack and something stung my chest. Blood stained my shirt.
Jesse had drawn his whip. He flicked his wrist, and a furrow opened in my thigh. The denim I wore did little to protect my limbs from its bite. I tried to crab walk backwards while he split my back, arms, and legs. He worked the weapon like a master, each hit precise and torturous.
“C’mon, boy!” He cackled. “Take your lickin’s like a man!”
Holy shit, you are a dick, I thought.
I pulled myself into a ball, but that gave Jesse new angles to attack. The whip cut the flesh over my left shoulder blade, opened a bicep, then struck my face and I screamed. The left side of my mouth hung in ragged scraps of flesh.
Finally he relented and inhaled the scent of my blood like a man savoring a grilled steak. I shivered on the ground like a beaten dog.
“I could do this all day, Alex. I could.” He knelt and grabbed me by the hair. “But you shoulda taken the fall like a good patsy.”
“You walked the zombie out of the morgue.” I slurred my words through the slash in my lips. “If it weren’t for you, I would still be in jail.”
He let out a breathless chuckle. “You think I’d leave you for the cops? Even you could walk through them like they were paper. I wanted the Society watching you. Kincaid could mask us from them, but we knew they’d catch on. So I put you on a hook and dangled it. They went for it like the out-of-touch shitheels they are.”
Speaking of out-of-touch, where the hell was the Society? Kincaid had been dead for at least half an hour. I doubted his magical smokescreen could keep their auguries from finding us, so where the hell were they?
Death Dealers Page 22
