A flash of rainbow light appeared.
“Pauli, I thought you were looking for clothes…”
But she appeared—not Pauli. It was Aida-Wedo. I glanced at Hailey. Her jaw had dropped nearly to the flowers.
“Aida-Wedo,” I said, “what brings you…”
The Loa raised a hand, cutting me off. “There’s no time. The Bokors are attacking the reservation.”
“The reservation?” Kalfu couldn’t go there with the wards, and the Choctaw people were generally immune to the effects of most kinds of magic. “That doesn’t make sense. Why…”
“Because your friends are there.”
I bit my lip. It still didn’t make sense. I knew they had gone to the reservation, but it seemed foolish for Kalfu to attack them there. The last I’d seen them, Mikah had taken Oggie’s old Hummer, along with Roger in his Jeep, and they were supposed to be appealing to the Choctaw elders for an alliance. It was Roger’s idea—and he was confident they’d go for it. Allow us to “make base” on the reservation where, at the very least, Kalfu couldn’t attack. In exchange, they’d be helping us eradicate Kalfu. Doing that, frankly, was in everyone’s interest.
I wasn’t worried. Roger and Ashley were resourceful enough on their own. Ellie and Sauron had their own abilities, having the aspects of Erzulie and Sogbo respectively. Mikah now had a familiar of his own in Alexa Windstrom—the very girl who’d destroyed Vilokan on account of an ill-advised bargain she’d made with Kalfu. According to Mikah, she was all in on helping us—she wanted redemption and, more than that, revenge on Kalfu now that she’d been freed. With her abilities, Mikah was every bit as strong as I was—if not more so. But beyond all of that, they also had Joni Campbell with them—Druidess, siphon, and La Sirene, the General of the Fomorian Wyrmriders. An altogether badass who could more than hold her own. We figured with them all together, the chances of any group of Bokors standing a chance was slim to none. Sure, Kalfu had the numbers on his side. But only a few of them—those who’d managed to acquire a few souls from Vilokan’s fallen before I intervened—had any real threatening abilities. I still wasn’t sure what those abilities might be, so there was a giant unknown to contend with. But the majority of the Bokors were half-rate sorcerers. Dangerous enough, but not a match for my cadre of friends.
“How could the Bokors stand a chance against them?” I asked.
“That was not their purpose. Their goal was to demonstrate to the Choctaw nation that harboring you and your friends would be to their own peril.”
“Why didn’t they just text or something?”
“All I know, child, is that the Bokors who arrived had abilities that they hadn’t predicted. Mikah had to turn over the reins to Alexa, and her storm magic basically created some kind of pulse that fried all technology in a mile’s radius.”
“Holy shit,” I said . “That’s crazy. So the soul-fused Bokors…”
“I cannot say what they each could do,” Aida-Wedo explained. “I could not be there on account of the reservation’s wards, which prevent all Loa from entering their sacred lands. But I caught my son as they were fleeing. He wanted you to know the plan. Said we’d find a way to meet up again once we knew what we were dealing with.”
I bit my lip. Mikah said six others had managed to become soul-fused with Vilokan’s fallen before I’d shattered the vessel, interrupting their ritual. The only problem was that none of them had manifested any abilities at all the last we saw them. There’s no telling what they might have discovered they could do later.
“So the reservation kicked them out?” I asked.
“They hadn’t yet made appeal to the elders. Once the Bokors arrived and they knew what they could do, apparently your Shaman friend was no longer willing to subject the Choctaw nation to the danger.”
I shook my head. I knew it wasn’t the best plan to begin with, but I was needed here to help corral the vampire younglings and to try to hide them from Kalfu—it was just a matter of time before he started picking them off, one by one, acquiring more power with every vampire he bit. And, by latest count, there were almost thirty new younglings represented by nearly all of those who’d lived in Vilokan and had been given Baron Samedi’s aspect. It was too much to hang on Mercy—and it wasn’t safe for my friends who, without the advantage of my soul-blade, would each be tempting meals for the younglings. Only Pauli—since his body was technically cold-blooded, even when he shapeshifted into human form—was safe amongst the vampires.
Still, rage boiled up from within me. It pissed me off that from day one, from the time I’d first encountered Kalfu and he’d learned of Isabelle, we’d been on the defensive. Always waiting for him to make a move. Then we’d have to respond and react. More often than not, as could be expected, he ended up more powerful with every encounter. Even when we thought we had him cornered on the beach—the wyrmriders and Tressa’s sharks assailing him by sea and Mercy’s zombie army pinning him in on the opposite side—something crazy would happen, like the souls from the vessel that I’d freed suddenly re-possessing their zombie bodies turning them into vampires, and Kalfu would again have an advantage. Vampires were easy prey for Kalfu—and there was no telling how many new powers might lie latent in the blood of these younglings. Particularly consumed by bloodlust and acting recklessly now made them easy prey for Kalfu.
I sighed. Destroying the vessel might have prevented the Bokors from all acquiring innumerable new abilities, but it made it possible for Kalfu to acquire more for himself. I was pretty sure he had counted that as a win. And once again, it forced me into a defensive role. Protect the vampires. So long as I was on the defensive side of this war, it was going to be nearly impossible to make progress in defeating Kalfu.
“You know what you must do, child.”
I shrugged. “I do?”
“Well, you are High Mambo, no?”
I huffed. It was an honorary title I’d received as the default winner of the Voodoo Trials. Technically, I’d been eliminated in the second round. But since everyone else afterward was either disqualified or dead, I was pronounced the “winner.” It also came with Dumballah’s blessing which, in turn, was now what Agwe had called a Seelsorgerin—a soul soother, a ring I wore that gave me the ability to dispel most any curse. I couldn’t undo a bargain, but it was almost as good. When one breaks their end of a bargain with Kalfu, the result was—at least per the terms he usually conducted—a curse that would eventually leave the person’s soul in his possession. Now that I could remove the curse, Kalfu would either need to find a new way to structure his bargains or I’d be able to effectively render them powerless.
“I guess I am the High Mambo. Not much good that does since the whole Voodoo world is gone.”
“Scattered, child. But not gone. Do you recall what the High Mambo was tasked to do?”
I nodded. “To unite Vilokan. To stand against Kalfu.”
“This has not changed, child. And you and Pauli have restored Vilokan, no?”
“We fixed the firmament,” I said. “But even though Mercy raised everyone who had the aspect of Samedi as zombies, that was only about a fifth of the population. The place is still littered with bodies. The water damage is too extensive. No way to deal with the water damage, much less the mold.”
Aida-Wedo cocked her head sideways. “You mean to tell me that mold is the problem you fear the most?”
“Mold is some serious shit,” I said. “And the smell of death… we can’t just move back in. It’s going to take serious work.”
“Then you’d best get to it, child.”
“If you haven’t noticed, we’re a bit busy. I’m protecting the vampires from Kalfu—not to mention from hunters who are probably already on their way here. If we can figure out how to beat Kalfu, then we can slowly rebuild Vilokan.”
“No, child. You cannot win without Vilokan. The city must be restored.”
I shook my head. “That tactic makes no sense…”
“Do I look like Ogoun, ch
ild? This is no tactic. Vilokan is more than a city. It is a place that gives our people, the people of the Voodoo world, confidence and strength. It unites us, in spite of our differences.”
I took a deep breath. I knew what she said was true. Hell, they’d even accepted me of all people, the great-great-granddaughter of slave owners. This, in spite of the fact that Vilokan had originally been a place of refuge for slaves, a place where they could escape their oppression, where they could learn and thrive. How they ever accepted me… it was remarkable.
“So war tactics be damned?”
“There is a time for everything, child. But before you can lead an army, you must have one. You need Vilokan for that.”
“Fine,” I said. “I don’t know what to do. The place is… disgusting.”
“Vilokan will speak to you, child.”
I had to consciously force myself not to roll my eyes. In the realm of nouns—you know, people, places, and things—only people “speak” on the regular, and few things (provided they are equipped with Siri or Alexa) talk at all, but places don’t speak. Vilokan is a place. This was the sort of mumbo jumbo that gave Voodoo a bad name. Not that Aida-Wedo didn’t know what she was talking about, but the whole concept of a city speaking to me was just a bit too ridiculous to get behind.
“Metaphorically, of course,” I added.
“No, child. I mean what I said quite literally.”
I bit my cheek. Aida-Wedo was no millennial. Like all the Loa, she was ancient. The chances of her misusing the word literally were not especially high.
“If you’re leaving, I need Pauli,” Mercy interjected.
I narrowed my eyes—Mercy was not intimidated by my stare. “Why do you need Pauli?”
“He’s the only one who can help me with the younglings,” Mercy said. “With you gone, I need someone who isn’t at risk of being bitten. And his abilities could come in handy if any more run off.”
I wanted to argue—but I had nothing. Truth be told, my only argument for Pauli to come with me was that he was my friend, not hers, which wasn’t the most compelling reason given the circumstances.
“Fine,” I said. “I guess I’ll just go alone.”
You’re not alone…
“Isabelle and I will handle it,” I said, clarifying my prior statement. “Just don’t let Hailey out of your sight.”
“I’m not a moron,” Hailey said. “What do you think I’m going to do, sneak out and go around the French Quarter murdering people?”
“Well… yes. That’s exactly what I think. First, you have a pattern of sneaking out. That’s what got you in this mess to being with. And second, the hunger is only going to get worse.”
Mercy put her hand on Hailey’s shoulder. “The girl will be safe.”
I nodded. If there was one thing I knew Mercy could handle, it was helping a vampire control their cravings. For the most part, that is. She did wonders for my parents. To them, she was some kind of saint. But with her own boyfriend, Ramon, who was more than a century old himself, she never could get him to tame his bloodlust and ended up staking him and burying his incapacitated corpse here, in the very garden where we were standing. The fact of the matter is that not every vampire can get control of his or her bloodlust. Those who don’t usually end up staked—if not by hunters, by other vampires who don’t particularly appreciate the press that a vampire serial killer on the loose would inevitably bring.
Chapter Four
The smell of death jarred me like a kick to the face. The long staircase that led into Vilokan was steep and unpleasant under regular circumstances. This was something else. There were still a lot of rotting bodies in the city, and the smell had made its way through the staircase. I wasn’t at all looking forward to what was surely an even more pungent odor in the city proper.
A bitter chill struck my chest—it froze my lungs, causing a sharp pain when I gasped at the contact.
What was that? Isabelle asked.
“Do you sense anything?” I asked, coughing through my words as I attempted to breathe. “An essence or an aura?”
Nothing…
Ghosts were known to cause a few degrees’ drop in temperature when they manifested. I’d gathered most of the souls from Vilokan—all those who’d been in the auditorium when it had flooded. Some of them re-inhabited their reanimated bodies—thank you, Mercy Brown—and became vampires. The rest I freed when I shattered the vessel. It hadn’t occurred to me that there might be other ghosts lingering here, ghosts who weren’t in the auditorium at all. Those whose souls I hadn’t gathered into the vessel. But if what had struck us was a human spirit, Isabelle should have been able to see their aura, and since I also had Baron Samedi’s aspect, I should have seen them. Whatever struck us, it was stronger… inhuman.
“Why the hell am I doing this anyway?” I asked.
To revive Vilokan, to restore hope to the survivors, to provide them a place where they’re safe from Kalfu.
“Still, why couldn’t Aida-Wedo do this herself? She can teleport. She could clean up this shit a lot more easily than I could.”
She’s a Loa, Isabelle said, stating the obvious. She doesn’t clean shit up.
Don’t get me wrong. I was grateful for Aida-Wedo. She’d saved my dog for God’s sake. And even though rescuing Letty from the flooding city probably meant one more human died that she could have saved made it bittersweet, I was nonetheless grateful to have my dog back. Isabelle and I both were. This whole idea, though, that I had to come here alone, face down the demons of the past, so I could lead the Voodoo world against Kalfu… well, it seemed absurd.
The cold chill struck me again, this time knocking me off my feet. I fell onto the steps and slid down a flight.
“What the fuck!” I shouted, shaking my fist aimlessly into the air as if whatever it was that kept hitting me would be intimidated by the almighty combination of f-bombs and shadow boxing.
Not a ghost. Maybe a projection?
I shook my head as I got back to my feet. “What person have you ever met who was powerful enough to project themselves with that kind of force?”
Joni could… probably. If she siphoned the right kind of magic.
“Okay, aside from Joni. She isn’t doing this.”
You just asked if I ever met someone powerful enough. I have. Joni. I’m just saying, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that this is a living person projecting.
“I guess if anyone knew, you might.”
Isabelle could project, too. She didn’t do it much. Sometimes she would project because Letty could see her when she did, and she loved playing with the dog. But for the most part she said it felt unnatural, uncomfortable. Still, she did have a body—even if she was sharing mine—so Isabelle wasn’t dead, technically speaking. She’d know what a human projection could do.
“I still don’t understand who it could be. And why they’d be trying to knock my ass down the stairs.”
A frost formed on the wall beside me. I quickly leapt down a couple steps as another icy blast jumped across the stairway.
“Hey!” I shouted. “Stop with your shit! Just tell me what you want!”
Something caught my attention out of the corner of my eye. Something moving on the wall. The frosty patch… it was like something was being written.
FIND QUEEN N-- HOST.
“The queen?” I asked. “Marie Laveau?”
No response.
And a host? The Loa require hosts. Was it Oggie trying to communicate with me? I could only hope. And what was the word that started with N? I couldn’t make out anything after it before HOST.
The hair on my neck started to rise. I looked around. Another patch of frost had formed on the wall.
L… A… X
“The airport in Los Angeles?” I asked out loud, raising my voice to be sure that whatever was out there trying to communicate with us could hear.
I’m sure it isn’t the airport.
I shrugged. “A laxative? Are you cons
tipated?”
Shut up, Annabelle.
I snorted. “Well, I can’t think of what else it might stand for.”
How about Laveau? First two letters. And pilgrims draw an X on her tomb when they visit her grave seeking a blessing.
“I guess that makes more sense in this context than laxatives.”
Ya think?
“Maybe Marie Laveau died in the flood. And she wants us to find her a host so she can come back and save our asses? I mean, some people think she is a Loa anyway, seeing that she returned after she died and never seems to age.”
But why would she say “find queen” if it’s her?
“Maybe she likes speaking about herself in the third person. Annabelle does that sometimes.”
The next time I have the reins, remind me to slap us in the face.
“Why would you do that? You’d feel it.”
And you would, too. It would be worth it.
I chuckled. “Still, if whatever this thing is was running out of energy and can’t spell the second message with more than three letters, I don’t think they’d say ‘find queen’ the first time if they meant ‘find me.’”
She would, since we wouldn’t know who ‘me’ was.
“Okay, you have a point. But it still doesn’t seem likely.”
Well, if Marie Laveau is a Loa, we should be able to summon her somehow, right? I mean, one way or another we’d be finding the queen.
I bit my lip. “Seems like there was a veve for Marie Laveau. We never learned it in Summoning 101. But I remember Asogwe Jim telling us in Philosophy of the Arts that evoking the queen’s presence through ritual was forbidden.”
Voodoo Queen Page 2
