Gods of New Orleans

by AJ Sikes

  The flapper and her little group made their way through the crowd and Emma turned to see where Lisette had ended up, but she couldn’t find her in the tangle of suits and beads and skirts. All she could see were straw boaters, cloche hats, bobs, finger waves, and peacock feathers. The men all had paddles with numbers on them, and the women all held cigarettes or drinks, or just the arm of the man they were with.

  Between two women standing close to her, Emma caught sight of a white suit. A sleek jacket and trousers over a pair of fine shoes, and a white fedora to match up top. The man held a paddle, too. Emma felt a stab of fear when she recognized the Birdman, but then the man turned to the side and Emma spied his eyepatch.

  The Ghost turned again, as if he could feel Emma’s eyes on him. He put a finger to his hat brim and winked with his one eye above a slim smile that faded as fast as it came.

  Emma thought to push through the crowd to catch up to the Ghost. As she stepped forward, she heard Eddie’s horn. Her heart skipped before she remembered his betrayal and what he’d been a part of and known he was a part of the whole time.

  When she got her thoughts together again, the Ghost had vanished into the crowd that kept pressing around Emma and trapped her where she stood.

  Where is Lisette?

  ~•~

  Aiden crept out of the cot and opened the hatch. He slid his good hand down the side of the ladder as he stepped down the rungs to the corridor. Whoever had been in the ship was gone now. The cabin was empty and quiet at the end of the corridor, so Aiden stepped down to see what he could see out the windows.

  At the bunkroom door, someone jumped out at him, and Aiden caught sight of a blade glinting in the moonlight coming through the cockpit windows.

  “Oh, damn, Dove Conroy!”

  Aiden stumbled backward and saw Julien standing in the bunkroom door holding a kitchen knife.

  “What the hell you doin’ here?” Julien asked. His face was tight and scared. “I almost stuck you like a pig there. What you doin’ on this ship? And how you get in without me hearin’ you?”

  “I was hiding up there,” Aiden said nodding back at the engine room hatch. “My ma . . .”

  Aiden stepped down the corridor, past Julien, who stayed back in the bunkroom but hissed a warning at him as he went by.

  “Don’ go out there, dove. They see you, it all gonna go wrong.”

  Aiden ignored his friend and went to Mr. Brand’s desk. He couldn’t say why, but he felt like he should be sitting there. So he did and opened the top drawer. Two envelopes sat there mixed in with some of Mr. Brand’s old news notes from Chicago City. Aiden lifted out the envelopes and saw one had Miss Farnsworth’s name on it. He put that one back and opened the one with his name.

  Innocence,

  I don’t know how to tell you this nicely, so I won’t bother. You’ve been in my way for too long, and now you’re going to pay for it. Say good good-bye to Mommy Dearest and get the hell out of New Orleans.

  Yours,

  Hatred

  Aiden’s heart did a flip-flop. Then he heard a commotion coming from outside and looked out the window. Miss Farnsworth was in a tangle with two tough guys holding her arms. Aiden felt his heart flip again when he recognized one of the toughs: Theo Valcour. Aiden hadn’t seen the older boy since he’d chased Aiden through the streets and into the pile of mud with all the tramps.

  So that’s where you ended up. Sitting high and fat after you took my money.

  Behind Aiden, in the corridor, Julien again hissed a warning, so different from the first time the boy had called Aiden’s name outside the Ghost’s alleyway. Aiden looked back at his friend and shook his head. Then he reached up, pulled back the curtain of the city, and left the airship cabin.

  ~•~

  Emma bumped and bustled her way through the crowd until she felt a hand on her arm. At first she thought it had to be Eddie, because nobody with dark skin ever put a hand on her there except for Eddie.

  But it was some tough guy from Bacchus’s krewe. He was young, but big, and Emma felt him urge her to leave the room. Then another heavy took her other arm and the two of them hauled her out of the house as the auctioneer started to rattle off his litany and the paddles went up.

  ~•~

  Aiden grabbed Theo Valcour from behind, putting his one good arm to the task. He got the bigger boy by the scruff of the neck and yanked as he stepped back behind the curtain. Theo toppled backward almost coming down on top of Aiden, but with a quick dodge to the side, Aiden was out of harm’s way.

  “The hell is this?” Theo yelled, scrambling out of the mud and putting his fists up like he was ready to kill. Then he seemed to notice where he’d ended up. And who had brought him there. His eyes went left and right, like a scared rabbit’s, but his fists stayed balled.

  “You must be ready to die, damn fool dove. Touchin’ on a man bigger’n you and stronger’n you. And a man in Mr. Bacchus’s krewe. You know what he gon’ do after I’m done with you? Birdman gettin’ your name, dove. He gettin’ your momma’s name, too. Time your whole family got plucked.”

  While Theo busied himself talking, Aiden kept an eye out for movement in the tunnel. Sure enough, as Theo stepped up with a fist pulled back and ready to fire, the wall came alive to Aiden’s left. He stepped back and Theo moved to follow until a muddy arm wrapped around the bigger boy’s mitt.

  Theo hollered at first and shook off the mud. Then more of the wall came to life, arms and legs, fingers curled into claws that stained and smeared. And those gaping, moaning mouths that spoke of nothing but hunger and sorrow.

  Aiden kept stepping back, flashing a look left and right to make sure the mud men didn’t come up on him by surprise. But they seemed content with their prize. Theo struggled and wrestled against the hands that wrapped over his mouth and face now. He howled and roared. And then he screamed and flailed his limbs.

  But it was done. Aiden slipped out from the tunnel and back into the airship cabin. Julien stood there at the corridor entrance, mouth open like the mud men, but only with shock and fear on his face.

  “Dove Conroy, you‌—‌”

  “Yeah,” Aiden said. He saw Julien’s face squeeze up in fright and then the boy’s eyes rolled up and down he went.

  Just like my ma.

  Only Julien didn’t go to thrashing in fits.

  ~•~

  Emma felt the man behind her let go, but the other one kept his hands on her. Then he went stiff and his eyes bugged out like he’d seen a ghost. He let Emma go and fell to the side.

  Lisette stood behind the bruiser, holding one of Emma’s kitchen knives in her hand. Blood dripped off the blade, long and thick, to the ground where it joined the pool around the man’s body.

  “Took it when we was in your kitchen,” Lisette said, tucking it back into her handbag. “Bet you glad I did. Now come on. They puttin’ my Juliette up on that block soon.”

  They dragged the dead gangster behind a bush. Emma hunted the night for the other man who’d grabbed her, but she couldn’t find him anywhere.

  Inside, the bidding was going fast and furious, and Emma heard a mess of groaning and moaning from one side of the room. She and Lisette wove their way into the crowd together until Emma saw him: that damn New York banker from the night she was out with Eddie.

  The man stood in a group, all New York from what she could see: the cut of their suits and the way they held themselves, big and tall, proud like skyscrapers. The banker and his friends all wore the same ugly look, too.

  The auctioneer called out a bid and one of the New Yorkers stuck up a paddle, but just as fast he was outbid. Emma scanned the crowd for the winning paddle. She spotted the Ghost not a few feet away. He stood right in front of the auction block and something in the set of his face told Emma he wasn’t here to bid on the same prize the others had in mind. The Ghost’s one good eye was bent up like he wished he didn’t have to see any of his surroundings.

  It’s like he wishes he wasn’t here
. Or that this place wasn’t here.

  Up on the auction block, Juliette shivered like a puppet with broken strings, all knock-kneed and doing her best to stay upright. Behind her, the other girls who’d all been bid on stood in a row, doing the same frightened dance of standing still and wanting to fly.

  Emma turned to Lisette to say something when the room exploded in a storm of black feathers. Everyone screamed and Emma heard a woman’s voice cut through the chaos.

  “This’s for that girl you thought you owned before you paid for her. Damn New York dummy!”

  A man from the New York crowd hollered bloody murder and Emma caught a hollow laugh that turned to acid in her ears, like the shrieking of steel against stone. She heard a rustling of dry paper and dead leaves, and then the crowd split apart as a dark shape came rushing at her. She tried to back away, but the people pressed her forward into the coming blackness.

  Emma saw at the last minute that it was a rooster being carried by a man wearing a white suit, just like the Ghost, but he had both eyes and laughed like a maniac as he ran at her with the bird in his mitts.

  She staggered back and came up against the crowd, and they all pushed her forward again. The rooster came in close and Emma swatted with an arm, shoving the bird to the side. But she felt blood trickling down her arm from where its beak had dug into her flesh. The crowd pushed once more and Emma went down on her knees. She lifted an arm to cover her face and rolled to her left until she felt shoe leather against her back.

  Someone shoved with the toe of his shoe, and Emma moved away, still holding her arm up in front of her eyes. The shrieking and crowing of the rooster threatened to split Emma’s eardrums. Some in the crowd were cheering, and other laughed. Emma even heard a bet being made as she circled around the small space the crowd had made for her and the crazy man with the rooster.

  With her arm up, the best Emma could do was to focus on her shoes and the limits of the little arena that had formed in Bacchus’s gala house. If she could spot a gap between two sets of legs, she’d make a break for it. She just had to‌—‌

  The Birdman’s cackling came to Emma’s ears again, closer than before, and then she heard the rasping screech of the rooster right beside her head. A hand grabbed her arm and yanked it away from her face, and she smelled the wet stench of a barnyard as black feathers filled her vision.

  A gunshot cracked through the air and Emma staggered back. The Ghost stood beside her with a smoking pistol leveled at the Birdman, who fell to the floor with a hole in his face where his right eye should have been.

  “Now we’re even, Birdie,” the Ghost said, tucking his pistol into his coat pocket. The rooster squawked as it fluttered off to the side of the room. The crowd drifted apart, breaking up the arena and clearing a path for Emma to see Lisette grabbing Juliette’s hand and running for the door. Eddie was up on stage with the band, watching Lisette and her daughter go, too.

  Another gunshot cracked through the night and Lisette stumbled and landed on her stomach. Juliette screamed. Eddie dashed down from the stage and Emma raced through the splintering crowd to join him. Eddie helped Juliette turn Lisette over while Emma searched for the shooter.

  From the middle of the crowded room, Bacchus’s footsteps were like thunder on the floor as he crossed in front of the auction block.

  “I believe you all have something belonging to my person,” Bacchus said. The red mist began forming around him again, pouring from his eyes and mouth, and this time everyone in the room seemed to notice it. They all went hush and still, except for the few people close enough to almost touch the fat gangster with the smoking gun in his mitt. As those guests backed away, too, Emma felt Bacchus’s eyes on her, hot and angry, but hungry at the same time.

  Eddie gave Emma a look that said run as he got to his feet.

  “Mr. Bacchus, sir, whatever you want, I’ll pay it. I can owe you the money, if that’s okay, and I’ll just play your shows until it’s paid. Just please, let Emma go free.”

  Bacchus seemed to consider the offer, but Emma felt the scream rise in her throat when the red mist ballooned in the space between the two men and the gangster’s face fell like he just couldn’t be bothered.

  Bacchus raised his gun and shot Eddie in the chest. Emma cried out and went to him as he fell dead on the floor. She huddled over him, crying and knowing they’d lost everything. She and Lisette had bet the house and come up empty-handed.

  Bacchus’s feet set down beside her in a slow and heavy one-two.

  “I’ve long needed a new diversion for myself, and I believe you’ll make a fine addition to my . . . menagerie, Miss Emma.”

  Emma kept her face pointed down. To her left she saw Lisette taking shallow breaths as she lay cradled in her daughter’s lap. Emma spied the glint of her kitchen knife then, the one Lisette had been carrying. It was half hidden by Eddie’s head. Emma slid a hand across the floor by her knee, like she meant to use it to help her stand up.

  Bacchus chuckled and Emma heard him sliding his pistol into a holster under his coat. His heavy hand reached down in offering, like he’d help her to her feet.

  “Come now, Little Miss Lily White. We’ll have a nice time of it and you can forget all of this.”

  Emma turned to him, and saw the red mist sucking back into his face, filling his eyes and mouth, and disappearing into his bulk once more. Emma held her face unchanged, keeping her look fallen and stained with tears. She shuffled a knee so she could stand and then rose, clutching the knife and bringing the blade up to thrust into Bacchus’s heart.

  The big man heaved in a breath and she thought she’d missed, until blood bubbled from Bacchus’s lips and he fell away from her. His enormous body shook once, viciously, and the red mist of Emma’s nightmares billowed out around Bacchus as he stood there quivering. He lowered his thick head and looked at the knife coming out of his chest. The mist around him grew dense and flooded back into his nostrils and ears.

  Bacchus lifted his left hand to grip the knife. Emma rushed forward and slammed all of her weight against the handle, shoving the blade deeper into Bacchus’s chest. The man shook again and the mist sprayed out now, filling the room and going in every direction at once. People screamed as a cascade of angry crimson washed through the space.

  Emma felt the mist trying to get into her, but something kept it out, like a shield or a wall inside her that wouldn’t let even a scrap of Bacchus’s vile nature get in. Emma shuddered, but felt her strength return as she fought off the violent mist that seemed to thrash around the room now. The crowd shrank away from it, and some fainted, or just fell down in terror.

  Bacchus shook and spit blood, but kept his feet. Then another mist, an oily black one, joined the red. Together, the fogs of horror swirled into pictures of death and mayhem, murder, and violence of every kind imaginable.

  Emma felt herself wanting to scream, but her hands wouldn’t leave the knife.

  Not until it’s all out. Not until this place is free and clear of you.

  The ghosts of death and crime whorled above the crowd. Emma stepped back from Bacchus, letting go the knife because she knew the blade had done its work.

  All around her, the guests and partygoers whimpered or wailed, but the Ghost himself stood in the middle of the space, with the hint of a smile on his lips. The black and red mists tried to get into him, too, Emma saw. But they couldn’t touch him, and finally fled the room in a torrent through the open ballroom door.

  Emma watched the gods depart. She clutched her arms around herself as they left, remembering the way it felt to have them picking at her, trying to find some way inside her heart. Then the gods were gone, and the room was still. Emma turned back in time to watch Bacchus crash to the floor.

  His heavies came from all sides, climbing to their feet or out from behind screens, and all of them with heaters in their mitts. But the Ghost stepped onto the auction block and fired a shot into the ceiling. The torpedoes all lowered their gats and put their hands to their side
s like soldiers waiting on orders.

  “That’s the end of that,” the Ghost said. “This auction house is now closed for good.”

  The crowd murmured and some barked a few words of objection. Over in the corner, the New York contingent huddled around the banker Emma remembered. He was holding a hand to his face and streaks of blood ran down his cheek.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen,” the Ghost continued, “I did not say it would be the end of the gala houses, only that this . . . revolting enterprise was at its end. Y’all can go on drinkin’ and dancin’ until your feet fall off. It makes no nevermind to me.”

  Emma waited for the Ghost to say something else, something that told her she could leave. When he did turn to her, he simply winked at first. Then he stepped down from the auction block and walked forward, tipping his hat as he came. Emma saw wispy faces around the man’s head. They were colorful in bright reds and blues and yellows, with numbers all around.

  Playing cards, Emma thought as the Ghost reached a hand out to take hers and raise it to his lips. He kissed her fingers and let her go with a look of warning.

  “I am ever so pleased that you received my note. But now might be a good time to get yourself out of here,” the Ghost said. Emma remembered the envelope.

  “But I didn’t‌—‌”

  “Not now, Miss Emma. Just be getting on, hey?” the Ghost said. He nodded to the side like he meant to get her attention on something.

  The New Yorkers had broken their huddle and moved as if to snatch the group of girls standing behind the auction block.

  Emma ran forward, crouched by Bacchus’s body, and yanked the pistol from the holster under his beefy arm. She aimed it at the New York men as she stood.