Black Heart Loa

by Adrian Phoenix

  “They’d be in a pretty pickle,” Kallie agreed, easing Layne’s goggles up to his forehead. “But I know women guilty of the things you just listed too, so it ain’t only the men.”

  “By women do you mean woman, as in Kallie Rivière?”

  “I’ve never hurled myself out of anything or—”

  Layne moaned softly, but his eyes remained closed. Kallie trailed the back of one finger along the stiletto-thin sideburn curving along the line of his jaw, then touched the stylized fox black-inked beneath his right eye, naming his clan. Even though she wanted to stay with him, she couldn’t.

  Layne was still breathing, yes, but Jackson might not be.

  She slid her fingers along the rain-chilled chain of the Saint Bernadette medallion around her throat, then up to unfasten the clasp. Bending, she looped the chain around Layne’s neck, clicked the clasp shut. She straightened the medallion as it dipped and nestled in the hollow of his throat and rested her fingers against both—cool silver and warm, taut flesh—as rain continued to pour.

  Heal him, O Glorious and Blessed Lady. Soothe and mend his hurts. Keep him intact. Amen.

  Kallie lifted her hand. “Stay with him, Bell, and check him over.” She tossed Layne’s helmet into the grass as she rose to her feet. “I’m going to fetch Jacks.” She held her hand out for the shotgun.

  Belladonna arched an eyebrow as she relinquished the weapon. Her drenched tunic hugged the curves of her breasts and hips. “You’re gonna need help digging him free, Shug.”

  “I know,” Kallie replied, striding to the car and crossing to the passenger side. She opened the door.

  Kerry looked at the shotgun, then up at her, his dark eyes uncertain. “Hey, hey, now. I brought you to the place your cousin is buried, just like you asked—”

  “Yup, and I might need your help working a shovel,” Kallie said, tucking the shotgun’s stock under her arm. “I’m gonna untie you, but if you try to run …”

  Kerry winced as she plucked a single dark hair from his head. Twirling the hair between her thumb and forefinger and making sure he got a good look, she said, “I’ll fix you but good.”

  The color drained from Kerry’s face. “Ain’t no call for that. I’ll help and I ain’t running. To be honest, I never felt good about leaving your cousin behind like that in the first place.” He shook his head, looked away. “Man, I told Cash this whole thing about hitting Bonaparte’s house was a fucking … excuse my French … bad idea.”

  “A goddamned shame the bastard—excuse my English—didn’t fucking listen to you.” Kallie slipped the hair into a pocket of her cutoffs. “You’ll get that back as soon as we have my cousin out of the ground. Now, lean forward.”

  Kerry complied and Kallie quickly unknotted the rope Gabrielle had tied around his wrists, then tucked the rope into her hip pocket. Just in case.

  Leaving Kerry rubbing his freed wrists, Kallie raced around to the other side of the Dodge Dart. She shoved the driver’s seat back into place, hopped in behind the wheel, slammed the car into gear, and turned into the driveway marked by the broken mailbox post.

  She drove up the rutted and bumpy drive, feeling a bone-deep chill as she recognized the house and its sheltering palm trees from her blood divination.

  Doctor Heron’s home.

  As she’d suspected, Layne’s presence wasn’t a coincidence. And that ended any remaining mystery as to who had ordered Jacks snatched from their home and put into the ground.

  Icy fingers locked around Kallie’s heart. If the twisted and vengeance-seeking root doctor had ordered Jackson buried alive, there’d been a goddamned good reason for it. Fear pulsed through her like blood.

  She could think of any number of dark and nasty potions that could’ve—and most likely had—been forced down her cousin’s throat before he’d been tossed into his grave.

  Potions of command and compelling. Potions of brutal transformation. Enslaving potions. Potions that extended pain and suffering.

  A muscle jumped in Kallie’s jaw. As if slowly suffocating to death weren’t bad enough …

  She eased her foot off the gas as she reached the end of the driveway, then hit the brakes. A flash of lightning strobed across a grave-size hole in the side-yard beside a pile of mud and dirt. Several mud-smeared shovels rested in the grass at strange angles, as though flung aside.

  Kallie thought of Layne and wondered if by some weird quirk of fate he’d somehow stumbled upon Jackson’s burial site before the accident happened and had dug him up. But if he had, where was her cousin? The yard was empty, no sign of anyone around, living, ghost, or otherwise.

  “You sure this is the right driveway?” Kallie asked, even as her mind tossed back: Hello, even if it ain’t, just how many homes along this stretch of road have people buried in their yards? A neighborhood zombie garden?

  “Yeah, positive. This is the driveway and the house,” Kerry replied. “And that there’s where they buried your cousin. But,” he added, voice puzzled, “looks like he ain’t buried no more. Maybe they-all just wanted to scare him.”

  “Maybe.” But given this was Doctor Heron’s house, she doubted just scaring Jackson was the intention, even as she hoped Kerry’s words were true. Her CPR-aching ribs and sternum gave testimony to the dead root doctor’s true intentions.

  Switching off the engine, Kallie slipped out of the car, shotgun in hand, and raced through thinning rain across the wet, slippery yard to the grave. She pressed a protective hand against her bruised breastbone, felt the rapid drumming of her heart as she halted at the hole’s foot.

  She wanted to look, but an image of Jackson lying broken and pale and lifeless at the grave’s muddy bottom stole her strength.

  Ah, Jacks, please. You can’t. You just can’t. You may have been born my cousin, but Hurricane Gaspard and my mama made us siblings. I ain’t about to lose the only brother I’ve ever had.

  Kallie closed her eyes and, as she drew in breath to voice a prayer, lines from a Keats poem she’d heard Jackson quote from time and again, always with his wicked drawl, played through her memory and slipped from her lips instead, like a prayer, a summons.

  “‘Give me women, wine and snuff / Until I cry out “hold, enough!” You may do so sans objection / Till the day of resurrection: / For, bless my beard, they aye shall be / My beloved Trinity.’” Kallie opened her eyes. “You ain’t said ‘enough’ to anything yet, Jackson.”

  Drawing in a deep and steadying breath of air laced with the smells of wet wood and leaves, of muddy ground, she stepped forward; but just as she was about to look down, she caught a nose-crinkling whiff of pungent cigar smoke and booze and something spicy like …

  Kallie’s blood chilled.

  … hot peppers.

  “I too be fucking fond of de women and wine, but give me a big ol’ cigar over snuff any day,” said a jovial but nasal voice from behind her.

  Not being a practitioner like Belladonna and Gabrielle, Kallie had never attended a voodoo ceremony, had never watched as the loa had ridden their human chevaux, had never heard the loa speak.

  But she was a hoodoo rootworker, taught by one of the best, and she knew the hell out of her saints and loas and the proper offerings when asking for favors.

  Hot-peppered rum was a favorite of Baron Samedi—the all-knowing loa of death. And if the Baron was here, that meant …

  No. No. No. Jackson, no.

  Needing to know the truth before she turned to confront the presence behind her, Kallie looked down into the open grave. Empty. Nothing but glistening mud and muck and groundwater. No sign of Jackson—alive or dead.

  Intense relief sapped the last of the strength from her muscles and when Kallie tried to spin around to face the Baron, her legs gave and she fell to her knees instead, the cold mud oozing against her bare skin. She heard a soft thud as the shotgun slipped from her nerveless grasp and into the mud.

  “Now, that’s the perfect place for you,” said a voice behind her. A different voice. No longer
jovial or nasal and impossibly familiar. “On your knees.”

  No goddamned way.

  Kallie swiveled around on her knees, her fingers searching the slick mud for the shotgun, then froze when she saw who stood behind her, a shovel leveled casually across his shoulder, a smoldering cigar jutting from between his teeth.

  Goddamned Cash. More or less, anyway.

  The home-invasion amateur’s face was painted as a skull, his eyes hidden behind shades, his nose circled and hollowed out with black paint, a lipless grimace painted onto his mouth. Black fedora, purple shirt, and tailored black suit completed his loa-possessed ensemble.

  How the holy loving hell is this possible? And when did the Baron switch from top hat and tuxedo to a goddamned fedora and suit?

  He grinned—giving him a double set of teeth, one real, one painted—then said, “Toldja I wouldn’t be forgetting you, darlin’.”

  Cash kicked out with his right leg, and before Kallie could jump to her feet or grab the shotgun or twitch away to the side, the pointed toe of his scuffed-up cowboy boot caught her square in the gut.

  The force of the kick knocked Kallie backward. Gasping for air and struggling for balance, she felt the wet, muddy ground edging the grave give way. Then she felt only empty air beneath her.

  Kallie fell, Cash’s mocking laughter kiting above like a vulture.

  ELEVEN

  Spirit Box

  Hoping against hope that Kallie would reach Jackson in time, Belladonna eased Layne onto his back and resumed searching him for damage, her trained healer’s hands listening to his body as she felt his limbs and skimmed her fingers over his skin.

  Mmm-mmm-mmm. A shame the man’s unconscious. Well. And injured.

  So far, she’d only discovered bruises, along with pebble- and dirt-filled road rash. No broken bones. Now, as for internal injury or brain damage, a more experienced healer or maybe a CT scan at a hospital would be able to tell for sure. She pushed up his black Inferno T-shirt.

  Blue-inked tattoos curled across his lean-muscled chest and flat, belly-fluttering six-pack abs in flowing Celtic designs—detailed knotwork beneath his hard pecs curved around to his back; concentric circles looped around his nipples; shamrocks, spirals, stylized and fanciful beasts, decorated his skin in flowing patterns—each tat signifying, as far as she understood, nomad rites of passage.

  She thought of the tattoo—a dragon’s knotwork tail—she’d glimpsed disappearing into his waistband during the wet-boxers contest at the May Madness Carnival, and wondered where it ended and what rite that particular tat signified.

  Maybe once he and Kallie finally spend a little well-deserved playtime together—instead of just trying to keep each other alive—I can persuade her to share a few details over beignets and hot cocoa, a little girl talk.

  Relieved at the lack of bruising on Layne’s torso, Belladonna took her time smoothing his T-shirt back down over his belly. Oops. A wrinkle. Can’t have that. Oh, look, another. What a shame. Let’s get that taken care of too.

  But even with the lack of bruising, she knew Layne could have internal injuries that hadn’t revealed themselves yet. And that worried her. He could be bleeding out even now, and she wouldn’t necessarily know it. She mentally thumbed through a list of WebMD cautions regarding internal injuries. SEEK IMMEDIATE EMERGENCY CARE was the most popular response. She sighed. Well. Duh.

  She reached into her bag for her bottle of healing oil and uncapped it, tilted the bottle against her finger. She anointed Layne, touching her oil-beaded fingertip to the center of his forehead, then to each temple. The spiky scents of rosemary, sage, and bitter wormwood prickled into the humid air.

  Just as Belladonna parted her lips to murmur a prayer to Saint Joseph, Layne opened his eyes. His pupils were dilated, expanding into the pine-green irises but not swallowing them.

  “Hey, you,” she greeted. “Welcome back. How’s that thick nomad skull of yours feeling?”

  Wincing in the storm-grayed daylight, Layne blinked several times, struggling to focus. His dazed, pained expression gave way to confusion, his mouth opened and closed several times before he finally managed to whisper, “Oh, Bon Dieu, my aching head. Boy musta rung his bell damned hard.”

  Belladonna blinked. Was Layne speaking of himself in the third person? It couldn’t be Augustine piloting the nomad’s body, since he spoke in a posh British accent, so it had to be Layne, but his rhythm, even his word choice, felt wrong.

  An icy curl of dread twisted through her belly. This was beginning to feel a lot more serious than a concussion. Maybe Layne had fractured his skull and his brain was swelling.

  “Who the hell are you, girl?” Layne said, squinting at her.

  Hoo-boy. Not good.

  “Belladonna. I’m Belladonna, Layne. You just keep still, okay—”

  “Get away from me, dead man,” Layne hissed, his gaze shifting inward. “I beat you fair and—” His eyes suddenly rolled up white in his head, then the nomad passed out again.

  “Dead man”?

  Layne’s eyes flicked open again. His face paled. “Dear God,” he said in a familiar British accent. “My head.” He swallowed hard several times, as if trying to keep from puking, then focused on Belladonna. “I can’t stay long, Ms. Brown, I need to protect Valin. So I need you to—” His eyes shuttered again, long honey-blond lashes sweeping up, as he passed out once more.

  “Hellfire,” Belladonna breathed.

  A chill that had nothing to do with sitting in the rain in sopping-wet clothes shuddered along the length of Belladonna’s spine. She shivered convulsively. Either Layne had suffered serious damage to his noggin or he was carrying someone else inside of him—someone besides Augustine.

  “Hellfire,” Belladonna repeated, realizing what a treasure trove Layne’s unconscious and helpless body would be for any ghosts just wandering about, seeking something to haunt.

  Belladonna’s knowledge about Vessels was scant, and she didn’t know if multiple ghost takeovers of one body was even possible, but if it was—and if Augustine and the stranger(s) were warring over possession of Layne’s body—someone was going to get hurt, and that someone was most likely Layne.

  Can’t have that. She started digging through her bag for a knock-’em-out potion.

  Layne shuddered, then his eyes flew open. Again. “Help me up, girl,” he demanded, lifting a shaking, gravel-abraded hand.

  “Ghost, please,” Belladonna scoffed. “Given that you don’t belong in there, I don’t think so. And you need to scoot your spirit butt out of there. No vacancies.” Finding the potion, she yanked it from her bag just in time to see the nomad turn his head to the side, retch into the grass, then pass out. Yet again.

  “Boy’s like a spirit box full of ghostly jumping beans. Y’all need to leave him be,” she said, directing her words to the ghosts tussling inside Layne, “before you do him some permanent damage.”

  Belladonna twisted the cap from the potion, releasing the faint scent of poppies and 150-proof homemade white lightning moonshine into the air.

  Layne groaned, then his eyelids fluttered open. “Ms. Brown,” he began in a British accent, then all color drained from his face.

  Rolling onto his side, Augustine puked Layne’s guts out—or tried to, anyway. From where Belladonna was sitting, it looked like the nomad hadn’t eaten in a while.

  And, right now, that’s a good thing.

  “Gah. Yuck.” Belladonna clapped a hand over her mouth. She scooted back a couple of feet, trying hard not to puke herself.

  Layne-Augustine flopped back onto his back, breathing hard, eyes closed. Sweat beaded his face. “Ms. Brown,” he gasped. “Unless you know how to perform an exorcism on a Vessel, you need to call Valin’s ex-wife. I seem to have my hands full at the moment with Babette St. Cyr.”

  Hoping she’d heard wrong, Belladonna lowered her hands. “You sure?”

  “About having my hands full?”

  “No, the other thing.”

  “Abou
t calling Valin’s ex-wife?”

  “No,” Belladonna grated. “The other, other thing—about Babette. You sure?”

  “Ah. Oh, yes. Quite.”

  During their drive to Chacahoula, Kallie had filled Belladonna in on what she’d seen in her blood divination in New Orleans and her suspicions about the late Babette St. Cyr.

  “I believe that she set her husband up for murder by poisoning the potions he gave his clients, then allowed him and their daughter to believe that Gabrielle LaRue was the person responsible for sending him to prison for twenty-five years.”

  “Just because he had an affair with Gabrielle? That’s one cold-hearted woman.”

  “You gotta have a heart first, Bell, for it to be cold. I don’t think Babette qualifies, heartwise.”

  “Hellfire. If I potion up Layne, will that help?”

  “I believe so, yes.” Retching again, Layne-Augustine rolled onto his side, his body racked with dry heaves. He sounded like he was trying to turn himself inside out and Belladonna’s gut knotted in queasy sympathy.

  When he finished, he whispered, “If Valin’s body is drugged, none of us will be able to use it—Get away from here, you harpy! He’s mine!”

  “Excuse me?” Belladonna said indignantly, then realized that the Brit was speaking to Babette. But before the illusionist could say another word, his eyes rolled up white once more and he lost consciousness.

  “Shit, Layne,” Belladonna murmured. “I can’t even imagine how much all of this must suck from your end.”

  The fingers on Layne’s right hand twitched. Belladonna’s eyes narrowed. Had he—or someone else inside—just tried to flip her off?

  Crawling back to the nomad’s side, Belladonna slipped a careful hand under Layne’s head and lifted it enough so he could swallow without choking to death. She tipped the green bottle against his lips, then hesitated.

  The memory of Divinity blowing powder into Cash’s face, then curling up on the sofa for a snooze, played through Belladonna’s mind. How the hell had Kallie’s aunt’s spell backfired? And why?