Black Heart Loa

by Adrian Phoenix

 

  Soul sister.

  The reflection glimmering on the lenses of the Baron’s night-deep shades guttered like the flame it resembled, then vanished as another image flared to life and tugged Kallie’s vision inward.

  Drums pound in time with the throbbing in Kallie’s skull, the rhythm fast and primal and hungry. Shadows ripple at the edges of her vision. Cold frosts her veins. And still the black dust pours from her into St. Cyr—mouth, nose, ears, and eyes—in a violent rush of power that scrapes against her heart and threatens to yank her under.

  “By Bon Dieu’s holy cock!”

  Kallie’s memory wisped away at the Baron’s abrupt words and she nearly stumbled when his icy fingers disappeared from her arms with all the frantic speed of a man jumping away from a downed and wriggling power line. The Baron stepped back, Cash’s cowboy boots squelching in the mud, his tensed body language both wary and predatory.

  “I don’t know de how or de why of it, since it ain’t riding you like a cheval, but a wild loa be hiding inside of yo’ curvy body. And bristling with pure darkness. And dat just won’t do. It don’t belong dere.”

  Kallie blinked, caught off guard. She’d expected/feared that he’d find the loa harbored inside her body and had a bone-deep feeling, a wordless intuition, that if he did, it would be bad news all around. But this …

  “Hellfire.” Low and heartfelt from above. Belladonna.

  Kallie’s heart beat against her ribs like a caged and feral thing seeking release. “Okay. I agree. Dat most definitely won’t do,” she said, pleased her voice remained level. “And I figure it’ll take more than a regular cleansing to get rid of it. So what do I do?”

  “Well, now, dat depends on de unnamed and untamed loa you got coiled up in yo’ soul’s place. It be up to her which road we take, ma belle. Her choice—hard or easy.”

  And there it was. Her goddamned secret—one forced upon her as an infant and one she didn’t have any answers for, only tons of questions—was no longer hidden. At least, not to the eyes of the loa of death. But instead of feeling relief, Kallie felt only hollow dread and a sense of wrongness.

  Kallie knew that without this nameless loa, she’d be well and truly dead—body and soul—at the hands of that bastard Doctor Heron. Just like Gage. And without the nameless loa, she might not be able to get her locked-up mama to reveal the location of her missing soul.

  If the loa was important enough for Mama to murder her own husband in cold blood and important enough to steal away her only child’s soul, then the loa ought to make one damned fine bargaining chip.

  Looking into the Baron’s shades and relieved to see only her own reflection in the lenses this time, Kallie asked, “What if I want to keep the loa for the time being?”

  “Dat ain’t an option, girl. Dat t’ing inside you be wild and willful, shaped outta slivers of moonless nights and Halloween shadows and ill intentions. And she’s fattening herself up on darkness and violence like a tick.” The Baron shook his head, then sighed. “Normally, I loves me a woman—be she loa or human—with a round and sassy ass, but dis be a whole ’nudder t’ing.”

  “Will it hurt Kallie?” Belladonna asked. “When you take the loa from her?”

  And yet another reason she’s my best friend—asking all the hard questions.

  Laughing, the Baron tipped his face up to look at Belladonna. “No, ma jolie, don’t worry. De girl won’t feel one lick o’ pain—as long as de loa takes de easy road, dat is.” Returning his attention to Kallie, he added, “But de hard road—now, dat will hurt like a motherfucker.”

  “Fantastic,” Kallie muttered. “Sounds like Christmas just came early.”

  “Sure,” Belladonna agreed, her voice light, but sympathetic. “If by Christmas you mean hell.”

  “Yup, you got it.” Sudden pain throbbed at Kallie’s temples—in anticipation of the hard road?—and scraped at her concentration. Made it hard to think. White sparks flitted across her vision.

  Exhaustion must be catching up with me. And at the worst goddamned moment possible.

  “And the best part about all of this bullshit?” the Baron said, his voice slipping into Cash’s mocking cadence. “You die no matter which road your loa takes. But don’t worry none. You won’t be lonely. I’ll be sending your cousin to join you.”

  An electric jolt surged through Kallie, short-circuiting and disconnecting her thoughts. Images whirled behind her eyes against a backdrop of white sparks: Pale bones. A chained heart. A black horse. A ruby red skeleton key. A woman with cinnamon curls.

  “Well, then,” she heard herself say, her voice coming from far away, “in that case, I guess I’m taking the goddamned hard road.” Then she felt herself step forward, swinging a wicked right hook at the Baron’s painted nose just as a gunshot cracked through the air.

  The gun jumped hard in Belladonna’s hand, smoke curling up from the muzzle, and she nearly dropped the damned thing. She sucked in air reeking of cordite as Kallie’s powerhouse punch missed the lord of the dead—just as the bullet had—breezing past where his skull-decorated face would’ve been—if he hadn’t vanished, his mouth shaping an O of surprise.

  “Jesus Christ,” Belladonna whispered, tightening her grip on Layne’s Glock, and wondering who to pray to in a situation like this. Praying against a loa or asking another to intercede would be like refusing one parent’s ruling and running to another for a different, more favorable answer.

  You die no matter which road your loa takes.

  Belladonna refused to accept that. Baron Samedi tended to view death in a favorable light, so maybe he was just biased. There had to be another way. One that led to life and not to the graveyard.

  Her determined face framed by her wet, muddy locks, Kallie spun around on her heels, Jackson’s boot still clutched in the fingers of her left hand, her right fist cocked and loaded.

  Belladonna sighted the gun around the grave, waiting for the Baron’s return too, pulse pounding through her veins.

  Now that she knew she wasn’t dealing with a Baron Samedi imposter but the real deal in a weird, unnatural amalgam of dual and fluctuating control, Belladonna figured a bullet fired into Cash’s body wouldn’t do much more than distract the Baron from Kallie, but maybe that would be distraction enough to get the girl out of that grave and into the car.

  Like we can speed away from death.

  Worth a try, girl. Otherwise …

  Lifting one hand from the gun to wipe rain from her eyes, Belladonna refused to finish the thought.

  Given that she often served the Gédé loa and the Barons that ruled them in religious ceremonies at the hounfor where she studied to be a mambo, the thought of working against one—even to save her best friend’s life—left her guts tied in knots and her heart cold.

  But the thought of losing Kallie iced Belladonna to the soul, steadied her aim.

  The Baron blip-appeared behind Kallie in the spot he’d just vacated, instead of where she’d clearly anticipated him.

  Just as Belladonna was about to yell a warning to Kallie and squeeze off another careful round, the distinct and unnerving shu-schunk of a shotgun shell being chambered launched her heart into her throat, and her words died unvoiced. She caught a peripheral glimpse of rain-glistening, mud-streaked, familiar sneakers.

  Thunder growled overhead, moving away.

  Hellfire. Guess who’s roused from his damned swoon and discovered that his balls have finally dropped?

  “Don’t move, y’hear?” Kerry said, his voice unusually calm and steady. Well. Maybe not calm, per se, just less panicky. “Now toss the gun.”

  “We had this conversation back at the house,” Belladonna replied, sitting back on heels, her gaze remaining on the action in the grave. Kallie whirled to face the loa just as the Baron lifted a hand and traced a symbol of some kind in the air.

  Pain tightened Kallie’s features, darkened her eyes.

  Hoo-boy. Not good. Could be a b
anishing or compel command.

  “I can’t do both,” Belladonna continued, sparing Kerry a quick glance. His hands white-knuckled the shotgun, his lips a thin, determined line. “Now, which is it? Don’t move, or toss the gun?”

  Kerry blew out a frustrated breath. “Toss the gun, dammit. And technically, y’all had that particular conversation with Cash, not me.”

  “Oh. Well. That makes all the difference in the world,” Belladonna said. “It’s not like you were in the same room standing right next to each other or anything.”

  Power undulated up from the grave and through the air, and it seemed, for a heartbeat, that even the rain rippled like a breeze-pushed, water-pearled curtain. The hair lifted on the back of Belladonna’s neck. An icy hand trailed her spine.

  The surge of dark and unbalanced energy felt like a countdown timer on a suicide vest packed full of C-4 bricks.

  Wow. Great analogy there, imagination. Thanks for that mental image.

  Kallie swung at the Baron again, and the loa danced away, still etching symbols in the air, clearly reluctant to make physical contact with Kallie until he’d finished laying down his trick. Until he’d finished binding her. Entrapping her.

  “Look, you gonna toss the gun or what? I’d hate to hurt a woman, I truly would, but I will if I hafta.”

  Belladonna snorted. “Redneck, please. I could turn you into a stewpot chicken before you could get off a single round.”

  “Ain’t no call for that. Redneck. That’s just plain hurtful.”

  “You like stewpot chicken better?”

  The blood drained from Kerry’s face and gravel scrunched beneath his sneakers as he shuffled his feet, his reptilian survival brain contemplating a hasty retreat. “Didn’t I help y’all?” he said, reproach edging his voice. “Didn’t I show y’all where Bonaparte was buried?”

  “Yup, you did. But”—Belladonna paused to nod at the grave and the bizarre action taking place in its depths—“I don’t think you appreciate the gravity of this situation.”

  Kerry looked down, pursed his lips, tightened his fingers around the shotgun.

  The Baron crafted his spell as he dodged more sight-blurring punches from Kallie—and when the hell had she started moving so fast?—intoning in a deep and nasal voice: “I command you, nameless one, I compel you. Hear my voice, the voice of Baron Samedi, a voice impossible to deny or resist. Come to me. I command you, compel you.”

  The loa of death and resurrection’s words rumbled like long-rolling thunder, like the distant boom of storm-driven waves against rock, the sound echoing from the grave’s muddy walls and vibrating up through the ground beneath Belladonna’s knees and into her bones. Goose bumps tingled as power skittered electric along her skin.

  “I command you, nameless spirit, flesh-hidden and unbound …”

  “Okay,” Kerry admitted, “maybe things are a little weird—”

  Belladonna arched an eyebrow. “A little? Please.”

  “Okay, maybe a lot weird, but it’s you who ain’t appreciating the situation,” Kerry insisted, returning his gaze to Belladonna. “I don’t pretend to know how Cash got here or what the hell he’s doing, but I’m getting us out. Me and Cash, we’re gonna take your car and split. Now, toss the gun!”

  “Hear my voice, nameless and untamed loa. Yo’ lord, Baron Samedi, commands and compels you to leave de girl’s warm flesh. Yo’ master, Baron Samedi, unthreads you from her being with each word, every command. Come to me.”

  Belladonna’s muscles cabled tight across her shoulders. She couldn’t let the Baron finish laying his trick, couldn’t risk his killing Kallie with his commands. Maybe the loa’s magic would backfire. Maybe. But she refused to gamble with her friend’s life.

  “That’s not Cash down there, not exactly,” Belladonna said, shifting her gaze from Kerry to skull-painted Cash in the grave. “But fine, have it your way.”

  Narrowing her eyes, Belladonna sighted in on her target and hurled the Glock. The gun bounced off the back of the Baron’s head with a loud thok, then pinwheeled into the mud.

  The chanting stopped. The Baron looked up at Belladonna, wagged a Naughty, naughty, you’ve got a spanking coming, girl finger at her, then returned his attention to Kallie just in time to backpedal away from her rocketing fist.

  “Yo’ lord, Baron Samedi, commands you, wild loa, unnamed spirit …”

  Kerry took a step closer to the edge of the grave. “Cash! C’mon, man, forget about her. I’ve got the car and the shotgun and—”

  His words cut off abruptly as Belladonna reached up, yanked the shotgun from his rain-slick grasp, twirling the weapon around so that its muzzle was aimed at him. “Wrong on both counts,” Belladonna purred. She tsked. “Y’all really don’t know how to hold on to a shotgun, do you?”

  Kerry buried his face in his hands. “Fuck,” he groaned. No apology for his “French” was offered; the manners his mama had taught him apparently worn thin.

  “Compelled. Commanded. Come to me, wild one!” the Baron shouted.

  Fear stabbed a cold blade into Belladonna. Just as she thought, That sounds like a finished trick, and flashed an anxious glance at Kallie, a hard blast of power pulsed up from the grave and out, knocking Belladonna onto her ass in a rush of heated air reeking of brimstone and ozone and prickling with wrongness.

  Her teeth clicked together, narrowly missing her tongue, as her hind end hit the wet ground. She heard Kerry cry out in confused terror, followed by a soft thud. Knocked to his ass too. Or swooned. She’d lay odds on swooned. She also thought she heard a chicken clucking in an unhappy way.

  Stewpot?

  Belladonna crawled back to the grave’s muddy edge and peered down. Then blinked. Kallie was also on her ass in the muck, a dazed expression on her face. And in front of her …

  “Where’d the chicken come from?” Kerry asked. “And where the hell’s Cash?”

  FOURTEEN

  HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF

  “You feeling any better?” Gabrielle asked. “Has the potion finally worn off?”

  “I’m awake, me,” Divinity replied. She paused her teacup at her lips, and its aroma, redolent of black tea, honey, and ripe cherries, curled into her nostrils. “But feeling better? After what you told me? Hell, no.”

  She studied the makeshift altar on her coffee table, thought of the words Gabrielle had spoken as soon as Divinity awakened from her oh-so-restful damned snooze.

  “Baron Samedi is hunting your nephew. And it’s my fault.”

  “So de Baron just vanished? After saying Jackson was getting what he deserved?”

  “In a puff of smoke, no less. And taking his new cheval with him too.” Gabrielle shook her head, her eyes pools of disbelief. “Never seen nothing like that before.”

  Divinity could imagine.

  But what she couldn’t imagine was how an invocation for help had managed to go so wrong, downgrading her nephew’s situation from bad to Sweet-Jesus-it-can’t-get-much-worse.

  Gabrielle looked genuinely troubled, but any hoodoo or mambo worth her salt knew how to act when it was necessary to show a client or student or worshipper what they needed to see when it mattered most.

  “So, den,” Divinity said, leaning forward and resting her teacup on the table, her gaze on Gabrielle, “I be safe in t’inking what happened with yo’ invocation had nothing to do with my borrowing of yo’ identity?”

  Gabrielle’s cup of tea froze in midair. She stiffened in her rocker and shot a barbed look at Divinity. “You can’t borrow an identity,” she stated, her tone level, yet hot enough to weld iron. “But you can obviously steal one. The problem between us has nothing to do with what happened. Unlike Jean-Julien St. Cyr, I’d never harm an innocent over a crime committed by someone else.”

  “Never thought you would, you,” Divinity lied, meeting the other woman glare for glare. “Just stating facts. Don’t get so riled up.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” Dubious. Gabrielle’s cup resumed its journey to her lips. “I
got no reason to wish ill on your nephew or your niece.” She sipped at her tea. “Now, you, however …”

  “Don’t worry, you’ll get yo’ chance, you. We’ll hash all dat out later. After Jackson and Kallie are safe.”

  Gabrielle eyed Divinity from over the rim of the delicate rose-patterned cup. “After,” she agreed. “But until then, I’d like an explanation to tide me over. You owe me that much.”

  Divinity nodded. “True, dat. But it’s gonna need to be de Reader’s Digest condensed version. We ain’t got de time to waste on de past just now.”

  “We don’t. Agreed. So let’s hear it.”

  Clutching her cup and taking a sip of the cooling tea, Divinity gathered her thoughts for a moment, picking and choosing, saving others for a later date. “When I figured out what Sophie had done, I knew de day would come when I’d need to steal Kallie away and hide her. I just didn’t know when dat day would be. So I prepared.

  “I knew dat you’d gone to Haiti just a year or two before Kallie’d been born—after Jean-Julien had gone to prison—and I didn’t figure you’d be back, so I buried my name and gave new life to yours. I wanted to be sure no one could link Gabrielle LaRue to Sophie Rivière.”

  “But why? Didn’t you say your sister’s locked up?”

  “Oui. In Saint Dymphna’s for de criminally insane. But,” Divinity said, holding up a finger and capturing the mambo’s gaze, “I also knew dat my sister couldn’t’ve done dat evil t’ing to her daughter—her own flesh and blood—alone. It had to’ve been a group effort.”

  “A group effort,” Gabrielle repeated, stunned realization widening her eyes. “So that’s who you’re hiding the girl from.”

  “Dat I be. I be hiding her from her mama too. If Sophie knew where Kallie is, she might pass de word along.”

  The mambo’s brow furrowed. “Doesn’t she know Kallie’s with you?”