Veiled Eyes

by C. L. Bevill

  There were others. A sixties Mustang still had its wide white streak running down its hood. A Jeep Scrambler sat next to a flame red Cadillac Seville with a prominent dent in the hood. Anna saw some purses and belongings sitting in the vehicles just the way they’d been left. As she approached the far side of the yawning hollow in the earth, the vehicles became newer. There was a nineties Mazda Miata that was nearly hidden behind a nearly new Dodge 3500 pickup. Both appeared as though Anna could start them up and drive them out of this place. She looked in the back of the truck and saw scuba diving gear. Tanks, masks, flippers, all were accounted for and she shook her head in confusion.

  But the confusion was suddenly forgotten. Beyond the Dodge, parked against the far wall was a Peterbilt truck. There was no name or logo on the sides of the truck. Blacker than the lake, it still had the metal fangs attached to the grill. The Barbie doll was missing. Perhaps it got knocked off when the driver was negotiating some of the tighter passages in the mine, Anna thought reasonably. And if I open the door what am I going to find? Had Dan Cullen fled from the authorities to find someone else waiting for him? Someone who worried about Cullen talking about what a drugged Anna St. Thais had said to him?

  Anna shivered. Silence echoed back at her in the darkness that stretched out around her. The police and law enforcement from every state in the union was looking for Dan Cullen. Border crossings into Mexico and Canada had been alerted to watch out for this psychotic whack that had a proclivity for strangling hitchhikers after he was done with them. It didn’t matter. He was down here with Anna.

  She glanced around her. No bodies. There was only a graveyard of dead cars and trucks, each with their own story. I know why Dan Cullen had to vanish. But what had Miss Liza Trent done to the family? Saw something she shouldn’t? And Jared Slate of Memphis with a Nash Rambler? Had he come probing into the family’s business and had to be eliminated?

  “He was a reporter,” said a voice that echoed through the chamber and Anna started wildly. “Someone who was following up on Lisette and Varden, you remember the story that Sebastien told you. God’s truth was that Varden couldn’t go around killing men without someone taking notice. Not like your trucker. He killed a dozen girls and no one paid him a lick of attention.”

  Anna’s fingers shook as she turned off the flashlight and ducked behind the Peterbilt. Aurore. It’s Aurore Benoit speaking. Her gentile southern tones were unmistakable.

  “It won’t make any difference about the flashlight, Anna,” she said kindly. Anna looked around the fender of the large truck and saw a faint glow on the opposite side of the huge void of the mine. “It took five years for Varden to track down the men who had taken Lisette. Took another seven years for Mr. Slate to track us down. It seems his brother was one of the men that Varden killed. Varden was very angry. He was still angry when he told Sebastien about it years later. And Mr. Slate, he wasn’t happy about it, either.”

  Aurore’s voice stayed in a single place. Anna’s eyes adjusted to the darkness and she could see the vague shapes around her but there wasn’t much light to go by. She tried to reach out to Aurore’s mind to find out what it was that was motivating her and discovered she couldn’t find anything at all.

  “That won’t help you, chère. You’ve been thinking about how the family has different powers. You’re a strong one, all right, but I’ve got decades of experience on you. No one will hear you, not unless you really want them to.” Her voice became sly. “And you don’t really want Gabriel charging down here to rescue you, do you?”

  “Why not?” she finally found her voice in a quavering question that amused Aurore.

  “I’d have to kill him then, too. You see, the whole family doesn’t need to know about our business. My father’s business too. And Sebastien’s as well. Sebastien’s father is the one who got Mr. Jared Slate down here, not I. I was only, oh, about eleven years old at the time. What’s good for the family isn’t necessarily something they all ought to know about. And well, Gabriel, he isn’t one to keep a secret.”

  Gabriel dead? The thought of it brought Anna’s rampant thoughts to a raging halt. She struggled for internal control and found it with the barest rein on her emotions.

  “There’s no need for that,” Aurore called to her. “No need at all.”

  “And Meg?” she called back. “You killed her, too?”

  Aurore was silent for a moment. “It’s so interesting about bloodlines here. The strongest ones are able to do the most. The strongest ones become elders and protectors.” A brief silence followed that, and then she added, “Despite that neither of my sons could ever find their way down here without a map. Like you can.”

  The photograph Arette had kept in the book came back to Anna’s mind. She had thought it a photograph of Gaspard Benoit. But she hadn’t accounted for the simple issue of time. The photograph was at least twenty-four years old and Gaspard would have been a child. It wasn’t a picture of the son, but of the father, of the man that Arette had secretly loved, a younger Sebastien. “Sebastien was my mother’s lover.”

  “Ah, oui. Apparently she was too much for Sebastien to resist.” She paused. “Arette had a little tingle of the gift. I think maybe her family might have had a distant relative to us. Some great-granny perhaps.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Anna swore. “Did you have to kill her, too?”

  Aurore’s silence was telling. “It was the only way to protect the family. Arette liked to talk to people. She was a friendly one. And they liked to talk to her. Some outsiders can be like that. Like your friend in New Orleans. But Arette was curious about the mine. And she found her way down her, just like you. What she discovered in this room caused her to take her unborn child and flee to some far off place. But I had known of her presence. I asked Gautier about her but he simply said she was gone. When Arette came back, several people saw her and recognized her as she made her way to her husband’s home. She didn’t know that word tends to get around.” There was a significant pause. “It had to be done and Gautier would never betray us. We didn’t know about the child. About you. Gautier must have found you inside Arette’s car and it was he who took you away. Took you away to protect you from me.”

  Her voice seemed to be coming closer. Anna realized Aurore was stalling her while she searched for her. The gift wasn’t like radar unless Anna chose to tell her where she was.

  She began to low crawl through the vehicles and hunks of machinery, trying to work her way around to the other side of the room where the main opening was located. Feeling her way with her hands, she hoped that she wouldn’t slice some of her flesh wide open with a rusted piece of metal. Keeping the glow of Aurore’s light on her right side, she moved cautiously.

  “I think maybe you’ve got me wrong, child. Best to come clean with you and hope blood runs true in your veins. I forgave Sebastien for the slight of your mother years ago, but even he wasn’t sure if you should be privy to every little secret the family possesses.”

  What are you saying, Aurore? You don’t intend to kill me like you did all of them? She felt the bumper of a car and wondered whom it had belonged to and what isolated, innocent act of being in the wrong place at the wrong time they had committed.

  I don’t want to kill you. Not unless I have to. Stand up, Anna. Show me you trust me.

  It was the same voice in her mind that had warned her that she would be judged, judged like Gautier Debou. “Oh, God,” she said. “You killed him, too? And if I hadn’t come along, his body would have vanished into the mine, as well?”

  “He kept Sebastien’s child away from me, away from the family,” Aurore snarled. “He and that bitch of a woman, Meg Theriot. She wasn’t one of us. Not really. She only had a smattering of the gift and far too greedy to suit anyone.”

  “What did Meg have to do with it?”

  “She helped your mother run from the family, taking you with her. Gautier wanted to protect you. He knew that…”

  “What? Gautier knew what?” Anna k
ept moving. The light was almost to the Peterbilt truck now. Aurore didn’t know where Anna was, but if she kept moving she might be able to outsmart the older woman. Outrun her, too. She had marked every passage. Aurore wouldn’t know where Anna was going until she had fled. There were too many tunnels for Aurore or his sons if they were there as well.

  “As Sebastien’s child, with the amount of power you have, you become the next guardian. Not Gaspard. Not Raoul. Neither have the right gifts. It was always yours. The elders knew that you would do this. We all knew.”

  Anna was instantly outraged. “You mean I’m supposed to be some kind of official assassin for the family, taking care of problems like the ones that fill this cave?” She paused. “You’ve got a helluva thing up on the mafia. Casting huge shadows that move like monsters? What do you do with the bodies? Feed them to Goujon?”

  “The outsiders have ruined you,” Aurore said sadly. Her voice echoed weirdly over the chamber and Anna knew that she was almost to the opposite side. She barked her shin on an old conveyer belt and held the limb with her hands, dropping her flashlight to the ground, while the pain radiated through her leg. Biting back the curse that would have flown out of her mouth, she realized Aurore was talking again. “There’s another mine shaft with a sinkhole in it. It’s a fitting resting place for those who’ve betrayed us. And those outsiders who would have done us harm.” There was a hesitant pause. “It’s where you’ll go, too. Unless you want to change your mind. Convince me that you care about us.”

  Anna saw the sinkhole in her mind as Aurore allowed her to see it. It sat deep in the salt dome well below the water table, men had once gone too deep there and they had died when the floors under them had collapsed in a dry year. The sand at the bottom of the salt dome began to suck away at the surrounding walls and the miners had closed off that part of the mine. But Sebastien and Aurore’s kin had found another use for it. Whatever went into the ravenous soil of the sinkhole never came out. It was where Dan Cullen had gone, and where Meg Theriot had ended up, and the vision of sinking in the silt was prominent in Anna’s mind. “And what are you going to tell Gabriel and the rest?”

  “Why nothing at all,” Aurore replied, surprised. “You just up and went off by yourself. Again. You died down here as a victim of your own curiosity. A tragic…accident. I expect Gabriel will take it hard, but he’s a tough man. He’ll make it through the night. Mebe one day he’ll even find another family girl to marry.”

  “And who will you get to be your guardian, then?”

  “There are others who will take my place. Not as strong as you, but loyal to le famille.” Aurore’s voice had shifted again. Her light suddenly went upward and shone on the high vaulted ceiling of the giant room they were in. “This place, well, if you look up, Anna, you can see where the waters have seeped in from the lake above. We’re sitting right under the deepest part of it. It’s easy to get mixed up in the tunnels but most of the salt dome sits under our beloved lake. That’s where these engineers sank an exploratory oil shaft about fifty years ago. They plugged it up with a cement cap, but I do believe this whole room will collapse one day. Especially if I give it a little assistance.”

  Anna looked upward. Aurore’s light revealed drilling apparatus in the ceiling. Water dripped from the rigging. Seeping black water ran down cracks in the ceiling, confirming the weakness there. She glanced back down as the light Aurore held moved. “What are you telling me, that even if I get out of here, no one will believe me because you’re going to close this place up? You’ve got to be joking? All I have to do is call out to Gabriel.” But I don’t want him to come chasing after me, to put himself at risk, to possibly get himself killed because of me. Oh, God. I can’t do that to him.

  “I won’t let you do that,” said Gaspard. His light flickered on and immediately blinded Anna. He’d been waiting for her at the other end of the hollow of the mine. A fist struck her jaw and Anna lost consciousness.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Saturday, February 21st

  If salt is spilt, then no one must speak until it is thrown over one’s left shoulder, or else awful bad luck will ensue to the transgressor.

  Gabriel staggered with the abrupt shocking pain that exploded in his head.

  Without a doubt, he knew it was Anna. It was well after ten p.m. and he hadn’t seen her since asking her and Alby LaGraisse to retrieve the cases of cola from his garage. There had only been that little sense that told him that she had been thinking about him, and then the rich smell of raw earth, heady in his head, just as if he really smelled it.

  The fireworks show had gone off on schedule at nine, wowing the audience with its spectacular effects, lasting a lingering forty minutes in its entirety. After the show, Gabriel had brought the Belle-Mere back into the dock, and unloaded his passengers so they could eat at the crayfish boil. He had begun helping with some of the other events because there were still crowds of people eating and drinking.

  The families with smaller children had begun to leave, trickling out after the big event, and the parking lots were showing empty slots as they slowly left. But it was the Saturday night before Fat Tuesday and revelers were in a mood to party before Lent. Empty buses still waited for their passengers. He knew from past experience that the town of Unknown would be shooing off merry-makers until the wee hours. There were tents with coffee and breathalyzers for those who wished to be safe and three tow-truck companies had volunteered their services to those who had overindulged. Three sheriff’s deputies directed traffic and made sure that the partygoers didn’t go overboard.

  Helping out in one of the coffee tents, Gabriel and Camille didn’t have a lot of business at the moment and didn’t expect any for a few more hours. In fact, only two designated drivers were having a card game with two of the bus drivers at a table in one corner of the tent. Even Camille, who normally had an easy time with outsiders, was having a difficult time with all the noise. She didn’t notice Gabriel’s hand at the back of his head because she was slowly rubbing her forehead with both hands. “Aie, so many people,” she said. “And you know what they’re thinking when they’re drunk. I hope I never sound like that when I drink. It’s enough to become a teetotaler.” She removed her hands from her face and looked at her brother.

  Gabriel’s eyes were closed and his head bowed forward. His teeth were clenched in an unholy grimace of pain. His hands gripped the back of a folding chair until his knuckles turned white. “What is it, cher?” Camille said, her hand touching him gently. “All these people? It never used to bother-”

  When he opened his eyes she saw that his pupils were enlarged, eliminating all but a sliver of the antique gold color. Camille almost jumped backward because he looked so wild. She was reminded of another time more than a month before, when she had been in the same situation with her brother. As she opened her mind to her sibling, the ache transferred itself to the side of her jaw and to the base of her neck. One of her slender hands went there. “Anna,” she murmured. “That girl has bad luck. Alice Tremoine said the priest knocked over the communion cup today. It’s a bad sign.”

  Suddenly Gabriel straightened up, ignoring Camille’s statement. “Gone. She’s gone. It’s like before. Like she’s…”

  “Not-”

  “Non!” Gabriel snarled. The sober card players paused in their game and looked over curiously. His voice lowered. “Not dead. Just not…transmitting.”

  They were silent for a moment. The card players resumed their game. One said happily, “Hah. Queen-high straight. Beat that.” Zydeco music could be heard in the distance playing ‘Allons à Lafayette.’ The aromatic smell of meat cooking was still prominent in the air, revealing that the grills were still operating and feeding tourists and townspeople alike. People were laughing and singing along with others in the German beer tent that was adjacent to the coffee tent.

  “Something is very wrong,” Gabriel muttered.

  “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know. She was t
roubled by something earlier.” Gabriel ran an anxious hand through black hair, swiping it away from his forehead. He glanced around him, looking out through the openings of the tent into the groups of people hurrying past. Some were dancing, dressing in festival costumes. Some had colorful masks on their faces. Others merely had dozens of ropes of glittering beads draped around their necks. None of them were Anna.

  Anna? His eyes drifted shut as he concentrated over the thrall of outsiders’ thoughts. Some of the outsiders couldn’t help the noise they made; it slipped unbidden out of their heads. More of the family couldn’t help but listen to it. It was like having a blaring radio that one could not turn off. Most of the time Gabriel was good at tuning them out, like ignoring a persistent gnat.

  Anna? He hesitated as a vision of roses poured over his body. The roses were so richly red, so scarlet that he mistook their velvet petals for drops of blood falling around him. Gabriel felt a surge of fear and knew that it was his own.

  ANNA!

  The blood-red roses consumed his mind and he shuddered as he opened his eyes.

  •

  Anna was lost in her thoughts. Words and events drifted around her as she fought for understanding. Fear is what binds the family together. Fear and love. Don’t forget it, Anna. I’ve never been afraid of anything in my life before this. You’ll be sucked down. Drowned in a place where you cain’t escape. It won’t be no giant catfish who wolfs your rotting flesh down, it’ll be stuck in a tomb of sandy soil, with all those others who done gone before you. Relatives and close loved ones are blessed with the strongest connections. I was angry. I could have ripped his lungs from his body. That miserable son of a bitch. Someone had placed flowers in front of the marker, fresh red roses that Anna could smell as though someone had cut them from the garden just a moment before. I told you our gifts are strongest between family members and ones who love each other. No more secrets from you.