by G A Chase
* * *
Kendell was relieved Professor Yates wasn’t directing them to the cathedral, or worse, the convent. But as she and Myles followed the professor into the boarded-up building on Conti Street with a bar on one side and a junk shop on the other, she wondered what they’d gotten into. The empty ground floor didn’t inspire confidence.
“I realize the Church doesn’t want to discuss issues involving the paranormal in their sanctuaries, but this feels like walking into the Spanish Inquisition.”
Professor Yates unlocked a side door. “I spent the better part of yesterday afternoon convincing Father Carl I wasn’t crazy. He accused me of spending too much time working the crowd around Jackson Square with the other fortune-tellers. I don’t know what finally convinced him, but when I got home, I found an envelope with this key and instructions to bring you two. The note wasn’t from my friend. After all these years, I know his handwriting as well as my own.” The tall man had to duck under the angled roof of the stairwell as he climbed the creaking steps to the second floor.
Kendell’s impression of the first floor was nothing compared to her fear of the upstairs. The wide-planked wooden floor had been painted black. She couldn’t make out the walls and ceiling as the windows were covered in green paint. From the dried brushstrokes that extended across the glass, she assumed the supposed careless paint job had been intentional. An overhead bare light bulb illuminated a heavy oak desk that looked out of place in the run-down building.
She took the center of the three chairs, hoping having Myles and the professor on either side would give her comfort. It was only after they’d gotten comfortable that a man in black robes stepped out of the shadows. “You have questions. I’ll answer what I can. There are rules. You’re not to record our conversation, even on paper. Never return to this building. Do not attempt to contact me again. Understood?”
Myles took her hand under the desk. “We understand. Who are you?”
“You can call me Brother Aramis.” He sat at the other side of the antique table and opened a journal that half covered the desktop. “You were inquiring about Archibald Baptiste Malveaux.”
Kendell wasn’t interested in rehashing history. “Actually, we’re concerned about Colin Malveaux. Archibald was his great-grandfather.”
“One step at a time.” The man sounded unimpressed by her knowledge of Colin’s past. “Archibald Malveaux was a generous contributor to our diocese.” He looked up at her from under the cowl of his robes. The glare off his reading glasses prevented her from seeing his eyes. “The baron, you see, believed in covering his bets.”
Kendell wondered if the disclosure was meant as a threat or as an admission. “So you work for him too?”
“No. I tell you of his patronage so you’ll understand our position and why I’m talking to you now.” He tapped the yellowed page of the suede-covered book. “We keep close track of our parishioners. Archibald Malveaux had many flaws when it came to being a Christian, but so long as he repented on Sunday, we overlooked his whorehouses and questionable business dealings conducted during the workweek.”
Kendell’s impression of the Church wasn’t improving in the least. “You mean so long as he kept your coffers filled.”
The man laced his fingers together and put them to his mouth like a school principal trying to decide on an appropriate punishment. “The Catholic Church appreciates the help of well-to-do citizens such as the Malveauxs, but we are beholden to no one but God.”
Myles squeezed her hand, indicating he hoped to avoid an argument. “If he was so well regarded, why did you agree to meet with us?”
“We could overlook his misdeeds. All of us are sinners. But when he accepted the voodoo cane and started calling himself Baron Malveaux—rightful heir to Baron Samedi—we were left with no choice but excommunication. This is where the Church and Marie Laveau crossed paths. Catholicism and voodoo have had a long history of interaction. Many of the voodoo beliefs and loas were derived from our sacraments and saints, though who was the originator and who the imitator depends on which faith you’re talking to at the moment.”
“She came to you for help, and you did nothing?” Kendell asked. Myles would have been more diplomatic, but sometimes being polite got in the way of finding answers.
“I said we had interactions. The Church isn’t here to accept the rejects of failed false religions, and Marie wasn’t the type to pawn off her mistakes on others. Like you, she wanted information on hell.”
Kendell leaned forward and tried to make out what was written in the ledger. “You’re saying she and Agnes Delarosa fashioned Colin’s hell on your actual afterlife realm? What does your book say happened?” The words weren’t in English. From the age and source, she assumed they were Latin.
“We don’t build realms. Heaven and hell are the purview of God Almighty. Man’s job on earth is to discover the will of the divine, not attempt to copy Him.”
She leaned back so Myles could lead the conversation. “She didn’t mean to offend, but you must realize what we’re up against.”
The shadowy man nodded and returned to his ledger. “Baron Malveaux ended up being the wedge that forced voodoo and the Church apart. Though Madam Laveau attempted to limit his access to the dark arts, Archibald managed to subvert her authority within the voodoo tradition. For a time, even the loas of the dead bowed down to him.”
“Wait,” Myles said. “How much do you know about the loas of the dead? Even I didn’t realize he had achieved that much power in Guinee. I thought he only managed to rule the seventh gate.”
“The Church would be foolish to only focus on what we teach our congregations. Keeping an eye on the other belief systems, though it’s not outwardly acknowledged, has been our mandate from the time of Christ. We could hardly convince members of false religions to join us if we didn’t first understand where they’d gone wrong and what they’d gotten right.”
Professor Yates rubbed at his scraggly beard, a motion that meant he’d hit on something significant. “I remember talking to Father Carl about how the Church often absorbed ceremonies from pagan cultures in order to entice their people to convert. How far do you personally pursue these ideas?”
“You’re asking if I believe in voodoo’s ideas about Guinee, the loas, and the deep waters, I see a lot of crossover. Often our disagreements are more matters of semantics than real differences.”
Kendell could see the rest of the afternoon veering off into speculation about philosophies if left to the two old men. “So you have no allegiance to Baron Malveaux even though he did contribute to the church, and your uneasy alliance with voodoo prevents you from going into details about what was discussed with Marie Laveau. Can we get to Colin now?”
He consulted a computer tablet off to the side of the desk. “For someone so enamored with books, you don’t seem to care for character buildup, Miss Summer.”
It took all of her inner strength to remain seated. “You drive your point home with all the subtlety of a jackhammer. I get it. You keep track of me just like you did with Archibald Malveaux—though, in place of a dusty journal, you’ve updated your method of recording information.”
Myles again tried to steer a neutral course through the conversation. “Once you excommunicated the baron, what was your interaction with the Malveaux family? His son, for instance, never embraced voodoo, and the baron’s wife ended her days in Our Lady of Mercy Convent.”
“We looked after Miss Fleur with all the love someone would have for a favorite aunt who’d endured an abusive marriage. If anyone could have convinced the Church to act against Baron Malveaux, it would have been Fleurentine Laurette-Malveaux. Fortunately for us, she never asked. As for Antoine Laurette, we offered our services, but he refused.”
Kendell wondered whether the monk’s stern reaction toward her was because she was a woman, or if she just got under his skin by not taking everything he said as gospel. “Then you know of the cursed objects,” she said, not wanting to leave all the questions
to Myles. “But my understanding is the Church doesn’t deal with supernaturally charged items, only those belonging to the saints.”
“It must be obvious that if we had dealings with Marie Laveau, we would also be aware of Luther Noire’s operation. He’s proven useful in safeguarding certain items we’d rather not have in our possession. But again, Antoine wasn’t interested in abdicating his family responsibility.”
Myles let go of Kendell’s hand and leaned on the desk. “I think we have a pretty clear understanding of the Church’s relationship to Archibald. What about the other half of Colin—Lincoln Laroque?”
Brother Aramis turned the pages slowly as if following the family line’s century-old interaction with the Church. “Between Archibald and Lincoln, the family may have changed names, but their patronage of the Catholic Church remained unblemished.”
Kendell began to wonder if the man under the hood really believed money didn’t buy loyalty. “With a family that rich and powerful, I’d guess their contributions have done a lot toward building the diocese to what it is today.”
He rested his hands on the pages as if he was about to lunge across the desk. “As I’ve told you, money is only a means to an end for the Church. We are not for sale, no matter the bidder.”
“I didn’t mean to impugn your integrity, but how open would you be if our questions were just regarding an average family and not the most powerful people in New Orleans?”
He leaned back into his chair. “Had Professor Yates not asked about Baron Malveaux, we wouldn’t even be meeting. If you’ll allow me to continue, perhaps you’ll learn why.”
Kendell was suddenly grateful to have been educated in the public schools and not under the direction of the Church. “I’ll just sit here quietly minding my manners then.”
He returned to the book as if her answer wasn’t meant to be sarcastic. “Like his ancestor, Lincoln Laroque was a fan of covering his bets. Though not brought up a Catholic, his contributions have been sizable and without expectations.” He looked up over his reading glasses. “We have been expecting some request from him, but so far, he seems content to believe he has us in his debt should the need arise.”
Kendell was happy to let Myles be the one to skate out onto the thin ice. “Are you aware of how Lincoln became Colin?”
“And now we get to the crux of the matter.” Brother Aramis closed the massive ledger. “For some topics, the Church still believes in an oral tradition. A story, once written, loses the dynamic flow of the spoken word. So it is with the creations of devils and saints. Once the facts are laid bare for all to see, the Church sanctifies the work of people like me. Until that day, however, I’m bound to my predecessors through our evolving understanding of the facts.”
Myles nodded as if what Brother Aramis said made perfect sense. “Baron Malveaux found his way out of Guinee. He possessed my body, driving my soul into a dark corner I’d rather not discuss. He was exorcised out of me and into a voodoo spirit jar. Lincoln drank the liquid essence and became Colin Malveaux.”
Brother Aramis took in the information in silence. His blank expression reminded Kendell of a computer’s lack of emotion as data was fed into it. “Is this where Sanguine Delarosa enters the story?”
Kendell sensed her swamp witch friend was about to be condemned by the Church. “She’s not responsible for what her grandmother created. Sanguine was only trying to protect the living from what Colin had become.”
Brother Aramis crossed his arms over the book and closed his eyes. “Emotions are one of the experiences we try to remove from the retelling of a story. Though your passion for your friend is admirable, it’s of little use in finding your answer.”
Myles put his hand on her knee, and she remained quiet, letting him take the lead. “If you remove emotion, you remove all understanding of Sanguine Delarosa. In her world, love overrides logic. We came here today because we wanted to understand not what your church preaches, but what it does. What we believe about forgiveness, the bonding of human spirits, and an understanding of who we truly are is only getting in the way of us containing Colin. You’re the expert on separating people into the saved and the damned.”
Kendell had never wanted to kiss Myles more, but this was hardly the time and place. “Agnes Delarosa based Colin’s hell at least in part on what your church has spent the last millennia describing. Where did we go wrong?”
“Pure evil will find its natural state, but we don’t believe any person is fully good or bad. A spirit that sees itself as unredeemable gratefully accepts banishment. Satan, the fallen angel, doesn’t hate hell. It is his domain. Those unfortunates banished to his realm might wish for redemption, but he does not. This simple distinction is how you will know if Colin is your devil ruling his domain, or a spirit forced there against his will.”
For once, Kendell hoped Colin really was the devil. “I can’t image anyone more evil in thoughts and deeds than Baron Malveaux, but I can’t answer for Colin.”
“Our hell wasn’t created by humanity, with its mixture of good and evil, nor does God rule over hell. Evil incarnate created the realm and watches over it. Colin Malveaux, however, didn’t create your hell. He isn’t your fallen angel but is merely a prisoner in a cell with no one in charge.”
29
Myles didn’t say a word for the first two blocks as he headed home with Kendell. “He wasn’t necessarily talking about Sanguine.”
“The hell he wasn’t, and stop reading my mind.”
From the moment Brother Aramis had said “fallen angel,” Myles knew Kendell would fixate on Sanguine being the logical ruler of her grandmother’s hell.
“The story of Satan revolves around him trying to usurp power from God. Fallen angel referred to him being banished from heaven. Sanguine doesn’t fit either description. She was attempting to fulfill her grandmother’s plan, not replace it with one of her own. If anyone should be hell’s ruler, it would be Agnes Delarosa.”
Kendell held his hand as they walked along Royal Street. The sound of her shoes scraping along the concrete sidewalk made him feel like he was dragging his kid sister home from a fight.
“You and I heard two very different stories from Brother Aramis,” she said. “He might be willing to accept some connection between voodoo and the Church, but he wouldn’t even say the word Wicca.”
Myles had noticed the omission as well. “Have you considered that he might not know that much about Sanguine or her grandmother? From what I could make out, most of the people the Church kept an eye on were residents of New Orleans. Sanguine and her grandmother lived pretty much off the grid out there in the swamp.”
“You mean until we came along. When it comes to stories about witches and the Church, Sanguine’s distrust might be well-founded. Now that she’s been so active with us, the Church has taken notice. She probably doesn’t see this life as the refuge it once was.”
Myles feared where Kendell’s thoughts might be headed. “Look, we’re not going to let her move to hell and take up her grandmother’s cause or pursue her plan of removing Colin from existence. We’ll be her family, and that will give her a reason to stay among the living. But Brother Aramis had a good point. Colin isn’t the devil to this version of hell. He’s trying to escape. If we can’t resurrect Agnes to play the role of hell’s ruler, we need to find a way to make Colin accept whatever realm we dump him into.”
“A blank slate where he gets to form his own hell?”
Myles wondered how many hells were out there. “No. Brother Aramis also said a devil wants followers. Given a blank dimension, Colin would try to entice—or force—others to join him.”
“That’s almost what we’re facing now, only instead of moving people into his dimension, he wants to take over ours.”
Myles tried fitting the pieces together, but it was as though multiple puzzles had been mixed together. “Not necessarily our reality, just the one he thinks you inhabit.”
“What are you thinking?”
&n
bsp; He wasn’t sure, but talking it out helped. “We can’t build a new dimension. The Church won’t take our castoff. Left on his own, Colin will blast a hole between his reality and ours, but only to get to you. Ideally, we want him to accept the hell he’s in. That would be the simplest answer. We already know we can move voodoo totems from his reality to ours, and Delphine confirmed that we can send a totem back to hell. The real trick is making sure the energy he’s building up in the World Trade Center doesn’t actually blow a hole between dimensions and continue to pump his evil into our world. We’ll need a way to utilize that energy.”
Her eyes bore into his like she was pulling the ideas straight from his brain. “If we make mirrors of ourselves so convincing he couldn’t tell the difference, and positioned them in his hell, he might think he’d made his way back to our reality. But a virtual hell built on top of his current dimension would need a lot of power to make it run.”
He shook his head, trying to see all the specifics. “We’ve seen his hell. It’s only a charade of the real thing. We would need more than just people. Then there’s the whole time-standing-still problem. Don’t forget, Agnes spent most of her life building just the simplistic version of New Orleans. We’re talking about a layout so precise it would fool the man who provided much of the funding that built what we see. Even once we were ready, we’d have to time our additions to when he tried to escape.”
“True, but yours is the first idea I’ve heard that doesn’t end up with a tear in the fabric of life and death.”
“I wonder what Sanguine will say.”
* * *
Though Sanguine had learned to find comfort on any flat surface she called home, having spent the better part of two months comatose on Kendell and Myles’s couch made crashing on the same cushions a bit awkward. She longed to return to the swamp, but without her grandmother, the old cabin that hung in the trees no longer felt like home. The vision of her grandmother as a young woman and the cabin freshly painted wasn’t one she wanted diminished by reality.