And there was that poised dampness, thick in the air, a hovering threat.
The chanting was interrupted suddenly by a cry from one of the dancers. He screamed, clutching at his hair and falling to his knees. He threw back his head, his eyes pointed to the sky, and he repeated the scream. The others danced on, ignoring his outburst, drawing the sound of his voice into the chant and making it one with the sound—the spell of the moment.
And suddenly there was only the one naked, black man. Kneeling alone, as he’d been all along.
When he raised his head and stared at me, his eyes were pale, empty sockets. He smiled, licking his lips, and rose unsteadily, as if adjusting to his own limbs. Turning, he made his way out of my line of vision, returning moments later. He had three cigars hanging from his lips, all burning. On his head, a battered top hat was canted to one side, and in his right hand he clutched a bottle. The scent of rum made its way to my fogged mind—and something else. Rum and . . . peppers?
The flickering flames coalesced and became nothing more than reflected shafts of light filtered through some skylight above, tossed and twisted by the gnarled branches of a massive oak.
My mind was pulling itself back together. I tensed, ready to spring into action.
He moved toward me, the jerkiness gone from his step. It was replaced by cocky assurance. His eyes—still dead-white—seemed to glow. He took a huge swallow of the rum without a flinch. Smiling even wider, he opened his mouth and screamed a single word.
"Change!"
Bennet put the muzzle of a .357 against the sore spot on the back of Zolotow’s head. "Take the next exit and head south past Lackland."
"What about them?" Zolotow asked, nodding toward the radio.
"You don’t get it, do you, Zolo? What makes you think I give a fuck about those guys?"
"Right. Silly me. Forgot who I was talking to."
On the radio, Jesse reported that his A-Team had secured the living room. They’d located a tape player and switched off the weird chanting. The Rear Guard reported that the kitchen was also secure.
Then the channel was overcome with screams.
"Jesse?" It was Henry, the guy directing the whole fiasco. "What the hell’s going on in there?"
Nothing but screams and curses. Someone bellowed, "Darts! Fucking darts!"
"Darts? Someone tell me what’s going on?" Nothing. "East and West sides," Henry ordered, "enter through the fucking windows. Find out what’s going on in there."
"Texicans," Bennet interjected, "dumbest motherfuckers you ever seen."
Jesse: "It’s all right, Boss. It’s just some kinda booby trap. Darts, just darts. Vests caught most of them and—Oh, God, Hernandez is going into convulsions!"
"Interbreed with them stupid wetbacks long enough and this is what you get."
Jesse: "His goddamn eyes are popping out of his skull! I can’t hold him still. Madre de Dios, he bit off his tongue! Someone get an ambulance! Franco? Oh, man, Franco’s down too!"
Someone else screamed that something had taken his leg off below the knee.
Someone reported that a section of floor had opened up, dropping several men into a pit. The guy called for a light and when he got it, all he could do was sob and call on Jesus.
There came the sound of a small explosion.
More screams.
Jesse quit answering Henry’s demands for information. From the team that had entered through the kitchen, nothing. The teams flanking from the east and west reported heavy smoke. They couldn’t see. Henry ordered them out. Half of them didn’t make it. The half that did were coughing up blood.
A few seconds later, a major explosion.
And nothing.
"Gotta give that Voodoo Killer some credit," Bennet sniggered. "He throws one hell of a surprise party."
Tensed, ready to spring into motion but unwilling to be commanded, I waited.
"Smart bitch," he hissed, snake-like. He turned away and walked into the darkness. A second later the place was flooded with brilliant light. It was a barn. The floor was sopping mud. The four walls, each of which held one of the tethers supporting my weight, appeared to be made of magically levitated water. When my eyes adjusted to the sudden light, however, the nature of his trap became clear, and I knew why I had felt death poised all around me.
The walls were sheets of crudely framed glass panes holding back tons of water. Water leaked from the silicon seams, running in hungry rivulets down the surface of the condensation-beaded glass, pooling in the mud. The back walls of the crudely fashioned aquariums were plastic tarps set against the real walls of the barn. The only opening was the closed barn door, just beyond my captor. I could tear free and be out that door easily, ripping his throat open in passing, but there was something else. Where the ropes anchored to the surface of the glass there were wires and electronics and tiny bundles of plastique, spidering out in a web-like pattern from floor to ceiling.
"You see the charges? Yes, you see them. Struggle. Pull against your bonds. And you set off the charges." He walked over and stood under me. "Don’t worry about me. They’re only little charges. The most I’d suffer is a few shards of glass."
He ran a dirty finger down the length of my thigh. "But you, my bagay e’ffrayique, you will die, won’t you? You, my most terrifying demon, you are no swimmer." He laughed shrilly. "While you were unconscious, I offered you to the water, and do you know what it told me?" He danced around my suspended body, little clots of mud flying from his feet, flecking the glass. "The water told me you were an abomination, possessed of an incredible loa whose power could be mine if I were brave enough to perform the renvoi."
"Speak English," I told him. I was surprised to discover how difficult it was to talk. I was scared. More scared than I’d ever been.
"I’ve been looking for you for quite some time. The other women were false idols, loupgarous whose essence was but a mauvis air, less substantial than my own powers. The water didn’t want them, so I raped and killed them all and left them downtown so the police would have something to do.
"But you. . ." He licked his lips. "You are a bocor’s wet dream."
After that he went back to sucking his evil smelling cigars as if the time for conversation was at an end. He brought out a bucket and set it beneath me. He traced diagrams in the mud with ashes. He did some more chanting and dancing, this time with a rattle wrapped in snake bones and beads. There was a small blade set in the handle of the rattle and before I knew what he intended, he’d reached up between my legs and sliced open both thighs. Blood immediately flowed to the bucket in a steady stream. As I watched my life draining away, he dipped his hands in the bucket and smeared my blood across his face and in his mouth.
Could I be bled to death?
I honestly didn’t know.
Bennet had him switch the radio to the dispatch frequency and they listened to the chaos from that end while Zolotow drove south on Military Drive. There was one promising call, that of the ambulance reporting that they had Garza and were enroute to the hospital. Garza was reported to be unconscious, but stable.
"When you reach Zarzamora, turn south."
"Where are we going?" Zolotow asked.
Your friend," Bennet answered, "Mister Voodoo Killer—his real name’s William Gates. Ha! Bill Gates, just like that millionaire computer geek, ain’t that a riot? Except this guy’s a nigger. Rich nigger, though, has his own law office in Seguin. Probably chases ambulances. Anyway, he’s got a ranch south of town. I kinda’ neglected to tell anyone else about it. My guess is he’s holed up there."
"Why take me there?"
Bennet thumped him with the barrel of the revolver, irritating that same spot further. "One thing I’ve hated about you from the start, Zolo. You ask too many fucking questions."
"Sieber’s dead, you know?"
"Who gives a shit?"
"Garza knows everything."
"The Frenchman’ll pay me enough to get a new identity somewhere else. I’ve bee
n thinking about Switzerland. You ever seen the women they got there?" On the radio, the dispatcher began to demand that Bennet report in. "Gee, what do you think they want me for?"
Zolotow stopped for the light at Zarzamora and briefly debated jumping from the car. Bennet, he knew, would have no qualms about putting a .357 between his shoulder blades. In his haste he’d neglected to retrieve his Beretta, but the PPK was still strapped to his ankle. He considered the odds that he could get out of the car and get the PPK out before Bennet shot him. When the light went green, Zolotow turned right.
"We’re going to Gates’ place to find your lady friend," Bennet volunteered. "She and I need to trade blade tips—whatever that was she used to open up Sieber’s arm is a wicked mother. I want to see if she can howl that loud with my gun in her mouth. I’m supposed to take the bitch alive, but the more I think about it, the more I think I’ll just rape her and then put a few bullets in her head . . . not necessarily in that order."
"Don’t count on it," Zolotow said under his breath.
"I got a bullet with your name on it too, chum. Leave you and that nigger there so I can claim I solved the case—just in case you’re pulling my leg about Garza knowing his ass from a hole in the wall."
"And the Frenchman?"
"I’ll meet up with him later. Now shut up and drive. And keep your speed down, Zolotow, you’re starting to make me nervous."
"One more question."
"Ah, stuff your one more question, Zolo. You’re pissing me off, hear?"
"What makes you think you’ll find Katherine at this ranch?"
Bennet laughed. "Garza didn’t tell you everything, eh?"
"How do you know she’ll be there?"
"Turn left up here." The city had fallen behind them and they were now driving through a rural area. The road was lined with farmhouses, spotted here and there with trendy new suburban neighborhoods.
"How do you know?"
Bennet snickered.
Zolotow pushed the accelerator down and the car lurched forward.
"What the fuck do think you’re doing?" Bennet rapped his ear painfully with the gun.
The speedometer needle whipped past vertical, heading toward sixty miles an hour.
"I swear I’ll splatter your fucking brains all over the dashboard, Zolo! Slow this motherfucker down before we get pulled over!"
"Answer my question!"
"Fuck you." Bennet cocked the revolver and pressed the muzzle against the base of Zolotow’s neck. "Better buckle up, sweetheart, we’re fixing to hit a ditch or two."
"Answer the question."
"Night, night, Zolo."
Gritting his teeth, Zolotow held the steering wheel in a knuckle-white grip and waited for the shot. Seconds ticked past like hours.
"Shit. Slow down. I’ll answer the fucking question," Bennet surrendered. Zolotow heard him ease the hammer down on the revolver as he backed off the throttle. "This morning we found the owner of that strip joint with his head caved in. Gates must have heard about the bitch at the club—hell, the whole freaky scene was all over the news. We figure the club owner talked plenty before Gates beat him to death, but he didn’t have to say much. He had a phone number for your friend, a number at the Embassy Suites. By the time we got there she was long gone. Gates’ fingerprints were on the door to her room.
"Happy now?"
Their speed had dropped back down to the speed limit, but Zolotow’s hands were clutched just as tightly around the wheel. Bennet suddenly reached into the front seat with twelve inches of polished steel and slashed it brutally across the back of Zolotow’s hand and forearm. The flesh fell open in an eight inch long gash. Blood sprayed out in his lap. Zolotow bellowed and bit through his bottom lip.
"That’s for fucking with me," Bennet hissed from the back seat. "Next time I cut off one of your ears." He gestured with the knife. "See that dirt road coming up on the left? You want to turn in there. Gates owns a farmhouse about a mile down."
Zolotow spotted the turn off. The dirt road was bordered by deep ditches and thick cornfields. A sign facing the main drag proclaimed it to be a dead end.
"See it?" Bennet asked when it became obvious that Zolotow wasn’t slowing down for the turn.
"Yeah, I see it," Zolotow answered as he rolled the steering wheel all the way over. The Chevy careened out of control in a tight spin. Bennet cursed as he was thrown across the backseat and up against the passenger-side door. The Chevy took out the yellow dead end sign, hit the ditch, and rolled in a cacophony of crunching metal and murdered glass. One quick tumble and the car rolled back upright with heavy cornstalks slapping its sides. Glass from the shattered windshield was everywhere. Zolotow tasted blood in his mouth. More was gushing from a gash above his right eye.
Throwing his weight against the door, Zolotow was suddenly out and rolling, crashing through mud and coarse stalks. Behind him, Bennet cursed vehemently and spilled from the opposite side of the car. A quick backward glance showed him virtually untouched, his hair just slightly out of a place and a crazed look in his already maniacal eyes. As Zolotow fled through the corn, the .357 barked six times. Bullets whispered through the corn. One of them passed through Zolotow’s right bicep, the same arm Bennet had already sliced open, another burned a furrow along his left hip. Zolotow angled to the right, away from the road, zigzagging through the rows of corn. Each time he heard Bennet behind him, he angled away, clutching his arm against his chest in an effort to minimize the blood trail, trying his best not to crush stalks as he jumped furrows.
The sun was setting and the rows of corn were besieged with long, undulating shadows. Zolotow insinuated himself into those shadows, ignoring the pain that yelled for attention from every quadrant of his body, ignoring the fatigue that seized his muscles, ignoring the jack-hammer going off in his head.
Just about the time he decided that he’d lost Bennet, Zolotow burst unexpectedly out of the cornfield and into the open. Before him stood a large barn and, beyond the barn, a small ranch-style home.
From my point of view we were at something of an impasse. I wasn’t convinced that I couldn’t make it through the barn door before the full force of the water hit me. Still, one thing I had learned about traps over the years is that when they seem focused toward a single avenue of escape, that is generally the last place one should run. Also, the drugs made me uneasy about my abilities and reluctant to turn over control to the beast. But the decision would be moot if I didn’t free myself soon. Blood was still flowing steadily from my thighs, contributing to the drug-induced weakness. I wasn’t far from a do or die decision.
Ultimately, one thing stopped me.
His first word to me had been "change." For some reason, a reason I couldn’t even begin to comprehend, he needed to face the Beast. Not Katherine. He was bleeding me, but somehow I knew it wouldn’t prove enough for his purposes. He needed more than human blood in his bucket. He needed something from my other self—the blood of the beast, perhaps. But he had to also know I was running out of choices; if he didn’t get what he wanted, he might be quite content to stand there and watch me die.
Then the odds shifted a bit—almost imperceptibly. He was caught up in his moment, half himself and half whatever beast was inhaling cigars like fresh air and guzzling rum like water. I could sense the power of that other, could feel it drifting in and out of control as he swaggered about, watching me, looking at me from every angle. Every couple minutes he would spit a bit of the rum out and say something vile—prefaced or followed by that single command. "Change!" Whatever it was that gripped him, it didn’t enhance his senses. I heard the steps outside, silent for a man—awkward, plodding steps to my heightened senses. Somehow I sensed, as well, that it was not someone he was expecting.
The footsteps approached the barn quickly, and suddenly the Voodoo Killer stopped, growing tense, concentrating. Now I was sure the intrusion wasn’t a part of his plans. He snarled, tossed the bottle aside, and sprang toward the door, savagely jerki
ng it open.
Several things happened at once. The scent of Zolo’s sweat, still mixed with my own cheap perfume, wafted through the incense. But with it came another smell, the smell of another man. I couldn’t place it at first, but it was familiar. For a second Zolo stood framed in the doorway. I cried out to him to duck, to run—anything—an incoherent scream that told me how truly weak I was. Zolo leaped to the side, and a shot rang out. It couldn’t have come from as close as my captor, and it was in that instant that the scent clicked in my fog-shrouded mind. Bennet.
Bennet’s shot punched a neat hole in the glass behind me and a long streamer of water jetted out, arcing across the barn toward me. The stream strained against the limits of physics and the impetus of whatever pressure forced it through the hole in the glass, moving closer with each passing second. The balance of the water strained against the glass and spider web cracks screeched out from the bullet hole to the edges of the pane.
I nearly went, then. I would have if I hadn’t been so mesmerized by the queer dilation of time which had allowed me to watch each of those cracks grow in the glass, which was allowing me to watch, even yet, as that streamer of water inched across the length of the barn and reached for my feet.
Bennet came charging for the open doorway, straight for the Voodoo Killer who stood staring with mouth open and eyes wide, shocked and affronted that his ceremonies were being violated. Bennet would have come straight through the door, but Zolo leaped back from the shadows, shouldering the Voodoo Killer aside and slamming the heavy barn door on Bennet.
Bennet cursed and his gun barked. Three shots splintered through the door. One ricocheted off the metal cross bar brackets and went up through the ceiling. One struck Zolo in the side with a fleshy slap. The third took off the Voodoo Killer’s left thumb (I actually saw the black digit splash into the mud at his feet) and then sank into my thigh.
Very little blood leaked from the bullet hole in my thigh, and I realized I might have waited too fucking long after all.
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