Return of the Hunters (The DeathSpeaker Codex Book 4)

by Sonya Bateman

  When we cleared the bridge, the sky above the city was a pale, washed-out green. And the buildings were…wrong. I couldn’t figure out why.

  “Jesus Christ,” I breathed. “And nobody notices this?”

  “Nobody who ain’t on the Path,” Bastien said. “You okay?”

  I shrugged carefully. “Guess I have to be.”

  But I decided not to look at the scenery anymore.

  After more quick turns and backtracks than I could count, Denei and Zoba made a left turn and vanished around the corner of a big cement building with boarded windows. I caught up to find an alley paved with cobblestones and bordered on the right by an eight-foot wooden fence that curved around the back of the building. Behind us, the increasingly bizarre sky and distorted buildings had become an industrial graveyard, populated with silent rusted structures and empty paved spaces.

  And around the curve of the alley, in a pocket of unnatural shadow, was Boite Boko.

  The front door of the fat two-story brick building was painted black. A second-floor balcony spanned the width and continued back on both sides. The balcony railings were bones—oversized and made of metal and plaster, but the effect was still chilling. And there was a sign at the apex of the roof. No words on it. Just a picture of a skull wearing a garishly colored Mardi Gras mask, with blue flames dancing in its empty eye sockets.

  Absolutely nothing in me wanted to walk through that awful black door.

  But I’d promised.

  CHAPTER 19

  For some reason, I didn’t expect to see any patrons at this club. Maybe because it wasn’t quite noon—not really a happening hour for the club scene. But there were people in here.

  At least, I was pretty sure they were people.

  The place was dark. There was a kind of dirty yellow light hanging around the walls that never quite reached the center of the vast room behind the door, but I couldn’t see any light fixtures or lamps. Counter-style tables with tall wooden stools on the right-hand side of the room held a scattering of shadowed figures with gleaming eyes. I thought I saw Mama Reba among them, but I managed not to murder whoever was behind the hallucination. And to the left was a bar, and a bartender. A tall skeleton of a man in a top hat with a banded snake coiled around his right arm, its head hanging over his left shoulder.

  Denei paid no attention to the patrons. She headed straight through the darkened center, and stopped at the back of the room in front of a staircase heading up. When everyone gathered around, she looked at me. “You ready for this, handsome?”

  Not even close. “Yeah,” I said. “Listen, if something goes wrong—”

  She cut me off with a wave of her hand. “Might not seem like it, considerin’ the way this all shook out, but we’re all grateful to you. Nothin’s gonna change that,” she said. “Jes’ remember that we chose this. We cain’t do this no more, none of us. And one way or another…we done.”

  The rest of them murmured agreement. Senobia laid a hand on my arm and smiled. “You the DeathSpeaker, right?” she said. “So if we don’ make it, we just hang around and haunt your ass.”

  Zoba made a sound. It was probably supposed to be encouraging.

  “Right,” I said. “Well, lead the way. Let’s do this.”

  Though the place sure as hell looked like two stories from the outside, we passed the second floor and somehow kept going up. The door at the top of the next flight of stairs was already open. Beyond it was a wooden loft, completely empty except for Legba.

  He looked exactly the same as he had in Zoba’s memory. White suit, purple scarf and glasses, silver skull-topped black cane. And he was damned powerful. Even I could feel the air crackling around him, the unnatural energy filling the room. The hair on the back of my neck stood up the way it did in the moments before a storm broke.

  And the longer I looked at him, the harder it was to see him. My eyes watered with the effort. Finally, I realized I was trying to trace a shape that wasn’t quite there. Some kind of massive, distorted shadow lurking behind him.

  The Fae used glamour to change their appearance and look more human. I had a feeling that Papa Legba did something similar—this was a projection, not his true form. But at least the Fae were basically the same shape.

  If I was really sensing this right, Legba wasn’t even remotely human.

  “Well. At least you have arrived on time, children.” Legba frowned severely and shook his head. “I will give you this one chance to limit your suffering, no?” He looked around slowly, and his gaze settled on me. “Serve me, DeathSpeaker. I would have your knowledge added to my own.”

  I took my time responding. Maybe if I stalled him, I could control him before he knew I was trying. “You mentioned something about rewards,” I said, already reaching out the way Nyantha had taught me—kind of mentally extending my arms without moving. When I was talking to the dead, this let me pull the soul into myself and project it outward with a glamour. The dead couldn’t lie to me…and once I had them, I could use magic on them. “What kind of rewards are we talking about?”

  “Gideon, what the hell you doing?” Denei whispered sharply.

  “Silence, child.” Legba gestured at her, and she shuddered and closed her mouth. “You have power, do you not?” he said to me. “I can sense it in you. But I can give you so much more. Gifts that will make your power seem like a plaything.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I’d almost reached him. I closed my eyes briefly, allowing myself to focus better. “What kind of—”

  The instant I made invisible contact with him, a deafening roar filled my head, and I couldn’t speak another word. Thousands of whispering voices at once. Jesus Christ, he really was just a shitload of dead souls—and I was in contact with all of them. Hearing just one soul in my head was painful enough.

  This felt like railroad spikes being hammered through my skull from the inside.

  My nose started bleeding immediately. I gritted my teeth against the pain, pushing everything I had into it. I only had to hold on long enough for one command. One spell. But I had to make sure it would work like this. I’d never tried talking to the dead without pulling the souls in completely.

  And if I tried that here, my brain would probably explode.

  “What’s your name?” I gasped.

  WE ARE LEGBA.

  Thousands of voices in unison, every one a needle through my head. Blood gushed from my nose and soaked the front of my shirt.

  Legba stiffened, and his cane clattered to the floor. “This is your power?”

  “Yeah, pretty much,” I ground out. “Release the Duchenes. Saohram iahd.”

  This time the voices screamed. My vision flashed white, and I felt hot blood stream from my ears, and then my eyes. When the light faded, I saw Legba through a red film, shivering in place.

  But all at once, the pain vanished on its own. And my strength went with it.

  I dropped to my knees, gasping for breath. Something wasn’t right. I had no idea what should’ve happened with the whole release thing, but it shouldn’t have been nothing.

  It hadn’t worked. At all.

  Legba retrieved his cane and casually polished the skull with a sleeve. “You have command over the dead,” he said. “This is an intriguing power, child. Yet you sought to command me.” He stepped forward. “How did you expect to do this, when I am very much alive? I am Legba,” he thundered. “I am, and I will be. Always. And now, my children, you will pay the price for your malicious defiance.”

  CHAPTER 20

  As Legba started to raise his cane, Reun ran toward him and grabbed him by the throat. “You’ll not harm them, foul beast. Coriin a mùtaadh!”

  The words meant something like wither and fall apart. There was a sizzling sound, and smoke dribbled between Reun’s fingers. Jagged black lines formed on Legba’s neck and spread rapidly to his face. The skin started to sag and wrinkle.

  Legba shook the cane a few times. The end became a blade—and he drove it through Reun’s arm.


  As Reun fell back with a startled shout, he yanked the blade out and motioned with his free hand. Reun slid roughly across the floor and collided with the far wall. The whole building trembled with the impact. Then Legba sighed and passed a hand down his face.

  It was like Reun never touched him.

  “I have shown you mercy, Fae.” He glared a challenge. “Lay hand to me again, and I will not be so generous.”

  Jesus Christ. Reun was seven hundred years old, and a noble. And this guy had just smacked him down like he was no more dangerous than a mosquito.

  I managed to stand and tried to catch my breath. The small charge my spark had gotten in Arcadia was just about gone, and I had to assume Reun used the rest of his on that spell. He hadn’t even moved from where he’d landed. At least the Duchenes probably had something in mind. They must’ve had a contingency plan in case things went horribly wrong. Which had definitely happened.

  But when I looked back, every one of them was standing perfectly still, with identical expressions of frozen fear.

  “They cannot stand against me,” Legba said, like he’d read my mind. “They are mine. And you have already proven that you have no power over me. Stand aside now, DeathSpeaker, while I finish this task my children have driven me to perform.”

  “No power? We’ll see about that.” I had one desperate idea left. I’d used it against more powerful Fae, and it worked just because they weren’t expecting something so simple. I gestured at him and said, “Beith na cohdal.” The spell took everything I had left.

  Legba failed to fall asleep.

  And then, he started laughing.

  “You are quite brave, no? Attempting to use Fae magic against me, when I have already defeated your friend.” He folded his hands on top of his cane, leaned forward—and astonishment registered in his features. “Samedi,” he whispered.

  Before I could even try to figure out what the hell that meant, there was a low, angry sound to my left as Zoba broke free of whatever was holding him back and rushed at him.

  He actually managed to tackle Legba to the floor and land a single, bone-crunching blow. But just as quickly, Legba tensed and threw him straight up—so hard that the impact cracked a roof beam. Zoba dropped like a stone, landing flat on his back.

  Within seconds, Legba was on his feet. And furious. “I had planned to collect my payment from you alone,” he said. “But now you will truly suffer. A long life, with a great burden of pain that will never ease. You will know, always, that you have brought this on yourself.”

  “No,” Denei moaned. “Please…”

  “Oh, it is far too late to beg. I have no mercy left.” Legba pointed his cane at Rex and Senobia. “You two,” he said. “It is time to come home, children.”

  Their screams pierced the air like steel blades.

  Rex fell first, with Senobia seconds behind. Their bodies shook like they were being electrocuted, and an awful, wet ripping sound filled the room as the youngest Duchenes shivered into stillness.

  And the ver-géants slithered out from the collars of their shirts.

  The things were three feet long, a good two inches thick. Mutant centipedes made of countless bristling black legs and dull black flesh, marbled with the blood of their hosts. They moved in rapid, skittering S-curves toward Legba. When they reached him, each one crawled up a pants leg and vanished.

  “Never test me again, children,” Legba said in the horrified silence. “There is no limit to the suffering I can cause you. Do not believe this is the worst that will happen, for I can and will bring about far greater anguish than your limited imaginations can conceive.”

  The shadow behind him swallowed him whole. Then it faded, and he was gone.

  It felt like there was a red-hot boulder parked on my chest. I couldn’t tell if it was a consequence of the promise, or just my utter shock that Senobia and Rex were gone. Not passed out, not critically hurt, but beyond any hope of healing or magic. Dead. In seconds.

  I couldn’t do a thing to stop Legba. Not one damned thing.

  Denei was the first to move. She staggered the short distance to her fallen siblings and sank bonelessly between them, staring in disbelief at the blood soaked into their shirts. “Nobi?” she said in a soft, plaintive tone, reaching over to stroke her sister’s hair with a trembling hand. “Rex, honey…?”

  There was a flat pop as Isalie clapped a hand hard to her mouth and started breathing in rapid, distressed gasps. Bastien circled her with an arm, shielding her from the sight of the bodies as he led her toward Zoba, who was struggling to sit up.

  “No, no, no, no…God, no…” Swaying slightly, Denei gathered them up and pulled their heads into her lap. Blood smeared her hands as she tried to keep them from flopping horribly to the sides like rag dolls with worn stuffing. Her breath hitched and stuttered in a terrible, tuneless rhythm.

  I didn’t dare say a word to any of them right now. Instead I rushed over to Reun, who’d started to stir, and helped him right himself. I was pretty sure he had no idea what just happened. And I had no idea how I’d break it to him.

  He shivered and focused on me. At least he had his back to the rest of them, for the moment. “Gideon,” he rasped. “You’ve lost your glamour.”

  Jesus. I really had drained everything—and it still wasn’t enough. “Yeah, guess I did,” I said shakily. “Listen, Reun…”

  An unholy scream filled the room, dense with anguish and absolute despair.

  Reun’s eyes widened in horror. He immediately tried to get up, but I held him down firmly. “I think we should give them a few minutes,” I whispered beneath the awful sound.

  He glanced back, and then shuddered and went limp.

  Denei’s wavering cry went on for longer than anyone should’ve been able to breathe. Finally, she choked air into her lungs as the other three gathered around her, and she started rocking violently back and forth, still clutching the bodies. “My babies!” she wailed, tears streaming unchecked from her eyes. “He’s killed my babies!”

  I swallowed against the fire in my throat and forced myself to look away, hearing Senobia’s last words to me echo in my head, over and over. If we don’ make it…

  I was already trying to figure out a way to end the bastard who’d taken them.

  CHAPTER 21

  The half-moon rising over the swamp stirred memories that had been coming back way too often lately.

  Getting out of Boko’s was a blur. At some point one of the Duchenes must’ve made a call, because a handful of people showed up with a cargo van. They were hastily introduced as cousins. No one inside the club said or did anything as the bodies were carried out and loaded inside, and everyone piled in. There was a long, silent drive south through the city to the river, and another migration from the van to a wooden flat-bottomed keelboat moored at a decrepit dock.

  Two cousins, Aubin and T-Sam, had boarded the boat with us while the rest drove off in the van. Rex and Senobia lay under canvas tarps at the back of the craft. Everyone else had collapsed wherever they found space while the cousins navigated the waters with a long bargepole.

  I hadn’t bothered asking where we were going. We’d been on the water almost three hours, headed deep into the bayou. A searchlight mounted at the front of the boat allowed for careful passage through the treacherous terrain. Swamp cypress and tupelo trees decked with Spanish moss wove a dark canopy overhead, and duckweed choked most of the surface of the water, broken by the angular knobs of cypress knees. More than once, I spotted sleek, sinewy coppermouth snakes slipping from weed-tangled pseudo-banks into the water, or the ominous rippling V pattern of a gator just beneath the surface.

  And I started to notice other, non-natural things. Like hunting traps.

  We passed a good-sized hummock strewn with dead leaves, and I caught glimpses of a thick chain and a few jagged metal teeth—all of it painted black. Then, in a stagnant pool of murky water, I saw the faint outlines of a submerged cage trap baited with a live fish—well,
barely live. It was swimming sluggish circles in a water-filled glass box, set just past the trigger at the back of the cage.

  Those were poacher traps. Virtually invisible to animals, and to most people who might stumble across them. The Valentines were especially fond of the live-bait cage. And they’d never given a damn when their setups caused human casualties—when they found one, they just disposed of the victims like they were unwanted entrails pulled from a kill.

  I tried to dismiss the idea that the Valentines actually were here in the swamps. They weren’t the only poachers who hunted these grounds.

  But those traps felt too damned familiar.

  I made my way to the bow, where T-Sam stood lookout and murmured occasionally to Aubin, who was poling the boat. T-Sam was a squat, muscular man somewhere in his mid-forties with a shaved head and weathered skin. He hadn’t spoken two words aloud, except what he mumbled to the younger Aubin. The strong resemblance between the two suggested they were father and son.

  “Hey,” I said when I reached him. “You guys get a lot of poachers around here?”

  T-Sam turned his head slowly and fixed me with dark, bloodshot eyes. “Yeah.”

  “So you’ve seen the traps,” I said. “We passed at least two of them already.”

  He stared at me for another minute, and then slowly turned away without another word.

  “Uh, right. Good.” I sighed and shuffled off to the side where Aubin wasn’t poling, watching the forward progress. The boat was headed for a narrow throat of water between two rows of cypress, and it looked like a tight fit. But they must’ve made this trip before.

  Suddenly I noticed an unnatural glint near the surface of the water, right at the mouth of the tree tunnel. A long filament flashing in the searchlight. More glinting filaments criss-crossed above and stretched into the trees. And there were three dark, faintly glittering lumps hovering a few inches above the water.