They decided thkf it’d be best if they stayed together, not even separating for the night. Safety lay in numbers, and they weren’t going to make the mistake common in bad horror movies of splitting up to search the house. Sara, despite her protests, got Father Baltazar’s bedroom, while the priest took the sofa in his study, and the brothers lay down on cushions on the floor in the adjoining living room.
Father Baltazar’s bedroom, located at the rear of the house, was as quaint and cozy as his study. Other words to describe it, Sara thought, would be small and cramped. There was a single bed with an old handmade quilt, a nightstand, an ancient trunk at the foot of the bed, and more bookshelves crammed with more books, prints, icons, and other small chackas.
She would have stripped down to her underwear and tumbled into bed, but she had no underwear left. She unbuttoned Father Baltazar’s shirt and draped it over the trunk at the foot of the bed, unbuckled her holster and set it on the night stand that held a small lamp and the earthenware pot that, according to Father Baltazar, held Paul Narcisse’s soul. She unknotted the drawstring of the priest’s sweat pants and let them fall in a pile about her feet, then slipped into bed and pulled the sheet and quilt over her.
She had never been so tired in her life, yet also never so far from sleep. Her mind was awhirl with the day’s happenings, and speculation as to what the next day would bring. They were headed, she knew, toward a final confrontation with Guillaume Sam, and they’d lost the one who knew be§t how to fight him. Without Paul Narcisse they were goihg into batik- blind. No one else in the community could replace, him. There were lower-ranking houngans, but Father Baltazar was reluctant to bring them into the conflict, reluctant to risk more lives in what might be turning out to be a hopeless cause. Still-tomor-row he might have to face that reluctance, and overcome it, just as Sara might have to overcome her reluctance to bring Jake into the fray, if they wanted to have the barest hope of winning.
She was grateful to hear a low tapping on her door, grateful for anything to take her mind off the rollercoaster of fear and anticipation that was making it impossible for her to sleep.
“Come in,” she said in a low voice at the tentative sound at her door, and it opened a crack. A tall, broad shouldered form slipped into the room. She recognized the dark silhouette immediately.
“Alek.”
“Sara.”
He stood by the side of the bed, hesitant. “Sorry if I woke you up,” he said.
“You didn’t. I couldn’t sleep.”
“I couldn’t either. Mind if I come in?”
“If I did, I wouldn’t have said come in, would I?”
Alek laughed lowly. “I guess not.”
He only had to take a couple of steps to reach the edge of the bed. Sara sat up against the pillows, holding the sheet up to her chest. She looked at the arm holding the sheet. She was almost surprised to see that it was flesh, not covered by the metallic sheath of the Witchblade. The voices were suspiciously silent in her mind. Almost distractedly, she wondered what they were planning.
“I just felt that I had to see you. Alone. To talk to you. To-”
Sara lifted the edge of the quilt, and Alek quickly slid into the bed next to her. It was a small bed. Just lying there, they were actually embracing, her arm under his neck, their legs pressed together from thigh to calf.
“I had to tell you,” Alek said, “that these have been the most amazing days of my life. They’ve been awful, yet somehow exhilarating. You know the music we’ve been doing. Gothic. Dark. Ah that stuff.” He shook his head. “Christ. What did I know about darkness, until this? What did i know about cold, soulless evil? Or pure valor?”
He reached out and touched her cheek gently. “This is just some crazy down-the-rabbit-hole adventure I’ve wandered into. But you—this is your life! How do you do it, day after day? How to find the courage to face this evil, nasty shit like Guillaume Sam and his creatures?” Sara shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said simply. “I don’t think about it. If I did, I suppose I couldn’t do it.” “Yeah,” Alek said, “but how do you keep from thinking about it? I mean, I know we have to face Guillaume Sam again. We’re all hanging on a highwire suspended over a bottomless pit leading down to hell. And one of us-either Guillaume Sam’s group or our group-is going to fall down into it and never come out. Probably tomorrow. How do you keep from thinking about it?"
“Here’s one way,” she said.
She leaned over him, her hair fluttering down upon his face like the wings of a dove, and kissed him.
It was a kiss that fulfilled the promises of their earlier embraces. It lasted a long time and, soft and sweet at first, grew harder and more insistent. She felt his hands discover that she was naked. Gentle as his touch was, she flinched when his hands brushed her taped ribcage.
“Sorry,” he said into'her mouth and, in concert, they maneuvered so that no weight or pressure would be brought upon her ihjured side.
Either the voices left her or she forget they were there. Afterwards, looking back at it, she couldn’t tell which was true. All that she knew was herself and Alek Gervelis, holding back the fear, holding back the promise of the future, losing themselves and finding themselves in each other.
It was the sweetest, most human experience she’d ever had.
When it was over he fell asleep in her arms. He was too serious to smile, but she was happy enough to see his simple contentment. She held him close for his warmth, for the beating of his heart, for the blood coursing through his veins, and the sheer human electricity running on the network of his nervous system.
He slept, but she didn’t.
She still couldn't, because she knew that she couldn’t subject him or his brother or Father Baltazar to any more of what they’d experienced this day. They were not meant for it. They were not meant to face evil, whether coming from the barrel of a gun or the whisper of a bokor's curse.
She was. It was her job. She carried the Witchblade, but, more importantly, she carried a badge.
She would see this thing ended. One way or another. Alone.
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
y*
I
n a sense, Sara thought, it had all begun here. And perhaps it can end here as well.
' * Guinee was as peaceful and tranquil as ever. The weather was perfect, the scenery breathtaking. It seemed, Sara thought, like a great place to retire to, but she figured that at this rate it was unlikely she’d be around long enough to get a pension check. A nice headstone was probably the best that she could hope for.
She was at the crossroads. She sat down and waited, enjoying the feeling of the warm night breeze scented with tropical aromas playing over her nakedness, as the old man hobbled up the road toward her.
He shook his head and whistled at the sight of her. “You are a vision,” Papa Legba said as he reached her side. “It’s a good thing you’ve called the old man to you, not one of the younger spirits.”
Sara smiled. “Would they help me like you, Papa?” “Maybe,” Papa Legba said, leaning on his crutch. “Maybe for your smile, maybe for your favors, depending on who you called.”
“Why have you helped me, Papa?”
“Maybe for your smile,” the old man said, his face wrinkling into a hundred creases as he smiled himself. “Maybe because you’re polite and need my help. Maybe because you seek my help onjy to help others. Maybe because a favorite son asked me to.”
“Paul Narcisse?” * •
“Aye,” the old man said, nodding. “He was a good boy. Respectful to his elders. Always ready with a proper sacrifice. Even sacrificed himself in the end.”
“I know,” Sara said, tears wetting her cheeks.
“Don’t ciy, child,” Papa Legba said gently. “This is Guinee, land of the loa. All things are possible here. Speak from your heart, girl. What do you need?”
Sara looked down at her nakedness. “Well, I’d hate to go where I have to go tonight like this. I could proba
bly use some clothes.”
“Probably,” Papa Legba said, and she was suddenly wearing a typical outfit of boots, jeans, and a pullover loose enough to move comfortably in, tight enough to show her lithe curves. “Just where do you have to go tonight, child?”
“You know.” Sara gestured up the road to where the dark and forbidding cemeteiy lay. “I want to finish this. I want to finish it tonight, here, where no one else can get hurt.” Papa Legba nodded. “That would be good.”
“I just want to know that I have a chance,” Sara told him, suddenly desperate. “I just want to know that I’m not going to throw my life away and that my friends will continue to suffer at the hands of Guillaume Sam."
Papa Legba laughed. “Would it comfort you to know that Guillaume Sam is asking the very same thing of his benefactor, right now?”
Sara was surprised. “He is?”
“Would it comfort you further to know that you don’t have to go on this journey alone?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
A small head popped up from the macoute, the straw tote bag slung over Papa Legba’s shoulder. It was covered with white fur and, like Papa Legba, had eyes the color of . blood. It climbed out of the sack, and sat on the loa’s thin, frail shoulder.
“Sandro!” Sara exclaimed.
The spirit guide meowed a faintly distant greeting. He was kitten-sized, perhaps in concession to his patron’s apparent frailness, but with the same intelligence, the same fierceness underneath his placid surface that Sara remembered from their past encounter.
“Can he go with me?” she asked Legba eagerly.
But the old spirit shook his head.
“We cannot take sides in the battle between right and left. We partake of both, though my sympathies most often lie with the good and respectful. Besides,” he grinned, “I’m not sure Sandro trusts you-or rather, that which rides you like a loa rides his mount. But do not worry. I am the opener of the door, the guardian of the gates. I allow the spirits to descend. Or, sometimes, ascend. Look, child, at who comes down the road.”
Sara followed his steadily pointing finger to see someone trudging up the road the way Papa Legba himself had come. It took Sara a moment to realize that it was Paul Narcisse, whole and alive. Apparently. He seemed as serious as ever, and was dressed as neatly, as conservatively, as ever.
“Paul...”
Sara went to embrace him, but stopped before they touched. Viewed,« from close up, he was ethereal. The moonlight shone through his eyes, making them dark pits in his skull. His legs faded into uneven nothingness at his ankles. This wasn’t Paul Narcisse after all, Sara realized, but just part of him. His gros-bon-ange.
“Are you all right?” she asked. “I mean—”
Tm fine,” he .said. “Thanks to you my gros-bon-ange was saved from Guillaume Sam. It rests safely in the pot-de-tete by your sleeping form as our spirits walk and talk in Guinee.”
“You’re the one who asked Papa Legba to watch over me?”
“It was the least I could do for someone willing to risk her life, her immortal soul, for my people.”
“What do we do now?” Sara asked.
“Your instincts were good,” Paul Narcisse told her. “The final confrontation could be fought on Earth, where many might die, or here in Guinee where it will be limited to those occupying this plane.”
“But,” Sara said, “in Guinee I lack my most potent weapon.”
Narcisse shook his head.
“You only think you do,” he told her. “Father Baltazar told me of your... situation. You have allowed this thing which mounts you to take possession of your body on its terms, when it wants to, so that it can further its own agenda. But you are stronger than that. You can bend it to your will. You have to stop being in awe of it. And being afraid of it. It needs you as you sometimes need it. You will never be able to control it entirely, but you can partner with it on your terms.”
“How?” "
“By being yourself, Sara,” Paul Narcisse said gently. “It chose you. It doesn’t want you to know that it needs you more than you need it. Before it came along you were doing just fine. Before you came along it was in limbo, looking for someone like you.
“You’re a rare person,” Paul Narcisse told her. “You’re a bom warrior, full of strength and pride. But, rarer yet, you are a warrior with compassion. You don’t fight for glory. You don’t fight for financial reward. You fight to ' protect the weak and innocent.” He smiled. “You’re a rare commodity, Sara Pezzini, and the Witchblade knows that.”
“But it can’t even come into Guinee,” Sara told him. “Every time I’ve come here it’s been silent.”
“That’s because subconsciously you haven’t allowed it to accompany you. You’ve been seeking a sanctuary from it, and you’ve found one in Guinee. But Guinee isn’t preventing it from following you here. You are. Open your mind. Reach out for it. You will find it.”
Sara found it hard to believe that she’d been exerting that much control over the Witchblade without realizing it, but there was no reason for Paul Narcisse to lie to her. He was the expert on such matters, she-despite the fact that she hosted the Witchblade-the novice.
She closed her eyes and concentrated. The silence around her was as perfect and as deep as the night. She reached out, questing with her mind, and after what might have been minutes or might have been hours, touched upon the familiar voices that were her omnipresent company. They were complaining grumpily to themselves.
“-left us again-”
“Where does she go-”
“-that we cannot accompany her-”
"What does she do-”
“-that we cannot see-”
"Miss me?” she asked, and caught the sudden tinge of startlement in their essences, “Then come and join me.” They did. Instantaneously. She was surprised to find them somewhat fearful of Guinee, as if it were a foreign land not suited to their taste. It was clear they didn’t like this realm. Their uncertainty, oddly enough, made them seem more human, perhaps easier to deal with. She would certainly test Paul Narcisse’s theories thoroughly before this sojourn in Guinee was over.
“You see?” he asked, as if he could read her mind.
Sara nodded. “Now for Guillaume Sam.”
“You know where to find him?” Papa Legba asked. Sara gestured down the road to the waiting cemetery. “Will he be there?”
“He will,” Papa Legba said. “His presence is the third and final boon that I grant you. Of course, he will not be alone.”
“Neither will Sara,” Paul Narcisse said.
“Farewell, then,” the loa said, “and good luck. Remember your old Papa from time to time.”
Sara leaned over and hugged him. He felt as thin as the wind, but a strange electricity ran through his form and it seemed to impart some of itself to her. Suddenly she felt stronger than she had for weeks, mentally rested and ready for anything.
She looked at Sandro. He condescended to allow a swift pat on the head and scratch behind the ears. Sara smiled, feeling that perhaps they had at least gone some way toward making up.
“All right” She turned to the gros-bon-ange of Paul Narcisse, who stood wavering before her in the night wind like a mirage. “I hope you’re not afraid of cemeteries,” she said.
“A cemetery will hold my body,” he said. “Nothing can hold my soul.” *
“I hope so,” Sara said, and they started down the road together. %
There being nothing more to say, they walked in silence, dead man and possessed cop, to the home of the Guede Family, of which Baron Samedi was the head.
Someone was waiting for them at the entrance to the graveyard. Paul Narcisse seemed to recognize him.
“Ah, Captain Zombi,” he said. “How good of you to meet us.”
For an evil spirit, Captain Zombi seemed a cheerful, even comical sort, with his trousers rolled up above his knees, a fat cigar in his mouth, and a half-drunk bottle of rum grasped by the neck in one
hand.
“Not at all,” he said sunnily. “We don’t get such distinguished guests very often, and my lord, Baron Samedi, did not want you to lose your way among the tombs.”
He gestured backward into the cemetery. Even with the full moon shining like a soft and gentle sun, it was a dark and disturbing place. Gravestones and monuments and crypts crowded closely together. Funeral statuary seemed to move like living things as clouds glided across the moon or the wind shifted the shadows of overhanging trees.
“This way, if you please.”
The loa led them up a crooked pathway between the graves. It was cold* inside the cemetery. The night breeze was no longer warm, nor sweet. There was a chilly edge to it, and it smelled of wet earth and things that had lain in graves inside rotting wooden caskets for a long time. Darkness could be tasted on the air, and mysteries that Sara didn’t Want to know the solutions to.
They were waiting for her atop the hill that loomed in the center of the cemeteiy. Paul Narcisse named some of them for her. Just the important ones, for there were far too many for him to name in the time that they had.
There was the trinity of Baron Samedi, the head of the Guede family, in his top hat and sunglasses, alongside his brothers—or maybe other aspects of himself—Baron La Croix and Baron Cimetiere. There was Samedi’s wife, Big Brigitte, goddess of black magic and ill-gotten gold, dressed in a flowing purple dress, and their three sons, General Jean-Baptiste Trace, General Fouille, and Ra-masseur de Croix, Collector of Crosses.
Below them on the hillside were the lesser spirits, Guede Souffrant, Erzulie of the Black Heart, Marinette bwa Chech—Marinette of the Dry Arms-and Criminelle and the one-legged Ti Jean, and too many others to name or even remember.
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