by Nancy Morse
“What would you do if you did encounter one?”
“Run like my pants were on fire. My neck has enough to worry about from the hangman’s noose.”
He said this without a hint of guile in his tone, and every instinct she owned told her he was not a vampire hunter. She should have been relieved, but the knowledge of his innocence only stoked the flames of her agony. If only she had not allowed Nicholas to plant the seeds of doubt in her mind. If only she had not acted impulsively and gone to the voodoo queen for a love potion to protect her from a man she needed no protection from. If only she had allowed love to follow its natural course. If only…if only…Anger convulsed her and she bunched her fists at her sides. What a fool she was.
He was looking at her with starlight in his eyes. “I have a new ship, the Marie’s Fortune. She’s a fast ten-gun sloop. I won’t be flying under a black flag, though. It was Marie who suggested that I fly a red flag, jolie rouge, with a dagger on one side of the skull for battle and a heart on the other side for life. She sewed it for me herself.”
A farewell whispered through the trees. The anger faded, and Pru felt cold and sick. I have truly lost him, flashed through her mind.
“I’ll be sailing in a few days.”
“And Marie?”
“I set her up in my house outside the city. I wouldn’t mind if you looked in on her once in a while until I get back. She told me how kind you were to her.”
Kind, yes, when I could have…should have… killed her with one swift bite. “I’ll do what I can,” she forced herself to say.
He leaned forward and placed a light kiss on her lips. “Maybe one day you’ll tell me what secrets you’re hiding.” The red feather fluttered when he removed his tricorn and bowed to her. “Farewell, Pru.” Flashing a boyish smile, he moved past her and started down the street.
“Stede?”
He stopped and glanced back at her.
“Why did you take her in when Nicholas sent her to you? You didn’t have to. You could have said no.”
He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Hell, Pru, I’ve never been able to say no to a pretty woman. And she reminded me of my Evangeline.” The scent of absinthe receded as he disappeared into the sweet-smelling mist.
She stood at the gate, tears threatening to spill from her eyes. The mist off the river chilled her body to the bone. Again and again she heard his voice. “Farewell,” he had said. Farewell to love and happiness, she thought with despair.
With tear-glazed eyes she looked at the flowers clutched in her hand. Her fingers opened and they fell to the ground. She opened the gate and made her way numbly along the flagstones and went inside.
Out upon the street the flowers that were the color of the evening sky were picked up like weeds and scattered on the wind.
Chapter 25
Nicholas lay on his bed, a layer of soil from his native homeland spread beneath the mattress of moss. No sleeping in a coffin for him, thank you very much. Although where that tired old myth came from was a mystery. No more a mystery, however, than how a creature like him could have fallen so hopelessly in love with Prudence Hightower.
In her mortal state she’d been so unlike any woman he’d ever known. Prim and decent and chaste to a fault. Not that she wasn’t brave about some things, like the way she hadn’t turned and run when he had revealed his true nature to her, and the devilish delight with which she had taken to carnal pleasure.
He recalled the first time he touched her, how her flesh fluttered with modesty while his astute senses had detected the passion dwelling deep within. He’d been able to smell it on her and hear the rapid beating of her heart without placing an ear to her chest. She had taken to it like a duck to water, or, more precisely, like a lioness to the kill.
Just thinking about it brought liquid heat to his loins. If he lived to be a thousand years old—and by all indications it looked as if he would—he would never have his fill of her. He’d given up long ago trying to figure out why she had this effect on him.
As he lay there, he imagined her standing at the foot of the bed, naked and smiling, hair like dark polished gold spilling over her shoulders and across her breasts, blue eyes peering at him seductively through thick black lashes as she swept aside her hair to reveal heavy breasts and a soft, white belly.
If she were there right now, he would rise and go to her. He would take her hand and lead her to the bed and push her down and watch the moss mattress conform to her shape, narrowing at the waist and gently flaring at the hips. He would touch her lightly at first, and feel her flesh flutter as it had that very first time. She would sigh and arch her back. He would wind an arm beneath her and draw her upwards to meet his kiss. And the warm, sweet taste of her would grow hotter and more demanding until she was kissing him back with otherworldly power known only to those of their kind. She would open for him, hands grasping his buttocks to pull him into the sanctuary of her body. Her breath would come rapid and uneven as she drew him in deeper and deeper and the pumping grew harder and faster. And if it were possible for him to die, that was where he would wish it to be—embedded in the velvet warmth of the only woman who understood him. And it was that understanding which lifted his lust to a higher plane and made him feel the one thing that he both craved and feared—love.
But what good was love when it was given and not returned? His face darkened with distress. Why couldn’t she see that they were meant for each other? He knew not how it was possible, but somehow, long before he had come into existence, fate had decreed that his heart would be captured by a timid little mouse with the heart of a lioness.
Before she came along, he had not thought much about life beyond the moment, and even less about a future that stretched to eternity. His life had been without purpose, flashing from day to day, decade to decade, century to century, like riding a runaway stallion, hurdling over obstacles and splashing through decisions as if nothing mattered. And nothing did. Until her.
It had come as a revelation. He had rebelled and ranted against it. So unaccustomed to love was he that the prospect of it frightened him. That someone like he, a creature of the night, could love someone like her, so pure and untouched by darkness, had to be the work of the devil. Surely, God, who had turned a deaf ear to his prayers for mortality, had no hand in it. Or had He? Whatever the source, there it was. He loved her. As thoroughly and completely as it was possible to love anything. And she, in all her tempestuous passion, loved another man.
His plan to drive a wedge between her and the pirate had worked, albeit not as he anticipated. Who would have guessed that the pirate would fall in love with the quadroon whore? But as he had swirled around Pru and the pirate in vapor form witnessing their touching farewell, he had not failed to notice the look on her face as the pirate left her standing alone at the gate. A furious howl had sliced through his sanity. Would she ever look upon him with the same expression of love with which she gazed after the departing mortal?
Now that the pirate was no longer a rival and clearly not the possessor of the black bag, Nicholas could put aside his malicious thoughts of sucking the life out of him and turn his attention toward whoever had placed the black bag in the armoire. It had to be someone who knew the pirate’s movements and was aware of his long absences away from the house outside the city. Someone who knew of his penchant for absinthe, and that when wrapped in the fog accompanying the binges he was not likely to notice the bag at the back of the armoire. Who was he, who was he? echoed through his mind.
But a hunter in the vicinity was not the only thing that troubled him. Prudence’s association with the voodoo queen was the cause of much anxiety. Having followed Prudence to the voodoo queen’s cottage, he could guess what she was up to. His mind raged with unanswered questions. How was she going to get the witch to chant the words from the book? Did he dare join her in this crazy endeavor? And if they somehow managed to regain their lost souls, would they be restored to their original mortal states? It had never been done
before. Who knew what they would become? And if she did not love him now, what were his chances that she would love him then? He had to stop her from attempting this foolish thing, for her sake, as well as his own.
***
A single candle burned low in the cottage on Rue Ste. Anne. Finding the door ajar, Pru pushed it open and peered inside.
She recognized the tall, lean figure standing in the center of the room even though his face was concealed in shadow.
“Christophe! What are you doing here?”
Slowly, he turned and looked at her, his watery blue gaze washing over her. “Monsieur sent me to buy the green drink.”
“I would think he’s had quite enough of that,” she remarked sourly as she came into the room.
“There are some things a man cannot do without,” he said. “For him it is the green drink.”
“I’ve had my fill of things men cannot do without,” she griped. Blood, absinthe, what difference did it make? She glanced around and asked impatiently, “Where is Sabine?”
“In the bayou dancing to the voodoo drums,” he replied with bitterness.
She looked at him closely. “I take it you do not approve.”
“It is beneath her.”
“You know her well enough to know that?”
“I did. Once. A long time ago.”
Within his doleful reply she sensed a carefully guarded a secret. What was he not saying?
“I know why you are here,” he said. “You seek a potion or a spell that will bind Monsieur to you.”
A brittle laugh spilled from Pru’s lips. “I tried that. But the potion Sabine gave me didn’t work. I am here for a different reason.”
She came forward and withdrew the book from beneath her cloak. Placing it on the table, she ran her hand over the worn and cracked leather. “Within these pages are the words that will restore to me something I lost. They must be spoken by a woman with great power. A woman like Sabine.” A musty odor rushed into the air when she opened the book to the tattered page containing the chant.
The moonlight that came through the window fell upon his head of crinkly blond hair as he bent his head for a closer look and squinted his eyes to see better against the dimming candlelight. “She does not know that language.”
“It is not necessary that she understand what she is reading,” Pru explained “Only that she speak the words as they are written.”
“Will the chant restore to me what I have lost?” he asked.
Pru shrugged and answered slyly, “That depends on what you have lost.”
“I knew Sabine when we were young. She was not the way she is now. She was a happy woman, not the hateful person she has become.”
His eyes misted as he spoke, and it was then that she realized his secret. He’d been in love with Sabine in their younger days, and he still was. It was their lost love that he wished to reclaim.
“It is as if something evil has jumped inside of her.”
More than you can know, Pru thought. An ancient witch with the ability to jump in and out of mortal bodies inhabits your beloved and has turned her into someone whose nature you no longer recognize. “I wouldn’t know about that,” she said evasively.
Pru recognized the longing in Christophe’s eyes for someone beyond his reach, just as Stede was beyond hers, and sheer desperation prompted her to use it to her own advantage. “If you will help me get her to chant the words, it is possible that what you lost will come back to you.” The words were a reclamation chant to reclaim a lost soul, not a lost love. And as far as she knew, once Lienore exited a body, there was nothing left but a corpse. But enlisting his aid was worth a try.
Christophe walked with heavy steps to the door.
Scooping the tome up from the table, Pru blew out the candle, and followed him from the cottage.
A wind off the river chilled the night air. As they left Rue Ste. Anne and crossed onto Rue Condè, he warned, “Be on your guard.”
She looked up at him. The light from a street lamp made his close-cropped hair look like a halo around his head. The white and black blood in his veins combined to make him rather handsome. It was curious that she’d never noticed that before. “Why do you give me this warning?”
He met her gaze, staring at her for a moment. “Monsieur told me that he fears the one with the green eyes might harm you.”
“Nicholas? Nicholas is my—” What could she say? Lover? Yes. Friend? Perhaps. “He would not harm me.” Her hand went out to catch his arm, pale fingers tightening over the sleeve of his coat. “Do not cross him, Christophe. He carries a heavy burden and can be very dangerous.”
“There is something unnatural about him.”
She forced a laugh and said dismissively, “There is something unnatural about all of us.”
He lowered his voice to a bare whisper. “The Saint-Domingue slaves tell stories about the undead that walk among us.”
Affecting a careless shrug, she said, “I would be afraid if I believed in such things, but I do not.”
“If you have seen the ceremony in the bayou, you would know that all things evil are possible. She tells me things. Things that should never be told. She told me about the house on Rue Bourbon.”
A tightness formed in Pru’s chest as he spoke.
“She said the undead live there, and she has sworn to destroy them.”
Pru was aghast. She shook her head disbelievingly. “Sabine told you this?”
“Sabine? No,” he said. “I am talking about Delphine.”
Delphine. Delphine. The name ricocheted off Pru’s mind like a pistol shot. She had never considered that a hunter would be anything other than a first born son of a first born son, and least of all a woman with a sweet smile masking the heart of a cold-blooded killer.
“The servant of the house told her of their strange ways,” he said.
Babette!
“Apparently, the servant helped herself to some wine from a decanter. But it was not wine. It was blood.”
“That is preposterous. Delphine has been listening to too many slave stories.”
“That may be,” he conceded.
“I have to go.” She turned quickly away.
“If such creatures do exist,” he went on, “they are safe for now. Delphine is upriver visiting her brother. Come with me to the bayou and bring your book. I will help you get Sabine to say the words.”
Pru hesitated.
He held out his hand, palm up, beckoning with his fingers. “Come,” he urged.
The temptation was too great to ignore. Putting aside her disquieting feelings about him, she followed him down the street and into the mist.
Chapter 26
A full moon flickered through the branches of the cypresses, casting an eerie glow over the bayou.
Dressed in blue calico, the points of her tignon sticking straight up, golden earrings glittering in the firelight, the voodoo queen writhed to the throbbing rhythm of the drums. Draped over her shoulders like a deadly shawl was a black water moccasin whose venom had been removed.
Her head bobbed from side to side. Her eyes rolled back in her head exposing the whites. “Papa LaBas! Papa LaBas!” she cried over and over again in a voice that was not her own. Lifting the snake from her shoulders and holding it aloft, she whirled around and around, faster and faster.
Some in the crowd shrank in terror. Others moaned. One man fled into the swamp.
“She calls to the devil,” Christophe whispered.
Standing beside him watching the spectacle, Pru shuddered. “She must have protected herself with good gris-gris to summon such an entity.”
The voodoo queen stopped whirling, and with the serpent held high over her head, she approached the circle of onlookers. “Fear not, my children,” she said, strutting before them. “I will protect you. Papa LaBas will not dare to harm you. Dance! Dance!”
“Maman! Maman!” they cried.
As the others stepped into the ring of light to join in the dancin
g, she wrapped the snake around her shoulders and sprinted away, twisting and writhing.
A lean black man wearing only a loincloth appeared out of the crowd with dark green bottles of rum. As she danced, the voodoo queen seized one bottle, pulled out the cork with her teeth and drank in long, deep swallows. Swaying from side to side, infused now not only with the heat of the dance and the tom-toms but with the power of rum, she went from dancer to dancer, holding the snake’s head out to them so that each in turn might kiss it.
She went around the circle, and then stopped. A lopsided smile formed on her lips. “It is time for you to take up the dance.”
Pru looked into those dark eyes that were wild and bright and fixed upon her. “Maman, I am not ready.”
A look of hostility crossed that beautiful black face when she noticed Christophe standing beside Pru. “What are you doing here?”
“I have come to watch and to learn,” he replied.
Her gaze swung back to Pru. “Come, cher, do not be afraid. I have taught you all there is to know.” She called for the bottle of rum and thrust it at Pru. “Drink this and you will be ready.”
With her purpose of getting Sabine to chant the words in mind, Pru grasped the bottle and tilted it to her lips. She choked as the fiery liquor ran down her throat. After several swallows, she lowered the bottle, but Sabine laughed and forced it back to her mouth, clinking the glass against her teeth and urging her to keep drinking as she unclasped Pru’s cloak and let it slide to the ground.
Pru felt the world beginning to tilt. “Maman, I brought the book for you.”
“And I have something for you.” As she said this, Sabine unwound the snake from her shoulders and lifted it over Pru’s head.
“Maman, the book.”
“Later.”
The weight of the serpent came down on Pru’s shoulders. Somewhere in a distant part of her mind she wanted to scream. No! No! I don’t want to dance. Take this thing off me! But no words emerged.