Arcanorum

by C. L. Bevill

  Run, Jane, Christien implored. His thoughts begged her to move.

  I can’t move. She told me not to move. I can’t disobey. It’s like I’m frozen in place.

  Jane’s eyes moved to watch Adrienne Viqc striding across the parking garage. The three large men followed like robots. Raoul walked behind them, pausing to extract a cigarette from a pack in his jacket. He paused again to light it with a Zippo lighter. Blowing smoke out of the side of his mouth, he glanced back at Jane.

  “See you, baby,” he threw at her.

  The largest of Adrienne’s men produced a key card and used it on the elevator’s exterior panel. The elevator doors opened. She walked inside the small area and stood just beside the door, watching Jane and Christien. Raoul strolled, obviously not in a hurry.

  Christien moaned. Jane’s head spun toward him, and she frenziedly willed herself to move. His head bent toward the ground and his back arched.

  What’s wrong? Jane thought insistently. What’s wrong with you?

  Jane’s eyes skimmed from Christien’s trembling form to Adrienne, looking for an answer. Raoul stopped to look back at them with a sly smile. The interior garage lights flickered on, and Jane realized the sun had just passed beneath the horizon.

  Behind him, Adrienne made another motion at one of the three men who had joined her in the elevator. One moved toward the interior panel with purpose. Jane couldn’t see it, but she assumed that he had just pressed a button for a higher floor.

  With a cunning smirk, Raoul continued to watch Jane and Christien. He was standing about ten feet from the elevator doors.

  Jane abruptly comprehended Adrienne was leaving Raoul with them in the parking garage. With all of the doors locked. With the nearby buildings devoid of people…or witnesses. With no one to observe anything that might happen in the foreseeable future. And something is about to happen. I’m guessing bad because it’s not likely a knight in shining armor will be riding in on a white horse to save our collective asses.

  “Guess Adrienne didn’t like you not telling her all the details about my escape, Raoul,” Jane said.

  “What?” he said. He flicked the end of his cigarette and glanced over his shoulder at the elevator. “M’dam?”

  The doors began to shut. “Jane is quite correct, Raoul,” Adrienne said coldly. “I’m tired of your incompetence. Good luck with all of…this.”

  Raoul dropped the cigarette as he leaped for the door and succeeded where the guard hadn’t with Jane. He caught the edge so the sensor was tripped, and the door began to cascade back into an open position.

  Adrienne said, “Let go of the door and step back.”

  “But you wouldn’t do this to my mother, your own sister,” Raoul protested.

  Jane looked at Christien again. His head had dropped nearly to the cement. He was almost pressing his face against the cold floor. His back shook with an unnamable strain. She didn’t know what was happening, and she thought, Christien, for God’s sake, talk to me, maybe I can help you.

  “You’re my AUNT!” Raoul shrieked. “We’re blood kin!”

  Jane’s gaze went back to the scene at the elevator. She was uncertain what was going on. Something bad was about to happen. Raoul knew what it was. Adrienne knew what it was. Even Christien knew more about than Jane.

  One of the large men planted a hand on Raoul’s chest and thrust him away. He fell into a heap a few feet away. Immediately he scrambled to get upright. The elevator clicked, and the doors began to shut again.

  “My mother will never forgive you for this!” Raoul screamed at the closing doors.

  Adrienne laughed. “Oh, she’s got other sons. She won’t miss you.”

  Raoul looked around hysterically, and he bolted for the opposite side of the parking garage where the exit gates were located.

  Jane’s eyes caught Adrienne’s. She waved her hand, and one large man kept the doors from shutting again by lifting a hand in-between the doors. “Jane, chère,” she called, “you can move again, for all the good it will do you.” Her fingers snapped, and the door was released. It closed, and the elevator made a dinging noise.

  Raoul had made the gate and was rattling it viciously.

  Jane nearly collapsed in place as she regained control over her body. She reached for Christien, intending on comforting him. She wanted to touch him again. It was so imperative to her that she feel her fingers on his warm flesh. She wanted to know that he was real, that he was alive, and that what they were experiencing wasn’t some psychological delusion.

  The tips of her fingers touched the flesh just above the collar of his t-shirt. Jane almost jerked back because he felt as though he was burning alive. She was confused for a moment. Am I cold or are you hot?

  Christien finally brought his head up and his eyes were full and black as the night. There was no white left in his eyes. They were consumed in darkness. He said, “R-ruh-un, J-jay-ane,” and it was an animal sound that turned into a mournful howl.

  Raoul snarled something in Cajun French that Jane couldn’t understand, and he struggled harder with the gate. Wrought iron jangled loudly.

  Jane didn’t understand until the canine incisors began to grow in Christien’s mouth. His panting breaths became chaotic. The flesh on his body began to ripple. Even the clothing began to change in color, fading away as mottled fur took its place. His back heaved and lengthened into the massive form of the animal he was becoming.

  The breath caught in Jane’s throat.

  She scuttled backwards, awkwardly crab walking away from Christien until her back hit the wall next to the room she’d woken up in. She had to do it with her wrists bound, but she did it all the same.

  Christien was, indeed, as cursed as Jane, but he was also cursed a thousand times worse.

  The Roux-Ga-Roux shook off the remnants of the canvas, and his emergent growl filled the hollowness of the parking garage.

  Raoul slowly looked over his shoulder as he abruptly stopped yanking at the bars of the gate. “Merde,” he muttered, and Jane heard it clearly as he repeated the word in palpable panic. It blended into nonsensical noises. “Merdemerdemerdemerde.”

  Christien turned his tremendous head and regarded Jane with heavy interest. Then Raoul’s desperate repetition caught his attention. After a moment, his black gaze came back to Jane, along with a low, enraged snarl.

  Christien is the Roux-Ga-Roux, Jane thought numbly. And I’m trapped in here with him.

  Chapter 18

  Every beast knows its time. – Polish proverb

  Christien looked down at her. It was a skewed vision of him because she could only see him with one eye. The other one didn’t want to open. His handsome visage blanched of color as he stared at her; it was the shade of the aged ivory on the keys of an antique piano. The fear within him could be felt within Jane’s entire body, like the swell of a storm-swept ocean. She could hear his horror-filled thoughts reverberating in her mind. Dying. Dying. Dying.

  There were others’ voices in the distant background. Not in the dark room they were in but within the confines of her brain. They called to Christien. They urged him not to die with her.

  The faraway scene played in Jane’s head for a brief moment. It was so vivid she could smell the coppery tang of the blood dripping from her skin. There was a colossal pressure in her stomach where she had been so severely injured. But Christien was touching her, and for the moment in time where his flesh connected with hers, all was well. The fear receded into the background, but they were together.

  Together in a way that Jane had never before experienced in her life. She was part of something, and it felt so good. She knew that Christien...

  The moment snapped away. The reality of the present smashed upon her entire substance. Jane wasn’t bleeding. She wasn’t dying. She was trapped with Christien in a bestial state of being. The Roux-Ga-Roux was snarling at Jane. The stippled beast paced back and forth, rapidly casting a look at Raoul as he continued to struggle with the gate.


  Jane was still as she sat against the wall, staring at the animal that had once been Christien. My God, she thought. He’ll kill me while’s he’s in that form.

  He’s not all gone, the thought came to her, a booming insistence that bombarded into her head from nowhere. For an instant Jane thought it was her own inner voice, but it didn’t sound like her. It was someone else.

  Who are you? she demanded silently but the voice was gone. It was as if someone had gotten through for the briefest of moments and then was compelled to break away. Suddenly, Jane remembered comparing her brain to the broken shell of an egg. The white was slipping out. More of the eggshell was crumbling away, and she couldn’t say if it was a good thing or a bad thing.

  Good thing, she decided. Not alone. Not alone. Christien is with me. In one form or another.

  Christien continued to stride back and forth. His immense claws clicked on the concrete floor. His broad shoulder muscles undulated. It was unmistakable that he didn’t like the enclosed area. He paced to one side and pawed at the iron fence. It rattled forcefully. Jane wondered if he gave it his all, whether it would collapse.

  Raoul stopped cursing and backed into a corner, trying to make himself as little as possible. He caught sight of the booth the security guard would stand inside, protected from the elements, and inched toward it. Jane knew his plan as soon as his head pointed toward the little enclosure.

  Christien turned his massive head toward Raoul and watched him move. An irritated snarl rumbled out of Christien’s mouth and echoed across the parking garage.

  It’s Christien, Jane thought. It’s the person who’s been speaking to me in my head. He isn’t a different person. He’s cursed just the same as I am. He didn’t hurt me in the cemetery. He didn’t do anything threatening to me and he could have. He could have ripped me into shreds by now, if he felt so inclined. The witch can curse him, but she can’t make him into a bad person. I know him. I know him like he’s the other half of my soul.

  The realization was earthshattering. “We do know each other,” she whispered. The low noise was startling in the nearly empty parking garage.

  Christien whined, and his vast body shuddered. He pawed at the fence again. Jane stared at him open-mouthed. “Oh Lord, we really do. That’s why—” She cut herself off promptly.

  Adrienne Viqc had cameras installed all over the place upstairs. Why not in the parking garage, too? She’s likely watching the scene play out for her own twisted reasons.

  Jane looked at the Roux-Ga-Roux going back and forth. Christien wasn’t attacking Jane. Christien wasn’t attacking Raoul. Christien was as confused as she was.

  The gold medallion had been ripped from Christien’s neck while he had been the animal, and the animal had been committed to attacking her. In the moments after the medallion had come off, the beast had retreated, unsure. He had spoken to her because…He had a moment of clarity. He knew me. He knew what was happening. Dr. Sorrell said it, too. The cursed object allows the hoodoo to control the individual who was cursed. Without it…

  The witch had lost her control over the beast and probably over Christien, too. He had answered her in the garage, as if he had been compelled to do so, but had he been trying to protect Jane from the witch?

  Jane gingerly moved one hand and touched her pocket. Raoul hadn’t searched her for a weapon, possibly because he knew Adrienne could make her do anything she wished. The little knife was there, but it would be like stabbing an elephant with a toothpick. Additionally, the cursed pendant was still there. Her fingers snaked inside and touched the cold metal.

  Christien immediately stilled. That oversized head with its huge teeth turned toward her, and a resonating growl emitted from him. He could feel that. He didn’t like it.

  The witch wanted to see what happened. She was watching from somewhere above them, waiting to see what the Roux-Ga-Roux would do with Jane and with Raoul. When Adrienne understood that Christien’s will had been freed, what would she do?

  She would be ticked off, Jane decided. She let go of the medallion and pulled her hand free of the pocket.

  Raoul reached the little booth. He carefully pulled the handle of the door and discovered it was locked. Another Cajun French curse floated back to Jane. He looked over his shoulder at Jane and said in a low voice, “Help me. I’ll let you go. I swear.”

  “I thought I was a stupid bitch,” Jane said in the same tone of voice. Christien didn’t want to hurt her. She couldn’t say he felt the same of Raoul. Furthermore, she didn’t think she could prevent Christien from harming Raoul if he so felt inclined.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, glancing at Christien. Christien growled again, or had he ever stopped?

  Jane found an ounce of calmness within the torrid rapids of the fearsome situation. She was mindful that Adrienne Viqc was watching them, if not listening to them. The witch wanted to know something about Jane and Christien. She didn’t care about Raoul. She had thrown Raoul, well, to the dogs.

  To the Roux-Ga-Roux, anyway, Jane amended. “Don’t move,” she warned. “I don’t think he likes you. I can’t imagine what you did to him when he was helpless and chained.” The last part was bitterly accusatory.

  “I didn’t like it,” Raoul protested weakly. “M’dam made me do it.”

  Now that’s a lie. Adrienne hadn’t much cared for that. Sure, she was all over the witchy-cursey part, but the other stuff was distasteful to her. Hypocrite. Raoul did what he wanted because he wanted to do it. He did it to me.

  Christien’s increasing growl become more than menacing; it was death incarnate wrapped up in a hair-raising sound. Those impenetrable black eyes glared at Raoul.

  Jane slowly surveyed the area. Iron fences. Iron gates. The booth was locked. But the controls to the gate were inside the booth. She had seen the guard use them before. Did they require a key card?

  No, the guard had pushed a button. Jane pushed herself off the wall. If Adrienne was watching, and Jane was certain that the witch was watching, waiting for the bloody show to commence, then as soon as they figured out what Jane was doing, they would put an end to it.

  Christien, Jane thought hard. Christien. Please. We need to get away from the witch. She controls me when I’m near her.

  Christien’s eyes snapped toward Jane again. The provoking growl transformed into a whine.

  There was another realization. Raoul had been looking for Jane. He had been unable to control her except through drugs. Adrienne had control of Jane but only within a certain proximity. Maybe she has to be able to speak to me to make me dance like a puppet. She couldn’t command me when I was roaming free, away from her. If we can run away, we can fight her in other ways. There must be a way to break our curses. We can—

  Jane didn’t want to think about what Dr. Armand Sorrel had said. “The cursed one kills the one who laid the curse, of course.” Of course. She wasn’t sure if she was up to killing Adrienne Viqc.

  Coming to her feet, Jane stumbled, and Christian produced a hissing noise. Her head began to hurt again. She thought to him, hoping he would understand what she was saying. We have to get out of here before the witch knows we’re trying to escape. There’s a button in the booth that will open the gate.

  Christien’s head gyrated toward the booth before she had finished the thought. Raoul shrank back against the fence, trying to blend in. He was likely thinking that Christien was eying him instead of the booth.

  She’s watching us, Jane thought. She’s watching us from above, and she’ll try to stop us if she sees what we’re doing. Christien, look at me if you understand me.

  The large head gradually turned toward Jane. His black eyes glittered in the fluorescent lights of the parking garage. The whine that came from him was unmistakably a question. What next? The words weren’t in her head but in her imagination. It was what Christien the Roux-Ga-Roux was asking her.

  Jane saw one camera near the elevator. There was another one near the booth. She couldn’t see any more. Reasoning
suggests all entrances be covered, she told herself. Take out the camera that shows the booth. Mentally, she envisioned the little black box with its all-seeing lens. Break it off. Smash it.

  The Roux-Ga-Roux moved like the wind. His gigantic body twirled, and he melted into the shadows. Jane would have gasped if she’d had a moment more. The black shape went into the darkness like it was part of him. Maybe it is.

  She took a step toward the booth and by proxy, Raoul. He yelped, “Stay away from me.”

  “Get out of the way, shithead,” Jane said. “I think if you pretend you’re part of the wall, Christien won’t eat you.” Then again, I can’t guarantee it.

  Jane perceived the camera by the booth was moving toward her, trailing her faltering gait. There were other cameras in the garage. From what Jane knew, they were likely limited in their views. They would be set up to see a certain vantage and couldn’t be repositioned to see beyond that. Adrienne didn’t know about Jane’s connection with Christien and didn’t anticipate that the beast possessed Christien’s innate intelligence. While in the form of the Roux-Ga-Roux, he was still an animal, but he was also still Christien.

  Once she got to the side of the booth, the camera positioned above the enclosure wouldn’t be able to see her at all. The mount was there to see who was coming and going via vehicles from the parking garage, not to trail after pedestrians inside the garage proper.

  Raoul moved away from Jane as she approached. His eyes stared over her shoulder, evidently watching Christien fading in and out of the deeper shadows that the fluorescent lights didn’t reach.

  Jane touched the door of the booth and shook it. It was, indeed, locked, as Raoul had demonstrated. She examined the glass on the sides of the booth. It wasn’t glass at all, but some kind of Plexiglas, intended to protect those on the inside from threats on the outside. What kind of people have you pissed off, Adrienne, that you and your people need this kind of protection?