by Angie Fox
The guard with the feather necklace approached. "He's here."
Osse Pade's mouth tipped at the corners. "Bring him in."
Two guards dragged Carpenter through the wide archway. He was shirtless, bloody and bruised. He wore the same black pants from the night he was taken. Thick ropes secured his hands behind his back and snaked up his back to form a noose around his neck.
The crowd recoiled as he lurched and tried to throw off the guards. He gurgled as they tightened the noose behind him.
"Kneel." The guard behind me shoved me to my knees on the stone floor and secured my arms with a rough rope binding. He wrapped the remaining length around my neck. It bit into my skin and squeezed dangerously tight. I struggled for breath.
Don't panic.
They bound Dimitri the same way. We shared a glance. I didn't know what we were going to do. We had to escape, but I couldn't get to my weapons. I couldn't overpower the guard at my back through sheer physical strength, even if I wasn't tied and half-strangled.
A man in a yellow tunic approached the front of the room where we stood. I recognized him as the same man who'd slashed his belly with a knife at the ceremony in the swamp. "It's not time yet," he said, twisting his hands together. "We still need to find the rest of her ribcage." He eyed the coffin, nervously drumming his fingertips. "And a pinky toe."
Osse Pade glared down at the man. "I don't care about a pinky toe." He lifted his arms to the sky. "We raise her now!"
Excited shouts erupted from the congregation, lyrical exclamations in a language I didn't immediately understand. Then it hit me.
They were calling for her.
Manman nou! Manman Pade!
Our mother. Mother Pade.
"We will bring her home to you!" Pade announced.
Drums began to pound. They took up a slow, steady rhythm, mimicking a human heartbeat.
I twisted my wrists, fighting the knots that bound them. They'd tied me tight.
Okay.
I worked my arms sideways, ignoring the uncomfortable stretch in my shoulders. There had to be some way to catch a rope on the top of my switch stars. If I could just…force it.
The guards dragged Carpenter by the neck toward the wax-stained sacrificial altar in front of the casket.
My left shoulder screamed and my eyes watered with pain as I tried to reach my switch stars. It wasn't working.
Frick.
Then I remembered the small, bald creature who lived in the back pocket of my demon slayer utility belt. I'd inherited Harry along with the belt. He refused to come out and liked to bite my fingers. Hard. Maybe he just mistook them for the occasional bacon slice or pizza crust I'd sneak him.
Come on, Harry. Now was the time to make it up to me.
I reached for the flap of Harry's hideaway with my fingertips. "Hey, little guy," I murmured. I felt the sting of his teeth and winced. "Good boy." I rolled my shoulders back and felt Harry latch onto the rope. I jiggled it and felt him bite down harder.
Atta boy.
Of course the rope was thick. And from the glimpses I'd gotten, I'd say Harry was about the size of a small hamster.
I wriggled my wrists and heard Harry growl as he attacked with added vehemence.
We were running out of time.
Two guards lashed Carpenter to the stone altar like an animal brought to sacrifice. Women in white rushed forward with thick candles and placed them around the struggling necromancer. Another approached with fire and sent flames leaping up over the thick, red wax.
Aye-yay-yay! Voices erupted all around us.
The bokor stood behind Carpenter with his back to the casket. He swayed to the beat of the drums, eyes closed, arms outstretched, as if he were entering a trance.
"We beseech the dark loa, the mother of death! Come to us!" Pade called. The music changed. The drums stuttered out a staccato beat and the people screamed with abandon, thrashing their bodies. "We call our ancestors. Come to us!"
The air grew heavy and I could feel the spirits descend over the crowded courtyard. Their voices rushed over us and whispered in the corners. They twisted in the smoke from the fire.
Pade slowly tugged at the leather strap around his neck and pulled out a pendant tied with yellow cloth and lashed with sticks and feathers. Oh boy. It looked exactly like the trap Carpenter had tried to bring to me. An object inside the bag quivered and I knew who it had to be.
Mamma.
"I've got you," the bokor coo'ed. He drew the bag off his neck and broke it over the coffin.
I felt for the rope at my back. Harry had about half of it chewed through. He clamped down on my pointer finger and I fought back a curse. I shook him off, felt the warm blood bubble up.
Come on. I baited him with the rope again, scared when he didn't latch on right away. Then I felt the weight of his bite and the shake of his head as he attacked with lusty vigor.
Osse Pade bent over the casket and drew out a long stick topped with a skull. I'd seen that before, in the swamp. He'd used it to strike the chicken dead.
He whipped it toward the crowd, laughing as they cowered. "Are you afraid of death?" he taunted. "I'm not."
Yeah. Because he was insane.
He pointed the skull at Carpenter, who lay on the altar struggling. "He's the one who should be afraid."
A harsh wind tore through the courtyard, whipping at the candles lining the walls, scattering flecks of blood red wax. It spattered over the congregants, wetting their skin, burning. The people swayed and clung to each other—some crying, others silent—as a dark power seeped into the courtyard like a living thing.
A sick crackling noise rose from the casket.
The bokor's eyes opened wide as he stared into the pink coffin. "Mamma's back!" His glee abruptly vanished. "Bring me the blade."
A woman in white rushed to the front and prostrated herself as she offered up a machete as long as my arm.
I lunged, shoving my wrists against my bounds. The ropes held. The guard behind me yanked me up by the noose, the thick rope cutting into my neck, choking me. My eyes watered. I gasped for air.
"Let her breathe!" Dimitri ordered. I barely heard, terrified, as my ears rung and my vision swirled.
I felt a rough yank at the rope around my neck and the wet on my cheeks as I sucked in a deep lung full of air. I raised my head just in time to see Osse Pade slice the machete down onto Carpenter's chest.
He gasped out a cry. Blood bubbled up from his abdomen and ran freely down his sides.
No telling how deep they'd cut him this time. If they'd bleed him out.
And I could do nothing but watch.
Osse Pade tilted a gold cup to catch the necromancer's blood. The flow surged with each grasping beat of Carpenter's heart. The drums mimicked the pounding. The cup overflowed, the blood sluicing down onto the floor.
We watched, horrified, as Osse Pade raised the chalice high and poured the blood over mamma. It splashed wetly over her bones.
He clutched the empty, bloody cup, his entire body shaking. "We call to you, loa!" His eyes were wild as he stared down into the coffin. "We call to the mother of death!"
Was Carpenter even breathing? He'd turned a sickly gray, his head lolled to the side. But his blood still flowed, slower now, dripping down into the drain on the floor.
"The mother of death…it's got to be mamma," Dimitri muttered beside me. I hoped to God he was wrong.
All I could think about was mamma's black soul seeping into blood-drenched bones on pink satin. Then back to that dead, twisted body of the chicken back in the swamp, sprawled in the dirt.
How its feathers, soaked in blood, had begun to twitch.
The drums struck hard and fast, in a heavy unnatural beat. Pade raised his arms to the blackened sky. "We call you back from spirit!" His chest heaved. Sweat beaded his forehead as he intoned, "come be flesh and blood once more!"
A skeletal hand grasped the side of the casket.
Sweet mother.
A win
d whipped through the courtyard, causing skin to flutter against bone. Veins snaked down her fingers. Tendons grasped together.
Osse Pade cried tears of joy. Carpenter bled. The altar candles ran with thick red wax. I stared in horror as skin stretched and grew over the once-dead hand.
No. Not once dead. Still dead. His mother couldn't be alive.
She couldn't.
Even after all I'd seen, after all I'd done, I still couldn't believe it.
The coffin shook and creaked. I watched in terror as a half-formed corpse rose from the silk bed. White eyeballs bulged in hollow sockets. Her bare jaw opened and closed, the tendons working, the teeth and bone exposed. Leathery skin blew loosely over high cheekbones. Thick arteries roped down her neck. They pulsed with blood. With life.
She turned her head and stared directly at me.
Chapter Eighteen
Pallid gray skin stretched and grew over the bones thrusting from her cheeks. It sunk into her eye sockets, making the whites bulge.
All at once, her gaze sharped. Her top lip drew up as she studied me.
There was intelligence in that stare. Her brain might be half-rotted or hell for all I knew it as fresh and pink, but there was no doubt Mamma Pade was back.
As far as what she wanted with me... I had a sick feeling I was about to find out.
She held out a hand and let Osse Pade assist her from her coffin.
I struggled once more to free my wrists, knowing it was useless.
Mamma took one creaking step down from the viewing stage, then another, her gait unsteady, her limbs swinging. She was bald, naked, her left ribcage hollowed out and missing bones. The skin healed over muscle, leaving oozing trails of blood in its wake.
Instinctively, I drew back, the noose around my neck tightening, leaving me gasping for breath.
Osse Pade fluttered behind her. One of his assistants brought him a green robe that he draped over her shoulders. She ignored him and advanced on me.
Her son turned and began issuing orders to his followers. "Go get her silk slippers as well. And a chair. She may want to sit."
Ha. I didn't think Mamma Pade was slowing down anytime soon.
She drew uncomfortably close to me, her stale breath making my stomach roil. Her left eye socket hadn't closed and I could see down to the bone.
Her breath sounded like wind through rocks, rough and grinding. "A slayer," she said on an exhale, as if speaking was still foreign to her. Hell, walking should have been as well. Not to mention seeing, breathing, and…touching. She ran a skeletal finger over my cheek. I could feel the darkness in her, the pure black of her soul.
My throat tightened as she turned to Dimitri. She swiped a rough tongue over thinly formed lips. "And a toy."
"Let me go and I'll help you," I whispered, hoping to God that her son hadn't heard. Right now, I couldn't break free. I couldn't fight. But if I could somehow convince this corpse that I was of use to her, we might have a chance.
"Lizzie," Dimitri protested, his expression pained. He knew I didn't have a choice.
She stared at me, as if measuring my words. I held her gaze, ignoring the wriggling of something under her left eye, keeping my gaze steady as a fly emerged from under the skin and crawled over her exposed eyeball. The woman didn't blink and neither did I.
Her gaze moved to the noose at my neck and down to the ties that bound me.
"He's afraid I'll give you too much power," I murmured. "He wants to control you."
She laughed at that, a dry rusty sound. "I'll show you control, demon slayer."
She held up her hands and I heard the bones on the tables behind her begin to rattle.
A gasp erupted from the crowd.
Pade rushed to her, wide eyed. "They're not all sorted, Mamma."
She ignored him, her eyes feral, her jaw gritted.
"You're not strong enough yet," Pade insisted, his voice louder.
She thrust him away. He sprawled hard onto the steps before lurching to his feet, his features slack with surprise. Or perhaps fear.
The voodoo mamma reached for my throat and I gasped, prepared for her to squeeze. Her fingers dug into the soft skin of my neck as she threw off my noose. But she didn't untie me all the way.
I saw the black soul pulsing under the skin at the base of her throat. So close. I wanted to rip it out.
She turned and staggered toward the rows upon rows of tables, each holding a nearly complete skeleton.
Bones shook and clattered and I about choked as I watched them begin to cling together. The spines rattled, the fingers twitched. The crowd gasped and slunk back as the parts as the bodies grew skin and sinew.
There had been no ceremony, no cutting of Carpenter. No black souls captured, no pretense of any kind.
Mamma slit her wrist open with her finger and a thin stream of blood bubbled up. Dry bones rubbed together. She was missing several teeth as she grinned. "Watch."
She dripped blood over the nearest corpse and it gasped, its chest thrusting out, its veins churning with life.
"She doesn't need us," Dimitri murmured. And he was right. Mamma had the power over life and death.
Mamma reached a hand to the corpse on the front table. A chill shuddered through me as it grasped her hand and sat up. It had the head of a young-ish woman, with long stringy hair, fresh from the grave. It also had the shoulders of a muscular man, an arm of an elderly person, a caved in hole where the left shoulder should have been.
Mamma coaxed it off the table and it struggled to stand on uneven legs, the two knees not lining up as it lowered itself to bow to Mamma Pade.
Osse Pade rushed to her, mouth open as he stared at the Frankenstein zombie corpse made from his ancestors. "Stop. You don't need them," he pressed, growing desperate. "You have me."
Mamma wrinkled the leathery skin on her nose as she poured her blood out over the next corpse. "You're weak."
Pade looked as if he'd been slapped. "I raised you from the dead," he thundered.
She moved to the table after that. "You always were a suck up." She dripped her bloody wrist over the last corpse as the entire row of bodies behind her began to twitch and groan.
Osse Pade ignored the insult as she moved to the next row.
"Let me sort them," Osse Pade pleaded. "Let me raise them with black souls. No more blood," he protested, as she raised her dripping arm over the next corpse. "You can't make them immortal!"
She watched as it dripped over the bones, making them shudder. "That's the one thing I can't do," she said, frowning. "Yet," she added glancing at me.
What the?— I struggled to figure out what she could mean. I didn't have power over the dead. I was just as mortal as the next person.
"These are my servants. They are my army," she added with relish, as a man with half his face missing rose up from the table beside her.
"They can't reason. They can't obey," Osse Pade protested.
"They don't need to think," she growled, as if the mere idea offended her.
I tested my ropes. They held. Damn it.
Harry growled and struggled and I willed him to chew faster.
One by one, the dead stumbled from the tables and bowed before Mamma.
"This is no army," Pade spat, following her through the growing crowd of shambling corpses. "These are your powerful voodoo ancestors."
She moved on to the last row. "They will help me raise more."
Not if I could help it.
"Faster," I hissed to Harry. We needed to take them down.
Meanwhile, Osse Pade held her attention. "We can't hide this many," he protested. "People will see."
"We don't hide," Mamma lectured. "We rule."
Oh my word. I rolled my bound wrists, trying to work them free, earning a few angry nips in the process. She couldn't just let loose a horde of zombies on New Orleans.
Actually, she could.
"Come on," I whispered hotly, as I felt my bounds slacken.
"Where is Andre?" she aske
d, when she'd raised them all. Mamma whipped her head around, searching. The corpses around her twitched, their mismatched limbs making them gangly as they bobbed and swayed before her.
Pade's panic grew. He clutched his skull-tipped walking stick, as if he could use it as a weapon against them.
"I didn't bury Andre with the family," Pade hissed. "I buried him in his wife's family crypt in St. Louis Cemetery Number One." He shoved off a corpse that stumbled against him. "He's not my true brother."
"He's my son," she thundered.
"Your favorite," Pade hissed. "But he is dead and I brought you back to life."
She appeared absolutely feral now, and I saw before Osse did that he'd made a grave mistake. He backed away, toward the altar that held a motionless Carpenter.
She followed, stalking the bokor. "You would do anything for your mother?"
"Yes," he said, standing before the altar without a shred of hesitation or guile.
She placed a hand on his head, and one on his shoulder. "Then die," she said, breaking his neck.
The drums silenced. The crowd waited. I could hear wet breathing and a few soft sobs as Mamma Pade raised her head to the crowd. "Do not worry, my sweetlings." She let her son fall, ignoring the sick crack of his head on the floor. "This time, I'll raise him to obey me."
I felt the ropes on my wrists drop and seized Harry before he could escape. He bit down onto my knuckle but I held him tight. With shaky hands, I pocketed the savage beast. Then I took a switch star and sliced through the ropes that held Dimitri. My fingers felt weak from lack of blood. Frick. I couldn't throw like this.
Mamma held her bloody wrist over her son's dead body and let the crimson liquid drip down over him.
"Do it," Dimitri said low in his throat. He didn't move. Didn't betray the fact that he was free. "End her," he urged.
It wasn't so simple. I didn't want to screw this up. I placed my hands behind my back as if they were still bound, rolling and stretching them until the feeling returned. I had one shot at this. One.
I got that they were distracted, but I couldn't let that force my hand.