by Angie Fox
Osse Pade gasped, and sat up.
"There," she said, catching my eye.
Strength flooded back into my fingers. The nerves tingled with pain. They needed more time than Osse Pade to come back to life. But I couldn't wait. Not anymore.
She turned attention back on her son. He slowly stood before her, as if waking from a deep sleep. His eyes appeared dazed and he stared right through the crowd and me. Mamma Pade stroked his hair. "There's my boy. Now you'll serve your mamma. I won't have you bickering with me or with Andre."
He stood, his neck lolling from his shoulders, the bones unable to hold it up. "Yes, mother."
Now.
I drew a switch star and ran straight for Mamma. I drove it into her head as I reached into her neck with my other hand, ripping out the black soul. I flung it to the floor and crushed it under the heel of my boot, hoping to God that would kill it.
My switch star sliced straight through her skull, shattering bone and spraying brain matter. Osse Pade screamed. Mamma fell. And the dead turned toward me, snarling.
I couldn't kill them all. There were too many.
"This way!" Dimitri hollered, as we started running.
Chapter Nineteen
We burst down the side, past the startled church members, and skirted the edge of the lobby. Dimitri was stark naked, but we didn't care. Or maybe that was just me. At the last second, he grabbed a green and blue flag from the wall.
I kept a tight grip on him and we made a beeline past the guards and out the door.
The flag rippled behind him as we streaked across the street, taking refuge in the dark alley Aimee had shown us.
Thank heaven I still had that sneak spell in my bra.
We were hidden. For now.
Dimitri's breath came in harsh pants. "You think you killed her?" he asked, working the silk flag around his waist. Damn. The man could make anything look good.
I turned my attention back to the funeral parlor, shocked we hadn't been followed. Yet. I wiped my bloody hands on my pants. "I pulled out the black soul. I've killed immortal demons with switch stars. And the undead alligator back in the swamp." It had to work. I didn't know what I'd do otherwise. "You get the witches. I'll stick here and pick off anything that tries to pursue us." It's not like he had any weapons on him anymore. With any luck, her undead followers were busy falling apart in there without her. "I'll stick here and make sure we got her."
He gave a quick nod. "I'll take the back way out of the alley and shift once I have the space."
"Perfect." He could travel faster when he was in griffin form. And if I needed to move, he'd be able to locate me thanks to the emerald I wore. I used to hate that. Now, I was damned grateful.
He gave me a fast, hard kiss. "Be careful."
"Always," I said, squeezing his hand tight before he slipped away into the darkness.
I turned back to observe the funeral parlor. The shadows around the lights had grown darker. Sparks of white rippled out over the center courtyard in peaks before descending over the worshippers inside. Most likely spirits of the dead. I shuddered to think of the kind of souls who would be at the call of a dark voodoo priestess like Mamma Pade.
But, no. She had to be gone.
It had gotten late. Gas streetlights cast uneven light. Sparse groups of tourists wandered farther down the block. I prayed they wouldn't come this way, especially when I saw a black hearse pull up in front of the building. It was drawn by four black horses. Their eyes glowed milky white and I could see the rib bones on one, where the papery skin hadn't grown all the way back. They snorted and dipped their heads.
Fuck a duck. Maybe I hadn't killed Mamma after all.
Osse Pade emerged, surrounded by members of the church. They flooded past him into the street. His eyes blazed hot and his head dipped at an unnatural angle. He opened the lobby door wide and bowed to Mamma. She'd survived. I didn't know how.
Her skull showed the damage from my switch star. I'd cleaved it in two pieces, straight down the center. Now, she held it together with a crown of beads, shot with a jeweled plume of pink and yellow feathers.
The halves fit together unevenly, with one eye socket higher than the other, the nose hole jagged, one side of her jaw lolling down. Her skin fluttered on both sides of the gash, exposing white bone.
There, at her neck, her black soul pulsed under a layer of papery skin.
I'd done my best and it hadn't worked. I'd barely slowed her down.
How in Hades was I going to kill her now?
The carriage swayed as she entered, followed by her son. The man in the yellow tunic climbed into the driver's box along with two of the women in white.
One thing was for certain: I couldn't let them get away.
My necklace hummed, the emerald stone warming against my neck. The bronze chain went liquid, snaking down my body as I watched the undead shamble from the funeral parlor.
Their snarls filled the night. I held my breath and waited as the soft metal glided down my side, over my hip. It twisted down my leg and settled on my left ankle where it hardened right on my joint. Great. I tried to move my ankle and couldn't.
A group of tourists stopped down the block and started pointing at the corpses and the hearse, like it was some kind of show. Three girls rushed up to take pictures. The young blond woman out front giggled with her friends, snapping selfies while a hissing man with a pearl necklace and an old woman's body lurched straight for her, arms out, teeth bared.
"No!" I rushed from my hiding place to save her from the monster. I gave it a boot to the chest and it hit the ground as the carriage clopped past us.
Mamma Pade watched out the window, her bulging white eyes locked on me.
"What are you? Crazy?" The girl demanded, while her friends continued to snap photos on their phones.
Oh my word. My mind reeled. I'd not only been caught by Mamma, but this was the first time I'd ever beheld supernatural phenomena that was visible to non-magical individuals.
"These people are dangerous," I warned, slapping away a girl taking video of the monster and me. They weren't even people, but I wasn't about to explain that for YouTube. "Get out of here!"
A hand grasped my ankle and the creature I'd shoved had his mouth open. He bit me, his teeth slamming against the enchanted bronze. I jumped back and smashed his head onto the pavement.
That's when camera girls began to scream.
Bloody hell.
Pink brain matter oozed out from under my boot and I prayed to God that I'd killed the corpse.
"Stop it," I said, among the phone flashes.
Frick. Mamma was getting away. Her followers and the corpses trailed her down the street.
"Look," I dug into my utility belt and pulled out one of the Ziploc bags I'd packed for my original trip to this hellish place. Inside, living spells hovered, practically falling over themselves to escape. They refashioned themselves at will—flattening, lengthening, and twirling. "Here." I cursed under my breath at the top of the bag that would not open. I finally got it, my fingers closing around a shimmering corkscrew. I tossed it at camera girl. Hard. I launched two more at her friends. "Sick 'em," I ordered the gooey spells as they smacked the girls in the forehead.
Their expressions went blank.
Mind Wipers made you forget everything except what you most wanted to be. And they erased memory for a good five minutes before the event. I grabbed blondie's phone and started erasing the evidence.
The girl's anger disappeared and her face lit up. "I've always wanted to be a Kardashian!"
Lord almighty.
I handed her the phone back. By this time, my quarry was a good way down the block. I couldn't afford to loose them, but I had one more thing to do.
I drew a switch star and dashed back into the funeral parlor. The lobby stood empty. Hallelujah. I skirted the edges and entered the courtyard once more. Overturned tables littered the space, along with scattered pools of blood. Everyone had fled. Except for one poor s
oul.
Carpenter lay tied to the altar, struggling.
"Thank heaven you're still with us," I said, rushing toward him, using the blades of a switch star to cut him loose.
He winced, clutching his stomach, his muscles bunched and straining as he forced himself to sit. "Heaven has nothing to do with this."
"Hey, hey. Settle down." Truth be told, I was surprised he was still alive. The bleeding had stopped, but he looked terrible. "You need an ambulance."
"I've had worse." He waved me off. "And I heal faster than you." He struggled to his feet, chest heaving. "Right now, I need to figure out how he did it. How to stop her." The necromancer staggered toward Osse Pade's abandoned office. "Time is of the essence." He turned. "Why the hell are you still here?"
"I'm saving you," I insisted, feeling kind of dumb saying it.
He nodded, bracing a hand on the doorway to Osse Pade's office. "Go. Stop them as best you can. Hopefully, I can save you."
"Right." Mamma was getting away. I'd done what I could here. "Be safe," I said, as I headed out of the abandoned funeral parlor. I made it outside, past the Mind Wiped tourists and toward the hearse that was still visible way down the street.
If Carpenter could figure out how to kill Mamma, if I could stop them in the meantime…we might just have a chance.
It was better than the alternative.
I took off after the undead funeral procession, walking funny with the bronze boot around my ankle. It was a relief when the enchanted metal went liquid again. Maybe it would turn back into a necklace. Maybe that would be the last attack on me for a while.
But as Grandma always said, if wishes were fishes, we'd all eat well tonight.
The liquid metal snaked up to my abdomen. It surrounded my middle, squeezing as it hardened. I pressed forward, fighting for breath, as I struggled to catch up to the hearse, the church members, and the dead who took up the rear.
I probably should have hid the body of the corpse I'd killed back there, but I didn't have time. Hopefully Dimitri would get it. Or Aimee. At least it was dead. As for the rest of them? They weren't attacking. That was a good thing.
I finally made it to the back of the procession.
One step at a time. My job was to figure out where they were going and why. I took refuge behind the crowd of the undead, lingering behind a straggler, a rotting woman with a twisted spine and half of her dress falling off. One hand hung limp while the other clawed toward the carriage winding its way up Royal Street.
We were moving toward the more crowded area of the French Quarter. We saw more cars, more people snapping pictures. They stood on the sidewalks and crossed the street behind me as the dead walked among them. What did they think this was? A parade?
Only in New Orleans.
I kept my head down and my feet moving. The one way I could figure that normal people could even see this when they couldn't see griffins, or dragons, or hear talking dogs, was the fact that these corpses staggering up Royal were real people—just very, very dead.
And quite possibly blood thirsty.
I'd come close to losing a chunk of my ankle back there and didn't even want to think about what would come of a bite. And I refused to even speak out loud what was now running through my mind—zombies.
We turned right on St. Peter and lost the crowd of onlookers as we passed next to the darkened park beyond.
Osse Pade still had the bug on him. The witches would be able to track him. And until backup arrived, it was up to me to keep control of this situation. Somehow. Only I had no idea what Mamma's end game could be, until I realized we were headed to St. Louis Cemetery Number One.
I heard movement behind me and nearly tripped when I saw a patch of grassy soil between the sidewalk and the street shaking as if there were something alive underneath.
Oh, no, no, no. I slowed. Stopped. Let out a gasp as a hand shot out of the soil.
I caught movement to my right and saw another corpse pulling itself out of the ground just inside the park.
Impossible.
But I knew better than that.
Still, what was that one doing in the park?
Then I remembered my history, how the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 had claimed a large part of the populace, and how they'd buried the corpses…everywhere.
Two more stumbled down the street from the right. Moaning.
Heaven almighty. I didn't understand how she could raise the dead, just passing by in her carriage. And worse, she drew to a stop in front of the gates of St. Louis Cemetery Number One.
This time, I didn't need to climb the tall white walls that surrounded the city of the dead. The gate opened on its own for Mamma Pade's carriage.
I took one more look back and saw Aimee in the street, clutching the arm of a man, most likely her husband. But they were too far back, and I didn't know what they could do at this point anyway. She'd be more help to Carpenter.
I pushed past the dead and followed Mamma inside. She stood on the main path, surrounded by mausoleums, gleaming white under the light of the moon. "Where?"
Osse Pade led her to a crumbling tomb toward the back of the first row. "Andre is in here," he said, defeated.
Mamma coo'ed as she stroked the bokor's chin. He appeared almost happy then, until she reached out and laid a hand over her favorite son's final resting place.
"Rise up, my sweet Andre." She opened her arms. "That goes for all the departed who hear my call." She lifted her head and stretched her arms out. "If you wish to serve me, than you shall live again." She chuckled. "Do not worry. Never fear. All is well." She lowered her gaze and it landed square on me. "Mamma is here."
Rumbling filled the air, and I heard a sick scratching noise come from the tomb to my left. Someone was trying to get out.
A foot emerged from the soil in front of it, as if one of the dead had gotten turned around. Gray skin rubbed and tore against the white footpath as it tried to get a toehold.
I searched the sky for any sign of Dimitri. The scratching inside the tombs had grown more frantic. Louder.
Entire families were buried in these mausoleums, and if they were all coming back to life…I watched as the stone slab fell from the front of a tomb up ahead. A man stumbled out. Two more men and a woman toppled over him, followed by a child and another woman and oh my word, in a minute we were going to have an unstoppable horde.
I couldn't kill this many. Even if I could, Mamma would raise more.
Osse Pade stood just beyond the melee. I stalked up to him, grabbed him by his cold, dead arm. "What the hell is your end game?"
He broke into a smile. "Mamma knows best," he said, latching onto me with inhuman strength.
Farther down, Mamma embraced a slack-jawed, blond haired corpse with no nose or ears. "Andre baby," she said, ruffling his hair. She smiled at me, not even worried that I'd stop her.
I couldn't.
Not now, at least.
She let the blonde corpse shuffle away. She stood at the center of the moaning undead and lowered her eyes.
Mamma began uttering incantations. Her human followers gathered around her, praying, lending their energy to her as she worked, asking for her blessings as more and more of the dead rose from their graves.
Her eyes snapped open and she smiled. "Now, my good people," she reached down to them, "you will be transformed!"
They swayed and chanted, mesmerized as the dead surrounded them. I shouted a warning as a corpse drove its jaws into the neck of a woman in white. She arched forward, silently screaming. Blood sprayed as the zombie tore her throat out.
"Give yourselves! Surrender to death!" Mamma commanded the panicked crowd.
I broke away from Osse Pade and took down one corpse with a switch star. Two. I sliced their heads clean off. At least they couldn't bite. But the rest of the undead surged into the crowd, their fingers tearing, their jaws working.
It took no time for her to massacre them all. The bodies of the church members lay dead and bloody on
the ground.
Mamma's eyes locked onto mine across the blood and the gore. "Don't worry. Mamma's here." She raised her arms, flung them wide, and I saw the bodies on the ground twitch. "You'll better than you were before," she crooned to the grisly remains of her followers. "You'll be so much stronger." She grinned. "And you'll be mine."
Osse Pade gripped my arm. "It's beautiful, isn't it?" He pressed his lips against my neck with barely contained joy. "Once she has enough servants raised, she can draw the strength to bring you back from the dead."
Oh, hell no. "I'm not dead," I said, twisting in his grasp.
He kept hold of me and levered a knife at my heart. "You will be."
I broke free, wincing as his blade glanced off my bronze armor and sliced into the soft skin above. Hot pain seized me as I spun him around and grabbed his blade, holding him against me as I held it to his jugular.
Mamma jumped down from the tomb. "Kill him again," she laughed. She closed the distance between us. "Here. I'll do it for you." She took him by the neck and sliced him open with a sharp, bony finger. Blood sprayed as he fell to his knees.
I clutched a hand to my injured side. My vision swam. Frick, it hurt. I gathered my strength and focused on levitating. I needed to escape.
"No, no," Mamma gripped my shoulder and slammed me back to the ground. I'd only risen a few inches.
Osse Pade lay at our feet. I wasn't sure if he was alive or dead. "He's a good boy," she mused. "He tries. I don't know anyone else who has a demon slayer minion."
"Not you," I ground out, even as I found myself surrounded by the dead.
Her jaws creaked as she smiled. "Yes, me." She brought a skeletal hand to my bleeding side and I could feel the pierce of her fingers as she worked her way inside my body. "Die, demon slayer."
Chapter Twenty
Her cold fingers slithered inside me.
I slammed a switch star into her neck, taking her head clean off her shoulders. Blood splattered my face and I bent over in pain as I wrenched free of her grip.
Bodies pressed in on me from all sides, their dead hands holding me in place while Mamma snarled. Her head lay on the pavement several feet back, laughing at me.