Nibo was sick of being misjudged. “Don’t lay your hate on me. Or your sins. That be your mirror, Qee. Not mine. All I ever wanted was to play me music and be left alone to tend my flock and love me wife. Just like now. You’re the one seeking glory and to lead the fools what will listen to you into a quest that will be the death of all. Not I.”
“That’s what you say. But I see more than you think.”
“Nay, that you do not. You see nothing save your own stupid opinions that are colored by an ego so large it blots out the very sun above and casts a shadow over the entire world.”
Qeenan’s eyes turned bright red as the demon inside him rose up.
Nibo tensed and lowered his voice. “Go ahead, brother. Attack. This time, me back’s not turned. Just remember that when you do, I will defend myself.”
It was so eerie to see that amount of hatred in his own eyes. To stare at it in a face that was so close to his own. While Nibo held a healthy dose of self-loathing, Qeenan took it to a whole new level.
Right down to arguing over who’d had the prettier identical twin sister.
“You were ever a brat, you rank, filthy bastard. Maman should have drowned you in infancy.”
“Too bad she didn’t drown you first.”
Or leave him to strangle himself with that umbilical cord.
Qeenan exploded into fire. He rushed toward Nibo with a burst of energy and would have engulfed him had he not countered the attack with a wave of his crook. Instead, Nibo caught him with the edge of it and swatted him off like an annoying fly. The blow caused his brother to rebound off the nearest building with a resounding smack that was so loud it caused every spirit near them to turn and stare.
And Papa Legba to burst into laughter.
That did nothing to calm Qeenan’s fury. Rather it spurred it ever onward and made him cuss Nibo like a slow-walking dog. Which was fine by him, as he’d called his brother far worse things.
This was, after all, their own personal hell for their crimes against each other. Qeenan for the fact that he’d killed him and caused Aclima’s suicide, and Nibo’s for his well-noted arrogance that had made Qeenan hate him. He had been a selfish sonofabitch when he’d lived, and he had rubbed Qeenan’s nose in the fact that Aclima was more outgoing than her sister. Truth was, he could still be that prick.
He just tried to hide that sin a little more these days. But his brother continued to revel in his violence and wrapped himself up in the proud cloak of self-indulgent gore and mayhem.
Qeenan peeled himself from the wall and returned to his more human form. “One day, brother—”
“We had that fight already. You won, remember?” His brother had left him with nothing. Nibo glanced to Qeenan’s sleeves that were marked with red handprints. The signs of Nibo’s murder, and those that marked Qeenan as Baron Kriminal, the hit man for their nanchon. He was the one summoned to do their dirty work in the human realm. If they wanted someone killed, or worse, his brother was more than happy to do it.
No questions asked.
Qeenan spat at his feet. “You should have been left to wander in limbo forever. A forgotten shade.”
“Couldn’t agree more,” he said under his breath as his brother walked off. He’d never asked for either life. This one or his first. He damn sure hadn’t wanted to be tied to Qeenan in either of them.
But that was the way of things. Life was ever a gift. And never the one you’d really wanted and had hoped to get. Worse? It always came with a no-return policy.
Take it or leave it.
Disgusted, Nibo headed for the gates. He wasn’t sure where he was going. But he didn’t want to be here any longer. If he had to listen to fools bitch and moan, he might as well be among the humans. At least they had a reason for their blind stupidity and unhappiness. They were the pawns of the real assholes.
Qeenan watched as his brother walked off, and narrowed his gaze. He grabbed his right hand, Joseph Danger, the loa of justice who traveled with him. They were inseparable, as Joseph was the one charged with righting injustices of the righteous who’d been wronged, and he was the one who wouldn’t hesitate to shed blood in their name.
Indeed, he lived for such.
Unlike him and his twin, whom he loathed, he and Joseph were a perfect team. Joseph didn’t shirk at what needed to be done to balance the scales. He understood payback and hell-wrath. That not everyone deserved to live.
Or to be happy.
Nibo was pathetic in his sympathy for others and Qeenan cursed his twin’s bleeding heart. While Qeenan knew when to cull the herd, his brother was all about coddling the weak and wasting resources on those unworthy.
Nibo’s devotion to his pathetic human bitch was a prime example. Rather than cut her loose, he’d bargained to save her.
Futtocking fool.
His human tart would be the death of him. Again. Just like Aclima had been when she’d refused Qeenan’s advances.
You’re not your brother. And I won’t have you. …
Her death had been no suicide. He’d kill her again if he could. Just as he’d killed Nibo’s latest whore.
“Nibo will gut you if he ever learns what you did.”
Qeenan hissed at the fool who spoke too loudly. “He would have risked us all for her. A slag whore.”
Joseph’s gaze went to Erzulie as she walked past and gave them a covert glance. “There are many who risk more for things they shouldn’t covet.”
Qeenan grabbed him by the throat. “Remember, I have the power to take out a loa as much as I do a mortal.”
Joseph placed a searing hand to his wrist that caused him to gasp and let go instantly. “You’re not the only one, Qee. Just because you enjoy the killing and they indulge your hunger for it doesn’t mean no one else here can rise to the occasion.”
His fury simmering, Qeenan blew cool air across his burning wrist to soothe it as Joseph vanished.
“Go ahead,” he breathed. “All of you. Mock me, if you will. But you’ll regret your actions.”
He’d make sure of it.
Adarian respected him. He understood the future better than these troglodytes. There was a new day dawning. And it wasn’t for the bleeding-heart radas who clung to their outmoded traditions and useless ways.
This was the age of division. The age of conquest and fury. Of grudges and hatred.
The Malachai was rising and he and his loyal followers were going to make sure the world paid for everything it had done to them. For all the ill it’d made them swallow.
He was tired of walking in his brother’s shadow. Tired of eating scraps and being treated like the dog sent out as a last resort, after all the others had been called for first.
Just once, Qeenan wanted to be the chosen one. His days of being cursed were over.
It was his name they would cheer, and he would be second to no one, especially not the brother he hated.
“Burn, bitches, burn.”
And it would be his brother’s precious Valynda and the crew of the Sea Witch he’d offer up as his first sacrifices to the Malachai to prove his loyalty.
“You should call for your Nibo.”
Valynda tensed as she heard Belle’s voice behind her. Clearing her throat, she finished knotting the ropes she’d been mending and tried not to be annoyed at the sound of yet another person meddling in her life. After all, when had that ever gone wrong for her? “Why would I do that?”
“Because you’re weeping.”
She scoffed at the very idea. “I can’t weep.” She had no tear ducts.
Coming around her side, Belle placed her hand on Valynda’s chin and forced her to meet her gaze. The beauty of Belle’s features never ceased to amaze Valynda. Today, she’d painted an intricate pattern of blue and white dots around her eyes and down the bridge of her nose. The paint glistened against her dark skin and complemented the darker blue and red beads that were braided into the hair she kept held back from her face with a red kerchief that was knotted at the nape o
f her neck.
Because she was a rigger, charged with climbing up and down the masts, she wore breeches and tunics like the men, and yet she was as regal and graceful as any queen. Indeed, there was something innately feminine and deadly about Belle Morte. Gentle and cutthroat.
That dichotomy was what had drawn Valynda and everyone else to her and kept them all intrigued.
Not to mention the fact that Belle, in spite of her ferocity, tended to act as motherly toward them as the Lady Marcelina, who guarded the entire crew like a fierce lioness. And it was the maternal Belle staring at her right now. “Don’t be lying to me, child. I know you better. I see all that’s unseen.”
And that she did. No one could hide from the powerful sorceress. Valynda knew that. Belle’s powers were extraordinary. The only one who came close to them was Janice, the Trini Dark-Huntress who traveled with them and who could only come out from belowdecks after the sun went down.
“I want nothing to do with him, Belle. We’re done.” Except for the small matter of her needing to seduce him for the Malachai, but it seemed like a bad idea to mention that to the one person who could rat her out and see her gutted for it.
“’Tis a pity, that.”
“Why?”
Shaking her head, Belle sighed and released her. She fetched a length of the rope Valynda had been working on for the rigging and headed off.
At first, Valynda assumed she was done with her and was going to carry it to the mast to repair something. Since it was Belle’s job, it made sense.
But, in a grand huff, Belle came back to her.
“You know how I died?”
Of course not. How Belle had died was one of the best-kept secrets on board the ship, which, given the grand secrets of this crew, said a lot, as most of them weren’t too keen on sharing much of anything, other than a few random shoves, and blows to the egos whenever someone got to thinking too much of themselves. Not even the captain knew what had happened to Belle to bring on her damnation.
The woman kept a lid on that tighter than Sallie kept the cork on his rum bottle where he stored his soul.
Valynda shook her head.
Her eyes turned as stormy as the seas right before a tempest. “I had a family I loved more than anything on this earth or beyond. Husband and a daughter so beautiful that even the angels above wept in envy of her.” Belle’s voice cracked with the weight of her heartache and pain. “They were the pride of me life, they were, and maybe that was me mistake. I took too much pride in caring for them. In loving them and being loyal to them before even meself. In putting them above and beyond everything else, and thinking nothing and no one could ever divide us. Because I truly believed that—that nothing and no one could ever get between me husband and me. That we had that rare love that comes along once in a fairy-tale dream.”
Closing her eyes, Belle visibly winced. “Until the day me husband hired a new barmaid for his tavern. Plain and homely, she was, and I thought nothing of her at first. But it didn’t take long to see that she was all kinds of evil. It was evident in the way she talked to others. How she put them down whenever me husband wasn’t around and how smug she acted, as if she owned the place. I tried me best to tell him exactly who and what she was. I saw the devil in that one, clear as I stand here before you. She was evil incarnate, and it bled from her tongue with every honey-coated barb and well-practiced, left-handed compliment she dropped every time she opened her fetid mouth. But he refused to listen to me. He told me over and over that I was being ridiculous and that we needed her. I couldn’t believe it. He hired her as a servant, and before I knew it, he had her even living with us as if she was a member of our family! He’d even go off a-gallivanting with her in the middle of the day to frolic while I’d be left alone to work by meself to support our family and watch our daughter! ’Twas so bad, some even began to think her his wife instead of me. Instead of being ashamed for what he did and how he behaved, the beast that he became began to throw his thoughtless acts in me face and to blame me for it. And I grew physically sick and weak from the stress of having to work all the time to pick up the slack as he played more and more with this stranger who divided him from his family and duties.”
Valynda was stunned on multitudinous levels. One, she hadn’t known Belle was ever married. Hadn’t known she’d been a mother. Nor that their petite sorceress had owned a tavern.
Indeed, it was all she could do to keep from gaping at all the facts her friend had kept secret.
Twisting the rope in her hands, Belle paused as if the memories were more than she could bear. “And me husband wasn’t the only one she toyed with. That horrible slag bitch caused trouble between everyone she came into contact with. ’Twas as if she fed from the very turmoil she fostered, like some gluttonous maggot what couldn’t get its fill. Every night ’twas a brawl between patrons caused by her and that rancid tongue that hid its venom beneath disguised insults and doublespeak.”
Belle curled her lip. “She had a way of getting into someone’s mind and twisting it around until they turned on even their very best friend to the point of murder. And it wasn’t just the patrons she went against. Workers we’d had for years quit without warning, and all because of the mischief she’d put in their weak-willed minds where she’d played on their fears and turned their thoughts against me, as if I was the cause of it. For no reason other than she was a mean, petty she-bitch, bent on the utter destruction of all those around her. And that was nothing compared to what she’d done to me poor, pathetic husband.”
Valynda held her breath at the venom in Belle’s voice. That was a new tone for the tiny woman, especially since Belle never talked badly about anyone. The fact that she didn’t like this woman told her all she needed to know.
She had to be evil for Belle not to like her, and her husband to be a true idiot not to know that one basic fact about Belle. If he knew nothing else about his wife, he should have known that. There was an innate kindness in her that radiated out from her like the warm glow of sunlight after a fierce storm.
Belle got along with everyone. She loved everyone and no one could be around her for five heartbeats and not feel it. Everyone was drawn to her. While she might be a bit verbally caustic, she was compassion incarnate. There was no one she wouldn’t help. No one she wouldn’t reach out to if they were in need.
And if Belle didn’t like someone … they were rotten to their very core and should be avoided like a poisonous viper in the Garden of Eden.
How could the man who married her not know that?
“What did he say when you tried to tell him about the woman he’d let in?”
Belle ground her teeth. “That she was only trying to help.”
Valynda grimaced at the stupidity of that answer. How could anyone be so blind as to not see through something so obvious? Especially if he’d been married to Belle for any length of time. Or known her at all?
With a bitter laugh, Belle shook her head. “I was too sick to argue against them both. Besides, he’d always been my hero. We did everything together. Until that trollop showed up, we’d seldom ever had an argument. We were best friends in all things … or so I thought. And never had I known him to be weak-minded, yet she took control of him like a marionette. Pathetic fool thought himself in charge, but she played him for everything he wasn’t worth. Before I knew it, he turned on me and our daughter in ways I couldn’t fathom. No longer were those his words coming from his mouth, but hers. He let that monstrous whore torture ma petite fille and me like she was the mistress of his home and I the tart in the tavern he’d hired off the street. Nothing I could say or do would get through to his mind. ’Twas as if she’d removed his brains and replaced them with mush. I couldn’t understand how he could just stand there and bear witness to her evil and say nothing. How he couldn’t see what was right before him and blame us for her wickedness. Whatever I said, or ma petite Shara, that wench turned around and mutated. She made even the most innocuous comment sinister with her wicked ma
chinations, and never once did he doubt her lies.”
Belle’s eyes glistened with unshed tears. “As long as I live, I’ll never understand how it was my Robbie turned on me the way he did. We’d known each other since we were children. Never did I say or do anything to make him doubt me. I gave him all I had and more, and I loved him more than me life. Had he simply come to me and said he wanted to leave with her, I’d have been fine with that and wished him well. Truly, I’d have packed his bags meself. But nay, rather he stood by and let that slag whore poison me and ma fille.”
Wait …
What?
Shocked, it took Valynda a moment to grasp the magnitude of what she said.
Then she gasped in horror. “Nay!”
A single tear fell from Belle’s eye. “Indeed. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the stress wasn’t what had been making me ill. I simply thought myself overworked and overtaxed as I sat there, day after day, watching ma petite fille grow weaker with every rattling breath she struggled to take, ne’er really knowing what was wrong with us both, while he knew what that bitch was doing, and said nothing to me about it. How could any man ever do such a thing to the family he’d sworn before God to love and protect? How?”
The agony in her eyes flooded Valynda’s with tears for the pain it wrought through her soul.
Her mind reeled at the horror of it all. Belle’s husband was worse than the very demons they fought against. What father, or husband, could do something so monstrous? So cruel? How could anyone betray another human in such a cold, brutal fashion? She couldn’t understand it any more than Belle did.
There were some lines no one should ever cross. And this level of insidious cruelty was definitely one of them.
Belle shook her head. “Shara was in so much pain, every day, and I was so concerned for her that it didn’t even dawn on me that we shared the same symptoms. I actually thought my maternal instincts caused me to feel her ailments in sympathy because ma petite cried all the time from it. Poor babe could barely walk. If she managed to eat, she threw it all up. Her body was failing and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I tried every potion I could think of to make her better. Prayed to every spirit I knew. Lit every candle. Nothing worked. Not even Nibo could help her. ’Twas as if all had abandoned me with feckless disregard.”
At Death's Door (Deadman's Cross Book 3) Page 10