by Nancy Holder
He grinned as he slipped it on over his head. “Cool. The ep, I mean. The synchronicity with what’s happening here.”
“It’s freaky weird,” Faith said to the girl, who nodded as if to say Yeah, but I’m used to freaky weird cuz I’m, like, so hip, and cupped her hand around her lighter.
“I like it,” the guy insisted, settling into his sweatshirt, unaware of the daggers Tori Amos Junior was throwing his way.
Faith sighed, not because these folks were too strange—before she’d become a Slayer, she was like them, digging on stuff that carried with it the illusion of meaning something, plus self-centered—but because she had a hangover and wanted nothing more than a shower and her own bed—and a toothbrush—but hey, bad dreams and bad weather equaled an increased need to find Buffy and compare notes. Also, a trip to the G-man’s apartment—Xander called the Watcher that, and Giles hated it—which wouldn’t be all bad. The dude made good tea and he had a lot of sweaters.
I’ll let ’em all wake up first, she decided.
“Okay, well, keep the keep,” she said, giving them a head nod, because she knew from experience that people this tragically avant-garde did not wave buh-bye.
As she passed out of range, she heard the girl grouse, “Jeez, Alan, give me your sweatshirt, for God’s sake. You pig.”
Share that love.
Faith hurried on, eager to get out of the cold, when the lights went out.
Every streetlight along the street went black, and every neon sign and traffic signal and even lights that had been on in windows. It was pitch-black dark, and the moon was covered with rain clouds.
Wicked strange, Faith thought, as she hurried along.
Chapter Seven
Canetown Plantation, Jamaica
It’s so windy tonight, Roger Zabuto thought, as the shutters on the old plantation house clattered and banged. He thought of the famous novel, A High Wind in Jamaica, and how it had ended in death for the main characters, pirates who had not committed the crimes for which they had been found guilty by a court of law. They’d committed others, though, and so their captain was content to be hanged, and his crew with him. Their sins led them to the gallows.
Mine lead me here.
He was drunk. Through the slats, the dark-haired man watched the waving cane fields. He thought of the Sargasso Sea, in the West Indies, famous for its murderous, thick miles of kelp beds, in which ships became entangled. Cursed and feared by sailors everywhere, the sea was a graveyard of hulks and men.
Like this hulk of a house.
Like me.
Despite the night—it was actually early morning—Roger Zabuto sat in the sweltering heat. He wore a loose white shirt and a pair of khaki trousers. On his feet were woven sandals. There was a single silver earring in his right ear. It was a black pearl, a gift from his cousin, Timothy, who was his only living relative. Timothy was an oceanographer who specialized in the Pacific Rim—California, Hawaii, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia; the exotic places. Timothy was the last of the Zabuto male line, and not likely to pass the name along, as he was gay.
Maybe he’ll adopt, Roger thought vaguely. It’s strange to think the Zabutos would ever die out.
Strange to think that I’ll die.
The cane fields rustled. Rats lived among the stalks of sugar; feral cats, too. In the old plantation days, Canetown had been the premier plantation on the island. The Zabutos had not been the original owners—that had been a white Brit, of course, named Jezruel Spaeth. Spaeth, a drunkard and an inveterate gambler, had lost the plantation to Roger’s great-great-grandfather in a game of faro.
The plantation had thrived, despite the prejudice of the other plantation owners against a black man entering their ranks. But then Roger’s father had sold most of the land, retaining only a few acres of cane. Roger devoted his life to training Kendra, and his cousin chose to become an oceanographer, and so the short-lived dynasty came to an end.
Maybe I’ll start raising cane again.
He smiled grimly at his own weak pun and stared out the window. Lightning crashed in the lowering sky, and a sudden rain struck the earth like hammers.
In the black recesses of the ruined mansion, the madwoman, Mirielle LaSalle, shrieked and danced. As Roger sat in what had been the music room, he saw her dart across the passageway, her sleeveless white dress swirling. Her lush, black hair streamed behind, tangles of wild curls framing her chalk-white face. She was laughing now, spinning in a circle as she teetered down the hallway toward the nursery. Mirielle was his mad wraith, the residue of Kendra’s battle with Baron Diable, the zombie king of the island.
Mirielle, one of the most beautiful women Roger had ever seen, had been targeted by the baron—also known as Simon Lafitte, a powerful businessman—to become the vessel for his mother’s soul. The drums spoke of it for months, as moons waxed and waned. Mirielle begged the authorities for help, but they turned her away. The official reason given was the usual—the practice of voodoo, per se, was not a crime.
But Mirielle knew that no one wanted to help her because she was doomed. People from Kingston to Ocho Rios knew what happened to someone who crossed a voodoo master. Goats were not the only things left hanging in trees with their throats slit.
The desperate Mirielle went underground, hiding out in the jungle, depending on offerings of food left in obscure places by sympathetic people, most of them women.
Finally, she found Roger Zabuto, who served as Watcher to the Vampire Slayer, Kendra. Kendra was in America at the time, and Mirielle almost despaired of help. Roger hid Mirielle in his house.
But somehow Baron Diable discovered the whereabouts of his intended vessel. The moon was hidden that night, a night much like this one, and the vast, overgrown plantation fields Roger had inherited soon tangled the footfalls of scores, if not hundreds, of the walking dead.
Zombies stumbled through the thick, shadowed night, mindless, speechless, soulless creatures that deadened the courage of Roger’s security guards. Oh, a few of the advance phalanx of zombies were shot, but when the others shuffled implacably forward, trampling the corpses of their fallen comrades, it was too much for the guards.
They ran, leaving Roger to drag Mirielle through the house as fear overcame her and her madness began.
“Mon Dieu,” she breathed, falling to her knees, “Roger, s’il tu plaits, kill me. Before they take me, make sure I’m dead.”
But he could not. He had sworn to the Watchers Council of Britain that he would protect human life, and not shed human blood.
More importantly, he had begun to love her. She was warm and beautiful, clever and witty. His life as a Watcher had been like his Slayer’s—isolated and lonely. Their mission was so sacred that all distractions were sacrificed—friends, family, company.
Now this beautiful woman was in his life. He couldn’t bear the thought of ending that wonderful dream.
“Then give me a gun. Oh, my God, give me a knife!” she had shrieked, clawing at him in her terror. “I’ll do it myself. I’ll rip open my veins with my teeth!”
But it was too late. As he tried to find a place to hide her, the dead army of Baron Diable broke into the house. They never made a sound, never grunted, never sighed, never breathed. They simply walked.
In panic she bolted out the back door, sobbing and cursing his name as the zombies surrounded her. If it would have done any good, he would have run out to save her.
From his research, he knew there were elaborate rituals to perform before Mirielle’s body was emptied of her spirit, and Tutuana’s could invade it. He had perhaps two weeks, maybe three, before Mirielle would be lost forever. His hope was that Kendra would return in time to help him save her.
The drums celebrated the victory while Lafitte’s mother, Tutuana, directed the brewing of the curare-based potion required for the transfer of her spirit into Mirielle’s lithe body. It was complicated, and each step had to be completed perfectly. By the time it was finished, three of Baron Diable’s most val
ued lieutenants lay dead, the consequence of their lack of attention to quality control: the potion had to be thrown out and re-created—under new management.
At last it was done. With great ceremony, in her finest robes and headdress, a necklace of rooster claws hanging down her chest, Tutuana drank her share of the potion. Mirielle’s share was forced down her throat. It rendered them both catatonic.
In the rays of the full moon, Baron Diable, resplendent in black robes and a headdress of his own, oversaw the placing of Mirielle’s body in a coffin layered with talismans and flowers, and sprinkled with the blood of dozens of offerings, both animal and human. The next step was to seal the lid and lower her into the earth.
The celebrants—many of them Simon Lafitte’s well-heeled business colleagues and political cronies from around the world—toasted with champagne as the Baron’s still-living followers sang and danced, leaping into and over fires and drinking the blood of yet more sacrifices. The zombies—hundreds of soul-dead men, women, and children—stared straight ahead, immobile, awaiting a simple command to stir them into a semblance of life.
The zombies were hideous, with mottled faces and slack musculature, lacking everything that distinguishes a person from a simple body. After a time, whatever animated them began to wear off, and their organs started to fail. They died slowly, on their feet—to the last, slaves of Baron Diable.
Some people claimed, however, that just before they finally stopped existing—they couldn’t actually be said to die, not by then—their souls returned for the briefest of moments. It was the worst of all the horrible things which had befallen Baron Diable’s victims, for in that moment they realized what had been done to them . . . and to remember everything Baron Diable had forced them to do: destroy, ruin, ravage, murder.
Mirielle was to be set apart: Baron Diable planned to rip her soul from her body at a different point in her transformation, and the physical process halted. Tutuana would take over the body, and animate it. It would not be truly living, but it would be more alive than dead. How vigorous it could be made to be would depend upon the force of Tutuana’s will.
The voodoo priestess was as feared as her son. It was said she bathed in the blood of virgins to retain her beauty, which was still extraordinary, even at her advanced age and her poor health.
Kendra arrived home almost too late; Roger had filled her in when he picked her up from the airport. His hands shook with fear, both for Mirielle and for his Slayer.
“This is a deadly situation,” he’d told Kendra.
And she had looked soberly at him and said, “Sir, they all are.”
Roger had loved Kendra then, the way a Watcher should love a Slayer—as a samurai admires a fine sword, or a soldier relishes a precision sidearm. She was a well-honed weapon in the battle against the forces of darkness, and one he could take some credit in refining.
But in that moment—that dark midnight when she left to save Mirielle LaSalle—he had looked at Kendra’s retreating form in the muggy heat and thought, And what does that make her, but a zombie? Her every thought is for her calling. Her every action is to improve her killing techniques. She has no expectation of a normal life, nor of a natural lifespan.
And what did I do to her? Roger Zabuto thought, as Mirielle danced mindlessly through his ruined mansion. He drank his rum and stared at the stormy cane fields, the vines and flowers dripping like raindrops over his field of vision.
I did nothing but prepare her for her destiny, he thought defensively. Kendra was the Chosen One, and that was not my decision. She was called, and I was as well.
Without me, she would have died much sooner.
But the insanity that was Mirielle LaSalle was a reminder that he had failed both of the women he cared for. Kendra had been quite young as a Slayer when her throat had been sliced open by the razor-sharp nails of Drusilla, a mad British vampire. Her attempt to save Mirielle had been one of her last major undertakings. It had been a terrible debacle, and he was certain that it had sapped her self-confidence. By the time she had left for America, he had already begun to mourn her.
The rescue of Mirielle was botched, and that was his fault. He hadn’t done his homework. When Kendra fought her way across the field of zombies, dug her up, and plucked her out of the coffin, she should have had a means at hand to keep Mirielle’s soul inside her body.
Mirielle’s spirit left her body for two nights, while Roger worked to restore it. When he brought her back, something else crept inside her, and now she was quite insane.
Tutuana’s soul was barred and forced to return to her own body. The great voodoo queen died a painful death soon after.
Her son’s fury was uncontrollable. He killed a hundred and fifty innocent people by setting off a bomb in an open market. His grief was worse: he tortured animals, zombies, and living people, as if they could absorb his agony.
The rains poured down heavy and hot, and the wind was ferocious. Roger was drinking rum neat, and watching the gathering storm. He thought he heard footsteps.
He thought he heard death coming for him.
Or was it all the rum?
Maybe it’s Simon Lafitte, he thought. He’s finally coming to get his revenge.
I should call for help.
But his telephone was not working. Such was often the case on the ruined plantation.
I should get a cellular.
A presence startled him; it was Mirielle, who had somehow come upon him without his noticing. When he jerked, startled, she laughed. Her fingertips plucked at her gauzy dress. In the years he’d kept her safe—imprisoned, an interior voice reproved him—he’d bought all her clothes, her toiletries, and her food and drink.
He was fairly certain that somewhere beneath the exterior craziness, she hated him for keeping her walled up alive.
“Do you like my dress?” she asked, twirling. “It was a present. From her.”
He studied her face, not understanding, afraid to press her for details.
“She came from here. From our island. These are her roots,” she confided. “She was a priestess, and they betrayed her. They sent her to him, to Taran. But she got even with him.”
Does she speak of Tutuana? Does the old priestess live on after all, inside Mirielle?
With a broken sob, she began to dance again, bounding and dropping to the floor, springing back up. She whirled and whirled, arms outstretched, head back.
She staggered to an abrupt stop. “Roger,” she said, out of breath from her frenzy, “the stars dropped out of the sky tonight.”
“Oui, mon amour,” he said cautiously.
“I counted them. There were four.” She waved her arms.
He regarded her with weary sympathy. “Were there?”
She nodded and touched her forehead. “The dead are speaking to me tonight, Roger. They are walking.” She leaned forward. Her gaze was intense and filled with hatred. “They are saying, ‘The Gatherer is coming.’ ”
Roger reached out a hand to steady her as she lurched to the right, grabbing his shoulder; she giggled, and the sound frightened him more than any of her pronouncements. She was filthy, and she stank, and she was the only human being on earth he had spoken to in three weeks. He had been desperately lonely, but he was too ashamed to go to town. The Watchers Council had invited him to London numerous times. He knew they were concerned about him, and they had a right to be. He was not handling the death of his Slayer well. Not well at all.
I should locate Christopher Bothwell, see how he’s doing, he thought. Last I heard, he’d become a beach bum in Southern California. Can’t get over his Slayer’s death, either.
Mirielle rested her head in his lap. “Make the dead be quiet,” she begged. “Tell them to hush and go away.”
Roger stroked her hair and drank his rum, trying to figure out what the devil was going on. The cane fields waved like sailors’ arms as the sea’s new victims sank in the Sargasso Sea.
Life is a morass, he thought, just too bloody m
uch to contend with. We ought to initiate some sort of support group for Watchers who have lost their Slayers. It’s rather criminal, actually, that we have nothing in place for this terrible situation. Of course, that’s not at all British, is it, to wallow in one’s sense of worthlessness? Best to keep a stiff upper lip, old man; best to show them the sterner stuff a good Watcher is made of.
It’s a wonder we haven’t all gone completely mad.
He drank his rum and watched the cane wave at him. Roger watched the stormy fields, seeing shadows that shambled toward the house, seeing nothing at all; shadows of past lovers and friends, blurs of memories soaked in rum. He was astonishingly drunk.
And he and Mirielle were no longer alone. He sensed it before he really knew it; then slowly Roger turned his head, his lips parted at the strange image before him. He thought, Am I so drunk I’m hallucinating?
A tall figure swathed in strips of material glided two inches above the floor, oblivious of the obeisance Mirielle paid as it floated toward Roger. The eerie figure was carrying a cube which appeared to be made of bits and pieces of human beings.
Twirling, Mirielle struck a pose, extending one foot in front of her body and draping her arms as if to display the creature like a prize package on a gameshow. In ringing, elated tones, she announced, “It’s called a Wanderer, mon vieux. It’s a messenger of the Gatherer, and it’s looking for a Slayer!”
The thing stood silently. If it looked like anything familiar, Roger would have called it a mummy. But it wasn’t, really. It terrified him. I thought I had given up on living. I thought I wouldn’t care if I died.
But I do care, very much. If it comes any closer, I’ll start screaming. And I won’t be able to stop, ever.
This is what happened to Mirielle. It was this kind of fear that made her insane.
Behind the figure and Mirielle, a man wearing a voodoo mask of painted wood posed on the threshold of the room in black, shimmering robes and a tall, black headdress. Behind him, a throng of dark people with slack faces and hollow eyes stared straight ahead.