Black Heart Loa (6 page)

Cielo burrows deep into the pile, dark earth flying into the air by the double pawful, but it seems like she’s no closer to digging Daddy out of the ground than when she began. When she sends her inner voice to him, she hears nothing in return. She redoubles her efforts. Blood and foam fleck the soil.

She hears soft padding behind her and her hackles rise. Dark shapes slip out from around the trees. She smells heated fur and musk, the reek of wolf and something other, something she doesn’t recognize.

A howl rakes the morning, a morning that has steadily darkened as Cielo’s paws tore through the dirt.

Just as she whirls around, forelegs planted in the dirt, muzzle lowered and lips wrinkled up, revealing her fangs, thunder cracks along the horizon. Her fierce warning growl rumbles to a stop in her throat at what she sees.

Three wolves, one black, the others rain-cloud gray,
roll in the dirt that Cielo has tossed into the driveway. Roll and
yip-yipe
and shudder as if their fur is on fire or their paws prickling with thorns. Their bodies ripple and blur.

Thunder booms again, an angry fist pounding the sky.

And rain pours.

G
abrielle watched through the
porch door’s screen as Belladonna steered her age-weathered Dodge Dart down the rutted dirt driveway, her tied-up and nervous guide strapped into the passenger seat, while Kallie sat in the back behind him, his shotgun lying across her bare thighs, her cousin’s red flannel mojo bag tucked into her pocket.

“Lord have mercy,” Gabrielle prayed. “Christ have mercy,
ago-ago yé.
Saint Expédite, pray and intercede for that poor boy buried in the ground, and grant his cousin speed and perfect timing. His life is in the hands of Bon Dieu.”

As the lime green vehicle bounced out of view in a wake of pale dust, Gabrielle added, “And in the Baron’s.” She could only hope that it wasn’t already too late.

Closing the front door, she twisted the simple lock into place. No dead bolts here, no security chains or bars on doors or windows. Most folks would never dream of crossing a conjurer’s threshold uninvited.

Well, not the locals, anyway. As for those who don’t know better …
Gabrielle glanced at the sullen expression above Cash’s duct-taped mouth. A smile brushed her lips.
A fist-throwing, shotgun-grabbing niece will do the job just as nicely.

And as for unseen and otherworldly danger, a hoodoo’s wards usually guarded the home quite handily, but the tingle Gabrielle had felt—the warm spiderweb touch of protective
gris-gris
against evil—as she’d stepped into Divinity’s cozy, frankincense- and rose-fragrant home a few hours earlier was now inexplicably missing.

Gabrielle walked into the living room, her gaze skipping from that chair-bound fool Cash to Divinity’s softly snoring form on the sofa. The woman’s face was untroubled, her light cocoa-colored skin uncreased by worry, fear, or doubt. And Gabrielle had seen every one of those emotions chase across the rootworker’s face that morning since she’d learned of her nephew’s dire situation.

How in the name of Bon Dieu and all the saints and angels had Divinity’s spell backfired? How was such a thing even possible?

Power peals through the room in a deep, bone-thrumming vibration and Gabrielle’s heart stutters.

A cold hand trailed ice down Gabrielle’s spine—and not for the first time that morning either. Something was
very
wrong, something that traveled deeper than backfiring spells and suddenly missing house wards.

Maybe it was more of Jean-Julien’s—
no, make that Doctor Heron, the Jean-Julien she’d once loved had disappeared the day he was arrested for murder
—dark work, a hex laid down before Kallie and her handsome dread-locked nomad had ended his dark work forever.

Maybe it was due to the fact that Kallie carried a
loa
inside of her instead of a soul—a fact her aunt had hidden from the girl until just an hour or so ago.

Yo’ soul—yo’
Gros Bon Ange
—was removed to make room for de
loa
placed inside you. De same
loa
dat your mama tried to awaken with blood and darkness by murdering yo’ papa and shooting you.

But
why
was a
loa
put inside me? Who did it? How? And why the hell would Mama want to awaken it? And where’s my soul?

Well, see, dat be de problem. We don’t know. Your mama was de last one who had it, and she ain’t talking.

Gabrielle shook her head, still amazed. She’d never heard of such a thing. A child’s—no, an
infant’s
—soul stolen, the emptiness inside filled with a sleeping
loa
—one that apparently craved violence.

Which explained—somewhat—what Gabrielle had seen Kallie do as Jean-Julien’s soul had escaped his dying, knife-savaged body.

The black dust coating Jean-Julien’s soul ripples, then flows backward and down into Kallie’s waiting palm. The root doctor’s spirit unravels inch by inch, molecule by molecule, until the air is empty.

Gabrielle’s fingers plucked at the edges of her scarf, then she mentally shooed away the image of her former lover’s ultimate death. Just who or what resided inside of Kallie Rivière? And why? Questions asked by the girl herself, questions that remained unanswered—so far.

A surge of anger stiffened Gabrielle’s spine. Stealing identities. Costing innocent folks their lives. Lying to her niece—even if to protect her from her mother’s inexplicable and reprehensible actions.

Divinity Santiago has a helluva lot of explaining to do and much to answer for. A shame her niece and nephew are paying for her foolishness. And thinking of that poor boy …

Maybe, just maybe, there was still time for Gabrielle to help Kallie rescue her cousin from the fate Jean-Julien had no doubt spun into motion even before he’d attempted to kill Kallie body and soul—and would’ve succeeded, if not for her missing soul.

Gabrielle quickly cleared the coffee table of empty Abita bottles, a blue glass vase full of white roses with peach-rimmed petals, magazines—
Boat World, Star Magazine, Louisiana Cookin’
—and a slim, well-thumbed copy of
The Complete Poems of John Keats
.

Makeshift altar clean and empty, Gabrielle hurried to Divinity’s worktable for a couple of blessed candles, some holy water, and an incense brazier. Digging through the woman’s collection of roots and herbs, she also scooped up a handful of tobacco leaf, a chunk of frankincense resin, and a little bottle of dragon’s blood ink.

A small wood carving of a penis nestled in among the brightly painted saint statues caught her attention.
Just the thing for the randy
loa
of the dead.
Smiling, she added it to her little pile of goodies.

From the kitchen, she fetched a couple of slices of sourdough bread, grumbling at the lack of peanuts—one of the Baron’s favorites—then poured a cup of cold coffee from the carafe on the counter. She discovered a bottle of Captain Morgan spiced rum in the cupboard above the quietly humming refrigerator and was surprised, but pleased, to see hot peppers floating inside.

A quick count revealed the hot pepper tally as twenty-one, a perfect offering for Baron Samedi, gatekeeper to the world of the dead.

And given the hot-peppered rum, it seemed that although Divinity was a hoodoo rootworker and not a
Vodou mambo or even a voodoo priestess, the woman was, if nothing else, a hoodoo prepared for a client’s any request.

Satisfied with her plunder, Gabrielle returned to the living room, knelt in front of the coffee table, and dumped her offerings onto its polished mahogany surface. With the ease and sure-handedness of decades of practice, she laid out the offerings—bread, black coffee, and rum. Although she wished she were working at her own altar with its
vévé
-and-cross-etched spirit pot, she had no choice but to make do with what she had.

A life hangs in the balance.

Rising to her feet, Gabrielle unstoppered the small blue bottle of holy water, then dipped her fingers into the consecrated fluid. She walked the room, murmuring a protection spell—
Where this sacred water is cast, no thing of darkness or evil can last or can endure this water pure
—and flicking holy water into the corners, and on the thresholds of the doors and windows.

She paused to sprinkle both a scowling Cash and the sweet-dreaming Divinity, before anointing the items on the altar and then replaced the cork stopper on the bottle of holy water.

Kneeling once more, Gabrielle lit the mingled frankincense and tobacco piled on a charcoal round in the brazier with a wood match, then touched the flame to each of the three candles in turn. The pungent aroma of sweet leaf tobacco and musky incense wafted into the air.

Grabbing one of the magazines from where she’d placed them on the hardwood floor, Gabrielle placed it on the coffee table beside the upright carved wood dick. Then, dipping her finger into the red, cinnamon-scented
ink, she drew a cross and a coffin outline on one of the magazines’ back page.

With the Baron’s symbols—cross, coffin, and phallus—etched on paper, Gabrielle twisted open the bottle of Captain Morgan. The eye-watering odor of peppered rum curled into the air and, blinking, she fanned a hand in front of her face.

Cash emitted a duct-tape muffled complaint—lipsmushed words that sounded something like:
Jesus Christ! I can even smell that shit over here.

“Hush, boy,” she said. “This rum ain’t for you—or any mortal man. It’s a gift to the Baron. Now keep quiet while I work.” She nodded in satisfaction as Cash rolled his eyes, but otherwise remained silent.

Divinity snored, oblivious.

After voicing the Litany of the Saints and the Lord’s Prayer, Gabrielle crossed herself, murmuring, “
Au nom du Père, le Fils, et le Saint Esprit,
I call upon you, oh mighty Baron Samedi, all-knowing
loa
of death and resurrection, gatekeeper to the world of the dead, to humbly ask for a young man’s life to be spared.”

As she spilled a little of the peppered rum onto the bread, her skin rose in goose bumps, suddenly chilled. The energy charging the room’s atmosphere wasn’t the tranquil and hushed sense of the sacred that usually followed a blessing or protection spell and invocation. No.
This
energy was dense and dark and coiled like a python around a twisted oak branch, waiting.

And very,
very
wrong.

Heart thudding, Gabrielle lowered the bottle of rum to the table and carefully scanned the room, but saw nothing out of place, nothing amiss. Except …

As her gaze returned to the makeshift altar, she noticed that the smoke from the brazier had thickened, spreading throughout the room like a roiling nicotine- and frankincense-scented thundercloud. The hair lifted on the back of her neck.

“I believe in God, the Father Almighty,” she prayed, grabbing the bottle of holy water and rising to her feet, “Creator of heaven and earth.”

“Dat nice and all, but I t’ink He be too busy stroking Hisself to pay much mind to yo’ prayers,” a nasal, masculine voice said, then a night-skinned man wearing a black fedora with a purple band, sunglasses, and a purple shirt beneath what looked like a well-tailored black Armani suit stepped from the thundercloud of smoke. “A cock dat large—an eternal fucking cock—needs
beaucoup
attention,
ma belle femme.
”

Standing in front of the sofa and the sleeping Divinity, Baron Samedi thrust his silver-handled walking stick between his legs as a visual aid. Waggled it up and down, in and out.

“Mmmph-
mmft
!” Cash exclaimed.

Gabrielle somewhat agreed with the young outlaw’s
Holy shit
assessment.

Despite the
loa
’s requested presence, everything still felt very wrong to Gabrielle, dangerously off-kilter. From outside, she heard the low rumble of distant thunder. She carefully unstoppered the bottle of holy water, keeping her attention fixed on the Baron and his hip-thrusting pantomime.

“Thank you for answering my call and listening to my petition,” she said. “A young man named—” Gabrielle’s words withered in her throat as the Baron moved
with striking cobra swiftness to stand in front of Cash.

Mr. I-Don’t-Believe-in-Juju’s eyes widened. His eyebrows disappeared into his sweaty hairline. He hopped his chair back across the hardwood, but the Baron remained right in front of him as though the toes of his black leather dress shoes were duct-taped to the chair legs.

“Mmmph!”

A grin split the Baron’s lips. He tapped his walking stick against the top of Cash’s blond mullet, then the
loa
vanished. Cash stiffened, his eyes rolling up white in his head. He slumped in his chair, the ropes knotted around his ankles and wrists keeping him more or less upright.

Before Gabrielle could say a word, Cash straightened up in the chair, yanking free as though the ropes binding him had been braided out of butter, then rose to his feet. He ripped the duct-tape from his mouth and dropped the wilted gray strip to the floor.

Holding out his hands, he wriggled his fingers, then lowered his arms. “Pasty,” he declared. “But a fine
cheval
all de fucking same.” His nostrils flared. “Ah, I smell de rum.”

“Here,” Gabrielle said, lifting the opened bottle. She hadn’t expected the Baron to possess Cash, but then, she hadn’t expected him to actually manifest for an invocation of mercy either. “I humbly ask for a life, a young man named—”

The Baron laughed. “Let me drink first, woman.” He strode over to the coffee-table altar and snatched up the bottle of rum from Gabrielle’s hands. With a lewd wink, he tipped the bottle back and poured the hot-peppered
rum down his gullet in one long, throat-stretching swallow. The peppers’ sharp smell spiced the air.