Savage Prophet: A Yancy Lazarus Novel (Episode 4) (23 page)

“I don’t like this,” Ferraro said as we both stalked over to the offered seats. She stole an uneasy look around the room. “This guy, he gives me the creeps, Yancy. I know I don’t have the same experience with the supernatural as you do, but I’m a good judge of character, and this guy’s bad. Maybe he won’t do anything to us personally, but he’ll roll on us in a heartbeat if there’s something in it for him. I’ve worked with a thousand snitches just like him. That’s probably the reason he’s an informant in the first place—his allegiance is for sale to the highest bidder.”

“I’m not saying you’re wrong”—I ran a hand through my hair—“but this is what we’ve got to work with. This is the only place we can go, and that decrepit old fart is our only lifeline.”

Pierre-Francois wobbled out a moment later, sans shotgun, clothed in a ratty plaid bathrobe held together mostly by sweat and grime and bits of dried chewing tobacco. “I still can’t believe it,” the old-timer said, shuffling to an unoccupied seat across from me and gently, slowly, lowering himself down.

His face contorted in a grimace of pain from his effort. “These godforsaken bones ah mine get older every day. Comin’ up on four hundred next month.” He sighed, then broke wind—a billowing rip, which he completely ignored—as he settled his weight onto the seat. “So you got a death wish?” he said without preamble. “If so, you done come to the right place, boy.”

“No death wish,” I replied, trying to ignore the sour stink of old man flatulence, “and I think we both damned well know I wouldn’t be in Haiti if the need weren’t world-ending important.”

“You workin’ a case, then?” he asked, milky eyes peering into me. “Last I heard you were in retirement. Left after that mess with the
De Danann
.”

“Was retired. Past tense. Things change, and for now, I’m battin’ for the home team again.”

“Things, they change alright,” Pierre-Francois replied slowly, raising one hand and fingering a few overlong strands of hair jutting from a large mole on his chin. “You truckin’ with the dark power, now? The
Avizo
?” he asked, then waved a hand through the air, fingers flicking back and forth in dismissal. “What me sayin’? Course you usin’. It’s all over you. Even a blind man like me can see that. Don’t even need no help from Nibo.”

“What’s a Nibo?” Ferraro asked, leaning forward, one elbow resting on her knee.

“Him who gives me power, ah course. The Baron of the Crossroads. I make him offerings, he grant me access to the Avizo for my workings. I never woulda taken you for a secret practitioner,” he said, turning that watery, dead gaze back on me, “but, like you say, things, they change. You come to learn the secret? The art? Might be I could teach you, if that what you after. Haven’t had a proper apprentice in a time, but I know the craft good as any. Better than most. I could teach you the making of the fetishes, too. With your kinda power, boy, you could be one of the best.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, far more vehemently than I intended.

Except maybe I
did
know what he was talking about, after a fashion.

The ghostly rustle of demonic wings seemed to drift through my head in quiet affirmation.

Though folks like Pierre-Francois used the Vis in their workings, Voodoo was an altogether different beast than what most magi did. My abilities were tied directly to the raw power undergirding creation. When I wanted to do something, I tapped into that vast ocean of energy, drew the necessary elemental components, then shaped it according to my will. No muss, no fuss, very straightforward.

More like advanced physics than magic.

But Voodoo
was
magic, in its way.

Instead of shaping Vis through sheer will, Voodoo priests, Bokors, and initiates of Voudoun manipulated Creation’s energies through complicated rituals and time-consuming prayers, which were so integral to the process that their constructs literally wouldn’t work without all the religious trappings. And, most notably, they focused on conjuring and binding the Loa in exchange for powers no proper magi had access to. A power voodoo workers called
Avizo
—the mysterious force that governs death and destruction.

The true Voudoun community was closed off to outsiders, and Voodoo masters—few and far between, believe you me—were notoriously tight-lipped about their rituals and even more so with Guild members, who frowned on their ass-backward practices. Like necromancy. Powerful Voudoun practitioners were a secretive lot, and those who divulged those secrets to noninitiates faced extremely unpleasant punishments. Like being buried alive. Or set on fire. True, I knew a little bit about the secret Voodoo from my time working undercover here, but what I knew only scratched the bizarre, fetish-covered surface.

But what if Voodoo wasn’t magic?

What if
Avizo
was just a different word for
Nox
? What if Houngans and Bokors bound free-roaming Loa in exchange for access to a dark, secret power inaccessible to humans without aid from powerhouse interdimensional beings? Was I a friggin’ Bokor now? Some kinda dark Voodoo shithead?

That wasn’t a line of thought I particularly wanted to explore, so I rudely shoved those nasty notions away. Pushing them to the back of my mind, I turned my full attention to Pierre-Francois.

“Listen,” I growled, “all we’re here for is information.”

Ferraro placed a hand on my shoulder and gave it a little pull, forcing me to look at her. “You okay?” she asked, searching my face.

I nodded, too afraid to speak, knowing I might give away just how
not
okay I was.

“Why don’t you take a breather?” she said, sensing my sour mood. “I can do this part as well as you. Better, actually.”

I nodded and folded my arms across my chest, refusing to look at the lined Voodoo priest.
I’m not a fucking death-worshiping, necromantic shitheel, dammit!

“We’re here to find out about a man,” Ferraro said evenly, “who we have good reason to believe operates in these parts. He has a number of names and aliases, but we believe he’s going by Baron Samedi, though he also goes by the name Luang Phor Ong. Or sometimes Mucalinda.”

There was a screech as Pierre-Francois’s wobbly stool slid back. His face swiftly contorted in fear at the mention of the name. Before anyone could speak he crossed himself then grabbed a bone-clad talisman—shaped like an open palm with an actual chicken’s eye affixed in the middle—which he promptly raised to his dusty lips in a reverent kiss.

“You do got a death wish. The both of you,” he said, then spat on the floor. “Come ’round here, talking ’bout the High Baron. Bad business, no matter who you be.” He fished a dirt-stained handkerchief from his robe pocket and mopped his forehead. His hand shook the whole while. “Hear me now, I want no part in helpin’ anyone who at cross purposes with him. You cross him, you dead or you end up zombie. Don’t matter what Loa you serve, he get you. And I will not end up wit’ my soul in a witch-jar. I will not.”

I rounded on him. “Does this have something to do with Pa Beauvoir roaming the streets when he should be a pile of bones rotting in the friggin’ ground?”

Pierre-Francois shook his head, a petulant, implacable sneer firmly in place on his worn face. “I’m not sayin’ nothin’ against the High Baron Samedi. Not him and not Baron La-Croix, neither.”

“Baron La-Croix,” I said, standing, skirting around the table and slowly edging forward until I loomed over the shriveled man. “Is that what Pa Beauvoir is going by these days?” I grabbed his musty bathrobe, nearly recoiling at the filthy layer of grime. “These days, I’ve been having a helluva time with my temper”—a surge of Nox crept in, and suddenly I was seeing through a hazy cloud of purple. I knew my eyes were glowing with otherworldly power, I could see it reflected in Pierre-Francois milky orbs—“so you’d better talk before a witch-jar seems like a nice place for retirement.”

Ferraro smoothly slipped up next to me, wedging herself between me and the old man. “No reason for this to turn ugly,” she said, first to me, then rounding on Pierre-Francois. “Please, let me help you back to your seat.” With a halfhearted smile she walked the tottering old man over to his stool and eased him down. “Now,” she said, backing up a step, “let’s be civil about this?”

“You think I’m a fool, yeah?” the boneman responded. “I know what this be. I watch your American television shows. Your Miami Vice, with Sonny Crockett and Rico Tubbs. You playin’ good cop, bad cop. Well, I’m not dumb.”

“Good,” Ferraro said with a flash of teeth. “I’m glad you know how this works—that’ll save time explaining it.”

“I ain’t talkin’—nothin’ you can do to me be worse than what the Barons will do. I’ve got nothin’ to say on the matter.”

She nodded her head sympathetically as he spoke, then, as he fell sullenly silent, she cocked back her fist and popped him in the jaw with a wicked right hook that sent him sprawling to the floor with a curse and a thud.

“A pox on you, woman!” he shouted, his voice a disgruntled rasp as he rubbed at his cheek. “I thought you were the good cop?”

“I am,” she replied evenly, “but good and bad are subjective terms.”

“And FYI,” I said, pulling my hand cannon and pointing it at one of his rail-thin legs, “be careful who you call poxes down on. I tend to get a little trigger happy when people start threatening my friends, douchenozzle. And bad things happen when I get trigger happy. If you need my credentials, feel free to ask your Baron La-Croix about it.” I tapped the corner of my eye with one finger, a not-so-subtle reminder that I’d blasted the Voodoo Daddy’s brain out the back of his head.

“I meant nothing by it, that curse,” he said with a sigh, then shakily pushed himself up against the wall, leaning against the concrete. He scrubbed one hand over his bald head, then twirled the hair protruding from his mole. “Gah. Fine. Ask what you would have of me,” he finally said, resigned. “I tell you what I know, but then I want you out. Gone. The sooner the better.”

Ferraro shot me a frosty look,
I’ve got this
. “Let’s start with this man, Baron Samedi. Tell us about him.”

Once more the old boneman crossed himself and kissed his amulet.

“There ain’t much to tell about him,” he replied softly. “He ain’t no Haitian, that much I do know. He an
Azyatik
, from China maybe. Show up here ’bout ten years ago—and he got power. Real power. More than any of the Loa I ever seen. He call himself Baron Samedi, the Loa Lord of the Grave. No one be that bold unless they tell the truth, and he certainly got power over the grave.

“All us bonemen know about the zombies, but he show up with zombies like no one ever seen before. He call people back from the dead. He conjure spirits like none of us ever seen. Demon snakemen,
Kulev.
Strange bird creatures. Not long after dat, Pa Beauvoir make his grand appearance, though everyone know he been grave-dirt for thirty years. Except he says he Baron La-Croix now. Loa incarnated. He no friend to me.” He spit again, a fat wad of phlegm that darkened the dusty floor. “But”—he shrugged his narrow shoulders—“he got power, too. And he got the blessing of Baron Samedi, so no one question him. No one.”

“And if we wanted to find Baron Samedi, where would we go?” Ferraro asked, staring down her nose at him, one hand planted on her cocked-out hip.

“The High Baron?” Pierre-Francois said after a spell. “He ain’t ’round much these days. Leaves mosta the heavy liftin’ to Baron La-Croix. Baron La-Croix, he collect tribute, run the Chimeres, keep what little peace there be. So, you wanna find the Big man, you go to the Little man.”

“Okay, then where can we find Baron La-Croix?” Ferraro asked, irritation creeping in.

“He run a big nightclub called Ge-Rouge, but”—he paused, sniffing at the air like a dog picking up on a scent—“I’m thinkin’ you won’t need to find him. No, he gonna find you.”

A moment later I heard the distant sound of thundering drums.

EIGHTEEN:

Damsel in Distress

“Keep an eye on him,” I yelled at Ferraro, bolting for the door, eating up the distance in a blink and bursting out into the courtyard, now awash with the encroaching sound of rumbling drums. The outer wall surrounding the property was too high for me to see over. So, with a blast of Vis-conjured air, I swept a heap of yellowed skulls from one of the roughhewn tables—they crashed against the ground with a dusty clatter—then slammed the table against the wall with a
screech
and a
thump.

I hoofed it across the courtyard and mounted that sucker in a blink, scrambling to my feet, gazing out over the top of the concrete wall and onto the street beyond. I blinked, then pressed the palms of my hands into my eye sockets, trying to clear my vision because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. After a second I pulled my hands away and blinked a few more times.