Chapter Four
Chapter Four
I figured Murphy would argue semantics. Instead he murmured, “Touché,” and followed me into the tavern.
“When can we leave?” I asked.
“As soon as I buy supplies.”
“I’m supposed to hand over the cash and believe you’ll come back?”
Anger flashed across his face. “I agree to do a j ob, I do it; otherwise I wouldn’t live very long in a place like this.”
Third-world countries such as Haiti did possess a “hang the horse thief” mentality. I couldn’t say I blamed them. People had very little; they protected what they did have with a vengeance. Literally.
“All right.” I reached under my shirt to extract money from the belly bag where I kept it. Murphy’s gray-blue eyes followed every move.
“When can we leave?” I repeated.
“Sunup.”
My watch read well past midnight. He obviously wasn’t going to patronize any of the retail establishments in town.
“Are you hiring bearers?”
“No one would come.” His eyes met mine. “You still want to go?”
“Nothing could make me stop.”
He continued to stare into my face for several seconds more, as if trying to figure me out. Good luck.
“All right then, I’ll see you at sunrise.”
I returned to the Hotel Olafsson, stopped in the lobby, and roused the manager. Edward had made certain I’d be able to draw funds whenever I might need them. I obtained a money order for the agreed-upon amount, then headed to my room.
As soon as I flicked on the light, I knew someone had been inside. Not the maid, either. They usually didn’t draw symbols on the wall over the bed.
Bright red. Could be blood.
I crossed the floor and swiped my index finger against the plaster, then stared at the glistening residue.
Probably was.
I didn’t plan to wait around for an analysis. I didn’t plan to call the authorities and tell them about it. I had to meet Murphy, and the police would not be amenable to letting me leave once they saw this.
In Haiti, everyone and their grandchild knew that drawing the icons of a coffin and a cross called the loa Baron Samedi, Lord of Death, gatekeeper to the other world.
Loas are the immortal spirits of voodoo. A bridge between God, known as the Gran Met, and humankind, they resemble the saints, angels, and devils of Catholicism.
And in a coincidence that probably wasn’t, Baron Samedi also oversees the process of changing the dead into zombies and the shape-shifting of animals.
I wasn’t sure what this meant, but I was sure I wanted to get out of here before I found out. I turned away from the wall and something crunched under my shoe.
Dirt lay strewn from the doorway to the bed. I’d been dancing in the stuff since I walked in.
The whisper of a thousand voices surrounded me. I staggered, feverish and dizzy. Someone had sent the dead.
Not just any someone. Only a bokor can perform this most feared of all black magic spells.
The sorcerer gathers a handful of graveyard dirt for every spirit sent to enter the body of his victim. The amount spilled on the floor of my room explained why I heard so many voices, why I felt innumerable hands pushing, pulling, and pinching me, the pressure in my head as the spirits attempted to invade my mind.
If they succeeded, I’d go insane and then I’d die. The only way to end such a spell was by the interference of a powerful voodoo practitioner.
Wait! That was me.
Struggling to think past the pain, the voices, the confusion, I searched for an answer and thought of a plan.
Each loa has a light and a dark side, Rada and Petro, respectively. To call the dark side requires blood, usually of a large animal, often a pig.
My gaze went to the drawings on the wall. I bet the owner of that blood had oinked at one time.
Baron Samedi is a Gede, a spirit of death. To send him away, I needed to summon a spirit of life, and there was none stronger than Aida-Wedo, goddess of fertility. Conveniently she was also the wife of
my guardian spirit, Danballah. I had never had a problem summoning either one of them, sometimes even when I didn’t want to.
Muttering a prayer that tonight would be no different from any other, I thrust my hand into my bag, sighing with relief when my fingers closed around the tiny piece of chalk I kept there.
Gasping and grunting against the pain, fighting the insane images of blood, darkness, and isolation that flickered through my mind, on the floor I drew a rainbow—the symbol of Aida-Wedo, who rules the realm of new life.
“Help me,” I murmured.
The spirits howled inside my head until my eardrums ached. For an instant I thought I’d only pissed them off; then light fell over my face.
A rainbow spilled into the room, the colors so bright I could see nothing else. Soft music drowned out the grating voices as peace surrounded me. Aida-Wedo’s rainbow was the calm that followed every storm.
The whispers and the pain faded. When the colors went away, so had the bloody symbols on my wall.
As soon as I stopped shaking, as soon as I could breathe normally again, I called Edward. Though he preferred e-mail for updates—the old man had a powerful fixation with the Internet—I’d put my foot down at taking a laptop to Haiti. What was I going to do with it while I was trekking up a mountain?
Since I hadn’t brought a cell phone, either—as if one would work here—I placed the call from my room.
“Mandenauer,” he barked. Edward never bothered with “hello” or “good-bye.”
“Sir.” I resisted the urge to stand up straight and click my heels. Edward always had that effect on me.
“Have you found the answer?”
I very nearly said, What was the question ? but Edward had a serious humor deficit.
No doubt being a spy in WWII had cured him of the urge to laugh long ago, and fighting monsters for the past sixty years hadn’t improved his disposition. I’d been told he’d lightened up lately, but I found that hard to believe.
“I haven’t even been here a day,” I muttered.
“What have you discovered?”
“There’s a man who knows how to raise the dead.”
I didn’t need to tell Edward the guy could be evil personified, at the least slightly insane, or that I was
headed into the mountains with an opportunist to find him. I also didn’t need to tell Edward I’d been threatened. What was he going to do about it?
“Has something happened?” he murmured.
How did he always know everything? Perhaps it was just the wisdom of age, though I doubted it.
Sometimes I wondered if Edward was human himself.
“I’m fine,” I said, though that wasn’t what he’d asked.
“Tell me, Cassandra.”
Something in his voice made my eyes prickle. Before I burst into tears and lost my Jäger-Sucher membership card, I blurted out what I’d found in my room, and what I’d done about it.
“You’re sure you didn’t imagine the symbol? You’ve had a long trip, a difficult life.”
I stilled. No one was supposed to know about my life. “What did you say?”
“You think I would allow just anyone to work for me? That I would not investigate your background before you appeared in New Orleans?”
“They promised—”
“They always promise.”
Though only the U.S. marshal who’d relocated me, and maybe his boss, was supposed to know who I really was, where I now lived, Edward had powerful connections. There was little he couldn’t do or discover. So why was I surprised he’d been able to discover me?
“Trust no one, Cassandra. You will live longer.”
I frowned. His warning seemed prophetic, but what didn’t around here?
“I shouldn’t trust you?” I asked.
“That is your choice. Know that I will give anything to destroy the monsters.”
“By ‘anything,’ you mean ‘anyone.’”
“Of course.”
At least he was honest. I couldn’t throw stones. I’d give anything, and anyone, to have my daughter back.
“Returning to the bringing of the dead,” Edward continued, “what does this mean?”
“Either there’s a very powerful bokor who isn’t too happy with me or I’m nuts.”
“Which do you choose?”
I drew the toe of my shoe through the dirt on the floor, then lifted my index finger. Blood had dried on my skin.
” Bokor,” I said.
“That would be my choice, as well. But how does this man even know you are there?”
Yeah, how did he?
“What is his name?” Edward asked, and it hit me.
Renee had refused to speak Mezareau’s name. I had a feeling her reticence was not just because she disliked him.
When Murphy had spoken the bokor ’s name aloud, a bizarre sensation of being watched had come over me. I didn’t think that had been merely a goose walking over my grave but rather Mezareau opening his eyes, wherever he was, and seeing me.
“Cassandra,” Edward said. “How does he know?”
Quickly I told him my thoughts, being careful not to utter the word Mezareau.
“This man sounds more like a legend than a reality.”
My heart stuttered. I needed Mezareau, and all that I’d heard about him, to be real.
“Isn’t dealing with legends turned to reality the main thrust of the Jäger-Sucher j ob description?” I pointed out.
“Ja. Which is why you are in Haiti.”
Touché, I thought, the word bringing Devon Murphy to mind. I glanced at the window. The eastern horizon was growing lighter, as was my mood at a new realization.
“Bringing the dead is serious voodoo,” I murmured.
Someone who could perform such magic, at such a distance, was very powerful indeed.
“In other words,” Edward said, “if he can bring the dead, he can also raise them.”
“I’d say yes.” My voice came out so chipper, you’d think we were discussing a surprise party.
“Where is he?”
“The mountains.”
“Remote?”
“So I hear.”
“Dangerous?”
“I’ve camped before.” In a state park.
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“The mountains are remote, but I hired a guide who knows where to take me.” Or so he said. “I’ll be there and back before you know it.”
I could tell by Edward’s silence he didn’t like the idea, which was why I hadn’t planned on telling him.
Until being possessed by the spirits of the dead had made me far too chatty.
“The man is powerful and evil,” Edward said. “I should send someone to kill him instead.”
“No!” I blurted.
I could almost see Edward lift his brow at my insolence, but I didn’t need him sending one of his minions down here. I’d only met a few, but they’d all scared the crap out of me.
“I wasn’t going to do it,” Edward murmured. “I’ve had to cut back.”
I didn’t know what he meant, and I didn’t want to.
“Are you certain that raising the voodoo queen is the sole way to end the curse of the crescent moon?”
Edward asked.
“According to all the legends, as well as your pal Renee, yes.”
“Legends are made to be broken. Once I believed only silver would end a werewolf’s existence, but I learned differently.”
“Since I have a lead on this particular method, I don’t think I should waste time searching for an alternative.”
“Fine. I’ll expect a full report the instant you return to Port-au-Prince.”
“Yes, sir.”
Silence drifted over the line. I’d have thought Edward had hung up without a good-bye, again, except
I hadn’t heard a click and I still heard him breathing.
“You spoke with Renee?”
His voice was different. No longer brusque, there was a softness, and a wariness, which hinted that his question was not merely chitchat. As if Edward ever made chitchat.
“I spoke with her,” I said.
“She was helpful?”
“Very.”
Since he was asking questions, I decided to ask one of my own. “How do you know Renee?”
“She was in the resistance.”
“In France?” My voice went up in pitch and volume.
“Where else?”
I couldn’t get my mind around the idea that Renee, a black woman familiar with voodoo, had been a member of the French Resistance. But was that any more bizarre than werewolves, zombies, and bringing the dead?
***