Midnight Moon (Nightcreature 5)

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Can you imagine? No more death.

I had a hard time believing it myself. But I wanted to.

In New Orleans I’d often spouted platitudes about death being the beginning, not the end, a new plane, a different world, an adventure. Maybe it was.

I still wanted my daughter back.

I turned away from the city, moving into the room where Marcel waited. “When will I meet Mandenauer’s friend?”

“The friend will come to you, Priestess.” At my scowl Marcel corrected himself. ” Miss Cassandra.”

“When?” I repeated.

“When it is time.” On that helpful note, Marcel opened the door and disappeared.

I didn’t bother to unpack. As soon as I had a direction, I was out of here.

Exhausted, I fell asleep across my bed still wearing my travel outfit of loose j eans, a black tank top, and black tennis shoes. When I awoke, night had fallen.

The noises of Port-au-Prince seemed louder in the still, navy blue darkness. Under a new moon, the sky was as devoid of shining silver as my j ewelry box had been before I discovered werewolves.

My beringed fingers sought out the shiny crucifix around my neck, worn not for religious purposes but for protection. These days I overflowed with the stuff. I’d once thought it best to keep protective amulets hidden, but I’d learned it didn’t hurt to have them displayed, either.

I turned on my side and froze. The door to my room was open, and someone stood on the veranda.

“Hello?” Slowly I sat up. “I’m Cassandra.”

“Priestess.”

The word was a hiss, reminding me of Lazarus, the python I’d left in New Orleans. He’d been my only friend until the crescent moon curse had brought Diana Malone into my life.

A cryptozoologist sent to New Orleans to investigate tales of a wolf where one didn’t belong, she’d gotten the surprise of her life when she’d found a whole lot more than a wolf. She’d wound up in my shop investigating the voodoo curse, and we’d bonded, as women sometimes do.

The hovering shadow continued to hover, so I murmured, “Come in, please.”

As soon as the words left my mouth, the figure glided over the threshold. I flicked on the light, my eyes widening at the sight of the woman in front of me.

Tall and voluptuous, she was also gorgeous and ancient. Her skin café au lait, her eyes were as blue as mine. She was clothed in a long, flowing purple robe, and a matching turban covered her head. This was what a voodoo priestess should look like. Too bad I’d never be able to carry it off.

“I am Renee,” the woman murmured. “You wish to learn about the curse of the crescent moon?”

Her accent was French, her diction upper-class. She might be from here, but she’d learned English somewhere else.

That, combined with the shade of her skin and eyes, marked Renee as mulatto—a nonoffensive term in Haiti, referring to the descendants of the free people of color from the Colonial era. Their mixed race had afforded them great wealth, as well as the rights of French citizens.

Why I’d expected Mandenauer’s friend to be a man I wasn’t quite sure. Maybe because he was so old the idea of a lady friend kind of creeped me out. Like catching your grandparents in flagrante delicto on the kitchen floor. I wanted to stick a needle in my eye to make that image go away.

“Uh, yes. The crescent moon,” I managed. “Is it true a voodoo curse can only be removed by the one who did the cursing?”

“Yes.”

“And if that person is dead?”

“Ah, I see.” Her head tilted; the turban didn’t move one iota. Impressive. “You have come to learn of the zombie.”

I couldn’t think of any reason to be secretive about it. “I have.”

A crease appeared in Renee’s nearly perfect brow. She didn’t have many wrinkles, so why did I think she was ancient? Must be something in the eyes.

“Raising the dead is a serious and dangerous proposition,” she murmured.

“But it can be done?”

“Of course.”

I caught my breath. “Have you done it?”

“Such a thing is against the laws of both man and God.”

I didn’t worry about either one anymore. There was nothing the law could do to me that was worse than what God had already done.

You’d think that after what happened to my child I wouldn’t believe in God. And for a while I hadn’t. I’d begun to study voodoo for one reason—Sarah—but I’d been seduced by what I’d found there.

Voodoo is a complex religion—adaptable, tolerant, monotheistic. A lot of what I’d learned made sense.

For instance, there can’t be evil unless there’s good.

And I believed in evil. Much more than I’d ever believed in anything else.

Renee frowned, as if she’d heard my thoughts. She’d probably just read my expression. I cared about nothing but raising life from death. That kind of obsession could be hazardous to everyone’s health. I knew it, but I couldn’t change what I felt, what I needed, who I was.

“Have you ever raised the dead?” I repeated.

“No.”

I released my breath in a hiss of disappointment.

“But I know someone who has.”

Anticipation made me dizzy. “Where can I find this person?”

“Raising the dead is an act performed only by a bokor. You know what that is?”

“A houngan who serves the spirits with both hands—an evil priest.”

“There are no absolutes,” Renee murmured. “Any houngan must know evil to fight it, just as a bokor must at one time have embraced good to hold any hope of subverting it.”

Sometimes I longed for the days of black-and-white, or at least their illusion.

“What if you’re raising the dead for good?” I asked.

“Nothing good can come of such a thing. In death there is peace everlasting. Though the living fear it, the dead embrace it. They do not wish to come back here.”

“And you’ve talked to many dead people?” I snapped. “They’ve told you this?”

“Death comes to all of us when it is our time. There are no accidents.”

“I don’t believe that!”

My voice was a little too loud, a little too strident. Renee’s eyebrows lifted.

I needed to be careful. The woman wasn’t stupid.

She’d figure out I was in Haiti for a reason other than Jäger-Sucher business, and I’d discover nothing.

“What I believe doesn’t matter,” I said more calmly. “Edward wants me to find a way to end the curse of the crescent moon. From what I’ve been able to discover, that means bringing back from the dead the voodoo queen who did the cursing so she can remove said curse. Can you help me learn how to do this?”

Renee studied me for several ticks of the clock, then lifted her long, slim hands—which didn’t appear very old, either—and lowered them. “There is a man in Port-au-Prince—”

“I heard there was one in the mountains,” I interrupted.

Renee’s eyes flashed. “He is not someone you wish to learn from.”

“He who?”

“Names have power,” Renee whispered. “I will not give voice to his.”

I agreed with the names-have-power sentiment. In legend and myth, many curses could be broken by the use of someone’s name, although in practice, I’ve never found this to be true.

You could call a werewolf’s human name until you were three inches from dead and the beast would not change form. I’d heard it said that a key part of the ceremony for raising a zombie involved calling the departed’s name three times. Since I didn’t know the rest of the ceremony, I’d never been able to discover if that particular name game was true.

“I need to meet this man,” I said.

“No, you do not. To raise the voodoo queen you must only learn the ceremony. Bring her out of the grave for an instant; she will do as you ask; then you will put her back where she belongs.”

“And the man in the mountains?” I tried to keep the eagerness from my voice, but I doubted I was successful. “He does something different?”

Renee turned toward the veranda. For an instant I thought she might glide right out the door, and I took a single step forward. Foolish, really. I doubted I’d be able to stop her from doing anything she wanted to do. I sensed great power in Renee. Though it wasn’t voodoo, it was something.

However, she didn’t move, merely stared at the distant rolling hills, turned the shade of evergreen beneath the ebony skies.

“Have you ever heard of the Egbo?” she asked.

“No.”

“In the bad times, when the people of Africa were stolen away and sold into bondage, there was a tribe known as the Efik of Old Calabar. They came to control all the slave trade on the coast.”

“A tribe that sold its own people?” This I hadn’t heard.

“Not its own. In Africa, then and now, there are divisions, wars, hatreds. One group would fight another; then the victor would sell his prisoners to the Efik, who in turn sold them to the white traders.”

I shook my head. People, regardless of color, just weren’t very nice to one another.

“The Erik had a secret society known as the Egbo. They began as a group of judges, but eventually the Erik had so many slaves in their possession, they had to find a way to keep them under control. The Egbo became a feared clan who imparted vicious punishment for the slightest wrong. The very whisper of their name was enough to cow captives into submission.”

I could see where that would be helpful. Slave revolts were a reasonable fear when the population of the oppressed was often double that of the oppressor. In fact, Haiti had been the location of the only successful slave revolt in history.

“This is all very interesting, Renee, but what does it have to do with me?”

“The man in the mountains is said to be of the Egbo.”

***