Black Dust Mambo (27 page)

T
HIRTY-THREE
H
ORSE WITH
N
O
N
AME

The rivière girl’s body convulsed violently on the blanket, her long mane of dark hair whipping around her face. Blood poured from her nose and mouth, her eyes and ears. Her fingers twisted into the blanket’s fabric, a blanket Belladonna’s booted foot now rested upon.

Kallie Rivière’s body stopped thrashing. With a soft sigh, she died in every way.

Bitter disappointment curled through Jean-Julien.
Should’ve brought a camera and filmed the girl’s death so Gabrielle could see the consequences of her actions from all those long years ago.

Grateful that the girl had cared enough for her friend to make sure she took the brunt of the hex’s power and not Belladonna, Jean-Julien raised a shaking hand to his forehead and wiped away the sweat. He caught a whiff of bitter rue. The girl’s confusion spell would’ve worked if he hadn’t anticipated her pulling a stunt like that and doubled his protection.

Close. Too close for comfort. “Belladonna, turn around, walk to the dogwood behind you, then sit down.”

The voodooienne paused for a moment, her eyes glistening with tears; then she turned around, as stiff and slow as an old woman, and tottered across the grass to the dog-wood tree. She plopped down at its base.

Jean-Julien frowned. Dust or something must’ve gotten into Belladonna’s eyes to make them tear up like that, since it was impossible for her to comprehend what had just happened—Kallie’s sacrifice for her sake.

But before he released Belladonna, he needed to follow up on Kallie’s words. Desperate words, surely, from a girl trying to buy a few more moments of life.

“You ain’t the only one who believes an eye for an eye is never enough. The nomads do too, and they’re gonna kill Rosette—body and soul.”

Now that Gabrielle’s niece was dead, it was time for Rosette to escape. Reaching into his pocket, Jean-Julien pulled out the guard poppet. He paused beside the picnic blanket, frowning once more. From what he could see, there was no trace of the black dust that had killed Kallie Rivière.

Only the hex itself should’ve been absorbed into her body, not the now-harmless powder. Jean-Julien rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Most likely between the girl’s convulsions, all the blood, and the night breeze, the black dust had been scattered or liquefied. Part of it could even be underneath her. In any case, it couldn’t just vanish.

Jean-Julien continued across the grass and brush and sat down beside Belladonna. The girl’s hands were curled lax in her lap, her face pleasantly blank. But tears wet her cheeks, and her unfocused attention seemed to be on the Rivière girl’s small and motionless body. Which wasn’t possible, of course.

Closing his eyes, Jean-Julien drew in a deep breath, then centered himself. He placed the tips of his index fingers over the poppet’s black-button eyes and whispered, “Mine thou art, your eyes, your body, and heart. I see what you see. I hear what you hear. And you do as I do, following each command true.”

The darkness behind Jean-Julien’s closed eyes faded and he became aware of a well-lit hall, heard voices in conversation. He looked out through the guard’s eyes, his vision narrowing down to small dead-ahead spots. His heart leaped into his throat when he saw the cluster of people gathered in front of the guard: four female nomads and one male nomad, along with a red-haired woman in a purple pantsuit.

Fear sliced through him, slivered his heart with ice. Gabrielle’s niece had told the truth. His Rosette
was
to be handed over to nomad justice.

“Where will we kill her?” a teenage girl says, her dark skin glimmering with highlights from the overheads. “Will we do it here, or take her somewhere else?”

“Here, of course,” the red-haired woman answers, her voice bearing a lacy, high-class British accent. “Outside of the Prestige, you’d be subject to local laws and could find yourselves accused of murder.”

Jean-Julien felt sick. His beautiful and courageous daughter was about to be slaughtered. How would he ever explain that to his Babette? Atone for it? That he’d gained his revenge, but destroyed their daughter?

A possibility occurred to him, a dark and heartbreaking possibility. One he knew he would have to take, for Rosette’s sake.

Jean-Julien focused on the guard’s open and compliant mind. Filled it with his instructions—instructions to be followed the moment the guard was asked to fetch the prisoner.

“Your will my desire. Your word holy fire”
—looped on endless repeat through the guard’s mind.

The redhead glances at the guard and says, “Please bring out Ms. St. Cyr, Rudolph.”

Rudolph nods, his instructions triggered. He shuffles over to the warded cell door, unlocks it, and goes inside. Rosette, curled on her neatly made bunk, bluish shadows under her eyes, looks up from the newspaper she is reading.

She scans the guard’s face and smiles. “Papa,” she breathes. “I love you, Rosette,” the guard mumbles. “I have no choice but to send you to your mother. Please forgive me.”

Rosette’s eyes widen as the guard pulls his gun from its holster. She presses herself against the wall. “Papa, no,” she chokes out.

The guard empties the gun into her body. Shouts ring from the hall.
Jean-Julien pulled away from the guard’s mind. Chest aching, he plunged his knife into the guard’s poppet and with several quick slices, disemboweled poppet and man, killing both. He tossed the poppet’s remains into the grass.

Bending over, elbows to knees, he rested his head in his hands.

Rosette is in her mama’s arms now, her soul safe. The nomads can no longer touch my little girl. Hold her tight, Babette,
ma chère.

Sucking in a ragged breath, Jean-Julien lifted his head and straightened. He would release Belladonna, then leave. His work for the moment was done. All that remained was Gabrielle’s nephew, Jackson Bonaparte—a project already in process.

Not wanting to chance harming Belladonna when he unmade her poppet, Jean-Julien sprinkled it with a simple uncrossing powder, a blend of sandalwood, five-finger grass, myrrh, and frankincense.

“Free thou art, your will once again your own,” he murmured, as he unstitched Belladonna’s poppet, removing and scattering its insides. “Free thou art, your will once again strong as bone.”

Belladonna sucked in a breath and rubbed her eyes. “What the hell?” she muttered. “Where am—”

Jean-Julien rose to his feet and walked away. Behind him, Belladonna’s anguished scream shattered the bayou’s silence.

“
KALLIE
!”

The jarring thud of hooves against the ground vibrates along Kallie’s spine, jolts her body with each ground-swallowing gallop. Rough hair rubs against her cheek, twists around her fingers. She smells horse musk and, underneath her thighs, feels the powerful flex of muscles. She realizes the pain has stopped.

m’ame-soeur,
and ride.>

A woman’s voice, low and determined; a voice as familiar as her own even though she’s certain she’s never heard it before.

The image of a heart bound in chains made of pale bones and surrounded by black
X’
s flares behind her closed eyes.

Kallie opens her eyes. Purple fills her vision, and coarse hair tickles her nose. She sneezes. She lifts her head and sits upright, realizing she’s astride a black horse, her fingers wrapped in its flowing purple mane. Panic surges through her.

Where’s the blanket? Is Belladonna safe? Wait. Am I goddamned dead? And wait one more time—there’s
sneezing
in the afterlife?

the horse replies, managing to sound dry and witty and nothing like Mr. Ed.

since
we
ain’t dead, not yet. Not if we win this race and claim what be ours.>

Our
body? Who the hell are you?>

<
Oui,
My name be Shut-Up-And-Look-Already-Will-You?>

One Mississippi . . . Two . . . Kallie’s count stops when she looks as her goddamned horse has so subtly suggested and realizes she—
they
—are still in the bayou and on an
iceberg-dead-ahead
course for the checked picnic blanket.

And Belladonna.

Kallie’s breath catches rough in her throat as Belladonna, her face wet with tears, performs CPR on
her
blood-smeared body.

Sorry, Bell. I’m so sorry.

sassy
god-damned horse,> Kallie grumbles. She looks up, and what she sees stuns her into silence.

A huge black-dust
X
jeweled with ruby skeleton keys glimmers against the night-shadowed canopy of trees sheltering the bayou.

Black and red, keys and crosses. A gift from Papa Legba,
loa
of the crossroads, the intermediary between spirits and humanity.

her horse says.

Kallie’s gaze remains locked on the
X
undulating in the moonlight.

Kallie wrenches her gaze away from the
X
and looks at her grieving friend.

Kallie rolls her eyes.

The horse’s hooves gouge chunks of sod from the ground, and it splashes water up from the bayou, then strikes clods of night sky and stars from the air as it leaps over the blanket and Belladonna and into the sky. With her knees to the horse’s ribs and her hands in its purple mane, Kallie guides it toward the
X
’s shimmering center.

Fear ripples through Kallie as memories of the pain she just suffered sweeps through her mind and, for a second, she considers stopping and accepting her fate.

“Sorry, baby. I ain’t got a choice.”

“She’s bloody death in cutoffs and a tank top.”

“The sooner you get on the blanket and accept your fate, the sooner Belladonna can be freed.”

But the image of Belladonna’s anguished face shoves Kallie’s fear and doubts aside.

She’ll always blame herself for my death. Because of it, she’ll never be free.

Can’t stop now.

Breathing in the hex’s pungent odor of bergamot, black licorice, and sulfur, Kallie decides to ask one more time.

The
X
fills Kallie’s vision. Power radiates from it, cold and razor-thorned, prickles against her skin, her face. Her essence. Kallie kicks her heels against the horse’s sides, and they leap into the
X.

Each tiny barbed bit of black dust, each and every cold molecule, pours into Kallie through her sternum like boiling oil into a funnel.

This time the pain is worse. Much worse.

She screams.

T
HIRTY-FOUR
C
HAINS
M
ADE OF
P
ALE
B
ONES

Layne was crouched in the backyard of Kallie’s aunt’s house, examining a line of white, green-flecked powder stretching across the stone threshold of what looked like a workshop, when his cell phone buzzed in his jeans pocket. He held his breath, waiting to see if it buzzed a second time. It didn’t. Kallie’s signal.

Layne straightened, the toe of his left boot nudging the line of powder, and suddenly he found himself walking briskly through the grass back to the rutted dirt drive, thinking,
Maybe someone will be home tomorrow.

He came to an abrupt stop.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Virgin Mary in a ceiling crack. A fucking spell.
Whirling, he raced back to the shadowed yard. His leather jacket creaked as he pulled one of his blades free from its inside sheath. Just as he ran past the workshop, careful to skirt the powder guarding it, a heartrending wail sliced through the air.

“KALLIE!”

Layne barreled through the thick brush, vines slapping him in the face, thorns scratching his jacket and snagging his dreads. His heart drummed a light-speed cadence against his ribs, one that pounded out Kallie’s name with each beat. He quickly scanned the dense undergrowth and tree-shadowed depths. But, seeing no one, he bolted in the direction he thought the scream had come from.

A shape stepped out of the darkness from beside a lightning-shattered cypress. Layne skittered to a stop, his boots sliding in the dew-slick sawgrass, and just missed smacking into the startled-looking man. Doctor Heron.

“Hold it right there, asshole,” Layne growled.

But the asshole refused to hold it right there. Instincts drenched in adrenaline, Layne swung his knife under and up in time to parry the blade punching for his own belly.

Edged steel
thunk
ed together, scraped apart.

Layne jumped back and out of easy reach. Relaxing into a knife-fighter’s half-crouch, he circled the hoodoo slowly.

An expression of intense hatred flickered across St. Cyr’s caramel-brown face, icing his pale-green eyes as his gaze locked with Layne’s. Or—more accurately—locked onto his clan tat. “My daughter’s dead because of nomad trash like you,” he spat.

Clang! Clang! Clang!
“Not now,” Layne grated under his breath. “I know who the fucker is.”

Clang! Clang! Clang!

Movement at the bayou’s edge tugged at Layne’s attention. Risking a quick glance away from St. Cyr, he saw Belladonna kneeling, her arms locked together and stiff as she compressed . . .

Layne stared in deepening horror as Belladonna performed CPR on a prone form in the grass. Kallie stood beside Belladonna and the prone form she labored over, but her skin glittered as though dusted with black mica, and her hair flickered black flame. Her head turned, and she looked directly at him.

“Oh, fuck,” he breathed, despair cracking his voice. “Kallie . . .”

CLANG!!

Layne wrenched his gaze away from Kallie just in time to see Jean-Julien St. Cyr leap forward, his knife slashing at throat level. Layne spun away, his own blade swinging in a defensive uppercut as he evaded a literal close shave.

Close, hell. Woulda been fatal. Focus, dammit. Dying ain’t gonna help. Kallie’s gone. Just like Gage. You can’t do anything for her now.

Augustine sent.

Layne switched his blade to his left hand and reached into his jacket to unsheathe another. With a knife in each hand, he went after St. Cyr again.

Kallie says. Black-dust mojo crackles like lightning within her, a wild storm of power corralled within her motionless heart.

Her horse with no name no longer looks like a horse. Instead she looks like a woman her own age with café-au-lait skin and long cinnamon curls. A
vévé
hangs at her throat—the image of a heart bound in chains made of pale bones and surrounded by black
X’
s. It’s a
vévé
Kallie has never seen before.

A guardian angel, maybe?

our body
thing again. Okay. How?>

Kallie kneels beside her blood-spattered body.

Kallie opened her eyes. She tasted blood in her mouth, felt it sticky on her eyelashes. Rib-cracking pressure hammered down on her sternum.

“Bell,” she whispered. “Stop.”

Eyes wide, Belladonna froze on her last compression, her gaze shifting to Kallie’s face. “Oh,
bon Dieu,
” she sobbed, and grabbed Kallie up in a bear hug. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

Pain lanced through Kallie’s chest. Looked like it was
her
turn for broken or cracked ribs. Touché, karma. “I can’t breathe,” she protested. “Kinda defeats the whole purpose of CPR.”

Belladonna released Kallie and rocked back on her heels. “I thought I’d lost you,” she said, wiping the tears from her face. “Hellfire. I
did
lose you.”

“You sure you’re okay? That bastard didn’t hurt you?” Belladonna shook her head. “I’m fine. But . . .” Her words trailed off as her gaze fixed on something past Kallie. “Hellfire. Layne!”

Layne.

Looking over her shoulder, Kallie saw the nomad fighting with Doctor Heron, both men slicing knives through the air. She struggled to her feet, pain stabbing into her sternum with the movement. Her vision grayed. She hurt everywhere as though her skin had been turned to glass, then shattered. A dull ache throbbed at her temples.

“What are you doing?” Belladonna asked. “Helping Layne.”

“Oh, hell no.”

Blinking her vision clear, Kallie pressed a supportive arm against her aching ribs and trotted—albeit unsteadily—across the lawn. A memory tickled at the back of her mind, something about a purple-maned horse and black dust, a memory she couldn’t quite grasp. A dying and/or resurrection dream, maybe?

Just as she reached Layne, he whirled on her, knives arcing through the air and aimed for either side of her throat, his pine-green eyes cold as winter-frosted stone.

Kallie skidded to a stop, her pulse thundering in her ears.
Smart, Kallie. Run at a man engaged in a knife fight.

Stunned recognition melted the frost in his gaze. “Shit!” His blades stopped just shy of their target. Kallie felt the muscles in her neck twitch.

St. Cyr swung his knife at Layne’s exposed back. “Behind you!” Kallie choked out.

Layne dropped, dreads flying as he spun around on his knees and drove both blades hilt-deep into St. Cyr’s belly. The root doctor gasped. His knife tumbled from his fingers into the grass. The color drained from his face as he looked down at Layne.

“For Gage and Kallie both,” Layne snarled, twisting both knives.

St. Cyr dropped to his knees. His mouth opened, but no sound emerged. He collapsed into the grass. Layne slid his blood-glistening blades free of St. Cyr’s body and sat back on his heels.

The root doctor’s mouth kept opening and closing like that of a drowning fish and Kallie realized that—even dying—the man was trying to cast a spell.

Give the goddamned man back what be his.

Power crackled like ice beneath her skin. Stars wheeled through her vision.

Kallie knelt beside St. Cyr, and his pain-dilated eyes widened. He shook his head in silent denial and tried to scoot away from her. Before she knew what she was doing or how, she grabbed him by the front of his Hawaiian shirt and forced him to face her. He stared at her, his expression stark with mingled disbelief and fear.

“Black dust mambo,” he whispered, his words bubbling with blood.

What the hell’s he talking about?
But even as she wondered, she felt power rise within her like a gator from beneath cypress-shadowed water. Words flowed through her mind.

“Graveyard dirt, black salt, sulfur, rattlesnake skin, sand, pigeon shit, and the bitterness of an empty heart, ingredients all in a hex to kill body and soul,” Kallie chanted. “Back into you they flow.”

Kallie cupped her empty palm and blew into it. Her breath caught in her throat as black dust actually flowed up from beneath her skin and streamed from her palm into St. Cyr’s face. The glittering onyx powder rushed into his mouth and down his throat.

Drums pounded in time with the throbbing in Kallie’s skull, the rhythm fast and primal and hungry. Shadows rippled at the edges of her vision. Cold frosted her veins. And still the black dust poured from her into St. Cyr—mouth, nose, ears, and eyes—in a violent rush of power that scraped against her heart and threatened to yank her under.

How the hell am I
doing
this?

Blanketed in blackest juju of his own making, St. Cyr’s body convulsed, then went still. A second later, a shape dusted in black powder pushed its way out of the root doctor’s lax mouth.

Kallie stared, her heart thundering in her chest as St. Cyr’s hex-oiled soul slithered out into the night from between his lips.

“Hellfire,” Belladonna and Layne said together. Doctor Heron’s black soul spiraled up into the air, a triumphant expression sparking across his face.

“No, goddammit,” Kallie said. She jumped to her feet and grabbed the spirit’s ankles. St. Cyr struggled to kick free of her grip. “Eye for eye, life for life, soul for soul. You shall pay what you owe. For Gage.” Letting go of him with her left hand, she cried, “Return to me!”

“Kallie, no!”

Kallie looked in the direction of the voice and saw her aunt and another woman standing beside the old lightning-blasted cypress. She recognized her aunt’s companion as the true Gabrielle LaRue, or one of them at least, the woman from the photos in Rosette’s file. She watched Kallie with a calm and curious expression, a red scarf covering her curls.

Kallie’s aunt, however, regarded her with the exasperated, hands-on-hips expression she usually wore before grounding someone for the rest of their natural lifetime. She shook her head. “Don’t do it, child. It ain’t yo’ place.”

“It wasn’t his either,” Kallie said, throat tight. “And I don’t know how you can tell me right from wrong when you can’t even tell me your name.”

Her aunt blinked, then said, “I had my reasons, girl, but now dat you know, you need to get over it.”

One Mississippi
. . . A muscle flexed in Kallie’s jaw. She returned her attention to the slippery St. Cyr and growled, “Return to me, I said.”

The black dust coating St. Cyr’s soul rippled, then flowed backward and down, back into Kallie’s waiting palm. The root doctor’s spirit unraveled inch by inch, molecule by molecule, until the air was empty.

“Hellfire,” Belladonna repeated, her voice stunned. Her aunt tsked in disgust. “I guess an eye for an eye
is
enough,” Layne said.

The last speck of black dust melted into the palm of Kallie’s hand and she stumbled, drained and aching. Strong arms looped around her, scooped her up against a hard, leather-jacketed chest. She felt the tickle of dreads against her face.

“Gotcha, sunshine,” Layne said, voice husky.

Kallie slipped an arm around his neck and closed her eyes.

What just happened? And how did I do it?