Black Heart Loa (11 page)

Not being a practitioner like Belladonna and Gabrielle, Kallie had never attended a voodoo ceremony, had never watched as the
loa
had ridden their human
chevaux,
had never heard the
loa
speak.

But she
was
a hoodoo rootworker, taught by one of the best, and she knew the hell out of her saints and
loas
and the proper offerings when asking for favors.

Hot-peppered rum was a favorite of Baron Samedi—the all-knowing
loa
of death. And if the Baron was
here,
that meant …

No. No. No. Jackson, no.

Needing to know the truth before she turned to
confront the presence behind her, Kallie looked down into the open grave. Empty. Nothing but glistening mud and muck and groundwater. No sign of Jackson—alive or dead.

Intense relief sapped the last of the strength from her muscles and when Kallie tried to spin around to face the Baron, her legs gave and she fell to her knees instead, the cold mud oozing against her bare skin. She heard a soft thud as the shotgun slipped from her nerveless grasp and into the mud.

“Now, that’s the perfect place for you,” said a voice behind her. A different voice. No longer jovial or nasal and impossibly familiar. “On your knees.”

No goddamned way.

Kallie swiveled around on her knees, her fingers searching the slick mud for the shotgun, then froze when she saw who stood behind her, a shovel leveled casually across his shoulder, a smoldering cigar jutting from between his teeth.

Goddamned Cash. More or less, anyway.

The home-invasion amateur’s face was painted as a skull, his eyes hidden behind shades, his nose circled and hollowed out with black paint, a lipless grimace painted onto his mouth. Black fedora, purple shirt, and tailored black suit completed his
loa
-possessed ensemble.

How the holy loving hell is this possible? And when did the Baron switch from top hat and tuxedo to a goddamned fedora and suit?

He grinned—giving him a double set of teeth, one real, one painted—then said, “Toldja I wouldn’t be forgetting you, darlin’.”

Cash kicked out with his right leg, and before Kallie
could jump to her feet or grab the shotgun or twitch away to the side, the pointed toe of his scuffed-up cowboy boot caught her square in the gut.

The force of the kick knocked Kallie backward. Gasping for air and struggling for balance, she felt the wet, muddy ground edging the grave give way. Then she felt only empty air beneath her.

Kallie fell, Cash’s mocking laughter kiting above like a vulture.

H
oping against hope that
Kallie would reach Jackson in time, Belladonna eased Layne onto his back and resumed searching him for damage, her trained healer’s hands listening to his body as she felt his limbs and skimmed her fingers over his skin.

Mmm-mmm-mmm. A shame the man’s unconscious. Well. And injured.

So far, she’d only discovered bruises, along with pebble- and dirt-filled road rash. No broken bones. Now, as for internal injury or brain damage, a more experienced healer or maybe a CT scan at a hospital would be able to tell for sure. She pushed up his black Inferno T-shirt.

Blue-inked tattoos curled across his lean-muscled chest and flat, belly-fluttering six-pack abs in flowing Celtic designs—detailed knotwork beneath his hard pecs curved around to his back; concentric circles looped around his nipples; shamrocks, spirals, stylized and fanciful beasts, decorated his skin in flowing patterns—each tat signifying, as far as she understood, nomad rites of passage.

She thought of the tattoo—a dragon’s knotwork tail—she’d glimpsed disappearing into his waistband during
the wet-boxers contest at the May Madness Carnival, and wondered where it ended and what rite
that
particular tat signified.

Maybe once he and Kallie
finally
spend a little well-deserved playtime together—instead of just trying to keep each other alive—I can persuade her to share a few details over beignets and hot cocoa, a little girl talk.

Relieved at the lack of bruising on Layne’s torso, Belladonna took her time smoothing his T-shirt back down over his belly.
Oops. A wrinkle. Can’t have that. Oh, look, another. What a shame. Let’s get that taken care of too.

But even with the lack of bruising, she knew Layne could have internal injuries that hadn’t revealed themselves yet. And that worried her. He could be bleeding out even now, and she wouldn’t necessarily know it. She mentally thumbed through a list of WebMD cautions regarding internal injuries.
SEEK IMMEDIATE EMERGENCY CARE
was the most popular response. She sighed. Well. Duh.

She reached into her bag for her bottle of healing oil and uncapped it, tilted the bottle against her finger. She anointed Layne, touching her oil-beaded fingertip to the center of his forehead, then to each temple. The spiky scents of rosemary, sage, and bitter wormwood prickled into the humid air.

Just as Belladonna parted her lips to murmur a prayer to Saint Joseph, Layne opened his eyes. His pupils were dilated, expanding into the pine-green irises but not swallowing them.

“Hey, you,” she greeted. “Welcome back. How’s that thick nomad skull of yours feeling?”

Wincing in the storm-grayed daylight, Layne blinked several times, struggling to focus. His dazed, pained
expression gave way to confusion, his mouth opened and closed several times before he finally managed to whisper, “Oh, Bon Dieu, my aching head. Boy musta rung his bell damned hard.”

Belladonna blinked. Was Layne speaking of himself in the third person? It couldn’t be Augustine piloting the nomad’s body, since he spoke in a posh British accent, so it
had
to be Layne, but his rhythm, even his word choice, felt wrong.

An icy curl of dread twisted through her belly. This was beginning to feel a lot more serious than a concussion. Maybe Layne had fractured his skull and his brain was swelling.

“Who the hell are you, girl?” Layne said, squinting at her.

Hoo-boy. Not good.

“Belladonna. I’m Belladonna, Layne. You just keep still, okay—”

“Get away from me, dead man,” Layne hissed, his gaze shifting inward. “I beat you fair and—” His eyes suddenly rolled up white in his head, then the nomad passed out again.

“Dead man”?

Layne’s eyes flicked open again. His face paled. “Dear God,” he said in a familiar British accent. “My head.” He swallowed hard several times, as if trying to keep from puking, then focused on Belladonna. “I can’t stay long, Ms. Brown, I need to protect Valin. So I need you to—” His eyes shuttered again, long honey-blond lashes sweeping up, as he passed out once more.

“Hellfire,” Belladonna breathed.

A chill that had nothing to do with sitting in the rain in
sopping-wet clothes shuddered along the length of Belladonna’s spine. She shivered convulsively. Either Layne had suffered serious damage to his noggin or he was carrying someone else inside of him—someone
besides
Augustine.

“Hellfire,” Belladonna repeated, realizing what a treasure trove Layne’s unconscious and helpless body would be for any ghosts just wandering about, seeking something to haunt.

Belladonna’s knowledge about Vessels was scant, and she didn’t know if multiple ghost takeovers of one body was even possible, but if it was—and if Augustine and the stranger(s) were warring over possession of Layne’s body—someone was going to get hurt, and that someone was most likely Layne.

Can’t have that.
She started digging through her bag for a knock-’em-out potion.

Layne shuddered, then his eyes flew open. Again. “Help me up, girl,” he demanded, lifting a shaking, gravel-abraded hand.

“Ghost, please,” Belladonna scoffed. “Given that you don’t belong in there, I don’t think so. And you need to scoot your spirit butt out of there. No vacancies.” Finding the potion, she yanked it from her bag just in time to see the nomad turn his head to the side, retch into the grass, then pass out. Yet again.

“Boy’s like a spirit box full of ghostly jumping beans. Y’all need to leave him be,” she said, directing her words to the ghosts tussling inside Layne, “before you do him some permanent damage.”

Belladonna twisted the cap from the potion, releasing the faint scent of poppies and 150-proof homemade white lightning moonshine into the air.

Layne groaned, then his eyelids fluttered open. “Ms. Brown,” he began in a British accent, then all color drained from his face.

Rolling onto his side, Augustine puked Layne’s guts out—or tried to, anyway. From where Belladonna was sitting, it looked like the nomad hadn’t eaten in a while.

And, right now, that’s a good thing.

“Gah. Yuck.” Belladonna clapped a hand over her mouth. She scooted back a couple of feet, trying hard not to puke herself.

Layne-Augustine flopped back onto his back, breathing hard, eyes closed. Sweat beaded his face. “Ms. Brown,” he gasped. “Unless you know how to perform an exorcism on a Vessel, you need to call Valin’s ex-wife. I seem to have my hands full at the moment with Babette St. Cyr.”

Hoping she’d heard wrong, Belladonna lowered her hands. “You sure?”

“About having my hands full?”

“No, the other thing.”

“About calling Valin’s ex-wife?”

“No,” Belladonna grated. “The other, other thing—about Babette. You sure?”

“Ah. Oh, yes. Quite.”

During their drive to Chacahoula, Kallie had filled Belladonna in on what she’d seen in her blood divination in New Orleans and her suspicions about the late Babette St. Cyr.

“I believe that she set her husband up for murder by poisoning the potions he gave his clients, then allowed him and their daughter to believe that Gabrielle LaRue was the person responsible for sending him to prison for twenty-five years.”

“Just because he had an affair with Gabrielle? That’s one cold-hearted woman.”

“You gotta
have
a heart first, Bell, for it to be cold. I don’t think Babette qualifies, heartwise.”

“Hellfire. If I potion up Layne, will that help?”

“I believe so, yes.” Retching again, Layne-Augustine rolled onto his side, his body racked with dry heaves. He sounded like he was trying to turn himself inside out and Belladonna’s gut knotted in queasy sympathy.

When he finished, he whispered, “If Valin’s body is drugged, none of us will be able to use it—Get
away
from here, you harpy! He’s mine!”

“Excuse me?” Belladonna said indignantly, then realized that the Brit was speaking to Babette. But before the illusionist could say another word, his eyes rolled up white once more and he lost consciousness.

“Shit, Layne,” Belladonna murmured. “I can’t even imagine how much all of this must suck from your end.”

The fingers on Layne’s right hand twitched. Belladonna’s eyes narrowed. Had he—or someone else inside—just tried to flip her off?

Crawling back to the nomad’s side, Belladonna slipped a careful hand under Layne’s head and lifted it enough so he could swallow without choking to death. She tipped the green bottle against his lips, then hesitated.

The memory of Divinity blowing powder into Cash’s face, then curling up on the sofa for a snooze, played through Belladonna’s mind. How the hell had Kallie’s aunt’s spell backfired? And why?

Had Doctor Heron tricked the house somehow? Had Cash been wearing some kind of protective mojo bag or
paquet
? Power had exploded through the house, hitting
Belladonna in the solar plexus—her magical center—like a hard-knuckled punch. She’d never felt anything like it before—unbalanced, cold, and hungry.

There was no reason to think that the same kind of magical misfire would happen out here, but …

Belladonna studied Layne’s pale, sweat-glistening face. She couldn’t chance it. The potion itself was strong enough to knock him out and keep him that way for a while without her magically enhancing or lengthening its effect.

Better safe than sorry, definitely.

Belladonna swallowed back the spell she’d been about to chant and instead murmured, “Sleep well, Layne. You too, Augustine.”

She poured the potion into the nomad’s mouth and he swallowed convulsively, drinking it down. “That’s it,” she encouraged. “There you go.” The eye-watering smell of moonshine stung her nostrils. She fed Layne until half the bottle had been emptied.

With a soft sigh, his body relaxed, tension drained from his muscles, and his fingers uncurled from his palms. She gently lowered his head back onto the wet grass, then rolled him onto his side in case he started puking again.

Screwing the cap back on the half-empty bottle of knock-’em-out, Belladonna returned the potion to her bag. She rose to her feet, brushing at her sodden leggings.
Ruined,
she mourned.

She tossed a glance down the long, rutted driveway, wondering how Kallie was doing, wondering if she’d found Jackson, wondering if she needed any help. But the sight that greeted her gaze froze her to the spot.

Kallie knelt in front of the
loa
of death and
resurrection—Baron Samedi. She stared at the fedora-capped man in front of her, her expression one of shock. As Belladonna watched, the Baron kicked Kallie, knocking her backward.

She vanished from sight and Belladonna’s heart leapt into her throat.

Mocking laughter drifted into the air. Familiar laughter, but Belladonna couldn’t quite place it. Standing beside the opened passenger door of her Dodge Dart, Kerry crumpled to the ground in a boneless swoon.

Again?
Was the man wearing a corset under his T-shirt?

“Hellfire.” Belladonna spun, bent over Layne, and searched inside his leather jacket for his gun. Her fingers whispered past his sheathed blades and she plucked one free before grabbing his Glock.

Belladonna was pretty damned sure that the asshole who’d just kicked Kallie into the grave had to be a blond-mulleted Baron imposter, possibly someone hired by Doctor Heron to mess with Jackson’s mind before tossing him into the grave, and who happened to still be hanging around, maybe waiting for his boss to return.