Darkest Heart (25 page)

He gasped as if a large rock had been dropped on his chest, his back arching like Ulysses' bow. He clawed weakly at his throat, his eyes bulging from their sockets. Then, as quickly as it began, he dropped back into her arms, lifeless as an empty suit. His head lolled to one side as the spark in his eyes faded like the picture on an old television set.

Sonja gently rocked Estes' corpse back and forth, smoothing the hair from his pallid forehead. It was so much easier to be gentle with the dead than the living, and so unfair. She held him close until the last of his body heat was gone, leaving him as cold as clay in her arms. She didn't want to do what she knew had to be done, but she had no say in the matter. She had promised him he would not rise as one of the undead he had dedicated his life against. It would not be an easy task, or a pretty one.

She stretched his body out on the floor so that he was lying in repose; hands folded atop his chest, and placed the edge of the switchblade against his throat. She shook her head and folded the knife back into its ornate handle. It would be better if she used something more suited to the job.

As she reached inside the breast pocket of her leather jacket to retrieve Estes' Bowie knife, her fingers brushed against cool glass. She removed the mojo bottle and stared at the dancing light trapped within its blue heart. Maybe, just maybe, it wasn't over yet.

It's been a long long long time;

How could I ever have lost you

When I loved you?

Long Long Long,

- George Harrison

VéVé sat on the front porch glider, her sewing basket in her lap, quietly darning a pair of Levon's stockings. The way she saw it, just because the man was dead didn't mean he had to go walking around with holes in his socks. She paused to rest her eyes from the close work, gazing out at the shady canopy of live oaks lining the drive leading to Mojo House.

Levon lumbered across the meadow-sized front lawn with the push-mower, oblivious to the delta sun climbing its way across the sky. Although the morning air was heavy with the scent of freshly cut grass, VéVé could smell trouble coming on the wind from the river. And, in her experience, the river winds were seldom wrong.

The augury proved itself correct when a strange car suddenly appeared at the mouth of the shell drive, sending up a trail of white dust in its wake. VéVé set aside her sewing basket and got to her feet. Levon

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) let the push-mower drop and moved towards the house with surprising speed, considering his condition. It wasn't until the car came to a halt in the turnaround that VéVé recognized the driver.

"Sonja!" The voodoo priestess exclaimed as she hurried down the front steps. "What the hell are you doing back here?"

The vampire slayer climbed out from behind the wheel of the rental car. In the open sunlight she looked as pale and vulnerable as a grub. "It's an emergency, VéVé," she said, grimacing as the sun cut her eyes.

The other woman frowned as she glanced inside the car. "Where's that nice Mr. Estes you had with you?"

"He's still traveling with me," Sonja replied, popping the trunk release. Jack Estes lay curled in the boot of the rental as if held in the jaws of some amiable beast, wrapped in a makeshift shroud fashioned from a velvet curtain, with twelve five-pound bags of crushed ice arranged atop his body.

VéVé placed her hand on Estes' chilly brow and quickly removed it, shaking her head.

"My heart grieves for you," she said, sadly. "But, woman, why bring him to me?"

"Because you're the only one who can save him."

"Save him? He's deader than a burnt match!"

"Not for long," Sonja replied grimly, turning the dead man's head so that the puncture marks on this throat were visible.

"May the loa protect us," VéVé whispered, crossing her self. "He is infected Girlfriend, have you gone mad?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. But I do know that you are the only who has the power to help me. By the way, could we possibly continue this inside? The sunlight's giving me a killer migraine and Estes needs to be stored somewhere where he won't spoil."

VéVé nodded her understanding. "I'll have Levon take him into the cellar. I'm sure he won't mind the company."

The zuvembie leaned into the trunk then paused, studying Estes with eyes as opaque as an oyster's gaze, then lifted the corpse across his back in a fireman's carry.

Five minutes later, VéVé sat at her kitchen table, slowly stirring her chicory coffee as she listened to her guest's story. Now that she was out of direct sunlight, Sonja did not look quite so haggard and her manner was more animated.

"Hear me out, VéVé. I know what I'm going to tell you sounds insane, but I'm convinced it can work.

Estes died from a vampire bite twelve hours ago, give or take and hour. That leaves me sixty hours, more or less, to expel the vampire taint before he resurrects. Once he reawakens as one of the undead, he's lost forever."

"Let me get this straight - You want to exorcise the vampire element within him? But how could that possibly save him? He would still be dead."

"So's Levon."

VéVé's eyes widened in horror. "Merciful spirit, woman! You want me to bring him back? That is something reserved only for those who were never punished for their crimes while living! Levon was a rapist and murderer who preyed on children. What you suggest is something that is inflicted on your worst enemies, not your loved ones!"

"But Levon is the way he is because he has no soul."

"That is true," VéVé said, nodding her head thoughtfully. "Not that he possessed one while alive, from what I've been told."

"But what if you restored life to a dead body - and there was a soul on hand to fill it?"

VéVé frowned. She could clearly see where her friend was going, but was not sure if she wanted to follow her there. "I can't be one-hundred percent certain, but my guess would be that such a creature would be a living thing, but with no memory of who he once was, either physically or spiritually, not unlike those reincarnated in the bodies of infants."

"That's what I hoped you'd say," Sonja said, grinning in relief.

"But you overlooked one thing, honey - I don't happen to have a spare soul lyin' around."

"That's okay," Sonja said, reaching inside her jacket. "I've got it covered." She placed the little blue bottle between them. "How did you know Malfeis had Judd in his collection?"

VéVé lowered her head so that her eye was level with the edge of the table, staring at its glowing contents.

"I was hopin' you'd figger things out on your own and get Malfeis to cough up."

"I had to wrestle him for it, and he surrendered with less than good grace. I'll be unwelcome in the

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) Monastery for the next year or two, but he'll get over it. That's the good thing about demons: they're practical when it comes to business. I'm too good a customer for him to ban me for good." She shook her head wearily, a bitter smile on her face. "I blamed myself for what happened to Judd for so many years.

Not so much for killing him, which I still don't regret... but for the damage I had done to his spirit. When he came to me that last time, I could tell his soul had been extinguished just by looking into his eyes. I thought I was the one to blame for that - that the Other had corrupted him, turned him into yet another renfield. I had no way of knowing that he had bartered with Malfeis. He damned himself for my sake, and I killed him out of ignorance. I owe it to Judd to rectify my mistake. So - what do you think? Can you pull it off?"

"I don't see why not, provided we can find a way of ridding the host of the enkidu before it germinates.

Plus, there's the question of decay. If the tissues deteriorate beyond a certain point, he'll be no better than Levon." VéVé got up from her place at the table, her brow knitted like that of a physicist puzzling out a question of quantum mechanics. "I'll need to see what grandpa's books have to say about the exorcism of vampires."

Sonja followed VéVé to Papa Beloved's study, located on the first floor of the house. The room was small, and made even cozier by the floor-to-ceiling barrister-style bookcases that lined the walls. Although born into poverty and illiteracy in the Caribbean, Papa Beloved worked hard to educate himself upon reaching America, first learning how to read and write in English, then going on to school himself in French, German, Greek and Latin. Over the years, he had amassed a sizable collection of rare and unusual books pertaining to the occult. Hands clasped behind her back, Sonja studied the spines of the volumes on display. No doubt the Garden District society ladies whose lawns Papa Beloved once tended would have been shocked to discover the bandy-legged little man with the battered straw hat and sagging pickup truck owned such titles as The Aegrisomnia, Legendre's Le Livre de L'Absinthe, Von Valkenberg's Die Grauen Fremden, and Il Gospel della Capra, which was illuminated by the heretical Brotherhood of St. Dionysus during the Middle Ages, and possibly even more horrified to learn he could read them all in their original languages.

VéVé stuck her hand into her apron pocket and fished out a large metal ring bristling with keys. She unlocked one of the glass-fronted bookcases and plucked out several oversized, leather-bound volumes.

"This will take some time," she warned as she lugged the books over to an old roll-top desk. "I'm not as skilled with the dead languages as Papa Beloved, so I must rely on his notes. Why don't you rest a spell?"

She motioned to an old leather couch arranged against the only wall space that wasn't occupied by a bookcase. "I won't have an answer for you before dusk, anyways."

Sonja nodded and wearily stretched out on the couch. The moment she closed her eyes her blood pressure dropped like a stone tossed down a well and her body went completely limp.

When she reopened her eyes, it was to find shadows climbing the walls and the room lit by the flickering light of a kerosene lamp. VéVé was still seated at the roll-top desk, hunched over her grandfather's books like a student cramming for mid-term.

"What did you learn?" Sonja asked with a yawn, picking up the thread of conversation exactly where it had last left off.

VéVé turned to face her houseguest, massaging the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. "I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?"

"What's the good news?"

"I've found numerous means of exorcising a vampire."

"And the bad news?"

"Most of the texts assume that the enkidu's host is dead and is going to stay that way. All of the exorcism rituals call for either total or partial destruction of the host body, ranging from traditional cremation and decapitation to packing the body cavity full of sea salt and driving a spike through the top of the head.

However, there is one means of exorcising the vampire that doesn't require the destruction of the host body, but it's so off-the-wall I don't even consider it a true possibility...."

"And that is - ?"

"Expulsion by the seraphim. According to the Gospel of the Goat, they have the ability to drive forth major and minor demons, including the enkidu. Which is all well and good, provided we knew where to find seraphim and then get them to pay attention to us after we found them."

"Maybe that's not as crazy as you think. I have pretty good idea where I can lay my hands on at least one."

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) VéVé stared at Sonja as if she'd just grown a second head. "Girl, are you serious?"

"As cancer."

I hurry through the French Quarter, as determined as Orpheus. I don't allow myself to be distracted by the rowdy tourists clutching Hurricane glasses and milling about the Vieux Carre's narrow streets. I also ignore the various and sundry demons, vargr and the like mixed amongst the revelers. I have no time for such trifles. I am in search of one breed - and one breed only - of Pretender tonight.

I stand and stare at the patch of empty pavement where I had last seen the seraph Fido. I fight the surge of panic rising from my belly like a bitter tide. Still, if Fido is no longer to be found, there must be other seraphim in the vicinity. They are invariably drawn to hot zones like New Orleans, where demons and the other dangerous varieties of Pretenders congregate.

I toss back my head and throw open the doors of perception, allowing thousands of voices to pour in like competing short-wave signals. I sift through the voices in my head, like a prospector panning for gold, seeking out a particular pattern of thought waves. One by one I tune them out, until all that is left is a sonorous, droning chant, like that of Buddhist monks at prayer. It is the call of the seraphim.

I cut across Jackson Square and Decatur Street, passing within feet of the Cafe Du Monde's open-air pavilion, where the smell of coffee, fried dough and powdered sugar hangs thick in the evening air. A street performer dressed like a medieval jester juggles flaming batons near the approach to the earthen dams that shelter the French Quarter from the Mississippi River. Honeymooning couples, teenage lovers and pensive drunks stroll along the Moonwalk atop the levee, lost in their own self-contained worlds, oblivious to my passing. I hurry through Woldenburg Park, with its carefully maintained magnolia and crepe myrtles, towards the Aquarium of the Americas. I pass through the Spanish Plaza at the foot of Canal Street, where several garish riverboat casinos have set permanent anchor, without bothering to give their glittering façades a second glance. I find the seraph under the Greater New Orleans Bridge, far from the lights and bustle of the city's tourist district, surrounded by piles of old tires, shattered glass, and trash discarded from the speeding cars crossing the bridge above. The sound of traffic passing overhead is as constant as that of the river slapping against the huge chunks of concrete fill dumped along the bank as a breakwater.