Hell Rig (30 page)

“Stay away, Sid!” she screamed at him.

He stopped at the sound of her voice. Confusion caused him to lower his arms and shuffle on dead feet.

“He remembers you,” Damballah Wedo said. “Poor fool.”

This angered her. “You murdered him, all of them. Why?”

“You know why. I took their souls for power.”

“How many souls do you need?”

“Three more,” he laughed.

“So Sims was dead, too
.
Why isn’t his body here also, a walking zombie
?” “I’m here to fight you,” she yelled defiantly, somewhat like a little girl yelling angrily with raised fist at an approaching storm.

“You cannot fight me.”

“I can try,” she insisted.

Two eyes blazed in the shadows. “The Gateway is open, ever so slightly. Life and death are two sides of the same coin. What would you do if I offered to give you back your friends as they were?”

Lisa swallowed hard. “
Was he trying to bribe her
?
For what reason
?” “All of them?”

“All of them.”

“In exchange for what?”

“You will all leave this place in the emergency craft.”

Her hopes sank. “We’ll die in the storm.”

“Perhaps, though I will do nothing against you. You will be at the mercy of the storm and no more. You may survive. You may not. Will you chance it?”

She thought of her dead friends returned to her, and of her granny. “Include Granny Iris.”

Damballah Wedo laughed. “You want a
mambo
? She cannot help you. No, the
mambo
remains where she is.”

She knew it had to be a trick. Why should he return them alive after all the trouble he had gone through? Did he know something she did not?

“Why do you want us gone?” she asked.

“A gesture on my part.”

“Maybe you are afraid of us,” she suggested.

Thunder roared and the platform shook. “I fear no one.”

“My friends are dead. I’ve grieved for them already. I don’t want to leave. I want to stop you.”

Lisa felt something invisible reach out of the shadows and grab her, wrap around her like the coils of a snake, lift her into the air and fling her across the platform. She landed hard on her back, knocking the air from her lungs. She rolled over to look at the black sky above and passed out.

She awoke still on her back. The zombie corpses of her friends stood silent vigil around her. She checked her body for broken bones but thankfully found none. She felt confused. She had no idea of how much time had passed.

“How long was I out?” she asked of the darkness.

“A day. A moment? What is time where it does not exist?”

“I expected you to kill me,” she admitted.

“Not I. Not yet.”

“But you will?” she asked.

“When the time comes, you will die.”

She laughed. Damballah Wedo shared none of her uncertainty. “I thought you said there was no such thing as time.”

The platform shook so violently that her zombie guards fell to the deck.

“Do not bandy words with me,” he said.

“It’s plain to see you have no sense of humor,” she said getting to her feet. “Let me see you.”

She sensed something behind her. She turned and stared into the glowing red eyes of an ebony face. The face rested on the body of a serpent. When he opened his mouth, two large fangs glistened.

“Damballah Wedo,” she said. “I thought white was your color.”

He hissed. “I wandered my realm and found shadows, dark and inviting, deep in time and space. They spoke to me, succored me. Now, I am a thing of shadows.”

“You’re the shadow of the real Damballah Wedo,” she said, misinterpreting his words.

Again, the platform shuddered as he writhed before her, hissing. “I am Damballah Wedo!” he said, rising to tower above her. Now the shadow casts its own image.”

She fell and bounced along the living deck. It felt like tortured flesh beneath her. She rose quickly in disgust.

“You are the father of Loas. You are good.”

He laughed. “I am Damballah Wedo, Lord over all. I am beyond good and evil. I am all things. The shadow has become greater than that which once cast it. I yearn to break my bonds, go where I wish.”

“The other Loas will stop you.”

“They fear me.”

“I don’t fear you.”

He stared at her with his blood red eyes and she felt herself slipping into them, into hell.

Chapter Twenty Five

Sims stood on the deck, exposed to the wind and rain. He could smell death in the wind, but had nowhere to run. Pain raced through his body in response to the thought of escape from his bargain. He fought back the memories as they poured into his mind, released by the greatest Loa of all to torment him. He remembered the rage that was Hurricane Katrina and the fight to get his crippled ship back to port. He remembered seeing the platform in the distance, on fire and belching black smoke but solid in a sea of gigantic waves. He remembered tying up to it, hoping for help.

He remembered walking into hell itself.

Mutilated, hacked and tortured bodies lay everywhere. The odor of death hung over the platform in spite of the strong wind, some evil hovering over the rig like the pall of smoke. He saw the Digger Man, standing in front of him, filled to the brim with the evil of the place, dripping its overflow onto the deck like spilled tar. Its blackness oozed and quivered on the deck like a living creature.

Pain, muscle twisting, bone wrenching pain filled his mind. No words had passed between them but he knew what was wanted of him, what he had no choice but do. After he did as he was bidden, he left the platform, carrying his tormentor with him, inside like a parasite feeding on the remnants of his soul. He murdered his crew, and when the storm took his ship, rode the waves heedless of the danger until picked up by the Coast Guard. Now he was back, along with Waters, a minion, to complete his task.

The pain subsided. Sims calmly walked into the storm.

Chapter Twenty Six

Lisa was drowning. She struggled as the frigid water enveloped her, smothering her. She struck out blindly, hitting something solid.

“It’s me, Lisa,” a faint voice whispered over the crashing of waves and the peal of thunder. A face hovered above her, somehow familiar. She focused on its features, slowly recognizing it.

“Jeff?” She sobbed. She felt a surge of relief. Her descent into hell…she couldn’t remember. She remembered the beginning of her journey into Damballah Wedo’s fiery eyes when everything she believed in fell to the wayside when faced with the reality of his existence. Her body remembered the tortures she had endured but her mind had shut down under the duress. She felt a blank spot in her mind, numb and cold.

“Yes.” He pulled her tight. Rain pelted them. They were outside on the deck.

“How?”

Jeff shook his head. “I don’t know. You disappeared from the room. Somehow I knew I would find you out here.”

“Thank you,” she said, her words muffled by his jacket. “How long was I gone?”

“Minutes. You disappeared and I came out here and saw your body crumpled on the deck. I…I was afraid.”

Jeff looked at her oddly while she struggled to digest this information. She felt older, much older.

“Let’s get you back inside out of the storm,” he suggested. He helped her to her feet. Her body was sore and bruised; aching proof it had not all been a dream.

She sobbed. “He offered to give everyone back, Jeff, if we would just leave. Let them live again.”

“Just like that.” She could detect skepticism and bitterness in Jeff’s voice that had matched her own.

“I think he’s afraid of us.”

“It certainly doesn’t looks like it,” he answered.

“I think I know why he’s determined to strike New Orleans again.”

“Why?” Jeff stopped to stare at her. Water dripped down his face, accentuating the weariness and disbelief she saw in his eyes.

“It’s a city filled with people with knowledge of voodoo,
houngans
and
mamboes
, people with power. They didn’t abandon New Orleans after Katrina. Maybe they even fought him the first time. Katrina didn’t do the damage they thought it would. It was the old levees that failed. Maybe someone there knows how to stop him.”

“How does that help us out here?”

They walked through the front door out of the fury of the storm. It was as if a heavy weight had lifted from her. Even this modest shelter offered some protection from the almost overpowering sense of dread she felt in the power of the storm raging outside. She looked at the candles and pentagram and smiled. Maybe this was the center of that protection. She was amazed that she no longer felt as if she was trespassing on her grandmother’s turf. She knew she had the same genes, the same power as her grandmother. The old memories were still there, as sharp as if engraved on her young mind for this very purpose by her grandmother. It gave her hope, slim hope, but better than none at all.

“It means he can be defeated,” she said with confidence.

“How?”

How was the question she kept asking herself. “I don’t know, yet.”

She wiped her face and damp dried her hair with the towel Jeff handed her. Her arms ached. She forced herself to get up to check on Tolson. He was worse. His upper arm was laced with purplish-black lines from blood poisoning. His fever burned hot in his brow and he twisted and writhed in his bed. She could detect the first sour odor of gangrene.

“Tolson’s worse,” she said when Jeff came to check on her. “He’s going to die here unless we do something soon.”

Jeff looked at her with fire in his eyes, fighting the weariness they both felt. “I’m no longer concerned with just surviving the hurricane. Too much has been taken from me—my friends, my faith, even my beliefs. I want to stop this Damballah Wedo somehow before he manages to wipe New Orleans off the map. More than that, I want to kill Waters.”

She had never seen so much anger, so much hatred in Jeff’s face. The anger contorted his features, hardening his chin and brow. He looked as if he would take on Damballah Wedo barehanded if necessary. She knew she could not stop him. It was up to her to find some way to help him.

“Let’s get out of these wet clothes,” she suggested, holding out her soggy shirt by the bottom.

He nodded. “I noticed Sims is gone again,” he said as he pulled off his wet shirt. He took a fresh one from his backpack and put it on.

“Damballah Wedo said he needed three more souls; I presumed ours and Tolson’s. That means Sims is dead also.”

Jeff stopped dressing and looked at her. “Dead? Well, I hate it but he picked his horse to ride. It’s his own damn fault.” He looked at her a moment as she stared at him. “I know it’s cruel, but I just don’t care any more. He fought us from the start, unless…” he paused. “Unless Damballah Wedo meant Tolson’s soul is his already and Sims is still out there.” Jeff shook his head. “I don’t know which I want to be true.” Jeff shrugged out of his soaked jeans and slipped into a dry pair. “That’s better,” he said, doing his best to muster a smile.

Lisa went to her room and took off her pants and shirt. Jeff followed. He looked at her naked body but showed no overwhelming desire for her. She, too, was drained of emotions, especially lust. She was too tired and frightened. She noticed bruises that looked like wide bands on her ribs and torso and remembered Damballah Wedo’s serpentine appearance, the way he was always depicted. She finished changing her clothes and felt a bit warmer.

“So what do we do?” Jeff asked.

“I have to think, to try to remember anything my granny said that might help us. If Digger Man’s
gris-gris
was powerful enough to help Damballah Wedo break open the Gateway, maybe we can use it somehow.”

“We anointed the bullets but they didn’t stop Waters,” Jeff reminded her.

She tried to consider the problem they faced. “Oh, I don’t know, Jeff. I’m so tired, so empty. I need to rest and think.”

“Lie down and get some sleep. I’ll keep watch.”

“You won’t…”

He smiled. “Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere.”

“All right.”

She let Jeff lay her in her bunk. She held onto his neck, pulled him down to her and kissed him. “Thank you, Jeff.”

He kissed her again, longer this time; letting his hands slide over her body. She felt a warm shiver of response and was surprised.

“My pleasure,” he said as he pulled away slowly. She reluctantly released him. “Sleep now.”

She knew she could not sleep. She needed to think.

* * * *

Jeff was worried. Tolson’s shoulder and arm looked very bad and smelled even worse. He had caught a whiff of just such a wound before in a hospital ward and Tolson’s wound smelled suspiciously like it. Tolson would die if they did not get him to a hospital soon. He looked over at Lisa as she tossed and turned in her sleep. It had taken her a while. He had watched her fight it until sleep had won out over fear. He sat on the floor with his back to the door, watching over her.