KNIGHT'S REPORTS: 3 Book Set (9 page)

Chapter
14

Witchy Woman

From a side room, the beautiful black woman I’d met in the French Quarter, Marie Paris Dumesnil de Glapion, appeared and seemed to float up behind the sheriff.

Her face was highlighted in white but darkened around the eyes and her cheeks were shadowed; all making her head look like a bare skull. Her mouth was painted as if it had been cut ear-to-ear and then sewn shut. Around her neck was a huge yellow and white python — an albino — and she held its head with one hand as the thing flicked its tongue. Marie’s breasts were bare and painted with a pink handprint on one and a red handprint on the other. With a second more scrutiny, I realized the handprints weren’t painted on but were tattoos. On her head she wore a red scarf with feathers sticking out and her hair was in dreadlocks.

This time she didn’t smile at me, but glared, showing now blackened teeth in a snarl as she gently placed a hand on Sheriff DePue’s shoulder.

Before them on the red tablecloth were a number of items, including what appeared to be a ritual dagger; a small, crude doll; some long pins with different color heads; and a whole lot of what I guessed were chicken bones.

But one thing seemed very out of place among the gris-gris. It was a small and probably cheap cell phone — a simple clam shell. It seemed dirty, maybe dried mud on it.

I thought of Billy White Cloud’s phone message to his mother, and how it ended abruptly after the sound of water splashing. I thought of the adult-size figure standing silently upright and bound in the enclosure behind the cabin, and I hoped when and if I got to him, he would still be alive.

Marie took another cell phone from a pouch hanging from her side and laid it beside Billy’s. It was mine. The sheriff pulled them closer to him and took out his big hog-leg of a .357.

“Son. Would ya like t’make you’s one phone call, now?” He chuckled to himself and used his sidearm’s handle to hammer the phones. He smashed them until they were obviously unusable.

Marie gathered up the chicken bones, shook them in both hands and threw them out in front of Legba. Her head tilted side to side theatrically as she inspected them. Then her eyes went wide and she stared at me.

“Him have little dust, Papa Legba,” Marie said. “Him duck an’ hold breath. An’ him get jus’ tiny scratch. Not enough. Need more.”

Legba nodded.

She said, “We make him zombie — might be useful, might be smart.”

Legba nodded again.

I said, “So bumping into you today
wasn’t
a coincidence — but how ... ?”

“No coincidences, boy — nothing happen by coincidence. Always reason, always purpose. Your purpose be Papa Legba’s zombie.”

“You’re serious?”

She snarled at me.

“And what’s your angle, Legba? Who are you really, and why do you want to dress up like a clown?”

That got him fuming. He slammed his fist onto the red tablecloth even harder than the sheriff’s .357, and all the gris-gris went flying. His eyes bugged like his head was about to explode.

Marie put her hand into the pouch again.

I didn’t like where this was going — had a really bad feeling for what was about to happen. I could strike out, and take down a couple of these big guys, but I needed my surprise guest in order to have any more than the slimmest of chances of overwhelming this entire crew of perverts and low-life scumbags.

I wondered if Zack had succumbed to the marijuana and Twinkies and was now taking a long nap.

Legba picked up the crude doll in front of him on the table. He began chanting.

I remembered Zack asking me if Marie had taken any of my hair, and I’d recalled feeling a pinch on the side of my head. I felt the pencil-eraser-size bald spot again. I was convinced the doll was made from at least a little bit of my hair.

But I don’t believe in magic, black or white. I don’t believe in Voodoo or hoodoo. I don’t believe in things I can’t touch, see or taste. Still, I believe in mind control and thought manipulation. I’ve seen brainwashing techniques work during torture. I knew there was nothing to this zombie-Voodoo stuff, yet my backbone got as cold and stiff as an icicle as Legba picked up the four-inch, blue-headed pin before him.

The powder Marie had blown in my face and the poison laced scratch she’d given me on my arm contained drugs administered to make my mind more pliable ... and I hate to admit, they were working. I feared what my mind might make of the pin being jabbed into the doll’s chest or head. From my years of experience being in Special Forces and as a contract assassin, I know the power of suggestion is a very powerful tool.

“Enough of this
‘Serpent and the Rainbow’
bullshit!” I said.

Marie said, “You don’t believe? You will — y’be doin’ m’biddin’ soon, Knight zombie.”

Now my entire back felt like a block of ice. Yet sweat beaded on my forehead and rolled down the sides of my face. My breathing became rapid and shallow, but my heart hammered inside my chest, and I could feel the strong pulse in my throat that slammed into my cranium. I became so nauseated I was sure I’d puke out everything from my scrotum up to my tonsils.

Legba jabbed the pin into the doll’s groin.

The worst pain I’d ever experienced racked my gut, and I doubled over in agony.

“How ‘bout a kidney stone,” DePue said. “Now y’know how I feel. Have ‘em all the time.”

*   *   *

As Legba jams the pin into the doll’s groin a second and third time, I fall to one knee in front of the gator, Bob Dylan. I know I’ll soon vomit. This time Legba keeps the pin in the doll, leaving me feeling as though a bayonet twists my intestines.

The gator opens its powerful jaws to growl. I let go of the two dozen Twinkies I’d binged while high on cannabis. Bob Dylan reels back and snaps at DePue.

“She-it!” DePue shouts.

In an explosive entrance, the front door falls flat, busting from its hinges, and Black Zack steps inside. He’s laughing, eyes bulging, squirting fire and bullets out of the Mach 10 like it
is
a plastic ketchup bottle.

I see Deputy Grover behind him, on the ground just outside the door. He’s laying oddly, twisted back like he’s sitting on his own head. Zack must have nearly broken the guy in half.

With Zack’s arrival, I find renewed energy and refocus. But I know the adrenaline boost won’t last long.

The lone sheriff’s deputy behind me is caught completely off guard. But he does get one wild shot off as I take his big wheel-gun away from him, easily pushing it inward toward his body. In less than a second the gun is turned back on him, and I shoot him in the center of the chest.

The bodyguards are reaching under their blazers, bringing their guns out when I shoot the white guy between the eyes. The second man ducks behind the red table cloth. I don’t wait for him to reveal himself, placing three shots in a downward pattern under the skirted table about thirty inches high and six inches apart, horizontally. I hear him collapse and conclude that probably two of the powerful .357 rounds have struck him in vital areas.

In the meantime, the unarmed Papa Legba leapt over his guard and goes through the back door. I notice an odd tattoo covering his back. It’s a large colorful rainbow with a black snake coiled around it. The head of the thing lies atop the rainbow, just below Legba’s neck.

Bob Dylan, obviously fearing the loud gunfire, scampers across the big black bodyguard as well, following his master to the door.

The least of my worries is the overweight, slow-talking Sheriff DePue. I figure him for being just as slow in his reaction time, and I’m proven correct.

As he stands and brings up his .357 to kill Zack, I take three long but quick strides to him, reach out and grab his wrist. After twisting his arm around, I slam the heel of my hand into his elbow, snapping it like I did his deputy’s. Then I side-kick into his knee, forcing it to bend backward, and he falls straight down.

He’ll be in too much pain to give us any trouble, and he certainly won’t be going anywhere unassisted.

“What was it you were going to do to me, DePue?” I grab his handgun from where it lay beside him on the floor.

The sheriff glares up at me, pain and anger filling his face, turning it bright red.

Zack has long since sprayed out all of his ammo, and Marie seems to think it’s a good time to attack.

She throws the python at him, but it falls short; the snake less than enthusiastic to be used as a weapon, anyway.

Marie snatches up the ritual dagger and leaps at Zack, but the big man blocks it away. She comes at him again. This time she’s struggling wildly, but he finds her weaponed hand and pushes the dagger between her ribs, stabbing her through the heart.

Her eyes bug in reaction as he lifts her completely from her feet by only the dagger in her chest.

“I’s wanta do this fo’long time, Marie — since you hexed my dear’st o’er forty years ‘go.” He lets her fall to the floor. “You’s great, great gran’ mammy’s ghost howlin’ ‘n the wind — ‘shamed a you an’ you usin’ ya black magic ‘gainst good folks.”

Forty years? Marie doesn’t look over twenty-five — even with the dark makeup — granted, she looks a
very dead
twenty-five, now.

I notice the sheriff is more of a man than I’d thought. The old fat boy’s managed to crawl to the open side door where Legba exited. I don’t bother to stop him, remembering I’d wired the gate latch shut from the outside. Legba probably scaled the six-foot fencing easily and has probably left in his limo — but his alligator won’t be able to escape the courtyard. From first impressions, I don’t think Bob Dylan and DePue get along that well.

I go to the side door as the fat sheriff realizes his mistake. He’s trying to crayfish back in.

“Shoot the gator!” he cries. “Shoot the damn gator!”

“Domino’s delivery!” I say, giving his big ass a boot to clear the doorway. I slam the door shut, leaving DePue outside with the twelve-foot, toothy reptile, Bob Dylan.

Blood curdling screams and pleading comes from the other side of the door, but I don’t feel a thing. Sounds like ol’ Bob Dylan’s getting
all
“
Tangled Up in Blue” — parish sheriff Blue
.

A noisy two-cycle engine accelerates from the front of the cabin, and I run past Zack to the front door. I find the strangest sight in memory: A man wearing a leopard skin skirt in a top hat decorated with chicken feathers, teeth and bones —  giving a little 49cc moped as much gas as it can take.

But he pulls to the side of the narrow road ahead, and I hear why. The roar of semi-truck engines comes our way. Those container trucks are arriving with dozens of Legba’s men.

Chapter
15

Goin’ Muddin’

We needed help. It was time to regroup and rethink. No matter how high I was, I knew we had no chance against an armed force of at least three dozen. I hated the idea of retreating, but too many lives were in the balance to let the little macho man whispering inside my head take over in a suicidal killing rampage. It didn’t matter how despicable these assholes were.

We went for the side door. But on the way I snatched up the little Voodoo doll that had caused me so much pain. I was uncomfortable leaving that damn hoodoo weapon laying around for anyone to mess with. Being a bit weary of the pins, unsure of what removing them might do to me in my current drugged up, mental state, I left them in and carefully stuffed my poor cloth and hair likeness into my back pocket.

When we slipped out, Bob Dylan had his mouth full of DePue pork chop and paid no attention.

As I helped Zack over the fence, he said, “She-it! That there’s Ol’ Yellah! Damn thin’ give me them nigh’mares, ‘gain!”

I shoved a final time, and the big man slipped over to the other side of the fence. He landed remarkably well, and I vaulted over the fence after him.

More semi-trucks pulled in.

I told Zack, “We’ve got a plenty to give us nightmares, already.”

After a wave to the strange guard behind the cabin, we headed back the same way we’d come.

Within twenty minutes, we were back to our newly purchased Jeep and hauling ass back to the Big Easy. Zack said he had an ally who could help us; the girl in Billy’s photo, undercover FBI Special Agent Pooh Dooley.

Zack explained Poodoo had been working the streets deep undercover as a hooker. She’d take in her Johns, let’s say
hand selecting
them as possible connections to the case. Then she’d lead them on long enough to get them naked. After drugging them up with a roofie, sodium pentothal and versed cocktail she’d gotten from a CIA friend, she’d tie them to her bed. When she had extracted all the info from them she could, she let them pass out and then dump them in an alley. They wouldn’t remember a thing.

She was obviously working a little toward the rogue side of the law.

Evidently, as deep as she’d gotten, her bosses felt they couldn’t pull her out without jeopardizing dozens of lives and an investigation that had been going on for over a year. She had single handedly taken a case started from rumors and superstitions, and she’d cracked this hard-shelled nut wide open.

“You’s gonna love ‘er,” Zack said. “She be crazy — jus’ like you.”

Within a mile from the little bayou bait shop, we found our troubles were far from over.

Three all-terrain vehicles with some serious hardware mounted on top cut us off.

I cut the wheel sharply to the right, narrowly avoiding a collision with the two ATVs blocking the road.

We bounced through the thick vegetation, and down a steep sloped ravine. The engine of the third patrol vehicle sounded close. They’d followed us in, and the other two would not be far behind.

At the bottom, we hit water. Within seconds, we were sitting in water with the jeep up past its hood in the swamp. I was thankful then for the snorkel. But the old jeep wouldn’t go much deeper without drowning out. And there was at least a half dozen other concerns that could make this old Marine vehicle stall on us.

A little water wouldn’t stop the patrol vehicles, either. But the four-foot deep stuff did. And we had the advantage of cover from the thick bayou vegetation.

About two hundred feet in, the motor died.

Lucky that the swampland kept Legba’s patrol vehicles back, it did little about shielding us from their bullets. With an M-60 mounted on the back of each ATV, when they opened up on us, I felt as if I were back in Iraq.

Limbs snapped off from overhead and water spouted up around us like geysers as they threw their 7.62 mm rounds blindly in our direction, but at a collective rate of 30-rounds-per-second.

I found myself instinctively lying over Black Zack’s big body. His Brennan laugh acknowledged my protective measure along with the bullets snapping and splashing around us.

The firing had cut through the foliage enough for me to make out the guns through the swamp grass. They could surely begin to see us, as well, as was soon to become obvious.

The bullets struck our stalled jeep. We were out of options — we’d have to jump into the swamp.