The Map of Moments (22 page)

“Wait,” Max said. “What are you going to do?”

Stupid. They can't hear you.

The white woman produced a knife and stepped toward the girl. She began to chant in something that sounded vaguely like French, but was not. Max took a step closer, but the woman lifted her own hand and sliced her palm, wincing, then made a fist and let her blood spatter down onto the dying girl's face.

Where the blood dripped, it burned like acid. The girl opened her mouth in the beginning of a scream, and then convulsed again, more of that black vomit issuing from between her lips.

Two men tore away the blanket covering the girl and ripped open her clothing, showing her withered body and its pattern of awful lesions. Her lower back had turned entirely bruise-purple, like a corpse whose blood had settled into mortification.

The Tordu took up the chant. One by one, they cut their palms and bled onto her belly, legs, and face, and everywhere their blood showered her, the girl burned.

Max shook his head, hands clenched into fists at his side, damning the map and damning crazy Ray, and even damning Gabrielle. “Stop!” he screamed, stepping up to the one who was their leader.

The Tordu man raised a hand to hush the others and looked around in alarm, his eyes alert, but not as though he was searching for something. As though he was
listening.
He closed his eyes tightly, cocked his head.

“Did you hear me?” Max said aloud. Impossible. But …“Stop, you fucking bastards! Leave her alone!”

The man's eyes flashed open and shifted, and he stared right at Max, studying, trying to decipher whatever it was he saw, or thought he saw.

“Yes! I'm right here!” Max cried, frantic now. “Right in front of you! Get away from her!”

The man shook his head, as though working off a chill, and then turned away, signaling for the others to continue.

“No!” Max shouted.

The one with the squirming burlap sack stepped toward the girl. Max felt as though his mind would simply fall apart. To be unable to do anything but stand and bear witness was more than he could tolerate. He reminded himself what the map had said of the Fourth Moment: the Tordu were here to help. This day, evil banished the yellow fever. Thousands of lives might be saved, and without this Moment, the entire population of New Orleans might have died that year.

But this?

Was anything worth this?

The blood of the Tordu had burned holes in the girl's belly, chest, and cheek. The man upended the sack and dumped a squirming gray mass of rats onto her.

The doctors and nurses in the grange hall screamed.

Max screamed with them. He rushed at the nearest Tordu, the one he thought had been able to hear him, and tried to grab him. His hands passed through.

Two doctors, crying out in rage, ran to help the girl. One of the Tordu women threw a handful of powder into their eyes, and they fell, crying out in pain.

And all the while the rats tore at the little girl. She still twitched, still breathed, still lived. But she never opened her eyes. Consciousness never returned.

Max screamed epithets at God, full of venom and hysteria and helplessness. Then, quietly, turning his back, he prayed first for the girl, and then for himself. And as he prayed, the rats began to move away from the girl, who surely must be dead by now. Squeaking, sneaking, leaving tiny paw prints marked with the ink of her blood, they began to race through the hall toward the other patients.

“No!” Max pleaded, turning his gaze heavenward, wishing that God or even crazy Ray would hear him, that the magic of the Map of Moments would be taken from him. “I don't want to see any more. Please.”

But the Moment had not ended yet.

The plague-stricken who were conscious screamed as the rats darted about. Some tried to stand and stagger from the place. The vermin seemed to target only the sickest amongst them, though, and those people were in no condition to move. They hardly seemed to notice as the rats began biting their fingers, toes, and faces. They had eaten of the girl and their snouts were daubed with her blood, but now they were not attempting to eat flesh, only to nip.

And then, as quickly as they had swarmed through the grange hall, they darted into corners, through doors, and beneath cots, vanishing in moments.

Instantly, the boils on the faces of the stricken began to shrink. Purple lesions faded, and if they did not vanish entirely, they might as well have. Those who'd seemed closest to death opened their eyes as fevers broke.

Whispered prayers came from the corners of the room where the remaining doctors and nurses had retreated. Now they rushed to their patients. Someone laughed, and then others took up the sound. The weeping that began was the sound of joy instead of anguish.

Max looked around, eyes wide. The Tordu had already left, but now those who had not yet been on their deathbeds were beginning to sit up, their symptoms departing, and the rats had not been anywhere near them. Those the rats had bitten were healed first, but their wellness was
contagious.

The fever had been broken.

He heard, amongst the whispers and shouts, the word “miracle” in several languages. But how could anything that required the mutilation and death of a little girl be a miracle?

His mind could not contain any more. He ran for the door where he'd come in, through the kitchen, and down that corridor with the peeling wallpaper, to the front entrance. When he staggered into the street he fell to his knees and threw up, eyes watering.

A car horn blared.

He blinked and looked up at the oncoming car, forced himself to stand and move aside to let the rusted Chevy go by, then turned and stared at the vacant lot on the corner of Perdido and Bertrand.

The stink of disease and rot was still in his nose, and he didn't think he would ever be rid of it.

B
ack in the RAV4, driving through the streets of New Orleans, the stink of corruption from over a century before still on his clothes, Max felt in more danger than ever. He was the focus of this city's attention, as if every home he passed had someone standing behind its front window watching him. And yet he knew that whatever had set its awareness upon him was beneath and behind the city. Something deeper, and deadlier. The Tordu.

He had stood and watched them slaughtering that girl, that doctor, so that they could introduce a cure. He'd been able to touch and smell, hear and taste, but he had not been
there
enough to intervene. And that felt so unfair.

But if he
had
intervened? Stopped them, somehow? How many more would have died?

He cursed, stamping on the brakes and slewing around a corner, taking out his anger on the road.

Ray's words came back to him.
Follow it, magic yourself up, like runnin’ your feet along a carpet to build up static, and at the end of the map you'll find Matrisse. Then maybe he'll help you through.

Perhaps it was because it was fresher in his memory, but this Moment had felt much more real than the others. He had almost been taking up space in that replay of history rather than merely witnessing it. During the other Moments, all his senses had been delving into the past, but this time he had felt less like a bystander. It had affected him— involved him—in some way the others hadn't.

That man stared at me!
Max thought.
He sensed me there, maybe even heard me.

Maybe he
was
magicking himself up, as Ray had put it. Perhaps it was a cumulative thing, and every time he viewed a Moment, understanding came closer.

“But how will I know?” he muttered.

A gray sedan cut him off at the next intersection, horn blaring, and Max's heart jumped. He jerked the steering wheel to the right, bouncing over the curb at the corner and getting back on the street just in time to avoid hitting a parked car. The car that had cut him off slowed.

He caught his breath and slowed as well, staring at the sedan, almost expecting to see a man leaning out with a gun at the ready. What he actually saw were two small kids, turned in their seat and waving to the man their mother or father was likely cursing.

I
cut
them
off,
Max thought. He waved back and drifted to a stop at the curb, watching the other car drive away.

He glanced in the rearview mirror. Real though that Moment had been, it did not compare to the sound and feel of the RAV4 crushing that man against Coco's car.
Because
I
did that,
Max thought. And he wondered if the man was dead.

He breathed deeply and closed his eyes, letting the sounds of the street wash through his partially open window.
Had
he killed? He did not know, and there was no way he could find out. He was alone on the streets of this ruined city, and the sooner he left, the better. But not yet.

Each time he blinked, he witnessed that sick little girl dying beneath a shower of Tordu blood. He was still confused at what he'd seen—the brutal, heartless Tordu apparently curing the plague—but the more he dwelled on it, the less he understood. Why would those dark magicians use their magic to help the people of New Orleans?

“Hey!” Someone rapped on his window and Max jumped, heart fluttering in his chest. He reached for his keys, wincing against whatever violence was about to come.

“You're in my parking spot!”

Max looked at the old man standing beside the RAV4— tall, bald, face like a crumpled leather jacket, cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. He frowned at Max, pointing at the car, then down at the road.

Max smiled. Relief flooded him, relaxing his tensed muscles. Normality
did
still exist. He wound down his window.

“Sorry,” he said. “Just taking a break.”

“Yeah, well, break somewhere else. I gotta load up my car.”

Max pulled away slowly, moving out into the road and waving at the tall guy.

He drove, edging south without realizing it and finding himself heading back toward the university. He tried to hunker down in his seat, but the vehicle was high, and he felt on display to anyone who might be looking for him.

And they
were
looking for him. After Max had crushed that guy who'd chased him from the library, Coco and his cronies would search until they found him. From the current of fear their name inspired and the way the police had responded to it, it seemed likely the Tordu had a web of contacts through the city. Some strands may have been snapped by Katrina, but it still felt as though a deeper, darker level of the city than most people saw was theirs.

I'm being hunted,
he thought. The sights, sounds, and smells of the last Moment would remain with him forever, but this was reality. Corinne's death had implications in the here and now, rather than being a snapshot of old history. And in the reality of here and now, action remained his only recourse. Momentum.

He glanced in his mirror, then drifted to a stop before an empty, boarded-up house.

The map lay on the passenger seat, folded, enticing. The Fifth Moment would be on there now, the fourth already faded away to the memory it really was. He grabbed the map and opened it across the steering wheel, looking everywhere but at the map while he smoothed it out. A couple of cars passed by him, their drivers apparently uninterested.

Across the street, three men in overalls walked along the pavement, dragging their feet, heads bowed. One of them seemed to be talking, but Max could not see whether the other two were even paying attention. They carried long-handled tools over their shoulders. The buildings across the street from him were faceless, windows gleaming with reflected sun. If someone was watching him from there, he would not see them.

They can't be everywhere,
he thought.
If they were, I'd be dead already

So, finally, he looked down at the map.

He scanned areas where no Moment had appeared before, but eventually his eyes were drawn back to the French Quarter, only a couple of blocks from Jackson Square, where the Second Moment had occurred. A small box had appeared there:

Later again. Each moment represented a shift forward in time, marching toward the present. He wondered how many more there could be after this one, and the strange sensation of something closing in on him made him shiver.

Maybe they don't always win,
he thought, taking in those words again and trying to make sense of them. But he could make little sense, because he
knew
so little. He knew the Tordu existed, but not why. From his first meeting with

Coco, it had been apparent they were involved in drugs and prostitution, some kind of crime family, holding the city in a terrible grip. According to the Moments he had seen, they had been preying on New Orleans, living off the city, for centuries. But what did their rituals and conjurations have to do with any of that? Were they ruling this town with dark magic, the same way organized crime families controlled other cities with fear and money?

Their influence on New Orleans could not be denied. And Max felt certain that someone with an intimate understanding of the city would have to know at least something about the Tordu …even if they never spoke of it aloud. Even if fear made them erase such knowledge from their minds.

“Charlie,” he said. His old friend from the university, chased away by the Tordu. There was only one reason for them to warn Charlie away: they'd been afraid he would speak of things meant to be secret.

Max sighed and folded the map. He had transportation now, and he could be at the site of the Fifth Moment in maybe fifteen minutes, but the streets were dangerous for him. The Tordu were looking for him and for this vehicle.

“Charlie, you can tell me,” he whispered.

He couldn't break his momentum. He had to forge ahead to the next Moment, and witness its memory and truths. At first, he had not seen the pattern, not realized it at all, but the Map of Moments contained within it the story of the Tordu establishing a hold upon the heart of New Orleans. And if Max hoped to survive contact with them, he needed to reach the end of the map, the end of the story,
and unravel the secrets of the Tordu. This wasn't just about making peace with losing Gabrielle anymore, or even some hope that he might reach back to save her, or forgive her, or forgive himself.