Wolfsbane (16 page)

“But not Daily?” Edan asked.

“Non,
” she shook her head. The expression on her face was almost a pout.

“Is my
grand'mère
related to you?” Janette asked. “By blood? You never did say.”

“No, I din, did I? Yeah, she be blood kin. I ain't proud of it, but she is. She ma aunt. Bad Strahan, she is. Ever family got 'um. But she one of the worst. She hate me, but she's 'fraid of me, too. I got de power.” The old woman looked at Pat, then jerked her head at Janette. “She got star on her chest?”

“I most certainly do not!” Janette protested.

“Dat rat?” Annie continued looking at Pat.

He nodded. “No star. No marks.” He smiled at Janette's embarrassment. “Perfect.”

“Ain't no woman perfect, boy—jes lak no man perfect. Bes you 'member dat.” She cut her eyes to Janette. “Your kids; boy and girl . . . dey got marks?”

Janette shook her head. “No. No marks.” She wondered how Annie knew of her children.

“Good. Maybe all de bad blood die out when all dis ugly business over in Ducros. And,” she looked at Pat, “it gonna be over—one way or de other. Now, I tared. Gets me a nap. Ya'll be back here one more time, den we gets it done.” She rose from her chair and walked into the house.

When she had disappeared into her house, Pat said to Edan, “How much of all this do you believe?”

“All of it,” the sheriff whispered.

Inside the house, Annie Metrejean cackled her laughter. “De Big Man gonna be put to de test soon—den he believe. Oh, my, yes. Cooo! Yeah, den he believe.”

 

Janette shook Pat awake early the next morning. The hands on his Glycine Airman wristwatch read 0245. “What?” he mumbled.

“Hold me, Pat—Please!”

He gathered her in his arms and pulled her close. She was trembling. “What's wrong, babe?”

“I just had the most horrible dream. Some . . . thing . . . some . . . whatever it was came to me in my dreams and told me to watch. It was like I was awake, but not really. Does that make any sense? No!” she answered before Pat could open his mouth.

“Then I saw my mother and my father—and it was my parents, that was unmistakable. She was feeding on him.”

Pat sat up in bed. “She was doing . . . what the hell did you say!?”

Janette shushed him and pulled him back under the covers. “She was . . . she was biting him on the neck, drinking his blood. It was awful!”

“Janette,” Pat said calmly. “You're letting that old witch-woman's words get to you. You probably went to sleep thinking about that catch-ee-car she talked about. I . . .”

“No, Pat.” She placed a finger on his lips, silencing him. “No, this was real; I feel this . . . thing I saw really happened. And something else, Pat.”

“Yes.”

“The . . . spirit . . . or whatever it was, he, it said. . . said you'd win this fight, but you'd also lose.” And he said: ‘Don't trust the dark one.' What do you suppose that means?”

“It means,” Pat said, reaching over her and uncorking the small bottle of Valium on the nightstand, “that Casper the Friendly Ghost and Janette with the overactive imagination are both about to go night-night. Take these like a good girl. Here, here's some water.

“Hold me until I go to sleep, Pat?”

“My pleasure, babe. Always your dutiful servant.”

But after Janette had dropped into the deep sleep of the sedated, Pat rose from the bed to stand by the windows, looking out over the grounds.

He stood for a long time, his thoughts many and all confused. Finally, he gave it up and went back to bed. But sleep was elusive. Just before he closed his eyes, dropping off into a deep sleep, he could have sworn he heard the sound of hooves just outside the window. And he could have sworn a thin finger of mist crept into the room and touched him on the forehead, sending him into sleep.

“That's not possible,” he muttered, as the sound of hooves striking air faded and sleep took him gently into dark arms.

The editorial in the
Ducros Register
was not openly critical of Sheriff Vallot's handling of the disappearances and murders in the parish, but it managed—subtly—to leave the reader with the impression that the sheriffs department was not performing up to par on the unsolved murders in Ducros.

“Son-of-a-bitch!” Chief Deputy Andrus balled up the paper and tossed it at a trash can in the sheriffs office. The paper bounced off the wall and landed on the floor. “I just don't like that bastard. Never have.”

“Why is that, Blaine?” Edan inquired.

The deputy shook his head. “That whole family is weird. There's something about all of them that's . . . I don't know—unhealthy. That's not the right word.”

“Sneaky?”

“Yeah! That, and something else: evil. And don't ask me to explain that. I can't.”

“Where do they go to church, Blaine?”

“They don't. None of them. Eli's youngest told my Sally it was stupid to worship God. She asked him what he worshipped, and he said: something a lot more fun. Then he clammed up and wouldn't say anymore about it. Sally said the next day when he came to school, he had black-and-blue marks all over him; one of his parents really whipped him.” The deputy shook his head. “Man that'd do that ought to be horsewhipped—in public.”

“When was this?”

“Two weeks ago. Kids are all gone now.”

“All gone? What do you mean?”

“Left over the weekend with their grandpa Daily. Eli just jerked 'em out of school and that was that.”

“That's odd.”

“Wonder how many of us still believe in any part of the old ways?” Blaine suddenly changed the subject.

“By ‘us' I assume you mean the French-speaking people of Ducros. Probably about one percent, maybe two percent. None of the young people. Of the eight people on this department—that is, right here in Joyeux—you and me are the only ones who even suspect what is going on—really going on. Who even dare to talk about it to each other. We're in a box, Blaine. We can't ask for any outside help without looking like a couple of idiots.”

“Edan?”

“Yeah?”

“My granddad was one of them that helped kill old man Bauterre back in '34.”

“You can't know that for sure, Blaine. All records went up in the courthouse fire, years ago. Newspaper accounts are missing.”

The deputy shook his head and pulled a yellowing newspaper clipping from his shirt pocket. He handed it to Edan. “I remembered my grandmother saying something about it, and remembered she had saved the clipping. I got to thinking about it and went through an old trunk of hers we kept up in the attic. Those are the men that formed the posse that night, Edan. You'll find an Andrus and a Vallot included among them. Also a Daily.”

But, Edan thought, his eyes scanning the yellow paper, Annie said no Daily was on the list. “Yeah, I see. Had to have been my grandad; he was up in this part of the country working at the time. But he's buried back in Vermillion.”

“Your father?”

“Beside mother, back in Vermillion. This Daily on the list bugs me, though.”

“Yeah, you said Annie told you no Daily was there.”

“That's what she said. And if she said it, I'll bet she's right.”

“But the clipping . . .”

“What paper is this out of, Blaine?”

“The
Register
. ”

Edan smiled. “Sure. Where else?”

 

“What have you two been doing with yourselves lately?” Madame Bauterre asked over dinner. “I haven't seen either of you for days.”

Pat said nothing, content to savor the delicious meal in front of him: mutton chops
arlésienne.

Here I sit, Pat thought, eating this elegantly prepared meal, under a chandelier that's probably worth thousands of dollars, and I've got a bag around my neck filled up with dog shit. He sighed, almost audibly. When in Rome.

Janette smiled sweetly. “We visited all the old gravesites of the Bauterre family,
grand'mère.”

“How interesting!” Victoria returned the sickeningly sweet curving of lips. “But how did you know where to find them? I certainly never told you.”

“I just knew,
grand'mère.
Perhaps the power has been passed to me without your knowledge?”

Victoria's fork dropped from her fingers to clatter on the floor. Her face paled. “Where did you hear that expression?” she asked, her voice harsh.

Janette again smiled, the smile containing no hint of humor. “Why, from your niece, of course. Oh, yes, you wouldn't know about our visit there, would you? I suspect her powers are equal to yours . . . in a completely different way.”

Victoria's face was ugly with hate. “My
niece
! I have no niece in this wretched place!”

Sylvia served dessert:
pain d'epice.
Pat looked up at her. “Heating up some in here,” he said, smiling. Her smile was not friendly; more a silent snarl. Getting long in the tooth, Pat thought. Damn teeth of hers look like fangs.

“Who told you she was my niece?” Victoria demanded.

“Why, Annie Metrejean, of course. She was a Strahan, wasn't she? Weren't you?”

Victoria stiffened in her chair, her face pale and hard-looking. She glared at Janette. “
You went to see her?
” She carefully enunciated each word.

“Oh?” Janette said, enjoying every second of this confrontation. “Then you remember her?”

“Vaguely,” the matriarch of the Bauterre family said, her lips compressed in ill-concealed rage. “Her side of the family and mine never really got along well. So . . . how is my niece?”

“Quite well, thank you. I had a long chat with her. Seems like a very nice person . . . in a quaint way.”

Pat finished his dessert and said, “I wonder if I may have some more coffee?”

“Shut up!” Victoria told him. “You may be excused. This is family business.”

Pat grinned, hooking a leg over one arm of his chair. He lit a cigarette. “I think I'll stay. You two might decide to talk about me.”

Victoria's gaze would have frozen hell. “You're making a very bad mistake playing games with me, Strange.”

Pat's smile faded. “I assure you, Madame: I am not playing games. Like the little game you played yesterday morning outside my bedroom door.”

“What do you mean, Strange?”

“The salt in the form of a cross. Come on, Madame Bauterre, you know about it.”

A puzzled look came over the woman's face. “No Strange, I did not know about that. But that information is very interesting, nonetheless.”

“I don't understand,” Pat said.

“What you don't understand, Strange, would fill volumes. But that is beside the point. Salt in the form of a cross, eh?” She smiled a nasty smile. “Well, I probably know who placed it there. It's Creole voodoo. Was the salt dry or damp?”

“Damp.”

“Misfortune coming your way, Strange.”

“So I've been told. But I think I'll stick around—take my chances.”

“No doubt.” She cut her gaze to Janette. “Where is your gris-gris, child? The old woman must have give you all one to wear?”

“I have it.”

“It won't help you—any of you.” She rose from the table and walked away, her back stiff. She stopped, turning about. “Remember this, young people, should you decide to stay, and I've asked you both nicely to leave: her magic is weak compared to mine.” She looked upward, raised her hand, then brought it sharply to her side.

The elegant chandelier suspended over the table, worth a small fortune, suddenly ripped from its chains and crashed onto the table plunging the dining room into darkness.

Janette screamed as the chandelier plummeted to the table.

Victoria laughed. “You see?” she said, then walked away.

“Crap!” Pat said, looking sadly at Janette's dessert, now buried under broken china, bent silver, and a mound of sparkling cut glass. “I was gonna eat that.”

“Claude Bauterre,” Edan told them, minutes after calling Amour House and asking them to meet him in the drive, “was killed on the last day of October, 1934.” He told them of Blaine's clipping, and of the inclusion of the Daily name.

“And today is the twenty-first,” Pat said. “You really think things are gonna start popping around the last of the month, don't you, Edan?”

“Yes, I do.” The sheriff looked up at the huge old mansion, looming white against the night. He shuddered. “I wouldn't stay in that house for any amount of money.” His eyes touched the dark form of Victoria Bauterre, watching them from the upper gallery. “Look at her,” he whispered. “Like a vulture, waiting for the last death kicks.”

Her laughter rang out over the lawn, a taunting cackle. “A vulture, Sheriff Vallot? Pity. And I thought you were such a nice young man. Get off this property, Vallot—now. And until and unless you have the proper papers authorizing you to trespass, stay off!” She turned and melted into the shadows of the porch.

“Part of this property is mine, Edan,” Janette told him. “You're welcome here anytime.”

“Why tempt the gods?” Edan answered. “From whatever kingdom. I've been a lawman all my life. Never held any other full-time job. But I've never been in a bind like this one. I can see me callin' Colonel Desormeaux of the Highway Patrol and requesting help on this. I can just hear him laughing when I tell him I've got a bunch of werewolves prowling around the parish, sucking the blood out of people.”

Pat laughed in the night. “Yeah, they'd reserve a room for you in the funny farm.”

“You got that right. I mean, there it is. Who can I turn to for help?”

“For one thing,” Pat said, “we can all start pulling together in harness. For another, if you believe—and it's obvious you both do—that these . . . gaboos exist, let's figure a way to call them out of hiding and kill them. Stop, as a British fellow I once soldiered with would say, mucking about and get on with it.”

“You still don't believe any of this, do you, Pat?” Edan asked.

Pat shook his head. “No, I don't guess I do.”

“I don't blame you,” Edan said. “I wish to God I didn't.”

Without another word, the sheriff walked to his car and drove away.

Pat said, “Your grandmother is watching me. I can feel her eyes.”

“I'm frightened, Pat.”

“Go to bed, Janette. Go on.” He gently pushed her toward the house.

“What are you going to do?”

He smiled. “Tempt fate. Anger the gods. Piss-off the woolly buggers.”

“Pat, you're insanel”

“Come on, I'll walk you back to the house and tuck you in. I need to change clothes.”

 

Pat sat by her bed until she was asleep, then went into his room, changing into old faded field clothes. He checked his shotgun, filling the tube with three-inch magnum shells, double ought buckshot. He belted his .41 mag around his waist, in a leather holster, then clipped on two speed-loaders. He slung a bandoleer of shotgun shells around his shoulders, bandit style, then secured a dark bandana around his head, to keep the sweat out of his eyes. He stepped out into the hall.

“Okay, roogooboos,” he said. “If you won't come to daddy . . . then daddy will just have to come to you.”

“Going hunting, Strange?” Victoria Bauterre's voice cut through the dimness of the hall, from behind him.

Pat did not look around. “That's right, ma'am. Hunting woolly bears.”

“I could kill you now, Strange. This instant. You know that, don't you?”

“No, ma'am, I don't know that.”

The answering laugh was evil. “But I think I'll let you play your game, Strange.” Do you have a choice? Another older, colder voice ripped through her head. You will not intimidate this one, Victoria. He has chosen well. “Perhaps,” Victoria said, “you will be victorious.”

“But you don't think so?” Pat asked.

There was no reply. Pat turned slowly to look down the hall.

A small black dog sat on the carpet, gazing at him through dark eyes.

“I'm still waiting to see what you do for an encore,” Pat said, then walked down the hall. He walked down the curving steps, past the portraits that hung in the hall, and stepped outside, into the humid darkness.

And from windows in the great house, eyes watched his every move.