Age of Voodoo (18 page)

SIXTEEN

CROWD OF THE DEAD

T
HEY CAME OUT
of the dark, singly at first, then in a horde.

Leading the pack was a despot from sub-Saharan Africa, massively overweight, his face grey as clay. Sticking out of the rolls of blubber at his neck was the hypodermic syringe Lex had used to inject him with a lethal dose of potassium chloride, the British government’s answer to the man’s repeated attempts to blame all his country’s contemporary ills on its former colonial ruler. The UK did not take kindly to being made a scapegoat. Cause of death had been listed as heart attack, according to a coroner who didn’t wish to enquire into the matter too deeply. Like most of his countrymen, he was just glad the psychotic fat bastard was gone.

Next was a Thai plutocrat who had been attempting to sell phials of weaponised hantavirus to some very shady characters on the Pacific Rim. While cruising around the Phi Phi Islands in the Andaman Sea in his luxury yacht, he had slipped on deck, fallen over the rail and drowned. Or so it was generally assumed. His bloated corpse showed signs of having been nibbled by small fish and gnawed by sharks. Water poured in a continuous stream from his mouth, nose and ears.

Following him came the Montenegran arms dealer who had moonlighted as a trader in state secrets, selling information he gleaned from his contacts in various defence departments to terrorists and religious fanatics, whoever would pay his exorbitant prices. His Lamborghini had left the road while negotiating the St Gotthard Pass in the Swiss Alps, plunging off the Teufelsbrücke bridge into the Schöllenen Gorge. The car had been so badly wrecked that accident investigators failed to find evidence of the remote-detonated packets of explosive that burst the two nearside tyres simultaneously and caused the driver’s fatal loss of control.

Then there was the Ukrainian people-trafficker flooding London with abducted underage prostitutes, who had been found hanging in a wardrobe in what looked to all intents and purposes like an act of autoerotic asphyxiation gone disastrously wrong.

And the sheik with connections to al-Qaeda, apparently slain by one of his own bodyguards who had then immediately turned his gun on himself.

And the rabble-rousing neo-Nazi Russian demagogue, forever exhorting his country to unleash its nuclear arsenal on the decadent, racially-impure West, who had been shot in the back while on a moose hunting expedition in the Urals, killed by the same calibre of rifle bullet his fellow hunters were using even though every one of them swore blind that they had not fired at or even near him.

They all lurched towards Lex, charred, mangled, broken, dismembered, riddled with bullet holes, sporting gory wounds, eyes cloudy, mouths agape in silent screams of indignation. They converged on him from in front, behind, all around, encircling him, a dozen, a score, twice that number, more. Cold, clammy hands clutched at him. The crowd of the dead pressed in on him, threatening to overwhelm him with their weight and their putrid stink. Lex struggled, but he seemed to lack all strength. He couldn’t escape. He was helpless. The dead surged over him like a tide, all the many people he had killed, all risen from their final resting places to claim their assassin and drag him down to whichever dark hells they now called home.

And now Lex heard laughter—derisive, crowing laughter. He scanned frantically to see where it was coming from. Maybe it was someone who could help him.

Beyond the throng of shambling corpses, somewhere on high as though on a podium, stood a man in a black tailcoat. He wore sunglasses with the right-hand lens missing and a crooked top hat on his head, a crow’s feather protruding jauntily from the sash. His face was painted to resemble a skull, the white of the makeup contrasting starkly with the deep brown of his skin.

He brandished a cane in one hand, a spindly twist of wood with a carved ivory skull as its knob. He was using it like a conductor’s baton, waving it to and fro in time to a rhythm only he could hear, and Lex could see that the crowd of the dead were under this frightful figure’s command. He was urging them on, orchestrating their assault, and laughing heartily all the while, as if it was the finest entertainment imaginable.

The dead were now crawling over one another to get to Lex, their wretched bodies forming a dome over him, engulfing him. He was at the heart of a pile of soft putrefying flesh and writhing rotten limbs. He could barely breathe. He was going to suffocate.

And still that laughter pealed in the background, immense delighted guffaws from the cavorting, skull-faced man in black...

O
F COURSE IT
was a dream. Lex knew that even while he was in the thick of it, being buried under those corpses. Only a dream, and he fought his way out, thrashing up to the surface of consciousness to find himself, yes, in bed, at home, in darkness, lying tangled in the sheets with cicadas trilling outside the window and the ceiling fan whirling lazily overhead.

And then, to his horror, he realised that he was still pinned down. A body lay half on him, one arm across his throat. It had been no dream. The nightmare was real. The dead were here—
his
dead—and one of them had him in a tight embrace and was about to throttle him.

He threw the arm off and scrambled sideways, desperate to get away, desperate to flee the postmortem vengeance of his victims.

He tumbled off the bed onto the floor, thumping hard, backside first. He was slick with sweat, heart pounding. He thrust himself backwards with his heels until he struck the wall. He could hear a mewling coming from his throat, an abject sound, a wordless plea for mercy.

Then, from the bed, someone spoke.

“Lex?”

And a lamp flicked on.

“Lex, what’s going on?”

It was Albertine, with the sheet clasped to her chest, leaning over him, beautiful, solicitous.

“What are you doing on the floor there? You look terrible. What on earth’s the matter?”

Lex gasped, gulped, finally found his voice. “I... Shit. I had this... I was... Bad dream. Yeah. Really fucking bad dream.”

Albertine looked him up and down. “Yes, I’d say so. Come on.” She beckoned.

Reluctantly, unsteadily, Lex clambered back onto the bed. He was shivering, despite the heat.

“It was... Bloody hell. So vivid.”

“Shhh. It’s all right. Lie down.”

He settled down against her. She was naked, as was he. How had this come about? How had they ended up like this?

It came back to him, gradually, piecemeal. He had rendezvoused with Wilberforce and Albertine at his house. They had been waiting for him here when he returned from the Cape Azure. There’d been dinner, during which Lex had laid bare the facts about Anger Reef and explained what Lieutenant Buckler required from each of the cousins. Then Albertine had retired to the spare room for the night while Lex made up the couch for Wilberforce.

Later, Lex’s bedroom door had opened. Albertine had stepped through, shutting it softly behind her.

Not much was said. She was in a borrowed bathrobe. She let it slip to her ankles, revealing an ample shelf of bosom and wide, sinuously incurving hips. She slid in under the covers beside him. The warmth coming off her was tremendous. The musk too, the earthy female scent. Lex was erect almost before he knew it, and he didn’t question her presence, didn’t ask why she was there or why she wanted him. Didn’t care. He threw himself at her, and there was sweat, and saliva, and pawing, and straddling, an inelegant ballet of lust, and it was over quickly, for both of them, an urgent, exultant coming together, and afterwards a precipitous rush into sleep, like falling off a cliff, oblivion chasing the heels of orgasm and exhaustion.

“You get nightmares often?” Albertine asked.

“Occasionally. Not like this one, though.”

“Want to talk about it? Sometimes helps.”

“No. Want to tell me why you... you know. Why we...”

“Got carnal?”

“If you have to put it like that.”

Albertine gave a wry, slightly pitying chuckle. “One thing you should know about islander women. We’re very passionate. Prim and proper on the surface, but underneath... Look out!”

“Not that I’m complaining, I hasten to add.”

“I know you’re not. I surprised you, that’s all. I understand that. You weren’t sure I was interested. But I can be very impulsive. Sometimes Erzulie Freda, she gets the better of me. She’s a fine lady, fond of all the nice things in life, dainty in her way, and you’d think she’d be above getting all down-and-dirty, but she’s not, trust me. She’s got a wicked streak, and now and then, even when I haven’t summoned her, she mounts me...”

“And you mounted me,” Lex finished.

This time Albertine didn’t so much chuckle as cackle—quite the lewdest laugh Lex had ever heard.

“And it was nice,” she said.

“That’s all? ‘Nice’?”

“Very nice, then. You may not be the tallest man I’ve ever been with, but in other respects you’re far from being the smallest.”

“Thanks. I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Do.”

“What time is it?” Lex consulted his alarm clock. “Christ,” he groaned. “Gone three. We’re ‘wheels up’ at six, according to Buckler. Albertine, I know I’ve asked this a hundred times already, but now it seems more pertinent than ever. Are you sure you—?”

She placed a finger on his lips. “Don’t even think about saying it. A bokor has been committing heinous acts, perverting
vodou
for his own ends. As a practising mambo, a true
serviteur
of the loa, I can’t stand idly by and allow it to happen. And you’ve seen what I can do. I’ve got my bag of tricks with me, packed with all I need, and I’m not afraid to use it. I’m going into this with eyes wide open, Lex. It’s kind of you to worry, but don’t.”

“I’m just saying...”

“Things are the way they are. You must understand,
vodou
is a very fatalistic religion. Accepting one’s destiny is part of the deal. The loa know what’s best for each of us, and it would be foolish to attempt to defy their will. It would only displease them, and make them more determined than ever to force you down the road they want you to take. And this, this mission, is the road for me. I know it. I have no doubts.”

“Okay,” said Lex. “Well, you can’t say I didn’t try. Shit.” He pressed the back of a forearm to his forehead. All at once, in his mind’s eye, came a vision of the figure in the funereal black suit, the cockeyed hat perched on his head, the cane carving patterns in the air. “The thing about the dream I just had... I’ve had similar dreams before. A recurring nightmare. But this time, it was worse than it’s ever been. I suppose I’m just anxious about what’s ahead.”

“Who wouldn’t be?” said Albertine. “If Lieutenant Buckler is right and we’re going to be facing zuvembies, or something like zuvembies, anxiety is the only sensible response.” Her tone shifted from sympathetic to inquisitive. “Was there somebody in this dream, by any chance? Somebody you’ve not seen before?”

“Yes,” Lex said, a little too quickly. He backpedalled, not sure he wanted to give away too much about himself, about the workings of his subconscious mind. He had met this woman less than twenty-four hours ago. They had had sex, but he still hardly knew her. “Sort of. You know how, in dreams, someone can seem familiar even though they’re a complete stranger? There was a bloke like that in this one.”

“Describe him.”

Lex supplied a brief verbal sketch of the top-hatted man.

“Baron Samedi,” said Albertine. She didn’t seem all that surprised.

“Oh yes. The one you said Papa Doc Duvalier cribbed his look from. I remember. That’ll be why I recognised him. You see pictures of him all over the place, don’t you?”

“The Baron? Nine out of ten tattoo parlours here have him in the window as one of their design samples. He’s a popular choice of body art, particularly among young men. Decals on motorbikes, airbrushed pictures on surfboards, murals on the side of houses—you can find images of him just about everywhere you look. He’s the loa even people who know nothing about
vodou
know about. Everyone thinks he’s hot stuff, and that makes the Baron happy. He thinks he’s pretty hot stuff too.”

“And I suppose I was dreaming about him because you mentioned him yesterday.” To Lex, this was comforting. Dreams were the mind’s clearing-house, a way of sifting through, sorting and storing the jumbled data of the day. Albertine had talked about Papa Doc and Baron Samedi, and Lex’s hindbrain had conflated the two and then invited the Haitian dictator to put in an appearance among the parade of human monsters whose shades haunted Lex while he slept. Duvalier may not have been one of Lex’s Code Crimsons but he certainly fitted right in with the rest. The Baron Samedi get-up conferred a kind of star status on him, as though he were a veteran actor wheeled out of retirement to spruce up the cast of a long-running show.

“Maybe,” said Albertine. “Or it could be that the Baron wished to take a look at you.”

Lex could not help but feel a chill at her words. “Don’t be daft.”

“It would be just like him to drop by and introduce himself. If there’s trouble ahead, and especially if it involves a bokor, then the Baron is likely to have a stake in the proceedings. Black magic and the Baron are never far apart. He wanted to get the measure of you, that’s what I think. See what he’s up against. Did he say anything?”