Black Dust Mambo (26 page)

Kallie met the nomad’s scorching take-no-prisoners death glare and held it, chin lifted. “We’ve found the man responsible for that hex,” she said, pleased with the cool, even tone of her voice. “And we’re going after him.”

“Looks to me like yer going after
Layne
. I guess fooking Gage in every way possible wasn’t enough fer you.”

“Christ in a bread basket, woman!”

Kallie’s muscles coiled and her hands curled into tight fists at her sides. “Stay out of it, Layne. This is between me and her.”

“Christ. You too?” Layne threw his hands up in disgust. “Woman-stupid,” he muttered, then looked oddly pleased with himself.

Light glinted in the leprechaun’s eyes, and a dark smile tilted her lips. “You think those are gonna save you, do you now?”

“Save me—no. Flatten you—yes.”
“Count to ten before you throw a punch, Shug. Count slow, like you would between rumbles of thunder.”

One Mississippi . . . Ten!
Kallie swung up her fists and shifted her weight. Something vibrated against her hip and she looked down, perplexed, until she remembered her cell phone.

“Hey, lassie.”

Kallie looked up in time to see the nomad’s fist looming in her vision like an incoming asteroid. She ducked, but not quickly enough. Mc Kenna’s hard knuckles grazed her cheek, knocking her off balance.

Kallie stumbled against Augustine’s desk, bruising her hip against its edge, then caught herself and whirled away from the pixie nomad’s next air-swooshing blow. Adrenaline flooded her system, poured through her veins. She spun back around, fists lifted. And barely stopped herself from knuckling a blow into Layne’s back.

He stretched his arms out, one hand in front of Kallie’s chest and the other in front of McKenna’s. “Stop it,” he said. “This ain’t solving anything, and we’re wasting time.”

“Get out of the way,” Mc Kenna barked. “No. I need you to listen to me. Gage bought Kallie’s life with his own. That should mean something to you. It does to me. If anything happens to her and I trace it back to you—we’re finished.”

Mc Kenna stared at him. “You don’t mean that. You can’t.”

“Don’t test me on this, Kenn. Please.”

“You’d actually choose a squatter over clan?”

“Let it go, buttercup, I’m asking you. Let it go.”

Mc Kenna’s hands unclenched and her expression smoothed into a cool and expressionless mask. She held Layne’s gaze for a long moment before pronouncing in a cold voice, “Bewitched, that’s wha’ ye are.”

“Cursed, more like,” Layne muttered.

Daggering a last dark look at Kallie, McKenna pivoted around and walked from the room without another word.

“Fuck.” Layne sighed. “You shouldn’t give her so much shit about me,” Kallie said, slipping her cell phone from her pocket. “I’d feel the same way in her place.”

An amused smile flickered across Layne’s lips. “Mighty magnanimous of you, sunshine, considering that she’s probably plotting your death even as we speak.”

“Well, everyone needs a hobby,” Kallie murmured as she looked at the caller ID on her cell—BELL. A knot of anxiety tightened in her belly. Must be news about Dallas. Kallie returned the call.

Jean-Julien looked at the ringing cell phone. The caller ID read: KALLIE. A smile curved his lips. He thumbed the talk button. “Kallie Rivière,
oui
? Just the woman I wanted to speak with.”

A short pause, then the Rivière girl’s voice, low and taut, curled into his ear. “You must be Doctor Heron, the goddamned prick who killed Dallas. Where’s Belladonna? She’d better be all right—”

Jean-Julien cut her off. “She’s fine, and we’re on a little journey. I truly don’t want to hurt her, but that’s up to you. Give yourself to me, and I guarantee your friend will walk away restored and unmolested.”

“Restored?”
Dark suspicion edged the word. “At the moment, she and her poppet are mine.”

“Shit! Goddamned bastard! So where is all this supposed to go down?”

“Your aunt’s house in Bayou Cyprès Noir,” Jean-Julien said. “Alone, Kallie, of course. If I catch even a whiff of the Hecatean Alliance or anyone else, I’ll
destroy
Bella-donna even if it’s the last thing I do.”

“Wow. How über-villain of you,” she muttered. “I ain’t gonna risk Bell’s life, don’t worry.”

Jean-Julien chuckled. “I’m
not
worried. But
you
should be, girl.”

“We’ll see. You know it’s going to take a couple of hours for me to get home.”

“I know. But if you’re not there by two-thirty . . .” Jean-Julien switched off the phone.

So Brûler had died, after all. He wished he could see the look on Gabrielle’s face when she received the news of her former star pupil’s death. However, he would have the far greater pleasure of seeing her face as she watched her niece die.

Rolling down the passenger window of Belladonna’s ancient Dodge Dart, Jean-Julien tossed the cell phone into the night. No excuses. No distractions. No escape.

“I hope for your sake she’s a very good friend,” he said, looking at Belladonna and touching a finger to her dark cheek. She shuddered, but kept her lovely hazel eyes—well, relatively lovely, considering how unfocused they were at present—on the road beyond the bug-spattered windshield.

Kallie stuffed her cell phone back into her pocket, then shoved shaking hands through her hair. Fury and fear raged through her in equal measure.

She was too goddamned late. The soul-killing god-damned bastard had
already
gotten the drop on someone else. Belladonna. And not only that—the prick had hexed her and bound her to his will.

Doctor Heron. The bogeyman of hoodoo.

And Kallie was pretty damned sure he was hunting the wrong goddamned people.

She swallowed hard and closed her eyes. Her hands knotted into fists at her sides. She didn’t want to imagine what Belladonna was enduring this very moment, her every action manipulated, her thoughts suppressed. Kallie hoped her friend was unaware of what had been done to her.

She had no illusions about St. Cyr setting Belladonna free. It hadn’t bothered him that an innocent man had been killed, body and soul, by accident. Belladonna’s life would also mean nothing to him.

“Kallie? What’s wrong?”

Kallie looked up into Layne’s concerned face. “Doctor Heron has Belladonna,” she said, her voice rough. The nomad’s jaw tightened. “He’s taking her home. My life for Bell’s.”

Layne grabbed Kallie’s hand and headed for the door in long-legged strides. “That’s what he thinks. How far away’s home?”

“Nearly as far as Delacroix,” Kallie said, hurrying to keep up with him. “He gave us two and a half hours.”

“Looks like Babette and Delacroix are gonna hafta wait for another day.”

“Looks like.”
I’m on my way, Bell. I’ll be there soon. Hold on,
chère,
hold on.

The leprechaun’s dark and bitter words circled through Kallie’s mind: “
She’s bloody death in shorts and a tank top.
”

It scared her to think that Mc Kenna just might be right.

T
HIRTY-TWO
B
AYOU
C
YPRÈS
N
OIR

Layne made it in two hours and ten minutes, his black, low-slung Harley tearing up I-10 West in a steady, high-pitched thrum, his dreads snaking in the wind. Kallie kept her arms locked around his T-shirt-draped waist, her mouth close to his ear to give directions. And as the night cooled down, she was glad she hadn’t gotten all woman-stupid and refused his leather jacket.

Layne stopped the bike at the mouth of the rutted dirt drive leading to Kallie’s house and killed the engine. The night air seemed to vibrate in the sudden silence. A single cricket sawed a quick song, then quieted. The night-rich smells of moist dirt, green leaves, and muck from the bayou’s edge drifted in the air.

Kallie climbed off Layne’s bike and unstrapped the black-and-orange-flamed shorty helmet he’d given her to wear. She shook out her hopelessly tangled hair. The nomad took off his own helmet and hung it from the handlebar by its chin strap. He swung his leg over the bike’s seat, then stood. He looked up the dirt drive and into the darkness.

“Don’t like this,” he said quietly.

“Me either,” Kallie said, resting her helmet on the bike’s seat. “But you gotta stay out of it. I can’t take chances with Bell’s life.”

The night shadowed Layne’s face so she couldn’t make out his expression. “I hear you,” he said. “But
I
can’t take chances with
your
life. Not when Gage has paid for it.”

“You’re gonna hafta, until I call you,” Kallie insisted, keeping her voice pitched low. She’d programmed Layne’s number into her cell phone with the idea that she’d ring him—well, vibrate him—the moment she’d found Belladonna.

Layne crossed his arms over his chest and grunted. He hadn’t liked the plan from the start, but he understood that St. Cyr would be watching to see if she came alone or not, so Kallie decided to accept that as a fine-but-I-still-don’t-like-it grunt.

She shrugged out of his leather jacket and handed it to him. It had protected her from the chilly night air, but the damned thing was too heavy and way too large.

“You wanna take a gun or knife with you?” he asked, tugging on his jacket.

Kallie shook her head. “He’s likely to use it on me if he finds it.”

She slipped off Belladonna’s bag of potions and handed it to Layne. No point in letting St. Cyr take it from her. Besides, she had a couple of tricks of her own. Tucked inside her bra was a small bottle of confusion oil. And stuffed into the back pocket of her cutoffs? A hastily stitched poppet bearing Jean-Julien’s name and a few powerful herbs.

Two could play the bend-over game.

But first she needed to make sure Belladonna was safe and out of St. Cyr’s easy reach and command. Kallie wished she’d had a little more time to put together something truly badass.

“Okay,” she said. “I guess I’m ready.”

Layne grasped her shoulders, his hands warm against her rapidly chilling skin. “Be careful, sunshine,” he said. “I’m gonna be right behind you.”

“Waiting for my call, right?” she asked, searching his green eyes.

“Right.” He squeezed her shoulders, then—almost reluctantly—released her.

Kallie offered him a smile, hoping it looked more confident than she felt, and started walking up the tree-lined drive—tall cypress, bitter pecans, and oaks.

Headed for home.

The breeze, carrying the honey-sweet fragrance of the button bushes growing beside the water, pushed at the blue bottles hanging from the branches on the oak in front of the house. The bottles clinked and tinked musically, a soothing sound. Kallie hoped they still held luck.

She faced the house, the skin on the back of her neck prickling. A single light burned inside, and the front door was wide open. So quiet—too quiet. The unusual silence sawed at her nerves. No Cielo
whooing
a Siberian husky– style greeting; no earthy C. C. Adcock–crafted swamp-blues pounding from Jacks’s iPod station as he worked on his truck or his boat; no creak from the porch swing as her aunt relaxed with a beer and a book.

Of course, normally at this hour, everyone would be asleep. But that one burning light, the open door, and the silence suggested that there was nothing normal about the hour—not tonight. Tension knotted the muscles in Kallie’s shoulders.

Jackson’s weathered Dodge Ram was missing from its spot in front of their garage. Were Jacks and her aunt safe, or bound just like Belladonna?

Only one way to find out.

Kallie walked up the stone path to the weathered porch. Just as she placed her foot on the first step, a man’s voice—St. Cyr’s—said from behind, “Don’t move.”

Something cold pressed against the side of her neck. Kallie held still, fear slicking an icy finger down her spine as she remembered the pool of blood Dallas’s slashed throat had created.

“The knife ain’t necessary,” she said, mouth dry. “Not when you’ve got Belladonna.”

“I think I’ll keep the knife right where it is, since the need for survival often trumps loyalty to friends.”

“If I was focused on survival, I wouldn’t be here.”

St. Cyr slid his arm around her shoulders and gripped her left bicep with a hard-fingered hand. His right kept the knife pressed against her neck. “Let’s go,” he murmured, his breath warm against her ear.

“What about my cousin and my aunt?” Kallie asked. “Are they all right?”

“I wouldn’t know. No one was here,” St. Cyr grumbled. “Now shut up and walk.”

Having no choice, Kallie went with St. Cyr. He led her into the backyard, walking her past the cistern for rain water and the shed, past Gabrielle’s workshop and through the brush to the bayou’s edge. The breeze rustled through the trees, carrying the smells of muck and moss and damp rot through the air. An owl hooted.

Kallie’s heart skipped a beat when moonlight illuminated a curly-haired figure sitting in the sawgrass underneath a tall cypress next to the water. Belladonna, and only Belladonna. No sign of her aunt or Jackson. Maybe Gabrielle was still away doing whatever and Jacks had ignored Kallie, put Cielo in the back of his truck, and driven into town for a few drinks.

As St. Cyr walked Kallie toward the cypress Bella-donna waited beneath, Kallie saw a checked picnic blanket spread out in the grass and weeds.

And when she saw what was on it, her blood turned to ice. The blanket held a large black
X
. Just like the one on her mattress back at the hotel.

And Belladonna sat curled right at the blanket’s edge. One little movement and the hex would snag her, body and soul.

“You don’t need Belladonna,” Kallie said. “It’s me you want, right? Release her.” And though she felt like she’d need the Heimlich maneuver in order to get the word out of her throat, she added, “Please.”

“
Oui,
it’s you I want, true enough, but you have no say in anything that happens here, girl, no negotiating power,” St. Cyr replied. “That said, I plan to release Belladonna as soon as you’re dead. So the sooner you get on the blanket and accept your fate, the sooner Belladonna can be freed. She’s an innocent in all of this.”

“So was Gage. But you killed him.”

“The nomad’s death was an accident. Tragic, but nothing I can fix.”

“And Dallas, you sonuvabitch?”

“As my daughter once put it: He was a sacrifice upon the cold altar of revenge—just as you will be.”

“But that’s just it. You’ve tracked down the
wrong
Gabrielle LaRue,” Kallie said quickly. “My aunt looks
nothing
like the pictures of the woman in your daughter’s files. She’s not the Gabi you’re looking for. Maybe your wife learned about the affair. Maybe she got mad enough to poison your clients and to let you take the blame.”

Fury blazed in St. Cyr’s eyes. “Shut up, girl. Enough talk.” His fingers squeezed Kallie’s bicep so tight that her fingers tingled, then went numb as the circulation was cut off. “Your aunt filled you full of lies.” He brought them to a stop in front of the hexed picnic blanket.

Sweat trickled between Kallie’s breasts. The sight of the thick black
X
crossing the checked material twisted cold around her heart and filled her mind with images of Gage’s empty eyes and bloodied body.

She tried to measure the distance between her and Belladonna. Tried to figure if she could jump the blanket and knock her friend over at the same time. Belladonna’s glassy-eyed gaze remained fixed on St. Cyr, her hands curled lax in her lap.

Odds didn’t look good. Maybe if she had a running start . . .

Keeping the knife in place at Kallie’s throat, St. Cyr released her arm, then yanked up the back of her shirt. Kallie stiffened as he pulled the hidden poppet free. Her belly sank. Now might be a good time to call Layne. If she could slip a hand into her pocket.

“Look at me, girl,” St. Cyr said, removing the knife from her throat.

Kallie turned around slowly. Doctor Heron, aka Jean-Julien St. Cyr, aka Rosette’s ex-con daddy, ripped the poppet apart with his knife and plucked out the piece of paper bearing his name. He stuffed it into the pocket of his jeans. The rest of the poppet he scattered in the grass and alligator weeds.

She slid her hand into her pocket and tapped the speed-dial button for Layne.

“Belladonna, stand up,” St. Cyr said quietly, his cold pale-green gaze meeting and holding Kallie’s. “Hold one foot above the blanket.”

Kallie heard movement behind her as Belladonna obeyed Doctor Heron’s command.

“I hope your friend has good balance,” he commented. “One little wobble . . .”

Kallie kept her gaze on St. Cyr, wishing she could turn him to stone with just a glance. “She does. But you don’t need to do this. Let her go.”

St. Cyr chuckled. “You sound just like Brûler. Either you take your place on the blanket or Belladonna does.”

Kallie swiveled around, giving her back to St. Cyr and facing Belladonna. Her friend swayed on one platform-soled foot at the blanket’s edge, her face blank. Kallie’s gut knotted with dread. Despite what she’d told St. Cyr, Belladonna wasn’t known for her coordination and grace.

“How can I trust you to release Bell when you’ve sold your own daughter’s soul to the nomads? Left her high and dry?”

“The nomads? What are you talking about?”

He didn’t know. The goddamned bastard didn’t know. Maybe she could throw
him
off balance with a bit of truth mixed liberally with speculation.

“The clan of the nomad you murdered has arrived in New Orleans and they’ve asked for your daughter,” Kallie said, slipping the bottle of confusion oil from her bra and palming it. “Augustine okayed it. But that shouldn’t be a surprise, since Rosette murdered him too, right? You ain’t the only one who believes an eye for an eye is never enough. The nomads do too, and they’re gonna kill Rosette—body and soul.”

Hard hands seized Kallie’s shoulders and spun her around. St. Cyr searched her face with eyes as hard as green diamonds. “You’re lying, stalling for time,” he growled. “No more. Belladonna—”

Kallie punched him before he could finish speaking. Doctor Heron staggered back, blood trickling from his nose, his expression stunned.

Pulse roaring in her ears, Kallie uncapped the bottle of confusion oil and tossed the contents into the bastard’s face. The nostril-pinching stink of bitter rue and pungent guinea pepper spiced the air. “Your thoughts spin, your purpose you cannot hold,” she chanted. “Your evil intentions will not unfold.”

But the majority of the oil spattered on the arm St. Cyr had instinctively flung up. “Belladonna,” he yelled, his voice thick with blood. “Step onto the blanket! Now!”

Kallie whirled around to see Belladonna slowly lowering her foot.

“
NO
!” Kallie screamed and, knowing only one way to save Bell from the hex’s fatal discharge, she threw herself into the middle of the black-dust
X
.

A cold and black flood of venomous magic poured into Kallie, oil-slicking her veins and shocking all thought from her mind. Choking, she struggled to breathe as the hex’s power coiled like a hungry python around her heart and squeezed. Sucked at her soul like a black hole drinking in a star’s brilliant essence.

White-hot pain wracked her body and short-circuited her mind. She felt hundreds of tiny fists battering her from within, hammering with increasing strength.

“I’m sorry, baby. I ain’t got a choice.”

Her breath stopped; then, a moment later, her heart quit beating.