Black Heart Loa (13 page)

The Baron laughed, sounding genuinely amused. “A woman with sass be a beautiful thing, for true. But you ain’t
just
a woman, ain’t dat so?”

“Hey, granted, I look more like a drowned swamp rat at the moment, but of
course
I’m just a woman. I’m—”

“More,” the Baron interjected. “Different.” His winter-hard hands slid down Kallie’s shoulders to her biceps, trailing frost and a strange, skin-tingling heat in their wake. “What you hiding, Kallie Rivière? Hmmm,
ma belle
? Somet’ing don’t feel right here.”

Kallie stiffened beneath the
loa
’s unrelenting grip, her pulse drumming at her temples. “I ain’t hiding nothing.”

“Den dere be no harm in looking,” the Baron declared.

Kallie wasn’t so sure about that. She wasn’t hiding anything, no, but according to Divinity, an unnamed
loa
had been secreted inside her, a
loa
her mama had tried to awaken with bullets and blood and cold murder.

Sorry, baby. I ain’t got a choice.

An awakening her aunt was determined to prevent, no matter the cost.

“Dere ain’t nothing I wouldn’t do to help you, Kalindra
Sophia. Teach you. Guide you. Lie to you.
Bind
you, if it be necessary. Because a big wrong’s been done to you.”

Right now, facing Baron Samedi, a little guidance would be pure gold. Especially given the question circling her mind: Who was her mama hiding the
loa from
?

“Look at me, little hoodoo.”

A dark, powerful energy radiated from the Baron, spiking out like deadly icicles in shades of coldest midnight and purple, icing Kallie to the bone, pricking against her soul. Or would’ve if she’d still possessed one.

She held no doubt that she was truly in the presence of Baron Samedi, lord of the
Gédé loa,
and not Cash. Her reflection flickered like flame in his shades—long cinnamon curls, café-au-lait skin, summer green eyes.

A pang of fear pierced Kallie to her core.
That’s not me.
An image shaped itself behind her eyes—a heart bound in chains of pale bones—and a memory, a dying dream, unwrapped itself like a gift.

The jarring thud of hooves against the ground vibrates along Kallie’s spine, jolts her body with each ground-swallowing gallop. Rough hair rubs against her cheek, twists around her fingers. She smells horse musk and, underneath her thighs, feels the powerful flex of muscles
.

m’âme-soeur,
and ride.>

Soul sister.

The reflection glimmering on the lenses of the Baron’s night-deep shades guttered like the flame it resembled, then vanished as another image flared to life and tugged Kallie’s vision inward.

Drums pound in time with the throbbing in Kallie’s skull, the rhythm fast and primal and hungry. Shadows ripple at the edges of her vision. Cold frosts her veins. And
still the black dust pours from her into St. Cyr—mouth, nose, ears, and eyes—in a violent rush of power that scrapes against her heart and threatens to yank her under.

“By Bon Dieu’s holy cock!”

Kallie’s memory wisped away at the Baron’s abrupt words and she nearly stumbled when his icy fingers disappeared from her arms with all the frantic speed of a man jumping away from a downed and wriggling power line. The Baron stepped back, Cash’s cowboy boots squelching in the mud, his tensed body language both wary and predatory.

“I don’t know de how or de why of it, since it ain’t riding you like a
cheval,
but a wild
loa
be hiding inside of yo’ curvy body. And bristling with pure darkness. And dat just won’t do. It don’t belong dere.”

Kallie blinked, caught off guard. She’d expected/feared that he’d find the
loa
harbored inside her body and had a bone-deep feeling, a wordless intuition, that if he did, it would be bad news all around. But
this
…

“Hellfire.” Low and heartfelt from above. Belladonna.

Kallie’s heart beat against her ribs like a caged and feral thing seeking release. “Okay. I agree.
Dat
most definitely won’t do,” she said, pleased her voice remained level. “And I figure it’ll take more than a regular cleansing to get rid of it. So what do I do?”

“Well, now, dat depends on de unnamed and untamed
loa
you got coiled up in yo’ soul’s place. It be up to
her
which road we take,
ma belle.
Her choice—hard or easy.”

And there it was. Her goddamned secret—one forced upon her as an infant and one she didn’t have any answers for, only tons of questions—was no longer hidden. At least, not to the eyes of the
loa
of death. But instead of
feeling relief, Kallie felt only hollow dread and a sense of wrongness.

Kallie knew that without this nameless
loa,
she’d be well and truly dead—body and soul—at the hands of that bastard Doctor Heron. Just like Gage. And without the nameless
loa,
she might not be able to get her locked-up mama to reveal the location of her missing soul.

If the
loa
was important enough for Mama to murder her own husband in cold blood and important enough to steal away her only child’s soul, then the
loa
ought to make one damned fine bargaining chip.

Looking into the Baron’s shades and relieved to see only her own reflection in the lenses this time, Kallie asked, “What if I want to keep the
loa
for the time being?”

“Dat ain’t an option, girl. Dat t’ing inside you be wild and willful, shaped outta slivers of moonless nights and Halloween shadows and ill intentions. And she’s fattening herself up on darkness and violence like a tick.” The Baron shook his head, then sighed. “Normally, I loves me a woman—be she
loa
or human—with a round and sassy ass, but dis be a whole ’nudder t’ing.”

“Will it hurt Kallie?” Belladonna asked. “When you take the
loa
from her?”

And yet another reason she’s my best friend—asking all the hard questions.

Laughing, the Baron tipped his face up to look at Belladonna. “No,
ma jolie,
don’t worry. De girl won’t feel one lick o’ pain—as long as de
loa
takes de easy road, dat is.” Returning his attention to Kallie, he added, “But de hard road—now, dat will hurt like a motherfucker.”

“Fantastic,” Kallie muttered. “Sounds like Christmas just came early.”

“Sure,” Belladonna agreed, her voice light, but sympathetic. “If by
Christmas
you mean
hell.
”

“Yup, you got it.” Sudden pain throbbed at Kallie’s temples—
in anticipation of the hard road?
—and scraped at her concentration. Made it hard to think. White sparks flitted across her vision.

Exhaustion must be catching up with me. And at the worst goddamned moment possible.

“And the best part about all of this bullshit?” the Baron said, his voice slipping into Cash’s mocking cadence. “You die no matter which road your
loa
takes. But don’t worry none. You won’t be lonely. I’ll be sending your cousin to join you.”

An electric jolt surged through Kallie, short-circuiting and disconnecting her thoughts. Images whirled behind her eyes against a backdrop of white sparks:
Pale bones. A chained heart. A black horse. A ruby red skeleton key. A woman with cinnamon curls.

“Well, then,” she heard herself say, her voice coming from far away, “in that case, I guess I’m taking the goddamned hard road.” Then she felt herself step forward, swinging a wicked right hook at the Baron’s painted nose just as a gunshot cracked through the air.

The gun jumped hard
in Belladonna’s hand, smoke curling up from the muzzle, and she nearly dropped the damned thing. She sucked in air reeking of cordite as Kallie’s powerhouse punch missed the lord of the dead—just as the bullet had—breezing past where his skull-decorated face
would’ve
been—if he hadn’t vanished, his mouth shaping an O of surprise.

“Jesus Christ,” Belladonna whispered, tightening her
grip on Layne’s Glock, and wondering who to pray to in a situation like this. Praying
against
a
loa
or asking another to intercede would be like refusing one parent’s ruling and running to another for a different, more favorable answer.

You die no matter which road your
loa
takes.

Belladonna refused to accept that. Baron Samedi tended to view death in a favorable light, so maybe he was just biased. There had to be another way. One that led to life and not to the graveyard.

Her determined face framed by her wet, muddy locks, Kallie spun around on her heels, Jackson’s boot still clutched in the fingers of her left hand, her right fist cocked and loaded.

Belladonna sighted the gun around the grave, waiting for the Baron’s return too, pulse pounding through her veins.

Now that she knew she wasn’t dealing with a Baron Samedi imposter but the real deal in a weird, unnatural amalgam of dual and fluctuating control, Belladonna figured a bullet fired into Cash’s body wouldn’t do much more than distract the Baron from Kallie, but maybe that would be distraction enough to get the girl out of that grave and into the car.

Like we can speed away from death.

Worth a try, girl. Otherwise …

Lifting one hand from the gun to wipe rain from her eyes, Belladonna refused to finish the thought.

Given that she often served the
Gédé loa
and the Barons that ruled them in religious ceremonies at the
hounfor
where she studied to be a mambo, the thought of working against one—even to save her best friend’s life—left her guts tied in knots and her heart cold.

But the thought of losing Kallie iced Belladonna to the soul, steadied her aim.

The Baron blip-appeared behind Kallie in the spot he’d just vacated, instead of where she’d clearly anticipated him.

Just as Belladonna was about to yell a warning to Kallie and squeeze off another careful round, the distinct and unnerving
shu-schunk
of a shotgun shell being chambered launched her heart into her throat, and her words died unvoiced. She caught a peripheral glimpse of rain-glistening, mud-streaked,
familiar
sneakers.

Thunder growled overhead, moving away.

Hellfire. Guess who’s roused from his damned swoon and discovered that his balls have finally dropped?

“Don’t move, y’hear?” Kerry said, his voice unusually calm and steady.
Well. Maybe not calm, per se, just less panicky.
“Now toss the gun.”

“We had this conversation back at the house,” Belladonna replied, sitting back on heels, her gaze remaining on the action in the grave. Kallie whirled to face the
loa
just as the Baron lifted a hand and traced a symbol of some kind in the air.

Pain tightened Kallie’s features, darkened her eyes.

Hoo-boy. Not good. Could be a banishing or compel command.

“I can’t do both,” Belladonna continued, sparing Kerry a quick glance. His hands white-knuckled the shotgun, his lips a thin, determined line. “Now, which is it? Don’t move, or toss the gun?”

Kerry blew out a frustrated breath. “Toss the gun, dammit. And technically, y’all had that particular conversation with Cash, not me.”

“Oh. Well. That makes all the difference in the world,” Belladonna said. “It’s not like you were in the same room standing right next to each other or anything.”

Power undulated up from the grave and through the air, and it seemed, for a heartbeat, that even the rain rippled like a breeze-pushed, water-pearled curtain. The hair lifted on the back of Belladonna’s neck. An icy hand trailed her spine.

The surge of dark and unbalanced energy felt like a countdown timer on a suicide vest packed full of C-4 bricks.

Wow. Great analogy there, imagination. Thanks for that mental image.

Kallie swung at the Baron again, and the
loa
danced away, still etching symbols in the air, clearly reluctant to make physical contact with Kallie until he’d finished laying down his trick. Until he’d finished binding her. Entrapping her.

“Look, you gonna toss the gun or what? I’d hate to hurt a woman, I truly would, but I will if I hafta.”

Belladonna snorted. “Redneck, please. I could turn you into a stewpot chicken before you could get off a single round.”

“Ain’t no call for that.
Redneck
. That’s just plain hurtful.”

“You like
stewpot chicken
better?”

The blood drained from Kerry’s face and gravel scrunched beneath his sneakers as he shuffled his feet, his reptilian survival brain contemplating a hasty retreat. “Didn’t I help y’all?” he said, reproach edging his voice. “Didn’t I show y’all where Bonaparte was buried?”

“Yup, you did. But”—Belladonna paused to nod
at the grave and the bizarre action taking place in its depths—“I don’t think you appreciate the gravity of this situation.”

Kerry looked down, pursed his lips, tightened his fingers around the shotgun.

The Baron crafted his spell as he dodged more sight-blurring punches from Kallie—
and when the hell had she started moving so fast?
—intoning in a deep and nasal voice: “I command you, nameless one, I compel you. Hear my voice, the voice of Baron Samedi, a voice impossible to deny or resist. Come to me. I command you, compel you.”

The
loa
of death and resurrection’s words rumbled like long-rolling thunder, like the distant boom of storm-driven waves against rock, the sound echoing from the grave’s muddy walls and vibrating up through the ground beneath Belladonna’s knees and into her bones. Goose bumps tingled as power skittered electric along her skin.

“I command you, nameless spirit, flesh-hidden and unbound …”

“Okay,” Kerry admitted, “maybe things
are
a little weird—”