Brighid's Mark (3 page)

She ripped apart the buttons on his tailored shirt, damaging it beyond repair. Her spicy sweet scent of ginger tempered by clean wind and rain washed over him. “He’s Marked.” Her eyes flickered up to meet his, the corner of her mouth quirking upward in bemusement. “Well, well.”

“Marked?” Donal cocked his head at Liam, thoroughly unfazed by his new contact’s current predicament.

“It seems so, though these are unlike any Marks I’ve ever seen.” She laid her hand over the geometric maze pattern on his chest, partially covered by his undershirt. “Now. Look at me with those gorgeous dark eyes of yours and breathe with me.”

He felt as though his heart were beating for the first time, his lungs filling with precious, sweet air. The pain crawled away. As it did, Liam sunk by inches into a deep well. His last conscious sight was her moonlit face and glittering eyes, framed by wild hair.

He awakened to the sounds of soft discussion and the soothing touch of cool air across his face. Muted lamp light turned the ceiling a mellow gold before bleeding into shadow, concealing the damage done by water and fire over the centuries. He’d never had it painted over or repaired—he regarded those stains as badges of honor, marks of a city’s survival.

All things considered, coming to prone on an antique fainting couch with his bare feet overhanging the edge by a good six inches rather ruined the mood.

“Welcome back.” Callie perched on the edge of the couch, cradling her ample curves in the plush cushion. She folded her hands in her lap, waiting.

Liam carefully pushed himself up and back so his feet no longer dangled. “How long was I out?”

“Not long. Here, this will set you right.” She handed him a glass of whiskey, amber liquid the exact color of her eyes. Warm spiciness overtook the distant rank smell of the river drifting through the open window. “Do you often faint at a woman’s touch, or is it just me?”

He took the heavy glass from her, careful not to touch her fingertips. “Just you,” he said without thinking, and immediately wanted to sear the tongue from his mouth at her Jack O’Lantern grin. “I mean, no.” He drank deep.

“Don’t worry, it won’t happen again.” She wriggled her fingers at him, lioness eyes glittering. “I’ve cast my enchantments over you.”

He almost choked. “What?”

Her laugh was like mulled wine, going right to his blood. “Really, it’s all right now. See?” She pressed her index finger to the middle of his forehead and pushed him back as he struggled to get up. “Now hush and have your whiskey.” She removed her lovely posterior from his sofa and went to the massive oak table dominating the center of his second story study.

He could see Callie and her crew had wasted no time making themselves at home, up to and including serving him his own liquor. The table was strewn with maps and notes, the paraphernalia of intense research, not to mention what appeared to be an impromptu breakfast involving his good china.

Part of him wanted them out, out,
out
as their presence threatened to upset the peace of his sanctuary.

But then there was Callie, who’d somehow known. His Marks had reacted to her as though she were Loa.

“Speaking of enchantments.” He managed to get his bare feet to the floor this time. “How did you get me in here?”

“We brought you in Chase’s van and carried you in when we got here,” Callie answered absently as she turned her attention to her friends’ activities. “Donal got us through the door.”

Liam believed her. Donal was the small one of the lot. The other one—Chase, he assumed—bore himself like a high school football star turned dedicated soldier and Callie strode about like a valkyrie without the wingspan, all height and muscular curves with a certain wild, windblown aura about her. He patted his pockets. “I still have my keys.”

“Who needs keys?” Donal smirked, but didn’t look up from the map he was examining. “Try this, Callie.” He leaned across the table to hand her a small black rock dangling from a silver chain. Liam’s ring clinked against the rock.

No need to ask which of them wasn’t human. At least one of them couldn’t be, to get past the Loa’s wards on his home. Besides, he could detect a certain something surrounding Callie’s smooth movements and autumnal spice.

Callie shifted the large map toward her, pulling it around like a tablecloth so it overlapped the edge of the table. She braced her right hand on its surface and stretched her long torso across, the strange pendulum dangling from the fingers of her left. Chase and Donal watched with silent intent, eyes riveted to the innocuous little pendant. Liam joined them, the drink in his hand forgotten.

For a seeming eternity they waited, focused like a pack of cats upon a swaying curtain chord. Callie ignored them. Her eyes drifted closed, head cocked in deep concentration.

Finally, she pushed herself upright, shaking her head. “Nothing. Either it’s not working or it’s not time yet.” She turned the little rock between her fingers.

“And Eva?” Donal asked quietly, without hope. Chase merely waited, keeping his silence behind his clenched jaw.

“Gone. That I felt.” Now she clenched the pendulum until her knuckles turned white. For a worrisome moment, Liam feared for his windows. “What the hell is going on?” she snarled.

 
Chase slammed his fist on the table. Even in the heat of his fury, the antique monstrosity barely rattled. “Donal said you can help,” he demanded of Liam. “How?”

Callie shot her partner a quelling look. “What he means is we’re not familiar with the protocol here. A pissed off Loa is not a helpful one, I’m thinking.”

 
“The Baron said it wasn’t him who sent me that dream. He also said the first order of business would be to find out who did.” Liam finished his drink and set his empty glass on a nearby hutch, ice tinkling. He opened one of the doors and extracted a fresh bottle of spiced rum. “This should do it.”

The lower Ninth Ward had flooded a seventh and final time in the Christmas Day floods of 2015, which lasted—not at all ironically—forty days and forty nights. Now its streets were an unfettered maze of fetid canals stretching between the Mississippi River and Lake Ponchatrain.

The water taxi trundled past a homemade sign that read “Steamboat Alley” in the oily glow of the boat’s swinging lantern. What houses were left hunkered strangely moored in the black waters of the mighty Mississippi to the brim their second story balconies, like floating hats.

Callie leaned back against the side of the boat, hands in the pockets of her black leather jacket. The jacket matched her knee-high boots, but made an incongruous pairing with her halter dress, patterned with bright florals. Her hair was, of course, a complete mess.

Liam’s dark eyes were black in the night. His open, intent curiosity sizzled over her skin. He didn’t look away, and neither did she.

“This person we’re going to see,” Chase spoke up. “She can tell us what killed Eva?”

“Voudon priestess, and doubtful,” Liam answered.

“So what’s the point?”

Callie quelled him with an arched eyebrow. “What’s the plan?” she asked Liam.

“Sulie can contact other Loa, ones who can open the path to knowledge. When the Baron tells you to consult a Hoodoo, you consult a Hoodoo.” Liam shrugged and smiled. “If we’re lucky, we might even get dinner.”

Chase snorted.

Liam ignored him, focusing on Callie. “How did you know about my Marks?”

“Because I’m Marked too.” She peeled her jacket from her arm, showing him her bare shoulder blade. A tree of life grew from a flame-shaped knot work pattern, bound in more knot work. The whole thing encompassed the size of a badge. “I woke up with it when I became a Keeper.”

“Keeper?”

Donal took over again. “A thousand or so years ago, Brighid—in her incarnation as Saint Brigit—had a small chapel where a fire was lit, and stayed lit, pretty much uninterrupted through the centuries.”

“I know. I’ve been there.”

“Ah. Right. So, back then there were nineteen protectors who took turns tending the Flame. No one with evil or harmful intent could ever cross its boundaries. It was a sanctuary.”

Callie pulled her sleeve back up. “Keepers of the Flame.”

“And you kill demons?”

“Among other things. But mainly we fight.” Her hands went back into her pockets, and she stretched her long legs, crossing her ankles with a casualness she didn’t feel. “The apocalypse is coming, and soon. And while the forces of good and evil duke it out, someone has to look after humanity.”

“That’s you.”

She nodded. “Nineteen Keepers, leading fifty-four contingents in the biggest battle of them all, for the highest possible stakes.” She gave him another of her patented lion-contemplating-lunch looks. “Of course, that doesn’t explain how you got Marked.”

Liam shrugged. “Like you, I woke up with them. In the middle of a cemetery, of all places. They’re my link to the Loa.”

They turned a corner and came to a tall, narrow house of three stories, the third no more than a watchtower of bay windows. The windows of the second story were boarded over, the paint peeling, the walls covered in spray painted line drawings of coffins and crosses, stars and candelabra. Festival beads dripped from the railings, and large stylized pearls draped from the roof awning like dollops of cream. The ground floor was completely submerged.

The ferryman swung the small boat around and approached the balcony platform in a graceful arc. Chase was the first to leave the taxi, followed by the much shorter Donal. Liam handed the ferryman a brown paper bag as Callie vaulted over the balcony.

A dark fluttering landed on the rail with a thump. A massive black rooster gave them an ancient feral look. Liam eyed it back with evident distaste. “Legba,” he greeted it in dire tones. “Is she in?”

Legba gave him a poultry version of a sneer and flapped off at knee level round the side of the house. They followed it to the one window that wasn’t boarded. Liam opened the window and they all ducked through.

Callie looked around a makeshift entrance to a long, narrow room divided by a curtained doorway of more festival beads. A short, squat figure rattled through the curtains, bottle cap glasses perched on the crook of a prominent nose. A canary yellow caftan was offset by a pair of shocking pink, fuzzy slippers embroidered with blue forget-me-nots.

“Ah, Irish-Man. You bring me visitors.” Her glasses flashed in Callie’s direction. “Welcome to my humfor.”

Beyond the festival bead curtains lay an oblong living space, long and narrow. Callie noted the clutch of mismatched folding chairs clustered opposite a tweedy, mildewed sofa of indeterminate color or pattern. The empty eye sockets of a dozen or more festival masks, chipped and molting, followed their stilted progress through the room. Sulie’s pace would have tried the patience of the most enthusiastic Boy Scout.

They followed her hot pink shuffle up a narrow oak staircase to the windowed watchtower crowning the little house. They passed through a low doorway into a plain room of white washed wood paneling and hardwood floors. At one end, by the bay windows, stood a folding table covered in white cloth and a jumble of rum, cigars and misshapen little carved statuettes. One sported a little top hat.

Sulie moved fast, as though by passing through the door, she had passed through a barrier, and was now free of its constraints. “You been dreaming again, Irish-Man.”

Liam shrugged. “Am I that predictable?”

Sulie stooped to draw between two pillars with a hunk of chalk. “Tell me.”

Liam crossed his arms. “As symbols go, it was fairly unusual.”

The priestess chuckled, pausing to admire her handiwork. “Well, it would be.” She nodded in Callie’s direction. “I felt her kind die.”

“Raven in a burning tree—”

“Nothing unusual about that. Why that creature follows you around, I’ll never know.”

“There was a lot of fire, actually. Not to mention the great bloody demon. And a woman who changed appearance at least half a dozen times, until Eva.”

“Fire can mean many things—I’m inclined to death and rebirth.” She stood and stretched her back. “As for the demon, this city has faced fires before. Fires and storms and, yes, even other demons. That La Laurie woman was something to contend with, let me tell you.”

“Don’t remind me.” Liam handed her the fresh bottle of rum. “Who do we contact?”

“Papa Legba—the real one,” she amended, as her black rooster fluttered across her chalked sketch.

Donal eyed the animal with some measure of trepidation. “We’re not going to…you know.” He dragged his finger across his throat.

Sulie blinked at him. “Where do you get your ideas about Voudon, boy? Leggie’s my link to the Loa realm, so he’s already been sacrificed, in a manner of speaking. It’s what makes him so cranky.”

“‘Leggie?’” Callie mouthed in Liam’s direction.

Liam gave her a crooked smile. She grinned back.

“I assume we’ll forgo the usual theatrics,” he said to Sulie.

“You know firsthand what troublemakers the Loa be. I hope your new friends are ready for this.” She eyed Donal balefully.

“I suspect they’re up for the experience.” Liam raised an eyebrow in Callie’s direction. She nodded.