Cajun Gothic (Blood Haven) (14 page)

The
woman, Catrina, pulled away, eyes still at half mast, her face relaxed,
post-coital. She mumbled, “
Vreau mai mult
. Please, I vant more…”

He
comes and goes as he pleases, we know not where. Trina’s sweet caresses comfort
and sooth my broken heart for he loves her not and that is the tragedy I feared.
He is incapable of emotion, preferring his games and petty posturing.

We
hunt and nurture and pleasure together. To him I will never submit.

Trina
found the missive, on formal parchment, like an antique Egyptian scroll, the
figures inscrutable, writ out in an ancient tongue older than time. We, the
three of us, have been recalled. He is relieved.

I
am not. I fear the Council, I fear his city, I fear the dark juju that is the
heart and soul of New Orleans.

And
I fear for my child, my beloved.

CHAPTER TWO

Summons

“A
cemetery, Damien? Really?”

“Hush,
Cher, this was not my idea.”

They
approached the crypt cautiously. The council allowed one and only one bodyguard
at a clandestine meeting. Magda would have preferred a battalion of her kind,
warriors all, skilled with blades.

“You
did come prepared, am I right, Beb?”

Damien
seldom called her ‘Beb’ anymore, taunting her instead with the hated ‘Mags’.
But tonight he was nervous, out-of-sorts. She could get down with that. The
aristocrats had a way about them, an ancient way. Powerful influence-mongers.
Purveyors and dispensers of perversions and pleasures. And endless pain.

Some
of their Havens were organized like co-ops, with enlightened leadership and a
very brotherly love vibe. Damien’s stake in New Orleans was definitely not one
of those. Up until then he’d been a golden boy, a veritable cash cow. But
something changed and he, they, were on their way to the proverbial woodshed.

The
Council only summoned. They did not make personal visits. Ever.

Damien
cocked an eyebrow, still awaiting confirmation that she was indeed prepared.
She doubted he understood, or cared, how much that insulted her.

She
fingered the pouches on the fishing vest, worn as a fashion accessory although
anyone who knew her well realized that being fashionable was the last thing she
could be accused of. Catrina had cleverly disguised the shurikens with a
variety of artful touches, albeit sewn with an eye to functionality in terms of
ease of reach and not protection from exposed skin. Madga’s flesh pricked and
prickled with every movement of her upper body.

She
could not risk more weapons than that.

The
grounds were eerily silent, not even spring peepers gave voice to the warm
sultry night. Damien pointed to an undistinguished block building sporting an
ornate latticework wrought iron fence, almost like a mock porch.

“General
Hayes.” He obviously expected a reaction and when Magda failed to respond, he
continued, “Louisiana Tigers, Cemetary Hill. Civil War. Ringing any bells?”

Magda
shrugged. They’d been on tour, as Damien dubbed their exile, so she was
blissfully unaware and uninterested. She preferred making history, not reading
about it.

“Never
mind. Quickly now. Let’s not keep our visitors waiting.”

Quick
was a relative term. The monuments to necessity and blind faith hindered
movement in all directions. With the ground water at levels requiring muck
boots for anything other than concrete sidewalks, the tombs rose like tenements
in orderly processions, some like the good general’s unadorned edifice, others
lavish homages to status… or plain wishful thinking.

Magda
dodged a bit of fallen concrete and muttered a curse. “Why pick a tourist spot
in the middle of Mardi Gras, it doesn’t make sense.”

Damien
chuckled. “It’s called hiding in plain sight. Samuels has wards all around the
perimeter.” He swept the area with an elegant gesture. “Do you see any tourists
tonight?”

She
sputtered, “Wards? He used fucking witches?”

“Voudoun,
my dear. De bokor, he be of de dark side, dontcha know, not of de houngans.”

“Christ,
Damien, shut it. I hate when you go all Afrikaans or whatever that is.”

Damien
paused at a mausoleum decked out with pseudo-Doric columns and an incongruous
widow’s walk structure topping the peaked roof. Like all its neighbors, the ‘door’
on the short side appeared cemented in place.

Appearances
could be deceiving. Damien inserted a brass key into an inconspicuous slot and
pressed inward. As if on oiled hinges the door swung open, silent and
unwelcoming. Before stepping through he turned and said, “Is Kreyól, Beb, not
African langaj.”

“Yeah,
whatever. Let’s do this thing.”

She
pushed past, her throat working hard to dislodge the tennis ball that had
somehow inserted itself into her windpipe. When fear entered the picture she
often regretted the impulse to suck air. It was distracting and a tell she
worked hard to get rid of. Two hundred and eight years and counting and still
she was subject to the pitfalls of her too human heritage.

Damien
was one of the lucky ones, born, not made like her. To the manor as they said
in merry old England. And it suited him. He was elegant, equally as
aristocratic as the patricians waiting below ground, and until his little
peccadillo with the Secretary of State’s daughter Cornelia, on the fast track to
first among equals status in the collective.

He
might have been forgiven, eventually, for not keeping it in his pants. But
making
her
had been the final straw.

The
Council’s motto had always been
our way or the highway
. One could ask
permission. Politely. Bearing gifts. Forgiveness was never an option. Had
Damien not been one of the rarest of the rare, they’d both have been nothing
more than a grey film coating the few dry bits on the Atchafalaya Bayou.

The
burial chamber contained the requisite cement-encased coffin, the lid chipped
and flaking in the unrelenting heat and humidity. She bypassed that and
examined the wall on the right, tracing the glyphs with a ragged fingernail,
pressing at thumb-sized indentations, the rhythm
five, two, one, three, one
at each. A narrow slab slid sideways allowing ingress to cement stairs leading
down.

“Smells
like a damn aquarium.”

Damien
wrinkled his nose in agreement. “Have Jeeves see to it when we get back, won’t
you dearest?” The man only resorted to humor when he was seriously stressed. It
usually failed. Miserably.

The
dank air also smelled like trouble but Damien already knew that. And the
possibility of never walking back up the stairs was all too real.

Running
her palm along the ragged, dripping cement, she murmured, “Jesus wept.”

“What,
Mags…?”

“Nothing.”

At
the base of the stairwell, the landing branched in two directions. To her right
lay a meandering tunnel that eventually came out near the levee and escape via
one of the delta’s myriad inlets. To their left there was a short hall
truncated by another cement door. That led to the Chambers and their new
destiny.

This
time she approached and waited patiently. The cameras and other monitors,
thermal imaging, infrared, devices she had no name for and little interest in,
would announce their presence. It would also assure the members that they were
indeed alone.

About
the hardware decorating her lithe frame, that would also show up. The Council
had come to expect some entertainment value from Damien and his
pet
as they
called her.

I
wonder what they would call Catrina if only they knew about her.

“Caution,
sweetheart. Keep your lovely hands where they can be seen.”

Translation,
keep your thoughts to yourself, Magda. They don’t know. They couldn’t.
Otherwise we wouldn’t be here.

She
knew he was right. If they knew, if they even suspected he’d dipped his fangs
in forbidden fruit…
and
bound her to his insatiable lust and poor
judgment at the same time… they’d already be dead.

But…
there was one small niggling concern. Samuels rather liked his pageants gory
and spectacular. The vamp was easily bored. The others kept him, by necessity,
on a tight leash because if he ever let loose with another rampage, the Spanish
Inquisition would look like a Boy Scout gathering of concerned citizens.

Damien
had dismissed her concerns that this meeting was going to be a gladiatorial
display of Samuel’s prowess, with them the object d’sport, as nothing more than
speculation. But why else bring the lot with him? And why risk exposure in such
a public place. Why engage the witches… or whatever Damien wanted to call them.
Magic was magic in her book,

If
evil was the new fast food, the houngan served it up via voudoun like chilled
gazpacho on a hot day.

Damien
was murmuring, sotto voce, a deep bass rumble she felt in the small of her
back.

She
was about to suggest they knock politely but the door swung inward, revealing a
hollowed out space about twenty by thirty feet. A single long folding table and
church basement vintage metal chairs lined the far wall. Electric bulbs in
plain sconces decorated walls that appeared stucco’d though she couldn’t be
sure. Home decorating, along with personal fashion statements, weren’t her
things.

Damien
brushed his fingers along her right arm, the gesture oddly assuring.

He
pitched his voice low, conciliatory. “Myra, Jenson. Nice to see you again.” He
raked his eyes past Samuels and bid the newest members, Ortiz and Rinj, a good
evening. Then he bowed respectfully and said, “Samuels, a pleasure to welcome
you to my Haven.”

“Our
Haven.”

“Yes,
of course. We serve the Council in all—”

Samuels
dismissed Damien with a wave, then casually lit a cigarette, drawing deep,
never taking his obsidian eyes off his adversary.

“It’s
too bad, Rochon, that I always seem to find reasons for not believing you.”

“Your
Grace?” Damien held to a level of edgy obsequiousness but it was clear to her
that he did so with an effort.

Samuels
and her maker were two of only a few dozen ‘naturals’, though the truer term
was ‘half caste’, offspring of a vampire-human union, generally a vamp male,
human female. But not always. Both Damien and Samuels shared the even rarer
male human, female vamp genealogy.

It
did not make them brothers.

No
oracle or seer or historian of their race had ever explained to anyone’s
satisfaction how and why those unusual events could occur. That they did was
well documented and one of the reasons the Council went ape-shit when one of
their own violated their very strict anti-miscegenation laws.

You
just never knew who or what might show up in nine months’ time.

Of
course, that little rule was honored more in the breach that the observance.
Damien called it the
three eff’s
: find, feed, fuck. He’d always been the
poster boy for the angry young vamp, acting out and using charm and ability to
overcome any objections to his flaunting the will of the Council.

“I
see you have your lovely warrior with you.” Samuels gave Magda a sly wink and
beckoned her closer. She shivered, the action involuntary. The man gave her the
creeps, big time.

She
rubbed a thumb over a razor-edged throwing star, the eight node version, honed
with pleasure and purpose. She strode closer, imagining how it would rake
across the cornea like a buzzsaw, the spin clockwise, biting deep, lodging into
the occipital bone. Not a killing blow, far from it. But it would hurt like a
sonofabitch.

“May
I see it?” Samuels held out a hand, palm up, fingers curved inward, almost like
claws. Not for the first time she wondered if his mother had been a witch, a
hag, a seidhr before being turned. Damien’s maman had been mambo, a
practitioner slave in service to a wealthy sugar cane baron. Magda had met her
once, before the purge.

Damien
nudged her from behind, reminding her to mind her manners.

“Of
course, my Lord Samuels.” She withdrew the device from its pocket and carefully
extended it, thumb and forefinger in a delicate balance on the cool steel.

Extracting
the object from her grip, he set it down and redirected his gaze onto her
breasts, the outer corners of his lips tilting upwards in recognition of some
unspoken jest.

“Do
you still play with sabers, my dear?” She hated
my dear
, it made her feel
like a juvenile, a youngling… a girl.

She
would not give him the satisfaction of dissing her small pleasures so she gave
him a feral grin and spat out, “I prefer sharp blades that pierce true to small
blunt objects requiring instruction manuals and lubrication.”