Fever Moon (2 page)

As he hauled her to her feet, saliva ran in strings from her mouth, mingling with the blood that had begun to dry on her chin. She tried to jerk free, but he held her by the handcuffs.

Her dress was torn, her feet bare. Mud and scratches covered her legs. Blood was drying on her face and down the front of what was left of her dress. She panted from the exertion of her struggles, staying as far away from him as the cuffs would allow. Even in her agitation at being confined, she cast a look at the moon that touched the treetops with silver.

“You’re under arrest. Come with me.” He pulled her toward the car, setting off another fierce struggle. She was weakening, though. Her body carried no extra fat, and the fever clearly burned with an intensity that concerned him.

He forced her into the front seat of the car, cautious of the teeth that snapped close to his face and ears. Normally he transported prisoners in the back, but he didn’t like the idea of her teeth sinking into the nape of his neck while he was driving.

At last she tired, and he relaxed the pressure on her. “What’s your name?”

She looked beyond him to the moon riding low in the velvet sky and smiled. Her mouth opened, as if she might answer, but she slumped against the seat, her body shaking with chills.

He checked her pulse, which was weak and thready. For the moment the fight was gone from her.

He left her in the car and took a moment to examine the body. Aside from the abdominal injuries, Henri’s head had been nearly severed from his body. The wound was such a mess he couldn’t begin to determine what might have caused it. There was nothing to do for Henri Bastion but call the coroner.

Raymond got behind the wheel, turned the car around, and headed back to town. In the bright moonlight, he studied the woman’s slack face. He thought he might have seen her before, but he still couldn’t place her. Her features were distorted, both by the blood and the fever that raged through her. When she was clean, he might be able to recall her name.

Once he’d known all the young women of the parish. He’d danced with most of them, flirting casually, leading those willing to more adventurous activities. The world had been a series of Saturday nights where the pattern of life was simple. The smell of gumbo cooking in a cast-iron pot over a fire, the pulse of a fiddle, a beautiful young woman looking up at him with the promise of a future in her eyes as they danced while the Bayou Teche lapped softly at the bank. He could remember the feel of liquor going down hot, and the taste of kisses under a full moon. But it was a memory that belonged to a dead man.

As he drove down the treacherous road, he let the past slip away. Those nights were gone. He’d had dreams then, normal desires and ambitions. The war had changed all of that. Had changed him in ways he couldn’t explain, not to his family or anyone else. The life he’d once expected had been taken from him, replaced with something dark and violent. He had the sense that destiny had led him to this moment on a lonely road with a gruesome murder and a madwoman.

The motion of the car lulled her. Her eyes opened sleepily, and she leaned against the seat, looking neither left nor right but straight ahead.

“Did you know Henri Bastion?” He tried to block the image of Bastion’s body, the abdomen gutted and the head dangling by a bit of spinal column and muscle.

“The
loup-garou
is hungry.” Saliva dripped down her chin. “I killed him.” Her throat worked.

Raymond watched the way she held herself, ready to flee or attack. The legend of the
loup-garou
was strong among the backwoods people. They believed that the legendary creature was a shape-shifting devil who possessed normal people, both willing and unwilling. Often when children disappeared in the swamps, it was never reported to the authorities. The parents assumed that the child had been taken by the
loup-garou
. To call the law would bring only shame on the family. One of their own had gone to the side of the devil. It was better to hush it up and forget it. And pray the possessed body of the child never made it home again.

“Did you know Henri Bastion?” he asked again. There was a long pause, and he glanced at her. She was awake, her gaze on the moon that seemed to follow them. “What was Bastion doing on Section Line Road?”

Her eyes sparked with fever. She sat bolt upright and then slumped against the door. He reached across and felt her forehead. She was burning up. If the fever went much higher, it might cook her brain. She required a doctor.

He turned the car south at the intersection, avoiding town and the jail. Since she was already in the car, it would be best to take her to Madame Louiselle, a
traiteur
who used herbs and prayers to treat the illnesses of those too poor to afford a doctor. There was no time to drive to Lafayette for a physician, and Doc Fletcher, New Iberia’s resident doctor, was out of town. If Madame Louiselle couldn’t break the fever, the woman beside him would die.

T
HE dense woods closed in a tight canopy as Raymond turned down the narrow lane to Madame Louiselle’s. Beside him, the woman slumped against the door, her eyes closed. Raymond put his hand on her forehead, a gesture so intimate that he hesitated. She twitched beneath his touch like something wild and frightened. He accepted that she might die. She’d slipped from consciousness into a place where she was unreachable. Fever. Madness. He couldn’t say. He could only drive.

He crossed the bridge that was often flooded after a heavy rain and thanked whatever God watched over him as he pulled up in front of the dark cottage on pilings.

“Madame Louiselle!” he called out as he scooped the woman into his arms and started up the steps with her. She weighed almost nothing. As tall as she was, there was only bone and skin. “Madame Louiselle!” When he made it to the landing, he kicked the side of the house.

The screened door creaked open and a tiny black woman stepped out. She surveyed Raymond and the burden he carried. “Bring her inside.” She stepped back. “Put her there.” She pointed to a quilt-covered sofa.

Raymond deposited the limp woman.

“Who is she?” Louiselle asked as she drew a chair beside the sofa.

“I don’t know her name.” Raymond watched Louiselle’s face closely. Madame treated only those she chose to treat. She catered to no one. “She may have murdered a man.” He stopped himself from any mention of the shape-shifting demon. “She’s burning up with fever.”

Madame Louiselle touched the woman’s cheek. “Move the lamp closer,
cher.”

He did as she asked and heard her sharp intake of breath.

“I know this woman, Raymond. Her name is Adele Hebert.” She pressed a finger to Adele’s neck, checking her pulse. “Two weeks ago she came to me. Her twin boys were sick with the fever.” Louiselle slowly straightened in the chair. “There was nothing I could do.” She brushed her fingers over Adele’s cheek and looked up at Raymond. “Such perfect little boys, just learning to walk. They died in her arms, she trying to force them to drink her milk.” She shook her head. “I’m too old for such grief.”

“This was two weeks ago?” Raymond hadn’t heard of burial services for two children.

Almost as if she could read his mind, she spoke. “Adele wouldn’t give up the bodies. She said she would tend them herself. She said they were her babies and no one else had loved or wanted them, so she would bury them herself.” Louiselle took a deep breath and stood. “Let me make some tea for her fever. If she doesn’t drink, she’ll join her babies.” Madame placed her fingers on Adele’s neck, pressing lightly. “And her sister.”

“Her sister?”

“Rosa Hebert.”

“The woman with the stigmata was Adele’s sister?” Raymond stepped back. Rosa Hebert had died a senseless, tragic death. A woman with mental problems, she’d been harried and pushed to the point she’d hung herself last winter. Now, here was the sister, found drooling over a dead man as if he were her next meal.

Madame stood up straight. “The Hebert family has seen too much tragedy,
cher
. Adele has lost all she ever loved.” She covered the sleeping woman with a quilt.

Raymond said nothing. The death of a child could drive a woman to madness, and Adele had lost two children and a sister. “Is it the fever that sickens her, or is she …”

Louiselle stared at Adele’s sweating face. Steam rose from her damp clothes in the chill cabin. “This is more than fever.” She sighed. “I will not say more now. Take off the handcuffs and wait outside.”

Raymond stood his ground. “She’s my prisoner.”

“And so she will remain, only dead, if you don’t leave us alone. Her wet clothes must be stripped.”

“She’s stronger than she seems. Perhaps very strong.” When Madame didn’t respond to his words, he unlocked the cuffs and walked outside, but he took the precaution of leaving the door cracked.

He lit a Camel cigarette, blowing the smoke into the cold eddies of air that circled the cabin. The weather touched the metal in his hip and back like an electric wire, reminding him that he had no guarantees in his future. Each step could be his last. Inhaling more deeply, he thought about Henri Bastion’s body lying by the roadside for anyone to stumble upon. Raymond hadn’t called the sheriff or anyone else. Not yet. There were no phones near Beaver Creek. None here at Madame Louiselle’s. His car was not equipped with a radio. Everything electronic had been put into the war effort. Not even aluminum foil could be had here at home. He could do nothing but wait for his prisoner and smoke.

Five cigarette butts were lined on the wooden balustrade of the porch by the time Madame stepped out to talk to him.

“She’s dry and more comfortable,
cher
. The fever is less, but I have no medicine to make it leave. It’s claimed her as its own, for now. She will live or not. It’s in the hands of God and her will.”

“I have to take her to jail.”

She nodded slowly. “It would be best if she could remain here, so I can care for her.”

“No—”

She put up a hand. “I understand she must be taken. Do these things, Raymond. Keep her dry and warm. Give her these herbs every four hours. Pry open her mouth and pour them in. Feed her soup. Force it down if necessary.”

He saw in Madame’s eyes what she would not say. “What of her mind?”

“Perhaps it is burned away.” She shook her head. “There’s a point where not even the strongest person can bear more. Adele has suffered.” Her fingers lightly touched his arm.

“Do you think she had the strength to bring down a grown, healthy man? He was gutted, Madame. Like a pack of savage animals had beset him.”

She looked into the trees that soughed around her home in the wind. “Good and evil walk the earth, Raymond. You know it because you’ve touched it. No man can measure the power of either. She was covered in blood, some of it her own. She is cut and scraped as if she’d been struck by a wagon, but most of the blood was not hers.”

Raymond tossed his sixth butt to the ground. “Thank you. The county will reimburse your expenses.”

“No charge. I don’t take money for those I cannot heal.”

He left Madame on the porch as he stepped through the door. Adele Hebert lay beneath three colorful quilts. Cleansed of blood, her face was angular and pale. Her long hair, now dry, fanned about her head like a dark aura. She looked dead, like a figure in one of the church windows. He crossed himself without thinking, a habit from a past life.

“She is breathing but just barely.” Madame touched his arm. “There is great tragedy in this woman, Raymond. Don’t let it slip from her to you.” Her touch increased to a squeeze. “You carry enough tragedy of your own,
cher
. Whether you deserve it or not.”

Raymond felt his breath catch. No one else in town would dare to speak to him like that. He gathered Adele Hebert in his arms, tucking the quilts around her. “I’ll return these.”

Madame nodded. She stood in the doorway, watching him maneuver the steep steps as he went back to the parish car. As he put Adele in the front seat beside him, he saw no need to replace the handcuffs. She was beyond slumber, almost in a trance. When he looked up, he saw that Madame had begun to light a series of candles. She was cleansing her home of evil. Despite his lack of belief, he felt a chill trace along his spine.

The study was crammed with books, most of them leather-bound. For the past ten years, they’d been Father Michael Finley’s closest friends, his comfort in the wilderness. A musty odor of mildew rose from them, and Michael made a mental note to have Colista clean them again when drier weather set in. Humidity left unchecked would ruin them, and some were old and valuable.

He hurried, barefoot and in his underwear, across the colorful rug to answer the ringing telephone. Dawn had not yet broken, and the demanding peals of the phone could mean only one thing—death had come calling. Few people in Iberia Parish could afford the convenience of a telephone. He’d justified the luxury by pointing out that his services were often in immediate demand. There were times that he regretted his superiors’ decision to honor his request.

“Hello,” he said.

“It’s Raymond Thibodeaux. Something bad’s happened, and I need you to go out to the Bastion plantation as fast as you can.”

Michael hesitated. Raymond had not used his title, but there was no doubt he spoke with the authority of the law. Of all the people he’d expected when he picked up the phone, it wasn’t Raymond. A dark cloud hung over the deputy. The scent of death clung to his hair and clothes and in his dark eyes Michael saw torment. Even now, months after Raymond had returned home, stories circulated how he’d been one of the army’s most efficient killing machines, a loner shifting through the war zone like a vengeful ghost. Or a man who wanted to die.

“Father, did you hear what I said?” Raymond didn’t hide his impatience.

Michael gathered his thoughts. “What’s happened?”

“Henri was murdered last night out by Beaver Creek.”

Foreboding touched Michael’s heart. Something bad had indeed happened. Raymond Thibodeaux rode the vanguard of tragedy yet again. It seemed God cursed him. “Do you know who killed him?” he asked quietly.