Longarm and the Voodoo Queen (24 page)

"Don't I know it," said Longarm.

"You are here to... to kill him?"

"I don't rightly know. It depends on what he does. But I can promise you this, ma'am... he won't ever bother you again."

"If you can... kill him!" The vehemence in her voice made Longarm's blood turn a little icy.

The next instant, he heard a footstep outside the door of the room, and he was already rolling off the young woman as the door opened and Clement stepped through. "It's nothing to worry about, darling," said Clement. "Everything is under control, and I have that champagne I promised you, to put you more in the mood-"

The light from the hallway fell through the open door and revealed Longarm standing beside the bed, the Colt in his hand leveled and cocked as he said wryly, "That's mighty kind of you, sweetheart, but there ain't enough champagne in the world to put me in mind of messing around with a skunk like you."

Clement didn't waste any breath exclaiming in surprise. He just flung the heavy glass bottle in his hand at Longarm's head and threw himself to the side as the lawman's gun roared.

Longarm tried to get out of the way of the champagne bottle, but fortune had guided Clement's throw. The bottle clipped Longarm on the side of the head, knocking his hat off and making bright red rockets explode behind his eyes. He was pretty sure his shot had missed. As he stumbled back a step toward the window, he saw the young woman go flying through the open door, and heard the slap of her bare feet as she fled down the corridor outside the bedroom. Knowing that she was clear, Longarm triggered the Colt twice more, firing blindly.

Clement crashed into him from the side, his hand clawing at the wrist of Longarm's gun hand. Both men went down, and Longarm's hand cracked against something hard, probably the edge of the bedside table. His fingers went numb, and the Colt slid out of them. Clement made a grab for the gun, but Longarm managed to twist around and kick it, sending the weapon skittering out of reach across the floor.

He had to end this fight in a hurry, Longarm knew. Those shots would bring the guard from downstairs, and he might summon more of Clement's men to come with him. Longarm planned to knock Clement out, recover his gun so that he could deal with the sentries, and haul Clement into the jungle with him. Then it would be just a matter of eluding the inevitable pursuit, reaching the port city with Clement as his prisoner, and taking him on board the ship that would ultimately carry them back to New Orleans.

That was all.

Longarm's right hand was still numb, so he used his left to punch Clement in the face as they rolled back and forth on the floor, grappling desperately with each other. Enough light came into the room from the hall for Longarm to be able to see what he was doing. Unfortunately, Clement was fighting like a madman, and even though Longarm was larger and heavier, the plantation owner held the advantage for the moment. Clement slammed his knee into Longarm's groin, and as agony shot through Longarm, making him double over, Clement managed to loop an arm around his throat from behind.

Clement's arm was like a bar of iron across Longarm's neck. Every time he turned around in this case, Longarm thought wildly, some son of a bitch was trying to strangle him. First it had been that blasted zombie, then one of Clement's men, and now Clement himself. Longarm was sick and tired of it.

He drove an elbow back into Clement's midsection. That loosened Clement's hold, and Longarm was able to grasp his arm and pull it away. As he twisted around, he gulped down a breath of air to ease the terrible tightness in his chest and then clubbed both hands together and swung them at Clement's head. The blow sent Clement skidding away across the floor.

Longarm heard the rattle of gunfire close by, maybe as close as downstairs. He wasn't sure who was shooting at who, but for the time being, that didn't matter. He wanted to press his advantage over Clement, so he scrambled to his feet to lunge after the plantation owner.

Something rolled under Longarm's foot and dumped him hard on his back, knocking the breath out of him. That damn champagne bottle, he realized as he lay there half-stunned. It hadn't broken when it struck his head and then fell to the floor, and now it had tripped him up.

Worse than that, it rolled to a stop right beside Clement, who snatched it up and threw himself toward Longarm, holding the neck of the bottle with both hands as he raised it over his head.

That bottle was heavy enough to crush his skull when Clement brought it crashing down, Longarm knew. He gasped for air and gathered his muscles to try to get out of the way of the death blow.

He didn't have to make that probably futile effort because someone stepped into the room from the hallway, lifted a pistol, and squeezed off a shot. The bullet struck the bottle, shattering it and sending a shower of champagne and glass shards over both Longarm and Clement. Clement was left crouching over Longarm, the jagged bottle neck still clutched in his hands.

"Drop it, Clement," said Claudette, smoke curling up from the barrel of the revolver she held in her fist.

Longarm didn't know what was the most surprising: the sheer fact that Claudette was here, the lack of a Cajun accent in her voice as she spoke, the dark shirt and trousers she wore, so unlike anything he had seen her in before, or the accuracy with which her shot had broken the champagne bottle. All he could do was gape at her.

"Who...?" gasped Clement.

"Call me Royale," said Claudette with a faint smile playing around her sensuous mouth.

With a scream of deranged hatred, Clement flipped the bottle neck around and plunged the jagged edge of the glass at Longarm's throat with the speed of a striking snake.

Claudette was faster. The gun in her hand boomed again, and Clement was thrown forward as the slug slammed into the back of his head, bored through his skull, and mushroomed out his forehead in a grisly shower of bone and brains. The bottle neck fell harmlessly to the floor as Clement pitched forward lifelessly. He flopped across Longarm's face, and Longarm hastily shoved the corpse aside in revulsion.

Claudette slid the gun into the black holster that was belted around her hips and came quickly across the room. "Are you all right, Custis?" she asked, still missing the Cajun accent.

"I'm fine," he said as he sat up and glanced at Clement's body with a grimace. "I never expected to see you here."

She knelt beside him. "I'm sorry I... had to deceive you."

"Outright lie to me, you mean." He chuckled grimly and shook his head. "Still, you just saved my life, so I reckon I can't get too riled up with you."

She helped him to his feet, and they walked out of the room without looking back at Clement's corpse. "Does that mean you're not going to arrest me?" she asked.

"When you've probably got a dozen or more men downstairs in the mood for trouble?"

"Closer to two dozen," she murmured. "I didn't know how well guarded Clement would be. I'm just sorry I didn't get here in time to save you the trouble of trying to get to him."

"You sailed out of New Orleans the same day I did, didn't you?" said Longarm.

"I have ships available to me," she said.

Longarm snorted. "I'll just bet you do. Smuggling ships."

"I never ran slaves, like Clement and Millard," she said tightly.

"No, but your men came damn close to killing me a few times. They did kill some of Millard's men."

She shrugged. "In war, men die. And it was war between Millard and me. I didn't know then that Clement was part of it. And I would have been willing to let things go on the way they had been if Millard's men hadn't ambushed a group of my couriers a few days before you arrived in New Orleans, Custis. They got the drop on my men, disarmed them... then shot them all in the back."

"Millard never mentioned that little detail when he said you were out to ruin him," Longarm said as they started down a broad, winding staircase to the first floor.

"Of course not. I never set out to hurt anybody, Custis. You have to believe that."

Longarm wasn't sure if he did or not, but at this point, it didn't really matter. He asked, "Why did you save me from your own men, down there in the shinneries?"

"I knew you were working with Millard. I thought I could use you to get close to him and find out his plans." Her hand reached over and stole into his. "But I didn't count on coming to feel about you the way I do now, Custis."

Longarm stopped and looked at her, and she leaned forward to kiss him. After a moment, his arms went around her, drawing her tightly to him. Then he broke the kiss and looked at her sadly. Her gaze dropped, and they started once more down the stairs, their hands no longer touching.

"You started the fire in the cane fields to draw Clement's guards away," Longarm said after a few seconds of silence between them. "Then you came here for Clement."

"I would have taken him prisoner and turned him over to you if I could have," she said quietly. "I really would have. He didn't give me any choice."

"No," said Longarm, "I reckon he didn't."

They crossed a luxuriously furnished drawing room and went out through a foyer onto the veranda. Several men in derby hats stood outside the house, holding rifles. The body of the guard Clement had left on duty lay slumped on the ground nearby.

"Everything all right, ma'am?" asked one of the derby-hatted men.

"Yes," said Claudette. "Gather the workers we've freed tonight and take them back to the ship, Barry. We have room for them, don't we?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Good. We'll take them back to New Orleans, or anywhere else they want to go."

The man nodded, and he and his companions moved off into the darkness.

"There's just one more thing I want to know," said Longarm.

"What's that?" asked Claudette.

"Why the masquerade as a bayou gal? Whose shack was that you took me to?"

"It was no masquerade," Claudette said softly. "That bayou girl was who I was, once upon a time... a long time ago. The shack belonged to my gran'pere, and everything I told you about him and his gran'mama and Marie Laveau was true."

"Too bad you had to reveal who you really are to your men."

"They already knew, no matter what Millard may have told you about the mysterious Royale. They're just loyal to me, that's all." She paused, then asked, "What happens now, Custis?"

Longarm looked into the distance, at the flames that were now dying out in the destroyed cane fields. "I've got no authority here," he said tonelessly. "In Saint Laurent, I'm just as much of an outlaw as you are. So I reckon you go your way and I go mine."

"Yes." She lifted a hand and touched his cheek lightly. "But it is a pity that is the way it must be. If you and I were only on the same side ..."

Still looking at the cane fields, Longarm said, "It's a pretty thing to think about, ain't it?"

The End