Orfeo (25 page)

She hunted around for food but everything in the kitchens had been spoiled. Eventually she managed to locate water in tanks that had not been polluted by the hurricane-driven floods: it was a little brackish, but at least she wouldn’t die of thirst. Most of the rooms upstairs had been damaged by the storm, detritus scattered everywhere. In one bedroom she found some of what must have been Ardyce’s clothes. Many were wrecked and of those elegant pieces that survived Snake realized that none of them would fit her to replace her own dirty garments. There were, however, some men’s clothes which were more suitable for Snake’s powerful frame: she would have appreciated a bath as well, but at least she could change into something cleaner.

And so she waited. Day was followed by night, and night by day. Snake had never been one much for introspection and in that regard was closer to Earl than the other
loa
. Papa had his own plans and machinations, and sometimes she thought that Horse would be able to wait until judgment day without moving a muscle, but to sit and do nothing was bad for Snake.

In fact, she could never remember how long ago it had been when she’d been forced to wait like this. The house was almost silent—disturbed only by the occasional groan of broken timbers, straining to take the weight of damaged walls—and after a day of this she began to have strange thoughts. Those thoughts stopped her sleeping too well, added to which she was starting to get very hungry.

She thought about the two men she’d killed to get the boat. One was fat-faced—complacent perhaps, but not too bad looking if you cared for such types. His companion had been long-featured and melancholy, a bit like a horse, but the chubby guy had kind eyes that turned to terror when she stuck the knife in him. Snake wondered why she kept thinking about the two men: that wasn’t like her at all. Try as she might, she couldn’t get the image of both of them floating away in the water out of her head and experienced a strange sensation in her guts, that maybe she shouldn’t have killed them after all.

How many men had died at her hands? Dozens? Hundreds? She couldn’t remember, though she knew that every single one of them had been killed with a blade. That was what Snake did, that was how she struck—ever since the first time. She might have forgotten most of her kills, but never the first one.

She was thirteen and she still remembered the day as clearly as though it had been yesterday rather than nearly fifteen years previously. She could not recall as clearly when he’d first started terrorizing her, but then she’d been a very young girl when he’d first started to touch her. She guessed she must have been about eight when he first raped her, and so it had continued: long nights of fear and loathing until, one day, she’d picked up a knife in the kitchen and stabbed him deep in the stomach. She was so frightened of what she’d done that she dropped the knife and watched, a terrified teenager, as her father slowly died in front of her. It was the unexpectedness of it all, she realized later, that had shocked her. She never regretted stabbing him—if that was the only way she could stop the torture, so be it, and when she saw the knife, all gleaming steel smeared with blood, she knew that she would follow the way of the blade.

She fled, of course. Young women killing their fathers tended not to be looked on kindly in Texas, even if that father had been raping his daughter for many years. She took up with gangs and began to cover herself in tattoos, at first to disguise herself, then to make herself look ugly so that men would hide their disgusting urges, and finally as a means to terrify her victims. She also realized that the swirls and lines that covered her torso, her limbs, her face, did not disgust all men: indeed, some it attracted even more and Snake realized she could use that to her advantage.

It wasn’t until five years later that she finally came to New Orleans. Earl recognized her talents immediately, treating her with a respect that made her look on the world anew. She would follow him to the ends of the earth, and if capturing Ardyce and killing Orfeo was the means to regain Earl’s admiration then she’d endure any amount of hunger and boredom to do it.

Part of her wished that she’d been able to kill both of them. That bitch had insulted Earl too many times and Snake didn’t know why her boss put up with it. If anything, Ardyce should die and Orfeo should live—at least for a little while. But then, out here no-one would know what she got up to and she could have plenty of fun before she knifed him. She wondered if he had a big cock, a thought that made her leer. She bet he did have a big one. Perhaps she’d castrate him after she’d finished with him: it wouldn’t be the first time, and a nice, big, black cock would be a fine memento of her twisted pleasures.

But it wasn’t working so well for her this time. Every time she tried to sink into one of her bloody fantasies, she saw the chubby face of that fucking do-gooder she’d killed and his donkey-faced companion. Why wouldn’t they go away? She wanted to shout out at them to leave her alone, but of course they were dead and they couldn’t hear her. Nor was that the worst of it. She started seeing the queer cocksucker she’d knifed the night he came to Hades with Orfeo. Why the hell should she start thinking about that bastard now?

She started to feel she was going mad. The floodwaters had long drained away from the house, and she was stalking through the rooms, nervous and anxious. She was famished and this, combined with lack of sleep, made her jittery and jumpy. When she entered the
drawing room, with its smashed furniture and rain-damaged walls, her heart leaped up in her chest.

Baptiste was sitting on the one chair that had not been smashed. He was impeccably dressed, as the queer bastard had always been, his thin moustache neatly trimmed, his
demeanor dapper and trim. There was something wrong with him, though. His skin was too pale, as though all the blood had been drained away. When he turned and looked at her his eyes didn’t give any signs of life at all: they just stared in her direction.

She ran out of there, running toward the stairs, heading back to her room. He was at the top of the landing, standing completely still. Now she could see why he looked so pale: one shoulder of his suit was stained with blood from the wound that had killed him. He didn’t speak nor give any expression that he recognized her but simply waited there in silence.

She gasped as she turned away, and when she almost ran into him standing by the door she did scream out loud. The flesh on his face was sunken, his eyes unmoving. There was something waxy about his complexion and the red stain on his clothes was dreadful to behold. Her heart beating faster than she had ever known it to, Snake ran out into the open air, not stopping until she had dashed through deep, sodden puddles, sinking at last into the mud and water and sobbing uncontrollably.

When she finally calmed down she chastised herself for being such a fool. She hadn’t eaten in days, nor had she slept properly. She was hallucinating, that was all. But why him? And why now? After so many years when her heart had been as hard as one of her steel blades why should she develop a conscience and suffer guilt now?

She couldn’t answer such questions, of course, but she did realize that to give up her stakeout at this point would be complete folly. She just knew that Ardyce would try to return to Xanadu and this was her one chance to redeem herself in Earl’s eyes.

Forcing herself to go back to the house was one of the most difficult things she’d done in her life. Her steps were unwilling and she had to push herself to approach the front doorway. When she saw movement inside, she nearly died of fright, but then faint voices came to her—voices she recognized.

She had her cell phone on her fortunately and, switching it on fairly nervously, she was grateful to see that a sliver of power still registered on the bar. When she called Earl’s number, he answered before it rang out a second time.

“Where the fuck have you been?” he hissed. “We’ve been looking all over the fucking city for you.”

“They’re here,” she said quietly. Earl paused on the other end: she did not need to explain who they were.

“Where’s here?”

“Xanadu.”

“Keep them there,” he told her. “The cops have given us an SUV. It should take us less than an hour to get there.”

She turned off the phone and began to move stealthily toward the house, knife drawn and held purposefully to one side of her hips as she trod carefully forward.

As she entered the door, she saw the two of them on the stairs, dressed up in some stupid looking all-in-one work suits. She frowned when she saw the way they were dressed, but her smile was feral and vicious when she realized there was nowhere for them to escape now. She had them. It was Orfeo who saw her first, his eyes expanding with fear and shock as he recognized her. Turning back to Ardyce, he pushed her up the stairs, shouting a single word: “Run!”

The young woman heard him and, foolishly, obeyed. That was good: she wouldn’t be able to get out of the house, Snake was sure of that, so there was plenty of time to take care of her. In the meantime, she could enjoy herself with the singer. For a moment Snake regretted calling Earl: it meant that she had less time to toy with her prey, but that couldn’t be helped now.

He split away from Ardyce, evidently seeking to draw off their pursuer. That suited Snake just fine and she readily gave chase as he plowed through the upstairs chambers, knocking aside broken pieces of furniture in an attempt to slow her down. Not that Snake was in too much of a rush to get him.

“I’m gonna make you sing, boy,” she called out after him. “You and me, we’re gonna make such sweet music. You hear me?”

He said nothing, keeping just far enough ahead of her for her to remain in pursuit of him and leave Ardyce alone. She shrugged at this. His plan suited her. He dived into another room, waiting for her to follow.

“I’ve been wondering,” she shouted. “It gets kinda lonely out here, and I’ve been doin’ a lot of thinking. I bet you’ve got a big cock, boy, and you seem to have the taste for a piece of white ass. So how about chowing down on some Mexican pussy. I’ve been thinking about that a lot, recently. Maybe we can get rid of that skinny white bitch, you and me get it on.” She paused, listening. “Whaddya say?”

With a roar Orfeo suddenly appeared from a door to her left, running at full speed toward her. She attempted to turn, to get her knife hand around to stop him, but before she could do so he had crashed into her.

He attempted to pin her down, holding her with strong arms, but even in her weakened state she could put up a good fight. As he punched her, she pulled her knife hand free and slashed across his forearm, making him gasp in pain. When he drew back, she attempted to stick him in the ribs and he grasped hold of her wrist, his face trembling with exertion, hers covered with sweat as they struggled together.

To break this deadlock, she
head butted him. With a yell, he pulled away and then, as she scrabbled to her feet, blade outstretched in her strong arm, he drew himself up and backed into a room, watching her warily.

She followed him, leering as she did so. “What’s up?” she asked. “Don’t you like my proposition? Well, that’s just too bad for you.”

He was retreating before her, his eyes hunting around the room, hands outstretched protectively in front of him. She was impressed, though. He was cautious, of course, and he feared her—but it was a measured fear, a realization that she was going to try and kill him and that she had the means to do so. There wasn’t a look of abject terror about him and Snake felt an unexpected thrill in her loins as she closed on him. It was going to be a shame to knife this one.

A movement to one side caught her eye and made her turn her head.

In the gloom of one corner, she saw a ghostly shape, glowing slightly in the darkness. As it walked forward, the hackles of her skin rose up instantly and she let out a low moan.

Baptiste continued to walk toward her, that gory stain across his shoulder, but where before his eyes had been expressionless now they glistened with pleasure while on his mouth was a mysterious smile.

As he came closer to her Snake let out a yell. “Get back!” she shouted, her face contorted in horror. “Stay away from me, damn you!” But still he walked forward, each steady pace bringing him toward her even as she backed away.

She was barely aware now of Orfeo who stood frozen on the other side of the room, looking at her and the space around them in confusion. “I said fucking keep away from me!” she yelled, the tattoos on her face twisted in utter fear. She threw her knife at Baptiste, but for some reason even though he was barely feet away from her now she missed. With each step that smile remained fixed on his lips. One foot in front of the other, hands outstretched. His eyes weren’t dead anymore but creased up with laughter, his mouth open.

She could take no more. Within moments she would be backed up against the window with nowhere to run and hide. “Please,” she whispered. “Please, leave me alone.”

But her pleas did not stop the horror and she felt black despair grip her soul. With a scream she turned and ran the final few paces to the window, throwing her full weight against it and leaping through head first. Had she still possessed her wits about her, she would probably have survived the fall with nothing worse than a broken leg or arm, but as her head hit the stones below she felt incredible pain for a second and then darkness fell.

For what seemed an age Orfeo was unable to move. The window frame had broken outwards, glass cascading with Snake as she fell. Now the room was empty, but he couldn’t move as he gazed in horror at the space where the woman had been staring and screaming at before she threw herself out.