Predestined (22 page)

“Could she just have some soda,
father?” Leif asked and for once I was thankful for his presence.
My mouth was incredibly dry.

“Yes get de gurl some soda,” he
ordered one of the women standing back around the table waiting to
do his bidding.

“Thank you,” I managed to choke out.
Wyatt,
I
reminded myself. I was doing this for Wyatt.

“Ah and she’s got de manners. You
chose good son. I lak dis one.”

Leif beamed beside me and I felt
the urge to gag.

“Dis
one,” Ghede announced loudly to the rest of the table, “she fell in
love wit Dankmar. Das right,” he enjoyed the surprised responses
that came from the others. I peered down the table for the first
time since sitting down and had to force myself not to openly gape
at them. At least my dress didn’t stand out. Every female at the
table was dressed in a similarly ancient style of dress. However,
their chests were much bigger so they really did have cleavage up
to their nose. I sucked in a quick breath when I watched one of the
men pull the front of a lady’s dress until her entire breast
bounced free. Swinging my eyes off them I studied the other side of
the table. Men were all dressed in tuxedos and several even wore
black masks. The hairstyles on the women were alarmingly high.
Curls stacked up at least a foot with sparkling jewels, feathers,
and other items stuck into the mix. They all drank liberally and
laughed even shrilly. A loud squeal brought my eyes back to the
other side of the table and I watched as the man who’d pulled the
woman’s top down now had her butt up on the edge of the table and
was shoving her dress up, which was a feat all its own with all the
fabric, and she was spreading her legs wide and squealing
delightedly. When the man went to unbutton his bottoms I closed my
eyes and snapped my head back around to look toward the wall behind
Leif’s head. Dear God, they were about to ... to
do it
at the table. What had I agreed to?

“Father please, Pagan isn’t used to
this sort of behavior. For tonight can you stop them?” Leif asked
from beside me and I wanted to bury my face in his shoulder and
start humming a song to drawn out the loud grunts coming from the
man only a few feet down from me.

“Whut? De sex is part of de fun.
You won me to go wit out de sex? Whut is a party wit out de
enjoyment of de flesh, hmmm. Non dat is de answer.”

The woman began to moan loudly and
call out words I’d never heard before. Leif’s arm came around my
shoulder and I used his side and his arm as muffles for my ears
while my eyes remained tightly shut.

“I’m sorry, Pagan,” he whispered
into my hair.

If he was really sorry he wouldn’t
have bribed me to come to this place. It wasn’t a meal it was a ...
a... freaking orgy. More moans had joined in and I cringed in
horror as women called out vulgar suggestions and men screamed
nasty descriptions. This was nothing like I’d imagined.

“Father please, may we be excused?”
Leif asked.

“Hmph, I guess. I don want to stop
my party. You take de gurl and I’ll send de food to
you.”

Relieved, I jumped up being careful
not to glance back down the table and let Leif lead me out of the
room and back into the safety of the large hallway.

“Ohmygod,” I whispered horrified.
My mind would forever be traumatized.

“I’m sorry. I’d hoped since you
were there father would contain that but--”

“But he’s a sick pervert,” I
finished for him.

Leif started to open his mouth, but
I cut him off.

“Don’t. I don’t care about what I’m
supposed and not supposed to say about him here. That was the most
revolting experience of my life. And you just let me walk right
into it. No preparation or warning.”

“Because if I’d told you that was a
possibility you wouldn't have gone and Father would have punished
you.”

“And that wasn’t
punishment?”

“No, he finds that entertaining.
He’s the voodoo spirit over many things. Eroticism is one of
them.”

“Ugh, oh, ugh,” I shook my head and
started walking back toward the room that I’d been in
earlier.

“Don’t you want to see the
library?” Leif asked.

I thought about what I’d just seen
and the idea that the library probably contained ninety percent
porn was a major turnoff for me. “No, I’d prefer to go bleach my
eyeballs and ears,” I snapped back at him.

“What about Wyatt?”

He’d used the power card. I stopped
and glared back at him. I hated he had something to hold over my
head. “If you were really sorry about tonight you’d send him to
me.”

Lief nodded, “Done. And I’ll bring
you food too. Normal food and a soda.”

I didn’t argue because I was sure
once my stomach settled down from the disgusting scene I’d
witnessed I would be hungry. It had been awhile since I’d
eaten.

“You need to take the next right
then it’s the third door on the right,” Leif instructed. I was good
with directions so I hadn’t needed his reminder but I nodded
nonetheless and picked up my pace. I was now terrified of what I
might witness in these hallways.

The door was a dark purple with a
large black skull carved out of marble mounted in the center of it.
I hadn’t paid attention to that when we’d exited it earlier. I
twisted the large heavy knob and stepped inside.

It was sad that this was comforting
to me. Earlier I’d hated it. Now, after that horrid experience I
decided I needed to get very well acquainted with this room because
I wasn’t leaving it again.

Glancing down at my dress I wanted
it off. It reminded me of the other women and I felt dirty wearing
it. However, I didn’t see my other clothes anywhere and I wasn’t
about to get naked.

Chapter Twenty-
One

The door creaked open
behind me and I turned expecting to see Leif with food but instead
it was Wyatt. He closed the door behind him and a sad smile touched
his lips. He was more solid than souls were supposed to
be.

“Hey
Pagan.”

I stared at him as it
registered that he’d just spoken to me in my head.

“Wyatt, I’m so sorry,” I replied stepping closer to
him.

“This isn’t your fault Pagan. I
didn’t understand any of it at first but Leif has visited me
several times and he’s explained everything.”

“No, it is my fault.
If I’d just gone with him when he told me about my soul you’d have
lived. But I didn’t know. If I’d known they’d take someone else in
my place I would have never stayed.”

“You
thought Death would fix it in time,”
he replied.

“Yes, I did. I guess
you know about Dank now.”

Wyatt nodded then reached out a
hand and although I wasn’t sure if mine would go through it or if
he was a solid as he seemed I reached out to take his. The cold
hard hand under mine surprised me.

“You aren’t like other souls. They
can’t talk and they aren’t solid.”

“I
believe it’s because of where we are. Here Ghede makes things the
way he wants them to be. I believe he... uh,”
Wyatt stopped talking and looked away. He almost
seemed embarrassed and slowly tonight’s dinner came back to me and
I realized what he was trying to say.

“
He uses souls as his
entertainment?” I asked

Wyatt peered back at me and nodded.
My stomach felt sick again. Had Ghede used Wyatt that way? I was
going to throw up.

“No Pagan, he hasn’t forced me to
do any of ... that stuff. I’ve just seen it. I believe my age keeps
me safe from it, I’m not sure.”

I
leaned against the side of the bed and sagged in relief.

“He intends to keep you here you
know.”

I lifted my eyes back
to Wyatt’s and nodded. “I know. I just wish there was a way I could
get you out of here. It isn’t fair that you have to remain here now
that I agreed to come. He has me. I won’t leave.”

“How
is Miranda?”
Wyatt asked and
the pain in his eyes sliced through me.

I remembered her sitting on her bed
with his notes encircling her and the teddy bear he’d given her in
her lap. I couldn’t tell him how much she grieved his death. It
would be too much.

“She’s okay. She misses you
something fierce but each day she gets better,” I assured
him.

His
face fell,
“That was before.
When she had you. Now she’s lost us both.”

The unsaid words
hanging in the air between us were thick and painful.

“She’s stronger than you think,” I
assured him but the memory of her drunken body staggering out of
the graveyard said another thing entirely.

“I hope so.”

I could tell from his
tone he didn’t agree. He was right of course. Miranda was like a
fragile flower. One that needed tending and special care. Wyatt had
always understood that and gone out of his way to give her exactly
what she needed. I’d loved him for that.

“He’s
coming,”
Wyatt said, staring
at the closed door.

“Can you stay?” I asked, not ready
to see him go.

“No. But I’ll come back
again.”

“
Stay. I’ll ask him
to let you.”

Wyatt
shook his head,
“I don’t want
to Pagan. I don’t want to be near him.”

I understood. Leif had
taken everything from Wyatt. His future. His eternity.

“Bye Pagan.”

“Bye.”

Leif opened the door and Wyatt
walked past him without a word.

Frowning, Leif closed the door and
walked over to the table beside the bed and set down a silver tray
filled with recognizable items such as cheese and crackers,
strawberries, dinner rolls, pulled pork and chocolate chip
cookies.

“He isn’t fond of me,” Leif
murmured as he handed me a large round porcelain plate.

“No,he isn’t. But then who can
blame him? You took away his eternity. He is now stuck here,
forever.” The anger lacing in my words caused him to
flinch.

“I didn’t take his soul Pagan, my
father did. I had no idea he was going to. Ghede answers to no one
within our realm. He makes decisions that please him and he
overindulges in anything pleasurable and corrupts enjoyable
pursuits, making things that should be good and satisfying into
depraved behaviors. Nothing I can say will stop him. I was a child
when he asked me to choose a soul. I had no idea what the
implications were. I chose you. I didn’t know then what that meant.
You can hate me but try to understand I am not my
father.”

He may not be his father but he
didn’t have the courage to stand up to his father. He was weak but
hadn’t I always known that? Even back when I thought he was a human
Leif had been weak. He never really accepted the weight of his
actions. He always made you feel as if his apology were something
precious and special that you would be stupid not to accept. The
charisma he’d carried had won him many advances. Who was he
exactly? If his father was Ghede then who was Leif?

“Who is your mother?”

Leif paused from fixing his plate.
The strawberry in his fingers plopped onto his plate then he sighed
wearily before raising his eyes to peer through his long blond
eyelashes at me. “My mother is Erzulie, she is the reason my skin
is pale and my hair is blond. She’s the Voodoo Goddess of many
things. Love being one... vengeance being another. She takes many
lovers and enjoys the same things my father does. I see her on
occasion but for the most part I live with my father. She has never
had any desire for a child but then I’m not her only one. She has
several, many of whom walk the earth. She is not above taking human
men to her um... bed.”

His mother was a deranged voodoo
sex goddess. Great.

I stuffed some pulled pork into a
dinner roll and chewed while I let this information sink in. I’d
never really questioned his skin color until tonight. When I’d seen
that his father was dark brown in coloring it had surprised me. But
then I was a little shocked by the wild orgy going on and that kind
of took precedence. After taking a long swig of the canned coke
Leif had brought me I studied him a moment.

“You don’t talk like your father
either. He has a bit of a cajun accent.”

Leif shrugged, “I’ve spent the
majority of my life following you. I adopted your accent so I would
fit in with your life. I didn’t want to appear to you as an
outsider.”

“So all those dreams I’ve had are
real? Those things really happened. Are there more memories I’ve
forgotten?”

Leif stared intently at the food on
his plate. Then managed a small shrug, “Maybe a few
more.”

He was lying. He couldn’t even look
at me. “A few more? That’s all?”