SEALs of Summer 2: A Military Romance Superbundle (58 page)

Deolina took an apple out of the bag and started to chew. “’Course not. Americans ignore spirits. Even when death shadows that man, he pretends not to see, not to feel.”

“What are you jabbering about, Deo?” Grann asked.

Deolina covered her mouth. “Nuthin’. Not one thing.” She chewed in silence.

Grann frowned. Deolina was definitely hiding something. Mulling over what she might be missing, she took a small plastic packet out of the bag and set it beside her.

Gochi leaned over her shoulder. “Whatcha cooking, Gran?”

“A spell. Can you reach that for me, handsome?” Deolina pointed to a large black pot on the top shelf in the cabinet.

“Sure.” Gochi rose on his toes, grabbed the pot, and put it on the counter. Suddenly, his eyebrows twitched upward in alarm. “Hold on. The two of you are making a spell? Together?”

“We would be if Deolina could get to work.” Grann dropped a pinch of dried manure into the pot. She was irritated at Deolina for keeping secrets at a time like this.
Death shadows the American? What does that mean?

“I
am
working.” Deolina snatched the plastic bag from beside Grann and cut it open with a pair of scissors. “See? Got the graveyard dust.”

“Graveyard dust?” Gochi asked. “Who are you two putting the hex on?”

“You might want to step back.” Grann warned as Deo poured the contents into the pot.

Gochi jumped backward and ducked behind a chair. “Got that right. I don’t want any goofer spilling on me. No way. I’ve got enough troubles.”

Using her mini-food processor, Grann ground up a handful of dead scorpions. She grimaced at the sight. Ysabeau had given her this little machine for her last birthday to chop onions, not grind up bugs. She poured the brown mess into the pot and started stirring.

“Holy Saints,” Gochi cried out in alarm when he saw a live chicken wriggling around inside a burlap sack under the table. “You two thinking about using black magic?”

“More than thinkin’. We’re doin’. Got to keep that devil away from our girl.” Deolina reached into the sack and pulled the chicken out by its neck.

“Oh, man, oh man.” Gochi paced. “There’s a throbbing vibe coming off you two, so black I can’t see through it. I didn’t expect this to happen. No way. No how.”

“That Guardian needs to be on the next flight back to the States.” Deolina lifted a butcher knife. “The sooner the better.”

“Stop!” Grann held up her hand. “Don’t.”

Deolina startled. “What’s the matter? I thought you wanted to use black magic.”

She took the knife from Deolina. “He’s after the blood of my blood. Let me do it.”

“Oh no, no, no,” Gochi mumbled. “This is not what you do, Priestess of Light. Don’t go to the black side.”

“I have to, old friend. I’ll do everything in my power to save Ysabeau. Even this.” Grann sliced open her own palm and let her blood flow into the black pot.

“Lord above!” Gochi groaned.

Grann wrapped her hand in a floral print kitchen towel. “Okay Deo, do what
you
do.”

Deolina chopped off the chicken’s head and began her incantations.

Gochi whispered so as not to interrupt Deolina’s spell, “I’ve been following him, just as you asked. Gotten pretty close a few times. Even saved him from breaking his ass.” He clicked his tongue at the memory. “The man doesn’t even know how to get out of a tap-tap without nearly killing hisself.”

Deolina snorted.

“Keep working.” Grann circled her finger in the air, urging Deo to continue.

Deolina rolled her eyes, muttering, “Make one little mistake a lifetime ago and the woman thinks she owns me.”

“Huh?” Gochi frowned. “What’s she talking about?”

Grann shook her head. “Don’t listen to her. Tell me more about the American. What did you sense?”

“Nothing. He’s a giant ball of confusion and lust.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “He kinda likes our girl.”

Deolina groaned. “I saw that comin’.”

“What else? There has to be something we can use,” Grann said.

“Sorry, Gran. I get nowhere. Something has his vibes all blocked up,” Gochi said.

“More like
someone
does,” Deolina mumbled, as she cut out the chicken’s warm heart.

Grann jumped up from her chair. Suddenly, she knew what Deo had been hiding. “That’s what the cards have been saying? Holy Mother! The piece I couldn’t grasp. Deolina why didn’t you tell me? I ought to smack you into next week.”

Deolina lifted her chin. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

Grann leaned toward her. “You know.”

Gochi grumbled. “I don’t. Someone want to tell me?”

“Keeping secrets is not right. You know how important this is!” Grann glared hard.

So hard that Deo flinched. “All right, all right. He’s got a spirit protecting him. A female. That’s all I know.”

“That’s why the cards have been confusing. The spirit has been blocking my readings,” Grann added.

Gochi whistled through his teeth. “That makes things more complicated.”

“There’s only one thing to do,” Grann said.

Deolina nodded. “Will Ysabeau agree?”

“She won’t have a choice, will she?” Grann said sadly.

Gochi scratched at his beard. “Um, you lost me again. What does Ysabeau have to do?”

“A Voodoo ceremony. We’ve got to ask the man’s spirit to help us. Ysabeau’s life depends on us,” Grann said.

“Sweet Lord,” Gochi grumbled. “I don’t care for the sound of that. What if it’s a bad one? Do you know what could happen if we open the gates and let one of them mean spirits in?”

They looked at each other. They knew. The spirit was protecting the man and there was no guarantee she wouldn’t kill Ysabeau for getting too close to him.

“But first, we do a little ceremony of our own right here. See if we can find a way to change the future,” Grann said. “Or at least know what’s coming.”

“Yeah, all right. I see nothing but darkness in your vibes. I’m just gonna head on home.” And with that, Gochi left.

Night was falling. It was time to begin.

*

Deolina was accustomed
to others trembling in her presence, but tonight the Voodoo priestess felt her own old legs shaking. In a shack thick with smoke, she faced her mortal enemy—a priestess who had powers Deolina could only dream of—and prayed she’d survive.

A drummer they’d paid for the night came in quietly and set up his bongos in the corner of the room. He tried to be as inconspicuous as possible. Nobody wanted to interrupt the voduns when they did what they did best.

The drumming started up behind them pulsing a beat as strong and steady as a heart. Deolina heard the pounding in her veins as a call to war. A war she could not win. With the exception of the drummer, she and the tiny, but fierce Grann were alone. No followers this night. No distractions. They’d come together as two of the greatest priestesses in Haiti—one of dark, the other light—to fight an evil that could kill them both.

Rolling her shoulders, Deolina shook off the long-legged spiders of fear that crept up her spine and skittered through her cornrows. Flickering candlelight couldn’t bar darkness from clawing at the shack. No matter, she didn’t need light to see what was coming for them. She knew. It was the
knowing
that made her bones grow cold.

“Hurry, woman!” Grann yelled at her with a voice as commanding as ever.

“I’m doin’ it,” she grumbled as she quickly gathered her magic about her.

It would do no good to keep Grann waiting. She feared that dangerous nag almost as much as the horrific future she’d seen in her visions. And today—she cast an eye toward Gran—today she looked more than dangerous.
Sweet Mother, Grann looks scared
.

In sixty-five years, she’d never seen terror raging as a wild thing in Gran’s light brown eyes. It was like stumbling on Satan frozen on a Popsicle stick—she didn’t know whether to cheer, or run. Remembering the horrors in her vision, she ran as fast as her old legs would carry her to sprinkle cast-off-evil powder inside the windowsills and pack it in thick around the doors. She doubted it would do much good, but she was willing to try anything.

The drummer eased back to a rhythm soft as blood drops on dirt.

Grann bent her head, the gray curls on her head falling forward over her face as she genuflected before the crucifix hanging on the far wall and recited “Hail Mary’s” to the plastic Holy Virgin on the sole bookshelf. Deolina stepped up on the footstool to insure the charms and amulets were in the right places to ward off the wrong spirits.

“Can we save her?” Gran’s voice cracked, making Deolina nearly lose her balance on the stool.

A tiny squeak escaped her lips until she righted herself by placing both of her flat bare feet on the floor. She eyed Gran. “Stop lookin’ so vexed. You’ll make me forget the spell.”

With surprisingly strong, thin fingers, Grann shook her by the shoulders. “You do foresee us stopping this thing?”

Deolina was a mostly-retired black magic
Vodun of Petro
. In all her years as a Voodoo priestess, she’d seen lots of terrifying things, but stopping this? A rat with its legs caught in a trap had a better chance of getting out alive. Still, she wasn’t so heartless as to give old Grann the odds. Besides, voicing evil out loud was as good as calling the thing home for supper. Deolina was not about to play housemaid to a beast who might eat her for snack. She’d never stop it, but Grann didn’t have to know just how bad it was going to be, did she?

“You and me together?” Deolina snorted. “How can we lose?”

Gran’s thin face twisted with sorrow. The High Priestess of Light knew the truth. Sometimes the truth ripped old women’s hearts to shreds. “Maybe the spirits will tell us what to do. Start the ceremony, Deo, I’ve got to know.”

Deolina dipped her fingertips into a small pewter jar. In long strokes, she spread spiritual powder on her skin until her arms were shimmering amber-gold in the candlelight. Grann bound their wrists together with a scarf as soft as goose down and the color of spilled blood. They were ready.

In words as old as time, they chanted, begging the spirits to keep the wolf at bay.

A gust of wind blew through the shack, skittering Tarot cards off the end table. Their white dresses lifted with the breeze, baring their dark legs mottled with ropey veins. The bongos grew louder, pulsing faster, faster, a frantic heart. With closed eyes, their bodies moved in perfect rhythm. Their wrinkled fingers, coated in ceremonial powder, splayed and vibrated to the violent beat. Red, white, and golden candles sputtered with the wind and stayed lit.

They panted for air while they chanted and danced, but didn’t stop, didn’t miss a beat. Their voices rose on the howling wind until they were screaming at the wolf, demanding he keep his ugly hairy self far, far away from them. Away from her.

The drumming ended as abruptly as death. Exhausted, Deolina untied the scarf with trembling hands and fell to the floor. Sweat rolled down her back while the horrifying vision still lingered in her head. Pain, screaming, death…

Grann studied her as if she could see clear through to her bone marrow. “Did the vision change? What happens to her?”

Deolina shuddered and bit her tongue to keep it from spilling what she’d seen as they danced. Better to have her tongue cut out than to tell Grann that her premonition hadn’t changed. Hell was still heading to Haiti.

Stalling for time, Deolina mopped her brow with the crook of her arm and said, “Oh, Mother above, I’m about as worn out as Gochi’s T-shirts. Why does that man let them rot off his old body? I keep buying him new ones, but he won’t wear them.”

Gochi had long since gone home. He couldn’t bear to watch his two girlfriends calling up black magic.

“Can’t you stop thinking about men for one minute?” Gran’s light eyes flashed with the same old fury, same old hurt.

Deolina shook her head. “You ever gonna forgive me? That was a million years ago.”

Grann set her thin lips in the way that said she’d never forgive. They’d go to their graves with the past weighing them down like river muck clinging to the ankles of two little crawdad-hunting girls. Deolina sighed. How she wished they were still innocent girls.

Pointing an arthritic finger at her, Grann said, “Tell me about the vision.”

She couldn’t make herself look into Gran’s eyes. “It’s bad.”

“I can’t lose another child, Deo. Please, God, not Ysabeau.” Her cries pierced through the shack and tumbled out into the wind blowing from the Gulf of Gonâve.

It snapped Deolina’s heart in two. Could there be anything more pitiful than watching the person she most feared turning herself inside out? It made her crazy. It made her want to give something that she had no right to give—hope.

“It’s not her, Gran. It’s him,” she uttered before she could stop herself. A thought took shape in Deolina’s mind. Maybe there was a chance. Some rats chewed off their own legs to cheat death. “We’ve gotta keep him away from her. Understand? If we put our magic into it, we might be able to change things.”

Tears ran down the deep grooves in Gran’s cheeks. “Fix the future? Is it possible?”

Deolina grinned and slowly rose to her feet. “Nothin’ more powerful than the two of us gettin’ our mojo on. Why don’t we see if we can figure who his evil spirit is? Maybe drive her away.”