A castle? “I read somewhere that there are ten thousand species of snakes, and nine thousand of them live in our state.”
He made a cute shivering gesture of distaste.
Gabrielle wasn’t too fond of snakes herself.
A companionable silence followed, broken when she remarked, “I notice that you have a nice suntan. I thought vampires couldn’t go outside in the daylight.”
“That’s an old wives’ tale. Actually, we vangels cannot spend much time outside if we haven’t fed properly or drunk our synthetic beverage, Fake-O. Otherwise, sun is fine.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We save sinners by taking their blood, the amount depends on how tainted by sin they are.” He shrugged. “The blood of a redeemed sinner sustains us for months. Without it, if we go outdoors, our skin gets lighter and lighter, almost translucent.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Back up the bus,” she said. “Are you saying that you drink blood?”
He looked surprised at her question. “Of course. What did you think the purpose of fangs was?”
“I don’t know.” She shook her head in confusion and motioned for Ivak to start driving. What kind of crazy had she gotten herself involved in? She glanced over at Ivak, who was concentrating on a right turn he was about to make and didn’t notice her scrutiny. He looked entirely normal, but . . .
Once they left Houma and were traveling along Bayou Black, in the opposite direction from Tante Lulu’s cottage, Gabrielle observed, “You know, many people think that the bayous are rather spiritual in nature. In fact, with the way that trees arch over the waters from both sides, meeting in the middle, they resemble a cathedral. Sort of.”
“Sort of?” Ivak laughed.
“Well, you have to use your imagination.” She thought a moment, then made another observation. “You said that you were in Louisiana back in the 1800s. Were you in this section of the bayous then, too?”
He shook his head. “No. Not that I would recognize it, even if I had. As you know, seen from the sky, the network of thousands of bayous resembles an intricate piece of lacework, but it’s ever changing. What was here today is gone tomorrow, and new bayous spring up with every storm.”
She nodded. The waters were calm today, deceptively peaceful. But the wrong step and a person could land in mud up to her eyeballs, or face-to-face with some deadly animal. Even so, the humidity of the air magnified all the colors into boldness, like an expressionist landscape. Pretty.
It took them about an hour to find the remote, very remote plantation house, if it could be called that anymore. “Heaven’s End Plantation,” the broken-down sign at the entrance said. How appropriate was that?
The Realtors, or owners, must have cleared a pathway through what had become a tropical jungle, just big enough for a car to pass through. An allée of live oak trees dripping moss once graced this lane. Similar paths were made around both sides of the house and to the outbuildings where ancient trees peeked up through the foliage. Not just the ancient oaks, but tupelo, chinaberry, willow, and sycamore, and fruit trees gone wild . . . cherry, fig, apple, and peach. Flowering bushes, like bougainvillea and magnolia, resembled small trees. Kudzu was the least of the problems here.
They both got out of the car and looked up.
“Well!” was the best she could come up with.
“Holy hell!” Ivak said, and he almost never swore. “The place is about two hundred years old. It’s been unoccupied since the 1970s.”
“I believe it,” she said, and she referred to both its age and its neglect.
It was a raised Creole-style mansion, the kind where the main floor was on the second floor, and the ground floor was where the kitchen and storage rooms had been in an age past. There were three-story columns that rose all the way to the top floor. Once gracious galleries surrounded all sides of the house. Wide steps . . . about twelve feet wide . . . led from the front drive up to the second floor entry.
That was the good part.
Parts of the hipped roof had caved in. Many of the tall, floor-to-ceiling windows were broken. Exterior paint had long worn off, and moisture had no doubt rotted the wood in many places.
“I love it!” she exclaimed.
“Are you demented? It’s a dump. See here,” he said, showing her the display screen on his phone. “This is a picture Mike sent of how the place looked at one time. As if I would have recognized this crumbling monstrosity from this photo.”
She smacked his arm. “Shh! Don’t insult the house.”
It was a sepia-toned photo that showed a stately home with manicured flower gardens on the sides and grand oaks framing the road down to a wide bayou stream, where goods and travelers would have arrived here in the pre–Civil War days when the plantation had been built.
“You can’t insult a building,” he griped.
But she was already walking up the steps when he yelled out, “Come back here. Those steps are rotten. You might . . . oh shit!” He was soon at her side, and they both placed their feet carefully on the wooden boards that were indeed breaking apart in places.
When they got to the top, she tried the double front doors, to no avail; they were probably warped shut, rather than locked. Not to be deterred, she peered through one of the remarkably intact etched glass side windows that bracketed the doors. She sighed.
“Oh look, Ivak. The wood staircase is still there, and the cypress floors are damaged but aren’t they beautiful? Look, look, look. There are stained glass French doors leading into one of the parlors or dining room, it’s hard to tell which.”
Ivak was amused by her enthusiasm, but she didn’t care. One thing after another caught her attention. Crystal doorknobs. A tiled fireplace. A kitchen courtyard. A stone pathway leading into a jungle that had once been a rose garden, as evidenced by a lone pink rosebush that had managed to survive its tropical invaders. At her urging, Ivak tore off one of the long stems and handed it to her. She sniffed and smiled.
Without a machete, or a bulldozer, to clear the jungle, it was impossible to investigate any of the outbuildings . . . slave quarters, a sugar refinery, and God only knew what else. Plus, Ivak kept glancing at his watch.
When they were back in the car, Ivak didn’t start the ignition right away. He just stared at her.
“Why did Mike . . . uh, your boss . . . want you to look at this place?”
“I don’t know, but I have an alarming suspicion.”
She cocked her head to the side.
“About a year or more ago, he sent my oldest brother, Vikar, to a run-down castle in Transylvania. I made reference to that earlier. Mike told Vikar to renovate it and make it into a home for vangels. It has twenty-five friggin’ bedrooms and will probably take a century to really restore it and by then he’ll probably have to start all over again.”
“What does that have to do with this?” She waved at the mansion that loomed over them.
“Mike has hinted that he might want each of the VIK to establish command centers in other parts of the world. The VIK is an acronym for me and my six brothers as a leadership group.”
“Oh my God! You think he might want you to buy this place and restore it?”
He nodded hesitantly. “I’m pretty sure he has ruled out the warehouse in northern Louisiana.”
“Oh, how I envy you!”
“You jest! Gabrielle, I’m not sure what would be worse. Angola or this . . . this place.”
“You’re wrong,” she said.
“Why does this run-down mansion appeal to you so much? I thought you were all for a little house in the country with a white picket fence and a horde of bratlings.”
“I didn’t say that exactly. But can’t you sense something special about this place, like it has a soul, and it’s calling to you for help? It feels like . . . oh, you’ll think I’m crazy . . . but it feels like home.” Then she burst out crying, big gulping sobs.
He slid over to the middle of the wide bench seat and pulled her onto his
lap, embracing her while she wept onto his neck. Finally, she sat up straight and gave an embarrassed laugh. “Some soul mate you picked!”
He pulled her face down to his and kissed her lightly on the lips, then not so lightly. “Not I, sweetling. Mike is responsible for this.”
She kissed him then, framing his face with both hands. When she had him panting into her mouth, she leaned back and said, “Tell Mike Gabrielle says thanks.”
Eleven
The road to Hell was paved with . . . snakes? . . .
Jasper decided to drop in on Dominique to discuss their latest project: the Angola Prison.
The restaurant that fronted Dominique’s activities here in the Crescent City was on the first floor; so, Jasper’s tail was dragging by the time he huffed and puffed his way up the steep flight of back stairs to her personal residence. The torture chambers were on the third floor and attics.
He turned to Beltane, his French assistant who’d spent his early human life in the 1700s Vieux Carré, or French Quarter, and had begged to accompany him. “You could have checked ahead, and we would have teletransported directly to the upper floors, instead of the blasted back courtyard,” Jasper griped. If he had more energy, he would swat the hordling on his fool behind.
Beltane ducked his head. “Sorry, master. I was so excited about coming home . . . I mean, to Nawleans, not my home now . . . that I forgot.”
Jasper’s struggle up the stairs wasn’t Beltane’s fault, Jasper admitted to himself. He needed to stop eating so many human hearts loaded with cholesterol, but, yum, they were like potato chips to him. He couldn’t stop at one.
“Jasper, dah-ling, you didn’t have to walk up the steps. You could have teletransported.”
Well, duh! For some reason, he decided to cover for Beltane. Dominique might very well bite his head off. Literally. He’d lost so many of his close assistants in recent years that he found himself rather protective of the boy, who was not really a boy at nineteen, give or take two hundred years. “I forgot that you weren’t in a basement here.”
Beltane gave him a look of total adoration.
“There are no cellars in N’awlins,” Dominique explained. “You only have to dig a spade into the soil before hitting water.”
Hah! He’d like to see the day Dominique ever lifted a spade.
“In any case, welcome, welcome!” She flashed him a big, fangy smile that was not really a smile.
He could tell that the female haakai was surprised, and not a little unhappy, about his sudden appearance, despite her smile. Good. It was always a good idea to keep his Lucipires on their toes, even the high-level commanders.
“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
“Of course.” Before he entered, he told Beltane, “Go and visit your old neighborhood. Be back in two hours.”
Another look of adoration and Beltane was gone.
As he stepped inside, Jasper instantly wished he’d accompanied his assistant. There were snakes. Everywhere. In glass cases. Loose, on the floor. One was even hanging from the chandelier.
“Holy shit, Dom. Must you have so many of these slimy reptiles? It’s disgusting.”
“Do I criticize your taste for killing jars, master?” she inquired with an emphasis on “master.” The wicked wench no more considered him her master than alligators bowed to fish, even though they swam the same waters, and they both knew it. If he turned his back on her, he’d no doubt have a snake bite on his ass. Or her bite.
There were times when a good bitch slap was the only thing that would do. Unfortunately, Dominique would no doubt reciprocate with what could be called a bastard slap. Leastways, she could try.
“Show me around and then we’ll discuss the Angola Project,” he said in a tone of voice that put her in her place. He hoped.
Dominique, who was wearing some kind of tight leather outfit, adorned with sharp metal studs, that left her ample breasts almost exposed, led the way up . . . More stairs.
He sighed and sucked his stomach in. No way was he going to reveal to Dominique how out of shape he was. The minute he got back to Horror, he was hiring . . . okay, killing and turning . . . a fitness coach.
All the walls had been removed from the upper floor so that it was one massive space. Still, it was not one-hundredth of the size of Jasper’s torture chambers. But then, Jasper liked to keep his playthings for long periods, to enjoy their pain, while Dominique was more impatient. She killed, tortured, and turned humans like an assembly line. He’d cautioned her more than once to slow down, she was calling too much attention to herself. Did she listen to him? No.
There were a dozen or more dead humans in various stages of torture and turning, all with ball gags in their mouths to prevent their screams from reaching the restaurant diners below or passersby on the street. All of their eyes were uniformly wide with terror at what they had wrought with their sinful lives. Other than a viper vat, Dominique employed the usual torture techniques and implements: the rack, impalement devices for all body orifices, demons licking, biting, sucking, and gnawing on every inch of skin and bone. That kind of thing. Ho-hum.
They were soon back in Dominique’s small salon, which Jasper had insisted be free of all reptiles before he would sit down. Dominique had redone several antique chairs to accommodate Lucipire tails, so Jasper was comfortable when they sat across a small table sipping at tall glasses of Piña Colada Blood cocktails . . . blood drawn from nubile females who’d been permitted to eat only pineapples and coconuts for a week.
It would be an inviting repast if it weren’t for all the snake decorations about the place. Carved into the chairs and woodwork. Depicted in paintings, including the famous one in the Garden of Eden. Even woven into the design of the carpet on the floor. He must have grimaced with distaste because Dominique inquired with as much sweetness as she could garner, which wasn’t much, “What bit you in the balls, Jasper?”
He hissed his outrage, and, without moving from his seat, hurled her up against the wall, where she dangled like one of her snakes. “How dare you take that tone with me? Commander you may be, high haakai you may be, but always remember you are merely one of my minions.”
“I am sorry, master,” she said. “I did not mean to give offense.”
He released her invisible bonds and she dropped to the floor, just catching herself from falling to her knees. Her red eyes snapped at him, but she deferred to his greater strength.
She had the good sense, belatedly, to bow low at the waist and wait for his permission to return to the table.
Once she was seated again and had composed herself, she announced, “I have news.”
It must be good. Her red eyes threw sparks of excitement, and she was shedding scales like a fish about to become chowder. Saliva pooled at the corners of her lush mouth.
“I believe one of the VIK is in the area. Ivak Sigurdsson.”
With a frown, Jasper remarked, “I thought you told me before that Ivak might be at Angola.”
“There, too,” she said with obvious excitement. Obvious, because she was drooling. “And we may have a weapon against him.”
Jasper cocked his head to the side, pretending only mild interest, when it was his greatest dream to catch . . . and keep . . . a VIK. He’d had one in his possession a year or so ago, but the bastard VIK had managed to escape. Well, not escape exactly. That infernal enemy of his, St. Michael the Archangel, had rescued him.
“Look at this.” Dominique handed him a cell phone. On it was a picture of one of the VIK . . . Ivak, he believed it was . . . behind the wheel of a big lavender car with a woman at his side. “They were driving down Bourbon Street when one of my mungs caught this on his cell phone.”
“And . . . ?”
“I believe this woman may be a sister of an inmate at Angola, one we tried unsuccessfully to turn.”
“Unsuccessfully?” He homed in on that word. “You failed?”
“In that one case. The mung who was fanging the inmate was interrupted a
nd then later the young man appeared to have lost the sin taint.”
“And that is why you think Ivak may be inside Angola?”
She nodded vigorously.
“Get more information. Do not . . . I repeat, do not rush in and attack. Take your time. Make sure Ivak is in fact stationed here in Louisiana, and find out more about the woman. Ivak is attracted to all women with his lustsome nature, but if he has formed a stronger connection to this woman other than with his cock, we might be able to use her as a trap for him.”
“Exactly what I thought.” Dominique preened.
“We’ll need to gather information on this woman. Do you still have that detective?”
Dominique blushed, if a demon could blush. “He is long gone.” At Jasper’s frown, she went on, “But we have something better.”
This ought to be good.
“The Internet,” Dominique revealed in a ta-da! fashion.
“Do you know how to use a computer?”
“Bloody hell, no! And I do not want to learn.” She glanced down at her two-inch, bloodred fingernails. She would not want to risk breaking them on a keyboard. “But we recently captured a young geek who bilked lots of people out of their money by hacking into their bank accounts. He’s almost done turning.”
“Put him on it.”
Dominique nodded. “Speaking of the Internet . . . I heard a rumor that Michael and Gabriel are setting up an archangel website.”
Jasper gaped at her. “For what purpose?”
“To gather more souls for the Lord.”
Damn, damn, damn! “Then we will do the same. We will set up a website for Satan.”
At first, she frowned, but then she practically jumped up and down in her seat with excitement. “It could be like Dear Abby, except ours would be Dear Satan.”
Jasper hated to encourage Dominique but he admitted, “I love it!”
They both raised their glasses in a toast. “To evil!”
When shit hits the fan at Angola, it really flies . . .
It was utter chaos back at Angola.
“This facility is on immediate lockdown,” a red-faced, furious Warden Benton hollered, spittle flying, to the quickly called meeting of prison personnel. “Is that clear? No one . . . no one . . . is entering or leaving these grounds until we’ve solved this mystery.”