Black Heart Loa

  “We’re running out of time,” he heard his uncle say, voice wire-tight. “Jackson, can you hear me, boy?”

  Light needled Jackson’s eyes as he forced them open and met Ambrose’s grim gaze. Realized the hands holding him belonged to his uncle. “Oui, Nonc.”

  “Bon. Then I need you to listen close,” Ambrose said. “I don’t know what-all you remember, but you need to understand what’s happening to you. Your papa was a loup-garou and you’re a half blood. And you’re going through your First Change.”

  Jackson’s heart pounded wildly in his chest. “Change? No. I was told that some half bloods never Change and that I was one of those.”

  January stirred beside Ambrose. “Who told you that?” she asked. “Your mama? She lied to you, Jackson—”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Ambrose cut in, slanting a dark look at his wife. “Not now. This ain’t the time.”

  January shook her head, but said nothing more, her lips compressing into a thin, bitter line.

  Fury shook Jackson. He aimed his heated gaze at his snowy-haired but youthful tante. “You ain’t got no business saying my mother lied to me or to anyone else,” he said, voice strained. “No business. None.”

  January met his furious regard, a wolfish and powerful light gleaming in her jade eyes, but no regret. Her lips parted, but before she could say anything, Ambrose spoke, his words sliding like a butter knife between them.

  “Nicolas was just as responsible as Lucia in what happened to you and your sisters.”

  Jackson’s heart clenched. He remembered Jeanette snuggled in his arms, Junalee’s smile. Tried not to think of how they’d looked in the end. “My sisters?” He shifted his attention from January to his uncle. “No disrespect, Nonc, but what the hell are you talking about?”

  Releasing Jackson’s shoulders, Ambrose said, “Your papa never told your mama what a half blood faces during First Change until after Junalee had been born.” He paused, trailing a long-fingered hand through his hair, his expression pensive. “I don’t know whether it just never occurred to Nicolas that Lucia might want to know before they had kids or if he deliberately ‘forgot’ to tell her. He never told me.”

  Jackson felt sick as he remembered the late-night arguments between his folks when they thought the kids were sleeping. Over us. The fights were over us.

  “In any case,” Ambrose said, “your mama was so worried about what might happen to y’all during First Change that, after she learned the truth, she used her hoodoo to bind all you kids to one form—your human one. And she forbade your papa to ever bring you here again.” He shook his head. “Nicolas was hurt and furious.”

  Jackson looked away from his uncle and stared at the timbered ceiling. He didn’t want to believe what he was hearing, didn’t want to believe that his mother had lied to him and buried a part of who he was.

  Maybe if she’d lived, she woulda told me when I was older, allowed me to choose for myself…

  “What happens during First Change?” Jackson asked from a throat gone tight. “I don’t remember Papa ever having trouble during his Changes.”

  “It’s different for half bloods,” Ambrose admitted, voice low. “Far more difficult and dangerous. You’ll be bound to the cycle of the moon, when we’re not. If your human nature is too entrenched, you won’t be able to accept the wolf. Your papa tried to help you by making sure you knew that the wolf was a natural part of who you are.”

  Until Mama changed all that and Papa stormed from the house, his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists, hurt and fury glinting in his eyes.

  Ain’t gonna forgive you for dis, Lucia. Dey be my kids too. You t’ink I wouldn’t guide dem tru de Change? Keep dem safe? Dis ain’t done, woman. Not by a long shot.

  Papa never lived in the house again.

  “If your First Change is successful,” Angélique told Jackson in a gentle voice, “then you’ll Change during full moons—just like in the movies—but you won’t be a full wolf, you’ll be a hybrid wolf-man—loup-homme—with fangs and claws, heightened senses and strength, and the inherent need to run and hunt. But your heightened senses and strength will remain with you always, during all phases of the moon.”

  Jackson lowered his gaze from the ceiling and looked at Angélique. He felt his potion-distanced pain starting to return. “And what happens if my First Change is unsuccessful?”

  “You could end up mindless and stuck in a monstrous wolf-man form,” she replied, sympathy glinting in the green depths of her eyes. “Or lost to madness in two forms, or dead.”

  Jackson nodded, mouth almost too dry for speech. “Well, then. Need to make damned sure I succeed, me.”

  Angélique smiled, but looked away for just a split second, and he realized that she hadn’t told him everything.

  “Hey,” Jackson said, “I need to know every—” Another spasm bit into his muscles. His teeth sliced into his lower lip and the copper-penny taste of blood trickled into his mouth. Pain snaked out from its hiding place and sank sharp teeth into him everywhere.

  Angélique whispered into his ear as the spasm passed. “All you need to know is this: Be a wolf, Jackson. Don’t let your humanity Change you into a monster. Or end your life.” Something pressed against his lips—the cool mouth of a glass bottle. “Drink.”

  Jackson did as she asked, gulping down another potion of thick honey and bitter herbs, then closed his eyes again, trying to make sense of everything he’d just been told. Trying to understand what he was facing, trying to prepare for it, but pain kept dashing his thoughts to pieces against a wicked reef.

  “I’ve got his bath ready,” a man said, a voice Jackson didn’t recognize.

  He opened his eyes and saw a black guy, his hair twisted into a bunch of short braids poking out in all directions and angles around his skull, dressed in jeans and a deep-blue T-shirt. He was standing beside the table with a large basin of steaming water in his hands.

  Nomad, Jackson realized when he saw the little squirrel tat inked beneath his right eye. Then he noticed the man’s eyes. One dark brown and one deepest blue. “Never seen that in a person before,” he marveled, then clarified, “Your eyes. Is it a loup-garou trait?”

  “Wouldn’t know, since I’m human,” the man said with a quick smile. “But I got a feeling they all wish it was a loup-garou trait.”

  Someone snorted.

  “Be quick, Merlin,” Ambrose growled. “We need to get Jackson to the cage tout de suite.”

  Before Jackson could question his uncle about what he meant by “the cage,” he felt himself drifting away on a tide of fever and potion and distant pain, and his eyes fluttered shut.

  Words from one of his favorite Keats poems curled through his mind, as though whispered into his ear by an older brother who’d shared the same grief, guiding him through the shoals of darkness he’d washed up against following Gaspard.

  Darkling I listen; and, for many a time / I have been half in love with easeful Death / Call’d him soft names in many a musèd rhyme, / To take into the air my quiet breath; / Now more than ever seems it rich to die, / To cease upon the midnight with no pain …

  To cease upon the midnight with no pain.

  He’d never wanted to cease, he’d always been in love with life and laughter. But not to feel—that had been another matter. Not to remember the weight of a sister in his arms or the sight of her empty and staring eyes …

  No. Oh, hell no. You can’t afford to sleep, to drift. To peel scabs off half-healed wounds. You need to focus so you can survive what’s coming. Change. First Change.

  Jackson grabbed onto that thought and reeled himself up from the dark and soothing herb-soaked depths like a free diver following a weighted line to the ocean’s light-glimmering surface. He forced his eyes open.

  Merlin bent over him, a look of intense concentration on his face—as if praying—as he dipped a cloth into the steaming water and wrung it out. Jackson breathed in the odors of myrrh and minty hyssop and warm milk.
r />   Jackson tried to lever himself up on his elbows. Merlin glanced at him, surprised, wet cloth in hand. “Help me up—s’il vous plaît,” he said. “I need to take part in what-ever’s going on—all of it—since it’s my life.”

  Merlin didn’t even hesitate. He dropped the cloth back into the basin of water, then eased Jackson up into a sitting position with strong but wet hands. “Damn straight, man. It is your life.”

  The room spun and black spots peppered Jackson’s vision, and for a moment, he thought he was going to pass out; but the nomad supported him with one hand between his shoulder blades, the other gripping his shoulder until the room steadied.

  “C’est ça bon,” Jackson murmured, gripping the table’s edges for balance. He met Merlin’s bicolored eyes. “Thanks.”

  “We got no time to waste,” Ambrose reminded them. “Get this done.”

  “Mais oui, Premier,” Angélique said in a respectful tone.

  With a quick smile, the nomad wrung the cloth out again. “Close your eyes and try to envision a column of white light pouring in through the top of your skull and flowing like blood throughout your body, okay?”

  Nodding, Jackson closed his eyes and did just that—or tried to, anyway. The potion’s drugs and the fever kept chipping away at his concentration like chisels into ice.

  He felt a wet cloth on his skin, trailing ice along his chest, his back, his limbs. Smelled smoky incense. Heard Angélique’s soft voice chanting, “Spirits of the wilderness, sacred mother, fair and true, I appeal to you. Jackson Bonaparte has been crossed by evil and desires to be free of this negative and attacking energy …”

  “Incoming,” Merlin whispered into his ear.

  Jackson opened his eyes, trying to puzzle out that cryptic comment, when the nomad upended the basin over his head and ended his speculation. Jackson gasped as the potioned and fragrant water cascaded over him—fever-morphed into an icy waterfall—streaming down his face, chest, and back. Soaking his hair. He shivered convulsively, his skin goosebumping, and pushed his wet hair back from his face.

  Cielo watched him, tongue lolling, from where she sat beside the table, looking somehow amused.

  Get-in-the-tub time, Daddy.

  Angélique stepped past Merlin, a lit white candle in one hand—which she passed to the nomad—so she could anoint Jackson on the forehead, throat, heart, just above the belly button, and then, as he shifted uncomfortably beneath her light touch, on the crotch of his boxer-briefs with oil that smelled of sandalwood and patchouli and myrrh.

  “Protection comes to you this day, negativity and evil no longer hold sway,” Angélique chanted. Pacing back a step, she handed Merlin the bottle of oil and took back the candle. “So be it,” she proclaimed, finishing her trick.

  Jackson felt a strange energy pogo through the room like a hyperactive child freebasing sugar, then Cielo disappeared from view. Vanished. Jackson blinked. He was pretty sure either the fever or the drugs or both were fucking with his perceptions again, since Siberian huskies didn’t possess cloaking devices.

  “Did y’all see that?” Angélique said, her words slow and stunned and shaken. “The dog just went invisible.”

  Oh, she’s gonna like that, Jackson reckoned. A soft whoo confirmed his opinion.

  Voices clamored that they had, indeed, seen the dog go invisible, and what the hell just happened? And what had been that weird-ass energy that had bounced through the room just prior to the dog’s vanishing?

  Jackson closed his eyes, listening, as a burning tide of fever and reawakening pain swept over him. He swayed and his fingers tightened their grip on the edges of the table. The muscles in his right forearm spasmed, then quieted.

  “We’ll figure it out later.” Ambrose’s voice cut through all the perplexed and anxious chatter. “It’s time to go. I’ll carry Jackson.”

  “No.” Jackson opened his eyes. “I’ll walk. I might need some support,” he admitted. “But I’m going on my own two feet. Ain’t being carried, me.”

  Ambrose nodded, and Jackson could see that his response had pleased him. “C’est bien. We’ll walk together.”

  Once Jackson had swung his legs around and slid off the table to the floor, Ambrose’s steel-fingered hand locked around his biceps and kept him on his feet when his legs wobbled beneath him. Angélique draped a blanket over him for the walk outside.

  With Angélique on one side and Ambrose on the other, Jackson walked slowly—more like tottered, he thought grimly—to the door, his muscles protesting each step. A tall, powerfully built man with tawny hair and beard stepped aside.

  “Bonne chance,” he said.

  Recognizing his voice, Jackson stopped. “René, right? I remember you. At the grave and in the pirogue. ‘Lâche pas,’” he said. “Merci beaucoup.”

  René inclined his head, brown eyes glinting with an emotion Jackson couldn’t name, then said, “And it still holds true, you. Lâche pas.”

  Once outside, the small party—Jackson, Ambrose, January, and Angélique—followed a well-trod dirt path past other swamp cottages and cabanes dripping with rain beneath a canopy of oaks and cypress. The air smelled of wet leaves, moss, and the bayou stretching beyond the houses and serving as their driveways.

  Jackson sensed more than saw people watching from their windows and on their porches. The quiet was so profound—except for cicada buzz and bird trills—he heard only their own quiet footfalls. A cold dread nestled in his guts.

  At the path’s end, he saw a small stone cottage with narrow slits for windows near its roofline. Must be the cage. His dread deepened.

  “It’s tradition to have someone with you during First Change,” Angélique said. “Someone to comfort and encourage and guide.”

  “Under normal circumstances, oui,” January replied. “But not with such a late First Change … if he becomes a monster, a mindless wolf-man. Too dangerous.”

  Jackson stiffened at his tante’s words: such a late First Change. Did his age make a difference in his survival—his human nature too deeply rooted?

  “He’s my brother’s son. Mon neveu préféré. I’ll stay with him. See him through.”

  “Ambrose, no …” January sighed.

  Sudden dizziness spun Jackson and he stumbled. His uncle kept a tight grip on him. “No shame if you don’t have the strength to walk any farther, boy,” he murmured.

  “I’ll make it,” Jackson replied, feeling like he was coming unmoored and about to drift away again, a piece of flotsam on a dark tide.

  He thought of Keats, dying of consumption at twenty-five, trapped in a cramped little room on the Spanish Steps, listening to the sounds of life just outside his window and wanting to get up and walk out—yearning for it, but unable to. He’d never leave that room again. Not alive.

  I have a choice and I can walk.

  When they reached the cottage, Ambrose grabbed the thick stone door’s iron ring and pulled it open, stone scraping against stone. Stale air smelling of straw and old blood and musky pheromones rushed out.

  Angélique gently drew the blanket from Jackson’s shoulders and draped it over her arm. “You can do this,” she told him. “You came back to us for a reason and it wasn’t to die.” She brushed the backs of her fingers against his cheek, the touch of skin icy against his. “Whatever you do, don’t give up.”

  “I won’t,” Jackson promised, a smile brushing his lips.

  January said nothing. Instead, she embraced him tightly, then released him and walked away.

  As Jackson stepped into the dark cottage, he heard the click of nails against stone. “Out, you,” he said to his invisible dog. “You be a good girl and go with Angélique.”

  Angélique came over and patted the air, feeling for Cielo. Cielo’s argumentative whoo-whoo gave her position away and the traiteur was able to grasp the Siberian husky’s collar. With a reassuring smile at Jackson, she led Cielo away, which looked pretty damned odd—a woman walking hunched over, her fingers looped through an invisible collar. br />
  “Over there,” Ambrose said, pointing at the far wall. Steel glinted in the gray daylight shafting into the cottage. Chains.

  Jackson nodded, mouth too dry for speech, and sat where his uncle had indicated. He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. Butterflies raged in his stomach. He felt cold stone underneath him, heard the clink of chains, felt their icy touch against his skin as Ambrose locked them around his wrists and wrapped them around his waist. He smelled straw and steel, his uncle’s juniper scent.

  “I’m here, boy,” Ambrose said quietly. “You ain’t alone, you.”

  And like a dog whistled to a bone, the pain capered over on eager paws. Seized him. Wrenched and pulled. Tore him apart. His body arched and contorted as his bones cracked and shifted.

  The chains clanked as the links suddenly pulled taut.

  Jackson screamed.

  THIRTY

  SHE BE A JINX

  It was nearly midnight and the rain had stopped by the time the scarecrow finally wandered out of the sugarcane field. Wearing weather-beaten Goodwill clothes and her husband’s old straw cowboy hat, the scarecrow tottered on stiff, straw-filled legs into the pale pool of light spilling into Addie Martin’s front yard from the porch.

  Addie watched from her front porch, hands on the hips of her bluebell-printed sundress, as the scarecrow—missing one black button eye—plowed straight into the palm tree near the cracked sidewalk leading up to the steps, bounced, then fell into a heap of faded cloth and straw on the lawn.

  “One of your backfires?”

  Addie nodded. “At least I think so.” She glanced at the dark-haired man standing beside her wearing a short-sleeved white shirt and faded jeans, a root doctor up from Jeanerette to attend the hoodoo emergency meeting. “The result of a spell I fixed this morning for good health—of all things.”

  The root doctor—and now Addie’s memory deftly supplied his name, John Blaine—shook his head. “Near as I’ve been able to learn, it seems like everything started going to hell in a handbasket right around dawn.”