Black Heart Loa

  But Kallie was afraid all the bayou-born toughness in the world wouldn’t be enough to counter the double-whammy of magic gone bad and a mother’s broken binding. All the same, Kallie nodded. “Damn straight.”

  Angélique led the way while Merlin, now dressed in jeans, a blue tee, and scooter boots, followed a few yards behind his wife, his Coleman lantern lighting the way for those lacking preternatural sight—like himself.

  The jingling of Cielo’s collar told Kallie that the invisible stealth husky—thanks to the goddamned magic snafus—still padded beside her. She had a feeling, after Cielo’s prancing, whooing greeting, that the dog was very pleased with her new condition.

  A fierce rush of wind kicked Kallie’s damp hair over her face, pushed at her back. Tree limbs creaked ominously. She smelled brine and ozone and wet fur.

  “Wind’s picking up,” Belladonna commented.

  “Yup,” Layne replied, voice tight. “Ain’t Evelyn supposed to be twenty or thirty hours out?”

  “The wards could be doing more than just summoning her, they could be hurrying her along too,” Kallie said, giving voice to a grim possibility.

  “Virgin Mary in a leaky boat. There’s a fucking cheery thought.”

  They drew to a stop in front of the cottage and Angélique grabbed hold of the iron ring in the stone door’s center. She glanced at Kallie from over her shoulder. “Remember,” she said. “He ain’t gonna look the same.”

  Kallie nodded, throat tight.

  The muscles in the traiteur’s arms corded and stone scraped against stone as she pulled the heavy door open. Heated air reeking of wild and wounded animals, dark and musky, rife with the odors of blood and straw and piss, washed over Kallie, tugged at her breath.

  Releasing the ring, Angélique stepped back. “She’s here, Ambrose.”

  “Send her in,” a male voice replied, low and just a little weary.

  The quick click of claws against stone and her jingling collar indicated that Cielo had already dashed inside.

  “Dog too, apparently,” the male said in dry tones.

  Angélique’s eyes flashed silver beneath Merlin’s lantern. “Kin only,” she reminded, her gaze skipping from Belladonna to Layne. Both nodded their understanding.

  “We’ll be right here, Shug,” Belladonna said, slipping a companionable arm around Layne’s leather-jacketed waist. “Give Jacks my love and tell him to get his fine ass feeling better. Wait. Is it a furry ass now?”

  Kallie tried to smile, but felt her effort falter. “I’ll tell him,” she managed. Heart pounding, scared of what she’d find, she stepped into the cottage. The stone door thunked shut behind her, cutting off all light. She stood, blinking, waiting for her eyes to adjust, and for her heart to calm.

  “He’s over here, girl.” The speaker’s eyes glinted green in the thin light trickling in through the window slit from the dying night outside. “I’m Ambrose Bonaparte, Nicolas’s frère and Jackson’s nonc. I understand you’re a cousin on his mama’s side.”

  “That I am,” Kallie replied. “His only cousin on that side of the family.”

  Making out a man-sized shape sitting against the north wall beside a darker, wolf-shaped form, Kallie hurried across the straw-strewn floor. A soft sigh, followed by a jingle, told her that Cielo had lain down near her Daddy.

  Kallie knelt beside the dark-furred wolf lying on its side on the cold stone. “Jackson,” she whispered, heart clenching. She studied him, struggling with the change in him—fur and paws and fangs. Her hand shook as she reached out and gently touched her cousin’s side. Thick, warm fur greeted her fingertips.

  Their shared long-ago summer night of fireflies and wolf whispers pulsed through her mind. And Kallie drew on its magical possibilities as she remembered Jackson’s pride that night.

  “I won’t do a big Change into a real wolf, but I’ll do a little Change, me, and be a two-legged wolf someday.”

  “I wish I could be a wolf. I’d howl all night and eat up the people I don’t like.”

  “He surprised me,” Ambrose said quietly. “Him, he did something I ain’t never seen a half blood do before—transform to full wolf.”

  Something in his voice made Kallie look up and meet Ambrose’s lambent gaze. She felt a sharp pang as she realized how much he looked like her long-dead uncle. “Is that bad? I know he didn’t expect to, but …”

  “Normally, I’d say it was a damned good thing, an amazing and wondrous thing,” Ambrose replied, “a thing to be proud of. But in this case …” He shook his head. “First Change ain’t done, ain’t a success, until transformation is made, then reversed.” His attention returned to Jackson. A muscle played in his jaw. “He’s had so much going against him: the late Change, all the blood he’d lost, exhaustion.” His voice roughened. “Me, I don’t believe he has the strength to Change back—not from full wolf.”

  “You giving up on him?” Kallie bristled, eyes burning. “’Cuz I ain’t.”

  “Ain’t giving up, girl. Just being realistic. Boy’s done wrung out. If Change had happened at any other time, maybe …”

  Wind moaned through the windows slits—an eerie chorus of ghosts.

  “Then feed him, pour potions into him, have the traiteur work on him!”

  “We’ve done all that and more,” Ambrose said, and his gentle tone scared her even more than the slow, labored rise and fall of Jackson’s chest beneath her fingers. “He’s got nothing left to give.”

  Kallie shook her head, blinking away tears.

  Don’t do it, child. It ain’t yo’ place.

  If she’d listened to Divinity and had allowed Doctor Heron’s black-oiled soul to escape into the night, then the trick Tante Lucia—for whatever goddamned reason—had fixed to keep her son in one form would still be working, and Jackson wouldn’t be dying.

  But she hadn’t listened. And guess what? Divinity had been right. What she’d done had been wrong, no matter how she justified it. In the end, she’d been no better than Doctor Heron himself.

  “Jackson, hey, cher,” Kallie said, stroking her hand along her cousin’s side. “I ain’t gonna let you give up. I know you’re tired, but you gotta fight through it, just like you taught me how to box, how to aim my anger through my fists and into the bag.”

  Jackson’s muscles twitched underneath Kallie’s hand. His eyelids fluttered open and he looked at her with eyes that held a faint and dimming absinthe-green glow. His muzzle worked, like he was trying to talk, but the only sound he made was a combination gargle-whoo. She furiously blinked away more tears.

  Cielo gave a soft answering whoo.

  “I know a way to fix all this,” Kallie said, voice husky. “But you’ve got to keep fighting, cher, until I can. I promised Ti-tante that I’d bring you home safe and sound and you know I can’t break a promise—so don’t make me kick your scrawny ass.”

  Jackson offered up another gargling attempt at speech, then swiped at the floor with one paw. Okay.

  “C’est ça bon,” Kallie said, her throat so tight it ached with each word. She bent, wrapped her arms around her cousin’s neck, and rested her face against his, breathed in his sour/musky odor of blood and fur and too much pain. Whispered, “‘Give me women, wine and snuff / Until I cry out “hold, enough!” / You may do so sans objection / Till the day of resurrection: / For, bless my beard, they aye shall be / My beloved Trinity.’”

  Releasing Jackson, Kallie sat up. “I’m holding you to that, Jackson Bonaparte. You keep goddamned fighting. You wanna give up, you hafta be actually able to say ‘hold, enough!’ before I’ll ever let you go.”

  Jumping to her feet, she strode across the floor, straw crunching under her boots, and hammered her fist against the stone door. She felt Ambrose’s gaze on her back.

  She could only hope that she’d told Jackson the truth about knowing how to fix things. What if Devlin Daniels was wrong? When the door shuddered, then scraped open, and Kallie stepped out, she found herself facing a woman she didn’t reco
gnize, instead of Angélique.

  The woman looked to be a youthful forty with a narrow-hipped and boyish figure, her wind-tossed hair a spill of alabaster silk. But her eyes were her most arresting feature: a deep jade green like a depthless Caribbean sea at twilight.

  Angélique and Merlin stood beside her—though the shuvano dimmed his lantern to spare the sensitive loup-garou eyes. “Kallie, this is January, Ambrose’s wife, and the other half of our Alpha pair,” the traiteur said.

  “So, you’re Kallie Rivière, Jackson’s human cousin,” January said, folding her arms beneath her small bust and studying her with those Caribbean eyes. Kallie tried not to bristle at the disdain threading through the word human. “Who marked you?”

  Kallie glanced down at the bloodied claw scrapes scoring the tender flesh near the scooped neckline of her tank top.

  Yo’ heart be mine, Kallie Rivière, hoodoo woman.

  Kallie quickly shoved aside the uncomfortable memory. “Devlin Daniels,” she said. “He’s also the one who told me to seek out Angélique and Merlin—although he didn’t give any names.”

  “Devlin? He sent you?” Surprise flickered across the Alpha’s face. Her gaze, now uneasy, returned to the claw marks on Kallie’s chest. “And claimed you,” she murmured, almost to herself.

  Kallie stiffened. “The hell he did.” She felt Layne stir beside her, felt his gaze. “Forget about that. It’s what he told me that’s important—that I’m the cause behind everything that’s gone wrong since yesterday morning.”

  “Dat’s what I been saying all along,” a familiar voice said from the shadows beneath the oak tree. “Dis girl be a walking jinx, a living hex.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  DEADLINE

  “Jesus in a cracker tin,” Layne muttered. “Just what we need.”

  A cold brick of dread dropped into Kallie’s stomach when she saw Baron Samedi stroll into view, still wearing his Cash suit, and twirling his walking stick in one white-gloved hand. He sauntered to a stop beside January, his sunglasses-hidden gaze looking everywhere but at Kallie. The sharp smell of hot-peppered rum spiced the air.

  He still can’t see me. That’s one good thing.

  “Y’all don’t understand—the magic ricochets have affected the Baron too,” Kallie said. “And his cheval hates—”

  “One thieving, betraying, sorry-ass sonuvabitch named Jackson Bonaparte who’s just run outta time,” the Baron said in Cash’s voice, then laughed. “And I ain’t a fucking cheval at the moment, darlin’.”

  Kallie’s hands clenched into fists. “I know how to fix this. I need a little time—”

  “Sorry. Time’s up.”

  “We’ll just see about that,” Kallie promised, stepping in front of the loa. “Give me the time I need to set things right or I’ll let my loa come out and play a few hexing games.”

  Of course, the last part was pure bluff, since she didn’t even know how to contact her loa, let alone release her, but the Samedi-Cash didn’t know that—hopefully.

  Thunder boomed, shaking the ground and launching Kallie’s heart into her throat. Baron Samedi seemed to stretch up into the cloud-roiling sky as though rising on stilts, his Armani suit jacket flapping in the wind, and his skull-painted face scowling down on her. Her blood turned to ice.

  “Holy shit,” Layne whispered.

  “Agreed,” Belladonna said.

  “Who you t’ink you be talking to, little hoodoo? Mebbe I can’t see you ’cuz o’ yo tricks, but I can close de gates between de world of de living and de realm of de dead and leave you wandering forever in de Between Places.”

  “I was talking to your cheval, Baron, not to you,” Kallie said, mouth dry. “I never intended those words for you. All I’m asking for is the chance to restore things to their proper natures, the chance to save my cousin’s life and—”

  The Baron’s voice rumbled across the night sky and vibrated up from the ground, echoing within her. “Kallie Rivière, you got ten hours to restore t’ings to deir proper natures. If you don’t get it done in dat time, I’m sending yo’ cousin to de realm of de dead—if he ain’t had the good sense to die before den—and I will find a way to strip dat loa from yo’ luscious body and leave you empty in de Between Places.”

  Baron Samedi vanished in a retina-searing flash of forked lightning. The pungent scent of ozone and peppered rum saturated the air.

  Kallie looked away, blinking and shaken. Instead of getting Cash to back off from his quest to kill Jackson, all she’d succeeded in doing was pissing off the loa of death and resurrection and earning herself a deadline. Never a good thing.

  “Hellfire,” Belladonna said. “Oh, Shug, ten hours …”

  “Start talking, girl,” January commanded. Wind whipped her hair across her face and her eyes glowed between the white strands.

  Shoving her trembling hands into the pockets of her shorts, Kallie did just that. She told January and Angélique and Merlin everything. And she watched their expressions shift from disbelieving, to shocked, to horrified as she told them about Doctor Heron and his black dust and the tragic case of mistaken identity, about the loa her mother had replaced her soul with, about what Devlin had found inside of her.

  It be de black dust you took in from Doctor Heron. De hex you sucked down when you unzipped de man’s soul. It captured de loa, webbed her up like a fat fly in a spiderweb and it feeds on her power, using it to magnify its own. Dat be de cause of all de magical mishaps.

  “Great Mother,” Angélique whispered, her face stunned. Sympathy glimmered in her eyes. “You’re caught in a nightmare.”

  “I think that sums it up, yup,” Kallie replied. “Devlin told me to ask y’all about the sacred fire, that it was the only way to fix things.”

  Merlin’s eyes widened. He whistled low and long, then said, “Holy goddamn. The sacred fire. Yeah, yeah, that could definitely work. The sacred fire is a very powerful and transformative energy, yeah. But …”

  “But what?” Kallie asked. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”

  “Excuse me,” Belladonna said. “But we’re talking sex magic, right?”

  Kallie stared at her. “We are?”

  “Yup,” Merlin agreed. “But the sacred fire ain’t magic, per se—which is a good thing, given all the problems we’re having with magic.”

  “Then what is it?” Kallie asked.

  “It’s a ritual of prolonged, very intense sex,” Merlin replied, meeting her gaze, and Kallie noticed for the first time that his eyes were two different colors, one blue and one brown—much like Cielo’s, but with deeper, richer shades. “And by prolonged, I’m talking hours, not days. Though that’s been done too, with some amazing results.”

  Kallie blinked. Days? She wanted to ask if the people involved had survived their marathon of intense sex, but decided that if they hadn’t, they’d most likely died sweaty and exhausted, but very happy. “And this ritual creates the sacred fire?”

  Merlin nodded. “Yup. Raw sexual energy heightened by connection on all levels—physical, spiritual, mental—by the couple performing. The sacred fire is powerful, a positive and life-affirming energy that will burn to ash anything dark or destructive within you and your partner—or around you.”

  Belladonna leaned in and cupped a hand around Kallie’s ear. “Sounds like a fancy way of saying you fuck away the black dust,” she whispered. “Where do I sign up to get hexed?”

  Kallie whapped Belladonna’s shoulder. “Evil.”

  “But,” Merlin said pointedly, recapturing Kallie’s attention, “there’s still a problem. Like I said, the energy generated is way fucking powerful, and that kind of light and heat lures all manner of things—good and bad—to a couple completely vulnerable in the throes of sex.”

  “And now, thanks to the magic snafus,” Angélique said, “we can’t use normal protective measures, such as wards or protective circles.”

  Kallie nodded, her stomach sinking. “What other options do we have? I hafta do this, I hafta tr
y, at least.”

  “If we had more trained shuvanos or traiteurs here, then we might have a chance,” Merlin said thoughtfully. “We could become living wards, surrounding you with positive energy and channeled white light, instead of magic. Use chants. Drums.”

  “I could help,” Belladonna volunteered. “I’m a voodooienne.”

  Hope surged renewed through Kallie as a possibility bloomed bright. “Would hoodoos and voodoos work too?”

  A light glinted in Merlin’s eyes. “Definitely. But we ain’t got much time to round a bunch of people up—”

  “Wait, hold on,” January cut in, slashing her hands through the air in front of her. Once she had everyone’s attention, she continued in a quiet but forceful voice. “As unhappy as I am to have Outsiders in Le Nique”—her narrowed gaze slashed across Kallie, Belladonna, and Layne—“and as much as I wish to avoid admitting more, I realize the situation gives me little choice. But I have conditions that need to be met so I can keep my pack safe.”

  “Mais oui,” Kallie said. “Anything.”

  The Alpha’s conditions were simple: only those trained in magic and healing would be allowed—no friends or other tagalongs. René and a few other loups-garous of his choice would meet the incoming conjurers near Morgan City, some twenty miles distant, blindfold them, then bring them to Le Nique.

  “If they refuse the blindfold, they will be left behind,” January finished.

  “Fair enough,” Kallie said. “Give me just a minute.”

  She slipped her cell phone from her pocket, then walked up the path until she caught a signal. “We found Jackson,” she said when her aunt answered.

  “Praise Bon Dieu,” Divinity breathed. “Is de boy okay?”

  Kallie thought of the slow, labored rise and fall of her cousin’s chest beneath her fingertips and her throat tightened. “For now,” she lied. “Look, we need help. Are Addie and her posse still there?”

  “Oui, we been hashing t’ings out, us. What you need, child?”