Chapter 10

 

The altar was arranged, and the offerings were in place. Legba’s veve, drawn in ash on the floor, was sealed by some kind of varnish or polyurethane to prevent it from getting smudged. A smart move, no doubt devised by years of experience as Voodoo’s queen. The altar was draped in black, with a red cloth atop the black one just covering the top of the altar. Marie lit the candles she’d arranged on the altar in advance and opened a jar full of pennies.

“Papa Legba wants pennies?” I asked.

“He adores copper, always has. And like most of the Loa, he’s a smoker.” Marie placed a corn cob pipe on the altar, already stuffed full of tobacco. She then popped open a bottle and poured a shot.

“A smoker and a drinker?”

“Aren’t they all?” Marie asked. “Kalfu likes his rum spiced with gunpowder. At least Legba will take his straight. Though I’ve learned that coconut-flavored rum is his favorite.”

“Is all this really necessary? I mean, if I’m bringing him back anyway…”

“Of course, dear. He will mount Chad in Samhuinn, but the binding cannot be completed until you return.”

“Aren’t you lighting these candles a bit prematurely? I mean, there’s no telling how long this will take.”

“No, child. That place is removed from space and time as we know it. When you return, no matter how long you seem to have been gone, it will be but moments here.”

“Oh yeah,” I said. I knew this fact—I’d been to Guinee many times, and each time I returned, only a few minutes had passed. Beli was pretty good and getting me back at roughly the same time I’d left. Still, my mind was a bit aloof. I was still put off by the whole Chad situation—and I wished I could have brought along my own friends, Pauli at least. Still, there was no telling how much time we’d waste gathering them together, if I could even find them. And Mercy had made it clear that her hands were full already, and she wasn’t wrong that Pauli would come in handy if she needed help corralling any of her vampire younglings. Not like it was a big deal. I was basically just making a quick trip to Samhuinn—the closest thing to Hell I’d ever experienced—with the dickweed of the century. What could go wrong?

I heard a toilet flush.

“The lizard is drained, and Chad is ready to go!”

I nodded. Now he was talking in the third person. About his drained “lizard.” Not that talking in the third person was that annoying—on occasion, I’d even do it. But when Chad did it, I just wanted to punch him in the face.

I grunted. “I didn’t hear the sink. Go wash your hands.”

“Yes, mother!”

I heard the sink turn on and off quickly. “With soap, asshole!” I shouted.

“I did use soap!”

“No you didn’t. The sink was on for two seconds. No way you washed with soap.”

Chad laughed—God his laugh was annoying. “Busted! Send me to the no-hand-washer’s prison. Life without parole!”

“I’m serious. Go back in there and wash your hands.”

Marie was smiling, clearly amused by the way I was handling him. Chad was like a child and had fewer brain cells than a hamster. It wasn’t just about him not washing his hands. If I had my way, he wouldn’t be touching me anyway. But he had to know that he couldn’t get away with his shit once we crossed over. I had to make sure he knew I was in charge.

I grinned a little as I heard the water run, for about twenty seconds this time. “Sometimes you just have to tell them like it is,” I said.

“Indeed, you do. Men can be like children. And Chad is particularly difficult, I admit.”

“So, ready to cut this portal, or should I?”

“I will, dear. I’ve done this enough times that I’m reasonably sure I can get you somewhere in the vicinity of where you need to go. Do not lose Legba’s remains.”

I was still clinging to the shrunken head of Legba’s former host. “I won’t. Hard to lose something like this.”

Marie Laveau handed me a burlap sack—the one she’d had it in before. Grateful, I put the head in the bag and tied its drawstring around a loop in my jeans. Much easier, and less creepy, to carry a head around in a baggie than by its hair.

“Through this,” Marie said, “Legba will help guide you to where you need to go.”

I nodded. I wasn’t sure what she meant, but I assumed things would become clear when we arrived. In my experience, when it comes to Voodoo, you can ask questions all day long, but things are never exactly the way they’re explained. The only way to really handle a situation in the Voodoo world is through experience.

Marie Laveau gripped her blade—the one she called Bellum—and cut a semicircle into the air, just above where Legba’s veve was drawn in ash on the floor. When I’d cut gates, I never knew where they’d take me—usually they opened into the garden groves of Guinee, but maybe one out of ten gates would open somewhere in Samhuinn. Usually I closed those as quickly as I opened them. Marie was clearly more practiced cutting such gates than I was.

“See you in a few moments,” I said, winking at Marie.

“I’ll be right here,” she said.

I took Chad’s hand—I know I wasn’t intending to touch him, but I figured he’d need a little guidance to make it through. It was soaking wet—he’d washed with soap and water but didn’t dry his hands. I took a deep breath, restraining my annoyance with my chosen travel companion, and stepped into the gate.

The scorching heat of Samhuinn hit me like a ton of bricks to the face.

“Dude, it’s hot here!” Chad exclaimed, demonstrating that he had a good grasp of the obvious.

“Yeah, no shit.”

I smiled slightly as I gently inhaled, drawing in a bit of Isabelle’s magica to soothe the pain of the heat as it radiated off my skin. “Doesn’t bother me too much, though.”

“What did you do just there?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your eyes. They started to glow a little.”

I shrugged. “None of your business.”

“Dude, come on.”

“First, I’m not a dude. Second, why does it matter? You’re going to be dead in a few hours anyway.” I regretted the words almost the moment I’d said them. The last thing I needed was for Chad to start having second thoughts.

“That was cold.”

“Well you were complaining that it’s too hot, so…”

“You know what I mean. You don’t think I’m afraid to die?”

“Could have fooled me,” I said as I surveyed our surroundings. As far as I could see there was nothing—barren tundra spanning miles of wasteland. Nothing so much as a shrub to be seen.

“I act this way because I’m scared shitless. Acting like a moron—well, besides the fact that it comes naturally and is aided by some good smoke—is just my way of coping with it.”

I pressed my lips together and nodded. For the first time, Chad was showing some semblance of being a human and not a Neanderthal. I’d hold my tongue and let him have his peace. This time, anyway.

“My life hasn’t been worth much. Never amounted to anything, really. Would you believe that my parents were both lawyers?”

I chuckled. “At least you had parents. Mine were invalids most of my life.”

“Trust me, that might actually be better than having two lawyers raise you.”

“I can imagine.” I cracked a grin.

“The way I see it is if my life didn’t mean much, then maybe my death can. Like do you sign that organ donor thing on the back of your license?”

I cringed a little. I’d always meant to. I knew the importance of it but just never got around to it. “No, but I meant to. I’ll have to do that when I get back.”

“I always sign mine. Figured if all my parts could be divided up, who knows how many lives I could save, ya know? Maybe I’ll save the guy who cures cancer even… a little too late for me, but maybe for someone else it would make a difference.”

“That’s actually really cool,” I said.

“I squandered away my life. But now my death can mean something. This Legba dude… seems like he’s pretty important.”

“He might be the key to saving the world, actually,” I said.

Chad grinned widely. “That’s pretty badass.”

“I agree,” I said.

“Hey, sorry about that earlier. I was being an ass. I get that way when I’m afraid.”

“I get it,” I said. “Doesn’t excuse it. But I get it.”

Chad nodded. “So, I guess we walk?”

“Hell no,” I said, smiling widely. “Beli!” I shouted.

“You calling forth a blade, like Marie?”

I shook my head. “If we were on earth, that’s exactly what would happen.”

I heard a loud shriek from the distance and looked up to see Beli’s massive form gliding toward us.

“Holy shit!” Chad exclaimed.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “Beli is a friend.”

Dust went flying as Beli’s large talons crashed into the ground. With a single flap of his wings, the air cleared. I’d forgotten how majestic he was. Not as large as the sea wyrm I’d ridden in Fomoria, but a glorious creature in his own right.

“Great to see you, Beli!”

“Likewise,” the dragon responded.

Chad stared at Beli wide-eyed and dumbfounded. “Dude… all I can say… is dude.”

“Yeah,” I said, playing it coy. “I can summon dragons… well, a dragon, anyway.”

“And it talked… the dragon talked.”

“He’s quite articulate, actually.”

“Why wouldn’t I talk?” the dragon asked. “But this one seems to be struggling with his words. Is this what you humans call babies?”

I snickered. The dragon was talking smack with Chad. I mean, dragons don’t really need to talk smack. Their very presence accomplishes anything that smack-talking ever might—bravado, intimidation, badassery, etcetera. You get the idea.

He’s actually like forty, Isabelle said.

“Forty!” Beli exclaimed. He was as much Isabelle’s elemental dragon as he was mine—it was the elements that both of us together drew that constituted Beli’s makeup.

“And he reads minds. How does he know how old I am? Everyone thinks I’m still in my twenties…”

I looked at Chad incredulously. “You might think that when you look in the mirror, but trust me, no one else does.”

“Come on. I look good for my age!”

I opened my mouth to talk and then thought better of it. If he wanted to leave this world thinking he was hot stuff, I wasn’t going to get in his way. Not to mention, after he’d opened up to me—albeit very briefly—I felt a little bad about how I’d been speaking to him. Death is a crazy thing, and when it stares us in the face, we are all likely to act a bit strange. Who was I to judge? Aside from his little game of grab ass, he hadn’t acted that offensively—mostly he was behaving like a moron. Annoying and immature. But mostly harmless.

I grabbed onto Beli’s wing and pulled myself up his body, flinging my legs around until I was straddling his back. “What you waiting for?” I asked Stoner Chad. “You coming, or are you planning to walk?”

“I…” Chad stopped talking. Probably a good thing—when he opened his mouth, nothing good ever came out of it. He charged Beli, tried to grab onto his wing like I’d done, then fell flat on his ass, forcing a cloud of dust to billow beneath him.

I laughed so hard I had to hold on tightly to Beli’s scales to prevent myself from rolling over. “Oh my God! That might have been the most epic fail I’ve seen I a while.”

Chad stood up. Based on the rouge that flashed across his cheeks, he was clearly embarrassed. He dusted off his jeans.

“Your parkour needs some work,” I said, still laughing through my words.

“I guess it’s time I give up my dreams of auditioning for American Ninja Warrior.”

“I’d say it’s probably time!”

“You know, since I’m going to be dead before the next auditions.”

I quickly muffled my giggles—that wasn’t the sort of comment you laugh through. “Really, we were just having a good laugh. Come on, now…”

“Sorry… I’ve always been a mood killer.”

“Look, try to get a running start. Use your momentum to throw your legs over the top. You don’t have to lift your whole weight with your arms.”

Chad took a step back.

He lunged back into a runner’s pose—totally unnecessary, but I wasn’t going to tell him that—and charged toward Beli. This time he gripped the wing and managed to get one leg over Beli’s back before I grabbed him by the waist of his pants and pulled him over the rest of the way.

“Hey! Wedgie!”

I giggled. “That’s payback for grabbing my butt earlier. Deal with it.”

“Tooshie,” Chad said.

“I really hope you meant touché, because what you said is just another word for butt.”

“Um yeah. Touché!”

“Though I guess in the context of this discussion, it is your tooshie that is suffering.”

“My butt is fine. My underwear on the other hand… I think I’ll need another pair.”

“Papa Legba would probably appreciate that. Poor Loa’s going to have to deal with it, I suppose.”

“I’m giving him my body. He can deal with my ripped drawers.”

I smiled. “I suppose that’s true. Hold on to Beli’s scales.”

“How do I…”

“Look at my hands. Just slide your hands under the scales like so, grip the scale underneath. It’s the only way to really hold on.”

“Other than holding on to your waist.”

I turned over my shoulder and glared at Chad.

“I’m kidding. Chill out. I’m not going to touch you again. I want to keep all my appendages, at least for the next several hours while I still have a body.”

I nodded. “Hold on tight. This is going to be fun.”

Go easy on him, Beli. We need to get him to Legba in one piece, Isabelle said.

Beli grunted. Clearly “going easy” on him wasn’t what he’d had in mind. Not that I blamed him. If I were the one determining our flight path, we’d be hitting as many loop-de-loops and corkscrews as possible. Not only because I’d relish the thrill of the flight, but because I’d get a kick out of Chad’s terrified reaction. Of course, if he peed his pants, he was sitting just behind me… and when Legba took the host, he was already going to have to deal with ripped undies. Pee pee pants were just too much.

“Nothing crazy, Beli,” I said, echoing Isabelle’s sentiment. “We need to find Papa Legba. Can you take us to him?”

Beli snorted. “I can, but…”

“But what?” I asked.

“But the domain of the Loa is on the other side of Samhuinn, not in Samhuinn itself.”

“And not in Guinee’s Garden Groves?” I asked.

“No, the other side…”

“I didn’t know there was an other side.”

“Of course there is. Samhuinn doesn’t go on forever.”

“Then where is it we’re going?”

“Into the void, the place from where I was born—the chaos of what once was before the Earth, before even this domain, ever was.”

“That sounds like a bad part of town… but Marie Laveau has been there. She’s brought many Loa from that place.”

“No,” Beli said. “She traveled on the back of my brother, and I should know. She only went there once. Every time thereafter, it was Legba who brought the Loa out of the void, and she who brought hosts to Legba.”

That doesn’t sound like what she described…

I sighed. Isabelle was right. “Maybe she was afraid if I knew in advance I wouldn’t go?”

Maybe…

I took a deep breath and released it. “Well, what choice do we have? The song takes on new meaning now. You ready, Chad?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Beli,” I said before bursting into my pitchy rendition of Elsa’s girl-power anthem. “Into the unknooooooooooowwwwn!”