a terrible beauty Read online

  “Who would call upon such a creature?” Sara asked. “Those who want to do harm. Bokors. But,” Father Baltazar added, “sometimes she comes when her sister is called. Voudon is not a science. And it is more than an art.” Finally, Paid Narcisse and his helpers seemed satisfied with the design they’d created around the poteau-mitan. After a brief, quiet consultation, they retreated back into the rooms at the rear of the hounfort.

  It looked as if the peristyle was a later addition grafted onto the caille mysteres, which were older structures, built in mossy stone. They were attached like town-houses, arranged in a shallow, semi-circular arc. Sara suddenly realized that they were above-ground crypts, probably once used by a large family or group of related families wheif the Cypress Hills National Cemeteiy was still an active conceni.

  There was a sudden murmur in the crowd as a man emerged from the sanctuary carrying a large drum. He looked familiar. Sara realized that he was the drummer of Mountains of Madness. She also realized that she didn’t know his name.

  Two other men accompanied him, carrying, respectively, a medium-sized and a small drum. They took up a place together behind the poteau-mitan.

  The drummer from Mountains of Madness skimmed the surface of his drumhead and a low rumbling came forth.

  “It begins,” Father Baltazar said quietly.

  As the assembled crowd turned their attention to the dancing ground, Paul Narcisse came again out of the caille mysteres, his arms spread wide, his expression intent and serious. Following him, a woman dressed in white led a line of a dozen or so dancers out of the sanctuary and they stalked counter-clockwise around the poteau-mitan. The men wore white shirts, the women white dresses and colorful kerchiefs tied about their heads.

  Paul Narcisse started to speak in a language Sara had never heard before. Somehow, maybe from knowledge leaking from the voices in her head, she knew it was an old language from an antique land. She couldn’t understand the words, but from the intonation of Narcisse’s voice she could tell that it,was a plea, an invocation of strong and strange powers. It was, Father Baltazar whispered to her, langage, the mystic tongue hougans used to communicate with the loa in Guinee.

  It seemed as if everything in the world was waiting, silent, expectant. The crowd was quiet, without a whispered murmur or shuffle .of feet. The three drummers stood alert by their drumsi watching Paul Narcisse who, face shining with sweat, arms thrown wide with gourd rattles in each hand, still prayed in langage. His eyes were closed, his teeth clenched. Those who had accompanied him from the caille mysteres were also watching him, silent and expectant.

  When he finished his impassioned plea the sudden utter silence exploded like a thunderclap on Sara’s brain. Even the voices in her head went totally silent. Tension built to an almost sexual peak. Sara could see the dancers’ muscles start to twitch.

  And then the drums began.

  The small one first. It was no more than eighteen inches tall, and the only one played with sticks instead of the drummer’s hands. It sounded like a staccato barrage of hail hitting a tin roof.

  The medium drum added a steady, rolling surf surging against a dark beach.

  Then came the largest drum, played by the drummer from Mountains of Madness, and from it erupted the booming heartbeat of the world.

  They each had their own pitch. They each had their own rhythm but they blended together like the braids of a rope. Sara had never heard anything like it before.

  Led by the woman in white, the dancers began to weave around the poteau-mitan, ignoring the delicately-drawn veve at their feet,.mixing it with sand as they shuffled through it. They danced singly, not in pairs, almost flat-footed, their shoulders shuddering and arms flapping clumsily.

  Sara wasn’t sure how long the dancing went on, but suddenly the man on the big drum threw his head back and she saw that his eyes were wild. Before he had played passionately but he’d been in control. Now he played like a man possessed. The big drum broke away from the others, smashing the rhythms that had meshed them together. Its beat hurled a broken counterpoint that struck the dancers like a volley of spears.

  Suddenly something seemed to strike Sara in the head, exploding like white darkness in her brain. She grabbed her temples, swaying. Father Baltazar, noticing her distress, caught her. She sagged into his surprisingly strong arms.

  “What is it?” he asked, concern on his face.

  “The drum,” she gasped. “Every beat feels like a nail driven into my brain, down my spine, across every nerve ending...”

  “We can’t stop the ceremony now,” Father Baltazar said. “It would be dangerous to all involved!”

  Sara grit her teeth. “I can take it.”

  She was panting like an animal, trying to control her pain.

  “Hold on,” Father Baltazar said, gripping her closely as if he could confer his strength to her shaking body.

  Sara tried to focus on the dancers. Like the drummer, they too, seemed to have lost control, and were wildly shaking and gyrating, no longer in concert, but as if in some chaotic mosh pit where everyone was dancing to a different song.

  She blinked rapidly. Paul Narcisse was gone. He’d disappeared from the dancing ground.

  The pain in her head mounted, and with it the babbling of the voices. They were almost incoherent as if they too were; in pain. Sara felt her grip loosening. Under her garments k metal band popped into existence and she gritted her teeth trying to hold it back. She couldn’t allow the Witchblade to materialize in front of all these people. For one thing, its razor-sharp edges would tear Father Baltazar to pieces. She concentrated fiercely, holding it at bay, but she knew she couldn’t keep it away for long.

  And then Paul Narcisse emerged again from the caille mysteres. He must have ducked back into the sanctuary soon after the drummer had gone into his mad beat. It was Paul Narcisse returning to the dance floor, certainly. -Yet, as Sara gazed at him, she couldn’t be sure.

  He had shrunken, somehow. Become smaller and twisted. He walked now with a pronounced limp. He probably couldn’t have walked at all if it wasn’t for the crutch that he leaned against heavily.

  He shuffled slowly like an old man, and, even from where she stood Sara could see that his eyes had changed. They weren’t the eyes of Paul Narcisse at all. They were ancient eyes, old with knowledge and experience well beyond a human lifetime. Their whites were shockingly bloodshot.

  He went to the concrete altar built around the poteau-mitan, walking through the gyrating dancers as if they weren’t there. He went straight to the bag that Sara had placed there, took out a double cheeseburger, unwrapped it, and began to eat. He looked directly at Sara, and the pain in her head went away. She hung in

  Father Baltazar’s arms, more from her desire for warm human contact than from weakness.

  “That was good,” Papa Legba said, as he slowly came towards Sara with his hobbling gait. “Next time bring a large fries, too.”

  He stopped before Sara and the priest. The rest of the crowd continued to watch the ongoing ceremony, giving them a bubble of jjfivacy in the controlled chaos that had gripped the old graveyard.

  There was no question in Sara’s mind that this was Papa Legba, that he’d descended from Guinee and taken over Paul Narcisse’s body. The movements, body language, facial expression, even vocal inflections were those of the ancient loa. Wherever Paul Narcisse was, he no longer inhabited his own body.

  “I need your help, Papa Legba,” Sara said.

  The spirit inhabiting the body of Paul Narcisse nodded. “You may ask for it, twice more. I’m afraid that is all I may help you, for many are in need of my aid.”

  “That should be enough,” Sara said. “My partner, Jake McCarthy, is missing. We think Guillaume Sam has taken him as a hostage.”

  “Ah, the great malfacteur. He is a dangerous one, with a powerful patron.”

  “Who, Papa Legba?”

  “Baron Samedi, master of the Guede Family, god of death and patron of sorcerers. A most
puissant loa.”

  Sara was afraid that Legba would confirm what she had been told. It looked as if rescuing Jake would fall somewhere between the impossible and the miraculous, and she figured that she couldn’t do it alone. She would have to call upon the Witchblade.

  With that thought, the voices inside her, strangely quiet and respectful in the presence of Papa Legba, quivered with barely suppressed delight.

  “How can I find Jake?” she asked with determination. “I will send you a guide,” Papa Legba promised. “His name is Sandro. Meet him at the Club Carrefour. He will show you a place you never thought existed in this city.” Sara looked around hefself. “I’ve already been to such a place tonight.”

  Papa Legba laughed. “No, you haven’t, child.” He gestured freely with the hand that did not grip his crutch. “This must all seem very strange to a most modem blanc as yourself, but, believe me, much more good than harm ever comes from this hounfort. Why, you yourself have sought—and received—help here.” He shook his head. “No, Sandro will take you to a place is not like this at all. He will take you to the heart of darkness in the city, where play the loup-garou and zobop. You must go there if you’re to save your partner, but—” and here the old spirit looked concerned “—I despair of your ever coming out.” “She will not go alone,” Father Baltazar said, speaking for the first time. “I will accompany her.”

  The loa nodded. “That is good. You are a man of the spirits. A strong man. She will need your aid.”

  Sara shook her head. “I can’t have you coming with me. The danger-”

  ’’That’s why,” Father Baltazar said with quiet firmness, “I’m going with you.”

  “Let him come,” Papa Legba told her. “You’ll need his help.” He turned to the priest. “And Father—”

  ”Yes?”

  “You will be better off bringing a gun then a cross. Just so you know.”

  The priest nodded splemnly. Papa Legba turned back toward the poteau-mitan, where the drumming and dancing had continued unabated.

  “Now I must return to the ceremony,” Papa Legba said. “The night is young. There is much dancing ahead and many loa will be called to'possess a mount and walk again on this earth.” .

  He hobbled back' toward the poteau-mitan. They watched him for a moment, then Sara turned to Father Baltazar.

  “What kind of dream have I fallen into?” she asked.

  “For these people,” he said, indicating the dancers and the raptly watching crowd, “it is simply life. For others— for you, for Jake, for those fallen to the Machete Mur-derer-it is a nightmare.”

  • , He took her arm and together they walked swiftly from the forgotten graveyard.

  9 CHAPTER

  TEN

  How are we going to find this Sandro?” Sara asked. She paused, thinking. “And how will we know him when we, see him?”

  “Good questions,” Father Baltazar said. “Let’s just hope he—or she—is better informed than we are.”

  There were again in the city, a world of cars and noise and electricity, only a few miles removed from the primeval sanctuaiy where the hounfort lay unsuspected, where the drums called down the loa to meet their worshipers on quite a personal level.

  A crowd had already gathered around Club Carrefour. Many stood outside, smoking and talking, and getting a breath of fresh air. The autumn warmth still lingered, but something else was also in the air, a sense of expectancy. Of hesitancy. Sara could feel it, but she couldn’t quite understand it. It was as if the city were waiting for something. There was a sense of change in the air, and Sara felt sure that it was connected to Guillaume Sam and the Machete Murderer and spirits coming down the sky to dance in old, forgotten graveyards.

  A familiar figure came out of the club, noticed them standing outside, and headed in their direction. It was Alek Gervalis. He had a worried look on his face.

  “Hello, Sara. Father,” he said.

  “What’s the matter?” Sara asked.

  “Oh, probably nothing,” AMk said. He shrugged, and Sara could see that there was an element of annoyance as well as worry on his face.••“It’s the boys.”

  “Rog and Jer?” Father Baltazar asked.

  “Who else?” This time the exasperation showed clearly in his voice. “We’re trying to work out some new songs before we leave next week for the road, and they’ve gone off somewhere. You haven’t seen them around, have you?” “Not since last night,” Sara said.

  Alek sighed. “That’s the last time I saw them myself. They were with that chick Jean.” He shook his head. “I never cared much for her. She’s strange. Beyond strange, actually. Her and her brother.”

  Sara, remembering the stench of burned human flesh, nodded in agreement.

  “This isn't the first time they’ve gone off, is it?” Father Baltazar asked.

  “No,” Alek said. “And probably not the last. It’s damned annoying, though.” He stopped for a moment, frowning slightly. “What are you guys doing here, anyway?” he asked. “If I’m not prying into police department secrets, that is.”

  Sara and Father Baltazar exchanged glances.

  No, Sara said to herself, you see, we just came from a voudon ceremony where Papa Legba promised us a spirit guide to lead us to the lair of an evil sorcerer who’s kidnaped my partner.

  “Um,” Sara said, looking at Father Baltazar.

  “Um,” Father Baltazar replied, looking at Sara.

  Alek, who was facing the opposite direction, suddenly started. “Jesus Christ, did you see that?”

  They both turned quickly, but the dark alley down which he pointed was quiet and empty.

  “No,” they said together.

  “What was it?” Father Baltazar asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Alek said slowly. “I just caught a glimpse of it. It was moving fast. Some kind of big animal, I think. It went right down that alley beside the club.”

  “Well,” Sara said, “maybe I’d better check it out. Uh, good luck finding the boys.”

  Alek made a sudden grimace of annoyance. “Ah, screw the boys. I want to see what that thing is.”

  ,Sara and Father Baltazar exchanged glances.

  “No, my son,” the priest said. “Don’t wony about it—” ”I’m not worried,” Alek said. “I’m curious.”

  “You know what they said about curiosity,” Sara muttered.

  “I’m not a cat,” Alek said. “There’s something there. Let’s find out what it is.”

  He stalked off toward the alley. Sara opened her mouth, but Father Baltazar laid a hand on her arm.

  “He saw it, not us. Maybe he’s meant to accompany us. I’ve often thought there was something about him, an aura of power—or at least the possibility of power.”

  “I can’t let him go into danger unknowingly-”

  ’’What danger?” the priest asked. “What can happen here in the open? Besides, it’s probably nothing.”

  Alek, already at the mouth of the alley, turned towards the others. “Are you coming or not?”

  “We’re coming,” Father Baltazar called out.

  They caught up to him, Sara muttering to herself, “Yeah, what could happen?”

  The voices, though, seemed to approve of Alek’s pres-ence-though whether that was good or bad for Alek, Sara didn’t know. But she decided that it would be foolish to fight the voices and the priest both when they finally seemed to agree oh Something.

  The alley ran between the Club Carrefour and an adjacent three-stoiy building. It was longer than Sara would have expected and narrower than she liked. There were no streetlights, no lights at all. It was choked with Dumpsters and old garbage sitting piled up around Dumpsters. The Dumpsters on the Club Carrefour side were overflowing with empty liquor bottles and the combined fumes wafting from the discarded bottles—beer, wine, and every kind of spirit known to partiers at the dawn of the twenty-first century—was enough to turn Sara’s stomach. The narrow confines of the alley seemed to trap the odors so th
at a swamp-like miasma clung to the vicinity. “Phew,” Alek contributed. “This place stinks.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Watson,” Sara said. “What did this thing look like, anyway?”

  “I told you,” Alek said, “I didn’t get much of a look. But it was some kind of animal. Furry. White. Maybe a weird dog of some kind. It was too big to be a cat.”

  “Was it?” Father Baltazar said in an odd-sounding voice.

  “Yeah—” Alek turned to where the priest was looking. “Holy...” ‘

  It was, after all, a cat, but a cat unlike any Sara had ever seen before.

  He was standing by a side door to the club, staring at the three of them with eyes the color of blood. He was white, gleaming white, as if a spotlight was shining on him. His fur was thick and fluffy, his tail was a high plume that he carried arching over his back, his breast was covered by'a bushy mane like that of a lion. He was three times the size of an ordinary domestic cat, probably forty pounds of long, ton, and lithely muscular feline.

  “I wasn’t expecting something like this,” Sara said in a soft voice, “but that must be him.”

  “Him?” Alek asked. “Who?”

  She looked at the singer.

  “This is something you don’t want to be mixed up in,” she told him.

  “Police business?”

  >, Sara hesitated.

  “Yes,” she finally said.

  “You’re looking for a big white cat on police business?” “Look-”

  ’’Does this involve the boys in any way?”

  Sara looked at Father Baltazar. He shrugged, as if telling her that it was her call.

  “Possibly,” she said, unable to lie to him. “But this could be dangerous.”

  “Not could be,” the priest corrected quietly. “Will be.” Alek looked from Sara to the priest.

  “Count me in,” he said.