Princess of Wands Page 8

  She rummaged through her bag looking for useful items. Makeup… all the use it was going to be. Nail polish… nothing came to mind. Lighter. That went in a pocket. Locking knife, that clipped to her right pocket. Nail polish remover. Potentially useful but where to carry it? She slid it in the backpack and added the remaining bottles of water, wishing she’d picked more up at the store. Sodas as well. Hair-spray… oh, yeah. Take.

  She put everything useful in the backpack and then dumped the bag off to the side, wishing she had a roll of duct tape. No particular reason, but duct tape had a thousand and one uses. One of them came to mind and she crept quietly over to the dumped out empty water bottles and collected them. If she found a roll of duct tape…

  She realized what she was contemplating and froze.

  “First degree murder,” she muttered, frowning as she sat back down in a lotus position. Well, if it came to premeditated murder or dying, she was just going to do the deed.

  Yes, “thou shalt not kill” correctly translated as “thou shalt not murder.” But that was what she was contemplating. If she had to fight her way out of town, she wasn’t going to do it like a cowboy in the westerns. She was going to do it the way daddy taught her: Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. Never come at a frontal position. Use concealment as long as possible. Never give an enemy an even break.

  Murder them before they knew you were there.

  Murder. The bottles could be used as field expedient silencers. Using a silencer was, de facto and de jure, proof of prior intent. First degree murder.

  She was getting angry, too. The deep, cold-hot anger that she worked every day to control but this came with a righteous strain that somehow made it stronger and more potent. She could feel the demon straining at its leash and she knew that soon it would be let loose. Murder, she knew, wasn’t the true stain on the soul, it was the tarnish that came with the feelings surrounding it, the anger and the sick feeling of power to give or take life. That was the center of the sin against oneself, against God.

  But there were times, and this seemed like one of them, when letting the demon out of the jar was acceptable and appropriate. She wondered how hard it would be to get the lid back on.

  She was contemplating that moral and legal dilemma when she suddenly realized it was full dark.

  And Kelly hadn’t returned.

  * * *

  Kelly stepped to the rotten door on the side of the boathouse, hand on his service Glock, and ducked inside, looking around.

  The room was gloomy and covered in spider webs, half the roof gone. The old man was in a corner, shaking and moaning. But he was the only one there.

  Kelly walked across the concrete floor, searching the shadows for threats and then shook the man on the shoulder at which he screamed.

  “Shut up!” Kelly said, quietly.

  “Oh, God,” the man said, rolling over and grasping at the detective. “Please tell me you brung a bottle! Please! I gotta have a taste!”

  “Here,” Kelly said, drawing the flask out of his waistband and then holding onto it as the alcoholic clawed at it. “Just a taste,” he said, opening it and letting the old man have a swallow.

  “God, that’s good,” the man said, trying to hold on as the detective wrestled it away. “Please, let me keep it! I need it to make the voices go away!”

  “Not until you tell me what is going on,” Kelly said, squatting down. He let the man have another drink then pulled the bottle back and capped it. “What’s your name?”

  “Claude Chauvet,” the man said, hugging his arms to his body. “I’m from up Houma way. Used to do construction, fishing, whatever I could do for money. Had a wife and kids once, then the bottle started to get to me. Been wandering for a while. Fetched up here about a year ago. Old sheriff dropped me in the tank til I was dried out. Fed me up, got me a job on one of the boats. Couldn’t keep me off the sauce but I worked, you know? Wasn’t a great place, but it was as good as any to die and I knew I was gonna go soon. Too much booze, liver’s going.”

  “So what’s this with voices?” Kelly asked. “And do you know where Carlane Lancereau is?”

  “Sure,” the old man grunted in laughter. “But gimme another taste. I need some help to tell it.”

  Kelly let him have another swig and took the bottle back.

  “Tell,” Kelly said.

  “ ’Bout six months ago, things started happening. People got stranger than they’d been, really angry sometimes. Were a couple of murders, which hadn’t happened in a while. People started to talk about strange lights over by the old church and that fella Carlane started turning up real regular. Drove a fancy car, had fancy clothes. Sheriff couldn’t stand him, said all the Lancereaus were plumb bad. Then some kids went missing. Some people thought they were runaways, sheriff thought different. Got really angry with Deputy Mondaine about it. Couldn’t find nothing, kids had disappeared like they never was. Parents moved away, said they’d been getting threats about making a stink. Then the voices started…” He trailed off and looked longingly at the bottle and Kelly let him have another taste.

  “Ain’t really voices,” the old man said in a strained voice. “More like visions.” He looked up at the cop sharply and coldly. “Everybody’s got demons, mister cop. You know that. Things they think about that ain’t exactly… right. You do, too.”

  “Everybody,” Lockhart agreed.

  “Well, imagine you’re pulling in a basket of crawfish and your boss is yelling at you to hurry it up and you can see yourself cutting the bastard’s throat. Just like it’s real. Feel the blood running down your hands, just like you’d already done it. Feel a rush, like a drug, at killing him. Then all of a sudden you’re back pulling in line, like nothing happened.”

  “I’d say you were having DTs,” the cop replied.

  “Ain’t like them,” the drunk said, shaking his head. “Sometimes you see things can’t be real. Big shapes you just know if they see you nothing’s gonna save you. See yourself doing… bad things. Got to where it was like it was all the time. But when I was drunk…”

  “The visions went away,” Kelly said.

  “Yeah,” Claude said, shaking. “That’s why I got to have a bottle. Yeah, I’m a drunk, but I need the bottle so the voices will go away. Sometimes they’re voices, speaking a weird language, calling me. Then the old sheriff died. Strong as an ox he was. A right bastard if you crossed him but he was a good man and healthy. And he just up and died. After that it got bad. Started hearing… screams from the church of a night. Bad screams. And chanting, weird chanting, like humans trying to say the words in my head, but we can’t say those words right.”

  “Okay,” Kelly said, standing up. “Here’s your bottle-”

  “He won’t get a chance to drink it,” Deputy Mondaine said from across the room.

  Kelly turned around slowly and lifted his hands at the sight of the twelve gauge pointed at his midsection. And Mondaine wasn’t alone. Kelly recognized the owner of the bait and tackle store and one of the clerks from the Piggly Wiggly. At least five men, all with guns pointed at him.

  “You can die right now,” Mondaine said. “Or you can pull your gun out real slowly and drop it on the floor.”

  Kelly slowly pulled the automatic out with two fingers and dropped it on the ground, then turned around with his hands over his head.

  I should have stayed with the Princess, he thought as something crashed into the back of his head. All he saw was white.

  * * *

  Barbara sat in the corner in a lotus position, praying, until she heard the creak of the door downstairs. Then she stood up, quietly, and catwalked to the window. She’d tested the floor and found all the spots that creaked and she carefully avoided them. She also stood back out of the slight light from the window to survey the top of the porch. Sure enough, there were several figures, at least four, clambering up onto the roof via a ladder.

  “Lord, I ask that you infuse me with the warrior soul of David this night,”
she said, quietly. “And forgive me my actions, speech and thoughts. Because, Lord, I am seriously going to kick some unrighteous ass in Your Name, Amen.”

  That last prayer done she reached down inside, set “Good Barb” off to one side and opened up the jar. It was time for Bad Barb to come home.

  All the fear seemed to wash away, leaving something hard and cold and ancient in its place. Her breathing slowed, details seemed to jump out at her, a vase on a shelf, the smell of the bayou, the scuffling of feet outside her door.

  She catwalked back over to the shadow in the corner and waited, hand going to the sidearm and then withdrawing. Use that only if necessary.

  With a crash a chunk of cinder block came through the window and at the same time someone tried to open the door. There was a thudding sound from there as three men piled through the broken window, one of them yelping as he apparently cut himself on glass. Just as the first man was throwing himself on the pillows on the bed and shouting in surprise, three more came through the door and piled into him.

  Funny as the resulting scramble was, Barb was in no mood for entertainment. So she quickly walked across the room and kicked one of the bystanders in the balls from behind. Hard.

  All six of them were howling and cursing so loud that they never noticed him go down. She gave him a hard kick in the temple as she went by, nonetheless. Then she got seriously to work.

  She slammed a closed fist, a hammerblow, down on the neck of one of the figures at the back of the group, right at the top of the neck where the spine inserts to the skull. Concussion on the first through third vertebra almost always induces instantaneous unconsciousness and it did in this case. It could also cause death if the blow was hard enough and Barb was not pulling her strikes. Mrs. Nice Lady was no longer in residence.

  One of the group seemed to sense that something was going on behind him and turned. Barb caught his left wrist with her right hand and twisted it up and back while holding the elbow, dislocating it on the fulcrum of her left hand. He howled like a banshee as she gave the elbow an additional twist, then was cut off in mid howl as her open palm struck him on the temple.

  The group was finally aware that the person they were wrestling with on the bed was one of them and was trying to come to terms with being under attack, but she wasn’t going to give them much time.

  A man was reaching for her from the right and he got a dislocated thumb for thanks then another kick to the balls followed by an elbow in the chin that drove him into unconsciousness. This left Barb balanced to the right and she used it to high kick to the left, catching one of the group in the throat and undoubtedly breaking his hyoid bone. That was a kill for sure and certain if somebody didn’t do a tracheotomy. But she didn’t let it slow her down.

  The last two attackers were the one on the bed, who was getting off as fast as he could, and the guy who had been grappling him. She feinted a kick at the balls at the standing man and then followed the motion forward with an open hand blow to the nose. As the man’s hands came up to his shattered nose she punched him in the solar plexus and drove a hand up under his descending chin. Then she wrapped his head in one arm and stepped forward, over and back, rotating his neck through three dimensions and snapping it like a twig.

  The last attacker was scrambling for the window but she was in no mood to deal with him later. She stepped forward and kicked him in the small of the back, throwing him into the wall, then punched at a pressure point in the upper back, temporarily immobilizing him with pain. Then she dislocated his shoulder, kneed him in the groin as she twisted him around, broke his instep and drove a hammer blow into his upper neck as he bent over from the blow.

  She looked around the room and nodded. There was some groaning but most of the figures weren’t so much as twitching. At least two were dead, probably more. The thought suddenly made her queasy so she put it out of her mind, she had no time to throw up, and took one more look around.

  “Time to leave,” she muttered, looking at the dark hallway and then the slight light from the window. “No real choice there,” she said, quietly, picking up her backpack and moving to the door as silently as she could. She looked at the broken glass and then leapt up and forward over it, legs stretched like a hurdler, body bent to avoid the upper sill. But while she was still in midair she saw the figure by the ladder rising up, holding a rifle or shotgun in his hands.

  She landed carefully and drew her sidearm with a practiced and automatic motion, cocking the lever and firing twice at center of mass. She was rewarded by seeing the target fall off the roof with a quiet grunt of surprise and a small cry. He couldn’t know it was she who had come through the window and he’d hesitated so he wouldn’t shoot one of his friends. That wouldn’t happen every time. Especially now that the relative silence of the night had been ruptured by pistol fire.

  She decocked the pistol and holstered it, buckling it in place, then ran to the edge of the roof, jumping down and landing in a roll. She came up on one knee, drew her pistol and scanned for targets all around. The previous target was on the ground, groaning, so she ran to him and looked for the weapon he’d been holding.

  “A pistol in a gunfight is only good for getting a shotgun,” she muttered, scanning the ground. “A shotgun is only good for getting a long gun.”

  She found the long gun a few feet from his body and picked it up, examining it and trying not to curse.

  It was an AR-10, the identical model that Kelly had in the trunk of his car. What were the odds of that?

  She went to the groaning figure and quickly rifled his body, looking for ammunition for the rifle. He was wearing a camouflage blouse that was just about covered in blood, so she wasn’t going to be borrowing it. There were two spare magazines, one in each blouse pocket. Those went in the back pockets of her jeans.

  She straightened up and pulled back the charging handle of the AR-10, ensuring that there was a round in the chamber, then headed around the back of the hotel as voices and flashlights closed in on the front.

  There was an overgrown garden in the back that terminated in the bayou. She moved through it as silently as she could until she was on the far side, away from the voices, and then suddenly bent over, pulled up her mask and was sick as quietly as she could manage.

  When she was done throwing up she pulled the backpack off her back and took out one of the bottles of Pepsi. She carefully opened the top to quiet the hiss and let the shaken bottle relieve some pressure, then quickly opened it and used it to swill out her mouth, spitting to get the taste out. Then she capped it, put it back in the bag and listened to the night.

  There was shouting from inside the hotel and she could see flashlights up on the second floor. None of the words were coherent but she thought she recognized the voice of Deputy Mondaine.

  Big surprise there.

  It was definitely time to get out of town. The problem was wheels.

  She walked quickly to the edge of the swamp and rubbed mud on her running shoes, wiping her hands off on the grass. Then she picked up a twig by feel and slid it into the barrel of the gun to check that it was clear. It was.

  That done she hoisted the rifle into a tactical position, butt by her shoulder, barrel down, and headed west, away from the voices. She wasn’t sure what was to the west, but it had to be better than this place.

  Chapter Seven

  Kelly awoke to screaming.

  He had the worst headache of his life, like a pounding hammer in his head, and the screams were making it worse. But he couldn’t blame Dolores; he’d be screaming too.

  He was in the nave of the old church, handcuffed and, from the feel of it, somehow shackled to the floor. The floor of the back of the nave had been removed, revealing an empty hole and, from the sounds of it, water. Apparently at one point the church had been built out over the swamp and for some reason the current group of madmen had opened it up.

  There was a low wooden altar in front of him with Carlane standing in front of it, wearing black robes wit
h green symbols on them, his hands raised above his head and chanting in some strange language. On the far side an old-fashioned whipping post had been erected and the hooker from New Orleans was chained to it, hands overhead, and two men wearing robes were working her over, in turn, with a set of cat-o-nine-tails. Each time the hard-swung leather thongs touched her flesh she let out a scream. There was blood running down her back and over her legs.

  There were three other men in robes flanking Carlane, their heads bowed, chanting a low, monotonic response, and a group of worshippers, about twenty, down in the main area of the church, were waving their hands overhead and repeating the response.

  “Agathalu Almadu!” Carlane chanted. “Asertu Almadu! Thagomod Tthu!”

  “Asertu Almadu!” the robed figures chanted with the worshippers repeating.

  “Souls for you, Almadu!” Carlane said. “Come to us, Almadu! Bring us to power!”

  “Asertu Almadu!”

  The nave was lit with candles and Kelly shook his head, trying to believe he was imagining the scene. But the screams were real, and the crack of the whips in flesh.

  “Feel the pain, Lord Almadu!” Carlane shouted. “Calling to you, Lord Almadu! Pain for you, Lord Almadu! Give to us the power!”

  “Asertu, Almadu!”

  “He comes!” Carlane shouted, throwing his arms wide and his head up as if struck by something invisible. “Bring her!” he said in a deeper tone.