Grim Tidings Page 3

  “Whose side are you on, anyway?” I said, raising my voice a little.

  “I’m always on your side,” Ashley said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “But wouldn’t you be happier if you and Isabelle figured out how to be on the same side of things, too?”

  I huffed. Ashley was right. Still, I’m an independent young woman. Having to run all my decisions by someone else, even someone who is stuck inside my head, seemed like a miserable life to live. Not to mention, of all the spirits to be possessed with, why’d it have to be the spirit of such a prude!

  “Just apologize to her,” Ashley said. “This is the sort of thing she might know about.”

  “Fine,” I said, shrugging my sister’s hand off my shoulder. “Isabelle, I’m sorry.”

  There was a long silence.

  “She isn’t responding,” I told Ashley.

  “Probably because you don’t mean it.”

  “This is dumb,” I said. “We’re possibly facing a vampire in New Orleans and she’s going to hold information fucking hostage until I tell her I’m sorry for making out with some dude?”

  That’s not what I’m mad about, Isabelle said, breaking out of the silent treatment she’d been giving me.

  “Then what is it?” I asked out loud. “It sure seemed like that was what pissed you off.”

  It isn’t that you did that, it’s that you didn’t think to ask me how I felt about it first.

  “We didn’t exactly have a chance to talk about it,” I said.

  You could have made the time. If you wanted to.

  I shook my head. “I don’t need permission—”

  That’s not what I’m saying, Isabelle interrupted me mid-sentence. I am simply asking that you respect me enough to at least consider my feelings first.

  I bit my lip. “Okay, I get it. I just wasn’t thinking. He was cute, we were flirting. I just figured you’d speak up if you had a problem with it.”

  Would you have listened if I did?

  I cocked my head sideways. “Probably not… all right I see your point. I’m sorry I didn’t think about your feelings.”

  Okay…

  “So can you please help us out on this case?”

  When I was a girl, there was a vampire in New Orleans. Usually came after slaves figuring he could get away with it. Ripped off people’s limbs to drain their blood.

  “And no one got wise to it?” I asked.

  That kind of viciousness… they thought it must’ve been the gators. No human being rips limbs off of bodies, not like that.

  “But it wasn’t alligators,” I said, noticing Ashley staring directly into my eyes, hoping to get some idea of what we were talking about by hearing one side of the conversation.

  Not gators…something else, something created by a hex cast by a Caplata.

  “A Voodoo witch, like your sister?”

  Yes… but it wasn’t Messalina. It was the one who ended up teaching my sister. Found that out later.

  “So how did you realize it was a vampire?”

  People talk… the other slaves, I mean. White folk didn’t much believe in things like that. At least if they did, they didn’t let on.

  “So what happened?” I asked.

  I heard the story from Sagduh, one of the slaves who saw what happened firsthand. He was a massive man—maybe twice the size of your average worker, so it was really quite incredible that your great-great-grandfather was able to secure him at a bargain price. But we soon found out why—Sagduh was consumed with night terrors. And the horror of his dreams overwhelmed him even during the day. He was strong, but he moved so slowly, as if his mind was somewhere else, that he wasn’t of much use. Still, eventually we got him to talk—Messalina and me. Took a lot of prodding, but eventually he relented.

  “And he told you about the vampire?”

  Before he came to your family’s plantation, Sagduh belonged to one of the mercantile families near the old Port of New Orleans. As Sagduh told the story, it all began when Alberto De Leonne was married and he agreed to do his new bride a favor, to take in his brother-in-law, Ramon. Ramon was basically a drunk. Causing all kinds of problems in the city. De Leonne hoped they could straighten him out, or at least hide him away enough that the family could save face.

  “Taking in a drunk… yeah, that can be tough.”

  Especially in those days. They didn’t have groups you could go to for help. You either drank yourself to an early grave or you got locked up. I was still pretty young, but everyone knew back then that if someone had given themselves to the bottle, there wasn’t usually much hope.

  “But De Leonne thought he’d try.”

  When it’s your family, and you are a husband wanting to please your new wife…

  “Makes sense. I mean, even when it is hopeless, you don’t give up on family. But what did this have to do with vampires in New Orleans?”

  Well, as the story went, Ramon was apparently feeling grateful that De Leonne took him in. But he still couldn’t stop drinking. So drunk on absinthe, he stumbled into the woods where he’d apparently learned that the members of a secret Voodoo sosyete met to conduct their rituals. Perhaps they could heal him, remove his craving for the drink. At least that was his hope. But when he showed up, they were in the midst of some kind of dark rite. No one knows for sure. But it’s believed that when he stumbled upon them, he fell victim to a curse, a hex of some kind.

  From what Sagduh said, after that night, Ramon’s cravings for the strong drink disappeared completely.

  “Sounds like a miracle,” I said. “But I’m guessing there was a cost.”

  New erratic behaviors consumed him instead. He began sleeping through the day, leaving the house at night. He’d be gone a few hours every night, after sunset, and would return and tend to a lime tree in the courtyard of the family home for a few hours before sunrise, when he’d go back inside to his bed.

  “That’s pretty strange,” I said. Meanwhile, Ashley had given up trying to pick up on the tale—I’d have to relay it to her later—and was browsing the files that the police officer had sent on my computer.

  It was odd behavior, but compared to years of constant drunkenness, I suppose they turned a blind eye to it. It’s expected that someone who has been out of touch with reality for so long might be a bit out of sorts.

  “I can see that. They were probably just glad to have him back.”

  Apparently they made a gardener out of him. Thought if he had responsibility, if he could tend the garden where he liked to spend his early mornings, it might give him some kind of purpose.

  “Doesn’t sound like a bad idea,” I said.

  Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t have been.

  “But something had happened to him, when he was cursed in the woods?”

  One day, when Ramon didn’t come back inside to retire for the day, De Leonne thought he must’ve gotten wrapped up in his new responsibilities. Still, De Leonne went to check on him himself. He found Ramon’s body curled up and cold, clinging to the trunk of the lime tree. Distraught over what had happened, De Leonne ordered the servants of the house to bury his brother-in-law at the foot of the tree, the only thing he seemed to have loved in life after he gave up his romance with the bottle. Only, when they began to dig his grave, they uncovered severed human limbs, body parts drained of their blood.

  “So it wasn’t alligators after all…”

  That’s what they concluded. But after Ramon was buried, when one would think these disappearances would end, more limbs severed from their bodies were discovered. Rumors amongst De Leonne’s servants, who were privy to what happened to Ramon but were nonetheless sworn to secrecy over the matter, became suspicious and fearful. Ramon was rising from his grave at night and resuming his murders. That’s what they believed. The servants of the house refused to tend to the garden in the morning or evening, and would only go into the garden during the middle of the day. When De Leonne asked about their odd behavior, he was told what they all suspect
ed—that Roman had become a demon, hunting down slaves at night.

  De Leonne, in fact, had heard that the killings had escalated. He reasoned that perhaps Ramon had not been responsible at all but had only come across the limbs, which he chose to bury out of respect for the dead. This version of events, which he’d convinced himself must be true, he told to the servants in hopes of calming their fears. But they persisted in their belief that Ramon himself was rising from the dead and committing these murders. Intent to pacify their fears and to dispel their superstitions, De Leonne decided to spend a night in the garden himself.

  “Doesn’t sound like a great idea.”

  It wasn’t. No one knew what happened for sure during the course of the night. But at some point, there was a gunshot. Charles, De Leonne’s son, was the first to arrive. Several of the house servants were not far behind. They found De Leonne lying prone in the grass, his body drained of blood.

  “It was Ramon?”

  Who knows what Charles thought at first—but the servants certainly believed it to be so. Charles ordered his father’s body be taken inside, but just as they were getting ready to move him, they noticed the soil around the lime tree began to move. Kicking at the dirt, Charles saw a red glow beneath the roots of the tree. He screamed for help, and seconds later Ramon was upon him.

  But the servants were prepared. It took several men, but they bound Ramon with a rope. Sagduh—the servant who later told us this story when were slaves on your family’s plantation—quickly ran and retrieved a jagged hewn piece of metal, a spike of some sort. Among them, he’d been the only one born in Africa, and chanting in his own tongue he ordered that the bound vampire be held down on his back. Sagduh thrust the metal spike into Ramon’s chest. The vampire’s already pale and emaciated flesh immediately began to wither.

  “What did they do with Ramon’s body?”

  Charles ordered him buried, again, beneath the lime tree. Then he had the tree cut down. Sagduh warned us that should his body ever be exhumed, should the spike ever be removed from his heart, Ramon would rise again and resume his murders.

  “Do you think that’s what’s happening now?” I asked. “Could it be Ramon?”

  I don’t know. I mean, based on what the cop sent you, it was in the right neighborhood. It’s something to check out.

  I nodded.

  “Hey, Ashely,” I said. “Isabelle might have a lead. She knows where a staked vampire was buried. Been buried there since she was a little girl. She says it’s in the neighborhood where the cop was attacked.”

  “Some vampire named Ramon?” Ashley asked.

  “Um, yes, actually. How did you know?”

  “The cop said he was attacked on Decatur, right?”

  “That’s what he put in the email.”

  “Check this out.” Ashely turned the computer monitor toward me. The page she loaded featured an old French-style house. Tall and white. Typical of the era. The headline of the article she’d found read: “Casa do Diabo.”

  “That’s not French. What is it?”

  “Google translator says it’s Portuguese. It means ‘House of the Devil.’”

  “And Ramon is connected to this place?”

  “According to the myth on this website, he was a vampire buried in a shallow grave under an old, gray stump in the garden. According to this site, the end of the metal spike that holds Ramon can be seen from the surface. And get this… whoever owns this web page says that if one is rightly attuned to the spirits, one can hear Ramon crying beneath the surface, urging whoever passes by to retrieve the stake from his heart that he might once again roam the night.”

  I scratched my head. “I wonder how someone else knows this story. Isabelle says she only knows of it because the slave who staked Ramon eventually came to work on our plantation.”

  Ashley shrugged. “It’s New Orleans… who knows where all these legends come from. But we’ve been doing this long enough that you know as well as I do that more often than not there’s a kernel of truth to these tales.”

  “I suppose we should check it out. But not before consulting with the client. We need to hear the officer’s story in person.”

  Chapter Four

  Present Day

  Something about how we’d handled the situation with Ramon the year before still didn’t sit right. He almost made it too easy… like he wanted us to stake him again. I could still picture Ramon’s emaciated form, wrapped in the tree roots that Isabelle had called forth from the ground. The image of Ramon’s fanged mouth agape as he laughed maniacally was burned into my memory.

  “You’re too late!” Ramon had said between his cackles. “He already knows! He’s coming back! He’s coming for you!”

  I should have prodded him for more information—but at the time I just wanted him gone. I dismissed his ravings as a product of his blood lust and plunged the metal stake into his heart before burying him again beneath the stump that had marked his grave for more than a century. Only this time, for good measure, Isabelle spawned a new tree, a shoot from the stump with fresh roots to envelop the vampire’s corpse. It was an extra measure, we thought, to hopefully prevent him from escaping his stake a second time.

  —Still, in the year since, I couldn’t help but wonder if Ramon’s last words—He’s coming back! He’s coming for you!—referred to Baron Samedi, the Loa of death. But I was the one who brought the Baron back, and I was the one who, with the help of Nico and my friends, left him back in Guinee.

  Still, it seemed too strange a coincidence that my parents—who’d been bitten long ago by zombies animated by the Baron’s aspect—would happen to be at Casa do Diabo, the very place Ramon’s vampiric corpse was buried… at least I hoped it was.

  Casa do Diabo was a large, three-story house built in Spanish style. Anyone could tell that it had been quite a luxurious place to live back in its day. Curtains were drawn closed in all the windows.

  “Not sure how accurate the GPS pings these things, but they should be just inside the house,” Ashley said.

  “The phone, anyway,” I added. “Can’t say for certain they’re with it. Or even that they’re together.”

  “True,” Ashley said. “But we still need to get inside to find out.”

  “Not until we’ve checked out Ramon’s grave,” I said. “I’m not sure how it changes things if we find out he’s risen again or not. We still have to find Mom and Dad.”

  “But at least we’d know what we’re dealing with,” Ashley said, nodding.

  “Did you see that?” Mikah said in a hushed voice.

  “See what?”

  “The curtain, on the second floor. It moved, like someone was peeking out at us.”

  I took a deep breath. “I hate this place. Isabelle, are you picking up on anything?”

  Not really… but I’m not so sure that’s a good thing. The living have auras. Even living supernatural beings, like the Loa, have auras. But the undead… zombies and vampires… I know there’s a magic of a sort inside of them, a corrupted aspect of a Ghede Loa, but I’ve never sensed anything from them.

  “And if Mikah saw someone in the window, but you didn’t sense anything at all…”

  Not a good sign…

  “To be fair,” Mikah interjected. “It could have been a cat in the window. Maybe even a gust of air from a fan or something.”

  Not a cat, Isabelle said, her voice echoing in my mind. I can sense cats. Let’s hope he’s right. But knowing where we’re at…. We really should check to see that Ramon is still buried in the courtyard.

  “I agree with Isabelle,” I said. “She suggests that before we even attempt to get inside this place, we need to check on Ramon’s grave. If he’s not there, or even if he is… I don’t know. I just don’t want to go into this place without knowing the chances of Ramon popping up looking for revenge.”

  “You know, we picked a shitty time of day to go investigating a vampire grave,” Mikah pointed out. “We probably only have fifteen minutes until su
nset at most.”

  I shrugged. “Not much choice. I mean, if my parents are here, we have to figure this out.”

  “I’m just saying,” Mikah added. “If they are vampires already, you can’t really do anything about it now that you won’t be able to do tomorrow, or a hundred years from now for that matter. Would waiting until morning be the end of the world?”

  I shook my head. “Family can’t wait. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Excuse me?” Mikah said.

  I bit my lip. Mikah’s mother was a Loa—Aida-Wedo. She headed one of the schools at the Academy. And his father… I don’t think he knew who his father was. Some dude in Ethiopia who’d raised him more or less the first few years of his life. He didn’t talk about those days much—and I got the distinct impression he wasn’t exactly ready to share. Still, my comment was unintentionally biting.

  “Sorry, I…”

  “I do have family,” Mikah said. “Even if it isn’t the kind of family you think counts.”

  “That’s not what I meant…”

  “You’re suggesting I wouldn’t understand what you do for family. But I do know what you do for your friends, and I think that’s worth just as much. Why else would I go with you and Ashely to face Kalfu knowing my powers, my aspect, would be silenced by wards? Why would I go with you into Guinee—”

  “I get it, Mikah. I put my foot in my mouth, okay. You’re right. We can’t risk it. If something happens to my parents between now and tomorrow, I’ll never forgive myself.”

  “No offense, Annabelle, but Mikah is right. And we’re wasting time bickering about it. I say we check out the grave, make sure Ramon’s still staked. Then we regroup in the morning, try to get in here after any potential vamps who might be lurking are in their slumber.”

  I took a deep breath. Honestly, a part of me was just itching to kick some vampire ass. It’s not that I relished in conflict, usually, but I belonged to College Ogoun. Oggie was the Loa of war… this was the sort of shit I was wired for. The only thing I didn’t understand was why Mikah didn’t feel the same urge… the same hunger for battle. After all, he belonged to College Ogoun, too.