So why is he the bottom of the bunch in vamp hierarchy? Why did he lose his control of his blood clan? How did this guy lose a blood duel?
Before the thought was fully formed, Ed dashed inside the demon’s reach and cut a long gash in its belly with my vamp-killer. The black blood cascaded out. And this time it didn’t clot over. Go, me!
“Silver!” Edmund shouted at me.
I pulled two more silver-plated vamp-killer blades and slid them across the floor to Gee and to Clermont. They put their lives in danger of his long reach, dashing in and back out, but the demon squealed as they all began to make headway on bleeding the thing to death.
I whirled and went back outside into the rain. Looking for Margaud.
She was standing under the magnolia tree in Miz Onie’s front yard, leaning against the trunk of the tree, half-hidden in the low branches. This time she wasn’t guiding the demon with kicks, fists, and maneuvers. She was standing still, running with rainwater, a sodden mess. Shoulders hunched, she was staring into her cupped hands, shielded from the elements. Staring at something that had her total attention.
I pulled a small knife, one with a wide pommel and short blade. I drew on Beast’s stealth abilities and her speed. I bent and leaped across the ground, landing on a mossy patch of ground. Instinctively keeping downwind, in the shadows, I leaped again, landing beside the girl. Raised the knife. And bonked her on the head. She dropped like a stone. I caught her hands and picked out the thing in them. It was . . . a gris-gris.
Time slowed all by itself, the bangs and thumps from things breaking inside growing deeper in tone. The raindrops seemed to decelerate, not hanging in the air, but falling at half speed. My stomach cramped. This was not gonna be good. In fact, it was gonna be very, very bad. I could tell.
Gris-gris were small leather bags that had originated in Africa and were believed to protect the wearer from evil or to bring luck. Or to provide the wearer a method of birth control. Lots of things, depending on what the wearer and the maker wanted. They had become part of New Orleans’ voodoo, or vodoun, subculture, and they looked a lot like a Cherokee shaman’s medicine bag at first glance. This one was made out of leather covered with red silk fabric, tied with undyed hemp. It was about four inches long, less than three inches wide, a little large for a gris-gris. Like the shaman’s bag I had begun to wear in my soul home, gris-gris held herbs and small animal bones. And when used in dark magic, the spells they powered could become unstoppable.
I touched the leather, which was bumpy and rough—tanned alligator skin. There was a swatch of bristly hair tied into the hemp. I held it to my nose and caught the scent of wild boar.
I toed Margaud with my foot paw and she lolled limply, sluggishly. Still out. Moving through the abnormally slow rain, I carried the gris-gris to the porch and stood under the light. Inside, the fight was still taking place at half speed, and I could hear grunts and the sound of more breaking furniture. In the distance I also heard sirens. The light-sleeping Miz Onie must have woken even with the sleep spell, and called the county law enforcement officers. I wondered if they would fall sway to the sleep spell as they entered the city limits and if they’d get the unit stopped in time. The thoughts were useless things, mostly background, so my subconscious could worry about the real problem while my hind brain kept me breathing and my heart beating. A lot going on at the moment, and there were, after all, priorities.
One shouldn’t open a gris-gris.
It might unleash many things, even worse things than the demon inside the house. Or . . . maybe the gris-gris bag had been opened and that was how the demon had gotten free? Or . . . maybe there was something even worse still inside the bag.
I had the answer to any gris-gris. I pulled my silver cross from the lead-lined pocket in my jeans. I untied the hemp and pressed the cross into the gris-gris bag and shook it. Black smoke boiled out of the bag, tarry and sour-smelling. When the smoke cleared, I dumped the contents into my knobby-knuckled palm. Fragile bones, mixed dried herbs, a tooth, and three clay tiles fell out. The demon was part frog, part boar, part alligator—frog body and back legs, boar tusks, bristly hair, and a little twirled tail, alligator skin, frog mouth full of alligator teeth. And arms muscled like a gorilla. Using my index finger, I pushed around the contents. There was a jawbone of a very large frog or toad. The boar hair was tied with a string. The white tooth was probably an alligator’s. The tiles were rough, etched with figures of a frog, a boar, and an alligator. I rubbed one and it felt like dried mud.
Of course. I held it to the yellowed light and decided the mud had been mixed with sacrificial blood before it was shaped and dried. Something had died to make the gris-gris. It was black magic.