The sweat glided down her throat, her fingers, scorched from the heat emitting from the iron rod in her hand. Red hot, so hot!
"No! Please! Not again! Please, not again!" Lalaurie cried, pushing her stubby fingers through the metal gates.
"Shutup!" Marie shot back, her back still turned to Lalaurie's back. "You are the cause of all this! It is all your fault. You! You did this!"
Gathering up her gown around her, Marie walked closer to the girl's cage, the rod shaking in her hand. How long had it been? Maybe months? Years? In the underworld there was no such thing as daylight, no time variant, just an everlasting influx of hot air. So hot!
Marie wiped the sweat beads from her brows and upper lip. "Now, you get to watch this go up her little white back side."
"No! Please, not again! Please, do it to me, torture me instead, not her, not my girl." Lalaurie's cries were lost on Marie, their destinies were set, their fates, sealed. There was simply no escaping hell, not even for the great Marie Laveau. She was forever cursed, doomed to torture an innocent soul as atonement for the many she had offered Legba.
"Shutup, I say!" Marie swung, the rod now directly pointed at Lalaurie. "Do you think I want to do this?! Huh! It is your fault. You dragged these girls into your sadistic acts! You forced them to spill blood, and they died before they even had the chance to purify themselves. That's why they're in hell! You sent them to hell!"
Marie turned back around, seeing the misery in Lalaurie's eyes. How long had it been? How long had she shoved this flaming rod up the poor girls' anal canal? How many times down her throat, all the while hearing her mother screaming less than fifty feet away, her stubby fingers clawing against the metal cage that held her and the rest of her breed captive. What must it have felt like for Lalaurie? As much as Marie wanted to see her suffer, this was not how she had imagined it. She had known the comfort of motherhood once before. She had cooed over her beautiful baby, too. But none of that mattered now. On that faithful night Marie had led her marching Tribe down to the Lalaurie mansion to exact revenge, she had made it clear that no one was to touch the girls, or the husband. No blood was to be spilled. Not even Lalaurie's. She knew the consequences all too well, back then. The plan had been simple, march down to Maison Lalaurie, capture the fat bitch, and parade her around town as a warning to all the white devils who thought it practical enough to torture one of her kind. But it had gone awry far too quickly. The slaves had gotten word of Marie's plan; somewhere between feeding her tears of immortality to Delphine Lalaurie, and taking Bastian's brutalized body home, the slaves had marched into the Lalaurie mansion, set it ablaze, dragged out her daughters, taken turns on top of them, and hung the poor bitches for the world to see. She had never intended for them to die.
But, again, it did not matter. The act had been done, and upon her return, as disgusted as she had been at the vileness of her own people, she was still Marie Laveau, and they were still her people, and the fire ignited by the sight of all those poor tortured bodies in that attic still flamed too hot within her to look upon Lalaurie with any sense of compassion. So, she had worn a brave face, as the Queen of her people she had sentenced Lalaurie to a life below the surface, close enough to hear the world still existing nut never knowing the pleasures of truly living again.
Now, their fates were sealed, eternity, together. Forever and ever.
"I don't want to do this. This girl ain't done nothin' to me, Papa. Please, I don't want to do this anymore." Marie dropped the rod. Every muscle in her body ached, her fingers shot out, reaching for the floor, the rod. "I can't do this anymore. Please, papa! Please!"
"Then don't." A sweet voice said.
"What'd you say?" Marie asked, turning to Lalaurie.
"I ain't said nothing." Lalaurie said, her eyes wide open, gaping at a fixture behind Marie. "she did."
Marie turned around slowly. The first thing she noticed were her toes, chipped and bloodied, barely covered by the torn oversized black dress that hung from her shriveled bones. Her breasts where almost non-existant, her hair covered in a white puritan bonnet. Her smile, oh, her smile, like the first rays of sunlight after a great storm. Was she here? Was she real?
"Jesus?" Just another example of Marie's true mortal age, she had been raised in the days of self-righteousness. So, even though her stance as the Queen of voodoo was well known amongst all in New Orleans, she was always saved a front row seat in the Parish house not too far from Congo square. Marie knew Jesus.
"No, child," the voice called out. "Jesus has a thing dangling between his legs. Try again, you know me well, child, you know me well." And suddenly, it was clear to Marie who she was, the owner of the sweet voice. The puritan attire, the jet black skin. The grass whipped bare feet, the voice. The voice. She knew that voice; she had heard that voice call out to her before in her dreams. That voice had told her stories about the journey across the ocean. That voice had comforted her during those stormy nights living in the bayou as a young girl. That voice!
"Tituba."
"I know him!" Queenie jumped out of the chair and walked towards the aged, mini-T.V. to get a better look. On the screen, was the image of a chiseled black man, dressed in entirety in dark clothing, standing amongst the religious heretics on Jackson Avenue. On the side of the screen, the time read 03:33:31. Two seconds later as the recorded time chipped down, there was an explosion, the ground shook, screams were heard, and the screen went blank.
"That is the last recorded footage from the streets of Jackson Avenue before the explosion that is making headways around the world. Upon breaking into Miss Robichaux's Academy, or as it is popularly now called, the Devil's Den, agents of Homeland Security have reported to have found no individuals residing within its walls. As of this hour, there is a nationwide bounty on the heads…" The television goes blank.
"Dammit!" Queenie banged against the TV, trying to get it to turn back on. "I told Marie to change this damn thing!"
"You said you know him?" Cordelia said, pacing about. Since they had arrived, the Supreme hadn't settled on any of the furnishings.
"Yes, I know him very well. I saw him a few times in this very room; he was one of Marie's men." Queenie said. "Sit down, Miss Cordelia, you know the chair don't bite, right?"
"I know, it's just… being here, in this room." Cordelia looked around, taking deep breathes to calm her nerves. It felt like a lifetime ago since she had first stepped foot into Cornrow City. She had been so oblivious then, so ill-informed as to the battle between her people and the Laveau Tribe. Fiona hadn't done her job as the reigning supreme to teach the younger generation of the ongoing war. And, then there was Hank. She could still recollect clearly that morning, the news, the video tape, the gun in his hand as he marched into Marie's hair Salon and killed everybody in it.
"Well, this is the best place for us to be right now. They're accusing us for killing all those people, even the freaking CIA are on our asses." Queenie plopped down on the chair behind the desk, exhausted. All that transmutation had done her in. From house to house, from the Academy, to the Ramsey house, to the next to the next, until they had finally arrived at Conrow City. Atleast, here, she was certain they could buy themselves enough time to figure out just what the hell was going wrong with Cordelia's powers.
Suddenly, there was Zoe and Kyle, standing in the center of the room, in his hand, Kyle had a brown paper bag.
"Shit, Sabrina! Can you like, give us a warning before dropping in."
"Sorry, I didn't have time, you know, since the whole freaking world is looking for us." She takes out a can of Campbell's soup from the paper bag and tosses it at Queenie. "Dig in."
"Finally!" Queenie gushes as she tore off the metal head of the container.
"So, what have you two decided is wrong with the portal?" Queenie and Cordelia exchange looks. Queenie shrugged. "The fuck, guys! Those girls couldn't have just disappeared into thin air!"
"More like sucked into oblivion." Cordelia said. "The portal connected the dimension we created, with our physical realm. Now that the portal has been compromised, that means the connection is broken, those girls could be anywhere, floating through time and, they could be stuck in the sixteenth century, on any planet…"
"But, how! How did the connection break?" Kyle asked, breaking open a can of soup and passing it over to Zoe.
"I think it has something to do with my powers. The spell required a foot hold in this plan in order to properly connect to it. So, I linked it to my powers."
"Miss Cordelia!" Zoe called out.
"I know, I know. But, the supreme witch line is eternal; it's the most powerful force on earth. I didn't know my powers will start acting up like this. I still don't know what went wrong." Cordelia buried her hand in her arms.
"Wait!" Queenie said. "Miss Cordelia, earlier when we came into your room, you said it felt like your powers were trying to crawl out of your skin, right?"
Cordelia looked up, nodding. Queenie sat quietly, looking about, calculating.
"What is it?" Zoe asked.
"I think I know what is wrong with your powers." Queenie finally spoke.
"What?!" Zoe interjected.
"We've been looking at this all sorts of wrong, Miss Cordelia. That was definitely one of Marie's men we saw on the TV, now, what would he be doing amongst those Christian bastards?" Queenie asked.
"What does that have to do with anything?" Zoe asked.
"Think, Sabrina! Cordelia is losing her powers, there are explosions killing thousands right infront of the Academy, we're being haunted…"
"Yeah, because the witchhunters are back!" Fired Kyle in defense of Zoe.
"No, Zombie brain! The witch hunters hate witches, true, but they can't work magic! They can't mess with Miss Cordelia's powers."
Cordelia shoots up, finally understanding.
"It's not the witch hunters, it's the Laveau Tribe, the Voodoos. They're waging war on us."
"Exactly! Marie has been missing for over a month, it only makes sense that the Tribe will be looking for her, besides, who else apart from the witch hunters gains most from us being haunted and killed off the face of the earth?"
"So, what you're saying is, they blocked off Cordelia's power, and some guy from the voodoo tribe set off the bomb…" Zoe chipped in.
"And the blame of course all falls on the Coven. We are already outnumbered, and now they have taken my powers…Oh, my God, they're using the rest of them, to finish off what Marie couldn't. The whole world wants our heads on the steaks, we're as good as dead."