Chapter 29 Cobwebs and Strange
October 26, 2005. New Orleans.
Dean shifted slightly in the chair, pressing the phone more tightly to his ear as a crackle almost drowned out his father's words.
"Say again?" He closed his eyes, shutting out the distracting view of the square, filled with people and movement, bright with the morning sunshine.
"How was getting into the city?" John's voice was suddenly loud and clear again.
"Fine. I didn't bring the car in, it's still kind of iffy around here. But the older parts weren't flooded." He shrugged. He'd brought his gear over the Crescent City bridge on foot, not knowing exactly what it would be like in the city, not wanting to risk her to looters or vandals.
"Good. What have you found?"
"Not much so far. A lot of people who are scared to talk." He frowned at the pavement under his feet. "This isn't voodoo, Dad, at least not the way it's usually practised. It's a lot more powerful for one thing."
"What are you thinking?" The crackle was back, almost obscuring the words.
"I don't know." He chewed on the corner of his lip. "I've got a few people to see this afternoon. I'll know more after that. But this queen, she's only been around for about five years."
"That's unlikely," John said thoughtfully. "Maybe, come in from somewhere else?"
"No signs of that. I checked around with Mali in Baton Rouge, and Claude in Lafayette – they've never heard of her, I even checked with Roswell in Haiti and no one there's ever heard of her either. It's like she just dropped in from nowhere." He sighed. "There's something else. I think another hunter might be working this gig."
"Why?"
"A few people mentioned being questioned by someone else." He looked around. "The situation is still pretty confused here, it could have been a cop, or a gang member – I don't know, but it sounded to me like hunter questions."
"See what you can find out. I'd feel better if you had back up there anyway."
Dean wrinkled his nose, leaning back in the chair. "I'm fine. But yeah, I'll check. What about yours? Anything coming up on the missing men?"
"I've got a couple of possibilities; I'll know more after I've talked to someone."
"If there is another hunter here, I could leave this job to them, come up and help?" Dean leaned forward again.
"No need." John's voice started to break up again. "I think I've got it covered. And Dean, if there's another hunter there, you …try …them –"
"Dad, you're breaking up." He heard the solid tone in his ear and looked at the phone in disgust, closing it and shoving it back in his pocket.
He loved New Orleans and normally he'd be dragging this case out for all it was worth, just to stay longer. But after Katrina the joy had gone out of the city, and the anger and despair he'd seen here wasn't making working the case any easier. Two days he'd been here already and half the people he needed to see were either gone or had clammed up, the fear in their eyes making him uneasy.
He finished his coffee and stood up, walking across the square and downriver toward Dumaine Street. The other hunter, and he was almost certain it was another hunter, had beaten him to the last three informants. He needed to get ahead of them if he was going to find out anything worthwhile before the whole community stopped talking.
As strange as it was not having his wheels with him, he was at least in the one city where walking was easy, and the territory he needed to cover was packed tightly into a couple of square miles. The breeze from the river took the edge off the still-warm October sunshine, and he shoved his hands into his pockets, lengthening his stride as he turned onto Decatur.
The room was large and bare of furniture, the centre taken up by a parterre, the offering to the spirits, a large square white cloth spread over the floor, covered by dishes of food, bowls of liquid, flowers and herbs and coins, held at the corners by four candles, all red. Seated around the walls of the room, the supplicants were praying.
"Yes, I have heard of this one." The man spoke softly, glancing at the parterre and gesturing to a door further down the hallway. "Not here, I do not want to contaminate this room with this talk."
Dean followed him down the hallway and they went into an ordinary sitting room in the family's area of the house.
"She is calling herself Antoinette Chaigneau. Two of my congregation have been to seen her." He shook his head. "The first wanted a charm, for love. She gave it to him and the woman he loved died two days later. The second … I have not seen since she went."
"The love charm, you think it backfired?" Dean frowned at him. The man shook his head.
"All things must be paid for – through prayer or sacrifice or action. I do not think this was paid for, and when the spirit came to it, it took the woman as the price."
"What kind of ritual or power could do this?"
"I do not know. Nothing that is in voodoo." He looked at Dean, dark eyes uncertain, and fearful. "The most powerful spells are still prayers. They do not compel the spirits, they demander … uh, ask for what is required."
"Can I have the names and addresses of the people who went to see her?" Dean pulled out a notebook and pen.
"You can. I do not think it will do you any good." He shrugged. "Marcus Baigaille, Apartment 3, 206 North Rampart. And Chevonne Martinique, 202 Iberville, riverside in Storeyville."
"Thanks." Dean started to turn away. "Uh, one more thing. Anyone else been asking questions about this queen lately?"
"Oui, a woman was here yesterday." He spread his hands. "She said she was a policewoman."
"What did she look like?"
"Uh, tall, thin. Long hair, dark blonde, blue eyes. Attrayant … pretty."
Dean nodded, and walked back down the hall, squeezing out past more of the congregation who'd arrived on the steps.
He looked at the addresses. Storeyville. It was a half mile's walk. He'd have lunch first.
Dean had just turned the corner onto Iberville Street when he saw the woman walking briskly down the steps and turning away from him. Tall, thin, long blonde hair loose down her back, wearing a dark blue suit; it had to be her, he thought. He started to walk faster, then slowed again as she stopped by a late-model compact, unlocking it, getting in and pulling away. He stepped out into the street and caught the plate number as the small car sped away from him.
He looked at the house she'd come out of. Chevonne Martinique's house. Walking up the steps, he knocked hard on the brightly painted door, waiting for a minute before trying again. No one home, or no one alive at home?
The woman had come out of this house, he was sure of it. He looked around, feeling exposed, and pulled out his picks. Setting the wrench at the bottom of the lock, he slipped the pick over it and started lifting the pins. The lock opened and he walked in, tucking the picks back in his jacket pocket as he closed the door behind him. The house was silent and he walked down the side hall, checking each of the rooms as he passed them. Nothing was disturbed. He checked the yard at the rear then went up the stairs, careful to keep his hands away from the surfaces and touching the door knobs only through the edge of his jacket.
The upstairs rooms were as undisturbed as those below, and he weighed his options as walked slowly down the stairs. He needed to see Marcus Baigaille. The man had at least seen Chaigneau, had seen first hand the effect of the charm she'd given him.
Closing the door behind him and wiping over the knob, he turned north and headed toward Rampart Street, wondering if he would again be too late to catch up with the woman. He doubted very much that the police had anyone to spare to work a voodoo case in New Orleans right now, their hands full with the destruction of the city and the rising crime.
The apartment building was quiet, most of the residents still at work, he thought, moving down the dimly lit wide hallway to the rear. Apartment 3 was on the back north eastern corner, originally a large apartment that had been divided into several smaller ones. He raised his hand to knock on the door, when he saw it was very slightly ajar.
Pulling the automatic from his pocket, he moved to the hinge side of the door and pushed it open, crossing to the wall on the other side of the door as he pulled it closed again and checked behind it. The door had opened into a small living room, sparsely furnished and painted white. A narrow hallway led from it to the rest of the apartment.
He moved silently to the hall, and stopped again, listening. The tick of a clock, somewhere down the hall was very loud. Under it, he could hear the hum of the fridge, and the languid whir of a fan, possibly in the next room. He walked down the hall and pushed the first door he came to, his nose registering the faint sweet scent of the beginnings of decomposition as it swung wide.
Marcus Baigaille lay on the double bed, his skin a mottled purple-grey, his face held in a rictus of fear, the eyes open and staring. Above the bed the wide-bladed fan turned slowly.
Dean looked around the room slowly, not focussing on anything in particular, letting his gaze take in the details of the room without emphasis. On the ornate dressing table between the tall windows, a glass lay on its side, the contents had spilled out and the pool of drying liquid looked dark and sticky, several insects already trapped in it. On the floor to one side, a bottle of dark rum was also on its side, unbroken, with the lid screwed on. A jacket had been tossed onto the delicate chaise-longe in the corner of the room. A briefcase stood next to the door. He crouched down, looking at a line of powder that had been spilled along the threshold. It was dark grey. He touched his fingertip to it, bringing it to his nostrils and smelling it warily. Earth. Blood, maybe, he thought, brows drawing together. Goofer dust?
He straightened up and was about to take a step into the room when he heard the slight sound. Barely a whisper, of fabric sliding over fabric. He stilled, gaze sharpening as he scanned the room again. His eyes narrowed slightly as he took in the slight bulge at the base of the heavy curtains beside the left hand window. Stepping into the room, he caught the edge of the door and closed it behind him, the latch clicking as it slid home. The bulge in the curtain moved fractionally.
He took two long strides and grabbed the curtain, yanking it down over the person he could feel hiding within it. A knife blade slid through the material, grazing the back of his wrist and he swore, his arm tightening around the lump he was holding, resting the barrel of his automatic against what he thought was their back.
"Give it up," he grunted as the lump thrashed inside the curtain. "I'm so not in the mood for this."
He cocked the gun, the small sound loud in the room and felt the person subside within the fabric. Gripping an edge of the curtain, he rose and stepped back, the gun aimed as he pulled the curtain away.
On the floor, looking up at him, was the woman he'd been chasing. Long, dark blonde hair, streaked with lighter strands, fell over her shoulders, framing an oval face with fair skin, almond-shaped blue eyes and full-lipped mouth, now partly open as she panted with the exertion of the last few minutes.
"Who the hell are you?" She put her hand back against the wall behind her and got to her feet, kicking the heavy curtain away.
Dean levelled the gun at her. "That was my question."
She licked her lips, looking down at the barrel. "Annie Hawkins, I'm a reporter for the Times-Picayune."
"Right." His mouth twisted slightly as he shook his head. "Let's see your press pass."
She looked at him mulishly for a moment, then sighed. "Alright. I'm not a reporter."
He smiled. "Glad we got that out of the way."
"Who are you, anyway?"
He looked at her consideringly for a long moment. There wasn't much to be gained from dragging out the process. "Dean Winchester."
He saw her eyes widen slightly at the name and felt his curiosity rise.
"You any relation to John Winchester?" she asked slowly.
"My Dad." He nodded. "How do you know him?"
"He got me out of a tricky situation a couple of years ago." She looked down, brushing the dirt from her clothes. "He didn't say he had family."
"He's not the sharing type." Dean looked around the room again. "This seems to be a dead-end. What have you found out about Antoinette Chaigneau?"
She laughed, looking up at him from under her brows. "So now we're partners?"
"Not if you'd prefer to work alone," he said easily, his gaze steady on hers. "This seems like a job where it might be good to have someone watching your back."
"Yeah, okay, you got a point there." She looked at the man on the bed. "He's been dead for at least a day. You can see the marks on his throat, and the petechial haemorrhaging in his eyes. He was strangled."
"Must have been someone big, even catching him off guard." He gestured to the glass and bottle. "The lock on the front door, it was pulled out."
She nodded. "I saw Marcus two days ago. He was terrified. He was going to leave, go up to Baton Rouge for a while."
"Have you actually seen this chick? This Antoinette, who's calling herself a voodoo queen?" Dean leaned close to the man on the bed, looking at the long scratches in his forearms, frowning. Either his assailant was a man who'd forgotten to cut his nails, or a very big woman. The cuts were narrow and deep, almost like claws.
"No. She lives in the Garden District, Coliseum and Sixth, opposite Lafayette cemetery." Annie shook her hair back from her face. "She's not a voodoo queen, Dean. Not in the true sense of the word."
"No, this isn't voodoo," he agreed absently, straightening up and looking back at her. "Let's get out of here, and we can bring each other up to speed on what we've learned, alright?"
"I haven't eaten all day, can we do that over a meal?" She turned to look at herself briefly in the mirror above the dressing table, one hand lifting to push back a few errant strands of hair from her face, and he saw the small revolver tucked into the shoulder holster under her jacket.
"Definitely."
"They look like snot." Dean wrinkled his nose at the platter of oysters on the half-shell in front of Annie. She laughed.
"They're delicious. Try one."
"Not if you paid me." He picked up his poboy and took a bite, still staring uneasily at the plate.
"They're an aphrodisiac, you know," she said, picking one up and slurping it off the shell.
"That I don't need." He looked at her, lifting a brow with a slow smile.
She shrugged and picked up the delicate stemmed wineglass. "If you say so."
He chewed slowly, watching her. She was older, not by too much, he thought, her skin smooth and pale, lightly sprinkled with freckles. On the short drive to Bourbon Street, she'd told him that she'd gotten into hunting when her family had moved into a house that had been haunted. She'd been the only survivor. He couldn't see the scarring that must have left, she kept it buried very deeply. Every hunter he'd met had a similar story, similar but different. All of them amounted to one thing – a knowledge that most people didn't have, and an acute sense of revenge that drove them on. He shrugged inwardly. He was no different.
"Antoinette Chaigneau doesn't exist, by the way." Annie tossed down another oyster, and looked at him. "She appeared in New Orleans suddenly five years ago, claiming to be the descendent of Marie Laveau and Jacques Paris, Laveau's husband. A load of crap, because Laveau didn't have children with Paris, only with her plaçage lover, Christophe de Glaphion." She pulled out a notebook from her jacket pocket. "Around the same time as Chaigneau appeared, there was a reported disappearance of a young woman in the Ninth Ward – a Marie Ramsey, originally from Chicago, moved to New Orleans with her mother when she was three."
"You think that she took a new name and became a voodoo queen?" Dean stopped chewing.
"I think that maybe she found something, something that gave her power, and she decided to quit being a nobody in a poor part of town and become someone else."
"Found something … like what?"
"Like an object, maybe." Annie shrugged. "I don't know. What I do know is that you don't become a voodoo queen with the sort of power she's been using, in five years."
"True." He finished the sandwich and picked up his beer. "Alright. Say she found something … what do we know about what she's been doing?"
"Aside from the charms and potions and hexes she's been handing out, there are rumours of people disappearing around her place. Servants, homeless people, prostitutes … people who aren't likely to be missed too quickly. She's supposedly responsible for a number of death curses, but of course there's no corroborating evidence, just more rumour. There's also a rumour that she called the hurricane. I don't know how much faith to put in that. Ostensibly, she had a falling out with a man she was seeing and she called it to destroy his business and his home in Metairie."
"A category five hurricane to destroy a business? Seems a bit … much." Dean leaned back in his chair. "It destroyed the city, that can't have been the plan?"
"No. That's why I'm not sure about it. The storm was predicted well in advance anyway." Annie slurped up the last oyster and finished her wine. "The question is, how do we find out whatever it is that's giving her this power, and put a stop to it?"
"Yeah. That's the question." He rubbed the heel of his hand over his face. "We'll have to go and take a look at her place."
"Not sure we'll see anything of use just by looking." She looked down at the table. "I've had a look at the place, it's locked up tight. Practically screams 'go away'."
He looked at her sharply. "Walking in without knowing anything about it isn't a smart thing to do."
"No, but maybe I could see if I could get a reading, or buy a charm …" she trailed off as she realised that wouldn't float in this situation. "All right, you're right. We'll look first." She put her napkin down and stood up. "When did you have in mind?"
"Now." Dean stood as well, looking around for the waiter. He caught his eye and nodded and the man came over with the check.
"Could we have two more poboys to go, please?" Annie looked at the waiter as he handed Dean the check. "Sorry to be a bother."
"No bother, ma'am. It'll be a few minutes." He took the check back and walked to the bar.
"You still hungry?" Dean looked down at her curiously.
She smiled. "You haven't been to the Garden District, have you?"
He shook his head.
"No convenience stores there, unless you go up to St Charles. If we're staking her out, then I'd rather have food on hand."
He raised a brow and nodded. His own philosophy. "Fair enough."
Annie drove him back to his hotel first and Dean picked up his gear bag, tossing it in the back and getting back into the car.
"One more stop," she said, pulling out and heading downriver, finding a tiny parking spot in front of the narrow sidewall house whose discreet hand-painted sign advertised charms and protection bags. When she came out, she tossed him a small leather bag, tied with a strip of rawhide.
He looked at her, eyebrows raised.
"Just put it in your pocket," she said with a frown as she extricated the car from the slot. "It'll help."
He shrugged and tucked the bag into the inside pocket of his coat, the scent of the herbs and other ingredients rising slowly around him.
The house stood on the corner, with barely a couple of feet of space between the walls and the sidewalk. Annie drove past slowly and turned right at Seventh, and again at Prytania, pulling in close to the sidewalk and under the deep shade of the trees that lined Sixth Street along the wall of the cemetery.
"This is as close as we'll be able to get in the daytime." She stopped the engine and opened her window, then turned to the backseat and pulled a pair of binoculars from the oversized nylon gym bag that lay on it, passing them to Dean.
He looked through them, his view slightly obscured by the low-hanging branches of the trees ahead of them, and the corner of the wall of the graveyard. He could see most of the windows along the northern wall, and the front door. It would have to do for now. He glanced at the high stone wall of the graveyard.
"We can get closer in there, when it's dark."
"Yeah, but we have to be careful. I think she has some kind of field extending from the house, something that lets her know if someone is watching."
He frowned. "What makes you think that?"
"Because the first night I got into town, I came down here to watch the house and all the lights went off within a minute of me pulling up, and I've had nightmares every night since," she said dryly.
"What kind of nightmares?"
"The kind that scar you for life." She shook her head. "They're not coming from me. I've been using a dreamcatcher and it's helping but they still get through, a bit."
He put the glasses back up to his eyes, rifling through what he knew of projected dreams and the witchcraft needed to do that. Not much, he thought a few minutes later. His father knew about it, he was using a dreamcatcher lately.
The afternoon passed very slowly. There was very little movement in the area, an occasional tourist, coming or going from the cemetery, even more rarely a car driving slowly past the grand houses. The air was warm and soft, and sweet with the scents of the trees and gardens that lined every street and home. Dean leaned back in the seat, trying to stretch out, or at least get one limb stretched out, the small car restricting him every way he turned.
"Dean."
He looked at her and sat up. "What?"
She passed him the glasses, her eyes remaining fixed on the figure on the opposite block.
He lifted the binoculars and looked through them, adjusting the focus slightly. The woman who stood on the sidewalk was dark, her skin gleaming like ebony in the sunshine. She was staring back at him, as if she could see him clearly, although the car was parked behind others, in a pool of black shade from the wide-canopied oak that stood next to it. He stared at her face. It was smooth and expressionless, almost like a mannequin. It took him a moment to register exactly what had caused the thread of unease that rose from his gut. Her eyes were utterly empty, the irises bleached out to a shade of grey so pale they seemed to be gone, her pupils tiny pinpoints of darkness in the centres. He moved the glasses from her, panning across Sixth Street to the house of Antoinette Chaigneau. In the upper window of the third floor he caught a movement, the lace curtain twitching slightly. Behind it he could see a shadow.
"Well, that's pretty damned creepy."
"That's Chevonne Martinique," Annie said softly. "What does she look like to you?"
He lowered the glasses and exhaled softly, not wanting to use the word. "She looks like a zombie."
"Yeah." She looked at him. "We're in Louisiana, right? Not Haiti?"
"Yeah." He raised the glasses again, but the woman had gone. "She didn't look dead, either."
"No." Annie shivered involuntarily. "No. She wasn't dead. But I don't think she's still got her soul."
He glanced at her, then at his watch. Almost six-thirty. "Whatever it is, we've been made. We should move."
"Yeah." She straightened up, and turned the key, starting the engine. "Where do you want to go?"
"Just around to the entrance of the cemetery. Park the car out of sight somewhere and get close again on foot. Try and time it for dusk."
"Okay." She pulled out and did a u-turn, unwilling to get any closer to the house, or whatever it was that now inhabited it.
Clouds had drifted across the wide skies through the day and were now lit up in improbably lurid shades of gold and rose and amethyst as the sun disappeared behind the trees and buildings. Twilight came slowly, filling the streets with a thick mauve shadow that tinted the buildings and roads and trees in the same hue. They ate the sandwiches and went through the gear bags, taking weapons, protective elements, salt and butane.
"Question." Dean looked down into his bag, wondering what else he might need.
"Yeah?" Annie was hunched in the back seat. She had taken off her neat suit and wriggled into jeans and a long dark leather coat. She looked up at him as her fingers finished buttoning up the jeans.
"If whatever it is, is this powerful, how are we going to destroy it?"
"I'll have to get back to you on that." She pulled on boots, discarding the heels. "It depends on what it is. But most things burn, right?"
"Yeah. Most things." He shook his head unhappily.
"Relax. We probably won't get within two hundred yards of her tonight." She gave him a grin as she climbed back into the front seat.
Outside, the streets were dark, the street lamps hidden by the massive trees, so that they cast pools of light underneath them, rather than illuminating the whole length. Dean got out of the car and stood next to the wall of the graveyard. Annie came up to him, putting her hands on his shoulders as he bent, linking his hands under her foot to give her a boost to the top. When she was over, he jumped, catching the top of wall and pulling himself up, rolling over the top of the wall and dropping soundlessly on the other side. The gates were locked at night, and they moved between the tombs and headstones and statues silently, keeping to the shadows of the trees and low buildings as much as possible, working their way south and west toward the corner.
He'd been in a lot of graveyards over the years, had developed an eye for them. This one was probably easy to move through in the day, with plenty of light. It was a nightmare to navigate in the darkness, the tombs and graves and markers close together, the only real paths were too exposed to use, wide paved paths that ran north-south and east-west, crossing in the middle of the cemetery. They had to keep to the walls, out of sight of the three-storey house they were heading for.
About half-way in, the back of his neck began to prickle. He reached forward to touch Annie's arm, drawing her back against the wall next to the overhanging ivy as he scanned the darkness.
He felt her breath against his neck. "What's wrong?"
He shook his head, continuing to stare around. In his peripheral vision he caught a movement, turning his head at the same as he brought up the barrel of the shotgun. The figure moved silently, its eyes fixed on them, the smooth black skin barely reflecting the faint light as it moved closer. Annie's head snapped around as well, and Dean became aware that there were several creatures moving toward them, from all points of the cemetery.
"Crap." He gestured south and Annie moved along the wall, her revolver held in one hand, the other feeling along the wall.
The hand that clasped her wrist was unexpected, cold and horrifyingly strong as she pulled back, stumbling into Dean, the figure that the hand belonged to now emerging from the darkness of the wall, pale eyes with their pinpoint pupils staring at her.
Dean took in the problem fast as Annie backed into him, the gun rose and he fired both barrels into the creature's face. Skin, blood, brain and bone spattered over the ground behind it and the hand dropped off Annie as the body fell to the ground without a sound.
"The tomb!" Dean pointed to the small mausoleum in front of them. "Get inside!"
Annie took a couple of steps forward and fired at the padlock that held the chains closed. She pulled the chains apart as the padlock fell to the ground, pushing hard against the rusting iron doors and shifting them open. Dean was backing toward her, six of the soulless creatures moving toward him unhurriedly. From the corner of her eye, she saw the seventh, the one whose head Dean had blown off, rising as well, much closer than the others.
"DEAN!" It was all she had time for. The creature lunged for her, a gout of dark liquid emerging from the ragged neck, soaking her shirt and jacket as she twisted away, her scream rising in her throat when the liquid soaked through her clothes and began to burn.
The loud retorts of the 9mm automatic filled the quiet streets. Shoving Annie back into the tomb as the impact force of the bullets pushed the creature away from her, Dean used the back of his shoulder to thrust the door wide enough for him to slip through, dropping his gun as he forced it back. On the inside, four long flat bolts had been installed, and he pushed each of them home, securing the door as a fusillade of blows began to pound on it from the outside. It was pitch black inside the tomb and he felt for the flashlight in his pocket, pulling it out and turning it on.
Behind him, on the floor Annie was twisting and moaning, struggling to get her jacket and shirt off as the liquid continued to soak through the layers, charring the fabric while it burned through to her skin.
He dropped beside her, kneeling on the stone floor and pulling the shoulder holster off, ripping the front of the shirt open and dragging it from her arms. He saw a blistering redness where the liquid had managed to get through the two layers. She sat up, then started, looking down at her bra, and the coin-sized spot on it that sent a tendril of pale smoke up as it began to burn through the silk, her fingers frantically reaching around to her back.
Dean slid around her on his knees and unhooked it, and Annie threw it off, her breath ragged as she checked the skin underneath.
"What the fuck was that?" He pulled off his coat, draping it over her shoulders.
"I don't know – it came from the creature's neck – the creature you blew away," she told him, her voice cracking as she shivered under the coat.
Sucking in a deep breath, she closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again, the shivering decreasing as she shut down her panicked response. The burns on her side were stinging, but thankfully no worse than that.
"It was – like an acid of some kind, it just burned through everything," she said, remembering how fast it'd gone through her coat. Looking down at the half-eaten leather coat, lying on the floor a couple of feet from them, another shiver slid through her as she imagined what her skin would've looked like if she'd left it on.
The pounding on the door stopped, silence dropping over them like a shroud, and they looked at each other, straining to hear any sound from the outside. There was nothing. The same image popped into both of their minds. The zombies or soulless or whatever they were, standing around the door like a bunch of misplaced statues, waiting with the infinite patience of the dead for them to emerge.
"I guess we know what happened to the people who went missing." He looked around the tomb. It was a small rectangular room, the plaques showing those who rested beneath him, stamped iron and screwed to the stone walls. Moving back against one wall, he slid his arm around Annie, drawing her back to sit next to him.
"Yeah." She wrapped her arms around herself under his coat. "I think maybe they are the ones who spotted me, that first night, and let her know. I had no clue there'd be so many of them."
"You okay?" He looked down, unable to see her face, though he could he feel the intermittent tremors that shook her shoulders.
"No." She leaned against him, but didn't look up. "Not really, not at all."
He tightened his arm around her, shifting slightly so that she could lean back against him more comfortably. She turned slightly, letting her cheek rest against his chest, her body heat making up for the use of his coat.
"Well, you were right about not getting any closer tonight. I think we're stuck here for a while," he said, wondering how long that was going to be.
"How did you secure the doors?" She glanced over to them and he lifted the flashlight, showing her the bolts.
"On the inside?" Her eyebrows shot up.
"Yeah. Kind of makes you wonder what they knew about the neighbourhood, huh?" He lowered the light, turning it off and leaving them in darkness. No point wasting the batteries.
"We could be stuck here for a while, you know," she said, her voice low. He tipped his head back against the wall.
"Nah, I let off both barrels and about seven shots into that thing. Someone'll call the cops."
She made a noise, somewhere between a snort and a sob. "Not likely. Not now. Not here. You know how thin the cops are in this city right now? And they're not worried about shots fired here. They're too busy dealing with looting and murder in the CBD."
She was right, he realised. Even before Katrina, the city had had the unenviable reputation of having ten times more murders per capita than any other in the country. A few shots fired wouldn't rate.
He couldn't shake the image of the creatures waiting for them outside of the tomb door. "We'll wait until morning. Maybe she'll give 'em something to else to do."
Annie nodded reluctantly. She didn't particularly want to spend the night trapped here, but she couldn't see any other option either.
"Try and get some sleep, Annie," Dean said softly.
She shook her head. "I can't sleep."
He remembered what she'd said about the nightmares and winced inwardly. "How're the burns?"
"They're stinging. Nothing worse." She lifted her head slightly, her hair brushing against his chin. "Tell me about your family. Why'd your dad start hunting?"
Dean closed his eyes. "He didn't tell you?"
"No. There wasn't much time for conversation," she said, belatedly hearing the reluctance in his voice. "Sorry. I'm not trying to dig out old wounds."
"No." He looked down, unable to see a thing, his cheek against her hair. "It's okay. Just, uh, hard to know where to start."
It would pass the time, he thought, tipping his head back against the wall and thinking of what he could say. In the end, he told her a bit about it. The things he could remember. The things that weren't so painful they were buried deep and going to stay that way for good. She listened quietly, not interrupting him, letting it come out at its own speed.
"Sam left four years ago. He's, uh, in college in California."
"That must have been hard for you," she said softly. He hesitated, wondering what he'd said, that she'd drawn that conclusion.
"Yeah, well. He's out now. Safe, I hope. Doing what he wanted to do."
"What about you, Dean? Are you doing what you wanted to do?"
"Yeah," he said, shrugging slightly. At ten and fourteen and sixteen, he'd seen this life as a hero's life. Now, he no longer thought that way, but it was still a life that had meaning, that meant something, he thought. The things he hated, the things that scared him, was losing his family. In the last couple of years, it'd almost happened too many times. "Mostly, I guess."
He felt her shift, sitting up beside him. He couldn't see anything in the darkness, but he felt her breath, against his neck, then his cheek. Her lips touched his, soft and questioning.
For a moment he couldn't respond. He heard the rustle as his coat slithered to the floor, knowing what that meant, but still not quite able to believe it. He pulled from her mouth slightly, his breath ragged.
"Uh …"
"No more words, okay? Just … comfort, in the dark, for both of us." Her voice was barely a whisper.
She leaned forward again, brushing her mouth over his and this time he held her, guiding her over his legs so that she sat facing him on his lap, his hands sliding slowly from her back to her breasts as the kiss became more intense.
Despite an impressive level of experience, he hadn't been with many women older than himself. In point of fact, none. It was a whole different ballgame with her. She whispered to him in the dark, telling him what she wanted him to do to her, telling him what she wanted to do to him, and he could hardly breathe, his heart racing as he felt her touch, her lips and tongue on his skin, directing his hands and mouth over hers, her desire every bit as great as his, her lack of inhibition leading him to deeper pleasure.
He had to fight for control, and very nearly lost it several times, as she took them through a long process of foreplay until he was shaking with the need to be in her, a torment that burned in his groin and spread throughout his body, his nerves twitching and muscles jumping erratically. Then she pulled him down, guiding him inside her and arching against him, starting with an almost unbearable slowness that almost unhinged him, speeding up until he realised that longer, slower, deeper thrusts were taking him there in great leaps instead of the faster but less intense technique he'd been used to. When she came around him, the staccato ripple up him tipped him over and he came with a force he couldn't believe, the groan released with his exhale echoing around the narrow stone room.
October 27
He woke stiffly, hips and ribs sore from lying on the stone, his head pillowed against her thigh. Levering himself upright, he felt around for the flashlight, turning it on and pointing it at his watch. Five a.m. Dawn would be soon. He left the flashlight on, pointed at the wall behind them, the reflected light showing her tired smile.
"You didn't sleep?" He knew the answer as soon as he'd asked. She shook her head.
"I dropped off a couple of times, but couldn't stay asleep," she told him lightly. "It's alright, I'll catch up later."
"Annie …" he stopped, unsure of what to say next, what to say about last night.
The smile reappeared, as if she knew what he thinking, why he was hesitating. "Relax. It's just sex, Dean, not love. Not expecting anything from you."
He looked away, nodding. That put it into perspective, didn't it? He wasn't sure what he thought about her matter of fact words. Another difference between the girls he was used to and the women he suddenly wanted more of, he wondered?
Getting up slowly, he walked to the door, leaning against it and listening. There wasn't a sound from outside.
"You hear anything, while I was sleeping?" He looked back at her. She shook her head.
"Nothing. Do you think they've gone?"
"I don't know what to think about those things," he admitted, drawing the bars back one by one. He pulled the door open, flinching as it grated loudly across the stone.
The cemetery seemed empty and peaceful, the cool, grey light spreading from the east.
He stepped out, taking his shotgun from Annie and turning around. A slight ground mist rose from the damp soil around their feet, but despite the dew in the night, there were no tracks around the tomb. He nodded to Annie.
She walked out slowly, wearing his shirt now, her own clothing left inside. She looked at the ground and back up at him.
"No tracks."
He nodded. "Time to go."
He turned and she followed him, moving away from the tomb. The hand that dropped onto her shoulder made her jump, her mouth opening to scream a warning to Dean, and a second hand clamping down hard over it. Dean was half-turned when he felt the hands on his arms and shoulders, fingers biting into the flesh like talons. He twisted around, and saw Annie similarly held tight, her gun on the ground, struggling against the monstrous strength of the creature that held her.
"Mistress wants to see you." The creature beside him said, her skin dusky in the soft light. "Now."
He was pushed forward, toward the southern wall of the cemetery, the relentless strength of the things holding him unmoved by anything he tried. A tomb stood open near the southern wall, steps going down into the darkness and he realised how the creatures had come to the graveyard with no noise to warn them last night. He ducked his head as the hands pushed him down, the woman who had once been Chevonne Martinique leading the way into the blackness of the tunnel that led under the wall and under the road.
It took him a few moments to realise that the tunnel was only shallow, steel reinforcing columns supporting both ceiling and road, as they came up through a trapdoor into the kitchen of the corner house. The room was empty, lit by a single bare lightbulb. He frowned as he looked at the black squares of the bare windows. Light should have been coming through those windows, it was past dawn, it must be. He looked down at his watch, and his eyes widened as he saw the time. Eleven-thirty. P.M. He looked around, getting a shove in the back from the creature behind him. How had they lost the entire day in the walk from the cemetery? It couldn't have taken more than five minutes to cross under the road. He got another hard push and put the thought aside for the time being.
Chevonne moved through into the hallway, walking with a stilted gait like a woman who'd lost the heel from her shoe. She turned at the staircase and started climbing, and Dean had a good view of her feet as she went up ahead of him, his stomach lurching as he saw that she was walking on one bare foot – and a bloody and dirt-encrusted stump.
On the landing, they turned left, into a wide double room that matched the double parlour downstairs. A four poster bed stood against the interior wall, facing tall French windows. Several chairs, chaise-longe and occasional tables were scattered throughout the rest of the room. On the far wall, a heavily carved armoire stood, with a gold-tinted mirror above it. Dean stopped as the hands held him still, looking around. Until she moved, he didn't see the tall, almost skeletally thin woman who stood beside the bed. When she moved, he wished he hadn't seen her.
Antoinette Chaigneau, also known as Marie Ramsey, had been attractive once. The bones of her face, clearly visible under the tightly stretched skin, were striking. Now though, her skin was rough, almost scaly in places, her hair had been reduced to a few thin clumps still clinging here and there to her skull, her eyes … her eyes were horrifying. The lids had almost disappeared showing the full roundness of the eyeballs. They were white, all the way across, the pupils so small in the centre as to be almost invisible. Dean looked away from her stare.
"So, you are hunters." The voice might once have been human, now it was a sibilant whisper. She smiled and her teeth were disappearing, only a few left in the front of her mouth, and those were longer, as if they were growing, or changing shape. "Weak, powerless mortals. I have the power here, in me, and it keeps on growing, getting stronger. He is coming back, this time he will rule, oh yea."
She looked away for a moment, and became still, the animation draining from her face and body. Dean looked at her, seeing the blankness on her face, and wondered what was happening to her.
A moment later, she turned back to them, her face living again, and raised her hands. He heard a gasp behind him and twisted around, seeing Annie rising from the floor. He looked back at the woman in front of him, whose arms were now fully outstretched, mouth wide open as a deep and atonal noise came from her throat. Far away he heard the beat of drums, a steady, primitive beat. The soulless creatures had backed away, moving to the edges of the room. He turned and saw that Annie was pinned against the ceiling, her eyes rolled back in her head.
A movement caught the corner of his eye and his head snapped down and around to look. From the vents, from under the doors and through the windows, snakes were writhing into the room. Harmless, huge mud snakes, brightly ringed milk snakes, banded water snakes, rattlers, cottonmouth, garter snakes, grass snakes and tree snakes, they slithered and slid across the polished parquet floor, converging on the voodoo queen in the middle of the room.
Dean backed away, freezing as a pink and rust patterned copperhead slid over his boot, brushing by his ankle on its way to its destination. He felt a trickle of sweat run down the back of his neck, as more and more snakes entered the room, creating a living carpet over the floor surrounding Antoinette.
He looked around the room, at the motionless servants, the seething floor, the woman in the centre whose skin was bubbling as the snakes began to wind their way up around her legs and waist. Behind her, he saw the armoire and the gold mirror, his gaze brushing past then returning with a snap, his focus sharp as he recognised what the mirror was reflecting. On the top of the armoire a plain wooden box sat open, a faint and pulsing purple light shining out of it. In the mirror, tilted down as it hung by slender chains from the high picture rail, he could see the dried and withered looking bones inside the box. He felt for the salt and butane in his pockets, looking down at the still writhing floor with a grimace of distaste and took a long stride to the bed, feeling the snakes under his boots, and hearing their furious hissing, but through luck or magic, staying unbitten. He rolled over the bed and pulled the salt out as he slid up to the armoire, dumping half the pound bag into it and dropping it on the floor as he pulled the butane out. The sharp scent began to fill the room as he squirted the contents thoroughly. He looked back at the queen, saw that the snakes had reached her shoulders and pulled the Zippo from his jeans, flicking it open and lighting it. The butane made a quiet whoof as it lit, the flames at first the normal bright yellow, but turning to green and then blue and finally a deep violet as the bones began to burn and the wood of the box charred.
The scream was high and wild and he looked around to see Antoinette turning to him, her skin splitting apart over the bones as the snakes fell from her. He felt himself lifted into the air, helpless against the force holding him, then thrown the length of the room, tucking his head against his chest as he hit the wall on the other side with a force that drove the air from his lungs.
She was staggering in small circles, the snakes now moving in the opposite direction, leaving the room as more and more of her skin peeled from her bones, falling to the floor in chunks. Dean's chest heaved as he tried to suck in air, getting to his feet and looking up at Annie, who was rising and dipping against the ceiling as Antoinette's control slipped. He stumbled across the floor and got underneath her as she was released, catching her and falling backwards at the same time, scrabbling backwards across the floor to the thick plastered wall as the soulless creatures began to shake and tremble, and the voodoo queen, a skeleton now with only a few pieces of flesh still holding onto her bones, shrieked and burst into flame, as violet as the fire still burning in the box. Dean's eyes widened as behind her, he saw the outline of a huge snake, twisting and coiling, its hooded head staring at him, the purple flames reflected in the slitted vermillion eyes. The skeleton shimmered for a moment then flared into a corona of pale light, reaching out to every corner of the room, burning away the vision of the snake, the shadows in the room, chasing the last of the living snakes back under the doors and windowsills, through the vents.
He threw his arm over his eyes, closing them tightly against it, seeing the afterimage of the queen's skeleton outlined in fire against them.
The light died. The room was in darkness.
Lowering his arm cautiously, he opened an eye and looked around. The men and women who had had their souls taken were lying on the floor around the walls. The parquet floor was still, the snakes gone.
He sat up against the wall behind him, lifting Annie's shoulders and looking into her face. She looked back at him, her expression exhausted and she nodded slightly to tell him that she was alright. Rolling to his feet, he walked to the armoire at the other end of the double room.
The fire had burned everything, including the box, into ash. Beside the pile, two other boxes sat on the highly polished surface. He felt for the flashlight, and pulled it out, turning it on and playing the light over them. On the lid of one, an eye had been crudely carved into the wood. On the lid of the other, a circle. He lifted both lids together, unsure of why he felt it was important, just knowing that it was. From each of the boxes a zephyr of wind blew out, entwining and dissipating, surrounding him with a faint scent of flowers. He shut the lids and looked up at the mirror. The warm gold tint that he'd noticed on the first glance had gone. The angle of its reflection was no longer as acute anymore either.
He turned around and walked back to Annie, holding out his hand to her. She took it and let him pull her to her feet. He led her to the door, and switched on the light. The couple of bare bulbs didn't light the room much, but they both watched as the bodies of the soulless began to stir, rolling over and looking up. Chevonne Martinique looked over at them, her expression confused and afraid, her dark brown eyes filling with tears.
"What happened? Where am I?" Her voice was high and sweet, a young woman's voice again.
Dean looked at Annie. "We should get out of here."
"Yeah. I think so."
October 28, Gretna, Louisiana
Annie slowed down as she approached the black car, easing her vehicle to a stop behind it.
"What happened back there?" she asked the man sitting beside her, her expression screwing a little.
Dean shook his head. "I think you were right," he said, remembering the bones in the box. "I think Marie found something of power and she had no idea of what she was doing when she let it take her over."
"I saw – I thought I saw a snake," Annie told him uncertainly.
"Yeah, you did," he confirmed. "My dad'll kill me if I don't get the mythology right on this one but I've never seen anything like that before. You remember what she said about it?"
"Something about ruling?" she hazarded, not sure if that was a memory or a part of the hallucination that had overtaken her when she'd felt hands lifting her up to the ceiling.
He nodded. "Some kind of god, maybe?"
"Maybe," she said. "But you burned the bones and the box and it vanished?"
"It seemed to," he allowed, wondering if it'd really been that easy. "She was keeping the souls of those people. In boxes."
Split apart. He frowned, wondering how – or even if – that was possible. In his mind he saw the eye and the circle, on the lids of the boxes. He'd be able to find out what they meant.
"Did they give – it – power?" Annie asked.
"I don't think so," he said, not sure if it was true, but feeling it as a truth. "I think it was just to control them."
Dean got out of the compact and reached into the back seat for his bag. He shut the door and leaned on the window, looking at the woman behind the wheel.
"You alright?"
She smiled and shrugged. "Yeah, I'll be fine. Nightmares have gone, I think."
"Take care of yourself, Annie." He straightened up, stepping back from the car.
"You too, Dean. I'll see you around."
She put the car into drive and pulled away. Dean turned watched her go and turned to the black car behind him, unlocking it and tossing his bag onto the seat. He slid in after it, stretching out slightly as he pulled the door closed and slipped the key into the ignition, the engine rumble familiar and reassuring.
"About time." He smiled and pushed the tape into the deck, and Nothing Else Matters rolled over him and through the car as he pulled out and headed for north and west.
October 30, Phoenix, Arizona
Dean pulled into the motel with a sigh of relief. He'd been driving for the last two days, not rushing it, going steadily but he was starting to get stiff from the constant time spent in the car. He'd make Jericho tomorrow. He parked outside the office and got a room, driving the Impala into the slot in front of the door, and hauling out his bags.
He stripped off and had a long, hot shower, trying to get the knots and stiffness out of his muscles, emerging fifteen minutes later with a feeling that he might have returned to mostly human. Crawling into the bed, he was asleep almost before his head had touched the pillow, the case, the drive, his thoughts dissolving into a peaceful darkness.
In the pocket of his coat, hung on the back of the chair next to the small table, his phone buzzed softly. He didn't hear it. There was a beep and then silence filled the room again.
October 31
He woke as the sunlight streamed through the thin curtains onto his face, groaning slightly and rolling away from it. He wasn't ready to wake up yet, just a few more minutes of sleep.
The airhorn of a rig on the highway blasted through his dreams a moment later, and he sat up, knuckling the sleep from his eyes as he looked at his watch. Seven thirty.
He got out of the bed and padded to the kitchenette, filling the filter with coffee and the pot with water and staring out the window into the parking lot as it bubbled through.
The last few days had taken on a haze in his mind, the city and it's old sections, the fear in the people. Had he really seen the snake behind Antoinette, trying to come through the woman? He hadn't been able to find any kind of reference to that sort of possession. He shook his head impatiently. It didn't matter. Whatever the significance of the bones he'd burned had been, it was over now. He still felt uneasy at the compulsion that had taken hold of him in the room, when he'd opened the other boxes. It had cut through the most basic tenets of his training. But it had seemed to work, the souls returned to those they'd be stolen from. And he hadn't been able to find anything about the symbols that had adorned the lids either.
He glanced at the pot, and took a cup from the tray on the counter, tipping the coffee into it.
It was finished, and that was all he really cared about, wasn't it? The memories of the tomb he and Annie had spent the night in were still there and he ducked his head as he pushed them aside, still close enough to stir him if he thought about it too long. Live and learn, he told himself, mouth quirking up to one side.
The soft beep from his jacket caught his attention and he walked to the chair, fishing around in the pockets of the coat and pulling out his phone. He looked at the screen, seeing the message notification from last night. Lifting the phone to his ear, he pressed the button and listened to his father's voice, breaking up and crackling.
"Dean...something big is starting to happen...I need to try and figure out what's going on. It may... Be very careful, Dean. We're all in danger."
October 31, 2005. Palo Alto.
Dean pulled into the kerb next to the building. He wasn't sure what he was doing. Wasn't sure it was the right thing to be doing. He'd been trying to call his father every hour since he'd left Phoenix, heading north. He was only getting voicemail. It wasn't so unusual. His father was tightly focussed when he was working, sometimes not getting around to checking messages for weeks. But the message he'd sent … that worried him.
He didn't want to be alone when he went to Jericho, he realised. He wanted backup. The only backup he could really trust. He wanted his brother.
I sought my soul, but my soul I could not see. I sought my God, but my God eluded me. I sought my brother and I found all three.
~ Author Unknown
END
