Bayou Moon - Andrews, Ilona [122]
“You should’ve left,” she told him. “You always wanted to.”
“False diamonds,” Lagar whispered. “Like swamp lights.”
Another convulsion shook him. He screamed. His eyes rolled back in his skull. Blood poured from his mouth.
His pulse stopped.
Cerise untangled her hand from his. Her face turned flat and cold. “String him up.”
“You’re bleeding,” Richard said. “And grandmother isn’t here to help you.”
“She’s right,” Ignata walked up to them. “Tomorrow will be too late. String him up, Richard.”
He shook his head and walked off.
“What’s going on?” William glanced at Kaldar.
Kaldar grimaced and spat into the grass. “Magic. Old swamp magic.”
TWENTY-TWO
CERISE sat in the grass. The cut on her breast had stopped bleeding. Strangely, it didn’t hurt, not as much as she thought it would have. Her blood always clotted quickly, and she usually got away with a bandage where other people needed stitches.
A few yards away Erian dragged a corpse by its feet onto the growing pile of the dead. He should’ve nursed his wounds, instead of pulling corpses around. Erian turned toward her, flipping the corpse. Excitement lit his eyes, his teeth bared in a rigid grin. He looked deranged, lost in a maniacal glee.
Blood poured from the corpse’s mouth. Erian laughed, his voice bubbling up from his throat.
The delight on his face disturbed her to her core. This wasn’t Erian. Erian was calm and quiet. He didn’t laugh at death. Didn’t revel in it.
The feud was over, Cerise told herself. He’d waited for his revenge for so long it might have driven him a bit unhinged. The Sheeriles were done, and once they cleared the field, Erian would return to his normal self. But she would remember that rigor mortis smile forever.
She sighed and looked at the body he was dragging. The cadaver’s pale head bounced on the ground, and more blood escaped from its mouth. The face seemed familiar . . . Arig. She almost didn’t recognize him without that leer. Death wiped all expression off his face, and now he seemed just another boy, cut down too early.
Cerise wished she felt something, something other than regret. The Sheerile brothers were dead. The feud was over. She should’ve been celebrating, but instead she felt empty, scraped clean of all emotion. Only regret remained. So many people dead. Such a waste. A waste of people, a waste of life.
If a rock fell from the sky and hit her head, killing her, she wouldn’t care. She was spent anyway.
William dropped on the grass next to her. “It was a good fight.”
“Yes. You slaughtered thirty people single-handedly.”
“I meant you and Lagar.”
Cerise sighed. “If I was my father, the family would follow me anywhere, but I’m not. I had to prove that I was good enough. The next time I may have to lead them against the Hand, and I need them to follow.”
In the center of the clearing the men had strung up Lagar’s body. He hung upright, off a wooden pole, and people piled peat and mud around the base. Three buckets full of mud already waited next to the body. Richard and Kaldar brought a large plastic bin over and set it by the buckets.
William looked at the body. “Why?”
“We’re going to invite a swamp spirit into his body. There are many spirits in the swamp. They used to be Gods, the Old Gods of the Old Tribes who fled into the swamp centuries ago. But the tribes are long gone, and now their Gods are just spirits. There is Gospo Adir, he’s the spirit of life and death. There is Vodar Adir, he’s the spirit of water. I’ll be calling Raste Adir, the spirit of plants.”
“To what end?”
She sighed. “We don’t know where the Hand took my parents or why. We need to find out where they are and what they want. Plants have a lot of vitality. Enough to revive a dead body. The things I’m looking for are locked in Lagar’s brain. He was a careful man. He would have to know what Spider planned to do with my parents, or he would’ve never made a deal with the Hand. Raste Adir will meld with the body and find that knowledge for me.”
“Fusion.” William spat the