Unsympathetic Magic - Laura Resnick [145]
“The Petro loa are hungry gods. And I’ve sought a lot of favors from several of them. They want the most impressive and costly offering there is: a human life.”
I looked up at the flashing, thunder-crashing sky, and I thought I saw dark gods looming overhead, come to drink my blood and consume my soul. “No!”
Heedless of my screams and protests, the zombies started hauling me up the precarious old spiral staircase that wound around and around the tower, dragging and carrying me all the way up to the lookout platform.
Now I understood the names that had haunted Shondolyn’s dreams: Marinette, a servant of evil; Mama Brigitte, who presided over black magic and helped her worshippers acquire ill-gotten gains. The other names in Catherine’s personal pantheon no doubt had similar profiles.
I also understood now why she had used the white darkness to possess my predecessors, to teach them docility and obedience in a trance state. I was making this process every bit as noisy, slow, tiresome, and inconvenient for Catherine as I could. The higher we climbed and the harder I fought against the zombies dragging me along, the more I screamed and shouted at the bokor, the more annoyed she looked. This was clearly not how she had pictured her victim behaving on the big night.
When we reached the lookout platform, she turned to me and snapped, “Can’t you be a bit more decorous? The gods can hear you! You’re spoiling an important and emotional event for me!”
“Good grief!” I said, gaping at her. “Evil incarnate! Right in front of me! You’re not just evil, you are Evil!”
She slapped me again. “Stop your babbling!” She pointed overhead. “Right there! The dark loa whom I have summoned are right there.”
With my hair blowing across my face, I looked up. They were indeed right there. Shifting shapes and amorphous shadows loomed and writhed overhead, spilling out of the belly of the crashing thunderclouds directly above us. The shapes were immense and, although not even vaguely human, they had a clear form and seemed to move with conscious intent.
“I have prepared for this night for a long time!” Catherine shouted at me as the fierce wind made her red robe billow. “Ever since that do-gooder houngan left for Haiti. He was always interfering. It was such a relief when he left town. You have no idea—”
“Now who’s babbling?” I butted her nose with my forehead.
Catherine shrieked and fell back several steps as her nose spouted blood. With uncontrolled rage in her eyes, she started hitting me repeatedly while the zombies held me still.
“Esther!”
Through my pain and terror, through the clash and crash of thunder, through the roaring of the wind and the cold sting of the rain that started falling again, I thought I heard someone call my name.
“Esther! Esther!”
I turned my head away from Catherine’s next blow and craned my neck to look down from the platform. I shied back reflexively, not having realized just how high up we were. Then I realized I saw figures scrambling around on the plaza below us. Biko was fighting with the baka down there, while Max tried to get past them to enter the tower. The baka seemed intent on preventing entry. I realized that Catherine must have left them there as sentries.
A bolt of lightning flashed, illuminating the moment that Biko shoved his rapier through the torso of one of the monstrous little creatures, then yanked it upward to gut the thing.
“Ouch,” I said involuntarily.
Max tried again to enter the tower. The remaining baka leaped for him., The creature was skewered in midair by Biko’s sword. The young fencer beheaded that one, then dashed into the tower after Max. Even above the rage of the thunder and Catherine’s screams of protest, I could hear the rattle and echo of the shaky iron stairs as my rescuers ran upward in pursuit of me and my captors.
Catherine yelled something at the zombies. They released me and turned, descending the stairs at their usual measured pace. They’d obviously been instructed to stop Max and Biko. As soon as they let me go, Catherine