Neutron Solstice

Chapter Two

The blind woman sat trembling on a large wooden chair, leaning against the high quilted back, arms folded across her breasts. She wore a thin cotton dress, with a dark brown stain on the right hip. Her right hand fiddled with the slim silver knife, sheathed on a cord around her neck. Every few seconds her pink tongue flicked nervously over her dry lips.

All around her, in the lobby of what had once been the Best Western Snowy Egret Inn of West Lowellton, near Lafayette, Louisiana, men bustled about their business. Not one of them looked directly at her. If Mother Midnight had been summoned by their lord, then it was best to avoid any entanglement. The scar-faced woman was notorious as one of the most cunning of the witches. The magicians of the day were known as houngons, and were frightening enough. But Mother Midnight was one of the dark wizards, called bocors.

Cross her, and she might wish you dead. Might touch you on the cheek with a long fingernail and whisper the single word, Thinner. That had happened only a month ago to tall, strapping Stevie King. Slowly but surely, he began to waste away. Within twenty days he died, shriveled to less than eighty pounds.

And now something had gone wrong. All through the bayous the whisper had gone out of a disaster at a ritual. So the baron wished to see her.

Her sensitive nostrils caught the sharp scent of marijuana, and she turned toward the sound of steps, hearing them stop near the chair.

"He will see you now, Mama Minuit."

There was not the usual respect in the young man's voice, and the woman tasted fear on her own tongue. The baron ruled over a vast area of the swamps, all around Lafayette. Apart from the renegades, every soul for fifty miles around paid dues to Baron Tourment. Even the Cajuns, deep within the Everglades, would not cross him.

She stood and reached out a feathering hand for guidance. The Best Western had been the headquarters for the baron ever since she could recall. But he moved from room to room daily, fearing assassination. The hand that gripped her fingers was soft as a girl's, and she could smell scent.

"This way. There is a step, then another."

She wasn't going to ask why she'd been summoned, in case she got the answer she dreaded.

She wasn't going to ask.

"Why does?.." she began.

"He will tell you."

"Oui," she said simply.

The carpet was soft beneath her sandaled feet, muffling their steps. Her sense of direction was excellent, but even she lost track of the twists and turns of the endless corridors. Twice they passed clunking machines that made ice for the baron and his army. Once they stopped, and she heard the thin whining of an elevator. They went up one floor, then along more corridors. They entered another elevator. As her bare shoulder brushed against the sliding metal door, she felt the faint whipcrack of a static shock. Down a level.

She realized that the young man holding her hand was teasing her. Playing some cruel jest by taking her a winding way, making the darkness around her into a bewildering maze.

"How far?"

Ignoring her, he quickened his pace, dragging her behind him.

"How far, friend?"

"Soon." There was a measured pause. "And do not think I am your friend, Mother."

Then, clear and distinct, her ears caught the sharp click of a gun being cocked. She winced in the expectation of the shock of a bullet. But nothing happened. The man at her side giggled, feeling the sudden tenseness of her hand.

"That is not his way. Not a swift death."

"I know it," she replied, her voice shriller than she'd intended.

The last public execution had been around the beginning of the year. An old man who'd stolen a chicken for his family and had been caught by the sec men.

They'd stripped him, his pale, sagging belly almost concealing the shrunken genitals. Poured gasoline over him and ignited it. The flame was almost invisible in the bright sunlight. He'd capered and jigged, his hands beating at the fire. The leader of the baron's sec men, Mephisto, had handed the old man a can of water, which he'd immediately poured over his own head.

The water had been boiling hot.

Smoke and steam had mingled in a deadly halo about the old man's skull. Layers of skin had come peeling off like discarded decorations at Mardy. Careful not to sully his immaculate white suit, Mephisto had splashed his victim with more gas, flicking a match to light it. The cold liquid had streamed over the man's body, over his groin and his legs. The flames, with the more beautiful blue tint to them, had danced all over. The pubic hair had scorched; blisters burst out by the hundreds.

Mother Midnight had seen none of this, relying on one of her followers for a description. But she'd smelled burning hair. Roasted flesh. Heard the mewing and gagging of the old man. The hiss as Mephisto poured more boiling water over the fire.

Flames and water.

Flames and water.

Flames.

"Come on," snapped the young man, jerking the witch from her reverie.

She was pulled into a room and was left alone. She coughed, trying to establish the size and shape, but the sound was muffled, as if large drapes hung everywhere.

"The ritual of the bird, Mama?"

He used the Creole French that she always used in her ceremonies, rather than the anglicized patois of his followers. His voice was deep and resonant with a pleasant amiable tone to it.

"It was bad, Baron. Real bad."

"Everyone leave us."

There was a scurrying of feet and a jostling in the doorway as if too many people were trying to get out at once. The woman heard the door close, then silence broken only by a susurrating creaking sound. Leather and wood and metal moving against each other, under tension.

Mama Minuit had never seen Baron Tourment. She had spoken many times with him. Even made love with him. Her body knew his dimensions. All of them.

She knew that he was immensely tall. Three inches over seven feet. Though his fingers were like steel, his body was weak, the knees and hips unable to fully support him. To compensate, he wore a clumsy exoskeleton of steel struts and bindings around his lower torso and legs. His hair was short and curly. She also recalled that his penis was about twice ordinary size, thick and long, like the forearm of a young child. He had thrust remorselessly between her wide-spread thighs, tearing her, so that blood gushed over her legs and belly.

She had never conceived. Nor had any woman he had ever serviced. But she knew that the baron still lived in hope of a son and heir.

"I heard of the red-wing slain. Falling into the flames to perish."

On an impulse she dropped to her knees, conscious of him looming over her. She could smell his body. Musk and soap, mingling.

"I have never seen the like."

"You put out the eyes?"

"Yes."

"And released it clean? It was not harmed? The wings were unbroken?"

"Yes, lord."

His breathing was slow and steady. The only other sound the woman heard was the surf of her own blood seething through her ears.

"It fell to the fire and was consumed?"

"I have never..."

"You have said that."

"Forgive me, lord."

"For what? There was a ripple in our world, and you asked for the strangers' ritual to be performed. It has been done before. And it will be done again. This time, it went... I am disappointed, madame, I am very disappointed."

"It proves what I had said. There had been signs before. When there has been a great tide or the earth has shaken. The insects, the snakes and the birds. All behave in..."

His hand touched her face, and she stopped speaking. The middle finger of his right hand touched her jaw, beneath the left ear. His spatulate thumb probed under the right ear.

"Tell me once, woman. Why?"

The palm of his hand was across her lips, pushing them against her broken teeth. There was the warmth of sweet blood in her mouth.

"There are strangers come. But they are not as we are. Not Cajuns. Not your men or women. Not the wolf's-head renegades from the other side of the town. They have come from nowhere."

"And the signs are bad?"

"As bad as can be. Never..."

The finger and thumb began to tighten, making the cartilage pop under the skin. The woman moaned, but the grip was inexorable.

"That is all? There is nothing more you can say to aid me with these strangers?"

She desperately racked her mind for something that might satisfy Baron Tourment, might spare her from his cold anger.

"No?" he said, voice as soft as the touch of a butterfly's wing. "Then you have failed me."

The hand closed on her jaw, squeezing, the nails digging into her flesh. The skin burst under the pressure, and the woman tried to scream for mercy. But already her windpipe was clamped shut. First the left side of her jaw was dislocated, then the right joint cracked apart. She tried to bite the black hand, but it was too tight against her lip.

Blood was filling her mouth, and she struggled to swallow it. The hand pincered in, harder and tighter, until she couldn't breathe.

Her veiled eyes protruded from their sockets, blood trickling from the corners. More blood came seeping from her broken mouth, from her nose and from both ears. It was as though her entire skull was a great sponge, filled with crimson blood, and Baron Tourment was squeezing it slowly dry.

The giant black braced himself on his splinted legs, lifting Mother Midnight until her bare feet hung clear of the carpet, kicking and jerking. He wrinkled his broad nose at the stench as she lost control of both bladder and bowels and fouled herself. But his grip didn't relax for a moment.

The last sound she heard, deep within her own head, was a soft cracking, like a man setting his heel to a fresh apple.

"Adieu, Mama," whispered the man, opening finger and thumb with a gesture of revulsion, allowing the corpse to drop to the floor at his feet. He wiped the blood from his hand on his dark cotton shirt.

There was a polite knock on the door of the luxury suite.

"Come."

"It's over, Lord?"

"Yes, Mephisto. It's over. Remove that and dispose of it to the pets." The grating Creole French was gone and the man spoke perfect English.

"And then? She saw something?"

"I think so. Something could be real bad. Pass the word for extra care."

"Who can they be?"

The massive black creaked across the room and collapsed inelegantly on a long sofa, stretching the exoskeleton and sighing.

"Not that white butcher kid and his friends?"

"Lauren and his gang?"

"No, Mephisto. The bocor woman here smelled something new. From outside the swamps."

Mephisto grinned wolfishly. "It is a vengeful spirit come to punish you for your evil, Baron Tourment."

It was dangerous to make that kind of joke, but the sec boss had judged the moment well.

"You think maybe that? Do I do wrong? No. A man like me shouldn't worry about something like that. It may even be blasphemous."

He threw back his leonine head and laughed uproariously at his own joke. Mephisto joined in, stopping when the baron pointed a long, bloodied finger at him.

"But take care. Who knows what manner of creature moves amongst us?"