She’s interred in one of the wall vaults right at the entrance.
I locate the one that belongs to little Felicite. Less than a day ago, I watched through the window as she passed away in her mother’s arms, covered in bruises from the beating her bastard father, Jacques, had dolled out.
Marie’s frantic cries haunt me.
They’ll haunt me until the end of time.
Standing in front of the child’s tomb, I squeeze my hand around the shovel I carry—more for ceremony than out of necessity—and battle with the demonic rage in my soul.
I can’t kill him. I can’t touch him. Believe me, I’ve tried. Whatever magic Marie worked to keep me away from her extends to her immediate family, as well.
He is a monster. Much more than the creatures I’ve encountered on the other side. Fighting in the Haitian revolution of 1791 left him twisted.
It’s no fucking excuse.
He can’t put his hands on his wife, he learned it the hard way, so he takes it out on their two, precious little girls.
They should’ve been mine. I hate that thought, but it’s one that never leaves me.
Truth is, I fell in love that night four years ago, like some pathetic boy who was with a woman for the first time, and I haven’t gotten over it.
It wasn’t just that she sucked a part of my soul into her. I honestly fell head-over-heels for that idiotic priestess.
She is. As stupid as I am. Marie has yet to understand that the rules don’t apply to people like her. She’s tapped into a sublime source of power, giving her rights that others don’t possess.
Jacques should be a dead man at her feet by now, yet she’s holding onto the false belief that ending his life would incur the wrath of the gods.
Not this one.
And certainly not Legba. He might be the head of our pantheon, but there’s no way I’d let him intervene against her.
I’ve let him get away with enough.
Shoving the end of the shovel against the opening of the crypt, I shatter the door clean open. Normally I’m more discreet than this, I don’t leave a trace of me for the humans to find.
This time I will.
Let Marie know I came. That I escorted her precious baby into the afterlife.
The young girl’s soul floats out from its tomb and she lands on her feet in front of me. Big doe eyes, identical to her mama’s, stare up at me, afraid.
“Hush, child,” I croon, the wound in my chest festering. “It’s alright.”
“Mama spoke of you,” she whispers, clutching her favorite doll to her small bosom—a doll her mother must’ve lovingly placed there before the coffin was sealed.
Marie speaks of me? Perhaps as a god. I doubt she ever told her child about her connection to me.
She would’ve been dedicated to teaching her daughters about our religion, however. And that means telling them about the Baron that escorts the dead to the afterlife.
I hold out a hand, trying my best to smile, but gods damned she’s like a miniature version of her mama, and she died at her own father’s hands.
I’ll have his life for this. Marie’s insane magic be damned, he will suffer for eternity for what he’s done.
“Come, child. It’s going to be alright. I promise. There’s a wonderful place waiting and all your mama’s ancestors will be there to greet you.”
“But I want mama.”
Her sweet, sad voice births a demon in me. A blood-thirsty, rabid being that becomes obsessed with ending her sire.
And even if I can’t, I swear on everything I am that I will be there to claim his soul.
I will be there to own it.
He will suffer for eternity in ways that even Hell can’t deliver.
I kneel down to her level. “I know you do, sweet child, but where you’re going, she can’t be there.”
Felicite shakes her head, expression pleading. “Mama said you have the power to decide who lives or dies.”
The cruelest part of my myth.
It’s a power my predecessor had, but the only one that didn’t come instantly with my change. The only one I’m supposed to cultivate with time.
Unbearable brutality. I should be able to save the girl’s life, yet I can’t.
It’s a failure that’ll haunt me until the end of time.
Gently, I lift Felicite into my arms. She’s an insubstantial being that I can see through; due to my abilities, I can feel her clearly. As if she were solid. “I don’t actually know how to do that, sweetheart. I’m sorry. But I promise you, I will make sure that where you’re going, you will live happily for the rest of eternity.” I begin walking off into the fog with her, leaving the shovel and the broken tomb door behind.
Her small arms wind around my neck and she stares off into the distance with that sad, longing expression. “But how do I do that without my mama?”
“I have yet to figure that out myself, mon chère,” I confess, wondering what either of us ever did to deserve our fates.
HE KILLED ANGELE, THEIR second daughter.
I watched from afar as this heinous tragedy played out, unable to intervene.
Marie found him as soon as he’d finished pummeling that tiny body into a pulp in his impotent fury, the result of Marie’s cold treatment and distance from him after Felicite’s death.
What happened to Marie upon witnessing this . . .
It’s another scream added to the long list of cries that follow me wherever I go. The ancestors answered this time, and a whirlwind of energy encompassed Marie—until I realized it wasn’t just energy.
It was souls.
Right before my eyes—and Jacques’—thousands of souls had congregated around her form, and her eyes had bled light gray.
Exactly like Maman Brigitte’s, but without the silver streaks of tears running down her cheeks.
Her own tears were painful enough to witness.
As one, the spirits had invaded Jacques’ body through his eyes, nose, and mouth, and once within him, they began slowly, methodically tearing him apart from within.
About time.
Yet nothing can ever ease the agony of a mother who’s lost not just one, but both of her babies.
I was there to get Angele and reunite her with her sister in the afterlife.
Now, here I am, in the Bayou, at the edge of the swamp, ready to call forth that piece of shit.
It’s another promise I made. He’s mine now.
Marie deposited his remains in the murky waters for the alligators to feed, and regardless of this twisted heartache that unites us in this moment—even though she isn’t aware I’m walking this path alongside her—the pride I feel for her can’t be denied.
The moonlight reflects off the surface of the water. To my left, there’s a large ripple, and a crocodile’s dark tail breaks the surface momentarily, before sinking back under.
If only Jacques had been alive when Marie threw him in there as a meal to the creatures in the water.
Frustration rides me as it always does, an aggressive hum beneath my skin. Every day that passes and I lack the ability to bring the dead back to life adds fuel to the bloodthirst.
I hold out one tattooed hand, fingers spread, and call that lowlife to me.
Like a slingshot, his soul is catapulted from the water and into my hand. I squeeze his neck with every ounce of strength I have until his eyes bulge from their sockets.