He’s merely a ghost, yet to him, his bodily reactions will feel oddly similar to being alive. As such, he chokes from his inability to breathe and the pain of my grip as it tightens.
Clawing at my hand, Jacques trashes back and forth.
I smile at him, aware of how shocking I must look to him—gleaming white teeth against a skull backdrop. Glowing gray irises focused on him from the shadow of my top hat. “Hello, Jacques Santiago. I’ve been waiting years to meet you face-to-face.”
His lids peel back further in terror, and that’s yet another part of the human soul that holds onto past experience: emotions remain a driving force. As ever.
I bring him to me, smiling wider. “You’re going to like what I have in store for you. Since you thought it was your right to kill your two, precious little girls.”
Jacques attempts to shake his head. As if formulating a denial to give a god.
I drag him by the neck behind me, loving every moment of his panicked struggle and basking in the knowledge that more is to come.
Marinette, after all, will absolutely love having a new plaything.
THE YEAR IS 1881 AND there she stands, within St. Louis Cemetery Number 1. The same resting place where she buried her two babies.
Except, now she’s here, attending a funeral procession for her own damned self.
The gall of this woman. May Bondye give me strength.
It’s been sixty-two years of this. Six fucking decades where that priestess’ powers have managed to circumvent a god’s.
A part of me wishes she would die. Then there’d be nothing to stop her from having to face me.
Her gifts have risen to heights unimaginable for most humans. The world is filled with priestesses, priests, shamans, witches, warlocks, you name it. Many hold extraordinary abilities. Many more are charlatans among their own kind.
Marie ascension is almost dangerous for the gods.
Legba doesn’t seem concerned. As a matter of fact, the times I bring her up, he tends to act like he’s forgotten about her.
Dirty liar.
Now there she stands, looking the same as ever, her eyes disguised somehow. Instead of the all-gray, murkey shade, they’re a regular human brown.
The color they were the night I met her.
She’s surrounded by mourners sobbing at her death, pretending to be her own daughter grown into adulthood.
Marie Laveau II.
And they’re buying it.
They’re fucking buying it.
I throw my head back and laugh up toward the sky.
Toward us, the gods.
The audacity of that mortal makes a mockery of our own.
She worked a spell over herself to pretend she was aging.
Then, she spent the last twenty-years of her life hidden away, and thus her lie was cemented.
The old woman in that crypt isn’t her, but they believe it is. As much as they believe she’s the daughter with the same namesake.
Her abilities remind me of the new presence in New Orleans. That group of witches and warlocks with their ungodly abilities. Their leaders love to interfere with human lives.
As always, I play spectator. A god I might be, but in this great cosmic wheel, in the midst of this destined play, I am nothing but a witness to the machinations of fate.
It won’t be forever, though. That much I know.
“Play your games, bébé,” I tell her from afar, even though she can’t see or hear me. “Play your games. Own them. Hell, if it suits you, come own us. Just remember, Baron will never forget you. And eventually, Marie Laveau, I will get my hands on you again. You can bet on it.”
Chapter Seven
Present day . . .
I found a replacement for Marie.
No. Not another female. Of course, I devour as many as I can, as many come my way.
Ask me if I remember anything about them. Go ahead. Rub my shame in my face.
But, there is something else that almost brings me as high as she did that night . . . Two. Hundred. Fucking. Years. Ago.
Doesn’t matter. There are benefits to the passage of time.
The wild liberation of society being chief among them.
I was anointed a god of death; in this new, shiny world, I am purveyor of chaos. A glutton of revelry.
A voyeur unleashed.
Who could’ve guessed that human madness would come to feed the demon in me?
Yet, it does, and I don’t know if that motherfucker Dionysus was ever actually real—I suspect he was since I know Brigette, that Greek, lying bitch—but I’m this close to taking his place in the world’s consciousness.
The humans could use a new god of debauchery. I’d fit the bill quite nicely.
Of course, one cannot feed off human ecstasy while in another realm, so in the 1970s, when shit started getting really interesting in the mortal world, I moved out.
And Legba let me.
Brigitte didn’t say a peep, either, which I still find suspicious as hell, yet fifty years or so later, life is as good as it’s going to get.
Especially because I haven’t laid eyes on Marie in four decades.
The necromancer, as she finally revealed herself a century prior, joined the new group that established themselves in this town in 1898.
Kado yo bay.
The gift givers.
Or, in their modern nomenclature, The Bestowers.
They ended up forging a sacred alliance with Legba, one not seen for millennia. It sent their powers soaring into the stratosphere.
Of course they then had to have the greatest necromancer of her time.
Shit, I’d love to have her, too, but we all know how that turned out for me.
Self-exiled in the mortal world.
One step away from being ex-communicated, and who knows. Probably on the verge of being stripped of my own powers.
High as fuck, drunk on the supernatural version of absinthe.
Humans think their shit causes hallucinations? Hah. I’d love to pour some of this down their throats, but it’d kill them instantly, so that’s a no go.
I can bring them back once they do, but where’s the fun in that?
Did I mention I finally mastered the power of life? I can decide who lives or dies now.
Again, two centuries too late.
I’m always too fucking late.
Shrugging, I pull on my cigar and head down the stairs of my newest acquisition: a ten-bedroom mansion with a living room big enough to house hundreds of partying humans.
The Bestowers eventually forced Marie out, around the same time that I felt her tugging too hard on the veil. I am the god of death, and she’s a necromancer who was becoming too able for her own good.
She was mere steps away from something astronomical and unheard of.
At least for me.
I’ve never encountered a story about a human that becomes a god by sheer force of will.
Yet, if there is one, if such a thing is possible, of course that woman would be the one.
Haven’t seen her in forty years, yet I remember every damned thing about her.
Gods, I fucking miss her.
One night with her, and I’ve been missing her for the bulk of my miserable, immortal life.
Whatever, as the humans now say. I have a pit of immoral self-indulgence to dive into.
At the landing, I pause to look out over my human-filled domain. Mardi Gras just began out there, but in here, it’s been a non-stop party for weeks—
A familiar tickle goes through my consciousness and I freeze with the cigar halfway to my mouth.