Desperate Souls (42 page)

Not lights. Torches. So far down that no one else sees them.

At the end of the gangway, he stepped onto a metal floor. Switching on his flashlight, he saw a caged construction elevator. He pulled the gate open, stepped inside, and pulled it shut. The gate rattled like a grocery cart.

“Now we’re both in a cage,” he said to Edgar.

The raven cawed.

Scrutinizing the elevator’s controls, Jake threw a lever so it aligned with a Down arrow. A motor hummed to life, and the elevator descended into darkness. A breeze blew in Jake’s face, and his stomach felt queasy. He counted four floors, then saw the foundation come into view. Wondering if the elevator would stop on its own or if he would kill himself in a crash, he waited until he had almost reached the ground before flipping the lever into its Off position just to be safe.

He pushed the gate open and hopped down two feet onto the cement. Stepping forward, he imagined the space before him as a luxury condo’s parking garage.

If it ever gets finished.

A series of work lights affixed to support beams provided enough illumination for him to see where he was going without the use of his flashlight, which he slid into a jeans pocket. He approached the burning torches at the foundation’s far end, the smells of cement and plaster and other construction materials filling his nostrils. Glancing down at Edgar, he maintained an even pace.

Nearing the torches, he saw Katrina standing in the distance, wearing a tight white dress that emphasized her figure and made her skin appear darker. She had lashed the torches to steel girders.

As they got closer to her, Edgar made a sound that Jake had not heard from the raven before: a low, fearful croak.

“It’s okay. Don’t be afraid.”
I’m afraid enough for both of us.
Jake stopped ten feet away from her. He did not set the birdcage down.

Katrina held a laptop with a handle. “Good, you came alone.”

“Don’t men usually do whatever you say?”

A hint of a smile. “Yes. Especially those who have drunk my menstrual blood without knowing it. An old vodou recipe.”

He gestured at her dress. “White doesn’t suit you. You seduced Edgar to get to me?”

She nodded. “When Tower died and Kira Thorn disappeared, I cast a spell to locate Afterlife. When I found out whose safe protected it and I discovered your former relationship to the Tower, I decided to set up shop here in the city.”

“Why didn’t you come after me instead of Edgar?”

“I’m an expert researcher, remember? I knew your wife had been murdered and that you had thrown yourself into your work. Your relationship with Edgar seemed to be the only one you made an effort to maintain, so I chose him. When I finally met you at dinner and saw you with Maria, I considered that maybe I’d underestimated myself. I’m pretty sure I could have had you. No problem, though: everything went according to plan, and Edgar was a fine lay.”

Jake felt anger radiating from his soul.
Stay cool, Jake. Stay focused.
“One minute you tried to kill me, the next you wanted me alive. That’s confusing to a guy like me.”

“I never wanted you dead. I came here for you and what you stole from Tower. You caused my Brooklyn zonbies to go after you when you invaded their turf. They’re programmed to carry out basic functions, one of them being self-preservation. I didn’t even know they tried to kill you until I read about it in the papers. But I did send the second crew to your building after you drove me home. Their orders were to torture you until you opened the safe so they could steal the disc.”

“And then they wouldn’t have killed me?”

She offered an apologetic smile. “I said I didn’t
want
you dead. I didn’t say I wouldn’t hesitate to kill you if it served my best interest.”

“Why the machetes?”

“What is this,
Meet the Press
? Machetes are easy to come by, and I wanted to ensure that my enemies didn’t resurrect their soldiers. The last thing I needed was for zonbies to come after
me.
“

“You threw my back out and caused me to hallucinate.”

“Physical pain to keep you out of my hair and emotional distress so you’d beg me to make it stop. I wanted to trade you peace of mind for Afterlife then, but you found a way to beat my curse. Since we’re playing twenty questions, why don’t you tell me how you did it?”

“It’s a trade secret.”

“We’d make an interesting pair, if only we could trust each other.”

“What about Malachai?”

“He and his crew are dead. I had no choice after you turned him against me.”

Malachai is dead,
Jake thought.
Good, now I don’t have to worry about him.
“You shouldn’t have sent him to deliver that message.”

“I didn’t want to risk meeting you face-to-face. You’re more unpredictable than I expected. You might have killed me or kidnapped me and tortured me until I agreed to transmogrify Edgar again.”

“You could have just called me; I’m listed in the phone book.”

“You made that impossible when you stole our supply of Black Magic. Malachai was out of his mind with anger. I needed to make him feel proactive about settling his score with you or kill him. So I sent him to you, knowing that I’d still have to kill him eventually. You can’t blame a girl for trying to have her man and eat him, too. It doesn’t matter; he served his purpose, just like Edgar did. I can rebuild my drug operation with very little effort. With Afterlife, I can do almost anything in time.”

“What secret sauce makes your zonbies tick?”

Katrina seemed to enjoy his attention. “Trade secret.”

“According to my source, a true bokor gets her power from a demon.”

“Hmm. Your ‘source.’ I wondered how you were so effective against me when I went out of my way to keep the really useful information about voodoo out of Afterlife. I thought maybe you’d used something else in Afterlife against me. I guess you’re not such a loner after all. Isn’t there a psychic on the ground floor of your building? I should pay her a visit one day for a little girl talk.”

Careful,
Jake thought. “Can I watch?”

“Let’s see how tonight goes first.”

“That suits me just fine. We were discussing your demon friend …”

She pursed her lips. “We call them Loa, the spirits of our vodou religion. The Petro Loa are aggressive and warlike. While conducting research for Nicholas Tower, I discovered a secret method of summoning the demon spirit Kalfu, who is a Petro Loa. Naturally, I kept this information to myself. I dreamed of one day revenging myself upon the drug dealers who murdered my parents in the Bronx. It was a silly schoolgirl fantasy, one that I’ve never been able to realize because I don’t know who the killers were. Hopefully I can remedy that with Afterlife. But when my grandmother, who raised me and instructed me in the ways of vodou, drowned in her own home because our government wouldn’t extend a hand to save its own people—the descendents of the slaves who built this country—I performed this ritual and summoned Kalfu to visit me.

“He didn’t appear naked in a pentagram or in a burst of flame. I saw him on the street a few days after I’d made my sacrifice in his name. He was beautiful—boyish and feminine at the same time. As soon as he spoke to me, I knew my prayers had been answered. I took him home and made love to him. I’d never experienced such love. Then he raped me. It was brutal. Ugly.
Painful.
I don’t know how I survived that night. It took weeks for the scratches and bite marks to heal, and I still have scars. When he left, he said, ‘You’re pregnant now. Call me when you’ve given birth.’ And then he laughed at me, humiliating me even more than when he tore me open.

“It turned out he was right: I
was
pregnant. I had no job, no family for support, just Nicholas Tower’s money. That was enough. I carried the baby to term and gave birth to a beautiful baby boy in a house I’d bought in Westchester. I named him Romero after my father. He filled my life with a joy I’d never known. But when I took him home, I remembered what Kalfu had said. So I summoned my god.

“He appeared in my bed when I went into my room. His skin was red and covered with runny sores. ‘Let me see the child,’ he said.

“I raised my son in my arms for his father to admire. ‘Isn’t he beautiful?’

“Kalfu laughed, a sound that degraded me. ‘Do you love him above all else?’

“’Yes,’ I said.

“’Then kill him now in front of me, and I will grant you the powers you seek. Wring the life out of his frail body, and you shall know the secrets of life and death, which you may use as you see fit.’

“I looked at my baby, Romero, with his soft skin and closed eyes. He weighed only six pounds. I caressed his hair and kissed his cheeks. And then I strangled the life from him and offered his corpse to Kalfu. Laughing, the demon raped me again, streaking my body with my own blood. I screamed, then cried, then passed out from the agony in my orifices. When I regained consciousness, Kalfu and Romero were both gone, and I could barely move. I didn’t leave my house for two weeks until my wounds healed. During that time, I suffered feverish dreams, and in those dreams, Kalfu instructed me in the ways of true vodou.” She smiled, her teeth white in the firelight. “For that, I love him to this day.”

Jake felt sick to his stomach. He was no stranger to human-demon couplings; he had witnessed Kira Thorn fondling Cain and attempting to straddle him. But Kira had revealed herself to be a monster, genetically engineered in Tower’s laboratories and programmed to lust after power. Katrina was all too human and had sacrificed her own baby to his father in return for the secrets of necromancy. And she craved even more.

Sensing his disgust, Katrina stopped smiling. “Don’t look at me like that, just because I have the guts to walk where others are afraid to tread. I’ve brought this city to its knees. Not Papa Joe, not Malachai.
Me.
A so-called bitch.”

“I don’t need to hear any more. I don’t think I can stomach it. I’m here to make a trade.”

Katrina reached out with one hand. “Then give me Afterlife.”

Jake grunted. “First, make Edgar normal again—with no side effects. I want him the way he was, the way he’s supposed to be.”

“Just like a man. Satisfy me first; then I’ll satisfy you.”

Jake drew his Glock from its shoulder holster and aimed it at her. He had learned a thing or two about high-pressure negotiating from Old Nick. “We seem to have reached an impasse.”

“Shoot me and Edgar will never lose those wings and tail feathers. I’m the only person who can change him back.”

“If I give you Afterlife now, you have no incentive to keep your end of the bargain. You’ll checkmate me, and Edgar and I will end up dead.”

A feint smile of admiration returned to her lips. “You’re half right. I like Edgar just the way he is.”

“Which leaves me six feet under.”

“Not necessarily. Maybe I’ll turn you into a field mouse and watch Edgar eat you alive.”

“Not if I kill you now, sweetheart. At least I’ll finish your zonbies and put an end to your vodou.”

“I sacrificed my baby to get where I am. Are you willing to sacrifice Edgar to shut me down?”

Jake swallowed.
I don’t know.

Then a vicious smell overwhelmed him, an odor he hadn’t smelled in over a year since his days in Homicide: the stench of a rotting corpse. Before he could react, muscular arms encircled his chest, pinning his arms to his side and squeezing the breath from him. The birdcage and Glock clattered on the cement, and the birdcage rolled with Edgar shrieking.

No!

Katrina had tricked him. She had only run off at the mouth to give her undead slave time to sneak up on him. And now she stood perfectly poised and unconcerned with any threat he might have posed, a look of amusement on her face.

Jake struggled in his oppressor’s steel grip but could not shake the creature loose. None of Katrina’s other zonbies had reeked like this. Unable to breathe, he twisted his head around and gaped at Malachai’s dead face. Unlike the other zonbies, Malachai had not undergone any kind of preservation. He smelled and looked like death, and as his purplish lips pulled back into a snarl, revealing a full set of teeth, Jake saw hatred blazing in his eyes.

Hearing a stutter of footsteps, Jake snapped his head around in time to see Katrina seize the birdcage and dash back to her spot. Renewing his efforts to break free of Malachai’s crushing hold on him, he lunged at her. With his oxygen cut off, he heard his brain throbbing in his skull and feared he would lose consciousness.

“Let him breathe,” Katrina said, her eyes gleaming from the torchlight.

Malachai loosened his grip just enough for Jake to suck in some air.

“You’ll have to forgive Malachai for being overzealous. He isn’t a zonbie but a
zombie.
With the right knowledge, there are numerous ways to resurrect the dead. He remains a slave to my will, but I’ve allowed him to retain a certain amount of ambition. It’s impossible for him to move against me, so you’re his sole reason for ‘living.’ He doesn’t like you very much. When he’s finished with you and I’m finished with him, the police will discover what appear to be the corpses of two men who killed each other. I want his body identified. I want there to be no doubt on the streets about who’s running this city now.”

Arching his back, Jake gasped for more air and saw Katrina raise the cage high enough to stare at Edgar. Admiring her handiwork, she unlatched the cage with her free hand, groped for the quivering bird, which pecked at her hand, and allowed the cage to fall to the ground so she could restrain the panicked raven with both hands.

“No!” Jake’s voice rose into the night.

As Edgar flapped his wings, Katrina closed the fingers of her right hand around his neck and extended both arms, as if offering a sacrifice.

Edgar stopped croaking, and his wings stilled.

“Give me Afterlife, or I’ll break his neck and use him for a feather duster. I won’t lie to you: there’s no saving yourself. But at least Edgar will live.”

Staring at the raven in Katrina’s hands, Jake couldn’t help but imagine her baby. He sagged in Malachai’s rancid arms and bowed his head. “All right. You win. Afterlife is yours.”