Return of the Hunters (The DeathSpeaker Codex Book 4) (11 page)

Jesus Christ. Reun had just volunteered to die in exchange for letting us go.

Braelan caught on fast. “Lord Reun. Have you sworn a
gealdht
to stay with this woman?” he said.

“I have, Highness.” He shivered and coughed weakly. “Please let them go,” he said. “I will gladly die in her place.”

“Don’t you dare,” Denei said in a trembling voice. “I’ll kill you if you go’n die on me.”

Damn it, I wasn’t leaving this place without my friends. All of them. “Listen…uh, your majesty,” I said. “I swear to whoever you’re supposed to swear to around here, Reun is
not
a bad guy. When I was here with Uriskel, he saved my brother’s life. And the reason he came here in the first place was to sacrifice himself for my father. The Unseelie Queen took his bargain, even though she didn’t hold up her end, and—” I broke off hard. “Well, let’s just say she didn’t treat him like a noble guest.”

Braelan stared at Reun. “You gave yourself over to Moirehna?”

“Aye, Highness.” One corner of his mouth twitched. “An experience I’d not care to discuss, if it’s all the same to you.”

“I can imagine you’d not.” The King walked forward, stopped between the cells, and took something from his pocket. A silver key. “Well, Gideon Black,” he said. “My brothers trust you, and so shall I. Lord Reun, by the power of the Seelie Court, you are hereby granted pardon.” He unlocked one door, and then the other. “And you are all free to go.”

Denei pushed out first, almost knocking Braelan over with the cell door as she rushed over to Reun. “Thank you,” she said breathlessly. “Oh, Jesus, thank you.”

Braelan gave a slight frown. “My name is not Jesus,” he said. “It is Braelan.”

“Yeah, just…never mind that.” I smirked and helped Zoba off the floor, then made my way out of the cell. “So, your majesty. How about one more little favor?”

His brow went up. “Releasing you is not sufficient favor?”

“Here’s the thing,” I said. “I’m running low on magic, and I’m pretty sure Reun is too. And in case you haven’t noticed, there’s a big, bloody hole through him. The rest of us aren’t doing much better.”

“You’d like me to heal you,” he said.

“Something like that.”

“Very well.” He smiled and stepped back slightly to make room for everyone else filing out of the cells. “You are quite stubborn and persistent, aren’t you?” he said. “You’ve much in common with Uriskel.”

I grinned. “Not really. I usually just ask politely for stuff, at least the first time,” I said. “Your brother is bad-ass scary. He doesn’t have to be stubborn—he gets what he wants because everybody’s too afraid to piss him off.”

“You truly do know him,” Braelan said with a laugh. “And now I’m certain I’ve made the right decision. Let us prepare you for your journey.”

“Thank you,” I said.

I only hoped my persistence had paid off in time.

C
HAPTER 18

A
ccording to Senobia’s nearly-dead phone, we arrived in the human realm at 2:13 in the morning on June 5, 1994. I was pretty sure that was wrong—Arcadia must’ve screwed with the electronics or something. Still, not knowing what time it really was didn’t help to calm anyone’s frayed nerves. We might have half an hour to get there, or five minutes.

Or some of us might drop dead any second.

We’d stepped out through the portal into an empty, cracked-asphalt parking lot overgrown with grass, behind a pile of faded debris that used to be a building. There was a smashed car wedged beneath the wreckage, and a rusted pickup lodged in the branches of a massive magnolia tree at the far end of the lot.

The warding in the dungeon prevented crossing over from there, so we’d gone outside the palace to leave. Which meant Reun and I had gotten a dose of Arcadian moon. It wasn’t enough to recharge all the way, but at least we weren’t completely helpless.

He’d tried to tell me how to part the Veil while he was doing it. Something about knowing where you needed to go, making the air thin, and channeling the fire through your hand. I had no idea what he meant, but I’d nodded along anyway. Now wasn’t the time to demand clarification.

“All right. Hold up.” Denei looked stunned and shaken, like somebody had just whacked her in the face with a cast-iron skillet. She closed her eyes and breathed in slowly. By the time she exhaled, she was in control of herself again. “What you think, brother?”

Zoba tilted his head back and sniffed the air. Then he grunted.

“Yeah, me too. We close enough.” She looked around at everyone. “Y’all keep up, hear? Especially you, handsome,” she said. “This might get rough.”

“Aww, here we go,” Rex intoned.

“Er,” I said. “Here we go where?”

Denei and Zoba were already moving, with Reun close behind. Rex just grinned and followed them with Senobia. I figured I’d hang back, bring up the rear, but Isalie came up and nodded ahead at the rest. “Best you stay in the mix,
cher
,” she said. “Me and Bastien’ll go behind. You fall back, ain’t nobody be able to catch you up.”

“Okay.” With a slight frown, I started forward. “What are we doing?”

“We walkin’ the Path,” Bastien said.

“And that is?”

“A real long story.”

I guessed it was one he didn’t want to tell right now, and that was fine with me. Wasn’t sure I wanted to know what the Path was, or why it might get rough.

Past the wrecked building was a narrow street, just as riddled with cracks as the parking lot, and the sidewalk wasn’t in any better shape. The road was lined with close-set houses—worn and tired, but clean. Pleasant, mid-sixties weather had a few people sitting out on porches. Trees grew from spacers in the sidewalk at regular intervals. Most were elm, magnolia and crape myrtle, but there was the odd palm tree here or there.

I’d never associated palm trees with New Orleans before.

There wasn’t much conversation as we walked. I kept my mind busy with the scenery and occasionally watched Zoba, who walked in tandem with Denei at the front of the line. He still seemed okay. But I was worried he might weaken again, now that we were so close to Legba.

At the end of the narrow street, Denei and Zoba turned left. And for a second, I could’ve sworn they shimmered like a desert mirage. I shrugged it off.

Until I made the same turn, and felt my stomach twist like I’d stepped off a cliff. Everything around me blurred. Before panic could set in, my vision resolved and everything was normal again.

Except for the side street we’d just turned off, which wasn’t there anymore. An auto parts store stood where the curb had been.

My steps faltered. “What the hell?” I gasped. “How…”

A hand at the small of my back made me flinch. “Jes’ keep walkin’,” Isalie murmured. “It’s the Path.”

“Yeah. Great.” I tried to shake off some of the disorientation as I plodded after Rex and Senobia. Somebody was really going to have to explain all this to me later.

This was a more commercial two-lane road. There were still houses, most of them duplexes, but now they were mixed in with businesses—little shops with sidewalk stands, restaurants, boutiques, everything from hole-in-the-wall places with spray painted signs to national chains.

One of the buildings was a bank with a big digital clock sticking out like a flag. The time it gave was 11:42.

At least we weren’t late yet.

The street and foot traffic had increased. But I started to notice that most of the people on the sidewalks were giving us a wide berth. More than one stepped into the road to swing around us when we passed, and an older lady in a purple sundress practically ran across the street when she saw us coming. An entire porch full of people stood and filed silently inside before the group reached the house, throwing guarded stares our way.

“What gives?” I said under my breath. “Do we smell funny or something?”

Isalie flashed a baleful expression. “Sometime the Path push ’em away. They cain’t walk it,” she said.  “But mostly, they think we goan put the
gris-gris
on them. It’s always like this down city.”

“Yeah, we got the scary juju.” Bastien smiled crookedly. “We ain’t never lay a hand on anybody here, but they still fork the devil sign ev’ry time.”

Isalie nudged him and winked at me. “Y’all oughta see ’em over in Tremé. We go there, they be scatterin’ like fat hens from a fox.”

“All churched up and no place to pray, poor bastards,” Bastien said.

They were trying to make light of it, but I could sense the pain beneath the words. And I remembered something Legba said in the memory Zoba showed me.

As if Christ would lift a finger on your behalf. Do you not know that you and your family are forsaken?

Apparently, enduring hatred and isolation was part of the price of service, too.

At the next intersection, Denei headed across the street against a green light, without bothering to check for traffic. While our group crossed, cars moving toward the intersection slowed to a crawl, coasted to a stop, or pulled to the curb. One black-checkered yellow cab slammed the brakes with a tortured squeal and blazed a tight U-turn, almost cracking the bumper of a slow-moving Volvo.

No one seemed to notice the traffic problems. This was really creeping me out.

The street we were headed for was clearly a narrow one-way with a row of vehicles parked along the right side. But when I stepped past the curb, reality did another jump-cut. And we were suddenly passing beneath a highway bridge on a shoulder that was way too close to fast-moving traffic.

When we cleared the bridge, the sky above the city was a pale, washed-out green. And the buildings were…
wrong
. I couldn’t figure out why.

“Jesus Christ,” I breathed. “And nobody notices this?”

“Nobody who ain’t on the Path,” Bastien said. “You okay?”

I shrugged carefully. “Guess I have to be.”

But I decided not to look at the scenery anymore.

After more quick turns and backtracks than I could count, Denei and Zoba made a left turn and vanished around the corner of a big cement building with boarded windows. I caught up to find an alley paved with cobblestones and bordered on the right by an eight-foot wooden fence that curved around the back of the building. Behind us, the increasingly bizarre sky and distorted buildings had become an industrial graveyard, populated with silent rusted structures and empty paved spaces.

And around the curve of the alley, in a pocket of unnatural shadow, was Boite Boko.

The front door of the fat two-story brick building was painted black. A second-floor balcony spanned the width and continued back on both sides. The balcony railings were bones—oversized and made of metal and plaster, but the effect was still chilling. And there was a sign at the apex of the roof. No words on it. Just a picture of a skull wearing a garishly colored Mardi Gras mask, with blue flames dancing in its empty eye sockets.

Absolutely nothing in me wanted to walk through that awful black door.

But I’d promised.

C
HAPTER 19

F
or some reason, I didn’t expect to see any patrons at this club. Maybe because it wasn’t quite noon—not really a happening hour for the club scene. But there were people in here.

At least, I was pretty sure they were people.

The place was dark. There was a kind of dirty yellow light hanging around the walls that never quite reached the center of the vast room behind the door, but I couldn’t see any light fixtures or lamps. Counter-style tables with tall wooden stools on the right-hand side of the room held a scattering of shadowed figures with gleaming eyes. I thought I saw Mama Reba among them, but I managed not to murder whoever was behind the hallucination. And to the left was a bar, and a bartender. A tall skeleton of a man in a top hat with a banded snake coiled around his right arm, its head hanging over his left shoulder.

Denei paid no attention to the patrons. She headed straight through the darkened center, and stopped at the back of the room in front of a staircase heading up. When everyone gathered around, she looked at me. “You ready for this, handsome?”