Return of the Hunters (The DeathSpeaker Codex Book 4) (6 page)

You do what you want to me. You ain’t goan have my kin.

The thought wasn’t my own, and the voice in my head wasn’t one I recognized. It was deep, thick Creole, and very angry.

And I was no longer on the train.

It was a vast old barn, empty except for the hay bales pushed against the walls, the big iron fire pit burning off to the left, and the man standing in front of me. Striking features, perfectly groomed moustache and goatee, long immaculate dreadlocks, his eyes hidden behind round purple glasses. He wore a pristine three-piece white suit with a wide purple silk scarf draped around his shoulders, and white wing-tip shoes. In his hands was a black cane tipped with a silver skull.

As for me, I was tied to the rafters above with my feet barely touching the floor. Shoulders aching, wrists throbbing, sweat trickling down my bare back. And I wasn’t me.

I was Zoba.

“What did you think would happen, child?” The man—
Legba
—spoke in the breezy, dulcet tones of the Caribbean. “There was a deal, no? Now the deal, it is broken. And you must pay the price for this.”

 “The deal was me and Denei,” I said in Zoba’s voice, with no control over what came out of my mouth. “You cain’t have the young’uns. You get them…them
t’ings
outta them, or I will, me. You hear? I
will
.”

“No, child. You will not.” Legba approached with measured steps, reached out and forced my chin up with a finger. “Those who came to me before you—they paid with blood, no? And so shall you.” He shook his head sadly. Then he stepped back, held out the cane and shook it a few times. It wobbled and lengthened into something snake-like, almost graceful.

A bullwhip.

I sneered at him as Zoba’s shock and rage flooded me. “Yeah, you do that. You wan’ my blood? It’s yours, Big Papa. Hell, whip me t’death, if that’s what you be wanting. Do it. Long’s you let my kin go.”

“Death is not what I want from you, child. Not yet. Your purpose now is to live for me, grow strong for me, and feed me your knowledge. All of you. If I kill you now, I gain nothing.” He coiled the whip slowly in his hands. “But you must learn your lesson, child. There will not be a next time—because if there is, I cannot forgive it. In fact, all of you must learn this lesson.”

I tensed and lunged at him, but the ropes brought me up short. “Touch ’em, and I’ll kill you,” I snarled involuntarily. “Swear to Christ.”

Legba laughed. “Oh, child. As if Christ would lift a finger on your behalf,” he said. “Do you not know that you and your family are forsaken?” He made a half-turn and gestured, and the big barn door flew open. “Do not worry, though. I swear on my own name, I will hurt no one except you. This time.”

There was the sound of a brief scuffle from outside, and two empty-eyed men marched the rest of the Duchenes in, shackled at the wrists and ankles.

No!
Zoba’s explosive protest screamed through my head. I could barely look at them. So painfully young, so terrified they couldn’t even speak. As they were herded toward me, Denei kept gathering the rest of them closer, trying to hold onto all four at once.

Her eyes met mine, and I heard her in my head.
You don’ worry ’bout me. You jes’ survive this, hear?

And I answered with Zoba’s thoughts:
Forgive me, cher
.
But you gotta shut me out.

No I won’t. Good or bad, remember?

Doan do this. Please, sister. Shut me out.

“This is touching, no? Unnecessary, but touching.” Legba turned that awful smile on Denei. “So you would feel his pain, child. You will wish you’d listened to your brother soon enough.” He shrugged and paced around behind me. “Such a shame,” he murmured.

And then the pain came.

It was worse than anything I’d ever felt. Like being bashed with a length of red-hot iron, over and over. At first I couldn’t even get enough breath to scream—and then I was determined not to. Well, Zoba was. His fierce focus on staying silent, on not letting the young ones know how much it really hurt, was an almost soothing sensation in a sea of anguish.

Before long, I didn’t have to scream. Denei was doing plenty of that for both of us.

I didn’t even realize the whipping had stopped until Legba appeared in front of me, swimming in my blurred vision. He did not look happy. “I am not at all sure you’ve learned your lesson, child,” he said. “Have you?”

Speaking seemed an impossible task. I had nothing left. Couldn’t even hold my head up. But I was determined to have my say. “Yeah, I done got it,” I slurred harshly. “Goin’ straight to hell, me, and you drivin’ me there. But you got your pound of flesh, ain’t ya. Now you let…you let my kin go,” I gasped.

“So your answer is no. You have not learned, not a thing.” Legba lifted the whip and ran a hand down the length of it, squeezing out drops and spatters of blood. With a flick of his wrist, it became a cane again. Then his bloodied hand shot out and grabbed my jaw. “You should have screamed, child, while you had the chance,” he said. “Because those were the last words you ever speak.”

He moved slowly to the fire pit and pulled something out of it. Something that looked like oversized tongs with a pair of curved-down scissors at the end of it. The blades glowed an ominous orange.

I blinked, and he was in front of me, forcing my mouth open.

Guiding the blades toward my tongue.

Zoba let go of my hand just before Legba cut his tongue out.

The real world rushed back in. Everything seemed louder—the hum and rattle of the train, the whispers among the Duchenes, my own harsh, unsteady breathing. My face was damp, and not just with sweat.

I sensed Denei looming near, about to touch me. “You all right, handsome?” she said.

“Fine. I’m fine,” I gasped, shuffling away on my knees so she wouldn’t. I could still feel the echoes of Zoba’s pain, hear the screams locked away in his mind. “Jesus.”

They all seemed to know not to speak to me until I could pull myself together. When I did, I looked straight at Zoba. “I’m going to free your family,” I said. “I swear I will. If it’s the last thing I do.”

On the verge of a smile, he made a small, indistinct sound. But I understood him just fine.

Thank you.

C
HAPTER 9

O
h, boys…I think it’s time for target practice.

I woke from the dream with a stifled gasp. It’d been months since the last time I had it, but this time was more vivid than it had been in years. The deep Colorado woods, the bright full moon, the caravan drawn around the campfire. Orville Valentine drunk and looking for a reason to beat me again. Target practice—the signal for me to run, so my brothers could hunt me down like a dog and shoot me.

Hodge and Morris never missed. At least, until that night.

The dream was slow to fade. I could still smell the woods, feel the branches scratch at me and crunch beneath my feet. Hear the frantic pounding of my heart, and sense the rage in me overtaking the fear. It was the first time I’d defied them all, and the last game of target practice they forced me to play.

Of course, I paid for that defiance in bruises and blood. All because Orville had tried to take the only thing that’d ever been mine—the moonstone pendant. At the time I didn’t even know what it was, but I was still willing to die to protect it.

As the memories filtered back to the dark corners of my mind where I kept them, the light of reality pressed against my closed eyes. My body ached vaguely, and my mouth was desert-dry. There was a constant low-level vibration moving through me.

Damn. I was still on the train.

I cracked my eyes open reluctantly. Cold daylight flooded the windows of the suite, showing Zoba and the two youngest still asleep. I’d somehow managed to slide down and curl over awkwardly in the chair, in a position that strained the hell out of my back and left the arm I’d slept on dead asleep. I couldn’t even move my fingers.

I groaned and started the painful process of straightening myself out. I’d just managed to sit up more or less straight when the bathroom door opened.

And Orville Valentine walked out.

This time my gasp wasn’t so stifled. It was damned close to a scream. No way in hell I was still dreaming—the surge of sparkling pain through my arm as it tried to wake up attested to that. Orville, six and a half feet of grinning, bearded devil stuffed into filthy flannel and jeans, was approaching me with murder in his eyes.

To keep the promise he’d made to me ten years ago.

“Not if I kill you first, you son of a bitch,” I snarled, forcing myself straighter in the chair. I didn’t stop to question the impossible logic of him somehow being on this train. I was already reaching for the knife I usually carried, even though I knew it wasn’t there. “Stay the fuck back, or I’ll—”

“Gideon!”

The female voice, nowhere near Orville’s bear-growl tone, acted like a splash of ice water. Senobia was scrambling down from the bunk with panic in her eyes. I drew a breath to warn her off, to keep her away from that monster.

Then I realized Orville was gone.

“What the hell?” My body relaxed without the permission of my mind, which refused to believe he’d never been there. He must’ve ducked back into the bathroom, or hid behind the bunks, or gone into the next room. Gradually, I accepted that no one could’ve moved that fast. It hadn’t been real.

But that didn’t make me feel any less freaked out.

“Okay,” I said, breathing out slowly as I looked at Senobia. “You did not just see a big, scruffy redneck asshole standing in the middle of this room, right?”

“No,
cher.
But I’m guessin’ you did.” She glanced back at Rex and Zoba, who were starting to stir at the commotion, and faced me with a frown. “Sometime the dust makes you see things for a while,” she said carefully. “Hard things.”

“Great. You mean that shit Denei drugged me with?”

She nodded. “If y’all want, I can make you another remedy.”

“Is it actually going to help? Never mind, don’t answer that.” I sighed and scrubbed my face with the hand that didn’t feel like it was stuffed full of firecrackers. Christ, if I sat here much longer, I was going to start sobbing like a baby. I really didn’t need hallucinations of the Valentines following me around right now. “Gotta take a…I mean, use the bathroom,” I murmured, lurching up on unsteady legs. “Excuse me.”

I still half expected to see Orville in there, waiting for me.

C
HAPTER 10

T
he two-hour layover that morning at Chicago’s Union Station was my chance to get the hell away from everyone, so I could try to process everything that’d happened. In less than a day, I’d gone from the relative safety of a place I was just starting to feel comfortable calling home, to an unexpected and life-threatening trip halfway across the country with people I barely knew. No one knew where I’d gone, and I had nothing but what I was wearing.