Zamani (11 page)

“Renfield, listen to
me.
 
My father (she felt him flinch
at the word, but he stayed focused on her) has fled.
 
If he were coming back for you, he would
have done so already.
 
For him, you
were merely a way to spy on goings on here, an open channel if you will.
 
A conduit.”
 
He was listening now, but she couldn’t
tell if it was sinking in.
 
“Are you
following what I am saying?” He nodded, his eyes glassy with a far away look.

“Mina has asked me to
release you, Renfield. Is that what you want?”
 
She waited, halfway expecting him to
reject the offer, her father’s pull was so strong on him.

“Release?
 
Release?
 
As in set me loose?
 
I don’t know that I can handle myself
out there.”

She shook her head.
 
“Your body would not be released, but I
can release your soul.”
 
At the
mention of his soul, she saw Renfield’s eyes clear for a second.
 
He looked her in the eyes, as if he were
seeing her now for the first time, and a loud sob escaped from his lips--it was
almost a scream in its loudness.
 
He
then simply cried, pushing his grubby face into her neck.
 
He cried like someone who had lost
everything, as he had.
 
She could
give it back to him, though, if he truly wished to be released.

“Do you want me to help you,
Renfield?”
 

He nodded, too overwhelmed
to speak at first.
 
“Please, do it
now, as the sun comes up; I want the evil influence he’s had over me to
dissipate with the darkness.”
 
She
felt him give himself up to her, his knees buckling beneath him. She quickly
slid an arm around his waist, holding him up.
 
She turned his face toward the window so
he could see the light breaking and the sky lighten as she drained the blood
from his body.
 
As she finished him,
she heard the sound of soft laughter in the air and Renfield whispered, “so
beautiful” and was gone.

Olivia left England shortly
after dispatching Renfield.
 
Van
Helsing kept his distance from her, and she kept her distance from the Harkers,
leaving it up to Mina to contact her if necessary.
 
In her new-found freedom, she learned
much about her own true nature and about the nature of normal human
beings.
 
Whether she was in Ireland,
Spain, or China, she found comfort in larger cities where she could recede into
the crowds and where her choices of playmates were infinite.

Chapter
Sixteen

June 21st, 1881

New York

After two decades in
England, Olivia went to New York.
 
She was happy there; the diversity of the city suited her. She found it
easy to move from one neighborhood to another every few years to prevent
detection.
 
She learned quickly upon
leaving her father’s castle how to get along in the world.
 
She’d taken enough gold with her from
his coffers to establish herself.
 
Once she settled in New York and began to enthrall her victims, she
chose those who had not only the blood to spare but also those who would not be
likely to miss valuables or money from their wallets.
 
She merely had to ask and her paramours,
both male and female, would give her what she wanted.

She was contemplating a new
apartment when a story caught her eye in the
New York Times
:
 
“The dead Voudou queen: Marie Laveau’s
place in the history of New Orleans.”
  
In particular, the passage about
Marie Laveau’s annual ritual, set to commence in three days caught her eye:

Many
old residents asserted that on St. John’s right, the 24th of June, the Voudou
clan had been seen in deserted places joining in wild, weird dances, all the
participants in which were perfectly nude.
 
The Voudous were thought to be invested with supernatural powers, and
men sought them to find means to be rid of their enemies, while others
 
asked for love powders to instill
affection into the bosoms of their unwilling or unsuspecting sweethearts.
 
Whether there ever was any such sect,
and whether Marie was ever its Queen, her life was one to render such a belief possible.
 
Besides knowing the secret healing
qualities of the various herbs that grow in abundance in the woods and fields,
she was endowed with more than the usual share of common sense, and her advice
was oft-times really valuable and her penetration remarkable.

Olivia couldn’t explain why,
but she felt an irresistible desire to go to the place where this child of a
slave woman considered “one of the most wonderful women who ever lived” spent
her days.
 
She hoped, too, that if
this Marie Laveau was as powerful as the
Times
made her seem that there
would be successor who held the secrets and powers that she had cultivated
during her long life time.
 
Perhaps
there were answers for her in New Orleans.

The new Piedmont Air-Line
Route by train was the fastest way to get to New Orleans from New York.
 
In 40 hours she could be in the city,
giving her just enough time, she hoped, to find the St. John’s night
ritual.
 
She quickly packed a trunk
with her necessary items and set off for the station.
 
On her way out of the building, she
stopped by her landlord’s door and slid three months rent in an envelope under
the door with a note indicating she planned to return before the three months
elapsed and that she trusted her things would be undisturbed in her
absence.
 
She knew he feared her
enough subconsciously that she need not worry, but she also realized people enjoyed
having written notes about business.
 
They found them comforting.
 
She didn’t mind, as the average person’s poor memory and susceptibility
to good manners made them all that much easier to manipulate.

She made her way to Grand
Central Station by way of a horse-drawn cab, paying extra to ensure the driver
didn’t dawdle and that the horses were pushed to their maximum speed; she
arrived a good hour before the train was scheduled to depart.
 
She wasn’t worried she’d not be able to
make the train; few could afford to make the lengthy trip, so service for those
who could was excellent. Her trunk was loaded quickly and she was shown to her
berth.
 
She carried the copy of the
New
York Times
under her arm, and she read and reread the obituary for Marie
Laveau as the train made its way South.
 

Olivia loved traveling by
train.
 
Her privacy was important to
her and the private berth was a welcome refuge.
 
She associated trains with freedom;
after all it was a train that allowed her to flee her home country.
 
Unlike the ordeal she went through when
traveling by water, train travel allowed her to operate in a normal way,
seeking companionship when she wanted it.
 
Water travel made her disoriented. Water travel caused her complete
disorientation that was far worse than seasickness.
 
She experienced none of the vertigo or
other irritating side effects with rail travel.

As the train rolled into
Basin Street Station some 40 hours later, Olivia was anxious to begin her new
adventure in the city.
 
And the city
was ready to welcome her.
 
The Basin
Street Station’s proximity to St. Louis Cemetery #1 meant that from the moment
she exited the train and entered the station she heard snippets of conversation
about the interment of Marie Laveau.
 
A week had passed since the procession of mourners to her tomb as the
body was placed there, but it was apparent the passing days had not slowed the
traffic of the faithful and devoted.
 
Olivia hailed a cab and asked for the nearest respectable lodging.
 
The driver took her to a small hotel on
the corner of Royal and Iberville.
 
Once she was settled in her room, she returned downstairs to speak to
the desk clerk.

“I’m here from New York; I
read about the death of Madame Laveau?
 
I’m absolutely intrigued.”
 
Olivia smiled at the clerk.

He was more than willing to
talk to her about the Voodoo Queen, even telling her he’d seen her on the
streets often.
 
“You don’t want to
get tangled up in that kind of business, though.”
 
He shook his head.
 
“I hear that even though her mama’s
dead, the daughter is still holding the rites down at Lake Pontchartrain
tonight.
 
Shameful, if you ask
me.”
 

Olivia wasn’t rebuffed.
 
The clerk was shuffling receipts and
hadn’t fully looked her in the eye.
 
She reached across the desk and placed her hand on his, stopping his paper
shuffling and causing him to look up.
 
She smiled again and said sweetly, “Oh, I can manage myself.
 
What information can you provide about
these rites?”
 
As she talked, a
shadow moved over his face, and he became far more cooperative.
 
He passed her the week old
Daily
Picayune
which shared the details of her internment.
 

“You can take the
Pontchartrain Railroad to the lake shore.
 
You can board it in the Marigny.”
 
She removed her hand from his.
 
As she did so, his brow furrowed.
 
“Miss, I really would hate to see harm come to you. Please don’t go.”

She patted his hand and
chuckled softly.
 
“Don’t worry about
me, dear.
 
Just write out directions
for me, please, and I’ll take care of the rest.”

She’d packed her trunk with
a variety of costumes and she knew from the way the clerk reacted that her best
bet for getting to the ritual by the lake was to dress as a man.
 
This didn’t bother Olivia; truth be told
she preferred traveling as a man when she could—pants were so much more
practical.
 
She’d worked with a
tailor in New York so the clothes fit her well and were made to create a more
masculine silhouette.
 
She was
petite in stature, but she’d always been lean and well muscled.
 
Her dresses with their extra boning to
accentuate her waist and décolletage to increase her bust created more of an
illusion about her than her suits did.
 
Once she was fully dressed, she set out toward Congo Square. With her
hair up and tucked under a hat that was pulled low over her brow, she could
easily pass as a young businessman.

The clerk’s information was
good; on her way to the station, she’d stopped and had coffee in one of the
little cafes.
 
By the time she
reached the train station at the foot of Elysian Fields by the Mississippi
River, a good crowd was gathered.
 
The rituals were not secret; in fact Marie Laveau had heavily publicized
the Lake Pontchartrain festivities, inviting the press and even the police to
attend in previous years.
 
She’d
made an enterprise of it, charging admission to the service.
 
As early as 1831, the Pontchartrain
Railroad ran dedicated cars to the lake for the rituals.
 
Olivia thought that the woman must have
been quite powerful and clever, indeed.
 
She boarded one of the special cars and watched the city go by as they
rolled toward the shore of Lake Pontchartrain in Milneburg.

The other occupants of the
car busily chattered away about how they wondered if Marie’s successor would
ever be able to hold the same power as her mother had.
 
One woman claimed that she had been at
the final performance Marie had as the Queen in 1869.
 
“She was amazing, even then. She never
looked old.
 
She would dance and her
voice was as clear and strong as it had been when she was in the prime of her
life.
 
She passed the
responsibilities of the larger ceremonies to her daughter then.
 
Marie still did her prison work until a
few years ago, though, and she still orchestrated the rituals.
 
Her daughter has done well under her
direction, but her presence just doesn’t match Marie’s.
 
The daughter never had the showmanship
her mother did; I’m not sure if she was too afraid to dance with her mother’s
snake, Zombi, or if her mother forbade it, but the rituals just were never the
same.”

Olivia wished the woman
would stop talking.
 
She was
starting to wonder if this was a wasted trip after all.
 
Perhaps the magic had died with Marie
and all that was left was this—the business that grew out of the magic.

They finally reached their
destination. Olivia marveled at the feast set out. There was also a full bar. Makeshift
tables had been fashioned out of sawhorses and boards. Covered with clean white
linens they looked like proper tables, though, and they were well stocked. As
they waited for the ceremony to begin, Olivia noticed that people who arrived
dressed in ritual white stopped at the tables first, adding to the bounty with
a covered dish or an unopened bottle of liquor.

The sun was not yet down,
but in preparation for the night’s festivities, a large bonfire had been built
on the shore. Drummers were setting up on the edge of the ritual space, their
backs to the water.
 
Once in place,
they began a slow rhythm.
 
The crowd
waited.
 
The ritual participants
were dressed in white, differentiating them from the onlookers. The women wore headscarves
of purple and several of the men wore purple sashes tied at the waist of their
clean white pants.
 
An altar was set
up on the other side of the bon fire near the water.
 
At the head of the altar was a large
cross. In front of the cross was a large picture of St. Peter with three large
candles in front of it.

The drumming picked up in
rhythm as a woman carrying a picture of St. John approached the altar.
 
Olivia could feel a stirring inside as
she watched her. At the same time, the woman from the train started up
again.
 
“That’s her!
 
That’s Marie Laveau.”
 
As Marie turned around to face the crowd
gathered at her feet, bowing in front of her, Olivia could see a large royal
python wrapped around the woman’s waist and draped around her neck.
 
It seemed to be looking at the kneeling
crowd with the same attention that Marie did.
 
As Marie turned back toward the cross
and knelt, raising her hand to knock on the ground three times, her followers
mirrored her movements.
 
Olivia
heard a small sound to her right where the woman from the train was—it
was a startled gasp, and she turned just in time to see the woman faint.

Olivia was glad for the
quiet. Not only was the woman out in a faint, but also the crowd around her had
gone silent from the moment Marie Laveau came into view.
 
She moved regally, gliding effortlessly
toward the altar.
 
The snake, Zombi,
must have been heavy, as it was thick bodied and long enough that it coiled
around her middle twice before sliding over her shoulders, yet she seemed
unaffected by the burden.
 
She was
much shorter in physical stature than her presence.
 
Everyone in the crowd, including Olivia,
was transfixed.
 
Other than when her
father was exerting control over her or when she was in the throes of passion
with Daniela she had never felt so free of worry and pain. In Marie Laveau’s
presence she felt as if she were being held gently all the while knowing that
she could be obliterated at any second by the love and power.