Cajun nights Anthology 3 in 1

254 Pages·2016·1.38 MB·English

by  Windsor Annie

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CAJUN NIGHTS, 2003
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Ellora’s Cave Publishing Inc.
© LE MYSTÈRE, SAMANTHA WINSTON, 2003.
© EMBRACE THE MOON, PATRICE MICHELLE, 2003.
© MALÉDICTION, ANNIE WINDSOR, 2003.

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LE MYSTÈRE edited by ALLIE McKNIGHT
EMBRACE THE MOON edited by MARTHA PUNCHES
MALÉDICTION edited by ANN RICHARDSON
Cover Art by DARRELL KING
CAJUN NIGHTS

Le Mystère
By Samantha Winston

Embrace The Moon
By Patrice Michelle

Malédiction
By Annie Windsor
Cajun Nights

Prologue

Sunset prowled Louisiana’s Atchafalaya Basin, thieving glimmers from the
swamp’s unrelenting black surface. Tributaries became dark wells. Slow-moving
rivers grew bleaker than the Styx and twice as deadly. Like veils between worlds,
Spanish moss hung from cypress branches, concealing more than most dared to
imagine or understand.
Snakes sliced across inky surfaces as owls preened and readied for the
night’s hunt. Here and there, crickets and toads rehearsed for a deafening
performance, and a bull gator’s heart-chilling bellow cleaved the humid air.
Birds struggled to find roost before they fell victim to the swamp’s insatiable
appetite—and as for bipeds, human or otherwise, they hurried to the nearest
refuge. Only fools and murderers remained in the Atchafalaya after nightfall,
along with a few brave souls and yet a few more lacking sanity’s wisdom.
Rubie Breaux counted herself among the former, and sometimes the latter.
Sometimes, Rubie thought she’d been born with the Atchafalaya, and when she
died, the old Basin might just wither with her bones—or at least Daemon Swath,
the isolated patch of mud, rock, and swamp grass where she lived and farmed
and saw to ceremonies in her oum’phor, her Voudon temple.
“Foolishness,” she muttered. Talking to herself had become second nature
long before Maman Rubie forgot how old she was getting. Now, she could
scarcely remember the spelling of her name, who loved her enough to call her
Maman, who knew her enough to address her as Tata, and who simply pointed
and whispered about “dat old mam’bo on dat damn cursed island.” She could no
longer fully remember even the gentle lines of her Haitian mother’s sweet face.
She recalled what was important, though. What had to be done. She didn’t dare
think about what would happen to the world she knew when she died. Those
thoughts were simply too horrible to bear.
As darkness stole across her herb beds and chicken yard, covering her
vegetable garden and her clothesline draped with newly laundered ceremonial
flags, Rubie moved quickly despite her white-clad bulk. Adjusting her cotton
dress and apron, she leaned forward and touched up the paint on the trunks of
her reposoirs, the trees where the loas, the gods, lived. She took care to use the
exact shade of each loa’s favorite color. She knew exactly what the gods liked to
drink, what they chose to eat and how to cook it—and this was fortunate, for
Rubie and her foremothers tended the most unforgiving of mystères. Maman
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Winston, Michelle, Windsor
Rubie and her people kept the Pethro Rites. They served—and to some extent,
contained—the darkest of loas and the darker sides of benevolent gods.
She finished painting the base of the last live oak at moonrise, then glanced
toward her two-room shack. It would feel like paradise to slip inside and take a
short nap, but many hours of work awaited her in the oum’phor. The wooden
building’s four rooms needed to be swept, and the packed-earth peristyle, or
courtyard, too. The peristyle’s central post and the nearby pé, or altar, needed
dusting, as did the two Pethro drums. Rubie’s asson, the calabash rattle filled
with stones and snake vertebrae, sacred symbol of her power—well, that was
looking dusty, too.
Rubie sighed. Sometimes, she wished to be a young initiate again, free of the
burden of leadership. Or maybe just a hoodoo adept like most in New Orleans,
casting love charms and simple spells, barely noticed or known by the loas. Such
was not her lot, though. Rubie Breaux was a mam’bo, an empress of Voudon, and
she knew her responsibilities all too well.
Mustering her waning strength, she started for the oum’phor—then froze and
shivered.
A strange spirit energy had crossed onto Daemon Swath.
“Something that don’ come often.” Maman Rubie sniffed the thick night air,
hoping for a scent, a perfume, some clue to tell her which loa had chosen to make
a visit without being summoned by the drums, chanting, dance, and offerings of
a proper ceremony. Such things were unusual, but not impossible, especially in
times of trouble.
Rubie sniffed again. “Smells like…hmmph. Fancy European toilet water.
What you be doin’ here, Mademoiselle Charlotte?”
Of course, the capricious loa refused to answer.
Heaving a sigh, Rubie changed course and hauled her old bones back to her
cabin. It took her a good hour to collect and prepare what she needed: a cup of
syrup-sweetened water, a glass of clairin, and a plate of just-cooked tender meat
of a very young chicken. Rubie arranged all of this on a tray lined with pink,
Mademoiselle Charlotte’s favorite color, and she carried it through the darkness,
out to the edge of the yard, and placed it at the base of her only pink dogwood.
Minutes ticked by.
Mosquitoes worried Rubie’s arms and face. She swatted at them, but didn’t
even consider going inside. Charlotte was the trickiest of tricky. Temperamental.
Headstrong. She’d take her time, mais, oui. Just to be a dickens.
After another few seconds, the contents of the cup, glass, and plate vanished.
Before Maman Rubie could move or speak, Mademoiselle Charlotte’s
presence seized her like a storm. Pictures flooded her tired mind.
A dark man, with wicked purpose.
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Cajun Nights
A woman sought by a man outcast, even from his own heart.
A cursed man, bearing blood-burdens and grief.
And more. Infinitely more. Perhaps the breaking of all she had protected, the
finish of all she held dear. Maybe even her own doom.
By the time Mademoiselle Charlotte departed and left Rubie to fall to her
aged, aching knees, the mam’bo of Daemon Swath realized great good and great
evil would come home to the Atchafalaya. The fate of many souls turned on the
actions of the three people she had visioned. May the gods help them—and all
the lives they would touch.
Two of them would be her visitors, no matter that they weren’t initiates, and
no matter her personal feelings. One man was her long-lost foster son, heading to
the swamp in great peril. Charlotte had instructed Rubie to answer the questions
they would pose. For what purpose, Rubie could but guess.
Mademoiselle Charlotte, a mystery among mystères, rarely shared her
intentions, be they fair or foul. Rubie knew one thing for certain, though. With
Charlotte involved, nothing would be simple…and everything would have a
price.
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Le Mystère

Samantha Winston
Le Mystère

Prologue
Bayou Lafourche, Atchafalaya Basin, 1977

In the black, velvet night, someone hunted her.
He’d been following her since she left the bastringue. At first she hadn’t been
worried; lots of folk took the short cut across the swamp after the dance. Simon
had accompanied her as far as the fork, and then had asked if she’d be all right.
She’d just laughed. The bayou was her home and she knew it well. The path was
wide and the pale sand glowed faintly in the moonlight.
The air stood still. The heat in Bayou Lafourche was oppressive, sending
stinging, salty sweat into her eyes. Mosquitoes whined, some landing on her
arms and legs. Their bites stung, but she didn’t dare move. She didn’t dare
breathe.
Then the clouds had covered the moon. Quiet footsteps had come closer, but
when she asked who was there, no one answered. Now she crouched in a small
bush, painfully aware of how poorly it hid her.
A bullfrog croaked, making her jump.
Close by, there came the sound of a low laugh. Gooseflesh prickled on her
neck. Her heart hammered madly. She couldn’t see anything in the pitch
darkness. But she sensed a presence. Someone came near, closing in on
her…chuckling as he approached.
Her nerves stretched to the breaking point. A splash sounded on her left and
she bolted, rocketing out of the thicket. Her feet hit the familiar path leading to
her shanty, but the laughter came closer. A hand grabbed her and she lost her
balance. She fell, grunting as she skinned her hands and knees. Before she could
recover, hands were around her neck.
She wanted to scream, but she couldn’t. The hands were tightening, and a
harsh voice whispered in her ear.
“Sorry ma belle, but I need you dead…and buried where no one will find
you.”
She tried to breathe, tried to escape, but the hands were too strong. The last
thing she knew a flash of light blinded her and then…nothing.

* * * * *
Twenty-five years later…
9
Samantha Winston
The mam’bo stared at the man. He was evil, she sensed it. Badness
surrounded him in an aura that pulsed with each breath he took. “What do you
want?” she asked, her voice low.
Outside the crickets stilled. In the quiet, the man spoke. “I seen her.” The
skin around his mouth and nose whitened.
The mam’bo’s eyes narrowed. “Seen who?”
“Non, mam’bo, I ain’t sayin’ her name. Be enough to say she’s dead, been
dead twenty-five years, yet for two weeks now in my dreams I seen her standing
in a patch of moonlight, lookin’ jes like she did twenty-five years ago. The same
dream comes back every night, and in it, she looks straight at me and says it’s my
turn now.” The man shook his head. “She’s dead. Defan bitch!”
“Twenty-five years?” The mam’bo’s skin was prickling now. She looked out
the window. “You said it is the same dream?” She shook her head. “Bad signs.
Dreams about the dead are bad signs. Twenty-five years is a quarter century,
with the moon—”
“I don’t care about that. Tell me what I got to do to make her go away and
never come back.”
The mam’bo’s lips tightened, but she nodded to a bench and he sat down. She
went to the corner where a black hen and a white rooster were penned. She
reached into the cage and selected the hen.
She did her business in this room. Callers came at night usually. She ushered
them into the peristyle, where most rituals were performed. Partly enclosed, it
was adjacent to the holiest room in the oum’phor. Baskets, rattles, and trays hung
from the ceiling. A burning fire cast red light on the man’s face.
On the hard, earthen floor, an intricate vèvè glimmered malevolently. She’d
drawn it with chalk and, in the dark, it took on a greenish glow. The mam’bo took
pungent, stinging leaves out and crumpled them, inhaling their bitter scent, then
sprinkling them on the lines of the vèvè.
She grabbed the black hen and tore its head off. The bird’s wings flapped,
but she held it over a jar until no more blood trickled from the neck. She set the
bird down and picked up the jar. Holding it towards the fire, she peered at the
quantity and color. Too dark for her liking, too thick, clinging to the side of the
glass. Not a good sign. She hesitated and then took a sip. The hot blood burned.
She held the blood in her mouth then swallowed.
Her hands shook as she set the jar down. She walked in slow circles around
the bloodied vèvè— seven times—praying to the loa she was summoning for
help. Her eyes closed. Would Charlotte help her now? Where was that loa? Time
passed. Sweat rolled in huge droplets down her face. A whiff of perfume tickled
her nostrils, but it wasn’t Charlotte’s French scent. It was lighter…like lily of the
valley and cool dew. And then images appeared.
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