Cursed

Cursed

Book 1, Voodoo Nights

By Lizzy Ford

http://www.GuerrillaWordfare.com/

Published by Evatopia Press

http://www.Evatopia.Com

Cover design by Sarian Royal

http://www.Facebook.com/SarianRoyal

EPUB EDITION

Cursed copyright ©2013 by Lizzy Ford

http://www.GuerrillaWordfare.com/

Cover design copyright ©by Sarian Royal

http://www.Facebook.com/SarianRoyal

All rights reserved.

This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events; to real people, living or dead; or to real locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.

Marie Toussaint moved as fast as her plump body would go down the street running between the Iberville Projects and an expansive cemetery located just outside the French Quarter of New Orleans. The early autumn night was chilly enough to make her shiver despite the gown she wore. Street lamps rendered the sidewalk well-lit while the graveyard and side streets were shrouded in darkness.

As a member of a culture that revered death and celebrated the transition of a person from flesh into a spirit, Marie normally felt comfortable – honored even – to be anywhere near the tombs of the deceased.

Except when she came to the city.

Evil lurked somewhere in the cemeteries of New Orleans, and it scared her more than the Projects at night. She dug through her pocket to grab a good luck gris-gris she created for herself, a chicken claw and cat foot bound with the hair of a loved one and blessed by no less than two magic spells. Comforted by the charm, she focused on the rhythmic clicking of her bone and wooden bracelets instead of the unwelcoming city around her.

By the time she reached the end of the cemetery, she was panting and ready for a tumbler of her favorite Sazerac. She licked her lips and slowed without stopping. She was already half an hour late for the secret meeting in the city with the heads of the other two Houses – families of ancient voodoo magic bloodlines.

She stopped to catch her breath.

Someone had begun following her at the bus stop and was closing in. Pretending not to notice, she silently asked the spirits to warn her of any danger, the same way they told her someone trailed.

She began walking again.

Rene.
The spirits whispered the name of the gang member in a voice only she could hear.

“Ah. The warrior,” she said loudly, pleased. “He watches over me.”

She listened intently for a moment, wondering if he’d respond. Her pace was quick for her, but slow for a young man accustomed to prowling the wards and graveyards of New Orleans. He could’ve robbed her or attacked her or worse. But he wouldn’t. Not this member of the Loa Ogoun gang. Named after the warrior god, Ogoun, the LO gang was small and dedicated to voodoo. They were created in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to protect the core voodoo religion and its adherents when the city was thrown into total chaos after the storm wiped away most of the city – and all forms of law and order.

“I ain’t no warrior,” Rene grumbled at last. “How you know I’m following, Madame Marie?”

“The spirits protect them who serve well,” she said with a grateful look towards the cloudy sky.

The rugged gang member materialized out of the shadows lining the storefronts and apartment buildings. Tall and lean, Rene wore baggy jeans and a t-shirt with cap sleeves that left the tattoos on his roped forearms visible.

“You got almost all the Loas on your arms,” she said in approval. “Ogoun twice.”

“He’s my family’s god,” he said, pointing to the warrior god’s symbol. It was in the center of both forearms.

Any other day, she might try to convince him that the spirits really did want him to take his place as a warrior. Today, however, she was already late. She walked faster instead and saved her breath for the journey.

She spotted the Coffee Loa – Coffee God – a hole-in-the-wall café that specialized in voodoo memorabilia and African imports located at the edge of the trendy, touristy French Quarter. The door of the all night meeting spot was propped open, and the rich scents of incense and coffee rolled out onto the street. They reached her half a block away, along with the sounds of a jazz band playing in the club across the street.

“I could eat a horse,” Rene said, eyes on their destination.

Accustomed to feeding eight children and their two dozen grandchildren whenever they dropped by her house north of New Orleans, Marie kept a ready supply of treats in her pockets. She automatically reached for one and pulled out a small baggy, handing it to him.

He took it and held it up, peering at it cautiously with blue-green eyes the color of the shallow Caribbean water of her native Haiti. It was another reason she felt at peace with the reluctant warrior. He reminded her of a much simpler time from her youth.

“Mini-po-boys,” she told him. “Homemade.”

He lifted his eyebrows. “I never eat homemade no more. My mama’s too sick to cook.” He opened the baggy and pulled out the messy sandwich. Two bites later, he was done and sucking the spices from his fingers.

Marie smiled then turned her attention to the café. Instead of going in the front door, they went around the side, to the secondary entrance.

Rene opened the metal door for her. It scraped the cement below. Two doors were on the other side, though only one was visible to the naked eye. The second was protected by magic.

She went to the hidden door and pressed her palms to the cool cement. The spell that hid the door sizzled around her hands in warm, yellow flames. Recognizing her, the protective ward retreated, and the sound of a bolt being retracted filled the quiet space where she and Rene stood.

The door opened. The narrow stairwell beyond was lit by buzzing fluorescent lights. The walls and ceiling were made out of slate gray cement.

“Always feels like a tomb,” she complained and gripped the wooden railing. She stepped down, letting her good leg go first.

She heard the voices before she reached the secret vault under the coffee shop. The others were already present.

Marie descended the last step with a heavy sigh and reached into the knit purse hanging over one shoulder. It held more snacks for the grandkids and a collection of vials with ritual powders and herbs, small boxes containing mummified animal parts and other essential items to perform magic on the go.

The two voodoo leaders sat at a small table in the center of the room whose corners pointed in the cardinal directions. An altar to each House’s respective god was in three of the four corners of the room, and someone had recently drawn a protective veve under each chair. Homemade purification sachets in lovingly created silk pouches of bright purple and gold lined the room with one tossed under the center of the table.

She admired the sachets for a moment. They were the work of one of the voodoo leaders. Marie’s tools of the trade, plastic baggies and beat up boxes, were functional and far less pretty, much like her cooking.

Marie went to the corner dedicated to Papa Legba, the benevolent, powerful chief of the gods who was also her family’s personal protector. She pulled a squeeze bottle of cascarilla – crushed eggshells – from her bag and used it to deftly draw the veve of Papa Legba on the cement in front of the altar.

Kneeling in the purified spot, she closed her eyes and prayed to her deceased husband, her parents, grandparents and great-grandparents.

“Please grant me protection and forgive any offenses I made,” she murmured. Uncomfortable in the city at night with the people behind her, she called upon the spirits of the long dead, just in case she needed the added protection.

When she rose, she went to each corner, deposited puffs of eggshell powder into each then drew the family god’s veve under her chair.

The others waited in respectful silence for her to finish a routine similar to those the House leaders no doubt went through before she arrived. Only when she was ready did she look up at who awaited her.

“Madame Toussaint,” Rene’s uncle, Olivier DuBois, greeted her. He was tall with the polished, educated air befitting the man who bore the title of Assistant Police Commissioner. Well-dressed and middle-aged, he had the family’s blue-green eyes. “Welcome.”

“Welcome,” added Candace Igbo, a woman in an African head wrap and robe with a warm smile. She smelled of the café above, a sign she had been working in her shop before coming down.

“I apologize for the emergency phone calls,” Olivier started. “We’ve had an incident. The … menace we thought was gone has returned.”

“I sense the evil all around,” Marie said. “It followed me from the bus stop here.”

“I ain’t evil,” Rene objected.

“Not you, my warrior.”

Frowning, he crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall.

“Rene, give us a minute,” Olivier ordered. “We need to talk about official matters. Go upstairs and wait for me.”

“A’ight. Candace, I’m grabbing some beignets or something,” Rene said.

“You’re welcome to any of our snacks, as usual,” Candace replied.

The gang member left.

“He is a good boy,” Marie said.

“He, his brother and their street thugs serve a purpose,” Olivier replied. “They keep our culture safe and secrets hidden. There are still parts of the city where police won’t go. If we can’t protect our own, how can our religion withstand another Hurricane Katrina, let alone other threats?”

“The religion is not as vulnerable as you believe,” Candace chided, her accent giving her words a pleasant rhythm. “People may die, but our religion will remain.”

“You and I will never agree,” Olivier said with a smile. “My family has been protecting the Original Three Houses of New Orleans for a few hundred years. We are the -”

“- First Families of voodoo,” Candace finished. “I’ve heard it enough times.”

“It’s a source of pride and responsibility. We are charged with covering up issues like those we need to discuss tonight and ensuring the continuation of our way of life.”

Marie watched them talk. Candace glowed with goodness. She was a
mambos,
a voodoo priestess who was gentle, wise and focused solely on healing magic. Olivier’s background was more like Marie’s: mixed. Having dabbled in black magic as well as healing, Marie found her place, but only after making a few mistakes she was still trying to right.

C’est la vie,
she told herself.

It didn’t take long for her to tune out Olivier. Once he got on his soapbox, she lost all interest. She wasn’t there to be reminded how voodoo in New Orleans had withstood great challenges, from hurricanes to witch hunts to being condemned as a satanic religion, until the Original Three Houses went underground in the 1700s, long before Madame Leveau helped take the legitimate religion out of the mainstream circus it had become in the late 1800s.

No, Marie wasn’t in the mood. She pulled a small wooden box and her cascarilla out of her bag and returned to a spell she’d been working on for a week now. It had to be done by tomorrow, when her beloved grandson, Jayden, visited.

Opening the box, she withdrew the old, round dog tags that belonged to her grandfather and set them on a cloud of eggshells to work on.

“… because we are the original three Houses in New Orleans, each one representing a sect of our religion. African, Haitian, American, we are …”

He will talk forever, if we let him.

Tomorrow morning, she’d prepare the altar in the shed where she practiced her voodoo for the final ritual meant to give the dog tags her most powerful protection spell yet. Her collection of oils, powders and special prayers had grown over the years to the point where she doubted anyone outside of the high priests and priestess in Africa knew more.

If what the spirits told her was accurate, then her grandson was going to need every ounce of knowledge and powder she had.

“Am I boring you, Marie?” Olivier asked, tapping the table to draw her attention.

“
Chatte brile pair di feu
,” she replied in Creole.
A burnt cat dreads the fire.
Is creole french different than regular? Chat is cat in French.
“I don’t never vote and I know you too well. You ain’t ever gonna impress me.”

Candace laughed. Olivier gave a slow smile.

“Okay. Onto business,” he said.

Marie put her project away.

“The LO gang is reporting two more murders like those that used to be frequent a few years ago,” he started. “Black magic deaths. The voodoo serial killer is becoming more active again.”

“The Red Man returns as well,” Marie said. “The spirits have warned me.”

Olivier shifted in his seat. “Last time, the Red Man came and left and then the ritual murders started. Both are connected to the curse, but the LO never found out why.”

“It is the foulest curse I have ever seen,” Candace murmured. “What kind of curse is beyond my skill to heal?”

They both looked at Marie.

Marie touched the mole between her eyes the way she did whenever she was troubled. Every woman born in her family the past four hundred years bore the birthmark; it made her feel closer to those who came before her. She worked on recalling what she’d been told by the spirits.

“It’s the return of the Fourth House, that which used to be one of the original families of New Orleans,” she said. “The spirits told me another member of the Fourth House has come. The Red Man follows.”

The other two exchanged alarmed looks.

“Your ancestors warned us about him last time. I don’t understand how the spirits of your family know so much about this Red Man curse,” Olivier said.

I won’t never tell you, neither,
she said to herself.

“The tale of the Red Man comes from Africa, Olivier. He is known to be hungry, to eat his own, body and spirit and must claim who he comes for, or he will never leave. He pulls others into his curse, anyone in his way, even the innocent,” Candace said. “Whatever he was sent to do last time, he did not finish it, if he is returning. He was supposed to be a legend, a myth only.”