Chapter Twenty-Four

“What do you have to do?” Murphy whispered.

“I repeat an incantation while the charm, powder, whatever, is being administered.”

“Then poof, it works on everyone.”

“Theoretically.”

I’d learned the spell while in training, but I’d never actually used it. According to my teacher, only a practitioner of incredible power could make the magic work.

“If that’s true,” Murphy said, “then we’ll fall asleep.”

“We’re not zombies.”

“Oh, right.” He shifted, uncomfortable on the hard ground. “What if it puts only the male zombies to sleep?”

“We’ll just have to hope it works on all zombies.”

“Which would leave the bokor wide awake.”

At least Murphy had remembered not to say the man’s name. He was catching on to how things operated around here.

“He doesn’t seem to come to the village much—especially at night. Stays in his hut, lord of the manor.”

“So maybe he won’t know we’ve escaped until breakfast.”

“By then we should be long gone,” I agreed.

“If we can get past the waterfall.”

“One problem at a time.” I rubbed my forehead against his. “How are we going to get the powder in a guard’s mouth?”

“You mean how am I going to do it?”

“You could say the incantation instead.”

He lifted his head just enough so I could see the glitter of his eyes by candlelight. “I’ll pass.”

“I thought you might. So how will you do it?”

“Jump on his back and shove some right in.”

“Then he smacks you across the island and you land on your head.”

“I think I can avoid getting my ass kicked by a single zombie long enough for you to say a few words.

Unless we’re talking a sonnet.”

“A couple of lines. We’ll need to separate the two of them.”

“I have to take a leak.”

“Now?” My voice rose in exasperation. He lifted a brow. “Oh. I get it. But how will I know when to start?”

“Count to one hundred, then begin.”

The plan was so simple; it had to work.

Or fail abysmally.

“Ready?” Murphy stood, and swept the bag of sleeping powder into his hand. He didn’t wait for me to answer, just headed for the door.

“Buddy.” He tapped the smaller of the two guards on the shoulder. “Gotta drain the snake.”

The man obviously knew what he meant, or maybe he just got the idea from Murphy’s lewd hand gesture. Murphy glanced back and mouthed, One, two.

I began to count silently to myself as I packed. Turning away from the guard, who wasn’t watching anyway, I tugged the diamond from my pants and tossed it inside, too, then set the bag by the door.

By the time I reached ninety-eight, cold sweat dribbled down my back. If this didn’t work, Murphy and I were stuck here, and I doubted Edward was going to be able to get us out before I ended up Mezareau’s zombie-making partner and Murphy became a zombie.

“One hundred,” I murmured. “Hear me, Simbi, master magician.”

Simbi, the overseer of white magic, was invoked in the making of charms. He was the patron loa of all freshwater, his symbol the green snake. Simbi and I got along great.

The guard turned when I spoke. I wished I could have said the words silently, but a spell like this must be spoken aloud.

“Grant me the power!”

A tingling began in my hands, spreading across my skin. Both hot and cold, kind of electric, a surge of strength and energy. My hair stirred in a nonexistent breeze, and the hut seemed to glow with more light than there should be from one tiny candle and a just past full moon.

Thunder rumbled. Simbi’s voice. He had heard me, and he’d answered.

The guard had started walking in my direction, but now he began to back up. He sensed it, too. The night belonged to me now, and there was nothing he could do about it. I stepped toward him, and he ran.

Outside thunder still rumbled; the air smelled like sulfur, but the sky was as clear as a pure blue lake. Not a hint of rain.

“Lend strength to my magic,” I continued, as I followed the guard. “Send it to all of a kind.”

He crashed face-first into the ground like a tree felled by lightning. I skirted his unmoving body. “That had to hurt.”

Murphy was on the ground, too, and for a second I feared he was asleep—like the guard snoring nearby

—if not dead, which, come to think of it, was also like the guard snoring nearby. But Murphy lifted his head, struggling to get up, and I hurried to help him.

The strange crackling energy I’d experienced in the hut had disappeared the instant I’d finished the incantation. I’d called on Simbi before in the making of charms. The most that had ever happened was a little bit of thunder.

Though the ease with which I’d performed this difficult spell and the surge of power that had come with it made me nervous, I was also intrigued. What more could I do?

I reached Murphy, and my gaze searched his face for bruises. At least there weren’t any new ones.

Though his black eye looked painful, at least he could see out of it now. The one I’d received from the crazy zombie man had faded fairly quickly.

“You OK?” I asked.

“Yeah.” He shook his head, and his beads clacked. “He fell like a ton of bricks, and I flew.”

“He didn’t hit you?”

“He wanted to, but he didn’t have the time before he went nighty-night. Since you’re here, sans guard, I’ll assume the spell worked.”

I put my arm up and pantomimed falling, then hitting, hard.

“You’re something else, Cassandra.” He stared into my eyes, seemed about to say more, then just grabbed my hand. “Let’s make some time.”

My stomach did a flip. “My bag. I left it at the hut.”

“You need it?”

“My papers—,” I began.

“One second. Stay here.”

“I can—”

“Believe me, I can better.”

Since I knew he was right, I quit arguing. The trip took him more than a second and it seemed like an hour. Waiting alone in the shadowy jungle, I started to hear all sorts of weird things.

Rustles, grumbles, growls—maybe the last was my stomach. At any rate, when Murphy burst through the trees, I let out a startled shriek, and he winced. “Shh! You want to wake the dead?”

“Are they all asleep?”

“I didn’t see anyone milling about like they usually do all night long.”

“Shouldn’t we check?”

“Does it matter?” He tugged me away from the village in the direction of the cave. “We’re still out of here as fast as our happy feet can carry us.”

I kept waiting for a hue and cry, but none came. I still had the feeling we were being followed. From the way Murphy kept glancing over his shoulder, he thought so, too.

“Almost there,” he murmured.

Then all hell broke loose.

Shadows flew out of the night, screeching so loudly I could do nothing but cover my ears. At first I thought the zombies had found us and they were pissed, but the shades that separated from the trees had the forms of animals, not people.

A cat, a dog, a pig, then a few birds swooped low, brushing the tops of our heads, before flying away. If Mezareau controlled the beasts, that could be a problem, even though, according to everyone, there weren’t any large, vicious animals on the island.

Of course such rules didn’t hold since I’d met Edward. Usually where there wasn’t supposed to be something was exactly where it was found.

The greenery rustled and I tensed, expecting that large, furry, vicious creature to burst forth. Instead a misshapen dwarf and a twisted troll j oined the others, and I understood what they were.

“He’s sent the baka.”

Murphy eyed the troll with distaste. “Don’t sound so happy about it.”

“They aren’t real.”

“Look mighty real to me.”

“The baka are evil spirits that roam the night; they can steal your life if you let them, maybe drive you insane.”

“So even if they aren’t real, they’re still pretty dangerous.”

“At least we didn’t drop dead at the mere sight of them.” I glanced at him and shrugged. “It could happen.”

“How do we get rid of them?”

“They grow stronger on fear.”

“Terrific,” Murphy muttered.

The circle of demons stepped closer. Their eyes began to glow. “Stare them straight in the eye,” I said,

“and they’ll disappear.”

“Sure they will,” Murphy said. “That always works.”

“Do it,” I said between gritted teeth.

Though the glowing eyes were hard to meet, I focused on the troll creeping up on me from the right. I thought of Sarah and what would happen if I didn’t get out of here. Any fear of the thing Mezareau had sent evaporated; the demon went p oof .

The others advanced. One of the damn birds smacked into my head. Murphy was right. The thing felt pretty real.

I glanced up, furious, not frightened, and p oof , poof, poof—the birds were gone. When I lowered my gaze, Murphy and I were alone again.

“That was… weird.” Murphy’s eyes were bright; he could hardly stand still. Jazzed. I could understand the feeling. Thwarting evil spirits really got the juices going.

He kissed me, and I could swear his lips sizzled, like we’d both been struck by lighting. As he lifted his head, his forehead creased. “I thought your eyes were blue.”

“They are.”

“Huh. In this light they look aqua.”

I rolled my aqua eyes. “No time for that now. Let’s get out of here before he sends the diab.”

“I know I’m going to be sorry I asked,” Murphy hurried along at my side, “but what’s the diab?”

“Wild spirits. They resemble gargoyles, except for the protruding red tongues. The only way to get rid of them is with a knife.”

“Which we conveniently have, and you seem pretty good with the thing.”

“I am. Except I’d have to use the knife on us.”

Murphy stumbled, then righted himself. “Us?”

“The only way to get rid of the diab is to carve a gad in the upper arm.”

“What the hell is a gad?”

“A guard. The symbols, or tattoo, invoke the has to keep us safe.” I frowned. “Though I’m not sure if it will work without the sacrifice of a rooster.”

“Let’s not find out.”

“That would be my vote.”

We continued on for what seemed like a very long time.

“We weren’t walking this long when we went to the village,” Murphy grumbled.

“We have to be getting close to the cave.”

“Unless it disappeared, too.”

“The bokor said the waterfall would be right where I wished it to be.”

“He said a lot of things, Cassandra. I doubt any of them were true.”

My lips tightened. I had to believe that what Mezareau had told me about raising the dead was real. If it wasn’t, I wasn’t sure what I’d do.

Murphy put his arm around my shoulders. How had he known I’d needed a little comfort? Maybe he’d just needed some, too.

I supped my arm around his waist and we continued to walk hip to hip.

“You still expecting gargoyles to show up?”

“Don’t worry; I’ll protect you.”

Our gazes met. “Ditto,” he said, and I got all warm in places I shouldn’t.

What was it about this guy that kept turning me on? His penis? A lot of guys had them. Since Karl, I hadn’t been interested in a one.

If we got out of here, I’d probably never see Devon Murphy again. And that was OK. Without the constant threat to life and limb, I probably wouldn’t want to.

Murphy stopped walking, and his arm slid from my shoulders. I glanced up and my hand fell back to my side.

We’d found the cave.

Murphy didn’t waste a minute before tugging me into the cool, misty gloom. He no longer seemed to care about enclosed, dark spaces. Amazing what a sorcerer with a little zombie army can cure.

When we’d traveled in the opposite direction, we hadn’t been able to see two inches in front of our faces, and that had been in the daytime. In the middle of the night, the silvery glow of the almost full moon didn’t penetrate the cave for more than a few yards.

Murphy kept one hand in mine and one on the wall. We moved at a pretty good clip. I only hoped we didn’t move right into a dead end.

I strained my ears for a hint of falling water. All I detected was the rattle of pebbles.

From behind us.

I tried not to panic. The sound could be anything. Or a lot of things. None of which I wanted to know about.

Murphy didn’t appear to notice, or maybe he just realized we had no choice but to move forward. Unless we wanted to face the unknown scary thing that might or might not be following us in the dark.

Suddenly he stopped, and I bumped into him, crunching my nose against his back. “Hear that?” he breathed.

I listened, half-afraid there’d be a snarl, right behind us. Instead I caught the lap of water against a shore.

I could even smell it.

We rounded a corner, hustled down a long corridor, and turned the opposite way. Murphy let go of my hand and struck a match, illuminating the cavern and the pond. We were still sans waterfall. Mezareau appeared to be a big fat liar.

“We’re fucked,” Murphy muttered.

The flicker of the flame threw shadows across his face, highlighting his cheekbones, making him appear both older and younger than he was.

A sweet water-scented brush of a breeze swirled past. The match went out, and in the complete darkness footsteps echoed loudly in the corridor. They made me stop wondering how the breeze had swirled in from a wall.

I took off my backpack, pulled out both my knife and a ruined T-shirt. I shoved the latter into Murphy’s hand. “Light this.”

Stones scattered in the darkness, closer now, and I tensed. Murphy struck another match and touched it to the shirt, then dropped the flaming material between us and the gaping black maw of the cave.

“Give me the knife,” Murphy whispered.

“Not yet.”

“When? After he’s turned us into zombies?”

“I won’t let him.” I was the only chance that Sarah had.

“I wish I had my rifle.”

Mezareau had returned my things, but not Murphy’s.

“Me, too,” I said. “But since we don’t…” I moved nearer to the opening.

A growl drifted down the corridor, followed by the distinct shuffle of a shoe against dirt.

I glanced at Murphy, who appeared as puzzled as I was. The growl was inhuman; shoes, not so much.

My gaze returned to the black hole. Eyes shone, coming closer and closer, bobbing much lower than they should have been if Mezareau were walking upright.

I tightened my grip on the knife as the outline wavered in the light of the flames. Man? Beast? I had no idea.

A snarl erupted, so loud it seemed to ricochet off the walls. I forced myself to meet the disembodied eyes.

Help , I thought; what I said was, “I am not afraid.”

If Mezareau was sending bigger and better baka, the creature should have disappeared. Instead it shot forward, and I threw the knife.

The weapon struck with a thunk. An unearthly shriek erupted, and Jacques Mezareau fell out of the darkness, my silver knife embedded in his heart.