Chapter Fourteen
You, and me, and Devil Makes Three
There was a tremor in her hands that reminded her of Edward. Clenching her fists tight, Dusty luxuriated in the way her nails bit deep into her palms. Fear was an interloper. She preferred the pain. Lucky for her, limping across the Nevada desert was about as painful as it got.
Edward had been missing for two hours now, and it was just as oppressive as it’d been since she stepped foot out of the car. It was the height of summer, and the temperature was well in the triple digits. A heat made all the worse by the glare bouncing off the sand stretching on into infinity. A jolt of agony in her thigh had Dusty stumbling. She fell to her knees and her vision wavered. She needed to keep going. Edward had been out on his own, naked and with no water for far too long. Coupled with the drugs in his system, it would be a miracle if she didn’t stumble across his corpse. Unbidden, an image of him, lifeless and forgotten, filled her mind's eye.
No
The viciousness of the thought surprised her.
It’s my fault he’s lost, drugged up, and dehydrated, she reasoned. The least I can do is bring him back. Nothing more.
But when she stood, panic made her clumsy and slow. Gritting her teeth, Dusty trudged on, her thoughts in turmoil. She was running out of time. She could feel it in the sweat slicking her back and the valley between her breasts. Looking back, the Mustang was nothing but a glimmering red star in the distance. If she didn’t find Edward soon, he wouldn’t be the only one in danger.
Far off on the distant horizon, a storm brewed. Dark clouds swirling and promising mischief and violence. Another threat prowling close. Dusty stopped, her jaw tight as she stared at the encroaching clouds. In her right hand, she held a handful of leaves she’d grabbed on her way down the side of the ravine. They still had Edward’s blood on them, though it was beginning to dry, tacky, against her skin.
No helping it, she thought.
Crouching, Dusty reached for the knife in the hilt at her ankle. It was rare she pulled this one free. It wasn’t like Sweet Bess, eager for battle and ready to taste skin. No. This one was made for other things, and the steel gleamed as Dusty palmed the handle. If she listened close enough, it was as if the knife whispered, and Dusty echoed the prayer etched into the metal with reverent breaths as her fist crushed the delicate, blood-soaked leaves in her free hand.
She knew most vèvès by heart. While other kids were learning their multiplication table or memorizing the capital city of every state, Dusty and her sister were learning how to call on the primordial deities, the Lwa, who governed the world and man alike. Over the years, Dusty had shied away from the practice she’d been reared on. She was neither initiated nor trained to be the Manbo her mother and grandmother had been. She’d dabbled here and there in hoodoo, just to keep her spirits fed and strong, but a world where miracles were commonplace was no longer her home.
Still, she still knew how to ask for help. Something told her if she spoke, Someone would be listening, waiting—just like back in the tunnels, just like the woods that night with Desi, just like always. Setting her knife aside, she pulled off her necklaces and rings, tossing the trinkets aside. Her clothes went next. They were covered in grime and the wrong color for this sort of work. Their energy further tainted by the touch of Officer Dipshit. Once she was as ready as she could be, she crouched on the desert floor. Using the tip of her knife, she carved His name into the earth, splitting packed sand apart with excruciating care. A vèvè was a portal, an anchor, an invitation, but at its core, each one was a name of beings too ancient to comprehend.
Which meant there was no room for error, least she run the risk of calling forth someone…unexpected. The storm edged closer, as if hunting, and her hair danced around her as the symbol took shape. Dusty had left her jacket behind in the car, and the sun was a scorching weight against her back and bare arms. But still, she worked. She was no longer brimming with power and faith – it had been years since she had any altar to speak of. It was hard to pay homage to one’s ancestors and spirits while on the back of a motorcycle.
Hard, but not impossible, a thought chided, reminding her so much of her gran she winced.
“Sorry,” Dusty muttered to her.
A sense of amusement, not her own, before the invisible presence was overpowered by something else. The fine hairs on her body stood on end, as if she were standing too close to a current, and with every pass of her knife, the next line in the sand grew harder and harder to draw. By the time she finished the last symbol, her arms were shaking with strain.
Dusty fell back, gasping in relief – and no small amount of pride. It was perfect, throbbing in time with her heartbeat. In her left hand were the leaves with Edward’s blood on them, and in her right was her knife. Was it right? She didn’t know. Even the hand you used could determine the success or failure of a conjure. Dusty pushed on. She had no choice. She needed to do something now . Edward’s face bright in her mind’s eye and the touch of his blood an intimate weight against her palm, she spoke her prayers. She could taste him on her tongue, remember the warmth of his skin, how strong he was even at his weakest. She needed him back.
“ è?ù ?ba ??dàrà,” she whispered, uncertain of her welcome. The first time she’d been dumb enough to call for his aid, Desi’s death fed life to the conjure. It had been the Devil, after all, who pulled Dusty from the depths beside her sister. Who gave her life. Only, he wasn’t the ‘Devil’ at all. Not to her or those like her, those who felt his spirit at every crossroads, and walked with him through graveyards. Those who tasted him and knew him as Chaos. To be claimed by spirit was to walk the path they’d set for you your entire life, but Dusty had been running for so long she’d long since lost her way. When she was a child, her gran told her she was the daughter of a trickster - but there was so much more to Eshu than the games he liked to play.
The first time she called his name, there had been Desi. This time, Dusty had nothing to offer. Nothing but dirt and blood and steel. And it was enough. Oh, God. It was more than enough. Warmth, both sharper and softer than the heat of the sun on her flesh, suffused her and Dusty’s voice grew strong as the magic took hold.
“è?ù ?ba ??dàrà,” she said again. “Your daughter has come.”
The wind stopped, and Dusty glanced up. The storm had inched closer as she worked, but it, too, was frozen. Not even the roiling black clouds bisecting the, otherwise blue, sky moved. The desert was cut in half, part shadow and the other light, and from within the between place stepped a man. The figure from the tunnels, the whisper from the grave, he stomped towards her in bare feet, his footsteps a thousand beating drums she could taste. Black skin, so dark he rivaled the shadows at his back, and sensuous muscle. He was obsidian and strength, lithe and bouncing on the balls of his feet as if he ached to run but enjoyed the pageantry too much to skimp on it. A wide, regal nose and lush lips transformed a strong-boned face from harsh to mischievous. With every step he took, Eshu changed, as if unsure of what form to take.
Stomp
A man in traditional tribal gear, staff in hand, and red sash riding low on his narrow hips.
Stomp
An old man with a gray beard and wide-brimmed hat
Stomp
A little boy palming a necklace of cowrie shells.
When he reached her, he was dressed like he’d been born in the same hood as her, raised on the block, and proud of that shit. His chest was bare, showing off the hard, unforgiving planes of his body. Tattoos ate up every inch of skin, and his hair was in dreads, half of it pulled up, and the rest left to hang down around his shoulders. It framed his strong-jawed face and made his eyes shine like pools of quicksilver. This time, he was wearing the cowrie shell necklace, and his red linen pants hung haphazardly, showing off the deep V where stomach met hips and hips led a trail to other things.
Dusty was staring so she glanced away, flushing when he chuckled. A sound like the cawing of crows in the distance. It called to something primordial within her and her body swayed toward him.
“A shy, Adele Burdot,” he murmured, his voice like sins still unforgiven. Lifting a hand to catch a lock of her hair, he ran the braid through his fingers before pressing a kiss to the end of it. “The Gods, they weep, Chere.”
“Your daughter-”
“Daughter?” He threw back his head, laughter a sharp bark of sound. “You’re no child of mine, Burdot.”
Dusty’s breath caught, and she dared meet his gaze, as confusion – and the first stirrings of anger – dawned. “My gran says different.”
“And you believe her over your own God?”
Dusty grit her teeth. She didn’t say as much, but they both knew the answer. Eshu twirled her hair around his finger as he spoke. Around and around. A finger, then his hand, then his wrist. A leash he used to urge her closer and closer still. Up close, he smelled of gunpowder and rum, warm steel and Florida water.
She wanted to bathe in him, clean her soul in him, come up gasping for air with fire in her mouth and a spent bullet for a tongue.
Dusty licked dry lips. “If I’m no child of yours,” she rasped. “Then you’re no God of mine.”
He grinned, revealing a gold grill in the shape of vampire fangs. Between her legs, desire twisted with a violence that drug a gasp from her lungs. Dusty jerked back but he used her hair to keep them less than a breath from one another. “I said you weren’t one of my children,” he leaned in, scenting the curve of her neck. “I never said you weren’t mine.”
She was breathing too hard, breasts rising and falling. She wouldn’t be surprised if he could feel the ragged beat of her heart against her ribs, even with space between them still. Though they weren’t skin-to-skin, a chill emanated from him. His grip in her hair remained gentle, and as much as she wanted to, Dusty knew better than to try and pull away from the ice inching towards her scalp. What would happen if it touched her? Eshu met her eyes, so close their lips almost brushed. She couldn’t help but notice; beyond the grills was a yawning darkness, infinity wrapped in rich brown skin, so much like her own that her throat ached with unknown emotion.
“What do you want from me?” she asked, because he wanted something. Everything, above and below, had a price and Eshu was the one who dictated it.
“Everything.” He laughed, and Dusty made the mistake of staring too long into those silvery eyes. His lashes were white, she noted, as she was pulled into his gaze. There was no pupil to be found, no iris. It was like peeking through a window into something forbidden. The desert faded and all was light; so intense she quelled before it. In the light was a web, a maze stretching into forever and arching overhead, tangling around her mind and snaking through her veins until she couldn’t pull free of it. Each line hummed, screamed, sang, exploding with sound and power where they interconnected with one another.
Dusty fell, and fell, and fell over, and over again. Scrambling to catch herself on the pathways scouring the tender parts of her brain. The scream built from deep within her, tumbling from between her lips to paint the sky a shimmering gold. One of the lines in the distance lit up, echoing her cries until they were all she heard. All she was. From far away, she knew her physical body was thrashing in place, knew there were restraints pulling her away, but Dusty had always gloried in the pain, and her screams turned to howls, rich and wild. Howls to laughter, sharp and broken. And around her the world of crossroads and endless possibilities pulsated and cracked, as if her voice had the power to bring it all crashing d…
Something grabbed her by the throat, the touch so sudden her consciousness was pulled kicking and shrieking from Eshu’s own. She was pulled off her feet and to the ground. Dusty struggled, clawing at her neck until similar bands snaked around her wrists and jerked them away. Her feet kicked, digging into the ground as she bared her teeth. She was shaking so hard her body convulsed, desperate to return to that place, even if it meant cutting off her air to get there.
“Be still,” Eshu commanded, and the fight leaked out of her so abruptly it was like a spirit being exorcised. A death of self that drug a mourning howl from heart and womb alike. Dusty sagged, realizing the binds holding her were ropes of sand – given life by Eshu himself. Blearily, she glanced down. She was kneeling in the center of Eshu’s vèvè, the sand around her neck keeping her head bowed so that she couldn’t look up at him as he circled her.
A mercy that felt like anything but.
“I’ve missed this, sha.” He breathed. She shuddered at the endearment, eyes rolling in her head. He ‘Spoke’ and all of a sudden she was a violin, the strings of her soul plucked with such ease he may as well have been classically trained. Her skin was burning, the sound of his voice crawling so deep it scraped her bones.
“You talk like you know me,” she panted, and Eshu chuckled but said nothing more.
Focus Dusty, she ordered. How long had it been since she’d called him forth? The storm was almost upon them, bucking his influence in bursts and spats. Lightning was a warning crackle against her skin, and thunder a supernova dying in her chest. But she had to focus.
“Edward,” She breathed, calming. His name was a balm against burns too deep to see. “Bring him back to me.”
“No.”
Another death, Dusty bared her teeth on the grief. Never before had she felt the world so deeply. Never before had she felt every emotion that would call her body home. It would break her soon, she knew, as so many things had already.
“If it’s about payment-” she tried again, mind scrambling.
Standing before her once again, Eshu crouched, arms hanging loosely across his knees as he looked down at her. She beat back the urge to meet his eyes again and took a deep breath. Then another.
“For you, Adele Burdot, there is very little I wouldn’t do,” he confided, his voice gentle. The part of her brain still in possession of a modicum of common sense marveled how a God of Chaos, of destruction, was more careful of her than any flesh-and-blood man—except Edward. But the creature you seek doesn’t need to be found.”
Confusion cleared some of the fog from her thoughts. This time, when she tried to straighten, the sandy ropes allowed it. Falling away to return to the careful lines she’d drawn earlier. It was as if the vèvè had never been touched. Even rubbing her hands across it didn’t clear it away, and a sense of foreboding gripped Dusty harder than any restraint. Eshu nodded towards the distance, and Dusty turned to follow his gaze.
The storm. The darkened sky splitting the Nevada Desert into two worlds was so close she could taste the ozone on her tongue. The sun no longer burned her. It had been blocked out, and now damp air kissed her skin with the promise of rain. A little foreplay before it decimated everything in its path. She squinted, and there, beneath the churning clouds, bathed in a sphere of light breaking through from the Heavens, stood Edward Hayes. He was frozen in place, staring across the distance at her and Eshu. Even from where she stood, she could see the fire raging within him. He shone like a star fallen to earth, his amber eyes blazing with it until he no longer seemed human. His blond hair whipped around him, a shock of light hungry to reach the sky. He was the sun made man, Adonis given teeth to rend and blood to spill.
A scent hit her – so reminiscent of the tunnels she wasn’t even surprised to look up and find rage twisting Eshu’s features into something monstrous. In his anger, he was all flesh stretched too tight across the bone, so sharp she thought his skin would tear like paper. He and Edward were staring at one another – caught in a stand-off, she couldn’t begin to understand.
Who the fuck was E.M. Hayes that he would give a God pause?
“You hate him,” she said in wonder. “Why?” There was so much in that one word. It cupped ‘ what is he’ and ‘ why is he’ in the memory of Edward’s trembling hands and dimpled smiles. Dusty was both frightened and eager for Eshu to turn his banked rage on her. Anything to bring his attention back to where she wanted it most and away from…well, just away . Instead, Eshu closed his eyes, snuffing the quicksilver that made the orbs flicker like something breathing.
“I was carved from the heart of the universe, back when it was still wet and mewling,” he said, turning to her. “As such, I have seen many things, Adele Burdot.” His attention flickered to Edward and back. Just for a second, there and gone, and still the scent of his rage – ripe as old blood, roadkill left to spoil - gagged her. “ He is not a creature you make deals with one such as I for.”
“I don’t know who or what you think he is,” she said, voice thick with animal yowls tamped down. If he would bank his fire for her, she would do the same for him. “But Edward Hayes is human,” Lies , her thoughts breathed. Desperate lies from a desperate girl . “He has a family,” she spoke louder, drowning out the doubt threatening to take hold. “- a life,” more lies. “-a home.”
“A half-blood Changeling calls no place home,” Eshu spit, surging so close they shared a breath. His words slipped past her lips and down her throat, and power clawed through her body, untamed and raging. A flash of lightning struck, so close, too close, and in the white-hot light, she glimpsed the bone man hiding just beneath his costume of human skin. There was more than just the stirrings of rage within her now, and the familiar heat warmed the touch of death and destruction Eshu’s touch had left behind. She stared back at him, unflinching.
“If you’re not going to help me,” she said, searching his expression. “why did you come?”
He stared her down, expressionless, until he finally pulled away. Stopping her before she could get lost in his eyes once again. A sigh escaped Dusty, shaky with relief.
“To give you a gift,” he said, flashing gold fangs as he grinned.
“I don’t-” before she could decline, Eshu touched her. Skin to skin for the first time, and the world was fire and light and agony . Dusty screamed, and this time, there was no laughter hidden in its depths. Only a feral jubilation that left her throat raw and bleeding. She threw back her head and sang her name to the sky above and the stars beyond while Eshu traced reverent fingertips down the length of her arm. He stepped back as she collapsed to her knees, staring at her arm in horror as the tattoos there morphed and changed. Writhing like snakes, they glowed red hot from shoulder to wrist, where a bracelet made of smooth ivory now rested. Like her ceremony knife, it whispered, and when she pressed cold fingertips against it, she knew it was not ivory he’d placed on her, but bone.
Dusty paled. She couldn’t take her eyes off the bracelet. The etchings on it faded in and out of relief like a message disappearing in the sand over and over again, just to be rewritten. Most of it was in a language she couldn’t understand, but one word stood out, repeating itself like a cry.
Hel
Hel
Hel
“What is this,” she rasped, the Knowing prompting her to speak when all she wanted to do was curl into a ball and whither. Her voice was so torn she could barely hear herself. Eshu had no such issue, and the trickster’s glee made the land buck beneath her.
“Reparations,” he purred.
“You stole it,” she said, her lips numb with disbelief. “Why?” Panic strained her vocal cords. “From who?” From what?
“Doesn’t matter,” he said, waving a hand in dismissal. Then, as if to himself, “It’s not like she can come up here and take it back.”
For the first time, Dusty looked at what had been done to her arm. There, replacing her tattoos, was Eshu’s vèvè. It was much more stylized, much more flamboyant, than her own attempt, but it was his. “You branded me,” she accused.
“I blessed you,” he countered, smug. “From now on, that which is lost, will always find it’s way to you.” Fangs glinted in dying sunlight. “And in exchange, for as long as you wear me on your skin, I may come and go as I please, little Pomba Gira.”
Pomba Gira.
The name was familiar, but for the life of her, she couldn’t remember why. Still, hearing it raised her hackles, and Dusty closed her eyes, muttering to herself in Creole. She wished her grandmother were here. Though, if she were, she would have swatted Dusty upside the head for even calling the lwa forth in the first place.
I should have let us both die in the desert, she thought, half hysterical.
Eshu reached for her and whether he would have touched her again or not, she’d never know. He moved and she cried out, jerking out of his reach just as a bolt of lightning danced across the ground between them. They exploded back as branches of electricity licked the air where they’d been. A fiery tongue of sensation rushed through her, and Dusty hit the ground with a groan, rolling to a stop against the base of a giant bolder.
“Seems you have a guard dog,” Eshu’s voice echoed in the air. Both nowhere and everywhere. She couldn’t escape it or him. Not anymore. “Take care - if you are going to run with Beasts, you must learn to tame them,” it was a rumbled warning. “I will not spare the Changeling’s life again if harm should befall my consort.”
“Your WHAT-”
Howling with laughter, Eshu danced away, footsteps echoing the thunder lumbering across the valley floor. His form shifted between all the others she’d seen before. The old man, the boy, the warrior, and Death come calling – cigar between his teeth and rum bottle in hand. One after the other, so fast now they blended together into a form her brain could make no sense of. A scratching - like nails down a chalkboard. A breaking - like teeth crunching bone. The song started in her brain and wouldn’t let her go. Licking dry lips, Dusty averted her gaze until her mind fell quiet and still once more. Silence. Stillness. Then everything, everywhere, all at once. Eshu was gone, and so too was whatever had been holding the storm – and Edward – at bay.
***
It starts like this:
A gale storm swallows you whole and lifts you high.
The bone bracelet around her wrist grows teeth and pierces flesh – biting so deep they rend tendons. Blood joins the rain lashing her skin and soaking her hair. The bone bracelet curls into her palm like a skeleton hand grasping her own. She holds each skeletal finger tight, and with a flick of her wrist a handle forms in the palm of her hand as if it has always been there. The whip lashes forth with tongues made of flame. Dripping liquid brimstone on the desert below.
Something, the world perhaps, screams and the wind drops her so suddenly she plummets. The flames lash out once again, and the earth bends around her. Bows. She hits the ground on one bended knee, arm out and red flames snaking through the air. A miasma stinking of sulfur and decay.
His howl is a thing of terror, but Dusty has been touched by God. There is no fear in the way she cuts through the intervening space between them, whip tearing a chasm across the earth until it cries for her. The storm lays tattered above them, a bubble of magic shredded around the edges and leaking power back into the ether where it belongs. Edward is a mad dog, collarless and feral. Ready to bite. The whip drags him howling by the neck to her side, and she straddles the recalcitrant beast. He bucks beneath her, all hard cock and muscles straining, but doesn’t hurt her. Leaning over him, her braids fall in a cascading curtain around them, and the scent of gunpowder and rum that has poisoned everything is replaced by something clean and bright.
Oranges and vanilla.
Vanilla and oranges.
So sweet
Sweet
Sweet
they could be kisses. First of their kind and freely given.
For Dusty, he is the sun on a body long cold.
For Edward, she is Master and home both, and he submits to her will with an eagerness that leaves him empty and human once more. The whip slithers back home, and the whispering within the bones falls quiet as it retracts its grip. As Dusty watches, skin once pierced and bleeding re-knits. Good as new, but for the Name resting where her tattoos once did.
She looks down at Edward, eyes shining with unshed tears and her voice shaking with hysteria. “You gotta stop running from me, Pretty Boy,” she says, with a laugh that hurts everything she is. “Because God knows what you’ll do next time if I’m not around to catch you.”