Have Stakes Will Travel: Stories From the World of Jane Yellowrock (12 page)

I took his hand and we shook, and I felt all kinds of weird about it all and didn’t know what to say.
Me? With fans
? I opened my mouth, closed it, and figured I had to say something. I settled on, “Lucky Landry. What about Boudreaux?” I asked, indicating the sign saying “Boudreaux’ Meats” on the back wall.

“My father in law.” Lucky crossed his arms over his chest and I saw the full sleeve tat down his left arm. It was of weird creatures—combos of snake and human, with fangs and scales, mouths open in what looked like agony—as red and yellow flames climbed up from his wrist to burn them. It was like some bizarre version of hell. He was maybe late forties, early fifties, Caucasian, with black hair and dark eyes—what the locals call “Frenchy.” “I married the daughter, and when her daddy done died dead, I took over dey business, I did. It a right fine pleasure t’ meet you, it is, Miz Yellowrock.”

“Ummm. Yeah. Pleasure and all. Call me Jane.”

He moved behind the counter, beaming at me. “You hongry, Miz Jane? What I can get you for? I got some fried up gator, fried up catfish, fried up boudin balls bigger’n my fist.” He made one to show me. “I got me fried onion, fried squash, and fried mushroom. My own batter, secret recipe it is, and dat oil is fresh and hot for cooking.”

Beast perked up at the description of the food
. Gator. Human killed gator? Human man is good hunter! Hungry for gator.
And the picture she sent me was a whole gator, snout, teeth, feet, claws, tail, skin, and all, crusty with batter. I chuckled and sent her a more likely mental picture. Inside, she huffed with disappointment.

“Fried gator sounds good. Boudin balls too. Got beer?”

“I can’t sell you no beer, but I give you one. All my customers, I give one to, I do.” He nudged the tip jar at me and I understood. He had no license to sell beer, but he could give it away, and his customers could tip him to make it worth his while. I dropped a five into the tip jar and he grinned widely. “Beer in dat cooler. He’p you self.” I heard the hiss of gas being turned up, and smelled the gas scent and hot oil followed by the smell of raw meat.

There wasn’t a statewide mandate on selling alcohol, and the voters of each parish could decide the issue. Seemed the voters of this parish had decided to keep it dry. At least officially. I wondered about the saloon across the street, and figured that vamps didn’t have to follow the law around here—which might account for all the crosses everywhere.

I shoved a hand into the ice, grabbed a cold bottle from the bottom, pulled a Wynona’s Big Brown Ale out of the cooler, and made a soft cooing sound. I like the taste of beer, from time to time, and Voodoo Brewery made some of the best microbrews in the South. I popped the top and took an exploratory sip. Though the alcohol did nothing for one of my kind—the metabolism of skinwalkers is simply too fast and burns alcohol off in minutes—the taste exploded in my mouth and the icy beer traced a trail down my esophagus. “Oh, yeah,” I murmured and took another.

By the time the beer was half gone, I had a plate full of boudin balls and fried onion rings in front of me on a paper plate, grease spreading through the paper with a dull brown stain. My stomach growled and I popped a ring in my mouth while breaking open a boudin ball. I made an, “ohhh,” of sound and sucked air over my scalded tongue before I forked in a mouthful of fried boudin. Boudin is miscellaneous pork (though you can get it specially made with special cuts of pork) and white rice and spices, most of which are unique to each butcher or cook, and Lucky’s boudin was excellent. “Dish ish goo’” I said, and I groaned.

Lucky laughed and brought a second plate with the promised fried gator meat. It was flakey and fishy and just as wonderful as the boudin, so perfect I didn’t need the seasoning salt in a big carved stone bowl on the table. Inside, Beast let out a satisfied chuff. I tossed a ten on the table and it disappeared into Lucky’s pocket. Ten minutes later I put down the fork and said, “You are a genius with this stuff. Do you ship your boudin?”

“Everywhere dey a post office, for sure.”

“I’ll be placing an order. Now, about the Tassin Bros?”

“Dis gator huntin’ season. Dey close dat shop for thirty day. Open back on first day nex’ month.”

“Well, crap.” I had really hoped to make it back to New Orleans and my own bed tonight. “Guess I’ll be making do with the tools I have on hand. Any place I can work in the shade?”

“You bes be getting you self to Miz Onie’s bed and breakfast before dark, and work on dat motorbike in da morning. We gots trouble in dis town after dark.” He frowned. “Suckhead trouble wid dey witches, we always have, but dis time dey suckheads gone done too much.”

I flashed on the crosses everywhere in the middle of town, on every window and door, crosses that had been there, in the open, for many more decades than vamps had been out of the coffin and a part of American life. I had a feeling this town had known about vamps for a lot longer than the rest of the world, and I had a moment to imagine—to remember—all the horrible things vamps could do to a town if they decided not to follow the Vampira Carta, the legal document that reined in the predatory and murderous instincts of all vamps.

Before I could ask, Lucky set another plate in front of me, opened and passed me another beer, straddled the chair across the table from me, and said, “Dis one on me.” I had a feeling he didn’t give beer away, and little hairs lifted on the back of my neck, like a warning.

“We had dey suckheads here since eighteen-thirty,” he said, “when de banker’s son, dat Julius Chiasson and he wife, come back from Paris, him a doctor now. Dey all change, dey was, dem and dey son. Dey be gone to Paris for twenty year and dey not aged. Look like same age as dey son, and dey not go out in de sun no more. Tings not too bad for few year, until dey son, Marcel Chiasson, go crazy. Townfolk figger he change to suckhead den and was set free.

“We learn only later dem suckhead supposed to be chain up for ten years befo dey set free. Hard lesson dat was too, but dat another story.

“Wid Dat Marcel Chiasson free, dey slaves, dey start to disappear, one by one. And more suckheads like Marcel appear. Crazy in dey head dey was, each and every one, crazy.”

Despite myself I was drawn into the story. I ate onion rings and gator and drank the free beer, feeling the movement of the sun as it plummeted toward the horizon.

“De priest, Father Joseph, he made dem crosses to be everywhere, on every house and building, and most dey attacks in town stop. He teach dey townsfolk how to kill wid stakes and swords. Den de war come, and all de town boys go off to fight Yankees. Town was dying, it was.” Lucky was turning the stone bowl full of spices in his hands, which were strong and knobby from years of handling heavy sides of meat. He stared into the spice and salt mixture as if it had the answers to all the secrets of the universe. “Father Joseph was turn one night. But he strong in de faith. He rise and he come to the church, holding his craziness inside all by hisself, and he tell dem townspeople to cut off he head. Dey did. But it nearly kill mos dem all.”

His voice softened. “Julius Chiasson and he older brother—human was old man Chaisson,” he clarified, “old,
old
man by den. Dey know dey have to stop Marcel, cause he still crazy in de head. Dey set a trap. And dey kill dey own.” Lucky shook his head. “Julius’ wife, Victorie, her name was, she went crazy wid grief and attack and kill old man Chiasson, head of family, patriarch. Julius have to stake his wife.” Lucky shook his head and opened his own beer. Took a swig. As he lifted his arm, I saw again the tats, and the flames seemed to ripple and flicker with the motion.

“But he not cut off her head. She rise from de grave, she did, and she kill and kill and kill. Church got itself a new priest, Father Matthieu, and he lead a hunt to kill her. Dey take her head and burn her body in center of de streets jus’ befo dawn, nex morning.” He pointed outside to the crossing of Broad Street and Oiseau Avenue.

“Dem Bordelon sisters, witches all, dey come gather up de ashes for to make hex. And Julius, when he hear of all dis, he make war on dey witches. Kill dem mostly. Dem witches, dey make de hex, and de suckheads caint eat, caint drink. Sick-like. Dey kidnap Dr. Leveroux, kill him when he caint cure dem. Leave his body in middle of town, like warning.”

Lucky pointed at my plate. “Fried gator not good cold. Eat, you.” I shoveled food in my mouth, knowing I should get the heck out of Dodge—or out of Bayou Oiseau—but I was hooked. And I had no doubt that was what Lucky had intended.

“Dem witches join wid dem priests and fight dem suckheads. And war was everywhere, here, in de bayou” —he pronounced it bi-oh, which sounded odd to me— “in de swamp, in the north. In New Orleans, Flag Officer David Farragut was in charge; Louisiana territory was in control of de North. We had no help. Cut off from de rest of de world, we was.” Lucky stood and reached to a phone on the wall, picked up and dialed. “Miz Onie,” he said a moment later. “Dis Lucky Landry. Get you bes room ready. Town got Jane Yellowrock here for de night. Yeah, dat so. Dat room on front of de house, one wid porch out front and green. Purty room it is,” he added to me. “Yeah, I bring her over to you befo de sun set. Yeah, sure.” He hung up and sat back down. “Where I was?”

“Farragut in New Orleans, and war everywhere.”

“Ah. Yeah.” He picked up the bowl again, but this time sprinkled a little of the spice onto the table and set the bowl into the middle of the spices, so when the bowl turned on the surface, it made a soft scratching sound, as if grinding. “Amaury Pellissier hear of our trouble. He come on horseback, him and he nephew, Leo. He kill Julius for not runnin he clan like he should, for not keepin de secret of de suckheads. And den he leave. But he leave behind de swamp suckheads, ones made and set free while dey still in insane.”

He raised his brows to make sure I understood, and I did. Vamps went into devoveo, the insanity that followed the change, for the first ten or twenty years after they were turned. He didn’t seem to know the term, but he was aware of the insanity peculiar to vampires. I nodded that I understood and he continued, his voice as melodic as a song.

“Strongest suckhead, Clermont Doucette,” which came out Cler-mon Doo-see, “make hisself a new clan, become a blood-master. In 1865 dat war end and de slaves go free. Everythin’ change it did. Black folk take off for de north or into de swamp for freedom. Some join dem witches, some join dem suckheads, some leave, some stay, to make a free, human way here on land and swamp, in place dey know.”

And yet, they had problems, which part Lucky hadn’t gotten to yet. “When did the first Cajuns get to Louisiana? I asked.

“Moutons say dey get here in 1760, but my family, de Landry’s, land in New Orleans in April 1764, but dey don’ get here in dis town till 1769.” He smiled his pretty teeth at me and waggled his brows, lifting and shifting the stone bowl from palm to palm like a magician with nifty a trick or a ball player half-tossing his ball between innings. “My granmere one dem Bordelon sisters, Cally Bordelon.”

I began to see a glimmer here. Lucky Landry was way more than a butcher with a melodic quality to his voice. Here was a tattooed man from a witch family, a man with a rogue-vamp hunter suddenly stuck in his town, and in his power. And wouldn’t you know it, Lucky’s family had a Hatfield versus the McCoy’s feud going on with vamps. I narrowed my eyes at him

“Like my history, you do?” he asked.

“Yeah.” I grinned back and set the empty beer bottle on the table with a soft snap. “I’m waiting for you to get to the part where you need me for something.” Lucky’s smile got wider and he pointed a finger at me as if acknowledging a clever point in a debate. “But you’re trying to keep me here until it’s too late to leave town safely, even if I got my bike going again, which isn’t likely.”

“Smart lady, you.”

“If I was smart, I’d have pushed my bike back to I-10 and slept under a tree, where only the mosquitoes would have sucked my blood and the nutria chewed on my bones.”

Lucky laughed at that, his black eyes flashing.

And that was when it hit me. The history he knew so well, his nearly mesmeric story telling. His witch family origins. The flames on his arm that had seemed to waver. The tats were a lot like a scenic tat I’d seen on another man’s arm, chest, and shoulder. Spelled tats. “You’re a male witch,” I said, my voice cold as ice. “And you want
me
in this war.”

I caught a hint of movement from the corner of my eye, and everything went dark.

* * *

Beast’s claws flexed in my brain, waking me, yet holding me down. Through her memories, I knew instantly that I was in the best room of Miz Onie’s bed and breakfast, lying on the edge of the bed, my hands and feet unbound and hanging over the side. Even without Beast’s memories, I’d have guessed where I was, by the colors I could see through my tangled lashes: the emerald green bedspread, moss green walls, striped green drapery, and greenish fake flowers in a tall vase gave it away. That and the fact that Lucky Landry was sitting in a chair in a wide bay with tall windows and a door. That and the fact that I smelled his special peppers and spices in my hair. All that and the fact that my head was aching, yeah, that was a clue. “You sucker punched me,” I growled, Beast in the tone. “With a spice bowl.”

Lucky nodded. “Sorry bout dat, I am,” though he didn’t sound very sorry, and proved it when he added, “Ruin me a good batch of my special spice mixture.”

Yeah. Funny guy.
I grunted and sat up slowly, holding my head with one hand. It was pounding like a bass drum interspersed with clanging cymbals, sharp pain in every pulse. “What do you want?” I snarled when I could, though it came out more like a whisper.

“I tried to call Leo Pellissier. Him no take my calls. I want you to call him and ask him for help.”

“No.”

Lucky’s eyebrows went up and he smiled. But this time the genial Cajun butcher was gone, and a powerful witch smiled in his place. I could feel the power crackle in the air. Male witches were very rare, most of them dying in their youth of childhood cancers. I thought about that for half a second until Beast informed me that Lucky had divested me of my weapons. My leather jacket was hanging open, and my holsters and blade-sheathes were empty. Nary a gun nor a knife nor even a stake was still on me. Which really ticked me off.