The Best of Lucius Shepard (101 page)

“Let
me go,” he said.

“I
don’t believe I will.”

“Give
me another month or two, I promise I’ll tear you down to your shoelaces, boy.”

“I’ll
be waiting.”

“Let
me go!”

He
pawed at my hand and I let loose of the shirt. That electric green danced in
his eyes again.

“‘Pears
you growing a pair. Love must be making you bold.” He hitched up his belt.
“Yeah, I been catching you looking at Jocundra. She looks at you the same. If I
wasn’t around, the two of you be going at it. But I
am
around.”

“Maybe
not for too long,” I said.

“I
might surprise you, boy. But whatever. As long as I’m here, Jocundra not going
to stray. She’s just dying for me to tell her about every new thing I see. She
finds it fascinating.”

“What
do you see?”

“I’m
not telling you, pal. I’m saving all of my secrets for sweet cheeks.” He took a
faltering step toward the house. “How’s about we make a little side bet? Bet I
nail her before you.”

I
gave him a shove and he went over onto his back, crying out in shock. A guard
stepped from the shadow of the trees—I told him to be cool, I had things
covered. I reached down and seized hold of Pellerin’s arm, but he wrenched
free.

“You
want to lie there, fine by me,” I said, and started back along the shore.

He
called to me, but I kept walking.

“Know
what I see in your future, Small Time?” he shouted as I passed into the trees.
“I see lilies and a cardboard casket. I see a black dog taking a piss on your
grave.”

What
he said didn’t trouble me, but I was troubled nonetheless. When I had reached
for his arm, I had brushed the fingers of his right hand, the same hand that
he’d been holding above the water. I wouldn’t have sworn to it, but it seemed
that his fingertips had been hot. Not just warm. Burning hot. As if they’d been
dipped into a bowl of fire.

* * * *

If
pressed to do so, I might have acknowledged Jo’s right to value her duties, but
I was unreasonably angry at her. Angry and petulant. I kept to my room for a
day and a half after that night on the beach, lying around in my boxers and
doing some serious drinking, contemplating the notion that I was involved in a
romantic triangle with a member of the undead. On the morning of the second
day, I realized that I was only hurting myself and had a shower, changed my
shorts. Still a little drunk, I was debating whether or not to see what was up
in the rest of the house, when someone knocked on my door. Without thinking, I
said, “Yeah, come in,” and Jo walked into the room. I thought about making a
grab for my trousers, but I was unsteady on my feet and feared that I’d stumble
and fall on my ass; so I sat on the edge of the bed and tried to act nonchalant.

“How
are you feeling?” she asked.

“Peachy,”
I said.

She
hesitated, then shut the door and took a seat in a carved wooden chair that
likely had been some dead king’s throne. “You don’t look peachy,” she said.

I’d
cracked the drapes to check on the weather and light fell directly on her—she
was the only bright thing in a room full of shadow. “I had a few drinks,” I
told her. “Drowning my sorrows. But I’m pulling it together.”

She
nodded, familiar with the condition.

“How
come you didn’t tell me your boy could do tricks?” I asked.

“Josey?
What are you talking about?”

I
told her what Pellerin had been doing with the ocean water and she said she
hadn’t realized he had reached that stage. She hopped up from the chair, saying
she had to talk to him.

“Stay,”
I said. “Come on. You got all day to do with him. Just stay a while, okay?”

Reluctantly,
she sat back down.

“So,”
I said. “You want to tell me what that is he was doing.”

“My
previous patient developed the ability to manipulate electromagnetic fields. He
did some remarkable things. It sounds as if Josey’s doing the same.”

“You
keep saying that. Remarkable how? Give me an example.”

“He
cured the sick, for one.”

“Did
he, now?”

“I
swear, it’s the truth. There was a man with terminal cancer. He cured him. It
took him three days and cost him a lot of effort, but afterward the man was
cancer-free.”

“He
cured a guy of cancer by ... what? Working his electromagnetic fields?”

“I
think so. I don’t know for sure. Whatever he did, it produced a lot of heat.”
She crossed her legs, yielding up a sigh. “I wish it had stopped with that.”

I
asked what had happened.

“It’s
too long a story to tell, but the upshot was, he built a
veve .
... Do
you know what a
veve
is?”

“The
things they draw on the floors of voodoo temples? Little patterns?”

“That’s
them. They relate to the voodoo gods, the
loas.
” She flicked a speck of
something off her knee. “Donnell ... my patient. He built the
veve
of
Ogoun Badagris out of copper. Several tons of copper. It was immense. He said
it enabled him to focus energy. He used to walk around on top of it and ... one
day there was an explosion.” She made a helpless gesture. “I don’t understand
what happened.”

Neither
did I understand. I couldn’t wrap my brain around the idea that Pellerin might
be some kind of green-eyed Jesus; yet I didn’t believe she was lying.

“What
do youthink was going on with him?” I asked. “With Pellerin. I mean, what’s
your theory? You must have a theory.”

“You
want to hear? I’ve been told it’s pretty out there.”

“Yeah,
and nothing about this is out there, so your theory’s got to be way off base.”

She
laughed. “Okay. The bacteria we injected into Josey was the same strain we used
at Tulane. All the slow-burners have reproduced those designs in one way or
another. It’s as if they’re expressing the various aspects of Ogoun. Doctor
Crain’s theory was that because the bacteria eventually infested the entire
brain, the patients used more of their brains than normal people—this resulted
in what seemed to be miraculous powers. And since the bacterial strain was the
same, it prevailed upon the host brain to acquire similar characteristics. That
makes a certain amount of sense as far as it goes, but Crain was trying to
explain voodoo in terms of science, and some of it can’t be explained except in
voodoo terms.”

She
paused, as if to gather her thoughts. “Someday we may discover a biochemical
factor that makes the patients prone to seeing the
veve
patterns. But
we’ll never be able to explain away all the mystery surrounding Ezawa’s work. I
think he discovered the microbiological analogue of possession. In a voodoo
ceremony, a possession occurs quickly. The god takes over your body while
you’re dancing or having a drink. You jerk around as the god acclimates to the
flesh, and then you begin acting like that god. With the bacteria, it takes
longer and the transition’s smoother. You notice a growing awareness in the
patients that they’re different. Not just because they’ve come back from the
dead. The real difference lies in the things they see and feel. They sense
there’s something qualitatively different about themselves. They recognize that
they have their own agendas. They grow beyond their life stories the way Jesus
and Buddha outgrew the parameters of their lives. Things Donnell said ... they
led me to believe that the bacteria allowed them to access their
gro bon
ange
. Do you know the term? The immortal portion of the soul? According to
voodoo, anyway. And that in turn opened them to the divine. As the bacterial
infestation increased, they became more open. The slow-burners all demonstrated
behavioral arcs that fit the theory. I guess it sounds crazy, but no one’s come
up with anything better.”

She
seemed to be waiting for me to speak.

“You’re
right,” I said. “That’s out there.”

“Donnell
was seeing these peculiar shadows before he died. I think he was seeing
people’s souls. I can’t come close to proving it, of course, but there were
things he told me.... “She sighed in exasperation. “I begged Crain to let me
work with Josey my way. I thought if I started from a position of intimacy, we
could forge a bond strong enough to endure until the end. We’d see the
maturation of the new personality. If my theory’s right, we’d have a captive
god fully integrated with a human personality. Whatever a god is. That might be
something we could determine. Who knows what’s possible?” The energy drained
from her voice and her tone softened. “As things stand I doubt we’ll ever get
any further than I got with Donnell. He should have been given the space to
evolve, but all they did was harass him.”

“I’m
getting you liked this Donnell,” I said.

Her
face sharpened. “Yes.”

“How
about Pellerin?”

“He’s
not very likeable. Part of it is, he’s afraid of everything. Confused. He
doesn’t know yet who or what he is. He may never know. So he tends to be angry
at everyone. That said, he’s coarse, he’s truculent and difficult to be
around.” She made a sad face and pushed up from her throne. “I wish I didn’t
have to go, but I should get back to him.”

“Jo?”

“Uh-huh?”

“Remember
when you asked if you could count on me as a friend? For what it’s worth...”

“I
know,” she said, coming toward me.

“We’ve
been forced onto the same side, but...

She
embraced me, pulling my head down onto her shoulder. I breathed in her warm,
clean smell, and kissed her neck. She tensed, but I nuzzled her neck, her
throat, and she let her head fall back. When I kissed her on the mouth, she
kissed me back, fully complicit, and, before long, we were rolling around on
the bed. I worked her T-shirt up around her neck and had disengaged the catch
of her bra, a hook located under a flare of white lace between the cups, when I
realized that, although she was not resisting, neither was she helping out as
she had a moment earlier. I slid my hand under the bra, but she remained
motionless, reactionless, and I asked what was the matter.

“I
can’t cope with this. You’re the first man I’ve been attracted to in a long
time. A very long time.” She adopted an injured expression, like the one a
child might display on running up against a rule that denied it a treat. “I
want to make love with you, but I can’t.”

My
hand was still on her breast and desire crowded all coherent thought from my
head.

“Say
something.” She shifted, turning on her side, and my hand was no longer happy.

“Does
this have anything to do with Pellerin?”

“Partly.”

“You’re
sleeping with him?”

“No,
but I might have to. It may be the only way to control him.”

“Is
that how you controlled Donnell?”

“It
wasn’t like that! I was in love with him.”

“You
loved him.”

“I
know it sounds strange, but I was...”

I
experienced a flash of anger. “It sounds twisted.”

She
froze.

“You
ever think,” I said, “you might have a kink for dead guys?”

She
held my eyes for a second, then sat up, rehooked her bra and tugged down her
T-shirt.