“Or using her to kill someone?” Frank said sourly.
“That may have been the ultimate intention. A well-behaved girl would be an ideal tool for murder, after all, since she would almost certainly catch her victim unaware,” Max said. “But I believe we intervened before that could occur. Apart from her nightmares and the resultant insomnia, Shondolyn’s life seems to have been proceeding in its normal fashion so far, with no major disruptions and no pattern of long, unexplained absences.”
“So what do we do now?” I asked. “I’m tired and want to go home. And since it’s probably not safe for me there until we stop the bokor . . .”
“The first thing we must do,” said Max, “is destroy the bokor’s private altar and purify that space.”
“But there could be zombies in that room!” Frank protested. “And who knows what else?”
“For that reason,” said Max, “we will prepare ourselves for battle.”
“What?”
Frank said.
Max put a hand on his shoulder. “This work is not for everyone. You may prefer to remain here.”
“Well,
I’m
going,” said Jeff. “I want to find Puma.”
“I’m going,” I said. “I want my poppet.”
Looking around at the three of us, Frank gave a defeated sigh. “Fine. I’ll go, too.”
“Good man!” Max beamed at him.
“But if I’m going back to that place . . .”
“Yes?”
“I’d really like a stiff drink first,” Frank said.
“Actually,” said Jeff, “that’s not a bad idea.”
“Ah! I happen to have some rather good aqua vitae here . . .”
While Max poked around his overcrowded shelves, I decided to go upstairs to check on Nelli.
I found her lying by the front door of the shop, groaning softly and panting in distress. I knelt beside her and stroked her head, promising we’d take her straight to a vet before doing anything else.
She growled at me.
“You need a doctor,” I said firmly.
Nelli’s body started heaving, as if she were having trouble breathing. She was trembling all over. We had waited too long. We needed to take her to the clinic immediately!
“Max!” I called. “Max! Come here!”
I heard his footsteps a moment later. He was carrying a cloth bag—probably full of supplies for the purification he had mentioned—and a machete. His eyes grew round with alarm when he saw Nelli’s condition.
“She needs help right away,” I said urgently. “I’m going outside to hail a cab. I hope you have a lot of cash on you.”
Max nodded as he called over his shoulder, “Jeffrey! Frank! Esther and I must leave immediately! Nelli is in distress!”
Jeff called out that they were coming right away, and I heard their footsteps on the stairs.
Nelli groaned again. Max seized her pink leash from its hook by the door. “Come Nelli. Let’s go to the doctor.”
She growled again. Her whole body went tense. With my purse slung over my shoulder, I opened the door to step outside.
“I know you find the clinic upsetting,” Max said, “but you’ll feel much better after they treat you.”
He reached down to her prostrate form, intending to clip on her leash. With a ferocious snarl, Nelli tried to bite him. Max leaped back with a cry of surprise and bumped into me, making me lose my footing for a moment. I clutched his arm for balance.
Nelli rose to her feet, snarling viciously. Saliva dripped from her bared fangs. Her hair stood on end. Her eyes glowed with demonic red light.
“Max!”
I dragged him out the door with me and pulled it shut behind us, just as Nelli leaped for our throats, her massive jaws open wide as she howled madly for our blood.
22
I
braced my body against the door, praying the thing could withstand Nelli’s weight as she hurled herself against it, barking maniacally at us.
“What the
hell
. . . ?” I was panting with terror, my body shaking from the sudden flood of adrenaline.
The door, which was mostly made of glass, shook in its old wooden frame when Nelli flung herself against it again, trying to get to us. Max dropped his bag and his machete and braced both hands against the glass, trying to prevent the dog’s violent onslaught from shattering it. The fierce wind whipped his hat off his head and carried it down the street. My hair was blown across my face and got into my mouth.
I turned around and looked inside the shop. Nelli’s dripping teeth looked enormous as she raged and snarled at us, her red eyes glowing. I had seldom seen anything so terrifying.
In my peripheral vision, I saw motion at the back of the shop. I looked up to see Jeff and Frank emerge from the stairwell. Max and I started shouting at them to go back, turn around,
go back.
Seeing us standing at the front door with Nelli pressing her nose against the glass barking at us, Jeff must have thought we had locked ourselves out. He started forward.
“No!” I screamed. “
No!
Go back!”
“What?”
Hearing Jeff’s voice behind her, Nelli whirled to confront him. He looked at her—and his puzzled expression transformed instantly into shocked horror.
Behind him, Frank stood in frozen terror as Nelli made a beeline for the two of them. Jeff shoved Frank hard, practically throwing him down the stairs, then followed him into the stairwell and slammed the door shut just in time to escape Nelli’s dripping jaws. She threw herself against the wooden door in a fury; but I had confidence, now that it was closed, that the two men were safe.
“Max! What’s
happening?
” I cried.
Shock washed across his face. “Oh, no! I am a
fool.
”
“Max! What is it?”
“A fool,” he raged. “A fool!”
“Max!” I removed my hands from the door to shake him by the shoulders. “Tell me what’s happening!”
“The accident. Friday. At the foundation,” he panted. “Nelli left behind blood and body tissue.”
“You mean the torn off dewclaw?”
“I was so alarmed—so distracted—I didn’t realize it. Didn’t think!” He beat his head against the glass door. “Oh,
no.
”
“Blood and body tissue?” I looked at the red- eyed, snarling dog as she crouched down and made another run at us. The door shook when she hit it, but it held. “What does it mean, Max?”
“It means she is in the power of the bokor. It means . . .” He gestured to the bared fangs and glowing eyes. “. . . that the bokor can do
this
to her.”
My phone rang, making me jump out of my skin. I fumbled in my purse, flipped open my phone with shaking hands, and held it to my ear. “Yes?”
“What the
hell
is going on?” Jeff shouted over the phone.
I explained, and then I concluded, “I guess that’s why she’s been feeling so sick. The bokor was working dark magic on her.” As a mystical being, Nelli had evidently responded to such interference the way a normal dog would respond to an infection.
“Well, what do we do
now?
” Jeff said. “Frank and I are trapped down here!”
I could hear Frank having hysterics in the background.
“You’re going to have to wait here until Max and I dispatch the bokor.”
“Wait here?” he repeated. “You’re going without us?”
“We have no choice,” I said, raising a hand to shield my face from the wind. “You did get a good look at Nelli, didn’t you? We only have two choices now. Either we stop the bokor, or else we get animal control to shoot Nelli.”
“Oh, no!” Max cried.
“So we’re going to go stop the bokor,” I said firmly.
Max looked at me, and a grim, resolute expression hardened his normally gentle features. “We certainly are,” he said in a deadly voice.
“You go get a cab,” I said to him. “I’ll catch up in a minute.”
Max met his familiar’s glowing red eyes. “I will not return until I have freed you, Nelli!” He squared his shoulders, collected his belongings from where he had dropped them, and walked down the street. I had a feeling it would take him a while to find a cab at this time of night. Especially since he was carrying a machete.
“Jeff,” I said into my phone. “You need to distract Nelli.”
“You want me to
distract
the vicious two-hundred-pound dog that just tried to kill me?”
He was exaggerating. She wasn’t
that
heavy.
“This street’s pretty empty this late at night.” It was well past midnight now. “But we can’t have Nelli standing here terrifying the few people who do pass. Someone might call the cops. And we especially can’t have her breaking down this glass door and killing someone.”
“What the hell do you want me to
do?
”
“Just keep her attention fixed on you,” I said. “Keep her at the back of the shop.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” He gave a heavy sigh. “Okay. Right. Fine.”
A moment later, I saw the door to the stairwell open. Jeff stuck out his head and called, “Nelli! Oh, Nelli! Over here, girl!”
Nelli whirled around and went bounding across the shop, roaring with fury. Jeff slammed the door again. The enraged dog scratched on it, barking and snarling.
Fortunately, the possessed Nelli seemed to be as dimwitted as the regular version.
“Good work, Jeff,” I said into the phone. “I’ll call you later.”
“Be careful,” he said. “And don’t let anything happen to Puma.”
“I promise.” I ended the call and went after Max.
Thanks to Max’s skills, breaking into the foundation in the middle of the night didn’t present a challenge. The building was silent and dark. Tonight’s Vodou ceremony was obviously over, and all the celebrants were gone.
Once we were inside, we crept into Biko’s training room in search of a weapon. Max had his machete, but since our departure from the bookstore had been unexpected, he had brought nothing for me. And I didn’t like the idea of facing the mambo, her snake, zombies, the baka, or a possessed Biko without a sturdy means of defending myself.
The weapons in the supply cabinet that Max used his power to unlock were all for young people to practice with, so there was nothing sharp or intentionally lethal there. But as I grasped a heavy wooden practice sword in my hands, I thought it would be pretty useful for beating the stuffing out of a baka.
“I’ll take this one,” I whispered to Max in the dark.
“Let’s proceed.” His voice was like steel. Someone had messed with Nelli. Someone would pay dearly for that.
Fortunately, Max’s modification of my gris-gris bag had made it less peppery, so now I could move around without it making me sneeze or choke. It bounced harmlessly against my chest as we trotted down the stairs to the hounfour, moving quietly in the dark building.
We passed through the space where I had seen Lopez possessed by a loa hours earlier. The shattered pieces of the glass cage he had destroyed still lay on the floor.
“Where’s that damn snake?” I wondered nervously.
We soon found out. We crept down the hallway that Frank had described to the room he had told us would be there. On the other side of the closed door, we heard chanting. Max clasped my hand and squeezed briefly. I squeezed back to let him know I was ready. I let my purse slide off my shoulder and onto the floor so that it wouldn’t encumber me. Then with a fierce war cry, Max kicked open the door and plunged into the room, waving his machete. I followed right behind him, with my wooden sword in my hands.
I took a few long strides into the room, then stopped and stared. Mambo Celeste stood before an altar that was draped in red cloth and covered with frightening objects. My gaze briefly took in a dead snake in a jar of fluid, black candles, a desiccated human head, and a black wooden carving of a particularly nasty looking loa. She held Napoleon high over her head, stretched out between her arms, while she chanted. Her face was drenched with sweat, and her arms trembled under the strain of holding the heavy snake aloft.
The mambo whirled around at our abrupt entrance. Her face was a mask of shock. She and Max faced each other in tense silence for a moment.
I realized we weren’t alone in the room. Biko and Puma were both there, standing a few feet behind the mambo. I gasped and raised my sword, pointing it at Biko. But it was immediately apparent that he didn’t even know I was in the room.
He and Puma stood in identical positions, their arms raised in worship, their blank faces gazing unblinkingly at the eerie altar. They continued with the chant that the mambo had ceased when we burst into the room.
Looking at her now, Max said in a dark, furious voice, “You hurt Nelli!”
The mambo’s face contorted angrily and she started shouting at us in Creole. Max ignored her and swept his machete across the altar, destroying several ritual objects with a single blow.