The dirt and chanting continued until I couldn"t hear either anymore. The ground vibrated slightly with short bursts-they must have been pounding their shovels into the dirt. So much elaboration for a silly ritual, as if anything she was doing would appease the Voodoo G.o.ds.
I needed a plan and I needed one fast. Her devotion to tradition was the only thing that was buying me time and saving me from my imminent slavery. But it was hard to make plans when you were trapped in a musty-smelling box, no bigger than your body, with the air slowly running out. My only plan was to get out of the f.u.c.king ground, but I could barely move my arms. If it were any other circ.u.mstance, I could have probably pulled a Hulk Dex maneuver and punched my way out of the grave. It actually would have been pretty awesome. But I was still weak, and I was losing time.
And maybe a little bit of my sanity. It was one thing to find yourself buried underground-fully alive and conscious with three feet of hard-packed dirt between the surface and you. It was another thing to realize you weren"t alone in the coffin.
The area beneath my bare feet, what I thought was the damp, gross sides of the box, just moved.
There was something beneath my feet, moving very slowly, like it was just waking up. Scales brushing against my soles.
Oh f.u.c.kity f.u.c.k f.u.c.k.
I knew exactly who I"d been buried alive with.
Her partner in crime, Li Grand Zombi.
The python continued to coil around at my feet, seeming to go in circles. I cursed myself for being 5"9" and having the extra s.p.a.ce at the end of the coffin, although I suppose the alternative would have been to have the snake packed on top of me like sardines.
Now I had to think faster but the presence of the great serpent did nothing to get me into gear. All it did was put my already strained heart into overdrive, turn my tired brain into mush. I thought I"d run out of things to fear already, but it turns out there was a lot more.
I could only hope that it didn"t have the head of my mother this time.
Ignore the snake, it"s just sleeping, ignore the snake, I thought to myself. I hoped Rose was faring better than I was. I had been so happy to be myself again, to be alive, but now the alternative didn"t seem so bad.
The snake didn"t care what I was thinking. Perhaps it was feeding on my fear. I could feel it pressing its body up against my feet, pushing at them until my knees shot up a few inches and rammed into the top of the coffin. I"m sure I would have noticed it hurt, but all I could feel was the snake"s tongue skittering along the cut on my inner thigh, perhaps licking where the blood was. It headed up my legs and I immediately put my hands down over my junk, remembering what Ambrosia had said.
The python paid my hands no attention. It came up over them, over my pelvis, heading for my stomach. It paused there momentarily and I could hear it breathing, the sounds amplified in the darkness. It was watching me, sensing me, deciding what to do next. I wondered how much of the snake was just an animal acting on animal instincts and how much was someone else, a demonic spirit from the other world.
I was still trying to wonder that when the giant serpent resumed its movement. It came up all the way to my head and started coiling itself around my head and throat, forcing its body underneath me and the box, and looping back around again. It did this, winding around me, until it held me from head to toe.
And then it began to slowly, systematically, squeeze me to death.
My hands flailed, trying to pry it off of me, but there was no use. It was far too strong, its body made to choke the life out of its prey, to break their bones. My ribs began to crack.
Dex! I heard Perry"s voice in my head. Dex! I"m here, I"m here!
At least I thought it was in my head. It was hard to tell when I was losing consciousness again.
The snake stopped squeezing for a few moments, as if it had heard Perry as well. Then came the sc.r.a.ping sound of a shovel going into dirt, m.u.f.fled and distant, but it was there.
"Dex!" I heard her voice again, this time it wasn"t in my head. Oh G.o.d, please let that be her, please let that be her.
I opened my mouth to yell. As if on cue, the snake began constricting again, choking the words from me.
The sound above the coffin intensified. I knew she was there, I knew she was coming to save me. I didn"t know how, but there she was. I just hoped I could hold on long enough. I could feel myself turning blue, my lungs burning for air they couldn"t get.
I also hoped that Ambrosia wasn"t within earshot, because things would get ugly for Perry, very fast. Unless my baby had the upper hand and already kicked that b.i.t.c.h"s a.s.s.
Suddenly the coffin lid was. .h.i.t, struck by the shovel and I heard Perry gasp, clear as day. The top of the box began to move, cracks of dim light coming in followed by dirt that fell on my body.
I looked straight up at her as she removed the lid. Though it was probably the middle of the night and dark as sin, I could see the glow of a flashlight nearby. After being in that box, everything outside of it was much clearer.
I saw her beautiful, sweet eyes staring at me, threatening to spill over with tears, so much longing in them, her dark, wet hair spilling around her. Then her eyes flashed with horror once she realized what she was staring at: a giant black python wrapped around me, trying to take my last breath.
"Oh G.o.d, Dex, no!" she cried out. Her tiny hands flew to the snake, trying to pull it off of me to no avail. The snake squeezed harder. If I could have gasped, I would have at the pain of my lower rib breaking.
This couldn"t be the way I was going to go, after all of this, to die in front of Perry"s eyes. I tried hard to hold on, to stay awake, to stay alive but everything was in her hands. I was helpless. Only she had the ability to save me, to save me from death, from myself, from everything.
I love you, I thought.
She smiled as if she heard it, tears streaming down her face and falling onto me. Then she straightened up, grabbed the shovel, and said, "If this hurts you, I"m really, really sorry."
She raised the shovel in the air, looking like a divine warrior princess, perhaps of the gardening variety, and brought it down.
I shut my eyes and the edge of the shovel pummeled into the snake, pressing hard into me but not breaking my skin. I opened my eyes to see her bringing the shovel back out of the snake, guts and blood dripping from the edge of it, raining down on me. The snake was still holding on, not fully severed, but it had loosened enough that I could get a small amount of air into my lungs.
Perry raised the shovel again, and from the crazy determination in her eyes, that kind of determination I only ever saw in her, I knew she was going to finish him. I just hoped she could do it without making me a part of the snake kabob.
She brought the shovel down sharply, and with a sick squelching sound the snake suddenly released me. I gasped loudly for air, trying to pull it off my neck. Perry stared at the severed snaked for a few triumphant moments before she dropped to her knees and reached down into my grave to pull the upper half of the snake off of my neck. Then she reached beneath my shoulders, as far as her fingers could go, and slowly pulled me so I was sitting up. The python"s dead body dropped to my waist, freeing me.
"Dex," she whimpered, taking my face in her hands and peering into my eyes. I wanted to tell her so many things, but air wasn"t my friend yet. My throat and lungs were too bruised and raw. The only thing I could do was lean up as far as I could and kiss her, just a brush of our lips, but enough. Just to remind me that this was why I was alive.
It also reminded me that she was kneeling on the ground, soaking wet somehow, and I was sitting upright in a coffin, half-naked, a severed black python wrapped around me. It was then that she looked down at me and gasped. Her frightened eyes went from the markings on my chest, legs and feet, to the gash on my jaw, to the place where the top tip of my ear used to be.
"What the f.u.c.k happened to you?" she whispered, terrified. "Where is your ear?"
"I"ll explain once we get out of here," I said hoa.r.s.ely, finally finding my words. With her help, I got unsteadily to my feet and climbed out of the box. I knew I looked quite the sight, now covered in dirt and snake guts. At least the mix was deterring the mosquitos for the time being. "How did you find me?"
"It"s a long story," she said. "I came with Maximus but I...I don"t know what happened. I lost him. The zombies, they"re out there. They tipped our boat. I swam...I don"t know what happened to him. I...I think maybe I heard him drowning. I"m sorry." She was near tears again and I put my arms around her and held her to me, grunting quietly through the pain of the cuts and my broken rib.
"You did good, kiddo," I told her, whispering into the top of her head. "You did good."
She sniffled and then pulled away. "I just had a feeling I knew where you were. I could sense you."
"What about Rose?"
She shook her head. "I don"t sense her. What happened?"
I chewed on my lip. "She"s buried somewhere here too."
"Then we have to dig her up, she might die we if we don"t."
"I think she"s already dead."
"No," she said determinedly. "It doesn"t mean we shouldn"t try. If I gave up hope on you, I wouldn"t be here now."
I looked over her shoulder, at the shape of Ambrosia"s small cabin in the distance. There was a light flickering in one of the windows, but I couldn"t see or hear anything else. Perry was right. We had to try.
"Okay," I said. I tried to bend over to pick up the flashlight, but the pain was too great. She quickly got it for me and I shot her a grateful smile as I took her hand in mine. It definitely wasn"t the time to get sappy and we definitely had a lot to talk about and we definitely didn"t know where we stood as a couple, but I wanted to take the moment and hang on to it. At this point, I wasn"t sure if it would be our last.
She nodded at the flashlight. "Come on, let"s get Rose. Then we"ll find Maximus and get out of here."
For once I wished the big red giant really was immortal. I hoped Ambrosia"s minions hadn"t found him, though the bayou was still quiet aside from the occasional splash or bird cry. No gnashing of the teeth to be heard.
I shone the light into the area around my shallow grave. It did look like it had been an ant hill at one point, and then had probably been turned into a compost heap. Though it was maybe only twenty square feet and wildly uneven, it looked like it was the only land around. Everything else that my flashlight caught beyond the mound shimmered like water.
"Over there," Perry whispered, pointing to her left. I shone the light over and we quickly crept forward. The ground had been disturbed recently, but it looked more like something had been dug up rather than buried. We looked over. It was a grave alright, but it was empty.
"She must have buried her way before me," I said. "She already has her."
"Well what can we do?"
I looked back at the cabin. Rose was in there. But was it too late? And was it worth the risk of trying? The two of us versus a heap of mind-controlled zombies wasn"t exactly a fair fight.
Suddenly there was movement from the water and I knew the undead were rising slowly out of the swamp, as if they"d been there all along, waiting like alligators. I hoped that at least a few lucky gators got a meal out of them.
Perry whirled around toward the sluicing noise and I shone the flashlight on them, their eyes shining with madness. Yup. The undead.
I was about to tell Perry to run, to take us back to her boat, when I felt a presence behind me. Automatically, I made my body go slack, as if Perry had just dug me out and I was a bit brain-dead still.
"Where do you think you"re going?" Ambrosia said, her hand resting on my shoulder. "I figured the poison would wear off faster with you." She looked over at Perry, who was frozen in a mix of hate and fear as the zombies came closer and closer. "So you thought you"d come and try to save him. Well, I"m sorry dawlin", he can"t be saved. And now, neither can you."
I was grabbed from behind by six strong hands and ripped backward just in time to see a bunch of Ambrosia"s slaves lay their hands on Perry.
I yelled out for her before I was yanked forward and dragged through the dirt to her cabin. The ground disappeared and we had to slog through water to get to the entrance. They threw me up the stairs and up onto the rickety porch. No wonder Ambrosia practiced her magic out here, no one would ever suspect a thing. No one would even hear you scream.
I was shoved back into the cabin where I fell onto the floor covered with feathers, candle wax, and blood. The chicken"s body was gone, nailed to the wall with a knife. They immediately picked me up again and hauled me to one end of the main sacrificial room, whirling me around to face the door. Perry was brought in after me, Ambrosia holding onto one arm, her nails digging in, while another slave held the other. I fought to get free while she fought to get free, trying to get to each other. Our eyes said it all.
There was a groan coming from another small room and we both craned our necks to look. Rose was stumbling out of it, covered in dirt and blood, long, white hair in her face. It was obvious that we were too late. Rose had already lost her mind and free will. She was already under Ambrosia"s control. There was no more Rose.
"I haven"t tried anything on her yet," Ambrosia explained, watching with clinical amus.e.m.e.nt as Rose staggered across the room, seeming to have no clear place to go. "You can both witness the dawning of the new Rose, the extent of my power."
She started chanting loudly in her Voodoo speak, Perry wincing since it was right in her ear. She then yelled, "Rose, this man means you harm."
For a minute, I thought Ambrosia was pointing at me, but it was a lean, handsome zombie-man to my right. Well, he would have been handsome if he hadn"t looked stoned out of his gourd.
"Rose," Ambrosia continued, "I am your master, I am your protector. Destroy this man. Bite him, kill him. Tear him from limb to limb." Then she started chanting again, her eyes rolling back in her head, as if she was calling some dark force to do her bidding.
I eyed a few oily candles in the corner of the room, all burning brightly. I wondered if Rose"s name was on one of them and if hers was the only name. I wondered if this zombie s.h.i.t was actually going to work. To see them as the walking, yet recently deceased, was one thing. To see one become a zombie, someone that you knew, was another.
Rose had paused in the middle of the cabin, in between Perry and me, in the circle of candles that had melted down to wax. It was almost like she was listening.
Then she turned very slowly to face the man, the man who still had a firm grip on my right arm. This could go nowhere or this could get ugly. I didn"t want to see Rose this way, this hardened girl with her aching heart for her lost love. This wasn"t her.
But this Rose started to come forward, walking jerkily like the drugs were creating spasms. She kept coming and between the strands of her blonde hair, I could see her eyes. Blue-grey and crazed.
Rose stopped a couple of feet away, swaying back and forth as if she needed an extra push. Ambrosia yelled something at her, fire in her evil eyes, and Rose moved again.
She reached out for the man, wrapping both of her hands around his forearm, and bit him. She took a literal bite out of him, her mouth coming away dripping with blood and muscles and tendons. I nearly s.h.i.t myself and had to look away from the sight, from this Rose that was no longer human. Across the room, Perry sounded like she was about to vomit.
Ambrosia clapped gleefully. "I knew it."
Rose still stood there, like a robot, the man"s stringy flesh handing from her mouth until Ambrosia screeched another word and Rose lunged at the man again, this time her mouth going for his chest.
All this time, I was wondering if the zombie was just going to stand there and take it. He was still holding onto me. Didn"t he understand pain? What was happening?
He answered that fairly quickly. With one huge swipe of his mutilated arm, he grunted with rage and threw Rose backward until she slammed against the nearest wall. The candelabras shook overhead. Rose collapsed like a rag doll to the floor.
I watched her for a few moments until I saw she was breathing, then I glanced at Ambrosia. A look of surprise was on her face. Apparently, this was something she hadn"t planned for.
"Well, that was interesting," she noted. "I should pit them against each other more often. Their basic instinct to survive...survives."
"You are a sick f.u.c.king b.i.t.c.h," I snarled at her. "It"s not your choice to play G.o.d."
She smiled coldly, her eyes narrowing. I saw her nails dig further into Perry"s pale arm and I immediately regretted saying anything. "If I don"t play G.o.d with the power I am given, than why am I given the power?"
"You stole their power," Perry sneered.
Ambrosia immediately elbowed her in the face, Perry dropping to her knees as she screamed out in pain. I tried to get to her, to break free, but the men around me were fast.
Ambrosia kicked at Perry"s side and said to the slaves nearest her, "Take her over there, hold her open."
I did not know what the f.u.c.k that meant but I had a feeling I was going to find out. The men took Perry to the farthest wall and held her back against it, one man pulling one way with her arm, the other man pulling the other. Blood trickled out from her nose, but her attention was just on me, only on me. Her blue eyes cut me deep.
"Now it"s your turn, Declan," Ambrosia said. My nostrils flared. I made a move to run, to jerk out of their grasp, but they held me in place, even the man with a chunk of his arm missing.
Ambrosia picked up a candle from the floor, lit it, and started coming toward me with it. She began to chant, low and gravely sounds. Everything she said sounded like death.
She paused right in front of me, the candlelight flickering in her face. For once, I saw how ugly she really was. Her smile was crooked, her hair was rough and split, her skin light, but ashy. Her eyes danced with wicked joy, glinted with the absence of her soul. All her beauty was masked by the fact that I knew who she really was.
"Even though Perry dug you up, the ritual is still in process," she told me. "You were dead and now you"ve risen. Now you will become my own."
From behind the candle, she lifted a syringe. Before I knew what was happening, she stabbed it into my neck, plunging the drug deep into my veins.
Perry screamed, the sound immediately amplified by whatever new drugs were surging through my body. The room swirled and twisted on itself, the candles turned into a kaleidoscope of lights.
Perry was still across the room, terrified, a lamb to be slaughtered. I was supposed to slaughter her.
But I couldn"t. Because the datura or whatever Ambrosia injected into me, didn"t work. I was high as f.u.c.k, and tripping out hardcore, but I was still me.
And I could tell the witch was watching me carefully. She probably even gave me an extra dose of it since the original paralysis poison didn"t stay in my system long enough. If she caught on that it didn"t work as well as she"d hoped, she"d either pump me full of drugs until I was brain-dead, or she"d flat-out kill me. And Perry too.
I couldn"t let that happen. So I did what I attempted to do earlier. I let my mind go slack. I let my muscles droop. I played up the fact that I was on some wild and scary drug trip. I channeled my inner teenager, on those nights I did too many mushrooms and smoked too much pot.
I pretended to be a zombie. I pretended to be hers.
"Declan, can you hear me?" Ambrosia asked, peering at me. I ignored the annoying use of my full name, and stared straight ahead at an imaginary spot on the wall. She waved her hand in front of my face and I had to think whether I should respond to it or not. What did zombies do? I took a risk and slowly, jaggedly, turned my head her way. My eyes looked to a spot on her forehead.
I could see her expression changing, frowning, suspicious.