I watched as she straightened up and walked around the circles of candles, the flames licking at her ankles. The eyes of the dazed men in the shadows followed her every move.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked, my voice dry and hoarse. If I was going to die here, I might as well get some answers. “What’s the point?”
She stopped and glared at me. “What is the point? I thought that was pretty obvious. People underestimate me, they always have. They don’t even believe that I’ve descended from Voodoo royalty. The Voodoo Queen’s blood runs through me! But everyone thinks I’m a sham, thinks I’m nothing but a stupid, delusional girl.”
She was definitely delusional.
“Only Maryse took me under her wing. She was the only one who believed in me.”
“And then you got her shunned.”
Ambrosia pursed her lips. “Well, yes. She didn’t want to have anything to do with the dark arts. But the dark arts is where all the power is. It is what Voodoo is. All these years it’s become white-washed and weak. All the real traditions, the rituals, the real power had been stripped. It’s become commercialized. I want to take that power back, back to who started it, to those who deserve it, those who can make the world whimper.”
“The Mambo wouldn’t have let you do that.”
“No, you’re right. And she didn’t.” She walked over to a door and opened it. I heard the squawking of a few chickens, and she emerged with a black one in her hands. “I’ve been putting hexes on her from the very beginning. Nothing large, just enough to wipe her memory, to make her comply to me. Like you, I could never really make her do what I wanted, but I got enough out of her. I got her to teach me a lot of things that she never would have otherwise. I practiced and practiced and practiced until I knew I was ready.”
She walked to the middle of the circle and quickly sliced off the chicken’s head. It fell to the ground with a wet thunk, the eyes still blinking, the beak still moving. I hoped that was its nerves backfiring, that the poor f**ker wasn’t still alive.
She held the headless body in her hands like it was still alive, blood spurting out from the neck.
I swallowed thickly, my eyes drawn back to the chicken head. It was staring at me. “If you’re all about tradition, if you think the culture has gotten white-washed, then why are you going after black people? They’re your own.”
“To make a point,” she said angrily, and I saw that façade of hers slip again. “Aren’t you listening? Look at my brothers and sisters in this city. We made this city, and now we’re being kept in these neighborhoods to kill each other. Nobody cares. The police don’t. The city doesn’t. The country doesn’t. We thought that after Katrina the focus would be on us and our crime and our poverty and what was really going on. But it didn’t last. It’s back to shit again. No one even cares if black people are dropping left and right like flies. If anything, they’re happy. They only care when they reappear and start attacking white people.”
I couldn’t fathom her reasoning. Her point was lost. She was mad, and mad with power. I wanted to buy more time by asking more questions, but I didn’t know what I’d end up doing with the time I got. “But you’re turning them into slaves, just like they once were. Doesn’t that strike you as wrong at all, or just a little ironic?”
She glared at me. “Everyone has to make sacrifices. You’re one of them.”
She jerked the chicken at me and the blood went spraying onto my body, covering me with hot rivulets from head to toe. She came forward and glared down at me.
“I tried everything with you, Declan. I tried to give you the easy way out. If you’d been weaker, this would have been over with before it got painful. I tried the candles, the oils, the poppets. Everything. The only way I’ll ever have complete control of you is if I take parts of you away. You’ll be weaker, and I’ll be stronger. It worked with Maryse, it will work with you.”
She reached out to my face with a bloody hand and I tried to jerk away. “What happened to Maryse?”
“She’s dead,” she said. “And the real kind of dead. She was too frail to serve me as a slave, though that would have been wonderfully ironic. She’s underneath the house right now, a snack for the alligators.”
Her fingers traced my cheekbone. “You really are a handsome man,” she whispered soothingly. “Perfect cheekbones. Perfect lips. The darkest eyes. Everything about you is perfect. Except for your ear.”
I froze. Her fingers moved up to my ear and began stroking the lobe, her skin sticking to mine from the chicken blood.
“What about my ear?” I asked, my voice shaking.
“It’s a shame I’ll have to take part of it. Though I’m going to guess you’re not much of a listener anyway.”
She took out the blade and aimed it at my ear.
No. Fucking. Way.
I started bucking in my seat, trying to find a point of concentration, trying to get my strength back to break through whatever motherfucking spell this bitchy witch put on me. It was almost working too; though my feet felt paralyzed, I could feel the restraints around my arms coming loose.
Ambrosia tried to get the knife close, but I kept moving. I ended up with a large gash along my jaw and she started swearing in French. Suddenly, she stood up straight and raised her hands in the air. The shadows began to move and five of her slaves came at me. They held my head in place. I stared up at them, looking into their dull eyes, pleading for some recognition, for some humanity to be left. There was nothing in them at all. My hope was fading.
“I’d try and stay still if I were you,” Ambrosia warned me. “Unless you want me taking out your eye instead.”
I closed my eyes, not wanting that. I reached out in my mind to Perry, hoping that somehow she could hear me. I listened, and hoped I could hear her. There was nothing but the labored breathing of the zombie slaves, their foul stench of death.
Ambrosia took the knife and very slowly, to prolong the pain and agony that seized every part of me, she cut away the very top edge of my left ear.
I screamed and screamed until my throat felt ripped, my lungs raw. Warm liquid rushed down into my ear canal, trickling down my neck.
She moved away, proudly showing me the piece of my ear. She reached into her dark blouse, pulled out a small bag she was wearing around her neck, and put the piece of ear inside. She grinned at me. “The things I can now do with this, the person I’ll become.”