Page 16 of Tequila Damnation (The Voodoo Bastards MC #5)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

S aint…

The Bayou Baroness wasn’t a new thing as far as the Voodoo Bastards went. She’d been in the shadows of the club since its inception, long before even Ruthless had become P.

While the guys in charge before Baby Ruth had put stock in the Bayou Baroness, he hadn’t, while LaCroix had remained true to her. It was what had supposedly decided him when Hex had brought up how shit just wasn’t right the way the Bastards were headed under Ruth’s leadership.

Hell, we all saw what was happening. Ruth was out of his mind on drugs and greedy as fuck. He kept taking, and taking, and taking – the club growing, growing, and growing – too fast for the likes of a lot of us. Still, he wanted more . We all saw it. Ruth living high on the hog while the rest of us rooted in the muck from his table for scraps. The money went to the top under him, but it damn sure wasn’t trickling down.

That’s part of what started it.

We did what we did to get what we wanted, but we weren’t getting anywhere.

It was a story as old as fuckin’ time, and a bunch of us were getting disgruntled. By the time we all started whispering our mutual dissatisfaction to each other, and found the majority of us didn’t like what was going on one bit? Well, as far as LaCroix was concerned, there was only one thing left to do – consult the Oracle of the swamp, the Bayou Baroness.

Trouble was, it was hard getting a meet with her… eminence? Grace? Not sure what you called royalty of her stature. Not out here.

Still, somehow, LaCroix had managed to get an audience tonight, and he wanted to bring Velina.

I knew the shit that was about to go down, but she didn’t. Still, if I didn’t think it was safe enough for her, I would have said something.

I’d seen the Bayou Baroness do her thing a time or two, and while it left me wantin’ to run back to the church, I couldn’t argue with the results. You couldn’t get a thing past her.

We finished dinner, boarded back into the boat, and headed out deeper into the swamp.

There was a place in the deepest part of Manchac Swamp that was cursed back in 1915 by a Creole voodoo priestess named Julie Brown. The place we headed now? It was a similar place, just closer to the coastal waters of the Gulf.

I’d been to ol’ Manchac in the middle of the night before, and while it was deathly still and creepy as all get out, it still ain’t hold a candle to the little ol’ settlement we made for now.

The place we went was along an old bayou that had no name, and it ain’t have a town left to it, either. It was an old spot with even older graves that were barely left standing themselves and, more often than not, were under the black water of the swamp, only the tallest vault tipping precariously above the waterline.

Tonight, the water was low. As we slipped between the knees of two cypress trees like a cock sliding lovingly home, we could see that Lavinia was already here and waiting, small fires and torches dotting around the old cemetery to light the space she’d drawn out whatever sigils and ciphers that meant something to her and her loa or gods.

I didn’t begin to understand any of it, but I didn’t need to. Some things you just didn’t understand, but you had to respect them.

“Where are we?” Velina breathed, and I looked past her to LaCroix. He had a grim set to his mouth but didn’t say anything, and I followed my president’s lead.

“Saint?” she asked as we bumped the bottom and slid halfway up on shore.

“It’s all good,” I reassured her. “Promise.”

I got out of the boat and held down a hand to help Velina out. The ground was spongy with moss, and the mud beneath sucked at our boots as we made for the slightly higher ground.

LaCroix stepped past us and went to greet Lavinia.

“You bring a guest,” she said, and her old crone’s voice was that of a fifty-year chain smoker. She held out her hand, and LaCroix placed a large wad of cash in it.

“Bah!” She dropped the cash. “You wait, boy! Gimme the sack of dimes first!”

“Apologies,” LaCroix intoned, and he pulled an old Crown Royal bag out of his back pocket, heavy with the weight of coins that jangled in the dark.

Lavinia took it and shook it, laughing her old, wizened crone laugh that wheezed on its end.

“Pick dat up, and save it for now,” she ordered him, and LaCroix complied, stashing the fold of bills in his back pocket where the Crown Royal bag had come from.

“You! Girl! Come forward!” Velina looked up at me and I nodded, thrusting a chin at Lavinia.

Velina gave me a dubious look and went to the older woman. Lavinia was a skinny thing and had a lighter, almost golden cast to her skin. Her long silver hair was in braids that went past her waist, and she was draped in what could only be called colorful robes. Her wrists clattered with beads, her neck heavy with necklaces that jangled with bones and chicken or hawk’s feet.

She reached out a hand, heavy with silver rings and decorated with henna, to Velina, and Velina took it.

“Ol’ Louie in them eyes,” the old woman said, her brown eyes watery and turning a milky blue at the edges with her age. There was no telling how old Lavinia was – somewhere between sixty and ancient. Old enough to have grown grandchildren who had made her great-grandchildren who were approaching adulthood in their own right. Wasn’t saying much around these parts where a lot of girls found themselves pregnant young, and their kids found themselves having babies when they were still but kids themselves.

A lot of late thirty, early forty-year-old grandmothers out here. A thing that was common among a certain socioeconomic caste but certainly transcended race.

“He was my brother,” Velina said to the old woman, and the woman frowned.

“Psht! Ain’t gotta tell me! Ol’ Louie already did. Come sit down.”

Lavinia led Velina over by the fire she had going and pointed to a folded old woven blanket. “Sit,” she ordered. Velina sank to the blanket, and Lavinia gathered her robes and told us, “You boys, stay out there, outside the light.”

LaCroix and I exchanged a look and stepped back away into the shadows to wait.

“What’s your name, girl?” Lavinia asked before she started muttering and making hand gestures at the fire.

“Velina,” Velina answered politely.

“Mm.” The old woman didn’t sound impressed, and Velina made a face in my direction like what the hell?

I thrust my chin at the old woman, and she turned her attention back to her.

Watching Lavinia work her old magic was always a harrowing experience, but she was the mistress of her craft. I didn’t know anything about it or how it was supposed to work – just that it did, and when it did? Woo boy.

This was no exception.

She sipped her whiskey, spit some into the flames, and handed the bottle to Velina.

“Drink,” she ordered.

“Whiskey isn’t really my thi?—”

“Drink!” Lavinia shouted and hastily. Velina put the bottle to her lips and sipped, and that was it.

She was halfway to handing the bottle back when her eyes rolled up into the back of her head, just the whites showing. She tensed as though seizing and just sort of froze in place.

“Ask your questions,” Lavinia told LaCroix, and he moved into the firelight at her invitation.

He crouched in front of Velina and asked, “How much did Louie tell you?”

“Everything.”

Velina’s voice was a strangled whisper.

“Why’d you come to New Orleans?”

“To find him.”

“Why?”

“He stopped texting.”

I hated these questions and answers. I especially hated it for her , but LaCroix was right in bringing her here. We had to know, and there were worse ways to find out if she was telling the truth than a little of that voodoo that the Bayou Baroness do. Still, she sounded like a hand was at her throat and that she could barely breathe to speak. Her breath strained and rattled in her chest like she had one foot in the grave.

“He tell you that he killed his ma?” LaCroix demanded.

“Yes.”

“He say that anyone else was there?”

“No.”

“What else did he tell you?” he demanded and she told him. It took a while, but she told him everything that he wanted to know.

When LaCroix was satisfied, LaCroix stood up from his crouch and nodded to Lavinia.

“Bring her back,” he ordered, and Lavinia emptied some sort of powder from one of the many pouches at her belt into her palm. She blew it over the fire and into Velina’s face. Velina fell back, coughing and choking, rolling onto all fours, gasping for air.

The Bayou Baroness stood as straight as her wizened old frame would let her, and she snapped her fingers three times. Velina collapsed, unconscious.

“You can pay me now, boy,” the old woman said, and held out her hand to LaCroix.

“Saint,” LaCroix ordered, and I looked to Lavinia for permission before I went to Velina. The Bayou Baroness nodded at me, and I gave a nod back and went to the prone woman on the ground.

Getting her turned over was the easy part, bringing her into my arms and up off the ground was a little trickier, but I managed.

“She’s a strong one and loyal,” Lavinia said as I went to pass her, and she gave me a wide, toothless grin. With a wink, she said, “Just like her brother. It’s a good match, you and her.”

I frowned at the last, and she laughed, that creaking, wheezing thing that made her lungs sound like they were made out of old leather.

“It’s not like that,” I said, non-plussed, and that only made the old woman laugh harder at my departing back.

“Go on back to the city with you!” she called. “Ol’ Louie rides in spirit and protects her from beyond the grave. He craves revenge as much as she does. He’s out for blood – and you boys’ll have it. The bayou’ll run red, and your haunting will be over.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” I asked LaCroix as he climbed aboard the boat and I settled Velina in the bottom.

“Fuck if I know,” he said. “But I suspect we’ll find out.”

I shoved us off and jumped in, settling on the bench at the bow and pulling Velina against me.

She slept and slept deep. No telling how long she would be out.

We wound our way up bayous and through swamps, passing a glimmer out there in the dark that had to be LaCroix’s place. It took a while to get back to shore at LaCroix’s daddy’s old place, where Cypress now lived to get out from under his sister’s roof.

LaCroix had no interest, that was for sure. He was either in his houseboat out there on the swamp or in Alina’s apartment. Seemed to be his home was wherever she was apt to be and that suited him just fine.

I looked down at Velina in my arms, her face pale in the moonlight.

A good match?

I snorted and shook my head, but there were very few things the Bayou Baroness was wrong about.