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aithne[Usual disclaimers apply: 1832 Louisiana, difficult cultural history, certain realities of race relations and slavery that can't be avoided. Proceed with caution, if you're sensitive.]
She came up out of the ritual, and looked around. She'd expected Benjamin to be back by now, but he was nowhere to be seen. She started walking back to her house, thinking she'd meet him on the way.
No Benjamin, though she stepped off Barataria and into the swamp. Insects were shrilling as the morning sunlight made the mist retreat into the undergrowth. Odile was hurrying now, almost running, and as she came into the clearing that was her front yard she caught her breath. Her door was standing wide open, and there were signs of a fight, many different bootprints in the mud.
Inside the house, the place was a shambles, the kays myste overturned, fragile ritual objects smashed. No one was here, though there was blood on the floor. The door to her bedroom was still closed, though, and it appeared that the protections had held. Odile opened the door to see the corpse that held her Maman sitting right where she had left it.
Odile, her hands shaking, picked up the red brook and called the chant to wake her mother. "Maman, what happened?"
The white eyes opened, the mouth worked. "Durand and his men. They were waiting for you, but they took Benjamin instead."
"What happened to the girl?"
"Wandered out north," her mother said in a flat voice.
Odile sucked in a breath. "Durand just ignored her? If Gabriel sees her..."
"I think that's the point," Maman said dryly.
"I need to go find her, then. Did Durand say where they were taking Benjamin?"
The corpse's head nodded. "Back to the house to do some ritual that would make him vulnerable."
"All right. I'll be back." She muttered the chant for sleep and dashed out of the house, slamming the door behind her. Her heart was pounding, and pain flew in her footsteps. Images shuddered through her mind, Gabriel turning away from her, kissing Noemi, a disdainful look in Noemi's eyes. Herself walking away, leaving Gabriel to his wife.
She had to find Noemi before she found Gabriel.
She rounded a corner, headed towards the front of the plantation house, then came to a sudden stop as she was hit by an image that she'd never wanted to see.
Too late--
Gabriel was standing in front of the house, holding Noemi by the shoulders, a look of utter shock and deep, dawning awe on his face. Anton was behind Gabriel, looking uncertain. Odile gritted her teeth, sent a silent prayer to the loa for strength, and stepped forward. "Gabriel. There's trouble."
He looked away from Noemi, at Odile, and she could not read the look in his eyes. "Worse than this?"
"Durand has Benjamin," she said, willing her voice not to shake. "And as far as I can tell, this is not your Noemi."
Noemi had turned now, and a look of confusion was coming over her face. "Gabriel, who is this girl? How can she say that? I have come back to you. Like you wanted."
Odile blinked. "You don't remember talking to me before?"
"I remember bits. But that's no excuse for you accusing me, a white woman." Noemi's face twisted in an ugly snarl. "Have you no manners, slave?"
Gabriel's eyes narrowed, and Odile caught her breath. "Anton, give me your gun and go get more. We have to save your father." Without question, Anton handed Gabriel the rifle he was carrying, and turned away.
Smoothly, Gabriel pulled up the gun, pointed it at Noemi's head. The woman's eyes widened, just a little, and Gabriel pulled the trigger.
The report of the weapon was the loudest sound Odile had ever heard, and the thump as Noemi crumpled to the ground the quietest. Gabriel stood over the body of the woman who looked like his wife, the smoking gun in his hand. "Seriously the wrong thing to say, whatever you were," he said, staring down at her.
Odile felt like her limbs were encased in ice, her mouth hanging open. Words came slowly. "Ah. All right. I don't know who she was, but her body has been remade to look like Noemi, and someone's put a masking charm on the angel that I can't break safely without having whatever's anchoring the control on the other side."
"So we are without the angel and they have Benjamin," Gabriel said quietly, looking up at her. At his feet, the form of the body twisted and distorted. The ruined face turned to another one, one that was barely recognizable. "One of Durand's daughters," Gabriel said. "She was fifteen."
She swallowed. "I believe the person doing the ritual is Missus Durand. I was hoping to convince her to talk to me, by force if need be."
"She changed one of her own daughters for this. Were they after Benjamin, you, or me?"
"Maman said they were waiting for me at my house, but since Benjamin came they took him instead. She also said they were talking about doing a ritual to get through his protections." She took a breath. "This may not be the only attack we see today. The Durands want you distracted. I don't know from what."
"Probably tried to kill him and couldn't. So they took him. Must have been a lot of them."
Odile twisted her mouth. "There were, if the shambles of my house tell no lies."
Gabriel took a long breath, and stepped away from the body. "I can think of two things. One, they thought that with you gone, I would come looking for you and without the angel, they could get me and Benjamin. But they have Benjamin, so they have the same thing anyway. I can't leave him. Two, they were wanting to drag us away from the house for some reason. Three, that thing was probably going to try to worm its way into my life and probably kill me later."
"I'd say all three things might be the case. I can put up some more protections on the house, and you can put your people on alert for strangeness happening here." She looked at him, trying to decide from his expression what he was thinking. "Gabriel, are you all right?"
He nodded briefly. "I am angry about Benjamin. and about this game they are playing. But can I say something I know you don't want to hear?" Odile nodded briefly, bracing herself. Gabriel gook a sharp breath. "I love you."
The words hit her in the gut like a fist. She looked down and away from him. Very quietly, she said, "I know. I wish I could tell you the same. But I can't yet."
He almost reached for her, but visibly checked himself. "I know, that's why I knew you didn't want to hear it."
Odile had no idea what to do with her hands, going quiet and awkward and confused. "I. Ah. I should put up those protections."
He ignored her, continuing, "I thought you should know. No matter what happens, I wanted you to know that. Noemi is dead and gone. She was attached to that thing somehow and when she died, she went over finally. No regrets on what I have done. What we are about to is dangerous and I can't ask you to come with me. So in case I didn't make it back, I wanted there to be no doubt as to my feelings for you."
She brought her eyes up, looking him the face, astonished. "Do you really think I'm going to let you go without me? Especially now?"
"I don't want both of us to die," he said, shaking his head.
"If we both go, we have a much better chance of both of us coming back alive. If you go, you might very well die." She reached out and laid her hand on his shoulder. "Stronger together, remember?"
"I do." Anton was approaching, carrying three rifles. Gabriel turned to him. "Take the body, toss it in the swamp. Pack up everyone and move them to Petit's place." The young man started to protest, and Gabriel interrupted him with, "Anton, listen to me. You are the man now. Do as I say. If we don't come back, listen to your mother and then decide what is best for all of you. Take the papers from my desk. They will set you all free in the white man's world. Go."
Anton, with a last look at Gabriel, grabbed one of the dead woman's hands and started to haul the body away. Gabriel turned to Odile. "Let's get what you need, love, and see if we can bother Mister Durand."
Odile flinched at the word love, then took a long breath. "Back to my house, then." Her voice was harsh with the edges of Creole, more than usual.
They were silent on the way to Odile's house, and she was trying to get over the cold shock of what had just happened. She couldn't decide whether it was the shooting of Noemi or Gabriel's confession that was bothering her the most.
Finally, she gathered up her courage and asked a question. "So what convinced you that it wasn't Noemi?"
"The word slave," he told her.
"That wasn't something she'd have said?"
He shook his head. "My brother is Benjamin. She would never have used that word and never did. Therefore it couldn't be Noemi or if it was, it was a corrupted form of her. Then it was just a thing sent to hurt us. I did what I thought best."
Odile nodded. "I know. It was just...startling."
"Sorry. But to tell you the truth...I was considering it anyway, even before that." His voice was quiet, contemplative.
Startled, she looked at him. "You knew that what you were seeing probably wasn't the truth?"
Gabriel ran his hand through his fair hair. "I hope you don't hate me for this, or it makes you feel strange. But I didn't want her back. I didn't want you to leave me because this was my wife alive again."
She paused a bit before she responded, trying to think. "When I saw her and realized who she looked like...one of the worst parts was realizing that if it really was her, then you and I would need to go back to being friends and nothing more. I knew there were arrangements that could be made, but I didn't really want to think about any of them."
"I didn't want to see you occasionally. I don't think my heart would take you being another man's wife." He was looking at her as they walked, focusing on her intently. "That's what would have happened. You would have tired of being the mistress and found someone else. It's been a decade, and finally time has healed that part. Even her face couldn't tear that open again."
"I don't think I would have found someone else, myself," she told him. "And I'm glad. You were finally ready to let her go. Even if you had to shoot her to do so." It was a strange way to finish grieving, but she supposed if it worked, it worked. She smiled at him, just a little.
Gabriel nodded. "You know when you are young and you fall for someone and you think it's love because you don't know any different?"
Odile remembered being young, a mulatto boy from Leroy's plantation, probably her half-brother but she hadn't known that. She'd loved him with a passion she'd thought unequalled in history. But he had started going with someone else after she'd been initiated, and she'd thought her heart would never heal. "I remember, yes," she said.
"That, I think, was Noemi and I. I was in love because I didn't know any better."
She considered that for a moment in silence. "No, I think you did love her. But it's been ten years, and you've finally finished grieving her death. Don't dishonor the past to honor the present."
Gabriel inclined his head. His uneven gait beside her was at the same time strange and becoming very quickly familiar. "I did love her, and my grief tore open a hole in the crossroads large enough to let something through."
"Yes, it did. Now you're finished grieving her, and it's time to fix the hole and make things right again. However we can."
They were passing under the cypresses now, along the road that led to her house. "It is time for that. I just don't want to grieve anyone else, especially you."
"Well, I'll do my best not to die, if you do the same," she said.
"I will certainly try not to. Because I don't think the world will survive me grieving again," he said, and smiled at her.
"It might not, at that," she said, and they were at her house. Her heart sank once again as she surveyed the shambles. There was a lot of work to be done here, when she had the chance. But that chance wasn't today.
Her stash of made charms was undisturbed, though it was getting very low. She picked up what she thought she might need. She came out of the house, and Gabriel called, "Found where they dragged him. They went around east and then north. Pretty easy to follow them, Benjamin's heavy and they dragged him."
"Good enough," she said. She closed the door of her house behind her. "Let's go."
Magie plantation, to the north of Barataria, was a fair walk away, and the men who had taken Benjamin weren't moving quickly. Odile and Gabriel followed the drag marks north, and about a mile over the border had their first glimpse of where they thought Benjamin had been taken. It was a barn, the doors closed and the drag marks leading through the mud directly into it. There was one person on the doors, and two on the roof. They'd figured that he would be followed.
They kept out of sight, and Odile whispered the activation chant on several charms, giving some to Gabriel and others to herself. "Go around?" she murmured.
"Have to." They moved quietly around the barn, keeping well out of sight. The west side of the barn had no ground-level door, just a hay door that had been left open about eighteen feet off the ground.
Odile eyed the hay door. "Too bad we can't fly." She blinked then, an idea occurring. "Wait. Well, we almost can."
"How?" Gabriel asked. They were keeping their voices pitched low.
"Remember being the angel? I wonder if we can do that, only not so symbolically."
He shook his head. "I remember that. But I don't have wings--unless you can grow some for me?"
Odile glanced at the barn. They couldn't have been there long, and trying to defeat Benjamin's gardes would take time. "We have a few minutes, at least. I have an idea I want to try. If this doesn't work, we can do this the hard way. This might get strange, if it works. Up for it?"
"Anything that will help get Benjamin back," he said.
She nodded. "All right. Let's get back a little bit. We're going to be trying to enter ritual space without actually being in ritual." They went back a ways, into a space surrounded by bushes.
Odile closed her eyes and started to think of a chant, opening herself to mystery like she did every time she was in ritual. She took Gabriel's hand in hers, feeling it warm and strong, and thought about being together with him in the angel, pressed together.
She saw it, almost had it, the opening. It was as if a door had opened between them in the air, she could feel the edges of it, feel their hands linked through it. She stepped forward.
And into Gabriel's body.
Confusion, alarm, quickly sorted, and they opened their eyes. There were the great wings, the patchwork of their skin, their zanj self spreading its wings. They crouched and sprang, flying to the hay door, and folding their wings to land soundlessly on the other side.
Below, as they crept to the edge of the hayloft, they could see Benjamin held down by twelve men, both of the Durands standing nearby, talking to Leroy. There was a surge of rage from the Odile part of them, a desperate desire to see Leroy dead. Gabriel's anger was less quick but just as deep, but focused generally on those who were holding his brother captive.
After a lightning discussion, they separated, hearing the angel distantly screaming to be free, the first they'd felt of it. They could not carry both Benjamin and Missus Durand, so they would need to do the rest of this separately. Both of them had guns now--their clothing and possessions came back when they separated.
Mister Durand, a tall lean man with a weathered face and competent hands, was talking to his wife and Mister Leroy. "The big one here is the bait, and the creature is harnessed. It won't be doing them any good. I would expect them to send all the men to come here but we have people watching the roads and the forest south of here. You come from your place, and all that is left should be some black women and kids."
Leroy grinned. "Got it. I will kill the men if there are any guards left, and take the women and kids. We will split Barataria down the middle after we are done." He turned and left, and after a moment or so they could hear the creak of leather and a horse's hooves moving away.
Gabriel was at her shoulder, his mouth close to her ear. "I don't see a good way out without shooting a lot of people," he said.
Odile had been sifting very quietly through her bag, and pulled out the things that she had been looking for--a shy handful of wanga bouye, charms to confuse. "These should help, but Benjamin will be disoriented as well."
"That's probably all right. He recovers quickly."
"I'll throw these down, we count to three, and then do what we need to to get Missus Durand and Benjamin out and away," she said.
Gabriel nodded. "Aim for the guys holding Benjamin down. If he gets free, he will probably help the process considerably."
"I'll take the ones on the left, you the ones on the right," she said. Gabriel smiled and kissed her, then moved off a bit to give each of them some working room. Odile activated the charms and threw them over the edge of the hayloft with a whispered prayer, counted to three as noises of alarm came from below, and started shooting.
There was chaos below, men clutching their heads, others with their guns out and shooting. Odile and Benjamin began to shoot those holding Benjamin down, and the rhythm of firing, reloading, and firing again became everything Odile knew.
Three down. Four down. Benjamin broke free, grabbed up a long board, and began laying about him with it. Eight down. Nine. Blood was everywhere, the smell of it and gunpowder choking the air. Men were screaming as some of them died and others only lay badly wounded. Ten down.
Odile straightened, came to her knees, and then too late saw that Mister Durand had recovered from the confusion and was aiming at her. She threw herself to the side, hearing a twinned blast, a cold and then hot sensation on her left side warning that she had been hit.
She swore as she crawled back to the edge of the hayloft, reloaded, fired again. She was a good shot, had to be, and the weapon she had in her hands was very good. She concentrated on that and not the fact that she was shooting men, that human lives were ending down there.
Mister Durand, she saw, was trying to get to the door now. Missus Durand was digging in her skirts, looking for something, and Odile focused on her as the single greatest threat to them right now. She swung down out of the hayloft, landing heavily, and went for the woman. She hit her, reaching for the tackle, and the two of them went down in a heap.
Missus Durand was strong, but Odile was stronger and outweighed her by half. The contest between them lasted only a few seconds, and above her head Odile heard one last rifle report. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mister Durand hit the ground, limp, half of his head gone.
Benjamin loomed over Odile, offering rope. Together, they got Missus Durand tied, and by the time they had done so Gabriel had climbed down from the hayloft. He had some trouble with the ladder, but he did make it down. "You're bleeding," he said to Odile, looking alarmed.
"Just winged. Away," Odile said. "Now." She was reloading her rifle, expecting trouble outside.
The only way out of the barn was through the front door, and as they opened it they found a crowd outside, staring at them. Someone shouted, and Gabriel smoothly pulled his rifle up and shot the shouter, the guard on the door. There were screams in the crowd, murmurs going around, Missus Durand raising her head and shouting some nonsense about them saving her.
Nobody moved.
Benjamin put his arm around Missus Durand's waist and lifted her, carrying her now one-armed. Odile, now freed, reloaded her rifle quickly and shot the guard who had peered over the edge of the barn roof. He fell forward, plummeting to the ground next to them, bleeding into the dirt.
They stared at the crowd. The crowd stared back. Odile put her gun up and started walking, and Gabriel and Benjamin followed. The eerie silence reigned, broken only by the wail of a child who was quickly hushed.
Behind them, as they passed into the trees near the barn, the noise began. "They're going to riot when they find out Durand's dead," Gabriel muttered.
Pop of gunfire behind them. "Think so. Let's get hidden, it's going to get ugly on Magie for a bit," Odile said.
They walked quickly away, coming to a place out of earshot of any of the buildings on Magie, a little depression in the ground surrounded by trees. Odile made a thorough search of Missus Durand, whose given name Gabriel told her was Monique, and removed everything she thought might possibly be used as a charm. "Watch her?" Odile asked Benjamin. He nodded and she withdrew a bit. Gabriel had pulled off his shirt and was tearing it into strips. She let him start bandaging her shoulder. "Thanks. Let me have a bit of that, I can get the one on my hip," she told him.
"I suppose, but you have beautiful hips and you would deny me the sight?" he said, smiling at her.
She laughed briefly. "Probably less pretty while bleeding. Let me, I want to get this done so we can get back to Barataria."
"I don't think we want to get back to Barataria. What are we going to do?" Gabriel handed her the rest of the shirt, and Odile started tearing strips off of it.
She pulled her shirt up and her skirt down, hissing when she saw the wound. It wasn't deep but the flesh was torn and burned in almost a crease-like line, and it was bleeding freely. It was going to hurt a lot, later. "Depends a lot on what Missus Durand says. You know Leroy's probably going to burn the place if he gets there and finds everyone gone," she said, making a compress out of a piece of the shirt and pressing it to her hip.
"Yes, he might. But he has probably a lot of people and we are three. I don't think we can shoot them all before they do it." Gabriel began to tie bits of shirt around her shoulder. "I don't have a connection to the angel to wake it. It could stop him but even if I could, I am not sure of my control."
"Maybe Missus Durand will give me what I need to remove the masking." Something occurred to her, and she said slowly, "There's a problem with that, though. You said Noemi's gone, right?"
"I am sure they released her somehow. The angel is just the beast and me now."
"She was helping control it, and now it's all up to you." She gritted her teeth, and it was not entirely the burning pain in her shoulder and hip that caused her expression. "There may be a way to get you help controlling it, but I'm not sure it'll work, and I don't know if you're going to like the idea."
"What is it?" he asked.
"There's probably a way to bind another person into the angel, now that Noemi's gone. I could probably bind myself into it."
Gabriel's eyes went dark. "Ya, you are right. I don't think I like that idea. That puts you in danger. And another way out for the beast."
"It does, but with both of us working together, we might be able to hold it at bay longer." She finished the compress and adjusted her skirt so the waistband would hold it in place. "I thought I'd suggest it. What Missus Durand tells me may make the choice clearer."
He had finished with her shoulder, and now laid his hand on her other shoulder. "I could argue this until we are blue, really, but it comes down to this. I don't have a choice about being tied to this thing. I don't want you to do it. It could kill you, and your life is worth more to me."
She cocked her head. "And if me being tied to it meant that we might both survive? Gabriel, you know as well as I do that without Noemi it's only a matter of time before Kalfu decides to move into the angel and the beast moves into your body. And it might happen sooner rather than later."
"I know. I didn't say it was logical. It's just what I feel."
Odile nodded. "I just don't want to lose you," she admitted, and her breath caught in her throat. "And if this is what I need to do, then so be it. But like I said, there may be another way. Let's talk to Missus Durand and see what she has to say, or if she'll even talk."
"If there's another way, we try that first," he said. She nodded, and the two of them went back to where Benjamin stood over Monique Durand, his foot on her throat. The woman was not struggling, and she looked a little blue.
"Let her up a little," she told Benjamin. "Li ti goumen?"
Benjamin smiled. "Not really."
Well, he had been kidnapped by people working for this woman. He was entitled to a bit of his own back. "Well, I'd like her to talk to us, and she can't do that with you standing on her so hard." The big man nodded, and took his foot off her throat and transferred it to her wrist, putting a lot of weight on it. The prone woman whimpered, but Benjamin did not move his foot.
Odile dropped to a crouch beside Missus Durand's head. "So, Missus Durand. Tell me about what you did to Noemi."
Monique looked up at her, and Odile saw that her eyes were dark brown and had a flat, angry look in them. "Why should I?"
"Because it's in your interest not to make me any more angry than I already am," Odile said, her voice calm. "I already know you're a bokor. Don't compound that mistake by not telling me what you've done so I can do what I can to fix it."
Benjamin shifted his weight a little, and the woman whimpered again. "I pulled Noemi from the angel," she admitted.
"How did you manage to undo the bindings on her?"
Monique shifted, almost struggling. "Kalfu showed me in his Antoinette form."
She tilted her head. "And you were doing this at Kalfu's request? Did he tell you what he had in mind? What about the masking of the angel?"
"Speeding up the process of his takeover. You were to be captured and killed. Drawing Gabriel to the plantation so he could be held and the ritual performed."
"And this ritual was to accomplish what?" Odile asked.
"Transferring the beast back to Gabriel, free the way into the angel for Kalfu." Benjamin shifted again, and Monique cried out.
Odile glanced up at Benjamin, giving him a warning look. He shrugged and shifted his weight back a little. "Right. Where is the anchor for the other end of that masking charm?" she asked Monique.
"My necklace that you took," she said. Odile turned to the pile of things she'd taken off of Monique, and pulled out an expensive-looking emerald pendant on a silver chain. She closed her eyes and muttered a chant, and felt the tug back to the masking item, on Barataria. It was true, then.
She turned back to Missus Durand. "So, tell me. When the mask is removed, what's supposed to happen?"
The woman struggled briefly, then subsided. "Nothing should happen. The mask was to stop Gabriel from calling it."
"And Noemi did get sent beyond the crossroads, then, once she was no longer connected to the body you changed to look like her?"
"Gabriel sent her," she said.
Odile nodded, confirming Gabriel's statement. "I assume you knew this because you were helping power the bindings between her and the body."
"Yes, and she was in my daughter's body."
"We saw that." Odile crouched again, still holding the pendant in her hand, fingers closed around it. "So, do you know who has the other parts of Kalfu in them?"
"I do," Monique said, and gagged. Her eyes flew open wide, and a high wheezing sound came from her throat. There was genuine fear in the woman's eyes. Her lips had gone blue, and her back arched, all sound from her ceasing.
Odile snatched up a charm against black magic, slapping it against the woman's throat and calling out the activation. Monique convulsed and her skin flushed a deeper blue, and then, impossibly, her body crumbled under Odile's hands.
Her body went from solid to dust in a matter of heartbeats, and Odile gave a sharp cry and jumped back and away. Her heart was pounding, and she stared at the pile of dust that had once been a woman. Even her clothes had gone to dust. "Well, that was less than helpful. Some useful things, though," she said, briefly surprised that her voice was almost steady.
Gabriel was next to her now, though she hadn't seen him move. "Never seen anyone die quite like that," he said, his voice low. "Glad we got the necklace off her before she crumbled."
"Me, too." Her heart was calming, and she tucked the pendant into a pocket of her skirt. "Well, I can lift the mask probably about any time, but I think I'll need to be by the angel when I do so." Benjamin had begun to go through the things they'd taken from Missus Durand, and had picked up a small book and was thumbing through it, reading.
"Which means back to Barataria, and close enough to smell Leroy," Gabriel said, in a voice that made it clear he didn't enjoy the prospect.
She nodded, though the idea of smelling Leroy made her lip curl a bit. "So what do we want to do? Hope when he gets there he'll find nobody there and turn around and go home? If he's taking possession, you'd think he wouldn't want to burn most of the buildings."
Gabriel glanced down at the pile of dust. A breeze was coming up, stirring the pile, lifting bits of Missus Durand into the air and away. "His object was to kill my workers and drive us off. But he will be extremely angry when they are already gone. He will probably try to follow them. That many people moving leave a lot of tracks."
"So he'll follow them to Petit's place."
"Very likely," he said. "Where he will encounter a lot of resistance."
"And a lot of people are going to get hurt and killed." Odile lifted her hand to rub her forehead, and hissed when pain shot down her arm--she'd tried to use her left hand. Savagely, she said, "You know, this would suddenly become a lot easier if Leroy were to stop breathing."
"Can we get to him? Benjamin can probably get a shot off."
Odile shook her head. "We're not exactly the least obvious people in the world, and a lot of the cover on Petit's place got burned off, sounds like. Might be possible, though. There's another possibility, but I'm not sure I like it." She was looking at home now, steadily. "What we did to get into the barn."
Gabriel gave her a dubious look. "What are you thinking?"
"Go after Leroy in particular," she said. "The rest of them have probably heard of the angel, they might assume it's the same, and they'll probably run like hell."
"If nothing else it might scare them all off." He seemed to be warming to the idea. "I don't think we can do what the real one does."
"No, I don't think so. And we would be as vulnerable to being shot as we are separate." She took a breath. "Better than risking having anyone see Benjamin shooting Leroy, though."
He glanced up into the sky. It was starting to cloud up, like it was maybe thinking about raining in the afternoon. "I don't know if we can get to Leroy without taking a few shots, but we could get to the real angel and end Leroy," he suggested.
Odile cocked her head. "Willing to run the risk that the beast will decide to move in, if I lift the mask?" she asked quietly.
"Not really." His voice slowed, and the words came from him only reluctantly. "But can the ritual be done in time to add you to the link? I still don't like the idea but if we can control it better..."
Odile considered the idea. She was willing to do it still, she would never have offered if she hadn't meant it. She was a little afraid, but if it needed to be done, it needed to be done. She might end up as hopelessly tangled in the beast as Gabriel was, but she thought she was willing to run the risk. "If we get there soon, it might be. The place and the bindings are ready, I just have to convince them to attach to me and not pull me directly into the statue."
"It really depends on what we want to do. Chasing him away is safer. Killing him is preferable but the risk is outweighing the reward."
"I think so. I'd rather take my time with the mask, if there's any way to. Let's try to scare him off." She hardened her mouth. "Much as I really want him dead. Benjamin?" The big man looked up from the book he was leafing through. "Gabriel and I are going to be doing something strange."
"Can't be a whole lot stranger than this writing book of Missus Durand's," he replied, lifting the book a bit.
Curious, Odile asked, "What's it got?"
"Lots of stuff about Remy," he said.
"You'll have to tell me about it later. I think we should go. We should be back soon." Benjamin nodded, and Odile turned to Gabriel, holding out both her hands. He took them, and she concentrated, feeling that door form once more.
Odile stepped forward, and this time it was not a surprise when they found themselves in the same body. Strange.
We're more blurred. Look.
It was true, the edges on their patches were much more indistinct, and there were places where it was difficult to tell which one of them it was. They could feel a sense of power, locked up tight. Distantly, they heard Benjamin say, "Sobo protect me!"
Wings. Great wings opened and still that power, euphoric, but there was so much more elsewhere. There was even a feeling of the other angel, a cloud-wrapped anger, far far below.
It doesn't matter.
They were in the air now, with every wingbeat feeling stronger, the pain in shoulder and hip receding to a dull ache. The part of them that was Odile could feel fear coming from the part that was Gabriel. Deep, pained fear, fear that he was going to lose yet another woman he loved. Another woman he loved, linked to the angel, linked to the beast inside, being drained dry by what it held.
And in there was another fear, fear for the future, small but burning bright, spark in their wide firmament. Odile could not reassure that fear, could not even tell what it was about, and they were there anyway, men on horses below them. They were passing the place where the four men had been hung, on an evening that seemed like years ago but was only days. Spook the horses was their common consensus, and the drew themselves into a steep dive, snapping their wings outward as their reached the horses and climbing back up again, too swift for those who now shot at them to follow.
A lot of the men broke--but there was a core group, Leroy and five others, who stood with rifles aimed, keeping their horses still as they could. They looked down from the great height they were at, and with their hawk-like sight, they could see that Leroy was chanting something.
Leroy? Chanting?
An ba, get out of sight--
A place on them began to burn, by the hip that was her hip and his hip, quickly growing intensely painful. Odile remembered that place, she had put that necklace of Missus Durand's in a pocket there, the necklace that was the anchor for the masking spell. They could not get it out, it was within them somehow. A silent consultation and they were winging down for another dive at Leroy, trying to convince him that whatever it was wasn't working. The heat intensified until it was a small sun burning in them, bullets flying around them.
The pain stopped.
The stone angel's scream rang through the air.
Leroy has a piece of Kalfu, he just broke your connection to mons la--
Has to be. What do we do?
Faceful of stone angel soon, you must get control back!
Part of them was separated, looking for finger holes in the dam that separated them from that river of power just beyond. But it was complex, too complex to work out now, Legba or Erzulie would know how to break it. The rest of them was flying, higher and higher, and it was there that they were met by the stone angel, razor wings glinting in the moonlight, pointed teeth showing in the snarl it had on its face.
It shrieked and dove for them, pulling up at the last moment and shearing off into the sky, They and the angel began a dance, flying around each other, Gabriel groping for control and finding nothing. Odile could see the problem. He'd never had to do anything like this before, and he was failing because he didn't have the kind of grip on his power he needed.
The angel was shadowing them now, growling gutturally, its voice rising into a shriek every time they turned towards Leroy. When they got farther from Leroy, the stone angel backed off. Protecting Leroy--
This isn't working, Odile! the part of them that was Gabriel said, beginning to panic.
Odile wrestled with something very large and wordless for a moment, thinking very quickly and coming to the only conclusion she was capable of. She opened herself to Gabriel, offering her help. I have the will.
Are you sure?
Yes. Do it!
Gabriel pulled from her what he could, and threw. The stone angel's shriek was a thing of pure horror, and it flung itself up and away from them, turning back towards Barataria. They looked down and saw Leroy and his posse riding hard for him.
A surge of rage and hatred boiled up in Odile, and they began to dive at Leroy. She felt Gabriel's confusion at first, and then alarm. The closer we get the harder, the angel is fighting me.
Another surge, this one of bitter disappointment, swallowed swiftly by resignation. Another day, then. They winged back into the sky, turning back to where they had left Benjamin. They settled on the ground in front of him, and at the same time they could feel the other angel settle onto its pedestal with a shriek, going into its usual position and quieting.
Odile and Gabriel separated, stepping out from their shared form. As soon as she stepped out, Odile started feeling shaky, a little queasy, an emptiness briefly opening and closing inside of her almost too quickly to be noticed. Gabriel was holding onto her, and for the moment she was glad of the contact. Part of the shakiness was due to the pain that was suddenly surfacing, a burn on her right hip, where the necklace had been. She fished what was left of it out. The metal was melted into unrecognizability and the emeralds was all but concealed by the silver.
"We found another piece of Kalfu, in Leroy," she told Benjamin.
He looked between the two of them, seemingly dumbfounded. "What was that?"
"Damnation," Gabriel muttered, and she saw his hand go to his right hip, in the same place. "That hurts."
The movement revealed something she hadn't seen before. Gabriel was shirtless, and there was a small trickle of blood coming from his left shoulder. "Gabriel, what's wrong with your shoulder?" she asked, turning to look.
"Nothing." He put his hand to his shoulder, and it came away bloody. "Maybe not nothing. It looks like a bullet graze. Like your bullet graze."
"You mean the bullet graze that suddenly feels a lot better?" Odile asked, wryly. "How's your left hip feeling?"
He blinked, then said, "Sore." He put a hand down his pants, feeling around, and pulled his fingers back bloodstained. "Bleeding."
"The wounds must have split across the two of us. Sorry about that, I had no idea." In answer to Benjamin's question, she said, "Gabriel and I seem to have the ability to become something else."
Gabriel said, "It's fine. It will heal faster between the two of us."
Benjamin chuckled, seemingly in disbelief. "Something else is an understatement."
"It is, isn't it? It's something that happened for the first time during Gabriel's first initiation ritual." She gave the big man a lopsided smile. "I told you it was going to be strange."
"Are you like the other one?" Benjamin asked, curious. "You seem more flesh-like than stone."
"Just the shape and ability to fly. We'd probably take bullets if we got shot."
He shook his head. "Unfortunate, that. I saw the stone one flying as well. How did you break the mask?"
Odile gave him a wry smile. "We didn't. Kalfu decided to break the connection between Gabriel and the angel." She spread her hands wide. "I think we managed to get it at least partially back under control."
"Kalfu is gaining more and more control over it. Noemi's loss has strengthened Kalfu's grip," Benjamin said.
"Yes. I'm likely to need to step into Noemi's place. So to speak."
Gabriel had found his cane, which he had dropped before they had become the angel, and looked at Odile. "If you already haven't. I had to pull from you, and it opened the channel to the angel. It's got you too, now. I am sorry."
Strangely, the news came as neither a surprise nor a shock, and though Odile had thought she would be upset, she was simply calm, and chilled straight through. The shakiness was finally starting to fade. "Don't be," she told Gabriel. "I expected it to happen, I knew what it might mean when I offered my help. I'm hoping my presence will at least slow Kalfu's overtaking of the angel."
"Me, too." There was a tightness to Gabriel's mouth that she'd seen before, when he'd been healing from the gunshot. "I don't want to fight that thing. It's got a huge advantage."
"It's made of stone," she said.
"And pointed teeth and razor-sharp wings," he added, somewhat unnecessarily, she thought.
Odile nodded, considering. "Though, remember that power we felt. I think that would even the odds, if we can get to it."
He brought his head up a little, as if he'd forgotten about the power and she had reminded him. "We need to know how. Any ideas?"
"Consult Erzulie and Legba," she said. "I think they'd be able to tell us more."
There was another light in Gabriel's eyes now, and he smiled. "That, at least, sounds like fun." Ah, she knew that light, now. He was remembering the ritual yesterday as fondly as she was.
She chuckled. "Doesn't it, though? Though we probably ought to only call one or the other. Those two get together and they spend a lot of time talking to each other and not us."
"The images we got when we first linked were helpful," he said. "Maybe they would do that again."
This man was utterly incorrigible. But she had to admit that despite the pain in shoulder and hip, she was looking forward to it as much as he seemed to be. "Doesn't hurt to ask, surely."
"Good. Maybe not tonight, though," he said, and the light faded a little bit. "That burn is killing me."
He did have to remind her. "You're telling me. I wish I'd thought to leave the necklace behind, or at least put it in a pocket in a less tender place."
Gabriel turned to Benjamin, who was watching them both without comment. "Benjamin. How you feeling?"
"Good," Benjamin said. He raised his hand and brushed his head with his hand; if he was feeling the knock on the head he'd gotten before, he wasn't showing it.
"Walk us home, and then can you get the rest and bring them back," Gabriel said. "I don't think Leroy will come again tonight."
Benjamin nodded and held out Missus Durand's little writing book to Gabriel, who took it. "Let me tell you about the book," he said. "Monique was real interested in Remy, and spent time writing down things he let slip--or she thought he let slip. Claims he's older than he looks, a lot older. His old master was your father, Gabriel, and it says that his teacher was my mama. Stole the top had from him, and the flute from her. Remember that flute of hers? Never did know where it went. He lived in Atlanta when we were there, and followed us here when we moved." The big man shook his head. "Other thing it said was that Remy had a daughter who got sold before he started training with my mama. In Atlanta somewhere, no telling to who or even what her name was. You'd think I'd have remembered him."
"You never saw him before?" Odile asked.
He shrugged. "Man under all that paint could be anyone, but I think I'd remember the voice."
Odile took a breath. "Strange. Stranger that she wrote all that down. Not that Remy would probably care. Back, then? I'd like to lie down some."
By common consensus, they began to walk back. The burn from the necklace was on Gabriel's good leg, and as a result he was walking almost straight. "First time in years," he said, cracking a smile. They moved slowly, but they did make it back, passing beneath the angel's gaze on the way.
Barataria's property had remained untouched, and once they were back at the house Benjamin took off to go get the rest of the family and the workers. Once they were inside and in Gabriel's room, Odile snagged the waist of his trousers. "Off with these," she said.
Gabriel grinned. "And what are you going to do with me once I'm naked?"
She snorted. "I want to clean those grazes and the burn, they'll heal faster. Sweet loa, Gabriel, we both almost died today."
"All the more reason to want to enjoy each other while it lasts," he said. "But I will submit, if I must."
Odile washed off his wounds, concentrating on the burn. It was going to be stubborn, she could tell. It resisted the chant she gave to it, stubborn as the man it had injured. In the end, she ended up cleaning it off, putting some simple salve on it, and letting it air. "Awkward place to bandage," she muttered.
"Want me to get yours cleaned up?" Gabriel said. "Might not know anything about healing, but my mama made sure I knew how to wash off wounds, said I'd probably need to know how."
Odile nodded and slid out of her skirt and shirt, letting Gabriel use her supplies to clean her wounds. The grazes still stung fiercely, and the burn was a bone-deep hurt that radiated fire into her hip. She lay still and let Gabriel work, trying not to flinch.
After he was done, he left one hand on one of her thighs, while the other wandered a bit towards the middle. Despite her hurts, she felt desire flare when he cupped the damp place of her in his hand, moving almost reverently.
She looked up at him, then sat up a bit, using one elbow to prop her up. She smiled when she saw that his gigit was already at half-mast. "Thought you were hurting," she said, an eyebrow raised.
He curled his fingers a bit, and she half-closed her eyes as his fingertips slid against sensitive places. "I am. But I find myself not caring particularly. How about you?"
She half-growled in the back of her throat. "I think I might have to hit you if you stop that," she muttered as his fingers began to move more, finding places that made her want to raise her hips shamelessly. "Come down here and kiss me, mon fou."
"Thought you'd decided I wasn't crazy," he complained as he lay down next to her, matching breast to breast.
"When did you start understanding Creole?" she asked. "Still think you're crazy. A crazy I like."
"It's not too far off from French, and that was my father's tongue," he said. "Glad you do."
She claimed his lips for her own, then. She was exhausted and hurting, and still she wanted this man. After the day, after seeing Noemi and watching Gabriel make his decision, hearing his declaration that he loved her, then sharing the same body with Gabriel...it was all so much, and so overwhelming, and right now the fact that her body and his body fit together perfectly was the simplest thing in her life. So they made love to each other, gently and with much adjusting as they avoided bumping wounds to flesh.
Sleep claimed them afterwards, though Odile had intended to get up and sleep in Noemi's room. There would be time enough for the complexities of what had happened, later. For now, to be next to him was good.
Everything else could wait.
She came up out of the ritual, and looked around. She'd expected Benjamin to be back by now, but he was nowhere to be seen. She started walking back to her house, thinking she'd meet him on the way.
No Benjamin, though she stepped off Barataria and into the swamp. Insects were shrilling as the morning sunlight made the mist retreat into the undergrowth. Odile was hurrying now, almost running, and as she came into the clearing that was her front yard she caught her breath. Her door was standing wide open, and there were signs of a fight, many different bootprints in the mud.
Inside the house, the place was a shambles, the kays myste overturned, fragile ritual objects smashed. No one was here, though there was blood on the floor. The door to her bedroom was still closed, though, and it appeared that the protections had held. Odile opened the door to see the corpse that held her Maman sitting right where she had left it.
Odile, her hands shaking, picked up the red brook and called the chant to wake her mother. "Maman, what happened?"
The white eyes opened, the mouth worked. "Durand and his men. They were waiting for you, but they took Benjamin instead."
"What happened to the girl?"
"Wandered out north," her mother said in a flat voice.
Odile sucked in a breath. "Durand just ignored her? If Gabriel sees her..."
"I think that's the point," Maman said dryly.
"I need to go find her, then. Did Durand say where they were taking Benjamin?"
The corpse's head nodded. "Back to the house to do some ritual that would make him vulnerable."
"All right. I'll be back." She muttered the chant for sleep and dashed out of the house, slamming the door behind her. Her heart was pounding, and pain flew in her footsteps. Images shuddered through her mind, Gabriel turning away from her, kissing Noemi, a disdainful look in Noemi's eyes. Herself walking away, leaving Gabriel to his wife.
She had to find Noemi before she found Gabriel.
She rounded a corner, headed towards the front of the plantation house, then came to a sudden stop as she was hit by an image that she'd never wanted to see.
Too late--
Gabriel was standing in front of the house, holding Noemi by the shoulders, a look of utter shock and deep, dawning awe on his face. Anton was behind Gabriel, looking uncertain. Odile gritted her teeth, sent a silent prayer to the loa for strength, and stepped forward. "Gabriel. There's trouble."
He looked away from Noemi, at Odile, and she could not read the look in his eyes. "Worse than this?"
"Durand has Benjamin," she said, willing her voice not to shake. "And as far as I can tell, this is not your Noemi."
Noemi had turned now, and a look of confusion was coming over her face. "Gabriel, who is this girl? How can she say that? I have come back to you. Like you wanted."
Odile blinked. "You don't remember talking to me before?"
"I remember bits. But that's no excuse for you accusing me, a white woman." Noemi's face twisted in an ugly snarl. "Have you no manners, slave?"
Gabriel's eyes narrowed, and Odile caught her breath. "Anton, give me your gun and go get more. We have to save your father." Without question, Anton handed Gabriel the rifle he was carrying, and turned away.
Smoothly, Gabriel pulled up the gun, pointed it at Noemi's head. The woman's eyes widened, just a little, and Gabriel pulled the trigger.
The report of the weapon was the loudest sound Odile had ever heard, and the thump as Noemi crumpled to the ground the quietest. Gabriel stood over the body of the woman who looked like his wife, the smoking gun in his hand. "Seriously the wrong thing to say, whatever you were," he said, staring down at her.
Odile felt like her limbs were encased in ice, her mouth hanging open. Words came slowly. "Ah. All right. I don't know who she was, but her body has been remade to look like Noemi, and someone's put a masking charm on the angel that I can't break safely without having whatever's anchoring the control on the other side."
"So we are without the angel and they have Benjamin," Gabriel said quietly, looking up at her. At his feet, the form of the body twisted and distorted. The ruined face turned to another one, one that was barely recognizable. "One of Durand's daughters," Gabriel said. "She was fifteen."
She swallowed. "I believe the person doing the ritual is Missus Durand. I was hoping to convince her to talk to me, by force if need be."
"She changed one of her own daughters for this. Were they after Benjamin, you, or me?"
"Maman said they were waiting for me at my house, but since Benjamin came they took him instead. She also said they were talking about doing a ritual to get through his protections." She took a breath. "This may not be the only attack we see today. The Durands want you distracted. I don't know from what."
"Probably tried to kill him and couldn't. So they took him. Must have been a lot of them."
Odile twisted her mouth. "There were, if the shambles of my house tell no lies."
Gabriel took a long breath, and stepped away from the body. "I can think of two things. One, they thought that with you gone, I would come looking for you and without the angel, they could get me and Benjamin. But they have Benjamin, so they have the same thing anyway. I can't leave him. Two, they were wanting to drag us away from the house for some reason. Three, that thing was probably going to try to worm its way into my life and probably kill me later."
"I'd say all three things might be the case. I can put up some more protections on the house, and you can put your people on alert for strangeness happening here." She looked at him, trying to decide from his expression what he was thinking. "Gabriel, are you all right?"
He nodded briefly. "I am angry about Benjamin. and about this game they are playing. But can I say something I know you don't want to hear?" Odile nodded briefly, bracing herself. Gabriel gook a sharp breath. "I love you."
The words hit her in the gut like a fist. She looked down and away from him. Very quietly, she said, "I know. I wish I could tell you the same. But I can't yet."
He almost reached for her, but visibly checked himself. "I know, that's why I knew you didn't want to hear it."
Odile had no idea what to do with her hands, going quiet and awkward and confused. "I. Ah. I should put up those protections."
He ignored her, continuing, "I thought you should know. No matter what happens, I wanted you to know that. Noemi is dead and gone. She was attached to that thing somehow and when she died, she went over finally. No regrets on what I have done. What we are about to is dangerous and I can't ask you to come with me. So in case I didn't make it back, I wanted there to be no doubt as to my feelings for you."
She brought her eyes up, looking him the face, astonished. "Do you really think I'm going to let you go without me? Especially now?"
"I don't want both of us to die," he said, shaking his head.
"If we both go, we have a much better chance of both of us coming back alive. If you go, you might very well die." She reached out and laid her hand on his shoulder. "Stronger together, remember?"
"I do." Anton was approaching, carrying three rifles. Gabriel turned to him. "Take the body, toss it in the swamp. Pack up everyone and move them to Petit's place." The young man started to protest, and Gabriel interrupted him with, "Anton, listen to me. You are the man now. Do as I say. If we don't come back, listen to your mother and then decide what is best for all of you. Take the papers from my desk. They will set you all free in the white man's world. Go."
Anton, with a last look at Gabriel, grabbed one of the dead woman's hands and started to haul the body away. Gabriel turned to Odile. "Let's get what you need, love, and see if we can bother Mister Durand."
Odile flinched at the word love, then took a long breath. "Back to my house, then." Her voice was harsh with the edges of Creole, more than usual.
They were silent on the way to Odile's house, and she was trying to get over the cold shock of what had just happened. She couldn't decide whether it was the shooting of Noemi or Gabriel's confession that was bothering her the most.
Finally, she gathered up her courage and asked a question. "So what convinced you that it wasn't Noemi?"
"The word slave," he told her.
"That wasn't something she'd have said?"
He shook his head. "My brother is Benjamin. She would never have used that word and never did. Therefore it couldn't be Noemi or if it was, it was a corrupted form of her. Then it was just a thing sent to hurt us. I did what I thought best."
Odile nodded. "I know. It was just...startling."
"Sorry. But to tell you the truth...I was considering it anyway, even before that." His voice was quiet, contemplative.
Startled, she looked at him. "You knew that what you were seeing probably wasn't the truth?"
Gabriel ran his hand through his fair hair. "I hope you don't hate me for this, or it makes you feel strange. But I didn't want her back. I didn't want you to leave me because this was my wife alive again."
She paused a bit before she responded, trying to think. "When I saw her and realized who she looked like...one of the worst parts was realizing that if it really was her, then you and I would need to go back to being friends and nothing more. I knew there were arrangements that could be made, but I didn't really want to think about any of them."
"I didn't want to see you occasionally. I don't think my heart would take you being another man's wife." He was looking at her as they walked, focusing on her intently. "That's what would have happened. You would have tired of being the mistress and found someone else. It's been a decade, and finally time has healed that part. Even her face couldn't tear that open again."
"I don't think I would have found someone else, myself," she told him. "And I'm glad. You were finally ready to let her go. Even if you had to shoot her to do so." It was a strange way to finish grieving, but she supposed if it worked, it worked. She smiled at him, just a little.
Gabriel nodded. "You know when you are young and you fall for someone and you think it's love because you don't know any different?"
Odile remembered being young, a mulatto boy from Leroy's plantation, probably her half-brother but she hadn't known that. She'd loved him with a passion she'd thought unequalled in history. But he had started going with someone else after she'd been initiated, and she'd thought her heart would never heal. "I remember, yes," she said.
"That, I think, was Noemi and I. I was in love because I didn't know any better."
She considered that for a moment in silence. "No, I think you did love her. But it's been ten years, and you've finally finished grieving her death. Don't dishonor the past to honor the present."
Gabriel inclined his head. His uneven gait beside her was at the same time strange and becoming very quickly familiar. "I did love her, and my grief tore open a hole in the crossroads large enough to let something through."
"Yes, it did. Now you're finished grieving her, and it's time to fix the hole and make things right again. However we can."
They were passing under the cypresses now, along the road that led to her house. "It is time for that. I just don't want to grieve anyone else, especially you."
"Well, I'll do my best not to die, if you do the same," she said.
"I will certainly try not to. Because I don't think the world will survive me grieving again," he said, and smiled at her.
"It might not, at that," she said, and they were at her house. Her heart sank once again as she surveyed the shambles. There was a lot of work to be done here, when she had the chance. But that chance wasn't today.
Her stash of made charms was undisturbed, though it was getting very low. She picked up what she thought she might need. She came out of the house, and Gabriel called, "Found where they dragged him. They went around east and then north. Pretty easy to follow them, Benjamin's heavy and they dragged him."
"Good enough," she said. She closed the door of her house behind her. "Let's go."
Magie plantation, to the north of Barataria, was a fair walk away, and the men who had taken Benjamin weren't moving quickly. Odile and Gabriel followed the drag marks north, and about a mile over the border had their first glimpse of where they thought Benjamin had been taken. It was a barn, the doors closed and the drag marks leading through the mud directly into it. There was one person on the doors, and two on the roof. They'd figured that he would be followed.
They kept out of sight, and Odile whispered the activation chant on several charms, giving some to Gabriel and others to herself. "Go around?" she murmured.
"Have to." They moved quietly around the barn, keeping well out of sight. The west side of the barn had no ground-level door, just a hay door that had been left open about eighteen feet off the ground.
Odile eyed the hay door. "Too bad we can't fly." She blinked then, an idea occurring. "Wait. Well, we almost can."
"How?" Gabriel asked. They were keeping their voices pitched low.
"Remember being the angel? I wonder if we can do that, only not so symbolically."
He shook his head. "I remember that. But I don't have wings--unless you can grow some for me?"
Odile glanced at the barn. They couldn't have been there long, and trying to defeat Benjamin's gardes would take time. "We have a few minutes, at least. I have an idea I want to try. If this doesn't work, we can do this the hard way. This might get strange, if it works. Up for it?"
"Anything that will help get Benjamin back," he said.
She nodded. "All right. Let's get back a little bit. We're going to be trying to enter ritual space without actually being in ritual." They went back a ways, into a space surrounded by bushes.
Odile closed her eyes and started to think of a chant, opening herself to mystery like she did every time she was in ritual. She took Gabriel's hand in hers, feeling it warm and strong, and thought about being together with him in the angel, pressed together.
She saw it, almost had it, the opening. It was as if a door had opened between them in the air, she could feel the edges of it, feel their hands linked through it. She stepped forward.
And into Gabriel's body.
Confusion, alarm, quickly sorted, and they opened their eyes. There were the great wings, the patchwork of their skin, their zanj self spreading its wings. They crouched and sprang, flying to the hay door, and folding their wings to land soundlessly on the other side.
Below, as they crept to the edge of the hayloft, they could see Benjamin held down by twelve men, both of the Durands standing nearby, talking to Leroy. There was a surge of rage from the Odile part of them, a desperate desire to see Leroy dead. Gabriel's anger was less quick but just as deep, but focused generally on those who were holding his brother captive.
After a lightning discussion, they separated, hearing the angel distantly screaming to be free, the first they'd felt of it. They could not carry both Benjamin and Missus Durand, so they would need to do the rest of this separately. Both of them had guns now--their clothing and possessions came back when they separated.
Mister Durand, a tall lean man with a weathered face and competent hands, was talking to his wife and Mister Leroy. "The big one here is the bait, and the creature is harnessed. It won't be doing them any good. I would expect them to send all the men to come here but we have people watching the roads and the forest south of here. You come from your place, and all that is left should be some black women and kids."
Leroy grinned. "Got it. I will kill the men if there are any guards left, and take the women and kids. We will split Barataria down the middle after we are done." He turned and left, and after a moment or so they could hear the creak of leather and a horse's hooves moving away.
Gabriel was at her shoulder, his mouth close to her ear. "I don't see a good way out without shooting a lot of people," he said.
Odile had been sifting very quietly through her bag, and pulled out the things that she had been looking for--a shy handful of wanga bouye, charms to confuse. "These should help, but Benjamin will be disoriented as well."
"That's probably all right. He recovers quickly."
"I'll throw these down, we count to three, and then do what we need to to get Missus Durand and Benjamin out and away," she said.
Gabriel nodded. "Aim for the guys holding Benjamin down. If he gets free, he will probably help the process considerably."
"I'll take the ones on the left, you the ones on the right," she said. Gabriel smiled and kissed her, then moved off a bit to give each of them some working room. Odile activated the charms and threw them over the edge of the hayloft with a whispered prayer, counted to three as noises of alarm came from below, and started shooting.
There was chaos below, men clutching their heads, others with their guns out and shooting. Odile and Benjamin began to shoot those holding Benjamin down, and the rhythm of firing, reloading, and firing again became everything Odile knew.
Three down. Four down. Benjamin broke free, grabbed up a long board, and began laying about him with it. Eight down. Nine. Blood was everywhere, the smell of it and gunpowder choking the air. Men were screaming as some of them died and others only lay badly wounded. Ten down.
Odile straightened, came to her knees, and then too late saw that Mister Durand had recovered from the confusion and was aiming at her. She threw herself to the side, hearing a twinned blast, a cold and then hot sensation on her left side warning that she had been hit.
She swore as she crawled back to the edge of the hayloft, reloaded, fired again. She was a good shot, had to be, and the weapon she had in her hands was very good. She concentrated on that and not the fact that she was shooting men, that human lives were ending down there.
Mister Durand, she saw, was trying to get to the door now. Missus Durand was digging in her skirts, looking for something, and Odile focused on her as the single greatest threat to them right now. She swung down out of the hayloft, landing heavily, and went for the woman. She hit her, reaching for the tackle, and the two of them went down in a heap.
Missus Durand was strong, but Odile was stronger and outweighed her by half. The contest between them lasted only a few seconds, and above her head Odile heard one last rifle report. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mister Durand hit the ground, limp, half of his head gone.
Benjamin loomed over Odile, offering rope. Together, they got Missus Durand tied, and by the time they had done so Gabriel had climbed down from the hayloft. He had some trouble with the ladder, but he did make it down. "You're bleeding," he said to Odile, looking alarmed.
"Just winged. Away," Odile said. "Now." She was reloading her rifle, expecting trouble outside.
The only way out of the barn was through the front door, and as they opened it they found a crowd outside, staring at them. Someone shouted, and Gabriel smoothly pulled his rifle up and shot the shouter, the guard on the door. There were screams in the crowd, murmurs going around, Missus Durand raising her head and shouting some nonsense about them saving her.
Nobody moved.
Benjamin put his arm around Missus Durand's waist and lifted her, carrying her now one-armed. Odile, now freed, reloaded her rifle quickly and shot the guard who had peered over the edge of the barn roof. He fell forward, plummeting to the ground next to them, bleeding into the dirt.
They stared at the crowd. The crowd stared back. Odile put her gun up and started walking, and Gabriel and Benjamin followed. The eerie silence reigned, broken only by the wail of a child who was quickly hushed.
Behind them, as they passed into the trees near the barn, the noise began. "They're going to riot when they find out Durand's dead," Gabriel muttered.
Pop of gunfire behind them. "Think so. Let's get hidden, it's going to get ugly on Magie for a bit," Odile said.
They walked quickly away, coming to a place out of earshot of any of the buildings on Magie, a little depression in the ground surrounded by trees. Odile made a thorough search of Missus Durand, whose given name Gabriel told her was Monique, and removed everything she thought might possibly be used as a charm. "Watch her?" Odile asked Benjamin. He nodded and she withdrew a bit. Gabriel had pulled off his shirt and was tearing it into strips. She let him start bandaging her shoulder. "Thanks. Let me have a bit of that, I can get the one on my hip," she told him.
"I suppose, but you have beautiful hips and you would deny me the sight?" he said, smiling at her.
She laughed briefly. "Probably less pretty while bleeding. Let me, I want to get this done so we can get back to Barataria."
"I don't think we want to get back to Barataria. What are we going to do?" Gabriel handed her the rest of the shirt, and Odile started tearing strips off of it.
She pulled her shirt up and her skirt down, hissing when she saw the wound. It wasn't deep but the flesh was torn and burned in almost a crease-like line, and it was bleeding freely. It was going to hurt a lot, later. "Depends a lot on what Missus Durand says. You know Leroy's probably going to burn the place if he gets there and finds everyone gone," she said, making a compress out of a piece of the shirt and pressing it to her hip.
"Yes, he might. But he has probably a lot of people and we are three. I don't think we can shoot them all before they do it." Gabriel began to tie bits of shirt around her shoulder. "I don't have a connection to the angel to wake it. It could stop him but even if I could, I am not sure of my control."
"Maybe Missus Durand will give me what I need to remove the masking." Something occurred to her, and she said slowly, "There's a problem with that, though. You said Noemi's gone, right?"
"I am sure they released her somehow. The angel is just the beast and me now."
"She was helping control it, and now it's all up to you." She gritted her teeth, and it was not entirely the burning pain in her shoulder and hip that caused her expression. "There may be a way to get you help controlling it, but I'm not sure it'll work, and I don't know if you're going to like the idea."
"What is it?" he asked.
"There's probably a way to bind another person into the angel, now that Noemi's gone. I could probably bind myself into it."
Gabriel's eyes went dark. "Ya, you are right. I don't think I like that idea. That puts you in danger. And another way out for the beast."
"It does, but with both of us working together, we might be able to hold it at bay longer." She finished the compress and adjusted her skirt so the waistband would hold it in place. "I thought I'd suggest it. What Missus Durand tells me may make the choice clearer."
He had finished with her shoulder, and now laid his hand on her other shoulder. "I could argue this until we are blue, really, but it comes down to this. I don't have a choice about being tied to this thing. I don't want you to do it. It could kill you, and your life is worth more to me."
She cocked her head. "And if me being tied to it meant that we might both survive? Gabriel, you know as well as I do that without Noemi it's only a matter of time before Kalfu decides to move into the angel and the beast moves into your body. And it might happen sooner rather than later."
"I know. I didn't say it was logical. It's just what I feel."
Odile nodded. "I just don't want to lose you," she admitted, and her breath caught in her throat. "And if this is what I need to do, then so be it. But like I said, there may be another way. Let's talk to Missus Durand and see what she has to say, or if she'll even talk."
"If there's another way, we try that first," he said. She nodded, and the two of them went back to where Benjamin stood over Monique Durand, his foot on her throat. The woman was not struggling, and she looked a little blue.
"Let her up a little," she told Benjamin. "Li ti goumen?"
Benjamin smiled. "Not really."
Well, he had been kidnapped by people working for this woman. He was entitled to a bit of his own back. "Well, I'd like her to talk to us, and she can't do that with you standing on her so hard." The big man nodded, and took his foot off her throat and transferred it to her wrist, putting a lot of weight on it. The prone woman whimpered, but Benjamin did not move his foot.
Odile dropped to a crouch beside Missus Durand's head. "So, Missus Durand. Tell me about what you did to Noemi."
Monique looked up at her, and Odile saw that her eyes were dark brown and had a flat, angry look in them. "Why should I?"
"Because it's in your interest not to make me any more angry than I already am," Odile said, her voice calm. "I already know you're a bokor. Don't compound that mistake by not telling me what you've done so I can do what I can to fix it."
Benjamin shifted his weight a little, and the woman whimpered again. "I pulled Noemi from the angel," she admitted.
"How did you manage to undo the bindings on her?"
Monique shifted, almost struggling. "Kalfu showed me in his Antoinette form."
She tilted her head. "And you were doing this at Kalfu's request? Did he tell you what he had in mind? What about the masking of the angel?"
"Speeding up the process of his takeover. You were to be captured and killed. Drawing Gabriel to the plantation so he could be held and the ritual performed."
"And this ritual was to accomplish what?" Odile asked.
"Transferring the beast back to Gabriel, free the way into the angel for Kalfu." Benjamin shifted again, and Monique cried out.
Odile glanced up at Benjamin, giving him a warning look. He shrugged and shifted his weight back a little. "Right. Where is the anchor for the other end of that masking charm?" she asked Monique.
"My necklace that you took," she said. Odile turned to the pile of things she'd taken off of Monique, and pulled out an expensive-looking emerald pendant on a silver chain. She closed her eyes and muttered a chant, and felt the tug back to the masking item, on Barataria. It was true, then.
She turned back to Missus Durand. "So, tell me. When the mask is removed, what's supposed to happen?"
The woman struggled briefly, then subsided. "Nothing should happen. The mask was to stop Gabriel from calling it."
"And Noemi did get sent beyond the crossroads, then, once she was no longer connected to the body you changed to look like her?"
"Gabriel sent her," she said.
Odile nodded, confirming Gabriel's statement. "I assume you knew this because you were helping power the bindings between her and the body."
"Yes, and she was in my daughter's body."
"We saw that." Odile crouched again, still holding the pendant in her hand, fingers closed around it. "So, do you know who has the other parts of Kalfu in them?"
"I do," Monique said, and gagged. Her eyes flew open wide, and a high wheezing sound came from her throat. There was genuine fear in the woman's eyes. Her lips had gone blue, and her back arched, all sound from her ceasing.
Odile snatched up a charm against black magic, slapping it against the woman's throat and calling out the activation. Monique convulsed and her skin flushed a deeper blue, and then, impossibly, her body crumbled under Odile's hands.
Her body went from solid to dust in a matter of heartbeats, and Odile gave a sharp cry and jumped back and away. Her heart was pounding, and she stared at the pile of dust that had once been a woman. Even her clothes had gone to dust. "Well, that was less than helpful. Some useful things, though," she said, briefly surprised that her voice was almost steady.
Gabriel was next to her now, though she hadn't seen him move. "Never seen anyone die quite like that," he said, his voice low. "Glad we got the necklace off her before she crumbled."
"Me, too." Her heart was calming, and she tucked the pendant into a pocket of her skirt. "Well, I can lift the mask probably about any time, but I think I'll need to be by the angel when I do so." Benjamin had begun to go through the things they'd taken from Missus Durand, and had picked up a small book and was thumbing through it, reading.
"Which means back to Barataria, and close enough to smell Leroy," Gabriel said, in a voice that made it clear he didn't enjoy the prospect.
She nodded, though the idea of smelling Leroy made her lip curl a bit. "So what do we want to do? Hope when he gets there he'll find nobody there and turn around and go home? If he's taking possession, you'd think he wouldn't want to burn most of the buildings."
Gabriel glanced down at the pile of dust. A breeze was coming up, stirring the pile, lifting bits of Missus Durand into the air and away. "His object was to kill my workers and drive us off. But he will be extremely angry when they are already gone. He will probably try to follow them. That many people moving leave a lot of tracks."
"So he'll follow them to Petit's place."
"Very likely," he said. "Where he will encounter a lot of resistance."
"And a lot of people are going to get hurt and killed." Odile lifted her hand to rub her forehead, and hissed when pain shot down her arm--she'd tried to use her left hand. Savagely, she said, "You know, this would suddenly become a lot easier if Leroy were to stop breathing."
"Can we get to him? Benjamin can probably get a shot off."
Odile shook her head. "We're not exactly the least obvious people in the world, and a lot of the cover on Petit's place got burned off, sounds like. Might be possible, though. There's another possibility, but I'm not sure I like it." She was looking at home now, steadily. "What we did to get into the barn."
Gabriel gave her a dubious look. "What are you thinking?"
"Go after Leroy in particular," she said. "The rest of them have probably heard of the angel, they might assume it's the same, and they'll probably run like hell."
"If nothing else it might scare them all off." He seemed to be warming to the idea. "I don't think we can do what the real one does."
"No, I don't think so. And we would be as vulnerable to being shot as we are separate." She took a breath. "Better than risking having anyone see Benjamin shooting Leroy, though."
He glanced up into the sky. It was starting to cloud up, like it was maybe thinking about raining in the afternoon. "I don't know if we can get to Leroy without taking a few shots, but we could get to the real angel and end Leroy," he suggested.
Odile cocked her head. "Willing to run the risk that the beast will decide to move in, if I lift the mask?" she asked quietly.
"Not really." His voice slowed, and the words came from him only reluctantly. "But can the ritual be done in time to add you to the link? I still don't like the idea but if we can control it better..."
Odile considered the idea. She was willing to do it still, she would never have offered if she hadn't meant it. She was a little afraid, but if it needed to be done, it needed to be done. She might end up as hopelessly tangled in the beast as Gabriel was, but she thought she was willing to run the risk. "If we get there soon, it might be. The place and the bindings are ready, I just have to convince them to attach to me and not pull me directly into the statue."
"It really depends on what we want to do. Chasing him away is safer. Killing him is preferable but the risk is outweighing the reward."
"I think so. I'd rather take my time with the mask, if there's any way to. Let's try to scare him off." She hardened her mouth. "Much as I really want him dead. Benjamin?" The big man looked up from the book he was leafing through. "Gabriel and I are going to be doing something strange."
"Can't be a whole lot stranger than this writing book of Missus Durand's," he replied, lifting the book a bit.
Curious, Odile asked, "What's it got?"
"Lots of stuff about Remy," he said.
"You'll have to tell me about it later. I think we should go. We should be back soon." Benjamin nodded, and Odile turned to Gabriel, holding out both her hands. He took them, and she concentrated, feeling that door form once more.
Odile stepped forward, and this time it was not a surprise when they found themselves in the same body. Strange.
We're more blurred. Look.
It was true, the edges on their patches were much more indistinct, and there were places where it was difficult to tell which one of them it was. They could feel a sense of power, locked up tight. Distantly, they heard Benjamin say, "Sobo protect me!"
Wings. Great wings opened and still that power, euphoric, but there was so much more elsewhere. There was even a feeling of the other angel, a cloud-wrapped anger, far far below.
It doesn't matter.
They were in the air now, with every wingbeat feeling stronger, the pain in shoulder and hip receding to a dull ache. The part of them that was Odile could feel fear coming from the part that was Gabriel. Deep, pained fear, fear that he was going to lose yet another woman he loved. Another woman he loved, linked to the angel, linked to the beast inside, being drained dry by what it held.
And in there was another fear, fear for the future, small but burning bright, spark in their wide firmament. Odile could not reassure that fear, could not even tell what it was about, and they were there anyway, men on horses below them. They were passing the place where the four men had been hung, on an evening that seemed like years ago but was only days. Spook the horses was their common consensus, and the drew themselves into a steep dive, snapping their wings outward as their reached the horses and climbing back up again, too swift for those who now shot at them to follow.
A lot of the men broke--but there was a core group, Leroy and five others, who stood with rifles aimed, keeping their horses still as they could. They looked down from the great height they were at, and with their hawk-like sight, they could see that Leroy was chanting something.
Leroy? Chanting?
An ba, get out of sight--
A place on them began to burn, by the hip that was her hip and his hip, quickly growing intensely painful. Odile remembered that place, she had put that necklace of Missus Durand's in a pocket there, the necklace that was the anchor for the masking spell. They could not get it out, it was within them somehow. A silent consultation and they were winging down for another dive at Leroy, trying to convince him that whatever it was wasn't working. The heat intensified until it was a small sun burning in them, bullets flying around them.
The pain stopped.
The stone angel's scream rang through the air.
Leroy has a piece of Kalfu, he just broke your connection to mons la--
Has to be. What do we do?
Faceful of stone angel soon, you must get control back!
Part of them was separated, looking for finger holes in the dam that separated them from that river of power just beyond. But it was complex, too complex to work out now, Legba or Erzulie would know how to break it. The rest of them was flying, higher and higher, and it was there that they were met by the stone angel, razor wings glinting in the moonlight, pointed teeth showing in the snarl it had on its face.
It shrieked and dove for them, pulling up at the last moment and shearing off into the sky, They and the angel began a dance, flying around each other, Gabriel groping for control and finding nothing. Odile could see the problem. He'd never had to do anything like this before, and he was failing because he didn't have the kind of grip on his power he needed.
The angel was shadowing them now, growling gutturally, its voice rising into a shriek every time they turned towards Leroy. When they got farther from Leroy, the stone angel backed off. Protecting Leroy--
This isn't working, Odile! the part of them that was Gabriel said, beginning to panic.
Odile wrestled with something very large and wordless for a moment, thinking very quickly and coming to the only conclusion she was capable of. She opened herself to Gabriel, offering her help. I have the will.
Are you sure?
Yes. Do it!
Gabriel pulled from her what he could, and threw. The stone angel's shriek was a thing of pure horror, and it flung itself up and away from them, turning back towards Barataria. They looked down and saw Leroy and his posse riding hard for him.
A surge of rage and hatred boiled up in Odile, and they began to dive at Leroy. She felt Gabriel's confusion at first, and then alarm. The closer we get the harder, the angel is fighting me.
Another surge, this one of bitter disappointment, swallowed swiftly by resignation. Another day, then. They winged back into the sky, turning back to where they had left Benjamin. They settled on the ground in front of him, and at the same time they could feel the other angel settle onto its pedestal with a shriek, going into its usual position and quieting.
Odile and Gabriel separated, stepping out from their shared form. As soon as she stepped out, Odile started feeling shaky, a little queasy, an emptiness briefly opening and closing inside of her almost too quickly to be noticed. Gabriel was holding onto her, and for the moment she was glad of the contact. Part of the shakiness was due to the pain that was suddenly surfacing, a burn on her right hip, where the necklace had been. She fished what was left of it out. The metal was melted into unrecognizability and the emeralds was all but concealed by the silver.
"We found another piece of Kalfu, in Leroy," she told Benjamin.
He looked between the two of them, seemingly dumbfounded. "What was that?"
"Damnation," Gabriel muttered, and she saw his hand go to his right hip, in the same place. "That hurts."
The movement revealed something she hadn't seen before. Gabriel was shirtless, and there was a small trickle of blood coming from his left shoulder. "Gabriel, what's wrong with your shoulder?" she asked, turning to look.
"Nothing." He put his hand to his shoulder, and it came away bloody. "Maybe not nothing. It looks like a bullet graze. Like your bullet graze."
"You mean the bullet graze that suddenly feels a lot better?" Odile asked, wryly. "How's your left hip feeling?"
He blinked, then said, "Sore." He put a hand down his pants, feeling around, and pulled his fingers back bloodstained. "Bleeding."
"The wounds must have split across the two of us. Sorry about that, I had no idea." In answer to Benjamin's question, she said, "Gabriel and I seem to have the ability to become something else."
Gabriel said, "It's fine. It will heal faster between the two of us."
Benjamin chuckled, seemingly in disbelief. "Something else is an understatement."
"It is, isn't it? It's something that happened for the first time during Gabriel's first initiation ritual." She gave the big man a lopsided smile. "I told you it was going to be strange."
"Are you like the other one?" Benjamin asked, curious. "You seem more flesh-like than stone."
"Just the shape and ability to fly. We'd probably take bullets if we got shot."
He shook his head. "Unfortunate, that. I saw the stone one flying as well. How did you break the mask?"
Odile gave him a wry smile. "We didn't. Kalfu decided to break the connection between Gabriel and the angel." She spread her hands wide. "I think we managed to get it at least partially back under control."
"Kalfu is gaining more and more control over it. Noemi's loss has strengthened Kalfu's grip," Benjamin said.
"Yes. I'm likely to need to step into Noemi's place. So to speak."
Gabriel had found his cane, which he had dropped before they had become the angel, and looked at Odile. "If you already haven't. I had to pull from you, and it opened the channel to the angel. It's got you too, now. I am sorry."
Strangely, the news came as neither a surprise nor a shock, and though Odile had thought she would be upset, she was simply calm, and chilled straight through. The shakiness was finally starting to fade. "Don't be," she told Gabriel. "I expected it to happen, I knew what it might mean when I offered my help. I'm hoping my presence will at least slow Kalfu's overtaking of the angel."
"Me, too." There was a tightness to Gabriel's mouth that she'd seen before, when he'd been healing from the gunshot. "I don't want to fight that thing. It's got a huge advantage."
"It's made of stone," she said.
"And pointed teeth and razor-sharp wings," he added, somewhat unnecessarily, she thought.
Odile nodded, considering. "Though, remember that power we felt. I think that would even the odds, if we can get to it."
He brought his head up a little, as if he'd forgotten about the power and she had reminded him. "We need to know how. Any ideas?"
"Consult Erzulie and Legba," she said. "I think they'd be able to tell us more."
There was another light in Gabriel's eyes now, and he smiled. "That, at least, sounds like fun." Ah, she knew that light, now. He was remembering the ritual yesterday as fondly as she was.
She chuckled. "Doesn't it, though? Though we probably ought to only call one or the other. Those two get together and they spend a lot of time talking to each other and not us."
"The images we got when we first linked were helpful," he said. "Maybe they would do that again."
This man was utterly incorrigible. But she had to admit that despite the pain in shoulder and hip, she was looking forward to it as much as he seemed to be. "Doesn't hurt to ask, surely."
"Good. Maybe not tonight, though," he said, and the light faded a little bit. "That burn is killing me."
He did have to remind her. "You're telling me. I wish I'd thought to leave the necklace behind, or at least put it in a pocket in a less tender place."
Gabriel turned to Benjamin, who was watching them both without comment. "Benjamin. How you feeling?"
"Good," Benjamin said. He raised his hand and brushed his head with his hand; if he was feeling the knock on the head he'd gotten before, he wasn't showing it.
"Walk us home, and then can you get the rest and bring them back," Gabriel said. "I don't think Leroy will come again tonight."
Benjamin nodded and held out Missus Durand's little writing book to Gabriel, who took it. "Let me tell you about the book," he said. "Monique was real interested in Remy, and spent time writing down things he let slip--or she thought he let slip. Claims he's older than he looks, a lot older. His old master was your father, Gabriel, and it says that his teacher was my mama. Stole the top had from him, and the flute from her. Remember that flute of hers? Never did know where it went. He lived in Atlanta when we were there, and followed us here when we moved." The big man shook his head. "Other thing it said was that Remy had a daughter who got sold before he started training with my mama. In Atlanta somewhere, no telling to who or even what her name was. You'd think I'd have remembered him."
"You never saw him before?" Odile asked.
He shrugged. "Man under all that paint could be anyone, but I think I'd remember the voice."
Odile took a breath. "Strange. Stranger that she wrote all that down. Not that Remy would probably care. Back, then? I'd like to lie down some."
By common consensus, they began to walk back. The burn from the necklace was on Gabriel's good leg, and as a result he was walking almost straight. "First time in years," he said, cracking a smile. They moved slowly, but they did make it back, passing beneath the angel's gaze on the way.
Barataria's property had remained untouched, and once they were back at the house Benjamin took off to go get the rest of the family and the workers. Once they were inside and in Gabriel's room, Odile snagged the waist of his trousers. "Off with these," she said.
Gabriel grinned. "And what are you going to do with me once I'm naked?"
She snorted. "I want to clean those grazes and the burn, they'll heal faster. Sweet loa, Gabriel, we both almost died today."
"All the more reason to want to enjoy each other while it lasts," he said. "But I will submit, if I must."
Odile washed off his wounds, concentrating on the burn. It was going to be stubborn, she could tell. It resisted the chant she gave to it, stubborn as the man it had injured. In the end, she ended up cleaning it off, putting some simple salve on it, and letting it air. "Awkward place to bandage," she muttered.
"Want me to get yours cleaned up?" Gabriel said. "Might not know anything about healing, but my mama made sure I knew how to wash off wounds, said I'd probably need to know how."
Odile nodded and slid out of her skirt and shirt, letting Gabriel use her supplies to clean her wounds. The grazes still stung fiercely, and the burn was a bone-deep hurt that radiated fire into her hip. She lay still and let Gabriel work, trying not to flinch.
After he was done, he left one hand on one of her thighs, while the other wandered a bit towards the middle. Despite her hurts, she felt desire flare when he cupped the damp place of her in his hand, moving almost reverently.
She looked up at him, then sat up a bit, using one elbow to prop her up. She smiled when she saw that his gigit was already at half-mast. "Thought you were hurting," she said, an eyebrow raised.
He curled his fingers a bit, and she half-closed her eyes as his fingertips slid against sensitive places. "I am. But I find myself not caring particularly. How about you?"
She half-growled in the back of her throat. "I think I might have to hit you if you stop that," she muttered as his fingers began to move more, finding places that made her want to raise her hips shamelessly. "Come down here and kiss me, mon fou."
"Thought you'd decided I wasn't crazy," he complained as he lay down next to her, matching breast to breast.
"When did you start understanding Creole?" she asked. "Still think you're crazy. A crazy I like."
"It's not too far off from French, and that was my father's tongue," he said. "Glad you do."
She claimed his lips for her own, then. She was exhausted and hurting, and still she wanted this man. After the day, after seeing Noemi and watching Gabriel make his decision, hearing his declaration that he loved her, then sharing the same body with Gabriel...it was all so much, and so overwhelming, and right now the fact that her body and his body fit together perfectly was the simplest thing in her life. So they made love to each other, gently and with much adjusting as they avoided bumping wounds to flesh.
Sleep claimed them afterwards, though Odile had intended to get up and sleep in Noemi's room. There would be time enough for the complexities of what had happened, later. For now, to be next to him was good.
Everything else could wait.
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Date: 2007-06-12 05:30 am (UTC)They were passing under the cypresses now, along the road that led to her house. "It is time for that. I just don't want to grieve anyone else, especially you."
(One of these needs to go.)