The phrase "mad monk" is both alliterative and colorful but not wholly accurate as Rasputin was never a priest or a monk but a staretz—a religious pilgrim. In fact, he had little formal education or training in the Russian Orthodox faith. He was, instead, a self-styled faith healer and so-called psychic. If the czar and czarina had ordered a background check on their "spiritual advisor," his formative years surely would have given them pause.
As a young man growing up in a peasant village in Siberia, ole Greg was well known as a troublemaker. He had a taste for liquor, thievery, and women—and not necessarily in that order. Rumors of debauched and endless sexual appetites began early. He was barely into puberty when he had already developed the reputation of a rake.
At the same time, this Siberian seducer was quite the "holy" roller—when he wasn't off for a roll in the hay or a roll between the sheets. Some sources had him preaching the "word of God" since the age of eleven. Presumably he followed the dualistic path of most religious hypocrites: pious by day, priapic by night. Then, at the age of eighteen, he had a unique and most profound conversion experience.
It happened over the course of a few weeks while he was staying at the Verkhoturye Monastery. There he discovered the renegade Khlysty sect. The Khlysty philosophy taught that the only way to reach God was through sinful actions. Of course it wasn't that simple. Once the sin was committed and confessed, the penitent could achieve forgiveness. In other words, the central concept of the Khlysty was to "sin in order to drive out sin."
Sort of transcendence-through-the-12-step-process approach.
Rasputin had found a religious philosophy that embraced his hedonism and allowed him to exploit it in the name of God. Shortly thereafter he adopted the robes of a monk, developed his own self-gratifying doctrines, traveled the country as a staretz and elevated sinning to a new level of sacred self-indulgence.
By the time he'd reached his early thirties, Brother Lust's Traveling Salvation Show had journeyed all the way to the Holy Land and back, picking up a load of converts, including a surprising number of clergy from his homeland. And by the time he made a "pilgrimage" to St. Petersburg in 1902, many of the country's religious leaders were beginning to take notice.
The turn of the century saw a number of holy men, conjurers, psychics, healers, diviners, and unusual characters milling about the capital city, sniffing for opportunities as the royal family was in a state of turmoil. After the unexpected death of Tsar Alexander III, the young and totally unprepared Tsarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich had ascended to the throne and the situation was ripe for exploitation.
The young heir had already ticked off most of his family's royal connections in Europe on his way to courting and eventually marrying the princess who came to be known as Alexandra Feodorovna. Then he proceeded to burn his bridges with his own countrymen by holing up in the palace in Tsarskoe Selo. Seclusion is great for a couple of nobodies, madly in love with each other. Not so much for heads of state overseeing the largest land mass with its populous range of ethnicities and microcultures. Rasputin had a heavy hand in their unpopularity toward the end but the seeds of their destruction were sown early on.
The young Tsarina's primary duty was to produce the next male heir so it didn't help her popularity when she produced only daughters for four successive births. The palace doors were opened, at this point to a veritable parade of mystics and self-styled holy men. When all of that intense prayer and mystic ritualism coincided with a fifth pregnancy resulting in a boy, the stage was set for the appearance and disproportionate influence of someone like the wily staretz.
Rasputin's "in" with the royal court turned out to be a little gift from Queen Victoria to the infant Tsarevich: he had inherited his great-grandmother's hemophilia.
When the royal physicians were unable to control the episodes of bleeding, this bearded, wild-eyed man in monk's robes could perform seeming miracles! Skeptics would later say he used some kind of hypnotherapy.
Maybe . . . Gotta say, if I've learned anything over the last couple of years of living in the Valley of the Shadow, it's that there's more to blood than plasma and platelets, that genetics don't cover everything, and that vampires aren't the whole Neighborhood of the Weird. Forget heaven and earth, Horatio; there're more things in the Devil's Medicine Cabinet . . .
The stories about Rasputin are legion. Many are exaggerated or pure fiction. But even the most skeptical, rational-minded critic is broken, time and again, on two major issues. First, that, time and again, the staretz was able to stop Alexis' bleeding when the finest physicians in all of Europe and Russia were medically impotent.
And then there was the little matter of his presumed death back in December 1916 . . .
<Wait a minute,> I said, as Sammathea D'Arbonne studied a loose wire on an "unauthorized exit" door.
>Don't got a minute, Mister Chris. Irena probably no more than a couple a dozen yards into the next gallery and goin' to beat feet right back here in another minute.< She gently depressed the crash bar and slipped into a back hallway.
<Yeah, well, I know the paul harvey . . . >
>The what?< she muttered as she lumbered down the "Authorized Personnel Only" corridor.
<The rest of the story. How Rasputin continued to piss off all of the other Romanovs, not to mention most of the military for meddling in affairs of state. And, once Russia was pulled into World War I, how his disastrous policy-making and political appointments were viewed as acts of treason. Talking Nicholas II into going to the Front to take personal command of the troops—no wonder the generals wanted to hang him! Which, in turn, left Alexandra in charge of the country back home. Which, in turn, left her increasingly reliant on her trusted staretz, advisor, and puppet master. The Romanovs couldn't put an end to him quickly enough.>
>And they didn't, Cséjthe, which is why we're here.<
That caught me up short.
According to history they'd killed him pretty dead. First the conspirators, led by Prince Felix Youssoupov, plied their victim with drugged wine and pastries laced with enough cyanide to kill four men. It didn't kill him, though. At least not fast enough. So they came downstairs and shot him in the back. The bullet wandered around his guts before lodging in his liver.
That should have killed him.
So they wrapped him in chains and carried him outside to dump the body in the river. They didn't get far before the "corpse" began to struggle again. So they dropped him and proceeded to administer a beating that would have killed an ordinary man. But, of course, this was no ordinary man so they had to shoot him again. In the chest at point-blank range. At the same time another bullet—a high-caliber slug—was fired from the bushes into Rasputin's head. Lieutenant Oswald Rayner, attached to the Secret Intelligence Service, had been dispatched by the Brits with his own license to kill. After an additional beating with a two-pound dumbbell, the body was dropped into the freezing waters of the Moika Canal on the Neva River.
But the autopsy determined that Rasputin was still alive and struggling even as he drowned under the ice. (Admittedly, this was superhuman resistance to a series of attacks—any one of which should have been fatal by itself.) But the key words to remember at the end: autopsy; drowned. In the end, Death doth make beggars of us all . . .
>Anastasia, Cséjthe.<
<What? That silly little Disney movie? Or Alexandra's fourth daughter who really died in the palace basement with the rest of her family?>
>Do you remember the woman who turned up back in the 1920s claiming to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia?<
<Oh please! And which one? Anna Anderson or Eugenia Smith? There were about ten different claimants, as I recall, though Anderson and Smith were the most compelling pretenders. Anderson even had the Romanov heirs and survivors in a lather for years.>
>Well, she knew things—family memories, secrets—that only Anastasia or another member of the family would know.<
<They both did—Smith and Anderson. And, even if Anastasia had survived her wounds and the family's mass execution, she couldn't have been both Smith and Anderson!>
>One might think not.<
<And I seem to recall that there was some DNA testing, post mortem—>
>DNA only proves origins of the flesh. It means nothing in terms of a person's true identity if they are a Bloodwalker.<
It was like mental whiplash. <Whoa! Anastasia was a Bloodwalker?>
>Not a Bloodwalker, Cséjthe, but something like. And not Anastasia, but someone who knew the family intimately. Knew their secrets. Wouldn't die easily. And might inhabit a succession of hosts pretending to be royalty rather than presenting its own peasant origins.<
<Holy crap! Rasputin? What are we dealing with here?>
>Back when he was still a man, Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin was an acolyte of Nyarlathotep. What? You thought a simple peasant acquired the power of life and death over millions of Russians by mere happenstance?<
<Others have: Lenin, Stalin . . . >
>Pol Pot, Idi Amin . . . < she continued. >Nyarlathotep has many acolytes. And he sets them upon many thrones. But returning to the question of what we are dealing with now? I do not know the specifics. Only that Laveau is attempting to do something very bad!<
<Hey, I can play connect-the-dots well enough to guess that Laveau grabbing Rasputin's—uh—remains—means she's going to invoke the old monk's mojo in some way. But some specifics might help me know what I'm supposed to do when we catch up with la belle dame sans sanity.>
>"Sanity" is not a French word.<
<There is no French word for sanity. Ironic, huh?>
>There's nothing you can do even if we do catch her in time. You're a passenger,< Mama Samm continued. >And I don't know how to explain the parts that I do understand. She's been preparing a summoning spell. Except what she's summoning never really departed—though its host bodies have died over the course of time. And she plans on opening a gate—although that gate is already partially open or Nyarlathotep couldn't bind Baron Samedi and manifest through his avatar as he did in your car.<
<Opening a 'gate'? Why do I get the feeling that this is only the warm-up to the "very bad thing" that Laveau is working toward?>
>Hush now! I've got to think! Where would that bitch go to work her spell?<
Somewhere dry and out of the rain, I thought to myself.
>No. She called up this storm. It's more than just a barrier that shields her from the sun. It's an energy vortex that she's set up to power the next part of her spell! And to tap into it she will have to be outside when the time comes. . . . <
<That certainly narrows our search parameters.> Note to self: sarcasm is difficult enough without the toolbox of inflection.
>She'll seek the highest ground possible.<
<Are we talking ground literally or metaphorically?> There was no high ground in New Orleans.
>She'll go to the roof of the tallest building she can find,< Mama Samm answered, throwing her weight against a locked exit door. It gave way with only the briefest of hesitations and we were stumbling through the rain toward the parking lot at the front of the museum.
<That would be Place St. Charles—the old Bank One Center on St. Charles Avenue.>
>'Fraid not, Cséjthe. My money's on One Shell Square.<
<Bank One's got fifty-three stories. One Shell's only stacked to fifty-one.>
>Maybe so, but the Shell's fifty-two feet taller and it's got a big, flat roof to work wit'.<
<Laveau's casting a spell, not organizing a soccer match. How much room does she need?>
>Depend on de size of whatever she's bringing trough de gate.<
This was so not good!
Even worse, Mama Samm's conversation was starting to devolve into the Haitian-flavored patois she affected whenever the ectoplasm was about to hit the fan. It was her linguistic equivalent to suiting up in cape and tights before battling supernatural supervillains . . .
>What's that?<
<What?> I looked around and, of course, saw nothing.
>Did I just catch a flash of you imaginin' me in my underwear?<
<Um . . . >
A car slid alongside throwing a sheet of water over our already soaked carcass. Irena opened the passenger door from the driver's side. "Wherever you're going," she accused, "you'll get there a lot faster by not ditching me!"
Mama Samm wasn't done with me. >Don't you be lettin' your mind wander where it's got no bidness wanderin',< she sent as she slid onto the front seat. "One Shell Square," she told Laveau's stepdaughter. "And we're running out of time." >And none of us have time for engaging in fantasy lingerie daydreams right now!<
<It wasn't lingerie. It was more like long underwear.>
>'Specially kinky fantasy daydreams!<
Ow!
Baby got backhand!
One Shell Square was a monolith of white Italian limestone. A gridwork pattern of bronzed glass windows were arranged in rows of eighteen per floor on the wide sides and thirteen on the narrows. Fortunately, I wasn't very superstitious.
Very.
Maybe Laveau sensed us coming.
Or maybe it was just dumb luck that a freak lightning strike took all of the elevators off-line while the lights in every room on every floor continued to shine with undiminished luminosity in the storm's artificial night. There was no choice for it but to exit the lobby and take the emergency stairs up.
Irena Pantera and Sammathea D'Arbonne debated the definition of a "flight" of stairs as we ascended the first twenty floors. Irena held the opinion that the run of stairs from one floor to the landing between levels constituted "one" flight and that the reversed run rising from the landing to the next floor was another flight—thus totaling "two flights" between each floor, adding up to a total of one hundred and two flights to reach the top. Mama Samm insisted that landings and reversals didn't change the essentials and that the complete set of stairs between one floor and the next constituted a single flight and, therefore, there were only fifty-one flights to negotiate to the top.
It didn't make any difference in the total number of steps. And, while fifty-one seemed less daunting than one hundred and two, it was still discouraging enough to draw my attention away from the argument and contemplate my role in the approaching showdown.
Without a body to command I was just a useless spectator. Worse, I might prove to be a fatal distraction when Mama Samm needed to keep her wits about her most. Already the mountainous juju woman was tiring and Irena surged past her to take the lead on the stairs. As her pert derrière undulated with each step taken, my attention was drawn to an assessment of her slender frame.
Irena could be a mature sixteen or a late-blooming twenty something. Her curves were understated and her frame was slight: I doubted she weighed more than ninety pounds soaking wet. Still any body was potentially better than none and the muscles that slid and flexed in her tanned, taut arms suggested youthful vitality and toned fitness. That might offer some advantage to a bloodwalker if I borrowed her flesh in the coming melee. The problem was, such an incursion, uninvited, was tantamount to rape. It was one thing to bump brains with some inhuman foe and take possession in the name of survival and good versus evil. Quite another to commandeer an innocent bystander and chalk it up to the necessities of war.
Your son is in danger.
Yeah, but if I didn't start drawing lines somewhere, I would quickly become one of the things I waged war against.
So, you've finally dropped your noncombatant status and admit to being at war.
Shut up, I told myself. I'll do what I have to when I have to but not before.
Still, I couldn't help assessing Pantera's compact form and thinking of ways to use it if push came to shove.
Push and Shove were waiting for us on the next landing.
As vampires go, neither was particularly imposing. Skinny to the point of emaciation, they looked like meth addicts who had recently been turned, Marie Laveau improvising a rear guard on the fly.
"Dinner has arrived," the tall black one announced to the short white one.
Irena stopped. The hair on her arms, her head, rose up as if the handrail she gripped was charged with static electricity.
Mama Samm never broke stride and kept climbing, mounting step after step like a clockwork automaton.
"Dibbs on the Big Gulp!" yelled the short, white one. And leaped on us.
Well, actually he was aiming for Mama Samm, who was too big to miss. He came sailing down over a half dozen stairs, arms and fangs extended, ready to rip and feed on contact. Mama Samm never broke stride but brought a massive left arm up and around like a windshield wiper, intercepting him like a bug in flight and tossing him aside. He tumbled over the railing before I could figure out how to get a psychic hold for a bloodwalk. About five floors down he began screaming as the realization sank in that this was an express trip to the first floor without any stops in between.
Then the lights went out.
Mama Samm never stopped climbing stairs.
Irena screamed.
"You okay, baby?" Mama Samm asked without stopping.
There was a low-pitched growling sound. And another scream. The second scream didn't sound like a girl's. But then, it didn't sound so much like a man's, either.
The smell of blood burst in the dark but I couldn't orientate on a specific target to bloodwalk.
Mama Samm kept climbing.
In the near silence between our footfalls I thought I could hear a stealthy, padding sound. And a quiet chuffing, as if something were moving ahead of us in the darkness. I opened my noncorporeal mouth to ask a question and then intuitively closed it. Tried to listen, instead.
Fourteen floors later I felt us slip a little.
Mama Samm took a steadier grip on the railing and slowed her climb, feeling the step ahead before planting her foot. Two floors above we encountered speed bumps.
Soft, squishy, fabric-enclosed speed bumps leaking fluids. Littered over two landings and a dozen stairs. Past those we picked up the pace, again.
<What about Irena?> I asked.
>Don't you worry about Miss Irena. You just worry about whether I'm too late to save the res' of the world. And don' distract me till I'm done!<
I lost count of the steps.
I couldn't tell if Mama Samm was counting or not: our massive mojo mama was like a machine, clumping up stairs without regard to fatigue, pain, or the myriad of obstacles placed in our way.
She only stumbled once.
A concussive blast—I don't know any equivalent word for the feeling that pulsed down the stairwell, shook the building, and scrambled our minds like two eggs in a frying pan—seemed to vibrate everything down to the cellular level. And maybe beyond. For a moment I saw shadow places, vast caverns and deep abysses. There were memories of ancient books and recent battles, a life divided by threes and mirrored doors between worlds. A line of Russian nesting dolls stretching off into a light . . .
>Get out of my mind!<
It was more than brute force lifting me up and tossing me out. I was momentarily mingled with memories: I was threshed, sifted, and blown back to a dark corner in the box in Sammathea D'Arbonne's head. I huddled there, dazed and disoriented from the kabalistic kaleidoscope of images and impressions that had shot through the nebula of my consciousness like a laser light show.
<Sorry,> I finally offered as she began to stagger up the stairs, once more. <I didn't mean to pry into any of your personal secrets.>
>It's not my privacy that's at issue here,< she answered back, >but your own safety. There are places in my mind—and places where my mind could take you—that you would not survive!< She sent a couple of images, glimpses actually: in one I was vacant-eyed and drooling like a thirty-something newborn; in the other my flesh had burned to a crispy husk starting from the inside out. I scrunched a little deeper back into the corner of the mental box she was keeping me in.
>Now hush up and don't distract me! Laveau has unleashed a massive amount of power up there. I may be too late but it feels like she's not finished so I'm gonna have to go with that!<
And with that, she mounted the top of the stairs and threw herself against the access door to the roof.
There was a blue flash and we were back outside, in the open.
Some of the darkness from the stairwell followed us and swirled beside our legs. The fog may "come in on little cat feet" but there was nothing small or dainty about the feline paws that shadowed Mama Samm's stride.
A black panther seemed to coalesce out of the shadows. It regarded us with wide, golden eyes before turning and slipping past into more darkness around the two-tiered base of the roof.
No time to speculate on puss sans boots: Marie Laveau stood above us on the elevated, second level.
At least I assumed it was the former Queen of New Orleans: who else would be up here? But all of the accounts concerning Marie pegged her as a great beauty while this creature looked like a child's stick-figure drawing of a scarecrow.
Mama Samm seemed to recognize her, but she wasn't wasting time on long, lingering looks. She had turned her gaze upward and, of course, I could look nowhere else.
There was an opening in the clouds above One Shell Square.
Somewhere up there, above the upside-down purple mountain majesties of cumulonimbus incus, the sun was still shining. At least that was my assumption based on the time of day and the continuance of the laws of physics. However, the sickly green glow that leaked from the center of the collar formation over the roof looked more like leprous moonlight or a toxic waste spill from beyond the stars.
Even as we watched, a wraith of cloud material began turning in the opposite direction of the collar's lazy rotation, forming a hollow nub of blue-gray mist shot with lightning. It was pointed, like a gigantic, snub-nosed .38, back down at the exact spot on the roof where the scarecrow woman stood over a smoldering mound of flesh and hair.
Mama Samm took a step forward and the scarecrow whirled, brandishing an elongated, floppy object in her left hand.
<Whoa! Tell me her magic wand isn't what I think it is. . . . >
My hostess ignored me, reaching into her purse and producing a fistful of rosaries. With a couple of smooth, practiced motions, she pulled the loops apart and scattered the beads like a sower sowing seeds round about.
The scarecrow made a series of complicated gestures and the wind from the storm carried snatches of fevered mutterings to our ears. Sparks erupted all around us, snapping and rolling as the beads carried kinetic energies in all directions. Mama Samm's hand was back in her giant purse and emerging with some sort of crucifix.
There was more to it than that . . . a pair of hands, either folded in prayer or open in something like supplication . . . a ring . . . I couldn't be sure for, while I was using Mama Samm's eyes, I was focusing beyond her hands at the tableau on the elevated part of the roof.
Where the bundle of hair and skin was standing up.
And up!
Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin was six foot five back when he was alive. Death had done nothing to make him look shorter. And, at the moment, he was totally naked so he wasn't wearing platforms to achieve the effect. The inches (or centimeters) he was missing were to the horizontal rather than the vertical so, still "Mr. Big" in the public sense if not the private for now.
"What are you doing, Marie?" Mama Samm called into the wind.
"You know what I am doing," came the reply. The voice was ancient, screechy, like a rusted antique hinge. "You have read the book!"
" 'Loathsome Cthulhu rose then from the deeps and raged with exceeding great fury against the Earth Guardians,' " Mama Samm quoted from black memory. " 'And They bound his venomous claws with potent spells and sealed him up within the City of R'lyeh, wherein beneath the waves he shall sleep death's dream until the end of the Aeon.' "
"Don't stop," Laveau taunted. "Finish the prophecy! 'Beyond the Gate dwell now the Old Ones; not in the spaces known unto men but in the angles betwixt them. Outside Earth's plane They linger and ever awaite the time of Their return; for the Earth has known Them and shall know Them in time yet to come.' "
"The ravings of a madman!"
Marie Laveau nodded and grinned like an idiot child. "The Mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred! By his writings, through the holy Al Azif do we know our destiny!"
"Yeah? Well, here's my destiny . . ." Mama Samm gripped her odd relic in her right hand as she rolled up her sleeve with her left. ". . . I'm here to see you ain't be opening up any more gates and I'll just be punching the snooze alarm for any Old Ones who've gotten a little leaky of late."
"Old Ones?" the scarecrow echoed. "Oh, I have no intention of opening any more gates or doors or paths for any of the Star Spawn . . ."
As fascinating as it was to witness thaumaturgic trash talk between two hoodoo mamas, I was still keeping my eye on Mr. Monk. And that almost caused me to miss the overhead show.
Up in the clouds, the collar formation had become a vortex, spinning counterclockwise to the nub, which was elongating into a funnel of darkness. It groped toward the roof like a tentacle, the pseudopodia of a living, sentient thing. The staretz was standing, his arms raised, stretching toward the funnel as if trying to grasp a kite string . . .
. . . or take hold of the leash of a wild animal.
" . . . He Who Lies Dreaming," Laveau continued, "He Who Will Rise Again, already dwells on this side of the Gate. His Dreams slough away and His time draws near! The Deep Ones have returned and attend Him. They prepare the way for His return! As I prepare a new palace and throne where He will awaken and rule and summon those He deems necessary to restore the Old Ways! The Ancient Ways!"
"Honey, you ain't preparing shit!" Mama Samm shot back. "Your mojo is gone! Used up! It's plain to see you've got nothin' left!"
<The storm!> I interrupted. <Quit monologuing and look at the storm!>
"My work is done!" Laveau cackled as Mama Samm finally looked up. "I have done all that I have been commanded! This world will pass away and He will usher in a new kingdom! A new heaven and a new earth!"
And for a moment I caught a glimpse of a nightmare.
A vision . . . a protomemory . . . a searing peek at the hell dimension that had been this earth—and many others—aeons before the coming of the dinosaurs. When then-ancient beings that fancied themselves gods, fell from the skies—fell upon the earth as predators fall upon their prey. Creatures of such immense scale and grotesque distortion that nothing in recorded Terran taxonomy provides perspective or adequate reference point for comprehension or understanding. Sanity is challenged, troubled, perhaps even impaired by exposure to the very imagery of these things. Their existence . . .
And their hungers . . .
Whatever rift was opened, whatever allowed this brief sidewise glance at the unspeakable horrors that once were and sought to be again: it blinked. And I reached out with noncorporeal hands to grasp that cosmic eyelid for another searing look.
For my son.
I could not allow such things back into the world where my son would be born!
And I saw the remains of a great city, smashed into rubble and kindling. In a hazed, gray-green twilight, a great army of deep dwellers moved among the ruins gathering corpses and stacking bones. Reptilian work gangs constructed edifices of bone and a great cyclopean throne, preparing it to receive a god. A god who would rule a world of eternal night. Where love and virtue were unknown, alien concepts. Where all life was cattle and human life prized only for its greater capacity for fear and suffering. The Great Old Ones would return and rebuild the slaughterhouses they esteemed as temples.
But, to prepare the City . . .
. . . and the Throne Room nestled among the crushed spires of the St. Louis Cathedral . . .
. . . there had to be the Perfect Storm . . .
Holy shit!
Marie Laveau was going to flatten New Orleans!
Mama Samm's reaction was more practical. >Now that I know exactly what she's about, I have a better idea what to do about it.<
<Like what?>
Her only answer was to plant herself, massive, tree-trunk legs apart, and spread her arms like twin battering rams. >She's used up all of her mojo. She's got nothin' left.< And then she began to chant in some unknown, arcane tongue with lots of clicks and tongue clacks thrown in.
Almost immediately the howl of the storm overhead began to lessen. As it did, Laveau began to howl the more. I fancied I could see the rotating ring of clouds slowing and the funnel already looked shorter.
Rasputin-reconstituted redoubled his efforts at whatever he was doing and the winds began to freshen. Lightning cracked, thunder boomed, and the turbine of purple-black clouds kick-started a renewed power cycle. Maybe Marie Laveau was running low on batteries but her Russian proxy still had plenty of juice, it seemed.
Mama Samm tried some variations in the chants she was using—that was as much as I could discern from the gibberish above the rising sound of the storm. And I noticed two new things as I fumed in my own, helpless impotence. One: the big, black shadow shaped like a kitty cat had circled around the roof and was creeping up behind the giant, bearded, Russian eunuch. And, two: while seemingly undiminished in power, now, the whirlwind formation had moved off center—was actually still moving—and the "eye" was now staring blindly down over the intersection of Poydras and St. Charles.
Given enough time, we might have managed a more fortuitous outcome. Timetables and fate, however, rarely accommodate one another. This was no exception.
Laveau screeched, produced a knife, and rushed at us. The panther, stalking the staretz, might have intervened but seemed totally focused on the mad monk. If Mama Samm broke the spell to defend herself, she might lose the opportunity to regain mastery later. Assuming she could adequately defend herself, in the meantime.
There was just enough time for me to process this and for her to say >Goodbye, Mister Chris . . . <
Then the world, the entire universe, was shattered by an explosion—a blast that tore us apart and sent my shredded consciousness hurtling through the darkness
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and back into numbed solidity.
There was an awful familiarity to the waking/reconnecting sensations that mingled mind with matter, animus and anima, body and soul. I was home! Back in my own flesh!
Tied to a chair.
Correction: chained to a chair!
It was immediately obvious that no slice-and-dice fingernail action was going to be helpful here. Assuming I could even produce my monstrous manicure for a third time.
Bad enough.
Worse: The Mullet was sitting watch over me. In the forward salon of my own houseboat.
So much for the sanctity of home and I was definitely gonna have to rethink the security angle of being surrounded by running water.
Questions about Mama Samm's survival and whether she had been successful in disrupting the storm would have to take a back seat to escape.
Looked like my best hope would be a rescue from Cama—
ZZZZZzzzzzZZZZZzzz
I turned my head and looked at Camazotz who was slumped over in human form in the chair next to me. Unfortunately, sawing logs wasn't the same as sawing through the heavy chains that bound his small but wiry frame to the chair back. And even if he were to awaken I doubted that the metal links were the only restraining factors in play here.
Unless I missed my guess, the "Doctor" was in.