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His maman always told him that he was a child kissed by the Iwa, that he’d been born at midnight on November 3,1901 with a caul over his face.
As they lay together on their small, threadbare mattress, her warm arms circled around him and her fingers dancing through the fiery red curls atop his head, she’d tell him all the things she dared not say in the light of day. She told him how Mambo Odai’s lips had pulled further down and down into a frown as time passed that night, she and the rest of the vodouisants' chanting growing louder and louder – loud as they dared in this town that persecutes and condemns those of their faith – as the clocks ticked closer and closer to midnight.
An ill omen,
she had said,
to have a child born on the day of Baron Criminel.
And at long, long last when Madelaine had pushed and pushed and pushed until
finally
he had been born, his first cry ringing through the air with the last toll of the bell clock, she’d told his maman that this child was born of the
dark
and forever there would he remain.
But his maman hadn’t cared – still does not care. She tells the story of his birth with such happiness and joy, her beautiful caramel eyes alight with flecks of gold and bronze and copper so stunning they put the very stars to shame. She tells him how her heart had sung from the very first moment she’d felt him kicking in her belly, how her love had burned so bright even in the pitch black of night the very second she wrapped him in her arms and pulling the caul from over his face to stare at him – her love, her whole world – for the first time. She tells him that the
gris-gris
ever hanging around his neck contained the crushed up powder of his caul: the sign from the Iwa themselves that he had been blessed, that he would have the gift of second sight so rare these days that none in their community had seen one his like before. She tells him that where the rest of the Vodouisants fear Baron Criminel – fear his wrath and his might – she offers her prayers in thanks for granting him, her beloved son, her
jenn séf
, safe entrance into this world.
She tells him how special he is. And she tells him how loved.
Alastor does not remember much of those days, of his own beginnings. But he remembers that. He remembers those stolen moments of warmth and love and happiness he’d found in his maman’s arms, in her tender embrace.
What he
does
remember is an unrelenting, unforgiving, maddening void of hunger. He remembers watching with harrowed eyes the raucous laughter, the sputtering of half-chewed food, the enticing cloy of a veritable feast wafting through the air as he presses himself tight against his mother, burying his sallow face in her torn and tattered skirts and furtively sneaking glances at the boisterous people within as Madelaine knocks upon the door. Her hand clenches Alastor’s own, firm and strong. Undaunted, unwavering.
A woman pulls the door open, her head turned behind her as she laughs at whatever someone else had been saying. She turns to look at them, and the mirth drains from her face, draining what little color she had in her porcelaine face. A look of disgust and loathing blooms within the woman’s eyes, the corners of her lips twitching downward into a scowl. Alastor, all of 9 years old, wants to slam her face into the door until her eyes are blackened and swollen shut, her teeth falling out and mouth bloodied. He wants to break her down and destroy her, for who is she to look upon his maman like that? Who is this woman compared to the light and virtuousness of his mother?
As if sensing the ever-present darkness whorling in her son’s mind, Madelaine gives his hand a squeeze, drawing him back from the black to her light and her warmth. Alastor presses his face into her skirt again, squeezing his eyes shut so he doesn’t have to look at that ugly woman and make his maman upset with him for having such bad thoughts again.
“Mrs. Boudreaux, I am so sorry to trouble you this evening, but I was wondering if I could speak with Mr. Boudreaux?” his maman asks, her rich voice sounding so soft and hesitant, uncertain in a way that Alastor has never heard her be before and he hates this woman who makes his mother sound so unlike herself, so wrong.
The ensuing silence lasts long enough that Alastor peeks out from his mother’s skirt once more, finding that insufferable scowl etched all the deeper in the woman’s face. She turns down then to look at him, a momentary flash of surprise softening the edges of her lips before the scowl is back and stronger than even before. The absolute seething detestation in her eyes makes Alastor himself pause, but then he’s glaring at her just as fiercely, hoping his own abhorrence is as plain for the woman to see. It must be, because she clicks her tongue in her cheek in that way adults do when you’ve irritated them before breaking their gaze to look at his mother again, and Alastor doesn’t even bother hiding his grin, satisfaction radiating off him in waves. He detests this woman.
The woman’s hand gripping the door is so tight that all color has drained from her fingers, leaving them a ghostly white. It trembles the slightest amount, though Alastor isn’t sure if it is from fear or from anger. “My husband has no business speaking to the likes of
you
,” the woman hisses, making as if to slam the door in their faces.
His mother’s hand shoots out, colliding with the closing door with a slam that’s loud enough to quiet the party going on in the other room. “Tell your husband that it has to do with his son.”
The whole world seems to go unnaturally quiet around them, the two women locked in a staring competition more intense than any he’s ever seen.
A throat clears in the other room, a gruff voice murmuring a quick, “If you’ll please excuse me for one moment,” before the scrape of a chair against the floor and the heavy footfalls of someone coming closer. A door in the main hall behind the nasty woman opens, a man slipping out and closing the door behind him before turning to face them. His sky blue eyes peer questioningly first upon the two women before they finally fall upon Alastor himself. The fiery burn of his hair seems to crown him in a halo of light and Alastor nearly misses how the man’s eyes widen, his lips parting on a silent gasp as he looks upon the matching flames upon Alastor’s own head.
His father it turns out had no inkling of Alastor’s existence, a fact Madelaine had kept from him for nine long years until finally the sunken hollow of her son’s belly, the ferocious shine of starvation in his eyes, and the ever-meager reserves in her wallet that had long since run dry can no longer be ignored. Her desperation to provide for her son wins out against her pride, against her humiliation, against her common sense. He had no knowledge of what had become of the once dutiful housekeeper he’d forced himself upon time and time again in his drunken stupor after she’d quit their service. To raise his son.
He had no idea Alastor existed.
And he never wanted to.
Madelaine had sworn up and down, left right and center to the Boudreaux after they’d ushered out all their party guests so there would be no errant ears listening in on such a sensitive discussion. She’d given her word in every way she could conceive that if they helped her and her son, she would never again darken their doorstep and they would never again have to hear from either of them. But it wasn’t enough, it could never be enough. In coming here, his maman had brought all eyes upon them and the sweet and happy contentment that Alastor had so briefly known had died a cruel, cruel death. Before was at its end. What he wouldn’t give to have it back.
His father is a cruel, cold man, and the woman he married even moreso. Alastor thinks under any other certain circumstances he may have liked them, their ruthlessness something he objectively could have admired were it not turned in upon himself and his mother.
Alastor doesn’t know how long they’ve been locked in their cellar, how long he and his mother have sat in the oppressive empty black. The room is dank and the must of mold hangs heaving in the air. A chill lives under his skin, running up and down his spine, and no matter how close his mother holds him, no matter how she rubs his hands between her own the shivers never stop. He thought himself ravenous before… the heavy weight of his stomach as it twists and churns, consuming itself after so long without sustenance makes before seem a mere dream.
Alastor doesn’t know how long they’ve been down here.
His throat feels like it’s on fire. No, his whole body feels aflame. Alastor’s mind is a dense fog, thick and blinding as the ones that fall over the bayou. His thoughts feel just as thick and cloying as the muds of the swamps. His chest rattles with every hacking cough that rips from his burning throat, like the winds as they shake the mangroves. His mother’s hand when she presses it to his brow burns like ice, like the frigid cold of the winter nights where the humid air almost seems to freeze and beat down upon you like ice. He flinches away, letting out a truly wretched and pathetic mewl. Had he any presence of mind for it, he would be wrought with embarrassment at such weakness. But he doesn’t.
He’s dying.
They both are.
And still the pounding of his mother’s fists upon the cellar door that leave her knuckles broken and bloody go unanswered.
The fever seems to be at its peak, it’s lock upon Alastor’s mind so tight and crushing he can barely open his eyes. He feels his mother press something to his parched and cracked lips, a thick copper wetness dripping down the back of his dry throat sending him into another weak coughing fit. “Here,
mon jenn séf
, you must eat,” his mother’s voice breaks through the fog, her fingers pushing something soft and wet into his mouth. “You need your strength, mon cher.”
In the end, chewing is too great a task for him to perform on his own, and his mother has to chew whatever this food is before putting it back in his mouth and massaging his throat to make him swallow. The coppery taste of blood clings to his tongue, to his throat, and it’s the best thing he’s ever tasted, body screaming for more.
His mother feeds him and feeds him until he feels sick from it, his body trying to reject the nourishment after so long without. He manages not to vomit, likely from sheer desperation – who knows how long this mysterious food will last, how long it will have to sustain them until someone,
anyone
finds them and lets them go.
The thick metallic tang sits heavy on his tongue as he slips for the first time into blissfully dreamless sleep.
His fever breaks. The haze over his mind clears at long last.
He looks to his mother, eyes stinging but no tears coming to his eyes for his body does not have the reserves left to make any.
The gnarled gaping chunk ripped from her left thigh stares back at him, seared in the back of his eyelids even after she pulls him close, holding his face to her breast and dropping weak, trembling kisses upon his crown.
His fingers scrape over the coarse ground underfoot, dragging line after line over the grime and the rot until a network of crimson stains the very earth. He dips the pads of his fingers into the long since cooled puddle of blood, rubbing them together to break up the congealed clots before resuming his work. His movements are stiff and methodical. His broken, mangled body feels nothing but the inescapable cold of the long forgotten tomb all around him. He draws a coffin, then two. Filling this putrid place he’s been left to die with a final resting place for himself and –
His eyes flick to the rotting corpse lying at the base of the tombstone he’s traced upon the ground. In his and her blood.
Maman
–
Alastor tears his eyes away from the gnarled, twisted thing. That is
not
his maman. Not anymore.
He dips his fingers in the cold and sticky mess once more, dragging the last line up, up, up until it meets at the zenith, the cross staring back at him mockingly. From where he sits at its peak, the cross appears inverted, though he knows that from where the thing lies, it is fine. He touches his fingers to his lips, to his tongue, licking the last of the blood and the dirt and the rot off his fingers as he squeezes his eyes shut.
His mother used to tell him how he was born at midnight on November 3, 1901 with a caul over his face, a sign he had been blessed by the Iwa. Mambo Odai had told her he was a cursed child, born in the dark where he would always remain. Only one of them had been right, in the end.
Alastor beats his hand against his chest, mimicking the pounding of his own heart and begins to chant, words he only vaguely remembers from the yearly festivals of their circle heavy on his tongue, his inexperience turning the soothing and melodic verses to ugly, broken things. As if he could make anything but.
He calls upon Papa Gede, calls upon Guede Nibo, asking them one and only one act of mercy: that they take his mother’s soul far, far from this hellish place – away from the dark and twisted rot of Alastor himself – to the golden lands beyond, to the infinite bliss of the Heavens themselves. His mother was light, warm and loving and endlessly kind. She does not deserve to have her final resting place be somewhere so wretched as this, with someone as tainted as he.
He calls upon Marinette and Erzulie D’en Tort, asking them to grant him the strength and the ruthlessness to take the vengeance so owed him, to free him from his bonds so that he may crush the ones who took his maman – who took his light – away from him.
He calls upon Baron Criminel, the one he was bound to from his very first breath. He begs the Iwa to give him the power to rip the life from their chests the same way they have robbed him of his own.
The sanguine lines of the veve he’d drawn with his mother’s and his own blood in offering burst into flame, the fires rising high enough to nearly singe the roof overhead and the heat enough to suck away the last traces of cold left, except the one that lives eternal in Alastor’s chest now, drained of the only warmth he has ever known. He watches with apathetic eyes as the fires roar and seethe, burning hot and bright and blinding. He feels
nothing
.
As quickly as they came, they go.
In the center of the makeshift altar, standing over the tombstone veve is a woman. Her skin flawless and fair, hair made of golden fire. From her head sprout two red horns curling up and back in wicked spirals around her head. Upon her head sits a crown of pure black. A regal air hangs about her, shining in her eyes as she sweeps her gaze imperiously over the pathetic sight before her. Her chin is tilted slightly up, her eyes glowering down at him like an insect underfoot she is debating whether to crush. Power seeps out of her very being, making the air in the rancid chamber heavy and oppressive.
“
Ki moun ou ye?
” Alastor asks, his voice hoarse and stilted after so long without speech, after so long without water.
The woman raises a brow, regarding him with the first spark of interest. “So few have the power or the will to summon me, and yet you ask me who
I
am?” The corner of her lip twitches up in mirth, her head tilting a few angles as she examines him more intently this time. “I think the more appropriate question is who are
you
?”
Alastor’s fingers clench into fists. The too thin skin of his knuckles rip and bleed. He doesn’t even feel it. “I asked first.”
The woman laughs, her head thrown back and the sound is light and musical as bells but reverberating and booming in the room around them, suffused in enough power that the walls shake. When her eyes fall back upon him, they’re alight with glee. “You’ve got a
fire
in you, child, one that does not match that sorry body of yours.” She flicks a hand in his direction, seeming to encompass his entire being with the movement, and he feels the air tingle and shimmer. Strength infuses itself into his bones, into his flesh and blood until he feels better than he has ever felt in his whole pathetic existence to date. “That’s better,” she hums, wiping her hands together in satisfaction over a job well done, and she turns to look at the rest of the room they are trapped in. A brow arches at the mangled corpse lying at her feet, chunks of flesh missing from various places in the body and the beginnings of rot starting to set in. But the face is untouched, untarnished. The woman’s face forever stilled in a serene smile, a look of peace eternally etched on her face that speaks of a contentment that contrasts to the ghastly horror of the scene around them. The woman turns back to him, questions in her eyes. “It seems you have quite the story to tell, child.”
Alastor grits his teeth, his newly strengthened nails biting into his palms until they draw blood. He does not look at the corpse, at the
thing
that is
not
his maman, that could never be his maman. His maman who was filled with such light, such love, such warmth. All of which he stole away from her. Because he is a
cursed
child who never should have sought
anything
but the dark from which he was born. “
Ki moun ou ye? Who are you?
” he snarls, feeling that wretched twisted thing in his chest rear up and grin with cold delight at the rage coursing through his veins.
The woman is silent, her lips turned down into a frown. Something dark and malevolent flashes in her eyes, a threat of violence and cruelty the likes of which he has never seen. Then her lips curl slowly back into a wicked smile. “The name’s Lilith.”
The name is familiar, one Alastor has heard before at the Sunday school lessons he used to attend before the rest of the vodou congregation would meet together afterward for
their
homily. "Like, the first wife of Adam, Lilith?" he asks anyway to be certain.
The woman scowls at that, the flicker of irritation there and gone again. She smiles at him again, but this time there's more teeth. "More like the first woman," she grits on, not letting her smile fall despite the shadow of her annoyance still hanging in the air. "But yes, I was unfortunate enough to be that imbecile's wife for a time, albeit a short one. But now I'm Lilith: Queen of Hell."
Queen of Hell, huh?
“I wasn’t trying to summon
you
,” Alastor frowns, brows furrowing in thought. For all that he and his mother go –
used
to go to the local Catholic service, they had always been more faithful to the vodou teachings of their ancestors. His mother had loved to explain to him that theirs was a faith passed to them through the generations, from mother to child like she was doing for him now, all the way back to their birthlands in Yoruba. The names of each and every one that came before them are forever etched into Alastor’s mind, the knowledge of family and their lineage as important to their faith as the names of all the Saints and Disciples they taught him at Sunday school.
Because there was power in knowing the names of the ancestors, in knowing the ésprits: the spirits. They were the ones the vodouisants served, who they summoned and beseeched for aid. And if they were lucky, they may even be answered by one of the Iwa: the spirits of great power that acted as the intermediaries between humans and Bon Dieu. It was the Iwa that Alastor had been trying to summon, hoping this meager offering of flesh and blood that made up all he had to give in this world anymore was enough to earn their favor so that they would grant him the power to avenge his maman.
None of them had answered.
But
Lilith
had.
He set his jaw, his eyes hard and cold save the flames of his fury that would not be sated until an equal offering of blood was taken, until the lift that was stolen was paid for another of equal value.
(Except there would never be one; no number of souls could possibly match that of his maman)
“I did not call for you,” he says again, his eyes peering into the Queen’s own, “so why did you answer?”
Lilith has to admit, she likes this kid. He’s entertaining. And after millennia of life, of ruling over her kingdom of sinners, entertainment is hard to come by. Not to mention that he was powerful enough to summon her. His anger calls to her, the darkness in his soul a precious, beautiful bud just waiting to bloom. And
she
could be the hand to tend it, to shape it and mold it into a wonder of her
own
design. “Because your anger sings to me. Such an alluring song of anguish and hate. Such a strong cry for vengeance.”
Alastor’s eyes widen, and for a moment he seems little more than the child he truly is, his eyes big with wonder. No matter that what he yearned for was the promise of violence, of bloodshed and death. The juxtaposition of his almost innocent smile with the carnal sins he so craved was positively
delicious
.
“I could give it to you,” Lilith purrs, smile growing wider at the growing look of awe in the boy’s eyes. “I could give you the power and the justice you so desperately wish for…” She pauses, watching the boy’s light up and his lips crack and split apart, slow trickles of blood dripping down his face. Baleful delight shoots down her spine sending tingles to her fingertips and glorious satisfaction to her gut. Oh, she did
love
a good sale. “... for a price.”
Alastor’s eyebrows furrow, the child-like wonder fading away and being replaced instead by suspicious deliberation. Lilith almost laughs, the expression is so very much not the kind to be expected from a child, the intensity of his consideration and his level of distrust born of suffering and tragedy far exceeding the limits of his infinitesimally brief time upon this Earth. “What price?”
“Your soul,” Lilith purrs, leaning forward in true and honest anticipation. She wants to see how the boy reacts. Will he recoil? Will he refuse? Will he agree without understanding the true weight of what he would be losing? She can’t wait to find out.
The boy falls silent for a time after that, his eyes falling to stare upon the ground though she doubts he sees it, as deep within his mind as he is. She grants him the silence to think. She has all the time in the world, after all.
When he speaks again, his voice is small and quiet in a way she hasn’t heard it be thus far. “If I give you my soul… that means I’d never see
maman
again, doesn’t it?” His eyes flick over to look at the body on the ground, a look of pure heartbreak and longing that looks so perverse upon his youthful face.
So it had been his mother, then. The death that had driven him to such despair, such desperation. For a moment, she feels the pangs of sorrow and the gentle caress of pity. The emotions are so unlike her – she never feels remorseful, never has a shard of compassion for the victims of her deals. But she does, for but a moment, and it makes her pause, reassessing the boy once more.
Perhaps it is because the look of misery and the tone of wistfulness had reminded her briefly of her own child, of her Charlie. It had reminded her of the way her daughter had looked as Lilith carried her out of the castle, of how she had reached her tiny little hand over Lilith’s shoulder and sobbed for her father, continued to beg for him even after Lilith had set her down in their new palace, their new home and new life separate from Lucifer. Her daughter had not lost a parent – not in the sense that this child has – but she had cried herself to sleep for months after as though she had.
Something distinctly maternal rises up in her, choking her with the sudden urge to wrap the grieving boy in her arms and hold him there tight. She nearly jolts with the suddenness of it, at the intensity of the craving. Her fingers curl into fists at her sides, her jaw clenched as she carefully, carefully forces that feeling back, getting her hands upon it and choking it until nothing of its presence remained besides her sudden unease.
“No,” she replies at last, spitting the word out as disgust roils her stomach unpleasantly. Not for the boy – not entirely, her feelings more akin to discomfort that a mere question for the boy could evoke such strong emotions within her – but for herself. For her weakness, however fleeting it may have been. “Though I doubt a soul as dark and marred as yours would ever be able to ascend regardless, in which case you wouldn’t have been able to see her again anyways.”
Her words are cold, almost cruel, but the boy doesn’t look hurt by them. If anything, he almost seems to have come to a quiet acceptance and peace with the thought of his eternal damnation. Again, she wonders just how much of the severity of this he can comprehend. A lot more than most would expect, probably.
“Okay… I’ll – I’ll give you my soul,” the boy says at long last, looking up to meet her eyes once more. “Give me the power to make him and anyone like him pay, and my soul is yours.”
The blaze of green Hellfire fills the air, wrapping themselves around the Queen’s hand. She holds her hand out, the shadows cast by the flames throwing long haunting shadows on the ground underfoot that almost seem to wreathe and wail like the souls of the damned. Her lips curl upward into a wicked grin, her eyes alight with the infernos of Hell themselves. “It’s a deal.”
The wooden struts making up the foundation creak and snap, collapsing in on themselves as the flames lick and devour everything they touch. The man screams, a deliciously wretched thing, as his skin blackens and cracks like the wood of his pretty little house, the fat underneath liquifying and fueling the fire all the more. Black tendrils pierce through the meat of his thighs, wrapping their way down his legs to impale themselves a second time through his feet, locking him down and trapping him in the inferno. The bright red of his hair has long since been burned away, replaced instead by the bubbling leak of his blood down his burning face. The still and lifeless body of his wife smolders just beside him, the exquisite feast of her pathetic wailing having finally come to a finale several minutes prior.
The boy watches from amidst the conflagration, the inky black of darkness incarnate wrapped around him, protecting him from the storm. Behind him, several tendrils cradle the lifeless remains of his maman like the most precious thing in all creation. He steps closer to his sire, to the man who provided the seed from which he was born. To the man who ripped the only light in his life from his fingers without even a thought to the damage he was sowing.
Alastor’s lips are pulled taunt in a smile.
He watches his pére burn along with everything and everyone the man has ever loved.
And yet still, the insatiable void of hunger roars within his chest, demanding its next meal.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Mambo Odai and Houngan Tweelu lead the congregation as they sing the songs of mourning, as they pound the drums and beat the rhythm of passing into the soft earth underfoot. Alastor stands amongst them all, silent and unmoving, his eyes unblinking as he watches them bury his maman with all the rites of their people. His soul is not his own anymore, and his heart – well, his heart is swallowed by the earth alongside his light, his love, his maman. Before it is lost forevermore, it sends one final prayer to Papa Gede and Maman Brigitte, begging the Iwas to protect this sacred resting place and to guide his maman to the golden gates of Heaven, to usher her in to the eternal paradise of Bon Dieu that Alastor shall never lay eyes on. He prays that she may know a peace in death that she never was afforded in life.
When finally the singing stops and the ceremony draws to its end, Mambo Odai lays her hand upon his shoulder, her rich and earthy voice wrapping him up in its embrace like the dirt over the tomb they just buried. “Come now,
pitit
. Erzulie Mansur protects thee, and by the Blessed Lady’s will shall we provide.”
You’re just some good for nothing, pathetic nigger with no mommy and no daddy.
Alastor’s fists bears down upon the other boy’s face, the sickening crunch of the other’s nose and the scarlet spray of blood making the the frenzied smile on his lips creep higher and higher, the insatiable maw in his stomach growling its hunger for more. More violence, more carnage, more ruin.
No one loves you – no one even wants you! And no one ever will.
Another punch. Two. Alastor feels the shatter of bone around the boy’s right eye. His grin grows all the more.
Stupid, no good trash mulatto.
His teeth grow sharp and serrated, the dark shadows in the alleyway where he’d ambushed the boy, the one who had been trying for months to beat and torment Alastor until he lost the ever-present smile etched on his face. The other child’s damning words that finally snapped the last threads of his control on the darkness inside him ring in his ears again and again.
It’s a good thing that
whore
mother of yours died so she didn’t have to see what a useless piece of shit you turned out to be.
The boy’s screams are devoured in the inky black that envelops them, swallowing them down into the dark as Alastor rips a chunk of flesh from the juncture where neck meets shoulder, his tongue darting out to lick his lips as he chews the meat in his mouth. The hot spray of blood pulses like a geyser from the boy’s throat, splattering across Alastor’s face, his chest, his hands. His tongue licks his lips, chasing the warm coppery tang there before his mouth parts, teeth bared in a display of pure savage bliss. His prey’s dying cries turn to wet and choking gurgles as he suffocates on his own blood, Alastor biting down again and again and eating his fill.
The monster within him howls in glee.
“The police are asking for anyone with information about the missing boy to please come to the station at 221–” the staticky voice reads, the rest of the radio announcement cutting out as Jeromee turns the dial. The speakers whine and screech until he finally gets it tuned just right onto another station. The gentle ring of piano plays, the soulful croon of a saxophone joining in soon after and the two building and building as the beat of a drum joins in, the song cresting into a swinging, toe-tapping tune that makes the adults grin and break out into movement, dancing about on the hard dirt roads connecting all the homes circling the orphanage. Alastor himself taps a finger against his thigh in time with the beat, his ever-present smile turned to watch the vodouisants around him break out into an impromptu party. Some of the other older boys from the neighborhood tap the eager girls watching with wishful eyes the couples moved about, each of them stammering out with varying levels of success a question if they wanted to dance. Several people laugh as Vinny, one of the loudest and most boisterous (and most obnoxious, in Alastor’s humble opinion) asks Miss Tracy – overall thought to be the most beautiful and alluring of all the young ladies in their community – for a dance and she sends him packing with a giggle. Alastor himself can’t help a quiet chuckle at the boy’s morose expression.
His eyes scan over the crowd, watching with a cold detachment the vibrant light of the people around him, the glow of life and joy that exudes off them making the endless black void in his chest all the more prominent. The smell of gumbo wafts through the air as Mambo Judea steps out of her home, the giant pot clutched between two gloved hands as she makes her way to the edge of the porch, laughing at the scene before her. Her daughter follows with a large stack of bowls balanced in one hand and a fistful of spoons clenched in the other. She shoots Alastor a bright and kind smile, batting her eyelashes at him, eyes flicking to the dancing people and then back at him, her gaze expectant.
Alastor smiles at her coolly, standing up and making the few steps needed to close the distance between the two of them. He reaches out and takes the stack of bowls from her, watching with amusement as she blinks up at him coyishly. He steps past her, offering Mambo Judea a hand serving up the gumbo for some of the people turning away from the merriment and shuffling over at the enticing aroma. The High Priestess laughs, and Alastor has to stifle a chuckle at the little indignant huff from the girl behind him. Medea slaps the fistful of spoons against his chest and stomps away, grabbing and dragging another boy from the sidelines onto the dance floor.
“Gason, you betta
watch
yaself now,” the woman hums, taking the bowl he hands her and ladeling in some food before passing it to the waiting line growing before them. “Mon ti fi ti bebe ain’t no swoonin’ belle who’ll let ya gettaway wit’ slightin’ ‘er like that fer long.” She leans forward, voice lowered like she’s telling him a secret. “Pitit fi moun hassa fire in ‘er; she been kissed by Erzulie Freda. She won’t stand fer that kinda thing ya jus’ pulled, oh no she won’t.”
Alastor offers her a placating smile, as practiced and shallow as all the rest in his repertoire. “I don’t want no beef with you or your daughter, Mambo Judea. Medea’s a
doll
, really; but she’s also a bearcat, an’ I ain’t hard boiled enough to get stuck on her.”
The older woman chortles, cuffing him lightly as she teases. “Oh, sweet lil’ Al, ya slay me sometimes! Yer too young ta be such a wet blanket all tha time.”
He feigns embarrassment, his hand scratching the back of his head as he tries to appear properly chastised. “Please don’t razz me, Mambo Judea. I just don’t wanna take no wooden nickels or make myself out to be no pill.”
“An’ how!” she huffs, serving another bowl of gumbo to a chuckling Mister Jim who reaches over to ruffle Alastor’s curls before shuffling away. Alastor glares after him, eye twitching slightly as his smile goes sharp. The man gets about fifty feet away before he stumbles, tripping forward and splattering the contents of his bowl on Old Man Tittu. The ensuing scuffle draws the eyes of all those nearby, no one noticing the wriggling of the shadows underfoot as they slip back into place like they’d never left.
“A’right now, gason, you bes’ be gettin’ on now,” Mambo Judea hums, serving him up a heaping bowl of food and ruffling his hair once more. She ignores the unhappy grumbling of the boy, patting him twice on the cheek, a gentle curl of her lips and a quiet look of affection softening her face even as they deepen the wrinkles of her laugh lines and crow's feet. The look and the sentiment behind it goes unnoticed by the young boy as ever, and she feels the faint pang of sorrow in her chest. He truly is such a good boy. Madelaine would be so proud. “Grab you that bag in the kichin’ an’ make sure all ya chillins eat up, ya ‘ear? Damballa knows y’all need some more meat on ya bones,
jenn séf
.”
Alastor offers his thanks, ever mindful of his manners as his maman had always told him to be. He tries as always not to startle at the use of the pet name, at the way the woman says it endearingly like his mother used to years ago.
Little deer.
He goes without a word into the small, run down shack of a home and grabs the bag heavy and warm with a separate pot of food for all the children of the orphanage. Where the woman gets the money to feed so many hungry mouths when everyone in their congregation seems to barely be scraping by he doesn’t know. But any time he asks, he’s always hushed into silence, the kindly old matrons of their community smiling and ruffling his hair (a gesture he abhors, but that seemingly every adult does any chance they can regardless). “Don’ you be worryin’ about that now, yon ti kras. By the Iwa’s will, we serve the spirits. An’ one thing the Ésprits will is that no chil’ go hungry.”
By the spirits will, they all would say. Alastor has never felt the presence of the ésprits, never sensed the will of the Iwa. He doubts he ever will. That right was likely lost to him two years ago when he traded his soul in the glow of Hellfire and the screams of the damned. But it is only by their will that he still lives, that he has a roof over his head and food in his belly. And though he often wonders if the ésprits truly exist, if the spirits they all serve and pledge their faith to are even real, he silences those thoughts as quickly as they come.
Even if they aren’t real, this was the faith of his
maman
, these people the only family Madelaine claimed as her own. By extension, they are
Alastor’s
now: his people and his family to protect and care for. In memory of his maman and her light.
He may be a twisted, wretched thing cursed to darkness from the moment of his first breath until the end of time, but he is
powerful
and he is just, in his own way.
These people are
his
. And he will defend them to his last breath.
Mambo Odai places the plate of griot on the altar, the smell of the seasoned fried pork wafting in the air to mingle with that of the incense. The steady thrum of the drums, of the beat being pounded by hands against chests and feet against ground interplays with the heady chant filling the room, beseeching the ancestors to heed their call and plead Legba to allow them to commune with the Iwa. Alastor himself kneels on the floor, tips of his fingers stained red as he traces a vévé into the ground – one of many, a tapestry of black and red and blue painted across the floor. In the center of the room, the poto mitan stands tall, the dancers moving about it in a hypnotic display meant to please the Iwa they call upon. Along the walls, the vibrant drapos hang, the great patterned flags passed from generation to generation telling a story of lifetimes of worship and devotion to the ésprits.
In the center of the circle, a woman cries, huddled in on herself and hunched over a hand-drawn portrait of a child. Her wails join the chants and the drums: a plea for aid from the Iwa themselves.
Alastor stands to his feet, having finished his task, and moves to the sides to join the circle of chanters. He angles himself between two of the tallest men in the room, carefully standing in the long shadows they cast so that if anyone looks, they will not see anything amiss. They will not see that his own shadow is nowhere to be found.
Upon the altar, an effigy of the Black Madonna rests amongst the offerings of food and drink. Mambo Odai lifts a glass of rum, pouring the liquor to the ground and letting it sink into the dirt underfoot. Offering the essence to the Iwa they call upon: Erzulie D'en Tort.
Lady of the Wrongs.
The chwal – the “horse” through whom the Erzulie may possess and speak to them – stands in the center of the circle, eyes closed and face serene. Alastor joins the chant, all eyes in the basement turned to look upon the chwal expectantly.
The woman’s body arches back, mouth opening in what seems almost a silent scream of agony and ecstasy both. She falls to the floor, curled in on herself and shaking. The room falls silent, everyone – Alastor included – holding their breath.
Slowly, so very slowly, the woman pushes herself back up and stands. The previously unmarred face of the chwal now bears two scars running through both her eyes and down her cheeks almost like tear tracks. The woman’s already dark skin appears even darker now. And when she speaks, the voice is not hers. It reverberates, sounding like that of many, and the earth beneath their feet trembles. “Why do you call upon me this night, my children?” she asks, looking at none of them and all of them at once.
Mambo Odai steps before her, kneeling at her feet in deference. “We beseech thee, oh fair and merciful Erzulie D’en Tort. A child of our ilk has gone missing. We implore you to help us find her.”
The chwal is silent, her all-seeing eyes sweeping over the entire circle. Her gaze snaps back to land upon Alastor. She steps forward, and every step she takes to bring her closer seems to make the world fade away from around them until he is standing alone in a void. Before him stands the silhouette of a woman, the shape of her filled entirely with black. Her eyes glow, bright and pure white. Above and below each eye runs a deep vertical scar the color of blood. She stands barely a head taller than him, but her presence seems to fill the infinite space around them, the power emitting off her so heavy that it’s hard for him to breathe.
“Speak, child, and tell me your name,” the being says, her words reverberating in his mind in all the tongues of the world, in a thousand different voices.
His tongue feels heavy and leaden in his mouth. “Alastor. My name is Alastor.”
“Alastor,” the Lady says, as if testing the name for herself. “Tell me Alastor, what have you done with the fire that should be at your core? I feel nothing there and you appear to me hollow and empty.”
From any other, those words would have made him rear up in ire. But here, Alastor swallows heavily. “I sold it – my soul, that is.”
A deep frown mars the woman’s face, and something tingles in warning in Alastor’s mind. The inky black tendrils of his power sprout at his feet, wriggling like shadows in the void surrounding them without even a thought from the boy. The woman’s head turns down to look upon the black, her frown deepening before she meets his eyes again. “This power you have, I take it this was in exchange for your soul?” Alastor can only nod, his tongue feels so heavy that forming words seems impossible. “A poor trade, if you ask me. The potential of a human soul is
limitless
, yet this power is not. You have bound yourself in chains of your own making and thereby stunted your own development.”
A fire burns within his chest, a loathsome wrath springing forth at the woman’s words. “I did what was necessary to survive,” he hisses, eyes narrowed to slits and the smile on his face more a barring of teeth. “You speak to me of potential and chastise me for the choices I made. But when I prayed to you – any of you that would listen – all I got was silence.” His hands clench into fists, nails digging into his palms and drawing blood. For the first time in a long time, he feels something beside the cold that has lived in his very core since that accursed cellar. “I would have died in that fucking room, and what then of my potential? Would it still be limitless from where I rotted in the ground?”
Something closes around his throat, invisible and unshakeable. It lifts him up, crushing his trachea so that he cannot breathe. “Watch your tongue, child. Remember to whom you speak.” With what little air Alastor has left, he snorts derisively, looking down at the being with animosity and rage.
The moment stretches on so long that black spots start playing across Alastor’s vision, his lungs screaming protest as they are starved for oxygen. The endless void in his chest screams its fury, gnashing its black and savage maw in its hunger for violence. Finally the being relaxes its hold on him, allowing him to fall back down and breathe once more. Alastor glares up at here, refusing to let the reflexive tears fall as he fights to control his desperate gasps for air. “What’s done is done, the deal was made and the price paid,” the being says with an air of finality, pivoting the conversation. “Now tell me, child, what is it you plan to do with this power?”
Green Hellfire burns in his hands, the dark tendrils of the black void in his chest writhing furiously in the space around him, lashing out in a threat of violence. His teeth elongate and sharpen into daggers, his eyes glowing with an unholy light. “I plan to hunt down the rot and the filth of this world one by one and feast upon their flesh until the world is rid of their taint. Or until the day I fall.”
The being regards him with something that almost feels like deliberation and intrigue.
Interest
. Finally, it breaks into a smile. Images flash through his mind so fast he cannot even process them. Of monsters with a thousand heads and a thousand eyes. Of formless things that lurk in the dark and smile with hundreds of mouths filled with piercing fangs. Of creatures made of everything and nothing at the same time that burn with the need to create and consume eternally. Of so many things that Alastor cannot hope to see or understand, things so ancient and timeless that they transcend all words and thoughts entirely.
“Well then. I have a proposition for you.”
Within his chest, the gluttonous beast sings.
It feels both like countless millennia and mere seconds have passed when the being returns them back to the world. The chwal stands before him silently, and now that Alastor has seen the being’s true appearance, felt the weight of her true presence, this pale imitation is pathetic. On either side of him, the burly men have fallen to their knees, eyes downcast in reverence. But Alastor remains on his feet, eyes staring into the woman’s own, undaunted and unbending before the mere shadow of her essence. The woman does not look away from him as she speaks, addressing all the rest in the room around them. “This child has been blessed by Gede Doub. He has the gift of second sight. Through him, I shall grant you the answers you seek.” She pauses, letting her words sink in. Around them, several people draw in a surprised gasp, many gazes fixing upon Alastor. He lifts his chin, pushing his shoulders back as he stands tall and proud, eyes holding the chwal’s own intently. “And now, he carries the blessings of both Baron Samedi and myself. Let all those that would raise a hand to you, my children, know his wrath, for it is the fury of the Iwa given form.”
Mambo Odai steps forth, dropping to a knee and bowing her head in deference. “By your will, Erzulie D'en Tort. It shall be so.”
With a final nod of acknowledgement, the light in the chwal’s eyes goes out, her body falling limply to the ground, unconscious. The room is silent as several people rush to her side, checking her pulse before carrying her away to be tended to. Being ridden by a creature of divinity is difficult on the body, and the girl will need much healing before she can return to normal.
Alastor watches the room with cold consideration. From elsewhere, his shadow slithers its way to him, slotting back into place like it had never been missing. He narrows his eyes, visions flooding his mind.
The woman who had been in the center sniffles, but is otherwise quiet, her pitiful sobbing subsided. She steps forward, falling to her knees before him, the portrait still clenched tight in her hands. “Please, yon moun beni,” she stutters, lowering herself in supplication, “Please bring pitit fi moun home.”
Alastor’s lips curl up into a smile of true pleasure, that black twisted thing in his chest purring at the woman prostrating herself before him. More, it commands, and his smile grows. He puts a hand on her shoulder and watches her raise her eyes to meet his gaze, leaning into his touch as though finding comfort in the contact. He grips her a little tighter, his touch not a comfort but a brand, one she begs for desperately. A chill runs the room as he sweeps his gaze over all those gathered here tonight, sadistic delight blooming into existence at the awestruck and terrified expressions on their faces. He turns back to the woman, his smile a thing of nightmares.
“I will,” he tells her, voice saccharine sweet and infused with power.
He does.