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CHAPTER 19

Back in Black


I was off physical tyranny, out of the office and back on the job. Thank God. I swore then and there I’d never be a team lead.

There are reasons to want to be a team lead. Some people really like being the boss. Nothing against them. Earl’s like that as are both adult Rays. Trevor was a natural-born leader. There are jerks who are that way, but MHI’s “corporate culture” generally avoids them.

Team leads get paid more. They get a cut of the entire team’s action even if they’re sitting in an office or at a conference in Maui. That’s nice. Money for nothing, right?

They also have to inform the family of the departed, make arrangements thereof, and, notably, handle most of the paperwork. I never even got into the paperwork for being end users for the sort of ammo, weapons and explosives we use. That’s another nightmare.

I have stated definitely I will never be a team lead. Have zero desire. Some people think I have leadership skills. Okay, I’m fine with leading a field team. I’ll train newbies on an area or back at Cazador if I must. I’ll do that stuff. I don’t really have a problem with taking responsibility for the deaths of people I’m leading.

I don’t know anyone who likes informing the families, and I hate the freaking paperwork. I make enough money and I really don’t like the responsibilities.

Doctors, not knowing the horror they had unleashed, had cleared me for real work. I was once again free to kill shit and make money. Telling me I could go back to work was practically a violation of the Hippocratic Oath. “First do no harm.” I was about to do some serious harm. Just as soon as I got a fricking call!

“Please, God, I’m begging You, gimme a call!” I said, watching Sally Jesse Raphael. “Can you imagine if some of us went on this stupid show? ‘Well, Sally, my problem is I haven’t shot a zombie in the head in weeks! It’s driving me nuts!’”

“You need to cut down on the coffee, Chad,” Milo said.

“Don’t you even start,” I said, taking a sip of coffee. “Next thing you’ll tell me is to quit fortifying it!”

“Alcohol cuts down on fine motor skills,” Milo said, “which is why I shoot better than you.”

“Oh, you did not,” Shelbye said, making an “oooh” face.

“Since when?” I shouted. “Are you disrespecting Marine marksmanship?”

“No,” Milo said. “Just yours.”

“Oh!” I shouted, pointing in his face. “Oh! It is on!”

“We got a call,” Trevor said.

“Thank you, God,” Shelbye said. “I was afraid they were going to get into a shooting match right here.”

“What we got?” I asked, popping to my feet.

“Some sort of giant frog problem over on St. Charles,” Trevor said, handing Shelbye the slip.

“Hoooweee,” Shelbye said. “We goin’ uptown!”

* * *

St. Charles Avenue is the ritzy part of New Orleans. There are some questionable areas but by and large all the “right” people tend to live in and around St. Charles. Where it goes downtown as Madam Courtney pointed out, it is also the “right” area for offices.

The street is double one-way with a trolley line running down the middle. It is tree-lined and shaded along almost its entire length and it’s a very long street. The buildings are an eclectic mix of residential and commercial. The residences trend towards mansions on large lots, some Victorian era and neo-classical with a few newer that had replaced ones that had succumbed to time. It was a very upscale street, but this was New Orleans and even upscale areas had their issues. Especially if you were a politician, businessman or lawyer.

In New Orleans in the 1980s, if you really wanted to mess with somebody, one popular method was hexing. Hexing could range anywhere from, yes, temporary impotence to death if you hired a crazy-, evil-enough practitioner. Premature baldness was often considered to be a hex by people who had a family history thereof. Instead of, you know, being a baldy.

But if a person had strong wards against hexes, or an example needed to be made, stronger measures were called for. Like attacking their house with a bunch of giant, acid-spitting superfrogs.

In this case, it was a lawyer who had the “issue.”

His name was Reginald Katz, Esquire, and he was an immigrant. He’d been sent to New Orleans as part of a merger of an established New Orleans law firm with a much larger NYC-based law firm. Basically, he was there to show these yokels how it was done in the City. He bought a big mansion on St. Charles Avenue, installed his bottle-blonde, fake-boobed, nineteen-year-old trophy wife, rolled up his sleeves in City fashion and went to work.

Part of the shake-up had involved a long-standing property dispute. There was a relatively small piece of property in Marigny. The title was disputed. The current resident, one Odette Lefebvre, 87, insisted that the property had been deeded to her family in perpetuity in the time of her great-grandmother by the last listed property owner. A large NYC-based property company had bought a bunch of dormant titles, including 911 Marigny Street, as part of another merger. They were, on paper, the legal owner. Miss Odette claimed it as right of long standing and on the basis of some rather worn documents of questionable legality.

See, back when the damned Union won the War of Northern Aggression, Odette’s great-grandmother had been the mistress and hoodoo woman of one Côme Fred Lestrange. When the slaves were ordered set free, she simply continued her residence at 911 Marigny and her previous positions.

Mr. Lestrange had unquestionably owned the property. However, Lestrange died without official issue. And at the time the property had simply languished legally. Other properties were seized by the Damn Yankees and sold off, but for some reason 911 Marigny was overlooked.

There were other issues. Like Miss Odette had never paid taxes on said property. She was, from a legal POV, not much more than a long-term squatter.

Nobody had brought that up in her long life though, because Miss Odette was a hoodoo woman of some note.

I’ve talked a lot about the bad side of hoodoo and some people, Milo, would tend to see hoodoo, technically houdoun, as nothing but bad. But the truth is, it’s a very nuanced sect.

Houdoun is not a black and white religion. They have the Black and the White but they also have the Dark and the Light. Most practitioners wander in the realm between these four. Some are strongly White or Light but may occasionally wander into the Dark or even the Black. They don’t find this “wrong.” It’s more or less a matter of personal choice.

I’ll try to explain that in real terms and try to give some idea of the nuances.

Necromancy derives, almost assuredly, from the Old Ones. They are very very bad. Nobody wants the Old Ones to reappear and I’ve had to kill enough freshly risen zombies to really want that power to disappear.

But think about this. Say that you’ve got one last thing you need to do. You’ve been killed and your family is in danger. You’re the only one who can save them. But you’re dead. Nothing you can do. Even heaven’s got to kind of suck. Or they’re not even going to be killed. Enslaved. Held by vampires. Choose something really bad on toast that only you can prevent. But you’re dead.

Would you choose to come back as a revenant? They have their memories. Soul gets tricky and it might damn you to hell. But would you choose to come back to save your family? Lots of people would choose yes.

So in some circumstances even the power of the Black, necromancy, has some semilegitimate uses.

I wouldn’t, by the way. It’s not that I wouldn’t care, I would. But from the POV of eternity, no matter how bad it was and how long it lasted, it’s better for them to not have me come back and potentially damn my immortal soul. Or maybe I’m just a hardhearted bastard. Unless God sends me back, I’ll just wait in the Green Lands, thanks.

The Dark is casting hexes and summoning things. Also talking with and using the Dark loas. Those are generally believed to be human souls damned to hell, or demons. The fire imps that I’d faced in the cemetery my first day in New Orleans were from a Dark casting.

On the other hand, the minor hexes that a few of the team used—on the down low, because the Shacklefords would flip their lids—were also Dark casting.

Wards, blessings, healings were from the Light and the White. The White was generally considered to be God or Saints. The Light I suspected was close to Fey magic. Not that all Fey, or any Fey, were goody two-shoes.

Miss Odette was a well-known Light priestess. She did fortunes, minor healings, provided herbal medicines and warding charms and spells. She was right around the corner from where I lived and even I had picked up a couple of her charms. They were good charms. I’ve seen them work. And it was well known that the more good you do for someone the more power you get. And in houdoun, power is power. White, Black, Dark, Light, it’s all power. She was a very powerful hoodoo woman and just because that power had generally been Light didn’t mean she didn’t have contacts on the Dark and Black sides.

So it being New Orleans, everybody knew not to rock the boat. Because even the Light can get pissy when it’s being disrespected. Nobody pointed out, officially, that taxes were not being paid. Nobody asked who really owned the property. Judges were easy with continuances on Miss Odette’s side and her lawyers were pro bono. You don’t mess with hoodoo and you hope to gain favors in general.

Enter Reginald Katz, Esquire. Reginald was fifty-five, on his third trophy wife and had come down here to shake things up. He was a big guy, heavy set, dominating, great suit and tie collection, very good in a courtroom and did not give a flip about hoodoo. The case had been languishing for years. The real estate company, with which he’d worked in NYC, wanted it resolved in their favor. When he came to town they switched representation, their local representation having been, yes, dragging their feet, and Reginald Katz, Esquire, went to work.

He demolished every argument on Miss Odette’s side. He had the law on his side and knew how to work the court system. He quickly had it moved to Federal Court, which was a bit less wary of hoodoo since the Feds had really good warding charms and counteragents, and within a month of arrival had won the case. Congrats, Reggie, an 87-year-old woman was going to have to move out of the house she had literally been born in that was almost certainly legally hers based on genetic inheritance. You’re the man.

When the Sheriff’s deputies arrived they were really apologetic. She was nice to them. She understood they were just doing their job. They and neighbors and the local “neighborhood association” (drug gang) all helped her move to a new home nearby.

Two days later, giant acid-spitting frogs descended in force on the home of Mr. Reginald Katz, Esquire, who along with his trophy wife died screaming.

Agent Higgins really wanted to list it as “Act of God” for reporting reasons.

* * *

The house was two stories and large, probably ten thousand feet. De rigueur for the area, it had a low wrought iron fence out front that prevented entry to the grounds and, notably, driveway.

When Shelbye’s cousin was working on the grill of Honeybear, he’d sort of automatically installed a heavy steel brush bumper. Another way to describe that is a ramming bumper. Two thick pieces of horizontal tubular steel with intervening vertical smaller pieces attached firmly to the frame. Sort of thing you see in Mad Max.

I really didn’t like the look and it made the front end heavy. Then I realized I was working for Hoodoo Squad and he’d known that and done me a favor. I had to wonder if maybe I should get heavy screens over all the windows and maybe the same thing for the windshield. Whatever.

That flimsy, weak, pathetic fence was no match for Honeybear.

“Hah, hah!” I bellowed, pulling into the driveway. “I am the Honeybear!”

“We could have checked to see if it was open,” Milo said.

“Screw that, my fine moral friend,” I said, getting out. “We are the Hoodoo Squ—What the fuck?”

That exclamation was caused by looking at the roof and what was on it.

You ever see one of those photos of Amazonian tree frogs? They call them “arrowhead” frogs. The ones with all sorts of psychedelic colors? Electric blues and purples and the brightest orange on the face of the earth? The ones that sort of seem to reflect the sunlight, big bulbous eyes, like something on an acid trip?

Okay, imagine you’re looking at the front of this big Victorian mansion that looks like Disney’s idea of Tara in Gone with the Wind. Manicured yard, nice trees…

And on top of it has hopped one of those frogs. Mostly an electric blue with green markings and big, bright pink circles in the markings.

As big as a rhinoceros.

And it’s looking at you.

Miss Odette was one powerful-as-shit hoodoo woman. This is why in New Orleans, you don’t fuck with the hoodoo.

“Son of a…” Milo said, his mouth hanging open.

“Oh, these is gonna be good eatin’!” Shelbye shouted. “We be havin’ a fais do-do for the whole family after this’n!”

There was a crack of an M14 and the thing jumped straight up.

Okay, again, picture if you will. This frog the size of a rhinoceros has jumped straight up. Ever seen one of those things hop? Regular ones it’s sort of unreal. This one? It wasn’t really straight up. It just looked that way. It went up and up and up and…

“It’s a bird…” Milo said.

“It’s a plane…” I intoned.

“It’s SUPERFROG!” we both said.

The fucking thing just kept going. And going. And…it was gone. I mean, we were near the corner of St. Charles and Joseph and the next report was from Daneel! The damned thing jumped a block and a half! I swear at apogee it was spread out and catching a breeze off the river. It was like half frog, half bat, all insane.

“Oh,” Ray said, in that tone. “Even MCB New Orleans is going to have problems with this.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But it’s guaranteed to make the front page of the Truth.”

“More like Time Magazine if we don’t stop them quick.”

I went back to Honeybear, opened up the trunk and rummaged until I had Bertha the Barrett out.

“We’re gonna need the big guns for this,” I said.

“I got one in the van!” Milo said. “Whoever bags the most wins!”

It was ON.


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