Patrice nodded proudly. “I was scared, Gam’pair.”
“He tried to rape me,” Noelle said evenly. “He couldn’t.”
Duplessis looked only mildly abashed. “Everything costs. And it did seem appropriate-you and little Rene working so hard to entice me up here. I thought I’d just take you up on it a bit early.”
Arceneaux took a step, then another; not toward Duplessis, but toward Noelle in the chair. Duplessis said, “I really wouldn’t, Jean-Marc.”
Noelle said, “Dadda, get out of here! It’s you he wants!”
Arceneaux said, “He got me. He ain’t getting you.”
Duplessis nodded. “I’ll let them go, you have my word. But they have to watch first. That’s fair. Her and the little one, watching and remembering… you know, that might even make up for what you did to me.” His smile brightened even more. “Then we’ll be quits at last, just think, after all the years. I might even leave some of the others alive-lagniappe, don’t you know, our greatest Louzianne tradition. As your folks say down in the swamp, lagniappe c’est bitin qui bon-lagniappe is lawful treasure.”
Arceneaux ignored him. To Patrice he said, “Boy, you get off your mama’s lap now, I got to get those ropes off her. Then we all go get some ice cream, you like that?”
Patrice scrambled down eagerly. Noelle said, “Dadda, no. Take Patrice and get out-” just as Duplessis’s voice sharpened and tightened, good cheer gone. “Jean-Marc, I’m warning you-”
The ropes were tight for stiff old fingers, and Noelle’s struggling against them didn’t help. Behind him, Arceneaux heard Patrice scream in terror. A moment later, looking past him, Noelle went absolutely rigid, her mouth open but no sound emerging. He turned himself then, knowing better than they what he would see.
Petrifying as the sight of a werewolf obviously is, it is the transformation itself that is the smothering fabric of nightmare. On the average, it lasts no more than ten or fifteen seconds; but to the observing eyes and mind the process is endless, going on and on and on in everlasting slow-motion, as the grinning mouth twists and lengthens into a fanged snarl, while the body convulses, falls forward, catches itself on long gray legs that were arms a lifetime ago, and the eyes lengthen, literally reseat themselves in the head at a new angle, and take on the beautiful insane glow that particularly distinguishes the loup-garou. Alexandre Duplessis-cotton-white, except for the dark-shaded neck-ruff and the jagged black slash across the chest-uttered a shattering half-human roar and sprang straight at Arceneaux.
Whether it was caused by the adrenaline of terror or of rage he couldn’t guess, but suddenly the ropes fell loose from the chair and his fingers, and Noelle, in one motion, swept up the wailing Patrice and was through the door before the wolf that had been Duplessis even reached her father. The bad knee predictably locked up, and Arceneaux went down, with the wolf Duplessis on him, worrying at his throat. He warded off the wide-stretched jaws with his forearm, bringing the good knee up into the loupgarou’s belly, the huge white-and-black body that had become all his sky and all his night. Duplessis threw back his head and bayed in triumph.
Arceneaux made a last desperate attempt to heave Duplessis away and get to his feet. But he was near to suffocation from the weight on his chest-Baba yehge, amiwa saba yehge, de Damballa e a miwa-and then the werewolf’s jaws were past his guard, the great fangs sank into his shoulder, and he heard himself scream in pain-Danou sewa yehge o, djevo de, Damballa come to us, they are hurting us, Damballa come quickly…
… and heard the scream become a howl of fury in the same moment, as he lunged upward, his changing jaws closing on Duplessis’s head, taking out an eye with the first snap. Wolf to wolf-the greatest sin of all-they rose on their hind legs, locked together, fangs clashing, each streaked and blotched with the other’s blood. Arceneaux had lost not only who he was, but what-he had no grandchildren now, no children either, no lifelong downhome friend, no memories of affection… there had never been anything else but this murderous twin, and no joy but in hurting it, killing it, tearing it back once again to shreds, where it belonged. He had never been so happy in his life.
In the wolf form, loups-garoux do not mate; lovemaking is a gift for ordinary animals, ordinary humans. Yet this terrible, transcendent meshing was like nothing Arceneaux had ever known, even as he was aware that his left front leg was broken and one side of his throat laid open. Duplessis was down now… or was that some other wolf bleeding and panting under him, breath ragged, weakened claws finding no purchase in his fur? It made no difference. There was nothing but battle now, nothing but hunger for someone’s blood.
Most of the lighted candles had been knocked over-some by Noelle’s flight to the door, some during the battle. The rag rugs that he and Garrigue had devastated and not yet replaced were catching fire, and spreading the flames to dry furniture and loose paper and kindling. Arceneaux watched the fire with a curious detachment, as intense, in its way, as the ecstasy with which he had closed his wolf jaws on Duplessis’s wolf flesh. He was aware, with the same disinterest, that he was bleeding badly from a dozen wounds; still, he was on his feet, and Duplessis was sprawled before him, alive but barely breathing, lacking the strength and will to regain the human shape. Arceneaux was in the same condition, which was a pity, for he would have liked to give his thanks to Damballa in words. He considered the helpless Duplessis for a moment longer, as the fire began to find its own tongue, and then he pushed the door open with his head and limped outside.
Noelle cried out at first as he stumbled toward her; but then she knew him, as she would always have known him, and knelt down before him, hugging his torn neck-Duplessis had come very near the throat-and getting blood all over the pajamas in which she had been kidnapped. She had no words either, except for Dadda, but she got plenty of mileage out of that one, even so.
The cabin was just reaching full blaze, and Patrice had worked up the courage to let the strange big dog lick his face, when the police car came barreling up the overgrown little path, very nearly losing an axle to the pothole Garrigue had been warning them about for the last couple of miles. Antoine was with them, too, and Garrigue’s son Claude, and a police paramedic as well. There was a good deal of embracing among one group, and an equal amount of head scratching, chin rubbing, and cell-phone calling by the other.
And Jean-Marc Arceneaux-“Ti-Jean” to a very few old friends-nuzzled his grandson one last time, and then turned and walked back into the blazing cabin and threw himself over the body of the wolf Alexandre Duplessis. Noelle’s cry of grief was still echoing when the roof came down.
When Garrigue could talk-when anyone could talk, after the fire engine came-he told Noelle, “The ashes. He done it because of the ashes.”
Noelle shook her head weakly. “I don’t understand.”
Garrigue said, “Duplessis come back once, maybe do it again, even from ashes. But not all mixed up together with old Ti-Jean, no, not with their jaws locked on each other in the other world and the loa watching. Not even a really good conjure man out of Sabine, Vernon Parish, pull off that trick. You follow me?”
“No,” she said. “No, Rene. I don’t, I’m trying.”
Garrigue was admirably patient, exhausted as he was. “He just making sure you, the grandbabies, the rest of us, we never going to be bothered by Compe’ Alexandre no more.” His gray eyes were shining with prideful tears. “He thought on things like that, Ti-Jean did. Knew him all my life, that man. All my life.”