Cheri Scotch - VooDoo Moon 03, Ebooks~Mbooks, Ebooks
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THE WEREWOLF’S SIN
THE VOODOO MOON TRILOGY BOOK 3
CHERI SCOTCH
Moon, moon, gold-horned moon, check the flight of bullets, blunt the hunters’ knives, break the
shepherds’ cudgels, cast wild fear upon all cattle, on men, on all creeping things, that they may not catch
the gray wolf, that they may not rend his warm skin! My word is binding, more binding than sleep, more
binding than the promise of a hero.
•
Old Russian charm to invoke the Moon Goddess’s aid in becoming a werewolf
PART ONE
The Lives of the Werewolves
Sgt. Joe Ed Landry of the New Orleans Police Department approached the little house as
apprehensively as he had ever approached a crisis crime situation. It looked pretty peaceful out here in
Addis—hell, people in Addis took relaxation to a fine art form—but he knew it could blow up at any
minute.
The house looked like somebody’d just gotten up and gone inside. A rocker, peeling its paint, moved
back and forth on the long front porch. A half-full glass of lemonade, the sides still frosted with cold, sat
on a little wicker table beside the rocker.
Joe Ed shivered. Shee-it. It was early February. Even down here in the South, it was still too chilly in the
mornings to sit on the porch with lemonade.
The first gunshot sounded close by. Thirty years of training made Joe Ed hit the ground, his eyes scoping
the area. The second gunshot sounded just as loud. It came from the same place. This time, Joe Ed heard
the pinging of metal as a bullet connected.
After the third shot, Joe Ed heard a familiar voice.
“
Ooo-wee
!” the voice complained. “I think I done lost my touch.”
Joe Ed stood up and dusted off his pants.
“Will you watch where you pointin’ that thing?” he yelled. “Ain’t you never seen the police films on
firearm safety? What are you, a NRA or somethin’?”
Joe Ed walked around to the back of the house, where Captain Achille Broussard, also of the NOPD,
was aiming a .38 Smith & Wesson at the top of his house. He didn’t look much like a police captain: his
long, dark hair, usually kept neatly in a ponytail, cascaded free down his back. His short-sleeved T-shirt
emphasized his powerful arms and shoulders. And the little gold hoop earring wasn’t what Joe Ed would
call standard police issue.
“Hey, Joe Ed,” Achille said without looking at him, “where y’at?”
Joe Ed, unable to resist, followed Achille’s aim. On top of the house was a large metal weather vane
shaped like a rooster. The rooster’s metal tail feathers and a good part of the rear end were shot off.
“I hate that fucker,” Achille explained. “The last tenants I had in here were from someplace up north,
Kansas or one of them places; they put it up there to remind “em of home.”
Joe Ed nodded. To a New Orleans native, anyplace above Shreveport was “up north.” And
inconsequential.
“You ever thought of just climbin’ up there and takin’ it down?” Joe Ed suggested.
“Maybe I shoulda used the nine-millimeter, you think?”
“Hell, you woulda blown ya whole roof off. You never was that good a shot. I always meant to tell ya
that, but the occasion just never came up.”
Achille tore his attention away from the offensive weather vane and clapped Joe Ed on the shoulder.
“Well, come on in. I got some red beans and rice left over from last night, and there’s a couple of cold
Dixies in there. I even got a few bottles of that Blackened Voodoo beer— somebody dishonest done
lifted “em from a crime scene and left “em in my office one time.“
“You drinkin’ the evidence?”
“Hell, they weren’t evidence. They were in the refrigerator. The ol’ boys who owned “em weren’t gonna
drink ’em where they were going.”
Achille led Joe Ed into a comfortable country kitchen flooded with sunlight. Cooking implements hung
from exposed, stained beams, yellow cafe curtains hung at the windows, and Joe Ed found himself seated
at a big butcher-block table on a yellow painted chair. The place was immaculate.
“You got a cleaning lady comin’ in, Achille?” Joe Ed said, impressed. “My wife don’t keep our place
this clean.”
“I got a lot of time on my hands these days,” Achille said blandly.
That reminded Joe Ed painfully of why he was here. Nothing official was being done, but the NOPD
wanted Achille back to work. The acting homicide officer, Lt. John Sullivan, was worried about Achille.
“I don’t begrudge him his mourning period,” Sullivan had said, “but this isn’t like him. He’s changing, and
it’s not for the better. We gotta get the Cap back here; once he’s in the mainstream, he’ll recover. He’s
not living in Mae’s house in the Quarter anymore; he’s just holing up in that little house of his in Addis and
going slowly nuts. Go see what you can find out.”
Sullivan had handed Joe Ed a folder with some photos and press clippings. “See what he thinks of
these.”
Achille heated up the red beans. Joe Ed watched him carefully, with a professional’s eye. Achille looked
as good as ever—Joe Ed had never figured out how Achille stayed so young and good looking; good
genes, he guessed—but there was something very old, very painful about the way Achille moved. Achille
had always been all energy, all authoritative motion and decisive action. Now he was slow and tentative,
as if he were moving underwater, or just slightly behind the beat of life. It was as if he had lost part of
himself somewhere, the part that moved him and gave him his drive.
Well, thought Joe Ed, perhaps he had. Achille had lost plenty in the past few months.
Joe Ed inadvertently thought of his wife. They’d been together for so long that they took each other for
granted, but if he ever lost her… He gave a slight shudder.
Achille set a steaming plate of rice smothered in red beans and spicy chunks of andouille sausage before
Joe Ed. A basket of crisp French bread broken into large pieces sat beside the plate. “Damn, this smells
good,” Joe Ed said.
“Us bayou boys know how to cook,” Achille agreed. “But you didn’t come all the way nearly to Baton
Rouge for the cuisine.” Achille took a long draft of his beer.
Joe Ed looked at his plate. “Yeah, you right,” he said quietly.
“Am I fired?” Achille said. He didn’t sound particularly concerned.
“No!” Joe Ed said, startled. “
Hell
no! But the Chief wants you back on the job, Achille. Sullivan’s up to
his ass without you; he can’t even begin to fill your shoes, not even temporary, and he knows it. The chief
reminds him of it at least once a week—he’s on Sullivan’s ass like a pit bull. It’s been over a month
already.”
“That long?” Achille mused.
“Achille,” Joe Ed’s voice grew softer, “We all loved her. Mae Charteris was one of the finest women in
New Orleans. The Voodoos loved her better than any queen they’d ever had since Marie Laveau.
Personally, I’ll never forget all she did for the department; hell, we got cases’d still be open if not for her
aidin’ the investigations. Shit, she knew everything went on in this town. But…“
“You about to tell me she wouldn’t want to see me like this.”
“You should know.”
Achille sat back in his chair, balancing it on its two back legs. His long, curly black hair, streaked with a
little gray, freed from its usual pony tail, hung over the chair’s back. Almost unconsciously, he reached up
to touch the small gold hoop in his ear.
She had put it there, so long ago. She said it would keep other women away from him. She had been
wrong about that; women seemed more attracted to him than ever when he wore it. But she was entirely
correct in assuming that Achille would want none of them. Only her. It had always been only her, from
the moment he saw her, when she was sixteen and he was eighteen.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t believe she was dead. He believed it, all right. What amazed him was that he
was still alive without her.
“It’s too soon,” Achille said.
“Too soon, hell,” Joe Ed said. “Look, I’m gonna play hardball here.” He tossed the folder on the table.
Achille looked at it, but didn’t move. “And this is…?”
“This is, among other things, a two-day-old newspaper story about Reverend Eric Ely. The rev has just
been granted another postponement, courtesy of his high-priced New York lawyer, Russell Berkman. I
guess you heard’a him?”
Achille had. Berkman was every felon’s dream, a grandstanding publicity hound who happened to also
be a fine lawyer. He took media-intensive cases and made a reputation for winning the hard ones.
Achille still didn’t move, but he looked interested.
“How’s Ely affording Russell Berkman? I thought he was broke just posting bail.”
“He’ll never be broke as long as people are willin’ to be duped in the name of the Lord,” Landry said in
disgust. “Them religious fanatics in his church posted his bail and now they’re paying for his defense.
Some of ’em even mortgaged their houses to do it.”
Achille closed his eyes and seemed to stop breathing.
“Listen, Achille, you ain’t been around,” Landry said. “You ain’t heard it all. This guy’s become a
celebrity, especially since Berkman took his case. He’s got money pouring in from everywhere; even
these TV preachers who’d rather see their mothers raped at high noon in Jackson Square than give up a
nickel are yellin’ about what a martyr he is, how he was only doin’ the Lord’s work when he…”
Joe Ed stopped just in time. Achille hadn’t moved or opened his eyes, but his face was heating up, his
skin becoming suffused with blood.
Joe Ed waited a few minutes before he spoke again.
“You think I like sayin’ this? You think I don’t know what it does to you? Well, I don’t care, not if it
gets you outta this house and back in New Orleans, where you belong. I don’t care if you never speak to
me again.”
It was a long time before Achille moved or spoke.
“Joe Ed, you ever seen pictures of Jack the Ripper’s victims?”
“No,” Landry said, mystified. “I didn’t know there
was
any. I thought they just had artists in those days.”
“No. There were a few pictures taken at the scenes. I saw them when I was just a young cop, studying
everything I could about police work. I saw pictures of, I think it was Mary Kelly. She hardly looked like
a human being. In all my time in homicide, I never saw anything worse. Not until the afternoon in the
morgue when they unzipped that bag and I had to identify Mae’s body. You see what he did to her, Joe
Ed?“
Joe Ed squirmed in his chair. He wanted to cry. He’d seen.
“Thirty-seven stab wounds,” Achille said, “the first one through the throat would have killed her, but he
didn’t stop there. He was going good, the Lord was guiding his hand, he said he was ridding New
Orleans of this Voodoo vermin—although I hear that’s gonna be inadmissible as a confession when it
comes to trial.
“You know what was strange, Joe Ed, was that she never took him seriously. Just the day before, he’d
grabbed her on the street and said, ”I could kill you right now and my God would forgive me because the
blood of Jesus says that thou shalt not suffer a Witch to live!“
“She never told me this, of course. I heard it later, from the Voodoo woman who was with her at the
time, Sister Claudine. Claudine said that Mae just shrugged him off and laughed. She told him she was
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