Dead Man (Black Magic Outlaw Book 1) Read online

Evan's face was serious. "Get out of town, Cisco. Don't tell anyone where you're going. Not me or Emily or anyone else you've spoken to. You didn't deserve what happened to you. None of your family did. But maybe you can enjoy the rest of your life."

  I cocked my head and backed away.

  "The streets should be clear for the day," he continued. "The Saints will be busy at the sit-down. It's the best chance you have of leaving town unimpeded. Just disappear."

  I snorted, incredulous. "Not gonna happen, tough guy. And I don't need your blood money."

  "That's not what it is. Jesus, what kind of person do you think I am? That's some personal money that my wife and I put together because we care about you. Get some food. Buy some normal shoes."

  "Hey, don't diss the boots. They're growing on me."

  He rolled his eyes. "Just get out of town, Cisco. And keep the money. It comes with no strings attached."

  I slid the wad into my back pocket. "Fine. I'll take the money, but I won't take your advice. I'm staying and I'm going to that meeting. And fuck you if you won't help me."

  Evan's face twisted in anger. "You can't keep doing this, man. Emily just heard about your return last night. If you charge into Little Haiti with a bullheaded plan and get yourself killed again, it's not fair to her."

  "It might wrap things up nicely for you though," I reasoned.

  "That's not fair!" His emotion all poured out at once. No more mask. I swear, my friend almost decked me. I probably deserved it. It was a cheap shot. To Evan's credit, he didn't retaliate with one of his own.

  "The Bone Saints base down in a block-wide series of tenement buildings. It's their turf and it's locked down. You'll never get in and out alive."

  "Maybe not without your help."

  Evan expressed his displeasure. "I could check if the gang unit is running surveillance."

  "Do they have someone inside?"

  "In the gang? No. But maybe I could get you some intel. Lie low until then. Don't do anything stupid."

  I didn't like it. It sounded more like a stalling tactic than anything else. I held my phone out for him. "You can start with the address."

  Evan ran his eyes over the Bay and sighed. He grabbed my phone and punched in an address.

  "You really can't help more than that?" I asked as I took back the phone.

  "Get involved? Personally?" He looked me right in the eyes. "No way."

  I didn't hide my disappointment. "I've been dead, Evan. I've got an excuse. What have you been doing for the last ten years?"

  His hands went to his hips again. Facing his demons was business as usual. "You said it yourself, Cisco. You were killed, resurrected. That's impossible. No one should be able to do that. You can't beat whoever you're up against. What chance do I have?"

  I didn't answer, but I was pretty sure his Colt Diamondbacks wouldn't help.

  "I have a family now," he maintained. "I can't make a widow of my wife or an orphan of my kids. Shit, man. That's the best-case scenario. I saw what happened to your family." His voice was a whisper now. "It was horrible."

  I laughed in contempt. In disgust. I was sick of the pile-on. It wasn't an appropriate reaction, but I didn't care. Maybe I was going crazy. I backed away from my friend.

  "If your team's around Little Haiti later," I said, "tell them to DROP to the ground and keep their heads down 'cause I'm coming for blood." I spun in my cowboy boots and started to leave.

  "Wait," called Evan, wincing. He opened the back of his shirt and pulled a manila envelope from his waistband. "I had a feeling you'd say something like that."

  I grabbed the new envelope. This one was too big for money. "What's in this one?"

  "Your personal items. We found them dumped at the crime scene where you were killed. Your sister originally kept them until..." Evan cleared his throat. "Anyway, I'm not sure why I held on to them, but I figured they shouldn't fall into the wrong hands. Just in case."

  I nodded absentmindedly and ripped the seal open. More links to my past. To who I used to be. The manila envelope was filled with old spellcraft tokens. Fetishes, powders, tributes. The implements of black magic.

  Chapter 28

  I banged the taxi's trunk as it pulled away from the curb. The driver jumped and slammed the brakes, then shook his head when he saw me. I slid into the backseat with a smile and laid a clean hundred in his hand. His eyes widened.

  "Can you get me to Little Haiti?"

  "Oh," he said in a mocking voice (but still taking the money). "Why would you assume I know where Little Haiti is?" He judged me through the rearview mirror.

  "Um... Because you're a taxi driver?"

  He smiled. "Just messing with you. Forty minutes."

  "Take Biscayne. I wanna hit some stops on the way."

  He nodded and pulled onto the Boulevard.

  I rested back in the seat and closed my eyes. The Haitians and Nigerians weren't meeting for another few hours. I had plenty of time to decide on a plan, but one thing I wasn't doing was waiting for Evan's intel. Knowing him, he'd never get back to me and hope I missed my appointment.

  Not today. Today was Cisco Suarez Day. Sunny and full of hope. I was tired of being the one chased around. It was high time I did the chasing.

  The manila envelope crumpled in my grip. I checked the contents again. A straw mask, large enough to cover the top of my face. It had cut-out eye holes. Long strands of straw ran along the bottom edge like a beard. The mask was a single-use component that would definitely come in handy today.

  I also found my belt pouch, a rectangular nylon bag that cinched to my waist, useful for holding fetishes and favors. Inside were small candles, matches, pre-1965 quarters, and other common spellcraft tokens.

  The last item in the envelope was a silver dog whistle. It felt familiar between my lips, and I wondered how I'd gone without it for so long. The whistle is a fetish, not an artifact. A focus for my spellcraft, devoid of any inherent magic of its own. It's really just a plain old whistle, only worth the weight of its hollowed silver tube. But we've talked about silver's importance to necromancy before. It's a holy metal. A purifier. The skull buckle was pewter so I needed the whistle too. This fetish alone did more to heighten my power than anything else in the envelope.

  A black cat darted across the double northbound lanes ahead of us. The taxi swerved but the animal tried to beat us across the street. The car overtook the cat with a sickening bump.

  "Aw hell," exclaimed the driver. He cruised forward at ten miles per hour, checking his mirrors.

  "Stop," I said. The street was empty. It was worth checking.

  "What?"

  "Stop the car."

  He did and we both looked back. The black lump in the road didn't move. I bet the cat didn't think much of Cisco Suarez Day. Sunny and full of hope my ass.

  I scrunched my nose. "Is hitting a black cat bad luck or good luck?"

  "Stupid stray," complained the man. "It came out of nowhere."

  I nodded in sympathy and opened the car door.

  "Where are you going?"

  I approached the animal, slowing as I neared. I didn't see any blood. We'd hit it at a low speed, but that wasn't much consolation to the cat. A solid knock on the head with a bumper would do it in. I kneeled beside it and squinted. No collar. No movement. It looked fine, but it was dead.

  Without thinking, I returned the whistle to my lips. This was curious timing, right after recovering my fetish and all. Using my knife, I slit my fingertip and rubbed the cat's head, then blew into the whistle. There was no sound, at least not to human ears. I checked the cat, but nothing happened. Like I said, I was rusty.

  A car blazed by in the neighboring lane and laid on its horn. More vehicles followed. I wasn't in a good spot for this. I scooped up the dead animal and returned to the taxi. The driver didn't look happy.

  "What are you, a crazy person? You're not bringing that in here."

  I opened my mouth to insist. Before I could, a piercing meow startled us both.r />
  The cat cuddled in my arms; bright green eyes stared up at me. It surprised me a little, but I regained my cool and slid into the back seat.

  "It's fine," I said. "You barely nicked it. I'll take it to a vet."

  Cars piled up behind the taxi as a new wave of traffic hit. The man shrugged, already bored, and drove on.

  I leaned back and studied the animal in my lap. It appeared to be a perfectly healthy cat, but you and I know better. Twenty seconds ago, it had been dead. Now it licked blood from my finger. I'd never done that so easily before.

  After some time, I directed the driver to pull up to a store. I left the cat in the car, fitted the nylon pouch to my belt, and got ready to do some shopping.

  With magic, preparation is everything.

  The most powerful spells are not immediate. They require practice, prep, and patience. Animists have plenty of quick hits in them, but the serious stuff is planned. It involves groundwork.

  Most people, when planning something covert, might opt to shop at a military supply store. Some might go high tech and acquire spy equipment. Me? I hit up the local 7-11.

  Stuff inside was mostly how I remembered it. (Except for the quesadilla dog slammers. I'd have to try those some time.) For now I stocked up on plastic lighters, knock-off sunglasses, and other incidental items I'd need in Little Haiti. I passed an aisle with cheap baseball caps and picked one that read "I Heart Miami" with sunbeams coming from the heart. That was part of a disguise. I grabbed kitty treats because a hungry zombie is a bad zombie. Oh, and I scored a raspberry butterscotch Slurpee because I hadn't had a Slurpee in ten years. (Who was I kidding? I got the quesadilla dog slammers too.)

  I returned to the car ready to go. The taxi driver informed me that the cat had been yapping at a dog outside the car. Everything looked kosher now so I just shrugged. As we continued on our way, I silently considered my predicament.

  The Bone Saints wanted me dead because I'd assassinated the old Baptiste. Now they were unknowingly meeting the businessman who'd likely ordered the hit. On top of that, I was now alive—a problem from both ends because the new Baptiste hadn't forgiven me and Namadi Obazuaye would see me as a loose end. If the truth got out, maybe they'd kill each other for me, but to get to them, I'd need to surround myself with an entire gang of voodoo practitioners on their home turf.

  In other words, this was gonna be a hell of a party.

  Chapter 29

  Little Haiti was nicer than I'd assumed. Smallish houses mostly, very residential, with a strip of businesses on Second Avenue. No buildings higher than two stories, which gave a lot of space to the high Miami sky.

  I had the taxi circle the block. I knew it was the right place when we passed the herbalist shop across the street. A large awning loomed over the doorway, various flowers and grasses hanging from it like curtains. From the outside the shop had an ominous look. An enclosed cavern that housed the unknown. It kept the riffraff out, I was sure. Only animists like me knew the real value of the sacraments on sale.

  As Evan had mentioned, the block we circled wasn't just a single address or unit. It was more like a compound. A series of two-story concrete tract apartment buildings planted themselves in an open field of grass, taking up almost an entire city block. The units were blocky abominations born of nineteen-eighties squalor, dressed with the original, faded pink paint. The property looked more like a run-down school than anything else, but I assumed it to be project housing. A strong metal fence, painted green and twice as tall as me, ran along the exterior sidewalk and surrounded the wide block.

  Welcome to Bone Saints headquarters.

  As we passed, a high school kid with an obvious gun in his pocket entered a side gate. He nodded at the guard who opened the way and they bumped fists. A few others in the field took note of the entry. None of the people were residents; they were hired help. Scouts wandered the property. Wide fields of green grass between the buildings provided easy sight lines. In the broad daylight, the combination of open space and low buildings didn't give me much shadow to work with.

  Luckily, while the compound ran right up to the street on three edges of the block, the fourth was lined with residential housing. Small, old, dilapidated houses—sure—but hopefully gang-free. They had small backyards that bordered the green security fence. I figured that was my best bet.

  I thanked the taxi driver, picked up my cat and other belongings, and let him keep the change. He must've been familiar with the area because he sped off in a hurry.

  I picked the least-habitable house—no cars out front, no movement or sounds within, windows and doors shuttered—and made my way to the backyard. Low palms and bushes concealed me as I confirmed the house was empty. I checked a metal shed in the back along the neighbor's chain-link fence. It was missing a door and didn't have anything of worth inside. Since the shed faced the yard from the side, it provided cover against nosy neighbors, as well as offering a perfect view of the green metal fence and the Bone Saints beyond.

  I ducked inside and went to work. Standard stuff, at first. Incantations on the sunglasses. Tightening up the bindings of the straw mask. I fed the cat some nibbles and tested out basic commands on it. Sit. Lie down. Jump. Cisco Suarez was an everyday cat whisperer.

  After everything was set, it was still a little early. I decided to scout the property a little better. I set the black cat loose in the backyard, sat on my haunches, and closed my eyes.

  Unkempt grass brushes my whiskers. I choose each step with caution but glide smoothly over the ground. Smoothly between the metal bars that wall off larger things.

  I opened my eyes and peeked from my cover. The cat continued moving on its own, which was normal. But something was off. I was rusty still. He was hard to drive, more like a horse than a car, being urged to steer rather than responding to the turn of a wheel. I'd need to strengthen my necromantic muscles another time. For now, my little operation was running along smoothly.

  Let's address the obvious concern: you might think it stupid to spy on a bunch of bokors with a zombie cat, but these animists were wholly unfamiliar with my magic. Martine had taught me their ways. Bokors all channel one of the Barons of Death. Their patrons are famous in these parts. But they're not the only patrons of death.

  There are all kinds of zombies. All kinds of death. That's what Baptiste had said, and he was right. Haitian voodoo is a patchwork art, a hand-me-down of African origin. When the slaves had been carried away from their homeland, they lost their foundations, churches, artifacts—even their holy ones. They had to rise up and work with what they had. Improvise. What resulted was a different kind of magic. More immediate but less polished.

  Spellcraft arises from need. It's another tool in the belt of a free-willed populace. The man makes the magic, not the other way around. Neither is inherently good or evil to start. Motivations are where things get complicated. Motivation is birthed by need.

  That's why you can't assume the Haitians have the corner on death magic, with voodoo and all. Death is everywhere. Every culture since the beginning of time has revered and feared death, and anything treated with that much respect is bound to be tied to powerful magic.

  Opiyel is a Taíno zemi, a god of the indigenous Arawak people of the Caribbean (notably including Cuba and Florida). The dog spirit was believed to guide dead spirits to the afterlife, what animists know as the Murk or the Shadow World. Besides myself, I didn't know of anyone whose patron was Opiyel, the Shadow Dog.

  So I guided the dead cat, hoping it would be enough to trick even experienced bokors for a while.

  Some men laugh up ahead. I skirt them and smell a dog with them.

  A Rottweiler on a leash. It smelled alive, as did everyone else. Better to avoid them anyway.

  I trot directly toward the animal, curious.

  What? No. Go the other way.

  The dog grows excited and comes for me, but the man holds him back.

  I opened my eyes again. What the hell was the cat doing? Instead of a
voiding attention it was attracting it. The scouts watched as the cat tried to sniff the dogs butt. The Rottweiler wasn't too keen on the idea and kept spinning around to face the smaller animal. The two Saints laughed at the show.

  Without warning, the dog growled. The owner yanked him away but the Rottweiler was determined and pushed back. His handler strained. Then the cat made a loud yap that, if it wasn't a cat, I could only describe as a bark. The Rottweiler backed away, tail tucked between its legs. The Haitians traded their laughs for bemusement.

  Man this was risky. First the cat came back to life way too easily, now it was too difficult to control. In the distance, out of mind, nobody would suspect the cat of much. But this display? Anyone skilled in voodoo might recognize him for a thrall.

  I closed my eyes and urged the cat back on task.

  Bored with the animal, I prance away. Toward a central structure.

  Each building was composed of four apartments: two top, two bottom. Concrete steps lined opposite walls, giving each residence its own entryway. The cat climbed a set of stairs to the top, hopped onto a windowsill, then leapt to the roof.

  Nothing spies me up here. I look down on them all. The dogs. The people with the guns. The parked cars. A few men perch atop other buildings, like me, but I am small enough to escape their notice. I am invisible to everyone. That is the best way to watch.

  This was a great spot for intelligence. A cat's-eye-view of the grounds. Significantly more than I could manage from the outskirts.

  There was a lot of activity in the yard. Security was tight. Spotters on the roofs, streets, and entrances. Some of them were just kids. Most of them were armed. To me, the hullabaloo signaled a big event. The Haitians were taking this meeting with Namadi seriously.

  The same kid I'd seen on the sidewalk earlier was let out again by the same gate. He stalked along the property and turned the corner, patrolling the block.

  At the same time, a guard swung a long gate open. A white Hummer limo turned into the lot and the gate closed behind it. It surprised me to see Namadi in just the one vehicle. Evan had made it sound like the guy would have an entourage.