Ghislaine was on her feet in seconds, a scream dying in her throat. Her breath was coming in short, hot puffs and she was wide eyed and frightened like a child. This was no way for a priestess to behave. She who could command the dead was not to be frightened of them.

Her breathing slowed and she forced herself to take calm, slow breaths- though she still fought to penetrate the darkness. A shaft of light pierced the oppressing dark, and Ghislaine flung open her window to welcome the light of the moon.

But the light hadn’t come from the heavens, there was only an inky blanket of endless black above her. The illumination was coming from somewhere within the cane fields. And there were shadows there too, shadows of the slaves. They were still working the fields.

The master of Le Sangre was indeed a cruel man.

It was clear to Ghislaine why she’d been brought here. Another bad man who’d done bad things. Very bad things.

She ran from the house, her blood in a heady rage. She would not wait to make the powder, but would slit his throat just like her father. But this time, she wouldn’t be caught. She’d bury him beneath the cane, a sacrifice to the land.

But when Ghislaine found Martine Bartlett, her rage died.

He was working the dirt on his hands and knees with his bare, bloody fingers. His eyes were sightless as they stared forward, blank, but yet his body was animated. He didn’t speak, didn’t blink, only continued to dig into the soil though his fingernails had broken and there were cane weevils swarming up his arms and crawling about his face.

She realized now that the cane weevils thrummed a terrible, almost purring rhythm and the other slaves moved in time to the cacophony, unhindered by the teeming parasites.

Ghislaine opened her mouth to scream, but there was no sound.

Martine turned to her then, his mouth opened, a parody of her own silent scream. For one terrible moment, she expected the weevils to pour from his mouth. But it wasn’t weevils.

Martine’s mouth stretched until his lips split and bled, the sound of crunching bone as jaws were pried too wide- his throat pulsed from the movement of something squirming within. A great snake, viscous and shiny, pushed itself from his mouth to wrap around Ghislaine, its body contouring to the tattoo.

But instead of blessing her; whispering to her of arcane knowledge, it rammed itself down her throat and into her belly.

Martine Bartlett watched his last acquisition in the moonlight. He took another long pull from his cigar and sipped his brandy thoughtfully. She could have been mistress of Casa de la Sangre. She’d had a power within her, something that would have let her master the evil here. If only she’d waited. If only she’d obeyed.

But she hadn’t. So now she must serve.

Her new dress was nothing but a rag now, her beautiful skin desecrated, and her eyes, that green that had once caught him was faded and opaque. Sightlessly, she toiled in the earth, fed her blood to Casa de la Sangre. And every so often, her shadow writhed and her flesh shifted.

It would be a good crop this year. The yield would be more than enough to buy a hundred vodun priestesses if that’s what it took. There was a price to be paid for everything, and if he didn’t break the curse, his would be to rise and serve the land. But perhaps if Martine painted it with enough red, Le Sangre would let him sleep quietly within her dark arms.

The End