"Chrysalis, my dear!" Wilde exclaimed as the limo pulled away into the night. "And the glorious fourth estate. Dug up any juicy gossip lately?" Digger looked from Chrysalis to Wilde to the man sitting next to him and decided that silence would be his most appropriate response. "How rude of me," Wilde continued. "I haven't introduced our host. This delightful man has the charming name of Charlemagne Calixte. I believe he's a policeman or something. He's going with us to the hounfour."
Digger nodded and Calixte inclined his head in a precise, nondeferential bow.
"Are you a devotee of voodoo, Monsieur Calixte?" Chrysalis asked.
"It is the superstition of peasants," he said in a raspy growl, thoughtfully fingering the scar tissue that crawled up the right side of his face. "Although seeing you would almost make one a believer."
"What do you mean?"
"You have the appearance of a loa. You could be Madame Brigitte, the wife of Baron Samedi."
"You don't believe that, do you?" Chrysalis asked. Calixte laughed. It was a gravelly, barking laugh-that was as pleasant as his smile. "Not I, but I am an educated man. It was the sickness that caused your appearance. I know. I have seen others."
"Other jokers?" Digger asked with, Chrysalis thought, his usual tact.
"I don't know what you mean. I have seen other unnatural deformities. A few."
"Where are they now?" Calixte only smiled.
No one felt much like talking. Digger kept shooting Chrysalis questioning glances, but she could tell him nothing, and even if she had a inkling of what was going on, she could hardly speak openly in front of Calixte. Wilde played with Calixte's swagger stick and cadged drinks from the bottle of clairin, cheap white rum, that the Haitian took frequent swallows from himself. Calixte drank over half the bottle in twenty minutes, and as he drank he stared at Chrysalis with intense, bloodshot eyes.
Chrysalis, in an effort to avoid Calixte's gaze, looked out the window and was astonished to see that they were no longer in the city, but were traveling down a road that seemed to cut through otherwise unbroken forest.
"Just where are we going?" she asked Calixte, striving to keep her voice level and unafraid.
He took the bottle of clairin from Wilde, gulped down a mouthful, and shrugged. "We are going to the hounfour. It is in Petionville, a small suburb just outside Port-au-Prince."
"Port-au-Prince has no hounfours of its own?"
Calixte smiled his blasted smile. "None that put on such a fine show"
Silence descended again. Chrysalis knew that they were in trouble, but she couldn't figure out exactly what Calixte wanted of them. She felt like a pawn in a game she didn't even know she'd been playing. She glanced at the others. Digger was looking confused as hell, and Wilde was drunk. Damn. She was more sorry than ever that she'd left familiar, comfortable Jokertown behind to follow Tachyon on his mad, worthless journey. As usual, she only had herself to depend on. It had always been like that, and always would. Part of her mind whispered that once there had been Brennan, but she refused to listen to it. Come to the test, he would have proved as untrustworthy as the rest. He would have.
The driver suddenly pulled the limo to the side of the road and killed the engine. She stared out the window, but could see little. It was dark and the roadside was lit only by infrequent glimpses of the half moon as it occasionally peered out from behind banks of thick clouds. It looked as if they had stopped beside a crossroad, a chance meeting of minor roads that ran blindly through the Haitian forest. Calixte opened the door on his side and climbed out of the limo smoothly and steadily in spite of the fact that he'd drunk most of a bottle of raw rum in less than half an hour. The driver got out too, leaned against the side of the limo, and began to beat a swift tattoo on a small, pointed-end drum that he'd produced from somewhere.
"What's going on?" Digger demanded.
"Engine trouble," Calixte said succinctly, throwing the empty rum bottle into the jungle.
"And the driver is calling the Haitian Automobile Club," Wilde, sprawled across the backseat, said with a giggle. Chrysalis poked Digger and gestured to him to move out. He obeyed, looking around bewilderedly, and she followed him. She didn't want to be trapped in the back of the limo during whatever it was that was going to happen. At least outside the car she had a chance to run for it, although she probably wouldn't be able to get very far in a floor-length gown and high heels. Through the jungle. On a dark night. "Say," Digger said in sudden comprehension. "We're being kidnapped. You can't do this. I'm a reporter."
Calixte reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a small, snub-nosed revolver. He pointed it negligently at Digger and said, "Shut up."
Downs wisely did.
They didn't have long to wait. From the road that intersected the one they'd been driving upon came the cadenced sound of marching feet. Chrysalis turned to stare down the road and saw what looked like a column of fireflies, bobbing up and down, coming in their direction. It took a moment, but she realized that it was actually a troop of marching men. They wore long, white robes whose hems brushed the roadtop. Each carried a long, skinny candle in his left hand and each was also crowned with a candle set on his forehead by a cloth circlet, producing the firefly effect. They wore masks. There were about fifteen of them.
Leading the column was an immense man who had a decidedly bovine look about him. He was dressed in the cheap, tattered clothes of a Haitian peasant. He was one of the largest men that Chrysalis had ever seen, and as soon as he spotted her he headed straight toward her. He stood before her drooling and rubbing his crotch, which, Chrysalis was surprised and not happy to see, was bulging outward and stretching the frayed fabric of his jeans.
"Jesus," Digger muttered. "We're in trouble now. He's an ace."
Chrysalis glanced at the reporter. "How do you know?"
"Well, ah, he looks like one, doesn't he?"
He looked like someone who'd been touched by the wild card virus, Chrysalis thought, but that didn't necessarily make him an ace. Before she could question Digger further, however, the bull-like man said something in Creole, and Calixte snapped off a guttural "Non" in answer.
The bull-man seemed momentarily ready to dispute Calixte's apparent order, but decided to back down. He continued to glower at Chrysalis and finger his erection as he spoke in turn to the strangely garbed men who had accompanied him.
Three of them came forward and dragged a protesting Dorian Wilde from the backseat of the limo. The poet looked around bewilderedly, fixed his bleary eyes on the bull-man, and giggled.
Calixte grimaced. He snatched his cocomacaques from Wilde and lashed out with it, spitting the word "Masisi" as he struck.
The blow landed where Wilde's neck curved into his shoulder, and the poet moaned and sagged. The three men supporting him couldn't hold him, and he fell to the ground just as all hell broke loose.
The snap, crack, and pop of small-arms fire sounded from the foliage bordering the roadside, and a couple of the men so strangely crowned by candles went down. A few others broke and ran for it, though most held their ground. The bull-man bellowed in rage and hurtled toward the undergrowth. Chrysalis, who'd dropped to the ground at the first sound of gunfire, saw him get hit in the upper body at least twice, but he didn't even stagger. He crashed into the underbrush and in a moment high-pitched screams mixed with his bellowing.
Calixte crouched behind the limo and calmly returned fire. Digger, like Chrysalis, was huddled on the ground, and Wilde just lay there moaning. Chrysalis decided that it was time to exercise the better part of valor. She crawled under the limo, cursing as she felt her expensive gown snag and tear.