"Now for the First Death;" Major Shroud told him, and took hold of Decker's left arm. "I'll grant you a little respite, Martin, and take the fingers off your left hand first."
He raised his sword—but as he did so, Decker heard a furious clucking. Hicks came forward, and he was holding up the wildly flapping rooster by its legs.
"Chango!" Hicks shouted. "Come to me, Chango! This is your sacrifice! This is your blood! Come eat! Come drink! Kabio, kabio, site! Welcome to our house!"
Major Shroud turned his head around and screamed back, "What are you doing, you damn fool nigger? Get away from here! Get away! By God, I'm going to have your head next!"
"Chango! Let us see you! Chango, master of fire! Chango, master of thunder and lightning! Chango--are you master of your own destiny?"
With that, Hicks slashed the carving knife across the rooster's neck, almost beheading it. He swung the bird around and around, high above his head, and blood flew everywhere, spattering the walls, spattering Decker's face, pattering onto Major Shroud's hat and coat.
"No!" Major Shroud roared. "No, Chango! I forbid it! I forbid it!"
But Decker could see the blue crackle of electricity
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crawling around the outline of Major Shroud's face. Then—while Major Shroud still ranted in frustrated fury—a lattice of quivering light formed around his head.
"No! No! No! Chango! You have to protect me! If I die, you die!"
But Chango slowly rose out of Major Shroud like a ghost rising from a grave, his arms outstretched. His face was a mask, decorated with fire. His eyes burned red, his hair was like a hundred streamers of flame, and his mouth was filled with dancing, sizzling voltage. He wore a cloak of billowing brown smoke, in which Decker could glimpse intermittent flashes of lightning.
"You can't leave me!" shrieked Major Shroud. "You can't leave me!"
The whole apartment began to shake. Pictures dropped off the walls, lamps overturned and smashed on the floor, chairs tipped over. A double fork of lightning jumped from one side of the living room to the other, and Decker was almost blinded. Then—almost immediately—there was an earsplitting bellow of thunder. The couch burst into flames, and then the drapes.
One arm raised to protect his face from the heat, Hicks yelled, "Chango! You are indeed your own master! You are the master of the world!"
Major Shroud climbed off Decker and went for Hicks with his sword flailing. Decker scrambled to his feet, too, and pulled his Anaconda out of his Civil War holster. Hicks was retreating toward the kitchen, trying to parry Major Shroud's lunges by wildly waving the dead rooster from side to side. In the middle of the room, half hidden by thick, swirling smoke, Chango glittered and blazed.
Decker cocked his revolver and pointed it at Major Shroud's head. "Major Shroud!"
There was another flash of lightning, and then another
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rumble of thunder, far longer than the first, a rumble that seemed to go on and on, as if it would never stop. Lumps of plaster dropped from the ceiling, and wide cracks appeared in the walls. The apartment was already fiercely hot, and one of the windows shattered. A hungry wind gusted in from the river, and the couch flared up like a Norse funeral pyre.
With the briarlike afterimage of the lightning strike still dancing in front of his eyes, Decker took aim at Major Shroud again, and fired. Major Shroud tilted his head to one side, and the bullet hit the picture of the Dutch girl and smashed the glass. Decker fired again, and again, but Major Shroud moved like a speeded-up film, and both of his shots went wide.
"You'll have to hit me to kill me!" he screamed, above the funneling noise of the fire. He hacked furiously at Hicks, and caught him a blow on the shoulder. Hicks said, "Shit!" and dropped to the floor, still clutching the bloody rooster. Now Major Shroud turned on Decker, and came striding toward him, with his sword whistling in ever more complicated figures-of-eight.
"Nine Deaths, Martin? Ten? I'll give you twenty!"
He lifted his sword right back behind his head, and there was a look on his face that Decker had never seen on a man before. It was triumph, and mockery, and an excitement that was almost orgasmic. But it was more than that. It was the look of a man who had undergone a physical and spiritual metamorphosis. He was no longer a man, nor a beast, but something altogether more terrible. He was viciousness incarnate, and vengefulness, and war.
Decker fired at him again, and again he missed. He was just about to fire again when there was a third flash of lightning, so bright that Decker was blinded. It struck the tip of Major Shroud's sword, and Major Shroud was hurled bodily
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across the living room, colliding with the opposite wall and tumbling onto the floor. He lay there, jerking and twitching, with smoke pouring out of his coat. His beard glowed with a thousand orange sparks, like a smoldering sweeping brush.
Decker looked around. The burning figure of Chango was standing in the smoke, with one arm still extended. Decker said, "You did that?"
Chango opened his mouth and static electricity sparkled on his teeth. He didn't actually speak, but somehow Decker could hear him, inside his head, and in a strange way, more like pictures than words, he could understand what Chango was trying to tell him.
He kept my spirit prisoner for thousands of darknesses. He thought of nothing but bringing pain and death to those good men who harbored my brother and sister orishas. He deserved nothing but punishment. He killed those warriors who fought to set my people free.
Decker said nothing for a moment, but nodded, and coughed.
Chango said, Your gift is well received. Your summons was welcome.
With that, his fiery image began to fade. For a few seconds, through the smoke, Decker could make out an arrangement of twinkling stars, more like a distant constellation than a dwindling god. Then Chango was gone, and there was nothing but the burning couch and the blackened, burning drapes that flapped in the wind.
Major Shroud groaned. Decker walked over to the other side of the room and looked down at him. Major Shroud's face was blackened and his eyes were rimmed with red.
"—betrayed me," he complained. "Even my god betrayed me."
"Nobody betrayed anybody except you, Major Shroud."
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"It was war. That's what you forget. It was war, and I was doing my duty. The only trouble was, I did it too well."
"Yes," Decker said. "You probably did."
With that, he cocked his Anaconda again and pointed it between Major Shroud's eyebrows. "Hicks," he said, "can you walk okay?"
"Yassuh, boss."
"Go get Sandra and her mom out of the bedroom, would you?"
Hicks limped across the living room and opened the bedroom door. "Come on out, it's safe now. But hurry."
He led them out of the door while Decker kept the muzzle of his Anaconda only an inch away from Major Shroud's forehead, unwavering.
"The South will rise again," Major Shroud said. "You'll see."
"Pity you won't," Decker replied, and pulled the trigger.
At that instant the apartment exploded. Decker was flung against the kitchen archway, knocking his head so hard that he saw nothing but a blinding white light. He managed to crawl to the door, and Hicks grabbed hold of his coat collar and dragged him out into the corridor.
"My hat!" he said. "Billy Joe will kill me if I lose my hat!"
They walked out of the apartment building together to find the street already crowded with fire trucks and squad cars and sightseers. When Decker looked back up to his apartment, he saw that flames were waving out of the window like a burning Confederate battle flag, fanned by the early-morning wind.