The Graham Masterton Collection Volume Two by Graham Masterton

Author:Graham Masterton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2017-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Decker and Hicks waited nearly a half hour for Queen Aché to make herself ready. Decker and Hicks sat at the bottom of the stairs, sullenly watched over by George and Newton. People came and went: family members and friends who had been invited to the asiento, all dressed up in their best clothes and carrying baskets of fruit, jars of honey, rum, cigars, chickens, and flowers. When they learned that the asiento had been delayed, and why, they looked across at Decker and Hicks with restless hostility, and one elderly man came over and said, “You are not the law. The orishas are the law. You have ruined my grandson’s asiento.”

Decker said, “Sorry about that, sport. Nothing personal.”

“Something bad will happen to you today because of what you have done here. You will know justice and blood.”

“Thanks for the warning, but that’s part of my job description.”

Eventually Queen Aché descended the staircase, no longer a crimson-eyed white-faced ghost in muslin, but a tall, athletic-looking black woman in skintight black leather pants and a dark brown sleeveless suede top, with six or seven silver armbands on each arm. Her head was covered by a dark brown silk scarf, tightly knotted, with a silver medallion dangling over her forehead. She carried a large leather bag over her shoulder, with fringes and beads.

One of her heavily bejeweled henchmen came down with her, a shaven-headed man with mirror sunglasses and a neck like a tree stump. “You listen to me, Mr. Detective. This is Queen Aché here and Queen Aché is the queen of all she survey. Any bad shit come to her, then a hundert times more bad shit is going to be happening to you.”

“I’ll take care of her,” Decker assured him; although he knew that, in reality, Queen Aché was coming along to take care of him.

In the car, with the two squad cars following close behind them, Decker gave Queen Aché a brief outline of who they thought they were looking for, and why. He told her all about the Devil’s Brigade, and Major Shroud, and all of his nightmares. She listened, and nodded once or twice, but said nothing.

“You don’t seem particularly surprised by any of this,” he told her, when he had finished.

“Nothing in Santería surprises me, Lieutenant. I have known people whose dead ancestors are still walking the streets after two hundred years. You forget that Yoruba beliefs not only gave birth to Santería, in America, but Candomble in Brazil and Shango in Trinidad; and in Haiti, Yoruba traditions were mixed with those of the Fon people from Dahomey, and resulted in the creation of voodoo.”

“So you think that it’s perfectly possible that the So-Scary Man could be Major Shroud himself, risen from the dead?”

“Why not? A lead-lined coffin would preserve his body—as well as all the herbs and spices that were buried along with him. And if he was really possessed by Changó, that would preserve his soul. Changó, like all of the orishas, is immortal.

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