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Excerpt from Voodoo Moon by Alisha Paige (Not Contracted Yet)....FOR ADULTS ONLY (Contains Violence and Erotica) Magenta colored rays of last light shot across the cane fields, turning the yellow stalks burnt orange by the time Talin knocked once on the back door of the great house. His own wife led him inside. Soon she’d be back home, beyond the cane fields, back in the bed where they loved one another. Where they dreamed of escape and a life together. Just the two of them, lying free on the white sands of Montego Bay. No chains to keep them. No fear. Both of them knew they’d likely die on the plantation but visions of freedom gave them a wisp of hope. Something to cling to during the hard times. Times like now.
“Ya is late. She asked for ya twice. Don’ keep her waiting again,” Daisy whispered, wide eyed. Afraid for them both. What if the White Witch knew? What if she knew of their secret marriage and planned to kill them both?
Talin fingered the peacock feather. He folded up the parchment paper into a tiny square and stuffed it into his pocket. Even stealing a sheet of parchment paper from her mistress could prove fatal, but the spell called for it.
Daisy glanced behind her and then stole a quick kiss. He took her face in his hands, watching the kitchen door, pulling her to him again. The feather tickled her cheek as he kissed her between heated, anxious breaths.
“I love ya. Don’ worry.”
Daisy nodded. “Hurry. Go to her.”
“Rusha home. Do the spell when da moon rises clear ovuh da cane fields.”
She pushed his chest with her palms. “I will-a. Go naw. And be careful,” she hissed as a tear dripped from her long eyelashes.
Talin frowned and kissed her one last time. “Don’ cry. Go home. I’ll see ya in the morn.”
Daisy let herself out and ran across the wide cane fields as the wind whistled into her ears. Dry, autumn leaves rustled in the breeze, twirling, dancing behind her, chasing her skirts as she fled home, crying silently, praying her love would return to her. Praying that the White Witch would spare her husband. A pain shot through her at the reality of it all. Now. Tonight. He would betray her. He had to or death would be swift.
Tonight he would lie with another woman. A wicked woman. Annie Palmer, the voodoo queen of Rose Hall. Of French heritage, she’d moved to Haiti at the tender age of ten. Both of her parents died of yellow fever and she was raised by her Haitian nanny, groomed for the black magick. And children are most impressionable while still in a state of innocence. Those taught the voodoo while still pure attain the darkest realms. And Annie was as black as a shadow during a new moon. No light came from her eyes. She was all death. All evil. Wicked through and through. The devil soared through her veins, lapping at any sense of good or human kindness. Nothing of the sort came from this kind of voodoo queen.
Her powers had grown tenfold over the years. Her slaves feared her. Her husbands feared her. If they survived. Two had not. And number three stayed away on business trips. It was no doubt she instructed him too. He was far too old and pudgy for her taste. His wealth served it’s purpose well. He kept the plantation’s cane business flourishing and she kept the slaves cowering in fear. To be called to work in the great house was no honor on this plantation. The home slaves lived in darkest dread. She killed for a wrong look or if even one of them became too ill to work. It was certain death, after weeks of torture in the dungeon beneath the house, days and nights filled with soaring rage from a woman so beautiful. No one could deny her beauty. The first taken to her chambers had thought their affair would seal his freedom. It was his death warrant.
Talin climbed the creaky stairs, leading to the White Witch’s bed chamber. He would be the third lover she’d taken this fall but he would not die like the previous two or the other dozen or so before him.
Rounding the hall leading to Annie’s bedroom, a blast of cold wind assaulted him. She was watching him. Goosebumps rose in swarms across his warm flesh. Spirits pushed him back. Good spirits. Loved ones. Ancestors that had come before him, pushing hard on his shoulders and chest. He grunted, walking through the phantom warnings. The dark hallway glowed with burning magick voodoo lamps; coconut shells, crabs shells and pumpkin gourds filled with bones, herbs, dirt, powders and petals floating in oil. A sorceress’s candle for the dead. She was calling out for protection for herself, destruction for others. Hideous evil, wicked intent bled from the walls, silently screaming throughout the halls of the great house. He wanted to run but could not. He would fight. She had no idea that Talin was a voodoo priest before enslavement. Back in Africa he was the magick one. The anointed one. A houngan sent by the spirits as a white priest.
Of goodness.
He’d been raised to exorcise the demons and now he would face one of the worst design. A beautiful seductress with a serpent’s soul.
He’d been able to conceal his priesthood. Goodness was often overlooked and so it was with him on the plantation. A leader of the slaves, in charge of hundreds that worked the cane fields. He knew she could read minds. Not his. He wouldn’t allow it. The magick wouldn’t allow it. He knew she would one day call on him. Take him as her lover as she did so many others. The spirits foretold it. He knew it as a boy in Africa. Visions of the sultry White Witch lying in her bedchambers floated through his dreams. Lying in wait in a red room. A murderess. He would end it all. She knew it, yet she did not.
Talin called to her. Called to the demon within and it only made her want him more. His power. His refusal to do her favors, falling for her acts of kindness. Like all the others. All of them dead now. How many times had she pretended to be smitten with a strong slave? A man in chains. A man she could control. A man she owned. All of them had thought she really loved them, that her infatuation with them would be their freedom. Her powers were so strong, so void of the light, they never saw it coming. Like a mother smothering a new born child. Her magick over them had made them believe. He would not. He would fight her and win.
Heavy rains pummeled the roof as he rapped on her door.
“Come in.”
Talin pushed the door open with two thick fingers, peering inside. She lay naked on red, silk sheets. He’d never seen her hair down. She was a sight. Beyond his imagination. A tiny miniature of a woman. Four foot ten in height with eyes the color of green meadows, hair black as a raven’s wing, trailing over her breasts in silky waves, her lips as full as an African woman, pursed and wet.
“Shut the door behind you,” she cooed.
Talin swallowed, shut the door and fingered the feather in his pocket. Her powers were already weakening him. He felt no more dread, no more darkness. Only hot, overbearing lust. His mind went numb. His cock throbbed, lifting against his trousers. She crooked her finger at him. He walked to the bed. Patting the pillow, she smiled, showing off brilliant white teeth, laughing, arching her slender, ivory neck. His erection grew. She drew a circle around both nipples with long, painted finger nails, licked her parted lips and opened her legs wide, her knees pointing to the ceiling, her wetness flickering in candle glow. Sweat slithered down his brow, over his nose, cheeks, dripping from his chin. The room was unbearably hot. A fever shot through him. Like iridescent poison, longing to race through him and kill him.
He was hers. Daisy was forgotten. He only wanted to sheathe himself inside of her, taste her, please her and make her scream. To bed this woman. A master of slaves. Tonight he would dominate and thrill the White Witch. Forget Black Magick. All he could see now was her. And himself inside of this beautiful creature. He had been born for this day and the ache was so fierce. The sting of it shocked him.
“Undress,” she ordered.
Talin did as he was told. Dropped his trousers, flung his shirt off his back and kicked off his shoes. Annie sucked in a throaty breath at the sight.
“Lands! You are a mighty buck!”
Talin’s erection throbbed before her as he walked to the bedside. Annie reached out, took him in her hands, spread her legs wider and touched herself. Talin groaned, ground his teeth.
Talin. He shut his eyes. Daisy was beginning the spell. Her soul was reaching out for his but it was all he could do to acknowledge that she was calling to him. He pushed her from his mind, wanting to be angry for it, wanting to connect with her, with his magic so he could push the White Witch away but he was drunk with lust, with fever for his master. She reached for him, took his hand and pulled him to her. Talin crawled over the bed, eyeing her, sitting on his knees as she rubbed him and touched herself. His teeth ached, trying to ward off the witch’s powers, wanting to connect with his frantic wife. Knowing somewhere in the deep caverns of his mind that he should connect with his wife.
Annie was stronger than even he guessed her to be. It would take every ounce to fight her off. She moaned, arching her back, her neck as she plunged slender fingers inside herself, writhing, licking her lips, hissing, moaning.
Talin. Talin shook his head. Grunted.
Ezili Freda, goddess of love…save my love from the darkest, black magick …bring ‘im ‘ome to me. “Lick me,” Annie begged.
Talin bent his head and when he did he curled into a ball, crying out in agony, holding himself as if he’d been kicked in the groin. Annie screeched, scrambling to her feet, pacing the room, drawing the curtains closed, blowing out the candles.
“Whose in here?” she demanded, panicked, pulling on a robe, searching beneath the bed and then the wardrobe across the room.
Talin lay there wincing in pain.
“What black magick travels to my room, preventing me from lying with this man? Show yourself!”
Talin, wide eyed, in excruciating pain realized for the first time that though he was too powerful for her to read his mind, she could read Daisy’s. He slammed his eyes shut, catapulting his soul back to their home. What spell had she cast to hurt him so? His spirit shuddered at the sight beneath him. Daisy had fashioned a doll after him as if he were an enemy, poking it with needles. He had no time. No time to save her. Annie would be able to see it all. Her jealousy had driven her to it. She was to sacrifice the rooster and prepare the paket kongo filled with feathers of the dead bird, crushed leaves of twa-pawol, bwa-din and zo-devan to protect them both. Instead she’s prevented their love making. His soul drained back into his body and the pain hit him again like a rock to the head. And again she poked the doll. He cried out in agony. There was no way he could go to her, help her if she kept him in such pain.
Annie paced back and forth, chanting an old Haitian voodoo spell. Talin watched her. Ah, luxury. Daisy had stopped, afforded him a moment of bliss. A chance to catch his breath before the next needle. Annie stopped at the mirror and what he saw in the reflection made him cry out in fright. A demon stared back. Not the beautiful woman with long, flowing hair. A hideous creature with curled horns, scraggly gray hair, drooling, stared back. She was a true priestess of the devil. A dark mambo. Black voodoo had claimed her soul.
He watched the reflection speak out loud, saying the most lovely and the most terrible thing he’d ever heard. “Daisy.”
And then she ran from her bedchamber, bounding down the stairs and out the back door, fleeing to the slaves’ homes. Somewhere she’d never gone before. He struggled off the bed and watched her from the narrow bedroom window. His heart lurched. Horror upon horrors tumbled toward him when he saw the White Witch wielding a machete high above her head.
“No! Daisy!”
Then he fell to his knees when she poked him again. He crumbled into a heap as waves of nausea soared through him. Another poke in the groin and then the head. He moaned in agony, grabbed the window sill and looked toward his home. He heard Daisy scream and wanted to toss his soul to her though he’d have little power, he’d be with her in her final moments. If only he could have a few seconds to garner enough power to do so.
Annie flung open the flimsy straw door and rose the machete high above her head. Daisy shrieked, still clutching the doll when the White Witch cut her hand, slicing the doll in two.
Talin gasped for breath, his palm against the windowpane. “Da-Daisy,” he gurgled. Blood poured from his mouth, spreading across the wooden floors. He reached for the feather in his pocket but felt only flesh. Talin crawled to the bedside, found his pants and then the feather and parchment paper. Naked, on all fours, covered in blood, he chanted the words to the voodoo spirit that would take him into a new life form, saving him from certain death.
“Papa Gede, father of the here and afta, take me to the next world, the next life so I ma’ live long enuff ta save’ my love from the White Witch.”
Now drained of most his life’s blood, near death, shivering and mad with fright for Daisy, Talin smeared the feather and the parchment paper over the pool of blood collected beneath him. Rage shot through his veins. His back arched, his limbs shook. Pain tore through his muscles as he prayed silently for death, an end to this misery.
He heard a crackling of bones, snapping, twisting and then only the rain pelting the windows. He lay there. Painless. Lying in warm blood. He opened his eyes. The room was now a muted gray. He blinked and stood. On all fours. He looked at his hands and screamed. Beneath him were four gray legs covered in fur and the sound coming from his throat was not a man in agony but some kind of animal he’d never even seen in the rain forest but had seen in years past, in Africa. A wolf.
He sniffed and caught her scent. Daisy. And then he remembered. He leapt through the window, past the balcony below where the White Witch doled out orders and onto the back lawn, running before his swift feet landed, sprinting through the cane fields, back home to find his wife. The door was still flapping in the rain and wind when he found her, lying on the bed in a pool of blood, clutching the doll cleaved in half while the White Witch hissed from the corner, her white robe stained, splattered with his wife’s blood. In an instant she was changed and charging, nails extended like claws, growing from her fingertips.
There was no hesitation. He leapt for her throat, tore it out while she changed to her demon form. Her horns rattled against the wooden planks when he dropped her and leapt to the bed, licking Daisy’s ashen face. Her eyes were open, filled with tears. He nuzzled her, whined and laid upon her body feeling for one precious breath of life.
He was too late. Horrendous pain and misery flooded his soul and now he could not even hold her, kiss her, bury her behind their home. He stood beside her while the winds roared, the rain came in torrents, the door still smacking the frame like a man gone mad. A terrible howl of miserable loss erupted from his throat. His keen ears picked up voices. Slave voices. He darted off the bed and stuck his nose out the door. Two slaves approached with torches billowing in the heavy rains. He glanced back at her, whined and leapt through the rains, running for the rain forests, never to return.
~Happy Halloween
Alisha Paige
www.alishapaige.com
