Rogue Angel - Restless Soul Part 17

Annja had attended more than a few voodoo ceremonies in New Orleans, during her unescorted youthful adventures away from the orphanage. In the back of her mind she relived the music and colorful clothes. In one outing a tall woman went into a trance to communicate with the spirits of her dead relatives. In New Orleans Catholicism was mixed in with some of the voodoo ceremonies, and healing the mind and body was a central message.

Historically, voodoo spread from Africa in the 1500s as the slave trade blossomed. Tribesmen abducted into slavery from Africa's west coast, now Gambia and Senegal all the way to the Congo, brought their religious beliefs with them. In the Caribbean islands, where they were forced to work on the plantations and their owners tried to turn them into Christians, they kept their faith and continued performing the ancient rituals in secret. The term voodoo, voodoo, or or vodou vodou at the time, came from the African Dahomey tribe. at the time, came from the African Dahomey tribe.

Annja knew that even in the present day voodoo pract.i.tioners believed in one supreme being that ruled over men's and women's families, love matters, justice, health, wealth, happiness, work and their ability to provide food for their children. Offerings were made as requests for help in a particular area, such as to improve hunting or harvesting. The pract.i.tioners' ancestors were sought for protection and guidance through trances and spells, and more than half of the rites involved health or healing.

When slaves in the New World were threatened with death if they continued the old rites, they found a parallel in Catholicism and outwardly adopted that religion. Catholics prayed to saints, as voodoo believers sought the spirits of their ancestors-all to intercede in their favor to the supreme being, or one G.o.d.

But in all the time she'd been in New Orleans, she'd never come across something like the skull bowl.

New Orleans was perfect for voodoo to spread because of its mix of cultures-French, Spanish and Indian. Haitian immigrants were added to the meld of Africans who were brought to Louisiana via the slave trade.

The New Orleans rituals Annja had observed involved healing, pacifying the spirits of ancestors, reading dreams, creating potions, casting spells for protection and initiating new priests and priestesses. She'd been to more than she could remember, finding it all fascinating and far more interesting than schoolwork and ch.o.r.es.

Vaughan covered some of the history in his ramblings, unaware that Annja was well versed on the subject, and oblivious to her New Orleans roots.

On one of her forays away from the orphanage she had hopped on a Haunted Tour of New Orleans and visited Marie Laveau's tomb. Annja performed the traditional wish spell, turning around three times in front of the voodoo queen's grave and knocking three times on the tomb. She had wished to be adopted the next day by a nice family, and she left a hair ornament as an offering. The wish didn't come true, and Annja had thought her offering not good enough. In later years Annja realized the wish spell was only a hook for tourists.

New Orleans was often referred to as the birthplace of Voodoo in America, Annja. Louisiana gained slaves from the French colonies of Martinique, Santa Domingo and Guadeloupe-which were considered thick with Voodoo. Haitians fled to New Orleans to add their beliefs. As it evolved, New Orleans Voodoo began to differ from practices in Africa and the Caribbean because it tended to put more emphasis on magic than religion, incorporating live snakes and thriving, as Voodoo was not suppressed in the States. Magical charms were prevalent, including gris-gris bags and Voodoo dolls," he wrote.

The last time Annja visited New Orleans, an old friend told her that a little less than twenty percent of the population embraced voodoo and new churches had sprung up. Annja's friend was involved with hoodoo, which incorporated spells and superst.i.tions and included elements of the occult and witchcraft.

Your skull container might be Hoodoo, not Voodoo, Vaughan continued.

Now Annja stopped skimming and focused on each word. She took a gulp of coffee and held it in her mouth as she kept reading.

Or, more likely, it might be from some subgroup that became disenfranchised with Voodoo and created a dark offshoot as a way to punish their persecutors. It is dark, Annja, that thing you found...just like the one in the Florida museum. Those symbols on the outside, they're a corruption of a traditional, ancient Voodoo spell. They incorporate the symbols for Kalfu, Papa Ghede and Legba.

Annja was familiar with the names. Papa Ghede was the lwa lwa of death and resurrection; Legba was the keeper of the gate between the worlds of life and death, and he was considered the origin of life and regeneration; and Kalfu was Legba's counterpart, the birther of darkness, and a dangerous of death and resurrection; Legba was the keeper of the gate between the worlds of life and death, and he was considered the origin of life and regeneration; and Kalfu was Legba's counterpart, the birther of darkness, and a dangerous lwa, lwa, or or loa loa-a voodoo spirit.

The largest symbol on your container is a melding of the sun, the moon and a cross, the symbols of Legba, Kalfu and Papa Ghede, respectively. That's why I think it came from New Orleans, because a few Voodoo-related cults that sprang up there in the late 1700s were known for corrupting traditional symbols and values. The cults were subsequently put down by the real Voodoo pract.i.tioners who considered their rivals malevolent and dangerous. I'd set your container at two hundred and twenty to two hundred and forty years old. Best guess without studying it firsthand. The container in the Florida museum was suspected to be that old.

She remembered that Papa Ghede was supposedly the first man who ever died in the world and that now he waited at the crossroads to escort the dying to the afterlife, a favorable counterpart to the striking and ominous Baron Samedi.

I want to study the symbols a little longer and do a little reading, but I believe the intent of the spell on your container is to trap the soul of a person, keeping it hidden from Kalfu, Legba and Papa Ghede. The person ensorcelled in effect never reaches the crossroads and dies for all eternity, experiencing the moment of his or her death over and over and never able to go beyond it. A horrendous torture...if such magical things are to be believed. Something intimate of the person-a finger, maybe, or a hank of hair-would have to be sealed inside. Very black magic.

Dog tags and blood would be intimate to a soldier, Annja thought.

I found the skull bowl in the mountains in Northern Thailand, Annja had written, believing it to be an Asian relic...not in her wildest imaginings to be something from New Orleans.

Amazing that such a thing got all the way over to a remote part of Thailand, Vaughan wrote in a second message. But then how do people get from one spot to the next-planes, trains, automobiles and ships. Maybe someone bought it at a flea market and sold it on eBay to a collector in Bangkok. Who knows? Are you going to bring it back to the States with you? I'd like to take a closer look. We could meet somewhere.

Annja didn't reply to that last question, though she did email him an effusive thank-you note and told him the container had been broken and that she would stay in touch with him if she learned more about it.

The Ferguson CD ended and a cla.s.sical piece started, a piano concerto that she guessed was Brahms. Annja groaned. She didn't mind cla.s.sical music, but at the moment she would have preferred something shrieking or at least livelier.

She looked at the business cards of the antiques dealers that she'd taken from the smugglers. Maybe the skull container had come to one of them. Maybe quite a bit of the treasure in the cavern had come through one or more of the antiques shops.

There were phone numbers on the back, different than the ones listed on the front with the business name and address. Annja downed the rest of the coffee and reached for two of the Twinkies Pete had dropped off. She ate them quickly, barely registering the taste and craving more. Then she stretched forward for the telephone.

But the next call wasn't to one of the dealers, or to Luartaro. She glanced at the wall clock. It was 4:00 a.m., too early to disturb Luartaro or whoever was on duty at the lodge front desk. She dialed Doug Morrell and left a message on his voice mail.

"They're called spirit caves," she said. "They're amazing, and I found one undisturbed, with real remains. None of the coffins previously discovered had any bodies in them."

Annja took a deep breath, adopted her most persuasive voice and continued. "As for the monster rumored to be involved, I think you'll be surprised at just how...grisly...it all is."

She intended to start in on the antiques stores, calling the one in Chiang Mai first. But her body had other ideas. With the exception of the brief time she'd dozed after Doc had mended her leg, she'd been up for forty-eight hours. Annja slumped forward on the desk and fell asleep.

23.

Someone nudged her gently. "Rose is here for work. And she'd, uh, like to use her desk."

Annja got up with a start, her neck making a popping sound and a lengthy list of curse words stopping in her throat. She'd had so much to do! She hadn't time for the luxury of a nap.

But she had to admit the sleep was necessary. She glanced at the clock-eight-thirty. She'd slept for four-and-a-half hours. No wonder she felt better, but at the same time stiff. Her shoulders cracked when she rotated them. She hadn't chosen the most comfortable position for a snooze. Feeling her forehead, she detected a line across it, a mark left by the edge of the desk.

Pete shoved another cup of coffee under her nose. "With real cream. The kitchen's open. Join me for breakfast?"

That was an invitation Annja was quick to accept.

A short, stocky young woman in a three-piece suit nodded curtly to Annja and took her place behind the desk.

"Rose Walters, meet Annja Creed," Pete said. "Annja, Rose."

The women gave each other polite smiles.

Annja's stomach growled noticeably.

"Our cook used to work at O'Malley's downtown."

"An Irish restaurant?"

"The best in my opinion," Pete said with a grin.

Shortly after she settled at the table and was brought a steaming plate of food, Annja thought it was the best she'd eaten in quite some time. As Pete, who had changed into a suit and tie sometime while Annja was sleeping, explained about his dealings with the Chiang Mai police, she wolfed down a perfectly seasoned ribeye steak, three eggs scrambled with peppers, country potato cubes, mushrooms, toast and jam, fried tomatoes and baked beans.

"So you're not a suspect in anything," he finished as she upended her second gla.s.s of orange juice. "You're a hero, stopping a smuggling operation that has probably plagued this part of the world for quite some time. I got a call shortly after you, uh, took a nap. It was Officer Johnson. He seems quite taken with you, by the way. He said that fellow you had trussed up in the truck was quite talkative. Maybe all that bouncing around."

"Or maybe somebody went all Jack Bauer on him," Annja said as she reached for more potatoes.

Pete c.o.c.ked his head, not understanding the expression.

"Maybe the Thai police are persuasive," she said.

He picked at his own breakfast, then reached across the table for the coffeepot and poured her another cup.

Annja thought she might float away from as much as she'd been drinking. She looked around for the restroom.

"Phillip came in two hours ago and went over to the station with that rust bucket of a truck you drove here. He called a little while ago on his cell-"

Annja gripped the edge of the table. Luartaro had a cell phone, but she didn't know the number. She needed to call him...after a visit to the restroom. She downed the rest of the coffee.

"Phillip got a look at some of the stuff, and someone in the station told him one piece dated back several centuries and had been reported stolen last year. Probably quite a bit of it does date back a long way. Old, old stuff you found. A real hero, Miss Creed."

She pushed herself away from the table.

"There's been a problem for some time, people smuggling relics from ancient Asian temples and museums. It happens all over. Central and South America had tons of trouble with treasure hunters raiding the ruins. It was in the news," Pete said.

Annja well knew about artifact theft and the resulting cultural loss.

"This gang you broke up trafficked particularly in gold."

She could have told them that, based on what she'd seen in the treasure cavern. In fact, she had told Johnson that during the ride to Chiang Mai. And she'd probably tell the authorities again and again when they questioned her.

"Wonder if they still need to talk to me."

Pete nodded and stirred his eggs. "Phillip said they expect you down at the station sometime this afternoon. Just for questions. Like I said, you're not a suspect. You're a hero. The local paper will probably want to do a piece."

Standing over the table, all the wonderful scents of the kitchen a.s.sailed her. The spiced eggs and potatoes were especially strong, and she almost sat back down and asked for thirds. For some reason, she never seemed to gain weight no matter how much she shoveled in.

"Restroom?" she asked.

He pointed to a door over his shoulder.

"And you'll get me a ride to the police station?"

He'd finally taken a forkful of eggs and was eating it, the words coming out m.u.f.fled. "Driffmyself." He swallowed. "I'll be happy to drive you myself."

She shook her head. "You look exhausted. On second thought, I'll take a cab. I insist."

She had a stop in mind before the station. After freshening up she returned to Rose's desk and picked up the antiques-dealer cards she'd left there and the bag with the broken skull bowl.

"Mind if I borrow your phone?" she asked.

Rose waggled her fingers at it. She was busily typing away on the laptop Annja had been using. But this time it was plugged in so the battery could recharge. Annja took the phone a few feet away from the desk, as far as the cord allowed.

It took several minutes for the man at the lodge's front desk to summon a sleepy and somewhat incoherent Luartaro.

"I have been worried about you!" He added that he had not yet panicked, however, as the resort reported that she had come and gone yesterday evening, and that he spoke with one of the policemen who'd remained behind after Annja left for Chiang Mai.

Annja gave him a rapid-fire account of finding Zakkarat's body and dealing with the smugglers at the cavern, and told him she would return to the resort as soon as possible.

"I have to talk to more police today. Just routine." Indeed, she figured it would be. There were always reports to fill out. "And there's an antiques store here in the city I want to-"

"You think someone there's involved with this." Luartaro's tone was matter-of-fact. "I think I know you well, Annja. You are curious, and you cannot quit on a mystery. My sister would like you."

Annja had no reply for that. "I have to go," she said.

"Take care of yourself, Annja. I don't want to lose you."

The cabdriver took her for a tourist, and when she asked him a few questions about the city, he broke into a clearly memorized speech in fluent English.

"This city, it was the capital of all the Lanna Kingdom after it was founded almost eight hundred years ago. It was also the land's cultural center, and the center of Buddhism in Northern Thailand. Many, many temples were built by King Mengrai. We will drive by one of them."

Annja had pa.s.sed him the address she wanted to go to. "It was a little more than four hundred years ago that King Mengrai's dynasty ended and Burma occupied this land. To this day you can see the Burmese influence on the city's architecture. There and there." He pointed to a pair of squat, ornately decorated buildings, one of which looked to be an art gallery.

"It was in the late eighteenth century that King Taksin-"