Somewhere nearby, Ferret was snarling in frustrated rage.
The tonton macoutes abruptly lowered Lynx to the ground holding him tightly. A hard object brushed against his head. Then his captors astonished him they sliced the nylon rope from his wrists. Elated, he flexed his fingers. But the moment his elation changed to feral wrath when the ropes were replaced by metal shackles. “No!” he bellowed, and heaved.
The men in black had already started to release him. They hastened off toward one of the openings, snickering laughing.
Lynx looked behind him to discover a wooden post to which the shackles were fastened. Four feet of chain limited mobility. A hasty glance to his right revealed Ferret and Gremlin chained to other posts. To his left Eleanore was sagging lifelessly with her eyes closed.
“The best is yet to come, freak.”
The mocking voice drew Lynx’s gaze upward to bleachers.
Seated above the posts and leaning over the edge was the Baron. “Are you ready for the main event? It’s midnight.”
“What happens? Do you turn into a pumpkin?”
“Not quite,” Baron Laveau said, and nodded at opposite side of the arena.
Lynx glanced in that direction and spotted a huge gate. “Let me guess.
You’re having a dance?”
“Of a sort,” the Baron replied, grinning. “A dance of death.”
The tonton macoutes were almost all in position for the ceremony, dutifully filling the bleachers from bottom to top and walking up narrow aisles to reach the higher rows.
Lynx tested the shackles, surging against the steel chains, when they proved to be more than a match for his genetically heightened strength.
He recalled several stories he’d heard to the effect that Blade had broken chains on one or two occasions, and he doubted whether even the giant Warrior could break those restraining chains. But he had to find a way to get loose. If he didn’t-
“Let the ceremony begin!” Baron Laveau shouted, standing. He beamed at Majesta and Violet, who were on his left, and then glanced toward the drum, “Sound the Drum.”
Lynx saw a tall man lift a mallet of some sort and strike the drum. The booming retort reverberated in the arena and out over the bayou. He guessed the sound could be heard for miles under the right conditions.
The tonton macoutes began to chant in an unknown language.
The mallet struck the drum, and again the thunderous percussion echoed on the night breeze.
Lynx suspected what was coming. He ignored the drumming and the chanting of the tonton macoutes, who had only filled slightly over half the bleachers, and devoted his efforts to breaking the chains. He wrenched and pulled and lunged in reckless abandon, heedless of the pain the shackles caused as they dug into his wrists. If he didn’t get free, he was dead. And he didn’t want to die. Not when Melody was waiting anxiously for his return. Not when he had so to live for. A future with the woman he loved. Young kids of his very own.
Damn the injustice of it all!
His arms hurting terribly, his wrists bleeding profusely, he kept at his task with undiminished intensity. His hybrid strength enabled him to persist far beyond the point where a man would have weakened and collapsed. He bared his teeth, his chest heaving, and struggled, struggled, struggled. The drumming had become a monotonous backdrop to his efforts, the chanting a litany goading him to continually renew his attempts. Only when he heard Ferret yelling his name did he finally cease and stay still, weary to his core, dripping sweat and blood. He looked to his right.
“Don’t you see it?” Ferret asked in consternation.
“Dear God, no!” Gremlin declared.
Lynx shifted, and every hair on his neck and stood on end at the horrifying apparition slithering from tunnel not 50 feet away. He inadvertently gasped and recoiled.
Damballah had arrived.
The Snake God of the bayou.
Primal power incarnate.
Lynx’s worst nightmare. He crouched and formed his fingers into rigid claws, growling fiercely, resolved to go out fighting to the last. Fear tried to dominate him, sparked by his dread of all snakes, and he asserted self-control with a supreme exertion of willpower.
The drumming stopped. The chanting too. An expectant, heavy hush descended on the area. The gathered members of the Black Snake Society gaped at their Deity.
Damballah entered the temple slowly. The monstrous reptile drew its entire 40-foot length inside, then slid toward the posts as it had done countless times in the past, its chilling yellow orbs fixed on the creatures it would soon devour.
Lynx had never felt so helpless. The titanic serpent dwarfed him into insignificance; he’d be swallowed in one gulp.
“Oh great Damballah!” Baron Laveau called out. “Hear our prayer.
Accept these tokens for our loyalty and grant us continued good fortune!
Take them! They are yours.”
The Snake God crossed to within six feet of the sacrifical posts and halted. Its mighty head rose into the air. Ten feet. Twelve.
Lynx saw the thing looking at him, and trembled.
“Feast on these morsels!” the Baron yelled. “Enjoy the fruits of our labor for you!”
Damballah’s head rose ponderously, the great reptile staring at the man in red.
Lynx also glanced upward, wishing he could throttle the Baron’s neck, peeved at the idea of being killed without a chance of retribution, and because he was the only person in the whole temple to be gazing in that direction, because everyone else had eyes only for the snake, he alone saw it, he alone witnessed the giant rising from concealment behind the bleachers at the very top, he alone observed the herculean seven-foot-tall figure race down the aisle to the right of the Baron. He alone saw the cyclopean makeshift spear clenched in the giant’s brawny hands, a spear ten feet in length and six inches in diameter, fashioned from the limb of an oak, sharpened to a point by the Bowies the giant always carried.
Blade was there!
Tensing in anticipation, Lynx watched as Blade came to the end of the aisle near the Baron. He expected the giant to hurl the spear. Instead, in awe and wonderment, he saw Blade place a combat boot on the very edge and vault into the air, leaping high and wide.
The giant’s momentum and bulging muscles served him in good stead.
He arced up and over Damballah’s head, and at the apex of his leap, at the very instant he hung in the air over the serpent’s eyes, he bent in half and swung the spear with all the force in his arms and shoulders, driving the point into the snake’s flesh, penetrating to half the length of the spear, and held on tight.
For a heartbeat nothing happened.
Suddenly the Snake God exploded into action. Damballah’s mouth opened wide and it hissed louder than a thousand cottonmouths. Its body convulsed, and its head shot even higher and thrashed wildly.
Blade clung to the spear in desperation, his arms and legs wrapped around the shaft.
Majesta screamed.
The black snake rose almost 20 feet, half of its span suspended above the posts, and then it crashed down, falling between Lynx and Ferret, a full third of its body smashing over the rim and onto the bleachers, onto the Baron and the women with him, crushing them.
Blade let go of the spear and jumped. He landed to the right of the serpent, took hold of the top of the smooth wall, and swung down to the arena.
Above him pandemonium erupted. Damballah continued to convulse in a violent paroxysm of monumental proportions, bearing to the left on the bleachers, sliding over tonton macoutes or battering them aside with its blunt head. Screeches of anguish and terror filled the temple. Panic spread like wildfire, and those men in black who could do so, fled. But the majority never made it out. Limp, broken bodies lay everywhere.