Cold Prairie

Chapter 1

New Orleans, 1868

Remy DuMonde sweated profusely in the dense humidity of the Mississippi delta’s night air. It would have been difficult to tell if the perspiration was due to the cloying temperature or from his intense fear.

He forced himself to swallow his terror as he crept up the stairs of the majestic old mansion. Remy knew that he took a terrible risk in violating Maurice’s sanctum sanctorum and that if his brother caught him, family or not, he was as good as dead.

An unquenchable thirst for the forbidden power over life and death and, just as powerfully, a black hearted jealousy toward his older sibling prodded him upward.

Yellow light from the full moon, filtered into every color of the rainbow, shone through the stained glass windows at the top of the stairs. He reached the upper landing and paused for a moment, listening for sounds of Maurice stirring. Hearing nothing, he turned toward the left wing of the house. His candle flickered in an errant draft.

Remy slunk down the hallway, stalking carefully over the worn runner covering the hardwood floor. He stopped just outside Maurice’s door, straining to hear any noises from his sleeping brother before continuing down the hallway. Remy paused at the ornate double doors at the end of the corridor, seized by a fear so intense that his testicles drew up tight against his body and his watery bowels threatened to give way. The penalty for this incursion would not be a swift and simple death but a prolonged ordeal of unholy torment and retribution.

But he was a DuMonde and had as much steel in his spine as his fearsome brother. He squared his shoulders, took a deep breath then prepared to open the doors at the end of the hallway.

The heavy oak panels were firmly shut and locked but he had come prepared. Remy wiped his hand on his pants to dry the nervous sweat and pulled a purloined key from a pocket in his breeches. Taking a deep breath, he tried to still the shaking of his hand clenched tight around the heavy key. He paused for a moment then finally resorted to wrapping his other hand around it to still the tremors.

He inserted the key into the keyhole and it made a slight scraping sound as he pushed it in. He turned it then winced when he heard a seemingly thunderous click as the lock finally disengaged. Exhaling, he pushed on the door and it slowly opened, unoiled hinges creaking in the stillness of the empty manse. He froze and stared back at the door to Maurice’s sleeping chamber but thankfully, it remained firmly shut.

As soon as the door was open enough, he slipped inside the room and gently eased it shut behind him. He had made it this far but would still be in great danger until he could make his getaway.

He quickly lit a candle and surveyed the cavernous room. The shadows seemed to shift and move in the flickering candlelight. No moonlight penetrated this room as the stoutly barred windows had been covered with heavy moth eaten velvet drapes. Access by the maids had been barred to this room so dust lay thick throughout the chamber.

Remy raised the candle high and worked himself over to a towering bookshelf. He reached out and grasped a large leather covered tome, suspiciously free of the uniform coating of dust that shrouded its neighbors, tipping it out towards him. When he did, a section of the bookshelf slid out, leaving a narrow dark opening.

He slipped inside the newly revealed space then pressed a lever to close the secret door behind him. The light from the candle revealed a narrow, steeply angled staircase.

Remy slowly descended until he reached the bottom and found himself in a large room, strangely barren except for a pentagram, painted in red on the polished wooden floor. Remy ignored the symbol and its grisly contents as his eyes scanned the perimeter of the room. He saw a rough and stained wooden table holding an array of occult paraphernalia and cruel implements against the wall on the far side of the chamber and near it, a chest high reading table. Smiling in triumph, he skirted the pentagram, careful to keep his boots out of its confines.

Lying bound and rudely spread in the center of the pentagram in a coagulated circle of blood, like a discarded piece of trash, was the naked body of a young girl. Her tender sex lay exposed and a gaping hole marked where her heart had been crudely and brutally removed. The scene gave a sure account of exactly how she had perished.

Yet he didn’t experience the slightest shred of pity for the unfortunate creature. Remy only felt a familiar twinge of envy that his brother was having all the fun. No matter, his time would come and it would come soon.

He made his way to the reading table; it was draped in a silken black cover and held a large book bound in some sort of pale and softly tanned leather. The large grimoire was normally bound in heavy chains and fastened with a lock but it lay there unbound like a willing and waiting lover.

Remy kept his eyes riveted on the hellish volume as he edged past the body on the floor. His own body quivered with anticipation.

He hesitantly reached out and caressed the oily covering of the book, whispering, Finally, you’re going to be mine.

He burned with years’ worth of resentment over the favoritism his brother had always received, simply because he was the oldest and the heir to the sacred book of incantations and spells.

The DuMonde brothers’ parents were long dead, lost to the tribulations brought on by the great war of secession and their own greedy appetites. Remy didn’t miss his progenitors in the least but was relieved that he wouldn’t have to endure their petty whims and cruel criticisms.

It was his good fortune that the last spell Maurice had attempted to cast hadn’t been completely successful. If it had been, Remy would have never been able to usurp his brother’s place in the family’s echelon of importance.

Although the grimoire had been in the DuMonde family for centuries, no one had been able to fully unlock the infernal book’s secrets since the founding patriarch, Balfour DuMonde, used the book to establish his legendary wealth and ancestral power.

It hadn’t been for a lack of trying. Rivers of innocent blood had been shed in the DuMonde’s quest for immortality and unlimited power.

Although the younger DuMonde had participated joyfully in the profane ceremonies on countless occasions, he had never been allowed to actually touch the book. Remy carried a large canvas bag slung over his shoulder. He opened it wide, and carefully, as if he was handling something hot, he scooped the tome into the bag and fastened it shut. Then he immediately froze in place.

The book squirmed in the shoulder sack as though it was discomfited by the confinement of the bag.

Remy was filled with ecstasy at the realization of his long sought achievement. He raised his arms above his head and shook his fists at the ceiling.

It’s my turn, Maurice. Now you can serve in hell and while I rule the world.

He stepped around the slaughtered girl on the floor and hurried back up the stairs. He exited the secret door concealed by the bookcase then quickly slipped out into the hallway and, quiet as a dead mouse, scurried down the front staircase out the door and into the night.

Chapter 2

Ohio River Valley, 1870

Lydia sat down to rest at the base of a narrow, white barked tree and dug her bare toes into the thick dust of the cow track. The powdery dirt coated her feet and settled between her toes, but with the swipe of one dirty foot over the other, she was able to see the small scar running across the top of her right foot. She had been wading last summer and had snagged her foot on a submerged branch. It hadn’t looked bad enough to scar at the time, but the evidence was there.

Wasn’t that just like life? How a small, seemingly insignificant event could turn out to leave a mark that would endure the rest of your life.

She sighed as she contemplated her own life altering event, not so small or insignificant, that had occurred just this morning. Her family’s neighbor, Mr. Conroy, came by earlier than usual for a visit with her father. It was not an unusual occurrence around the farm, as he was a frequent visitor to the big, white farmhouse, usually showing up around suppertime. It was the earliness of the visit and the subject of the conversation she’d overheard that alarmed Lydia and sent her running out of the house.

She’d been in the pantry gathering ingredients for an apple cobbler when she overheard a discussion between Conroy and her father about what sounded like one of her father’s farm animals. She’d only been listening with half an ear so it didn’t immediately occur to her that they weren’t talking about livestock. It finally dawned on her that they were discussing a person and only a moment longer to register that the individual they were discussing was her.

She’s a tad on the skinny side and a bit headstrong, Mr. Conroy was saying to her father.

Her father blew out his breath loudly through his nose, She’s still young, Earl. She’ll fill out as she gets older. She’ll also settle down once she realizes this is the best thing for her.

Mr. Conroy scratched at his whiskey hardened potbelly, All right, I’ll think about taking Lydia off your hands, but you’ll have to speak to her yourself. I’m not about to be the one to break the news. Hard telling what she’ll do until she gets used to the idea.

The two men moved off into the parlor and then out onto the front porch. Lydia tried to calm her breathing and think clearly about the situation but panic was setting in. Marry that fat and nasty old coot? Could her father really be considering the offer?

Lydia ducked out of the pantry and quickly ran behind the barn to ponder what she had just heard and what she was going to do about it. As she leaned against the rough, silvery gray and sun-warmed boards, she took a long series of deep breaths to slow her racing heart. Lydia had just gotten her breathing back to normal when she heard a furtive sound off to her left.

She turned her head and, to her dismay and disgust, saw that Earl Conroy’s weasel of a son was leaning against the corner of the barn watching her. Earl Jr., known simply as Junior to distinguish him from his father, swept his oily gaze over her body with a smirk plastered on his thin pockmarked face and a suspicious bulge in the crotch of his worn overalls.

Junior rubbed one grubby hand up and down his leg, disgustingly close to the tent in his pants. Here now, Lydia, I heard you’ll be joining our little family soon. Papa’s been real lonely these last few years. And so am I, come to think of it. Lydia inhaled sharply as she read his meaning.

She glared back at him. I don’t think that’s going to happen, Junior. My Pa hasn’t made up his mind yet. And once I speak to him, he’ll realize that he’s making a mistake. Lydia kept her voice firm, not quite succeeding at hiding the quiver under her brave words.

That so? Well, you know that rich parcel of land that your daddy’s been after us for years to sell to him? My old man’s already drawing the papers up to sign over that parcel in exchange for your skinny hand in matrimony. But don’t you worry, darlin’, bout’ the old man not being able to keep you satisfied. I can take up any slack he can’t handle, if you get my meaning. We’re all gonna be one happy family. I’ll make sure of that.

Earl Jr. sidled closer then licked his lips and stared down at Lydia’s small chest. He walked a few steps closer to her and reached out a hand that ended in chipped and black rimmed fingernails. This wasn’t the first time Junior had tried to molest her and she knew that running away was her best hope. She’d complained about him to her mother before and been told that if she acted like a lady those things wouldn’t happen. Even his father had made inappropriate comments to her when no one was around and always wanted a hug that lasted just a little too long for comfort, one hand always managing to brush past her breasts.

That was more than enough for Lydia. She launched herself from the side of the barn, running for the cow track that led into the small woods that occupied the lower portion of her family’s land. She turned her thin frame sideways to slide through the gate, barely slowing her headlong flight.

Junior called after her in smug amusement. You can run but you can’t hide, Lyddie!

Tears running down her face, she finally skidded to a stop along the path in a patch of early summer sunlight and tried to catch her breath. She knew, with a sinking feeling, exactly what was motivating her father. For years he had desperately wanted to get a hold of Conroy’s land that adjoined their property and he would benefit twofold if Lydia married the old codger. He would get the land and get rid of one of his six children in the process. Ezra Price had been blessed with only one son and cursed with five daughters. This would be a match made in heaven, in her father’s eyes, and would leave him with one less mouth to feed. For Lydia it would be a sentence to hell at the hands of the perverted Conroys.

Lydia, at seventeen, was a constant source of irritation to the Price family. She was too skinny and too outspoken and full of what her father called sass. Lydia did not tolerate anything she deemed stupidity, a judgmental trait she had picked up from her grandmother, Lydia Fletcher of the Philadelphia Fletcher’s.

That venerable lady had recently passed on and Lydia lost not only her beloved Nana, but also her staunchest defender. Her maternal grandmother, whom Lydia was named after, came from finer stuff than her father’s side of the family. Nana had been a firm believer in the need for a girl to acquire a proper education, not to mention a little backbone.

Lydia’s mother had been somewhat of a disappointment to Nana, placidly and obediently following her husband’s sometimes questionable opinions and decisions. After Grandma Fletcher’s husband passed away and she came to live with her daughter and her son-in-law, she concentrated on her oldest granddaughter. She believed that Lydia was the only one of her brood of grandchildren who seemed to have been born with a good measure of grit and ability to think independently. Her granddaughter also had her own fey talents that allowed her to see and sense things that remained hidden to most folks.

As a result of her grandmother’s subtle influence, Lydia wasn’t nearly as biddable as her father would like her to be.

So she would rather read than milk cows? Was that so wrong?

Lydia Price just wasn’t that interested in living the same type of life she saw her mother embracing. And anyway, she didn’t see too many prospects for marriageable material among the local boys her age. It wasn’t that she was unattractive; they just didn’t interest her. She never encouraged their suits and because she had developed a reputation for being difficult, perhaps even troublesome, they did not push the issue. Now she had basically hoisted herself in her own petard. She needed to find a way out of this terrible mess that she had created for herself.

Chapter 3

Lilah Boudreaux studied her reflection in the isinglass curtains of the carriage window. She was happy to see that the rough travel hadn’t made her look too worn-out or haggard. Remy would never put up with a woman who wasn’t a beauty. He would cast her aside the minute she started showing her age. She raised a hand to tuck an errant black curl back under her silk bonnet then bit her lips to give them a nice reddish tint.

Lilah wasn’t happy to leave the comforts and sophistication of New Orleans but she knew better than to try and tell Remy no to anything he wanted. The only person Lilah had ever met who was more frightening than Remy was his sadistic brother, Maurice. The one and only time Lilah had met him; he reached out, right in front of Remy, and squeezed her breast cruelly, bringing tears to her eyes. Remy just smiled and she had hated him at that moment. But Remy was a frightening man in his own right and had never been averse to inflicting pain on her to make her comply with his wishes.

The DuMondes, although incredibly wealthy, had a reputation around New Orleans of being unbelievably evil. There were rumors that they practiced a type of malign swamp hoodoo, and an even worse kind of diabolical black magic. Worst of all, the locals said, they used live sacrifices to gain power. Lilah shivered as she thought about it.

She’d heard that before the war their black slaves had suffered the worst depredations but their former servants quickly fled the DuMonde plantations for safety and a better life after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

But it had only been a temporary setback. The family adapted to their new circumstances by changing their hunting patterns to exploit the new influx of Irish immigrants. In New Orleans, there was always a ready stock of human cattle ripe for the slaughter.

It seemed like anyone who crossed them came to a bad end and although Lilah wasn’t entirely convinced that the rumors were true, she wouldn’t put it past them.

Lilah wondered if the benefits of being the mistress of a wealthy man were worth it or not. Ever since Remy had moved her out of the high-end brothel he found her in, he acted like he owned her and he wasn’t above pimping her out to other men for his own purposes, but God help her if she chose to go with another man of her own volition. That would be the death of her. She knew because Remy had told her in no uncertain terms what he would do to her.

She sighed and braced herself between the window and the seat in the enclosed carriage and tried once again to question him about their destination. So, Remy, darling, what is the name of this town we’re headed for? When she saw him frown, she quickly added, Not that it makes any difference, of course, I’m with you wherever you go. You know that, sugar.

Remy stared at her hard, trying to see if he could detect any hint of sarcasm or insincerity in her little speech. Satisfied that she meant it, he decided it was probably time to let her know where her future home was going to be located.

It’s a little burg called Cold Prairie and it’s in Kansas. When he saw the look of shock on her face he laughed and then continued. "Not to worry, my dear, it may be a backwater but right now that’s exactly what we want. I know that my dear brother will be searching for me everywhere and I figured he would never dream that I would bury myself in some unsophisticated cow-shit smelling town. And that’s exactly why we’re going there.

I need time to work on some things and I need the privacy to do it. He was in an unusually talkative mood so Lilah sat as still as she could in the rocking coach. It wasn’t often that he allowed her to be privy to any of his plans. He expected her to keep her mouth shut, do as she was told without question, keep him satisfied, and look pretty when he needed a woman on his arm or in his bed.

Where will we stay when we get there? Is there a nice hotel there?

Remy was feeling expansive from his successful theft of the DuMonde’s ancient spell book and subsequent clean getaway. He decided he might as well tell her about his plans, at least some of them. Well, my dear. This won’t be my first trip to Cold Prairie. I actually traveled up there over a year ago when everyone thought I had taken that ship to France and set us up. We’ll have a nice house to live in and a business to run, at least for the time being. Then he fell silent and stared out the window.

Lilah tentatively questioned him again. What type of business, darlin’?

Remy sat silently for a moment or two and then replied. It’s a little tavern called, of all things, The Creaky Pig. I thought about changing its vulgar name, but it seemed appropriate for the town and its citizens. We don’t want to bring any attention to ourselves while I get things into place.

Lilah wondered what things he wanted to get into place but decided she had probably pushed her luck far enough. She settled back into her seat and resigned herself to a quiet, bouncy ride into the unknown.

Chapter 4

I’m dreaming aren’t I?

An unusually large and sleek black cat interrupted the careful grooming of its outsized male parts and replied, Indeed you are, Maurice.

Rosier, how have you passed the book’s wards to find me here in the midst of my slumbers?

Oh, not to worry, I remain bound to the grimoire. I have merely mingled our dreams so that I could deliver a message.

What is it?

The dream cat responded with a human-like grin, There is a mouse in your pantry and it seems to have made off with your finest cheese.

Stop speaking in riddles and answer plainly.

No.

I command you to obey!

The cat feigned a concerned response, "My dear Maurice, I am truly sorry but you are no longer my master." Then it began to laugh maniacally.

Maurice thrashed awake in the large four poster bed he shared with his beautiful creole mistress, Susannah, and shouted. That little fucker has the book!

Susannah Benoit was a cultured black woman residing in the elegant New Orleans enclave of black freeman called Faubourg Tremé. The eldest DuMonde brother had passed the day enjoying Miss Benoit’s company and had fallen asleep in her apartment after a nightlong marathon of enthusiastic and extremely satisfying debauchery.

Maurice had an insatiable sexual appetite and a taste for feminine variety. Susannah was merely one of many of his paramours but she was one of his favorites. DuMonde grew easily bored but appreciated a woman who possessed not only exceptional beauty but also the intelligence to engage in stimulating conversation.

He jumped out of the soft feather bed, dressed quickly and descended to the street where his loyal coachman had spent the night waiting with the carriage.

Take me home, Andres, and make utmost haste.

Maurice arrived at the ancestral mansion and quickly made his way through the secret passageway to the basement chamber housing the Alhazred Translation and the ritual area.

The room held only the slowly decomposing body of the last sacrificial virgin. God damn his rotten little soul to Hell!

Maurice was filled with a cold fury and the certain knowledge that his brother Remy had been the perpetrator. Who knew what other mischief the little prick had set in motion?

He called on Andres and two other loyal men and directed them to dispose of the body and to move any other occult paraphernalia out to the DuMonde’s empty cotton plantation north of the city.

That bitch is starting to stink. Get her out of here then scrub this place clean. Move all the wine racks down here from the other wine cellar, he fumed.

Maurice was fortunate that his men were reliable and that they worked swiftly. No sooner had they finished clearing the grisly evidence of his occult activities and left for the plantation than a small contingent of officials arrived on the manse’s doorstep.

The family’s ancient and loyal butler greeted the men at the door and tried to stop them from entering unannounced. He was rudely brushed aside by a brace of Metropolitan Police officers trailed by an inspector and a Union Army lieutenant who made immediately for the stairs leading to the library and the entrance to the secret room.

Maurice waited for the men at the top of the grand staircase. What in the hell is the meaning of this invasion of my home, Inspector Clark?

The police chief answered, Mr. DuMonde we have received some very alarming reports about the remains of a murdered young woman hidden in your home.

The young army officer interjected, The same source also accused you of seditious activities including ongoing attacks on officials of the provisional government.

Maurice fixed the officer with a cold gaze, And who in the hell might you be, sir?

The lieutenant was a handsome man with a carefully groomed van dyke beard. I am Lt. Archibald Moss of the 11th Cavalry Detachment under General Rousseau.

I thought the federals had turned over all the parishes’ peacekeeping duties to the Metropolitan Police.

I am only here to investigate crimes threatening the sovereignty of the Union, sir. Not to infringe on the jurisdiction of the local police. Moss answered.

Maurice knew that Inspector Clark was not here to investigate the possible murder of a young woman. The real reason for this intrusion was that someone