Maybe it would forget me, give me time to recover. Carrefour bellowed, and I felt the ground beneath me tremble. I dug my fingers into the wet ground and pulled. The grass was cool against my palms.
We couldn't beat it. Not the two of us now, not the whole damned mob of us before. And it had no hesitation in killing us. It was practiced. We were dead.
Sabine's voice came to me like a song being sung in a different room. The words were the same, Legba louvri le p贸t, but there was a depth to them, a seriousness. Worse, a pain. I shifted myself toward the small prison house, the light, the sound of her desperate voice.
Sabine sat on the floor, chains slack on her wrists and neck. Her back was hunched, her face running with sweat as she strained internally. I couldn't help thinking of childbirth. Her eyes were the clear, shining black of river stones. She had too many teeth.
"Louvri mwen, Legba," she said. "Louvri le p贸t."
I pulled myself toward her. Something loud happened outside, sudden and terrible as a cannon. I ignored it. I crawled closer to the girl. The air around her shifted and swirled like water stirred by a thousand writhing tadpoles. I closed my eyes and gathered my qi. I pictured the energy rising through my spine, out my arm, and arcing between my fingertips with a golden light. I held out my hand, and I felt Sabine touch me.
Her flesh was burning hot and sweat-slick. Her fingers clenched mine until my knuckles ached, and I felt something within her pulling at me like a riptide. I wanted to fight it, to pull myself back into myself, but instinct said that withholding now was surrendering to Carrefour. I pressed what little of myself I could focus out, into the girl, feeding the rider within her.
And then she let me go. I rolled onto my back, staring toward the ceiling as in the corner of my vision, Sabine Glapion opened her mouth wide, and then wider. Her jawbone cracked, and the serpent flowed out of her. Sabine's clothing and skin fell to the floor in discarded coils.
The scales shone silver in the bright halogen glow, and the needle-teeth were white as ivory. It wasn't the Legba that had come from Amelie Glapion. This snake was thinner, faster, and brighter. Something about it reminded me of the awkwardness of adolescence, though its motion was perfectly graceful. It turned to me, and I knew that if it lunged for my neck, I wouldn't be able to protect myself. The broad head turned to the darkness and the mist. A black tongue flickered.
"Carrefour!" Legba called, its voice a clatter and a hiss. "You have trespassed!"
The serpent swam through the air like an eel in a drowned city. I forced myself up to sitting and did my best to follow.
Carrefour stood in the pathway between shed and house holding Mfume by his neck in one thick, monstrous hand. The others-Aubrey and Ex, the cultists of Amelie Glapion's congregation-stood still as statues as Carrefour let his once and present victim slide to the ground. I wanted to move forward, to help, but I barely had the strength to keep my eyes open. I wondered almost idly how much granting my will to help Legba's birth had cost me.
"Legba," Carrefour said. "Petit Legba. You are born in time to die. The shortest life. Come to me, Legba the brief."
I propped myself against the doorframe. I couldn't stand. I couldn't fight. Carrefour strode across the night-dark, fog-shrouded space, and I didn't doubt for a second that this new Legba was just as screwed as I was.
The serpent spoke.
"Louvri," it said, and I knew what it meant. Open.
I caught my breath. Behind Carrefour, Aubrey lifted his head. The motion was slow, like something happening underwater. Aubrey turned. His face looked wrong; thinner, sharper. He stepped forward, and his shirt and pants hung loose on his body. He was skeletal, and when he spoke, it wasn't with his own voice. It was Marinette's.
"There is no place for you here, brother."
Carrefour spun. Aubrey took two steps forward, and the transformation was complete. The burned flesh, the skeletal thinness, the vicious eyes. But there was something of Aubrey in it too. Marinette's gaze flickered to me and turned back to Carrefour, more angry than before. Man and rider weren't in conflict this time. They had both come to kick some ass, and I found I