Voodoo Queens of New Orleans - Vol. I | ✓

Chapter 16: To Finish The Job

"I never asked you to come with me, Rocio. I'm the one that was going to come here by myself!"

"And you still don't understand!" she shouted back. "Because if we were to let you come here on your own, we would be the ones in trouble with Madam Dumont, not you! Our only choice is to put our lives in danger just so you can go out looking for God knows what. You think this is some type of game? Something to add into your little book? Voodoo, hoodoo, witches, bloodsuckers, none of it is a game, Lisa! This is real-life! Our lives!"

I didn't know if my tears were out of sadness or anger. Maybe it was a mixture of both. "I'm trying to understand all of this, Rocio -"

"Just don't! Just stop trying to butt into things you don't and never will understand!"

"Enough!" Kizzy screamed. Her voice was so loud, even the birds were scared away into the sky; it traveled on forever. "Stop it!"

That was enough to shut us up. Rocio couldn't bring herself to look at me. It was like I was too beneath her to be looked at. And I knew why she was so upset. If anything, she had every right to be. But I was under the impression that I had something to prove, and Rocio was disabling me from proving my worth. So, as our silence progressed, so did my frustration - the frustration that stemmed from me being so involved yet so in the dark.

Kizzy knelt down and opened up her backpack. She pulled out Aubade halfway and stared at it. The blade seemed to hum from its power, the orb glowing in the dark of the night. She quickly placed it back into her bag and expelled a stressed breath. Her eyes reminded me of Sajida's to an extent - full of wisdom but somehow still troubled by something. Everything.

"I need you both to shut up," Kizzy ordered to Rocio and I. "Now isn't the time to be arguing in the middle of the fucking forest! We all mess up, and we're all naive little specs of insignificant dust in comparison to the forces around us. Accept that fact and move on!"

Kizzy continued to look upon us like a fed up mother at her children. Rocio rolled her eyes while I held mine down at the dirt, breathing slowly to control my raging emotions. Tightening the straps of her backpack, Kizzy ordered us to run. And she meant it; Kizzy knew that we weren't completely rid of Sajida's influence, so the sooner we got out of the forest, the better. Running so quickly past the scaling trees reminded me of running with Imani away from Abraham's clan, wondering if a bloodsucker was close on our trail, watching us, waiting for the perfect moment to attack. This retired memory made me run even faster; I was brought back to that night and pumped my legs as quickly as I did after I saw Hezekiah sink his teeth into Tia Valeria's flesh.

Esther was having trouble keeping up, so I helped her keep momentum by holding her arm and taking some of her weight on my own. Rocio made sure to run as far away from me as possible; she didn't even want to help Esther if I was near her.

"I can't run anymore," Esther panted before collapsing into the damp earth. Sweat was soaked into her shirt, face more bloated than a puffer fish.

"We're almost to the car," I assured her. It was a lie - we had a good half mile before we were on the road again. But taking a break in the type of wilderness we were in was far from ideal. I couldn't even see Rocio and Kizzy anymore.

Come on, Esther. Get up.

"Just go without me," she said, heaving. "I'll catch up."

"I won't leave you here," I told her. Promised her. "You can do it. I'll help you."

Esther was so exhausted that she began to cry. Perhaps the night and everything that happened in it was finally catching up to her; almost being killed by a dark Bayou Witch can definitely take a toll on someone, especially someone as soft as Esther. So, I just let her sit and cry herself into sanity because I didn't know what else to do. I wasn't aware of how fragile Esther was, but I was given the perfect moment to find this out - in the middle of Louisiana's most demented marshland. I looked ahead, waiting for Kizzy or even Rocio to notice we were nowhere near them, but they were far in the distance. I was becoming antsy; I even considered just leaving Esther in the hope that she would catch up in fear of being alone. But as Esther continued to weep, she suddenly stopped completely. The tears flowed down her cheeks, her chest puffing in and out, but the laments were silenced. Her eyes became these empty pathways to somewhere else. Wide-eyed, she stared straight ahead into the abyss, firm in stance and vacant in expression. She remained this way for one minute, despite my attempts to bring her back into reality. I didn't know what was wrong with her then. I had not the slightest clue.