Greyborn Rising Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Greyborn Rising

  By Derry Sandy

  Cover Illustration by Rivenis

  Copyright 2019. All rights reserved.

  Text copyright Derry Sandy 2018

  Cover illustration copyright Rivenis 2019

  Cover design by Rivenis

  CaribbeanReads Publishing

  Basseterre, St. Kitts

  All rights reserved

  First Edition

  ISBN: 978-1-7338299-2-2 (paperback)

  978-1-7338299-3-9 (hard cover)

  Chapter 1

  (1805)

  I know what is out there. They slither through the cane fields and the noise of their passage is like the sighing of tall grass. They hide in the shadows biding their time. They make their lairs in all the old, dark, forgotten places where humanity’s passage no longer disturbs and where humanity’s wickedness has left its stain. They prey upon the unwary, the naïve and those who recklessly disbelieve their existence. They are not human. Pity is not within their comprehension. Be not mistaken, if you fall within their clutches, they will not be merciful, and prayer shall not avail.

  (fourth day of June 1801)

  – Excerpt from Kariega’s Diary

  In 1805 William Claudius Maloney owned what was then Maloney sugar estate and is today Maloney Gardens, a government housing project in east Trinidad.

  Maloney, who spent more time drunk than sober, was awoken earlier than usual one morning by the domestic slave that managed his household and informed that his attention was needed in the cow pen. He reluctantly dressed and descended to the pen where he found three of his best milkers lying in the cowshed apparently drained of blood. A fourth cow was pinned to the tin ceiling of the shed with a pickaxe and a pitchfork. The remaining cows were understandably in no mood to share non-bovine company and cowered together in a corner. Maloney squeezed his eyes shut as if to clear the apparition, but when he reopened his eyes the three cows were still dead, and their less fortunate sister was still crucifixed to the ceiling.

  There were two important lessons that any white man who owned slaves in a country where there were more enslaved people than freedmen had to learn quickly. The first was to take every word that came out of a Negro’s mouth with a grain of salt. The Negro would kill you with his tongue. With a grin he would send a white man down the wrong path and into a mire of quicksand then play deaf to the man’s cries for help.

  The second lesson was to find one slave who you could trust, one that could translate slave-speak and could break down their pagan beliefs into portions an anglicized mind could digest. This was a tall order. For this task an owner with an interest in survival ruled out female slaves entirely. This was not because it would appear improper, many white men kept Negro mistresses particularly in a colony so far from the monarchy’s disapproving gaze. The fact was, that female slaves were far more devious and cunning, and thus far more dangerous than the men. The men would come at you with a cutlass while you took a shit in the latrine. Death on the latrine was straight forward, even a little humorous. The women however, would put a drop of arsenic in your tea every morning for a year and then spit on you when you finally keeled over. There was nothing humorous about arsenic. Maloney preferred the cutlass while he took his morning shit to a slow painful death and so he kept the slave women at arm’s length.

  Maloney’s trusted man was a tall, dark, and sober Ibo slave whose African name had been Kariega Kimani Achen. Kariega had been formerly owned by a French planter Michael Le Clerc and bore the surname of his former master. Kariega had earned Maloney’s trust because he had saved Maloney from malarial death, a feat the Ibo had been unable to replicate for Maloney’s wife, son, and daughter.

  In West Africa, Kariega had been a powerful witch doctor and had fallen afoul of his tribal king. The details of the fall from grace were sketchy but the general theme was that Kariega spared the life the king’s fourth and youngest wife. The king had commanded Kariega to execute the young wife because she had been with child five times and five times she had miscarried. Instead of carrying out the king’s directive, Kariega gave her supplies and sent her off to a distant village. He had then reported to the king that he had dispatched the reproductively unfortunate wife. It was therefore to the king’s surprise and anger when the same woman he had sentenced to death was spotted at an intra-village wrestling match months later, very much unexecuted and holding a child conceived with a new husband.

  The king, even in his anger, feared to put a powerful witch doctor to death. Instead he had Kariega arrested and sold to the slave traders. The night the slave ship carrying Kariega sailed away from the Gold Coast port of Ponni at the mouth of the Ningo, a pride of twelve massive lions slipped past the village guard and entered the compound housing the king, his three wives and his eight children.

  Each lion seized one sleeping individual and dragged them into the courtyard of packed dirt where the entire royal family was mauled to death in an orgy of roars and screams. The lions then scattered and vanished into the night untouched by the hail of stones, spears, and arrows launched by the tribesmen.

  Maloney asked Kariega what he thought about the cows. Kariega answered, in a very matter of fact manner, that the dead cows were the work of soucouyant. Maloney squinted and held his arms out in a gesture that indicated that he needed clarification. Kariega explained that soucouyant were men and women who were bound to Bazil, a creature of the Vodun Loa. Men and women bound to Bazil become vampires.

  The first soucouyant were of French planter stock created by Bazil in Haiti. This first generation subsequently sired their own gets and passed the taint amongst slaves and whites alike.

  Maloney considered himself a proper Catholic, he believed in Mary and her Son. He had never put much stock in Kariega’s ramblings about the world being divided into three realms, the Grey where the creatures of legend lived, the Ether—the realm of Heaven and Hell, and the Absolute where humans made their home. But he humored the man and instructed him to make sure that no more of the cows were taken. Despite his skepticism about the spiritual isms and schisms of the Negros, he had seen enough weirdness on the island to know that not everything was black and white and heaven and hell.

  Kariega in turn requested letters for himself and four others that would allow them to patrol the roads at night. This group became the first soucouyant hunters in Trinidad. Kariega dubbed them The Order.

  ***

  The first hunt for the soucouyant that had killed the cows was something of a success. The five did not catch a soucouyant but they did find the next best thing, the skin of a soucouyant
. Soucouyant can fly, but to do so they must shed their skin and hide it in a safe place. While out of their skin the soucouyant appears to be wreathed in a low, dull flame that produces no heat.

  A soucouyant’s skin is its only connection to the Absolute. It is not so much a skin in the biological sense as it is a corporeal glamour that covers their whole body. After a prolonged period outside the skin, a soucouyant’s connection to the Absolute steadily weakens. Too long outside the skin and the soucouyant’s tainted soul is swept into hell to suffer forever, thus a soucouyant separated from its skin becomes very frantic and very dangerous.

  The night after the Order took the skin, Maloney awoke to the sound of breaking glass coming from the small room where he kept his liquor. He grabbed his rifle and ran into the room to confront what he believed was a slave stealing a drink. To his shock he came upon what appeared to be a naked woman wreathed in yellow flames leaning into his liquor closet and tossing fine bottles of scotch over her shoulder and onto the floor. Maloney knew she was a soucouyant. Her appearance was exactly as Kariega had described. Maloney brought the rifle up and took aim.

  The soucouyant whirled. Maloney managed to get off one shot which flew wide and blew a hole in a Victorian window. The soucouyant closed the distance between them with blinding speed, grabbed Maloney by the front of his nightshirt, drew him towards her, bit into his neck, and began to drink deeply.

  The hapless Maloney struggled feebly and futilely against the iron grip of the woman. Just at that moment Kariega ran into the Great House through a side door that opened directly onto the otherworldly scene. In his hand he held the soucouyant skin.

  “I dreamt that you would come. I have what you seek.” Kariega spoke in a commanding voice to the woman. “If you want your skin back I invite you to sit and talk.”

  Her head whipped around at the sound of Kariega’s voice. “Your dreams told you I would come? Or is it the fact that you stole something very precious to me?” she sneered. She let Maloney fall to the floor where he lay still, eyes wide open but unseeing.

  She approached Kariega with a face like a thundercloud, the image of a white flame dancing in her eyes. Kariega held the skin close to the flaming torch he held in his left hand. The soucouyant halted her approach. No man had ever had the audacity to even meet her gaze let alone threaten to burn her precious skin.

  “Now, firefly of Bazil, do you wish to be swept into the warm embrace of the Loa, or do you wish to serve a greater purpose?”

  “You’ve got some very big balls, slave,” she said, genuinely surprised by the man’s boldness. “But I’m sure you can see that we are at a stalemate. If you destroy my skin, I will kill you slowly and painfully and then I will kill the other men who were with you when you stole it.”

  "Firefly of Bazil...." Kariega began again but she cut him off with an upraised hand.

  “My name is Katharine. We can stop this firefly of Bazil rubbish immediately. I have never met Bazil and I do not serve him. How do you slaves come up with these names?” She moved towards Kariega again. Kariega held the skin closer to the flame of the torch.

  “Katharine. I do not wish to kill you, or to bind you to anything as Bazil has bound you to blood. I only wish to free you.”

  “Slave. You are strong. I feel the power rolling through you and I can taste vitality in your scent. But no one can sever the tie to Bazil. There is no cure for what we have. Besides, some consider this a gift. My mother was one of Bazil’s first gets. My father was a French nobleman who fell in love with my mother before he knew what she was. He insisted on being present at my birth and, when he held me to his chest, I bit him and fed from his neck. So you see, I was born a soucouyant but though I never sought Bazil, perhaps I wish to keep his gift.” Kat paused and took stock of the man standing across from her. “I would also wager that I could flay you, don your skin, and eventually it would be as good as my own. Please spare me the inconvenience of breaking your skin in.”

  “First, my name is Kariega Le Clerc, not slave, and second, I make no idle boast. I can break your tie with Bazil without diminishing your considerable gifts. Please sit and we can talk about it and perhaps you will see that there is need neither for me to be flayed nor for you to be inconvenienced.”

  She was angry, but also intrigued by the man’s boldness. As it often did, curiosity got the better of her. “Fine I guess there is no harm in hearing you out. Give me the skin and pour me some of this dead fool’s scotch,” she said gesturing briefly to the dead Maloney. “And let us talk.”

  Kariega replied, “How about we pour some scotch and I hold on to the skin until we reach a conclusion and you have promised not to take the skin off my back.”

  Kariega and Katharine sat across from each other in the smoking room of the great house to discuss their mutual fate. The pair talked through the night exchanging stories and by morning they were communicating like old friends. As dawn approached Katharine stood. “Kariega you make me forget myself. I cannot be caught in the sunlight without my skin. We have talked the night away and you have not proposed a damn thing.”

  Kariega cut her off with a wave of his hand. “No need to worry.” He gestured toward her. “I warded you while we spoke.”

  She glanced down at her body gasping in surprise. She was no longer clothed in flames, in fact, back in her human form, she was not clothed in anything.

  “Nice trick, Kariega,” she said making a half-hearted attempt to cover herself with her slender hands. Although over a century old she, like all her kind, had aged to her prime and then no more. She was small, shorter than average, but well-proportioned. Her body was slim and firm and bore not a scrap of excess fat. Her breasts were full and her legs shapely. Her milky copper complexion revealed her mixed ancestry and her curly hair framed a beautiful face. When she smiled her teeth were straight and white. Only her slightly pointed canines hinted that she was more than a lovely maiden.

  She fixed Kariega with her almond shaped, olive-colored eyes, and gave him a smile which emphasized the mole above her lip. “But I agreed to no bargain, did I say I wanted this?” she asked, a hard note entered her tone as she weighed the slave’s audacity.

  “Have a seat and I will explain how this works, then you will tell me if you wish to continue in your current state.” Kariega seemed to recognize he was treading on dangerous ground and spoke in a calm tone.

  Katharine, having swiftly overcome the original shock of her nakedness, sat and poured another glass of scotch.

  Kariega, reaching into his pocket, withdrew a small finely woven silver crucifix on a thin silver chain. Tossing it to her he said, “Wear this, it will strengthen your bond to this world and hide you from your coven. Also, you will not need this again,” he continued, gesturing to the skin he still held. He motioned with his hands and the skin burst into fine, gray ash which floated away like mist.

  Katharine gasped mostly due to the flippancy with which Kariega had dispensed with a thing that had so recently been vital to her. As for her coven, she had joined with the two other soucouyant after fleeing the upheavals in Haiti, they were not of Bazil’s line and far more blood-thirsty than she was. She would not miss them.

  Kariega continued, “What I have done has removed your thirst for blood, but you can no longer float. Your new skin is just like a human skin and cannot be shed. In time you will find that you will develop control over flames, pyromancy, if you may.”

  “And what do you expect in return for your…gifts?”

  “In return, you must agree to help me in any way you can to protect the Absolute from creatures of the Grey, or I will remove my spell and we will be back where we started. You have lost some powers in exchange for others, but I think this new Katharine is better than the old one.”

  “Help in any way I can?” Kathrine knew she was sneering. “Do I look like a servant or a lapdog? Do you intend to make a familiar out of me, a pet soucouyant? Are you fast enough to cast a spell before I can tear your head off, slave?”
Her voice conveyed that she was serious about her threat.

  Kariega sighed. “Only a fool would try to turn a lioness into a lap dog, and I assure you I’m no fool. As you may know when the Spanish first came to this part of the world they treated the native people so poorly that those people resorted to unfamiliar witchcraft. They used power they did not completely understand and tore a very big hole between the Grey and the Absolute, beginning the period we call the Recompense. During this time Bazil escaped into this region from the Grey. The hole the Amerindians created let a host of new pureborn into the absolute, powerful creatures like Bazil who created soucouyant like your mother, who in turn gave birth to soucouyant like you.” Kariega paused as if in deep thought. “Beings like you are already in the Absolute, what I would like is to ensure that no more pure greyborn cross over.”

  Katharine said nothing expecting Kariega to continue. “The Absolute is rightfully man’s realm. I want to learn about your kind and defend mankind from those of you who would abuse their strength.”

  A hint of a smile broke Katharine’s stony expression, she glanced sheepishly at the cold stiff body of William Maloney, “Does that count as abuse?” she asked, gesturing at the corpse of the slain planter.

  “That was the old Katharine. The new Katharine would never drain a man dry like that. The new Katharine knows to drink in sips and not to drink from the same victim too often.”

  Katharine nodded somberly.

  “One last thing before we seal our pact. You will outlive me by centuries. After I die, the spell will wane and the crucifix will be the only thing that staves off the lust and hides you from the Loa and your coven. If you willingly remove the crucifix the spell will be broken. Make it as precious as your old skin and wear it all the time. It cannot be replaced.”

  “You said you had dreams of me?”

  “Yes, the dreams did not have details, just a sense that you will one day be very important to mankind, to the Order and to me.

  “Did your dreams lead you to me specifically, or did they just tell you to pick the first soucouyant whose skin you could steal?”