JEZEBEL † The Originals †

21. The Trouble With Marcellus

JEZEBEL

I decide to return to the Crescent pack in the bayou, hoping I might run into Lisa. But today, the Southern bayou is quiet and not a soul is in sight. I look down at the pendant she gave to me, trying to recall which trailer house was hers. It was green; green like the rust on this necklace.

Amidst the rows and spread out clusters of camper homes, I pick the roundest and most antiquated one with the deepest green paint job. I deem myself to be right, because the young man who took the distressed Lisa back home when she finished speaking with me was just behind the screen door when I knocked.

He was ready to shut the door in my face. I yank the screen door open, stopping the inner most door from shutting.

"Hold on," I sigh. "Where's Lanita?"

Gruffly, the werewolf responds, "She's not here."

"Well can you tell her I have a really important question and to find me as soon as she can?"
"I'm not telling her anything. Eres inútil. You've caused us nothing but misery."

His tinge of a Yucatán accent gives me hope. I have to stop his teal door again, its squeak as loud as the squawking starlings above our heads.

"Hablas español?" I converse quickly.

Hesitantly, he nods. He is still reluctant to let me in, but at least he's not shooing me off his property with a shotgun.

"Dime de qué pasa," I appeal.
Tell me what happened.

∞

Arturo offers me a coffee, but then remembers that his wife is the only one who can use a coffee maker, so we take to his second choice. Setting one Corona Light down in front of me, he sits on the opposite side of his dining booth.

"Cuando vivíamos en Tamaonchan, hubo una serie de disturbios. Los hombres lobo tratan de hacerse con el control del pueblo Ocelomeh y de las otras islas. Es un poco difícil hacerlo sin el rey del orgullo. Pero tu padre nos dijo que no salieramos de esas islas bajo ninguna circunstancia. Todos sabíamos que estaba escondiendo algo en La Isla de Heron, y que se suponía que lo íbamos a mantener oculto," he offers this information freely.
When we lived in Tamaonchan, there were a series of riots. The werewolves were trying to gain control of the Ocelomeh people and the other islands. It's a little hard to do that without the King of the Pride. But Ángel told us not to leave those islands under any circumstances. We all knew he was hiding something on Heron's Island, and that we were supposed to keep it hidden.

"No me dijo nada sobre de Heron a mí, ni a los demás,"
He didn't say anything about Heron's Island to me, or the others.

The Ocelotl, Arturo, takes a full three-second sip of his room temperature beer. "No estoy seguro, pero te vuelves demasiado curioso para tu propio bien. ¿Alguna vez pensaste que era por eso?"
I don't know, but you come off as being too curious for your own good. Did you ever think of that?

Point made. But Arturo isn't the only one who had to have known what my father didn't want us to see on that island. Between the three major islands in our nation, there was Porta León, Pulmón, and then Heron's Island. All were banned from going to Heron's Island by my father, including me. Could it be that there had finally been a boiling point where the mysterious hybrid race of the Mexican Keys had found out what he was hiding? "Patríza Gutiérrez, una de sus hibrídos, murió la semana pasada. Aquí, en Luisiana. Dijo que nuestra gente se estaba muriendo. ¿Hablaba de los disturbios o hablaba de Berloíz?"
Patríza Gutiérrez, one of Berloíz's hybrids, died last week. Here, in Louisiana. She said that our people were dying. Was she talking about the riots or about Berloíz?