Indiana Jones and the Army of the Dead Read Online Free PDF Page A

the two-story wooden house, leaking out the glass and cracks into the night. Moths bounced from the windows, trying to get to the flame, unaware that the clear panes were all that kept them from turning into torches . . .
    Boukman, a head taller than average, was effectively invisible even to the mosquitoes as he leaned against the rough bole of a palm tree, a phantom in the shadows. If a man looked right at him, he would not see him. Boukman could hide in plain sight, so great were his talents in the black arts.
    He could have sent somebody. A man of his status? He did not have to skulk around in the blackness spying. But he did need to see them for himself, for they were something unlike anything he had ever felt before, even at his age.
    He smiled at that last thought. As far as he knew, there were no other living men his age. It was possible that somewhere in the world there were magicks equal to his own, other ways to stave off the Final Harvest, to extend one’s years far beyond the oldest normal men. He had heard rumors, but if there were such, he had not felt their energies vibrating through the realms on either side while he was chwal espri —the Horse of the Gods. And he was most sensitive to such things. He had felt the two white men—the imen blan —as soon as they had set foot on the land. Felt them as strongly as if they had touched him with their pale hands.
    That meant something.
    He’d had The Dream again last evening, the same recurring nightmare that had been with him since he’d been a boy. The Dream had small variations, and he had yet to determine the full meaning of it, even after all these years. But each time he had The Dream, events of great importance followed it, always. So these imen blan meant something. He did not yet know what—nor how he was to use them; only that he must. Boukman had a destiny, and it was part of some grand design, he knew that. He had not risen to be the most powerful man in the islands for no purpose, even if he did not know what it was.
    That they had found their way to Marie Arnoux? But another sign they were espesyal. One could possibly be foolish enough to ignore a Sign, but no bokor, nor even an average houngan worth his own salt, would ignore two Signs, and there were other things of which he had become aware of late, interlinked pieces of a great puzzle that he was being given to solve. It would be a thing of much power, he felt, perhaps more than any Vodoun bokor ridden by the loa had ever possessed.
    Who sent these men? Why? He would find out, eventually.
    Such a thing was like a lighthouse beacon on a moonless, cloudy midnight. One had to go to it. Power called to power, and in this land bokor Boukman was supreme. The world was larger than his island, however, and if he was to bestride the seas and control more of it? He would need to increase his strength. The strongest man in a village was not necessarily the strongest man everywhere. He was at his limits now.
    These two white men from afar? Somehow, they were the key.
    He had seen them. Now he would have them watched. He could call upon many eyes, and he would. Something of great import was happening, and these men were the catalyst.
    He turned and walked away from the house. The night was overcast and ebon, but there was nothing natural in the dark that frightened bokor Boukman.
    Nothing that possibly could.
    The Pétionville Road,
Four Miles South of Port-au-Prince
    Indy, Mac, Marie, and, as it turned out, her brother, Alain, rode in a rusty, mostly black Chevrolet of uncertain vintage, a rattletrap four-door sedan. Indy guessed it was about a 1930. With the war, they’d stopped making cars for commercial sale in the United States, churning out Blitz Buggies—“jeeps”—tanks, and planes in their place, so whatever you had, you had to keep running. Even so, this was an old beast, and grumpy.
    After a good night’s sleep and a bath, with their clothes washed and dried, not to mention a good