Graveyard - Leon
The ceremony at the graveyard was a solemn and special event. In voodoo, the dead were revered and honored, made into totems of worship that were placed in family homes on shrines that had accompanying Loa carvings or dolls, illuminated with incense and prayed to daily. Through their ancestors, voodoo priests could touch the face of The One. Or so the belief went. Funerals were bleak, but it wasn't the end. Graveyards held the kind of power that Leon and his fellow Priests could harness, especially if some of the bodies there were blood kin.
As he stood off to the side of the graveyard with the others, Leon bowed his head, lips moving in a soft prayer in Creole French. Tonight he would renew his power. Tonight he would perform the necessary rituals to charge his magic back to where it was supposed to be so he could unshackle himself from the crystal's protection. The surge he had used to find the missing students in the mine had depleted what little he had stored up, and he had used it sparingly since then, knowing that tonight, the day when the souls rose and the dead walked, the Loa would grant him mercy and redeem his powers from their fallen state.
Leon's fingers closed around a relic that hung with the other necklaces at his neck. The tattoos that were drawn up his forearm grew warm as he closed his prayer and looked up to silently watch the walking spirits. Having been raised watching his father perform exorcisms and disciplined not to flinch from these kinds of things, Leon looked on with a quiet expression of reflection. He felt Ms. Menides' all-knowing regard and met her eyes briefly, nodding to her unspoken command of not to push it too far on this night.
Halloween was important in Vodun, greatly so, and Leon had many plans and things to accomplish before the night was up. He would be very busy and had explained all of this to Mickey who, he was pleased to say, had walked with him to the graveyard before the boys gave each other space to reflect alone. Mickey was on the rebound, but tonight was about the Loa and the Path of The One. Leon had Priestly duties to attend to, and even his own spirits, the four haunts of the dead victims who could not be banished, had gone still and quiet.
As the spirits emerged from their graves to the cadence of Cavanaush's hauntingly beautiful music, Leon saw them off before turning to slip away into the trees. He'd better get started on the blood rituals if he hoped to meet with Barclay later, as promised.