Clay Cross

When James Finn ran down the priestess daughter of a houngan in a Louisiana bayou, he never imagined the consequences. When Laura Finn begins a search for her husband, the nightmare begins.
With the help of a local guide, Roy Evans, Laura tracks down her husband now trapped in a 'soul bottle.' Rufus and Ginny, the two houngans responsible, catch her and she joins hundreds of others similarly trapped. Roy Evans escapes and sets fire to the house, releasing the trapped souls in an inferno of dust and fire. In doing so, he inadvertently creates Djinn, earthbound, but lacking form.
This is the task enjoined upon Roy Evans by the voodoo loa, Baron Samedi. Roy will enjoy a charmed life, as an acclaimed comic book writer. At a price. One day the disembodied Djinn will come looking for him, feeding from his mind to gain function and form.
The story takes up again in the late C20th. Roy Evans, widowed, and still raging against the man who ran down his wife, has all but forgotten the incident until a ghostly detective invades his apartment.
Laura and James Finn have been transformed into something greater but cruder than their original selves. James Finn finds himself trapped in the persona of Clay Cross, a 1950's cold war warrior and misogynist private eye, in fact a composite of every pulp novel Finn's ever read. The equally cultured Laura Finn has mutated into Sheri Lamour. Earthbound and heralding a new age of Djinn, both become the playthings of two competing loa, Damballa and his brother, Baron Samedi.
The story reaches its climax when Clay Cross, a noir Don Quixote out of his depth and far from his comfort zone, is pursued by the houngan responsible for his predicament. The houngan and his wife, Ginny Mambo, seek the spell their dying daughter whispered to James Finn before his transformation. The spell will enable the two houngans to control the power of Damballa and the emerging Djinn being formed from fire and dust.
Events take Clay Cross and Roy to Newport South Wales where the hideously transformed Ginny Mambo seeks to turn their minds. Samedi, too, is exploiting Roy's perception of reality as it merges into a comic book world.

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