Alexander Death (The Paranormals, Book 3) (7 page)

***

Esmeralda Medina Rios lived with her mother Guadalupe in an apartment in Los Angeles. Tommy and Ashleigh rode into the graffiti-covered cinderblock complex, and Ashleigh’s lip curled at the scene.

“I told you it was ugly,” Tommy said. “Should we just keep going?”

“No.” Ashleigh took off her helmet. “We have nowhere else to go right now. We have to use Esmeralda’s identity.”

“What do you mean, use her identity?” Tommy asked as Ashleigh got off the bike.

“Well, of the three of us, you’re an escaped felon and I’m dead.” Ashleigh kicked the locked saddlebag where her bones were stored in her high school backpack. “So, if we’re going to put together any kind of life, we start with Esmeralda’s life and go from there.” Ashleigh looked at the stripped corpse of an automobile that occupied the parking spot next to them. “Though it doesn’t seem like she has much to build on. What does she do for a job, again?”

“She’s a mortuary cosmetician,” Tommy said. “Actually, she’s an intern, but she’s working toward her degree—”

“Oh, gross. I am not doing that.” Ashleigh crossed her arms.

“You don’t have to,” Tommy said. “Just let Esmeralda out to do it.”

“Right. Duh,” Ashleigh said. “But I think it’s time for a career change.”

“To what?” Tommy asked. He was leading them down the broken, spray-painted sidewalk towards Esmeralda’s mother’s door.

“I have a few ideas,” Ashleigh said. “But I have to look around. There’s a big mid-term coming up in the fall, you know. The President’s going to lose control of Congress.”

“Who cares?” Tommy stopped in front of an apartment door. “You’re not like some political junkie, are you? Politics are boring.”

“Power isn’t boring,” Ashleigh said. “Don’t you ever think about using your gift for something bigger than, you know, just robbing stupid liquor stores? Something on a much bigger scale?”

“Like robbing a bank?” Tommy asked.

Ashleigh rolled her eyes.

“So, should we knock?” he asked. “See if she’s home?”

“No, we shouldn’t
knock
,” Ashleigh said. “I’m playing Esmeralda, and this is her home, so...” Ashleigh fished Esmeralda’s keychain out of Esmeralda’s purse. “Hopefully, she’s got some decent clothes for me.”

They walked inside. The apartment was tiny, with a living/kitchen area divided by a bar. Spanish-language magazines were neatly arranged on the coffee table. Ashleigh looked at the framed posters on the wall: Jesus, Mary, and one saint after another stared back at her.

“Okay, we get it, you're Catholic,” Ashleigh whispered.

“What did you say?” Tommy asked.

“Esmeralda!” One of the doors leading off the living room opened, and a large Mexican woman in a bright dress burst out. She looked at Ashleigh, burst into tears, and hugged her tight. Ashleigh was guessing this was Esmeralda's mother.

The woman spoke a rapid stream of Spanish, catching Ashleigh off-guard. Ashleigh had taken three years of Spanish, under the tutelage of Señora McDonald at Fallen Oak High School, but nobody had never spoken so rapidly in her class.

Then the woman slapped her and began barking words in a booming, angry voice. Ashleigh picked out individual words, like
afraid
and
worried
, and then the lady started pointing at Tommy: “
Quién es
?
Quién es
?” Who is he?

“Mama,” Ashleigh said, in halting Spanish. “This is Tommy. He is my boyfriend now.”

“No!” the woman snapped. She spoke very rapidly again, repeated the word
Pedro
several times.

“Who is Pedro?” Ashleigh whispered to Tommy.

“Esmeralda's old boyfriend,” Tommy whispered back.

“Mama,” Ashleigh said. “He and I are not together anymore. Tommy is my boyfriend now.”

The woman got up into Ashleigh's face, screaming and jabbing her finger into Ashleigh's chest.

“Okay, this sucks,” Ashleigh said. “Tommy, scare her.”

“Are you sure?” Tommy asked.

“Never ask me if I'm sure!” Ashleigh snapped.

Tommy sighed and took one of the woman's thick arms. She gasped and stared at Tommy with widening eyes.

“
El Diablo
,” she whispered.

“What did she say?” Tommy asked.

“She called you the devil,” Ashleigh told him.

“Yeah,” he said. “I get a lot of that.”

“Sit down and be quiet!” Ashleigh snapped at Esmeralda's mother. The woman sank to the couch, shaking in fear while Tommy held onto her wrist.

“Tommy will be staying with me for a while,” Ashleigh said, in careful Spanish.

“Here? In my home?” Esmeralda's mother asked in Spanish. She was staring in terror at Tommy's face. “No, no, no...”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Ashleigh said. “He is mine and he is staying with me.” Ashleigh smiled at the woman's fear and anguish. Ashleigh could have used her own touch to make the woman feel love instead of fear. That would also have made her more compliant...but this was so much more fun.

Esmeralda's mother shuddered on the couch and covered her eyes with one hand.

“I think she gets the point,” Ashleigh said. “Come on, Tommy, let's check out the rest of this dump.”

Tommy released the woman's arm, but she made no move to stand up. She leaned forward, cupping her face in her hands, weeping in fear.

Ashleigh followed the short hall out of the living room. There was a bathroom on one side of the hall. She opened the door across from it and walked into Esmeralda's room, which was decorated with posters of Latin soccer stars, many of them shirtless, along with a collection of Day of the Dead masks in one corner. Another corner held a desk stacked with textbooks on mortuary science.

Tommy closed the door behind them. “How long do you think she'll put up with us?”

“Longer than we'll put up with her,” Ashleigh said. She opened the closet door. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. “This is horrible. Can you see this, Tommy?”

“What is it?”

“I hate all her clothes.” Ashleigh pulled a long skirt off a hanger. “Look at this beaded hippie Mexicany crap.”

“I think you'd look cute in that.”

“Shut the fuck up, Tommy.” Ashleigh ripped clothes from the hangars, throwing them in a big heap on the closet floor. She left only a few jeans and blouses hanging. “This sucks. We have to get some money and go shopping.”

“Esmeralda probably won't like you wrecking her closet like that.” Tommy opened an embalming textbook, flipped through some pictures, and winced. “Hey, look, they're reattaching this guy's jaw to his face.” He turned a gory picture toward her.

“Gross,” Ashleigh said. She folded her arms. “Esmeralda is so gross.”

“She is not!” Tommy snapped. “And you're just going to make her mad, the way you're acting. Why don't you let her out so she can deal with her mom for us?”

“Don't tell me how to do shit,” Ashleigh said. “Esmeralda's perfectly happy to curl up inside and let me handle things. That's a lot of responsibility she's putting on me, but somebody has to do it.”

Tommy didn’t seem convinced, so Ashleigh kept talking.

“Look.” Ashleigh sighed. “She knew her mother was going to be hostile about us bringing you to live here. She didn't want to deal with it. I'm doing Esmeralda a favor.”

“If you say so.” Tommy sat on the bed and continued looking through the pictures of dead bodies. “Will Esmeralda come and talk to me now?”

“Fine.” Ashleigh closed her eyes. This game of make-believe was going to get old fast. She could already tell. She opened her eyes. “Tommy!”

“Esmeralda.” Tommy smiled at her.

“Don't talk,” Ashleigh said. She took the book from his hands and tossed it aside, then she straddled his lap. She started kissing him. “I need you,” she whispered.

“I need you, too,” Tommy whispered in her ear. She pushed his shoulders until he lay on his back on the bed. She pinned his hands down while she kissed him.

“What about your mom?” he whispered.

“I am not worried about her.” Ashleigh took off her shirt. He watched as she unhooked her bra and tossed it aside. “Are you ready for me?”

“I'm ready, Esmeralda,” he whispered, and then he pulled her down on top of him.

Sucker,
Ashleigh thought.

Jenny took Alexander's hand and hopped down from the plane. The night was hot and steamy, and she was immediately covered in sweat. With the fiery landing-light barrels extinguished, the only illumination came from flashlight beams that slashed thin yellow lines across the deep darkness. Overhead, she could see a swatch of night sky brimming with stars, but most of the sky was blotted out by the high, dense treetops. Their landing strip appeared to be hacked out of raw jungle.

A couple of men hurried to refuel the plane from rusty, extremely unsafe-looking metal drums. Alexander spoke in rapid-fire Spanish to the handful of men around him, and they laughed.

“This way,” Alexander said. His hand found hers in the dark. “Hold on so you don’t get lost. The rainforest is full of predators.”

“Sounds great,” Jenny said. She let him lead the way by the thin glow of his flashlight. His hand felt warm and strong around hers, and again she felt the dark electricity of their powers mingling wherever their skin touched. He made something wicked and reckless stir inside her. She should have been terrified at the strange surroundings thousands of miles from home, but his touch extinguished her fears.

“This way.” Alexander helped her up into the back of a stripped-down Jeep, then sat down beside her. Ahead of them, the driver lit a cigar and cranked up the engine. Jenny could see nothing of the driver except for the glowing tip of the cigar.

“Wait.” Jenny felt the seat underneath her. “We’re just on a flat metal thing. Where are the seatbelts?”

“Seatbelts?” Alexander asked. The driver stomped on the gas, and the Jeep surged forward into darkness, fishtailing its way through low-lying limbs that snatched at Jenny’s hair. Jenny screamed and grabbed Alexander’s arm.

The headlights flared to life, casting dim light on the green mass of trees, limbs and vines surrounding them. They followed a narrow, overgrown trail, bashing through undergrowth along the way. She caught a glimpse of the driver’s battered green cap, his heavy black mustache, his grin around the cigar locked between his teeth.

Then the lights went out again, but the Jeep seemed to be accelerating, even as it made sharp turns along the winding trail. It skidded sideways at a tight bend, then straightened out.

“Why did he turn the lights off?” Jenny asked.

“Lights can make us visible from the sky,” Alexander said. “Not safe to leave them on.”

“Okay, but—” Jenny let out another gasp as the Jeep charged uphill, pushing her backwards. She flailed out her other arm and caught hold of the roll bar overhead. “Is this safe?”

“Manuel knows what he’s doing,” Alexander said. He wrapped an arm around Jenny’s waist, though, as if to stop her from flying out.

“I wish he’d turn the lights on again,” Jenny whispered. Her teeth chattered together as the Jeep bounced and slid its way through the jungle.

A minute later, the lights did come on again, to reveal that they were tilted at a sharp angle, following a narrow, crumbling dirt trail hacked into a mountainside. Jenny looked down along the steep, rocky slope beside her. If the Jeep toppled over on its side, as it seemed ready to do, it would roll and crash along more than a thousand feet of sheer moonlit rock.

Jenny closed her eyes again.

The Jeep plummeted forward like a roller coaster shooting down the first big hill. It slung her back and forth as it descended the steep trail, and then started climbing again. Jenny was starting to feel sick to her stomach, and she was pretty sure their driver was laughing.

They turned—sharply—onto a wider dirt road, which brought them to a high, uneven rock wall. The Jeep braked to a halt, and the headlights shone on a closed gate in the wall, which consisted of two large doors that appeared to be made of sheet metal. The driver, Manuel, hopped out of the Jeep, leaving the engine running as he approached the gate.

The wall was about ten feet high, a jumble of different stones cemented together. All over the wall, little glints reflected the headlights. Jenny realized that these were jagged pieces of glass embedded in the concrete. It looked the builders of the wall had stuck broken bottles everywhere, especially along the top, to slice up the hands and feet of anyone who tried to climb over.

Manuel unlocked the sheet-metal gate and pushed both doors open on rusty, screeching hinges. He drove the Jeep through, then hopped out again to lock the gate behind them.

They were on a paved path now, though many of the paving stones were missing, leaving empty sockets of water and mud. Ahead, Jenny saw a few buildings made of adobe, and a sprawling two-story main house made of stone, with balconies, staircases and chimneys jutting out here and there. The place looked almost medieval to Jenny. Candles burned all over the exterior of the house, outlining balconies, windows and doorways like strings of Christmas lights.