Black Magic (29 page)

Suddenly, two massive hogs charged in from the edge of the road. Heads down, they slammed into the driver’s side of the truck like a pile driver. Their tusks impaled the door. Metal bent with a hollow groan and the truck rocked up on one side. The hogs held it up and a tire on the low side blew out like an explosion. The hogs backed off and the truck careened into the drainage ditch on the side of the driveway and stopped.

“Holy shit!” A hundred images flashed through Andy’s mind. RPGs, IEDs, Taliban ambushes. Trucks blown thirty feet into the air. Bodies in pools of blood.

Andy spun the wheel and jammed on the brakes. He missed the pickup’s bumper by inches. The dump truck lurched to a halt. Andy held his breath and fought back the panic that threatened to consume him.

In the glare of the dump truck’s headlights, the hogs took position in the center of the driveway, as if daring the humans to make the next move.

Andy’s stomach did cartwheels. More casualties, more death. Everything he feared seeing from the cab of a truck was back with a vengeance. He wanted to run screaming back to the main road.

But something more important than self-preservation kicked in. He looked across the cab. His mother stared out the windshield. She was all he had for family and he wasn’t about to let her die out in this magic-stained no man’s land. And this wasn’t some spot on the other side of the world. This was his home. If he ran, that would be one less person in the battle to keep Citrus Glade from being wiped off the map. He relaxed his grip on the wheel.

“You okay, Mom?”

Dolly nodded and shook off the shock from the attack. She threw open her door and stood in the opening. “Walking Bear!”

The pickup’s driver’s door swung open and Walking Bear pulled himself out. He gave Dolly a chopped reassuring wave. Walking Bear reached in and pulled Autumn out after him, her face a mask of anguish. Walking Bear pushed her toward the dump truck.
 

Autumn climbed up into the cab and Dolly gave her the passenger seat while she remained standing.

“Damn pigs speared us right through the side of the truck.” She pulled her wet hair away from her face. “Non-native bastards.”

Walking Bear climbed up the driver’s side of the dump truck and cracked open the door.

“For now, we’re safe up here,” Andy said. “The pigs can pound the side of this truck until their skulls cave in.”

“Unless they run those tusks through one of these rotten tires,” Walking Bear said. “Those tusks are sharp as hell.”

“I’d never get this heavy truck to go anywhere on flat tires,” Andy said. “We’ll be stuck here with who knows what between us and the plant.”

“Something gave those hogs the brains to go for the driver in the pickup,” Walking Bear said. “It would also give them the brains to go for your tires.”

A dozen yards down the road, the two hogs snorted and waved their snouts in the air. Their eyes pulsed blue with a heartbeat rhythm.

In the near area of the headlight’s beam, an armadillo waddled out onto the road. It paused and looked up at Walking Bear.

“I’ve got this,” the old Anamassee said. He leapt from the cab and pulled his hunting knife from his belt. The armadillo headed toward the plant.

All three occupants shouted in protest, but Walking Bear ignored them. He walked the driveway’s double yellow line, eyes locked on the snarling hogs. One of them scraped its tusk against the rough pavement like a barber strap-sharpening a straight razor. The other pawed the ground.

With Walking Bear halfway there, the hogs charged, a quarter-ton of furious beasts ready to kill.

A yellow blur of panther fur flew from the underbrush and hit one of the hogs. The hog rolled right like a ship hit by a broadside. The attacking panther bit into the hogs’ neck and tore out a thick chunk of meat. Blood sprayed the big cat and the hog flopped over dead.

But the assault gave the second hog a lead. The panther leapt in pursuit, but the hog had Walking Bear in its sights. The gap closed to feet. The hog snorted. Walking Bear stared him down like a Western gunfighter.
 

The armadillo raced into the hog’s path at an impossible speed. The hog sidestepped to miss the armadillo and swung its massive head for a slashing attack. A tusk caught the armadillo and threw it skyward.

“No!” Walking Bear screamed.

The hog lost just a step, but it was a step too much. The panther caught it from behind and the two animals skidded across the slick pavement past Walking Bear. The panther grabbed the hog’s chin with one powerful paw and pulled. It drove its canines into the boar’s exposed neck. The hog gurgled and died.

Walking Bear ran to the armadillo and knelt at its side. He cradled the animal’s head in his hand. The armadillo cast its black eyes to Walking Bear’s face. Its mouth opened slightly and a wisp of white mist snaked out and vanished. The armadillo went limp. Walking Bear bowed his head. His lips moved in silent prayer.

Dolly had run from the truck as soon as the panther dropped the second hog. She knelt behind Walking Bear and hugged his broad shoulders.

“Your spirit guide?’ she asked.

He nodded, eyes still closed.

“I’m sorry,” Dolly said. “He was courageous. You both were.”

Walking Bear looked down the road toward the Apex plant’s hulking outline. A flash of lightning backlit the structure. The panther stood with its forepaws on the body of the dead hog and spit out a scratchy roar. Walking Bear’s eyes narrowed.

“Let’s go finish this.”

Chapter Sixty-Eight

At the edge of the parking lot, the rain stopped like it hit a pane of glass. One second the truck’s wipers were slinging a torrent of water off the vertical windshield, the next they parted mist. Andy stopped the truck. Walking Bear hopped down from his place on the running board and slicked his long hair back from his eyes. The panther trotted up to his side.

Autumn looked at the panther with longing.

“Researchers spend years and don’t see a Florida panther. I’m hunting with one.”

Hurricane Rita had formed her eye. Overhead, the sky was completely clear. Stars twinkled like angels in heaven. The full moon cast down its light and gave the crumbling plant a gray, ghostly glow. From the top of the tower, the bands of blue energy had transformed into a continuous counterclockwise swirl that stretched out across the sky to the whirling clouds at the storm’s inner edge.
 

“That’s where it’s going,” Andy said. “The energy travels through the pipes and then up through the tower.”

“Hurricanes need energy to form,” Autumn said. “It’s usually from warm water, but all this would supercharge the whole process. No wonder the storm rose up so fast.”

“And if we cut off that power?”

“The storm runs out of steam fast. Enough of it isn’t over the ocean to recharge.”

“Sounds like a plan. The winch on the front bumper has enough power to yank one leg of the tower free. That will be enough to topple it. ”

“Say you plug this fire hose feeding the storm,” Dolly said, “what about all that energy? The hose will burst somewhere.”

“Mom, there are millions getting pounded on both coasts. The Keys are going to be washed away. I’ll chance it. You two had better get out.”

Dolly climbed out of the cab.
 

“No way,” Autumn said. “Lose all that chivalrous crap. You need me. You’re going to drive up, I jump out and hook the tow cable, and you reel it in.”

“That’s the plan?” Andy said.

“It is now,” Autumn said. “Get driving.”

Dolly watched the dump truck lurch away toward the tower. Walking Bear joined her, panther at his side.
 

“We have our own task,” Dolly said. “We have to go into the plant. The man in there is making everything go on out here.”

“We can wait until Andy takes out the tower.”

“Once the tower is down, Lyle will make good his escape.”

“Ah, the element of surprise,” Walking Bear said. “You have some mystical immunity?”

“I have a strong spirit,” she said, “a wise friend, and a panther. I’m covered.”

The moonlight cast shadows around the lumps in the buckled, decaying asphalt. The panther trotted ahead of them in a beeline to the Apex plant. Walking Bear and Dolly followed its path.

The dump truck’s headlights lit the chain-link fence at the base of the tower. Vicente Flores stood outside the perimeter. He stared down the truck with his solid blue eyes.

“Who’s that?” Autumn said.

“Vicente Flores. General lowlife with a good façade. At least that’s him on the outside. Looks like something else happening on the inside. He’s got the same look in his eyes those mosquitoes had.”

“I’m starting to hate that look.”

Vicente raised his hands in the air like a priest at Mass. Pairs of blue eyes winked open on the ground all around him and Andy could see he faced an army of alligators and snakes. A machete wasn’t going to be much help now.

“A few days ago I would have been happy to see this many alligators,” Autumn said.

Two gators sprinted to the nose of the truck. They clamped onto the front bumper. In unison, they rolled right. The bumper tore free with a wrenching sound that sent a shiver up Andy’s spine. The bumper clanked to the ground. The wiring for the winch yanked free in a shower of sparks.

“Holy shit,” Andy said.

Gators attacked from both sides. Great jaws snapped shut on tires. The truck rocked back and forth as the tires burst one by one.
 

Before Andy could react, the air around the truck lit up with a million points of blue light. They swarmed the cab. Insects popped and splattered against the windshield like they’d been thrown against it by the bucketful. Andy and Autumn reflexively gave the door window cranks a tightening tug. The cab darkened as the windows grew thick with insect bodies. Blue eyes appeared in the recesses of the dashboard vents.

“Andy!” Autumn yelled. She slammed the vents shut on her side.

Andy closed his vents but the slats had gaps. A mosquito squirmed through the crack. Andy slammed it into the dashboard with his palm. He grabbed a rag from the seat and shoved it into the vent. Autumn grabbed yellowed papers and followed his lead. Andy bent over and stuffed some dirty paper towels into the floor vents. He turned the vent controls to off.

A snake slithered across the base of the windshield. Its brown and tan scales scraped a temporary clearing through the muck. It spiraled around a windshield wiper and ripped it free. Another brushed the outside of Andy’s door. The door handle jiggled and Andy pounded the door lock down.

Blind, immobile and surrounded
, Andy thought.
Could we be more screwed?

Autumn reached over and grabbed his hand.

At that moment across the parking lot, what Dolly thought were lumps of buckled asphalt came to life. Luminous eyes flicked open and dozens of alligators rose from the ground.

The panther snarled and with one great bound leapt to Walking Bear’s feet. It turned to face the new threat. Its head and tail swung in opposite defensive arcs as it growled a warning at the advancing horde. A python slithered out in advance of the gators.
 

Walking Bear drew his big knife from his belt and took a half step in front of Dolly.

“We’ll try to clear you a path,” he said. “Stay away from their jaws.”

The python coiled itself for a strike. The panther pounced. Its jaws caught the snake and snapped it in half. The cat threw the rest of the snake away with a toss of its head.

The gators came on at a run.

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Vicente’s high dwarfed anything drugs had ever done. Beasts at his command. Human lives in his hands. The million-watt thrum of magic that passed under his feet and into the tower behind him. He could even sense the energy in the bubbling clouds that swirled around the calm center over Citrus Glade. In seconds, his creatures of the night would destroy the two interlopers at the entrance of the Apex plant.

The dump truck idled on four shredded tires. Pythons had strewn exterior parts like bumpers and mirrors all over the parking lot. The thick remains of thousands of suicidal insects blackened the windows. Three pythons encircled the cab, ready to pop it open like Popeye crushing a can of spinach.

Instead of collapsing the cab, the snakes paused. Their heads twisted outward and their forked tongues licked the air. The gators across the parking lot paused mid-stride.

Something was wrong. The power Vicente felt,
his
power, was weaker, drained away to somewhere else…

“Cente,” called a voice behind him.

He whirled to see Juliana step out of the scrub. Her feet were torn and bloody, her long legs scratched. Her hair hung down in wet strands across her face but could not obscure her bright blue eyes.

Pale memories fluttered by of a girl and a truck the girl should have delivered to Georgia by now. At one point all these things had been important. Now all that mattered was Juliana might be a threat to the tower. If she could divert power from him, could she pull it from the tower as well? Were the rest of these people just a diversion for her attack?