Dead Things (28 page)

Every time I try to get a bead on him he fuzzes out. He’s actively hiding himself. The harder I push the harder it gets. Maybe I can’t find him, but if he’s here I can find Alex. I go to the nearest door, wonder what’s waiting for me on the other side. Do I open it and crouch, lean to the side, hope nothing jumps out at me? Fuck it. I throw it open. A bedroom, drawn curtains, dusty surfaces, an unmade bed.

“Master suite,” Griffin says behind me. “I’ve been here before.”

He points at three other closed doors and a short hallway that corners away from us. “Two other bedrooms, bathroom, and down there are a den and a game room.”

A sound from down the hallways catches our attention. “Sounded like a cough,” Glasses says. “Ghosts don’t cough, do they?”

I rush down the hall, ignoring Griffin’s warnings, hit the den and stop in my tracks. Alex is lying in a heap on the floor at the far side of the room between a coffee table and a leather easy chair. Heavy bruises mottle his face, one eye so swollen and black he can’t open it.

“Is that who I think it is?” Griffin says. “You knew he was here?”

“Yeah. Guess I left that bit out.”

“It’s a trap,” he says.

“No shit it’s a trap.” I walk into it, anyway. Alex is pale, barely conscious. His skin dry as parchment.

“Eric?”

“Yeah, man, it’s me. Come to take you home.”

He starts to cry. “Is he gone? Tell me he’s gone.”

“No,” I say. “He’s not gone, but I’m not going to let him hurt you, anymore. Can you walk?”

“I think so.”

I help him to his feet. He’s in bad shape. Beaten, tortured, dehydrated. A feeling of emptiness about him. Like he’s been hollowed out. He’s leaning on me for support, hobbling across the floor. It’s about as vulnerable a position as I can be in without having my pants around my ankles so I’m not surprised when Boudreau picks that moment to hit me.

But I am surprised when he tears the floor out from under me.

Chapter 26

The carpet rips as floorboards splinter and crack. We’re more than halfway across the floor. I hold Alex tight, and jump for the door. The floor bucks underneath me, a hole ripping through the area we were just standing on. Splinters and dust blow out in a cloud and I can see the smoky tendrils of Boudreau’s ghosts tearing more chunks away, making a larger hole.

I get Alex and I to the door, forgetting that I’ve got other things to worry about than just Boudreau. I see the glow of Griffin’s ghost blasting spell form around him. He doesn’t care if I’m in the way.

I duck, pulling Alex down with me, barrel into Griffin as he lets loose. The air around me fills with light and dark, a searing pain running through me. The blast fills the room, bursting from Griffin’s hands, raking the ceiling as I knock him over.

Momentum carries me forward. The pain is blinding, but I push past it, keep moving. I have to get Alex out of the house. Boudreau is trying to tear it down around us. He’ll follow us outside if we get that far. But if I can get Alex into the car, maybe the wards I’ve placed on it will offer some protection.

Smoke flows past us to the end of the hallway. Glasses tries to track it, his own spell ready to fly. Griffin’s between him and the den. If he lets it off now he’ll fry all of us. The smoke gets behind him before he can turn to face it. I can see Boudreau’s form inside it, the ghosts orbiting in a mad dance around him.

He’s noticeably diminished, many of the ghosts stripped away. Griffin’s spell didn’t kill him, but it hurt him. By the time Glasses can face him, tentacles of smoke lash out, spear through him. There’s a loud crack, a sharp smell of ozone. Power lashes through Glasses’ body, cooking him from the inside. He falls to the floor, smoke drifting off of him.

“I’ll kill both you fuckers,” Griffin says behind me. I turn to see him covered in plaster dust, propping himself up against the wall, the glow of his spell building around his clenched fist. They’ve got me trapped in the hallway. Boxed in, nowhere to go. Scylla and Charybdis would be a cakewalk compared to these two assholes.

Before I can call up a shield or even duck, Boudreau pulls back the writhing ghosts like a whip and brings them down at me. I drop Alex, hoping that they’ll at least miss him. Maybe he can make it out on his own.

They tear through me, come out the other side and hit Griffin in the chest.

I can feel Boudreau’s energy coursing through me, electricity running along the spears punched through my body. I hear Griffin scream behind me as his flesh cooks from the inside out, fire ripping through his eye sockets, smoke pouring from his mouth, his ears. I hear a loud snap as his skull cracks open, boiling blood and steam escaping.

But nothing happens to me. I don’t burst into flame. I don’t die on the spot. Boudreau’s spell passed right through me and did nothing to me. I’m not sure which of us is more surprised.

I have a split second of clarity as the ghosts start to pull back from inside me. I see their lives in a starburst flash of knowledge. And somewhere in that I can see Boudreau. I can feel him. And I know how to hurt him.

I don’t know what it is I’m calling up. Distilled death, maybe. Pure hatred. Rage. Maybe it’s mine. Maybe it’s Santa Muerte’s. Whatever it is I channel it through the lines of retreating ghosts, shove it through them like a high-pressure hose. And let it all loose into Boudreau’s tattered soul.

He burns. Bright and livid. Pieces of him flaring like tissue paper in a bonfire. The ghosts around him vaporizing. I keep it up until there’s nothing left of him to burn.

—

Smoke drifts from the bodies, smelling like Hell’s own barbeque. I kneel by Alex. He’s unconscious, covered in plaster dust, face lacerated from shrapnel. But he’s breathing. Right now that’s all I care about. I’ll get him to Vivian. She’ll know what to do. I throw him over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry, arms wrapped around his legs. My muscles are screaming at me.

With Boudreau gone the spell keeping the neighbors away from the house isn’t going to last long. I have to get him out of here quickly. He comes to at the top of the stairs as I’m stepping over Buzzcut’s body.

“Hey,” he says, his voice choked with dust. He coughs, a racking sound like his lungs are tearing.

“We’re almost out of here, man. I got him. Boudreau’s gone.”

“No,” he says, voice stronger. “I’m not.”

He rams an elbow hard into my kidney. My knee buckles, my feet get tangled up in Buzzcut’s headless corpse and all three of us go tumbling down the stairs. I land hard on my back, the wind knocked out of me. Alex picks himself up off the floor and then I get it.

I don’t know when it happened. Maybe as I was frying him, probably before. Maybe the thing I killed upstairs was only a piece he left behind for me. At some point, Boudreau moved into Alex.

“Oh, I knew I was going to enjoy this,” he says. He kicks me in the chest. “Have to admit I figured you’d be dead by now. I don’t know why you didn’t go up like Griffin did. Not that I much care.” Another kick. Spots swim before my eyes. Can’t get a breath.

I finally get a gasp of air. I pull myself away, but not fast enough. His foot glances off my forehead and I see stars. I roll backward to avoid the next kick. Find my voice.

“You sonofabitch. Let him go.”

“Nope. I like it here. Thanks for taking your time getting here, by the way. Gave me enough to get this boy prepped and ready to go.”

So I was right. He couldn’t just go anywhere, take over anyone. He needed to prepare them first. Jesus. He’d had months with Ellis. What did he do to Alex in, what, less than two days? To get it so fast it must have been brutal.

“I said let him go.” I reach out, looking for that thread of Boudreau I had hold of earlier, try to find him. Grab him. Tear him apart. But it’s not there. He’s firmly embedded. Just like when he took over Ellis.

On impulse I pull the Browning out of the shoulder holster under my jacket. I don’t know what else to do. He kicks it out of my hand before I can bring it to bear. Just as well. I couldn’t pull the trigger, anyway.

It’s Alex. The man who raised my sister when I was running away. Who picked up the broken pieces I left behind and helped make them whole again. He’s the man I never was, never could be. I’m the one who should be in his place. I’m the one who should be suffering. I’m the one who should be paying this price.

If anyone’s going to come out of this alive it has to be him.

Boudreau waves Alex’s hand and I feel myself picked up off the floor and thrown against the banister like a ragdoll. “Oh, god this feels good.” He flexes the fingers, rolls the shoulders. “You have no idea. It was like being numb all the time. You can’t feel anything, can’t taste anything. You know what I’m going to do when I’m done killing you? I’m gonna get a burger. Then I’m gonna get laid.”

He tries to throw me again, but I’m ready and meet his magic with my own, blocking him. I still can’t get hold of him in there and I don’t dare do anything that will hurt Alex. Well, not permanently. I try to push him back, but he’s got his defenses up as much as I do. So instead of moving him, I yank the rug he’s standing on.

He topples onto his back and I’m on him. “Get out of there, goddammit.” I wrap my hands around his throat. If I choke Alex hard enough to knock him out and not kill him, maybe I can scare Boudreau into leaving. It’s not tight enough and he breaks out of my hold, kneeing my in the gut and throwing me off.

“You don’t get it,” he says, giving me another kick to the head. “He’s gone. I broke him. Broke him, moved in, kicked his ass out.”

“He’s not—”

“Oh, yes he is,” Boudreau says. “He’s not just dead. He’s gone.”

I lurch to my feet, wrapping my arms around him in a tackle, drive him to the floor. “Bullshit. I know he’s in there.” He’s grinning at me like a maniac. That’s Alex’s face but it’s not at the same time. The expression’s all wrong, the way he’s laughing and smiling. This isn’t like when Boudreau took Ellis. I can’t see him the way I saw him at the hospital, his ghost overlaid onto the body. He’s in there hard and he’s not coming out. But it doesn’t mean Alex isn’t in there, too. I look into his eyes, trying to find any shred of Alex that might be left. There has to be something there.

And then something weird happens. Maybe it’s some newfound gift from Santa Muerte, maybe it’s something I’d just never tapped into before. I see Boudreau in there, see his soul taking root like invading kudzu, tendrils seething inside. An infection that won’t stop. It flows through empty channels, takes up residence like a squatter in an evacuated house.

And that’s when I know. He’s not lying. Alex’s body has been hollowed out, left empty for this new host. There’s nothing of him left.

I feel the air pick me up, slam me against the wall. Compress around me, hold me in place. I can’t move. Can’t breathe. He’s going to crush me. I try to break his hold, but it’s like arm wrestling a bear. It won’t work. Brute force won’t work. I need to do something he doesn’t expect.

I had practiced these moves in my mind for days before I tried it in Texas. That feels like years ago, a lifetime ago. But I remember them. I reach out, find what I’m looking for. Boudreau’s laughing. Good. He’s not paying attention to what’s behind him.

At least until Buzzcut’s headless body shoves the Browning against the back of his head and pulls the trigger. Alex’s head explodes. His body falls to the floor, spasming as it dies.

Alex might be dead, but Boudreau isn’t. He scatters like dust, reforms in front of me. Raging, screaming wordlessly. His shock is so overwhelming he loses control of his spell. I fall to the ground, gasping like a fish. My vision is going black around the edges.

I can feel him now, get hold of him. I pull out all the stops. Every ounce of power I can draw in, every bit of my own. All the rage, hatred and hurt.

I learned something when I destroyed what I thought was all of him upstairs. Understood another power Santa Muerte had given me. Tearing him apart, having the Dead eat him, neither one of those stuck.

So this time I eat him myself.

Chapter 27

I hear the memorial service was closed casket. After all, nobody wants to see a body lying there with a ravaged stump where his head used to be.

The police investigation was a mess. Took weeks to get Alex’s body released to Vivian. Some anonymous tips, a little misdirection and a couple of Obi-Wan “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for” tricks later and the police closed things up with a story of a mafia hit gone horribly wrong.

Explaining things to Vivian was a lot harder. I stand by the mausoleum a long way off from the funeral, watching. Alex is going into a plot at Forest Lawn, out on the grass, under the sun.

He’s quite the draw. I count almost a hundred people. Of course he would be a pillar of the community. Local boy does good, owns his own business. Some of the people are his customers, some of them are from the magic set. I recognize a few of them.

I haven’t spoken with Tabitha since it all happened. The first week she texted or called every few hours, then every couple days. And now I don’t hear from her.

A breeze blows past, bringing a smell of roses and smoke. I hear cloth brushing against grass next to me.

“Was wondering when you were going to show up,” I say. I haven’t seen Santa Muerte since that day in Mictlan. I haven’t gone back to her church, either.

“I grieve for you, Eric Carter,” she says.

“That’s the first thing you said to me when we met,” I say.

“It makes it no less true,” she says, “husband.”

My stomach clenches when she says it. I’ve been trying to forget that. Trying to scrub that out of my mind. Tried booze, pills. Downed a bottle of Xanax with a fifth of Old Grand-Dad. Should have killed me. Not surprised that it didn’t. Muerte’s got too much invested in me to let me go that easily. Something tells me I’m going to have a hard time dying.