Ghost Key (25 page)

Right next to you, Sanchez. A search is under way. Her minions are going house to house. You should probably tell these folks to put out the fires.
Brujos
have an excellent sense of smell.

“Hey, Zee,” he said aloud. “Maybe the cooking should be done indoors from now on. Just in case these suckers have organized a search party.”

“Sounds smart to me.” He whipped out a cell phone, looked at it, snapped it shut. “No signal. Shit. You think the quarantine jammed the cell signals?”

“Probably.”

Zee tapped his temple with the heel of his hand. “I’m getting sloppy in my old age, Nick. I shoulda thought of that cooking thing. I’ll walk back and tell them to kill the fires.”

“How fast can you move camp if you have to?”

The old man eyed Sanchez warily. “Why? You picking up something, son?”

Would he believe you if you told him I was sitting next to you?
Maddie asked.

He might. He knows Dominica is inside your body.

She and pervert Whit are covering the runway with body parts and debris from the café. It’s going to take them a while. The safest place for Zee’s people is the cemetery.
Brujos
hate cemeteries.

“Just curious, Zee.”

“Well, most of them trailers can be driven outta here like any vehicle. If we were in a hurry, we’d leave the ones on hitches behind.”

“Is there another wooded area like this one?”

“There’re several. But we’ve got an ELF field around this one that makes it tough for Satan’s army to get in.”

“An extremely low frequency field? What’s generating it? Why does that work?”

“Don’t have a clue why it works. But we’ve got high-voltage power lines around this woods, and that’s what generates the field. Early on, one of the demons tried to get in and couldn’t do it.”

“You could see it?”

“Heard its wails of frustration and then its death wails. Watch my pole. I’ll be right back.”

Zee picked up his weapon and bolted to his feet with the spryness of a much younger man.
Is he right about the ELF field, Red?

Yeah. No one else around here has figured it out, though. Dominica first encountered it in Otavalo. It’s how she keeps a
brujo
captive who has broken one of her rules.

“How do you find me?”

I think of you and wait for a tug in a particular direction.

“Yesterday, with the guy named Wayra … what happened?”

She took me again. When it gets really bad, I leap out of my body. You’re the only one who can hear me. Even Wayra can’t seem to. He’s on a houseboat with Kate, who worked at the hotel as a bartender. Her son is hiding out at this animal rescue center on Cedar Key. Shit, I’m babbling, you don’t know them. How’d you end up here?

“Did Kate also work at Annie’s Café?”

I think so.

“Then I met her last night.” As he talked out loud, describing what had happened after he’d fled the fire at the café, the sound of his voice moved through her like cool water. It made her temporarily forget her actual circumstances and assuaged the agony Dominica had inflicted on her. Listening to him, she could almost believe there was some way out for her, a route to freedom she hadn’t thought of.

Did you hear from Delaney after you texted him?
she asked.

His head bobbed, just as it might do in a regular conversation. “Yeah. He said to stay put for now. At some point before I arrived on Cedar Key, some fed had come out here and installed a security video in the café. It transmitted images to a remote computer. That’s what they’re studying now.”

What’s there to study? It’s obvious there was something wrong with the people on the right side of the café.

“I know. They’ve got the video I took, too. But trying to explain a concept like hungry ghosts to most of these guys is like trying to convince moon-walk doubters that we actually went to the moon. I doubt that Delaney is even trying to explain it that way.”

She felt Dominica’s attention shifting back to her, probing, searching for her.
Got to go, she’s wondering what happened to me.

“Wait. How can I come to you, Maddie?”

You can’t as long as she’s inside me. If she knows about you, she’ll kill us both. She already grilled me about the guy who resuscitated me. She saw you kissing me.

“Jesus, Red. What can I do to help you?”

Right now, nothing.
She touched his shoulder—and her hand moved right through him.

“I felt that,” he said.

How about this?
She moved in front of him, bent over, and touched her hands ever so lightly to the sides of his face so they didn’t sink through him. Then she kissed him just as lightly.
Did you feel it?

Smiling, Sanchez touched his fingers to his mouth and whispered, “I did. Like the soft threads of a spiderweb.”

Then the old man loped back over, breaking the spellbound moment. “Got that taken care of. You looked like you were talking to yourself, Nick.”

Maddie laughed and ran along the banks, her heart singing. She flapped her arms like the wings of a bird and thought,
Up, up, and away.

She snapped back into her body so abruptly that it jerked forward and then back in the cart’s seat, alerting Dominica that something unusual had just occurred. “What is it?” Whit asked.

Dominica rubbed the back of her neck. “It felt like whiplash.”

“I’m only going ten miles an hour, Nica.”

“I think Maddie has learned to travel out of body. Isn’t that so, Maddie?”

Maddie scurried back into her virtual room with its small, pathetic virtual comforts, anxiety eating away at her. Could the bitch prevent her from traveling outside her body? From escaping in that way?

It was one thing to go along for months as a prisoner in her body, plotting and planning ways to reclaim her power and her freedom, never aware that she might have other options. But now that she’d learned to slip out of her body so easily and had found someone who could hear her, now that she wasn’t so horribly alone, she knew that to be denied contact with Sanchez would kill her.

Twelve

Kate wore black—black jeans, black long-sleeved shirt, black windbreaker. She even tied a dark kerchief around her hair. Her weapon and an extra clip were in the pockets of her jacket. Wayra was at least six foot three, much too tall to wear Rocky’s jeans, but she found a dark shirt and jacket that fit him, and with his black hair, she thought he wouldn’t be visible out there on the water.

They climbed into the canoes, both equipped with electric motors that they couldn’t use until they were out of the mangroves, in open water. Wayra led the way, paddling through the dense mangroves. Despite the chill in the air, insects hummed, mosquitoes dive-bombed them, and here and there fish splashed.

The news about the quarantine had hit the Web and, thanks to her wireless Internet card, her communications hadn’t gone down. Official information was sketchy, but the parameters of the quarantine and the reason for it were spelled out. Wayra had explained that what the CDC believed was a virus was actually a substance that
brujos
prompted a host body to make so that physical life would be more comfortable for them. As if physical life, she thought, were a hostile environment like the moon or Mars. Maddie and all the others who had been seized would have the substance in their bodies for years, perhaps for their entire lives.

She now realized, of course, that Rich had already been seized the night they had sex and she wondered if she now had the substance within her own body. The CDC was theorizing that the virus was transmitted through bodily fluids. But if it wasn’t really a virus, could it be transmitted through sex? The question disturbed her and begged for an answer.

They paused at the edge of the mangrove. No fog yet. And the moon wouldn’t rise for another forty minutes. “I don’t see any boat lights, do you?” she whispered.

“No.”

“If we follow the current, we’ll get there that much faster.”

“You lead,” he said.

“Hey, Wayra, you have any of those grenades? Just in case?”

“Four.”

“About this substance that the ghosts cause their hosts to produce. If a
brujo
host has sex with someone who isn’t a host, can this substance be transmitted that way?”

He didn’t answer immediately and that worried her. “I honestly don’t know, Kate. My inclination is to say no. But over the centuries, these ghosts have evolved in ways that have shocked me, the chasers, and anyone who knows anything about the ancient
brujos
of Esperanza. It was never an issue in Esperanza because no one was doing autopsies. When someone bled out, the rest of us knew what had caused it. It’s entirely possible that Dominica has figured out how to make this substance transmissible that way. It might be why she has allowed this tribe to be so blatantly promiscuous. Maybe every
brujo
host who has sex with an uncompromised person is creating the inner conditions that facilitate that person’s seizure. It could explain why her tribe has been able to seize so many with so little resistance.”

“That’s troubling.”

“You’re worried that you had sex with Rich when he was hosting a
brujo,
so you might have the substance in your body, too, right?”

“How … I didn’t tell you about Rich.”

“In my other form, my sense of smell is extraordinary. That night you fled the hotel, I started following you because I smelled that you had been with a man who hosted a
brujo.
”

“That’s weirdly intrusive, Wayra.”

There in the little cave of mangrove branches, in the thick, almost oppressive odor of salt water and swamp, he gave her arm a reassuring squeeze. “Look, we don’t know anything for sure. Even if it’s true, any
brujo
would find you utterly distasteful regardless of how conducive this substance made your body.”

She actually managed a small, stifled laugh. “And why’s that, Wayra?”

“
Brujos
like compliant hosts, people who tend to be passive, laid-back. It’s why Cedar Key is perfect for her new tribe. But you and Maddie, in your hearts, are revolutionaries.”

“Then why was Dominica able to take her?”

“Because she’s the niece of one of the people who helped destroy Dominica’s tribe in Esperanza. Vengeance is pivotal to her existence.”

Kate didn’t feel like any revolutionary. At the moment, she was just a distraught mother terrified for her son. “Let’s go, Wayra.” She pushed her paddle against a branch and the canoe whispered out of the mangrove, into the open water between Sea Horse Key and Cedar Key. She paused briefly to lower the motor into the water and turned it on.

The sky looked as if stars had been flung out against the blackness by some Olympian. The thin necklaces of clouds didn’t do much to mitigate the light and she suddenly wished for black thunderheads and a horrendous downpour.

They aimed for the tip of the peninsula, where the runway was, and would travel along the eastern shore, through marsh and reeds, and come out behind Amy’s house. It was the most logical place to begin their search. Rocky had supposedly been with her when Kate had gone to work at the café. If Rocky wasn’t there, then they would continue into Goose Cove to the animal rescue center, the only other place he might be. Kate kept hoping that Liberty would show up and lead them to Rocky. But the hawk hadn’t been back since she had flown off last night. She desperately needed to believe Liberty was with Rocky, protecting him.

As they neared the island, Kate was shocked to realize Dock Street was mostly dark. Always in the past when she had approached Cedar Key from this direction, at night, the glimmer of lights along Dock Street burned brightly, an invitation. Business and restaurant owners who hadn’t been seized had probably gone into hiding and taken their food and supplies with them. Now they were hiding not only from
brujos,
but from the government as well.

By the time they reached the tip of the peninsula, the fog was thick, but low. It didn’t seem to be coming in off the water, but clung to the land like a transparent layer of earth and rock. Even though it made her uneasy, she didn’t feel it was an imminent threat. If anything, it provided a convenient cover for their canoes.

“Is it
brujo
fog?” she whispered.

“Yes.” No hesitation from Wayra on that one. “But it’s confused, disoriented, it doesn’t seem to have any direction.”

His canoe bumped into hers and he came alongside her, turned off his motor, tilted it back out of the water. Kate did the same. “You make it sound like it has a consciousness, Wayra.”

“It usually does. But this fog is more like a self-organizing system that vaguely recalls being conjured. And right now, it’s not threatening us. How far up the runway is Amy’s house?”

Kate studied the shoreline. She had never approached the house by water, at night. She brought out her flashlight, turned it on, and shone it off to her left, locating the runway. It looked weird, misshapen, as if an earthquake had torn apart the asphalt, then someone had come along and tried to slap it back together again. “Wayra, something’s wrong with the runway.”

“Yeah, I see it. Let’s stop here. I’m going to take a look. Take this.” He passed her the small bag that held the four grenades, then his canoe pulled out ahead of hers, and bumped against the shore. He grabbed onto something, secured his canoe, stepped out. “Be back in a few.”

With that, he dropped to his hands and knees and began to shift. It didn’t freak her out like it had the first time she’d seen him do this. If anything, his transformation possessed a curious kind of beauty, each detail precise, perfect, sculpted from some arcane mathematical magic known only to nature.

His skin went first, black fur sprouting from the pores until it covered every part of him. Then his arms changed into a dog’s legs, his hands became paws, his human legs shortened, his feet turned into paws. His bones cracked and popped and his spine seemed to rise and twist, as though it were actually some sort of serpent whipping from one side to the other. His nose, ears, and head went last, the bones moving, shortening, rearranging themselves so quickly that it looked as if his entire face were coming apart.