Ghost Key (46 page)

By the time she finished loading the truck, the sun nearly touched the horizon. She dreaded dusk. She would have to raise the garage door so she could drive the truck out of here. Just the thought of it brought back the taste of all the crippling fear that had kept her captive in her own body for so many months. What a weak little shit she was, allowing Dominica to use her body as she had because she was so terrified that if she fought the bitch, she would bleed out, she would die.

So what if she died? Death was nothing. You weren’t obliterated, weren’t reduced to dust. Her months with Dominica had taught her that. Energy couldn’t be destroyed. And in death, you learned that mythic battles were being fought on levels that might or might not have anything to do with you.

It didn’t matter if you grasped what these battles were really about. If you got sucked in, as she had, you had to deal with the situation as it was, not as you wished it existed. If she opened the garage door and found Dominica’s newest host staring her down, so what? What did it change or not change? Nothing, absolutely nothing. She would still be herself, Maddie Livingston, willing to fight to the death to maintain her freedom.

Bring it on, bitch.

Just the same, she couldn’t overcome her need to check the driveway and the road for cars, people,
interlopers
. Since the garage lacked windows, she grabbed one of her torches, put a lighter in her jacket pocket, and slipped through the door that opened into the fenced side yard. Her arm ached intermittently, as if to remind her of the possible risk. She dug another pill out of her jacket pocket, swallowed it with a gulp of water from a bottle.

She moved past a withered garden, tomatoes rotting on vines, dead clusters of cauliflower, and unlatched the wooden gate. She crept up the walkway, sticking close to the hedge. The sun had sunk so close to the horizon that its dying rays nearly blinded her. She raised her hands to shield her eyes and walked out to the end of the empty driveway. Dark pools of shadows spread out beneath the large trees on either side of the road. Nothing moved out there. Even the air stood still. It unnerved her.

Maddie listened closely to the cries of birds seeking a roost for the night and periodically heard what sounded like gunfire. All day, she’d heard sporadic gunfire, but she still couldn’t tell its direction. It might be a good sign, might be a pocket of holdouts who understood that Dominica couldn’t multitask. It might also mean the bitch was winning. It reminded her that although she had a lot of firepower, she didn’t have a single gun or flamethrower.

A screech of tires startled her and when she glanced around for the source of the noise, a pickup careened around the corner, aimed straight toward her, two men in the back of it. Maddie fumbled for the lighter in her pocket, lit the torch and ran for the side yard. But the truck moved so much faster than she did that it pulled even with her before she reached the gate. She hurled the torch at the truck, it flew wide, and the two men leaped out and tackled her.

The three of them slammed against the ground and the two
brujo
hosts tore at her clothes, laughed, rolled her this way and that as though she were some cute toy found at the doggie park. Her horror triggered the release of adrenaline that flooded through her muscles, her blood, her very being, and enabled her to vault upward, breaking their hold on her.

Maddie kicked one man in the groin and he stumbled, clutching himself, and crashed into the trunk of a nearby tree. The second man grabbed her jacket, jerking her back. Maddie wrenched free, spun, and punched him in the face. The blow split open her knuckles, but she felt the satisfying snap of his nose. Blood gushed from his nostrils and he lurched back, stunned, hands flying to his bloody nose. The third man, the driver, launched himself at her from the side, struck her hard, and they both hit the ground.

Panic exploded inside her, she couldn’t move, her attacker’s body trapped her against the ground. She couldn’t reach the Taser in her pocket, but her arms swung free and she beat her fists against his skull, yanked at his hair, clawed at his face and eyes and throat. He just laughed and sank his knuckles into her ribs and seized the sides of her face with such force that her head was immobilized.

“Dominica wants you back.” The words spilled from his mouth in a cloud of spittle and fetid breath. His eyes had gone dark, the way a host’s eyes always did when a
brujo
was fully in control. “And I’m taking you back to her and we’ll hang you in the courtyard with the holdouts from that cemetery camp and how sweet it will be.” Then he pressed his mouth to hers and dug his thumbs into her cheeks, forcing her to open her mouth. When he thrust his tongue inside, Maddie chomped down hard.

His blood poured into her mouth, hot, sticky, a squalid taste, and he shot to his feet, shrieking unintelligibly. Maddie flipped onto her stomach and spat out blood and a large chunk of his tongue. She struggled to rise, to lift up on her elbows, but her right side, where he had punched her, screamed with pain. Her arm now bled, the stitches had torn or just weren’t holding.
Shit, get up, fast, into the garage …
But the first man, the guy with the injured balls, now came at her, his homicidal
brujo
eyes stuck to her like Velcro.

She knew how this would unfold. He would reach her before she got up. He would beat her, assault her, the
brujo
within him would seize her.

No way.

Maddie pushed up and rose unsteadily to her feet. Pain shot through her side, blood rolled down her arm. In the last of the dying light, she swayed like a frail branch, but when the man hurled himself at her, she dived for the torch, swept it up, grateful that it continued to burn, bright, savagely hot.

The next thing she knew, the two zombies moved toward her from either side. Physical exhaustion nearly crippled her, but emotional horror galvanized her. She swung her torch at the first man and struck him across the upper arm, setting his sleeve on fire. On the backward swing, she hit his companion in the throat and the
brujo
inside of him fled—and propelled itself toward her.

Maddie thrust the torch through the puff of discolored smoke, impaling it, and it suddenly was no more. Just like that, without so much as a whimper, the
brujo
was gone, extinguished, liberated, like Von. The host lay writhing on the ground, hands grappling at his injured throat, then his body convulsed and he went still.

I killed him, I killed this poor fool, my God, what am I?

No, the
brujo
had bled out the host before she vaporized it.

She heard noises behind her and whirled around and faced the driver. A bib of blood covered his mouth and chin; he had torn off his burning shirt and snorted like a bull.

“C’mon, fuckstick,”
she screamed.

He charged her. Maddie swung the torch, but he was ready for it. He caught the metal stick with his right hand and yanked it away from her with the ease of a parent snatching a box of matches from a two-year-old. He hurled it over his shoulder and the torch landed on the dry hedge and instantly ignited it. He was oblivious to it.

Maddie tore away from him, toward the truck, blood now streaming down her arm, her side throbbing with pain, and prayed the key was in the ignition, where Dominica insisted that all keys for
brujo
vehicles must remain. She jumped inside—and there it was, the key, exactly where it was supposed to be. Now she had a chance. She started the truck, slammed the gear into drive, didn’t flinch or hesitate. She aimed, the truck did the rest.

When the truck hit the man, she felt a sickening crunch, as if the impact snapped him in two. Hurled back, in the slow-motion weirdness of her perceptions, he looked like a snow bunny without the snow, arms thrown out at his sides, his expression seized up with astonishment and shock. He hit the ground and didn’t move. She didn’t see any discolored smoke or mist drift out of him and knew the
brujo
within him had died as well.

Horror and panic overwhelmed her simultaneously and Maddie slammed on the brakes.
Tick, tick,
whispered the engine.
Let me move
. Maddie slumped over the steering wheel, sobbing like a mental patient. She was no longer sure whether she had killed the men—or whether they had been killed by the
brujos
that inhabited them.

The stink of smoke roused her and she raised her head from the steering wheel. Embers from the burning hedge had set the dry grass on fire. It sped across the ground like a luminous serpent, igniting whatever it touched. Maddie scrambled out of the truck and ran over to the weapons the men had dropped. One was a handgun, the other a rifle with a scope. She slung the rifle over her shoulder, pocketed the handgun. She forced herself to check the dead men’s pockets for additional clips, didn’t find anything. She returned to the truck and searched it for additional ammunition. She found a small leather duffel with two extra clips for the handgun and one clip for the rifle.

My luck is turning.

Maddie tore into the side yard, through the garage, and up the stairs for her pack and whatever else she could grab. On her way back down the stairs, she lit one of the other torches. When she reached the ground floor, she set fire to a couch, then the chairs, throw rugs, anything that would burn hot and fast. In the kitchen, she paused long enough to turn on the gas burners, the gas oven. Terrified the entire house would explode before she got out, she raced into the garage, tossed everything into the truck, raised the door, and backed out into a darkness lit only by fire.

The house blew apart before she reached the end of the road. Flaming chunks hurtled skyward like special effects in a movie and landed in neighboring yards long abandoned. More dry vegetation burst into flame. She watched part of it in the rearview mirror, then turned around to see it head-on.

Your world, Nica. Burning like Armageddon.

Even as she thought this, guilt besieged her for killing two men whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time, through no fault of their own, and for destroying other people’s property. Even if she hadn’t killed them directly, her presence had led to their demise; she was at fault.

As for the property, she didn’t have any idea how else to create the kind of chaos that would shove Dominica over the edge. She watched as low-hanging branches caught fire. Pretty soon, old porches would go up like tinder. Windows would implode, roofs would collapse. She didn’t hang around to witness the total devastation of the Pine Street neighborhood.

She turned onto the next street, Magnolia. Deserted neighborhood, everyone had either fled or died. She stopped long enough to light one of the rags shoved down deeply into a glass bottle filled with kerosene, and hurled it out the window. It landed in a withered flower bed, burst apart, and last summer’s beauty became tomorrow’s nightmare.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered to the people who had once lived there, to the lives that had unfolded here.

Her truck moved on down Magnolia, a lone machine of destruction. She lit and tossed, lit and tossed, apologizing each time to the people whose homes she destroyed, to the trees and plants and grass that burned.
Create chaos, create chaos.
It was the only plan she had.

When she finished with Magnolia, when everything on the street was aflame, she moved on to Cedar Street.
Light and toss. Again. Again.
And she kept apologizing and now she cried, too, cried for the months and the dignity Dominica had stolen from her, cried for her own losses and for the destruction she caused.

Everything around her now burned. Smoke rolled across the road, trees and houses crackled and hissed as they went up in flames. Maddie sped toward State Road 24, swung left, tires screeching against the asphalt. The headlights impaled a cart with a man and a dog in the front seat. A dark-haired man with a golden retriever.

Sanchez and his dog? Would the dog stick with him if he was hosting a
brujo
?

Maddie braked, grabbed the handgun, flicked off the safety, threw open the door and stepped out. She didn’t move away from the protection of the open door as she targeted Sanchez. The cart had stopped and Sanchez was out, moving toward her, his weapon trained on her. He didn’t speak, his stride never faltered, his gaze remained fixed on her, steady.

When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet but firm. “You look like Red. But if Dominica’s inside you, then I’m going to put a bullet through your goddamn forehead.”

“You look like Sanchez. But you may be a host. We could just end up shooting each other.”

Sanchez stopped three yards from her. “You’re bleeding pretty bad. But even
brujo
hosts bleed, right?”

Before she could reply, the retriever trotted toward her and stopped at her side, barking, tail whipping back and forth. Maddie glanced at the dog, at Sanchez, at the dog again, and released her left hand from her weapon and ran her fingers through Jessie’s fur. Emotion nearly choked her. For the first time in months, a dog allowed her to pet it. Jessie knew Dominica was not inside her and apparently her judgment was good enough for Sanchez.

“Got room for two more, Red?”

Overwhelmed, Maddie could barely manage a whisper. “Sanchez.”

He came over to her, drew his fingers through her hair, wiped dirt and soot from her cheeks. He covered her face and nose and mouth with small, light kisses, like the brush of a butterfly’s wings. The parts of her that had grown hard and knotted during the months of her imprisonment now melted away.

“When I smelled the smoke, I followed it,” he said. “I knew I’d find you in the midst of it.”

“I … killed two men, hosts … I … They ambushed me outside this house … I…” To her utter horror, she started sobbing. She pressed her fists against her eyes and suddenly saw herself as Sanchez probably did, a crybaby. “Shit, I—”

“I’d hug you, Red, but you’re bleeding pretty bad.”