Ghost Key (49 page)

“Fire.”

“Right.” He threw his arms out at his sides. “We set the barracks on fire.”

“Jesus, Wayra. Before we’re done here, this entire island will be burned to the ground.”

“You have a better idea?”

“No.”

They moved quickly through the old kitchen, gathering up anything and everything that was flammable. A can of lighter fluid, a container of Drano, a few rags, old dish towels, newspapers. Wayra jerked open a drawer in the counter and brought out four kitchen knives. The blades were dull, but they would have to do. They each pocketed two of them. Then Wayra picked up the container of Drano and started squirting it around the room.

*   *   *

Kate
created a trail of lighter fluid that led to a nest of rags soaked in the stuff. She created another trail that led to the wooden chairs and table, where she placed pieces of rolled-up newspaper that she also saturated in lighter fluid. Before they were finished, they had crisscrossed the kitchen with enough flammable material to take down the entire barracks and the hotel next to it. She worried that they would be too close to the building when it went up, that flaming debris might be hurled into the courtyard and injure or kill the hostages. But it was too late for a plan B.

“Okay, get outta here, Kate. I’m turning on the stove burners and lighting a match. Stay close to the fence. As soon as the
brujos
panic, head for the women closest to the fence.”

“I’ll take the men in the middle of the courtyard, where Zee is. He knows me. Whoever finishes first should get to the group tied up closest to the hotel. We should try to get out the front gate.”

As she turned to leave, Wayra said, “Illary was right about you and Rocky. She said neither of you would have a problem with being turned.”

“A
problem
? Regardless of how this ends up, Wayra, I want you to know you’ve given me the greatest gift of my entire life.”

He looked surprised, then grinned and shooed her out of the kitchen.

Kate backed toward the door. “Be careful.”

“Siempre.”

Her Spanish was a bit rusty, but she was pretty sure that word meant “always.”

She hurried out onto the rickety side porch, the knife now clutched in her hand. The music pounded the air with relentless fury, drowning out every other sound. Kate pressed through the hedge that grew along the fence, hunkered over, and moved quickly forward, heart drumming hard, beads of sweat rolling down the sides of her face despite the chill. When she was just beyond the fire pit and the drunken
brujos,
she glanced back and saw the flames licking at the windows of the barracks kitchen and Wayra hurrying along behind her.

One of the men at the fire pit suddenly shouted,
“Fire! Fire in the barracks!”

“Get the hose!”
yelled someone else.

They scrambled in various directions, looking for the hose, then the windows burst, and a gigantic fireball slammed through the roof like an exploding sun, clouds of black, greasy smoke trailing behind it. Flaming debris was flung a hundred feet or more into the night sky. The sides of the building ruptured with such ferocity that chunks of stone and flaming wood sped like deadly missiles in every direction.

Pandemonium erupted in the courtyard. The
brujos
scrambled for safety and stumbled around drunkenly, knocking over chairs and empty bottles, shouting simultaneously. Someone tripped over the fire pit and it toppled, spilling burning logs and scorching hot embers that quickly set weeds and dry leaves on fire.

The hostages who were still conscious screamed for help and struggled to free themselves. Kate dashed out into the middle of the courtyard, arms covering her head to protect herself from raining debris, and dropped to her knees in front of Zee. He looked bad, one eye swollen shut, bruises on his face and neck, his lower lip swollen, dried blood under his nose and in the corners of his mouth. She sensed he and the others were locked in various stages of terror, physical injury, emotional trauma, psychic and psychological chaos.

“Kate? What the hell.” His words slurred. “Hope I’m not dreaming.”

“You’re not.” She started cutting at the ropes that bound his hands to the tree. “How many of them are in the hotel?”

“Dunno. But they’re in the hundreds now. The bitch in charge, not sure where she is. But unless we get off the island, we’re all fucked, Kate. They killed Fritz … and Diana and … and when they raided the cemetery, they … burned my violin.”

The Stradivarius.
“I’m so sorry, Zee. For everything.” The knife wasn’t sharp enough, so she bore down harder, moved the blade faster, and the ropes began to fray. “As soon as you’re free, help the others. I’ve got an extra knife you can use. Then get out through the gate. A plane is going to fly us out.”

“A government plane?”

“It’s a private plane. Cessna. Look for it in the marina parking lot.”

The rope came apart. She quickly handed him the extra knife and started to work on the ropes around his ankles. “Help the ones closest to the hotel, Kate. I can do this.”

“Tell the others about the plane, Zee.”

The top of the oak had caught fire, the leaves burning fast and furiously, branches snapping, falling. She kicked branches away and moved to the far group of hostages. She freed one, moved to the next, and was suddenly yanked back as though she weighed no more than a mosquito, and hurled to the ground. Her knife flew from her hand, she landed hard on her ass, and Rich stood over her, jaw clenched in a grin. In the firelight, he looked hideous, his features seized up with tension, the tendons in his neck like tight cords. “Katie-bird, I knew I’d see you again.”

“Fight it, Rich,”
she screamed, scooting back, feet scrambling for purchase.
“Fight it!”

His body jerked as he sought to regain control of his own body. One arm and leg moved toward her, the other arm and leg moved in the opposite direction so that he resembled a grotesque marionette. Even his expression reflected his terrible struggle—one eye rolling around in its socket like a loose marble, the other fixed on her with a terrifying intensity.

“Fight it,”
she shouted again, and leaped to her feet and swept a burning branch off the ground and thrust it at him.

He laughed, an awful choking sound, and grabbed it away from her with his bare hands, apparently oblivious to the fire against his skin, to the destruction around him, and hurled it behind him. “Fire doesn’t scare me, Katie-bird, and frankly, I think I’d prefer you as a host.”

Just as Kate leaped back from him, the hawk swooped down, her piercing call echoing through the burning courtyard, and attacked him with her beak and claws. He screamed, his arms flew up to protect his face, and he tripped over a body behind him and went down. For a moment, Rich just sat there, stunned, and then he began to bleed from the ears and eyes and mouth as the
brujo
inside him fled.

Kate’s horror enveloped her. She rushed forward to catch him, hold him, to stem the bleeding. But a powerful instinct demanded that she drop to her hands and knees and shift. It wasn’t an instinct she could resist or ignore. It was as overpowering as thirst, hunger, self-preservation. She dropped to the ground, began to shift, and the
brujo
that had been inside Rich slammed into her before the transformation was complete.

All external sounds and sensations rushed out of her. But she
felt
this
brujo, heard
him,
tasted
him,
smelled
him, and his history was as open to her as hers was to him. Gogh, this was a ghost named Gogh, a young, naïve ghost that had taken Rich back in early February; she actually saw it in Gogh’s memory. She also saw him in the barracks kitchen with other ghosts, voting yes or no about the annihilation of a
brujo
that had saved his host and caused the deaths of two members of the tribe. She saw the annihilation ceremony on one of the nearby deserted islands and how one of the hosts refused to be involved and had left.

Then all traces of Gogh vanished—no taste, smell, voice, presence, nothing at all. She realized his essence had been freed to move on into the afterlife.

A breath later, her change was complete and she felt shaky, disoriented, strange. She remembered what she had seen in the collective shifter memory during her transformation, how Wayra once had taken Dominica into himself and it had nearly killed him. And he had told her about taking a
brujo
into himself in the same way on the houseboat and how he’d passed out. So why had she been able to do it without suffering as he had? Was Gogh still inside of her and merely hiding?

She didn’t know and there wasn’t any time to think about it. Sounds and sights and sensations abruptly rushed back into her world. The hotel now blazed, flames raged through the lobby, and the intense heat blew out the glass in the upper-story windows, then the windows in the lobby that still had glass. Bright orange tongues of fire leaped out the shattered windows and curled up the sides of the hotel, reaching for the roof, the sky. Flames danced along the fence to her left and raced along the top of it toward the gate where the liberated hostages were crowded, ramming their bodies against it to escape the pyre the courtyard had become. The gate, eight feet tall and topped with a heavy wood lattice, didn’t budge.

Kate looked around frantically for Wayra or the hawk, but didn’t see either of them.
Shit, we’re trapped.

“Scale the gate,” Zee shouted.

Kate shifted into her human form, her change much faster now, with just brief discomfort. The smoke was so thick it burned her eyes, and around her, people were coughing, shouting, moving one of the tables and some of the heavy iron chairs over to the gate. The chairs were set on top of the table and two men climbed on top of them and beat at the wood lattice with their fists until it splintered and cracked and finally gave way. Up and over, up and over.

We’re going to get out of here.

*   *   *

Dominica
, Whit, and two dozen of her most loyal followers watched the chaos on Second Street from the roof of the library. She was still using the body of Lynn from Key West, Whit continued to use the body of Kevin, the ex-CEO, and her followers were fortunate enough to have their original hosts.

Three buildings over, another group waited on the roof of the police station, a third group occupied the roof of the Cedar Key Museum, and other, smaller groups were positioned in the marina, on Dock Street, on the roofs of condos. And when the hostages began climbing over the gate and the burning fence, Dominica’s group opened fire.

Zee’s people fell like birds, tumbling into the road where they lay twitching, dying. Others limped off into the darkness and would be picked off by other members of her tribe or taken by
brujos
in need of hosts.

Beyond this area, out past the fourth bridge, some of the lower astrals she had summoned earlier now seized the feds, feasting on them, living through them, enjoying the immense pleasures of physical existence. Her reinforcements, her backup, her plan B. Except not that many ghosts had answered her call, maybe a few dozen in all. Why so few?

“Fog,” Whit hollered. “We need fog, Nica.”

She raised her arms, calling to the fog, but nothing happened. She tried again. And again. And then, within the
brujo
web, she heard laughter, Liam’s laughter.
You no longer command the fog, Dominica. It obeys the one with the greatest number of followers and right now that’s me. Right now, my ghosts are taking those you have shot and we’re healing them, as you taught us. And then we’re releasing them, whole and able to take up arms against you and your brutes. And those other ghosts you summoned from the lower astrals? Most of them joined me. You have twenty-five of them, that’s it. And they’ll desert you as soon as they learn how incompetent you are. And I now conjure fog in which the living can hide from you. Watch, Dominica, as the fog rises at the end of Second Street to provide them with cover. Watch and weep.

Stunned, Dominica leaned slightly over the edge of the roof and saw the fog rising at the end of the street. Impossible. She had commanded fog for all the centuries of her existence. No such rule existed about fog obeying the one who commanded more
brujos
. That was a lie, a chaser lie, and Liam had fallen for it. Even so, how was he doing this? Through the chasers? Were they facilitating this?

The chasers are using you, Liam.
Her words were broadcast throughout the
brujo
net, just as his were in his attempt to undermine her, overthrow her.

Chasers?
Liam laughed again.
There’s no such thing. Or if there is, I’ve never met one.

Those giant crows, Liam. They were conjured by chasers.
She heard a background chatter, that of other
brujos
considering this new information. She rushed on.
You’re a young, naïve ghost who couldn’t find your way out of a grocery store, much less lead a tribe.

Young and naïve is preferable to ancient and bitter. You’ve lost whatever vision you once had, Dominica. You’re vengeful, cruel, a petty tyrant. All who follow me dealt with so many petty tyrants in their lives that they want no more of it. We’re going to fix what you ruined here. It’s time for you to leave.

Get lost, you stupid shit. You may command the fog for the moment, Liam, but without me, there’s no
brujo
net. I created it and I can destroy it. I now order all who follow me to disconnect from the net.

Whit and the others with her on the library roof immediately disconnected from the net. She felt it, their energy blinking out like stars. Then, up and down the street, as others disconnected, she felt the turmoil in Liam’s group, heard their protests, their questions, their doubts.
What’s she doing? How can she do this? You told us you were the leader, that you could defeat her. How will we talk among ourselves? How will we communicate?