The Skinwalker Conspiracies - 02 (31 page)

He paused to allow me to digest this information before continuing. “This will be your chance to demonstrate how much you have mastered the body you’ve been placed in. If you do not pick, I’ll simply kill them both. After all, I can always pick up the phone and bring your mother here. I suspect she will make a fine bit of leverage. David always thought of you as a Mama’s boy.”

Yeah, I was going to destroy him. He’d guaranteed that when he stole my body. Now, I was ready to make sure he suffered while I did it.

Unfortunately, my evil glare and bared teeth did nothing to stop his little bad guy monologue. He took a puff on the cigar and blew the smoke into my cage causing Fido to wretch. “So you see; both of these humans are expendable. Who will you ask me to spare, Michael? The old man seems eager enough to die, but from what I am told, you barely know the woman. Still, she is young, attractive, and quite possibly has a very full life left in front of her. Such a dilemma, is it not? Now, I’ll let you think it over while we watch some entertainment and then I will ask you to choose. After that, I will point to each of your friends. Bark three times when I gesture to the person you wish to spare.”

He turned my carrier around, so I could see the action. Only one other carrier joined mine on the rough wooden bench and I could smell it was the poodle. Blackie was obviously on his way to the pit down below us.

I wasn’t worried about Oswald or his dog. Other things were on my mind. The little bars on the front of the cage. If I could get enough of my finger extended and hooked around one of them, it might give me a shot at pulling myself out of Fido. There was only about ten inches in the back of the cage, but getting Fido all the way back to it would free a whole hand.

First I needed to get his paw up on the bars and he wasn’t cooperating. With the loud noises and all the strangers around, my beagle was being skittish. The growls coming from the pit down there didn’t do anything to help either. Blackie was fighting some kind of mixed breed that was smaller than he was and already missing an ear.

After a few seconds, I knew one thing - if I never see another dog fight again, I’d die a happy man. It was ugly and brutal. Considering ghosts like De Soto don’t even care about human life, how could I expect him to care about the animals he was making fight?

The gruesome sight of the lab attacking that mongrel actually helped me concentrate because it drove home the seriousness of what was happening. Concentrating and focusing, I pulled Fido’s attention to the bars by putting that image of the chew toy in front of it. Fido edged forward and then back. I enlarged it and the beagle moved closer. Next, I started to flex my finger and stretch it outside of the paw. Difficult didn’t begin to describe this. Fido wasn’t a human. He was easily distracted.

By the time I got him into position, Blackie had finished mauling his opponent. De Soto used my hands and spun the porto-prison around.

“So young Mister Ross,” he began. “Will it be the young woman or the old man?”

I saw the look on Silas Parker’s face and the slight nod of his head. My life often degenerated into a collection of terrifying moments. There were firefights in Iraq and a certain roadside bomb that nearly did me in. Those paled in comparison to tangling with ghosts who were already dead and had no fear of repercussions stalking me. When forced into a fight, I could go at it like a caged and desperate animal, but I still knew fear.

Silas was different. He might have known fear at one time, but somewhere along the way, he’d dismissed it. It was humbling to see that much courage in the face of the unspeakable.

I barked three times when he gestured to Karla.

“So,” De Soto said, “You do have control of your animal already. Most impressive, Mr. Ross. When you have mastered this form, we shall try an avian or a reptile next. Each type of animal presents different challenges. Even so, I will have to keep my eyes on you. How noble of the two of you to spare the woman.  Perhaps chivalry, she is not dead after all.”

The sound of my voice was really starting to get on my nerves.

“Truly, I respect your decision and salute you, even though I’m going to kill the woman anyway. You see; a living being with a gift is quite rare. Mr. Parker holds no interest for me personally, but others I know may wish to examine him in more detail.”

He was toying with me all along! Fido and I answered with a long and, for a beagle, rather menacing growl. Good dog.

“Much like the animal you currently reside in, this is about breaking you. You will either be broken, or you will be destroyed. When you have existed as long as I have, time is all you have. Take her down to the pit and put two of our finest down there. I wish to hear her screams.”

Over Brother Silas’ protests, Karla was pulled to her feet, but she managed to spit in De Soto’s face. Wiping it away, the conquistador chuckled and then gave a polite wave goodbye to her.

“Damn you to hell!” Silas said, shaking a fist at him.

“Ah, and here I took you for a turn the other cheek kind of holy man. Instead, I find myself in the company of a man spewing fire and brimstone. Go ahead; call on him to strike me down. You won’t be the first. All the rest have been disappointed just the same.”

The conversation continued as my carrier was repositioned and I wasted no time. Perhaps Fido and I had come to an understanding about the urgency of the situation. The beagle practically mashed his snout into the thin metal bars as I pawed at the bars looking for a spot to hold onto.

Straining, I forced the tip of my phantom index finger outward and slowly bent it around a vertical bar. It was exhausting, like trying to do a pull up with only one hand, but I’d made it this far. Now for the hard part … hanging on. Pasting the image of Blackie just outside of the cage made Fido jump backward and I immediately lost my grip.

Damn it!
I’d have to try again and take it slower. By the time, I coaxed the dog back to the front of the cage; Karla was already in the pit. One man untied her hands while the other held a gun on her. Thankfully, De Soto was too busy gloating and describing the action to the furious Silas Parker to notice what I was doing. Taking a figurative deep breath, I looped my finger around a bar for the second time and conjured the image of Blackie. This time, I put it further out and made inched it closer.

Fido whimpered, but my index finger was out to the second knuckle and I could see the left middle finger starting to emerge. Quick as could be, I slid it around the bars as well.

C’mon thumb! As soon as that comes out, I know I can make it!

I could feel the toll the effort was taking. There was probably ten easier ways to do this, but Karla’s time was running out. My phantom thumb emerged - the other side to my “tweezers” - and I hooked it through and getting a “solid” grip on the bars.

Too many lives were at stake. Praying this would work, I made the illusion of Blackie charge the carrier. One of the “benefits” of my adventures was I’d been conditioned to expect excruciating pain - small wonder there wasn’t a high demand for people in this line of work. So, it wasn’t a huge surprise that it hurt - quite a bit in fact. The best way to describe it would be to imagine pulling off a really long scab, except in this case, I was the scab being ripped free of the howling beagle.

Fido cowered in the back of the carrier while I pulled my way to freedom.

“What is going on here?” De Soto shouted and turned the plastic crate toward him. I got the satisfaction of seeing my eyes go wide in shock.

My whole ghostly left hand was out, with the right one behind it. Stretching my pinky through the bars, I brushed it against the flesh of my body and the result was explosive.

I snapped out of that beagle like a broken rubber band. One of the first things I’d ever learned as a Ferryman during the fight with Jenny Goodman’s mother was what happened when a spirit came into contact with a person they were anchored to.  Even though I was alive, the principle was just the same.

Energy surged into my spectral form drawn from my body and the chump who’d stolen it. The “physical” Mike Ross slouched almost like a drunk or someone suffering a fainting spell.

Going straight for the throat, I bowled him over onto the lap of one of the confused bimbos De Soto had at his side and screamed,
“Get out of my damn body!”

“What the hell is going on?” the woman shouted and shoved De Soto aside. His eyes regained focus and fury. My body convulsed and went limp as he separated from it and came out swinging.

For the first few blows, I had the element of surprise and the fact he was more than a little groggy working for me, but I could sense he was regaining his strength, just like Cassandra said he could do. The air around us crackled and swirled with energy as the people who couldn’t comprehend what was happening instinctively scrambled away from us.

De Soto wasn’t used to someone who could play his reindeer games, or was anywhere close to his league. That much was immediately apparent. When I hit him sparks literally flew. Fluorescent lights shattered, sending shards of crystal raining down from the overhead. My punches and kicks knocked him all over the wooden bleachers as I looked to do as much damage as possible as quickly as I could. Power and energy shunted through my ghost form and I found I was absorbing some of his energy cloud as well. The blazing power inside me swelled. Free of the confines of my body, I didn’t have to worry about a heart attack.

The conquistador’s eyes opened wide in recognition and perhaps even fear. I could tell he understood the situation.
“Help me!”
De Soto yelled and three of his dead lackeys responded.

They attacked me, pulling me away from De Soto. Glowing with the fires of retribution, I slammed my fist into the face of the first one, knocking him a good five feet backward. The other two were pawing at me - one from the left side and the other trying to wrap himself around my back. De Soto distanced himself from us, so I couldn’t take any more of his returning energy.

“Come back,”
I grunted while pushing the one behind me away with an elbow jab.
“It’s only fair, you stole something from me and now it’s my turn!”

Rounding on the ghost to my left, I looped a right hook around that was partially blocked by his shoulder. His counterpunch landed at the same time and we both stumbled awkwardly. I couldn’t waste time with these thugs and let De Soto get back to full strength. The ghost grabbed me again. I let him and slapped my hands on his shoulders. Virginia had said to push the energy out from my hands. It was time to see if she was right.

All I could see was the look on the ghost’s face. I didn’t know him from dirt. He was a thick bodied man with a bent nose and a shaved head who tried to frantically push me away from him at the last second as a torrent of energy engulfed us.

Instead of the shockwave explosion like my cleansing bursts in Maryland or even when I was fighting Oswald in Dallas, this one was focused and directed, more like Lee’s lightning strike. My opponent fell backward and simply disintegrated into vapors before his head would have passed through the wooden bleachers.

The two closest ghosts were noticeably dimmer and they immediately fled in different directions. Scanning the area, I couldn’t spot De Soto, but I could sense his energy moving rapidly away through the wall in front of me for a brief second before the trail faded into nothingness. I started to pursue, but someone grabbed my shoulder.

Spinning, I was prepared to deal with another one of De Soto’s minions only to find my father standing behind me. I cocked my hand further back ready to deck him.

“Don’t!” he said, throwing his hands up.

“Give me one reason not to,”
I replied.

“I’ll give you two. You shouldn’t stay outside of a body for too long and take a look at your friends,” he said gesturing to behind him.

I glanced where he pointed. Silas was face down on the floor and an unhinged Karla was in cowering in the corner of the fighting pit against the chicken wire with a couple of dogs who were currently barking at me, but could turn on her any second. Though I didn’t feel weaker, I wasn’t exactly an expert on this whole out of body experience. Plus, my boosted energy levels were taken from De Soto. What would happen if that ran out? Perhaps the worthless dirtbag had a point.