He climbed under the balcony railing and plopped down in front of one of the lobby’s floor-to-ceiling windows. Other people apparently had heard the woman’s screams. Employees emerged from the kitchen, customers hurried out of the dining room, the bar, even a couple on the staircase paused and glanced back to see what was going on.
One man shouted at a woman hurrying away from him and she flung her arm into the air, middle finger extended. She burst through the front door barely stifling a sob, whipped out her cell phone, and punched out a three-digit number. Nine-one-one? Was she the woman who had shrieked? Had she been seized by one of Dominica’s brujos?
Wayra sniffed deeply. Brujo stink permeated the air here, but it wasn’t inside this woman.
“Shit,” she murmured, moving swiftly down the steps. “I should’ve parked closer.” She paused. “Talking to self, Kate. None of that. Shut up, just shut up and keep walking.”
She punched out a number on her cell. Wayra, trotting after her, heard her say, “Frank, it’s Kate Davis. I want you to know I’m filing a complaint against Sam Dorset for assault and attempted sexual battery. He nearly raped me tonight in the hotel restroom. I’ll drop by the station tomorrow and make a formal complaint.”
Brujo sexual aggression. He decided to stay close to this woman. She seemed to be some sort of brujo focal point.
Kate snapped the cell shut, knuckled her eyes, and finally noticed him. Her eyes were lovely, but red from crying. “Don’t go in there, dog. They might eat you for dinner.”
Wayra wagged his tail and kept pace with her as she hurried up the street. He had checked into a motel early this afternoon and sooner or later would have to return for his belongings. But for now, this woman was the person to follow. He could smell her rage and horror at what had happened and, beneath this, smelled her worry about fog. Yet, no fog had risen yet, at least not here in the downtown area. He caught another odor, too. Kate recently had had sex with someone who had been seized, a man with whom she worked.
It was difficult to read the man’s scent through Kate. But the brujo stink was like no other and he was able to follow it back to an event earlier in the evening, when the man had been with Dominica and several other brujos, on a beach somewhere. That event smelled of smoke and fire, destruction and death, Dominica’s calling card. He kept trying to untangle the rest of the story, but couldn’t.
Kate stayed on Second Street, where there were pedestrians, electric carts, a few cars. At the intersection, she turned right onto State Road 24 and walked fast. He stayed close to her side. When her cell rang, she glanced at the ID then took the call. “Hi, Frank. I assume you got my message?”
Wayra didn’t have to strain to hear the man’s response. His hearing, like his shifter sense of smell, was greatly heightened and it helped that the night was quiet.
“I did,” Frank said. “I also spoke to Bean. He says Sam was six sheets to the wind, and right now, he’s out cold in the office.”
“And your point?”
“I’m not doing squat tonight. Let him sleep it off. Come by the station tomorrow to file your complaint.”
“Excuse me, Frank. The fucker tried to rape me, okay? I don’t care if he’s in a coma. You need to take him in.”
“If you’re taking issue with my authority as chief of police, Kate, then I suggest you speak to the mayor, my boss.” His voice bristled with anger. “See you tomorrow.” He disconnected.
“Christ,” she whispered, and her voice broke.
Wayra whined, and Kate ran her fingers over his head. “This picture is fucked up big-time, dog. I’m the one who got assaulted, but Sam is the victim.”
Behind the Island Market, the fog had rolled in already and it was half a foot high and still coming in off the water. But it stopped within a foot of him and the woman. The ghosts who traveled within it probably sensed something unknown and deeply strange about him and wouldn’t make any aggressive move until they understood what he was.
Kate paused at an older-model VW Bug, opened the door, glanced at him. Wayra sat back, mustering his best forlorn expression. “I must have rocks in my head,” she said, and gestured at the open door. “Go on. Get in. I can’t just leave you out here.”
Wayra leaped into the VW and settled in the passenger seat. So many odors in here—of the man with whom she’d had sex, of a younger, hormonal man—her son?—and then the smells of her various moods, thoughts, suspicions. A complex woman, he thought, and what a bonus that she had a soft spot for animals.
As soon as they were on the move, Kate started patting her pockets, looking for something. She pulled pieces of paper out of a zippered pocket in her jacket, turned on the inside light, and read each note aloud as she drove. “‘Yes, annihilation.’ ‘Yes, banishment.’” There were more, but based on just these two he knew they were connected to some rule or law that Dominica had established in her new tribe. She had tried this before when Esperanza was young and her tribe was relatively new. Back then, she’d failed to enforce her rules.
The last note Kate read aloud alarmed him. He felt sure that Maddie had written it. If so, it meant she had learned enough about brujo consciousness to communicate without Dominica being aware of it. Unless it was a brujo trick.
Kate punched out another number on her cell phone. He smelled her annoyance that the person on the other end didn’t pick up. She left a message: “Rocky, I’m moving the houseboat over to the Island Marina in about five minutes. Give me a call. You’ll need to drive the car over there while I’m moving the houseboat.”
Wayra stuck his head out the window, dismayed to see the fog moving along with them, hanging back slightly from the car. Long tendrils of the stuff snaked between houses, through weeds, and slithered across blades of grass. He could just make out the brujo litany, that singsong refrain that Dominica had taught them. Find the body, fuel the body, fill the body, be the body. She apparently was trying hard to duplicate her tribe of ancient brujos in Esperanza, but he sensed that most of these ghosts were young, recently dead, naïve, reckless. They were like planets revolving around the sun, Dominica. Without her, the tribe would fall apart.
He smelled Kate’s fear again, a different sort of fear, about traveling within the fog to move her houseboat through the back bayou to a marina. He wished she would wait until morning, when even brujo fog usually burned off, but he didn’t have a say in any of it. The most he could do to repay this woman for her kindness and the inadvertent insights he’d gained was to stay with her until she made this dangerous move.
She hung a right down a narrow street shrouded by huge trees. The fog here remained low to the ground, but there was so much of it he feared it might already be too late for Kate. Once Dominica had someone in her sights, she brought the full force and power of the dead to bear against the person. Few survived such an experience. Those who did were permanently changed. Many were irreparably damaged.
The headlights impaled a tall, slender man in the distance, at the end of the street, waving his arms. He stood next to a scooter with a hawk perched on its handlebars. “The hawk may be your greatest protection, but I don’t know why,” Maddie had written Kate. Was this the hawk?
The bird suddenly lifted into the air and flew toward them, its high-pitched keening both a greeting and a cry of alarm. Wayra drew its scent into his lungs, but couldn’t read it. And yet, it was a sparrow hawk, just like that hawk in the landfill near Ocala. But was it the same hawk? Was this the synchronicity he’d hoped for?
Kate stopped alongside the scooter, got out, and the young man threw his arms around her. “Jesus, Mom. One of Amy’s neighbors was at the hotel and told us you got raped.”
“Nearly. It’s okay, Rocky. I’m okay.”
“I … I was so worried. I’m glad you’re all right and sorry I was such a shit earlier.” He stepped back, as if his own emotion embarrassed him. “Who was it?”
“Sam Dorset. I already talked to Chief Cole. He’s useless. Look, get your scooter on the housebo
at. We’re outta here.”
Wayra jumped down from the car and barked. Rocky’s face lit up and he ran his hands over Wayra’s head. “Wow, who’re you?”
“He followed me from the hotel,” Kate said. “I couldn’t just leave him. So for now, he’s ours.”
“I hope he and Liberty get along.”
The hawk hovered just above them, wings fluttering, then flew on between houses. Wayra watched her until a strong scent distracted him, that of the man with whom Kate had had sex. Wayra understood this was the man’s home and that Kate, her son, and the hawk lived out back, in the houseboat tethered to the dock.
Rocky pushed his scooter onto the houseboat, then started untying the houseboat from the dock. “Why’re we moving from here? Rich didn’t have anything to do with this, did he?”
“He told me not to make waves when I was about to call Chief Cole. He’s … changed, Rocky. I can’t explain it beyond that.”
He gave her an odd look, skeptical, then said, “I’ll move your car, Mom.”
“Forget the car. And the cart. We’ll come back for them tomorrow. I need you on the houseboat with me. Look, I know you think I’m paranoid and whatever, but we can’t just stay here, okay?” She gestured toward the water, the fog. “That shit freaks me out. I’d like some human company as we navigate through it to the marina.”
“Yeah, it freaks me out, too.”
Minutes later, the boat began to move into the bayou. Wayra trotted out to the front deck and noticed the hawk perched at the edge of the open upper deck, watching him warily. Are you the same hawk from the landfill? He directed his question at the hawk, but she simply swiveled her head, looking away from him.
As the boat entered the thicker fog, which blanketed every small rise of land, he suddenly felt Charlie beside him, then saw him clearly, sitting near the railing, legs crossed. He puffed on his fat Cuban cigar. The fog is filled with them, Wayra. If you could see what I do, you’d make them turn back.
I don’t have a say, Charlie. And unless you’ve got some specific alternatives, get lost.
Another man materialized next to Charlie, a short, squat man with Oriental eyes, a clean-shaven jaw, and a bald head. He wore a suit and tie and looked like a Wall Street guy. Then his attire shifted to jeans and a work shirt, like some down-home farmer dude from Kansas. He kept fine-tuning his clothing, the blue of the shirt deepening, his denim jeans shifting from dark blue to stonewashed to jeans with frayed hems. Victor, the chaser clotheshorse. Whenever he was uneasy, his clothes changed perpetually.
He was one of the thirteen on the chaser council, an ancient whose last physical life predated Wayra’s birth by at least several centuries. Wayra, good to see you again, Victor said.
I’d like to be polite and return that greeting, Vic. But I know better.
You always were a cynic. Victor suddenly grew hair, as if he believed it might create a more congenial atmosphere between them.
I like you better as a bald guy, Wayra remarked.
Really? Why’s that?
Buddha was bald. I have a fondness for Buddha.
Actually, Buddha wasn’t bald, Wayra, but I’ll leave you to your illusions. With that, Victor went immediately bald again and developed a protruding belly. You should know, Wayra, that Dominica burned one of her own for saving his human host and annihilating two brujos. We recruited him, a surgeon in his most recent life. And Maddie was enormously courageous and helpful.
So you’ve known all along that she was on Cedar Key? Wayra asked.
Not all along, no. But—
Wait a minute, Charlie burst out. You two know each other?
Oh, c’mon, Charlie, Wayra said. I know at least six of the thirteen chasers on the council. I may know more than that and just don’t realize they’re on the council.
But I bet you don’t know that Victor was my mentor during the last few years of my life, Charlie said. That he recruited me into the chasers.
This bit of information astonished Wayra. He hadn’t known anything about how Charlie had become a member of the chaser council. Victor, I appreciate the update on Maddie, but unless you have some useful intel about how I can rescue her without Dominica bleeding her out, you can go away. I’ve known Dominica longer than any of you chasers. I understand the dynamics. I won’t be dictated to by anyone who allowed this travesty to happen in the first place.
Victor glared at him. The hawk abruptly swept down from her perch on the roof and dive-bombed the two chasers. Her shrieks brought Rocky to the front of the houseboat, but since he couldn’t see the chasers, he didn’t have any idea what was going on. He whistled loudly for the hawk and she glided down to his padded arm and clutched it, head moving right, left, her strange eyes impaling Wayra. Charlie and Victor faded away.
Wayra now felt certain she was the hawk he’d seen at the landfill, the hawk who had saved his ass. The fact that she just happened to live with Kate and Rocky was exactly the kind of sign he’d hoped for, the synchronicity he so deeply needed.
Kate veered the houseboat close to the shoreline, where the fog thinned. The brujos within it watched them, pursued them, but the fog didn’t move any closer to the houseboat until they rounded the eastern edge of the island. Then a pair of tendrils drifted over the side of the houseboat. One slithered toward Wayra, the other toward Rocky.
Wayra growled, bared his teeth, and leaped onto the ribbon of fog, breaking it into dozens of smaller bits. The pieces whipped back and forth, like the severed tail of a lizard, and finally dropped over the side of the houseboat. The hawk shrieked and dived at the long band of fog that threatened Rocky. The length of fog reared up, a pale cobra poised to strike, but the hawk tore through it, her beak ripping it apart.
What the hell sort of hawk was this?
Rocky ran inside, shouting at Kate to open the engine as wide as it would go. As the houseboat picked up speed, the hawk landed on the railing. Her shrieks echoed across the water, through the darkness, like a battle cry. Wayra dropped his head back and howled. The fog rapidly retreated.
* * *
Dominica stood in the back office, staring down at Sam Dorset, sprawled on the couch where Gogh’s and Joe’s hosts had put him. He snored loudly, his mouth partially open, his unshaven jaw giving him a raw, primitive look. Liam, who had been inside him, now hovered nearby, fretting like an old man.
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do it, but I could smell sex on her, it excited me, I just couldn’t help myself and—
“Shut up, Liam,” Dominica demanded. “Just shut the hell up. Don’t any of you get it?” She looked at Joe, Whit, Jill, Gogh. “You can’t allow your hosts to drink alcohol or take drugs. Whenever a host takes any kind of mood-altering substance, we lose our way too easily. We need this hotel as our base. It’s how we make money, how we fit into the community. Once the island is completely ours, we’ll have to mingle with tourists. And what happened tonight and back in February just cannot be repeated. Ever. So as of right now, every brujo who has a host is responsible for that host’s behavior. I’ve taught you how to control humans, how to manipulate them, isolate their essences, how to inflict pain on them when they misbehave. Use the tools I’ve given you.”
“You’re being kind of harsh, Nica,” said Whit. “None of us is as ancient as you are, as proficient in the ways of the dead. We’re learning.”
“Yeah,” Jill piped up.
“Liam nearly disrupted our entire operation,” Dominica said. “So here’s a new decree. From now on, if you can’t control your host, then you don’t deserve a host. It’s as simple as that.” The brujo net trembled and shuddered as her new decree was broadcast. “And my best advice to you in this regard is to limit what your host drinks. So Liam, get back into Sam and wipe his memory clean of what happened.”
I already did that.
“You’d better be sure. You need to fiddle with his brain chemistry so his body absorbs the alcohol more quickly, and get him home. I don’t want him here.”
I don’t know squat about brain chemistry. Before I died, I ran a convenience store.
“For Chrissake,” she snapped, and backed up to a chair and sat down. Dominica plunged Maddie into a Snow White sleep so fast that her host never had a chance to fight it. Then she drifted out through Maddie’s chest and spoke with Liam and the others mind to mind. You’re going into Sam with me, Liam, and I’m going to show you what to do. Then you’re going to teach it to the others. That’s your new assignment. Understood?
Yeah, okay. I get it, you don’t have to scream.
She had never had to explain such things to her tribe in Esperanza. Many of those brujos had been as old or nearly as old as she was and understood the human body. She initially learned about human physiology from a surgeon who had hosted her for a year. He never even knew he’d been seized; her purpose with him was simply to learn. Hadn’t any of these ghosts been curious enough to explore the parameters of power in the world of the dead? Until she’d liberated them, hadn’t they ever ventured somewhere other than their pathetic astral planes?
She drifted through the top of Sam’s head and Liam followed her. Within minutes, she had shown him how to speed up the alcohol absorption in Sam’s body and how to conduct a memory wipe correctly, focusing on the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. Even though memory wasn’t just confined to these two areas of the brain, this wipe would suffice for their purposes. It was possible that Sam might remember bits and pieces of the incident later, but in the long run it wouldn’t matter. Every host they seized was damaged in some way, even Maddie. And the longer she hosted Dominica, the more damaged she would become.
The damage manifested in any number of ways. Sometimes hosts were so broken by brujo possession they went mad. Then the virtual metal room became their padded cell for the rest of their existences. Other times, hosts became psychic. Or psychotic. Or sociopathic. Some simply gave up, surrendering completely. Some were compliant and a few entered into a kind of symbiosis with their brujos. Those were the best kinds of hosts.
Ghost Key Page 10
