“Nothing. I’m as vulnerable as anyone on the island. But she did say they’re terrified of fire. Apparently they can be annihilated if the human host is killed and the ghost can’t escape before the host dies.”
Delaney rested his elbows against the boardwalk railing and stared off below, his expression inscrutable. “Christ, Sanchez. Be honest with yourself, okay? You want to go in because of this redhead.”
“I want to understand what’s going on.”
“And the woman doesn’t have anything to do with it,” Delaney said and laughed. “Yeah, right.”
She has everything to do with it. We connected, she and I. “If I’m there, I get answers more quickly.”
“One condition. I’ll give you a weapon and one of the cells that will be connected to the DHS communication system, and in return, you contact me immediately if she gets in touch with you again. And you keep me in the loop every step of the way.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
“And before we leave, see what you pick up on O’Donnell.”
Sanchez made a face. “I was trying to avoid that, but okay. What’d you pick up from him?”
“See what you get, then I’ll tell you.”
Sanchez glanced back and saw O’Donnell trotting down the stairs toward them. “We need some time alone so I can get the weapon and cell,” he said softly, and Delaney nodded.
“Sorry about that,” O’Donnell said as he joined them. “It was my supervisor. Since I had him on the line, I ran your suggestion by him. He nixed it.”
Sanchez shrugged. “That’s fine. I’ve got to return to Gainesville to pick up my stuff and Delaney’s. Where’s the headquarters going to be?”
“Just north of the fourth bridge,” O’Donnell said.
“I’ll get back to your headquarters by late afternoon,” Sanchez said. “How’s that sound?”
O’Donnell offered his gritted-teeth grin and extended his hand. “Then we have a deal. Excellent.”
Shit, here goes. Sanchez flipped on his psychic switch and his senses suddenly loomed like a gaping hole just begging to be filled with the detritus of someone else’s psyche. When he grasped O’Donnell’s hand, a rushing stream of images poured into him. Then the stream froze on a single image: O’Donnell, his face crayon red, demanding to know where the prisoner was and when Delaney had last visited her and had there been any word from that rogue Sanchez?
O’Donnell withdrew his hand, and the images dried up. “I suppose your dog will be joining us, Sanchez?”
“Always.”
Once they were in the parking lot, they went to their respective vehicles and Sanchez and Delaney managed to get a few moments alone. Sanchez quickly related what he’d seen and Delaney’s eyes widened. He blurted, “Okay, when I read him, I saw myself and O’Donnell interrogating a woman—I don’t know about what—but she’d been brought into custody. And then I saw myself alone with this woman, a tall blonde, unusual face, and I was asking her about a note that a hawk had dropped at my feet. And then I helped her escape.”
“Escape to where?”
“Beats the shit outta me.”
“What’d the note say?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see it. But we both picked up something that relates to a prisoner, and it’s got to be the blonde.”
And that meant it was more likely to happen, Sanchez thought. “You have that weapon and cell?”
“Yeah.” Delaney opened his trunk, unzipped a small leather bag. “Keep in mind that four bridges connect Cedar Key to the mainland, all of them on State Road 24, the only way on or off the island. Bridge number four will be blocked and everything south of it will be quarantined. The Coast Guard will patrol the shorelines. A curfew will be in effect. It could get ugly, Sanchez.”
“I’ll be in touch regularly.”
“Use your BlackBerry to videotape anything I should see. Send it to my personal e-mail address.”
“You got it.”
Delaney handed him the satchel. “Now get the hell outta here so O’Donnell won’t see in which direction you’re headed.”
When Sanchez hit the road again, headed for the island and the mysterious redhead, his heart was on fire.
Eight
In the afternoon light, Cedar Key looked normal to Maddie—as normal, anyway, as anything could be to her these days. Long, narrow shadows crossed the road, the gulf waters reached outward toward the horizon, infinitely blue, as flat as a book cover. The temperature had climbed to a perfect 72 today, but the brisk wind blowing off the water promised a much cooler night. On her way across the bridge to Dock Street, she passed bikers, Rollerbladers, runners, lovers holding hands, people walking their dogs. Normal; it all looked so beautifully, wonderfully normal.
But it wasn’t.
Dominica controlled her completely and the only reason she was on this bridge, on her way to buy coffee at the Island Café on Dock Street, was because Dominica was a caffeine addict and craved the stuff the way she did sex. Fortunately for Maddie, she loved the café’s coffee, but couldn’t let on. If Dominica knew that, Maddie would be denied even this simple pleasure. If she let on that Dock Street was her favorite block on the island, if Dominica realized that, she wouldn’t allow Maddie anywhere near it. The point, always, was to tighten her grip over Maddie, to deprive her, increase her isolation, force her to remain subdued, compliant, and, ultimately, to break her. So she remained quiet and allowed herself to drink in the sights on Dock Street.
Lined by shops and restaurants, the entire street looked as if it had been constructed of old driftwood. Every building boasted a colorful, artistic sign rendered in lemon yellows, vivid reds, and luminous blues and violets. The places on the water sat on tall wooden pilings to help prevent flooding during inclement weather, their wide decks jutting out over the gulf.
Tourists strolled in and out of the shops and restaurants and dozens of stray cats snoozed in slices of warm light or played in the shadows beneath the buildings. When Maddie passed a group of them, they hissed at her and scampered away. Ever since Dominica had seized her, animals didn’t just avoid her—they ran from her. And these cats sensed the ghosts within her and Mayor Peter Stanton, who walked with her, with Dominica.
He swung his long arms, his strides quick and confident. He wore jeans, a T-shirt, and a Cedar Key cap that shaded his eyes from the sun. Nothing about him revealed that his body was controlled by despicable Whit. He and Dominica chattered constantly, sometimes out loud, most of the time mind to mind. Maddie had been eavesdropping on their conversations, as she sometimes did, and had learned something new about Dominica: She didn’t know how to swim and, as a result, was frightened of the ocean. Ironic, since she hoped to make an island a brujo enclave. It seemed inconceivable to Maddie that in the six centuries of Dominica’s existence she had never learned to swim. Surely in all that time she had seized at least one host who had done so. Then again, maybe not. Brujos in general exhibited little curiosity.
Eavesdropping invariably left Maddie feeling soiled, defiled, and depressed at the hopelessness of her situation. It was best to just tune them out. After all, with Dominica so engaged in conversation with Whit, Maddie had a degree of freedom that enabled her to look at what she wanted to look at, to feel what she wanted to feel, to think her own thoughts separate from Dominica’s overbearing influence. And after all these months of imprisonment within her own body, she’d become adept at hiding her thoughts and emotions.
As they passed the pier, the mayor spoiled Maddie’s reverie by swinging his arm around her shoulders and speaking aloud to her. “Your hair looks gorgeous in this light, Maddie.”
“You look like shit, Whit. You really should take better care of the mayor’s body.”
Oh, Maddie, that’s not nice, Dominica chastised her and squeezed Maddie’s vocal cords, tightening her control over her voice until she felt as if she were choking.
The mayor’s arm slipped away from her shoulders. His hand trailed down her spine t
o her ass, cupping it, patting it, murmuring, “Nice, very nice. This is a valuable body, Nica. She could live well into her nineties.”
Maddie struggled to break Dominica’s hold on her, but the most she could do was wrench to the side, so Peter’s hand fell away from her.
He threw his head back, laughing. “She really hates it when I touch her.”
“She’s a silly puritan,” Dominica said.
Even after all these months, Maddie still wasn’t accustomed to hearing her own voice when Dominica spoke. Wayra had once referred to it as the brujo schizophrenia, but to Maddie it seemed more like a multiple personality disorder.
“It’s time she got over that, Nica.” He took Maddie roughly by the arm, jerking her closer to his side, hooking his arm through hers so that his fingers could caress the curve of her breast without it being noticeable to anyone around them. “Beautiful,” he murmured. “Young flesh is just so damn intoxicating.”
“It feels wonderful,” Dominica cooed.
Horror, disgust, and rage poured through Maddie, enabling her to briefly break Dominica’s control over her. She snapped forward at the waist, fingertips brushing the tips of her shoes, then threw herself back and to the side, crashing into the mayor. Peter stumbled, his arms pinwheeled for balance, and he fell off the curb and sprawled gracelessly in the road.
With Dominica’s attention focused solely on Peter, her control over Maddie loosened more than it had in months. Maddie lunged for the pier and dashed up the steps, startling fishermen, gulls and pelicans, a family with kids, barking dogs, and vaulted over the railing. Dominica fought to seize control of Maddie as she struck the water, but Maddie’s emotional state was too wild, reckless, desperate, and it empowered her. And as her body started to sink, Dominica panicked and leaped out of her.
Maddie swam frantically, deeper and deeper. She tore off her jacket, her shoes, and everything sank down through the sunlit water. She moved fast toward the pier and the marina. In the pier’s shadow, she wouldn’t be visible to the people on land and would be able to surface for air. Thanks to her youth and the fact that she used to be a runner, her lung capacity was still fairly good. She didn’t feel the urge to surface yet.
She swam east, her arms and legs propelling her forward. The salt water stung her open eyes. But she couldn’t close them, she had to see where she was going, where the shadows were thickest. Sound traveled with astonishing clarity through the water—music from one of the restaurants on Dock Street, the roar of a Jet Ski, the chug of a boat’s engine. It meant she was nearing the marina and the pier.
As the pier’s shadows closed over her, Maddie shot toward the surface, her head broke through, and she gulped at the air. It shocked her to realize her lungs breathed only for her, her heart beat only for her, her body belonged to her again. Her arms and legs, muscles and nerves, responded to her smallest desires. She had forgotten what it felt like. Sobs of joy welled up inside her.
Maddie treaded water for another minute or two, the chill rapidly eating into her. She estimated that she had to swim another hundred yards to reach the slips in the marina, but would have to swim much deeper because of the sunlight and the boats so that she wouldn’t be visible or get hit.
She heard more shouting above her and when she glanced around, saw several kayaks and a couple of small boats combing the water around the pier, searching for her. She knuckled her burning eyes, sucked air deeply into her lungs again, and dived down.
Her plan was flimsy—find a boat onto which she could climb and hide. But how could she hide from Dominica? Other than her fear of oceans, fire, and Wayra, she was like the Catholic version of a god, anywhere and everywhere, ubiquitous, practically all-seeing, all-knowing.
As a ghost, Dominica could move through solid objects, could think herself anywhere in the universe. As one of the most ancient ghosts, a bruja, she could inflict excruciating pain on humans, kill them—or heal them. Maddie had known about these brujo abilities before she’d been seized, but in the past months, she’d learned the details intimately. In the Southwest somewhere, Maddie had cut her foot on a piece of glass, cut it so deeply that she could see bone. Within minutes, Dominica stopped the bleeding and the wound closed up and never got infected. Why couldn’t the bitch turn that kind of ability toward what was good?
Many of Dominica’s abilities had been learned throughout the centuries of her existence and Maddie doubted if her new tribe was capable of doing a fraction of what she could. Plunging a host into the deep sleep, performing a memory wipe, inflicting agony: She was still teaching this stuff to her new tribe. But the one thing even the new ghosts had mastered was the bleed-out. Maddie wasn’t afraid to die; she already knew her soul would survive. But she didn’t want to suffer as she died. Worse than any of this, though, was the prospect of being seized again, of being imprisoned within her own body.
Fueled by a mounting horror that her freedom was only temporary, Maddie swam hard and furiously, using up the air in her lungs more quickly. She became light-headed, her lungs ached and threatened to burst, the muscles in her arms and legs throbbed, her eyes burned more fiercely, her vision grew fuzzy. She kept swimming. When her peripheral vision went dark, she shot toward air and light and exploded through the water’s surface.
She gasped and gulped, gasped and gulped again and again. Still treading water, she knuckled her burning eyes to clear her vision, but it didn’t seem to help. Luminous orbs and wisps of what looked like discolored smoke drifted in the air around her. Only when the orbs and bits of smoke shot toward her did she realize they were brujos in their natural form. Shocked that she could see them, Maddie sucked air into her lungs and dived again, mentally screaming for help from Wayra, Sanchez, someone, anyone, who might be able to hear her and give her an edge.
One of the brujos pursued her into the water and glowed like a lantern. But it couldn’t adjust to moving through water and quickly soared into the air again. Then a second and a third came after her. She was sure the brujo net shuddered and shook with the news that Dominica had lost control of her host, that her host, in fact, had escaped, and was up for grabs.
Being possessed by Dominica was awful, but at least Maddie was accustomed to her. Being possessed by a ghost like Whit would break her. She swam deeper, arms and legs moving wildly, her lungs already hurting, her eyes burning so badly from the salt water that she had to squeeze them shut. Something bumped into her on the right and she opened her eyes and saw huge shapes on either side of her. Dark shapes with fins. Sharks. Jesus God, they were sharks.
Maddie panicked. The sharks pressed up against her on either side, then suddenly lifted her until her head broke through the water, into sunlight and air. Dolphins. The rushing whoosh of air escaping from their blowholes nearly deafened her. Maddie grabbed onto the left dolphin’s dorsal fin, sucked air deeply into her lungs, and hung on tightly as the dolphins went under again.
* * *
Kate felt as if she’d been abandoned. Rocky didn’t answer his cell phone, the dog had taken off as soon as she’d returned to the houseboat with her food and supplies, and the hawk was, she hoped, with Rocky. She wanted to get out to Sea Horse Key before dark, so now she drove along Airport Road in the cart, headed for the animal rescue center to fetch her son. Like he was still in grade school, she thought. If Amy was working, too, then Rocky was going to be embarrassed and super-pissed at her for picking him up. But until he turned eighteen, she was calling the shots.
The center occupied two acres of land along Goose Cove and cared mostly for injured aquatic birds. They also rescued doves, pigeons, turtles, iguanas, small mammals like squirrels, cats, a few dogs, even an occasional fox, and, of course, one hawk, Liberty.
Kate turned into the driveway and continued through the open gate to the main building. Rocky and Amy stood between his scooter and Amy’s cart, embracing passionately. Kate drew up alongside them. “Hey, I hate to interrupt, but Rocky, we need to get moving.”
He and Amy leaped apart, b
oth of them looking guilty, and Kate wondered what else had been going on inside the building, on the grounds. “Hi, Kate,” Amy said in her chirpy voice, tucking her long blond hair behind her ears. “We just finished closing up.”
“Good to see you, Amy.” That svelte teenage body, the tight jeans and top, the perfect skin, a cheerleader type, a diminutive beauty. “You two the only ones working on a Sunday?”
“Pretty much.”
Amy’s eyes flicked nervously toward Rocky, a clear indication that she understood what Kate was really asking—whether they’d had any supervision at all, whether they’d been screwing their brains out in the administration building. But Rocky, swept up in his anger toward Kate, didn’t notice his girlfriend’s angst.
“We’re not done here, Mom.”
“You are,” Kate snapped. “Load your scooter in the backseat. I’d like to be out of the marina before dark.”
“Why’re you guys moving out to Sea Horse?” Amy strode over to the cart. “Nothing’s out there.”
Shit, Rocky, you weren’t supposed to tell her or anyone else.
“Exactly.” Rocky’s anger turned his voice as brittle as dry twigs. He loaded his scooter into the cart’s backseat. “But my mom believes that crazy asshole, Zee Small.”
“So you really think we’ve been invaded by something?” Amy asked.
“I’m just taking precautions, Amy.”
“Should I warn my parents?”
Rocky spoke before Kate could reply. “If you get freaked about something, you come stay with us.” He gave Amy’s hand a quick squeeze and got into the back of the cart with his scooter. “I’ll call you later.”
Amy blew Rocky a kiss, then swung into her own cart and followed them out of the center. The hawk swooped down over them and flew just above the cart. “You were supposed to keep that information to yourself, Rocky.”
“She and I don’t have secrets,” he shot back. “And you don’t have to come and pick me up like I’m eight years old.”
Ghost Key Page 13
