Ghost Key

by Trish J. MacGregor

  “Giant crows, hungry ghosts, possession? You realize how insane this sounds, Nick?”

  “Yeah. And every word of it is true. I’ll be in touch, Nicole.”

  “Nick, wait. Dad was asking about you. What should I tell him?”

  “The truth, just as I told it to you.”

  As soon as he disconnected, he tried Delaney’s number for the umpteenth time. It rang and rang until he reached voice mail. At the tone, he left a message. “Where the hell are you, Bob? We’re pretty much trapped in the cemetery, surrounded by this fog shit. Call. Text me. Something. Either phone, both are on.”

  Sanchez tried O’Donnell next, using the fed cell phone. To his utter shock, the call went through and O’Donnell answered on the second ring, his voice angry. “Nick? If Bob Delaney is there with you, I’d appreciate it if you put him on.”

  “He’s not with me. I’ve been trying to get in touch with him. I could use some help here, Tom. The—”

  “Help? You fucking went rogue on us, Sanchez, and I intend to get your ass fired.”

  If he had been threatened like this two weeks ago, he would have panicked. Now it barely made an impression.

  O’Donnell rushed on. “And Delaney’s job is on the line, too, and we’re going to file criminal charges against him. You know what that SOB did? He busted out that waitress who started the fire at the café.”

  Kate, the blonde. Sanchez suddenly felt certain she was the woman Delaney had told him about when they’d last seen each other at the park, the day he’d gone rogue.

  “Kate Davis violated the quarantine and we brought her in. Thanks to that video you sent from the café and our security video, she couldn’t deny she’d set the fire. So she gave us some cockamamie story about evil ghosts possessing people on Cedar Key and how they’re terrified of fire and—”

  “The story’s true, O’Donnell.”

  O’Donnell exploded with laughter. “For Chrissake, you sound just as nuts as she did.”

  “Old saying, Tom. You hear the same bullshit, wacko story from at least two sources, then maybe it’s not bullshit or wacko. If you don’t wrap your head around that truth very soon, you’re going to be fucked along with the rest of us.”

  “Whatever weird kinda shit is going down on that island is about to stop, Sanchez.”

  “You can’t stop them, Tom.”

  His guffaw this time sounded close to hysteria. “Just watch us.”

  With that, he disconnected. Sanchez stood there, replaying the conversation in his head, hoping it didn’t mean what he thought it did: an attack by air, hazmat units sent in, calling in the National Guard, the military, no telling how over the top O’Donnell might go.

  “Nick?” Zee came up behind him. “You look thoughtful, son.”

  “We’re the proverbial sitting ducks here, Zee. The cemetery is a haven for us right now, but it’s also a trap. The fog’s got us boxed in all the way around. We need to create some chaos to distract that shit, then see if some of us can get out by water and make it into town. The Island Hotel is their headquarters. If we burn that sucker to the ground, it would be a good start.”

  “We’ve probably got more artillery than some third-world countries. We’re now nearly forty strong. If we’re smart, we can do this even though they number in the hundreds.”

  “It might be a slaughter, Zee.”

  “Might be. Unless we take out the redhead. If we do that, the entire tribe goes down. The tribe gloms around her.”

  All the sound suddenly drained from Sanchez’s head. Take out the leader. Take out Maddie. He realized Zee wasn’t just tossing out ideas. He had thought about this, discussed it with people in his group, believed it was possible. Sanchez pushed to his feet. “No. That’s not an option. Not for me.”

  “Now just a goddamn minute, boy.” Zee stood, one hand gripping the strap of his AK-47, the fingers of his other hand sliding through his thinning hair. “You don’t go giving me orders. The—”

  “I’m not giving you orders, Zee. I’m telling you what I won’t do.”

  “Sweet Jesus,” Zee breathed. “You’re in love with this woman. You…” His free hand moved randomly through the air, as if seeking a phrase or concept to which he could anchor himself. “You’ve connected with this woman through your telepathic stuff and fallen for a fucking illusion.”

  Sanchez grabbed Zee by the arms and immediately wished that he hadn’t. Stuff poured into him, the detritus of Zee’s family drama with his son and daughter-in-law, his anxiety about his group of misfits, about the end-time, about his beloved island being invaded and possessed by the dead. And then he saw Zee’s endgame, a bullet slamming into Maddie’s forehead, right smack between her eyes, a shot that blew out the back of her head and instantly annihilated Dominica, who wouldn’t be able to escape Maddie’s body before she died.

  “You miserable old fuck,” Sanchez hissed, and gripped his arms more tightly. “No one’s killing her—not you, not these goddamn mutant ghosts.”

  Zee jerked his arms free and shoved Sanchez away from him. Jessie, who had never even growled or barked at anyone, abruptly snarled and leaped at the old man, struck him in the chest, and Zee lurched back, tripped over something, and crashed to the ground, the retriever’s paws still glued to his chest.

  He struggled to push her off, but couldn’t. “Get your dog off me, Nick, or I’ll shoot her head off.”

  Sanchez grabbed hold of Jessie’s collar, pulled her off Zee. “It’s okay,” he said softly. “I’m okay, back off, Jess, back off.”

  He dropped to his knees beside her and wrapped one arm around her neck and trailed the fingers of his other hand through her still-raised fur. She finally relaxed enough to whimper and lick his face. She backed away from the old man and sat against Sanchez’s legs.

  “I saved your goddamn life, son,” Zee spat as he pushed to his feet.

  “And I’m grateful. But if you threaten my dog again, Zee, I’ll wring your scrawny neck. And if you even entertain the idea of shooting Maddie, I’ll shoot you first. I’ll deal with the Maddie situation on my own.”

  Zee flung his arm out toward the fog, the water. “Yeah, go right ahead. And we’ll find your sorry ass bled out on a road or in a boat somewhere.”

  Sanchez whistled for his dog, and they moved quickly away from Zee, from the camp, out to the very tip of Cemetery Point. He stood there, staring at nothing, the cold water lapping at the toes of his shoes. The old man’s words echoed in his skull. You’re in love with this woman. Was he? But how? They had enjoyed a single kiss in a salt marsh. They had—

  You followed her here.

  Yes, he had. And he’d gone rogue to do it.

  Either the old man is right or he isn’t. Which is it?

  Sanchez rubbed his hands over his face, then his arms dropped to his sides and he just stood there, feeling miserable and alone as the fog offshore swayed and swelled and laughed at him.

  Seventeen

  Shortly after the gigantic crows had appeared—then disappeared—Dominica urged Maddie up Second Street, toward the hotel. Whit, still in Sam Dorset’s body, was with her, holding her hand. Maddie knew what the bitch had in mind. The attic. She and Whit intended to put Maddie and Sam in the deep sleep so they could tend to brujo business. Only horror awaited her in that attic—ten to twelve hours or more in a comatose state, her bladder filling, her body becoming dehydrated, her essence suspended in some dreamless place without light or color.

  “She’s resisting,” Dominica was saying to Whit.

  “So is Sam.”

  “Should we provide them with an impetus to move more quickly?”

  “That sounds like fun,” Whit said.

  Dominica began to bring on the pain, doing so with such dark glee that Maddie refused to stumble, to scream, to fall. Then Joe and Jill raced across the street toward them, Joe shouting and waving his arms. “Nica, Whit, the feds have entered the quarantine area.”

  The pain abruptly stopped and Maddie went s
till inside. She immediately felt the brujo net tremble and shake with the news.

  “Where are they?” Dominica snapped.

  “Headed in on 24,” Jill replied, her eyes shiny and bright with excitement. “A pair of Hummers.”

  “How many inside?” Whit asked.

  “Eight, maybe ten,” Joe replied. “Hard to tell. The windows are darkly tinted.”

  “Very nice.” Dominica’s voice—Maddie’s own—sounded silken, seductive. Then she raised her arms, conjuring the fog, and sent out a call to all brujos without hosts. We now get even for the way the hangings were disrupted.

  The fog rolled in swiftly and filled rapidly with the voices of the dead. Find the body, fuel the body …

  Dread poured through Maddie—and Dominica felt it and laughed. “Oh, Maddie, Maddie,” she cooed. “Now you’ll see what fun we hungry ghosts have. Let’s move off to the side and let the tribe go wild.”

  The four of them stepped back into the shadows, beneath the awning of a consignment shop. The fog swelled and thickened until it filled the entire road. It swirled up over the curb and climbed their legs, spiraling like vines. Its cold dampness seeped through Maddie’s skin, into her ankles, shins, knees, and encircled her waist and breasts like the arms of a lover. She instantly recoiled and struggled not to fight it, not to resist, to just let it be. Know your enemy.

  A strange silence gripped the air. Then the growl of engines punctured it and, moments later, the Hummers’ headlights illuminated the fog, so that the stuff looked as if it were lit from within. Joe snickered and rubbed his hands together, Jill giggled nervously, Whit slung his arm around Dominica’s shoulders. Maddie hated the weight of his arm, the way his fingers trailed through her hair, but she didn’t fight it, didn’t move.

  The Hummers moved up the street like lethargic monsters. In the backwash of the headlights, she could see four or five silhouettes inside the lead vehicle. Don’t come any closer, she thought. Turn around, flee. But the Hummers kept coming, the litany of the hungry ghosts a chorus the people inside the vehicles probably couldn’t hear.

  Then the lead Hummer stopped and the second Hummer pulled alongside it. The fog swayed and billowed with anticipation, waiting for the word from Dominica that the brujos within could attack, seize, do whatever they wanted. The driver and passenger doors opened on both Hummers and men in hazmat suits emerged, armed to the hilt with assault rifles—and flamethrowers.

  Most of the brujos within the fog understood what flamethrowers were and the fog now retreated slightly, the net humming with their collective alarm. They don’t understand what the fog is, Dominica told them. Seize them.

  But the fog retreated even farther, pulling away from the vehicles, the armed men. Maddie sensed Dominica’s anger and confusion that the brujos weren’t doing what she commanded them to do. Her arms flew up, a dramatic flourish, and she shouted through the brujo net, Seize them now.

  Dominica was so focused on communicating with her tribe that her control over Maddie loosened and Maddie lurched forward, waving her arms, and screamed, “Get out of here now, fast, they’re going to seize you, bleed you out, go, go…”

  Two of the men in hazmat suits dived back into the Hummer closest to her. The others just stood there staring at her, a wild woman racing into the street, shrieking. One of the Hummers lurched forward and a man’s voice boomed over the PA, “Get the fuck inside, this is a suicide mission.”

  Three men spun around and ran toward the Hummers, their gaits awkward because of their suits, but the rest of them advanced through the street, toward her, their flamethrowers and weapons trained on her. She felt as if she had stumbled onto a sci-fi movie set, where the guys in the suits breathed like Darth Vader, great labored breaths amplified in some way by her terror.

  Then someone struck her from behind—Whit, it was Whit, she could smell his sweat, the odor of his excitement—and she pitched forward and struck the ground. Dominica seized control of her again and leaped up and she and Whit raced for the alley. A moment later, gunfire chattered across the road where Maddie had been sprawled, the cloth awnings over two shops burst into flame, and Dominica shouted, “Take them, take all of them, show them our power.”

  Those words, show them our power, were exactly what the brujos needed to hear. The fog rolled over the men, swallowing them completely, and in the glow of the headlights Maddie saw them stumbling around, tearing at their suits, ripping off their helmets. They howled with agony and fell to the road, twitching, jerking, bleeding out. Maddie’s horror escalated, but Dominica controlled her so completely that when Dominica moved her forward, she couldn’t stop it, her legs obeyed.

  She stopped by one of the fallen men, swept his weapon off the ground and aimed it at him as he writhed on the ground. Shoot him, Dominica commanded. But Maddie’s finger refused to pull back on the trigger. It seemed to be the only part of her body she controlled.

  “Shoot him,” Dominica screamed out loud.

  Maddie’s finger twitched, but didn’t pull back.

  Whit grabbed the gun out of her hands and shot the man repeatedly, then marched up through the road, firing at the men on the ground, riddling their bodies with bullets. Maddie just stood there, tears coursing down her cheeks, tears that belonged to her, tears that spilled even when Dominica yelled, “Whit, the Hummer!”

  He spun and fired repeatedly at the Hummer that shot toward him. Bullets pinged and ricocheted off the grill, the windshield, but the monster kept racing toward him, and Maddie thought, Yes, yes, hit him, hit the fucker, please, and immediately felt guilty because it meant the Hummer would hit Sam Dorset, poor Sam, as trapped in his body as she was in hers.

  Whit leaped out of the way and the Hummer sped past him. He fired again and one of its tires blew and the vehicle swerved erratically across the road, back and forth, back and forth, then spun around the corner, onto State Road 24, the fog pursuing it.

  The second Hummer, with just one man inside, sped away. Maddie’s knees buckled—buckled in spite of Dominica’s control, buckled from exhaustion, despair, ruin. Dominica triggered Maddie’s pain centers, kept trying to jerk her to her feet, pull her up, get her moving. But nothing worked. Her body simply shut down.

  She was barely conscious when Whit and Joe lifted her up, supporting her on either side, and headed toward the hotel. And the deep sleep. Dominica continued to use her vocal cords, her mouth, barking instructions about moving the bodies to the hotel’s kitchen freezer, where the mayor and a few others still lay in icy repose.

  Then Maddie blacked out.

  * * *

  Wayra made it to a spit of beach near Goose Cove. Behind the sand loomed a thicket of pines, barely visible in the darkness, but he could smell them. No fog, the crows had gone silent—or left. He turned off the engine, pressed the button that lifted it from the water, and allowed the tide to move the boat forward until it struck the sand. It would be light soon. He wanted to get Rocky, Kate, and Delaney into the trees before the sun came up.

  It suddenly occurred to him that moving Delaney was going to be a major problem. How had that fact escaped him? Pulling Delaney into the houseboat from the deck was one thing. But to move him from the houseboat to the trees would require picking him up, and Wayra knew he couldn’t lift the man by himself. Would it be enough to just move him to the back deck? He would be surrounded by the wilderness of the island, the nearby trees, and his senses would be sharp enough to detect whatever wild scents he needed to become fully integrated into his new form. It might work. He decided to move all three to the deck. Then the first three shifters in nearly a thousand years would awaken together.

  Wayra anchored and returned to the main cabin and picked up Rocky. His transformation was nearly complete. Some of his fur was starting to appear, a shiny blond and black mixture that swirled into a distinct pattern, like soft ice cream in a cone. His ears were coming in, his snout was almost fully formed. Wayra carried him to the deck and set him down. The hawk flew down to the railing an
d landed close to Rocky.

  He sensed she’d returned because the crows had left.

  He went back inside to get Kate. Some of her fur was visible now, too, black marble striated with various shades of brown. It was still too early to tell what her form would be, but at least she and Rocky would awaken together. As he slid his hands beneath her, she made a strange, gurgling noise in her throat, her eyes flew open, and promptly rolled back in their sockets until only the whites showed. She passed out again. Was it pain or just part of the process?

  The only thing he remembered of his own transformation was that the initial agony had plunged him into a comatose state. When he’d come out of it, he was alone, terrified. He had wandered for days, struggling to understand new sensations, thoughts, and memories that rushed through him. His shifters wouldn’t have to endure such a thing. They would have each other and he wouldn’t abandon them as his creator had done.

  He returned to the cabin for Delaney, took hold of his forearms, dragged him out onto the deck, and left him alongside Kate. He stared at them, this new generation of shifters, and felt a strange kind of pride. By the time their transformation was complete, they would know most of what he knew—about the history of Esperanza, shifters, chasers, brujos. They would know that the first shifter back at the edge of time had been a mutant, the product of genetic experimentations on the continent of Lemuria, the equivalent of the biblical Adam whose Eve had been normal, ordinary. They would understand that the longevity of their race enabled them to move back and forth in time, but it would take training to teach them how to master that kind of travel.

  He felt like a proud father. Except for Kate. It disturbed him to look at her, to think of what he’d done. He crouched beside her and brushed strands of her blond hair away from her changing forehead. “Forgive me,” he whispered.

  She stirred, as if she’d heard him, but didn’t wake up.

  Wayra went back inside the cabin to get the other two torches. He planned to secure them at either end of the deck and to replenish his spent torch and place it at the front of the deck. He hoped that just the threat of fire would keep these hungry ghosts at a distance so that he could grab a few hours of sleep.