Ghost Key

by Trish J. MacGregor

  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?

  Yes, indeed. Like any ghost that lacked a central switchboard, she thought, Liam’s ghosts would have to learn how to communicate one on one, not the easiest thing to do when you had been dependent on the brujo net.

  Good riddance, Liam, she whispered, then proceeded to destroy the brujo net in the same way she had created it centuries ago. She summoned her most powerful intentions and hurled them into the greater forces available to the dead in the hereafter. She clapped her hands twice, sharply, and the brujo net went dark.

  Whit and the others on the roof all stared at her, aghast, awed. “My God, you actually did it,” Whit breathed.

  “Now what?” Jill asked. “How’re we supposed to talk to each other when we don’t have hosts?”

  “Reach out, be firm in your intentions, believe it can happen, and it will. One of our rights in the afterlife is to be able to draw on its inherent power. You don’t need the net to do that. It takes practice, that’s all.” And infinite patience, she thought, but didn’t say it.

  “What will happen to Liam and his group now that they can’t communicate with each other?” Joe asked.

  “The group will be thrown into total chaos. Now let’s go claim our island. Jill, you and Joe bring the vehicles around.”

  “And do what?” Joe asked.

  Wasn’t it obvious? Had he—had all of them—lost the capacity for independent thought? “Gather up the dead and the dying and dump them at the edge of the quarantine area. We still have a small number of brujos who need hosts and I’m sure there are some among the freed hostages who are healthy enough to be seized. After all, where can they possibly go? If they try to drive off the island, they’ll be seized by visiting brujos or arrested or shot by the feds. If they try to escape by boat, they’ll be caught by brujos or the Coast Guard. So let’s tie up our loose ends and then start cleaning up our enclave.”

  As the others headed downstairs, Whit took her hand and pulled her against him. Her host, Lynn, didn’t resist. She actually seemed to be attracted to Whit’s host, Kevin. “I love you, Nica,” he whispered, his mouth warm against her ear, her cheek. Then he kissed her and she melted against him and allowed herself a few moments to love the one she was with.

  * * *

  Wayra raced after Illary, who flew low enough for him to follow her, but high enough to locate Sanchez or Maddie or both of them. He knew that Maddie had liberated herself from Dominica; he’d discovered that fact in the courtyard, from one of the female hostages he had freed. The only reason she would be out here near the animal rescue center and the airport would be to hide or to find some way off the island.

  After freeing the hostages, he and the hawk escaped the courtyard. Now they were closing in on the animal rescue center.

  A cart’s headed toward you, Wayra, three brujos inside. They’re agitated about what’s happening downtown.

  He veered into a front yard, paused behind a tree, and flattened out against the ground, watching the brujo cart as it approached. What Illary referred to as “agitation” smelled deeper than that. It stank of that peculiar fear that only a brujo could feel when its existence was threatened. Their combined odors told him nothing about the source of their fear, but he felt certain it wasn’t just about the fire.

  When the cart whispered past him, he leaped up, keeping pace with the hawk as she turned north and then west along Airport Road. As he rounded the curve in the road, now close to the house where he and Kate had discovered the bodies of Amy’s parents, a familiar stench hit him. Brujo fear. Tell me what you see, Illary.

  A cart and an airplane with people outside it. I’m going in for a closer look.

  But what she didn’t see and Wayra did because he was on the ground, was the rear end of a truck protruding from a mangrove. He ran over to it, sniffing at the tires, the branches and water around it, and caught a dog’s scent and that of Maddie and Sanchez. The two of them together, here? How?

  He pursued their scents down the beach and saw them, flattened out in the shallows behind a mound of reeds, the dog next to Sanchez, he and Maddie, her hair covered with a baseball cap, watching eight brujos taunting Rocky and a tall black man. He suspected other brujos in their natural forms hovered nearby. All that stood between his shifters and the brujos was equipment they had removed from the plane and several heaps of debris that had been cleared from the runway. Wayra didn’t know if Maddie and Sanchez were armed, but even if they were, they were badly outnumbered.

  As Wayra approached, Maddie turned her head—and saw him. She shot to her feet and raced toward him, her arms thrown open. Even though she didn’t make a sound, her body was fully visible to the brujos, that young woman whose long and perilous journey with Dominica they knew nothing about. All they knew was that she had hosted Dominica.

  Wayra leaped at her, hoping to knock her to the sand, but one of the brujos opened fire and the bullet with Maddie’s name on it slammed into Wayra’s right side, punctured his right lung, and exited his other side, a clean sweep that nonetheless rendered him irrelevant. He collapsed, his breath an excruciatingly painful wheeze, and felt blood filling the cavity of his chest.

  Fuck.

  Twenty-four

  For Maddie, everything seemed to happen in a grotesque slow motion, each interminable moment vivid and horrifying. As Wayra’s paws struck her in the chest, knocking her to the sand, a single shot rang out, echoing up and down the beach, and Wayra’s airborne canine body twisted and fell to the ground.

  Now she scrambled toward him on her hands and knees, gunfire exploding around her, the same words spilling from her mouth again and again. “Please don’t be dead please don’t be dead…”

  When she reached him, she saw the agony in his open eyes, the blood seeping through his clothes. Then his body went berserk, fluctuating wildly between animal and human, fur one moment, skin the next; legs and paws, then a human foot, a human hand; a human ear, an animal snout. His shifter immune system had kicked into gear and she knew that if anything could save him, it would. She leaned
over him, struggling not to sob as she whispered, “Stay with us, Wayra. Stay with us.”

  As Maddie tore off her jacket to slip it under Wayra’s head, a hawk—keening shrilly—suddenly landed on the sand next to Wayra. Rocky’s hawk, Liberty. Her wings fluttered frantically and her plaintive cries tore into Maddie’s heart and soul. This was the cry of a mother who had lost a child, a lover who had lost a partner. And then the hawk transformed into a tall, lovely woman whose eyes brimmed with tears. “Please. Don’t touch him right now.” She sank to the sand and lifted Wayra’s rapidly changing head gently onto her lap. “His body needs a chance to stabilize.”

  “My God,” Maddie breathed. “You’re a shifter?”

  Only then did she realize the gunfire had stopped. She glanced around and saw Sanchez, Delaney, and Rocky running toward them, with Jessie dashing along in front of them. The retriever reached them first and immediately went over to Wayra and licked his face and Illary’s hands, then stretched out alongside him in the sand. Sanchez dropped to the ground next to Maddie and slipped an arm around her shoulders. “I thought…”

  Maddie squeezed his hand. “Wayra took the bullet.”

  “His body,” Sanchez said, staring at Wayra. “What’s happening to him?”

  Illary kept moving her hands gently over Wayra’s face. “He’s struggling for his life.”

  “Who’re you?” Sanchez asked.

  “She’s a shifter, like Wayra,” Rocky said, and crouched beside Illary, his eyes fixed on Wayra. “What can we do, Illary?”

  Huh? How do they know each other? Maddie started to ask, but Illary spoke first.

  “His temperature is dropping. Can you get something to cover him, Rocky?”

  “You bet. There’s a sleeping bag in the plane.” He loped off toward the plane and returned moments later with a lightweight sleeping bag that he drew gently over Wayra’s body.