Heath and I ignored him, swiveling around to try to talk to Cruz. “What the hell’s going on?” the deputy roared, stepping quickly forward, with his hand on his own gun.
“Wait a second, Deputy!” I said, dropping Pena’s weapon into the dirt and holding up my hands to show him that I meant him no harm. “Please, just give us one second to explain!”
“Whitefeather!” Pena roared behind us. “Open this goddamn door!”
“Jimmy,” Heath said to the deputy, his back still to Pena. “Seriously, give us just a few seconds to explain.”
Cruz’s eyes darted back and forth between Heath and me. I could tell he was trying to assess the scene. “What’s going on?” he said.
I exhaled. He was going to let us explain! “I know you don’t believe in this whole black hawk demon thing,” I told him in a rush. “But I’m here to tell you, the demon isn’t just a legend—it’s real. And like most demons, it needs a human host to help it accomplish its goals. Pena is that human host. It’s possessed Pena and it’s controlling him. Tonight, as soon as dusk hits, it’ll emerge from Pena’s body and go on the hunt looking for more victims. It got to Daryl and Trudy West, Milton and Beverly, and Wyatt Benoit, who’s buried up that slope in one of those caves.”
Cruz, who’d been holding a slightly crouched position while he listened to me, did something unexpected at the end of my speech. He stood straight again, took his hand off his gun, and laughed.
“Why’s he laughing?” Gilley said, coming over to stand next to me again.
I couldn’t even fathom it. Meanwhile Pena continued to pound on the glass and we continued to ignore him.
Cruz removed his mirrored shades, and as he did so, a tiny spark of red flashed from their dark depths. “Oh . . . shit!” I cried, reaching out to grab Heath by the shirt.
“What?” Gilley shrieked, moving in to huddle next to me. “What is it?”
“It wasn’t Pena!” I gasped, pointing to Cruz. “It was you!”
A growl rumbled along the ground from somewhere nearby and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up on end. I remembered something at that moment—a key piece of the puzzle that I’d never put together. When Heath had given Trudy the slip of paper, he’d said, “This is the number to the Zanto Pueblo sheriff’s station. Ask for Sheriff Pena.” He hadn’t given Trudy Pena’s number. He’d given her the station’s number.
I knew, deep in my bones, that Cruz had taken that call. It was Cruz who’d intercepted the two grave robbers. That’s why Trudy hadn’t been notified that her grandson was dead. Cruz was trying to find Wyatt without Pena knowing about it. He’d probably held back on the details of the remains found in the desert belonging to Daryl, and I wondered if that’s why Pena had lied about being at the dentist’s office when Cruz asked him where he’d been when Rex was found. He was probably wondering how much to trust Cruz once he’d talked to Dunlap about a mysterious e-mail exchange. An e-mail sparked by Gilley the night before when he’d asked the county sheriff to e-mail him any info he had on Wyatt.
“Jimmy!” Pena suddenly cried from inside the Durango. “Don’t!”
But it was too late. Cruz’s face changed into something barely recognizable as human. His eyes narrowed, his lips pulled back into a fearsome snarl, and his nostrils flared, giving him a most terrifying countenance.
“Ahhhhhhhhhh!” Gilley cried, and ran straight for Heath’s car, which was closest. But when he got to the door, of course he couldn’t open it; it was locked by his own remote control gadget.
“Keys!” I yelled to Heath, who was still standing in front of Cruz, dumbstruck and momentarily frozen. “Heath! Keys!” I shouted, turning my attention back to Gil, who was now patting himself down frantically, looking for the remote, which he’d obviously put away, or dropped.
Meanwhile, Pena was kicking at the window with his feet. The window cracked, but it didn’t shatter. And then, from the road I saw it coming. A giant, black, slithering thing with fangs and claws and glowing red eyes. It moved toward us with lightning speed, and I barely had time to grab Heath by the elbow and whirl him away from Cruz, whose face continued to take on a more and more monstrous look. He no longer looked human—and no doubt he no longer was.
From his lips came a deep and terrible growl. I’d never heard anything anywhere, living or dead, make that kind of noise. “The car!” I shouted, still tugging on Heath’s arm. “Open your car!”
Heath jammed his hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out his key ring, but he was shaking so hard that he dropped it. He bent to retrieve it and as he did so, I saw something move so fast through the air where Heath’s torso had just been that I didn’t quite catch it—but I swear it looked like a giant claw.
I screamed and fell to the earth, crawling backward away from the black gleaming monstrosity swirling the dirt around us. Gilley screamed too, and I swear to God so did Pena.
Heath was the only one who kept his focus—well, besides Cruz, whose eyes blazed red now like something straight out of Amityville. While I shuffled backward, Heath clenched his keys and pressed the button to release the locks; then he rolled to the side as the dragon-like demon nearly pounced right on top of him.
“Get to the car!” Heath cried, crawling to his feet and trying to lure the monster away from me.
Like an idiot, I didn’t do as he said. Instead I grappled with the canisters at my belt, which each held a magnetic spike. Why hadn’t I gotten a few out earlier? I wondered in the split second before I yanked off the top and tipped out a spike, getting to my feet.
Heath managed to weave and bob away from the demon for all of three seconds before it swatted at him hard enough to send him flying back into the dirt. “Heath!” I screamed, and darted straight at the demon, my hand held high.
As I got close, I could feel the air all around me buzz with electrostatic energy. The thing was crazy powerful, and I felt my hair stick out straight on the back of my neck and along my arms like I’d just walked into a room crackling with static electricity.
The demon must have heard my cry; it whirled and raised its giant clawed hand. I got my own arm up in the nick of time; otherwise, I swear it would have decapitated me. The spike I was holding did exactly what it was supposed to—it stuck right into the beast’s palm and the horrible creature whirled away from me.
That allowed the two seconds I needed to get to Heath and pull him to his feet. He had a terrible wound on his shoulder and across his collarbone and he seemed dazed and barely conscious. “Up! Up!” I commanded.
“Throw me the keys!” I heard Pena shout.
I got Heath’s arm across my shoulders and began to drag him toward his car, craning my neck to look for the keys in his hands and finding both of them empty. “Shit!” I swore, wrapping my arm around his waist. I’d get him to the car first and worry about getting us out of there second. I moved him maybe five feet when Cruz stepped in front of us. “There’s nowhere to run,” he said, his voice vibrating and gravelly—just the way you’d expect the devil himself to sound.
I stared at him, my chest heaving as panic filled me head to toe. The demon was somewhere behind me, and I knew that at any moment we were going to be slashed to ribbons.
And I realized that Cruz was right—there was nowhere to run. I couldn’t get us to Heath’s car in time, and I couldn’t fight the demon alone. I could even feel it hovering there behind me, and see its shadow pass over Cruz. I braced for the deathblow, but to my surprise, the action actually happened in front of me.
Someone rushed Cruz, and tackled him to the ground. Reflexively I pulled to the side to avoid them as Cruz and his attacker rolled in the dirt. That terrible growl went up again, and the demon moved away from Heath and me to hover over the pair fighting to the death in the dirt.
“Move!” Gilley shouted, coming to my side and taking up Heath’s free arm. It was all the encouragement I needed. Racing to the Durango, I realized that the brave soul who’d tackled Cruz had to be Pena, as
he was no longer stuck inside Heath’s car.
“We have to help him!” I shouted as we arrived at the SUV.
“Give me the keys and I’ll run that thing and Cruz over!” Gilley offered.
But the only keys I had were to the rental. And that gave me an idea. “Stay with Heath!” I told Gil, ducking under Heath’s arm and racing to the sage bush ten yards away. I rounded the bush and came up short. There stood Sam!
“Use the urn!” he commanded.
Behind me I heard a terrible scream—the cry of someone caught in the jaws of a hideous monster.
“The urn!” Sam repeated. “Quickly, M. J.! You have to use it!”
I flew into action, turning back for the new urn that Mrs. Lujan had created, which was closer to the Durango. “No!” yelled Sam, stopping me. “The other one!”
I didn’t have time to ask him what the hell he meant, so I turned again, pulled open the door, and grabbed the other clay pot. For good measure, I darted to the new urn too. With effort I held both bulky urns tightly to my chest. Pena’s bloodcurdling screams seemed to go on and on. “How?” I shouted at Sam when I realized I didn’t know what to do next.
“Go!” Sam said, pointing back toward the others.
It was the only direction he gave me, and I didn’t hang around to ask for more. Instead, I flew back to Heath and Gilley’s side. Gil was trying to get Heath inside the Durango, but he was shaking so hard and had gone so pale that I knew he was close to fainting.
I looked next at the source of the screams. Pena was writhing on the ground while the demon slashed and tore at him. He was covered in blood, and Cruz looked on as if he was truly enjoying the show.
I held both urns and screamed at the top of my lungs, “STOP!”
Of course, no one did, but Cruz cast me a casual glance over his shoulder. His laughter turned my blood to ice. “Throw down the urn!” I heard from right behind me. It was Sam’s voice. “Go on, M. J.! Throw it!”
I didn’t know which one he meant, and I hesitated. Sam seemed to read my mind. “Throw the old one!”
Without hesitation I set the new urn down, lifted the Whitefeather family urn up high, then threw it hard onto the ground, where it smashed into a gazillion pieces.
While I watched, something seemed to be rising from the wreckage of the broken pottery in front of me. And in the next instant, I realized that it was white smoke, curling and swirling in separate but distinct columns, and with it came voices.
Time seemed to stand still as I watched the smoke curl and weave and form itself into shapes that looked strangely human. Before I knew it, I realized that the shapes were human! Where there had been only dirt and scrub now stood at least two dozen souls! At the head of the throng was a tall, muscular man with bronze skin, a gorgeous face, and a long flowing mane of jet-black hair intertwined with an array of white feathers and one long lock of white hair at his temple.
He looked so much like Heath that for a moment I thought I might be hallucinating. I had no time to think on it, however, because out of his mouth rose a war cry that filled my chest with hope and courage. He raised his fist as he cried, and every other soul with him did the same.
And in the next instant, I knew exactly what to do. I reached to my belt and pulled at the lid of another grenade. Tipping it out, I raised my hand too and joined the chorus of cries.
The effect was electrifying. The air buzzed and crackled with energy, and the demon whirled away from Pena and turned to face the gathering mob. The warrior at the front, who had to be Whitefeather himself, stepped forward and rushed at the demon, never losing pitch as his cry went on and on. His descendants joined him and to my total shock, so did Heath! Bleeding and pale, he’d somehow found the strength to join his ancestors, and as one the crowd charged straight for Cruz and the demon black hawk spirit.
Cruz turned away from the approaching mob just as I joined the spirits, fist held high and moving straight for my target. I felt a sense of invincibility as I ran, surrounded by warriors and brave women alike, all charging with unyielding courage straight at the demon who may very well have taken a few of their lives.
We fell upon the demon, I moved to the side of the monster, and Heath aimed right at the center, raising his own spike before bringing it down into the heart of the beast. But of course, this beast had no heart. It had only darkness, and this poured out of the thing like sludge. I drove my own spike down into the side of the demon, and another thick gush of sludge poured out, coating my hands and turning my stomach. In the back of my mind I knew the substance had to be ectoplasm, and it left my hands sticky and smelled distinctly like sulfur.
We all attacked without mercy, Heath being the most ferocious as he drove his spike again and again into the demon, who writhed and clawed at everyone around him, trying in vain to throw us all off. But Whitefeather and his tribe had gained the advantage. At one point I glanced up to see that the warrior had wrapped his powerful arms around the neck of the beast, pulling and tugging it and the rest of us closer and closer to the urn I’d set down just yards away.
Heath seemed to realize what his ancestor was trying to do, because he looked up, met Whitefeather’s eye, then left his position at the center of the beast to join him at the demon’s head and help pull the monster closer to the vessel.
All this I took in as I brought down my spike again and again, feeling the demon’s energy slowly draining from it—but it was a powerful creature and it would not give in so easily.
We fought, all of us, with as much vigor and commitment as we had, each one of us taking up the war cry over and over, and slowly, painfully, we moved the demon inch by inch closer to the urn that would ensnare it.
And we almost made it too. It was as we were within feet of the urn that I began to see the black gleaming scales of the thing flake off and move into the neck of the urn. I never stopped stabbing it with my spike, willing the beast to die either at my hand or within the urn, but just as victory seemed imminent, I saw the vessel being lifted off the ground.
Distracted, I paused in my attack to see that Cruz had gone for the urn, and had hoisted it above his head, ready to dash it to the ground. The demon must have sensed that Cruz had done this, because it struggled with a renewed energy that quickly turned the tide against us.
I was flung to the side with a blow to my cheek that had me seeing stars, and even the powerful team of Whitefeather and Heath were losing their grip. The demon freed one of its arms and swiped at the ancient warrior, and to my horror I saw that the demon actually drew blood!
Heath snarled and fought to hold on to the beast’s head, but it was writhing with furious intensity, and I knew he couldn’t hold on to it much longer.
And then, out of nowhere came three explosions so loud that they made my ears ring. I saw Cruz’s twisted demonic face go slack as three large red blossoms of color stained his uniform, and for an instant there was nothing but surprise in his eyes and possibly a bit of the former man reflected in them, and then he sank to his knees, the urn still held high above his head.
As his eyes rolled up and his body began to fall backward, Gilley dashed forward, caught the urn, and slid out of the way.
Heath then did something extraordinary. He said something to his ancestor in Zuni, and when Whitefeather nodded, Heath let go, came around to the front of the demon, held his spike high, then brought it down one final time with a primal cry so true and pure that I felt it reverberate right through me.
As Heath plunged the spike into the demon’s head, right between its eyes, it gave one final horrible shriek and melted underneath Heath, curling into its own column of black smoke and winding its way into the urn that Gilley still held clutched to his chest.
All around me every one of the tribal members seemed to evaporate into white smoke and was carried away by the wind into the mouth of the urn too. The last to go was Whitefeather, who stood for a moment in front of Heath, laid a hand on his shoulder, and spoke to him. I didn’t know what he said
, but he punctuated the words by putting a fist to his heart, then tapped his finger to the white lock at his temple before flashing Heath a brilliant smile and vanishing into white smoke.
“Heath!” I cried when the spirits had all disappeared. Getting to my feet, I raced over to him as his strength finally gave out and he sagged against me, bleeding and barely conscious.
Still, he managed to grin at me and say, “That was intense !”
Chapter 16
Heath and I waited outside the central Pueblo courthouse for the verdict. He and I had both testified before the tribal judge and jury as to what’d happened out in the foothills, and my stomach twisted with the thought of Sheriff Pena being sent to jail for shooting his deputy three times in the chest.
I thought it a miracle that Pena had lived through the demon’s attack, and the poor man would have scars on his face, chest, arms, and hands for the rest of his life, but the true miracle was that he’d been physically able to shoot Cruz at all. And thank God he had, or it was quite likely that we all would have been killed.
We’d been encouraged by Pena’s tribal lawyer to simply present our separate stories about the events of that day in their entirety, and not edit or delete certain details because we were worried that we wouldn’t be believed. “Understanding of the way the spirits work runs deep in the Pueblo culture,” he’d advised. “Your white man’s jury would listen to what happened and think you two were a bunch of Froot Loops, but here, we know these evil spirits exist, and given the right circumstances, they can possess even the most honest man.”
So, we’d gone in there one at a time, me first, then Gilley, and finally Heath, and we’d told the courtroom everything that’d occurred, even how Gil and I had snuck into the Zanto library and stolen their histories book.
I’d gotten a few disapproving glares from the jury, but I didn’t think it would do Pena any favors to withhold how it was that we had learned so much about the black hawk spirit.
Ghoul Interrupted: A Ghost Hunter Mystery Page 28
