“I doubt it. That girl’s got her head out of her ass more than you ever did. Probably promised she’d be more, do more. Make a difference. Probably showed her what was wrong with Mictlan, told her she could help change it. I figure she went along with it even though it got her hands dirty. Necromancers don’t seem to have problems getting their hands dirty.
“You lot, necromancers, y’all go in one of three different directions. Seeing all that death changes a person. There are the batshit crazy ones, the cynics, and the idealists. I’m not sure if you’re the first or the second, but she’s definitely the third.”
“And why the fuck didn’t you tell me?” I said. “You could have said something when I came to you to ask about Santa Muerte the first time, over a fucking year ago. I came to you when I thought I had to take her deal to get Alex back from Boudreau. Why didn’t you tell me then?”
He put up his hands, trying to calm me. “I couldn’t. I wanted to. I wanted to tell you all about it. I—”
“Bullshit,” I said. “You didn’t tell me because you wanted me to do your fucking dirty work. You didn’t tell me because you knew at some point I’d be here looking to take them out. You couldn’t do it. But you figured I could. Jesus, you’re just as bad as they are.”
“Some folks would say I’m worse.” His eyes took on a dusky, red hue and any thought that he and I were ever friends was gone. He’s not human and it showed. “Point is, it doesn’t change what’s going on one goddamn bit, does it?”
“I can’t kill them, can I?” I refused to agree with him. It was true, but I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction. “So what do I do?”
“Oh, you can kill ’em. Just not the way you’re thinkin’. But sadly, this is where the narrative stops,” he said. “I can’t tell you what to do. I can nod my head or grunt a negative, but I can’t come out and say it. And no, this isn’t me trying to play you or anything. This is Mictlantecuhtli’s magic. It’s weaker than it was five hundred years ago, or I wouldn’t have been able to tell you this much, but a straight answer? Can’t do it, Chief.”
“Since when have you ever given me a straight answer to begin with?”
“Fair point,” he said. “So let me give you one now. You’re gonna have to guess. I can’t help that. Sorry. And then I’m gonna have to make you forget it. Because here and now I’ve got things blocked off for you. But if I don’t twist your memories a bit, the second you wake up they’ll know what I told you. They’ll know what you’ve guessed. They’re gonna suspect no matter what. But if they don’t know for sure they’ll keep playing the game, waiting to see if you really figured it out or not.”
“I don’t see how. I’ve got them blocked off.”
“Yeah, no you don’t. Those spells you got inked to hide you from them? That handcuff you got on your lady friend? They don’t work. Everything that chunk of Mictlantecuhtli in your head knows, he knows. They can see you, find you, talk to you. You can’t hide from them.”
“Oh, you are fucking kidding me. Those tats cost a fucking fortune.” This entire time I thought I was safe, but they were just letting me think that. A slow pounding started going through my skull at that point. How the hell do you get a migraine inside a dream? “Fine. Let’s get this over with. Is it bigger than a breadbox?”
“No,” he said.
It took me a little less than twenty questions to get my answers and I didn’t like them one bit.
___
I pull back, yanking my hand away from Mictlantecuhtli’s chest and almost tripping over my own feet. I only barely manage to hang onto the knife. Mictlantecuhtli grins at me.
“So you did figure it out,” he says.
Would I have, if Darius hadn’t clued me in? Maybe but probably not. I started to. Little things that didn’t add up, but I couldn’t get them to connect. Like why the king of Mictlan ran from his own people. Why they both wanted me so desperately to kill the other. Why they kept goading me on until I knew I was going to kill them both.
And why they were going to let me do it. I knew I was being played, but I had no idea how.
Mictlantecuhtli’s hands shoot out and grab mine. I can’t move them. I can’t even drop Quetzalcoatl’s lighter. He closes the lid with his thumb. “Let’s not do anything rash, shall we?” he says. He pulls the blade back to his chest, leans in until the point presses in. “I fall forward or you shove that knife in, either way, it counts.”
“Eric, what the hell is he talking about?” Tabitha says.
“Quiet,” Santa Muerte says. “It’ll be your turn next.”
“My turn for what?”
My mind is racing. I try to pull back but his grip is like iron. He squeezes so hard cracks are forming in the jade. I try calling on his power inside me, not caring that it will tip me over the edge. I just need a second.
But it doesn’t want to listen to me, anymore. I can’t think of any spell of my own that would do a thing to him. My own magic is useless.
I hear Tabitha and Santa Muerte arguing behind me but I’m not quite sure about what. There’s a rushing in my ears and my vision is starting to go dark around the edges.
Jade is slowly crawling up the last two fingers that are still flesh. I feel a tightening in my chest. So this is how it ends. My soul torn apart by an Aztec death god, or an eternity encased in jade. Goddammit.
All I need is one fucking second.
My raven tattoo gives it to me.
The birds tear free from their place on my chest, ripping through cloth, taking pieces of jade along with them. They’ve been feeling different for weeks and now that they’ve gotten loose I can see that they are different, and not just because they took the initiative and went out on their own.
It’s their coloring, their texture. When they’ve been released before they were inky black, but now they’ve taken on the qualities of the jade. Green, stone feathers, jeweled eyes.
But it’s also how they feel. Angrier. Bigger. Meaner. Much more dangerous. And they popped out all on their own.
Mictlantecuhtli figures this out the hard way. He shrieks as they tear into him, pecking out pieces of him with their beaks, gouging out chunks with their talons. They multiply in the air around him. Suddenly there are a dozen, two dozen. He swats at them, the ones he hits bursting into flame only to be replaced with five more.
He loosens his grip and I pull my hands free, falling onto my back. I don’t have much time. Seconds, maybe. I hesitate for a fraction of it, hoping what I learned from Darius is right.
Killing Mictlantecuhtli with the knife isn’t an option. That will just be a sacrifice as far as the magic is concerned, completing the ritual and kicking me out of my own body as his dies and he moves in. Same with Santa Muerte. That will just do the same to Tabitha.
I can’t sacrifice him. I can’t sacrifice her. That only leaves me with one other option.
I shove the obsidian blade deep into my own chest. It parts the jade flesh, punches through the stony bone of my sternum and tears into my heart. I twist to make sure I’ve really got it.
The pain is indescribable. Bone is cracked, my heart is a shredded mess. Green blood floods through the gash, pouring onto the floor. I twist some more, my vision going black, and yank, tearing out a green, fleshy chunk of my own heart hanging onto the end of the blade.
Distantly I can hear Mictlantecuhtli’s screams. Tabitha’s and Santa Muerte’s, too. Pain, panic and rage respectively. It lasts forever. It lasts no time at all.
A burst of green light tears out of the hole, enveloping Mictlantecuhtli. I can feel the jade, his magic, every piece of his personality wrapped up in my soul leaving my body. And in return I feel myself coming back from him.
I had lost more than I knew. Sensations I hadn’t realized I was missing, senses dulled that I hadn’t noticed. Everything is a burst of light and color and sound.
Sound comes back first. Tabitha’s panicked yelling, her screaming into my face, asking me what the hell I’m doing. Santa Muerte’s furious shrieks
and accusations. How I’ve destroyed everything, how I’ll pay for it.
I had thought, hoped at least, that I could do this and just turn around and take care of Tabitha, too. But she doesn’t know what I know. All she sees is this idiot on the ground who’s just stabbed himself in the chest and pulled out a chunk of green meat. If I turn around and stab her, I don’t think she’s going to be very receptive to it.
But it’s a moot point, because I can barely move anyway.
“What the hell did you do?” she says, trying to pick me up, see if I’m still breathing. I’m not sure if I am. I must be, right? Because I’m still alive? I think I’m still alive.
I manage to twitch my head up as my vision comes back, seeing Tabitha’s face swimming in front of me, blurred and indistinct.
I look for Mictlantecuhtli, finding him next to me. Turned back to jade, but with one crucial difference. He’s nothing but a pile of green rocks and dust.
Santa Muerte looms over us. Seven feet tall, a demonic skeleton with razor claws at the ends of her fingers, her skin in a puddle around her ankles.
“I will murder you,” she shrieks and her hands shoot out toward us.
I’m actually okay with that. I’ve had a good run. And honestly I really wasn’t expecting to survive this. I’m only sorry I wasn’t able to do the same for Tabitha. Would have been nice if I could have gotten her out of this, too. But the dying bit? I’m okay with that.
So I’m really surprised when a scream bursts from Santa Muerte’s mouth. I turn my head to see that Tabitha has grabbed the knife and punched its obsidian blade through the goddess’ sternum.
No. Oh, no. Tabitha doesn’t know what she’s done. Maybe it won’t happen. Maybe their plan won’t work. But I know that it will. They were putting it together for five hundred years before I came along and fucked it all up.
A red light bursts out of the wound in Santa Muerte’s chest and envelopes Tabitha before she can move out of the way. I watch her burning in the light. Skin and hair going up in flames. With each passing second Santa Muerte is getting smaller while Tabitha burns ever brighter.
I will my legs to move, my arms to push myself up. I stagger over to them, expecting to burn, but to me there’s no heat. It’s a fire that only Tabitha can feel.
She turns her head toward me, panic and confusion in her eyes, her arms and hands shaking, unable to tear herself free.
I reach between them, pull the obsidian blade from Santa Muerte’s chest, and in the same motion plunge it deep into Tabitha’s. The flames sputter for a moment, and I twist, tearing into her heart, making sure I destroy as much of it as I can. This might not work. This might not save her. It might be too late. But maybe I can keep her from becoming Santa Muerte’s new home.
The light twists between them, Santa Muerte catching the flame. Only Tabitha hasn’t stopped burning. They are both being consumed by the light pouring from each other. The snake eating its own tail.
The light grows brighter and I have a sinking feeling I know what happens next. I don’t bother to move. Where the hell would I go? Instead I close my eyes and wait for it.
The world explodes.
I’d just drive the Caddy out to Venice Beach, but after months of dirt and dust and general abuse, it’s not doing so hot. Just as well. I need people. Live people. Normal people. People who aren’t trying to twist the universe into knots. So I hop onto a bus of the L.A. Metro that I keep wanting to call the RTD. Funny how some habits never quite shake loose.
The bus stinks of sweat and food and cheap booze nipped from years of flasks and paper-bagged forties. I sit in the back across from a guy in ratty jeans and sores around his lips. He keeps looking at me. Pensive. Finally says fuck it and pulls out his works to shoot up.
Doesn’t get much more normal than that.
A few not so upstanding gentlemen seem to think this makes him an easy target. I disabuse them of that notion with a little magic and a lot of terror. They get off at the next stop, shaking. One of them has pissed his pants.
An hour later, I leave my sleeping bus companion and step off the bus on Washington Boulevard in Venice Beach. It’s bright, the sun shining through a crystal blue sky. The Santa Ana winds have blown all the crap in the air out over the ocean and a ring of shining, white clouds surrounds Los Angeles.
I don’t know what happened after the explosion. Everything’s a blank. I woke up alone in the middle of the desert, my clothes torn and stained with blood. The jade was gone, though it wasn’t until I found a town on the edge of the Arizona/Mexico border where I could find a mirror that I discovered my eyes were back to normal.
But I still had the wedding ring. It used to change from jade to gold with tiny Calaveras carved into it, but now it’s just the gold. It comes off my finger, which it didn’t before, but I don’t understand why I still have it at all. I’m not sure what it means.
I take a short walk from the bus stop and turn in toward the canals. The canals are a holdover from when some guy named Abbott Kinney tried to turn the beach into a tourist trap and make it look like Venice, Italy. Hence the name. It didn’t work out so well, but the canals and the tourists are still there.
The canals are quiet, the sounds of traffic on nearby Venice Boulevard muted. It’s around noon on a December Tuesday and most people are at work. The Venice canals are a strange neighborhood. Houses on narrow plots with little boats tied up in the canals right outside. It’s hidden away, and hard to find if you don’t already know it’s there.
It’s an upscale neighborhood, and a disturbing number of the residents have gone all Martha Stewart on their Christmas decorations. The decorations feel out of place. The demographic’s a little too old, a little too gentrified, but it’s candy cane fucking central all along the canals.
I pass a handful of ghosts on my way over. After seeing what some people’s idea of the afterlife looks like, seeing the usual Wanderers and Haunts is a comfort. I understand them. They make sense to me.
But Mictlan? That there’s some twisted shit. Tabitha said that the people shaped the place. I wonder if the other afterlives are as fucked up. The fact that human beings can even come up with a concept like Hell speaks volumes about us.
It took me over a month to get out of Mexico. Five days finding a town, three weeks recuperating in a shitty little hotel where all I did was sleep, eat tacos and drink tequila. I needed to recuperate, sort through everything that happened, figure out what to do next.
The obsidian blade and Quetzalcoatl’s lighter are gone. Destroyed? I don’t know. I don’t even know if Mictlan is still in one piece, or if either Tabitha or Santa Muerte survived. I saw Mictlantecuhtli’s shattered remains, but that doesn’t mean he’s gone. If I’ve learned anything it’s that I know fuck-all about gods.
Once I’d gotten enough sleep and drank enough tequila I caught a train down to Mexico City and found the Cadillac parked in Xochimilco. It hadn’t been touched. The wards carved and painted into its frame saw to that. Anybody who tried to break in, damage it, or even leave a ticket, would have had themselves a very bad day. Waking nightmares, shitting themselves, temporary paralysis. Nothing life threatening, just really, really unpleasant.
I took a drive along the river’s edge to see Isla de las Muñecas. The entire place was burned to the ground. The fires had spread about a quarter mile in either direction, blackening the shore and turning the trees to ash. Nothing stood. More importantly, the souls of all those dead children had moved on to wherever it was they needed to move onto.
I hope it’s better than being trapped inside a doll.
Lucy’s house in Venice is a boxy, two-story affair of stucco and glass with large windows looking out onto the canal and a balcony high enough to see a sliver of the nearby Pacific Ocean. It must have cost a fortune when she bought it, and is certainly worth a much bigger fortune now. Lucy didn’t lack for money. When both your parents are mages, money isn’t a problem. She was left a hell of a trust fund when our parents died.
>
When I was here last a window facing the alley had been boarded up. Her murderer had jumped through it and proceeded to turn her into hamburger. It’s repaired now, and through it I can see that the rest of the room has been painted over, carpet torn up and replaced. Walls cleaned of any trace of a murder.
Too bad cleaning crews can’t clean a place of ghosts.
After I got the Caddy back I drove into Tepito. To look at Santa Muerte’s shrines you’d think nothing had changed. And really, has anything changed? Whether Santa Muerte is alive or dead is irrelevant to her followers. It’s not like they ever talked to her outside of dreams, anyway.
The storefront that Tabitha worked out of had already been repurposed into a place selling cheap clothes, crappy luggage and bootleg electronics. There was no sign of Tabitha, not even a feeling of her. As far as this place was concerned she might as well have never existed.
The drive up from Mexico City was easier than the drive down. I knew where I was going this time, not bouncing around from town to town looking for traces of Tabitha, beating up Narcotraficantes, looking for a door into Mictlan. Even crossing the border into San Diego was easy. It helped that I used Sharpie magic to make the border guys think I was an FBI agent.
Sometimes magic is pretty cool.
I can feel Lucy’s Echo still lingering in the house waiting to come out and replay her death. I know it’s not really her. There’s no consciousness there. This is just the imprint left behind from her passing. Nothing but a constant howling pain. Her ghost is defined by nothing more than her final moments alive.
Over time she’ll fade, grow gray and staticky like an overused videotape. But that will take too long. For a long time I couldn’t come back here. But I have something I have to do, and I’ve finally pushed aside the cowardice that kept me from doing it.
“Glad you made it,” Vivian says, opening the door for me, a thick manila folder in her hand. Her red hair is cut into a bob and she’s wearing a gray sweater dress with long, black boots. “I was half expecting you’d chickenshit out and not show up.”
Hungry Ghosts Page 23
