“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” The man extended his hand. “I’m Wayra. Kim called me. Should we talk inside?”
Wayra? Who had driven Sara Wells to Esperanza two years ago? Maybe he wasn’t nuts. “Before we talk about anything, I’d like to know if you can show me the way to Esperanza.”
“Perhaps.”
“That sounds cagey. It’s either yes or no, Wayra.”
“In the world you’ve stumbled into, muchacho, nothing is that black or white. What do you remember about your time there?”
The question both disturbed and intrigued Ian. It suggested that Wayra understood things he had no way of knowing. “I remember a lot, including the brujos.”
“Do you remember me?”
“Your name, that’s all.”
“Well, now that you and I have made contact, the brujos will be out in full force.” He gestured down the street, where a light fog had begun to form.
Ian thought of what had happened in San Francisco, how quickly that fog had rolled up from the bay, consuming everything, and opened the door. “Will we be safe in here?”
“For a time. It would be foolish for them to upset the delicate balance they have with the people here. Otavaleños are world travelers, so when brujos take them, they do so to learn about the larger world, about the making of leather, their art, their business sense. They don’t wear out the bodies. There’s a kind of strange cooperation. In return, the Otavaleños are often healed of physical ailments and disease. The brujos are not entirely evil, Mr. Ritter.”
“I hate to sound selfish, but I’m more concerned about one of them seizing me.”
“They won’t do it here. They risk losing too much. But once we move beyond Otavalo . . .” He shrugged. “Then the rules change.”
Wayra greeted Kim Eckert. While they chatted, Ian ordered two coffees from the young woman who had brought him breakfast and said he and Wayra would be out on the back porch. He rushed back to his room for his pack, then joined Wayra on the porch that faced the beautiful garden. His coffee steamed in the cool air. “Do you know about Tess?” he asked.
“Yes. She survived.”
Ian shut his eyes, stunned that Wayra had said the one thing that mattered. She survived. He had a million questions, but didn’t know where to start. Wayra spoke first.
“Look, I know you’ve got a lot of questions. I’ll try to answer them. Let me give you some basics first. Among brujos and people associated with them, there’s a kind of information network that extends through time and space. Like most systems, it’s imperfect and, unfortunately for us, they can access it the same way that those on our side can.”
“So they know what we’re doing?”
“They have a general picture, as do we. For instance, I know you were under a great threat in San Francisco, that Dominica seized someone close to Tess, and also seized someone close to you. I know Dominica’s longtime partner, Ben, is dead. Tess killed the body he was using and Ben couldn’t escape before the host body died. Most of what I know, they know. But the specifics escape me. If I try to figure out all of the angles, I get lost. I have to concentrate on the present. And right now, my job is to get you to Esperanza, any way I can.”
This was sounding like an updated version of Paradise Lost, just as Sara had remarked. “How could she kill Ben? Aren’t the brujos already dead?”
“Dead but stuck. My friend Paco used to refer to certain Tibetan doctrines, where it’s believed there are six possible realms into which a soul can be born—the realms of Hell, Hungry Ghost, Animal, Human, Demi-God, and God. He felt that the souls who become brujos are actually born into the Hungry Ghost realm, a place entrenched in greed, where desires can never be satisfied. That pretty much describes the world of brujos, from what I know of them.”
“Paco Faraday? I remember him. He stitched me up. And told me people in Esperanza don’t age. I saw the evidence of that in Sara Wells.”
“All very true.”
“So how old are you, Wayra?”
“That discussion is for another time, muchacho. The—”
The doors burst open and Kim Eckert ran out, her face bone white. She rattled away in French, Wayra shot to his feet, translating aloud almost as quickly as she spoke. The fog was thickening, rolling up the main road through town, swallowing all in its path. “Get your husband, your employees,” he told her. “Take them to the highest room where there aren’t any windows. A closet, a storage shed. It doesn’t matter as long as it’s high, above the fog. It isn’t after you. Once we’re gone, the fog will leave, too. Where’s the nearest rear exit, Kim?”
She stabbed her hand toward the rear left corner of the property. “That way. Toward Imbabura. Go quickly.” She hugged them both. “Con Dios.” She rushed back into the building.
Ian grabbed his pack and raced after Wayra, tearing through the garden toward the rear gate. Already, ribbons of fog swirled under the fence, and when Ian waved his pack back and forth, they broke apart. He and Wayra threw their bodies against the gate simultaneously and it broke open, tearing away screws, hinges, pieces of wood. They fled into the road, but the ubiquitous fog tumbled toward them from every direction, not just ground swirls, but great, thickening clouds. Wayra said, “Forgive me, Ian. There’s no other way.” Then he grabbed Ian’s shoulders.
Agony exploded from the depths of his being and flashed outward to every other part of his anatomy. His bones cracked, his spine snapped inward, his skull hammered.
But suddenly his sense of smell was sharper than it ever had been. The entire genesis and history of a pebble, leaf, bush, lay within its scent, a universe that yielded information. Incredible power filled his legs. He felt that he could run forever. His vision exceeded twenty/twenty. He could see the bump on the back of an ant, the bending of light. Only then did Ian realize that he was running on four legs, that he was a dog or a wolf or some mix of the two, racing alongside a similar creature that carried his pack between its teeth. Only then was he totally certain that he was still locked up in the Minneapolis Mental Health Clinic, in a straitjacket, in a padded cell.
They plunged into the thick, dark fog. He discovered he could see through it—to the sunlit buildings and cars on the other side—and that he could see the brujos traveling within it. They looked like fragmented mosaics, sadly incomplete, as if parts of their souls had been left behind when they died. Most of them were dark, angry colors—bloodred, violent purple, burning orange. The fog remained close to them, but didn’t touch them. Chanting filled his skull, rising and falling, hideous, painful. Find the body, fuel the body, fill the body, be the body. But he ran effortlessly. His lungs didn’t strain, his heart didn’t pound. The wind bit into his eyes, but it didn’t burn. In the air, he tasted the brujo history and knowledge about them poured into him. Then they were on the other side of the fog, the sun shone, life continued normally.
They kept running until they reached a black truck parked on an empty street. Wayra dropped Ian’s pack on the ground and in the blink of an eye changed from canine to man, then touched Ian’s shoulder. “You’re gonna be really pissed.”
The pain this time was minimal. But nothing else was. Robbed of his exquisite senses, vaguely aware of what had just happened, of what it meant, Ian threw himself into Wayra, shouting, “You prick, you lousy prick, you didn’t tell the truth!” They crashed to the ground, rolled, and Wayra pinned Ian’s hands behind him. “It was the only way to get you through it.”
“Get the fuck off me before I bite your arm or something,” Ian snapped, and Wayra moved away from him. Ian sat up, brushed off his shirt. “I liked you better as Nomad.”
He stood, grabbed his pack, got into the truck. Ian didn’t know what angered him more—the fact that Nomad wasn’t just a lovable dog or that he had been deprived of such an exquisite sensory experience.
Twenty-three
JUNE 2008
From the moment the plane landed in Quito, Dominica pushed Dan Hernandez hard. She ramped up his
adrenaline to counteract the effects of the altitude, worked on his pituitary and hypothalamus so they released endorphins that made him more receptive and compliant, convinced him to keep drinking enormous amounts of water.
After he got through immigration and customs and hailed a cab into the city, she offered the name of a small hotel in Quito’s new town that was close to restaurants, Internet cafés, bookstores, all that was familiar to him. When he gave the name to the cab driver, she allowed herself to relax and reached out, searching for Tess.
Nothing. Since Tess and her group had a two-week head start, it was possible they were already en route to Esperanza. The more she thought about this, though, the less likely it seemed. No local tour agency offered trips to Esperanza. It had been crossed off the tourist list years ago, after three busloads of international tourists had been attacked by brujos on a lonely stretch of road well south of Río Palo. All eighty-two of them had bled out.
The government, naturally, blamed it on an unidentified virus. But the Ecuadorian people knew the real reason. From time to time, some entrepreneurial tour operator dismissed the urban legend about brujos and launched a tour to Esperanza. It usually took only one or two trips to convince the operator it was a stupid idea—hazardous roads, roving groups of banditos, and drug smugglers looking for easy marks. Tourists who found their way there tended to arrive in vans, cars, or on local buses—the Bodega del Cielo was a hub for local transportation to spots all over Ecuador. They were young, in their twenties and thirties, traveled in pairs or small groups. Since they were generally healthy, the brujos welcomed them as part of the growing pool of humans on which to feast. But generally, the route to Esperanza remained a well-kept secret, so she felt that Tess and her little group would still be in Quito, trying to find their way to the city.
As soon as Dan checked into the pretty hotel, Dominica pushed him to walk over to the bus station and buy a ticket to Otavalo. From there, he would be able to get to Ibarra and then to Esperanza. But the endorphin high was wearing off, he was sliding into adrenal exhaustion, the altitude was winning. He refused to acknowledge the suggestion. He collapsed on the bed beneath the open window and immediately dropped into a deep sleep. Dominica made some minor adjustments in his brain chemistry that would keep him asleep longer than usual, thus giving her a chance to slip away and return before he woke.
When his brain waves slowed sufficiently, she slipped out of him and immediately mourned the loss of color, physicality, of those wonderful human senses. But it was easier to tap into the information she needed, call to her own kind, see the people on the busy Quito streets who were being used by brujos. Not many. Maybe a dozen in this part of the city. Usually, in the larger Ecuadorian cities, it was many times that. It meant members of the various brujo tribes who lived outside Esperanza had been summoned home—by Rafael? Pearl?
She sent out a call to Rafael and Pearl, then moved restlessly through Quito, trying to zero in on Tess’s signal. Even though the signal wasn’t supposed to be affected by distance, she couldn’t get a fix on it. Had Tess found some way to diminish or mute it? Perhaps the chaser who had prevented Dominica from entering Tango Key was shielding Tess’s signal in some way.
Dominica finally picked up a faint trace and headed north out of Quito, following the four-lane highway toward Otavalo. It led her to the center of the city, where people filled the plaza, browsing through the endless displays of wools and textiles, handicrafts, artwork, jewelry, leather goods. She felt wary about Otavaleños, about the camaraderie her kind had shared with them over the centuries. Consent and cooperation were not hallmarks of the brujos and in recent years, the camaraderie had begun to fray, break apart, as tribes of brujos expanded their hunting grounds farther south. She must exercise caution here. While Otavaleños were peaceful people, they didn’t live in fear of brujos as so many Ecuadorians did.
She finally pinpointed the signal, coming from inside a colonial structure, the ExPat Inn. Eager to see Tess, she drifted closer—and was instantly repelled. It shocked her. How could this building be protected? By what?
“Extremely low frequency waves,” Rafael said, manifesting himself to her right.
“It’s the newest defense against us,” added Pearl, who appeared on her left.
“But how long has it been in place here?”
“Unknown,” Rafael replied. “We haven’t been down here in a while. We heard about Ben, Nica. We’re really sorry.”
She appreciated the condolence, even though it was disingenuous. Neither of them had liked Ben much. “I’m pleased you’re doing better, Rafael.”
“I just had to understand my limits. I hear you failed to find the man?”
You failed. He didn’t emphasize the word, but she knew that was the implication. “No one has failed, Rafael. We’ll get him. And her.”
“Explain to me, Nica, why killing them before we seize the city is so important?”
Dominica felt Pearl’s tension and suddenly understood Rafael wasn’t here to back her up. He hoped to evaluate her strength, resolve, motives, and then manipulate this information to make her look too weak and indecisive to lead the tribe. He wasn’t just seeking a brujo takeover of Esperanza. He intended to overthrow her as the leader and install himself as the king of a city of brujos, a country or continent of their kind. Dominica threw herself at him, a real joke since neither of them was physical or even inhabiting a virtual human form. But he felt it energetically, as only a brujo could, the full brunt of her disappointment and rage. “I rescued you and Pearl, nurtured you, trusted you, brought you up through the ranks, Rafael. Now you presume to depose me? What kind of gratitude is that?”
Rafael somehow disentangled his energy from hers, a maneuver so swift and certain that she suspected he’d learned it in counseling, which meant that the insurrection in her tribe went deep. “You represent the old way, Dominica. We’re sick of the old way of doing things. But know that the city is ready for an incursion by this liberation group or anyone else. We have done our part.”
With that, he thought himself away. “Do you agree with him, Pearl?”
“No. His counseling was a disaster. He can’t seize to kill, can’t seize for sex because it might mean that the host will bleed out, can’t function the way brujos must. He’s weak. I voted to have him banished. I was overruled. We, he and I, don’t . . . agree on anything anymore. But there are many who believe in him, who believe that he symbolizes change.”
“How many?”
“A majority. But you have loyal followers, those who believe the chasers are up to no good, that you and only you grasp the larger picture. Your followers believe that Rafael is just a rabble-rouser. Right now, your followers are stronger, but not in numbers.”
“And what do you believe, Pearl?”
They regarded each other like sisters whose passions were divided, but whose inviolate connection, a kind of spiritual DNA, they both acknowledged. “What is it that the physical beings say? Men are from Mars? Women are from Venus? Living or dead, it’s true. Let’s go do what we’re here to do.”
Just like that, Pearl turned her attention to the people on the street and Dominica sent out a call to her followers, to surround the building with fog. “How about them?” Pearl asked, gesturing at a couple of tourists. “They seem to be part of a tour. They look nonthreatening.”
And overweight. That meant clogged arteries, diabetes, arthritis. But she would be borrowing the body, not inhabiting it forever. “Let’s do it.”
Dominica and Pearl came up behind the women, slipped into them.
“Did y’all feel that?” drawled the woman Dominica had taken. “Lordy, it felt like someone was strollin ’cross my grave.”
“A chill jus’ went up mah spine,” said the other woman.
Lily and Cecilia, sisters from Virginia. They had never been to South America before, considered it a wild adventure, and were ready for just about anything. Lily’s body was in bad shape—arthritis settling into her join
ts, early stages of diverticulitis, and she might soon be facing heart surgery for two arteries that were eighty percent clogged. She took so many meds that her blood chemistry was completely screwed up.
“I really gotta pee.” Lily gestured toward the inn. “Let’s see if we can use the restroom.”
Dominica sensed that Pearl was doing the same thing she was, screening herself by dispersing her essence through the woman’s cells. But she felt uneasy as Lily approached the front door. She braced herself for a sudden and violent physical reaction from Lily—nausea, vomiting, bleeding, no telling what. But Lily waddled through the front door and into the building and Dominica experienced only the slightest twinge of discomfort. Lily’s fat protected her.
In the hotel lobby, Bob Dylan sang from a hidden speaker. War, change, heartache, all the sixties themes that were still relevant today. All hail Dylan. She hoped that when he passed on, he would end up in her tribe. But she wasn’t holding her breath on that one.
“Morning, ladies, may I help you?” asked a young woman at the front desk.
“Sweetie, may we use yo’ restroom?” Lily asked in her thick drawl.
“Of course. Straight across the dining room and into that corridor. It’ll be on your right.”
“Hold it,” said an older woman who stepped up to the desk. Slender, short, gray hair, early seventies, eyes like ice. “I’m sorry, but the restrooms are only for guests.”
Lily’s smile shrank. “And if you don’t mind my askin’, sweetie, who might you be?”
“Kim Eckert. The owner.”
The younger woman said, “Mom, it’s okay. Really. They’re just tourists.”
“You don’t know that,” Kim snapped.
Lily leaned against the edge of the counter. “Mrs. Eckert, I don’t mean to presume, but how would our being guests assure you that we aren’t . . . well, whatever it is you’re afraid of?”
Dominica decided she liked Lily from Virginia. Plenty of spunk and good old-fashioned balls. Dominica didn’t have to prompt her at all.
Esperanza Page 33
