Esperanza

by Trish J. MacGregor

  As if her kind could monitor every single stupid village in this ridiculous country when they had so many issues and concerns of their own. She told the priest to please put out his cigarette and return to the rectory to say three rosaries and a Hail Mary.

  The priest hurried back through the hallway that connected the greenhouse and rectory to the church, fingers moving swiftly over the beads of his rosary, mouth trembling with prayers. He trotted down the steep stairs, one hand gripping the railing, and emerged in a warren of underground rooms. As soon as the priest entered the cafeteria, she scanned the faces, didn’t see Wayra or Ian, but spotted Dan, one gringo among frightened villagers, serving breakfast. If she took him now, she risked annihilation. Even churches kept an arsenal of flamethrowers to be used against brujos, and she was certain there were sentries keeping watch on the crowd for signs of possession.

  She slipped out of the acolyte and into one of the pretty young village women, a schoolteacher seated at a long wooden table with other adults and children. The priest whose body she’d vacated seemed briefly confused, then hastened out. The teacher twitched a little but not enough to call attention to herself. Dominica urged her to get up for a refill on her coffee, to flirt with Dan. Because he was lonely and confused, he succumbed to her charms. They exchanged names—Katrina and Dan—and it didn’t take long for him to hang up his apron and turn his serving spoon over to someone else.

  “We probably shouldn’t go outside yet,” the teacher said. “But we can walk through the greenhouse. It’s really quite impressive.”

  “Is it safe from brujos?”

  “Quite safe. I honestly believe everyone overreacted to that video. Just because brujos attack in one part of Ecuador doesn’t mean they’ll launch a full-scale attack elsewhere.”

  “They’d like to,” Dan said.

  “You think so?”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  He knew more than he should, Dominica thought. “Well, there hasn’t been an attack on Punta in the last few years,” the teacher said. “The town’s not big enough to bother with.”

  “But there’re a lot of tourists. Brujos enjoy seizing tourists.”

  “It sounds as if you know a lot about brujos, Dan.”

  “More than I’d like to. You speak English well. Where did you learn it?”

  How smoothly he turned the conversation back to her, Dominica thought, and was delighted when they slipped away from the others.

  The teacher was a wonderfully compliant host, unaware that she was compromised. And Dan, a sucker for a pretty face who was still troubled by what had happened to him, enjoyed the moment. Dominica wasn’t sure yet how she would escape Punta once she seized him again, but surely one of the vehicles out back had keys tucked above a visor. One way or another, she would take him, they would get to Esperanza, and she would use him to kill Tess, thus ending whatever plan the chasers had.

  They made their way through the corridor to the greenhouse, talking quietly, discovering they had quite a bit in common. Katrina had graduated from Dan’s alma mater, the University of Miami, on an international scholarship, and they knew some of the same people, frequented many of the same clubs and restaurants in Miami, shared a common passion for certain movies and books. They walked around the greenhouse, through the lush, tropical odors, and finally settled on the ground to share a plump, ripe mango. As Dan leaned forward to kiss her, howls filled the greenhouse and Nomad shot toward them at the speed of light.

  The howls, so primal and electrifying, echoed in the greenhouse, an alarm to anyone within hearing distance. Katrina, certain the dog was rabid, shrieked and scrambled to her feet, her terror so extreme that Dominica couldn’t control her, was forced to leap out of her toward Dan. But Wayra suddenly stood between them, tall, enraged, and threw open his arms, catching her.

  Never in all these centuries had she dared to seize him, had she thought such a thing was even possible. As her essence sank into him, her shock and horror were as great as his, but she was stunned into senselessness, unable to grab control of any part of him. Wayra shouted, “Warn the others,” and Katrina and Dan tore out of the greenhouse.

  Then Dominica felt a terrible compression in the center of her being, heard the snapping of bones, tasted an alien blood. She realized Wayra was shifting, that she wouldn’t survive the transformation—and he knew it. He intended to annihilate her. She leaped out of him, soaring through the roof of the greenhouse, and thought her way back to Esperanza, to the cave. She immediately assumed a human form and fell to her knees, her sobs echoing in the dark womb.

  One moment Ian was asleep in the rectory and the next, Wayra was shaking him awake. “We’re leaving. I’ll meet you out back.”

  Ian leaped out of the hard, narrow bed in the rectory where he had slept for—what? Seven uninterrupted hours? By the time they’d gotten settled here in the rectory last night, Ian was so exhausted that he’d collapsed around nine. Wayra had warned him that the jump forty years forward might have physical repercussions and had advised him to sleep as much as he needed, to stay hydrated, and had given him a bottle of vitamins and herbs to take for the next five days.

  They’d planned to leave this morning, but the urgency in Wayra’s voice, his obvious haste, worried Ian. The likeliest scenario was that brujos had tracked them here. But how had they done it so quickly? Even after he’d regained consciousness in his old life, it had taken the brujos a while to locate him. And he’d been in Ecuador for nearly three weeks before they had found him in Otavalo—and that was only after Wayra had shown up.

  Was it easier for brujos to find Wayra because he had once run with them?

  Within minutes, Ian was outside, in the church’s back lot. Wayra was with Father Pedro Jacinto, the priest in charge of the church, and another man—blond, blue-eyed, bearded, who looked to be in his late thirties. They appeared to be arguing. The blond man glanced around uneasily, twitching, shifting his shoulders as if his jacket were too small for him.

  “What happened?” Ian asked as he reached them.

  His question was directed to Wayra, but Father Jacinto answered. “I believe you haven’t met Dan Hernandez, Ian.” The priest touched the blond man’s shoulder. “He arrived last night, not long after you had gone to bed. You two have more in common than you realize.”

  Dan’s shoulders kept twitching as he thrust out his hand. “Pleasure, Ian.” Then he quickly added, “I think.”

  Staggered by the man’s name, Ian was speechless.

  “I, uh, won’t even ask how it’s possible that you’re here,” Dan said. “In 2008.”

  “Some things,” the priest said, “are better left unknown.”

  “You’re Tess’s Bureau partner,” Ian blurted.

  “Was.”

  “Tell him what you know, Dan,” said the priest.

  Dan raked his fingers back through his hair. “I . . . was possessed by a bruja in Miami, so she could kill Tess. I think . . . she made me blow up Tess’s mother’s house.”

  He looked on the verge of tears and was so obviously traumatized that Ian barely resisted the urge to pat him on the shoulder. The priest expressed their collective compassion. “It’s okay, my friend. We understand what brujos can do.”

  Dan stared down at his shoes, struggling with his demons. “Tess . . . told me . . . all of it . . . about Esperanza . . . I laughed at her. I thought she’d lost her mind. When she, Lauren, and . . . Maddie fled, this . . . thing inside me . . . forced me to pursue her. I have huge holes in my memories of these past weeks. I’m not sure when I realized I was in Ecuador. One day in Quito . . . I heard voices . . . it must’ve been her, the bruja, telling me what to do . . . I thought I’d gone totally over the edge. Then, last night, I woke up in a car . . . in the middle of nowhere and . . . knew that whatever had been inside me was gone. So I . . . started running. I . . . hitched a ride and ended up here in Punta. She . . . found me a little while ago, she was inside . . . a local teacher and—”

 
“Dominica nearly took him again,” the priest finished. “But Wayra chased her off.”

  Ian wondered if that was why Wayra looked like shit—forehead beaded with sweat, a sickly pallor, eyes bleary.

  “While she . . . used me,” Dan went on, “I learned . . . about her plans, the plans of her tribe. I don’t know what it all means, but maybe you will. She thinks you and Tess, Ian, are a chaser experiment that will be expanded if it’s successful.” He made air quotes around that last word. “And that’s . . . why you and Tess were allowed into Esperanza. She believes that brujos outnumber chasers right now and they . . . need physical helpers who can do what they do. She’s facing an insurrection in her tribe. The majority of them just want to . . . to sweep into Esperanza, seize everyone, make it a city of brujos. If they can do that, then they’ll . . . move through Ecuador and take over the entire fucking country.” He blinked, looked guiltily at the priest. “Sorry about the F word, Father.”

  “No problem. Go on, please.”

  “There were some memories . . . of a fog rolling through the . . . streets of Frisco . . . thousands of brujos, chanting. She couldn’t seize you there, Ian. Something about restrictions she encountered when she . . . traveled back in time. But . . . when thousands of brujos descended, they were . . . able to take people, use them up, feed off the collective terror.” He rubbed his hands over his eyes. “Jesus, her memories were so . . . so dark. So alien.”

  “You’re fortunate you survived the possession,” Wayra said. “Not many make it.”

  “She ordered her tribe to isolate Esperanza by shutting off power, establishing a perimeter of defense around the town. They plan to . . . to seize as many people as possible and the rest will assume forms, whatever that means, and prevent anyone from entering the city.”

  “It explains why I haven’t been able to get through to anyone in Esperanza,” Wayra said.

  “She knows . . . the brujos know . . . that an attack on them is imminent, that it’ll happen during a festival celebrating Inti. I don’t have any idea what that means.”

  Wayra looked alarmed. “Is that possible, Pedro? That they could know?”

  “Priests all over Ecuador have been taken,” Father Jacinto said. “It has made us more vigilant. Our plans are in flux.”

  Ian didn’t have a clue what they were talking about.

  Four men loped out of the rectory, carrying a large plastic bin, a cooler, and four ten-gallon containers of gasoline. They set everything on the ground in front of the priest. “Our contribution to the cause, gentlemen. Food, water, forty gallons of gasoline, eight flamethrowers. Fire will obliterate a brujo. You won’t get far without them.”

  “You’re . . . a priest advocating murder?” Dan burst out.

  Father Jacinto turned his woeful dark eyes on Dan. “My friend, the brujos are already dead. When they’re obliterated, they’re freed to move on in the afterlife.”

  Dan gave a sharp, nervous laugh. “Dead. Right.” He blanched and looked like he was on the verge of puking. “She . . . messed with my brain, my blood chemistry . . . my memories.”

  “It’s something at which they excel,” Wayra told him.

  “There are also two high-powered rifles and two handguns in the bin,” the priest added, then gestured for the men to take the supplies to a small, decorative bus parked nearby.

  “Why a bus?” Ian asked.

  “It’s not an ordinary bus,” Father Jacinto said. “The windows can be tinted and sealed with just the flick of a switch. Mounted in the middle of the luggage rack is a rotating camera that provides a three-hundred-sixty-degree view. It has a satellite mounted on the roof, too, and an onboard computer. A panel in the roof can be opened for surveillance in case the camera fails or to shoot at the enemy. It was built by a Swiss company to transport valuables across the Alps and we simply modified it to fit our needs. We have six of these buses that we use for church-sponsored events. I’ll show you both how to operate everything.”

  “Are you joining us, Dan?” Wayra asked.

  “Me? No fu—I mean, no way, man.” He looked horrified at the thought. “I’m going back to Miami, try to pick up the pieces of my life.” He looked at Ian. “But would you do me a favor if you find Tess? Give her this.” He passed Ian an envelope. “It’s just an apology. For everything. I scribbled cell numbers on the back for Tess, her mother, and niece. I’ve called their cells several times, but never got through. Their service may not work here.”

  “I’ll be sure she gets it, Dan,” Ian said. “And thank you for the cell numbers.”

  “And Wayra, everything Dominica does, every . . . decision she makes, is ultimately about getting even with you,” Dan went on. “In her mind, you broke her heart, used her, betrayed her time and again. I mean, this is all in her own head, but it’s how she sees it.”

  “No doubt,” Wayra replied.

  In Spain, in the fourteen hundreds, I was killed because the father of the woman I loved hated me. Was that woman the bruja known as Dominica? Ian wondered. It made a terrible kind of sense.

  “Dan, go get yourself some breakfast,” Father Jacinto said. “Then we can make preparations for getting you home.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate it.” He nodded at Ian and Wayra and offered a small, wan smile. “Good luck, you two.”

  He seemed to limp away, shoulders hunched as if he were carrying an impossible burden. Ian felt as if he were watching a broken man struggling to appear whole. “You need to protect him from being seized again,” Wayra remarked.

  “He’ll have an escort to Quito.” The priest gestured at the bus. “Let me show you a few things inside.”

  The interior of the bus was impressive—five rows of leather seats that would seat three across on either side of the aisle, for a total of thirty passengers, storage bins overhead, a built-in cooler and restroom at the back, a console covered with buttons, switches, screens. Father Jacinto sat in the driver’s seat and proceeded to demonstrate what each switch and button controlled, how the satellite and GPS worked, what the computer could track. “Internet reception is not so good. Like the cell phones.” He explained that the sides of the bus were reinforced steel, the windows were made of bulletproof glass, that the bus was basically a tank that could get through almost anything.

  After Ian climbed back down, Father Jacinto said, “You will not be alone when you cross the Río Palo. By our estimates, there could be as many as twenty thousand from all over South America, men and women whose loved ones have been seized by brujos—and killed.”

  “The liberation group,” Wayra said, glancing at Ian, and gave him a quick rundown on what it was. “They often refer to themselves as the people’s army. Or as avengers.”

  “The churches all over Ecuador have been working with this group,” the priest said. “It’s why the churches have set up sanctuaries, supplied villagers with weapons, why we created alarm systems. So now the brujos are about to learn what happens when the people rise up. Because they have learned of our plan, you’ll stop at the Santa Clara church first, just outside of Dorado, and will be given instructions on how to proceed. We’re trying to keep everything self-contained, with only a few people knowing the full plan.”

  “Where’s Dorado?” Ian asked.

  “Just four hours from here. It’s where this liberation group is gathering.”

  “How far is Dorado from Río Palo?”

  “Less than a quarter of a mile.”

  A stone’s throw, he thought, his excitement surging. “Why did they wait until now? Why didn’t they attack years ago?”

  “They were waiting for you and Tess to return to Ecuador,” the priest replied. “They looked at it as some sort of sign.”

  “How could they possibly know about us?”

  “Your entry into Esperanza as transitionals was heralded as the beginning of a new era, Ian. And the liberation Web site has contacts throughout Ecuador. I suspect they knew the moment Tess entered the country. But you, my friend, since you came
via other means”—he looked at Wayra—“there’s probably no record of you at all. The other reason they chose today is that it’s the summer solstice. Hundreds of thousands in Ecuador and Peru will be celebrating Inti Raymi, the Festival of the Sun. In the five years the liberation Web site has tracked bleed-outs, there has never been one at a Festival of the Sun celebration.”

  Twenty-seven

  By early morning, they were high in the mountains again, one of the Dorado 13s chugging along in front of them, a chain of vehicles behind them. The paved road was two lanes and, in some spots, barely that. Most of the time, there was no guardrail and the sheer drop-off on the right distracted Tess. She kept expecting to see fog creep up over the edge. Now and then, she heard a troubling clunk in the Ford’s engine or beneath the car. She wasn’t sure. Please don’t break down out here.

  They’d taken turns driving in two-hour shifts, and Tess was now on her second stretch, the final hour to Dorado. Lauren and Maddie were sacked out, Tess’s eyes ached, she only wanted to get somewhere. Anywhere. They had made two stops, a dozen vehicles pulling into the same roadside restaurant, then a lonely gas station, neither of which could easily accommodate fifty-two hungry people who also had to pee. It meant lost time, increased anxiety, but bonds were forged while waiting to use the restroom, to pay for a snack or a bottle of water.

  Tess came to understand that everyone in this little wagon train was here to take a stand against the brujos, against the evil that had killed their loved ones with such indifference and broken so many lives. There would never be an official record of this battle, nothing that would go down in the history of Ecuador as a decisive turning point against oppressors. Everyone was here to stop the killing—and to rid the country once and for all of this scourge of the dead.

  The businessman driving the lead Dorado 13 had watched his wife bleed out while they were having dinner on the island of Chiloé, off the coast of Chile. He had run across Vivian Ortiz’s Web site in late 2005 and, since then, had culled several thousand cases from both Chile and Argentina. The Brazilian woman driving the rusted old VW bus lost her brother, a physician, to the brujos while he was conducting a conference on alternative healing in Rio. A Peruvian yoga teacher had been windsurfing on the island of Margarita when his son had suddenly begun bleeding from the eyes and keeled over while still on his board. An American congressman had seen a colleague bleed out in a hotel bathroom in La Paz. A California screenwriter had seen her daughter and a colleague bleed out during a film festival in Cannes, the only European incident in the group.