The house blew apart before she reached the end of the road. Flaming chunks hurtled skyward like special effects in a movie and landed in neighboring yards long abandoned. More dry vegetation burst into flame. She watched part of it in the rearview mirror, then turned around to see it head-on.
Your world, Nica. Burning like Armageddon.
Even as she thought this, guilt besieged her for killing two men whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time, through no fault of their own, and for destroying other people’s property. Even if she hadn’t killed them directly, her presence had led to their demise; she was at fault.
As for the property, she didn’t have any idea how else to create the kind of chaos that would shove Dominica over the edge. She watched as low-hanging branches caught fire. Pretty soon, old porches would go up like tinder. Windows would implode, roofs would collapse. She didn’t hang around to witness the total devastation of the Pine Street neighborhood.
She turned onto the next street, Magnolia. Deserted neighborhood, everyone had either fled or died. She stopped long enough to light one of the rags shoved down deeply into a glass bottle filled with kerosene, and hurled it out the window. It landed in a withered flower bed, burst apart, and last summer’s beauty became tomorrow’s nightmare.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered to the people who had once lived there, to the lives that had unfolded here.
Her truck moved on down Magnolia, a lone machine of destruction. She lit and tossed, lit and tossed, apologizing each time to the people whose homes she destroyed, to the trees and plants and grass that burned. Create chaos, create chaos. It was the only plan she had.
When she finished with Magnolia, when everything on the street was aflame, she moved on to Cedar Street. Light and toss. Again. Again. And she kept apologizing and now she cried, too, cried for the months and the dignity Dominica had stolen from her, cried for her own losses and for the destruction she caused.
Everything around her now burned. Smoke rolled across the road, trees and houses crackled and hissed as they went up in flames. Maddie sped toward State Road 24, swung left, tires screeching against the asphalt. The headlights impaled a cart with a man and a dog in the front seat. A dark-haired man with a golden retriever.
Sanchez and his dog? Would the dog stick with him if he was hosting a brujo?
Maddie braked, grabbed the handgun, flicked off the safety, threw open the door and stepped out. She didn’t move away from the protection of the open door as she targeted Sanchez. The cart had stopped and Sanchez was out, moving toward her, his weapon trained on her. He didn’t speak, his stride never faltered, his gaze remained fixed on her, steady.
When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet but firm. “You look like Red. But if Dominica’s inside you, then I’m going to put a bullet through your goddamn forehead.”
“You look like Sanchez. But you may be a host. We could just end up shooting each other.”
Sanchez stopped three yards from her. “You’re bleeding pretty bad. But even brujo hosts bleed, right?”
Before she could reply, the retriever trotted toward her and stopped at her side, barking, tail whipping back and forth. Maddie glanced at the dog, at Sanchez, at the dog again, and released her left hand from her weapon and ran her fingers through Jessie’s fur. Emotion nearly choked her. For the first time in months, a dog allowed her to pet it. Jessie knew Dominica was not inside her and apparently her judgment was good enough for Sanchez.
“Got room for two more, Red?”
Overwhelmed, Maddie could barely manage a whisper. “Sanchez.”
He came over to her, drew his fingers through her hair, wiped dirt and soot from her cheeks. He covered her face and nose and mouth with small, light kisses, like the brush of a butterfly’s wings. The parts of her that had grown hard and knotted during the months of her imprisonment now melted away.
“When I smelled the smoke, I followed it,” he said. “I knew I’d find you in the midst of it.”
“I … killed two men, hosts … I … They ambushed me outside this house … I…” To her utter horror, she started sobbing. She pressed her fists against her eyes and suddenly saw herself as Sanchez probably did, a crybaby. “Shit, I—”
“I’d hug you, Red, but you’re bleeding pretty bad.”
Then he kissed her deeply, a kiss so sublime she gave herself over to it completely. Only the moment existed, the sensation of his mouth, the feel of his body against hers. Maddie hugged him tightly with her good arm, hoping this instant never ended, that she wasn’t actually still imprisoned within her body, dreaming these moments so vividly that they seemed real.
He broke the embrace first with a sharp inhalation. He looked badly shaken. “You did what you had to do to stay alive, Red.”
“Did I?”
“Yes.”
The certainty in his voice caused her to realize that when he’d kissed her, he’d seen something in his mind’s eye. It explained why he’d seemed so shaken. “You viewed me,” she said.
“It happens unless … I shut down. I wasn’t shut down.”
“What else did you see, Sanchez?”
He touched her injured arm and turned it over so the blood running down the inside was visible. He worked her jacket off, unwound the gauze. “Who stitched this?”
“You see any helpers here, Sanchez? I stitched it.”
“I’m no doc, but I’ve got some EMT experience and your stitches look like the work of a pro. But they weren’t tight enough.” He pulled a blue and white kerchief from his back pocket and wrapped it tightly around her forearm. “This should help until we can stitch it up again. You have antibiotics?”
“Yeah, outdated by about two years.”
His eyes met hers, held hers, locked onto hers as though he were drowning and frantically searching for a safe harbor. “Maddie, Maddie,” he whispered, and drew her gently into his arms, but without touching her injury.
She suddenly didn’t care if she ever breathed or moved again. Her hands moved over his neck, through his hair, down his spine. She didn’t give a shit if they stood here all night and into tomorrow. Then he spoke again, his voice soft, certain, strong and strange.
“I saw the horror of what you’ve lived since she seized you. I don’t know how you stayed sane. She … took me briefly, Red.” He stood back from her. “Outside the cemetery, when they dumped off the bodies of Fritz and Diana. While she struggled to make my lungs breathe for her and my heart beat for her, I read her, just like I read you now. But with her, it was … deeper, horrifying. I saw what happened to you in the attic, saw—”
She touched her fingers to his mouth, silencing him. “Good came out of it. It gave me the strength I needed to escape.”
He grasped her hand firmly. “The fire’s moving fast. Let’s get elsewhere.”
“The only way to defeat her is to create so much chaos that she’s overwhelmed.”
Sanchez stared at the stash of weapons inside the truck. “Where’d you get all this?”
“I made most of it.”
“Jesus, Maddie. And the rifle?” He picked it up.
“I got it and the handgun from the … the two men I may have killed.” She pointed at the duffel bag on the passenger seat. “In there is additional ammo for the gun and the rifle. I don’t even know what kinds of weapons these are.”
“The rifle is a semiautomatic, an AR-15. The handgun is a nine millimeter. Where the hell did Dominica’s people get weapons?”
“Once they seized the chief of police and the cops, it was easy. How much ammo do you have?”
“Not enough. Just a single clip left, eighteen rounds. But with what you’ve got here, we’ve got a chance.”
They rearranged the weapons so the passenger seat was clear and there was room in the back for Jessie. Sanchez started the truck, drove over to the cart and retrieved his backpack. He handed it to Maddie, who dropped it in the back with the dog, then they continued south on State Road 24.
&
nbsp; “They took hostages from Zee’s camp,” Maddie told him. “They’re in the hotel courtyard. They’re probably being held as backup hosts.”
“How … do you know that?”
Maddie explained what had happened when she was ambushed back at the house. “This brujo talked about how sweet it would be to hang me along with the hostages from the cemetery camp. His exact words. But the last time Dominica intended to hang someone—Fritz and his wife—the chasers showed up and prevented it. Then the giant crows came. I don’t think Dominica will try hanging again. If we can create enough chaos on the island and then downtown, these brujos may be so freaked out by fire that we’ll be able to get into the courtyard and free the hostages.”
“Those crows were too immense to be normal crows, Maddie. What the hell were they?”
“Supernatural birds. That’s the only explanation I have. The chasers can do stuff, but they don’t do it often enough to suit me.” It suddenly occurred to her that he might not know about the chasers or what Wayra actually was, what Esperanza was, might not know much about any of it, and she didn’t know where to begin explaining. “You know about the chasers?”
He nodded. “I know enough—that hungry ghosts and chasers have been locked in battle for thousands of years, that Esperanza is unusual in a lot of ways, but I’m lacking on specifics. Ever since I first viewed you, I’ve been able to see and talk to my mother’s ghost and she’s supposedly friends with your grandfather, Charlie, who’s one of the chasers.” He spoke quickly, as though he couldn’t get it out fast enough. “The first night I saw my mom’s ghost, I was playing an Esperanza Spalding CD…”
“A synchronicity,” she said, snapping her fingers.
He looked shocked. But she couldn’t tell if it was because she had recognized the synchro or that she knew about synchronicity. “Yeah, exactly.” Something new entered his expression, a kind of awe. “I once felt like the lone weirdo in the universe, Red. Now I don’t.” He flashed a quick smile. “No offense. I’ve got a shitload of questions, beginning with what’s more ancient than the chasers?”
“Maybe the shifters.”
“The shifters,” he repeated. “Like werewolves? Vampires?”
“Similar, but different. Wayra is a shifter, a dog/wolf hybrid who is also human. But he’s the last of his kind, born at the tail end of the twelfth century. I used to think the chasers are older than that, but I’m not sure now. The shifters may be older. They may be the ancient ones, the true repositories of knowledge. Shit, I don’t know, Sanchez. I’m kinda fucked up from all these months with Dominica.”
“The guy in the salt marsh?” he exclaimed. “Wayra? He’s a shifter?”
“Yes.”
“Christ Almighty. I … saw this thin black dog dart into the marsh and then there was Wayra and I never saw the dog again. What else should I know, Red?”
“I wish I could give you the Reader’s Digest version, but even that would take days.”
“It’s a date, then. Agreed?”
For the first time in months, Maddie laughed. “Agreed.”
Sirens peeled away the silence—fire trucks, closing in. Sanchez turned off the headlights, swerved abruptly right, across the empty road, and raced into the trees. Blackness swallowed them. The truck pounded through low brush, slammed over protruding roots, and when they were in the heart of the blackness, hidden from view by anyone on the road, Sanchez stopped.
“The fire threatened them enough to send out the fire trucks,” he whispered. “And maybe the cops.”
“There’re only two fire trucks on the island. The last I knew, the firemen and cops were all dead or compromised. We have to assume they’re all brujos with guns.”
“Whatever. We want them out here, not in town.”
Through the trees, Maddie could see the red lights of the fire trucks and, right behind them, the spinning blue lights of a pair of cop cars. “They’ve gotten it together enough to investigate.”
“As soon as they’re out of sight, let’s create some more chaos for them.”
The vehicles sped past them, sirens at full tilt, and Maddie pressed her hands over her ears to block out the relentless shrieks. When the lights vanished, she whispered, “Let’s go.”
Sanchez started the truck and tore back out onto the road. Just short of the second bridge, he turned right into a small neighborhood that backed up to the bay. Deserted houses, not a light anywhere, no sign of humanity. Just like the other neighborhoods, Maddie thought, and hoped whoever had lived in these homes had escaped.
He stopped parallel to a vacant lot on the water, where a FOR SALE sign leaned to the left. Across the street from it stood an abandoned SUV, an Explorer. “I’ve got the car, Sanchez.”
“I’ll take the field.” He turned slightly in the seat, talking to the dog. “Jessie, you stay. Guard the truck.”
“You talk to her like she understands you,” Maddie said.
“She’s smart,” he said.
“Maybe she’s a shifter.”
Sanchez looked at Maddie with an expression that didn’t bode well for a future for this relationship. “She’s a dog, Red. A retriever. The species exists to please their humans.”
“That’s such bullshit. No species exists just to please someone or something else. That’s how the brujos think, okay? That’s their MO. And if you buy into that crap, then we’re fucked, Sanchez. All of us.”
His legs were already outside the truck, but his body remained behind the steering wheel, his head turned toward her, his expression tight, inscrutable. She knew that if he didn’t grasp this basic truth, then she would get out of the truck and proceed on her own, toward whatever the future held.
“I don’t know why I said that. I don’t even believe it. Jessie does what she does because it pleases her, it makes her happy. She’s the most joyful creature I’ve ever known.”
Was he just saying that to placate her? He read her expression and shook his head. “No, I’m not, Maddie. I don’t live that way.”
She leaned toward him and cupped his face in her hands. “What a refreshing change you are, Sanchez.”
“Ditto,” he said, then kissed her, and she wrapped her arms around him, her desire for him deep and pervasive. But her terror overpowered everything else. She scooted back and they sprang out opposite doors.
Maddie loped across the street to the Explorer. During the battle for Esperanza last summer, an Ecuadoran guy who had lost both parents to brujos had shown her a few pyrotechnic tricks. She never thought she’d have to use any of them again, but was grateful those memories hadn’t been destroyed by Dominica.
The SUV was unlocked. Maddie popped the lock on the gas cap, hurried to the rear, spun the cap. She pulled rags from her jacket pocket and soaked them with lighter fluid, then shoved them down inside the gas tank. She brought out her lighter, glanced back. Sanchez had set the field on fire and now loped toward the truck. She waited until she heard the engine turn over, then flicked her Bic and held the flame to the rags. It caught—and she raced back to the truck and threw herself inside.
“Fast!” she hissed.
The truck went from zero to sixty in seconds flat, the V-8 engine roaring.
The Explorer blew.
* * *
Wayra’s alarm escalated by the second. Great plumes of smoke rolled across Cedar Key, ash blanketed the air, the shriek of sirens was almost constant now. He still had to find Maddie and the hawk hadn’t returned yet. She had flown off half an hour ago to gather information about the fires and the situation downtown and now he feared that something had happened to her.
He and his pack moved warily through a deserted neighborhood at the far end of Cedar Key. He didn’t sense any specific threat, yet the very air he breathed reeked of everything Dominica stood for, chaos, destruction, death.
Kate loped alongside him, her long, sleek greyhound body rippling with tension. She’s winning, isn’t she, Wayra?
I don’t know.
It smel
ls like she is.
“Yeah, it does,” Delaney said out loud, and Wayra stopped and glanced back.
Delaney and Rocky had shifted into their human forms, so Wayra and Kate did, too. They all stopped beneath the drooping branches of an old cedar tree. “This isn’t our battle, Wayra,” Delaney said. “My job is to find Sanchez and get the fuck outta here. Forget the mutant queen of these brujos. Let her have the goddamn island. My plane’s at the airport.”
“You’re right. It’s not your battle. Take Kate and Rocky and fly back to Homestead. You’ll be safe there for a while. I’ll find Sanchez and Maddie and get them out of here.”
“Just hold on a minute,” Kate said. “I’m not leaving Cedar Key. This is my home. I intend to fight these brujo bastards till they’re gone.”
“Yeah?” Delaney shot back. “And how’re you going to do that, exactly, Kate? And even if we win this battle, then what? You’re a shifter now. That changes everything. Tell her about it, Wayra. Tell her about how it changes everything you do and think and feel. You taught us the basics today, but you failed to address the emotional and spiritual changes this triggers.” His eyes slipped back to Kate. “You think you can go back to bartending at the Island Hotel?” He laughed, a quick, nervous sound. “Or that Rocky can finish high school here?”
“What about you?” Kate said. “You can’t go back to remote viewing and your life in Homestead. What the hell are you going to do?”
He looked suddenly miserable. “I … I don’t know.”
Rocky, blowing into his hands to warm them, suddenly spoke up. “Wayra saved my life. I owe him. He also saved your life, Delaney.”
“Shit,” Delaney muttered, running his hands over his face.
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