Ghost Key

by Trish J. MacGregor

  Wayra realized that what Delaney had said was true. He had taught his shifters the basics, but had avoided all the intricate, complex issues of living as a shifter. “None of you owe me anything. You’re now more than what you were. Bob and Rocky, I changed you both because it was the only way to keep you alive. Kate, I changed you so that Rocky would never be alone, but that sentiment was due to my own experience, and for that I owe you my deepest apology. Each of you has to do what your heart dictates.”

  Just then, the hawk swept down through the smoky darkness and landed on the road. Relief coursed through Wayra, but before he could say anything, before he could express what he felt, the hawk unfurled her wings and instantly transformed, a process so singularly beautiful that Wayra couldn’t take his eyes off her. Until this moment, the other three shifters hadn’t known the truth about the hawk and they just stood there, staring, mute with shock.

  Rocky broke the silence. “I knew it. I knew you were special.” And he threw his arms around Illary, and she hugged him tightly, then slipped an arm around Kate and drew her into the embrace.

  “Thank you both for everything you have done for me.”

  Delaney glanced at Wayra, brows lifting as if to say, Thanks, dude. You kept this from us, too. “If this is a group hug, then Wayra and I should be included,” Delaney finally said.

  For long, weird moments, the five of them stood there on the deserted road, on this burning island, hugging each other—and solidifying the bonds that united them. Illary was the first to break the circle.

  “Fires are burning all over the island. About two dozen of Zee Small’s group are being held in the island courtyard. We might be able to free them if we can create enough distractions.”

  “If we free them, we need to get them the hell out,” Delaney said. “We’ll have to get them to the airport.”

  “The runway is blocked with debris,” Kate said. “You’ll have to clear enough of it to take off.”

  “And there are so many brujos between the hotel and the airport that they would be easily seized,” Illary said. “Can you bring the plane closer to the hotel?”

  “Maybe to the marina,” Delaney replied. “I can land short if I’m flying low. But the plane can only carry six people with baggage safely.”

  “We just have packs,” Rocky said. “If the seats are removed and your tank isn’t full, how many can you safely take?”

  Delaney thought about it. “Maybe ten. Big maybe.”

  “A flight to Gainesville won’t take more than twenty minutes,” Wayra said. “You can make two trips if you have to.”

  “We could meet you at the corner of Fourth Street and A, which becomes Dock Street,” Kate said. “That would give you a longer area for takeoff and the street is wide enough to accommodate the plane’s wings.”

  “All right,” Delaney said. “I’ll give it a shot.”

  “And after Gainesville?” Wayra asked.

  “Homestead,” Delaney said.

  “We need a way to stay in touch,” Wayra said. “Does everyone have a cell?”

  “Rocky and I lost ours,” Kate said.

  “I’ve got mine.” Delaney slipped his cell from the pocket of his jeans and looked at it. “Weak signal.”

  Wayra brought out his cell. “My signal’s weak, too. But weak is better than no signal.”

  “I need a first mate.” Delaney glanced at Kate and Rocky. “A navigator.”

  “Me,” Rocky said.

  Wayra noticed Delaney’s immediate and well-disguised reaction. He had hoped Kate might volunteer. But to his credit, he didn’t let on. “Then let’s get on it, kid.”

  Kate looked distressed about Rocky joining Delaney, but didn’t say anything. She hugged her son. “Be careful, Rocky.”

  “Not to worry, Mom.” He stepped back. “Love you.”

  Delaney and Rocky shifted and loped off through the trees, headed toward the southwest part of the island where the airport was. Kate stared after them until they disappeared from view, then turned her attention to Wayra and Illary. “So tell me, my shifter friends, how are we going to free two dozen hostages guarded by brujos and how’re we going to find Maddie and Sanchez?”

  “Not in our human forms,” Wayra replied, and shifted.

  A moment later, Kate and Illary shifted, too. The hawk lifted into the air, flying low above the road, and Kate and Wayra followed her.

  Twenty-three

  Sanchez drove the truck like a lunatic, careening around corners, racing through deserted intersections. When the sirens closed in on them, he plunged into a wooded area, killed the headlights, and he and Maddie slid down low in their seats.

  “Brujos are driving those vehicles,” she whispered. “The firemen and cops were seized weeks ago.”

  Sanchez reached for her hand, brought it to his mouth, and kissed the back of it. “We’ll use the guns only if we or others are threatened, agreed?”

  “Absolutely. Where to next?”

  “The airport. If Delaney is still alive, that’s where he’ll be. His plane is tied down there.”

  “If he’s been seized or is dead, can you fly the plane out?”

  Delaney had given him half a dozen lessons, so he could probably take off and land, but anything beyond that was out of the question. He said as much.

  “The runway is covered with debris from the café. We wouldn’t be able to take off.”

  “We’ll move the debris.”

  She tightened her grip on his hand as flashing red-and-blue lights strobed through the trees. “Brujos are scared shitless of fire. They won’t muster the courage to tackle the flames.”

  Sanchez released her hand and peeked over the top of the seat. “They’re gone. Let’s get moving.”

  “Airport?”

  “Right. Unless you have another plan?”

  She ran the back of her hand across her mouth. “Not at the moment.”

  Sanchez leaned toward her, kissed her again, and for a short while, they melted against each other, their hearts seeming to beat as one. He pulled back first. “When we escape this place, we’ll find a bed with fluffy pillows…”

  “And a thick comforter…”

  “… and a hot shower…”

  “… and privacy…”

  He gave her hand a quick squeeze and started the engine, turned on the brights, and sped out of the trees.

  For seconds, no more than that, his entire body sang. He not only had found Red, she was every bit as magnificent as he had hoped. Then headlights exploded in the rearview mirror, the side mirror, nearly blinding him, and Maddie shouted, “Cop car, brujo cops.”

  The cruiser slammed into their rear fender, the impact threw them both forward, Jessie howled, and Sanchez nearly lost control of the truck. He spun the wheel, the truck zigzagged into a one-eighty, and he floored the accelerator. As they shot toward the cruiser, Maddie yelled, “Get alongside him, Sanchez, I can shoot out the tires.”

  Sanchez turned, heard the truck’s fender clatter to the road, and Maddie opened fire. Her second shot took out one of the cruiser’s front tires and the driver skidded across the road, brakes shrieking, and crashed into the closest trees. The horn blared, and in his head, he could see the driver slumped forward, injured or dead.

  Maddie pulled her head back inside the truck, slammed another clip into her weapon, then turned around, peering out the back window. “No lights, Sanchez. But if the brujos survived, they’ll be coming after us.”

  “Shit, are there any more torches?”

  “No. Go left, take this left, fast. Then a right, another left, it’ll throw them off.”

  The tires shrieked into a turn, into a deserted neighborhood the fires hadn’t reached yet. He took the first right, another left, moving just as Maddie had suggested. By the time he found his way out onto State Road 24 again, they were less than a mile from the airport.

  * * *

  Kate and Wayra loped across the sandbars beneath the first bridge, making their way toward the
back bayou. Illary flew just above them, their scout, their eyes.

  With the tide low, mounds of sand were visible, stepping stones through the salt flats. Some of the mounds held reeds and brush that hid her and Wayra, some held only crushed shells and tiny crabs that scampered around, looking for food, or burrowed into the wetness. The crisp air alternated between an uneasy silence, the piercing squeal of sirens, and erratic explosions, which seemed to be coming from behind them.

  Once they reached the back bayou, they ran along a vast stretch of sand where the tide had receded completely, then turned to the dry land behind buildings that had stood here for most of Kate’s life. Cafés, restaurants, art stores, an old motel, a fish market, colorful wood and concrete structures that served as memory landmarks for her. Even the Island Market, which she could see now, held childhood memories of her Sunday walks with her father, when they headed over to the market to buy bait for a day of fishing. Darkness swam in the market’s windows.

  They jumped onto an old dock shrouded in brush. A couple of small fishing boats were tied up, wire mesh cages for lobster and crabs stacked at one end. The entire area was deserted. They trotted up the pier to the road, Fourth Street, and stopped. The north side of the hotel property was one block over, a straight shot from where they were. Illary circled above them, vigilant, and spoke to them shifter to shifter.

  I’m going to check out those explosions. From here, it looks like it’s safest to dig your way under the hotel fence, and go in through the barracks. I’ll meet you in the hotel courtyard.

  Stay in touch, Wayra thought at her.

  Always, mi amor.

  Wayra didn’t sound just smitten, Kate thought. He sounded like a man who had found the other piece of his soul. What does Illary mean, Wayra?

  “Rainbow,” in Quechua.

  What’s my shifter name?

  I don’t know yet. That’s for another day. Maybe you’ll still be Kate. In five hundred years, that name will sound as odd as Illary does to you now.

  Five hundred years. That would be 2509. Right. She couldn’t wrap anything around that. As Kate, Homo sapien, she had figured she would be lucky to hit retirement and Medicare. She couldn’t fathom five hundred years in the future. At the moment, her goal was to stay alive long enough to chase these mutants out of Cedar Key.

  As they dashed across the road, the explosions now sounded much closer. Kate felt the constant wail of sirens in her bones, her teeth. The smoke drifted toward this end of the island, and within it she smelled the panic of small wildlife, rodents, and insects struggling to flee the area. She could even smell the alarm of creatures in the marsh as they moved farther out into the bayou and then into the gulf.

  Her eyesight astonished her. Even with this thick blackness, she could see everything clearly. She had heard that greyhounds had the best eyesight of any breed, that they were actually called sight hounds because sight was how they hunted. But this was like having bionic vision, and she suspected it was due to the shifter part of her, not to the greyhound part of her.

  When they reached the other side of the road, they moved through a backyard littered with junk—a broken-down yellow school bus without wheels, a small rusted trailer, stacks of tires and wire mesh cages, two carts with flat tires, and heaps of trash—some of it in bags, most of it just loose. They kept to the deeper shadows, Wayra’s black coat camouflaging him much better than her fur camouflaged her. And perhaps that was what the brujos saw first, a flash of pale gray where there should be only blackness, movement where there should be only stillness.

  The first gunshot passed inches above her head and struck the school bus. The second shot kicked up dirt and pebbles just behind her. Kate dived under the small trailer and an instant later, Wayra joined her.

  Two of them in a cart, Kate. We can easily outrun them. Head for the trees at the side of that condo. We don’t want them to see us digging under the hotel fence.

  I’m ready.

  Kate burst from under the trailer and tore toward the trees Wayra had indicated. Even though the brujos fired repeatedly, she was moving too swiftly. Thanks to the absence of light all over the island, they probably couldn’t even see Wayra.

  She and Wayra reached the trees just moments apart, but this small thicket of widely spaced pines wasn’t sufficient to hide them for long. They ran to the back of the building, past more overflowing garbage cans and Dumpsters that brimmed with trash, and emerged on the far side, near an alley.

  That alley eventually leads into one behind the hotel barracks, Wayra.

  Let’s go.

  They made it into the alley, and when she looked back, there was no sign of the men in the cart. These particular brujos apparently lacked the ability to plan or strategize. Instead of trying to anticipate what she and Wayra might do, they simply continued on the same trajectory.

  Kate led the way through one alley after another until they reached the wooden fence behind the barracks. They dug fast, dirt flying out behind them, the hole growing wider and deeper until it could accommodate them. Kate wiggled under first and emerged close to the barracks kitchen; lifetimes ago, she had found candles and wax on the kitchen table and, in the trash, that first piece of paper: “Yes, annihilation by fire.” And then the other slips of paper. She now knew it was related to brujos, that fire could annihilate them, and suspected that Dominica and several other members of her tribe had voted on annihilating one of their own by fire.

  They slipped inside the dark kitchen, went over to a small, dirty window, and peered out into the courtyard. The hotel had gone dark, and the only source of light came from a few stars the clouds had missed and from a fire pit in the center of the courtyard. A dozen or more brujo hosts sat around it, laughing and swigging from bottles of booze and beer, music blasting from a CD player on a table, a heavy-metal piece cranked up so high it made her eardrums ache. Party time, celebration. These brujos acted like the battle had been won already.

  The hostages were tied to trees and tables in three different parts of the courtyard—four men in the center, four women near the fence, and four more men on the far side of the courtyard, close to the hotel, and another dozen scattered throughout the courtyard. Kate spotted Zee immediately, tied to the oak in the center, his head lolling toward his chest. He looked injured.

  As Wayra turned away from the window, he shifted into his human form and Kate did the same. The process, only the fourth time she’d done it, was still painful and took considerably longer than Wayra’s transformation. And now, as before, it took her several moments to adjust to the loss of sensory richness available to her in her canine form.

  “The only way we can free those people is to create a major distraction that scatters the hosts,” he said. “Just like Illary said.”

  “Fire.”

  “Right.” He threw his arms out at his sides. “We set the barracks on fire.”

  “Jesus, Wayra. Before we’re done here, this entire island will be burned to the ground.”

  “You have a better idea?”

  “No.”

  They moved quickly through the old kitchen, gathering up anything and everything that was flammable. A can of lighter fluid, a container of Drano, a few rags, old dish towels, newspapers. Wayra jerked open a drawer in the counter and brought out four kitchen knives. The blades were dull, but they would have to do. They each pocketed two of them. Then Wayra picked up the container of Drano and started squirting it around the room.

  * * *

  Kate created a trail of lighter fluid that led to a nest of rags soaked in the stuff. She created another trail that led to the wooden chairs and table, where she placed pieces of rolled-up newspaper that she also saturated in lighter fluid. Before they were finished, they had crisscrossed the kitchen with enough flammable material to take down the entire barracks and the hotel next to it. She worried that they would be too close to the building when it went up, that flaming debris might be hurled into the courtyard and injure or kill the hostages. But it
was too late for a plan B.

  “Okay, get outta here, Kate. I’m turning on the stove burners and lighting a match. Stay close to the fence. As soon as the brujos panic, head for the women closest to the fence.”

  “I’ll take the men in the middle of the courtyard, where Zee is. He knows me. Whoever finishes first should get to the group tied up closest to the hotel. We should try to get out the front gate.”

  As she turned to leave, Wayra said, “Illary was right about you and Rocky. She said neither of you would have a problem with being turned.”

  “A problem? Regardless of how this ends up, Wayra, I want you to know you’ve given me the greatest gift of my entire life.”

  He looked surprised, then grinned and shooed her out of the kitchen.

  Kate backed toward the door. “Be careful.”

  “Siempre.”

  Her Spanish was a bit rusty, but she was pretty sure that word meant “always.”

  She hurried out onto the rickety side porch, the knife now clutched in her hand. The music pounded the air with relentless fury, drowning out every other sound. Kate pressed through the hedge that grew along the fence, hunkered over, and moved quickly forward, heart drumming hard, beads of sweat rolling down the sides of her face despite the chill. When she was just beyond the fire pit and the drunken brujos, she glanced back and saw the flames licking at the windows of the barracks kitchen and Wayra hurrying along behind her.

  One of the men at the fire pit suddenly shouted, “Fire! Fire in the barracks!”

  “Get the hose!” yelled someone else.

  They scrambled in various directions, looking for the hose, then the windows burst, and a gigantic fireball slammed through the roof like an exploding sun, clouds of black, greasy smoke trailing behind it. Flaming debris was flung a hundred feet or more into the night sky. The sides of the building ruptured with such ferocity that chunks of stone and flaming wood sped like deadly missiles in every direction.

  Pandemonium erupted in the courtyard. The brujos scrambled for safety and stumbled around drunkenly, knocking over chairs and empty bottles, shouting simultaneously. Someone tripped over the fire pit and it toppled, spilling burning logs and scorching hot embers that quickly set weeds and dry leaves on fire.