Dominica moved swiftly up the aisle and suddenly a black dog leaped off a seat, blocking her way to the driver, and snarled, back hunched, fur rising along his spine, teeth bared.
The driver’s head snapped around as he reached for the flamethrower. “Epa, perro, qué pasa?”
She recognized the driver. Manuel Ortega lived outside Esperanza, in one of the rural communities, and worked part-time for various inns and hotels in Esperanza. But she knew little else about him. He slowed the bus, glanced back at the road, then eyed the dog in his rearview mirror. “Are we good? Are we safe?”
Low, feral sounds issued from the dog. Dominica couldn’t tell if the animal really saw her or only sensed her presence. Didn’t matter. She drifted back, not willing to provoke the dog into attacking. It couldn’t hurt her, she was already dead. But its attack would signal Manuel that a brujo was nearby and the call would go out to Esperanza and all the defensive measures would be taken. Sirens, shutters, bunkers, cops with flamethrowers.
“Is something here, Nomad?” Manuel asked.
The name shocked her. Nomad? Here? Why hadn’t she recognized him? Because there were thousands of black dogs in Ecuador. Because it wasn’t like their paths crossed frequently. Because she hadn’t laid eyes on Nomad for decades. But there was only one black dog with the eyes of a wolf, and seeing him here, now, tore at her.
For nearly a century, they had run together, Nomad her most trusted companion, not a brujo but a shape-shifter capable of transforming into a man with the face and body of a god. And one night in battle, he was critically injured and given a choice. Join us or die. And when he had joined the chasers, he had lost his ability to shift and was forever imprisoned in the body of this skinny black Labrador with the eyes of a wolf and the mind and heart of a man.
I mean you no harm, she thought at him.
He bared his teeth. The only things you understand are harm, despair, death. Leave.
But this is unprecedented, two transitionals who—
Leave, Nica.
I don’t understand how—
Go fuck yourself, Nica.
Then he sprang, his body arching through the air, jaws snapping. Manuel veered the bus to the right and it tore across the shoulder of the road, stones pinging against the sides. He slammed on the brakes and she was catapulted through the roof like some Olympic gymnast. She hovered there for a time, above the motionless bus, clouds of dust mixing with the fog. But she couldn’t bring herself to enter the bus again.
Just as well. Manuel scrambled out, his flamethrower whipping from side to side as he shouted in Spanish, “I know you’re here. Show yourself and let’s finish it.”
Right. Like this fool with his fancy flamethrower would finish anything. Her tribe of brujos numbered more than sixty thousand. The population of Esperanza was twenty thousand, with another ten thousand scattered through the countryside north of the Río Palo. Brujos outnumbered humans by at least three to one. This arrogant young bastard pissed her off. But could he be one of those rumored to be planning a retaliation against the brujos? She still hadn’t checked the rumor mill on the Internet, but would do it as soon as she returned to the city.
She quickly thought herself into her favorite human form, her virtual form, a tall, muscular woman armed with an AK–47. Manuel took one look at her and started laughing. “Are you kidding me?” he finally managed to say in between guffaws. “An AK–47? Why not arm yourself with a surface-to-air missile?”
He mocked her so openly that she just stood there, stunned. Why wasn’t he tearing for the nearest shelter? Why wasn’t he racing away from her, shrieking with terror? Why wasn’t he terrified? A part of her began to believe this rumor about retaliation. She’d never encountered a local so bold.
“Who . . . who the fuck are you?” she stammered.
“Not anyone you want to cross,” he said, and suddenly flames shot from his thrower and Dominica was forced to shed her virtual form and move away, quickly.
She remained above him for a few minutes, watching as the fog twisted around his ankles, his knees. Nomad now stood beside him and Manuel’s body swiveled back and forth, his flamethrower steady. Then his head suddenly dropped back, as if he sensed where she was, and flames shot upward, brilliant, orange, dangerously hot. Dominica thought herself away, fast.
Ian woke sporadically during the night and hoped the movement of the bus and the drone of its engine would lull him back to sleep. He had moved next to Tess again and she had nodded off with her head against his shoulder. He remained wide awake, staring out into the darkness, unease seeping through him. He couldn’t shake it.
He tried to focus on the scent of Tess’s hair, an aroma like roses and mint. Strands of it rested against his shoulder and upper arm and he drew his fingers over it, marveling at the softness, the pale gold color. He longed to kiss her once more, to see if he felt again what he had experienced when his mouth first touched hers, as if the earth’s tectonic plates were shifting. A Hemingway moment. But he was reluctant to wake her.
Part of his unease concerned the holes that riddled his memory. He couldn’t remember anything about this trip prior to arriving at the Bodega del Cielo. The altitude and fatigue might account for it. But it didn’t explain why he was on a bus bound for a town he’d never heard of, accompanied by a black dog and a woman who looked so much like Lauren Bacall that it made his heart ache. And how could she be an FBI agent?
When he first had seen her back in the bodega, standing in the food line, he had pegged her for a teacher, a lawyer, a nurse, but also as something of a rebel in her personal life. He figured her for the type who sought out Middle Earth on weekends, got high with her boyfriend, demonstrated against the war, and ate organic foods.
But FBI? And that dead body back at the bodega?
He knew that he lived in Minneapolis and vaguely recalled a flight from there to Miami to Quito. Other than that, he wasn’t sure of anything. Mulling this over only made him more anxious and Ian finally shut his eyes. Almost immediately, his left brain shut down, his anxiety ebbed. He didn’t give a shit. He didn’t need all the answers this minute. Right now, the bus was the most comfortable choice.
When he opened his eyes again, the foggy windows fractured the light. He rubbed his fist against the glass and peered upward into Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Sky. Plum-colored and streaked with blinding white light, it was the kind of sky that urged him to believe in miracles. But the fog still hugged the windows and he couldn’t see much of the landscape.
Tess now leaned away from him, head resting against the window, jacket pulled over her shoulders. Nomad snoozed on a seat, the bus barreled on through the dawn. Ian straightened, knuckled the sleep from his eyes, and got up to use the restroom. He took his toothbrush with him. He could deal with nearly anything if his teeth were clean, probably a vestige of a childhood spent on military bases, where home was what you carried with you.
Home is where your toothbrush is, son, his old man used to say.
Sure. That explained why his father hung himself in a bathroom, a toothbrush sticking out of his shirt pocket. My home is death.
Ian slipped into the bathroom, shut the door, locked it. Laughable. Locking it against who or what? Tess? Manuel? The dog?
The bathroom was as spacious and clean as the rest of the bus. Plenty of hot water poured from the faucet, and the soap smelled like some herb he used when he cooked. Basil? Mint? Cilantro? Maybe a combo of all three. He liked that the scents were familiar to him. But when he raised his eyes to his reflection, he didn’t like what he saw. A haggard face. Tight, anxious mouth, terrified eyes that ached from lack of sleep. A man at the edge. But at the edge of what? Just what scared him so badly that his hands now shook? Well, it was obvious, wasn’t it? Bathroom, toothbrush: you don’t want to end up like him.
Ian squeezed his eyes shut, but it already was too late, he was there, a seventeen-year-old kid running down the hall to the shower one morning only to find his father hanging from a
rope. He still could hear the way the rope creaked, see how his father’s eyes bulged in their sockets, tongue lolling from his mouth, face a ghastly blue. Nearly thirty years hadn’t diminished the clarity of this memory.
He gripped the sides of the sink, struggling to shake off the rest of the memory, but couldn’t. The wound had been torn open, the past spewed forth. He saw his younger self staggering back from his father’s body, horrified, relieved, then eaten up with guilt. He saw himself and his mother moving out of the base housing in Stuttgart, Germany, where his father had been stationed at the time. He remembered that in the ensuing months, the suicide always stood between them, an uninvited guest. The only time they had spoken of it, at Ian’s high school graduation, his mother had referred to his father’s “death” and Ian had snapped, “He fucking killed himself. There’s a difference.” They never again mentioned his old man.
Ian didn’t have any idea why his father committed suicide. His knowledge of the man didn’t extend beyond his career military mind-set—tuck in the corners of your bed; it’s “yes, sir” and “no, ma’am”—and what he was like when he was drunk, demons released by booze, belt whistling through the air as he shouted, You’d best remember who’s boss here, you little shit.
But Ian was not his father. Since his son’s birth twenty-one years ago, he had taken great care to be the father his old man hadn’t been. When his wife sank into a terrible postpartum depression after Luke’s birth, Ian took a six-month sabbatical from the University of Minnesota and cared for his infant son. When Louise returned to her job as an accountant for a real estate firm, Ian arranged his teaching schedule so that one of them was always home to take care of Luke. Then it was Little League games, Boy Scouts, fishing and camping trips, late-night talks around campfires. They were tight long before Ian’s marriage fell apart and remained close afterward. They shared a love of the outdoors, sports, politics, music, books and old movies. Anything that interested Luke, interested Ian.
Even with Luke’s busy schedule now, in his final year of college, they still managed to get together for fishing trips to northern Minnesota, for Twins games, for concerts. Ian felt genuinely sorry for Louise, that it drove her nuts when Luke took time to be with Ian, yet couldn’t make it to Sunday dinner with her and her new husband. But Luke detested her husband, didn’t get along with Louise, and stubbornly refused to pretend otherwise.
Ian pressed paper towels against his face. Breathe through it. When he finally tossed the wad in the trash, he glimpsed movement in his peripheral vision, and spun around, breathing hard, the small of his back pressed against the sink. The hairs on his arms stood up, a cold tongue licked its way up his spine. But the restroom was empty, he was alone. Of course he was.
He remembered that in the weeks immediately after his old man’s suicide, he had felt as edgy as he did now, constantly looking over his shoulder, as if he had expected his father to suddenly appear and announce that he wasn’t really dead, after all. The feeling that he was being watched had persisted until he had left Germany for Minnesota. But what spooked him now? Hadn’t the ghosts of his childhood been put to rest?
He peered in the mirror again, searching his face for signs that he might be getting sick. He pressed his hand to his forehead. No fever. If anything, his skin felt abnormally cool. He murmured, “I am . . .”
I am Winnie the Pooh, Luke used to say when he was a kid. The I Am game evolved over the years from I am Pooh to I am Bond, James Bond. If he and Luke had been playing that game right now, it would be, I’m feeling troubled and fucked up and I’m not sure why. Had he spoken to Luke since leaving the U.S.? It seemed he had, but he wasn’t sure. He needed to call him as soon as they arrived in Esperanza. Luke would be worried if he didn’t hear from him at least once a week, and since Ian hadn’t known where he would be staying, Luke couldn’t call him.
Ian opened the door and made his way up the aisle, past the snoozing dog, past Tess still curled up with her head against the window, and came up behind Manuel. “What time is it?”
“Six-twenty. We are nearly there. Besides the delay from the fog, I had to pull over in the night because of the rain. So I went to sleep. It is why we did not get here sooner.”
“Tell me how that TV screen up there works.”
Manuel laughed. “I am no technician. I cannot even tell you why a lamp comes on when I stick the plug into a socket.”
Fair enough. Ian couldn’t explain it, either. “Then tell me about the brujos.”
Manuel pressed the heels of his hands against the steering wheel. “That is a difficult question.”
“Give me a simple answer.”
“Lost souls. That’s what the brujos are.”
Lost souls. Fine. But was he speaking in a religious sense? Metaphorically? And what did he mean by “soul,” anyway? Before Ian could ask, the bus drew up in front of a huge metal gate with a high concrete wall shooting off on either side of it and disappearing into the fog. Manuel flipped a switch on the dashboard and the gate swung open, creaking noisily.
Manuel drove through and continued along a narrow, twisted dirt road lined by the oddest-looking trees. They looked like a cheerleader’s pom-poms, tufts of green sprouting from the branches in uneven clusters. “Those are monkey-puzzle trees.” Manuel pointed off to the right. “And over there, through the opening in the fog, see the alpacas?”
A group of them grazed in the dawn light, beautiful creatures with long legs and necks, short tails and small heads, most of them perhaps three feet tall. Interspersed among them were their llama cousins, who looked nearly identical except that they were taller and weighed more.
“Do you have alpacas or llamas where you live, señor?”
Ian laughed. Alpacas and llamas in Minneapolis? “Nope. Are they friendly?”
“They can be shy, but they love people. Here in Esperanza, they supply wool and are used to carry heavy loads. The alpaca wool is the best, soft, like cashmere.”
“Can we take a closer look at them?” Tess asked, joining them.
Ian noticed that her request surprised Manuel. “You do not want to go first to your hotel? To rest until later?”
“The hotel sounds great, Manuel, but I’d like to stretch my legs first,” Tess said.
“Me, too,” Ian agreed. Nomad barked and trotted up behind them, slipped past Ian and stopped in front of the door, tail thumping against the floor of the bus.
“The majority wins, eh?” Manuel stopped the bus, opened the door. The dog bounded off first, with Tess and Ian close behind him.
The fog swirled across the damp ground, twisting vinelike around their legs. But it burned off quickly as the sun pushed higher into the sky. Ian now had a clear view of the alpacas and llamas in the distance. Their heads seemed to swivel around, mouths chewing patiently, and although they gazed curiously toward the humans, they didn’t move any closer. Ian and Tess made their way toward the creatures, Nomad trotting alongside, Manuel hanging back, calling, “Please, my friends, do not go too far.”
Ian raised his arm, indicating they heard him, but he and Tess kept inching closer until maybe eight yards separated them from the animals. “They’re beautiful,” Tess breathed. “Their eyes are huge.”
The sun broke through the fog, showering the alpacas and llamas in a soft, celestial light that tinged their fur a reddish gold. Spellbound, Ian wished he had a camera. Then the fog closed in again, rolling toward the animals on every side, thickening, rising. Something spooked them and they turned in unison, like dancers in some choreographed ballet, and tore off across the grass, headed for the far trees.
At the same moment, Nomad started barking fiercely, the fog rolled toward them faster and faster, every hair on Ian’s body stood on end. Nomad suddenly sprang at him, knocking him back.
“Hey, what the hell is wrong with you, Nomad?” Ian snapped.
The dog barked again and dashed off into the fog. “I think he wants us to follow him,” Tess said.
“Suits me.
It’s eerie here. Let’s get back to the bus.”
The fog now surrounded them. Although Ian could hear Nomad’s barking, it echoed in the thick whiteness. Wind rustled through trees, but Ian realized it was a soft whispering, insidious, mocking. And then the whispers became voices, a strange, haunted chanting that sounded like, Find the body, fuel the body, fill the body, be the body, over and over again, louder and louder.
“Jesus,” he whispered. “Do you hear that?”
Alarm filled her eyes. “It sounds like—”
Suddenly, a group of men emerged from the fog, six, eight, then ten. They wore dark shirts and trousers, with white wool blankets wrapped around their shoulders. Their eyes seemed to be all pupil, shiny black surfaces that reflected nothing. Some had long braids, others had short hair, some wore shoes, others were barefoot.
“Campesinos,” Tess whispered. “Peasants.” But where had they come from? Ian wondered. “Buenos días.”
“Buenos días,” one of them replied.
Ian nodded and looked away from them. He and Tess walked faster. Two more men appeared on either side of them and fell into step alongside them.
“Buenos días,” Ian said again.
“De dónde vienen?” the man on the right asked.
“What’s that mean?” Ian whispered to Tess.
“They’re asking where we’re from. This is seriously creepy, Ian.”
As the man repeated his question, Ian took Tess’s hand, gripping it tightly. He no longer heard the chanting and wondered if they had imagined it. He and Tess walked faster, the two men fell back. When Ian stole a look behind, he saw at least two dozen of them now, fanning out behind them in a half-moon, the men at either end closing in, tightening the semicircle. Then nothing registered except his certainty that he didn’t want these men to touch him. “Run,” he rasped.
They raced forward, he tripped over something on the ground, lost his balance and flew forward. Tess’s hand slipped away. He slammed into the ground, air rushed from his lungs, and Ian lay there, unable to breathe. Nothing in his body worked, except for his brain, and it shrieked, Get up now, fast, run. And, somehow, he did, lurching to his feet with the gracelessness of Frankenstein.
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