Fifty-two stories in just their group. The experiences had landed some of these people in therapy, caused others to lose their jobs and pensions, branded others as unemployable. But they knew they’d left the rational world when they began to post on the liberation Web site.
As the road leveled out, the morning light carved the landscape into stark relief—trees blown into odd shapes by wind that swept up over the edge of the mountains, memorials for roadside fatalities decorated with clusters of wildflowers, then buildings made of stone, wood, and tin, where old people sat on porches, watching the procession of vehicles. At the summit, stood a sign: BIENVENIDOS A DORADO. Honking erupted up and down the line of vehicles, and on Dorado 13, passengers stuck their heads out the windows, shouting and waving.
The Río Palo was less than a quarter mile from the center of town, Tess thought, and the Bodega del Cielo, the place where her journey had begun, was a short distance beyond it. Excitement and dread rolled through her in equal measures.
The trees gave way to a town so beautiful and pastoral that it possessed a fairy-tale quality. Stone buildings looked gold in the morning light, bells rang, the sonorous notes echoing across the summit, an open-air market burned with colors. A church dominated the skyline, a throwback to ancient times with a fountain out front, doves cooing in the eaves. The town’s tremendous plaza was filled with people and dozens of stalls where locals sold jewelry, food, coffee. Near the fountain, five men played flutes and guitars, the haunting notes rising toward the cloudless sky.
“Ladies, we’ve arrived,” Tess announced.
“Somewhere, like, maybe a Hilton with a hot shower?” Maddie raised herself up from the back seat, face visible in the rearview mirror. “Never mind. The answer’s no.”
“I’ll settle for a Jiffy John,” Lauren remarked.
Tess parked in a pasture the size of a football field. Row after row of small buses, all Dorado 13s, lined up with several thousand cars, trucks, vans, jeeps. Colorful banners welcomed all to the Festival of the Sun. From a stall in the pasture, they bought coffee and vegetable empanadas that steamed in the chilly air. Tess couldn’t distinguish festival goers from those who were here to avenge the death of loved ones, those here to take back Esperanza. Safety not only in numbers, she thought, but in camouflage.
The driver of the Dorado 13 in front of them was directed to a side street, to a church and its adjoining school to regroup and pick up their directions. But it was a mob scene inside, the place jammed with vengadores—the avengers against the brujo incursion. Everyone talked at once, the PA system crackling with static as a woman explained what was supposed to happen next. It was too crowded and noisy, and Tess couldn’t deal with it. She told Lauren and Maddie she would meet them outside.
Tess wandered into a field behind the church, face turned into the sun, and watched a herd of llamas. Beyond the field, Río Palo’s glistening waters meandered beneath the shade of giant ceiba trees, beckoning, tempting her.
She returned to the sidewalk and joined a group of tourists headed toward the river. Her heart beat wildly, she just wanted to see it—and see across it. The road dipped steeply and flowed seamlessly into a two-lane concrete bridge that crossed the half-mile-wide river into brujo land.
She paused at the top of the steep banks, shocked at how fast the water moved, rushing over volcanic rocks, into and out of the sunlight, sweeping away everything in its path. A road cut through the vast rolling landscape on the other side. Everything was a deep emerald green, vibrant wildflowers blooming in clusters, the pines and ceiba trees partially hiding homes, squares of pasture, grazing llamas, horses, goats, a community.
Kids tossed a Frisbee in a front yard, people were getting into cars, small groups walked toward the bridge, presumably to join the celebration to the ancient sun god. It surprised her that people lived on that side of the river. Her memories were of a lonely building, isolated in thick fog. She sat on the grassy bank to get a better view and there, in the distance, stood the bodega, cars parked out in front, buses idling, their exhaust creating gray plumes in the air, passengers waiting around outside. Was the edge of the mesa right behind the bodega, as she remembered? Were the outhouses still there?
Are you out there somewhere, Ian?
An intense, powerful wave of emotion swept through her. She had made it, the river and bodega existed, and she was terrified it would be torn from her again. As she stood, her father strode up the banks, Charlie with his inimitable smile of optimism, his usual buoyancy. “Not much farther now, Slim.”
“You played me, Dad.”
“I did not.” He looked indignant, then angry. “At every juncture, every—”
“You played me just like you played the court system all those years.”
“Slim, c’mon . . .”
“Go plead your case with Mom.”
“She’s, uh, not exactly receptive.”
“Gee. I wonder why.”
“Look, I’ve always just wanted what’s best for all of you, Slim. No one’s forcing you three to go up the mountain.”
“Going up the mountain is the only way I’m going to find Ian. I do thank you for that, Dad.”
“Just remember, Slim, these brujos are tricky, they’ve seized nearly everyone in town, and in their host bodies, they can do whatever you can do. But you and yours have purity of purpose. That will go a long way.” He paused, listening to something. “Gotta run. Some more people are headed this way.” He winked. “Love you, Slim.”
Then he became a glowing white hummingbird, his little wings beating so rapidly she could barely see them. He soared across the Río Palo, swooped down once, as if to say, Later, and vanished against the blue of the sky.
Purity of purpose? She didn’t know about that.
Tess ran back up the hill to find Lauren and Maddie, tears blurring her vision.
The sun stood high in the sky when Dominica left the cave in her humble peasant form. Her demons were history and Wayra was, at last, truly dead to her.
Out on the street, she turned in place, senses attuned for the faintest hum of electricity. Only an eerie silence prevailed. Her smile grew with her certainty that the brujos had won this round—a complete shutdown of the city’s electrical grid. That meant that Rafael and his minions had done their jobs—windmills blown up, hydroelectric plants sabotaged. Some buildings, those with underground sanctuaries, would have backup generators, but eventually generators would run out of gas, sanctuaries would run out of food, and these desperate human idiots would have to emerge. People in rural communities, where greenhouses were abundant, might fare better for a while. But eventually, even they would have to surface.
As she walked through the streets of Esperanza, she saw that many in her tribe had seized residents—not for sensual pleasures, but for the defining battle ahead. Blockades were going up on the main arteries into the city, weapons were being dispersed, snipers positioned. As she crossed through the park into El Corazón, four brujos seized three men and a woman trying to escape the city by car.
She located Rafael, whose host body was that of a muscular black man, a young Ali who taught boxing at one of the local gyms. He was directing a group to surround a government building, one of the official underground sanctuaries.
“Nica,” he exclaimed when he saw her. “Why haven’t you chosen a host?”
“I will. How many are hidden in the sanctuary beneath this building?”
“We believe there are between sixty and a hundred.”
“How many have been seized so far?”
“More than three thousand. By dusk, we expect double that. You were smart to order your followers to join us, Nica.”
“Let’s get something straight, Rafael. I didn’t order my followers to join you. I ordered them to join all brujos and isolate Esperanza.”
He offered a small, sly smile. “In other words, you recognized the wisdom in my plan.”
“I recognized that it was time to make the city ours.” Befor
e he could gloat or contradict her again, she went on. “We know that Ed Granger rescued Tess in Otavalo and was last seen in Tulcán. But where are the others? Sara? Juanito? Illika and her Quechuan advisors? And what about Manuel Ortega?”
“We haven’t found them yet. But we will, Nica. We will.” His eyes glistened with hunger and excitement for the battle ahead. “Can you taste it? Smell it?” He lifted his head and sniffed at the air. “Our victory.”
“The city is not ours yet, Rafael. But we’re close. In an hour, I will address the tribe from here, in the park.” Close to where Atahualpa and his army had marched against the Spanish, she thought, and across the street from the buildings that covered an Incan religious site where Inti, the sun god, had been honored daily with sacrifices. May Inti shower us with his blessings.
“Well, I hope you have a host by then.”
“And I hope you won’t have to kill anyone, Rafael. You already had one breakdown and it certainly wouldn’t do anything for your supposed reputation as a leader to have another.”
With that, she swept past him, vowing to banish him as soon as Esperanza was theirs.
After so many failures these past weeks and months, the host she chose had to do what Pearl had suggested, it had to make a statement, to say, Do you see how truly powerful we are as a tribe? Only a member of the Esperanza hierarchy would accomplish that.
Dominica shed her form and thought herself to Saint Francis Church, where Ian and Tess had spent their final hour in Esperanza before returning to their physical bodies. Across from it was the orchard where Wayra had made love to her only to keep her from the transitionals. But that day, fog had filled the orchard, the field, and obscured the road. Now, there wasn’t any fog, just brilliant light showering the orchard.
The church looked deserted, not a car in sight, the fenced fields to either side of it empty of llamas and horses, even the chicken coop was deserted. She thought herself to the barn on the church’s left, alert for traps. But she sensed nothing like the low-frequency field that had surrounded Otavalo’s ExPat Inn. Apparently Illika hadn’t bothered learning anything from her neighbors to the south. Quechuans were a proud people and she suspected that Illika considered the Otavaleños too materialistic and their technologies too expensive.
She drifted through the roof of the barn, and found an old truck, VW Bug, and Harley parked inside. She sensed eight people beneath the barn, in the private little sanctuary for Esperanza’s elite. She really had no desire to descend into that underground place, but if she wanted to make a statement when she addressed her tribe, she would have to.
Dominica reminded herself that she was already dead, that the mounds of earth could do nothing worse to her than what had been done already. Just as she readied herself to descend, Persephone into the underworld, a door opened at the far end of the barn. Pretty Sara Wells stepped out, an Amazonian parrot riding on her shoulder.
The parrot squawked constantly. “Hungry, where is Nomad? Cómo estás?”
“Cálmate, Kali,” she said quietly, and hurried over to the truck and opened the door.
As she leaned inside, Dominica seized her, and quickly took control of her. The parrot fluttered off toward the ceiling, shrieking and squawking loudly, “Peligro, brujos, peligro.”
Dominica forced her to get into the truck, to insert the key in the ignition, to press the remote-control button that opened the barn door. The parrot flew off, its shrieks and squawks echoing through the still, cold air, Brujos, peligro. She commanded Sara to back out of the barn and met no resistance.
Very good, Sara. Keep doing what I tell you and you’ll enjoy breakfast tomorrow. Defy me and you’ll wish you’d fled with the younger residents when you had the chance.
Sara’s essence spoke softly—not from fear, but with disarming certainty. You won’t win this battle, Dominica. But there’s a certain karmic justice in all this. Your kind brought me to Esperanza. So lead the way, jefe.
Jefe. As if she were some macho jerk searching for a piece of ass. She resented it. But in all fairness to Sara, she resented nearly everything these days. While Sara drove fast over deserted roads, Dominica plundered the treasure chest of information she carried. She learned that in the hours just before the power had gone down, Sara had heard from Ed Granger, who said that Tess was no longer in his “possession,” as if she were a bag of gold or jewels that he’d lost. She discovered that Father Jacinto at the church in Punta was doing stations of the cross for the success of the revolt against the brujos.
You will lose, Sara said.
You’ve lost already.
You’ll be annihilated or forced to move on.
Shut up.
She learned that Wayra and Ian had left Punta early this morning. The shock of it—that it wasn’t enough that he had tried to annihilate her, but that he was now pursuing her, that he intended to be a part of the final battle—caused her to pull to the shoulder of the road.
Sara laughed and laughed. You thought he was going to sit around on the sidelines? You really are delusional, Dominica.
The information was phony, Sara was trying to trick her.
Why would I bother with tricks? You seem to do that well enough on your own. While you’ve been busy all these centuries perfecting ways to kill, Wayra has been fine-tuning all his shifter abilities. Dominica ignored her and tried to reason her way through all these new revelations. He had survived that crash by moving through time and taking Ian with him, which meant she never had known him. That he was now pursuing her, that he would be a part of this battle, meant she had never known his heart, his soul, that their one hundred and thirty-seven years together had been lies. A great wave of sorrow abruptly filled her—and then Sara started laughing again.
You never knew Wayra and never will, Dominica, because your heart went cold centuries ago.
You know nothing of my relationship with Wayra.
Actually, I know quite a bit. And with that, Sara’s memories of Wayra rose up and crashed over Dominica. Through Sara’s memories, she heard Wayra talking about her, discussing what their relationship was like in the very early years, how Dominica changed, how she became corrupted when she joined the brujos. Then there were more of Sara’s memories, a tsunami of memories so intimate and profane that Dominica couldn’t think, couldn’t bring the body to move.
He brought me to Esperanza, actually drove me here from the Bodega del Cielo when I was a young anthropologist and full of myself. We were lovers for years, and to this day are still lovers when the spirit moves us. He will love others, as will I, but that’s not something you understand, Dominica. It’s the spirit you lack, the human soul that you will never understand. It’s why you and yours will lose.
Dominica snapped out of her torpor, slammed the truck into gear, pressed her foot against the accelerator, and tore onto the road, Sara’s laughter pursuing her.
You will die hideously, I promise.
I will die gladly to join the chasers in their battle against you and your kind.
Shortly afterward, the truck hit the first of the roadblocks into the city. Dominica stopped and two men approached, physical men, and within them she sensed brujos. “Esperanza is in lockdown, ma’am. What is your business here?” asked the taller of the two, a goth type with spiked hair, tattoos, nails painted black.
Dominica addressed him by his tribal name. “Good job, Cooper. Now how about letting me through so I can address the tribe?”
He stooped over and looked in the window. “Dominica?”
“Who else could take the great Sara Wells?”
“Holy shit.”
“Who’s your companion? I don’t recognize him.”
“From another tribe, down south. Buena suerte.” He slapped his hand against the roof of the truck and waved her on through the roadblock.
A tribe down south? Where? How far south? Southern Ecuador? The tip of South America?
Sara laughed hysterically. You don’t know? You’re really that clueless? You
should get out more, Dominica, meet the other tribes. Some of them are quite innovative, and it won’t be long before they’re larger and more powerful than your tribe and they won’t want you as a leader. You represent the old ways.
Dominica shoved her down inside the metal room she had constructed long ago. Moments later, the car squealed to the curb and Dominica got out to great fanfare, a rock star’s welcome. Her followers cleared a path for her to the most elevated spot in the park, the base of a large statue of Atahualpa.
As she stood before them in the beautiful body of her rival, she did what she had been born to do six hundred years ago—inflamed the crowd, stoked their tremendous passions, their rage, their profound hunger for physical life. As she beat her fist against the air, cheers and applause went up from the burgeoning crowd. “The city is ours,” she shouted. “And just as the Incas made sacrifices to the sun god, Inti, right over there, beneath those buildings, I now sacrifice this body so that Inti’s blessings are with us in this battle.”
Then she slammed her virtual fist into Sara’s brain. As the body began to bleed out, Dominica leaped from it, assumed her peasant form, and watched Sara Wells twitching and writhing with agony as she died, her blood spilling everywhere. The crowd went wild.
She wondered why it didn’t feel all that good.
At Santa Clara Church they picked up twenty-three passengers, five hundred flamethrowers, and hundreds of other weapons that ranged from grenades to handguns to high-powered rifles with scopes. Ian was astonished that a church had amassed such an arsenal, but was grateful for anything that might give them an edge against the brujos.
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