Esperanza (52 page)

“Slim?”

She hated hearing the frightened tightness in her mother’s voice. “I’m okay, Mom.”

“Thank God. We’re on our way.”

Tess rubbed her eyes. She and the German kid huddled together on the deserted road, where the city’s blowers kept the fog away. Her father’s message kept playing through her head,
station liberation follow.

Dominica fled the center of Tulcán and returned to the mountain pass where she’d left Dan Hernandez in a deep sleep in the car. But he was gone. So were the backpack, bottles of water, food. Maps and papers were tossed in the passenger seat, crumpled cellophane wrappers littered the floor. He’d awakened and escaped, and because he couldn’t remember tossing the keys to the side of the road, he had fled on foot. She drifted through the area, searching for him. The terrain here was wild, rough, unpredictable, with
numerous dips and rises in the land. The altitude rose from six thousand feet to just above eight thousand, challenging for any human in good shape, probably a breeze for Dan, whose physical body was one of the healthiest she’d experienced. He wore well-made hiking shoes with thick, sturdy soles, a huge point in his favor.

She focused, again, on Dan’s body and started following the hum, the frequency unique to him. It eventually led to Punta, one of the few prospering villages in this region. It had paved roads, new schools, well-stocked stores, inns, restaurants, cafés, and thermal springs that had put it on the tourist map in the last thirty-five years. Its church boasted a new rectory, a new language school. But the distance Dan had traveled since she’d left him in the car was too great for him to have made it on foot. She was sure he’d hitched a ride.

Why were the streets so empty? The bars and clubs should be open, she thought. This town rarely slept. But Punta looked like a ghost town.

Dominica drifted down toward the church, peered through the stained-glass windows. She couldn’t see anything. She slipped inside, senses attuned for Dan, and felt that he was beneath the church, in the underground rooms, the sanctuaries from her kind. She couldn’t bring herself to descend into the tomblike maze. Many
brujos
refused to enter churches at all, placing themselves squarely in the realm of vampires, werewolves, all those silly legends about full moons, crosses, wooden stakes, clusters of garlic.

She moved to the far side of the church, looking for the rectory door. Here, she sensed another frequency, one so familiar and strong it shocked her.

Wayra. From when? She couldn’t tell. But since he couldn’t possibly move through time with the American or anyone else, he must have been here in the present before he and Ian had gone over that cliff in 1968. He had to be dead, his truck had plunged off a cliff, her people had combed through the rubble of the crash, and found nothing. Besides, if he were here now, he would sense her and show himself—to gloat, whisper sweet nothings, to try to manipulate her somehow.

Dominica thought herself to the back of the church, seeking someone she could seize so she could get inside without feeling the full brunt of the bunker, that sense of being buried. The rectory was back here, where the priests and some of their staff lived, and so was the small greenhouse that supplied fresh vegetables and fruits year-round. Since the greenhouse didn’t have fancy electronic shutters like those in Esperanza, she slipped inside easily enough.
She found an acolyte stealing a smoke at the far end, beneath papaya trees growing with wild abandon.

She seized control of him swiftly and within moments convinced him she was God. He immediately began to weep and begged forgiveness for every lustful thought he’d ever had. While he pleaded, she dug around inside his mind and learned why the streets were deserted. Thanks to the wireless Internet the church had brought to Punta, everyone here knew about the assault in Tulcán. The alarm had sounded shortly after a video had been posted on YouTube several hours ago, probably by one of those college students who traveled with the young man she’d seized. So now the bunker beneath the church was crowded with terrified villagers who believed the
brujos
were on their way.

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.”