Ghost Key (34 page)

He worked on the blood for long, tense minutes, wash and wipe, wash and wipe, until he could see the deep, gaping gash a bullet had torn across his rib cage. Wayra couldn’t tell if the bullet had penetrated. If it had, then his body might expel it during his transformation or tissue would grow around it, encasing it forever. The bleeding had stopped. That meant the transformation had already begun. Wayra treated the wound with the peroxide and Betadine, then felt along Delaney’s ribs to see if he could find any breaks. He didn’t detect any. He hoped that if there were hairline fractures he couldn’t feel, damage he couldn’t see, the transformation would heal them.

Wayra found a shirt that was at least a size too small for Delaney, but it would have to do. It was important that his transformation, like Kate’s and Rocky’s, happened while he was clothed. That way, whenever he shifted in the future, he would always return to his human form wearing clothing, with his belongings zipped into pockets or whatever he carried. He didn’t know why this was so, it just was.

He got up to check on Kate. Beneath her lids, Kate’s eyes flickered back and forth, as if she were in REM sleep, dreaming. Good, this was as it should be. It meant she was accessing the vast collective pool of shifter history, the first step in a transformation unless the person was injured or sick. For Rocky and Delaney, the healing was first, then the history. Within this history lay the blueprint of transformation that their bodies would use, a blueprint now encoded in their DNA. The shape each of them ultimately took would be determined by the nature of their individual consciousness.

Even though it had been centuries since Wayra had turned anyone, the information about the process surfaced with shocking clarity and speed. He suspected it was that shifter blueprint at work.

Wayra didn’t have any idea how Delaney would fit into this picture. Maybe he wouldn’t. If he survived, he might choose to turn a woman and form his own pack. Or perhaps he, Kate, and Rocky would form a pack. That part of it was out of his control.

As he drew a cover over Kate and then turned to Rocky, he noticed the hawk. She watched him warily from the back of a kitchen chair, those bright amber eyes so sentient and aware that he felt if he reached out to her in his other form, they would connect in some way. When he crouched beside the boy, the hawk fluttered to the floor beside him and drew her beak across the side of his thigh.

Wayra reached out and stroked her head with his fingers. She made that soft, trilling sound he’d heard several times now, the equivalent of a cat’s purr, then flew back to her perch on the chair. Wayra’s gaze lingered on her for a moment, puzzling over her, then he turned his attention on the boy.

The infection that had sent Rocky into convulsions was gone now, but his transformation was hideous to watch. It was as if he were caught in some terrible evolutionary loop—his feet and hands in the midst of conversion, fingers and toes disappearing into the knobs of his fists and ankles to create what would eventually become his paws. His head was no longer human, and at this point it was difficult to determine what kind of dog—or wolf—he might become.

He figured Rocky would emerge first, then Kate, then Delaney. They would possess the rudimentaries of what they could do as shapeshifters, but he would have to teach them the nuances. As their creator, he was obligated to do so. But he sure as hell couldn’t teach them what they needed to know while they were on the houseboat. They had to be outside, on land, in a wooded area or some comparable spot so that their initial sensory perceptions were of the wild.

Wayra walked out onto the porch, the hawk following him, and listened to the darkness. Night sounds, that was it. Yet he had heard gunfire, boats, and the explosion of the chopper. Surely that would prompt another chopper to be sent out, more boats, a rescue mission, something. He climbed the ladder to the upper deck, the hawk flying on ahead of him, and peered out over the tops of the mangroves. Fog stretched across the gulf, five feet high and still climbing, so much fog he couldn’t even see water in any direction. That explained why there was no rescue mission.

But would the young
brujos
who traveled in this fog seize hybrid humans? Unknown. He hoped they would avoid his trio just as they had avoided him. Regardless, he had to risk moving them to land or his shifters might end up like that boy he’d turned hundreds of years ago, never right in the head, eventually committing suicide.

The mangrove where the boat was anchored never gave way to solid land. So he would have to move along the shoreline, which meant his shifters would be more exposed to the fog, to the south side of the island where there was a lighthouse, a beach, and thickets of trees and brush. Or he could head for the old cemetery on Atsena Otie Key. But that would mean three or four miles of open water, a less appealing choice.

Wayra whistled for the hawk and the two returned to the cabin. Not much had changed with his three charges. He made sure they were as comfortable as possible, then went over to the tiny pantry and brought out the torches he’d made earlier in the day. He had wrapped rags around a couple of broomsticks and a mop stick and now he saturated the rags in gasoline. He slipped several packs of matches in his jacket pocket, left a box of kitchen matches on the counter, and helped himself to one of the torches. Just in case. He turned down the battery-operated lantern, picked up another and carried it into the pilothouse with him. The hawk stayed with Rocky, Kate, and Delaney. He was certain she would warn him if there was any significant change.

He set the lantern on one of the benches, stood the unlit torch in the corner, reeled in the anchor. He started the engine, kept it just above idle, and didn’t turn on any outside lights. Instead, he shone a flashlight through the window, orienting himself as he navigated to the edge of the mangrove. At this level, the fog was the same thickness and color as clam chowder. It pressed up against the front of the boat, drifted across the pilothouse window. He didn’t hear the
brujo
litany, didn’t sense anything inside it. Was it just ordinary fog? That seemed unlikely. He brought the power up and the houseboat chugged out into the fog, away from the safety of the mangroves.

Wayra headed along the eastern shoreline of Sea Horse and the fog quickly swallowed the houseboat. He felt like Jonah in the belly of the whale, the beat of the boat’s engine the throb of the creature’s heart.
Chug-chug, chug-chug,
a monotonous rhythm. He turned off the lantern, the flashlight, and noticed there was enough illumination within the fog—light from the stars or the moon—for him to see. But there was nothing to see, just the pale soup of the fog.

He navigated using the compass, the depth finder, the GPS. On the GPS screen, the houseboat pulsed a bright red and moved along the dark shadow that was Sea Horse. Two miles into the journey, something in the fog changed. He sensed it, an anger, a malevolence. And then he heard the litany:
Find the body, fuel the body
 …

The hawk suddenly shrieked and Wayra slammed the engine into high gear. The houseboat sped ahead, but it didn’t move quickly enough to outrun the fog. The stuff drifted through the wood, the glass, seeped through any minuscule crack or hole it could find. Tongues of it wrapped around his ankles and the cold bit through his skin, muscles, into his bones. Wayra lit the torch and touched it to the long rope of fog that ran from the wall to his leg. It broke apart, and the separate pieces swiftly retreated. Wayra brought the engine to idle and rushed into the cabin.

The hawk flew around wildly, shrieking, her wings flapping hard as she dived toward the windows, where fog pressed up against the glass, then drew back, afraid of her. Wayra raced over to the windows on the right, thrusting the burning, smoking torch at the glass. The fog retreated as though it didn’t perceive the glass, then dived toward it again, intent on gaining entry.

Suddenly, Charlie Livingston and Victor materialized in the middle of the room. Charlie looked the same, the guy in white, Mr. Clorox. But Victor was so agitated his clothes went from Grecian tunic to jeans to a Wall Street three-piece suit to shorts and a T-shirt. His eyes changed shape and color, and Wayra knew none of this boded well for him.

“Vic, Charlie, good to see you both. I hope you’re here to help.”

“We’re going to cover you all the way to Goose Cove,” Charlie said. “This fog is filled with some older ghosts that are hungry enough to sample the four of you. Dominica sent out a call and an appalling number of these bastards answered.”

“Just do it,” Wayra said, and thrust his torch at the window again.

Charlie and Victor raised their arms at the same time and evaporated. A moment later, the world erupted with caws and cries, squawks and a high-pitched keening. Birds. Hundreds of them. Wayra couldn’t see them until the fog rolled away from the houseboat with astonishing swiftness and then shock tore through him. Thousands—not hundreds, but thousands—of gigantic birds spread out against the starlit sky, and spiraled steadily downward toward the houseboat until they created a black veil that hid it from view. The hawk flew wildly around the room, then followed Wayra into the pilothouse and pecked at the side window until he opened it. She flew out and joined the birds.

Crows.

On the GPS, the blinking red light that had been the houseboat was replaced by a dark, undulating mass. Now and then, a bank of fog approached the dark mass, but the crows immediately attacked it and the fog either dispersed or fled. He imagined that the
brujo
net hummed like crazy right now, alerting Dominica to the presence of the tremendous crows.

Black crows and a single white crow.

Anxiety gnawed at him. Would it work? If not, then his trio would be more vulnerable than they would have been if he’d stayed where he was. It terrified him to think that in his eagerness to do the right thing for the people he had transformed he might have made a choice that could kill them.

*   *   *

For
the second time tonight, Sanchez and everyone else in the camp heard the crows and scrambled onto the top of their trailers and trucks, heads thrown back, faces turned toward the sky. But this time, the birds weren’t over Cedar Key. They swept in a massive wave across the starlit sky and looked to be headed somewhere out into the gulf. Zee swore they were headed south to Sea Horse, but Sanchez didn’t know the area well enough to agree or disagree.

At one point, he and Jessie wandered away from the crowd and walked down to the finger of land that jutted into the water. Cemetery Point. Fog blanketed everything beyond it, and even from where he stood, he could hear the lascivious voices—
find the body, fuel the body …
He slipped his BlackBerry from his jacket pocket, turned it on, and found three text messages from his sister.

WTF?

Call me!

I called Delaney’s boss, he put me in touch with some fed named O’Donnell, nasty SOB who refused to answer my questions. I’m contacting a reporter at the
Miami Herald
and telling him there’s a story for him on CK. Let the
Herald
blow this one wide open,
hermano.

“Shit,” Sanchez murmured, and quickly punched out Nicole’s number. To his relief, the call went through and she answered on the first ring.

“Jesus, Nick. I thought you might be dead.”

“The cell signal is erratic. Put your reporter friend on alert, but he shouldn’t come anywhere near here. I’ll send you videos when I can.” Then he gave her a thirty-second summary of what was going on.

“Giant
crows,
hungry ghosts, possession? You realize how insane this sounds, Nick?”

“Yeah. And every word of it is true. I’ll be in touch, Nicole.”

“Nick, wait. Dad was asking about you. What should I tell him?”

“The truth, just as I told it to you.”

As soon as he disconnected, he tried Delaney’s number for the umpteenth time. It rang and rang until he reached voice mail. At the tone, he left a message. “Where the hell are you, Bob? We’re pretty much trapped in the cemetery, surrounded by this fog shit. Call. Text me. Something. Either phone, both are on.”

Sanchez tried O’Donnell next, using the fed cell phone. To his utter shock, the call went through and O’Donnell answered on the second ring, his voice angry. “Nick? If Bob Delaney is there with you, I’d appreciate it if you put him on.”

“He’s not with me. I’ve been trying to get in touch with him. I could use some help here, Tom. The—”

“
Help?
You fucking went rogue on us, Sanchez, and I intend to get your ass fired.”

If he had been threatened like this two weeks ago, he would have panicked. Now it barely made an impression.

O’Donnell rushed on. “And Delaney’s job is on the line, too, and we’re going to file criminal charges against him. You know what that SOB did? He busted out that waitress who started the fire at the café.”

Kate, the blonde. Sanchez suddenly felt certain she was the woman Delaney had told him about when they’d last seen each other at the park, the day he’d gone rogue.

“Kate Davis violated the quarantine and we brought her in. Thanks to that video you sent from the café and our security video, she couldn’t deny she’d set the fire. So she gave us some cockamamie story about evil ghosts possessing people on Cedar Key and how they’re terrified of fire and—”

“The story’s true, O’Donnell.”

O’Donnell exploded with laughter. “For Chrissake, you sound just as nuts as she did.”

“Old saying, Tom. You hear the same bullshit, wacko story from at least two sources, then maybe it’s not bullshit or wacko. If you don’t wrap your head around
that
truth very soon, you’re going to be fucked along with the rest of us.”

“Whatever weird kinda shit is going down on that island is about to stop, Sanchez.”

“You can’t stop them, Tom.”

His guffaw this time sounded close to hysteria. “Just watch us.”

With that, he disconnected. Sanchez stood there, replaying the conversation in his head, hoping it didn’t mean what he thought it did: an attack by air, hazmat units sent in, calling in the National Guard, the military, no telling how over the top O’Donnell might go.