Ghost Key (42 page)

The air she tasted and smelled was filled with history. She could sense a fox pissing on a pile of pine needles in a forest, but had no idea where the fox or the forest were in space or time. She sensed a house built on this same patch of pine needles, could envision the people who had lived and loved inside this house, but didn’t have any idea where in time or space the vision occurred. And so it went for what felt like hours, days, months.

Gradually, the pain subsided and her senses continued to expand. She became the honeybee flitting from flower to flower, taking away not only some delectable nectar, but the entire history of the flower, its petals and leaves, its stalk, even the history of the soil in which it grew. She became the caterpillar and the butterfly, the eggs and the birds, the humans and their children. Her senses now told her everything she needed to know about her environment, but almost nothing about what was happening
to her.

Behind all the immediate sensations flowed information that inundated her, forced her to realize her reality had changed dramatically and irrevocably, but she had no idea what that meant in practical, daily terms. When she struggled through the labyrinth of her own memories in an attempt to piece together a coherent picture, a narrative that made sense, she couldn’t do it. Her memory of what had come before this moment of pain, this instant of sensory overload, this breath of life and beauty, was just a blank, a darkness that stretched even beyond Google’s infinity.

Google. What the hell is Google?

Something huge.

Kate latched on to that, the idea of a google, of something bigger than the sum of its parts, a holographic universe in which each part might not only reveal the scope of the larger picture, but contain it as well. She could see its structure—the Indra’s net that mystics talked about—but she had no way of expressing this unity.

She finally opened her dry, aching eyes.

She was sprawled on her back in a densely wooded area, the shadows of the trees greater than the sunlight that spilled through the leaves. The sight captivated her, the way the encroaching light penetrated these deep shadows, changing the mood and texture of the woods itself. The leaves turned from dark green to a soft, celery green. She could see the life force pulsating in the leaves, the branches, the very bark. Insects flitted around through light and shadow and she could see their pulsating life force as well.

Kate turned onto her side and stared in horror at her long legs and paws covered with short, soft gray fur flecked with rich brown.
Shit fuck what’s happened to me?
She began to shake uncontrollably and squeezed her eyes shut, certain she was locked in some terrible nightmare. Shudders swept up one side of her body and down the other. Her teeth chattered, her nose ran, she struggled to wrap her arms around herself, but couldn’t seem to do it. When she opened her eyes, her long legs and paws twitched and jerked, her muscles screamed for real movement, she thought she might vomit.

Kate leaped up and tore toward the marsh, her powerful legs covering the distance in seconds flat. At the edge of the water, odors inundated her, the smells of various life forms that lived in the marsh—tiny fish swimming through the sunlight, dragonflies flitting from stalk to stalk, crabs scampering to and from the shore, and, much deeper out, manta rays, dolphins, sharks. Then there were the scents of the wading birds and the noise of their cries and chatter, blue herons and wood storks, egrets and gulls and pelicans. Their voices gave way to a celestial music, a celebration of life. The sensory feast briefly paralyzed her.

She looked—and there was her reflection, a beautiful, sleek greyhound with human eyes. She touched her paw to the reflection and the ripples broke it up.

Holy shit, it’s real, I’m changed, I’m a shifter like Wayra, he pressed his hand to my forehead and light came out of it and then he sank his teeth into my neck and I’ve gone around the bend, I’m in meltdown, I’m—

Rocky, where was Rocky?

The last thing she remembered was seeing her son on the floor of the houseboat, his limbs human, his face that of a dog or a wolf.
Jesus God
.

Kate raced back into the wooded area where she’d come to, but didn’t see anything in the shadows. She sniffed at the air, drawing the smells deeply into her lungs. A sensory tsunami crashed over her, and for long, terrible moments, she felt as if her brain were short-circuiting. Then, gradually, she realized she could separate the smells of nature—water, grass, trees—from those of animals. It took her a moment to determine the distance and direction of several powerful animal scents, then she ran toward them, darting over fallen branches and protruding roots, into an area of the woods where the pines grew so tightly together it was as if they were joined at the hips, a family of multiple Siamese twins.

She spotted a large dog with thick fur the color of sand striated with black, and when she silently screamed her son’s name, the dog’s head snapped around. His ears popped upright, straight as little church steeples, and his lips furled back, exposing his ivory-white fangs. Kate stopped.
Rocky, it’s me.

Mom.
He howled as he tore toward her, and there in the shadows they danced around, sniffing and licking at each other. When he spoke, his words came to her in rapidly moving images, a movie of the mind. He had been hiding in the animal rescue facility when Amy, hosting a
brujo,
had appeared. The
brujo
had bled her out in front of Rocky, then seized him, infecting him. By the time Wayra had found him, he was dying and the shifter had changed him to save his life. Kate started to ask how the change had saved his life; she was a bit short on details. But the knowledge abruptly flowed into her awareness: the shifter immune system. It was why Wayra had lived so long.

But why had Wayra changed
her
? She hadn’t been injured. She had freaked out at the sight of her son caught in some fucked-up biological nightmare, yes, definitely. She vaguely recalled screaming and rushing toward Rocky. But she hadn’t threatened Wayra. She hadn’t presented a threat to anyone.
So, why?

Her question, once again, brought an answer. Wayra didn’t want Rocky to ever be the last of his kind, to suffer the excruciating loneliness that he had. She appreciated that Wayra had saved Rocky’s life, but shouldn’t he have
asked
her before changing her?

Well, yeah. But when would he have done that, exactly? When she had dropped from exhaustion at moving Delaney onto the houseboat or when she rushed toward Rocky, screaming like a banshee?

She understood Wayra’s whats and whys. And honestly, did she really mind being something other than a bartender? Did she really mind that one of her options in life was being able to run forty-five or fifty miles an hour, discern the ancient history of the soil on which she walked, and that she had access to knowledge that seemed to date back to the beginning of time? Did any of that really bother her?

No. She wished she could say otherwise, wished she could be enraged that such a thing had been thrust on her. But the bottom line—and right now everything for her was a bottom line—was that, except for giving birth to Rocky, her transformation was the most magnificent thing that had ever happened to her.

What had happened to Delaney? He had been badly injured when she and Wayra had gotten him onto the houseboat. Had Wayra changed him, too?

She had a bad feeling about it. Rocky picked up on her alarm, and they loped back through the woods, headed for the houseboat.
What’s your first memory of all this, Rocky?

Coming to in the woods and being assaulted by the odors. I went to look for you, Mom, but got distracted by a scent that consumed me.

Before the marsh came into sight, the odor of the air changed dramatically. She smelled terror, hostility, rage. And then she saw the rising fog, a long, thick bank of it forming a kind of barricade between her and Rocky and the marsh, where the houseboat was.

She felt Rocky’s uncertainty.
Can it seize us?
he asked.

I don’t know. But if we’re moving like the wind, it’s probably less likely. How fast can you run, Rocky?

Let’s find out.

With that, he raced ahead of her and Kate dashed after him, rapidly closing the gap between them, then pulled out ahead of him and plunged into the fog first. The bone-piercing cold shocked her. A litany of voices thundered in her skull:
Find the body, fuel the body
 … She felt the
brujos
within the fog trying to invade her, seize her, but they apparently found her distasteful and strange and broke away from her. Just the same, the fog rolled after her, pursuing her, the voices of the dead rising and falling in a maddening staccato rhythm. The fog brushed up against her tail, tasting but not trying to seize her. Then she reached the other side of it, and a moment later, Rocky burst from it like a bullet.

Fifty yards later, just short of a small clearing, they stopped. It took her a moment to process what she was seeing—a tremendous jet-black Great Dane backed up to a tree, an electric cart blocking him on either side, four men in each cart, and two large, armed men standing in front of him.

“Shoot the thing,” one man in a cart shouted. “It’s probably got rabies or some shit like that.”

Kate didn’t recognize the man who hollered, but she recognized both of the armed men when they glanced around—a state deputy who drank vodka straight up whenever he dropped by the island bar, and his college-age son. No question that they had been seized and that the Great Dane was Delaney. She could smell him as clearly as she could smell the
brujos
within the deputy and his son—and inside the other men. Delaney was about to spring and she knew the two men would shoot him. She doubted if even a shifter’s immune system could save Delaney from shots fired at point-blank range.

She raced, howling, along the left side of the clearing and heard Rocky’s echoing howls on the other side. And, more distantly, she heard a third howl.
Wayra
. Only one of the men in the carts was armed and he shouted, “Coyotes,” and raised his rifle.

“There’s no coyotes on Cedar Key,” the deputy said, laughing. “That’s dogs. Maybe this guy’s buddies.” He thrust the end of his rifle toward Delaney, who snapped at the rifle and swiped at it with his massive paw.

Kate didn’t hear the rest. She wasn’t even sure if he uttered anything more. The wind roared in her ears, she exploded out of the trees and leaped. By the time the deputy and his son saw her, it was too late. She struck the son so hard he fell into his father and lost his grip on his rifle. The deputy’s rifle went off, the explosion echoed through the trees, and the shot flew wild. Delaney seized his opportunity and jumped at the two men, knocking them both to the ground, pinning the deputy beneath his massive paws and trapping the son under his father’s body. As Rocky went after the armed man in the cart, Kate landed on the other side of the clearing.

Shouts rang out, one of the carts started to move away from the clearing, and Liberty suddenly swept down over the vehicle, shrieking, wings flapping madly, her dagger-sharp beak and claws ripping chunks of hair and skin from the men’s heads and arms. All four men jumped out and took off into the woods, the hawk and Rocky pursuing them. Wayra came barreling out of the trees in his human form, waving torches and shrieking like someone possessed. He hurled one torch at the fleeing men and another at the remaining cart; the torch landed in the lap of the armed driver. The young man scrambled out, slapping at his clothes, and the
brujo
within him fled; Kate could see it, a puff of discolored smoke.

Around them, beyond them, the dry pine needles and leaves on the ground caught fire. Kate knew it wouldn’t be long before the trees caught, before the entire woods was burning. Delaney apparently sensed this, too, and leaped off the deputy and his son. They were no longer armed and the
brujos
within them, terrified by the proximity of the flames, forced their hosts to their feet, and ran. The screaming man with the scorched pants stood there clutching his head, eyes wide with shock, shrieking,
“It’s gone, it’s gone, dear God, it’s gone.”
His face crumpled like cellophane and he fell, sobbing, to his knees, arms covering his head.

Kate trotted over to him and licked his face until his sobs subsided and he turned his head, struggling to catch his breath, to speak. “I … didn’t … do anything … I … what … kinda dog … You … knew I … had one of them inside me. You…”

“You’re safe now,” Wayra said when he reached them. “What’s your name?”

The man rocked back onto his heels, his eyes bright red, and looked from Wayra to Kate and back to Wayra again. “Friends … call me Ebo. I’m … a tourist … I…” He pressed his fists into his eyes and tried not to cry. “Got seized … three days ago…”

“The thing that seized you is gone,” Wayra said gently. “They’re all gone. But they’re going to alert Dominica and the others about where you are, where we are. We need to get moving.”

He looked desperate. “And go
where
? These bastards are everywhere, there’s no escaping them, no—”

Wayra crouched in front of him. “Listen to me, Ebo. I’m deeply sorry for what has happened to you. You’ve stumbled into a very old story. But I assure you there
is
a way to escape them. You can travel with us, or you can get off the island on your own. My advice to you is to flee while you can, head toward the fourth bridge, where the quarantine blockade begins.”

“I … I can make it on my own. The tribe is … targeting … groups. That’s how these mutants found the dogs. They … got a tip about the hawk. Dominica hates that hawk, she knows it belongs to that woman who has the houseboat, and she sent us … to check things out. We saw … the houseboat … then that huge dog … She … Dominica … told us to shoot all dogs, especially any black Labs.”

In other words, Kate thought, Dominica had ordered her tribe to shoot Wayra on sight.