Ghost Key (50 page)

Yes, indeed. Like any ghost that lacked a central switchboard, she thought, Liam’s ghosts would have to learn how to communicate one on one, not the easiest thing to do when you had been dependent on the
brujo
net.

Good riddance, Liam,
she whispered, then proceeded to destroy the
brujo
net in the same way she had created it centuries ago. She summoned her most powerful intentions and hurled them into the greater forces available to the dead in the hereafter. She clapped her hands twice, sharply, and the
brujo
net went dark.

Whit and the others on the roof all stared at her, aghast, awed. “My God, you actually did it,” Whit breathed.

“Now what?” Jill asked. “How’re we supposed to talk to each other when we don’t have hosts?”

“Reach out, be firm in your intentions, believe it can happen, and it will. One of our rights in the afterlife is to be able to draw on its inherent power. You don’t need the net to do that. It takes practice, that’s all.” And infinite patience, she thought, but didn’t say it.

“What will happen to Liam and his group now that they can’t communicate with each other?” Joe asked.

“The group will be thrown into total chaos. Now let’s go claim our island. Jill, you and Joe bring the vehicles around.”

“And do what?” Joe asked.

Wasn’t it obvious? Had he—had all of them—lost the capacity for independent thought? “Gather up the dead and the dying and dump them at the edge of the quarantine area. We still have a small number of
brujos
who need hosts and I’m sure there are some among the freed hostages who are healthy enough to be seized. After all, where can they possibly go? If they try to drive off the island, they’ll be seized by visiting
brujos
or arrested or shot by the feds. If they try to escape by boat, they’ll be caught by
brujos
or the Coast Guard. So let’s tie up our loose ends and then start cleaning up our enclave.”

As the others headed downstairs, Whit took her hand and pulled her against him. Her host, Lynn, didn’t resist. She actually seemed to be attracted to Whit’s host, Kevin. “I love you, Nica,” he whispered, his mouth warm against her ear, her cheek. Then he kissed her and she melted against him and allowed herself a few moments to love the one she was with.

*   *   *

Wayra
raced after Illary, who flew low enough for him to follow her, but high enough to locate Sanchez or Maddie or both of them. He knew that Maddie had liberated herself from Dominica; he’d discovered that fact in the courtyard, from one of the female hostages he had freed. The only reason she would be out here near the animal rescue center and the airport would be to hide or to find some way off the island.

After freeing the hostages, he and the hawk escaped the courtyard. Now they were closing in on the animal rescue center.

A cart’s headed toward you, Wayra, three
brujos
inside. They’re agitated about what’s happening downtown.

He veered into a front yard, paused behind a tree, and flattened out against the ground, watching the
brujo
cart as it approached. What Illary referred to as “agitation” smelled deeper than that. It stank of that peculiar fear that only a
brujo
could feel when its existence was threatened. Their combined odors told him nothing about the source of their fear, but he felt certain it wasn’t just about the fire.

When the cart whispered past him, he leaped up, keeping pace with the hawk as she turned north and then west along Airport Road. As he rounded the curve in the road, now close to the house where he and Kate had discovered the bodies of Amy’s parents, a familiar stench hit him.
Brujo
fear.
Tell me what you see, Illary.

A cart and an airplane with people outside it. I’m going in for a closer look.

But what she didn’t see and Wayra did because he was on the ground, was the rear end of a truck protruding from a mangrove. He ran over to it, sniffing at the tires, the branches and water around it, and caught a dog’s scent and that of Maddie and Sanchez. The two of them together, here? How?

He pursued their scents down the beach and saw them, flattened out in the shallows behind a mound of reeds, the dog next to Sanchez, he and Maddie, her hair covered with a baseball cap, watching eight
brujos
taunting Rocky and a tall black man. He suspected other
brujos
in their natural forms hovered nearby. All that stood between his shifters and the
brujos
was equipment they had removed from the plane and several heaps of debris that had been cleared from the runway. Wayra didn’t know if Maddie and Sanchez were armed, but even if they were, they were badly outnumbered.

As Wayra approached, Maddie turned her head—and saw him. She shot to her feet and raced toward him, her arms thrown open. Even though she didn’t make a sound, her body was fully visible to the
brujos,
that young woman whose long and perilous journey with Dominica they knew nothing about. All they knew was that she had hosted Dominica.

Wayra leaped at her, hoping to knock her to the sand, but one of the
brujos
opened fire and the bullet with Maddie’s name on it slammed into Wayra’s right side, punctured his right lung, and exited his other side, a clean sweep that nonetheless rendered him irrelevant. He collapsed, his breath an excruciatingly painful wheeze, and felt blood filling the cavity of his chest.

Fuck.

Twenty-four

For Maddie, everything seemed to happen in a grotesque slow motion, each interminable moment vivid and horrifying. As Wayra’s paws struck her in the chest, knocking her to the sand, a single shot rang out, echoing up and down the beach, and Wayra’s airborne canine body twisted and fell to the ground.

Now she scrambled toward him on her hands and knees, gunfire exploding around her, the same words spilling from her mouth again and again.
“Please don’t be dead please don’t be dead…”

When she reached him, she saw the agony in his open eyes, the blood seeping through his clothes. Then his body went berserk, fluctuating wildly between animal and human, fur one moment, skin the next; legs and paws, then a human foot, a human hand; a human ear, an animal snout. His shifter immune system had kicked into gear and she knew that if anything could save him, it would. She leaned over him, struggling not to sob as she whispered, “Stay with us, Wayra. Stay with us.”

As Maddie tore off her jacket to slip it under Wayra’s head, a hawk—keening shrilly—suddenly landed on the sand next to Wayra. Rocky’s hawk, Liberty. Her wings fluttered frantically and her plaintive cries tore into Maddie’s heart and soul. This was the cry of a mother who had lost a child, a lover who had lost a partner. And then the hawk transformed into a tall, lovely woman whose eyes brimmed with tears. “Please. Don’t touch him right now.” She sank to the sand and lifted Wayra’s rapidly changing head gently onto her lap. “His body needs a chance to stabilize.”

“My God,” Maddie breathed. “You’re a
shifter
?”

Only then did she realize the gunfire had stopped. She glanced around and saw Sanchez, Delaney, and Rocky running toward them, with Jessie dashing along in front of them. The retriever reached them first and immediately went over to Wayra and licked his face and Illary’s hands, then stretched out alongside him in the sand. Sanchez dropped to the ground next to Maddie and slipped an arm around her shoulders. “I thought…”

Maddie squeezed his hand. “Wayra took the bullet.”

“His body,” Sanchez said, staring at Wayra. “What’s happening to him?”

Illary kept moving her hands gently over Wayra’s face. “He’s struggling for his life.”

“Who’re
you
?” Sanchez asked.

“She’s a shifter, like Wayra,” Rocky said, and crouched beside Illary, his eyes fixed on Wayra. “What can we do, Illary?”

Huh? How do they know each other?
Maddie started to ask, but Illary spoke first.

“His temperature is dropping. Can you get something to cover him, Rocky?”

“You bet. There’s a sleeping bag in the plane.” He loped off toward the plane and returned moments later with a lightweight sleeping bag that he drew gently over Wayra’s body.

“Shouldn’t we get him to a hospital?” Delaney asked.

“Humans can’t fix this,” Illary replied. “His immune system is the best physician. He needs time before we can move him to the plane. Is enough of the runway cleared so you can take off, Bob?”

“You all know each other?” Maddie exclaimed.

“Uh, yeah,” Delaney said.

He didn’t elaborate and Illary continued as if Maddie hadn’t asked the question. “Downtown is on fire. Dominica had some of Zee Small’s people tied up in the courtyard. Wayra, Kate, and I freed them. I don’t know how many actually escaped, but they need to be rescued. Kate is back there with them.”

“We’re not going anywhere without you two,” Delaney said.

“Absolutely,” Maddie agreed. “We’ll wait until we can move Wayra into the plane.”

“My mom and Zee can take care of themselves a while longer,” Rocky said.

“Sanchez, Rocky, can you guys give me a hand?” Delaney asked. “We need to move those bodies and the rest of the equipment off the runway.”

The men left and Maddie and Jessie stayed by Wayra. “Will he live?” Maddie asked.

Illary looked down at Wayra, her hands now sweeping through the air just inches from his head, his body. A pale light emanated from them, so they seemed to glow like moons. She shook her head as though her entire existence hinged on the answer to that question. “I don’t know.”

“Will that light heal him?”

“It might help. You should know, Maddie, that Kate, Rocky, and Delaney have all been changed.”

“Changed? What do you mean?”

“They’re shifters.”

She might as well have said they were all aliens from Pluto. Stunned, Maddie just sat there listening as Illary continued to speak in that same quiet voice, explaining what had happened.

“No wonder Dominica never seized either Kate or Rocky,” Maddie said finally. “She always seemed afraid of you, so she must have sensed something.”

“If Wayra dies, Dominica will learn the true meaning of terror,” Illary whispered. “I promise you that.”

*   *   *

As
soon as Kate, Zee, and the others in his group climbed over the courtyard gate, a torrent of gunfire mowed down half of them. Men and women pitched forward. “Keep running,” Zee shouted. “Head toward the Old Fennimore Mill!”

The fire still hadn’t reached the Fennimore, a condo development of a dozen buildings on the marsh. None among them had a weapon, so the most they could do was flee the immediate area as quickly as possible and remain hidden until Delaney and Rocky landed in the marina parking lot. From any of the upper condos on the south side of the marsh, they would be able to see the plane as it approached.

But before they even entered the Fennimore property, fog rolled in off the marsh and rose up quickly around them, boxing them in so they couldn’t see more than a few inches in front of them. Kate stopped in the midst of it, her body tense, and listened for the lascivious litany of the ghosts within. She didn’t hear or sense anything. It seemed to be just ordinary fog, yet she felt sure it was sentient, aware. But if it wasn’t a
brujo
fog, then what the hell was it?

“We should get inside one of them condos,” Zee whispered, pausing beside her. “We know what this fog shit means.”

“This fog feels different, Zee. I think it’s protecting us.”

The others in the group, just six of the two dozen who had been in the courtyard, gathered around Kate and Zee, whispering anxiously among themselves. “Let’s get inside the office, first building on the right, bottom floor, and wait there until we hear the plane,” Kate said.

“Link arms,” Zee said.

They did and moved onto the property like dancers in a chorus line, except that no one was dancing. Kate was in the lead, Zee took up the rear. As she headed toward the first building, the fog tightened around them, but not in a threatening way. Beyond them, she continued to hear sirens, shouts, the roar of vehicles on Second Street, the noise of the fire consuming everything in its path. The stink of smoke permeated the fog, but the fog was thick and damp and quickly absorbed the worst of the smell.

They reached the first building. The sign on the office door read
CLOSED
and the place was locked up tight. If they broke the glass, the fog could follow them inside. Even though it hadn’t threatened them in any way, all of them had experienced the terror of fog and only wanted to get away from it. So when one of Zee’s men said he could jimmy the lock, Kate told him to jimmy away.

While they waited anxiously, the air burst with new sounds—gunfire nearby and helicopters, a lot of them. When she looked up through the fog, she could see the glow of the choppers’ searchlights.

“Did your friend summon choppers for us?” Zee asked.

“No. Absolutely not.”

“Some feds in hazmat suits came into town in Hummers,” Zee said. “These mutants bled them out. So now the feds are coming in choppers. Hurry it up on the door, young man.”

The fog climbed higher and drifted over the entire building, a white, thick, protective cocoon. Even the chopper searchlights wouldn’t be able to penetrate this stuff, she thought, and hoped that it would cover the entire complex of buildings.

When the door swung open, the group hurried inside the office. Zee shut the door and told his people to spread out and search for water, food, candles, flashlights, weapons, anything, everything. Kate hurried over to the computer, hoping there was still electrical power in the complex. But when she pressed the on button, nothing happened. The complex apparently had gone dark with the rest of the island.

Then she remembered her cell phone. She slipped it out of her jacket pocket and saw two text messages. The first was from Rocky, blunt and short:
Wayra shot and dying on beach near airport.