Ghost Key (54 page)

He leaned forward and hugged her tightly, an old man, the last vestige of her father’s generation. She smelled fish in his hair, salt on his skin, and the heart of Cedar Key in his breath. “I’m thanking you, Kate. Me and mine, we owe you and yours.” Then he brushed his hands over her cheeks, kissed her forehead, and moved to the front of the plane to hug Rocky good-bye.

“Go, go,”
Delaney shouted. “Get out of here fast.”

Kate threw open the cabin door and Zee’s people leaped from the plane to the tarmac, one after the other.

The trauma chopper had landed twenty yards away and they raced toward it in their tattered clothing, several with packs, most with nothing at all, but every single one of them propelled by their odd beliefs that Zee Small had the scoop on the end-time, that he was their miracle worker. Hell, maybe he was.

Kate watched them pile into the chopper, and before it had lifted into the air, she pulled the cabin door shut and Delaney revved the engine. She hurried back to her spot on the floor with Sanchez and Maddie, but the engines suddenly died and Delaney’s voice boomed over the PA.

“Uh, people, we’re blocked on every side.”

Kate peered out the window again. A dozen black helicopters surrounded them, some still in the air, others hovering at their side, four on the ground, with a pair on either side of the Cessna.

“O’Donnell,” Delaney said. “Ideas, anyone?”

“Get us out,” Rocky yelled from the copilot seat. “They’ll put us away in some quarantine hole where we’ll never see sunlight.”

Maddie quickly stood. “Delaney, Rocky, move back here with Kate and let Sanchez and me sit up front. Then the three of you shift.”

“What?”
Kate said, balking.

“Because they won’t be expecting to see four dogs,” Maddie replied.

Sanchez piped up: “I’ll deal with O’Donnell.”

“Maddie’s right,” Delaney said, and he and Rocky changed places with her and Sanchez.

Kate glanced through the window, where a chopper had landed and belched out men in hazmat suits who marched toward the plane with fierce determination. Maddie was right. Shock and awe. She began to shift and fell back against the floor of the plane.

*   *   *

Only
one man entered the cabin, and he wore a hazmat suit. He took a slow look around, shut the cabin door, and locked it. Maddie tried to see the scene the way he did, a growling golden retriever on the floor between the front seats where she and Sanchez sat; a Great Dane sprawled on the cabin floor with a Belgian Tervuren and a greyhound.

The man in the suit removed his helmet. “Fuck. You’re hauling
dogs
?”

“Agent O’Donnell,” Sanchez said.

O’Donnell dropped his helmet to the floor. A pulse beat hard at his temple, his face turned bright red. “Is this some kind of joke?
Dogs?
Where’s that fucking coward Delaney?”

“He didn’t make it,” Sanchez replied. “He got left back on Cedar Key.”

“That’s a goddamn lie, Sanchez. I heard him talking on the radio ten minutes ago.”

“Oh, you imagined it,” Maddie said.

“You’d best shut your mouth, young lady,” O’Donnell snapped, and pulled a weapon from his suit and stabbed at the air. “I know who you are. That Livingston woman. You disappeared from Florida a year ago. I don’t know how the hell you got into the country, but I’m betting you’re traveling under a phony passport. I don’t know yet what the hell else you’ve done, but we can certainly arrest you for that. You and Sanchez are going to be quarantined for—”

“Fat fucking chance of that.” Sanchez bolted out of his seat and moved toward O’Donnell.

“Stay back,” O’Donnell snapped, waving his weapon wildly. “Just stay the hell back, Sanchez.”

Jessie growled more loudly now, the greyhound snarled, the Belgian Tervuren got to his feet, and the Great Dane moved toward O’Donnell, forcing him to back up to the cabin wall. “I’ll shoot them, Sanchez, shoot all of them,” O’Donnell hissed. “Keep the goddamn dogs in line.”

“It may be too late for that,” Maddie said, and the three dogs started to shift.

O’Donnell’s mouth dropped open, the color drained from his face, his eyes bulged. He looked like a man perched at the edge of madness.

And when Delaney’s change was complete, he calmly reached out and took O’Donnell’s weapon and passed it to Sanchez, who aimed it at O’Donnell. “Sit down,” Sanchez snapped.

“But—”

“Sit. Down.” Delaney gripped his shoulder and forced him to the floor. “Here’s the deal, Tom. You’re going to allow us to fly out of here because if you don’t, I’ll bite you in the fucking neck and you’ll become one of us.”

“I—I—” His eyes rolled toward Kate, Rocky, Maddie and Sanchez, Jessie, then back to Delaney.
“How?”
he whispered. “How did this … abomination happen?”

“
You’re
the abomination,” Maddie shot back. “We should just leave you here on the runway, let the hungry ghosts have you.” She didn’t mean it, she wouldn’t wish that on anyone, but she enjoyed the horror in his expression.

“Please … don’t … I … I talked to the hazmat survivors. They described … what happened. We … I … couldn’t put it into any reasonable context. I … the CDC, DHS, all of them breathing down my neck … They didn’t want to believe any of it was true. They sent those survivors for a psychiatric evaluation and I … I knew they would do the same to me if I … I didn’t fall into line.”

“I told you the truth the day you interrogated me,” Kate said. “You thought I was delusional.”

“I … I don’t think that now.”

“Clear us for takeoff,” Delaney demanded.

O’Donnell’s head bobbed as though it had come loose from the tendons and muscles that connected it to his shoulders. “Radio’s in my helmet.”

Maddie scooped up the helmet, checked the inside of it, then passed it to him. He got on the radio and barked instructions. Someone on the other end apparently argued with him, but O’Donnell seemed to have enough clout to pull it off. Within minutes, the black choppers on the ground lifted away and those hovering around them veered off.

“Nicely done,” Maddie said. “If I were you, Mr. O’Donnell, I’d take off that suit. We’ll let you off in Miami or somewhere and you can call home from there.”

“You may want to put in for retirement,” Sanchez said.

O’Donnell looked miserable and angry. “You’re all wanted for a variety of crimes. You’ll never get away with this.”

Rocky laughed. “Watch us.”

Maddie pulled her legs up against her chest and rested her hands on her knees, the gun aimed at O’Donnell. “It’s really time for you to shut up, O’Donnell.” Then she flashed Delaney a thumbs-up, and moments later, the engines revved, the plane sped up the runway, and they were airborne.

*   *   *

Wayra
and Illary landed in a vast savannah, beneath a sweep of sky so crisp and perfect, in air so pure, that Wayra felt certain he had hit his approximate target—twelve thousand years back, give or take a few. It was far enough back in time that it might take Dominica the rest of her existence to find her way again to the twenty-first century.

The grass around them was tall and soft, the color of celery. Dominica, still inside her host, lay between him and Illary.

“She’s still got a host,” Illary said.

“If Dominica releases her, we’re obligated to return her host to her own time.”

“I know. But her leg’s broken. And she’ll be crazy.”

“She’ll go crazy here, too. And this body doesn’t belong to Dominica.”

He took Illary’s hand as Dominica stirred. Her eyes opened, she looked around slowly, eyes widening with horror, and rubbed her hand over her broken leg and cried out. “You … you can’t leave me here, like this. There’s nothing
here.
What have you done to me, Wayra?”

“What I should have done long ago. You’ll survive here, among the hunters and gatherers.”

“You may even have your own tribe,” Illary said.

“Who the—” She stopped. “The hawk.
You were the hawk
.” Then, much more softly, she said, “A
shifter
? You aren’t the last of your kind, Wayra? But how can—”

“The how doesn’t matter. Release your host, Nica. We need to take her back.”

“No.” She tried to jump up, but her broken leg crumpled beneath her and she hit the ground. “She’s mine. She’s staying here with me. She’s all that’s left.”

Wayra’s pain was abrupt, unexpected, something from centuries ago, a residue of feeling for Dominica—not love but pity, not concern but compassion, not yearning for the past but an eagerness to put it behind him so that he could embrace the future. He crouched in front of her and put his arms around her. “Nica, Nica,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry…”
That you moved into the darkness.

When his arms went around her, her body tightened for a moment, tense and unyielding, then she relaxed and Dominica’s essence drifted out of the top of her host’s skull. The young woman slumped against Wayra, dead before he set her against the ground. Dominica hadn’t bled her out; she’d simply died.

They didn’t have any shovels to dig a grave for her, so he and Illary carried her to the shade of one of the few trees in sight. Dominica flitted about, shouting and diving at them as they covered the young woman in leaves.

You can’t do this to me, Wayra,
Dominica screamed.
You can’t leave me out here. How can you be so cruel?

Wayra ignored her and looked at Illary. “Let’s find the others and head home.”

“That sounds wonderful,
mi amor.
”

They held hands again. Dominica’s screams echoed briefly in the air, rising and falling on a gentle breeze that flitted across the tall savannah grasses. Then even that was gone, the last vestige of his past.

Twenty-six

Five hours after they left Gainesville, the Cessna landed on a strip of grass in the middle of the Everglades. Maddie motioned O’Donnell to his feet and asked for his BlackBerry and wallet. He passed her the items without argument. She tossed the BlackBerry to Sanchez, then removed O’Donnell’s federal ID and driver’s license and pocketed them.

“You’re about fifteen miles from the Seminole Indian reservation,” she said. “If you keep walking west, you’ll eventually get there.”

O’Donnell glanced through windows on either side of the plane, then looked at her, at Sanchez, at Delaney. “What the fuck, man. This is the goddamn Everglades. How the hell am I—”

“You’ve got two feet,” Delaney said. “We figure it will take you about five hours to walk to the reservation and that’s if you don’t get lost. By then, we’ll be out of the country. And since you don’t have any ID, it’s probably in your best interest not to mention hungry ghosts, shapeshifters, or any of the rest of it unless you don’t mind ending up in a psychiatric unit.”

“It … it’ll be dark by then,” O’Donnell stammered. “Alligators and shit are out there.”

“It won’t be dark until six or seven,” Sanchez said, and opened the cabin door. “It’s not even one
P.M.
yet. You’ll make it before dark.” He handed O’Donnell a bottle of water. “You’re lucky it’s spring. You won’t roast out there.”

Maddie motioned with the gun. “Out, Mr. O’Donnell.”

“Jesus,” he murmured, and moved toward the open door. He stood there for a few moments, staring out at the desolation, the utter absence of anything except a dry flatness in every direction and a dome of blue sky. He glanced back, his eyes stricken with terror. “Listen, can’t we—”

“No,” Sanchez snapped.

“Bye-bye, O’Donnell.” She cocked her weapon.

O’Donnell pointed his finger at Maddie, then Sanchez, then Delaney.
“You. And you. And you.
You’re fucked, all of you.”

Sanchez pressed his hand to O’Donnell’s back. “You going to jump or should I push you?”

O’Donnell cast a hateful look at Sanchez, then leaped to the ground and loped away from the plane. Maddie shut the cabin door. “We’re good,” she called to Delaney, and she and Sanchez stepped back from the door and sat on the floor again.

Sanchez immediately started making calls—to his sister, his father. Maddie borrowed Delaney’s cell to call her aunt Tesso in Ecuador.

Forty minutes later, they landed in Homestead. They had less than four hours to get to the Miami airport, where a private jet owned by an Ecuadoran church would take them to Quito. Sanchez’s father, Emilio, and his sister would meet them there.

Delaney’s car was in the parking lot. He drove them to Sanchez’s place and said he would be back in two hours to pick them up.

Maddie, Sanchez, and Jessie got out and stood for a few moments in the driveway, watching Delaney drive away with his fellow shifters. Then Jessie barked and trotted to the front door and they hurried after her.

“What the hell should I take?” Sanchez asked, fumbling with his door keys.

“Your computer,” Maddie said. “Clothes. Books. Shit, I don’t know, Sanchez, what do you value most?”

“Jessie,” he said, and then looked at her. “And you.”

They were inside the house at that point and when he said those words, “and you,” electricity raced between them, a chemistry so palpable she felt it in the roots of her teeth, the marrow of her bones. He slung an arm around her waist, his mouth met hers, and they stumbled back against the wall.

For long, strange moments, they simply held each other, then his hands moved down her back, through her hair, and his mouth slipped to her throat, her breasts, upward to her nose and eyelids, and fire burned wherever he touched her.

They stumbled back into a couch and fell onto it, kicking the cushions away, tearing at each other’s clothes until they were skin to skin, bone to bone, his mouth and fingers and hands everywhere, ubiquitous, igniting such fierce desire in her that she knew it would happen too fast unless he slowed down.

She whispered, “Not so fast,” and nibbled at his ear and pressed her hands against his chest, pushing him back, away from her, so she could see his face, explore it, and sink into the dark landscape of his eyes.

But suddenly, everything went haywire, she was in the attic again, when Whit had made love to Dominica, when Sam Dorset had raped her. She wrenched free of Sanchez and bolted upright and covered her face with her hands and struggled not to sob out loud.