Hungry Ghosts (Eric Carter #3)(12)

I find my room and unlock it with the key, but I don’t go inside. I’m not going to stay in it. I just want the computer at the front desk to register my using the key. Instead I pick a room at the end of the hall across from the stairwell. I open the door with a spell that pops the lock, but shouldn’t alert the system.

It might just be paranoia, but my first night in Tijuana some locals decided I looked like an easy mark and busted into my room. Started shooting up the place. It was annoying more than it was dangerous. I took them out easily enough with an electricity spell I know that’s kind of like a big ass Taser. I left them lying unconscious and twitching on the floor of my room.

That would have been fine if it hadn’t happened again in Hermosillo, only with half a dozen men armed with assault rifles. I think they were trying to kidnap me, or something. That didn’t go so well for them, either. I shot three and gutted the rest with a straight razor. I left an extra big tip for the cleaning staff.

Ever since then I’ve been taking extra precautions wherever I stay. I always use runes, glyphs and wards near wherever I’m staying, but they’re all low level spells to keep people from paying attention to the room. That doesn’t work so well when you’ve already grabbed somebody’s attention and they tail you to your room. So I’ve added some really unpleasant ones, started sneaking into different rooms, setting traps. Whatever it takes.

Inside the room I put up other wards, but these ones are less for intruders and more to keep the ghosts out. They’ll show up eventually, and having the Dead watch you while you sleep isn’t nearly as fun as it sounds.

I sit on the edge of the bed and take stock. I’m so goddamn tired I don’t know what to do next. I need a shower. I need a shave. I need to get into some clothes that aren’t spattered with Bustillo’s blood.

The shower’s water pressure is almost non-existent, but it’s hot. I let it wash away the grime, sweat and blood. My body is shot through with jade. My chest, stomach, left thigh and down both arms to just past the elbow is a deep, sea green, dull and waxy. It crawls up my neck with thin tendrils and down my legs like varicose veins. My tattoos shimmer in the bathroom light, their colors muted in the stone.

I have one tattoo on my chest, a circular pattern with three circling crows. They move around inside their prison, shifting position. Looking too closely at them gives me a headache. In a pinch they can be released from my body, pecking and clawing at an enemy in a swarm of black feathers and razor sharp beaks. They’re not real, of course. They’re phantasms, constructs of magic locked away inside my chest.

Lately, they’ve changed. More menacing somehow, though honestly I didn’t think that was possible. But now I can feel them inside my skin, angry, wanting blood, wanting to be released. That’s never happened before. They’ve always just been another spell.

Now it feels as though they’re gaining will. Is it the stone that’s doing it? The change itself? I don’t know. I really don’t want to let them loose. Before I knew what they would do, how they operated. Now, I have no idea.

I get out of the shower and look myself over in the mirror. The last couple of months have not been kind. I’ve barely slept, depending on magic and Adderall to keep me going. I’ve been shot, stabbed, punched. Somebody took a baseball bat to my head in Hermosillo. The magic in my tattoos protected me from the brunt of it but I’m pretty sure one of my molars is loose.

Somebody else went after me with a broken bottle in Tijuana that scraped along the stone of my chest and cut a shallow furrow up the side of my neck. I had to stitch myself up with dental floss and a needle sterilized with tequila and a lighter after that one. My own damn fault for not packing a surgical kit. The scar is pink and raw. One more in a vast collection.

But things are finally starting to fall into place. I have a location on Tabitha. She told Bustillo to tell me where she was. That means she wants me to find her. She won’t be moving until I get there.

One of the things I got out of this arrangement is some of Mictlantecuhtli’s power. This dark, roiling thing that wells up inside me like it wants to tear through my skin. I could use that power to go straight to Mictlantecuhtli’s tomb, I’ve done it before. Once I’m there I could just stab him with the knife. Finish this once and for all. But I probably wouldn’t survive it.

Every time I tap into that power my body changes faster. Too much of it has gone to stone, already. Much more and the transition will be complete. How many times can I use it before it eats me up entirely? Two times? Three? Or worse, one? What if I get there and before I can stab the sonofabitch the transition completes?

So I’m doing this the hard way. Finding Tabitha’s the first step. I don’t just want her to make sure I clean up a loose end. I need her because I need a door into Mictlan.

That’s really the problem. Getting there. Once I’m inside, tracking down Santa Muerte and Mictlantecuhtli can’t be that hard. At least I’ll know what plane of existence they’re in.

The thing I’m most worried about is moving around without either of them knowing I’m there. I’ve got spells keeping her from tracking me out here, but in there, on their home turf, I don’t know how well they’ll work. I’ll burn that bridge when I get to it.

For now I just need to sleep.



___

My eyes snap open when the ward on the elevator breaks. Who is it? A hotel guest who’s gotten a room on this floor? Unwanted visitors with guns? I glance at the clock on the nightstand. I’ve been asleep about an hour.