Hungry Ghosts (Eric Carter #3)(13)

They couldn’t have waited another couple hours before they came to kill me?

I close my eyes again and reach out for the rune I painted in the elevator. I can sense six men inside. Viewing through runes is a synesthetic cross-stitch of senses that all meld into one. I can feel the men’s weight, smell the gun oil on them, see the skull-printed face masks, camouflage Kevlar vests. Feel the automatic weapons at the ready.

Well, we can’t have that.

I trigger the elevator rune, but I’m too late to catch them all. A column of phosphorescent flame erupts inside the elevator, hitting two of them with a furnace blast of heat. I hear screams, yelling. The blast is hot enough to cook the skin off their bones, but not hot enough to cook off the ammunition. I made that mistake once. Almost died from all the bullets in the air.

That should buy me a couple minutes as they try to save their buddies. They’ll figure out pretty quickly that there’s nothing left to save. I roll out of bed and throw on my clothes, slide everything but my car keys and the Benelli into my bag as quickly and quietly as I can. I don’t bother to put my shoes on. No time. I step to the door, watching them through the runes.

The remaining four come down the hall, guns in shaking hands, waiting for something to move so they can shoot it. I can feel their panic, their uncertainty.

They gather around the room I’m supposed to be in. Three of them flank the door, the fourth fires a burst through it that’s loud and effective for no other reason than he just used an entire magazine on it. The hollow, plywood door blows off its hinges into the room in a shower of splinters. He does a ridiculous roll into the room. What are these guys, F-Troop?

The other three follow him inside, and I take that as my cue. I slip out of the room and hit the stairwell. One of them comes out and sees me as I’m stepping through the door. He takes a shot, the bullet blowing a hole in the wall as the door closes behind me. I take the steps two at a time.

I hit the bottom floor as the two of them get into the stairwell. I trigger the rune on the landing with a thought and another column of bright, blue fire burns through them. That’s four down, two to go.

That slows them down, but not by much. There’s no way I can hit them with the Benelli from here, but I can do something else. I wait until I hear footsteps on the stairs. I put my hand on the metal railing and put as much power as I dare into an old stand-by, a big ass lightning spell.

The magic courses through me. I pull it back when I feel Mictlantecuhtli’s power unspooling inside me. It’s like being chained to a sleeping tiger. Wake it up too much and it’ll eat me.

Even with that the spell’s strong enough for what I need. Electricity arcs through the metal. Shrieks, the fall of bodies down the stairs, jerking from the voltage coursing through them. I don’t have a good gauge on this thing, but with the power I put into it they’ll either stay down for a while, or not get back up again.

Once I get to the car I’ll be safer. Get on the road, get down to Mexico City. If these are Bustillo’s men, it’s a pretty good bet that when they don’t report in they’ll just send more after me. A big place like Mexico City is a lot easier to hide in than Zacatecas. It’s not like I’m planning on being there long.

I back out of the exit door at the bottom of the stairs and into the parking lot, the Benelli trained on the steps above me just in case. I turn to head to the car and stop dead.

At the gas station back in Tepehuanes I saw five pickup trucks filled with Bustillo’s men in the backs. They’re all here.

They stand in a semi-circle around the exit door, guns trained on me. Smart. Knew I’d cut and run, knew where I’d come out. Couple dozen guys with automatic weapons. They can pump several hundred rounds into me inside of three seconds. No matter how many protection spells I have in my tattoos, those are not good odds.

I slowly lower the Benelli to the ground, put my hands up. “Gentlemen. How’s everybody doing tonight?” They don’t say anything.

To make matters worse the parking lot has filled with ghosts. Some Wanderers, but seeing how closely these linger around Bustillo’s men, it’s more likely that they’re Haunts who have bound themselves to their killers rather than to where they died. It happens sometimes, but not often. Which tells me these guys have killed a lot of people.

It also means that hopping over to the dead side as an escape route is the mother of bad ideas. The ghosts will shred me before I get three steps.

So the question comes down to, do I want to die from bullets or do I want to die from ghosts?





Being eaten by ghosts sucks.

They don’t take bites out of your body so much as they take bites out of your soul. The scars they leave behind aren’t just physical, they’re emotional and mental. Chunks torn out of the very fabric that makes you, well, you.

I’ve been hit by ghosts before. Hurts like you wouldn’t believe. I’ve even fed a few people to ghosts. Took them to the other side, tossed them to the Dead like chucking trees into a woodchipper.

It’s a horrifying way to go. Most of them deserved it.

The thing about being killed by ghosts is that it takes time. They’re like piranha more than sharks. Death by a thousand cuts. I’ve had to run through a crowd of ghosts on the other side before. Some of the worst pain I’ve ever felt.

But I got through them. When I popped back to the living side they couldn’t touch me. There aren’t quite as many here, but they’re more heavily clustered. I might make it through them and get to the car in relatively one piece. Provided that the spell doesn’t trigger the progression of jade and I turn into a rock on the other side.