Hungry Ghosts (Eric Carter #3)(14)

Bustillo’s men look like they’re not in a mood to talk with anything but their guns, so I figure it’s not much of a choice. Definitely die, or probably die.

I’m about to take my chances on the ghosts when I feel a hot wind spring up around us. It grows fast. Sudden hurricane force. A wave of heat sucks the air out of my lungs, and I instinctively hit the ground and cover my head. Fiery air blasts over me. I hear screams, gunfire, the sound of torches igniting. I hazard a look and instantly regret it. My eyes singe in the hot air, but the gunmen are far worse off than I am.

Corpses lie on the ground burning. Their skin blackened and charred. There’s a stink of cooked pork in the air. The ones still alive are rolling around desperately trying to put the flames out. I feel a little warm, my skin’s a little red like I’ve spent too much time in the sun, but that’s all. Nothing else is on fire. Not the building, not the ground, not even a nearby tree.

I stand and survey the carnage, orange firelight casting dancing shadows across the building. One of the gunmen, his skin crackling, one eyeball burst from the heat, crawls across the pavement, reaching for his rifle with shaking hands. I kick it out of his reach and put a round from the Benelli into him. Better to put him out of his misery than let him die in a burn ward somewhere.

“All right,” I say to the air around me. I don’t know where to look, which way to face. “I know you’re here. What do you want?”

It’s four in the morning. I’m standing in a hotel parking lot talking to the air with a bunch of burning bodies at my feet. A second later the air answers.

“We had an agreement,” says a voice cracking like a brushfire. “A compact,” says another with a sound like wind through dry, desert canyons. “A deal,” says a third, its hollow sound echoing in the empty lot.

The Wind’s voices are different from what I remember when I spoke to it at Vasquez Rocks outside of Los Angeles. I was looking for it, then. Now, it seems, it’s looking for me.

I pull shoes and socks out of my bag, and sit down to put them on. I might be dealing with an elemental of unbelievable power here, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to do it in bare feet. I don’t say anything until I’ve got my shoes tied and a shirt on.

“Why are you talking like it’s in the past tense?” I say, buttoning my shirt.

“Have you reneged?” the voices say in unison. “It has been too long. The stone spreads. Soon you will not be able to keep our agreement.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize there was a deadline.”

“Deadline, yes,” say the voices, and there’s a hint of laughter behind it. At Vasquez Rocks the Wind was more serious, flatter in tone. Different wind spirits blend and blur together. The desires of one can become the desires of all. What is it about the Wind down here that’s different? And is this where the desire to see Mictlan burn came from? Is this the source?

“The deadline will pass because you will be dead,” says another voice, its S’s stretching into a long hiss.

“You know, jokes aren’t funny when you have to explain ’em,” I say. Who knew the Wind had the sense of humor of a five-year-old? “You’re really worried I won’t get there in time? I didn’t think I’d see the day the Wind got all panicky.” It laughs, a strange, snakelike wheeze across its multiple voices that lowers until it’s a single, deep, throaty sound that rolls and echoes across the parking lot.

“I do not panic,” it says. The unified voice is stronger with a heaviness, a presence it didn’t have before. It blends into a single voice, the three into one harmony of rumbling bass. “But I would see Mictlan burn before the end times come. I will see that place cleansed with fire and that bastard king Mictlantecuhtli and his whore of a wife blacken in flames. And you, little man, usurper to the throne, you will do this for me, or I will turn the wind upon you and flay the skin from your bones.”

This is sounding awfully personal. And much more coherent. Strong, steady, pissed off. It just reinforces my suspicions. A wind spirit down here has a grudge against Mictlan, and it passed the message up the coast when I spoke to the more fragmented Wind in Vasquez Rocks.

There are only so many things that would care about Mictlan. I’m ninety-nine percent sure who this is. But I need confirmation. If I just come out and say its name, it could deny it. There’s nothing saying it can’t lie. Better to do something stupid and make it reveal itself.

“Which one are you?” I say. “Xipe-Totec? That crack about flayed skin fits. Huitzilopochtli? No, you’re talking about wind and fire. Not blood. Tlaloc? I don’t see any rain. Not Tezcatlipoca. It’s morning now. You’d be too weak if you were the god of night. You’re some second rate wind spirit, aren’t you? One of those little godlings too weak to do its own dirty work. What, some pissed off little sprite?”

“You dare—” it says, but I cut it off.

“I dare because Mictlantecuhtli and I are connected. Which means you and I are, too. Are you one of my in-laws? What upstart little cousin of the King and Queen of Mictlan are you? You call me a usurper, but I bet you’re a pretender. You’re nobody important. Nobody worth considering.” That last bit might have been going too far.

The wind picks up around me, and I can feel this thing’s anger on it. It shifts and whips around like a snake. It wants to hurt me, but it doesn’t dare. I’m its ticket for its revenge.