Hungry Ghosts (Eric Carter #3)(31)

I don’t bother answering him.

“No sense of humor,” he says after the silence becomes uncomfortably long. “I’m here because you’re here. I’m not Mictlantecuhtli. I’m your idea of a piece of him stapled onto your own soul. It’s all very meta.”

“I didn’t think it was possible, but you’re just as big a pain in my ass as Mictlantecuhtli. So I’m talking to myself? Awesome.” Mictlantecuhtli was always like this with me, so I guess it makes sense that this piece of him has the same personality.

“Sort of? Not really? Think of me as fake Mictlantecuhtli. Mictlantecuhtli Lite. I’m just the piece left over in your head. Stuck in here with your self-loathing and shitty self-confidence. All the death god with fewer calories. Fake me, real you. After a while we’ll just be us. Make sense?”

I rub my temple where I got hit. My head is starting to hurt and I’m not sure if it’s this conversation or the bone I took to my skull. I’m assuming I’m unconscious and this is all going on in my head, so feeling pain is probably a sign I’ll be waking up soon.

“Not really. Is this the same thing as what Tabitha has with Santa Muerte?” I’m still having trouble figuring out what Tabitha really is. Is she Santa Muerte? Is she Tabitha? If what he says is happening to me is also happening to her, then the answer is yes.

Tabitha told me that she and Santa Muerte had merged but she has her own opinions, her own thoughts. She was connected to Santa Muerte, had her voice in her head, until I cut it off with the handcuff.

I knew Tabitha had a chunk of Santa Muerte in her soul, and I wasn’t entirely sure she had any of her own. Santa Muerte killed her to make her avatar, after all.

He frowns. “Pretty much, yeah. I’m a little sketchy on the details. I don’t know everything real me knows. A lot, but not all of it. I’ve got holes. But if you’re asking if she’s her own woman? Yes.”

My head is really starting to throb. I press the heels of my hands against my eyes. Christ, when I wake up this is gonna suck. “Okay, so why are you here now?”

“At the moment you being unconscious is the only way I can talk to you. The longer you’re here in Mictlan, the faster we’ll sync up. Eventually I’ll just be a voice in your head. And then we’ll be one mind. Anyway, I wanted to talk before you kill real me in the hopes that you’ll flush out fake me and stop turning into a yard ornament.”

“Figured that out, huh?”

“I’m in your head,” he says. “Mictlantecuhtli Lite, remember? Everything you know, I know.”

“You gonna try to stop me?”

“Well, duh. We both know the second I can connect to the real me outside of your skull, I’ll do it in a heartbeat.”

“Fantastic.”

“I think so,” he says. “But that’s not really why I’m here.”

“Oh? Do tell.”

“Quetzalcoatl.”

There’s no reason for playing coy or trying to deny I know what he’s talking about. If this piece of Mictlantecuhtli’s soul knows about my plan to kill the real Mictlantecuhtli, then he knows about my arrangement with Quetzalcoatl. “I did make a deal with him. And I try to keep my promises.”

He laughs, a braying, mule-like guffaw that goes on so long he starts to wheeze. “Oh, that’s rich. Promises. You.” He wipes a tear from his eye. “Have you stopped to think what burning down Mictlan would do?”

I look out at the bone road speeding by in the headlights. “Raise the property values?”

“You’ll destroy hundreds of thousands of souls.”

I stare at him. How had that not occurred to me? The answer comes to me immediately. Because I didn’t want it to. I’ve been thinking of any souls I might run into as the same as ghosts. Just remnants that haven’t moved on to their respective afterlives. Only this is their afterlife.

I came here to save myself, exact revenge for my sister’s murder. Fully prepared to take out anything that got in my way. But this? I burn down Mictlan, I destroy everything in it. I destroy those souls forever. This is mass murder.

But if I don’t burn down Mictlan, then when I get out of here Quetzalcoatl’s going to make my life a living hell. Scratch that. If I get out of here.

“Shit.”

“And here I thought you didn’t have a conscience,” he says.

“What the hell is Quetzalcoatl’s deal, anyway? Why’s he got such a hate on for this place?”

“Oh, the usual. Jealousy, ambition, he’s a dick.”

“Sounds like there’s a story there.”

“There always is.”

“Christ, I hate talking to you.”

The car shudders. I know what that means. The last time I had this vision the car crashed, and I woke up covered in blood, in a storage room of an electronics store, a couple of demons arguing about whether they should eat me or not.

“I think you’re going to have to wait on that story,” he says. “I’m sure I’ll see you again soon, the next time you get the shit kicked out of you.”

The car rocks as something unseen hammers it from the side, it goes into a skid. Mictlantecuhtli pulls hard on the wheel, looking suitably surprised. Is he really, I wonder, or is it just my brain’s interpretation of things?