Hungry Ghosts (Eric Carter #3)(45)

“I haven’t decided what I’m going to do, yet,” I say.

“That was bullshit the first time you said it and it’s bullshit now.” Her face goes hard. If there had been any doubts about her before, they’re gone. “You’re going to kill her and then you’re going to kill me. We both know it. So stop fucking lying about it.”

“Fine. Mictlantecuhtli, then. Or do you have a problem with me killing him, too? I don’t know who’s telling me the truth. You? Him? Her? And since when do you care about dying? I don’t know if there’s even a ‘you’ in there. So tell me, Tabitha, who do I kill? I’m gonna shank somebody. At this point I’m not sure I care who it is.”

She says nothing for a long moment and then stands up from the rock, her face grim. She turns and starts walking away. “We take the Crystal Road,” she says over her shoulder. “There’s another entrance nearby. We can reach Mictlantecuhtli’s tomb that way.”





The Adderall doesn’t do anything for the pain in my knee, the road rash on my hands, my swollen eye, but it does make me care less about them. I’ve been popping these pills so long I barely even notice the jitters. If Tabitha does she doesn’t say anything. It’s probably not that different from how I’ve been since before I got here, anyway.

There are no roads, no paths. The bone landscape has mostly receded into dirt and stone. Actual plants dot the ground, a smattering of madrones, ficus and copperwood trees, not their sick mimics of bone and stringy flesh. Sickly looking grasses poke up through the dirt, wasted and thin, but alive or however close to alive this place gets. The sky is still a flat, uniform gray, though. No clouds, no sun. Does it ever become night here?

When I came here I was absolutely certain what I was going to do. Kill anything that gets in my way until I sever whatever connection I have to Santa Muerte and Mictlantecuhtli.

But now, I’m having doubts. I still want those things, but I’m wondering what will happen when I get them. My stepping through the mists re-opened them to the souls trapped on the other side. If I kill Mictlantecuhtli do they shut down again? If I kill Santa Muerte does something else fall apart here?

I still want to kill her for everything she’s done and I want to kill Mictlantecuhtli whether it will stop this transformation or not because he annoys me and he’s kind of a dick.

But what about Tabitha? I thought I wanted to kill her. To clean up a loose end if nothing else. But is she just a meat puppet for a chunk of Santa Muerte’s consciousness? Is she actually still in there?

When I discovered that she was Muerte’s avatar she told me she didn’t care if I killed her or not. It wouldn’t destroy the goddess. It’d just leave me with a corpse I’d have to dispose of.

But now I have to wonder. She ran from Bustillo’s crew. She accused me of wanting to kill her as if it mattered. This shit is giving me a headache. I need a distraction to keep my brain from eating itself. Mictlan delivers.

“Hold up,” I say. I squat to get a closer look at the dirt. “You see this?” Depressions in the dirt that look like handprints spaced the way an animal might leave them. Something that walks on its hands.

“Shit,” Tabitha says. She looks along the ground. “I think it looped back behind us.”

“Ahuizotl? Or is there something else with feet like hands around here?”

“I’ll be honest, I’m actually kind of curious to see this thing. It’s one thing to be chased through a river of blood and not wanting to take a swan dive into it, it’s something else when it’s on solid ground where I can see it coming.”

“Yeah. Come on. We’re not far from the entrance to the Crystal Road. I don’t want to be here if it notices us.”

“If it’s looping back around it’s a safe bet it knows we’re here.” I don’t see it among the trees and brush, which is surprising because there just isn’t that much. “It’s got good camouflage, doesn’t it?”

“You ever see that Predator movie?”

“Huh. Yeah, that could be a challenge. Do they travel in packs or singly?”

“There’s only the one.”

“So if that’s what was following us in the river, then it’s hunting us. Awesome.”

“Which is why I’d like to get out of here. It never gets too far from its prey. And if it’s been stalking us since we got into Mictlan it’s probably getting impatient.”

“You’re no fun,” I say.

“Hey, if you want to be eviscerated by an ancient Aztec horror, knock yourself out.”

And again with worrying about her own safety. It’s clearly got her spooked. But why? The only difference I can think of from before is that now she’s been disconnected from Santa Muerte. Is that what’s doing this? Is she Tabitha now? Or is the piece of Santa Muerte in her trying to keep its own hide intact?

Interesting, if it is Tabitha. I just don’t know what to do with it, yet.

“Lead the way.”

I follow her through the trees. They cluster together closer to each other the further we go until it’s an almost impenetrable forest of madrones.

“How the hell are there trees in the land of the dead?” I say, pushing my way through a tight bundle of branches.