Hungry Ghosts (Eric Carter #3)(57)

I can’t tell where I end and she begins. The power inside knots together, pulls tight against the other and for a split second we’re so deeply entwined. We’re just the energy, just the spell. The will of Santa Muerte and Mictlantecuhtli merging together.

The spell tears loose from us with a sound like a cannon. A wave of blue fire rips itself out of our bodies and fills the chamber in front of us. My vision goes white, blinding me, and all I can hear is a high-pitched whine.

Tabitha and I collapse in a heap on the ground, neither of us able to do more than wheeze. Either it destroyed the demons in the chamber, or the spirit bottle got them. Or it did nothing and they’re already coming for us but we’re too blind and deaf to know.

I’m really hoping it’s not that one.





“Did it work?” Tabitha says after what feels like forever. I must have blacked out at some point because I don’t remember my vision and hearing coming back.

We’re not dead so I suppose something worked. “I’m not sure I even know what that was.”

The spell wasn’t one I’ve ever felt before. It didn’t even feel like magic, not the way I know it. It was nothing but distilled rage. The phrase “wrath of god” pops into my mind and I realize that that’s exactly what it was. The fury of the old gods channeled through their avatars.

I slowly drag my way to the bottle. Besides a very pissed off ghost and some tainted vodka there’s nothing in it. I sniff at the air. Something’s not right. When demons die there’s a smell. Like rot and asphalt. Once you smell it you never forget it. It can last a few days.

But I’m not smelling it. So unless the spell we just unleashed destroyed every trace of them down to the stink, and hell, maybe it did, I should be able to smell dead demons.

“I don’t think the demons were in there,” I say. I slowly manage to stand, my balance shaky. I steady myself against one of the quartz columns. I look at my hands. Though they feel burnt, and there’s smoke coming up from them, the pain is fading fast and they don’t look damaged. No blisters, no burns. They’re not even red.

“Where would they be? Could they have gotten out?”

Light from the crystals around us fills this end of the tomb, fading off into darkness the further in it goes.

“I don’t see how,” I say. “Not unless somebody opened the door and let them out.” That’s not something I want to think about. Bad enough they almost got loose in the living world, I can’t imagine what kind of mayhem they might get up to over here.

“How are you feeling?” she says.

“You mean am I a garden gnome?” I feel fine. Which, come to think of it may not be a good sign. When I was first changing it was agony every time I tapped into the power. It left me shaking and weak afterward. Mictlantecuhtli told me that when it stopped hurting was the time to worry. I haven’t hurt in a long time from it, but opening the door was agony. The only difference now is that the feeling passed quickly.

“I think I’m okay,” I say. I pull my left sleeve up and see that I am so not okay.

Shoots of thin, green lines follow the veins into my hand. Dark green stone extends up my forearm and into my wrist. There’s a slight numbness where the stone is. Nothing too noticeable, just an absence of heat or cold.

And it’s spreading.

The green stone swallows up my flesh, spreading like a wildfire. Within seconds my left hand is engulfed in stone.

“Oh, Jesus, Eric,” Tabitha says. She looks me in the eyes and her own go wide in shock, horror plain on her face. She steps back.

“What? I’m not gone yet. Shit. It’s not just my hand, is it?”

“No, it’s not.”

The vision in my left eye is suddenly tinged a light green. I tap at my face with one of my newly jade fingers and hear the cold tapping of stone on stone.

“Is it still spreading?”

“You can’t feel it?” she says.

“Not really. I mean it doesn’t hurt. Feels a little numb, but not everywhere.”

“It looks like it’s stopped. It’s covering the entire left side of your face, though.”

I wave my hand in front of my eyes and see it go green as it passes into my left field of view. “Kinda figured that part out, yeah. I’m still moving, so there’s that at least.”

Dammit. I hope I don’t tap Mictlantecuhtli’s power for anything else. This spreads anymore and I’m done. I draw the obsidian blade. Nothing like running out of time to keep you focused.

I’m so close and suddenly I’m not sure what to do. I think back to my conversation with Darius. From my meeting with him I know there’s something I’m forgetting. I almost have it, but that’s the magic. If I try to remember it I can feel it just out of reach.

I step into the tomb, a long, wide chamber that’s more a vault than anything you’d call a tomb. There are no decorations, just rough stone hollowed out hundreds of years ago. The soft light from the glowing crystals outside barely penetrates the gloom.

The floor is still littered with the bones of Conquistadores who’d died when they went up against Mictlantecuhtli. Discarded pieces of armor, broken weapons. Now that I know what really happened here I can see the pattern of chaos. It’s clear some of the men died fighting, swords still clutched in their hands. But the way so many of the skeletons are facing, and how close they are to the door tells me that most of them died running.