Hungry Ghosts (Eric Carter #3)(58)

“You coming?” I say.

“I’ll hang back,” she says. “I’m not sure Mictlantecuhtli would be thrilled to see me.”

She’s probably right.

I shuffle through the piles of bones littering the floor. Tabitha stands in the doorway behind me. I stop when I reach an unusual pile. Long, blackened leg bones. Cracked and burnt skulls like twisted hyenas. Elongated snouts, long, curved fangs.

“Found the demons,” I say.

Before they ended up down here they’d been twisted into a thing called an ebony cage, a structure made of their still-living bones which continually released an elixir of liquid magic. It’s like the magic in the local pools, only in a drinkable form. Distilled and concentrated. Useful when you need some extra muscle in your spells but don’t have the ability to pull very much.

“You’re not screaming. That mean we’re safe?” Tabitha calls from the entrance.

Alex had the cage under his bar in Koreatown and was using the sorts of late night dramas bars are known for to feed emotional power into it and tapped the juice coming out to sell for a tidy profit.

After he died Vivian stuck the cage into storage where it broke, releasing dozens of these things. If they’d gotten out into the general population they’d have killed a lot of people and possessed their corpses, and L.A. would have been in the shit.

They almost killed me but I was able to open a passage into the tomb and toss them in. I figured Mictlantecuhtli would be pissed off at having his living room invaded by a bunch of unwanted guests.

Didn’t realize how pissed off.

“From them, yeah,” I say. But from Mictlantecuhtli? When I was here last he’d been an unmovable statue, inert and lifeless. That was mere hours before I sent the demons here. And just after I did is when I really started my transformation to jade.

Did that little bit wake him up enough that he could destroy all these demons? He is a god, after all, so I suppose it fits. But if that’s the case how has my continued transformation affected him? I was hoping to find him as a statue at the end of the tomb, not powerful enough to destroy demons. Suddenly I’m not sure how well this whole walk-up-and-stab-him plan is going to go.

The farther into the tomb I get, the less light from the outside reaches it. Soon the gloom gets too strong. I can’t see the end of the chamber. I start to cast a light spell and think better of it. I can still feel Mictlantecuhtli’s power thrumming through my body. It’s like that tense twitchiness you get in your muscles when you’ve just taken some meth but it hasn’t cranked up to full blown grind your teeth levels. If I cast a spell, even a small one, will it tip me over the edge?

“Hey,” I say. “You mind shining a light in here?”

I feel a spark of magic as she casts a spell, and a glowing sphere appears near the ceiling casting light through the entire chamber. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. Or more to the point, what I’m not.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” I say.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Mictlantecuhtli,” I say. “He’s not here.”

“What? No, that’s not possible.” Tabitha comes into the tomb, stepping hurriedly over bones and weapons. “How could he get out? He’s locked in jade.”

“I’m gonna go with: Not anymore.”

I should have guessed something like this would happen. I was banking on the idea that he wouldn’t be able to move around until he was completely free of the jade. And even if he was that he’d still be stuck in here. Wrong on both counts.

“Is there another entrance?” Tabitha says.

“He wouldn’t need one.”

“So now what?” Tabitha says.

“I’m not sure.” Where would he go? “Where’s Santa Muerte now?”

“Probably in Chicunamictlan. She travels through Mictlan all the time, but now that the mists are open and souls can get through they’re going to be flooding the place. I can’t imagine she won’t want to be there to greet them as Mictecacihuatl.”

I look at my left hand, the light reflecting off the polished jade. I’m glad I don’t have a mirror. I run my hand through my hair. It moves, but it feels stiff, brittle.

I’m running out of time. Whether I use Mictlantecuhtli’s power or not, it’s still spreading. Soon, today, tomorrow, an hour from now, it’s going to be all over.

“Then that’s where he is. Can we get there through the Crystal Road?”

“Mostly. But there’s no guarantee she’s there. I could find her, though. She’ll either know where Mictlantecuhtli is, or she’ll be able to find him.”

“No.” The only way Tabitha could do that is if I take off the cuff and reconnect her to Santa Muerte. I’m not prepared to do that.

“Eric, you’re not going to last much longer. What happens if we get there and she’s not? What if she is and we can’t find him in time?”

“I said no.” But what if she’s right? It’s a good possibility. Mictlan’s a big place. They could be anywhere. And I’m sure they know by now that I’m here and looking for them, even if they can’t find me. All things considered I don’t see how I have any other choice.

“All right, then. Let’s get going.”