Hungry Ghosts (Eric Carter #3)(61)

She calls my bluff and pulls the trigger.





The round hits the left side of my face, snapping my head back and making the inside of my skull ring like a bell. Half an inch to the right and it would have hit flesh and not stone.

I stagger more from shock than any actual pain or damage. The bullet flattened when it hit the stone and bounced into the dirt at my feet. I wonder, if it had hit flesh would it have blown out the back, or just bounced around the inside of my stone skull?

“Jesus fuck, Tabitha.”

“You were saying?”

“Fine, I lied about that part.” I touch the spot where the bullet hit me, but all my hand comes away with is Ahuizotl blood. I start to wipe my hand on my pants leg but that’s covered in blood, too.

“You want to know what’s going on? I’ll tell you. But I’d really like to do it when I’m not covered in blood.” She’s in just as bad shape as I am. Her blue flannel shirt is soaked through with blood and her jeans are so thick with it they’re almost black.

“You’re going to fucking tell me now or next time I won’t miss.”

“Can we at least go somewhere we can get cleaned up? Or do dead Aztecs not bathe?”

She lowers the gun, but keeps her finger on the trigger. “There are homes just outside the city. We can stop at one of those. Just so you know Santa Muerte will know we’re here no matter what cloaking spells you’ve got. She knows whenever anybody sets foot near Chicunamictlan. She’ll come looking.”

It’s a gamble, but I’m betting that she’s going to wait for me to come to her. She’s proud. She likes to hold her power over people. She comes to me and she might as well admit that I’ve got her scared. That’s just how she’s wired.

Or I could be wrong and she could show up at any moment and stomp me flat.

Tabitha turns on her heel and starts to walk toward the city. I get into step behind her, the coppery stink of blood thick in my nose. My coat’s a loss. Covered in gore, slashed to hell. The shirt’s just as bad. I can probably get away with hanging onto the pants for the moment. They’re black and, besides making the fabric stiff and sticking to my legs, it’s not too bad. And the messenger bag, well, to be honest it’s been through worse.

Even if she hadn’t shot me, from her body language I can tell Tabitha’s furious. I can’t blame her. She clearly cares about this place and about these people.

I’m not sure I don’t. They haven’t done anything, and I’m not really up for mass murder. Hell, it’s beyond murder. Kill somebody in the living world and their souls go on. Kill them here? That’s it. End of the line.

I won’t do that unless I absolutely have to. “So what do you want to know?” I say.

“Isla de las Mu?ecas,” Tabitha says.

“Creepy place. What about it?”

“What you did to the portal. Is that where it started? The only way to close it was to free the spirits trapped in the dolls,” she says. “When you came through you stank of smoke, covered in soot. I know you set fire to the place, but it had to have spread fast. So it was a magical fire. Quetzalcoatl did that?”

I clench my left hand over and over as we walk. It doesn’t hurt, but it doesn’t feel normal, either, especially when I tap my fingers together and heard the clicking of stone on stone. My vision isn’t doing much better. Having one eye tinted green kind of screws things up a little. I keep tripping over shit.

“Would you believe a magic Zippo?”

“This is you we’re talking about,” she says. “So yes, actually, I would. But it doesn’t answer the question.”

“No. It’s not where it started and he didn’t do it. He just gave me the lighter. You know why I did it. Those spirits were stuck and they were in agony. They were going to be stuck there screaming until someone destroyed the place. I made that call.”

I bring out Quetzalcoatl’s lighter to show it to her. She puts her hand out to take it but I slide it back into my pocket.

“Quetzalcoatl and Mictlantecuhtli haven’t gotten along since he stole the bones of the dead to reboot humanity,” Tabitha says.

“I’ve heard this,” I say. “Quetzalcoatl supposedly came down here during the Aztec’s . . . Fourth Era? To steal bones of that era’s humans to kick off the Fifth. They died out or something? I was never very clear on that. Every religion’s got an origin story. They know that’s not how life actually happened, right?”

“If they do they don’t care. Truth is different from fact and truth is flexible when you’re dealing with gods. It’s true to them, and here that’s all that matters. Anyway, they’ve been holding a grudge against each other ever since.”

“Man, gods don’t fuck around with their grudges,” I say.

“Which is why Quetzalcoatl doubled down and sided with the Conquistadores,” she says.

“And that’s why he wants to burn down Mictlan?” I say. That’s a hell of a grudge. How pissed off do you have to be to help wipe out all your followers?

“Probably, though it’s hard to tell with him. What I’m wondering is why you want to do it,” she says. “Is your hate for Santa Muerte so strong that you’ll destroy everything around you?”