Hungry Ghosts (Eric Carter #3)(68)
“You’re looking worse,” he says. “Might want to do something about that arm.”
“Huh? Oh, right.” My right forearm is a bloody mess with a short, deep gash in it. I can still move my hand and I have feeling in my fingers. The bleeding is bad, but it’s not going to kill me anytime soon.
I check my messenger bag for some bandages and come up with a roll of duct tape, instead. One of these days I’ll remember to stock a first aid kit in this thing. I wrap the tape tight around the wound. The pressure should stop the bleeding. And if it doesn’t, well, I’m probably not going to live much longer, anyway.
“I’m no expert,” Mictlantecuhtli says, “but I don’t think that’s hygienic.”
I’m so used to hearing and seeing him as Alex that it’s just as disconcerting as Santa Muerte appearing as a flesh and blood woman and not a pile of bones in a wedding dress. The voice is wrong, but he’s still as big a smart ass as the chunk of himself still in my head.
“Yeah, well. Needs must and all that,” I say. I might not have a first aid kit, but I think I saw some dental floss in the messenger bag. If I get some time I can always stitch it up with that later. Of course, that depends on what happens between now and later. “Thanks for the assist, by the way.”
“Just because I have a vested interest, doesn’t mean I’m getting in the way of a fight. Come on. We won’t have much time until they wake up. And then there’s going to be a lot of noise.”
“Even this guy?” I say nudging the warrior with the pulped skull with my foot.
“Even him. Might take a him a little while, though. And the guys you shot. And the others who you crushed with the street. Come on.” He steps to the edge of the building and raises his arms. Loose stones, dirt and sticks from the street down below rise up and interconnect, mashing themselves together until there’s a bridge of debris going from one building to the next. He walks across it to the other roof.
“Wish I’d known that trick,” I say, eyeing the structure and pushing my foot against it. It looks like it’s going to disintegrate in a stiff breeze, but it feels solid enough.
“You do know that trick,” he says. “It’d just be a real bad idea for you to try it. Just like it was a bad idea for you to use that trick with the street.”
“I didn’t do that. It just happened.”
“Sure. That’s up there with, ‘I just fell on it, doc’. It’s a miracle you didn’t turn into a statue right then and there. Now come on. I can’t hold this thing forever.” I hurry across and the moment I step onto the other roof the bridge collapses behind me.
“All right, now what?” Mictlantecuhtli does his trick again and we walk quickly to another roof. He’s visibly straining each time he does it.
“Now we get you into the palace so you can get my knife back. Then you go stab my ex-wife. Speaking of which, how come you didn’t when you had the chance? I was watching you when she showed up. You had a perfect shot.”
“With a dozen armed warriors surrounding me? Seriously?”
“Still think it was a missed opportunity.”
“Whatever. Probably should have stuck with the warriors. I was on my way there, already.”
“You were on your way to a cell,” he says. “She was going to lock you up and then find me. I’m too weak to fight her right now, since most of my power is sitting inside you. Then she sticks me in there with you so you can stab me. You finish turning into a rock, I get reborn into a meatbag. Nobody’s happy except her.”
“So what’s your plan?” I notice that though we’ve cut across several buildings and are taking a more indirect route, we’re getting steadily closer to the Bone Palace. “I take it we don’t just show up at the steps to the pyramid and walk on up.”
“My plan?” he says. “I don’t have a plan. What’s yours?”
He pulls together more debris, but this time it’s a ramp leading down to an alley. He’s visibly straining to keep it in one piece, and it disintegrates as soon as we’re on the ground.
“I figured I’d just show up at the steps to the pyramid and walk on up.”
“That explains so much. No, we’re not taking the stairs. Don’t be an idiot. Mictecacihuatl and I kept this area around the Palace clear of souls. Added privacy. There’s nobody in these buildings from here until we reach it. Just follow me and don’t do anything stupid like turn into a rock before we get there.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“You could have had this sewn up months ago,” he says, anger in his eyes. “You could have gotten here in the blink of an eye. And if you didn’t want to, you could have come in through Mitla. So why didn’t you?”
“I needed a back door,” I say. “I needed to get as close as possible to Santa Muerte. I wasn’t going to rush in here and start stabbing people. What do you think would have happened if I’d just shown up at the front gate? I wouldn’t even be here by now.”
“Oooh, that’s a fib,” Alex says appearing next to me. “Go on. Tell him the truth. I know he’d love to hear it. You wanted to save your new girlfriend and kill everybody else. Go ahead and keep lying to yourself, but we both know that’s why.”