Hungry Ghosts (Eric Carter #3)(70)

“Her avatar? Possibly. Why?” We walk through the room into an adjoining hallway. Everything looks pretty much the same as everything else. How the hell does he know where we’re going?

I tell him about the handcuff, about blocking the connection between Tabitha and Santa Muerte. How Tabitha refused to take it off. And that last bit is something I don’t even know what to do with.

“She didn’t seem happy when they left,” I say.

“I don’t doubt it,” he says. “Avatars aren’t meant to be individuals. They’re extensions of gods. They’re our eyes and ears outside. Most gods can’t actually leave their domains. Mictecacihuatl and I can’t. We can project our consciousness, but physically move among mortals? We need an avatar for that.”

Something about that twigs something in my memory but I can’t place it. It’s just out of reach, and the harder I grasp at it the further away it gets. I let it go. If it’s what I think it is it’ll come to me when I need it.

“So what do you do when an avatar stops being just an extension?”

“Simple. Get rid of it. Find another one.”

“Get rid of how?” I say, knowing I won’t like the answer.

“Kill it. How else?”

That is so not going to happen.

“Where would she be keeping her? You mentioned cells before. Would she be locked up? On this floor? Or another one?”

“How the hell would I know what she’s doing with it?” he says. “The cells are in the basement, but I doubt she’d put it there. If her avatar is broken, and it sounds like it is, the sooner she gets rid of it the better.”

“So she’s got her with her. Okay. I can work with that.” I find Santa Muerte, I find Tabitha, I find the knife. I kill everybody who gets in my way.

“Hey. Stay focused,” Mictlantecuhtli says. “You don’t have time for this bullshit. That means I don’t have time, either. We find Mictecacihuatl, get the blade, and you finish the job.”

“Excuse me?” I say. “You’re acting like I give a flying fuck about you. You want this to end well? Then you fucking help me find her.”

“We are in this together, you little shit,” he says. “So when I say—” He stops when footsteps round a corner. We both turn to look.

Warriors in jaguar skins. At least twenty pour into the other end of the hall with macuahuitls and spears and sneers showing too many teeth.

I think one of them is the guy whose head I pulped on the roof. It’s partly his look but really more that he’s the first one who screams and rushes us.

“Run,” Mictlantecuhtli says, and bolts down the hall.





“Run?” I yell as I catch up to him. “You’re Mictlantecuhtli. You’re the king of Mictlan. Aren’t they supposed to listen to you?”

“I’m not exactly at my most imposing at the moment.” All of the halls and rooms look the same. Bare floors, pine torches, tzompantli on fucking everything. You’d think after a few hundred years they’d come up with something a little more interesting than skulls. “I’ll draw them off. You find Mictecacihuatl and get that knife back.”

He shoves me and I stumble through a doorway, catching myself on the edge before I can fall over. I press myself up against the wall. The warriors sandals slap on the hard stone as they pass by.

At least one of them has stayed behind. I can hear him in the other room. He’s trying to move slowly but his sandals are scuffing the stone floor. I’m sure he can hear me just fine. Between the two of us I’m the only one breathing.

I don’t want to use the Browning. The noise will just bring everybody running. I don’t have the knife anymore, but now that I know I can at least inconvenience these guys for a little while I dig around in my messenger bag until I find my straight razor, unfolding it and holding the blade in a pinch grip. Useful things, straight razors. Good for getting a little blood for rituals. Even better for getting a lot of blood in a fight.

I take a deep breath, loud enough he has to be able to hear it, then hold it and duck down low, pivoting into the doorway. He’s taken the bait and his macuahuitl swings high above my head, leaving him wide open. I step forward, coming up and blocking his backswing. I run the razor through his throat. The wound’s largely bloodless, but it must hurt because he drops his weapon and grabs at his open throat.

I follow it up with a left hook that knocks him back a little, but he’s not going down. He rushes me, hitting me hard and knocking me to the floor. The wound in his throat is a deep gash that keeps tearing the more he moves his head. Pretty soon he’ll be able to pass a baseball through it. It isn’t slowing him down much.

Because why would it? The ones I took out on the roof I either put holes in their heads or crushed their skulls into oblivion. He’s already dead. The hell does he need a throat for?

I block his swing with my left arm and his hand cracks on the stone. It’s the swing you don’t see that always gets you. His left hook hits the flesh and bone part of my face and I go down.

He bends down to grab me for some more beating, the back of his throat visible through the gash in it. But I manage to grab hold of the discarded macuahuitl and swing it up. The blades bite into his neck, ripping through muscle and tendon, sticking on bone. I yank it down and the blades tear free, shredding their way through until his head is hanging on by scraps of flesh and stringy meat.