Hungry Ghosts Read online

  Raves for Stephen Blackmoore’s Eric Carter novels:

  “For a book all about dead things, this novel is alive with great characters and a twisty, scary-funny story that teaches you not to tango with too much necromancy. My favorite book this year, bar none.”

  —Chuck Wendig, author of Blackbirds

  “Blackmoore employs Chandleresque prose to smoothly incorporate a hard-boiled sense of urban despair into a paranormal plot, with occasional leavening provided by smart-aleck humor. Urban fantasy readers will appreciate the polished, assured writing and hope for a bevy of sequels.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Not only met, but exceeded, my expectations… . Plenty of action and magic-slinging rounds out this excellent second novel from one of my favorite authors.”

  —My Bookish Ways

  “In Dead Things, Stephen Blackmoore expands upon the Los Angeles supernatural world he first conjured in City of the Lost. Blackmoore is going places in urban fantasy, and readers fond of dark tales should keep their eyes on him. Highly recommended.”

  —SFRevu

  “Blackmoore can’t write these books fast enough to suit me. Broken Souls is hyper-caffeinated, turbo-bloody, face-stomping fun. This is the L.A-noir urban fantasy you’ve been looking for.”

  —Kevin Hearne, author of The Iron Druid Chronicles

  “Eric Carter’s adventures are bleak, witty, and as twisty as a fire-blasted madrone, told in prose as sharp as a razor. Blackmoore is the rising star of pitch-black paranormal noir. A must-read series.”

  —Kat Richardson, author of the Greywalker series

  “Blackmoore’s bottomless imagination concocts some truly twisted, weird, bloody and deviously clever stuff in this latest novel featuring his acerbic necromancer, Eric Carter. In a world where Aztec mythology, dark magic, and grim reality blend together, nothing is what it appears to be… . An adventure full of high-octane action and a number of unpleasant surprises.”

  —RT Book Reviews]

  Novels by Stephen Blackmoore

  available from DAW Books:

  CITY OF THE LOST

  DEAD THINGS

  BROKEN SOULS

  HUNGRY GHOSTS

  Copyright © 2017 by Stephen Blackmoore.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Cover art by Chris McGrath.

  Cover design by G-Force Design.

  DAW Book Collectors No. 1748.

  Published by DAW Books, Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher. In such case neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Nearly all the designs and trade names in this book are registered trademarks. All that are still in commercial use are protected by United States and international trademark law.

  Ebook ISBN: 9780698197695

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

  U.S. PAT. AND TM. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

  —MARCA REGISTRADA

  HECHO EN U.S.A.

  Version_1

  CONTENTS

  Praise for Stephen Blackmoore

  Novels by Stephen Blackmoore

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Sometimes books are easier to write than thank you notes. Who do I thank? Everybody? Do I have that many pages to name them all? Will I disappoint someone because I missed them? Will they even care? Will they even notice?

  The point is that a lot of people helped me with Hungry Ghosts and though I would like to thank them all, I don’t have nearly enough space here. They answered questions, vetted details, helped me with my deplorable Spanish. But they also helped me get through a rough year that saw this book torn down and rewritten from the ground up.

  Thank you to my readers and their infinite patience. I hope this book is worth the wait.

  My wife, Kari, for putting up with me while I hammered out draft after draft, tore everything down and started over. Thank you for helping me maintain something resembling sanity. I love you.

  Angus and Emma, the two best dogs a guy could hope to have. Even if they do think every mailman and pizza delivery guy is a murderer.

  Friends both authorly and not, whose support helped immeasurably. Chuck Wendig, Richard Kadrey, K.C. Alexander, Kevin Hearne, Jaye Wells, Jaclyn Taylor, Delilah Dawson, Lilith Saintcrow, Kat Richardson, Brian McClellan, Kristin Sullivan, and so, so many more.

  My agent, Al Guthrie, the Scottish Ninja, whose kindness and stoic demeanor hides a truly dark soul. Respect.

  My editor Betsy Wollheim, Josh Starr, and the outstanding staff at DAW. Thanks for helping make this the best book it could be.

  R. Andrew Chesnut, PhD, Santa Muerte scholar and all around stand-up guy. His book Devoted to Death is the best scholarly examination of Santa Muerte and her followers out there, and I highly recommend it. It takes an honest and unflinching view of the movement, both good and bad. Anything I got wrong about Santa Muerte or her followers, and there are oh so many things, are all me.

  And finally, a shout-out to the Bony Lady, herself. La Flaca, la Dama Poderosa, Señora de las Sombras. I have taken liberties, and I hope she doesn’t mind too much.

  Sharpie magic is the best magic.

  I stand on the side of the road, cool fall breeze blowing through the scrub brush. Half a dozen trucks pull out of a gated, hillside compound in the moonlight, kicking up dust and gravel. The men in the truck beds wear ballistic vests, skull-printed face masks, wicked looking guns clutched tight in their hands.

  I wave as they go by, but they have no idea I’m here. I’ve got a “Hi My Name Is” sticker on my chest with the words “NO ESTOY AQUÍ” written in Sharpie and pumped with enough magic to keep me hidden from them. I didn’t need to write it in Spanish, the magic doesn’t work that way, but I’ve been speaking almost nothing but for the last two months, and it helps me focus.

  They’re on their way down to a warehouse on the outskirts of Tepehuanes, Mexico, just down the road. It holds several thousand kilos of heroin in varying degrees of processing. It’s currently on fire.

  I set the fire.

  I don’t care about the heroin or the Sinaloa Cartel men entrusted with operating and guarding it. I just need them out of the compound. With them gone there should be about half a dozen men left inside. Plus the one I came to talk to.

  The estate of Manuel
Bustillo is fairly modest by narco standards. He’s not terribly important in the Sinaloa Cartel. Middleman stuff. Processes heroin, cocaine, meth. I hear he used to handle a lot of pot coming up from the south, but with medical marijuana in the U.S. getting so popular and so much weed being grown inside the states, the cartels have had a hard time moving product. Things are tough all over.

  I’m not here because Bustillo is a Sinaloa man, or because he’s a murderer, thug and all around bad guy. I’ve hung out with worse people. Lately, I’ve been wondering if I might be worse people.

  I don’t much care about Bustillo at all, actually. I’m here because he’s a stepping stone. A link in a chain. I’m looking for someone, and he’s going to help me find her.

  I got his name from a guy in Hermosillo a couple weeks back. And I got that guy’s name from somebody in Ensenada, whose name I got in Tijuana. I found out about the Tijuana guy from somebody in San Diego, who I tracked down from a guy whose arms I broke in an alley behind a strip bar in Los Angeles.

  It’s been a busy few months.

  Bustillo’s house sits on ten acres of hilltop Durango real estate looking down on rocks and scrub brush. It’s surrounded by an electrified fence and a ten-foot-high, brick wall. Spanish Colonial. Terra cotta tile, fake adobe.

  I sling my messenger bag over my shoulder, pick up my Benelli M4 twelve-gauge, and stroll unseen through the gate before the two men watching it shut it up tighter than a nun’s butthole.

  The men in the courtyard have no idea I’m here, but once the gunfire starts—and boy howdy is there gonna be gunfire—the Sharpie magic’s going to be pretty useless. Them not seeing me depends on them believing they can’t see me. It’s hard to ignore a guy firing at you with a shotgun at the best of times.

  I find a convenient spot out of the way and take a seat. The men walk the courtyard nervously fingering the triggers on their guns. A while later I check my pocket watch, an antique, railroad grade, 1911 Sangamo Special. Aside from being a nasty piece of magic that can twist time into ugly knots if you use it right, it’s a really good watch.

  It’s been half an hour. That should give Bustillo’s men enough time to get down to the warehouse and out of my hair. I slide the watch into my coat pocket and pick up the Benelli.

  “If it helps,” I say, though I know the spell keeps them from hearing me, “this isn’t personal.” I unload a couple of shells into the backs of their knees and they drop, screaming. If they get to a hospital soon they might not die. But if they do, well, them’s the breaks.

  The front door to the main house is this massive oak monstrosity that looks like it was pulled from a cathedral. Religious carvings all over it. Lots of Virgin of Guadalupe stuff. Considering who I’m looking to find from Bustillo the irony is almost too much to bear.

  I dig a couple more shells out of the messenger bag slung across my shoulder and load them into the shotgun. For backup I’ve got a variety of magical charms and a World War II era Browning Hi-Power, an ugly Nazi pistol with decades of evil energy baked into its frame. I can tap into that with my own magic and really fuck a guy up.

  I’ve been watching Bustillo’s place for the last couple of weeks trying to figure out how to get close to him. He’s not the sort of person you just make an appointment with. Or someone who’s likely to tell you what you want to know.

  I’ve kept a low profile, stayed hidden. It wasn’t until I saw a shipment to the warehouse come in on a couple of semis that I got the idea to set the place on fire.

  I won’t have a lot of time before they get back, but it should be enough. At some point they’re just going to write the whole place off as a loss. Tepehuanes doesn’t exactly have a robust firefighting force. The warehouse is the most modern building in the whole town.

  I give it less than an hour before they come gunning for me. They should already be getting frantic phone calls to come back. I need to get in, get my answers from Bustillo, and then get the hell out before thirty guys with AKs come busting in on the party.

  I put the barrel of the Benelli against the door lock and pull the trigger, blowing a hole the size of a cantaloupe out of the wood. Sure, I could have just tried the handle, but where’s the fun in that? I wouldn’t get the satisfying shriek as buckshot tears into the poor bastard on the other side of the door. I step out of the way and let the inevitable rain of bullets punch through the wood in return.

  The guy I shot through the door stares at me as I kick it open, the Sharpie spell too weak to hide me from him, anymore. The door was thick enough to stop a lot of the shot, but more than enough went through to make this a really bad day for him.

  He points his gun at me in shaking hands. A crappy, little TEC-9—I didn’t think they made those anymore—and pulls the trigger on an empty chamber. I hit him in the head with the butt of the shotgun and he goes down like a drunk prom date.

  There are a lot of ghosts here at the compound. Echoes in the courtyard, mindless recordings of people’s last moments. Every one of them an execution. Bullet to the head kind of stuff. All in nearly the same spot. They blend into each other like fractals, jerking this way and that as phantom bullets enter their heads over and over again. A few Haunts, too. Again, murders. Ghosts trapped in the house until their essence drains away to whatever afterlife they’re destined for.

  And then there are the Wanderers, self-aware spirits borne of trauma and tragedy, but not locked to any particular location, they travel from place to place doing, well, whatever they do. Watching mostly, being hungry and looking for some shreds of life to feed on.

  That’s the thing about ghosts. There’s not much going on in the land of the dead. Most can’t even see the living, just like most of the living can’t see them.

  But they can sure as hell see me. I show up to them like a neon sign that says GOOD EATS. They want life. Any life. Lucky for all of us they’re on that side of the veil. So when I attract their attention they follow me around like hungry wolves after caribou.

  Yay for necromancy, huh?

  Counting the murdered in Mexico’s drug war is tough. Anywhere from fifty-thousand to over a hundred in the last five years alone. Not all of them leave ghosts. Not all of those ghosts become Wanderers.

  But holy fuck are there a lot of them. I picked up a handful in El Zona Norte, Tijuana’s red light district. Murdered prostitutes and student protesters, low level cartel bagmen caught in a crossfire, police officers, tourists, locals in the wrong place at the wrong time. In each city I’ve picked up more. Some of them I even killed myself. They’ve been trying to keep up as best they can. They’re not fast and I have a car, but they’re tenacious little bastards.

  There are at least forty standing behind me, following me around as I shoot the place up. I’ve been seeing ghosts my entire life, so an audience of the dead is nothing new. But standing room only can get a little nerve wracking. I could push them away, but there are so many dead around more would just take their place.

  The foyer is terra cotta red tile covered in rugs, wrought iron chandeliers. Real old school Spanish style. I hear two sets of running feet coming down the hallway. At this point, the Sharpie magic’s useless. I’ve made too much noise and the magic can only do so much. I take up a position on the edge of the doorway and wait.

  Two men with AK-47s run into the foyer, see the guy on the floor. One of them’s stupid and runs for him, the other one’s smart and turns to check the rest of the room. I put buckshot in his chest before he can fill me full of .30 caliber rounds and another into the back of his buddy’s knee. I kick the guns away from the one who’s still alive, even though I’m pretty sure he won’t be conscious long.

  If I hadn’t made so much noise the sticker on my chest would have let me come in here and walk right on by everybody. Could have caught Bustillo in his bathroom or something. Or I could have used one of the perks of my particular magical knack and popped over to the ghost’s side, walked past Bustillo’s guards and popped back. It’s not fun, it’s not safe,
but sometimes it’s damn convenient.

  Aside from the fact that the ghost’s side of the world will leech out my life if I stay too long, they’ll try to eat me. With all of the dead here and the ones that have been following me it would be like jumping into a shark tank wearing a suit made out of meat.

  But the truth is that I wanted to do this loud and I wanted to do it messy. Word’s been spreading the last couple of months of “The Gringo With No Eyes”. Some scary motherfucker with eyeballs black as midnight asking questions, causing problems when he doesn’t like the answers. I get to be the boogeyman. My newfound reputation has made this trip a lot easier.

  Plus I have anger issues.

  It’s a big house, lots of hallways going off the foyer, a staircase leading to the upper floor. Finding Bustillo could take time I don’t have. I dig a charm, a small hematite pyramid carved with runes and hanging from a string, out of my messenger bag. I let it dangle from the string and in a few seconds the charm rises, pointing down the left hallway, then veering sharply to the right. I pocket the charm, load a couple more shells into the Benelli and head down the hall.

  Twenty feet and a right hand turn leads me to a pair of open double doors. Like the front door, these are heavy oak. Bustillo, a slight man with a balding head and a mustache you could sweep streets with, sits behind a desk in the room, a fat, little submachine gun on the desk in easy reach. Next to that is a bottle of tequila and two shot glasses. Both of his hands are in plain view.

  Either Bustillo is very stupid or this is a trap. I don’t think he’s stupid.

  “Eric Carter,” he says. “Come in, come in. Have a seat.” His Spanish is flawless, cultured, unlike my shoddy American accent. He pours a measure of tequila into each shot glass. He gestures at the chair opposite him. “I won’t shoot if you won’t.”