Hungry Ghosts Read online

  “Fair enough,” I say and step slowly into the room. I’ve been keeping a low profile in Tepehuanes while I’ve been scoping out Bustillo’s estate, using Sharpie magic to hide from the locals or make them think I’m something I’m not. I’ve never used my name. The fact that he knows it is troubling.

  “Inspired move,” he says. “Burning my warehouse. I was wondering how you were going to get my men to leave the estate. You put in so much effort, it would be rude of me not to play along.”

  I’m not sensing any active spells, and I’m not seeing anything on the walls, floor or ceiling that might be a magical trap. Of course he could have a claymore sitting under the chair to shoot up, but that seems a bit drastic, even when dealing with me.

  I sit, placing the Benelli onto the desk, my hand on the pistol grip, finger hovering over the trigger.

  “You were expecting me,” I say.

  “I was. Been waiting for weeks. Had I known you would show such caution I would have made myself a more tempting target.”

  “This isn’t how this usually goes,” I say. “There’s a lot more screaming involved. Broken fingers, that kinda thing.”

  “Oh, I heard plenty of screaming. The men you shot were stealing from me, so you have my thanks. We have all the time we need. The others won’t be back for a while. They think the heroin is important.”

  “And you don’t?”

  “Only as a tool. Like money is a tool. Or a gun is a tool. Or magic is a tool.”

  “You’re a mage.”

  “A minor talent at best. Not someone with nearly your standing. Tell me, why do they call you the Gringo With No Eyes? I have heard rumors, but I don’t know if they’re true. Is it the sunglasses?”

  “No,” I say and take them off. The whites and iris of my eyes are gone, replaced with pitch black orbs. I tend to wear sunglasses a lot so as not to scare the straights. It’s an unfortunate side effect of a bad decision I made a while back. Kind of like chlamydia.

  He cocks an eyebrow, curiosity on his face. “I see.”

  “So why’d you send your men away, Mister Minor Talent? You’re either awfully certain that I won’t just kneecap you and make you tell me what I want to know, or you’re monumentally stupid.”

  “Hopefully the former. I know where the one you’re looking for is. And I’m happy to tell you.”

  Everyone else I’ve talked to has had a little more information—talk to this guy, that guy knows something, maybe see this other guy—but they’ve all just been links in a chain. Breadcrumbs leading me further and further down the trail.

  Bustillo is just one more of them. He might think he’s important, they all think they’re important, and him being a mage is just going to reinforce that. But he’s only as useful as what he knows and what he can give me.

  I think he’s going to be surprised when he figures that out.

  “You’re a mage. You know what I’m here for. You are just full of surprises. And here I thought I was going to have to torture you, or …”

  I pull a small, obsidian knife from my inner coat pocket. The handle is simple wood and leather, the blade only a few inches long. It’s wicked sharp and I’ve been through three custom sheaths already. I place it on the table. Manuel stares at it, looking nervous.

  “Perhaps it is time for a drink,” he says and lifts his shot glass, his hand shaking a little.

  “Perhaps it is.” I’m not worried about poison, my body is crawling with tattoos infused with spells for protection. I have at least three against poison. I think. Maybe four? I’ve lost track over the years.

  I take my hand off the shotgun, but hold on to the knife. It’s the more dangerous of the two. We down our shots. If it’s poisoned it’s worth it. It’s damn good tequila.

  “I see you’ve heard of the knife,” I say. “Mictlantecuhtli’s blade. The Aztec king of the dead made this for Xipe-Totec, the Flayed God, to carve the skins of his enemies and absorb them into himself. A few quick cuts, toss the skin over the shoulders and everything a person is, everything they know, goes to the one who uses it. You’re not gonna make me use it, are you, Manuel?”

  “No,” he says, eyes firmly on the blade.

  “I’m glad to hear that. I don’t know what nest of vipers are bouncing around inside your head, but believe me I don’t want you in mine. Now you seem awfully eager to be having this conversation. Why is that?”

  “Señora de las Sombras told me to,” he says. Lady of the Shadows. Also known as La Flaca, Señora Negra, La Madrina.

  “I’m not looking for Santa Muerte,” I say. Which is true. I know exactly where she is.

  A while back I got backed into a corner, and to get out of it I made a deal with an Aztec death goddess. She used to go by the name Mictecacihuatl, Queen of Mictlan, the Aztec land of the dead. In more recent years she’s transformed, recreating herself as Santa Muerte, Saint Death.

  Her movement, religion, cult, whatever you want to call it, has spread to over two million devotees throughout Mexico and the United States and across the world, getting bigger every day. She’s seen as the Narco Saint, a protector of killers and thugs, but she’s so much more than that. She’s a protector of the innocent, an instrument of vengeance, and, oddly enough, a love sorceress.

  And she’s my wife.

  That was the deal I made. Marry my power to hers. Necromancy and a death goddess. I got the pitch black eyes and a ring covered in calaveras on my hand. She got me. I’m her champion, her consort. Neither of which is a job I’m particularly thrilled with. She’s got some other plan in mind for me but I don’t know what it is.

  I had a friend, Darius, who told me it was a bad idea. I should have listened to him. He’s had some experience with her, though I don’t know what kind. He had the sort of perspective you’re not gonna get from most people.

  Darius is special. He’s a Djinn. Hundreds of years old if he’s a day. He came over to California five hundred years ago with Cabrillo, and his bottle got lost in Los Angeles. Now he uses it as a pocket universe and lets people in from time to time so he doesn’t get bored.

  Once I took the deal with Santa Muerte, he and I were on the outs. Should have listened to him. Wouldn’t be in this mess if I had.

  The thing Santa Muerte didn’t tell me was that she already had a husband. Mictlantecuhtli, King of Mictlan. Darius told me he was dead. Turns out not quite. Dead gods are more complicated than I thought. It was more like sleeping. Sitting in a tomb in Mictlan, a statue locked in jade.

  And by a fucked up piece of cosmic logic—Mictlantecuhtli is the King of Mictlan, but the King of Mictlan is married to Mictecacihuatl and since I’m married to Mictecacihuatl I’m the King of Mictlan—he and I are trading places. I’m getting access to his power. But I’m also slowly becoming jade, the stone replacing my flesh like petrified wood. He’s slowly becoming … whatever it is Aztec death gods count as flesh. I don’t really know.

  The last time I saw him I was just beginning to change and he was still stuck in his tomb in Mictlan. Now a good forty percent of my body is green stone, flexible, movable, but stone nonetheless.

  “Her avatar, then,” Bustillo says. “Tabitha Cheung.”

  “Ah,” I say. “Now her, she’s the one I’m looking for.”

  Because my situation with Santa Muerte and Mictlantecuhtli wasn’t weird enough, I met a girl, Tabitha Cheung. Worked at a friend’s bar in Koreatown in Los Angeles. We hooked up a couple of times. She helped me out of a jam.

  And then I found out that she’d actually been killed a while back and the only thing keeping her upright was that Santa Muerte had stuck a piece of her soul inside her, turning a mid-twenties Korean waitress from Fullerton into her will made flesh.

  When I figured it out and confronted her, Tabitha showed me her true colors. She told me that she’s Santa Muerte, but she also told me she’s a combination of the two of them, blurring together until she can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.

  That means it’s po
ssible there’s some of Tabitha still in there. I have a lot riding on that.

  She walked out and I let her. I’ve wondered since if that was maybe not the best decision I could have made, and boy howdy have I made some bad decisions. Killing her would have just killed Tabitha’s body and whatever was left of her inside it. It wouldn’t have touched Santa Muerte. And I wouldn’t have the opportunity that I have now.

  I tried to keep track of her, but she went to ground. It’s taken me months to pick up the trail of men and women she’s seen or talked to. Santa Muerte herself has trouble talking to people in person. Most can’t see her. So she appears to them in their dreams.

  But with Tabitha, Santa Muerte gains a physical presence. She can actually see her followers, show them proof of who she represents. Whether operating through an avatar limits her power at all, I have no idea, but I’m not sure how much that matters.

  It’s not surprising that Santa Muerte knows I’m down here, and if she knows it, then it’s a good bet Tabitha knows. I’ve made a point of making as much noise as I can to get her attention. I want her to know I’m coming for her. I want her to think she’s got the upper hand. I want her to get lazy. It might be a stupid move, but it’s not likely I could surprise her, anyway, so I’d rather work with what I’ve got.

  But if she’s set this guy up with a message for me then it’s not just that she knows I’m in Mexico looking for her. She knows that eventually I’d have come here for him to give it to me. I’ve been herded in this direction from the start.

  “You should know she wants very much to see you again,” Bustillo says. “She knew you would be coming here not long after her visit.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “A month ago? Little more?”

  “What’d you guys talk about? Best ways to dispose of troublesome Federales? The ins and outs of the heroin trade?”

  “Tithes, mostly. Sacrifices to Santa Muerte. Spreading her word among the faithful. Señora is powerful, and she has many devotees, but she needs more.”

  This is pretty much what I’ve heard from everyone else. Santa Muerte’s looking to consolidate her power, grow her flock. Every day she gets more followers. Among the narcos, sure. But also, oddly enough, among Mexican and U.S. law enforcement, not to mention the millions of men and women who are caught in that crossfire, or the ones who simply see her as an alternative they can understand.

  They follow her for different reasons, but a lot of them do it because they think she’ll help when the saints they grew up with and the god they follow won’t.

  Santa Muerte will not judge you, will not tell you what you are doing is right or wrong. She will help you with vengeance, she will help you with your rocky relationship, she will help you when the chips are down and there’s nowhere else to go.

  Unless she doesn’t. She can be fickle. She is Death, after all.

  “All right. So where is her avatar now?” I ask.

  “Tepito.”

  Of course she is. Tepito is a barrio in Mexico City that has one of the highest concentrations of Santa Muerte devotees in the world. There are others, Tultitlán north of the city, Ciudad Juárez just on the other side of El Paso. But Tepito is where her base is. Where the people who need her most live.

  Tepito’s a slum, a massive, blocks wide, open-air bazaar. You can find food, drugs, electronics, guns, phones, computers, anything you can think of. As long as you’re okay with questionably sourced goods and illegal trade, you’re golden.

  “You know where in Tepito?” I know of the place, heard a lot about it, but I’ve never been there myself.

  He spreads his hands and shrugs. “She didn’t say. Can you answer something for me?” Bustillo says.

  “Possibly.”

  “You want to kill her,” he says. “Why?”

  “Santa Muerte, or her avatar?”

  “Both.”

  “Santa Muerte murdered my sister. Her avatar, well, she’s got a piece of her in her head. They’re pretty much the same person. You’ve been a devotee of hers long?”

  “Many years. Even before I knew it. There is an honesty to her I find refreshing.”

  I can’t help but laugh. “Honesty. Right.”

  “I have heard some of what she did to you. But tell me. Did she lie, or did she merely keep the truth from you?”

  This is actually a question I’ve been struggling with. She’s never flat out lied to me as far as I can tell. When we first met she offered to tell me who killed my sister, Lucy. I didn’t take her up on that offer, the price was too high. So instead she offered me a cryptic clue that wasn’t, technically speaking, incorrect. If I’d taken her up on her offer right then and there, would she have told me the truth? I think she might have.

  “No, she hasn’t lied to me. That’s not why I’m going to kill her.”

  “Of course not. But she is a product of her time. She has not fully grown into this modern world. It is regrettable that your sister died, but Señora only knew one way to get your attention. You cannot expect her to be anything but true to her own nature, even as she tries to change it.”

  “Yeah, and I can’t blame a bear for trying to eat me, either, but I can put a bullet in its brain so it doesn’t.” Something he just said catches my attention. “Wait, what do you mean about trying to change her nature?”

  “She hasn’t lied, but she has deceived. That’s new to her. Foreign. She tries to accommodate this new world, but doesn’t know how. Her ways are not—”

  “Sane?”

  “I was going to say subtle. She may only know death, but she is not the instrument of it. To enlist you in her cause she used the only tools she understood. So, as I said, she has an honesty that I find refreshing. She’s simply death. There’s nothing more honest than that.”

  He has a point. Death is the great equalizer. It’ll lay you low whether you’re the richest motherfucker in the world or the lowliest peasant.

  “Well, aren’t I lucky.”

  “She needs you for something,” Bustillo says. He pours out more tequila for us. “Do you know what?”

  “No. And I don’t care.” Not anymore. For a while it was driving me crazy. Second guessing her. Trying to figure out her game. But then I realized, it didn’t matter. Because whatever it is, I’m not going to let it happen. I’m going to kill her. I’m going to kill her husband. I’m going to kill her avatar. I’m going to kill anyone who gets in my way.

  “You don’t? It seems you’ve been given a gift. Why not accept it?”

  I’ve heard this one before. Everybody seems to think it’s like a fucking Christmas present.

  “I know this game. This is where I say, ‘I don’t want it,’ and you say, ‘But the power! The opportunity!’ And I say, ‘You don’t get it,’ because you don’t. It’s not a gift. It’s my sister’s murder. It’s my friend’s death. It’s me trapped in jade. It’s a debt I haven’t paid back, yet. And now I think we’re done here.”

  “Yes,” he says. “I am very sorry.”

  He says it less as someone offering condolences and more as someone who is apologizing for something he’s done. Or, more likely, something he’s about to do. I don’t give him the chance.

  I grab the shotgun and pull the trigger. It goes off in my hand with a thunderous blast that should vaporize Bustillo’s chest, but he’s fast. I feel a flare of magic as he lets off a spell he already had primed, and the desk, a thick, oak monstrosity that has to weigh a few hundred pounds, flips up blocking him and forcing my shot to go into the ceiling.

  Minor talent, my ass. With as much power as he’s got I can see why his ass is so chapped that he’s not the one with Santa Muerte.

  Buckshot tears through the edge of the desk, and I barely keep from being flattened as it comes crashing down toward me. I kick backward, rolling out of the way and to my feet.

  So far Bustillo is the first mage I’ve run into on this trip. It was really just a matter of time and I’m actually a little surprised it’s take
n this long. Most of the people whose heads I’ve busted have been your run-of-the-mill narco thugs. Tough bastards, dangerous, but normal. Normal I can eat for breakfast.

  I unload the Benelli at him. Five rounds, but I’m not really expecting anything to connect. He’s already on the move and any mage worth the title is going to have defensive spells ready to go at a moment’s notice. Bustillo works for Sinaloa, which is about as cutthroat a cartel as they come. They’re not known for coming at you in a fair fight. He’s going to have something extra special up his sleeve for just such occasions.

  Sure enough the buckshot scatters as it gets close, splitting into two streams of pellets and peppering the wall on either side of him with holes. I drop the shotgun, it’s useless, anyway, and scoop up the obsidian blade from where it’s embedded itself into the floor. As I grab the knife, Bustillo gets hold of his submachine gun and stitches a line of bullets across the room.

  I drop behind the desk. Like Bustillo I have defensive spells, too. Apparently, they’re not as good as his are. Even with the magic in my tattoos redirecting most of the rounds I get tagged by a bullet in my shoulder. Normally, that would be a problem.

  But normal left the building a long time back. The bullet that gets through my protections mushrooms on contact and stops dead. The jade crawling through my body has gone up to my shoulders and down most of both arms. I can’t scratch it, can’t break it. And it’s really good at stopping bullets. A small bright spot in an otherwise fucked situation.

  I pull the Browning. I don’t think I’m going to get close enough to him for the knife to be very effective. Even the Browning isn’t going to do much good. It’ll make big holes, but unless I can do something about his magical defenses it’s not going to do a whole lot.

  “So was I right?” I say. “You think I’m an idiot for rejecting Santa Muerte’s ‘gift’? I’m thinking you see yourself as a much more worthy recipient of it, yeah?”

  For somebody who’s just one more stepping stone to getting what I want, Bustillo’s turning out to be a big pain in my ass.