Fire Water (Black Magic Outlaw Book 5) Read online

  Distressed footfalls tore through the foliage. I lowered to my haunches on instinct, darting my eyes to the source. A mercenary, muttering and crashing through branches. Coming right at me. He stepped into my clearing and his eyes widened. He raised his automatic weapon and fired.

  I didn't move. I fell into the darkness, becoming a presence on the jungle floor, visible but impalpable. The barrage of lead shredded the thick leaves behind me until the gun clicked empty.

  I hardened my eyes and stood. "Where's Connor?"

  The merc threw the gun to the floor and drew a combat knife. He advanced slowly but sloppily. He was panicked. In a rush. He slashed at me. I sidestepped. He spun to come at me again. I wrapped the shadow around his neck and yanked him toward me. At the same time, I batted my open hands into his knife arm. His own blade dug deep into his chest. I tossed the man to the ground.

  Fresh blood painted my hands. Living, breathing humans in Coaybay. That meant I wasn't dead. That all but guaranteed Connor wasn't either.

  I hunched over the dying mercenary. His breaths came heavily. He'd been running from something, and it wasn't his own people. I considered interrogating him but his eyes glazed over. I frowned and opened the small sack over his shoulder. Ripe green guava fruits spilled to the ground.

  I pulled my own knife. The voodoo instrument. I cut a guava in half. Rich juice flowed over my fingers. Part of me figured these were just rations for the expedition, but another part suspected more.

  Guava was associated with death in Taíno culture. The ghosts of the dead transform to bats and leave Coaybay every night to feast on the Caribbean fruit. Hell, the god of Coaybay, Maquetaurie Guayaba, was named after it. The Lord Without Life gives the spirits his blessing to leave every night, so long as they return. With that kind of cultural significance, guava was probably a sacrament of some sort. A spell token burnt up in the acquisition of magic.

  Strange. I looked around the jungle and didn't see a lot of guava. The fruits I did see were withered and yellow. These must have come from the ship. From topside. As I scanned the trees, what I saw looking back at me froze me solid.

  A giant, flightless owl stood on the jungle floor. It was absolutely prehistoric. Long, scaled legs ending in curved claws. A large brown body. Its head was ashy-faced; a bowl of white against the brown, with two orbs of black carefully studying me.

  In my crouch, the terrifying thing was taller than I was. At first I didn't move, but then I slowly rose to my feet, letting the knife hang limply in my hand.

  The owl let out a stern hoot, turned, and sped off along the ground.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. Something about the bird's face struck me as familiar, but I was happy to see it go nevertheless. I didn't feel safe hiding in the trees anymore. I pushed ahead through the dense growth.

  The path the excursion had taken was easy to follow. A wide tunnel of chopped branches and vines. A large contingent. Even though much of the crew had perished in the shipwreck, there were still far too many to take on alone. Of course, none of that mattered if they were far ahead of me. I had to catch up to them first if I had any hope of stopping the jinn.

  After some light hiking, the jungle cleared as quickly as it had begun. Its tree line ran along the inner portion of the island, a wall to a hidden sanctuary. Wide slopes of wild grasses and ponds gave way to more arduous terrain in the distance. On the plains in between, a sight of horror played out before me.

  Men as black and featureless as shadow streamed through the sky on leathery wings. The wings weren't dragon-like. Different from the feathers I imagined Malik sported. These were mammalian wings. Bat wings.

  The beings streamed through the air, brushing the sky with dark lines. They swooped down on the mercenaries below. Russians. South Americans. Caribs. The men rained spurts of gunfire upward but the dark residents of Coaybay were unaffected. Fight turned to flight. Resolve turned to fear. Blood painted the fields. The Agua Fuego cartel was being obliterated. Mowed down by the arbiters of the underworld like white blood cells fending off foreign invaders.

  A strange thing happened to the mercenaries when they fell. As arbiters attended to the bodies, blue pillars of light broke through the sky and dissolved their essences. The soldiers vanished, ascended to the heavens. This was an underworld, sure, but it was a holy place for the Taíno. The mercs didn't belong here. They couldn't remain.

  I watched from the edge of the jungle as shadows gathered around me. Three arbiters converged, standing upright on the ground. Up close I could see they weren't really featureless. Within the magic that cloaked them were Taíno men and women. Soldiers with painted lines of red over their faces and chests. Defenders wielding spears and stone hatchets.

  Their empty white eyes considered me a moment. Then their faces softened. The arbiters faded back into their magic and took to the air, searching for more intruders.

  As with the owl, this unsettled me. I was technically an intruder as well. A living man. A descendant of a conquistador, no less.

  But in spite of all that, the humid air seemed to warm me. To welcome me.

  It was a strange feeling.

  The comfortable familiarity I had with this place. The approval of the arbiters. This feeling wasn't just a feeling. I had been here before.

  Ten years ago, when I had been dying at the hands of Tunji Malu and the Covey, I'd cast a powerful spell on myself. A last-second gambit. The Wings of Night. Instead of letting death take me, I embraced it. My soul sprouted ethereal bat wings and fled to Coaybay. In the meantime I had abandoned my body. It was abused and used as a mindless hit man.

  The Wings of Night was a spell I shouldn't have known. One I had never been taught. One I shouldn't have had the power to cast. Even now. But it had been real. I'd been dead and my soul had been in exile for ten long years.

  This was the living proof of where I'd been hiding. The Taíno underworld, Coaybay.

  I scanned the emptying fields. Men scrambled into the jungle, looking for escape. I ignored them and made my way into the open, along the main path of footprints. Despite the appearance of the arbiters, most of Connor's men had been able to forge ahead. Their tracks didn't lie. I followed the trampled grass as it skirted the hill, taking the path of least resistance.

  I still wasn't sure what Connor was doing, but I was getting closer to finding out.

  Chapter 42

  I pursued the expedition, hoping it didn't have more than an hour's head start. Probably half that, given the presence of panicking mercs. Even as I sprinted past them, a Russian tumbled to the floor and swiped at an arbiter with his knife.

  I didn't help. I didn't slow. I didn't bother. I sprinted ahead, slowly rounding the hill.

  The expansive plains sluggishly rotated into view. More expanse. More grass. After a solid ten minutes of chase, I had to slow to catch my breath. Imagine that, a spirit underworld and I still needed to breathe.

  I hooked my hands on my hips and took in the landscape ahead and behind. The area was unnaturally quiet. No more Agua Fuego soldiers getting slaughtered. I was worried I'd taken a wrong turn.

  I slowed my breathing. Calmed my heart. Then I closed my eyes and listened.

  Some screaming and gunfire came from the jungle. I tuned that out and listened more deeply. There was something else. The clanking of metal, I thought, echoing over the hills. With my eyes shut, I tried to pinpoint the location. It was difficult because the landscape bounced and muffled the sounds. I rotated my body in place until I was sure I was facing the source. Then I opened my eyes.

  I was staring straight up the slope. Just a gentle hill before me, but the terrain quickly grew steeper and rockier. I could chase the expedition the long way around the hill, the way they had traveled, or I could take the mountain pass and cut them off.

  I charged up the slope. It quickly grew arduous, but I used the shadow to assist my climb. Little dashes sprinkled between bouts of running and jumping did wonders. The higher I scaled, the wider I realized the bas
e of the mountain was, the more time I knew I was gaining.

  I finally made the summit and crossed over. There they were in the distance. A band of explorers pushed through the hills. The head of the contingent was already over the slope and out of sight so I couldn't get a full count of the men. Fifty at least. What I saw them doing was more worrying.

  Arbiters gathered around the enemy force but were unwilling to close on them. The Taíno defenders grouped together in frustrated restraint. Every once in a while, leathery wings would take flight. An arbiter would strafe and attempt a quick strike, but the Haitian wights parried the blows with machetes.

  These men were protected somehow. The arbiters were aware of some threat, left confused and unsure. Even the few that took action were rebuffed.

  It was because of the Spaniard. The arbiters didn't recognize the zombies. The dead. And the necromancers were half dead themselves. Wights, not in full possession of their human faculties. They held some sway in this underworld.

  That had been Connor's second modification to the Horn of Subjugation. He'd empowered the Spaniard against the Taíno. Against the very arbiters who were meant to defend Coaybay.

  I raced down the mountain side, skipping and slipping and phasing through the darkness. This was what I had long avoided. Fighting my friends. Fighting others under the control of Connor. That had been me once. I'd killed innocents. Even after that, once my mind was clear, I'd stabbed and killed Kita Mariko, herself just a thrall.

  I clenched my jaw till my teeth hurt. I couldn't just kill indiscriminately anymore. I wouldn't return to that ever again.

  My descent sped up until I caught the tail end of the excursion party. A single wight spied me and broke away, bringing two zombies with her. A lone arbiter saw the confrontation and hovered nearby, unable to take action.

  I tried to invade the bokor's connection with the thralls. It was easy to visualize in Coaybay. Easy to see the workings of the dead. But the necromancers were strong here, too. I could see the guiding spellcraft but couldn't break it or seize it for myself.

  As the zombies bore down on me, I abandoned that plan.

  A tether of shadow snagged one thrall's leg. The other came at me unchecked. He swung. I ducked around him and forced my knife into the back of its neck. In and out and in and out. A series of quick punctures.

  The zombie batted me away. The little blade wouldn't do enough damage. Not for a magically animated thing of death. And in the presence of the necromancer, breaking her hold wasn't working. Without my bag of tricks or some cemetery dirt, the zombie would keep coming after me.

  Wait a minute. What is a cemetery if not grounds for the dead? The Nether was water and earth. The soil beneath me was real enough.

  I sliced open my palm and grabbed a handful of dirt. When the thrall came at me, I shifted past his blow and kicked the back of his knee. He tumbled to his back and I jumped on his chest. I used my knife to pry open his teeth and shoved a fistful of bloody grave dirt into his mouth.

  "Shh," I said.

  And the thing went to sleep forever.

  The wight boiled with rage at the affront. With her other thrall unable to free himself of my shadow, she came at me herself.

  I didn't see the clouded eyes or the penetrating rage. I ignored the machete. Instead I saw a young woman in her twenties, thick dreads running to the small of her back, delicate fingers and smooth skin. She could've been a beach model or a surfer or a volleyball player. She was a real person, damn it.

  Her large blade came down and I couldn't ignore it any further. I blocked the strike with my forearm and rolled my back into her. My intention was to disarm her but her arm slipped through my hands. She also bit into the back of my neck. I cursed and shoved her off.

  Then the arbiter moved in.

  Something about the combat or the zombie going down must've triggered his defense mechanism. The shadowy arbiter had been hovering idly, but he finally spotted the danger. He swiped at the wight but she rolled away. Again he struck, but she parried his spear. The woman lurched forward beyond his defense and thrust the machete through the arbiter's chest.

  The shadow wailed and stretched until it was nothing more than a black curl. Then it winked out.

  Before she could reengage me, I rapped the back of the wight's head with the butt of my shotgun. She fell to the ground, unconscious. Out of immediate danger, I stared wordlessly at where the arbiter had been. He was there no longer.

  The gravity of this expedition was dawning on me. This was Connor Hatch, not only bolstering himself against the spirits, but defeating them. Oppressing them. Conquering the Taíno all over again.

  Everything I knew about the Spaniard was that he deplored forced service. When my sister had been taken by a soul catcher, the wraith spat at the mention of the santero who'd been robbing souls from graves.

  But how much did I really know about the Spaniard? How much could I really trust? Subjugation had been his cruelty. He was cursed with it now. Maybe forever.

  The last zombie growled at me, dumbly tugging against a shadow he could never break. I packed more dirt into my hand and dispelled him as well, leaving me alone on the hillside.

  I walked listlessly over the next peak. I crouched and wiped the sweat from my brow as I watched the full force of Connor's men marching toward the center of Coaybay. There must've been a hundred of them. Chevalier and his Bone Saints and their dead. Haitians and former crew, South American and Carib zombies. Some of the cartel were still alive even. They huddled toward the center of the pack with their useless automatic weapons, using the rest of the force to shield themselves from the native threats.

  Connor and the Spaniard marched at the head of the expeditionary force, bold and unafraid. Almost all powerful in this place.

  Look at them all. Many of them were innocents. Even ignoring that, there were too many. Too damn many. The arbiters themselves could do little more than watch. And yes, the few who grew too brave were viciously put down.

  I buried my face in my hands for a moment. Then I hissed and took to my feet. I wouldn't wallow in hopelessness now. The truth was: there was nothing I could do. No way I could overcome such a superior force. But that didn't mean I had to accept it either. Even if death was the outcome, I could fight.

  All I needed was an opening. A plan.

  I followed after them, adrenaline wiring my nerves. My mind raced. I was desperate and I didn't care.

  On the lower ground, where the soil was damp from pond water, I saw more proof of life in Coaybay. Feline footprints lightly pressed into the ground. Small. Domesticated. The trail led away from the expedition and into a nearby swamp.

  "It can't be," I said.

  I reluctantly broke off my chase and followed the animal prints. Another patch of jungle rose before me. Wet mangroves and swamp brush. Under the tangle of aboveground roots, a black cat with green eyes gazed my way.

  And he wasn't even burned up a little.

  Chapter 43

  "You're not dead," I said to the cat.

  He spun on his paws and dashed into the brush.

  I rolled my eyes. "Good to see you too, little buddy."

  I traipsed after him, knowing he'd wait until I caught up before leading me further. The cat was flighty and cautious and mysterious as hell, but I believed he held no ill will toward me. He was a guide of sorts. Random. Haphazard. I wondered if there was any meaning to it whatsoever, but I knew he wouldn't hurt me.

  The trees grew taller. They bent and twisted over my head. The already dark landscape became more bleak and suffocating. My alligator boots splashed in deepening water. A black lagoon stretched before me. The shoreline was infested with roots. It was difficult to traverse yet still, every now and then, I caught a glimpse of the stray cat. And I followed.

  The darkness grew into a smothering black haze. There were no swamp creatures in these parts. No life splashing in the water. No chirping insects in earshot. The blackness grew too dense even for me, your accomplish
ed shadow charmer. I had trouble walking against it. I was afraid to phase into it for fear of being forever trapped.

  When I had pressed as far as I could go, in the center of a small submerged glen, I paused. The leaves were still. The water a flat mirror. Even for an underworld this place was surreal. It was more than a feeling. It was a presence.

  From out of the trees emerged a giant dog's head. It was all black, with a body that disappeared into the brush behind. Despite the massive size, the features of the face were compact. A small nose on a medium snout. A tidy mouth that hid the teeth. Piercing black eyes under a somewhat shiny coat. Most striking were the large alert ears standing at attention, each almost the size of the head itself.

  The dog showed itself without any aggression, but it commanded my absolute attention. It was a force of nature. And then that force of nature spoke.

  "Shadow walker," came the voice. Rather than carry through the air it reverberated in my skull. Both a whisper and a bellow, it hit my being like a geyser. I buckled to my knees and craned my neck away from the being.

  I knew exactly who he was. Opiyelguobiran, the Shadow Dog.

  My patron.

  "Long has your road been to arrive here."

  I gritted my teeth under the great weight of his words. I couldn't believe it. Opiyel was a real, sentient being. A patron. A source of magic. A venerable, powerful thing.

  And here he was, talking to little ol' me.

  "A dog spirit in a cat," I said dumbly. "That was you."

  "The only way to guide the living," he returned.

  I recalled the day the taxi hit the stray cat on Biscayne Boulevard. It had just been random happenstance. An opportunity for the god to intervene.

  "You have been welcomed into Coaybay before. You are needed again."

  Welcomed. He said welcomed but I knew he meant invited. I raised my eyes to him. "The Wings of Night were a gift from you," I reasoned.