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CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

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Bullets sparked off the hood, the door. I curled up in a ball on the passenger seat, hands covering my head. Nine mil, .45 ACP, .40, all the standard rounds could puncture a car door. Best bet would’ve been behind the engine block or maybe the wheel rims. But no, I’d done what the magic cop said and dove right inside.

Araceli’s bored expression told me I was the one tripping. I’d curled up in the seat while she sat tall in the withering hail of gunfire. Then she noticed the sword and she sat even taller and gawked while bullets sparked on all sides like fireworks. I was about to jerk her beneath the dash when I realized, I didn’t need to.

I wasn’t swimming in shattered glass. Bullets weren’t whizzing around the interior, hornets trapped in a box they couldn’t escape. We were bulletproof.

She’d enchanted my ride.

While Bubonic took some heat, most of the bullets flew toward Jupiter wielding a gun and a vicious smile. One eye squinted as he aimed, a tongue stuck boyishly between his teeth. He never fired a shot. He took a dozen bullets center mass before his legs went to jelly. Grinning all the way down, Jupiter’s smile finally began to melt when the shadows concealing him oozed toward the car. They left Sheriff Hallewell’s shocked face behind, his bloated body riddled with bloody holes.

“Holy shit,” I said.

“Deu meu!” Araceli, whose eyes hadn’t left the blade, reached out to caress it.

I dove across her and switched off the lights. “Back up! Back up! Spin us round!”

Araceli swatted my hands off the wheel and floored the accelerator. The Cloak grew as it slunk away from the sheriff’s corpse and an unnatural dark you only find in the depths of a cave returned to the clearing. Once she’d spun Bubonic to face the semicircle of officers, I seized the wheel and Araceli let off the gas. Bubonic rumbled in the silent dark.

I had a plan, but would this new magic cooperate? Watching an officer fall under their hail of gunfire had shocked the county and state troopers into a stunned silence. The sudden darkness had disoriented them more. We could slap them with the brights right before they recovered. But first I needed to clean up a crime scene.

With an officer down and so much brass present, they’d pick the field apart for any excuse to rationalize the friendly fire. I wasn’t about to leave anything they could trace back to me.

Ditching the sword and skull, I lunged over the seatbacks and into the way back. Adrenaline and residual magic pumping through my veins, I flung open the heavy rear door and dropped into a crouch behind the hearse.

“Araceli! Police the brass!”

I didn’t know if she could do it. I didn’t know if she understood. But soon enough, my empty shell casings from earlier were floating up from the muck and whizzing into the open cargo bay.

Dark or not, I could see through this spell, a magic both alien yet attuned to me. I spotted the bodies quick enough. Hallewell, he could rot here. The two goons? They both had ballistics matches for my Scorpion.

One of the bodies had been ground under the tire and into the mud. I wrenched him free and hefted his body into the waiting coach. Sloshing through the mud, I hustled toward the next one ten yards away.

Built like the grain silo which spawned him, this cornfed beast was somehow bigger than his partner. I rolled him to his side and slung his heavy arm over my shoulder like some serial killer Crossfit class. Gritting my teeth, I plowed that muddy field with his boots and flopped his corpse on top of his partner’s.

“Turn off the engine and exit the car with your hands in the air!” A voice called from somewhere outside the darkness.

Somebody had come to their senses. Unsure if they’d seen an officer drop, they were holding their ground and their fire. Perfect. Time to dazzle.

I scrambled over the bodies and yanked the bottom corpse further inside. The coffin rollers embedded in the floorboard made the job less impossible than it seemed. A funk of earthy mud and the pungent sulfur rolled into the windowless space along with them.

“Hit the high beams!” I gagged.

Araceli flicked on the brights. The light clung to the grill. Crouched behind the seat, I focused on the impenetrable darkness outside the windshield.

I’d asked for justice and the cloak’s magic had let Jupiter decide how to serve it. What I wanted now was for it to let me take control.

I didn’t make demands, I just thought about how it should be. I wanted the officers to see us coming, but not be able to stand and take aim. I wanted cover for our escape. And I for sure didn’t want any more blood spilled in this field.

Like a parting curtain, the cloak slid to Bubonic’s flanks and the high beams cut a sudden, blinding path.

The first officers we drove toward threw themselves out of the way of the oncoming train. Others opened fire, shooting blind at the enshrouded and bulletproof chassis, but not many. One friendly fire incident had been enough. I caught sight of Deputy Gardener, on his feet again, rushing toward the now empty clearing.

I wadded my fists into the collars of the corpses and held on tight. I hadn’t been able to close the rear door, a portal into a black abyss. Rounds ricocheted off metal as the tailgate bounced against Thing One’s shins. We’d made it to the garden before I let Araceli slow down enough so I could drag bodies inside and slam the door.

***

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OUR TIME AT THE CEMETERY was too short. I gave Jupiter the best burial I could in an unmarked plot close to where his father rested. The slave who’d probably died of his wounds in the stables hadn’t been given a proper headstone. I had to use one of Atofo’s spells to find him and it was the last of my borrowed energy. Maybe even my borrowed time. Nothing after that was clear.

We didn’t say much else besides a few clipped sentences. I rode in the back with the two bodies. Being back there gave me room to stretch. And, for the first time, it felt like I belonged.

Araceli was worried. She didn’t know how much of the hearse the police could’ve made out in that magical darkness. And I hadn’t exactly kept my presence in town low key. All I could hope was they couldn’t identify me too quickly. To live, I had to drive right back to Saint Augustine where the hearse and I could easily be traced.

I’d dropped some Bob Marley style justice right here. Had I let the Deputy die, that might’ve solved my problems. He wouldn’t be around to lay out any theories.

The whole drive, Araceli kept craning her neck to check if I were dead. I must’ve looked it. My breathing quickly shallowed. Blood trickled from my lips.

I thought I heard the stroke of oars mixed with the ceaseless whisper of tires on pavement. Naked without the golden breastplate, he’d find me soon enough. An hour ago, I’d have gladly gone toe to toe with a Gallu. Damn, that magic had me juiced.

Araceli dropped the bodies somewhere in Georgia off the coast. A pretty little spot, the air sung with frogs and crickets. I tried to get out too, either to help or to become fish food, I didn’t know, but she stiff armed me back inside and slammed the tailgate closed.

I lay there listening to the sound of her dragging the corpses through the sand and the steady pounding of the surf. Xena here was doin’ me right, no idea why. I strained to hear oars above the waves. At one point I heard voices. The ringing of steel. Saw a flash of light.

“He isn’t yours,” she said. “Go back or taste my blade.”

“Lady Araceli de Peñafort,” rumbled a gravelly voice of dusty bone. “You of all mortals understand the price. Will you pay the fare this time? You have once before refused.”

I tried to sit up and peek through the curtains, but the strength wasn’t there. She was quiet. Ocean air coated my skin.

“I must,” she said. “It is my duty.”

I heard a rumbling chortle. “You already have. Put down your sword. It was never yours to begin with. Its memories are of a boy, now.”

No fleshless hands came for my soul. Floorboards hot from the muffler, the smell of bodies, both fresh and long since buried baked into the trim; if death had any power it should be here. Could be since Bubonic was my ferry his job was already done.

When Araceli got back into the hearse she had a vacant stare. She drove with one hand on the wheel, the other slung over the seat to hold my wrist. More than once she squeezed, searching, the engine’s throaty rumble wavering while her attention drifted. I let my head droop against her muscled shoulder.

I woke up with my head lolled over her forearm, not shoulder, and my feet dangling like a doll’s. This girl, she carried me, her face screwed up in determination. Her feet crunched deep into the gravel path outside the Timucua burial exhibit. Huffing under the exertion, she kicked open the doors, me cradled in her arms like some whacked out honeymoon. But crossing this threshold wouldn’t lead to any life affirming nuptials. No, we’d face a holy man’s blessing, one she’d already called a curse.

Araceli lowered me to the ground and knelt. Her ponytailed hair had come loose and framed her face in soft curls, damp with sweat. I saw her knife flash. Felt warm blood spatter near my forehead.

“You again,” I heard Atofo grumble. His dark form perched on the exhibit railing, eyes glittering like polished obsidian.

“Not by choice, demon. He’s dying, you need to...” Araceli stopped, the words bitter on her tongue. “Help him.”

“And you are prepared to make the sacrifice?”

“I have made it!” she hissed, bitterly. “Not in your name. But this man found true faith tonight, and I am sworn to give my life to keep that spark alive.”

“He already had faith, chica,” Atofo said. “In me. My people. Then he pissed it away. The Deer Lady told me. Death can have him. Nobody else will.”

Her hand closed tighter on the dagger. Blood continued to drip from her forearm. I didn’t see the sword. The demon slayer. Had she left it behind to carry me?

“You’d watch him die?” Araceli said.

Atofo shifted menacingly, his body balanced at an impossible angle on the railing. “So. Fucking. What.”

Araceli’s eyes flashed and she sprang into a fighting stance. Daggers poised before her, she held one point near Atofo’s throat.

“Oh! Oh my white Jesus! She has a knife!” Atofo mocked. His lip curled. “So do I.” His knife, the one I carried, had appeared in his waiting hand.

I tried to speak and could only manage a bubble of blood. Araceli spun one of her daggers and placed the cool flat of the silver metal against my chest. The touch soothed my pain, but breathing was still a struggle.

“Demon, I will end you this night if you do not help him.”

Atofo’s feet curled against the railing, the taloned toenails making a bone-shivering screech. He extended one sharpened finger and traced the nail along the edge of her blade.

“I’m not trapped inside a thirty-year old virgin this time, conquistador. You are in my house. Everywhere,” he bellowed, “from sea to shining sea is my fucking house! Are you sure you want to dance?”

Araceli pressed nose to nose with the fomenting spirit. “Gladly.”

“Without your little demon killer? Huh?”

Araceli shifted uneasily.

They held still, blades ready, his talons set to rend. His mouth slowly spread into a cruel smile and I could see Araceli’s eyes glisten with tears which refused to fall down her determined cheeks. Something was wrong.

“Okay,” Atofo said, suddenly cheerful and relaxed. “But only because we could use a warrior. And I need to undo this clusterfuck he caused.”

I patted Araceli’s leg to tell her it was okay. She lowered her guard reluctantly then dropped to my level.

Atofo bent, his sharp features upside down in my view and a smirk full of humor and malice. He aimed his pointer finger at my forehead. Araceli tensed. I squeezed her knee, reassuring her. Atofo’s gaze went to her as he dug into my forehead harder than he ever had before. I winced and choked back a cry. Araceli wanted to lunge, but the steady pressure of my grip held her back. This was normal. This was how it worked.

Bending over, eyes never leaving Araceli, Atofo put his lips to the wound and drew in his breath. I felt the corruption ripple through the countless pathways of my lungs. It became a hardened mass, pulsing and heaving against organs and flesh. The coolness of Araceli’s blade grew unbearably hot. I cried out and she raised her hand in shock. Smoke trickled from where we’d touched.

A sudden pressure and the growing mass wriggled into my throat. When I thought I’d puke, the sensation of a spike being driven out through my sinuses, my skull, brought up a ragged scream instead. Atofo’s intake of air finished with a dense slurp.

“Got your cancer,” Atofo growled, no sign of his snide self, just a malevolence sharp as Araceli’s blades. He put his mouth next to my ear, hot breath and a rancid stench of decaying flesh. “We expect your faith in return.”

The darkness closed in.