“I didn’t know that would happen.”
“But she knew,” Esmeralda said. “She was waiting. She jumped right into me. I didn’t even know that could happen.”
“Is it because she’s like us?”
“How would I know?”
“She talked about past lives. Like reincarnation,” Tommy said.
“I don’t believe in that.” Esmeralda’s dark amber eyes smoldered with anger. “I did what you wanted. Now take me home.”
“You have to let me talk to her again.”
“No.” Esmeralda’s voice grew quiet. “She scares me.”
“I thought you liked being scared.”
She glared at him. “I’m not letting her take control of me again.”
“I have to talk with her.” Tommy reached for Esmeralda’s arm.
She walked backwards towards the road, keeping her distance from him, watching his reaching hand warily.
“Esmeralda, wait—” Tommy said.
“I said no!” Esmeralda turned to run, tripped over a stone, and sprawled in the road.
“Let me help you.” Tommy shed his other glove and reached for her with both hands.
“No! Don’t touch me! Don’t…”
He seized her arms and pushed fear into her, the way he had with the prison guards. She shook hard in his grasp.
“You will do as I say,” Tommy told her. “Pick up the skull.”
“No,” she whispered, though she was shaking in fright. “Find someone else.”
“There is no one else.”
Mentally, he pushed harder, and she cried out.
“Then find someone else…who will be possessed by her,” Esmeralda whispered. “I’ll put her in someone else. But I would rather die than let her inside me again.”
Tommy was impressed by her ability to resist him. Maybe it was because she had a power of her own, he thought. Or maybe she was just incredibly stubborn.
“Okay,” Tommy said. “But then you have to come with me.”
“Yes,” she whispered, close to tears now. “Whatever you want.”
“That’s right,” Tommy said. “Whatever I want.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
When Alexander stepped up into the rear of the box truck, the two men with machine guns stopped talking with each other and watched him warily, their hands tight on their weapons.
In this part of Mexico, people knew Alexander as El Brujo, the sorcerer. His hair and eyes were dark, his skin a deep bronze from life in the sun. He wore a black Egyptian cotton t-shirt and dark, mirrored sunglasses. From a distance, it would be hard to guess that he was a gringo from Brentwood, a recent Stanford drop-out pursuing an interesting opportunity south of the border.
Inside the truck, three dead bodies lay in a puddle on the floor, flies already crawling on them as they rotted in the heat. The fourth bandito, the one that was still alive, knelt with his hands roped behind him. One eye was swollen shut, and he bled from both nostrils, but he kept his spine upright like a well-trained soldier.
The survivor was tough and wouldn’t speak, and this was why Papa Calderòn had sent in El Brujo.
“Hello, Carlos.” Alexander spoke to him in Spanish. Alexander had known both English and Spanish from the moment he was born, along with hundreds of other languages, most of them dead. “My friends tell me you aren’t cooperating. They say you refuse to speak. This is very rude of you, Carlos.”
Carlos glared defiantly at Alexander and said nothing.
“Who sent you, Carlos?” Alexander asked. “If you don’t tell us, we will unleash the greatest horror you have ever seen. The remainder of your life will be a long waking nightmare, if you do not speak now.”
Carlos did not speak.
“I don’t want to be here, Carlos,” Alexander said. “I should be on a plane right now. I have important business in the north. Don’t slow me down, Carlos. I don’t have time to play.”
Carlos didn’t answer.
“You killed our driver,” Alexander said. “And his bodyguard. You stole our shipment. Now the situation is simple, no? You tell us where to find our missing product—you tell us who has it now—and you live. If not…” He gestured to the three bullet-riddled bodies on the floor. “Who sent you? Was it Toscano?”
“Nobody sent us,” Carlos said. “We are independent.”
“Independent?” Alexander laughed. “You want to say you moved against Papa Calderòn, in this state, with the blessing of no one? I am to believe you are that stupid?”
Carlos just stared at him.
“We do not believe you are that stupid.” Alexander knelt in the pool of three dead men’s blood, paying no mind to the damage done to his Armani jeans. He grabbed the hair of a dead man lying face down in the congealed blood.