Keeping himself hidden from any regulars who might see him, he moved around the perimeter of the church, looking for a spot where the protection weakened, but he didn’t find one.
Fine. Brett didn’t need his body to do what was needed. He sat on the steps and focused on separating his energy from his body so that he could slip inside the church in astral form. That didn’t work either. Son of a bitch. Who had set such a powerful protection? The Legionnaires had grown their strengths to the level where they could set curses, something even he could not do. But now they could block astral travelers too? He thought he was the only one who could operate at that level.
He stood and turned to stare at the ancient church. What was inside that needed such high-grade protections?
Whatever it was, Brett was going to have to wait for the congregants to leave before scanning them about what the church was hiding and which Legionnaire had killed his men.
When the service ended, the villagers spilled out of the main exit. Brett centered himself, quieting his mind, and let his energy move among the people, slipping through them like an invisible filter, sensing their thoughts and emotions. Most were filled with a deep peace from the sermon, but one little boy was tangled with fear.
That negative emotion drew Brett like a bee to a bottle of soda. He summoned the boy closer, all while keeping himself unseen. Young minds were such sweet, easy fruit to pick. They held no resistance to Brett’s probing.
The boy was afraid of la Tunda. Good. He should be. The ghouls kept these villagers and all Brett’s workers in line. He reached into the boy’s memories to see what he knew of the Legionnaire who’d wreaked havoc here, and was quickly shown an image of an average man from the village. Youngish. Olive skin, dark, straight hair, dark eyes. Not the man Brett had expected—none of Liege’s first four looked like that man.
Had the Legionnaire shielded himself, or had this boy’s memory been manipulated later, after the fact?
Impossible to know. Brett moved on to a different topic. Who told you about seeing la Tunda?
The kid pointed to another kid, this one a teenager. Brett summoned him over. Pablo was his name. To their parents or anyone observing their discussion, the boys were standing near a low retaining wall, staring at a tree, talking with each other.
Pablo wasn’t as malleable as the younger one. The older kid had worked at Brett’s mine. He had indeed seen the ghouls. Brett was shown a man fighting them. The kid hadn’t seen much of the actual fight, because he’d been forced to hide his face, but Pablo had had seen the man who’d rescued him. They’d walked through the jungle back to the village.
The man he’d walked with was someone Brett knew well.
Merc.
Interesting. So Merc could now set curses. The mutations Brett and the Legionnaires had taken were still evolving, so it wasn’t surprising that any mutant could do new things. The more their physiology and neural networks changed, the more their potential skills changed. What was surprising was the power that setting curses gave to the Legion.
Brett was about to release the boys when a last tidbit slipped through to him—there had been foreigners here in town. Neither kid knew their names, but they’d visited the death pits with cameras, making a movie they were going to publish online.
Brett smiled. That would be good to look into further. He might find something for leverage. And if that didn’t pan out, he could always use the older boy to get to Merc. That Legionnaire had some kind of bond with the kid. Burdened with a conscience, Merc might fight to protect him.
Poor Merc. He couldn’t stand to see children harmed.
Losing his own had almost killed him.
Ash’s ride from the airport shuttle dropped her off at her driveway, completing the long journey home.
She’d never been so glad to be back. The late March sun was warm on her back and highlighted her bungalow’s tiny cottage garden, ready to burst into life if there were no more snowstorms that season.
She had a lot to do to get ready for work in the morning. She’d discovered from previous travels that jumping back into a routine immediately following a vacation was the best way to sidestep the adrenaline hangover that lingered after coming home. After what she’d experienced in Valle de Lágrimas, she fully expected a doozy of a trip hangover.
She went through her kitchen, living room, and down the hall to her bedroom, where she dumped everything on her bed. Her routine upon returning from a trip was always the same. Drink a big glass of water. Unpack. Shower. Laundry. Grab a bite. Get ready for the next day. Have a glass of wine. Prep for bed. Then finally crash.
Thinking about Merc, the village saint, was nowhere on that list.
She stripped and got into the shower. When the hot water hit her back, her mind wandered to all that had happened in the last few days. She’d had time and distance now, enough to think about the mystery man and Valle de Lágrimas in a more rational, dispassionate way.
And still none of it made sense. The only thing she could figure was that she’d been taken in by a hoax perpetrated by the town. No one could set curses, or condemn living beings to sit in chairs until their bodies died of thirst or starvation. No one could survive a hailstorm of bullets or summon home a long-lost son by simply blessing a medallion.
But it had felt possible. He had felt real. All of it had. And if none of it had happened, then how could she have had that vision in the pit? Her visions, even when she couldn’t confirm them, always felt like the truth.
There was only one answer, and she liked it not at all. The town had messed with her mind. Whether through drugs or hypnosis, she didn’t know. She closed her eyes and wondered at her luck surviving her experiences in the village.
Confusion and exhaustion were a dangerous combination. She sat on the seat in her shower. Unable to fight back her wild emotions, she wept.
I told you I wasn’t worth your tears.
Ash startled. That voice was in her head, but it wasn’t hers. It was a man’s—the same man from her vision at the fort, the one who’d spoken to her in the pit.
It was as if he was inside her head, which wasn’t possible. Her visions were never long-lasting, more like short snippets of scenes that passed almost before she was aware of having them.
Whatever it was, it would wear off as soon as she got back to normal life. She had a business card from Larry. She would call him later in the week to see if his memories, and those of his group, matched hers.
Having decided on a course of action, Ash felt better.
After her shower, she got things ready for work the next morning—her laptop, her lunch, her outfit. Tomorrow was just going to be a regular day.
And damn if she didn’t need some normalcy.
She was too tired for her glass of wine. Instead, she settled into her bed, then pulled the covers up. She loved her little bedroom, in her little house. Everything about it suited her perfectly. She set her alarm and shut her eyes. She lived in a college town in an area not far from Old Town. Kids from the university were often out and about at all hours of the night. She held still and listened to her world—or what she could hear through her closed windows.
This was home. She was back, and she was safe. The excitement, the fear, the nightmare of the man who haunted her was over.
Ash still felt out of sorts the next morning the whole way into the office. It was maddening to think she’d let herself be victimized by the village hoax. She wondered how many other tourists were going to get taken in by the same shenanigans.