Tropic of Darkness (18 page)

“Oh my God,” Hague protested, seeing what was about to happen.

And he started moving forward, except Luis and Manuel stopped him, with their hands against his chest.

“This is hideous!” Hague was barking.

“This is entirely necessary,
Señor
,” Torres responded calmly.

And he slit the bird's throat with one swift, practiced motion, letting some of its blood drain into the bowl.

Two white doves came next, to more protests from Hague. More blood went into the
omiero
.

Torres picked the bowl up, summoning the others to him.

“You must drink a little—it will give you strength. One sip is enough.”

Manuel and Luis complied immediately. And even Jack took a little. But Hague stiffened, drawing himself up as best he could manage, thrusting out his chin defiantly.

“Whatever else disgusting might be going on here, sir, I will not drink blood.”

Torres seemed to have been expecting that and nodded.

“Very well. But you must carry the mark of the cross, at least.” He'd produced the powder again. “See, it's only crushed eggshell.”

And he was reaching for Hague with it, when they heard a sound outside.

CHAPTER

THIRTY

It was only the faintest creak of a floorboard, but it couldn't have happened by itself. Somebody had stepped on it, which ruled out any phantom. Had anyone followed them inside?

Torres raised a finger to his lips, then tilted his flashlight beam away from the door, so as not to warn whoever was out there that he was coming. He stepped cautiously over, making very little sound. Jack and Luis followed suit. Manuel seemed uncertain about moving. And Hague was better left behind.

Torres and the others paused. The priest appeared to be holding his breath—perhaps they all were. Then they stepped out, swinging their flashlights around sharply.

A woman's face was revealed in the darkness.

Surprisingly, she stayed completely motionless, her dark eyes squinting in her withered face. She was shabbily dressed, her frame hunched over. Certainly not one of the twins, Jack registered after the initial shock

Torres raised a hand again, this time for calm.

“It's okay,” he told them softly. “I think I know who this is.”

He went forward a pace, addressing the woman.

“You would be another descendant of Camille, is that not so? But from a different line.”

It looked like the light was hurting her eyes. Her heavily veined hands kept coming partway up. Torres angled it away. But the woman still said nothing in response.

“A book that I own tells of a third—a later—daughter,” he continued. “If memory serves me, Esme. You're descended from her, yes?”

He got a nod that was almost imperceptible.

“You're the caretaker of this place?” Torres pressed on.

She
lived
here? Jack was aghast. He'd seen people inhabiting some pretty awful dumps since he'd come below the border. But nothing like this.

Manuel emerged from the room next moment, and was pushing his way fiercely at her before anyone could stop him.

“Was my brother-in-law here? A policeman?”

It seemed to goad the woman into action slightly. She stepped away, still facing them, and her eyes widened.

“A man with a gun? Yes,” she whispered. “The night before last.”

“And what happened to him?”

“They killed him, the sisters. Just as they'll kill you, if you don't go away. Right now.”

Her gaze swept across them and became imploring.

“I don't know what you think you're doing, but you need to save yourselves, gentlemen. Get out of this place.”

“No,
Señora,
” Torres answered gravely. “Leaving is the one thing that we simply cannot do.”

*   *   *

He even got her to tell the main part of her story. And Jack listened to it with a deepening sense that he was going mad. She'd been
born
in this place, spent her entire life here?
How could you even imagine anything like that?

The woman was clutching at her belly by the time she'd finished.
Just thirty years old,
Jack thought, staring at her dried-out face.
What the hell must she have been through in that time?

Only Torres seemed to be able to cope. He had the same air he'd displayed when he had first met Jack.

“There is a way to finish this,” he was explaining to her. “Join with us. With your help, we will be twice as strong. We're offering your unborn child a chance.”

But the woman wasn't in the least convinced. She simply shook her head again, then turned and moved away from the group of intruders, melting off into the shadows.

Manuel tried to go after her, but Torres stopped him.

“Let her go. She's no use to us in that frame of mind. And it's already later than I'd hoped.”

When he glanced back at the stairwell, the others could see what he meant. There was a large hole in the plaster at the top, the underbelly of the roof revealed. Many of the tiles were crooked, thin slivers of sunlight shining through.

And by the way that they were slanted and the faintly reddish tinge to them, evening was approaching.

*   *   *

Torres could feel the darkness coming, moving to the walls of the big house like some incoming tide. He had stayed reasonably calm up to this point, despite the exertions of the magic he'd been weaving. But fear—at last—began its poisonous trickle through his veins. He kept feeling the strange urge to abandon the others to their fate. And that was not a typical emotion.

Not too late,
a voice seemed to whisper, directly behind his ear.
Not too late to save yourself.

Were those his own thoughts, or were the twins already getting to him? The man clenched his fists. There was no choice but to stay here, and he knew that. He had to keep a grip on both himself and his surroundings. Was there anything that he had missed?

He went back into the room, gazing at the symbols that he'd chalked, satisfied that he had done everything right.

So he gestured to the others. “Step inside the circle. It's our best defense.”

He began to bring the candles out, and Luis helped.

The rest did as he asked, the elderly Canadian rather grudgingly. It was large enough to hold them all, but little more than that. Spread a ring like this too wide, and its power to protect them would be heavily diminished.

All that they could do was stand there. Torres craned his head around, and saw that they were not in the correct position.

“Stand around Jack,” he told the others. “Between him and the edges of the circle. He's the one they're going to try and get at, after all.”

He was asking them to use their own bodies as shields, and that provoked some hesitation. He did as he'd said immediately. Luis did the same. But Hague and Manuel were a little slower to follow.

Jack was looking awkward, and the high priest understood exactly why. This was a self-sufficient man, someone used to fighting his own battles. But there was no way that he could help himself in circumstances such as these. He had to accept that this was necessary.

Minutes passed. Torres felt his limbs start aching from the sheer tension of waiting. How much longer would they have to stay like this?

The corridor beyond the door looked darker than ever, its shadows opaque. And the light around them had grown a little dimmer too, in spite of the fact that the candles were nowhere near to burning down.

Someone behind him stiffened, jerked; had obviously noticed something. He heard one of the other men suck in breath, and realized what was making him do that.

The flames on the candles were flickering wildly.

Only . . . he couldn't feel any kind of breeze.

They continued to dance as he watched, casting silhouettes throughout the room with every twist and flutter. Shadow images of his companions lurched across the walls and floorboards, shifting constantly.

That gentle, faintly mocking voice returned behind his ear.

Too late,
it told him.
Yes
,
too late to run away, good priest. You really should have listened.

The flame of the nearest candle suddenly leapt up, stretching a hand's breadth in the air. Everyone in the circle went rigid.

Torres watched it carefully as it settled down again.

But when it jumped a second time, the flame extended a full meter. Every eye was glued to it.

It receded to its normal length, as if nothing untoward had happened.

But the third time, it actually broke free of its wick. Hurtled though the air, leaving a searing afterglow on the dimness.

It flew toward the nearest of the shelves. Touched the wick of one of the black candles, pausing very briefly before darting to the next.

Brand-new flames began to grow. In a few more seconds, every single one was lit.

The men were frozen, watching intently. Even Hague had let go of his supercilious expression, and his mouth was gaping.

Oily smoke had begun drifting from the hot black tallow, floating through the room and slowing down again in front of them.

It gathered there, writhing languidly.

And then, it began to coalesce.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-ONE

Dolores had moved off from the room, but not that far. Heading down the corridor, she'd reached another, narrower staircase, the kind that had once been used by servants. And had gone halfway down the first flight before stopping and turning round. She stood there, hunched over a little. Listening intently.

Her hearing was extraordinary inside this place. She could pick out every slightest sound, in its minutest detail. The men were talking amongst themselves. She found herself wondering which they were more of, brave or plain deluded. What did they imagine that they could achieve? But she remained there, motionless, until she started to feel the presence of the twins above her.

That finally made her move, turning to descend the flight again. There was no point in staying here, since there was absolutely nothing she could do.

Her pace kept getting faster. And she knew she ought not panic, but she couldn't seem to help herself.

They'll punish me.
The thought kept pounding at her as she scrambled downward.
When this is over, when the sisters have prevailed, they'll punish me for letting this intrusion happen in the first place.

There was nothing that she could have possibly done to stop it. But Lucia, in particular, would be in no mood for those kind of excuses, and would vent her rage to its inhuman fullest—she was pretty sure of that.

When Dolores reached the first floor hallway, she went through into the dining room. She wound up huddled underneath the long mahogany table, crouched there like some frightened animal.

She tipped her head to one side, listening for yells from upstairs. There were none so far, but she knew that wouldn't last much longer. She didn't want to hear it. She wanted to be somewhere else. But yet again, there was no choice.

One faint notion came into her thoughts. It went against everything she'd ever understood. But try as she might, she could not dispel the idea that—by some miracle—the men upstairs might just prevail. Impossible—she knew that too. But it kept wandering through her head.

They'll punish you for this as well,
she scolded herself angrily.
Punish you for your idiotic longings and your treasonous imaginings
.

The housekeeper closed her eyes, and tried to keep her mind completely blank.

*   *   *

When he saw the direction this was going, saw the shapes that were being created, Jack expected the smoke to form complete, fully visible bodies. The same two figures who'd appeared to him inside his dreams.

But it didn't happen, not at first. They were as insubstantial as echoes.

The smoke remained high in the air, and managed to arrange itself into a strange display of curved gray lines. He wasn't even sure what he was looking at, at first. Then comprehension dawned on him.

These were a pair of thinly detailed faces he was staring at, drawn in swift brief strokes on the dimness. He could just make out the cheekbones, and the mouths and ears.

Below those were four more smudges that were each partly segmented, and he thought that they might be two pairs of hands. The hands looked much as they had before, ready to grab hold of pretty much anything that came near them—like claws. A hardness started weighing down his stomach, but he couldn't shift his focus from them.

He could hear Luis's heavy breathing not far from his ear. And Leland Hague was muttering, “What
is
this?”

The final pale gray wisps of smoke drifted into place, becoming dense, creating circles where the sisters' eyeballs ought to be. Then they took on very faint traces of color—green for one, and hazel for the other. These glowed in the darkness with a pallid luminosity.

No one in the room was moving; all were frozen to the spot.

It was Torres who broke the impasse. The
Babaaláwo
had set his carved staff down on the edge of the chalked circle. Now, he snatched it up, and began yelling out.

The sisters' reaction was worse than Jack could possibly have imagined.

Lucia's gaze widened a little, a smirk forming on her insubstantial mouth. Isadora's gaze hardened, becoming icy and savage.

Torres kept on chanting. And then, without any warning, he bent down and scooped up the bowl in which he'd mixed the purifying fluid, the
omiero
.

And flung its contents at the shapes in one swift motion.

The stuff never reached them. Halfway through the air, it shimmered, then flared up and blazed.

The liquid fizzled away, leaving not even the faintest curl of vapor.

Aghast, Torres stared at the figures before him. There was no doubt in his mind that he had done everything right. No one could have prepared the
omiero
better. It should have been like acid to the twins, but it had had absolutely no effect.

The bowl dropped from his nerveless grasp, smashing to the floor. Instinctively, he crossed his forearms over his chest in an attempt to shield himself.

The outlines of the two ghost women got abruptly stronger, coming into focus like a lens had been turned in the camera that was reality. They were like they had been in Jack's dreams, fleshy, real, fully formed.

The green-eyed sister's smile grew ominously broader. And her twin's gaze burned so fiercely that it looked as if it might catch fire. They started to lift higher and move noticeably closer. Somebody in the group let out a moan.

Their narrow fingers twitched, long, sharp nails glinting.

A curious new sound began to fill the room.

It was like some massive breath being released. But it did not slow down or peter off. It kept resounding, taking on a higher pitch.

The hems of Torres's clothes began to flap. A proper wind was blowing up inside the house—inside the very room. He felt himself go rigid.

His skin was being pressed back on his cheeks. His hair was being ripped at, and he was finding it hard to breathe. The current of air round him was transforming to a gale.

He realized with sudden terror what the twins were trying to do.

“Get down on the floor!” he yelled out. “Hold on to each other! Hold on tight!”

The wind rose to a deafening shriek. The pressure of the rushing air made any movement difficult. But he knew that at least one part of his preparations had had some effect.

The ring of chalk. The candles inside it were flickering insanely, but not going out. The circle that he'd outlined—it was genuinely protecting them.

He managed to turn clumsily around. Grabbed Jack by the shoulders, started pushing the man down. But there were problems he had not foreseen.

In the first place, there'd barely been room for all five of them when they had been standing up. Sit down with their legs splayed, and they'd edge outside the circle.

And what about Hague? Torres glanced over, and could make out the older man's horrified expression. He looked like he was going into shock, unable to take in any of this.

But it was the American who most needed protecting. Torres pressed his mouth against Jack's ear.

“They're trying to blow us out of the circle! Get down on the floor!”

He dragged at the
Norteamericano
. And the others, following his lead, tried to hunker down as well.

All except for Luis, who appeared to have completely lost his mind.

Purest fear was doing that. Torres could only stare across, horrified by the look on his face.

His jaw was hanging wide, his tongue on the verge of lolling out. There was something primal flaring in his eyes, a kind of maddened electricity. Torres thought he could see what was coming. Didn't release his grip on Jack, but reached out with his other hand.

His fingers groped through the swiftly moving air. But he couldn't reach the younger man. He tried yelling a warning to the others, but his words were torn to shreds.

Luis started edging sideways.

The boy's mouth had started moving, but it didn't look like he was properly forming words. Far more like the babbling of a mind that was becoming rapidly unhinged. Jack now saw what was going on, and edged his body toward Luis.

But it was far too late.

Luis noticed the attempt to grab him. Backed away another step. And after that, Torres could only watch.

For the love of all the saints!
The boy had stepped outside the circle.

Torres's focus shot up to the twins, expecting them to close in on him immediately. They had seen what had happened, but they both just grinned a little wider.

And young Luis took that for a chance. He dropped to a low crouch, bolted, and was gone into the corridor.

*   *   *

The wind seemed to follow Luis as he ran, its cold breath on his neck.

If he had been thinking clearly, Luis would have realized that that in itself was very strange. It had been blowing in the opposite direction, back in the dim central room. And how could any current flow in two directions at once?

But every last scrap of reason had evaporated; his mind was no longer controlling his body, which was being driven by pure impulse.

Alone
. That was the notion echoing through his thoughts as he pounded down the corridor. He was beginning to see the terrible mistake he'd made. At least there had been other people around him, back in the chalked circle. That was no longer the case.

He was now alone with the horror. Wanted to turn back, but couldn't see how that was possible. The only thing that he could do was keep on running.

The corridor seemed longer than when they'd first come up, the landing and its balustrades impossibly distant. He pumped his legs even harder.

And the screeching, moaning gale . . . it seemed to be propelling him along by this stage, making him go faster than he could have on his own.
Why should that be?

By the time he burst onto the landing, he was going so fast that he could barely stop. He shrieked, stumbling forward. His thigh collided with the banisters, and he had to grab on tight to stop himself from tipping.

Luis stared down, breath hissing in his skull. Everything below him seemed to blur into one solid mass. He jerked away, then tried to pivot around and carry on.

But he couldn't manage it. The wind was holding him firmly in place. Its pressure became so intense that his whole body from the waist up was forced over the drop again.

Hadn't there been something else down there, something he had noticed when they'd first come in?
A massive, cast-iron chandelier, hanging down the stairwell on a heavy chain. But now, he couldn't see it.

Things that size didn't simply disappear.

Then everything around him seemed to change. It wasn't physical—he didn't think so, anyway. It was more a matter of perception.

The wind was still there, and still holding him. But its noise—which had been deafening—weakened to a subtler tone.

The darkness seemed to lessen slightly. And the additional light was not coming from any source. The air around him simply looked like it had taken on a hazy quality.

The tiles below him became crisper, more distinct. They looked closer than they had been when he had first stared at them.

But the whole rest of the house became as insubstantial as a close grouping of shadows.

And after a short while, he began to realize what this was like.

It was like being partly in a dream. And how could that possibly be?

That was when the tall, slim woman wandered out across the tiles below him.

He could only make out the top of her head at first, the black, lustrous hair. That and her olive shoulders, and the fact she had a long dress on, shimmering but also black. He only got brief glances of her feet, but they looked like they were bare. She kept on walking slowly until she was directly beneath him. Then she turned her face up, smiling.

She had hazel eyes. And Luis felt his body jolt again.

This was getting crazier with every passing second. The floor below him—it looked even nearer. And the walls around him had become so faint he almost imagined he could see the coastline through them. That strange glow that lit the air around him was still hazy, but it had strengthened.

It seemed to be coming from the slender woman's eyes. That was the genuinely weird thing. They were shining so brightly, like a pair of harsh flares behind amber glass. And the sight ought to have frightened him. He knew that. But it did not. That brilliant glow mesmerized him, like a moth. Luis felt his frame start to relax.

Isadora's full lips parted. He could hear a sigh come drifting out, and it was pleasant to his ears.

This wasn't right. He needed to be afraid of her. And ought to still be trying to get away. But something pushed that back to the far reaches of his mind.

He could only stare down at her, utterly transfixed.

Her lips parted once again. “Luis?”

Her voice seemed to echo. His own mouth was painfully dry. He ran his tongue around it.

“Yes?”

“Why were you running, Luis? Why exactly are you so afraid?”

He tried to remember, but could not. It seemed very distant to him, and he couldn't pin the recollection down.

The hazy light was working through his head and making him relax.

Isadora reached out to him with both her arms. The fingernails were painted black, and bracelets made of jet and amber encircled her narrow wrists.

“Come to me.”

He tried to glance over at the staircase, but he couldn't.

“Just jump. You won't be hurt.”

He could see that she was right. The floor wasn't that far down anymore. Luis paused, then climbed up on the rail.

And when he pushed himself off it, something miraculous happened. As he launched his body out into thin air, the wind seemed to grasp him. It closed around his body like a gentle, guiding hand. And instead of plunging down, he drifted out above the tiles.

He'd had dreams like this when he had been a child. This felt
wonderful
. And he was sure it was her doing. Her amazing gift to him. Luis stared down.