"Maximiliano, and you will stop them from cutting it off of me, because you know it is keeping me alive. It would be the same as shooting me in the head now that I am handcuffed and no longer a danger to anyone."
He was right, unfortunately, but I still didn't hear the second ambulance so we had time to play with him. If I played well enough maybe he'd help us stop the zombie that was sobbing behind us.
I drew one of the smaller silver-edged blades from a wrist sheath.
"What are you going to do, Blake?" Hudson asked.
"Search him for magic. If he has a gris-gris to help heal himself, he could have other things on him that could harm us."
"We patted him down," Hill said.
"Magic can hide better than a gun," I said. I moved closer to him, and he started struggling so that Hill and Montague had to kneel down and hold him for me. Sutton finally knelt on his legs, because Max didn't want me near him with the knife. There had to be more than just the gris-gris for him to be this upset, or there had to be something about the gris-gris that he didn't want me to see. Either way, I was going to search him for dangerous magical objects, and I was going to make it thorough.
"Hold him still, boys, I wouldn't want to cut him by accident." I started at the shoulder of his shirt, along the seam. I wanted his sleeves off first. I kept my blades sharp; it didn't take much to slice through the seams and start peeling down the cloth to expose the smooth skin of his arms. He kept trying to move, but he had three large men sitting on him who knew how to subdue and hold someone. His right arm was clean, no jewelry at all.
I duck walked to his left side and he tried to struggle harder. They leaned on him more, forcing his face down into the pool of his own blood. He was afraid now. Why? I couldn't cut it off him now that we all knew it was helping keep him alive; he was right about that. It would take weeks or longer of court hearings to get permission to take the gris-gris off him, and by that time his body would have healed enough that he might not die when it was removed, unfortunately. But he knew that, so why was he afraid? Was there something else on him that he didn't want us to see?
I peeled his left sleeve down and there it was on his upper arm, snugged in tight so it dimpled his flesh. "That's a gris-gris. They don't have to be armbands. A lot of them are small bags on a cord, but for magic that keeps you this alive when you're this hurt, you'll want it attached to you."
I put up my knife and started to fish for the small flashlight I kept in one of the many pockets on the tac pants. Most of them held extra ammo, but not all of them. Hudson figured out what I was doing and hunkered down beside me with his own flashlight.
It was a band made of black hair woven together. I looked at his short black hair. It wasn't long enough to do this. Then the light picked up a strand of blond hair, and paler brown, and another shade of brown, and another blond. I touched Hudson's wrist and used it to move the light. There was hair to match every zombie I'd seen on the videos.
"You son of a bitch," I said.
"What is it, Blake?" Sutton asked.
"The smaller pieces of hair woven around the main band match all the zombies on the sex tapes. DNA will double-check that it belongs to all his victims, but the main hair is going to be Estrella's, isn't it, you fucking son of a bitch?"
He was quiet now.
"Not so chatty now, are you, Max?"
"I am Maximiliano," he said, though his voice was strained, because Hill was forcing his face down into the grass and blood.
"I don't care if you're Mother Teresa, you are going to die for this."
"I took hair from them, that doesn't prove I killed anyone."
"The hair doesn't, but a few voodoo expert witnesses, and all the practitioners of your faith will tell the truth, Max. They won't want to be anywhere near this kind of soul debt to the loa, or whatever else you invoked to do this piece of evil shit."
"Tell us what you see, Blake," Hudson said.
"He didn't tell us we wouldn't find the bottle that held Estrella's soul. He said I'd never find what contains her soul, and if I did, I wouldn't know how to free her."
"What's the significance?" Hill asked.
"Yeah, I don't understand," Montague said.
"He's the bottle."
"What?" Montague asked.
"He's tied Estrella's soul to that gris-gris and him."
"That's not possible," Maximiliano said. "Everyone will tell you it's not possible."
"They will, but you figured it out anyway, didn't you, you evil piece of shit?"
"You'll never prove it, and you'll never get anyone to be able to explain the spell to a jury, or a judge."
"We'll find someone," Hudson said.
"It's an original spell," I said. "Like his mother before him, he's real creative when it comes to evil."
He gave a small smile. Hill pressed a knee harder into his shoulders, leaning more into the neck and head to grind him into the bloody grass. "Don't smile," Hudson said.
"He's used soul magic, which isn't even supposed to work, to trap Estrella and use her soul, her being a zombie, to give him some of the same ability to take damage, but he'll heal, unlike her."
"You mean she's stuck like that, with a hole in her side?" Sutton asked.
"Zombies can't heal injuries, so if we can't free her soul, yeah."
Max smiled again. Hill ground more weight into holding him down. Max finally made a noise that sounded like pain, so he could still feel it; good.
He spoke between gritted teeth. "I did not expect someone to shoot a hole in her."
"You shouldn't have used her as a shield then," I said.
I could hear sirens now; the ambulance was on its way.
"What can we do for her then?" Hill asked.
"Hope that sunup steals her mind away, and she's only afraid at night."
"Her soul doesn't vanish with the sunrise," he said, voice still strained.
All the men leaned harder on him, grinding him into the ground and making him bleed faster, but it wouldn't kill him. Until we either removed the gris-gris, or found a way to destroy Estrella's zombie, he might not be able to die. Why is it that the really evil bastards are so fucking afraid of death? Cowards, such cowards.
It was two ambulances, and we had to let the paramedics take him, and her, though once they found out she was a zombie they seemed at a loss. One EMT asked me, "Can we sedate a zombie? Can we make her comfortable?"
"I don't know."
Then I realized that I'd been stupid, so caught up in the monstrous parts of what talent with the dead could do that I'd forgotten there might be better uses for my gifts. I went over to the zombie where she was strapped to the gurney, still whimpering and saying it hurt. I doubted it really hurt, but it could have been like phantom limb pain in an amputee. Some of them can feel pain in their missing parts for years afterward. Estrella expected the wound to hurt, so it did, and it certainly was scaring the hell out of her. If I'd known I couldn't free her soul tonight, I'd have still shot through her to save Connie, but I would have regretted it beforehand a bit more.
She looked up at me with wide, dark eyes. I took her hand in mine and aimed my necromancy at her. I thought, Be calm, don't be afraid. I whispered it to her, and watched her face lose some of the terror, felt her body relax.
Max yelled, "What are you doing, Anita?"
I ignored him, but Estrella jumped, flinching and whimpering. She knew his voice all right, and it meant bad things. "He can't hurt you anymore, Estrella. You're safe." That was both true and a lie, but it filled her eyes with calm again. It helped her relax.
"She's mine! Her soul is mine! Mine!"
I smiled down at the pretty face, the calm zombie that didn't know it was dead. She smiled back. "You're safe. Calm."
"I'm safe, calm," she repeated.
I patted her hand and put it on top of the blanket they'd strapped over her, as they moved her toward the ambulance. I went to talk to Max before they loaded him. We were going to accompany that am
bulance, because when Hudson had asked me if Max might be able to use his magic to escape from the ambulance, or hospital, I honestly couldn't say yes or no. He'd already done a piece of magic that should have been impossible, so all bets were off.
"What did you do to her?" he asked, straining against the straps that held him down and the handcuffs on both wrists.
"I helped her be less afraid."
"I want her afraid. I want her to remember that she only has herself to blame for this."
"Why, because she dumped your ass? Stalker much, Max?"
"Maximiliano, and she's mine, Anita, mine! You keep your magic off of her!"
"She listens to me, to my necromancy, when you've got a piece of her soul trapped in you, and you still can't keep me from controlling her."
"I stopped you over the computer."
"Yeah, because you could touch the zombie and I couldn't, but now I can touch her and you can't. I'm betting I can control her, even if you don't want me to. I'll keep her calm and unafraid while we get a judge to sign off on removing the gris-gris so we can free her soul, because trafficking in human parts, even souls, is a felony. Did you know that?"
"How do you prove I have her soul?"
"I don't have to, someone tried to sell their soul on eBay a few years back and a judge ruled that a soul is the same as any human organ. It's a felony to sell pieces of ourselves."
"Fine, take it, it still won't prove that I did anything to earn an execution, and by the time you get through all the hearings to remove the gris-gris I'll have healed. It will be years in court before you can prove anything. Magic is so hard to explain to a jury, and I'll get to tell them what a bastard my father is, and how he abandoned me. His wife isn't going to like knowing that he had a bastard child with Dominga Salvador."
Max was right about that.
"Juries love videos, Maximiliano. The sex slavery angle will make them hate you. By the time they see it all, they will be thinking there but for the grace of God go I, or my sister, my daughter, my wife, my child. They'll put the needle in your arm themselves by the time we're done with you."
"A good lawyer will make sure those videos never see a jury, Anita. They are too prejudicial, and would bias the jury against me. If convicted it would be magical malfeasance, which means my execution would be swift. They won't take the chance of getting the verdict overthrown after I'm dead--that doesn't look good on a judge's record."
"What was your major in college again, Maximiliano?"
"Prelaw."
"Of course it was." I smiled at him.
He didn't like the smile.
"But, Max, all I have to do is get a court order to remove all dangerous magical items from you. I can honestly say that I don't know exactly what the gris-gris does. I mean, after all I don't do voodoo, not really. If we cut it off tonight, I think three bullets in the chest will be enough that natural causes will do it for us."
"You'll never get a judge to sign off while I'm this hurt."
I leaned in and spoke low. "You're probably right, but I'm going to try anyway."
He smiled, smug and safe behind magic too complicated to explain to most judges and nothing quite hard enough to be called evidence. He should have been safe as they bundled him up into the ambulance and we got in the Bear Cat and followed him. I didn't want him safe. I didn't want Estrella to be trapped in her ruined body for weeks while we fought this out in court.
I found Manny and his whole family in the waiting room outside surgery. I was still dressed for SWAT, so it took Mercedes a second to recognize me. She looked like a slightly younger version of Connie. She got up and came to me, hugging me. "Thank you for rescuing them!"
Then Rosita was there, all five-ten of her with her wide shoulders and nearly square shape. Her hair was back in a bun at the nape of her neck, so she could still undo her hair and let Manny brush it out at night. It was one of the things they'd done since they married in their teens. She'd probably have been embarrassed that I knew that, but I liked knowing it. It was sweet to know they still loved each other like that, after so many years. Connie hugged me and started to cry, which she hadn't done at the cemetery. Manny hugged me last.
"How's Tomas?" I asked.
He took me off to one side of the room away from the women in his life. "He'll live, but they aren't sure how hurt he is, and after the . . . man shot him he stomped his leg, broke it badly."
I thought about Tomas being fast enough to make State, and good enough to be scouted for high schools in the area, and even some colleges. He could run like the wind, Manny had said. I was sad I hadn't gone to one of the track meets now. "Max needs to die, Manny."
A look as bleak as any I'd ever seen filled his eyes. "Didn't he kill those girls and raise them as zombies? That will earn him a warrant of execution."
"We can't prove he killed them, not easily."
"He will be a danger to my family and to you while he is alive."
"I know, and if he could die we'd have taken care of it tonight."
"What do you mean, if he could die?"
I weighed the rules against sharing ongoing investigations against getting Manny's voodoo expertise, and you know what I decided. He was my friend, and this man had already traumatized Manny's family. I told him what I knew.
"So he has to kill the women and take their souls, and their hair represents that, or is it just their deaths that feed the magic?" Manny asked.
"I don't know, you're better at voodoo than I am, you tell me."
"There is always one thing you must never do, or it breaks the magic of a gris-gris like this," he said.
"I know. The last time I encountered a gris-gris like this, one kind of blood fed it, and another kind of blood broke the spell. There was no blood on this one, only the hair woven around a leather band."
"Women's hair?"
"Yes."
"And he was going to use a knife on Connie, but he never used the blade on Tomas."
"Yeah." I frowned at him, not following his logic, but letting him think it out.
"I wonder if a man's hair would be enough to break the spell?"
"I don't understand."
"Wrap a man's hair around the band, not a woman's, or maybe just something that has a man's DNA on it."
"Maybe, but if we know that would break the spell and potentially kill him, we still can't do it legally. It would be the same as putting a bullet in his head tonight."
"I suppose so, but for later, once it's removed from him, you still have to break the spell to free the last zombie."
"Okay, so boy parts, like boy cooties," I said, smiling.
He didn't smile back. "They don't know if Tomas will ever walk right again, let alone run."
"I'm so sorry, Manny."
He nodded, looking as grim as I'd ever seen him. "You brought my children home alive. Connie will still be getting married and Tomas will be in the wedding even if we have to push him down the aisle in a wheelchair. We are all alive, Anita, thanks to you." He grasped my hand in his and then hugged me again. I hugged him back, and then the surgeon was there to tell them some good news. The bullet had been an abdominal wound, so he'd lost a lot of blood internally, but he was going to make it. The orthopedic surgeon thought he'd be able to set Tomas's leg, and with a lot of physical therapy and rehab he'd be able to walk. He was young and in good shape; there was even hope that he'd run again.
There was a lot of crying and hugging again, and I got to leave them on a good note. I visited Estrella's room then, and she was calm, peaceful, but still trapped aware. Maximiliano so needed to die for what he'd done to her, not to mention everything else.
"I'm not afraid anymore," the zombie told me. "Thank you."
"De nada," I said, and though it's Spanish for "you're welcome," it literally means, "of nothing." This time it was how I felt. I couldn't free her soul. I couldn't make her forget everything. I couldn't put her peacefully in her grave. All I could do was keep her calm and unafraid while we fought in
court to free her from Max's slavery.
Her eyes grew wide, and she reached out. I took her hand without thinking, and I felt her "die." One minute she was in there and the next she was gone. What the hell?
My phone rang, and made me jump. "Blake here," I said.
"Where are you?" It was Hudson.
"In the zombie's room, Estrella's room. She just went . . . dead. She's gone. I don't know what happened."
"I just got a call from the hospital, Maximiliano is dead. He died of his wounds."
"He couldn't die of his wounds," I said.
"I know."
"Shit, I'll check it out."
"Make sure you have witnesses when you're with the body, Blake. You have a personal connection, don't give them room to blame you for this."
"I haven't done a damn thing."
"Just be cautious, that's all I'm saying."
"Fine, I'll keep a nurse or someone with me."
"Make sure you do." He hung up, and I went in search of our dead bad guy.
There was a nurse and a doctor with me. "One minute he was fine," Nurse O'Reily said. "I stepped out of the room for just a minute and then his monitors sounded and he was dead."
I put on a pair of surgical gloves. "I got a call that he'd died of his wounds, is that true?"
"He took three large-caliber rounds to the chest cavity, so yes, I'd say it's a safe bet that they'll list cause of death as gunshot," Dr. Pendleton said, frowning at me.
"I need to check one thing on him."
"What?" Pendleton asked.
"Magic," I said, and used my gloved hands to slip the sleeve of his hospital gown away from his left upper arm. I expected the gris-gris to be gone, but it was still there. Estrella's thick black hair was still woven tight around his arm. The colored hairs of his other victims were still there, too.
"It looks fine," I said.
"I read the notes, and you thought that was helping him heal the bullet wounds."
"Yes," I said.
"The notes said it wasn't to be removed under any circumstances, and none of us even touched it," Nurse O'Reily said.
"You'd have to cut it off, and it's whole," I said.
"Did it just stop working for him?" she asked.
"I honestly don't know, I'm not an expert on this type of charm."
"I always hate the paperwork when magic gets in my hospital," the doctor said.
"Magic complicates everything," the nurse said.