“Maxine, no. I’ve never used my empathy with you like that. I fuckin’ swear, I would never… It’s just… just…” She looked down at her palms.
“It’s just you might feel that way, Maxine, because everyone who Linda has been in ritual with… I suspect you’re permanently linked.”
Both of the women glared at Fonsi and yelled, “What?!”
“Linda, I read so much about your empathy right before I came down to DC for the first time, to check out the pastor’s place,” he said. “I was really excited to meet you. El Gran Libro, it says that those who’ve been gifted by Elegua with the power of empathy—a crossroads gift—that it’s bestowed upon those who can hold a multitude of minds within their own. A phenomenal amount of resilience is required. Linda, I think for all your Broken Hearts, since you’ve made contact, that you’ve remained connected.”
“I… I didn’t know.” Linda thought of the phantom voices that swam in her mind after all the years she’d been in ritual. Maybe the voices… maybe they weren’t phantoms at all. Was she, in fact, tuned into other people’s lives in real time?
Was she hearing Maxine in real time?
She turned to her assistant. “I swear to you, Max… I didn’t know…”
Maxine glared at Linda with the most disdainful scowl. She said nothing, as if doubt and distrust had devoured language.
“I… I made a mistake,” Linda continued. “Once, with my gift. There was someone in my life that I… we’ll figure this out.” As the wordstumbled forth, Linda realized that she wasn’t ready to talk about Imani. Not when there was an emergency. “But right now, we have to focus on how we can make sure the dorlis is permanently destroyed. Make sure that people are safe. We need to…”
The office suddenly grew dark. The light from outside vanished, as if a thunderstorm was about to arrive out of the blue.
“Whoa,” Fonsi said. “What…”
“Fuck!” Pain seared through Linda’s head. She tried her best to remain upright but fell to her knees. Maxine ran to her side, bent down, and placed her arms around Linda’s shoulders.
“What… what is it?” Maxine asked.
“I can feel…” Linda tried to find the words. What had just entered her mind, a bleak tarry darkness. Twisted, a mix of rage and pain and fear that wanted to lash out.
The dorlis.
“It’s here. The dorlis is here.”
“What?!” Maxine yelled.
“It’s coming after me.” Linda pushed through the pain, rose from the floor, and walked to the door, knowing what she was going to find. Fonsi and Maxine followed her outside. The trio stopped in their tracks right in front of the town house.
A massive obsidian cloud hovered high in the sky, writhing, twisting. Easily the size of a city block. Ever shifting, as if deciding what shape it needed to take. The contours of its shadowy folds limned by a bright crimson. Somewhere within that nebulous mass, Linda was certain, a pair of red eyes hovered.
All this talk about figuring out how to locate the entity—waste of time. They wouldn’t have to worry about finding the dorlis because the dorlis had found them.
The silence of the world fell away, replaced by a chorus of screams.People ventured from their homes or places of work and gawked at the sky. Some scurried back inside. Others took to the street and ran.
“I think… it’s somehow tracked me down.” She felt the thing in her head. The white-hot rage. “It’s after me.”
“Even with its craftiness, the dorlis is essentially a creature of base, primal instinct,” Fonsi said, even as he kept his eyes fastened on the shadow cloud. “It feeds, it reacts… Maybe if it feels like something poses a threat to it, if something…”
The shadow let forth an ear-shattering shriek. The trio covered their airs. A tendril snaked forth toward the front of the agency.
Maxine screeched as Linda pushed her out the way and onto the sidewalk. The two landed on their knees on hard concrete. Fonsi yelped, tumbled backward over a low gate, and landed head over heels in a rosebush.
More tendrils snaked forth. One reached for a man who was running away and lifted him into the air. Another tendril crashed into a hardware store window.
Linda helped Maxine up, saw that her assistant’s knees were bloodied, ignored the burning pain in her own knees. “Run as fast as you can. Get out of here,” she whispered. She pulled out her pistol. The tendril was doubling back, coming her way.
She fired twice. The bullets passed through the misty tendril and flew through the right front window of her town house. The tendril came for her again and solidified around her arms. It squeezed her wrists, hard. Linda heard a crack. She dropped the gun.
Linda felt something else hit her back. Something solid that snaked around her body. Another tendril.
More screams. She couldn’t see what was happening behind her. She couldn’t turn around.
