Chapter Twenty-Four Linda
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
LINDA
When Linda walked into her town house and checked herself out in her foyer’s large oval mirror, she allowed herself a momentary pity party and wailed inside.
Just for a second. She didn’t consider herself a vain person, but the black-and-blue, swollen face that stared back at her wasn’t someone she remotely recognized.
She’d managed to get Elton on Maxine’s phone, convince him that the amulets had to be destroyed and avoided at all costs.
He said he’d had a conversation with Rayo, was inclined to believe her, that he and his associates were getting in contact with the press right away.
Linda thanked Elegua for small favors. What was top of mind—how to figure out where and how the dorlis might strike again, if it was still around.
Which felt beyond her, like something she didn’t have the focus or wherewithal to begin to break down in terms of solutions.
Something had been tugging at her mind the entire ride to the agency, an odd sensation she couldn’t put her finger on.
“Linda, you said… you said you were able to blow apart the dorlis with your mind?” Maxine gave Linda the same hard look she’d been leveling at her for much of the drive over.
“I thought you… You’ve told me repeatedly that you can only use your empathy when you’re in ritual with someone.
That a special set of circumstances needs to be in place.
I know you get vibes from people, sure, but what you spoke of… It sounds like… more.”
Fonsi stationed himself by the couch and raised his hand almost as if he were in a classroom, hesitant to speak. “I don’t mean to speak out of turn, but Linda, your empathy… I think you can do far more than help people experience their soul selves.”
Linda looked at both of them. Saw the hesitancy and searching in Fonsi’s face, the confusion and betrayal in Maxine’s. Wasn’t the right time to have this conversation—not now.
And yet, did she have a choice?
“I… I made a promise to someone a long time ago. Someone I hurt—bad. There was an accident connected to how I used my empathy. I pledged that I would never use my powers in certain ways again. Me being in ritual, it just happened. I… I didn’t want to turn away people who I could help.
But I swore I’d never do anything else.”
“Wait, what else can you do?” Maxine said. “I’m not understanding any of this.”
Linda turned to Fonsi and looked at him imploringly as if he could help her out. His face was consumed by pity. He knew… he knew that she was much more than she seemed.
“So, uh, I… I can do a number of things with my gift,” Linda said, ashamed.
She sat down as the ache in her body returned and spoke with her palms open on her lap.
A tell she hoped Maxine understood. Complete surrender.
No bullshit. “I can enter the thoughts of others, share my thoughts with others, see through their eyes, exchange memories… those sorts of things. But I haven’t done so in years. Well… before reaching out to Rayo.”
“Are you mad? Linda!!!” Maxine glared at her boss with fury. “Is this why… sometimes, that weird sense of connection we have. Finishing each other’s sentences. Being so aligned with work. Is it because you’ve… you’ve been entering my mind all this time?”
“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 words tumbled 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.
Linda tried to remember what Fonsi had told her about the dorlis as the tendril tightened its grip around her, as the sky turned darker.
It was coming closer, she was sure. The creature, though made of shadow, was able to manifest itself as something both solid and intangible. Bullets wouldn’t do any good.
She had to use her mind.
Fonsi ran over to her, his head and body covered in leaves and thorns and petals. He dug his fingers into the inky tendril that had encircled her torso and chest and pulled.
He groaned from exertion. “I can’t—”
Another tendril appeared and wrapped itself around Fonsi’s face and shoulders. He let go of Linda and clawed at the tendril that had him. The thing constricted tight around his neck and began to thrash him about, hard.
Shit. Linda tried to focus, to remain calm. She concentrated on the tendrils in front of her face, wrapped her empathy around the substance of the thing. Her mind touching the dorlis, a bloodcurdling repugnance that made her want to retreat, go within.
She had to keep going. Linda gripped the tendrils tightly with her mind and removed them from around her body, doing the same for Fonsi. He slumped to the ground. She hoped he was just unconscious, and not…
Linda heard more shrieking. She had to focus, wouldn’t stop.
She imagined the shadow becoming a ball that she could hold for as long as possible.
She would make the creature her prisoner.
Her mistake before, trying to blow the dorlis apart, which made it easy for the thing to flee and return when it pleased.