Esperanza
Authors: Trish J. MacGregor
Esperanza
TOR BOOKS BY TRISH J. MACGREGOR
Esperanza
T
RISH
J. M
AC
G
REGOR
A Tom Doherty Associates Book
New York
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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
ESPERANZA
Copyright © 2010 by Trish J. MacGregor
All rights reserved.
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
Tor
®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
ISBN 978-1-4299-4075-7
First Edition: September 2010
Printed in the United States of America
0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Rob and Megan,
con mucho cariño siempre
And many thanks to Al Zuckerman
and Beth Meacham,
whose insights vastly improved the story
THE CITY OF ESPERANZA, ECUADOR
Dominica watched the pretty young woman standing on a dark, windy corner in the oldest section of the city, known as El Corazón, the heart. She liked what she saw. A foreign tourist, mid-twenties, beautiful figure, pale, flawless skin as smooth as a river stone. The woman’s colorful skirt rustled in the chilly breeze, her fingers fumbled with the zipper on her jacket, then tucked her thick black hair behind her ears.
Dominica wondered if the woman knew that in 1530, on this very street, the last emperor of the Incas had marched against the Spanish. The colonial buildings behind the woman covered an Incan site where Inti, the sun god, had been honored with daily sacrifices. The restaurant where the woman had just eaten had been built over an Incan altar used for divination during
ayahuasca
ceremonies. Did the woman have any grasp of this?
Well, it didn’t matter. Physically, she fit Dominica’s needs—young, attractive, foreign, and probably healthy.
Dominica moved toward her. Most people couldn’t see a
bruja,
but because human awareness varied widely this woman might be an exception. If she perceived Dominica, it would be as a shadow in her peripheral vision. So Dominica approached her slowly. Sudden moves could startle her or prompt a hasty retreat back into the restaurant.
As she came up behind the woman, Dominica’s eagerness to feel the physical world again was so great that she struggled not to rush. Up the street, people emerged from a hotel, their laughter drifting in the night air. Headlights from approaching cars washed over the woman, revealing the angular flare of her hips, the tumble of her beautiful hair past her shoulders.
Steady, steady
. Then Dominica summoned her strength and swiftly seized the woman’s body.
She gasped and staggered back, aware that something had happened to her, but what? Dominica worked quickly, adjusting her essence to the size and shape of the woman’s body, taking control of her brain, her organs,
limbs, even her voice. When a scream was about to explode up the woman’s throat, Dominica stifled it so it emerged as barely a hiss.
The woman’s heart and lungs pumped furiously. As oxygen flowed into the body, Dominica gulped at it. That first delicious breath shocked her. It always did. Then she tasted dampness, a promise of rain, and smelled flowers, grass, earth, exhaust fumes, and the woman’s perfume. Then the rhythmic beating of the woman’s heart and the rushing of blood through the body’s arteries and veins empowered her. Dominica was fully in control of the woman’s body, and the sensory feast of physical existence was now hers again and she drank it in.
The colors. Even at night, the colors she now saw were radiant compared to the grayness in which
brujos
existed. The vibrant greens of the pines looming in the park across the road looked as if they had spilled from an artist’s palette. The glow of the street lamps was the color of melting butter. The blues and violets in the woman’s skirt reminded Dominica of a dusk in Spain, where she had been born centuries ago as Dominica de la Reina, the only daughter of a wealthy landowner. In that life, she had died of a broken heart at thirty-six.
The sweet chill of the high mountain air smelled of pines. Stars burned like tiny suns in the black sky. Music pumped from an open window somewhere and Dominica tapped her foot to the rhythm, three quick beats, then two, then four. She held out her arms, turned her palms upward, flexed her fingers, then ran them through her hair. This body felt magnificent and Dominica fit into it perfectly, as if it had been created for her. An ideal host.
Claire:
the woman’s name was encoded in her body’s cells.
Dominica now felt Claire’s essence recover from the shock. She started struggling, twitching, jerking, creating spasms in her muscles as she screamed to go one way and Dominica forced the body in the opposite direction. Quick. Around the corner, where the shadows were thicker, deeper.
Claire’s essence shrieked. Dominica quickly formed a metal box in her mind, shoved the woman’s essence into it, slammed it shut. Only now was the body wholly hers.
Dominica walked rapidly, deeper into El Corazón, where Esperanza’s history was also her own. Each block held a memory. Here at the corner of Trujillo Avenue and Francisco Street she had seized a man in Pizarro’s army as the Spanish had surrounded Atahualpa’s army and forced him to flee. And over there, in 1862, she had seized a local woman, a peasant, and spent wondrous days on horseback, riding through the countryside outside of the city. In 1918, on the corner in front of her, she and Ben had seized an Asian
couple. And so it went, block after block of memories, every step a glorious celebration of physical life.
Outside the Internet café where she was supposed to meet Ben, she paused. People with laptops and BlackBerries occupied the sidewalk tables, sipping their fancy coffees. Tourists. The locals knew better than to be out on the streets this late, when her kind was likely to attack.