Orpheus - Haunting the Dead.pdf - Dice

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DIA DE LOS MUERTOSAUNTING THE DEAD
above some mere god! You have power Eileen and that
is all that’s keeping you alive. That value lasts until the
Chupacabra reaches you.“
He snapped his fingers and she heard the chunk of
claws tearing into stone.
Chupacabra? she thought, vague stories of goatkilling
predators scratching at her memory.
The cloaked man’s voice was back inside her head.
“You call us spectres,” he said.
Her mind went white and began babbling the
insane analogies her Orpheus basic training instructor
had made her memorize: Shark is to goldfish as wolf is to
terrier as spectre is to ghost. More experienced agents had
boiled it down to one simple piece of advice: Run and
don’t look back. It might be gaining on you.
The thing in the pit was climbing out. Despite
herself she leaned over, looking down into the darkness.
Two tiny points of light glittered at the bottom,
red flashes filled with a hatred as vast as the universe,
growing larger as the thing drew closer.
“El tiempo vuela,” Francisco said, switching back to
Spanish. “Choose.”
In desperation, Eileen did the only thing she could.
She gathered her anger against Francisco, her fear, her
rage and her grief for Teo, and she screamed. She
screamed the way only a banshee could.
The scream gathered power, tearing through the
ether between her and the psychopath in armor. Every
one of the jaguar warriors around her, including the
ones holding her, clapped their hands to their ears.
Francisco, however, was caught in the full fury of the
blast, and the gauze that held his ghostly form together
developed enormous gashes.
Eileen didn’t wait to see how long it would take him
to recover. She fairly flew out of the cavern, her ghostly
gown trailing behind her. From the cavern she heard a
roar when the thing from the pit reached the floor
level, and a foul stinking wind blew through the tun-
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