Free The Skinwalker Conspiracies - 02 by Jim Bernheimer

conspiracies.
    “So, you really didn’t kill Kennedy?”
    “My body pulled the trigger, but it was the Governor aiming the rifle. I was a pretty good shot and probably could have made it, but he was better. Also, I doubted he trusted me. Originally, he planned to kill both Kennedy and his wife, but he hesitated. I’m not sure why.”
    I didn’t know what to make of that, so I just tried to concentrate on learning more. “Okay, why did this Governor Skinwalker guy want Kennedy dead?”
    “Cuba. He had friends in Cuba. His title of Governor comes from when he was the actual governor of Spanish Cuba. After the Bay of Pigs and the Missile Crisis, his friends there called in a favor to remind the puppet masters in Washington to mind their own business.”
    “And you went along with it because you were Pro-Castro. So is Castro a Skinwalker, too?” My head throbbed, both from the battle and now this. It was an occupational hazard.
    “I am not sure. If I had to guess, I would say yes - probably another conquistador. The man’s been in charge there for a really long time.”
    “Let’s get back to the Governor,” I said. Oswald was easily distracted. Considering he kills every ghost he finds, he must be starved for conversation.
    “Yeah, the Governor is a sly one. He built me up and told me how much power I would have and the hero I could become. In the end, he abandoned me to my fate before I had even left the building. That’s when I realized that I really was a patsy. When it looked like I might get away, he tried to possess me again, but whatever happened during the assassination left him low on energy, and I was able to kick him out of my body. That’s when he possessed that cop and tried to take me in, except he forgot that I still had the revolver.”
    “He could have triggered a nuclear war.”
    “Well, he didn’t, but here’s a newsflash for you kid,” Oswald answered. “He was dead already and didn’t much care.”
    I wondered what the guy behind the JFK movie would’ve thought of that. The history lesson was interesting, but I wanted to hear more about the Governor. “Alright, you said you couldn’t beat this guy. Why? Who is he? You implied that he was one of the Conquistadors. Every Skinwalker I’ve ever run into has been weak, other than being able to use a body. None of them can come close to doing what you can do.”
    Oswald shook his head and said, “Every ‘walker’ has their little tricks. Trust me; I’ve killed plenty of them. This one, he knows things other Skinwalkers would gladly kill for. He’s been a ghost for close to five hundred years. His name is Hernando De Soto.”
    I only knew of two things that fit the name De Soto, and since we weren’t talking about cars, I said, “He was the one who beat the Aztecs, right?”
    Oswald gave me a look that made me rethink what my “B” in history really meant. Okay, just maybe I did need to know more about this Governor.
    “No, wrong Hernando – that was Cortez. Hernando De Soto did some work for Cortez, but he was pretty low on the totem pole. His big break came down in Peru where he was working for another guy named Pizarro. Then he went back to Spain with a bunch of gold, got married, and met the Queen of Spain. She gave him a couple of fancy titles and he decided to get a bunch of thugs and go searching for gold all through the American southeast.” Oswald had a way of making it sound like a mafia operation. Depending on the point of view, he wasn’t that far from the truth.
    “Not a lot of gold to be found there,” I said looking out at the last of the rainstorm clearing up. Sudden storms in Texas aren’t surprising, although the weather guessers would be pretty surprised to learn that this one was caused by a ghost.
    “Yeah, all he found was a bunch of ticked off Indians. He eventually died somewhere along the Mississippi river and history considers him a huge failure. After he died, he cozied up to some Indian spirits