Free The Skinwalker Conspiracies - 02 by Jim Bernheimer Page A

and learned everything he could from them. When he got all their secrets, he betrayed them and destroyed his teachers. Now, history has come full circle and it’s time for me to destroy him.”
    “So what can he do that other Skinwalkers can’t?” I was a little worried about how Oswald kept going back and forth on De Soto. Part of the time he sounded like an admirer and in the next breath, he was adamant about destroying him. Frankly, Oswald wasn’t all that right in the head, even for a ghost. His “all ghosts could become Skinwalkers therefore they must all be destroyed” act didn’t help his case.
    “He’s strong. When I forced him out of his last body, I thought I had him. He looked weak like any other ‘walker,’ but then it was just like flipping a light switch … bam! He was more powerful than I was. We fought and I had to flee, but at least I left him without his body.”
    “What did you do?”
    “It was near New Orleans, a little over fifteen years ago. I ambushed him when he was driving a car out on the highway. The car wrecked and killed the flesh he was wearing. At least, it made him go looking for a new body.”
    I noted that my new “friend” obviously had no qualms about killing a living person. Of course, other alarm bells were going off in my head. “You said he had to go get a new body about fifteen years ago? Where do you think he is now?”
    “The few leads I’ve come across say he’s out west. I go out that way every few months, but I’ve never been able to find him and if I stay away from Dallas too long, the ghosts start showing up here and I can’t let that happen.”
    Even though my knowledge of history might not have been as good as advertised, I could still do basic math. Oswald destroyed a powerful Skinwalker’s host body fifteen years ago. That’s right around the time that David Michael Ross Sr., up and left his family to go live in the southwest. I later learned he’d been kidnapped by a Skinwalker in the employ of Roger Taney and sold on the “Body Market” in Philly. There were just too many coincidences, for it not to be the answer. Hernando De Soto was probably “driving” around in my Dad’s body and if I wanted to stop him, I needed to team up with this homicidal lunatic.
    Nice advice about gathering allies, Virginia … thanks a bunch!
     
    “Well, what do you think? I need all the sense you can talk into me, right about now.” I said to Brother Silas while changing into a clean shirt. Oswald left me to go gather energy and recover from our fight. I wasn’t so lucky. I had to fight the traffic snarl around Dallas to get back to Silas’ relatives. I didn’t know if it was a sign, but I was flipping the channels on the Caddy’s radio when I hit a classic rock station. Procol Harum’s Conquistador was halfway through.
    Oh, did I mention that I looked like a drowned rat that’d gotten his ass kicked right before getting struck by lightning? My clothes were ripped, I had a scraped knee and my leg reinforced with a metal rod throbbed enough to make me wonder if I’d grown a second heart down there. Fortunately, my friend’s cousin, Marcus, and his wife, Sheri, accepted the story that I was caught outside in that nasty thunderstorm that just popped up on the other side of town, but that didn’t stop them from looking at me funny. I guess I was living up to the troubled youth label. Hell, when I looked in the mirror at my reflection it wasn’t a pretty sight.
    Truth be told, I probably should have gone to the hospital and gotten checked over. But my heart rhythm was normal as I loaded a replacement nitro pill in the holder. I also had no real desire to go back out into traffic and spend more time in a hospital. Too much of my life had already been spent being poked, prodded, and analyzed by those white coat wearing ego maniacs. All I needed was a good night’s rest. Yeah, they might have their pieces of paper, but I could talk to ghosts! That wins in my