Supernatural: Coyote's Kiss

by Christa Faust

  Dean laid out everything they knew. Everything they’d found out up to that point. Including their suspicion that the thing responsible for the attacks wasn’t human.

  De La Paz listened without interrupting, poker-faced and giving Dean no idea if he was buying it or if he was planning to call the men in white coats to come take Dean away.

  When Dean was finished, De La Paz nodded. He didn’t immediately arrest him or call the men in white coats, he just sat there for a minute in thoughtful silence.

  “So you’re saying that you think someone, or something, had it out for Keene because of an event that occurred on the job fifteen years ago?”

  “Pretty much.”

  More silence. Had Dean made a mistake, trusting De La Paz? Just because the older man knew their father didn’t necessarily mean he knew everything. Maybe they just had a couple of beers and talked about baseball. But there was something about De La Paz that Dean couldn’t quite put his finger on. Something that made Dean instinctively trust him.

  The phone on De La Paz’s desk rang, startling Dean a little.

  “Excuse me,” the older man said, lifting the receiver. “De La Paz.”

  He spoke for a minute in Spanish, his tone intimate and soothing, like he was telling someone not to worry. He covered the mouthpiece and whispered to Dean.

  “My wife. Every time she sees something on the news, she thinks I’m in danger, even though I’ve been working archives for three years now.”

  De La Paz listened to whatever was being said to him, and suddenly, his eyes went wide. He made a quick excuse to his wife and hung up.

  “What...?” Dean began, but De La Paz held up his hand for quiet and then started tapping away on the computer.

  Dean waited, feeling that hot excitement building inside him again. He had the feeling that he was moving in on their prey.

  “There’s been another ‘animal attack’ against our field officers,” De La Paz said. “Three, possibly four victims this time. One of them may have been Charlie Himes, currently MIA.”

  Dean waited for the older man to elaborate.

  “Himes was partners with Davis Keene, back when they were rookies, but he put in for transfer to San Diego...”

  De La Paz stood and pulled open a file drawer, riffling through files till he found the one he wanted. He laid it on the desk, flipped through it until he found a particular piece of paper, then turned it around so it was facing Dean.

  It was an application for transfer. De La Paz tapped the date with a thick, nicotine-stained finger. It said “April 18th, 1995.”

  “...fifteen years ago,” De La Paz said.

  EIGHT

  De La Paz led Dean down another hallway to a door labeled “DOCUMENTS.” De La Paz swiped his ID through a bar-code reader next to the doorknob and pushed the thick metal door open.

  “Welcome to the graveyard,” he said.

  The room they entered was a cavernous, dusty warehouse space packed with row upon row of floor-to-ceiling metal shelving. The shelves were lined with thousands of identical cardboard file boxes.

  “We’re working on getting all this old paperwork uploaded into the system,” De La Paz said. “But it’s a monumental task for which we are desperately understaffed. All the personnel files are in my office but any incident reports involving Himes and Keene from April of ’95 would be stored here.”

  Dean walked with De La Paz down the dimly lit rows, past 1997 and 1996, until they found a section marked 1995. The file boxes were in rough chronological order, but not exact, so it took them a few minutes to locate the later half of April.

  “Okay, fifteen, sixteen,” De La Paz was saying under his breath. “Right, here’s the nightshift report that covers April 17th and 18th.” He pulled a file, opened it. “Officers Keene and Himes were teamed up with José Porcayo and Gilberto Brewer that night. At 8:37 p.m. on the 17th, there was a pretty substantial narcotics intercept. Three arrests, 500 pounds of cocaine seized. Then nothing all night until 2:58 a.m. on the 18th, when a small group of migrants was apprehended trying to cross the border, including an abandoned female infant, aged nine months, whose mother was never found.” De La Paz shrugged. “Doesn’t sound like anything out of the ordinary.”

  Dean scribbled down the names of the two other officers in a small notebook, but he could feel a mounting frustration making him antsy, impatient. He’d always hated this kind of research. Sam was the librarian in the family. Dean much would rather be duking it out with demons than shuffling through old paperwork.

  “But wait,” De La Paz said, just as Dean was about to thank him for his time and give up on this angle of inquiry. “This is strange.”

  “I love strange,” Dean said, interest renewed. “Lay it on me.”

  “One of the migrants picked up that night was a sixteen-year-old kid named Anibal Obregon Hernandez. In his statement, he asked to file a complaint against the arresting officers. At first he claimed they raped and murdered a woman in the group. Several hours later, he changed his story and claimed the four officers, quote, ‘put a magic spell on her that turned her into a coyote.’ Unquote.”

  “Bingo!” Dean said.

  “You don’t really believe that’s what actually happened, do you?” De La Paz said, thick white eyebrow arched at Dean.

  “Maybe not exactly,” Dean said. “Maybe that’s just a scared sixteen-year-old trying to make sense out of something he didn’t understand.”

  De La Paz shuffled to another page and swore softly in Spanish.

  “What?” Dean asked.

  “Hernandez recanted his testimony the next morning,” De La Paz said. “The complaint was never filed. They found him hanging in the holding cell less than thirty minutes before he was scheduled to be deported. He’d made a noose out of his own T-shirt.”

  “Damn,” Dean said. “Do you think the officers involved may have gotten to him somehow, forced him to change his story?”

  “Look, I don’t know much about magic spells or anything like that,” De La Paz said. “But these officers were good men. Regular guys you’d play cards with on your day off or invite to a family barbeque. I didn’t know Brewer that well, but Himes’s little girl went to first grade with my daughter. These guys aren’t some kind of evil wizards or satanists or anything like that. They’re just... guys. I’m having a really hard time believing they would do something like what that Mexican kid described. Magic or no magic.”

  “Well, clearly something happened that night that scared the hell out of everyone who saw it,” Dean said. “Where are Brewer and Porcayo now?”

  “Brewer retired early on disability,” De La Paz said, slipping the file back into the box. “Diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Porcayo left CBP to work in the private sector.” He turned back to Dean. “You don’t think that they’re in danger too, from whatever animal is doing this?”

  Dean nodded, slipped the little notebook back in the breast pocket of his jacket.

  “That’s exactly what I think,” he said.

  Dean shook De La Paz’s thick mitt as he was leaving. The older man’s grip was strong and warm. The way things were, Dean found it difficult to trust anyone, even his own family, and it was astoundingly rare for him to meet a normal person as honest and open-minded as De La Paz.

  “You didn’t have to help me,” Dean said. “Thanks.” He looked into the older man’s pale eyes. “And if you want the truth, I don’t know if I believe in justice anymore. I want to, but...”

  “I understand,” De La Paz said. “Good luck out there, kid. You’re gonna need it.”

  Once outside the CBP station’s air-conditioned cocoon, Dean trudged across the vast parking lot with his head down, feeling like an ant crossing a frying pan. He was sure the thin soles of his dress shoes were going to catch fire before he made it to the Impala. When he got there, the Impala’s door handle was almost too hot to touch.

  He was pulling off his sweaty, wrinkled jacket and tossing it into the back
seat when he spotted the rider in black right on the other side of the razor-wire fence.

  The rider was much closer now, less than ten feet away, standing beside the parked Hayabusa. While the face was still hidden beneath a black helmet, it was clear that the body beneath the distressed, well-worn leather pants and black wife-beater tank top was curvy, unquestionably feminine. Every inch of visible, caramel-colored skin was covered in tattoos, all intricate, Aztec designs. Serpents and jaguars and skeletons. Women in elaborate feathered headdresses wielding leaf-shaped obsidian knives. Arcane symbols. Most were rendered in only black ink but the large, anatomically realistic heart on the left side of her chest was in lurid color, all lush red and purple, surrounded by golden flames.

  Like a gunslinger in a classic Western, she wore a low-slung, elaborately tooled black-and-silver gun-belt with a holster on each hip. The nose of each holster was bound to one of her thick, muscular thighs with a leather strap. But rather than old-school six-shooters, Dean could make out the modern, ergonomic grips of what looked to be a pair of Heckler & Koch tactical pistols. She was also wearing heavy, masculine boots and tight, wrist-length black leather gloves. She was not wearing a bra.

  There was no way he could climb over the double razor-wire fence in time to catch her before she could get that bike fired up and away. And as much as he loved the Impala, she was no match, speed wise, for what was widely considered to be the world’s fastest motorcycle. The Hayabusa would be pushing 190 miles per hour before he could get the Impala up to fifty-five.

  Dean approached the barrier.

  “Who are you?” he asked, gripping the chain link of the fence between them.

  She didn’t reply. Just regarded him for a moment through the smoked glass of her visor, then got back on her bike and was gone.

  NINE

  On the way back to the motel, Dean took care of a few errands. Gassed up the Impala. Bottled water and beer. Ammo run. Unsurprisingly, it was pretty hard to find rock salt in the desert. Not a lot of icy driveways. One smartass clerk told Dean that if he wanted salt that badly, he should just grab a pickax and drive out to the Death Valley salt flats. Dean ended up with an obscenely expensive ten-pound bag of fancy gourmet salt crystals that were infused with truffle essence or some nonsense. He almost felt bad for the local restaurant he’d conned the supplier into charging for the salt, but he was sure the next demon he shot with the stuff would appreciate the “complex, earthy aroma and crisp mineral profile.”

  He was deeply grateful that the endlessly glaring sun was finally sinking down behind the mountains by the time he got back to the motel. There was so much to process. So much he needed to tell Sam. Plans to be made. He figured the best course of action would be to have Sam dig up addresses for the other two men involved in the unexplained incident of April 18th, 1995 and then find them and warn them. Maybe stake them out, wait for their vengeful “animal” to show up and then gank the thing before it had a chance to hurt anyone else. But how could they pick which man to visit first? What if they picked wrong?

  These were the thoughts running though his head as he fished the gaudy plastic key-tag from his pocket and unlocked the motel room door. He pushed it open, stepping gratefully out of the heat and into the room’s dim, cave-like sanctuary.

  “You’re not gonna believe...” he began but stopped dead in mid sentence.

  It wasn’t Sam sitting at the table, hunched over the laptop. It was the rider in black.

  Her helmet was off, revealing dark, almond-shaped eyes, a fierce, pre-Columbian profile and wide, smirking lips. Her crow-black hair hung in a pair of thick, waist-length braids bound with leather strips.

  Dean lunged forward to grab her and she leapt up, kicking the chair at him, jumping onto the rickety table and then diving for the open window. He batted the chair aside and swore under his breath as he threw his body in her path, blocking her escape.

  She squared off, facing him, eyes wide and gloved fists raised. Standing toe to toe like this, he realized that, despite the aura of tightly coiled menace she radiated, she was actually surprisingly petite. Five foot three inches, tops. He had a good sixty pounds on her and was almost a full foot taller.

  “Look,” Dean said, palms out. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  Before he could blink, she’d scaled him like a cliff-face, taking a step off his knee and another off his hip and then throwing a sharp, spinning kick to his face. He was quick enough to dodge the full force of the kick, but still caught a glancing blow on the jaw. He staggered backward.

  She made a run for the door, but he grabbed one of her flying braids and yanked her back toward him, wrapping his arms around her from behind. She dropped straight down and out of his grasp, slippery as mercury, and then ducked backward between his legs. He spun to face her, narrowly avoiding an uppercut to the junk. He was finally angry enough to take a serious swing at her, but he may as well have sent her a Christmas card last year to let her know the punch was coming. She slipped in under his swing and gave him three short, tight body shots in the time it took him to throw just one.

  Fighting her was like trying to fight a hummingbird. She was so small and so fast, but she didn’t really have enough power behind her punches to knock him out. Just piss him off. On the other hand, she still had those guns on her hips and she could decide to use them at any moment. Dean had a feeling she was a pretty quick draw.

  He had no choice but to bull-rush her, using his size and strength advantage to power her into a takedown. He could tell he’d knocked the wind out of her and worked swiftly to immobilize her arms and keep both her hands up high, away from those pistols. She hissed and squirmed beneath him like an angry snake, and he was suddenly intensely aware of her braless breasts pressing against his chest and her leather-clad hips grinding against him as she struggled to free herself. She noticed him noticing and arch amusement flashed in her eyes. Dark eyes, just like Lisa’s. He felt a swift flush of heat, followed almost instantly by a cold chaser of guilt. That’s when he heard the soft, deadly snick of a switchblade.

  Dean froze. He could feel the narrow blade pressed up under his chin as she rolled him onto his back and straddled him. Her face was inches from his. He could feel her breath against his lips.

  “Take it easy,” Dean said, chin held high and eyes wide. “There’s no need for all this. I just want to talk.”

  “So talk,” she said.

  “Well for starters, how about telling me who the hell you are and why you’re following us?”

  “I’m Xochi Cazadora,” she replied. “And I could ask you the same question.”

  She had a fairly strong accent that wasn’t entirely Mexican. Something a little harder around the consonants

  “Where are you from?” Dean asked, intrigued.

  “Tenochtitlan. El D.F.” She pronounced it Dey Efey. “You call it Mexico City. My bloodline is Aztec.”

  “You’re not gonna cut my heart out, are you?” Dean asked, looking down to see the knife still too close to his chin for comfort.

  She smiled. “Try me.”

  “Wait a sec,” Dean said. “Isn’t Cazadora a Spanish name? I thought you guys hated the Spaniards, because of that whole smallpox thing.”

  “My people don’t have surnames.” She eased back on the blade just a touch. “Cazadora isn’t a name, it’s a job description. It means huntress.”

  TEN

  The door to the motel room opened and Sam walked in with an armful of upscale Mexican takeout. He arched an eyebrow at the sight of his brother sprawled out on the carpet and straddled by a hot tattooed chick in leather pants.

  “Am I interrupting...?”

  “She’s got a knife on me, dude,” Dean said.

  “Hey, man,” Sam said, setting the food on the table. “Whatever lifts your skirt.”

  Xochi closed the blade and stood, offering Dean her hand to help him up. He didn’t take it, just stood up on his own.

  “This is Xochi Cazadora,” Dean said to Sam
. “She’s a hunter.”

  “Sam Winchester,” Sam said, pulling a giant, foil-wrapped package from one of the brightly colored paper bags. “You’ve obviously met my brother Dean.” He offered the package to Dean. Dean shook his head so Sam offered it to Xochi instead. “Burrito?”

  Xochi looked back at Dean, the same amusement still there in her eyes. She took the burrito.

  “Thanks,” she said, pocketing her gloves, unwrapping the foil and taking a large, voracious bite. She frowned down at the burrito’s contents. “What is this?”

  “It’s a chicken fajita burrito,” Sam said with a shrug, taking out one for himself. “Don’t you like Mexican food?”

  “Whatever this is,” she said. “It’s not Mexican food.” She shrugged, took another bite. “But it’s much better than raw rattlesnake. Got any hot sauce?”

  “Um, hello?” Dean said. “I hate to interrupt your little dinner party, kids, but I’ve still got a few questions over here.”

  Xochi walked over to the bags on the table, rummaged around until she found a large container of hot sauce and dumped it all on the burrito. Now that her gloves were off, Dean could see that her hands were heavily scarred. Knuckles crushed flat. Nails unpainted, cut short. A fighter’s hands.

  “I’m not following you,” Xochi said. “You are not following me. Don’t you understand? We are both following the Borderwalker.”

  “Borderwalker?” Dean eyed her suspiciously, trying to get a read on her. Figure out if she was on the level. “You mean you know what this thing is?”

  She nodded. “I do. But I’ve been on the road a long time and I’m hungry. Tell me what you know while I eat, and then I will tell you what I know.”

  “How do we know we can trust you?” Dean asked.

  “You don’t,” she said.