“At any point during the attack,” Sam said, “did you feel like you were not in control of your body?”
“Yeah,” Porcayo said. “That’s exactly how I felt. I kept on trying to stop, even just to turn my head away, but I couldn’t. It sounds crazy, I know, but...”
“We believe you, Joey,” Dean said.
“What can you tell us about what happened after the assault?” Sam asked.
“We...” Porcayo wiped his lips again. “We just left her there. We all had control over our bodies at that point, but... We didn’t do anything to save her. We were all so ashamed of what had happened that we just walked away. That still haunts me.”
He finished the soda. Crushed the can.
“When we had rounded up all the other migrants in the group, I went back to her. I felt so horrible about what had happened that I went back to try and help her. She was gone. I don’t mean dead, I mean gone, like she had never been there. That’s when I heard a baby crying. That’s when I found Claudia.”
“My wife couldn’t have kids. She had to have a hysterectomy because of cervical cancer when she was just twenty-three and she thought no man would ever want to marry her. But she was so smart and so pretty. She was my angel, the best thing that ever happened to me. Better than a guy like me deserved.” He choked up and had to pause for a moment. “She was so happy when I brought home the paperwork to adopt Claudia. She never knew anything about what really happened. Neither one of them ever knew. I told them her mother died trying to cross the border.”
He looked up at Dean.
“Is Claudia in danger?”
“Perhaps,” Dean said. “We really have no way of knowing. I don’t think so, but I also think it would be a good idea for her to stay with relatives or friends, until we catch this thing.”
“You really think you can stop her?” Porcayo asked.
“We’re gonna try,” Sam said.
TWENTY-FOUR
Dean followed Porcayo’s crummy little blue Toyota back to the unremarkable house, while Sam rode with Porcayo to make sure the older man didn’t pull a runner. Dean parked the Impala while the Toyota pulled into the garage, slung Xochi’s rifle bag over his shoulder, then got out of the car.
By the time Dean got up to the door, Sam already had it open. Porcayo stood beside him.
“Is Claudia here?” Dean asked, handing the rifle bag to Sam.
Porcayo shook his head.
“She’s still at school.”
“I hate to break it to you,” Dean said. “But we saw her come home about an hour ago.”
Porcayo frowned. Took a cell phone out of his pocket. Dialed. Waited.
“Where the hell are you?” he said into the phone. “You better call me as soon as you get this message...” He hesitated for a moment. “I’m not mad, mija. Just please call okay?”
He ended the call and stared down at the phone, tears welling in his eyes again. He swiped at the tears with his knuckles, gritting his teeth against their onslaught. He raised the phone, clenching it in his fist and looking like he was about to throw it for a moment, but didn’t.
“If something happens to her,” he said. “Because of me...”
“Why don’t we go inside,” Dean said.
“Yeah, sure,” Porcayo said. “Of course.”
The house was generic and unremarkable on the outside, but on the inside the décor was quirky and colorful. It was painfully clear to Dean that the romantic vintage movie posters and charming folk-art had been selected by the late wife. All the funny little wooden animals were dusty, sad and neglected. There was a pair of gaudy red women’s reading glasses sitting on the coffee table, next to an empty coffee cup and a paperback romance novel. Dean was pretty sure it wasn’t Porcayo’s book. Or Claudia’s. The room felt like a shrine.
“Can I get you something?” Porcayo asked. “Beer?”
“Yeah,” Dean said. “That’d be great.”
Porcayo led them into a large kitchen that was overrun with dirty dishes, take out containers and beer cans.
“I’m sorry it’s so messy,” Porcayo said. “I keep telling Claudia to clean up around here once in a while, but she don’t listen.”
He shrugged and opened the fridge. Pulled out a six-pack of Budweiser that was one of the only items left inside. Handed a can to Dean, one to Sam and took one for himself, then shoved some of the debris on the counter aside to make room for the remaining three cans.
“What about you?” Sam asked, gesturing at the mound of dishes. “Your arms broken? Don’t know how to operate a faucet?”
He looked at Sam with an expression of baffled scorn, as though Sam had suggested he levitate the plates using psychic powers.
Dean cracked his can and sucked down a foamy mouthful.
“You know,” he said. “I really don’t think we ought to be here, in this house. We probably shouldn’t be encouraging the Borderwalker to show up in a residential neighborhood full of innocent families. What if she goes off like she did with that truckful of immigrants? What if Claudia comes home?”
“You’re right,” Porcayo said. “I couldn’t let that happen.”
“Okay,” Sam said. “So where should we go?”
“I work night security in an office building down in Santa Ana,” Porcayo said. “After the cleaning crew goes home, the place is empty until eight the next morning.”
“What time do you start?”
“Ten.”
“Man,” Dean said. “Don’t you ever sleep?”
Porcayo shook his head ruefully.
“Not really. I try to take naps between the two jobs, but I get nightmares.”
Sam looked at his watch.
“Ten o’clock?” he said. “That’s way too late. We need to go somewhere right now.”
“We could drive out to the desert,” Dean suggested. “Aren’t Borderwalkers more likely to show up in the desert?”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Sam said.
“Listen, guys,” Porcayo said. “Are you sure I shouldn’t go alone? I mean, she wants me, right? Why not just let her have me?”
“That’s very noble,” Dean said. “But we have no way of knowing if she’ll stop after you and no way of tracking her next victim. This could be our last chance to take her out. Now maybe you feel like you deserve to die for what you did, but those poor people in that truck didn’t deserve what happened to them. This creature is totally out of control and we need to stop it.”
Porcayo hung his head and put his untouched beer down on the counter.
“I understand, but...” he began.
There was a small sound from the living room. A padded thump like something fell over and landed on the carpet.
“Do you have a cat?” Sam asked.
Porcayo shook his head.
Dean stepped in front of Porcayo and put his hand on the frame of the doorway leading back into the living room. The bright striped sofa had four huge, parallel gashes across the seat cushions, puffs of fuzzy white stuffing bulging out. The paperback romance novel had fallen to the floor.
TWENTY-FIVE
“Oh come on,” Dean said. “Couldn’t you just wait a few more minutes?”
A hand reached up from behind the couch, too many long hairy fingers like spider’s legs clutching the sofa’s back. Then another hand, this one looking oddly dissimilar to the first. There was a low, rumbling growl that sounded more like the Impala’s engine than a living thing. Dean could feel the sound in his bones and the hair on his arms felt suddenly staticy, like there was a free-floating electrical charge in the air.
“Dean,” Sam said, unzipping the rifle bag and handing one of the heavy Atzec weapons to him.
“Where the hell is Xochi?” Dean asked, taking the weapon.
“Not here, obviously,” Sam said. “Got any other ideas?”
“I’m sorry,” Porcayo said, stepping in front of Dean and through the door to the living room. He said something else in Spanish, his tone emotional and
apologetic.
The Borderwalker leapt up onto the back of the sofa, perching like a vulture, bare taloned feet digging into the cushion. She seemed mostly human, but cadaverous and abnormal in the joints. Limbs asymmetrical and covered in patchy snake scales. Eyes matte-black and terrible. For the first time, Dean noticed the tattoo Ojon had mentioned: a lacy black butterfly on the left side of her scrawny neck. She didn’t seem to have any other ink. Her long, bony jaw dropped to her chin, that now familiar shriek echoing through the room.
Dean remembered what Xochi had said about connecting emotionally with the Borderwalker’s human soul. How she would be rendered vulnerable to normal weapons. He stepped up beside Porcayo.
“Listen to him,” Dean said. “He saved your daughter’s life.”
She looked at Dean with her head tilted like a curious animal. She screamed again and her face shifted first into the face of a coyote, then melted down to a canine skull with only a few shreds of desiccated meat clinging around the empty eye sockets.
“I don’t think she understands English,” Porcayo said.
“Then tell her in Spanish,” Dean said to Porcayo. “Tell her how much you love Claudia.”
Porcayo took another step closer to the Borderwalker, hands held palm up, voice soft and calm as he spoke gently to her in Spanish. Meanwhile, Sam was slowly inching around the perimeter of the room, that Aztec Louisville Slugger held low and ready to swing.
The Borderwalker’s face shifted again, back to human, but expressionless, features cold and static. Her curly hair was full of dirty feathers. Dean had no way of knowing if Porcayo was getting through to her or not. Dean’s hands were sweating, making the wooden handle of the Aztec weapon slick in his grip.
Porcayo took another step, now less that six feet away from the Borderwalker. She could easily pounce on him and tear him to shreds, but he was a rock, utterly fearless. He was a completely different person from the broken man who’d tried to slash his wrists in the breakroom at the HandyMart. Like his whole life had been leading up to this moment. The Borderwalker leaned forward, face a skull again and twisting on a long, vulture’s neck as she hooked her long claws into her own chest, tearing at her skin and opening up her ribcage like a book. Inside was a deep, impossible hole, a bottomless well, slick red walls crawling with fire ants. Looking into that hole made Dean feel like he was looking down from the top of a skyscraper. He felt inexplicably sure that he was about to fall into her and had to resist the powerful urge to grab onto something to keep himself from plummeting. That’s when the front door opened.
“Dad?”
Claudia stood in the doorway, keys in one hand and a blue raspberry Slurpee in the other.
The Borderwalker’s skeletal canine head whipped around at the sound of Claudia’s voice. When the Borderwalker saw her daughter, all the monstrosity sluiced off of her like rainwater, leaving behind an ordinary human woman in dusty jeans and a black sweatshirt. She reached out an ordinary hand toward Claudia. Dean could see amazed recognition lighting up Claudia’s eyes.
“Mama?” Claudia whispered.
Sam was right there beside the Borderwalker with the obsidian-studded weapon, raising it for a decapitating swing. Claudia saw what he was about to do.
“NO!” she screamed.
Claudia dropped the Slurpee and ran to her real mother, throwing her body in between the Borderwalker and Sam. Sam had to check his swing at the very last second to avoid hitting the sobbing teenager.
For a split second, no one seemed to know what to do. Dean had his own weapon raised but didn’t know what he was going to do with it. He tried to think of something to say to make Claudia understand why they couldn’t let her mother live, but he couldn’t find any words. In that moment, he wasn’t really sure he knew why himself.
Then Dean heard a gunshot. He swore and spun toward the sound, weapon at the ready. It took him a second to spot the bullet hole in the large picture window. When he turned back toward the Borderwalker, he saw Porcayo take a crooked, staggering step toward him. There was a perfect, bloodless hole just above Porcayo’s right eye. He looked surprised and slightly confused, like he was trying to remember the name of a song playing on a distant radio. He took another step, stumbling like a drunk, and then fell to the carpet.
Before Dean could react, there was another volley of multiple-caliber gunshots, followed by something crashing through the window. Dean leapt reflexively back from the flying glass and saw to his amazement that the something was a woman. A leggy brunette with the lean, sinewy build of a long distance runner. She wore a thin, filmy dress that had been torn to shreds. Her feet were bare.
She immediately rolled into a crouch, eyes wide and hair studded with glittering shards of broken glass.
“Wow, are you okay?” Sam asked, taking a step closer to her.
She hissed at Sam, flashing a mouthful of blood-webbed canine teeth, and leapt at him. As she lunged, she shifted so that by the time she connected with Sam, she was no longer human, but rather an enormous snarling panther. The heavy Aztec weapon was unwieldy for close combat, and Sam furiously wrestled with the beast, trying to kick it back far enough to take a decent swing.
“What the...” Dean managed to say, but was interrupted by Xochi appearing in the broken frame of the window.
“Dean,” she cried. “Silver!”
She had marigolds in her hair again and a pistol in each hand, firing with one while simultaneously tossing the other to Dean. Dean didn’t need to be told twice.
Xochi’s shot had hit the panther woman in the chest and she dropped, shifting as she fell. She was human again by the time she hit the carpet. Xochi stepped up and followed up with an efficient double tap to the fallen shifter’s head, but there were three more women coming in fast behind her, all in various stages of transformation. Two of them had guns, firing at the brothers as they ran.
Dean pushed over a large bookshelf for cover and hit the carpet behind it. He picked off one of the shifters with Xochi’s pistol while another rolled and dove behind the sofa. The Borderwalker reacted suddenly and violently to this strange invasion, tearing loose from Claudia’s embrace and sprouting a thousand scorpion tails, face split open into a howling pit.
“Sam,” Dean cried. “Claudia!”
Sam was already on it, pushing Claudia behind him and letting one of the panther women have it with the Aztec weapon. The screeching shifter fell into the coffee table, snapping it in half. Dean finished her with the last silver bullet in the clip.
“Out!” he called to Xochi, holding up the empty gun where she could see it.
She wordlessly pulled a second magazine from one of her pockets and tossed it to Dean. He released the empty and caught the full clip in mid-air, snapping it smoothly into place just in time to fire at the third panther woman. At that point, two more shifters had joined the fray, one going after Sam while the other hung back in the empty window frame, taking potshots at Dean and Xochi. Meanwhile, the Borderwalker was attacking Porcayo’s corpse, screaming with unhinged, irrational fury.
Xochi dove across the room and behind the fallen bookshelf, pressing herself up against the wall beside Dean and swapping out her own spent magazine.
“It’s good to see you, Dean,” she said.
“You too,” Dean said. “But who are your little friends?
They aren’t Borderwalkers are they?”
“Nagual,” Xochi said. “They are helping Teo, but I’m not sure why.”
“So who else is on the guest list for this little shindig?” Dean asked. “Dracula maybe, or the Creature from the Black Lagoon? Or how about Hitler? Because I don’t know about you, but I think this party could use a few more monsters.”
“Well...” Xochi began.
That’s when Teo walked in through the broken picture window.
TWENTY-SIX
What happened next happened so fast it made Dean’s head spin.
Teo leapt on the Borderwalker’s back, but instead of ganking her w
ith the obsidian knife, she spoke a rapid gush of words that seemed to form into glowing blue strands, snaring the writhing Borderwalker like a spider’s web.
The ceiling above them split wide open, gaping like a hungry gullet and Teo and the Borderwalker fell toward it, spiraling impossibly upward into the void. There was a sound like a thunderclap, like a sonic boom, and they were both gone. The two remaining shifters did a quick fade, transforming into doe deer and taking off through the broken window.
For a few heartbeats, there was just silence in the room as the three hunters waited to see what would happen next. Nothing did.
“What the hell just happened?” Sam asked, checking out a couple of nasty claw-marks on his forearm. He grabbed a crumpled red tablecloth and pressed it to the bleeding wounds.
“Teo has saddled the Borderwalker,” Xochi said. “Rode her through the gate into the Borderland between worlds.”
“Okay,” Dean said, frowning and handing Xochi’s pistol back to her. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” Xochi said, holstering both the pistols. “But I do know this. The Borderwalker’s power to transport people and things goes both ways. She can also bring things from the worlds beyond through the Borderland and into our world. I think maybe Teo is planning to unleash something ancient and terrible. We have to find a way to stop her.”
Supernatural: Coyote's Kiss Page 12
