“This job’s too hard,” Dean said to Sam. “Let’s be firemen instead.”
Sam laughed, shaking his head.
“Where is Claudia?” Xochi asked.
They found her huddled underneath an end table, knees tucked up under her chin and eyes squeezed shut.
“Are you all right?” Xochi asked gently, offering Claudia her hand.
“Don’t touch me,” the girl responded.
“We need to get out of here,” Xochi said. “Now.”
Claudia started crying, face buried in her hands.
Xochi looked up at Dean. He could see that she was silently asking him to do something to comfort Claudia, but he wasn’t any better at nursing the wounded than she was. Dean had never considered himself the boo-boo kissing type. Normally Dean would have relied on Sam for that kind of emotional aftercare, but in his current soulless state his brother was worse than useless in that department.
“Listen, kid,” Dean began, kneeling down awkwardly beside her.
Claudia threw her arms around him, sobbing against his chest.
“Yeah, well...” He patted her back awkwardly, looking up at Xochi. Xochi gave him an encouraging thumbs-up. “Okay, come on, let’s get you out of here.”
He stood slowly and she stood with him, clinging to him like she was drowning. Xochi and Sam both headed for the broken window frame, Xochi waving for Dean to follow. Dean lifted Claudia in his arms and carried her through the debris, wreckage and bloody carnage that used to be her home.
When he got out to the Impala, his arms full of sobbing teenager, he just stood for a moment, unable to let go of her to get the keys from his pocket.
“I’ll drive,” Xochi said. “Where are your keys?”
“Yeah,” Dean said. “Look, nothing personal, but I don’t really like other people driving my car.”
Dean could hear sirens in the distance.
“Unless you plan to drive with her in your lap,” Xochi said with an arched eyebrow, “you’d better change that policy.”
Dean looked over to Sam, who raised his swaddled arm and shrugged. He was clearly way too amused by this exchange to offer any help.
“Right front pocket,” Dean said eventually. “But don’t touch the stereo.”
He lifted Claudia a little higher in his arms so that Xochi could reach into his pocket, trying not to think about how weird and uncomfortable this felt.
Xochi unlocked the Impala’s doors and Dean tried to put Claudia down in the back seat, but she clung to him with panicked desperation and he had no choice but to get into the back seat with her. Sam got in the front passenger seat and Xochi slipped behind the wheel.
Xochi revved the Impala and put her in gear, pulling away from the curb. Dean had to resist the urge to watch the road and lecture Xochi on her driving. After a while, Claudia slowly started to wind down, easing up on the death grip she had on Dean. He looked down and saw that the front of his shirt was smeared with black blotches from her runny eyeliner.
“You okay?” he asked her.
She shook her head.
“Would you be?” she asked.
“Believe me, I’ve been there,” he said.
She was looking up at him, black make-up running down her chubby cheeks and eyes narrow and suspicious.
“I lost both my parents to this kind of action,” Dean told her.
“What?” Claudia looked away, tears welling back up again. “That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“I’m just saying,” Dean told her. “You don’t always get to choose what happens to you and your family, but you can choose how you react. Know what I mean? You can either let it chew you up or you can keep fighting no matter what. I chose to keep fighting. Now it’s your turn to choose.”
Dean could see that his words were getting through to her, but he could also see they were having another, unfortunate side effect. Now she was looking up at him with big puppy-dog eyes.
“Hey Xochi,” Dean said, pulling his hand away from Claudia and stuffing it into his pocket. “Why don’t you pull into that diner. I think we really need to talk some stuff over. Figure out our next move. There’s no point just driving around aimlessly.”
Really, he just wanted to get out of the back seat and Claudia’s adoring gaze.
“No problem,” Xochi said, hitting the turn signal.
She pulled into the first available slot in the parking lot, killed the ignition and tossed the keys to Dean.
“Thanks for trusting me to drive,” she said. “It was a real pleasure. This is a beautiful car.”
“Don’t get used to it,” Dean said, pocketing the keys.
This diner was called “ORBIT BURGER,” a mid-century classic, all futuristic angles and atomic-age details. The sign was shaped like a rocket ship and the décor inside continued the space-faring theme.
The four of them took a table all the way in the back, as far away from other patrons as they could get. Claudia sat beside Dean in the booth and so Xochi sat opposite her.
Sam took off into the men’s room with a first-aid kit while the other three stared at the menus and didn’t speak. In the end, none of them actually felt like eating, so they just got coffee. Claudia asked for a chocolate milkshake but then barely touched it. When Sam returned with a neat, white bandage on his arm, he slid into the booth beside Xochi.
Xochi was intensely relieved to be reunited with Dean and Sam. She’d felt sure from the beginning that they needed to stick together and now more than ever, she knew that was true. It had been a hell of a fight trying to make her way back to them. Teo’s pet Nagual were on her the whole way, hounding her and thwarting her at every turn. What had her sister got herself into?
“Where to begin?” Xochi asked. “This is such a mess.”
“First things first,” Dean said. “Claudia, where can we take you? Someplace safe, grandparents or friends maybe?”
“I’m not a child,” she said. “I’m not going to Grandma’s house, I’m going to find my real mother.”
“Don’t even think about it,” Dean said. “You can’t...”
“I can,” Claudia said. “She’s all I have left.”
“There’s no way...” Dean began.
“It’s my choice,” Claudia said. She turned to Dean. “I choose, right? You said so yourself.”
“Claudia,” Dean said. “You have no idea...”
“Don’t I?” Claudia picked up her napkin, shredding the edge with a chipped black fingernail. “I know where she is right now. I’ve always known. And if you won’t help me get to her, then I’ll go alone.”
“You know where she is now?” Sam asked. “Are you sure?”
“Ever since I was little, I’ve had these...” Claudia looked down at the shredded napkin. “They’re like dreams, but they don’t always come when I’m sleeping. We have a bond. I can’t really explain it. It’s like I can see her, my real mother, inside my mind. Her name is Elvia. I bet you didn’t know that. Elvia Revueltas.”
“No,” Dean said. “We didn’t know that.”
“For the longest time,” Claudia continued. “She was lost. Wandering alone, scared and hurting. Then I saw her in Choulic. In San Diego. In Yuma. She was so angry. So angry. I never told anyone about her. They would just say I’m crazy, but I’m not, am I?”
“So where is she now?” Sam asked.
Claudia looked at Sam with a hard frown.
“What, you want me to tell you where she is so you can kill her?”
“I’m sorry, but we have no choice,” Xochi said. “What your mother has become, it’s unnatural. She needs to be put down, like a sick dog. You have to help us find her.”
“No,” Claudia said. “Tell them Dean, there’s always a choice. Isn’t there? Isn’t there?”
Dean didn’t answer. He had no idea what to say.
“Screw you people,” Claudia said, standing up. “I’m not helping you kill my mom!”
An old Mexican man a few booths down looked
up over the edge of his Spanish newspaper at Dean and Claudia, frowning.
“Keep your voice down,” Dean said.
“Okay, just hang on a second,” Sam said. “Please, sit down. I think I have an idea.”
Claudia paused warily, then sat cautiously on the edge of the booth, ready to bolt.
“Dean,” Sam said. “Remember when you got turned into a vampire?”
Claudia’s eyes went wide.
“Oh yeah,” Dean said, hard stare locked on Sam with half-buried fury flashing in his eyes. “I remember.”
“You’re a vampire?” Claudia asked, like she hadn’t heard anything else.
Xochi could see that Claudia was rapidly developing a massive crush on Dean. The rush of teenage hormones flooding the booth was thicker than the greasy smoke coming off the grill in the kitchen.
“Whoa, hold on,” Dean said. “First of all, being a vampire isn’t sexy, okay? Not even a little bit. I’m dead serious. It was one of the worst things that’s ever happened to me, and I’ve been to Hell so you better believe I know what I’m talking about. Second, I’m not a vampire anymore, because...”
He looked up at Sam, suddenly understanding.
“You think there’s a way we can cure the Borderwalker?”
Dean turned to Xochi. “Is that possible?” he asked. “To turn the Borderwalker back into a normal human?”
“I don’t know,” Xochi said. “But I know who would. Huehuecoyotl. If he can tell us how to transform her back into a human, then she will be unable to open a gate between the worlds. She will be useless to Teo.”
“Okay,” Sam said. “So we talk this coyote dude into giving us a way to cure the Borderwalker, but we’ll still need to find her.”
“I think she’s in Mexico,” Claudia said. “Somewhere close to the border, but not Tijuana. I don’t know where that woman is taking her, but she’s very scared and confused. Promise me you won’t hurt her. Please?”
“I cannot promise that,” Xochi said. “I won’t lie to you, but I can promise to try this other plan first. If we fail, we may have no other choice. This hunt has become so much bigger than simply putting a suffering animal out of its misery. I think my sister is using the Borderwalker for something big. Something terrible.”
There was silence for a moment at the table. Xochi could see the gravity of her words sinking in for Claudia but also for Dean. Claudia looked terrified and unsure. Dean just looked grim and determined.
“How about the panther chicks?” Dean asked. “Where do they fit into all this?”
“The Nagual are a race of shapeshifting witches,” Xochi said. “Both male and female. They can take on various animal forms, but cannot imitate other humans. Not all are evil; it depends on which gods or goddesses they serve. Why they are helping Teo capture the Borderwalker remains to be seen.”
“Okay,” Sam said. “Next step?”
“We should go to Mexico, find my sister and the Borderwalker,” Xochi said. “We can find a place to talk to Huehuecoyotl along the way. But first...” She turned to Claudia. “I need to ask you something important.”
“Okay,” Claudia said.
“What do you know about the night of your real mother’s death?”
“Xochi, come on,” Dean said. “Do we have to get into that right now?”
“I have my reasons,” Xochi told him. “Please, Claudia, it’s important.”
“Nothing,” Claudia said. “All I know is that she died trying to cross the border. We have this... I don’t know what to call it, this weird kind of link, but I can’t see anything about what happened to her that night. It’s like she’s blocking that part from me.”
Xochi closed her eyes, pressing her fingers into her temples. She really wished there was some other way to do this. With everything else that Claudia was going through, she didn’t need be confronted with her father’s awful secret.
“I’m so sorry to ask you this,” Xochi said. “But I need information about what happened to your mother, and there are only two people who witnessed her unnatural transformation. One of them is dead, by his own hand. The other is you.”
“Me?” Claudia frowned. “But I was just a baby. I don’t remember anything about that night.”
“You don’t consciously remember,” Xochi said. “But the memories are there inside your head. I can help you access them if you agree to let me in. I think there is a larger force behind what is happening to your mother. If I can see exactly what went wrong that night, it will help us find who is responsible. Find them and stop them.”
“All right,” Claudia said quietly. “What do I have to do?”
TWENTY-SEVEN
“I don’t know about this,” Dean said over his shoulder.
He was back in the driver’s seat, where he clearly belonged. Sam rode shotgun, as usual. Xochi was in the Impala’s back seat with Claudia. She felt more than a little apprehensive about linking minds with the young girl, but she also knew that the world was full of hurt and heartbreak. No one could be protected from that ugly truth forever.
Xochi herself was hunting full time by the time she was Claudia’s age, staring death in the face every single day. More than that, Xochi was beginning to understand that Claudia was going to be a critical piece of the puzzle. As important to the success of the hunt as Sam. Maybe even more important.
“I’m okay,” Claudia said.
Xochi hoped she was right.
“Just remember,” Dean said. “Your dad—he was a good person. He saved your life. What you see that night, it wasn’t really him, okay?”
“Whatever,” Claudia said. “I’m fine.” She turned to Xochi. “I’m ready.”
Xochi gently cupped the back of Claudia’s head, pressing her palm to the girl’s forehead.
“This may feel... strange,” Xochi told her. “Don’t fight it, just try to relax.”
Then she began to recite the spell, easing her way slowly in.
The first thing Xochi encountered was a flood of memories, not of the Borderwalker, but of Irma, Claudia’s adopted mother. A woman with kind hazel eyes and gentle hands. Thick brown hair swept up into a simple twist at the nape of her long neck. A heart-shaped locket on a gold chain. She had an almost ethereal beauty, delicate, girlish and a little too thin, but always smiling. She stood in the kitchen with Claudia’s grandmother, cooking a huge pot of menudo on Sunday after church. In the backyard wearing a yellow dress, laughing and raising a hand to shade her eyes from the sun. In the living room, reading on the couch with her slim legs curled up underneath her, holding the book far away from her eyes because she refused to “throw money away” on new reading glasses when the ones she had were “perfectly fine.” In Claudia’s room, helping her make tea for dolls. Her father was there too, winking and pointing to his scratchy cheek, asking for a kiss. Lifting her up so high, seeming impossibly big and strong. Teaching her funny songs with bad words in them and her mother chasing him out of the kitchen with a wooden spoon. Him taking her mother’s hand and kissing it.
There were also memories of her mother in the hospital. A skeleton in pink terrycloth, barely breathing and lost in morphine haze. Claudia standing there nauseous and wracked with guilt for wanting to run away. For not wanting to touch that cold, wasted hand. For wishing she’d just hurry up and die already.
Xochi worked her way backwards, moving like liquid flowing through the years. As the memories got older, they became more disjointed, non-linear. Flashes and blurred images that Xochi had to pick apart and decipher. When she came upon what seemed to be a memory of being tucked inside a zipped-up windbreaker, she decided to dig deeper. There were other feelings associated with this memory, warmth and safety and a smell of drugstore aftershave. She worked through the tangled strands of this memory and into what preceded it. That was where she found what she was looking for.
Claudia is alone. Alone and cold and frightened in the middle of the night. Sand under her cheek and scratchy branches and curious insects and sh
e wants to cry but is petrified, frozen in terror. Men are running, huge boots thundering past the place where she is hidden. The men’s eyes are all wrong, hot and glowing from within, like cinders. She can see Elvia, her mother. The men are hurting her, kicking her and tearing her clothes. Doing other things that Claudia doesn’t understand.
Xochi breathed a sign of relief when she realized that the men in Claudia’s memory are just looming monstrous shapes. She carefully kept her own thoughts about the unfolding scene to herself, trying to stay detached as she watched and waited.
The men seem to be finished with Elvia. They step away, one by one, but the last man reaches down and touches her. Touches Elvia on the neck and a terrible dark stain forms, like an inky bruise. The stain takes the shape of wings. A butterfly.
A cold, creeping dread surged through Xochi’s veins. How could she have missed all the signs? How could she have been so blind when the answer was right there all along?
The men walk away, heads hung low and eyes no longer glowing, slump-shouldered shadows disappearing into the night. Then, a woman. A tall, silent woman with no clothes on. The woman crouches over Elvia, comforting her and whispering, shifting fluidly from human to coyote and back again. Elvia reaches out to take the woman’s hand and the black butterfly on her neck begins to spread like a disease across her pale skin, ugly barbed tendrils that reach out to infect the coyote woman. There is a hole opening in the night sky, a huge pulsing wound between the stars. The coyote woman lets out a shriek of unbearable agony as the black tendrils begin to eat into her flesh like acid, exposing raw, smoking bone. A torrential gush of strange power is flowing like blood from the coyote woman and into Elvia’s convulsing body as the two of them slowly levitate into the air, falling away from the bloody sand beneath them. Then the coyote woman bursts into a shower of wet black rags that disintegrate before they hit the sand and Elvia disappears into the wound in the sky, a long crooning howl echoing through the desert night.
Then the big man in the windbreaker, and Claudia zipped up safely inside.
Xochi fought to keep her breathing calm and steady as she gently withdrew, disengaging herself from Claudia’s memory. She came slowly back to herself in the back seat of the Impala, taking her hand off Claudia’s forehead. The girl’s smeary soot-ringed eyes flickered, then opened.
Supernatural: Coyote's Kiss Page 13
