Then, the crack of a gunshot inches from Dean’s ear and Javi’s forehead burst open with an explosion of brains and bone. Dean kicked the dancer back down the stairs and Xochi was at his side, pulling him through the door and slamming it in the faces of the oncoming zombies.
Xochi and Dean both pressed their backs against the door, expecting to need all of their weight to hold it shut. Amazingly, the lock Dean had picked re-engaged itself as soon as the door closed and after a few moments, the two of them cautiously stepped away.
Dean looked over at Xochi. Her face was stone, eyes cold and emotionless as she efficiently reloaded the .45.
“Thanks,” Dean said.
Xochi nodded without meeting his gaze. He knew better than to say anything else, knowing that this was exactly the way he would react if he were in her shoes. Now was not the time for emotion. That would come later. If there was a later.
Sam and Claudia were both standing at the edge of the roof, looking across an alley at the neighboring building. Dean joined them, looking down at the balls-out chaos ruling the street below.
A second Tzitzimitl had crawled out of the empty green shop to join the first, cutting a swath through the terrified crowd. Zombies were everywhere, ganging up on the few remaining living people and dragging them down.
“Where the hell are the police?” Dean asked.
“Police do not come to this part of the Barrio Bravo,” Xochi replied. “We need to find a way across to the green store where Elvia has opened the gate.”
“It’s too far to jump,” Sam said. “But look...”
Dean looked at the roof of the building on the other side of the alley. There was a large wooden extension ladder lying near the fire door.
“If we could get that ladder,” Sam said. “We could climb across and from there the buildings are all connected. We could get down into the green shop from above and get to Elvia.”
“And how do you propose to do that?” Dean asked. “If we could reach that ladder, we wouldn’t need it.”
Sam didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
“Oh, hell, no,” Dean said. “Don’t even think about it.”
“The zombies, they’re chasing souls, right?” Sam said. “So are the Star Demons. I don’t have mine, so wouldn’t they leave me alone?”
“We have no way of knowing that for sure,” Dean said. “What if you’re wrong?”
“What if I’m not?” Sam asked. “I can sneak past them and get into that other building, then lay the ladder across the gap for you guys.”
“Dean,” Xochi said. “This is why I needed Sam for this hunt to be successful. It wasn’t clear until this moment, but I think this... this is his destiny.”
Could that be true? Could it be that Sam was sent back from Hell without his soul for a reason? Could this be the reason, to stop yet another apocalypse? A double-blind deep cover mission into a foreign land where Castiel and all of Heaven’s minions were not allowed to interfere? Maybe so and maybe not, but either way, Dean just wasn’t seeing any other option.
“Dammit, Sammy,” Dean said. “I hate this plan.”
Sam headed over to a rickety fire escape hanging off the side of their building.
“I got this,” Sam said.
Claudia ran to Sam and hugged him. He looked up at Dean and then put his arms briefly around the girl’s shaking shoulders, face still neutral and expressionless.
“Good luck, Sam,” Claudia said.
“I don’t need luck,” Sam replied.
He started climbing down the fire escape, toward the street.
Dean watched his brother descend toward the madness of the street with his fists clenched and his heart in his throat. This had to work. It just had to.
When Sam reached the second floor, the fire escape simply ended, the ladder meant to reach the ground level either missing or stolen. He had no choice but to jump down to the sidewalk, right into the thick of the zombies. Which meant there would be nowhere to run if the zombies did go after him.
Sam looked up at Dean, acknowledging him with the slightest nod—then jumped.
He landed hard, knocking over a pair of punk kids with brightly colored mohawks. A heartbeat passed, then another. No reaction from the zombies. They just looked right through Sam.
“Hot damn,” Dean said. “He made it.”
“Dean,” Xochi said softly.
“What?”
“Can I have my hand back?”
Dean looked down and saw that he had one of Xochi’s gloved hands in a vice grip. He let her go and she opened and closed her fingers like they were sore.
“Sorry,” Dean said.
“Where is he going?” Claudia asked.
Dean looked back down at the street and saw Sam weaving through the crowd of zombies, walking right past the door to the neighboring building. He was headed straight for the pair of Tzitzimimeh.
“Is he crazy?” Xochi asked, as Sam picked up a broken-off, four-foot length of rusty rebar.
There was about a ten-foot clear area around the long, skinny legs of the demons, littered with skull-faced Santa Muerte dolls and mutilated corpses. Sam slowly approached the edge of the clearing. The two demons were turned in opposite directions, one chewing through the rag-doll body of a teenaged girl and the other tipping its massive, oversized head like it was listening to something only it could hear.
Sam took a cautious, sliding step closer, raising the rebar like a samurai sword. Neither demon seemed to notice him.
“They can’t see him,” Xochi said, astounded disbelief in her husky voice. “He is invisible to them.”
Sam lunged at the listening demon, swinging the rebar and shattering nearly half the obsidian teeth in its massive jaw.
The demon screamed and swiped at Sam with its knife-like claws, but Sam danced back and to the left, while the creature lunged right. It was fighting blind, swiping at nothing while Sam snuck up from behind for a second shot.
“He’s going for the teeth,” Dean said. “Just like Bobby said.”
“Without those teeth, it can still attack,” Xochi said. “But it can make no more zombies. It can eat no more souls.”
Sam struck again, knocking out the flailing demon’s remaining teeth then leaping back, out of the way. His arms and face were laced with bleeding cuts, but the cuts were only flesh wounds. He had no soul to eat.
The other demon attacked the now toothless one, the two of them crashing together into the side of a toy store. One of them kicked out at a parked minivan, sending it flying and crashing into the window of the empty green storefront they’d crawled out of.
Sam let the attacking demon have it in the back of the knees, buckling its lanky legs. It spun toward him, jaw snapping inches from Sam’s face as he faded back and then swung for the fences, obsidian teeth fragments flying everywhere.
The first demon lunged at the second, retaliating with wild, vicious swipes of its bloody claws. The two went down together, scattering cars and vendor’s tables.
Sam ran, dodging through hoards of milling, confused zombies and heading for the open door of the building opposite the one where Dean, Xochi and Claudia were trapped. He ducked inside, pulling the door closed behind him.
They waited. Just under five minutes later, Sam appeared on the neighboring roof, ladder in hand.
“What did I tell you?” Sam called. “Piece of cake.”
“I never thought I’d say this,” Dean said. “But after that stunt, I think you might almost be as bad ass as me.”
“Almost,” Sam said, laying the ladder across the gap. “Now get your bad ass over here will ya?”
“Claudia first,” Xochi said. “Sam, Dean: hold the ends of the ladder.
Claudia looked down at the zombies below. They had spotted the activity on the roof and were scrabbling at the walls, trying to climb over each other and reaching upward.
“Don’t look down,” Dean said.
Claudia started across, inching slowly along. She wa
s a little less than halfway when she slipped and nearly fell, clinging desperately to the rungs, legs swinging.
“Come on!” Sam called. “Keep coming.”
“I can’t!” Claudia wailed, clinging tighter. Frozen with terror.
Xochi swore.
“Hold on,” she said. “I’m coming.”
Xochi made her way across the ladder, which started to bend beneath their combined weight.
“I’m slipping!” Claudia cried.
“You’re not slipping,” Xochi said. “You’re fine. Give me your hand.”
“I can’t!”
“Yes you can. Give me your hand.”
Claudia looked down at the reaching zombies, then squeezed her eyes shut.
“Don’t look down,” Dean said again.
Claudia reached a shaking hand toward Xochi and Xochi heaved her back to safety. Together, they made it across the rest of the ladder. Sam was there on the other roof to help Claudia down on the other side. Xochi joined them and then turned back and motioned to Dean.
Dean looked around for something to secure the ladder when he crossed. He weighed it down with a discarded clay plant pot and then began to cross. As he made his way across the splintery ladder, he could feel that the joints where the extensions met had been weakened by Claudia’s struggle. He was almost to the other side when the stressed joints gave way. Dean felt himself slipping, falling.
Sam caught the back of Dean’s shirt with one hand and his arm with the other, hoisting him awkwardly upward while the pieces of the ladder crashed down on the howling zombies. Dean could feel his shirt ripping. He didn’t look down, just locked his grip on Sam’s wrist.
Sam was as calm and stoic as always. No sweat. But even though he hadn’t seemed particularly worried that Dean might fall and end up zombie chum, he’d still grabbed Dean. He didn’t let Dean fall. Dean looked up into his brother’s cold eyes. Looking for something that he knew wasn’t there. Or was it?
Sam pulled him up.
“What are you?” Dean said to Sam as he climbed up onto the roof. “Captain Frickin’ America all of a sudden?”
“Yeah, whatever,” Sam said. “We have work to do.”
“You know,” Dean said, fighting to catch his breath. “For a guy with no soul who doesn’t give a damn about anyone, you’re turning out to be quite the hero.”
“Just trying to be practical,” Sam said.
FORTY-EIGHT
Xochi stayed close to Claudia, trying not to think about Javi. He had been a good lover, even though he always wanted more emotionally than she was willing or able to give. She knew that the adrenalin pumping through her body was numbing that particular pain, though she knew that the second she slowed down, it would come back to knee her in the gut. But she couldn’t worry about that now. She had to stay focused on Claudia.
“Here,” Xochi said, tucking a single marigold behind Claudia’s ear. “You take the last one.”
“Thanks,” Claudia said.
Sam had played out his role as if he’d been born to do it, now it would be up to the girl to complete the puzzle and fulfill her own destiny. Whatever shape that destiny may take.
But was Xochi ready? Ready to face Teo? All this time, with everything that had happened, she was still deeply conflicted. She felt such poisonous anger toward her sister, but blood was blood. Teo was still the person who’d raised Xochi, who went without food so that Xochi and Atlix would have enough, who’d taught Xochi to read, to shoot, to hunt. Xochi had idolized her big sister for years, struggling to copy her hairstyles and her swagger and the way she held a gun. Then, after their brother’s death, Xochi spent the subsequent years distancing herself from Teo, trying to do everything she could to prove that she and her sister were nothing alike. But there was just no escaping the truth, that Xochi wouldn’t be the hunter she was today without the conflicted gravitational flux of her relationship with Teo. Was she really prepared to do whatever it took to stop Teo? Including killing her?
Crossing the connected roofs was no problem. Getting down through the building and into the empty shop was more of a challenge. It was crawling with zombies and Nagual but Sam and Dean were ahead of her, clearing the way for Claudia like a supernatural SWAT team.
As they came down the last flight of stairs, a violent tremor shook the building, sending them all staggering into one another and clutching at the handrails. One of the pursuing Nagual came tumbling down the stairs between them and Sam took her out the second she hit the bottom.
When they got to the first floor, they found that it was one big empty storefront. A painting project was half completed, with tarps, cans and brushes stacked against one wall. The crushed minivan was protruding sideways through the broken glass front. At the other end of the shop, where there should have been a back wall and maybe an emergency exit, was an open, pulsating gate, spiraling down into dizzy, sickening nothing. And front and center, Teo. Itztlitlantl in her hand.
“You’re too late,” Teo said in English. Then she switched to their ancient native language. “Elvia is bringing Itzpapalotl through the gate right now. The rest of her sisters are following close behind her. I can’t stop it now and neither can you. It’s over.”
“No,” Xochi said. “This is insane. Think about what you’re doing, Teo.”
“I have thought about it,” she said. “This isn’t the end of the world, little sister. It’s the beginning of a new era.”
Elvia crawled out of the gate, smoking from a dozen slashes, her stuttering form bleeding out into the air around her. Close behind her was a mammoth shape, coalescing out of the nothingness, all gleaming black teeth and howling hunger.
Claudia made a move toward her mother and Teo lunged at the girl with the obsidian knife. Sam and Dean both drew down on Teo, but Xochi was quicker, drawing her own stone knife, countering and knocking her sister back. They rolled together across the floor and away from Claudia.
“Don’t you touch her,” Xochi said in English, putting all her telekinetic power into her knife hand.
“Why fight me, Xochi?” Teo asked, countering with her own telekinetic power and forcing Xochi’s hand back. “This is our moment. The birth of an era of rampant monsters. An era in which skilled hunters like you and me will live like queens. The world will be a paradise of wild game and desperate humans willing to pay anything for our services. Even your little boyfriends will have more wealth and action than they will know what to do with.”
Claudia threw her arms around her mother. Elvia shifted again, pale and human now in her black hooded sweatshirt.
Dean watched Xochi and her sister fighting out of the corner of one eye, then took the flask from his back pocket.
“Elvia,” Dean said. “We can help you, but you need to drink this. I mean... breathe it. Dammit, just tell her, Claudia. We have to shut this gate right now.”
Claudia translated while Dean crouched down beside her and held out the flask to her mother. Elvia looked up at Dean for a minute, then reached out her hand.
Suddenly the whole building was rocking and rolling as a volley of tremors came out of the shimmering gate. Dean stumbled, battling to keep his balance on a floor that felt more like the deck of a ship in a thunderstorm. The flask slipped from his hand, spinning away toward the yawning gate.
Dean dove after it, but when it hit the cement floor, the cap popped off, and the Alpha’s fragrant blood wafted out and dissipated into the air.
Dean slammed his fist against the floor.
“Our mother would be ashamed if she could see you now,” Xochi said to Teo. “What you’ve become.”
“Don’t talk to me about shame,” Teo retorted. “You know nothing about our mother.”
Shuddering shockwaves came rolling out of the gate like a dozen simultaneous earthquakes. Cracks appeared in the walls and floor, spiderwebbing outward from the gate as the form inside became more solid, an enormous toothy head and long reaching arms now visible.
“I know she died a war
rior’s death,” Xochi said. “She died performing her sacred duty.”
“I only let you believe she died an honorable death because you were so young and heartbroken,” Teo responded. “And because I didn’t want you to share the shame that I still live with to this day. The shame that made it impossible for me to keep on buying into the family’s pretentious posturing about ‘balance’ and ‘sacred duty.’”
“What are you talking about?” Xochi asked. Though she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer.
“Our mother died on a routine job, cleaning out a fledgling vampire nest,” Teo said. “She died because she was drunk, and had been for years, drinking to kill the pain of a job that had ceased to have any meaning for her. She got drunk and she got sloppy and she got killed by a hungry newborn. Pathetic.”
The telekinetic power in Xochi’s hand faltered and Teo pushed her advantage.
“After that,” Teo said, “the job ceased to have any kind of deep spiritual meaning for me either. I saw it for the hollow lie it really was and realized that the only thing that mattered in this life is the pleasure you can squeeze out of every day.”
“And killing me will bring you pleasure?” Xochi demanded. “Your own flesh and blood? Is that how depraved you have become?”
“Your death will bring me no pleasure, little sister,” Teo said. “Only the pleasure of victory.”
* * *
“Claudia,” Sam said, raising the Magnum and drawing a bead on Elvia. “Step back.”
“No,” Claudia cried, pushing Elvia’s knotted hair back from her tear-stained face. “No, there has to be another way.”
“Look at her,” Sam said. “She’s dying anyway—can’t you see? We have to close the gate. We have no choice.”
“I’m sorry, Claudia,” Dean said. “But there is no other way.”
“There is,” Claudia said. “Remember, Dean, you told me there’s always a choice.” She turned to Elvia, whispering in Spanish, then English. “Change me.”
“What?” Dean took a step closer to Claudia. “No way, I’m not gonna let you do that. Come on, you don’t have to be all tough just to impress me.”
Supernatural: Coyote's Kiss Page 24
