I grabbed my shotgun, already reloaded with silver shot, as Father Bryan and the nuns hauled Ricky out of my truck. Sister Maggie and Sister Kate weren’t squeamish at all around the naked, blood-encrusted body. Of course, having spent so much time with vampires, neither was I.
To my surprise, when we carried him into the well-lit chapel that was the first building of the Mission I saw that he didn’t look nearly as bad as he had when I’d loaded him up.
He’s not human, I reminded myself. Shifters heal fast.
As we carried him out the back door of the chapel and through the small courtyard that separated the Mission’s public house of prayer from its private living quarters, one of the handful of children who had arrived last Friday night peered around a corner at us. An older woman pulled him back, and they soundlessly disappeared into the Mission’s anterior rooms.
Not for the first time, I wondered who these rotating groups of people coming in and out of the Mission were, exactly. Now I had a hint, having seen Ricky change from coyote to human. A coyote was someone who helped illegal immigrants cross the border, and Ricky had always enjoyed a good pun, whether in English or Spanish.
“Was Lupe with him?” Father Bryan asked, disturbing my thoughts as we carried Ricky through the Mission house’s big foyer and into the kitchen and dumped him on the wide trestle table. Sister Maggie went to the refrigerator, dragging from atop it a large red bag stitched with a white cross.
“I didn’t see her.” I watched the nun pull medical supplies from the bag. “Should I have?”
Father Bryan looked grim. “She went out with her brother tonight.”
“Well, I didn’t see anyone besides Ricky. Except . . .” I stopped, suddenly realizing that, if Lupe was a shapeshifter like her half brother, she could have been a bat sitting on a cactus for all I knew. But did Father Bryan know about Ricky? Shapeshifters had come out only recently, and maybe Ricky was still on the furry down-low.
Father Bryan’s eyes went all squinty as he thought about his next words. “Was Ricky naked like this when you found him?”
Father Bryan was being as cagey as I was, and the question was leading enough that I decided to take a risk. “Less naked and more hairy. Possibly with paws.”
Sister Kate looked up at us with inscrutable black eyes as she neatly threaded a needle. I looked quickly away.
“So you did see him.” Father Bryan took a deep breath, studying my face. “Okay, well, as you now know, both Lupe and Ricky are shapeshifters.” When I grimaced, his finger wagged under my nose. “But other than that, everything you know of them is true.”
“It sure seems I don’t know all that much, Father.” I shivered, the words leaving me cold.
“You’ve known Ricky for months,” Father Bryan said. “Lupe, too. They’re the same people they always were.”
I ignored his emphasis on the word people. “Ricky visited me sometimes. We were hardly besties.”
That was untrue, of course. Ricky came around all the time, and he’d always been a real gentleman. He’d carry stuff for me or bring me lunch and bunches of wild desert flowers. And I’d liked his attention. Despite myself, I had wanted to know him better. I’d certainly wanted to know that strong body better, not to mention that golden skin and that hawklike Indian nose, prominent under straight black brows and eyes the deep brown of my grand-mère’s famed roux.
Now that I knew Ricky was a shifter, I wasn’t sure how I felt about him.
“Sister,” Father Bryan said to Maggie, “run and look for Lupe. Maybe she’s returned. If she hasn’t . . .” His words trailed off, his face stricken.
I swore for him, taking one for the team. I’d forgotten about Lupe in all the drama. I prayed she’d gotten away from whatever had hurt them. And, after seeing Ricky’s wounds up close with him in human form, I had a pretty good idea of what he’d tangled with.
“I’m guessing there’s a reason Ricky was a giant coyote? Maybe something to do with all your houseguests?”
Father Bryan’s shoulders twitched.
“Ricky and Lupe were helping people,” he said. “Their parents were killed by unscrupulous coyotes—the kind that get people over the border only to rob them. If the kids hadn’t been able to shift and get away, they’d have been sold as slaves. All their parents wanted was a better life for their children, and they died for their pains.”
“Wow, really? Both of them murdered?” I felt that information like a punch, right in the gut. I knew what it was like to lose your parents.
“Yes. Well, Ricky’s mom passed away when he was a baby. But he was raised by his stepmom, Lupe’s mother, who died that night alongside their father, both killed giving the children time to escape. That’s why Ricky and Lupe do what they do.”
Putting Ricky and Lupe’s childhood suffering to the back of my mind to process later, I raised my hands. “Hey, I get it. I’ve lived here long enough to know that shit is complicated. But working as a coyote—shapeshifting coyote or human coyote or whatever—isn’t exactly safe, especially considering the current political climate.”
“Damned vampires,” Father Bryan spat, for the second time that day.
I approached the patient on the table, keeping my eyes away from where Sister Kate was industriously sewing up Ricky’s side. Examining the ugly wound at his neck, already neatly stitched, I pointed to the telltale marks.
“Looks like Ricky already got bit by the new Border Patrol,” I said.
“Vampire did this?” asked Sister Kate in her lightly accented English, crossing herself when I nodded.
Father Bryan said, “After all the prejudice vamps have suffered, I can’t see how they’d get in bed with the devil like this.”
“Father, they’re vampires. They are the devil.”
It was his turn to cross himself. “But I don’t understand why they’d attack Ricky.”
“But wasn’t he working as a coyote? Exactly the people the vampires are supposed to stop.”
Father Bryan shook his head. “You don’t understand. Ricky and Lupe liked the joke of shifting into coyotes, but they weren’t bringing people over themselves. They were only helping people who had already crossed.”
“Helping?”
“Yes. Ricky and Lupe would investigate rumors of coyotes selling their customers to slavers or robbing them. If the rumors were true, they’d rescue the people and bring them here.”
“So the people always hanging around the Mission . . . ?”
“Are immigrants rescued by Lupe or Ricky, but always people already on this side of the border.”
“Still, maybe the vamps who attacked Ricky and Lupe didn’t get their little joke and mistook them for the real deal,” I said.
“So where’s Lupe?”
“La raptaron,” we heard whispered from the head of the table. Ricky, his eyes bright with pain, was struggling onto his elbows.
“La raptaron,” he repeated. Then, in English, “They have her.”
“Who?” asked Father Bryan.
“Los vampiros.”
I swore, stroking my shotgun for comfort.
“They arrested her?” Father Bryan asked.
Ricky looked confused. “Arrest? No. Not policía. No uniforms.”
I frowned. In order to be as in-your-face as possible, the Arizona vampires working the border wore the familiar Border Patrol uniforms, only done in smoky gray and black with large American flag patches on the left and right biceps. They were out to prove they were all-American vamps fighting for American values, even if some of them were older than the country itself.
At that point, I realized I needed to go. It didn’t matter that I liked Ricky or his shy sister with her large doe eyes and small smile.
I stood up. “I’ve got to get something from my truck,” I lied. “You, um, take care of Ricky.” Father Bryan raised an eyebrow,
but he didn’t call me out.
“We will,” he said. “Go with God.”
Sister Kate didn’t look up from where she was setting bones in Ricky’s right foot, but the priest watched me with his piercing blue eyes as I turned on my heel, clutching my shotgun.
Sister Maggie burst back into the kitchen as I was leaving. “Lupe not here,” she said. “She missing.” I paused, hearing that, but lowered my head and kept walking.
I couldn’t get involved. Not with vampires. Not again.
I got into my truck but didn’t start the engine. Instead, my forehead flopped forward onto my steering wheel as I took a long, deep breath.
I’m making the right decision. I can’t get involved.
To fortify myself, I plucked my old cell phone out of its holder on my dashboard. Then I did something I hadn’t done since I left Texas over a year ago.
I opened up my photos.
The old Desiree grinned at me, fangs blazing in the flash of the camera. They were fake fangs, of course, but the two men flanking me in the photo sported the real deal.
Nicholas and Trey, my former lovers, and the former me.
Inspecting the photo, I had to admit I’d been hot. I’d always been a bit plump, but mostly in the right places. So my body seemed made for the corset cinching my waist, making my breasts sit like treats on a platter, ready to be tasted. My hair was bleached and long, rather than the natural honey brown it was now, cut much shorter to get the last of the blond off.
And those boys. I was as in love with Nicholas and his gorgeous protégé as any idiot in a made-for-TV movie. Trey, a newly turned vamp from Dallas, wasn’t much older than I was, while Nicholas was as old as dirt. I’d thought the two of them loved me back, because I was just twenty-two and stupid as shit. Needless to say, stupid as shit and old as dirt made for a dangerous combination.
Meanwhile, my two Romeos were happy to take my blood and make me the ham in their hot man sandwich—memories of which still made my lady business flutter a bit, despite everything. But they never loved me.
I was food. Pretty, fun-loving food, but food nonetheless.
Scrolling through my photos, I remembered the triumph of getting that job at the Bat’s Wing, one of the hottest vampire bars in Dallas—me, a girl from the bayou, whose daddy had taught her to cheat at poker, skin squirrels, make moonshine, and not much else. A daddy who’d died choking drunkenly on his own vomit, leaving her nothing. Despite all that, beautiful, immortal vampires had given me a glamorous job working the gift shop at their nightclub, and I’d been everybody’s favorite.
Then I’d met Nicholas one night when I was helping out behind the bar, after another girl called in sick. I’d looked down to wipe a glass and when I’d looked up, he was there. “What is your name, ma chère?”
I was so proud of myself for not flinching at his sudden appearance. I’d thought I was getting used to vampires.
“Desiree, sir,” I’d said, standing straighter, spine arching under his crazy-beautiful eyes. “And what can I get you?”
He’d ignored my question. “Your outfit becomes you.” Tawny eyes swept over me, lingering at hips, waist, breasts. Cool approval shone on his face and my heart skipped a Disney beat, my own eyes tracing the curve of his lips, his patrician nose, the mop of golden curls that my fingers itched to touch.
Another vampire, a huge man with black hair who looked like a football player, ambled over to take a seat next to the blond. The blond’s long white fingers touched those of the big man.
“I am Nicholas and this is my child, Trey. Trey, this is Desiree.” Nicholas pronounced my name like a caress. My knees wobbled.
“Ma’am,” said Trey, giving me an open, honest grin, the last vestige of the good country boy he’d been until quite recently.
They’d had me at hello.
I pushed aside those memories as my fingers numbly swept across the screen of my phone. So many photos of me with the two vamps. I stopped at one of the last, near the time I’d left.
The difference in my appearance was shocking. The plump girl was almost gone, my body working overtime to supply blood to two hungry vamps. My arms encircling the trim waists of Nick and Trey were much thinner, as was my neck, covered in scabrous bites that now looked barbaric to me, but of which I’d been so disgustingly proud.
Nick liked to leave his mark on me, he’d said, and I’d been so happy to be his.
And yet it wasn’t the sight of my neck that got me; it was the girl in the background of the photo, carrying a tray loaded with bottles of TrueBlood: Bethany Rogers, my coworker and roommate, who would die the night that photo was taken.
It had been Bethany’s death that got to me, finally. Of all the shit I’d seen—humans coming out of the john with no memory of when they’d gone in, vampires talking about us as if we were cattle, human boyfriends or girlfriends disappearing to visit mystery aunts or uncles and never returning—at Bethany’s death I saw through the veil.
I guess that’s called growing up. That moment when you see yourself for real, as opposed to how you think you are. When they found Bethany’s body in that Dumpster, I suddenly realized I was about five minutes from my own ignominious death. That the missing men and women weren’t visiting long-distance relatives, that vampires were killers, and that I was letting two beautiful demons drain me dry.
By that point, of course, I knew better than to up and quit. How many times had I seen human employees stomp into the manager’s office, only to wander out, dazed? They’d appear the next night pleased as punch to work the job they’d sworn they were quitting the previous evening.
Why kill us, when we could be made to forget we were unhappy?
So for damned near three months I smiled, sold Bat’s Wing T-shirts, and made love to Nick and Trey until the dawn broke when I’d saved just enough money to pack up my truck with a single suitcase of clothes and drive as far as I could that day, and the day after, and the day after that, until my money ran out. That had been over a year ago, and here I was. Ready to run again.
And I wasn’t even sure why, really. There’d been no attempt to follow me. I’d heard through various channels that the vampire community in Texas had some serious trouble, and quite a few vamps died in a shooting. Maybe Nicholas and Trey were dead; they certainly hadn’t come after me. So I wasn’t sure whom, exactly, I thought I had to run from.
Except maybe that blond girl in the picture, looking so happy in the embrace of two lovers who could have killed her and not given a single solitary shit.
That Desiree was a rotten layer of my onion I sure hoped I’d carved out.
I turned off the phone and leaned back in my seat, brushing angrily at the tears that had formed in my eyes. I flipped my visor down to check my mascara in the mirror there, swore, and flipped it back up.
The desert was never dark when the moon had any heft to it, and tonight the landscape was lit like a strip mall parking lot so I could clearly see the puffs of sand kicking up quite a distance away.
Something was coming toward the Mission, and I doubted it was anything good.
I started the truck. If I left now and got right on the highway, I would be well away before the vamps arrived.
This isn’t my fight, I reminded myself. I’ve escaped all this shit.
Ricky, Father Bryan, and Lupe be damned.
The puffs of sand kept coming, closer and closer. I made my decision and threw my truck into drive.
Father Bryan jumped when I kicked open the door that led from the foyer into the kitchen. Sister Kate didn’t look up from where she was bandaging Ricky’s foot, but Sister Maggie gave me a small, fierce smile.
I held the duffel bag in my right hand out to her, my movement limited by the shotgun cradled in my left. She came to take the bag, wincing at its weight.
“Company’s coming. How’s the patient?” Ricky move
d his head at the sound of my voice but didn’t open his eyes.
“Already healing, but he has a way to go,” said Father Bryan, blanching as I began unpacking the duffel I normally kept hidden in a lockable hidey-hole above my wheel well. “Do you really think we’ll need all that?”
I loaded the two service revolvers with silver bullets. “If we’re dealing with vampires, yes. These won’t kill them but it’ll hurt a whole hell of a lot. Do you have silver for that gun I saw earlier?”
“No.”
“Then take one of these.” I passed him one of the guns. “Sisters, can you shoot?” The women shook their heads, so I threw each a can of silver aerosol, sticking the other revolver and my last can of silver mace into my belt.
Then I lifted the final item contained in the black duffel. It was my pride and joy, my baby, my most beloved possession.
She was a Stryker Strykezone compact crossbow. Her name was Lolita and she was powerful enough to bring down any wicked old wolf a nice young lady might meet in the woods.
But she was loaded with wooden bolts, all the better to kill a vampire with.
“You ever have vampire guests, Father?” I asked.
He was staring at the crossbow in horror, undoubtedly wondering who the hell I was, really. I felt that acute pang in my conscience that I often developed in his presence. I’d never told him about being a fangbanger, and I hated the idea of having to admit the truth once this was over.
Then again, we might all be dead in a few hours, so I couldn’t worry about that now.
“Yes, once,” he said, answering my question about vampire visitors. “Members of the new patrol coming to introduce themselves.”
“Where were they able to enter? Think carefully, this is important.”
“They came through the chapel, into the courtyard. Then they knocked on the main door.” Father Bryan waved at the set of big double doors that led from the big entry room just off the kitchen into the courtyard.
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