Supernatural 8 - Coyote's Kiss

by Christa Faust

  “Well, what are you waiting for, little sister?” Teo asked, speaking in their ancient native tongue. “Kill her.” She drew Itztlitlantl and shifted it skillfully from her left to her right hand. “Oh, that’s right. You can’t.”

  “What do you want, Teo?” Xochi asked in English. “Can’t you see we’re busy here? Unless you’ve come to help...?”

  Teo flicked the fingers of her left hand like she was brushing away lint. The Borderwalker reacted as if hit by a truck, flying backwards and slamming into the far wall. Xochi was stunned by this casual display of power. Teo had always been strong, but nothing like this. Sam and Dean both turned toward the newcomer, weapons held high, eyes narrow and suspicious.

  “What the hell’s going on here, Xochi?” Dean asked.

  There was no way to explain everything with the Borderwalker struggling back to her feet. No time. But even if there were time, Xochi had no idea where to begin.

  Teo stepped up to the cowering Borderwalker and prodded the creature’s scrawny, trembling shank with the pointed toe of her shoe. She held Itztlitlantl in her hand but didn’t strike. Almost like she was teasing the thing. Teasing Xochi.

  Xochi was so angry, she felt ready to spit razor blades. That bitch had a lot of nerve to show up here, flaunting Itztlitlantl in Xochi’s face. Like she had every right to wield it. Like she had never betrayed the family. Like Atlix was still alive and safe.

  “You have no right,” Xochi cried, reverting to their native tongue. “No right.”

  It was a bad idea, but Xochi couldn’t help herself. She lunged forward, grabbed Teo’s wrist and twisted, trying to force her sister to drop Itztlitlantli. Teo gave Xochi a sharp elbow to the face, knocking her back, bleeding from a split lip. Dean was between them and on Teo before Xochi could shake the stars from her eyes. The two of them went down, grappling, to the carpet.

  Instead of attacking again, the wounded Borderwalker let out a miserable, desolate howl, clawing at the wall behind her. That wall suddenly opened into a yawning gateway and the Borderwalker tumbled backwards, pulling a few crumpled beer cans and a stray sneaker with her as she fell.

  And just like that, she was gone. The gate snapped shut and all that was left was a the heavy, resinous scent of copal smoke.

  Teo kicked free of Dean’s grip and leapt, cat-like to her feet.

  “See what you’ve done?” Teo said. Then switching to English she added: “Do yourself a favor and stay out of my way. You and these... beefcakes.”

  She spun on her heel and walked out the door.

  Sam looked over at Dean, eyebrow arched.

  “Beefcakes?”

  Xochi ran to Brewer. He was bleeding from a hundred slashes, life swiftly draining out onto the filthy carpet. She knew what she had to do.

  “Xochi,” Dean said, clenching his right hand like it pained him. “Who the hell was that?”

  “There’s no time,” Xochi said. “I’m going to have to ask you to trust me.”

  Xochi gathered Brewer up in her arms, ignoring the blood that soaked into her white shirt. She put one hand behind his neck and the other on his forehead, palm centered between his eyes. Unfortunately for Brewer, there was no time for seduction or easing her way in gently. She spoke the ancient words that would allow them to link minds and then unceremoniously kicked open the door to his memories just like she’d kicked open the door to his apartment.

  She clawed her way through scattered flashes. Images from a lonely, alienated childhood. An awkward sexual encounter with an older girl who chewed gum the whole time. The smell of cordite, of burning bodies and fresh blood on hot Iraqi sand. That first luscious rush of heroin, like the world’s coziest blanket wrapped around a wounded soul. She could feel the structures swiftly crumbling inside his mind, but luckily the memory of that night fifteen years ago was just under the surface, as vital and malignant as the minute it was formed.

  Men running through the moonlit Arizona desert. Brewer is one of them. They are chasing a woman through the tangled brush. A woman with curly black hair. She is carrying a dirty bundle in her arms. They lose her, spot her and lose her again. Now they’ve got her trapped in a cul-de-sac of steep, jagged rock. She turns to face them, hands up, defensive, begging them not to hurt her. The bundle is gone.

  That was where the memory went strange. While every other one of Brewer’s memories, no matter how violent or ugly, seemed centered and intimate, this memory seemed to hit a bizarre kind of snag and all his senses were suddenly disconnected. He still had his vision but even that was strangely distant and colorless, like watching a black-and-white television with bad reception. He couldn’t hear the woman screaming and begging as he punched and kicked her again and again. He couldn’t feel her struggling body against his as he shoved her jeans down around her knees.

  It was as if he was watching something happening through the windshield of a car driven by someone else. Feeling his memories, Xochi was glad for that anomaly, glad she did not have to share the sense memory of what it feels like to rape a dying woman.

  Brewer is finished with the woman, and is standing back, watching Keene and Himes work her over. Porcayo has his back to the action, head in his hands and shaking. Brewer wants to turn away but can’t. He is sure that someone is watching him, another woman standing just out of range of his vision, but he can’t turn his head. Then Keene and Himes stand up, backing away from the dying woman and all of sudden, Brewer can move again. He can feel the gritty wind on his face. He can hear the woman’s wet, labored breathing. Everything is normal again, the way it should be, except for what they have just done. He looks at his fellow officers and they look at him. No one says a word. They just walk away. Like it never happened.

  Xochi found herself evicted from Brewer’s mind just as suddenly and violently as she’d entered. She felt dizzy and disoriented from the abrupt transition. Brewer was dead in her arms.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Sam said. “Before the cops show up.”

  Xochi let Brewer’s body drop to the sticky carpet and stood. She staggered a little and Dean was right there at her elbow to steady her. She leaned into him for a moment, glad he and Sam were there. She had no idea what would have happened if she’d had to face Teo alone.

  “Right,” Dean said. “Bacon cheeseburgers are on me. But in return, I want some damn answers.”

  She knew it was unfair to ask the big gringos to trust her when she wouldn’t confide in them herself. But her feelings about Teo were so complicated, so contradictory. She hadn’t talked to anyone about her sister in years.

  She thought of what Huehuecoyotl had said, that she needed to go home to find the Borderwalker, suddenly understanding with the pure clarity of hindsight. He didn’t mean that the Borderwalker was in her home town. He meant that she needed to look at her own family to figure out what was really happening.

  “Okay,” she said to Dean. “No secrets. It’s the only way we can beat this thing.”

  SIXTEEN

  “Start with the chick with the big knife and the bigger attitude,” Dean said before biting into his second bacon cheeseburger of the day.

  The three of them sat together in a different diner that may as well have been the Roadrunner Grill, or pretty much any diner Dean had ever been in. Xochi had taken a beat-up leather jacket from Brewer to cover the blood on her tank top, the over-sized man’s jacket incongruous on her feminine frame. Dean couldn’t help but notice that she had decided to sit next to him this time.

  “That woman is my sister Teo,” Xochi said.

  “Well, what was she doing at Brewer’s apartment?” Sam asked. “She a hunter too?”

  “She used to be.” Xochi frowned. “Still is in a way. I don’t know.”

  “Come on, Xochi,” Dean said. “You got to let us in. We can’t fight this thing if we don’t know the whole story.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re right.” She poked at her fries, but didn’t eat. “Teo is my mother’s oldest daughter
, and so naturally she was to become the head of our family when our mother died. She was more of a mother to me growing up than our mother ever was. We kids were moved around to various aunts and cousins, always on the move, traveling with hunters, but we always stuck together.

  “What about your dad?” Dean asked.

  Xochi frowned.

  “Never met him,” she said with a shrug.

  There was a beat of awkward silence at the table. Xochi pushed the salt shaker back and forth between her hands for a minute then continued.

  “Teo is the best hunter I’ve ever known,” she said. “Taught me everything. Spells. Weapons. Hand-to-hand combat. But she likes hunting too much. Do you understand? She hunts for sport. Torturing her prey, like a cat playing with a mouse. It’s not about good and evil, it’s just a game to her. Our job is to maintain balance, not to revel in bloodsport.”

  Dean thought of Gordon Walker, the hunter with the vendetta and the hard-on for killing vamps. Of Dean’s own hard-earned lessons on when to kill and when to let live. But even Gordon, as far off the deep end as he may have been and even after he was turned, still believed he was doing the right thing. Black and white, that was how he saw it. Even he didn’t hunt purely for sport. For the thrill of watching something suffer and die. Just the idea of it made Dean’s skin crawl, like a dry drunk listing to stories about someone else’s bender. Because, after all the time he had spent torturing souls in Hell, he knew exactly what he was capable of. Because he knew how easy it would be for him to go down that same road. Because he knew how much fun it would be.

  He took a big slug of ice water, wishing it was whisky.

  “There was...” Xochi began, then paused and shoved her plate aside, expression hard and distant. “A death. Our little brother Atlix.”

  Dean felt like he ought to say something to comfort her from the obvious pain she was feeling, but he couldn’t find the right words. He just looked down at the shallow cut on his hand, feeling awkward and useless.

  “The male children in our family do not hunt,” Xochi continued. “Atlix was nineteen, a student at UNAM. The first and only member of our family to attend college. Such a smart kid, loved computers. He wanted to be a video game designer. We always joked that he was going to make millions killing make-believe monsters while the rest of us lived in poverty fighting the real thing.

  “That never happened. He was kidnapped and murdered. It was... retribution. The children of Xolotl, monstrous dog-headed creatures native to Southern Mexico, they came for him in the night. They wanted revenge for one of their own that had been tortured by Teo.” She curled her scarred hands into fists. “I was away on a hunt at the time. I rushed home as fast as I could, but I was too late. I couldn’t save him.

  “Because of Teo’s irresponsible actions and indiscriminate killing, the elders made the decision to initiate me as the head of our family instead of her. But before the ceremony could be performed, Teo broke into the family temple and stole the sacred knife Itztlitlantl. Even if our brother were still alive, this act of sacrilege can never be forgiven.”

  Dean saw that whatever emotion or vulnerability she had let slip while talking about her murdered brother had been swiftly buried, hidden under the quick-dry cement of righteous anger.

  “Right, okay,” Sam said. “So what’s Teo doing here in Yuma?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know,” Xochi said. “Maybe she is after our Borderwalker because she wants the challenge of hunting difficult and unique prey. Maybe she wants to beat me, to take my victory for herself and show that she is still the better hunter.”

  “And what the hell did you do to Brewer after she left?” Dean asked.

  She told them. Dean suddenly didn’t feel so hungry anymore.

  “So you think this weird disconnect you felt in Brewer’s memory was some kind of psychological block?” Sam asked.

  “Maybe,” Xochi replied. “Or maybe possession.”

  “Possession?” Dean put his burger down. “Like demons?”

  “No,” Xochi said. “Much more subtle than that. I’m beginning to think Huehuecoyotl wasn’t lying. I think there may be a larger force at work here. Something big.”

  “So what’s the next step?” Sam asked, efficiently devouring the remains of his protein salad.

  “The Borderwalker was injured in our fight,” Xochi said. “It may take her several days to recover her strength.

  Meanwhile we should go to the last man, Porcayo. Follow him. Learn everything we can about him and see if we can find anymore clues that will let us know who is behind this.”

  “Where’s he at again?” Dean asked.

  “Fullerton, California,” Sam replied.

  “Okay,” Dean said, holding up a hand for the check. “Sounds like a plan.”

  “One more thing,” she said, turning back to Dean and smirking, shooting him a mock dirty look. “Back when you were pretending we were FBI agents, did you name me after Selena?”

  “I was on the spot,” he said. “It was the first thing that popped into my head.”

  “Hey,” Sam said. “It’s better than Crockett and Tubbs.”

  “Pendejo!” She punched Dean in the arm. “I hate that whiny bitch. Next time you let me think of names.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Dean was feeling a little light-headed that night when they pulled into a kitschy motel with a neon sign that read “THE PRICKLY PAIR.” Beneath it was a large painting of a busty pin-up cowgirl in a checked bikini hugging a huge, blatantly phallic cactus. Dean was looking forward to the day when they stayed in a motel that didn’t feature any cacti in its décor.

  Xochi pulled her bike in behind the Impala and parked it under the sign.

  “Okay,” Sam said, heading toward the tiny office. “Two rooms, right?”

  Xochi pulled off her helmet and shook her head.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “I have a blanket.”

  “What?” Dean asked. “You’re just gonna sleep outside? On the ground? Screw that. We’re getting you a room.”

  “Unless you want to share a bed with my brother?” Sam put in with a grin.

  “Sam,” Dean said. “Knock it off.”

  “You can use my bed,” Sam said.

  “With or without you in it?” Xochi asked eyebrow arched.

  “Your choice,” Sam said. “But if you want me in it, it won’t be for sleeping. I don’t sleep.”

  “I prefer my own room,” she said with another one of her patented smirks. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me,” Sam said. “Thank...” He pulled out his wallet and thumbed out a stolen credit card, reading off the printed name. “Duane Swierczynski.”

  Sam went into the office. Dean leaned against the Impala, still feeling fatigued and slightly off balance. That fight had really taken a lot out of him, and he figured he was still suffering residual effects from the night before. The cut from Teo’s stone knife on his right hand throbbed as he opened and closed his cold fingers, massaging his wrist with his other hand. It felt inexplicably strange, like touching someone else.

  “Dean,” Xochi said. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine,” he said, clenching his right hand into a tight fist. “Just tired, I guess.”

  Sam returned with two keys attached to large plastic cacti emblazoned with room numbers 202 and 203.

  “Upstairs,” Sam said. He handed one of the cactus keyrings to Xochi. “You take 03, we’ll take 02.”

  Sam and Xochi went ahead, while Dean followed close behind. As he watched Xochi walk up the stairs in those tight leather pants with her gun-belt straps cinched just below the generous curve of her ass, he started to sweat, feeling so light-headed he thought he might not make it to the top. Xochi certainly did have a spectacular ass, but no ass in the world was that good. What the hell was the matter with him?

  He made it to the top and paused, gripping the metal railing. The weak, dizzy feeling passed as quickly as it had come and he shook it off, heading down the breez
eway to their rooms.

  “Goodnight, boys,” Xochi said, keying open her room. “Tomorrow, Fullerton.”

  “Right,” Sam said, opening their door. He held it open. “Dean, you coming?”

  “In a minute,” Dean said, looking out over the dusty parking lot.

  Sam shot Dean a look.

  “I just need a minute, okay?” Dean said. “I’ll be right in.”

  “Okay,” Sam said. He closed the door.

  Dean leaned against the railing. The rough, peeling paint flaked off under his touch. He looked at the closed door to Xochi’s room. Thought about knocking, but didn’t.

  She really was an amazing hunter, one of the best he’d ever seen. So graceful, so intuitive, utterly unflappable under pressure. They worked together like a well-oiled machine. Like tango dancers. Like they’d been doing it for years. She was everything he could ever want in a hunting partner and then some, and it was getting harder and harder to ignore the chemistry between them. Which was really the last thing in the world he needed. It didn’t help that every time he found himself thinking about what it would be like with Xochi, he would think of Lisa, see her standing alone on her porch, shrinking down to nothing in the Impala’s rearview mirror. Of the stony finality in her voice when she’d told him to stay away from her and Ben. He thought of what Sam had said. Surely, she’d moved on with her life, right? Why shouldn’t she? Why shouldn’t he?

  When he realized that he was just doing mental gymnastics to excuse sleeping with Xochi, he felt like a heel. The year he’d had with Lisa and Ben was the only time in his life when he’d ever been genuinely happy. And here he was trying to rationalize that away so he could spend a guilt-free night banging a chick with a nice ass.

  Clearly, a drink was the answer. Hair of the dog that bit him. That was becoming the answer to way too many questions in his life, but he was too worn down to care.