Blue Diablo cs-1

by Ann Aguirre

  But I was done with that mentality.

  I handled check-in while he unloaded the bags. Just as well because the woman’s Spanish was better than her English, even in Laredo. Chance came up to the counter just as I concluded the deal, and I passed him his key-card, taking a certain petty pleasure in his annoyance that I’d booked separate rooms. His jaw clenched when I blithely told him how much he owed but he forked over the money.

  “Why are we here?” I asked as we walked. Reading his look, I clarified, “This motel. It doesn’t look like you, so there has to be a reason.”

  It was a peeling pink stucco building, set amid an industrial area. The only other open business was the Denny’s next door. Everything else had shut down, installing gates and bars to keep kids from breaking in.

  “You act like I’m an elitist snob or something. Maybe I’m being frugal.”

  “You are an elitist snob. Why are we here?”

  Chance sighed. “I caught a peek at the file in Saldana’s office and I saw the address of the warehouse.”

  That made sense. “So we have a reason for being in this neighborhood.”

  He’d never have stayed here otherwise, and certainly not with his mom. Wherever they’d stayed, the room was long cleaned by now, and I couldn’t reasonably be expected to find anything. At the warehouse, though—well, they’d have probably taped it off as a crime scene, better safe than sorry. Blood made people twitchy.

  I stepped into my room without enthusiasm. What they called a queen bed looked no more than full to me, and the mattress felt hard as brick. The room was decorated in vintage motel with a cheap orange spread and muddy paintings on the wall. Gazing at the pasteboard furniture, I felt a touch claustrophobic and hoped I wouldn’t have to spend much time here. Worse, it felt damp inside, so I flicked on the air con. In response, water immediately began to drip somewhere from the bathroom ceiling.

  My backpack bounced on the bed where I tossed it, and I sank down beside it, unzipping the front pocket to delve beneath blouses and hair ties until I found what I was looking for. Cradling it in my hands, I studied the black pillow, no more than six inches wide and embroidered with white characters I couldn’t read. I traced them with a fingertip, remembering.

  “I know what being with Chance can be like,” she’d said with a half smile. “So I’m giving you some luck of your own.”

  She had, in a small way, stood in for my own mother, although Min always respected the half-step difference. She’d taught me to make the noodle soup Chance liked and she had a great laugh, really loud and infectious for such a small woman. Oh, Christ, and she was—

  Neither of us held much hope we’d find her alive.

  I clutched the pillow to my chest, finally letting loss sweep over me. Over the past day, I’d been keeping it at bay with various defenses, first focusing on him and then the trip. But now there was nothing but me and the stupid drip from the bathroom ceiling. My eyes welled up, and I felt the hot trickle down my cheeks. I wept silently, as I did the night I watched my mother burn.

  “They’re coming,” she’d whispered, pushing me toward the back door. “You run to the black oak in the woods and stay there until morning, you hear me? Don’t you come back until the sun’s come up.”

  I’d fought her. I wanted to stay. Even then, I thought I could make a difference. Maybe that’s why I’ve lived my life the way I have.

  “If you love me, Corine, you go.”

  I went.

  Behind me, she’d begun a chant, the last one she’d ever speak. In the distance, I saw the scattered lights marching toward our house like a wicked firefly army. I don’t know if I knew what would happen then, but my whole world went up in flames.

  No more would the hurdy-gurdy man come to supper at our house. Mama used to say his music was magical, and I think it surely was because none since then has sounded so sweet or lifted my spirits the way his harmonica did back then. We had a constant parade of visitors, some more amazing than others; Cherie Solomon never met a stranger.

  I sat and rocked, fifteen years removed from that night, weighing it against this fresh loss. In the movies, Chance would have sensed my pain, come to offer me comfort, and everything in my world would’ve been made right. He would have held me as I did him the night I didn’t want him in my bed. In reality, I cried myself out alone and fell into a sleep that left me sticky and thick when I woke.

  The room swam with shadows cut with light from the streetlamps and guttering neon from defunct businesses nearby. At first I wasn’t sure what had roused me, and then the knock came again. I felt wrinkles from the cheap bedspread imprinted on my cheek, and a glimmer of reflection from the window told me my hair was smashed flat on one side. I answered the door anyway.

  “Get your stuff,” Chance said, low. “We can’t stay here.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  His tone alarmed me. “Just come on. Now.”

  Acting on a type of trust I’d thought shattered forever, I grabbed my backpack and stuffed the handmade pillow inside. As I slid my shoes on and headed for the door, the streetlight sputtered and winked out. Chills rolled along my skin as I watched bulbs flicker and die all along the street. We stepped onto the dark lot, which suddenly seemed to me a cemetery of cars, so much dead, heavy metal.

  We left the Toyota parked, his hand on my arm as he hurried me along. I knew the clammy sensation of dread on my skin, and the last time I’d felt this way I nearly died. Though I wanted to ask for answers, I was too frightened to do more than scuttle behind him. The dark buildings seemed sinister, unfriendly eyes peering from broken windows.

  “Chance.” I didn’t dig in my heels as I spoke, kept moving. “What’s going on?”

  “Did you call the cop?” he asked instead of answering me. “After we arrived. Did you tell him where we were?”

  Watching the slow roil of darkness over this particular street, I shook my head. “No. I accidentally took a nap.”

  “Then he’s not our problem.” He sounded almost disappointed.

  “But we do have one.” It suddenly felt about ten degrees colder outside and that was more than just the sun going down.

  “Yeah,” he said grimly. He laced his fingers through mine, not a romantic gesture but as if in preparation for a blizzard where we’d need a nonvisual link to make it across the street. “No matter what happens inside, don’t let go of me, Corine.”

  My mouth felt dry. I wished I had called Saldana. “I won’t. I promise.”

  We stopped behind a warehouse, the reason he’d chosen this neighborhood in the first place. It was a hulking structure with blank windows, no signs of life. There should have been a night watchman on duty, but at the moment it felt as though we were the only two human beings left in the world. The wind kicked up, sending trash skittering across the dead-quiet street. Something besides cloud cover blotted out the stars, and the air felt heavy as lead when I brought it to my lungs.

  Stooping for a moment, Chance finessed the padlock on the back door, another skill set I had never examined too closely. The door squealed like a piglet being slaughtered as we pushed past into cloying, copper-scented darkness. His hand felt reassuringly warm against mine; this place had me shivering before we’d gone two feet from the door. I’d never read a building before, but as what my mama called dead man’s hands ran down my spine, I knew bad things had happened here. Normal folks ignored that creeping chill, as if it sprang from an overactive imagination, but they probably had a latent gift if they felt the ghostly touch crawling on their skin.

  His penlight clicked on, a tiny isle of light surrounded by the shadows that surged with purpose around us. Boxes and crates took on their own identities, sinister shapes crouched in wait. He ignored them and led us deeper into the labyrinth.

  “Here,” he whispered as we spotted the crime scene tape. “They found her purse here.”

  I knelt, running my free hand over the cement. It was too big for me to read, but I might get impressions. I
t sparked a little, the same blue shock I’d received from Jesse Saldana.

  Blood. Pain. Death.

  If I had anything in my stomach, I would have tossed it up. Something died here; there was no mistaking the necrotic tinge smeared over the floor like rancid butter. But I couldn’t quit. If Min had left the Buddha for Chance to find, knowing he’d bring it to me, then she might have left us another clue.

  “I need something smaller, something I can hold.”

  Closing my eyes, I ran my fingers over the floor. I imagined I could feel the tackiness of dried blood texturing the stained cement. I explored the corners of crates nearby and cracks where something interesting might sink. In one of those fissures I found a small round object with beveled edges. It singed my fingers just in picking it up; oh, yes, it held an active charge, secrets to share. I slid it into the narrow beam of Chance’s penlight.

  “A button,” he said with sharp, wicked delight.

  “I shouldn’t handle it here.” Though I couldn’t have explained my certainty, I knew it was beyond dangerous for us to linger.

  “We need to get out of this part of Laredo entirely.” Chance pulled me to my feet in a neat motion that reminded me how strong he was, stronger than he looked for such a lean frame. “Try to lose them before—”

  His words died in a nightmare of imploding glass as they found us.

  It’s No Sacrifice

  Needles skated along my spine, and then Chance threw himself against me, pinning me to a crate. His body curved as he sheltered me, curling his arms over my head. I felt a few stinging cuts blossom, though he took the worst of it. The place sounded as though Christmas ornaments shattered all around us, such a delicate tinkling sound for something that could slice us to shreds. Then it settled, as if the air inside the warehouse had equalized to the pressure outside.

  And something came in.

  Through broken windows, I heard the rush, like wind through dry leaves, before I smelled the sulfur. “It’s a sending,” I said through suddenly numb lips.

  My mama told me about such spells, years ago. But she cautioned me as I sat with a grimoire balanced on my knee. “Only a wicked witch would do such a thing,” she’d told me, stirring a pot full of steeping herbs for some potion. “Our first tenet is ‘do no harm.’”

  My whole body wanted to freeze, but Chance pulled me along as we made our way along the blunt crate edges. “Yeah. It’s going to get ugly, Corine. Can you handle it?”

  For a brief, panicked moment, I thought of Señor Alvarez, my Dutch miniatures, and my quiet, comfortable life. Then I set my jaw. For Min I could. Damn right.

  “I’m behind you. Let’s go.”

  A sending could take many different forms, depending on the materials used in the summoning, though it always smells of sulfur. I wasn’t sure what we were dealing with yet, but some sendings are worse than others.

  I read about them after Mama died. I’m not sure why. It wasn’t like my foster families would let me practice, but I snuck my books out from their hiding place beneath my mattress when nobody was watching. Ironically, nothing from the house but her grimoires survived the fire, as Mama had stored them in a fireproof safe.

  Sometimes I stole out to the woods and tried my hand at it, but my heart wasn’t in it. Maybe too much sorrow weighed the spirit down, unbalancing the chakras or preventing me from tapping my potential. Whatever the reason, I couldn’t make magick like she did. I just had the one soul-sucking trick.

  Chance and I had faced off against a few bad apples in our time, practitioners used to getting their own way and not caring how they went about it. We survived a particularly nasty cockroach sending in Reno. Hope to God it’s not insects.

  It wasn’t.

  When we broke away from the crates and headed toward the door, it zeroed in on us: a wailing presence made of violent wind, dust, and dry leaves that had blown in through the broken windows. Like a sand-storm, the sending stung my skin, determined to force its way into my nose and throat. I’d once seen the remains of someone who choked to death in one of these, and it wasn’t pretty.

  That was one of the cases Chance and I took pro bono. When a woman came to us and said, eyes downcast, “Somebody’s killing people on my block, and the police don’t care,” I just couldn’t refuse. One of those rogue practitioners had turned the projects into his personal hunting ground, testing new spells without giving a shit who got in the way.

  I tracked him. Found him. Chance left him chained to a guardrail on an overpass, wrapped up with a bow for the cops to find. Oddly, law enforcement didn’t appear thankful. They called us vigilantes.

  We had been, among other things, once upon a time. But I was out of practice.

  I don’t want to go out like this.

  My hair whipped around my face as the called storm fought to push into my nose and mouth. I should’ve put it up, braided it or something—long hair was a weakness out in the field. I saw sparks from holding my breath, but inhaling would be worse.

  The winds buffeted, and I fought to keep my feet, but the gale sent me sailing. As my hand tore from his, Chance shouted, “Corine!” though it was madness to speak.

  I landed hard, slamming into first a crate and then the wall. Dazed, I lay while the wind howled around me, more dust rising in a malignant manifestation of the summoner’s will. The leaves scraping my skin felt as though they were made of salt and ground glass, so I covered my face with my hands.

  How do you fight a force of nature? If I stayed low it’d burn itself out, if I didn’t choke to death first. No practitioner possessed the power to rage like this indefinitely.

  His head down, Chance came to me, crawling. Once I would have given anything to see him like this, but it lacked poetry now. I registered a surge of joy that he’d come for me. His fingers wrapped around mine.

  “I thought I told you not to let go,” he yelled.

  I almost laughed. He held on to me as we forced our way through, blind but determined. It became almost impossible to breathe, and I started to feel faint, afraid to inhale, afraid the demon dust would find purchase in my lungs and strangle me from the inside out. Worse—it might take root, giving the summoner a hold over me.

  By the time we staggered outside, our clothes hanging in tatters, I heard sirens in the distance. Leaning down, hands on my knees, I took deep, gulping breaths, willing the black dots to leave my field of vision. We had to get out of here. It wouldn’t go well if they took us in officially. I had a history of being near crime scenes, though it was hard to tell what local law enforcement would make of all the windows being broken.

  “Can you travel?” When he turned without waiting for my reply, I saw that his back was a nightmare of ruined flesh. If he didn’t receive immediate medical attention, it would scar. Hell, it might scar anyway.

  “Yeah,” I told his bloody back, and limped after him.

  A guy in a black hooded sweatshirt slid out from between two buildings. I caught the movement out of the corner of my eye and increased my pace to a quick trot. Most likely he was just a vagrant who slept in a box out back, but I didn’t take any chances. If the cops questioned him, he might be able to finger us. We needed to get gone.

  Because fate isn’t always a capricious bitch, the Toyota started on the first try. As we left the La Quinta parking lot, I saw the glimmered reflection of red and blue lights in the rearview mirror. They’d have a hell of a mess to clean up.

  I couldn’t think about the way Chance had put my safety first back there, how he’d thrown himself on top of me to shield me from flying glass. It controverted everything I knew—or thought I knew—about him. I certainly couldn’t think about the way he’d crawled through demon dust and howling winds for me.

  Luckily, something else occurred to me. “Where was the night watchman?”

  He cut me a grim look, taking his eyes off the road for only a second. “I hope he’s home watching TV. Nothing got out of that place alive, except us.”

  I hoped he
was right. It wouldn’t do any good to worry, though. “Where we going?”

  “I know a safe house.” His voice bordered on curt because the pain had to be staggering. He’d taken the brunt of the glass, maybe had slivers embedded in his skin too. I noticed how stiff he sat as he drove, and my conscience cringed.

  Chance made a quick call on his cell, but I couldn’t tell whom he was talking to. If the plan involved Tanya, I’d seriously think about going home, even if it meant abandoning Min to whatever fate had befallen her and breaking my word. Forfeiting my shot at IDing the bastards who had led long, happy lives after murdering my mother.

  So maybe not. I’d stick.

  Twenty minutes later, after Chance told me the plan, I gazed at him in disbelief. “Chuch? You’re entrusting our lives to Chuch?”

  “Don’t underestimate him,” he said briefly. “His grandmother was a very gifted curandera, and he knows things.”

  Curandera. Magickal healing woman.

  Well, in my eighteen months in Mexico, I’ve gotten to know a few of those. The occult is a staple of everyday life there, and oddly enough, it blends seamlessly with pervasive Catholicism. People believe in curses that can make you sick, go blind, or lose all your luck. At the plaza near my house, there’s a shop where you can find a curandera.

  Tia gives aura readings, does spiritual cleansings, reads palms, and makes charms, amulets, and potions—that sort of thing. She’s sweet as a bowl of figs. But I’m not sure being descended from someone like Tia qualified Chuch to help us out in this situation.

  Don’t get me wrong; Chuch is a great guy. Funny. The last time we got together, he’d said, “You call me if you ever need body work done. I totally redid this guy’s Mustang, so cherry it was stolen a week after I worked on it.”

  His full name was Jesus Maria Ortiz Obregón, but he told us, “I’m Chucho, but everyone calls me Chuch,” when we met at the Forever Wicker store in Lutz, Florida. Don’t ask what a custom car restoration artist was doing in a furniture shop on his vacation, but Chance always seemed to know what random encounters were meaningful, or maybe he just saved every contact we made, just in case. You never know when you’ll need your ride tricked out.