by Holley Trent
“Plot twist,” someone muttered, and after a moment, December realized she’d spoken the words.
“What am I supposed to do?” the lady asked.
“You’re asking me? I’m human. Plus, I’m new. I’m faking it until I make it.”
“You seem better at it. Maybe you should take them.”
“No! I don’t want your Coyotes.” December scanned the horizon again. Still no sign of Tito.
Damn it.
She cleared her throat and dropped what she hoped was a comforting hand on the lady’s shoulder. “Look, I’ve been in Maria for less than a week and let me tell you, this has been the most interesting week of my life. I really don’t need more to worry about right now. Neither does Tito. Also, I think that would qualify as a conflict of interest.”
“What are we supposed to do?” the short guy with the hundred-proof breath asked.
December shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe go home and regroup. Call your friends. Talk to them and see if they’re who you remember them to be. Try to figure out some way to govern yourselves, or maybe just … ” She added in a mutter, “Take a little vacation away from each other for a while.”
Where the hell is Tito?
All she could see on the horizon was dust, and she couldn’t tell if it were a normal amount of dust or if something had kicked it up.
The Coyotes raised their heads a little, only to give each other sideways looks.
“Go on home,” the band booster lady said. “I’ll call around and see if that was really the old man. If so, we’ve got a different problem to deal with.”
“Who’s gonna be our alpha?”
“Don’t know. Maybe you ought to all find different groups. Maybe this one should have broken up decades ago.”
At first, no one moved. But then booze-breath started the slow march toward the trail. Others followed. They all went, except the lady in the T-shirt.
She stuffed her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, tossed her head to get her dirty blond hair out of her yellow-brown eyes, and sighed. “Not sure what to say, but sorry. Immortality is an interesting thing when you don’t have magic to go along with it.”
“I may end up in the same boat with you.” December was pretty sure that boat had her name on it. Tito had said the choice was hers, and she wasn’t going to let anything else scare her away from happiness for her and Cruz.
The lady nodded and chewed on the inside of her cheek for a moment. “I don’t know how I can help you, but if there’s anything … ”
“I just need to catch up with Tito and make sure he doesn’t let his uncle finish his job.” She pointed toward the mountains and the dust. “They went that way, I think.”
The lady whistled low. “Good thing I brought the Jeep today.”
chapter TWENTY
Tito couldn’t get close to his uncle. The Shadow had yanked back too much of the magic that animated Los Impostores, and some that had been his dead mate’s. Tito couldn’t get close without feeling like his skin was on fire, and in a far worse way than when the fire cat had crawled under his skin. Though he didn’t want to believe his uncle would hurt him, he knew The Shadow felt that he had a job to do.
So Tito stood between his uncle and cousin, ready to plow into one if necessary, and punch a hole through the other if he made a move toward Tito.
Necalli was on his knees, wearing the clothes of some missing Coyote, smirking in his usual fear-nothing way, and holding his arms open wide as if in supplication.
“I knew you’d come,” he said to Tito. “Welcome.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Perhaps I just wanted to see my family in one place after so long.”
“Bullshit. You threatened my kid and my mate. Don’t tell me that was just for shits and giggles.”
“Ah, your pretty little nobodies. Silly fools with petty concerns. You ignore what’s important. That will be your undoing.”
“You have a deranged mind, just like your mother,” The Shadow said. “She wanted chaos. She wanted the old ways. The blood. The constant warring.”
“Because that was our birthright!” Nec scrambled to his feet and, turning in a circle, gestured demonstrably to the desert and ostensibly to the people beyond. “Wasn’t it?” he hissed and lunged toward his father, but Tito got an arm around his neck and yanked him back.
The compulsion to tighten his arm and squeeze until Nec’s eyes bulged flared and tempted. Nec was no challenge for him, really. With his birthright magic intact, Tito was more than evenly matched with the jealous impostor. He was faster and stronger.
Nec jerked, growling, hissing, spitting, and trying to shift into one of those beasts he’d mimicked for hundreds of years, but he was just an imitation.
Tito’s claws were out first and the tips pierced Nec’s chin.
“Yaotl,” Uncle whispered.
There was blood on Tito’s arm. He’d drawn blood and that hadn’t been the plan. He was just so fucking angry after six hundred years, and the anger wanted out.
He pushed Nec away and locked his hands behind his head, pacing.
“They should die,” Nec said evenly. “They should volunteer and know what an honor it is.”
“And if they don’t volunteer, then what?” Tito spat.
Nec shrugged. “They die anyway.”
“Have you noticed that you’re outnumbered?”
“A warrior against two men who never fight for anything?” He rubbed the blood from his chin and studied his hand. “This is only a distraction.”
“Pathetic,” Uncle said, still so quietly. He had his hands laced in front of his belly. His shoulders slouched and his head was hung. “You know nothing. Gods sacrificed themselves to sustain mankind. They jumped into flames so there’d be a sun and a moon, and spilled their blood so that the Earth wouldn’t get scorched from standing still. You, Necalli, are no god. You’ve never sacrificed anything, have you? You are an abomination who should never have been born.”
“And you seek to correct that now, Father? After all these years?” Nec scoffed. “I’ll rebuild. I always do. Start with one Impostore, and we’ll grow, and grow, until we’re like we used to be.”
The impulse to swing on the man and beat him down into the earth—to make him the bloody sacrifice he obviously needed to be—was as strong as Tito had ever felt. Necalli wasn’t just reminding him of how impotent Tito had been in the past, but threatening his legacy as well.
But he curled his toes in his boots to keep his stance rigid, and remembered what Uncle had said about envy. Uncle had had it for Ma, and it had ruined him for ages. Nec wanted to ruin everyone else.
Tito fixed his gaze on his cousin, and Nec lifted his chin, grinning.
“I never did a damn thing to you. Why couldn’t you just leave me the hell alone?”
“Because you deserved to suffer. Simple as that.”
“Who are you to decide who deserves to suffer?”
“I decided that from the first time I saw you.” Nec scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Disgusting. Consorting with farmers and fishermen. Low-class then. Low-class now.”
“If I’m so low-class, why am I so fucking interesting to you, huh? As a young man, I made the choice to be happy. I made the choice to live like a mortal because I wanted to love like one.”
“Why not love a tree? Or a rock? Same damn thing.”
“Is it, though? Because I’m starting to understand why loving someone who isn’t like me makes me better. In fact, with all this new magic swirling through me, making me angrier and more impatient, I think I would have killed you five minutes ago if I weren’t relying on my mate’s morality to keep me righteous. She’s out there somewhere now.” Tito pointed to the desert and then swung around fast and got in Nec’s face. “You’ll never get her. You’ll never get Cruz. You’ll never take what’s mine again.”
Nec flinched, but the small display of weakness didn’t linger. His chin was still high, eyes narrowed
in dare.
“I’ll get what I want,” Nec said. “No one will stop me. No one ever has, isn’t that right, Cousin?”
“I will,” Uncle said quietly.
“You could have already, but you haven’t. What’s that mean, huh?” Necalli’s sneer writhed and morphed, his thin lips filling out, his body softening and hair lengthening, and suddenly there was a woman where he’d been. A laughing, taunting woman who had Uncle’s energy stuttering and his expression twisted into one of turmoil.
“No!” Uncle shouted, magic flaring around him in a great, stifling heat wave that took Tito’s breath away. “She’s dead, and you’ll join her.”
She lifted her chin cockily, pursed her red lips, and massaged the collar of her dress as she whispered wicked enticements. Then her image gave way to yet another woman, and one with a familiar, placid face, and submissive posture.
There was a prayer on her lips. She’d always prayed, morning and night, like it was as important a chore as grinding the corn.
Tito had never thought he’d see that face again except in flashbacks and nightmares, and there Citlali was on her knees in front of him, whispering the prayers for children and for health and good crops that should have been private between her and Tito, but Nec knew them.
“Do you want to know what she said to me before she died?” Nec asked in Citlali’s voice.
Tito shook his head and kept his position between the warring kinsmen. “You’re a fucking liar. I don’t want to hear anything you have to say.”
“Are you sure, Yaotl? You don’t want to know what she thought of you? What she said when she thought I was just a woman from the village she could confide in?”
“You’re a liar and nothing you say matters, anyway. She’s long dead.”
Necalli morphed again, but the effort was inartistic because there was too much of him, but there was the image of Tito’s little boy. Dark, hollow eyes. Sickly, sallow, sullen. “Just like me. Too bad my father couldn’t protect me.”
“You—” Anger surged in Tito, hotter than any magic Tito had ever had to wade through, and he was going to kill his cousin with his own two hands, and he didn’t care if that was what he wanted.
“Yaotl! This is not for you.” Uncle’s energy surged forth, and Tito had a split second to decide whether avenging his dead family was more important than preventing The Shadow from completing his task.
Fuck.
Reflexes sent Tito toward Necalli, and he’d just pushed off his rear leg to block whatever magic Uncle was going to send out, but couldn’t get any traction.
In fact, he found himself hurtling backward through the air, farther and farther away from the father-son confrontation. The ground was approaching too fast, and though he threw back his arms and legs and tried to right himself, he couldn’t get his feet under him.
Didn’t matter, anyway.
He went through the ground, through space and maybe even time, and landed a bruised, abused pile in dark, misty realm.
“Fuck!”
And then he was scooped up. There was a hand pulling him up by the bicep. A familiar, deep sigh.
Familiar swarthy fingers and angelic energy.
Then came the familiar, unsettled stomach as Tarik ripped him out of that in-between place and back to the battleground that was Maria, New Mexico.
Tito had no way of knowing how long he’d been gone, but in that time, Ma had arrived.
Necalli was on the ground, half shriveled, choking for air. The Shadow had his hands around his son’s neck, placidly draining him of his spark and losing his as well. Tito couldn’t tell for sure, but Ma seemed to be interfering somehow. He couldn’t tell if she was trying to do the job for her brother or trying to stop him from doing it altogether. All Tito knew was that every green thing nearby had desiccated. Every tiny cactus, every shoot of desert grass. They’d gone to thready wisps, and the diameter of the circle of death was spreading, and there was a Jeep approaching.
“Stay back!” Tito shouted as December opened the passenger door and stuck her head out. “Back up, Dee. Get back.”
“What’s—”
“Get back. Move. Now!”
She opened her mouth to speak some objection, probably, but seemed to have thought better of it. She got back in, gestured for the driver to close her door, too, and they inched back.
Tito waved them back even more, seeing the perimeter of death still spreading outward. He was standing outside the circle, but he couldn’t be an outsider to his own family’s mess anymore.
He wedged himself between Ma and Uncle, and couldn’t tell whose magic was whose, and couldn’t make any sense of the words they were speaking to each other. He didn’t know the language. It probably had never been meant for his ears.
“Let go,” he said to one or both, he didn’t care. Who backed away first didn’t matter, as long as they stopped what they were doing.
Uncle shook his head, whispered, “I love you,” and yet again, Tito was knocked back by a surge of power, but not through the ground. He landed hard, twenty feet away with the air knocked out of him. By the time he could open his eyes and pull in a deep breath, there was a dark smudge on the ground where his cousin had been, Ma knelt on all fours, her belly held off the ground by the arm Tarik had slipped under it, and The Shadow was on his back, eyes fixed on the sky, mouth wide open like a mummy’s.
Tito crawled over and put a hand to his uncle’s chest.
He pulled in a rattling breath, gaze seemingly unseeing, magic down to nearly nothing and fleeing by the second. His spark was almost gone, too.
When the Jeep doors opened again, Tito didn’t try to keep December back.
She was there beside him, putting her hands to Uncle’s cheeks and whispering encouraging things like, “Hang in there,” as if they’d matter.
Uncle wrapped his fingers around one of her wrists, brought her hand to his mouth, and kissed the back of it. “Tell Cruz … good things about her great-uncle, okay?”
“No, no, no, that’s not the way this is supposed to work. You’re supposed to be gifted by the cosmos with the return of your magic for your good deed. That’s the way these things always work in books.”
Uncle chuckled and let his head fall to the side. “The books get things wrong. They don’t understand magic. Magic always has a cost.”
Ma crawled closer and took Uncle’s other hand. “You tell Cruz about you yourself. The Shadow needs to come out of hiding.”
“The Shadow is gone. Can’t you tell?” His smile was soft. “He’s almost gone. The scourge goes. I made it. I follow it.”
“Not this time.” She swiped a hand across his forehead and at Tarik’s scolding, “Dama,” she clucked her tongue. “You don’t have to entangle yourself in this. This is a family problem. You can go, Tarik. Keep yourself neutral.”
Tarik sighed again and put a hand to Ma’s back. “Too late for that. I already interfered.”
Tito didn’t understand the flow of magic, or what they were doing or what the consequences would be, only that he wasn’t meant to be a part of it.
He eased back a bit, pulling December with him.
Tarik helped Ma stagger to her feet, and then scooped The Shadow into his arms.
The three vanished.
Tito dragged his hand through his sweat-damp hair and blew out a harsh breath.
Is this over?
Nec was dead. Los Impostores were gone, but Tito felt like something was missing.
When Dee rested a hand on his arm, and his body relaxed a fraction and his lungs opened up, he remembered what.
She was his compass and family meant everything to her. She’d wanted him to save his uncle, and he’d tried, but he’d come so close to killing Nec. Maybe he deserved it, but the fact Tito had wanted to make that killing blow so badly frightened him.
She held his arm tighter and whispered, “Tito?”
“Man,” the Coyote stranger with Dee said. “My family reunions are nowhere near this inte
resting.”
Dee pulled her gaze away from Tito, slowly, and looked at the woman. “That’s probably a good thing.”
Tito pulled away, and walked to the shadow on the ground where his cousin had once been.
Gone.
Those impersonations of his wife and his son had been real enough to rip open wounds he’d been trying to stitch up for too damn long. And the things he’d said …
Dee stepped in front of him, nudging her hair behind her ears. She looked at him expectantly, like Cruz did whenever she stepped into a room he was in.
He didn’t know what to say. Nothing had gone the way he’d expected. No one was supposed to die, in the outcome she’d had in her head.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I faltered. Maybe you were right about me. I’m not as tender as you hoped. Or maybe I’m too tender in the times I shouldn’t be.”
“You’re blaming yourself for this?”
“I got distracted. He showed me things that were in the past and that I didn’t know how to block out, and I faltered. I was so close, Dee, I—”
“You feel guilty, right?”
Guilt. Right.
He stuffed his hands into his pockets and looked at the sky. Not a cloud in sight.
“I wouldn’t blame you for going back to Rhode Island with Cruz.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because I’m not good at this, Dee. I don’t want you to get hurt. I don’t want—”
She clapped a hand over his mouth and he looked down at her furrowed brow, her pursed lips. “Yes or no. Do you think you’ll be happier if I go away?”
He shook his head vehemently. She and Cruz were his only chance for happiness.
“Then let’s go figure out how to be happy.” She dropped her hand, and took his. She squeezed it hard “You’re freaking amazing, you know that?”
“What are you talking about, cōcohtōn?”
“You multitask like a boss. How the heck were you paying attention to both at the same time?”
He scoffed. “Sheer will. Still got knocked on my ass twice. Where are we going?”
