Rescue From Planet Pleasure (8 page)

Coyote sorted through the shoebox and withdrew a handful of papers in assorted sizes and types that he smoothed flat on the table. Some of the pages were from motel notepads, others were torn from spiral notebooks, and others were the backs of crumpled receipts or loose sheets of copy paper. All were covered in ink scrawls and sketches. Coyote arranged the papers before him and raised his hands in a proud gesture. “There you have it.”

I glanced from scrawl to drawing to scrawl. “Have what?”

Coyote pointed to the confused mess with both hands. “How you’re going to bring Carmen Arellano back home from outer space.”

***

Chapter Twelve

Jolie and I studied the papers Coyote had arranged on the coffee table. I tried to decipher the writing. Most were illegible chicken scratches made with a ballpoint pen or a pencil. Plus a black Sharpie. Highlighters.
Crayons!
I recognized a few letters but the words could’ve been English or Spanish. And some of the writing looked Chinese or Korean or Balanese. Hebrew? Maybe ancient Mixtec.
Perhaps Martian?

The sketches were just as confounding. Lots of circles and lines and squiggles.

Coyote watched, arms folded, nodding like he was pleased that I understood what he had planned … which I didn’t.

Jolie hunched forward from the sofa and squinted. Her forehead wadded into confused wrinkles. “What exactly are we looking at?”

Coyote fanned his hands.
Isn’t it obvious?

Jolie plucked a drawing of The Sun Dagger and held it up. “Let me guess.” She waved her other hand over the table. “All this explains how to use the Sun Dagger?”

He smiled, his thin cracked lips forming an uneven crescent around his crooked, yellow teeth. “Simple, no?”

“Which can only be used during the day?” she asked.

“Why would you ask that?” he replied.

Jolie reached for my knee and squeezed, though I’m sure she would’ve rather rolled her eyes and screamed in frustration.

Coyote stroked his chin. “I see that I lost you.” His voice became very Ivy League, clenched-jaw professorial. The aura over his head formed a mortarboard complete with tassel. “Invoking the Sun Dagger takes one from place to place along the edges of the psychic plane. To do so, we need the rays of the sun, either directly or reflected.”

I recalled last night’s moon. It shined from the sun’s reflected light. Not quite full though certainly bright enough to cast a dagger of light across the petroglyph. I said, “We’ll use the light of the moon to orient ourselves on the Sun Dagger.”

Coyote’s mortarboard morphed into an exclamation mark. “You got it,
vato
. It’s transcendental astral physics.” His accent returned to barrio Chicano. “In two nights, the Sun Dagger will line up with D-Galtha.”

“Which is what?”

“Where you two are going.”

Following Coyote’s reasoning was like chasing a chicken through a labyrinth. “Is that the planet where Carmen is being held prisoner?”

Coyote rifled through the papers and picked one with a sketch of a circle with an X marked over it. He jabbed at the X. “She’s right here.”

“D-Galtha? Is that a planet? A spaceship?”

“It is where you’ll find Carmen.”

Realizing this was all he would share, I pressed forward. “How do you know?”

Coyote put the paper back on the table. “Long ago, and I mean, long, long ago,
un
hechicero guajiro
—”

Jolie interrupted, “A who?”

“Medicine man. Shaman,” I translated.

“
Sí
,” continued Coyote. “He was the one who gave me the name
coyote
, saying that if I was to survive
la conquista
, I had to be as clever and tricky as my animal
tocayo
. Said that I wouldn’t be able to get by forever on my good looks.”

“Wise man,” quipped Jolie.

“He taught me about the world beyond what we can see or touch. He showed me
las puertas
, the portals, into the psychic plane.”

Coyote reached into the shoebox and withdrew a large folded paper. He spread it open. It was a charcoal rubbing of the Sun Dagger.

He cleared a space on the table and laid the paper flat. He gestured to me and tapped his finger at a point on the spiral. “Felix, put your hand here.
La derecha.
”

I extended my right hand.

He grasped my wrist and tugged my arm, forcing me to get off the sofa and walk around the table to stand beside him. He said, “Spread your fingers,” and adjusted the placement of my hand on the upper left quadrant of the spiral. “You must put your
mano
exactly like this.” Reaching behind his ear, he produced the stubby remnant of a pencil that had been crudely whittled to a point and traced around my hand.

Coyote made a whisking motion, indicating that I remove my hand and sit back down. He leafed through the papers until he found one with a list of numbers. He wrote along the bottom of the paper. 12:22:00.

“This is the exact time you must put your hand on the Sun Dagger.”

“At night, yes?”

Coyote jotted a.m. beside the time. He frowned suddenly, looked back at the list of numbers, scratched out the number he’d written, and wrote a new time. 11:43:00 p.m.

I stared at the number. “You sure about this?”

He leaned back and crossed his legs and his arms. “
Símon
. It’s very technical. You summon the portal at the wrong time,
boom
, you’ll find yourself on Jupiter.”

Jolie asked, “And you’re going to show us how to use the Sun Dagger?”

Coyote sighed. “I’ll teach what I can. It took me years of experimenting
con el
guajiro
just to find the doors. And many more years to open them. And still more to learn how to enter and navigate the psychic plane.”

“Experimenting?”

“With peyote. Much of it.” Coyote’s eyes crossed, then swiveled in opposite directions, spun a few times, and finally aimed straight. “Fortunately, it didn’t affect me at all.”

“Of course not,” I replied.

Jolie asked, “What if we miss the time?”

“Not good.” Coyote grimaced. “It’ll be another one hundred and thirteen years before it aligns again.”

“How do you know Carmen is on D-Galtha?”

“I was in the middle of one my beautiful peyote dreams,” Coyote turned wistful, “when I heard Carmen’s voice.”

“You know her?”

“No. But I heard this voice and I recognized it as hers.”

I asked, “You recognized the voice of someone you didn’t know?”

“
Vato
, when you’re tripping on peyote, anything is possible.”

Fair enough.

“Tonight we’ll practice with the Sun Dagger. Nothing fancy. Just a quick spin to Alpha Centauri and back. Dress warm.”

“We rescue Carmen and then what? How can she stop Phaedra?”

“Even I have to wait for that answer,” Coyote replied. “But once she is back here, then Phaedra must fight the four of us.”

“What do you know about D-Galtha?”

Coyote turned glum. “Only that it is a dangerous place guarded by the most dangerous aliens in the galaxy.”

“Naturally,” noted Jolie.

“What about Cress Tech?” I asked. “We return to Fajada Butte and shoot through the psychic plane again, won’t we trip their alarms?”

“I’m sure of it,
ese
. But like I said, tonight we’ll go on a quick trip. We’ll be on and off that
pinchi
rock before the Cress Tech helicopters and their
pendejo
guards get a clue.”

“I’d like to know how close the government is to unlocking the secrets of Fajada Butte.” My job as an enforcer for the Araneum was to protect the secrets of the supernatural world. Once humans learned how to enter the psychic plane, then it wouldn’t be long before they discovered what shouldn’t exist. Vampires. Werewolves. Ghosts. La Llorona. El Cucuy. Fairies. Then humans would do to us what they did to the dodo birds, the passenger pigeon, and most of the Native Americans.

“Carmen first,” Coyote replied. “Then we fuck with Cress Tech.”

He called for Rainelle. No answer. He got up and looked out back. He returned to the living room, appearing confused. “Her truck is here.” He read his Rolex. “Past eight. Time for dinner.”

I hadn’t been keeping track of Rainelle, and the last time I had seen her was hours ago. Concern nipped at my kundalini noir.

Jolie sensed it too because she got a serious look on her face, reached for her jacket, and slipped it on to prepare for action.

Coyote opened the kitchen door and hollered into the night, “Rainelle.”

No answer except for the bleating of goats. He called for Che. Nothing.

A hunch soured my belly, the acid burn telling me to expect bad news. I put on my jacket.

Something beeped. All three of us glanced at the psychotronic diviner on the coffee table.

The crystal emitted a warning glow.

Phaedra was calling.

***

Chapter Thirteen

Coyote snatched the psychotronic diviner from the table and dashed out the kitchen door. He leapt off the porch, ran the fifty meters to the edge of the mesa and stopped. Jolie and I sprinted after him.

He held the diviner in both hands like an offering. Its crystal glowed steady. Though it could be detecting any psychic energy burst, no need to fool ourselves about what the clues meant. Rainelle was missing. Phaedra had taken her as bait.

Stars crowded the black velvet sky. The moon hung low over the opposite horizon. Chaco Canyon, Fajada Butte, and the far mesas formed a patchwork of purple and dark gray. More than a mile before us, the dark jagged gash of Chaco Wash ran across the middle of the canyon floor.

Jolie asked, “Why didn’t the diviner go off when Phaedra took Rainelle?”

“Phaedra didn’t need psychic powers to kidnap her.” I answered with conviction even though I was only guessing. “Or she could’ve sent her human goons. Now that Phaedra has Rainelle, she’s letting her presence be known.” I looked over both shoulders and lowered my voice to an angry rasp. “And she took Rainelle right from under our noses. That bitch Phaedra could be anywhere.”

The crystal dimmed until its light went out. Coyote stashed the diviner in his jacket pocket and stared into the canyon below. “She’s there.”

“Why didn’t she zap us here?” Jolie asked. “If she had attacked just a few minutes ago, she would’ve caught us with our thumb up our ass.”

I recalled Phaedra’s debilitating mind blasts. As powerful as they were, they must have range limits. “Maybe she has to trap us.”

Jolie tapped the grip of one of her .45s. Her fangs glinted. “Bring it.”

Coyote stepped off the mesa and floated down the steep slope. Jolie and I levitated behind him and descended into the gloom, the three of us practically invisible to any human who might have been watching. But to another vampire, our auras glowed like hot irons.

After landing in the canyon basin, we hustled to the wash. The moon climbed high enough to shine like a dim searchlight across the empty landscape.

The psychotronic diviner beeped, and my nerves pulled tight. Coyote fished the diviner out of his pocket, and the light from its crystal cast his face in eerie shadows.

I yanked my magnum from its holster. Jolie had both .45s out and ready.

We kept walking until we reached a ravine branching from the wash. We halted where the bottom was just visible. A hundred meters from us, a human body lay on her back. A woman with her arms folded. Rainelle. A faint aural sheath surrounded her. At least she was alive, though unconscious, maybe comatose.

Coyote squinted, his brow tightening. But he didn’t move. None of us did. We knew. Rainelle was bait.

The diviner beeped again, loud.

Its crystal burned with magnesium flare intensity, then exploded like a big firecracker. We jumped back. The report echoed in the night and the blast dazzled my eyes. I blinked them back into focus.

Coyote dropped the diviner and rubbed his eyes. He opened them and grimaced.

A faint white light materialized on the other side of the wash, maybe three hundred meters away. The light glided toward us.

My kundalini noir buzzed in distress, and I whispered, “Phaedra. Get ready for anything.” I fought the urge to shoot. Jolie pointed her pistols but like me, held her fire. At this distance our bullets wouldn’t nail her spot on. As soon as Phaedra was within pistol range—fifty meters—then we’d drill her with a hail of silver bullets.

Coyote jumped into the ravine. I expected him to scoop Rainelle into his arms but he bounded past her. With every stride, an article of clothing sloughed from his frame. For an instant he was naked and in the next, he had morphed into a coyote. He sprang on all four legs over the ground, his orange aura shimmering with distress. He disappeared down the far end of the ravine to my right, away from danger.

Why did Coyote abandon us? He was no coward. Jolie and I could transmutate into wolves, but the change would take at least a minute. By then, Phaedra would be on top of us.

The light continued to approach, becoming a blur of white and green illumination, coming close enough that I could recognize a human form within the glow. Jolie and I stepped from each other to make two targets instead of just one, and we glanced about in case the light was simply a distraction.

At one hundred meters, the light was a fan of white and green rays. Coming closer, it was clear the form inside the light was definitely female. A bit shorter than Jolie, with a mane of twisting black hair that cascaded past her shoulders, curling around a young woman’s face you’d call delicate and girlish if not for the expression of pure hate.

Confirmation: Phaedra.

Her lacy black dress was gathered with a belt from which hung dead crows. Black jewelry clung to her arms like the remnants of chains. Sparks sizzled around her head like she was about to explode. She was an astounding sight, so fantastic and terrifying that Jolie and I stared in disbelief when we should’ve opened fire.

Phaedra halted at the edge of the ravine on the other side of Rainelle. So far she had not used any of her tricks to probe our minds, confound us with hallucinations, or slam us with blasts of psychic energy.

Felix. Jolie.
The ingénue’s voice slid into my brain. Out the corner of my eye I saw Jolie flinch. She was hearing Phaedra as well.

Before we get started, let me offer you this chance. Join me. Serve me. Live.

Jolie answered for the two of us. “Fuck you.”

I raised my revolver to draw a bead on Phaedra’s pretty face.

The ground trembled. To my right, dirt geysered upward. An orange aura shot from the spot. A vampire in a black duster appeared facing me, snarling, talons and fangs extended to combat length.

How was this possible? Had he been planted in the ground, or did Phaedra shoot him from someplace like a dirt torpedo?

More earth spouted upwards. Another vampire. Then another gout of earth. And another. Another. Jolie and I were surrounded by vampires. Eight of them. All in long dark coats like they were dressed for a Goth concert.

Pistols raised, Jolie spread her arms. She alternated firing to the left and right. Her bullets knocked the vampires down like they were bowling pins.

The vampires facing me attacked as one. I aimed the revolver and delivered two quick shots with the speed of a scorpion’s tail. Two vampire heads exploded like cantaloupes.

A vampire grasped my right shoulder from behind and aimed his fangs for my neck, an amateurish move against an undead enforcer like myself. I grasped his hair with my left hand and pitched forward. He rolled off my shoulder, and I whipped him flat against the ground. I drove the butt of the Colt Magnum against his forehead and cracked his skull like an egg. Brains and gore spurted out. His aura sparked with pain and began to ebb.

The last vampire, a female, lunged at me. I darted out of her way and sliced her throat with my talons. Her head separated from her shoulders and spun backwards, her aura blinked off, and the blood gushing from both ends of her severed neck turned to flakes.

Score so far … Phaedra: zero. Jolie and me: eight. The undead bodies lay strewn around us, their auras flickering weakly or already dark. I had four bullets left in my pistol, all for Phaedra.

The ground trembled once more and a fresh volley of vampires sprang from the earth. Another suicide squad. I crouched and got ready to fight them off.

Phaedra had glided closer, maybe thirty meters away. Her aura gathered into a glowing knot in front of her forehead. The knot grew into a plume that extended from her head like a flamethrower. The plume arced over the ravine and swallowed Jolie’s aura. My friend froze, her arms dropped to the side, and she levitated.

The sight both stupefied and dismayed me. Phaedra had learned how to focus her mojo into a physical attack.

The plume crackled like fire. Jolie began to tremble.

Rage compressed within me, then exploded. I shot a pair of vampires that advanced between Phaedra and me. The remaining vampires held back, not as fanatical or as stupid as I thought.

The aural plume let go of Jolie and she crumpled to the ground. The plume retracted halfway to Phaedra. She turned her head toward me and aimed the plume like it was a cannon.

My reflexes kicked into supernatural speed, and I cut to the left. But Phaedra was quicker. The plume smacked me hard, like a kick to my solar plexus. Orange light flooded my vision and swirled inside my head. An electric shock slammed down my spine. Spasming in pain, I floated upward.

The orange light dimmed. Through the agony, Phaedra’s voice echoed in my skull, a tone both flirtatious and taunting.
It’s been awhile, my love. I appreciate that you’ve grown stronger and more ruthless. But not ruthless enough.

I wouldn’t reply. My mind wrestled to escape the grip of pain.

I could feel her smile turn cruel. My neck began to twist. I resisted but the force contorting my neck wrenched harder.

I was hoping to see you die in a more honorable way. Instead I’ll kill you as if you were a chicken for Sunday dinner. So disappointing.

I clenched my teeth and fought against the pain and the grinding of my vertebrae.

Phaedra screamed. The plume and my pain and paralysis vanished. I fell to the ground.

She screamed again. Coyote had clamped his muzzle onto one of her ankles, snarling, jerking his furry head side-to-side, his aura blazing red, orange, and yellow.

I watched, dizzy, my limbs plastic, my kundalini noir limp and weak.

Phaedra turned her head and blasted him with an aural plume. He was thrown back. She stoked the plume until it merged with his aura and glowed with incandescent brilliance. Phaedra lifted him until he was level with her eyes, then slammed him to the ground.

I tried to rise but my legs refused to work. I fought to raise the pistol to shoot but my arm felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.

Phaedra shrieked with anger. The plume retracted into her head. She clenched her right hand and her aura crackled with lightning bolts of pain.

Jolie had staggered to her feet and waved the .45s, firing wildly.

Phaedra faced Jolie, shooting the aural plume, knocking Jolie flat with a punishing blow.

My arm felt mine again and I aimed for a shot.

Two vampires tackled me, and I was smothered under a storm of fangs and talons. I smacked at arms and faces with the butt of the magnum. Claws tightened around my neck. I jerked my pistol arm free and shoved the gun against a torso. Fired once. Felt the body go limp. Grabbed a face with my left hand. Raked my talons through flesh and bone and pushed the screaming, wounded vampire away.

A loud demonic howling echoed across the canyon.
Now what?

Out the corner of my eye, I spotted a bluish-white light bounding toward us. The light outlined a large gorilla-lizard shape. El Cucuy.

Phaedra retracted her aural plume from Jolie and watched him approach, her aura sizzling in confusion and apprehension.

He raced across the night desert in great leaps, the surface of his metallic segmented body articulating like a mosaic of pewter tile.

I shot one of the vampires in the back. His comrades spun about and sprang at me. The fight disintegrated into a wild brawl, vampires seizing my arms, quick shots at targets of opportunity, and a confusion of fangs, talons, and fists.

I tore free long enough to see El Cucuy get within fifty feet of Phaedra and leap at her. But she was ready and hit him with the aural blast.

He exploded into thousands of shimmering fragments. The fragments bounced across the dirt, but didn’t stop. Instead they moved like tiny Cucuys. They leapt at each other, clumping, these clumps sticking to others, all the while the mass approached Phaedra as it reformed the full El Cucuy.

Phaedra hit him with another blast. Again he exploded into pieces. And again, these pieces clumped together and remade El Cucuy.

She gave him another blast, but the plume was weaker. El Cucuy was slammed back, parts of him separating. They jumped back into him, and once whole, he pounced at her.

Another mind blast. This time El Cucuy was knocked to his knees with his head blown off. It tumbled to the ground, grew legs from the stump and jumped back onto his shoulders.

Phaedra retreated from him. Her aura radiated a weak orange light. It pulsed once as if giving a signal. The remaining vampires hopped up and disappeared into the holes they had sprung from.

A fresh aural plume twisted from Phaedra. She raked it across the bodies of her fallen minions. Their corpses burst into flame, flaring like dry tumbleweeds. I covered my face to shield my eyes. The bodies blazed for a moment, crackled, faded to embers, and then to smoke and twists of ash. Phaedra shrank into the distance and faded to nothingness.

***