Supernatural: Coyote's Kiss (11 page)

When Xochi spoke the first word of the spell that would bind the Borderwalker and drive her back, the creature abruptly fell forward onto her belly. When she hit the bathroom tile, her body seemed to shatter into a hundred black fragments. Xochi was horrified when she realized the fragments were alive. Hoards of black tarantulas were swarming around her boots, heading for Brewer.

The boys were swearing and stomping their feet. Brewer was crouched up against the wall, arms thrown defensively across his face. Xochi spun and held her ground, continued reciting the spell.

The army of hairy arachnid bodies puddled like tar and then in a stutter-flash, reformed into a kind of jittery, roadkill marionette, dripping with maggots. As quickly as her brain could register this new shape, the creature shifted again, now more coyote-like but still possessing aspects of a tarantula. Shiny black mandibles instead of teeth and far too many bony legs. The only thing that was still human was that wild black hair.

Xochi could feel the telekinetic power building in her extended hand. She thrust that hand forward and twisted. The Borderwalker reacted as if Xochi had grabbed a fistful of her curly hair, head cranked back and shrieking like an animal in a trap.

“Dean!” Xochi cried, sweeping her hand to her right and bringing the snarling Borderwalker with it as if attached by an invisible leash.

Dean was right there with the
maquahuitl,
swinging like Mickey Mantle. That weapon could cut off a horse’s head in one stroke but when it hit the Borderwalker it was like striking water. Her substance simply flowed around the blades.

“Again!” Xochi said.

Dean let the Borderwalker have it a second and third time. Aromatic smoke started to leak from gashes in the creature’s body and the liquid flow of her shape became sluggish, not so quick to reform. She lashed out at Dean, black vulture claws striking sparks against the silver chains around his neck. Dean faded back, then spun and brought the
maquahuitl
down sharply, neatly severing one of her skeletal hands. The hand fell to the carpet, became smoke and was gone. Sam moved in smoothly behind Xochi, placing himself between the Borderwalker and Brewer with his own
maquahuitl
raised and ready. They were winning.

Then the door burst open on its busted hinges and the last person Xochi expected to see walked into the room. Someone she hadn’t seen in more than ten years. Her older sister Teo.

Teo looked good, pin-up perfect as always. She was poured into high-waisted black-and-gold matador pants and a matching halter top with a plunging neckline. Teo was the one who got the boobs in the family and had always loved to lord her overflowing cleavage over her B-cup sister. She was six inches taller than Xochi in her pointy gold cockroach-killer heels. Her hair was piled high in a crown of flawless rockabilly curls and yellow marigolds.

But none of these details mattered, because the only thing Xochi could see when she looked at her sister was the leaf-shaped obsidian knife tucked into the waistband of her pants. It was very simple, rough-hewn and primitive. The handle and the blade were all one piece of glossy black stone, the only distinction being that the handle was smooth and the blade sharp. This was
Itztlitlantl,
a knife that had been in Xochi’s family for hundreds of years, a powerful and deadly weapon that could only be wielded by a woman of Xochi’s bloodline. A knife, that by right should be wielded by Xochi.

In that moment of anger, conflicted emotion and distracted attention, Xochi’s telekinetic hold on the Borderwalker faltered. Instead of going after Dean, the Borderwalker tore loose and threw herself at Brewer. Sam was there to block her, but she shifted form again, flickering like fire flowing around Sam and then suddenly right on top of Brewer, ripping into him with furious claws and teeth. Sam slammed his
maquahuitl
into the back of the Borderwalker’s head while Dean gripped the thing by the wiry pelt on her hunched back and pulled her off Brewer.

“
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.”

“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.”