“She’s not leaving it behind for you to put your grubby hands on,” Walker snapped.
A lump formed in Hettie’s stomach. “Is that a risk? Can we get stuck?”
“Stuck?” Coyote’s yellow eyes flashed, and he bared his teeth in a rictus of a grin. “It’s worse than that. If anything disturbs the spell on either side of the tunnel, matter will resolve around you, in you, turning you slowly and excruciatingly into part of it. I know men who’ve screamed for days as they turned to stone. Sometimes the patrol captures people trying to cross the border and melds them into the Wall halfway, leaving their limbs sticking out, wiggling to warn away others.”
Abby squeaked. Coyote chuckled lowly. “That won’t happen, little one. Your uncle Coyote will not fail you.”
“Where’s the exit point?” Uncle asked. He’d been silent up to now, which was odd for him. He usually tried to take charge wherever possible.
“A day’s ride from Villa del Punta. You know, for the very low cost of three months, I could drop you right in the center of the village. I have an aperture hidden away there. Not even Raúl can find it.”
Walker glared at him, and Coyote laughed. “I’m kidding. I thought you would appreciate the joke.”
“So … is this like a Zoom tunnel?” Hettie asked.
“It’s nothing like the Zooms,” Coyote said, irritated. “Zooms can’t go through the Wall. This is a spell I made all by myself. It’s the only way to get through the Wall around here, unless you’d rather go through one of the gates.” He eyed them speculatively. “Which I very much doubt. Only the most desperate of fugitives summon the Coyote.”
“Are you sure this is safe?” Hettie asked Uncle quietly. She glanced at Abby, who’d been watching the strange man as intently as a jackrabbit sensing a nearby predator.
“As safe as walking through solid matter is for anyone, I reckon.” Jeremiah scratched his nose. “Is this a drop and swim?”
“Ah, you’ve done this before.” Coyote peered at him, then blinked. “Do I know you?”
“Doubt it.” He looked away and kicked his toe in the dust. “Well, what’re we waiting for?”
“Hettie, stay close to Abby, but don’t hold hands.” Walker pushed them together. “You’re going to jump in after me—Abby first, then Hettie, the horses and Cymon, and then JB. Whatever you do, keep moving. It’ll feel strange at first, but don’t stop, or you might get stuck.”
Abby stared at the loop, her gaze blank. Hettie tapped her shoulder, and her sister blinked slowly up at her. “Like swimming,” she said dreamily.
A shiver skated down Hettie’s spine.
“Hang on to your hats, amigos.” Coyote grinned. He jumped into the circle and began chanting, dancing in a strange half-squatting position, kicking his feet and stomping his heels. Arms outspread, he sprinkled some kind of grain over the ground inside the loop. Where the grains landed, light spread. Soon, the whole circle glowed. Coyote gave a whoop and jumped—
He slid into the ground, as if he’d disappeared down a large gopher hole.
“C’mon, let’s git.” Walker leaped in, his black duster flapping out behind him. Abby hesitated.
“Hurry up, girls. The door won’t stay open long,” Uncle called.
“Everything will be okay.” Hettie said it to reassure herself as much as Abby. She gave her sister’s bum a swat. “Just like swimming, right?”
The girl smiled and hopped feetfirst into the pool of light as easily as if she’d jumped into a puddle.
Hettie stood on the edge, suddenly nervous. Uncle had the horses by the reins. But Cymon cowered, tail tucked between his legs.
“The damned mutt won’t come,” Jeremiah said. “Grab him.”
“C’mere, Cy! C’mon!” But the big brown dog wouldn’t budge. He shrank down on his haunches, ears flattened.
The horses gave nervous whinnies as they approached the pool of light. Uncle tugged on their reins. “Jezebel, don’t you dare flinch. You been through worse, and I can’t imagine you’re scared of a little light. Don’t let these two young ’uns beat you to the other side.”
The old gray mare lifted her chin. With the dignity of a queen, she marched straight into the portal, front end tipping forward. Her hind legs kicked the air as she was swallowed up by the light. Lilith and Blackie followed more cautiously, unwilling to be cowed.
Meanwhile, Hettie was trying to wrestle Cymon into the pool. He twisted out of her grip and scooted backward, sitting down hard.
“If he doesn’t come now, he won’t come at all,” Uncle shouted.
“We can’t just leave him alone in the desert.”
Jeremiah huffed. “C’mere, you stupid dog. Don’t you know what’s good fer ya?” When Cymon didn’t move, Uncle hefted up the dog, cradling him under his bottom like a baby. Cy wrapped his front legs over his shoulders, clutching him tightly.
“Hettie, hurry up and step on through. I’ll drop Cy in after you.”
She went to the edge of the shimmering pool but could see nothing past the brilliantly shining surface. Tentatively, she knelt and pushed a hand past the ground, meeting only the slightest resistance, as if she’d dipped her fingers in cold syrup.
“I said git!” Uncle planted a boot on her hindquarters and shoved her in, and she pitched headfirst into the pool.
She’d expected a splash, or gravity’s pull, and for a moment she thought she was in free fall. But the momentum of her tumble slowed abruptly, and her sense of direction spun.
Keep moving or you’ll get stuck. She started pumping her legs as if marching, pinwheeling her arms to get forward movement. Slowly she regained her equilibrium, and up and down became clear.
Gray fog filled the air. At closer inspection she realized it wasn’t mist, but fine particles like dust. It swirled as she moved, creating little eddies where the others had been, and she followed the path they’d cut toward a distant pinprick of light that didn’t seem to get any closer. Her muscles ached as she crawled through the miasma.
“Keep moving.” Uncle’s sharp directive startled her into redoubling her pace. A labored panting and whine told her Cymon was on her heels.
“Abby?” she called out.
Her reply came back faintly. “I’m here.” Hettie couldn’t see her through the gloom.
The horses nickered, Jezebel reassuring her that she was keeping them all moving.
“We’re almost at the end.” Walker’s voice came from far away. “Don’t stop.”
Hettie slogged on, limbs burning. Her lungs felt heavy, and her heart thudded sluggishly. She was so tired. All she wanted was to rest, to lie down and just … stop. Her eyelids drifted closed, and she started to slip away …
Someone grabbed her wrist and yanked her forward. With a gasp, she launched ahead, then slipped out into clear, hot air. She fell to her hands and knees, grit in her eyes, hacking as if she’d been wandering through smoke.
She looked up blearily.
And found herself staring into the barrel of a rifle.
Rough hands dragged Hettie to her feet. Someone shouted in Spanish at her, and she raised her hands. They’d been caught by the Mexican border patrol.
A second behind her, Uncle and Cymon tumbled out of the aperture shoulder to shoulder. The old man cursed as a soldier kicked him in the side, then yanked him to his feet. Cymon was snared and dragged away, and the startled horses were rounded up. Their captors prodded them on with the barrels of their rifles toward a tent. Coyote was nowhere to be seen.
Hettie’s left palm itched as Diablo struggled to prove its worth, but she suppressed the revolver’s urge to leap into her hand. The men would kill them before she could even get a bead on them.
Wanna bet? The thought came like a murmur in the dark. Hettie clenched her empty fist.
In the large tent, a long table rested in the center. Myriad p
iles of papers were weighted down with rocks, and the pages stirred in the hot, dusty breeze. A man in a dark, smartly cut jacket looked up from a sheaf in his hand, one thick, dark brow rising as he took in the prisoners. One of the soldiers said something to him in Spanish. Hettie didn’t know much of the language apart from one or two phrases she’d picked up from folks in Newhaven, but she knew gringos was rarely used as a term of endearment.
“I am Captain Jose Sanchez of the border guard,” he addressed Hettie in slightly accented English. She was surprised he was talking to her rather than Uncle or Walker, but perhaps that was a disarming technique. His dark eyes, gleaming with the slightest hint of green, bored into hers. “My men say you were sneaking across the Wall with that coyotaje.”
“We’re just trying to reunite these girls with their family.” Walker stepped forward. A soldier cuffed him in the back of the head, and the bounty hunter groaned.
“I was talking to the señorita,” the captain said crisply. He redirected his attention to Hettie, those uncanny eyes skimming over her. He put a hand in his pocket. “My apologies if you were injured. We are not animals here on the border, but you must understand that we have a duty to protect our lands from intruders. We will not harm you unless provoked. Just tell us where you are headed and why you were with that criminal. You can trust me.”
Pressure built in her throat, squeezing her vocal chords. Words gathered on her tongue, but she swallowed them down. She dug her fingernails into her palms. The man was using a truthtelling spell on her. She fought it, knowing that blurting out the wrong information would get them all jailed or worse. But if she didn’t speak, the border patrol would know something was amiss and probably jail them anyhow.
“That’s my sister.” She nodded at Abby. “And it’s just as the man says. We’re trying to find our father and mother.” Technically, it wasn’t a lie. Ma and Pa could only be found in the afterlife.
The captain sat on the edge of the table. “And this one?” He gestured at Jeremiah.
“My uncle. Not by blood.” Also the truth.
The young captain slipped his hand out of his pocket, and the pressure on Hettie’s throat and tongue eased. “If your parents are in Mexico, they would have let you through the gate at Nogales. It is not that far from here.”
Hettie thought fast. She tucked her chin down demurely and roughened her voice. “Not without documents. Our ranch was attacked by bandits. Our house and everything we had was burned in a fire. My parents went across the border first to establish themselves and sent for us a few months ago.” The best lies were half-truths, and this was mostly true. The captain had taken her for a weak, loose-tongued young woman, and probably thought she would sing with the least bit of pressure. She made herself look small and forlorn, pushing tears into her eyes by biting her tongue. “We just want to be with them again.”
“To start a new life in Mexico, eh?” He tilted his chin thoughtfully. “Yes, I might believe that. But apparently you don’t know how things work south of the Wall. This is not a land of milk and honey, señorita. There are more dangers here than you can imagine. The snakes and scorpions will get you if the sun doesn’t. And now we have el chupacabra.”
Hettie’s skin prickled. “Choo … choopa-cabra?”
“A demon monster. A creature from hell itself. It has been attacking villages all over the countryside. Three days ago it decimated a herd of cattle just south of us.” He smirked at Abby. “They say it eats little boys and girls who misbehave.”
Abby whimpered and turned away. The soldier behind her laid a firm hand on her shoulder, his rifle pointed at her feet.
The captain inspected his nails. “If your parents had come across the border, they were cruel to have sent for you. Things are not easy here for people like you. We don’t trust you gringos easily. Every day, criminals and derelicts creep into our country between the cracks in the Wall like cucaracchas. Men who’ve done great evil seek salvation in my home and expect it because they think they are better than us.” His eyes were hard and hot as his glare panned across his prisoners, the accusation a brand pressing against Hettie’s skin.
Captain Sanchez twisted his lips, regarding her steadily. “You are a little old to still be living with your parents, señorita.”
Her cheeks heated. She would appear to be in her midtwenties to him—an old maid by most people’s standards, and damaged goods by the rest. But she held his probing gaze, daring him to remark on her scar. “They need me.”
“Hmm.” He pinched her chin and turned her face roughly to one side as he examined the plume-shaped path a bullet had blasted across her right temple and cheekbone. “This is not so bad that a man would reject you for it. Depending on your cooking, I would have you.”
She snatched her face away. Diablo kicked into her palm, hot and heavy and primed to set this whole tent ablaze. No! she thought in a panic.
Walker lunged at the captain—he must have seen the infernal mage gun jump into action and meant to draw their captors’ attention away from it. Two guards grabbed him and punched him in the gut, doubling him over, then kicked his ankles so he fell to his knees. It was just the distraction she needed to slip the revolver back into her pocket. This was not the time or place to test her marksmanship, not with a rifle pointed at Abby’s back and a camp full of soldiers surrounding them.
Captain Sanchez smirked at Walker. “Have no fear, señor, I would never take a woman against her will. I promised you I would not hurt you, and I am a man of my word. We have other ways of dealing with lawbreakers. Why don’t I show you?”
The troops pushed the entourage out into the scalding noon heat. Hettie took in her surroundings, counting the soldiers and the layout of the tents. Wild whinnies off to the left told her Blackie, Jezebel, and Lilith were fighting their captors.
Above them loomed the Wall. The black granite surface was pitted and rough, deep grooves carved by water and time running up and down the length. It seemed to absorb all light and consume all attention, and it radiated a sickly heat that baked the earth around it. She stared up, the topmost edge lost in the hazy sky.
“They say it would take a man five days to reach the top of the Wall,” Captain Sanchez said near her ear. “No one has ever reached the apex and lived to tell the tale.”
“Because you caught them?” She forced awe into her voice. Flattery might get him to let his guard down further.
He snickered. “I don’t need to. There are a great number of unpleasant things guarding the Wall besides men with guns. The ones I catch come through with coyotajes the way you did.” He gestured toward their destination.
A lighter, lumpier section of the Wall had been portioned off by logs set into the stone. It almost looked like a scalable area stretching about thirty feet up.
But as Hettie neared, her stomach turned. She halted and turned to shield Abby’s eyes, but Captain Sanchez held her firm and pushed her forward and out of Abby’s reach. Then she heard the moans.
The writhing mass of fleshy faces stretched and contorted, their suffering plain in their slack-jawed expressions. Cracked and bloody lips gaped like rotting petals around foul, black mouths oozing with disease and decay. Flies swarmed around crusted, bloodshot eyes and hollowed-out pits of stone where eyes should have been. Some of the faces didn’t move at all. The noonday sun beat down on them, and the fetid smell of death wafted on the hot breeze.
“For decency’s sake,” Uncle muttered. “Don’t let the girls see this.”
“Everyone in Mexico knows about this. We teach it in schools, even. It is a necessary part of our bloody history. This is Sinner’s Block. Others call it the Wailing Wall … for obvious reasons.” He smiled, a strange light in his eyes. “The people sentenced to Sinner’s Block are the worst criminals. Murderers, rapists … and traitors.”
“Sure are a lot of them,” Uncle grumbled.
“Many of them a
re fugitives from your country. The Wall is a promise that those criminals seeking absolution or escape here find only unrelenting justice.”
Hettie forced herself to look at the block. The birds nesting among the faces higher up pecked at the protruding flesh. One haggard face awakened and screamed as a crow gouged and tore a strip from his nostril across his cheek. Abby covered her eyes and moaned. Walker stared resolutely at his boot tips.
The captain went on casually, “For many years, it was argued we should face Sinner’s Block into your country as a warning to invaders. But at the rate we’ve been catching illegal immigrants, the Wall will no doubt be covered on both sides.”
Four men in long robes marched forward, dragging a manacled man in the center of their square formation. He howled and tripped and struggled, but the manacles seemed to have been magicked to make him march. With a start, Hettie recognized Coyote.
“Ah, the latest addition.” Captain Sanchez beckoned them forward. Abby tried to pull away, but a guard shoved her, and she stumbled and fell. She cried out, gripping her scraped knee. The soldier wrenched her up by the arm.
“Abby!” Hettie glared at the captain. “She’s only a girl. She doesn’t need to see this.”
“On the contrary. If you want to live in Mexico, this is the first lesson you must learn. Traitors to Mexico are sent to Sinner’s Block. The coyotaje is a traitor for smuggling you gringos in. You claim to be hapless travelers—and I will accept that for now until you can be properly processed and your claims are proven. But in the meantime, he must pay the price for breaking our laws.”
The four robed men shoved Coyote against the Wailing Wall, two on either side of him. The faces pressing into his back groaned.
“Woodroffe!” Coyote shrieked. “You can’t let them do this to me! Save me, Woodroffe!”
“Woodroffe?” The captain turned. His dark green eyes seemed to pass over Walker several times, and he blinked hard before narrowing his focus. “Walker Woodroffe?”
The Devil's Standoff Page 3