Supernatural: Coyote's Kiss

by Christa Faust

  Despite his flyweight physique, it took all of both Sam and Dean’s combined muscle to hold Ojon down. His skin was moist and clammy and he stank, like bad teeth and burnt plastic. Xochi pulled out a stone knife with a handle shaped like a snake and pressed the blade to his dirty neck.

  “You’re not gonna kill him, are you?” Dean asked out of the corner of his mouth.

  “As much as I might like to,” Xochi said. “No. I only need a small amount of his blood.”

  “She’s right,” Sam said. “If he was that close to our creature when she opened the doorway between the worlds, some residual bad mojo is probably still clinging to him. A divination using his tainted blood could point to where she’s headed.”

  “Tainted blood?” Dean said. “This guy’s blood is so tainted we could sell it to truckers to help them stay awake.”

  Xochi’s gloved hands were steady as surgeon’s as she nicked Ojon’s throat with the knife, collecting his blood on the flat edge of the blade. She then picked up the cap from Dean’s empty water bottle and let the blood run into it from the tip of the blade.

  “Let him go,” Xochi said. “We have no more use for him.”

  Sam and Dean eased up on Ojon. He eyed them both like it was some kind of trick.

  “You heard her, slick,” Dean said. “You’re free to go.”

  Ojon didn’t bother to remove the gag. He just bolted for the door, threw it open and ran out into the parking lot, where he tripped over his own big feet and ate asphalt about three feet away from Xochi’s bike.

  Dean closed the door, shaking his head.

  “Write the names of the two men,” Xochi said to Sam.

  Sam tore a page from his notebook and did as she requested, setting the sheet of paper on the carpet at her feet. She knelt with the cap in one hand and the knife in the other. She spoke some words that Dean was pretty sure weren’t Spanish and the blood inside the cap began to swirl like a miniature maelstrom. When she up-ended the cap onto the center of the page, the blood ran toward one of the names as if the paper were slanted in that direction. Crimson tendrils flowed around the name, obliterating it.

  BREWER

  “There’s your answer,” Xochi said.

  “Okay,” Sam said. “Brewer’s in Yuma. We’d better hit the road.”

  Xochi stood, sheathing the knife.

  “Before we leave,” Xochi said. “May I wash myself?”

  “Uh yeah,” Dean said. “No problem. Be my guest.”

  “You’d better wash yourself too,” Sam said to Dean. “I’m not gonna sit in a car for four hours with a guy who smells like a dirty bar rag.”

  “Ladies first,” Dean said, gesturing toward the closed bathroom door.

  “Thank you,” she said. She paused with her hand on the doorknob. “But Dean, I have one question. What is Q?”

  “Look,” Dean said, suppressing a snicker. “You can’t be in the Monster Club if you haven’t seen Q, The Winged Serpent.”

  “It’s a movie,” Sam said. “And you’re probably better off not having seen it.”

  “Winged serpent?” She frowned. “They made a movie about Quetzalcoatl?”

  “They made a movie about a cheesy rubber puppet flying around New York City and eating people,” Sam told her.

  “Aw, come on,” Dean said. “I love that movie.”

  “Dude,” Sam said. “We watched that movie when I was, like, five years old, and even back then I wasn’t buying that monster for a minute.”

  “You help me win this fight,” Xochi said with a wink. “I’ll introduce you to the real thing. Then can I be in the Monster Club?”

  “If we win this,” Sam said. “You’re in. Lifetime membership.”

  Xochi smiled and disappeared into the bathroom.

  FOURTEEN

  The three of them stood outside a greasy spoon diner. It was long and narrow, a fifties aluminum building that had been given an ugly brown-and-orange makeover sometime in the mid seventies. There was a Denny’s on the other side of the highway, and so the little diner was nearly empty. The faded and peeling sign above the door read “ROADRUNNER GRILL” and featured a slightly altered knock-off of the famous cartoon character who was always making a fool out of the coyote. Dean found that strangely appropriate.

  It was only 9 a.m. but rapidly becoming unbearably hot. Xochi had traded her black wifebeater tank top for a white one, making her lack of a bra even more evident. Her long hair was loose and fragrant, still damp from the shower. She wore the same beat-up, Mad Max leather pants. And her gun-belt.

  “You know, I’m as paranoid as the next hunter,” Dean said, gesturing at the pistols. “But are you sure it’s a good idea to wear those to breakfast? I really don’t think anybody’s gonna try to shoot you in a diner.”

  “I have a carry permit,” Xochi said. “Your country is very gun-friendly.”

  “But you aren’t even a U.S. citizen,” Sam said. “Are you?”

  “No,” Xochi said. “In fact, this is my first time visiting the United States. But I have a U.S. driver’s license. And a birth certificate that says I was born in Los Angeles. A lot of people owe me favors.”

  “Come on, kids,” Sam said, pushing the diner door open and motioning for Xochi to enter.

  The single waitress, a tiny, birdlike woman in her mid-fifties with a big, bright red, utterly unironic eighties poodle perm, motioned for them to seat themselves. She eyed Xochi’s guns but was smart enough not to say anything. Sam and Dean took opposite sides of the orange Naugahyde booth closest to the door. Xochi chose to sit beside Sam. Dean had no idea why that bothered him so much, and tried to concentrate on the menu instead. A big greasy breakfast was just the ticket to get on top of his lingering hangover.

  “So how was your powwow with the coyote guy last night?” Sam asked Xochi. “Anything useful?”

  “Huehuecoyotl is a trickster,” Xochi said, looking down at the menu. “It is hard to see through his lies. He told me I had to go back to Mexico City to find the Borderwalker, but the divination proves that she is going after Brewer in Yuma next.” She closed the menu and slid it over to the edge of the table. “He did say one thing that I think may be significant. He seemed to be hinting that a larger force is behind the actions of the Borderwalker. If that is the case, we may have a much more difficult fight on our hands.”

  The waitress came over to fill their coffee cups and take their orders. Xochi asked for a bacon cheeseburger with extra bacon.

  “And chili cheese fries,” she looked to Sam. “We can share, okay?”

  “Chili cheese fries, for breakfast?” Sam shook his head. “Dean, you may have finally met your perfect woman.”

  “Chili cheese fries sound fantastic,” Dean said. “Just what the doctor ordered. And I’ll have a bacon cheeseburger too.”

  “You can’t fight the forces of darkness with a stomach full of salad,” Xochi said.

  “Amen, sister,” Dean said, raising his coffee cup.

  Sam rolled his eyes. “You can’t fight anything if you’re dead from a heart attack.”

  “You really think people like us live long enough to die from a heart attack?” Xochi asked.

  There was a beat of awkward silence at the table.

  “Okay, and what can I get you, honey,” the waitress asked Sam, with a desperately forced smile.

  Xochi followed the Impala on her bike. Dean watched her in the rearview, wondering what the hell he’d been thinking, agreeing to let her tag along. Wondering what it would be like with her.

  “Turn here,” Sam said. “Here!”

  Dean swung the Impala into a squealing, last-minute swerve to hit the turnoff Sam had indicated. Xochi followed smoothly behind them.

  Gilberto Brewer was a vet, a marine with a couple tours in the Middle East before he came home and joined the CBP, and so Sam had been able to pull all kinds of info about him through Veteran Services. Never married. No living family. History of drug addiction and homelessness over the past fifteen years
, on and off a county-run methadone program. Mostly off. Currently living in a crap apartment on the outskirts of Yuma.

  It took them a few trips around the block to find the place, and then only by inferring the address based on the numbers on the adjacent buildings. It was as if people who lived there didn’t want to be found. Once Dean got a good look at the place, he decided he couldn’t blame them.

  It was a dump, cheaply built in the eighties and already falling apart. Scabby stucco. Barred windows. There were only six units, all in a row like a cheap motel. Letters instead of numbers. Brewer was in the last one. End of the line, apartment F. That was about right.

  Xochi pulled into the parking lot behind them. She removed her helmet and started twining her hair up into a big figure eight on the top of her head, fastening it with long pins and marigolds just like she said she would. The resulting crown of flowers looked weirdly incongruous with the rest of her scrappy un-feminine outfit.

  “Here,” she said, pulling handfuls of thick silver chains out of her backpack. “Put these on. If you won’t wear marigolds, at least these may give you some protection around your face and neck.”

  Dean slipped the tangled chains over his head.

  “I feel like the second-place Mr. T,” he said.

  “Just tuck ’em under your shirt,” Sam said, putting on his own chains and slipping them under his collar.

  “Bring the weapons I gave you,” Xochi said. “Be ready.”

  “I don’t know,” Sam said. “I think this guy’s gonna freak out if we walk in there holding spiked baseball bats.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” she said.

  “What about you?” Dean asked Xochi. “What are you planning to use to fight the Borderwalker? Harsh language?”

  “Exactly,” she said, turning away and heading for the door to Brewer’s apartment.

  “Well isn’t she a take-charge kinda girl?” Dean muttered, annoyed by how easily they’d both fallen into following her lead.

  “She can take charge of me any day,” Sam replied, hefting the rifle bag and slinging it over one shoulder.

  When the two of them got to the door, Xochi was already banging on it with her gloved fist.

  “So,” Dean said. “Is there a plan... or...”

  The door opened a crack, revealing a chain lock and a slice of pale, unshaven face. A single suspicious bloodshot eye looked them over.

  “What do you want?”

  Xochi kicked the door open, breaking the chain off its track.

  Dean and Sam exchanged glances, then shrugged and followed her into the apartment.

  It was dim and cavelike inside, with a smell like old socks and moldy carpet. It was pretty much all one claustrophobic room with a minimal kitchen off one side and bathroom off the other. The walls were a dingy, unpleasant peach, like the skin of a discarded doll. The furniture was a sorry cluster of mismatched thrift store refugees. No television. No computer. No stereo. No books. No visible source of entertainment of any kind, unless you counted the dope paraphernalia on the scarred coffee table.

  Brewer was Latino, mid-forties, and balding, with pale, jaundiced skin and the sad, deflated build of a former bodybuilder gone to seed. He was dressed in a thin T-shirt that hadn’t been white in years and cheap, shiny track pants. There was an ugly purple abscess in the crook of his left arm.

  In moments, Xochi had Brewer backed up against the wall, a fistful of his stained T-shirt in one hand and a pistol in the other. She jammed the business end of the gun up under Brewer’s chin and whispered to him in Spanish.

  Dean stepped up beside her and put his hand on her shoulder, flashing Brewer a friendly reassuring smile.

  “You’ll have to forgive my partner, Mr. Brewer,” Dean said, badging him with an FBI ID. “She’s very... enthusiastic.”

  Xochi backed off with the gun and let go of Brewer’s shirt, but stayed up in his face, letting him know that she might change her mind at any moment. Playing unhinged bad-cop counterpoint to Dean’s calm, trustworthy good cop like they’d been doing it their whole lives, Sam stood like a silent wall behind them, arms crossed and using his size to intimidate and block access to the door. Maybe not exactly the way Dean would have played it, but it looked like they had this.

  “I’m Special Agent Scott. My partners Young...” Chin tip to Sam. “And Quintanilla.” To Xochi. “We need to talk to you.”

  Brewer’s eyes flicked to the syringe on the table, then back to Dean.

  “Not about that,” Dean said. “About an incident that occurred on the night of April 18th 1995.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the man croaked. But Brewer’s expression told a different story. It said that he knew exactly what they were talking about.

  “Look, Brewer,” Dean said. “We can do this the hard way, if you prefer.”

  “Mr. Brewer,” Xochi interrupted. “Excuse me, Mr. Brewer.”

  Dean shot her a questioning glance but she ignored him.

  “What?” Brewer wiped his dry lips with a nervous, shaking hand.

  “Do you have someone else living here with you?” Xochi asked.

  Brewer frowned, gave a terse shake of his head.

  Xochi stepped back, gestured with her gun.

  “Then who is that?”

  Dean followed her gaze through the doorway to the grungy bathroom. There was someone sitting on the edge of the bathtub, facing away from them. Silent, unmoving. Someone with curly black hair.

  FIFTEEN

  For a moment, nothing happened. The four of them stood frozen, just watching and waiting. Xochi felt the familiar adrenaline rush coursing through her limbs as she let her breath out slow and relaxed her muscles, preparing her body for action. Then Dean leaned close and spoke low out of the corner of his mouth.

  “That her?” Dean asked.

  “I think so, yes,” Xochi replied.

  Sam reached into the unzipped rifle bag and pulled out one of the obsidian-studded maquahuitl, moving slow and never taking his eyes off the woman in the bathroom.

  Then the woman’s head whipped around and she screamed, face splitting open into a bloody, gaping hole ringed with canine teeth. Blowtorch rage blasted Xochi with a power that was nearly physical in its intensity, but she stepped forward rather than back, shoving Brewer behind her and raising her right hand.

  The Borderwalker stood. Sam tossed the maquahuitl to Dean and then pulled the other from the rifle bag. The brothers flanked her, Dean on her right and Sam on her left. Brewer cowered behind them.

  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 strok
e 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.