Clearly, a drink was the answer. Hair of the dog that bit him. That was becoming the answer to way too many questions in his life, but he was too worn down to care.
He reached for the doorknob for room 202 and the dizziness suckerpunched him hard enough to rock him on his feet. The knob seemed to recede away from his fingers like scenery outside the window of a speeding train. He might have said Sam’s name, or maybe he just thought it.
EIGHTEEN
The next thing he knew he was on his back on a sagging motel-room bed, looking up at a large brown water stain shaped like the state of Texas. Sam stood over him on the left and Xochi on the right. She was holding his right wrist in both of her hands. She looked beautiful and deadly serious.
“Dean,” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me you’d been cut by Itztlitlantl?”
“What?” He frowned. “You mean your sister’s knife?”
“It is not her knife,” Xochi said. “By right it is my knife.”
“Okay, whatever,” Sam said. “I don’t care about your family drama right now, just tell us what’s wrong with Dean. Is he poisoned?”
“Worse,” Xochi said. “That knife was crafted by the great grandmother of my great grandmother’s great grandmother,” she said. “Carved from the tooth of a slain Tzitzimitl, a Star Demon. These are extremely powerful creatures whose obsidian bite can slice through souls. For this reason, they are also know as Souleaters.
“Itztlitlantl is the perfect weapon against ghosts and other unquiet spirits. It would also kill our rogue Borderwalker without a problem. But if it cuts a living human... The knife didn’t just cut your hand, Dean. It cut into your soul.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Dean said.
“I wish I was,” she said. “Your soul is wounded and must be healed.”
“Awesome,” Sam said. “It couldn’t have been me that got cut with this thing.”
Xochi looked up at Sam with an unreadable expression. Dean could see wheels turning inside her head but couldn’t imagine what she was thinking.
“So what are you gonna do,” Dean asked. “Give me a stick to bite on while you pop a few stitches into my soul?”
“I can do nothing for you,” she said. “I’m no curandera.”
“Okay so...” Dean frowned. “What happens now?”
“Your soul will die.”
“Die?” Dean looked from Xochi to Sam and back again. “Whoa, what do you mean die?”
“It’s not so bad,” Sam said. “Not having a soul. I’m doing fine without mine.”
“You don’t understand,” Xochi said to Sam. “Your soul isn’t in your body, but it is still vital. Still alive. If the soul dies, the body is left a mindlessly animated, rotting corpse.”
“A zombie?” Dean tried to sit up but couldn’t. “You mean I’m gonna go all Night of the Living Dead and try to eat your brains?”
“You won’t try to eat our brains, no,” she said. “But when the soul is dead, or if it has been devoured by one of the Tzitzimimeh, the animated body is attracted to other living souls. It will obsessively chew and claw into living flesh in a desperate attempt to get at the soul within, like a moth banging mindlessly against a light bulb.”
“Great,” Dean said. “How long do I have?”
“It’s a small cut,” Xochi replied. “Twelve, maybe twenty-four hours.” Her expression was grave. Dean felt sick to his stomach. He looked up at his brother.
“Sammy, you’re not gonna let that happen to me are you?” Dean gripped his brother’s arm. “If it comes to that, you’ll take care of it, right?”
“Of course,” Sam said. “I’ll take care of it.”
“You weren’t supposed to answer that so quickly,” Dean said.
“Sorry,” Sam responded.
“So that’s it?” Dean said. “We just sit here and wait for me to Romero out so Dexter here can pop a cap in my rotten brain and put me out of my misery?”
“There is someone,” Xochi said. “Someone who can help you. But I don’t know if she will.”
Xochi pulled out her phone. Dialed. Turned away from Dean, speaking low even though he couldn’t understand her anyway. The language she was speaking was neither English nor Spanish.
Dean couldn’t understand her words, but he could gage her tone. It started pleading, then became angry. Then she broke off suddenly. She looked down at the phone.
“Well?” Dean asked.
She turned back to Dean, the answer in her expression.
“Great,” Dean said. “Plan B?”
“Let me try again,” Xochi said.
She went to the door and pulled it open, stepping out onto the breezeway. The door closed on another rush of incomprehensible words.
“What are we gonna do, Sam?” Dean asked.
“I don’t know,” Sam said. “We could ask Cass.”
“I’m sure he’s getting a little sick of us tugging on his trenchcoat sleeve every time one of us gets beat up in the playground.”
“You got a better idea?”
Dean sighed and closed his eyes. The vertigo worsened, metallic nausea churning at the back of his throat.
“Hey, listen, Cass,” Dean said, flexing the fingers of his injured hand. Cold streaks of numbness raced through his forearm. “I know you’re real busy right now, what with the chaos in Heaven and all that...”
“No,” Castiel said, standing suddenly by the bathroom door, looking rumpled, unshaven and put-upon, just like always.
“No what?” Sam asked.
“No I can’t help you,” the angel replied. “I’m sorry.”
“You came all the way down here just to say you can’t help?” Dean pressed the fingers of his good hand against his temple. “Why bother? Why not just ignore me like usual.”
“I never ignore you, Dean,” Castiel said. “I never ignore either one of you. Sometimes I’m able to come and sometimes I’m not.”
“So why can’t you help him?” Sam demanded.
“You are...” He seemed to be searching for the right words. “Out of my jurisdiction.”
“I’m sorry, what?” Sam took a step forward. “Out of your jurisdiction? Since when do angels have jurisdiction?”
“You’re dealing with a whole different system of government here,” Castiel said. “Different gods. I’m not allowed to interfere.”
“Come on, just because we’re fighting Mexican monsters?” Dean said, struggling to sit up. The effort made his head swim. “There’s got to be, what, a billion Catholics in Mexico, right?”
“And there are a billion demons in Mexico too. In fact they have one of the highest demon to human ratios in the world, second only to Uganda. And if you were fighting one of those demons I would be happy to help you, but you aren’t. What you are up against is from a totally separate, independent spiritual realm. Upper management has a longstanding laissez-faire policy with other gods. By the terms of our recent agreement, they stay out of our business and we stay out of theirs.”
“But we’re your business,” Dean said. “Me and Sam. Aren’t we?”
“When you were up against Lucifer, did any Aztec deities show up to help you stop the apocalypse? Even though every one of their priests and chosen people would have also been destroyed if you had failed?”
“So, that’s it then?” Dean asked. “I’m walking worm food and there’s nothing anyone can do about it?”
“Your new friend is very capable,” Castiel said. “Like Sam said, she’s a hammer. You’re in her hands now.”
Xochi came through the door at that moment. Castiel was already gone.
“Good news and bad news,” she said.
“Bad news first,” Sam said.
“We must leave right away,” Xochi said. “We have to cross the border, to Tijuana. My grandmother will not come to the United States.”
“That’s not so bad,” Dean said. “Trip to TJ. We can have a few beers. Check out some strip clubs. Maybe get our photos taken sitting on one of
those zebra-striped donkeys.”
“Good news?” Sam asked.
“My grandmother is a powerful curandera,” she said. “She will help Dean.”
NINETEEN
Xochi went on ahead, with a promise to meet the brothers on the other side of the border. Said she had some things to take care of. Dean was in no condition to argue.
Sam helped Dean down to the Impala. Dean also wasn’t in any condition to argue when Sam wanted to drive.
As the Impala ate up the long desert miles, Dean leaned his dizzy head against the window. They passed a wordless graphic sign warning of illegal immigrants. A trio of silhouettes, a running man, woman and child.
“Tell me something,” Sam said
“What?” he asked.
“Are you still worried about Xochi trying to screw us over?” Sam asked.
“I don’t know,” Dean said. “I mean, I’m pretty sure she’s human. She seems to be on the level, but... I just don’t know.”
He wasn’t about to tell Sam what he’d really been thinking about Xochi. He’d never hear the end of it.
“I think...” Sam began, then faltered. “...I think this hunt is important. I can’t say why, I just know it. It’s not just about Xochi and this Borderwalker. It’s bigger that that.”
He drove in silence for a few minutes before speaking again.
“It’s been a long time since anything seemed really important. I feel like I have to see this through, no matter what.”
“Don’t worry, Sammy,” Dean said. “I’m not gonna check out on you just yet.”
He hoped that was true.
Xochi had suggested they park the Impala in San Ysidro, on the American side of the border. Dean hated to leave his beloved ride, but not as much as he hated the idea of her getting stripped or stolen on the Tijuana street.
He had to lean heavily on Sam as the two of them staggered down the long cement walkway leading to the pedestrian border crossing.
The border guard who checked their IDs was beefy Latino guy with a thick neck and way too many big white teeth in his deceptively lazy smile. He gave Dean a casual once over.
“Is he okay?” the guard asked Sam.
“Him?” Sam hoisted Dean up a little straighter. “He’s fine. Just been pre-partying a little hard.”
Dean picked up on the ruse immediately and threw his uninjured fist into the air.
“DONKEY SHOW!” he bellowed with his best drunken slur. “WOO HOO!!!”
The guard shook his head, handed the IDs back to Sam.
“You two be careful out there,” he said.
When they finally made it through customs they were funneled out into a maze of more zigzagging walkways, only these were lined with vendors. Kids Ben’s age selling rock-hard gum and candy, faces stained with green and red rings from huffing paint. Old women selling plaster saints alongside weird, glossy knock-off statues of American corporate-owned characters. Piles of sombreros and maracas. Rugs featuring white tigers or Julio Iglesias or La Virgen de Guadalupe. Inflatable animals and piñatas shaped like masked wrestlers. In Dean’s weakened condition, walking the gauntlet of street sellers felt like the Bataan Death March.
A cute teenage girl ran over and handed Dean a flyer advertising generic Viagra and Rogaine at bulk discount. Two steps later another girl handed Sam a flyer advertising a strip club.
“What are they trying to tell us here?” Dean asked looking down at his flyer and then at Sam’s. “You know what, on second thought, don’t answer that.”
When they finally made it out onto the Tijuana street, Dean spotted Xochi right away. It was impossible not to.
She sat behind the wheel of a four-door ’67 Impala. The number of doors and the fact that it rolled out of the Chevrolet factory the same year as his own were the only things the two vehicles had in common. This car had been chopped and channeled, sitting about a half an inch off the asphalt. It was painted a glossy, June-bug green impregnated with gold metal flakes. On the hood was an astoundingly gaudy painting of a muscle-bound Aztec warrior with a busty, mostly naked chick twined around one of his legs. As they approached, Dean saw the interior was done up in sparkly gold vinyl and lime-green fake fur. The hubcaps shined bright as diamonds.
When Xochi saw them she waved, punching the hydraulics and causing the car to hop and shimmy.
“Subtle,” Sam said opening the rear passenger door, tossing his bag into the back seat and then helping Dean in after it. “No one’s gonna notice us in this car.” He got into the passenger seat, next to Xochi.
“I thought you said it was too dangerous around here to drive a nice car,” Dean said. He was embarrassed by how good it felt to be sitting down.
“I said it was dangerous to drive your car,” Xochi said. “Everyone knows who this car belongs to. No one will touch it.”
“Whose car is it?” Sam asked.
“I told you,” Xochi said, throwing the car into gear and peeling out. “A lot of people owe me favors.”
Dean tried to pay attention to the scenery outside the car, but it all seemed to run together into a surreal, sodium-lit blur of illegible signs, beater cars and taco-cart smoke. Some kind of kick-ass old-school rock and roll was blasting out of the Aztec Impala’s formidable, bass-heavy sound system but the lyrics were in Spanish.
Sam and Xochi were talking, laughing, but he couldn’t hear what they were saying. His hand throbbed in time with his heart. His chest felt heavy, every breath leaden. When he closed his eyes, he felt like he was falling. He wondered if Xochi’s grandmother was really going to be able to cure him and was struck with a sudden fear that he’d made a terrible mistake, agreeing to take on this job. A mistake that may never be undone.
He thought of the argument he’d had with Sam after leaving the grim prison where their grandfather had been torturing monsters. Sure, Dean put up a good front, but what if he really did die before Sam got his soul back? Dean knew he was the only thing keeping his brother tethered to his humanity. Without Dean, would Sam just give up? Resign himself to a life without emotion, without conscience? Dean couldn’t let that happen. This wouldn’t be the first time he’d been too damn stubborn to die. Probably wouldn’t be the last.
Some time later, Dean had no idea how long, Xochi pulled the Aztec Impala into a narrow driveway leading up to what looked at first glance like an armored military compound. It turned out to be a motel. Surrounded by razor-wire fencing, guarded by guys in black-out SWAT gear wielding automatic rifles. They waved Xochi through with big smiles, giving Sam and Dean enthusiastic thumbs-ups.
“Where are we?” Dean croaked.
“It is a house of women,” Xochi said. “We will be safe here.”
“House of women?” Sam arched an eyebrow. “You mean a brothel?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Awesome,” Sam replied.
“Why all the security?” Dean asked. “Poachers?”
“The competition is very fierce,” Xochi said. “Other houses have sent death threats to Tia Lupe.”
“Hooker Wars?” Sam looked back at Dean with an expression of baffled amusement. “Now there’s a reality show.”
“We are so not in Kansas anymore,” Dean replied.
A woman that had to be Tia Lupe came out to greet them. She was wearing a pink spandex dress that had been a bad idea ten years and fifty pounds ago. Too many rings on chubby, French-manicured fingers. Poofed-up bleached blonde hair and pencil-thin chola eyebrows.
“’Sup, flaca?” she said when Xochi rolled down the window. “Introduce me to your sexy friends.”
“Sam in the front,” she said. “Dean in the rear. Boys, this is Tia Lupe.”
“Ma’am,” Sam said.
She said something to Xochi in Spanish that was obviously dirty. Then she switched back to English.
“Your abuelita is in twenty-one. Just pull into the garage. You boys need any room service, all you gotta do is ring.”
Xochi pulled out a roll of Mexican bills,
pressed a few into Lupe’s hand and did as she instructed.
Dean was amazed to see that each room had its own private garage. When he commented on it, Xochi laughed.
“That is so your wife will not see your car when she’s out looking for you.”
Sam helped Dean out of the back seat and through a connecting door into the room itself. The décor was super tacky, all red velvet and roses and gold sparkles, but he was happy to note there was not a single cactus in sight. The air-conditioning was cranked to eleven, meat-locker cold after the sultry Tijuana summer outside.
Xochi’s grandmother was waiting for them in the room. Dean wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, some kind of cliché Native-American wise woman or something like that, but he was not prepared for the woman Xochi introduced him to.
“This is my grandmother, Toci,” she said. “She doesn’t speak any English.”
Toci was tiny like Dean had pictured she would be, but other than that, he couldn’t have been further off in his image of her. She had a giant purplish-red beehive hairdo that was obviously a wig and added a good eight inches to her height. Heavy Cleopatra eye make-up behind owlish glasses and ten pounds of weird, kitschy jewelry hung off her skinny neck and wrists. She wore a black-velvet tunic with a sparkly gold jaguar head on the front, shiny gold-lamé leggings and gold, high-heeled cowboy boots.
She said something snide and dismissive to Xochi. It didn’t sound like Spanish. Dean leaned against Sam in embarrassed silence as the two women went back and forth in some kind of heated exchange. Sam shook his head and led Dean over to the bed.
“Is she gonna help Dean or not?” Sam asked.
Dean lowered himself slowly and gratefully onto the bed. His head was spinning, muscles weak and shaking.
Toci said something to Xochi, tipping her head toward Dean with her painted eyebrows raised expectantly.
“She wants me to tell you that it will hurt,” Xochi said.
“I can take it,” Dean replied.
Xochi translated his reply. Toci looked Dean up and down and then gave a curt nod. She said something to Xochi and Sam that needed no translation, accompanied as it was by a shooing gesture.
Supernatural: Coyote's Kiss Page 9