“She can’t change you,” Sam said flatly. “Borderwalkers can only share the Coyote’s Kiss with dying women.”
There was a beat of silence. Iztpapalotl was fully formed now and starting to crawl out through the gate, huge gray-and-black moth wings unfurling and brushing the ceiling.
Then Claudia had the silver knife in her hand. The one with the Blessed Virgin on the handle, given to her by the silversmith in Chihuahua.
“No!” Dean yelled. “NO!”
Claudia plunged the knife into her own chest.
FORTY-NINE
“Change me,” Claudia said, bleeding and collapsing against her mother. “Change me, or we all die.”
Dean ran to Claudia’s side, but Elvia took her daughter’s hand, tears spilling down her pale cheeks as she reached out to touch Claudia’s face. The two of them levitated up off the cracked floor, flickering, shifting, and twisting as Elvia’s power flowed into her daughter. Claudia’s face became a coyote’s face, then human again, her heart visible and glowing through the skin of her chest.
The two of them flowed like drifting, intertwining smoke moving toward the gate and the almost fully emerged Star Demon. Claudia grabbed one of the demon’s bony shoulders and Elvia the other and together they pulled Itzpapalotl back down into the void.
The Clawed Butterfly screamed as she spiraled down and away, the sound violent and deafening inside the storefront. The gate was reversing, a black hole now pulling everything toward it. Sam and Dean hung on to the exposed struts to stop themselves from being sucked into the nothingness. But Xochi and Teo were loose and were rolling across the floor, forced toward the gate.
Xochi managed to grab hold of a flapping tarp with one hand. Teo was digging her fingers into one of the cracks in the floor, fighting to hold on and losing. She had dropped Itztlitlantl and the knife lay just within Xochi’s reach, but was swiftly sliding away toward the gate.
Xochi realized she had a choice: she could grab the knife or grab her sister’s hand. Even now, it was no choice at all.
“Teo!” she cried. “Take my hand!”
Her sister looked up at her, eyes stony and guarded as ever. She lunged for the sliding knife instead, gripping it and slashing at Xochi. Xochi flinched away and Teo went tumbling down into the void, Itztlitlantl clutched to her chest.
The tarp Xochi was holding on to started to tear.
“Xochi!” Dean yelled, diving for her and managing to catch one of her kicking boots just as the tarp tore loose, flapping away like a bat into the yawning gate.
He held fast to her ankle, hooking his other arm around a nearby support beam.
“I’ve got you,” he shouted. “I’ve got you!”
The minivan that had been lodged in the store window came loose and flew down the gaping throat of the gate. Right behind it, first one, then the other, de-fanged Star Demon, screeching and flailing as they fell. A dozen zombies came swarming in after them through the now open storefront.
Dean could let go of Xochi to draw his gun or hang on to her and wait for them both to be eaten alive.
But, as the demons were swallowed up by the void, each one vomited up a coiling stream of bluish-white light. The light shattered into fragments, engulfing each of the oncoming zombies and stopping them in their tracks. They fell to their knees one after another, covering their faces with their hands.
For a moment, Claudia was visible in the mouth of the gateway, condor wings spread wide, eyes bright and heart burning. She raised her hand to Dean, then fell away, the void folding in around her as the gate closed, leaving nothing but a plain concrete wall.
Xochi struggled to her knees, leaning heavily against Dean. He held her for a long minute, unable to do anything else. It was a grim victory, resonant with painful losses. They were both shell-shocked, beaten and bruised to hell and back. But they were glad to be alive.
Sam offered Dean a hand, pulling him to his feet. Dean in turn helped Xochi.
“We did it,” Sam said.
“Claudia did it,” Xochi corrected him.
“I’m sorry about your sister,” Dean said.
“I know,” Xochi replied flatly. “She made her choice. Like we all do.”
All around them, the former zombies were getting to their wobbly feet. They seemed disoriented and confused, but otherwise back to normal.
Xochi grabbed an older man in a Hawaiian shirt and spoke to him in Spanish. He replied, a puzzled look on his face.
“They remember nothing,” she said. “When the demons were pulled back through the gate, they spit out all the souls they had eaten. The souls went back into their owners but it seems the owners have no memory of the events that happened while they were soulless.”
Dean looked at Sam. Didn’t say anything. Xochi put one arm around Dean’s waist and the other around Sam’s.
“Come on,” she said. “Let me take you boys home.”
FIFTY
On the street outside Chato’s body shop in Nogales, Arizona, Dean stood by the driver’s-side door of the running Impala. He had a lurid, bilingual newspaper in his hand, headline reading “DRUG RIOT IN MEXICO CITY SLUM!” It didn’t surprise him at all that no one believed what had really happened. They never did.
He tossed the paper in the back seat, watching Sam hand Xochi her gun-belt from the open trunk. She buckled it securely around her hips, fastening the straps around her thighs and checking both pistols. Sam closed the trunk and turned away, looking down the road, but she took his face between her hands and turned him back to her. She stretched up on tip-toe, looking intently into Sam’s eyes and speaking softly to him. Dean couldn’t hear what she was saying. “Gimme Shelter” by the Rolling Stones was blasting from the Impala’s speakers.
Then Xochi turned to Dean and came to him slow, sliding her arms around him like she had done that first night. This time he didn’t push her away.
“Dean—” she began.
“Stay,” he said, hushing her by pressing the pad of his thumb against her parted lips, fingers tracing the strong curve of her jaw. “Just for tonight.”
She closed her eyes and leaned into him. Mick Jagger was wailing for shelter. Dean felt like he’d forgotten the meaning of the word until that moment. Not home. Not happily ever after. Just one night out of the rain. Just shelter. He could feel a thousand knots coming unbound inside him. He cupped his hand around the back of Xochi’s neck and kissed her.
It was not a sweet, romantic kiss. It was rough, aching, and full of hunger. A survivor’s kiss. And she kissed him back, just as hard and just as hungry. Everything else went away.
Until she broke the kiss and stepped back, pulling free from his embrace. There was desire in her dark eyes, but also a melancholy kind of understanding. Even though the night was warm, his body felt chilled where she was no longer pressed against him. He had to curl his hands into fists to stop them from reaching for her.
“Go to your brother,” she said. “He needs you. He can’t tell you this, but he does. It seems to me, he has fulfilled his destiny, and now you must help him get his soul back. Stop at nothing. Whatever it takes.”
“But...”
“Goodbye, Dean,” she said.
Dean watched her walk away, down the dusty road, for as long as he could. Watching the swing of her long braids, moving in rhythm with her pistol-packing hips. Wanting her to turn around. Willing her to turn around. She didn’t.
He turned back to Sam.
His kid brother was standing by the rear bumper, big hands stuffed in his pockets and shoulders hunched, lost in thought. After everything they’d been through, Sam still seemed so impossibly young, still the same pensive kid he’d always been, so full of unrecognized potential. Dean felt like he was a hundred years old and then some. He walked over to Sam, mock-punched him on the shoulder.
“Come on, Sammy,” he said. “Let’s get the hell out of here. We got work to do.”
Dean got behind the wheel of the Impala. Sam took the shotgun seat. A
s Dean pulled away from the curb and headed north, the Rolling Stones song ended and another song started up.
“Carry On, Wayward Son,” by Kansas.
That’s just what Dean did.
THE END
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to H. Pascal for introducing me to El D.F., to my old comadre Libertad, to Gerardo Horacio Porcayo for letting me borrow his name, and to Macarena Muñoz Ramos for turning me on to Caifanes.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Christa Faust is the author of ten novels including the Edgar and Anthony Award nominated Money Shot, the Scribe Award winning novelization of Snakes on a Plane, and her latest, Choke Hold, forthcoming from Hard Case Crime. She lives in Los Angeles.
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Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Supernatural 8 - Coyote's Kiss Page 25