“That’s nuts,” Demi said. “How did you guys manage to blow the trailer open though?”
“What do you mean?” Cynthia asked. Demi could hear the deception in her voice. She’d gotten good at that in Khost.
“Don’t lie to me,” Demi said, her voice low. “I don’t believe for even a second that the two of you got sex-trafficked. I’ve seen a lot of explosions, but I’ve never seen anything like that back there. So tell me what the deal is.”
“There’s no point,” Cynthia said. “You wouldn’t believe us.”
“I’ll believe it if it’s true,” Demi said. “I know something’s up. You had a suitcase waiting for you in the desert. That means you had a plan here. So what aren’t you telling me?”
Cynthia looked over to Mariela, and after a long silence, both girls shrugged. “We’re witches,” Cynthia said at last.
“Huh?” Demi asked, sure she had heard wrong. “You mean black cats, broomsticks, pointy hats, and all that?”
“We don’t have any of that stuff,” Mariela said. “We aren’t that kind.”
“Oh, okay,” Demi said, feeling like an idiot. If they were lying, she couldn’t tell. “You mean you’re Wiccans. Got it. That’s cool.” Had she really been dumb enough to think they were saying they were actual magic-wand-waving witches? Maybe she’d lost a few brain cells while holding her breath under water.
“So,” Demi said, ready to move past her embarrassing moment and abandon her inquiry. “What’s the plan here?”
“Wander the desert,” Mariela said with a shrug.
“Pretty much,” Cynthia agreed.
“That’s a terrible plan,” Demi said. “We need to get back to town. We have to let someone know what happened here.”
“We have more important things to worry about,” Cynthia said. A cold wind blew across their little camp, carrying with it the stench of decay.
“What’s more important than White Dagger running a smuggling corridor right through my squad’s territory?” Demi asked, shaking her head in disbelief. “This isn’t Mexico. I have to do something.”
“You smell that?” Cynthia asked calmly, glancing out into the darkness.
“Yeah,” Demi said, wrinkling her nose in disgust. “A dead animal. What about it?”
“Not dead,” Cynthia said. “And not quite an animal. It’s a skin-walker, and it’s hunting us now.”
“A what?” Demi asked, sure she’d heard wrong. Only a moment ago they’d been talking about gangs and human trafficking.
“A skin-walker,” Cynthia said. “That’s what they’re called around here. Down south they call them nahualli—shapeshifters.”
“You… you’re joking,” Demi said, shaking her head. “Look, I just killed a dude for you. First witches and now shapeshifters? Let’s cut the crap, okay?”
“You wanted the truth,” Cynthia said. “We crossed the border looking for this nahual. It’s been killing migrants on both sides of the border, so we hitched a ride across.”
“Getting sex-trafficked was really the easiest way?” Demi asked.
“We actually were slaves,” Cynthia said. “Just like the other girls.”
“Maybe not just like them,” Mariela added.
“Close enough,” Cynthia said. “The witch thing… that’s a recent development.”
“We know all about the shipments up to Vegas,” Mariela said. “Seemed like an easy way to hitch a ride. We would have slipped away back at the motel if you hadn’t shown up.”
“Oh?” Demi asked. “You were going to save me?”
“What we do isn’t safe,” Cynthia said. “You might end up wishing we’d left you down in the river.”
“Okay,” Demi said, thinking back to the strange story Doug had told back at the bar. “Let’s pretend for like two seconds that I believe you. What is this thing?”
“It was a human once,” Cynthia said. “But he or she broke some terrible taboo—the lore is different depending on the region. Sometimes it could be cannibalism, incest, greed, murder, or a hundred other crimes. At some point, they came in contact with an older nahual, and their sins allowed the curse to be passed on. They can cross back and forth between their human form and their monstrous form—usually some sort of animal. Problem is, most of them can’t control it very well. They become loners and psychopaths, killing anyone they come across.”
“And you can kill one?” Demi asked, arching a well-trimmed eyebrow. “Because you’re witches?” She still didn’t believe that.
“Anyone can do it,” Mariela said. “Silver is lethal to most monsters. Or a stake through the heart. If you’re hunting ghosts, you want to use salt.”
“Or iron,” Cynthia added. “And before you ask, no one really knows why. Maybe it’s a purity thing, who can say? But why do you think they put iron fences around cemeteries?”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Demi said. “So… you are joking, aren’t you? You aren’t really witches?”
“Yeah,” Cynthia said, a grim look in her eyes telling Demi that at the very least, she believed in the thing she claimed was lurking out in the darkness. “Get some sleep if you want. We’ll keep watch.”
***
Demi awoke next to their campfire, her blankets soaked with flop sweat while her heart threatened to beat out of her chest. She could still hear the screams, the cries for mercy in those dark, wet cells. Her life had changed so quickly back then. One day she was patrolling for insurgents, and a single IED blast had left her standing guard at a military prison. And then they’d asked her to do more than just guard the prisoners. She did everything asked of her, without question—interrogations, executions, other things that she felt sick just thinking about. It had just been the enemy at first, but when one of their own was suspected of collusion, the alleged traitors were given to her for questioning. She had done what was asked of her, what her country asked of her.
But still the screams haunted her. They’d all proclaimed their innocence at first, but they’d all admitted guilt by the end. At the time, it had made her feel like her actions were justified. Looking back, she often wondered how many of them had just told her what she wanted to hear to make it all stop.
Mariela and Cynthia were asleep on the opposite side of the fire, and Demi walked away from camp, hoping to clear her mind in the dark. Morning was still far off, so she couldn’t have been asleep long, but there was going to be no rest for her out here, not until she got back to base and let everyone know she was still alive.
I knew they were messing with me, she thought as she climbed a gently sloping hill covered in thick scrubs. If they really thought a monster was hunting us, they would have left someone keeping watch. But like Doug, they had spoken with such conviction that part of her had actually believed what they were saying could be true, impossible as it seemed. And come on, witches?
“You’re a natural at this,” a blank-faced woman had told her after she’d finished her first “enhanced” interrogation. Demi hadn’t known her name—no one on the base had. She was tall and red-headed and attractive, always wearing a suit and a poker face. Demi had learned a lot about pain from her, and its effects on the human mind and body. Then one day, the woman had announced she was leaving.
“Come with me,” she told Demi. “You’re wasted in the army.” Demi had thought about the offer long and hard, and she’d nearly accepted. But something had told her it was time to walk away. Her tour was up anyway, and instead of following the woman, she’d returned home, leaving those memories thousands of miles behind.
But they always caught up to her. She could numb herself with booze and casual flings, but she could never outrun those screams for long. She wandered, lost in those dark memories until she felt a tickle on the back of her neck. She glanced over her shoulder and realized she had ventured out of sight of the campfire. “Cynthia?” she asked, certain that she’d heard something move in the darkness. “That you?”
She received no reply and decided it must have
been nothing but an animal. She looked back in the direction she thought she’d come from, realizing that she’d gotten herself turned around at some point.
“It was this way,” she said, doing her best to convince herself. She couldn’t remember just how long she’d been walking, so she had no way of knowing how far she’d strayed. She heard a deep sigh that wasn’t her own and spun around, her hand reaching for the gun that she would have normally worn at her hip. “Who’s there?” she demanded. No one answered.
She walked more hurriedly now, unable to shake the sense that someone—or something—was following her. She looked back from time to time, almost reluctantly—she didn’t want to be the one that proved Doug’s tall tale about his chupacabra was actually true. Each time, she saw nothing but blackness in the distance, but somehow that only added to her paranoia. She was certain she’d heard someone earlier, and that meant she was being followed.
Taking a deep breath and holding it in, Demi suddenly stopped in her tracks. There was the briefest moment of silence, followed by the crack of a branch about twenty feet back. Demi took off in a sprint, running as quickly as she could, absolutely certain that someone was on her trail now. She heard heavy footsteps behind her, and the earth seemed to tremble with each step her pursuer took.
Racing up the slope of a steep hill, Demi reached the top, only to find herself caught in the blinding glare of an entire bank of spotlights. Her hands flew to her eyes as the piercing white light blinded her, and she heard familiar voices amid the sound of boots scurrying up the hill to surround her.
“It’s her, sarge!” Pete shouted, and Demi found herself breathing a sigh of relief. Not only was she safe, she was back with her people. Now she could put all this behind her.
“I can’t believe it,” Pete said, offering her a hand. He helped her down the hill to where three armored Humvees sat idling, spotlights affixed to their hoods. “We thought you were dead.”
“I saw the headlines,” Demi said. “Something about dying in a firefight. But I don’t get it—we weren’t on duty when I went…”
“What is it?” Pete asked. The unit formed up around them—Doug, Claire, Dave, and five others she hadn’t gotten to know quite as well.
“What’s up, girl?” Claire asked. “You look like you aren’t happy to be back.”
Sergeant Casey pushed his way through the other soldiers. “You just couldn’t stick to your paygrade, huh, private?” he said. Demi tensed, and Pete and Claire grabbed her arms, holding her in place. “Where are the other girls?”
“Dead,” Demi said. “How did you know about them?” she asked.
“I told you to leave the spooky things to the spooks,” Casey said, glaring down at Demi. She spat at his feet.
“You aren’t here looking for me,” she said. “This is about that truckload of girls. You’re here for them.”
“They’re worth a fortune,” Casey said. “And our friends south of the border pay us good dinero to make sure their stuff doesn’t go missing.”
“They’re not stuff!” Demi said, snarling. “They’re people!”
“Look,” Casey said. “I liked you, kid. They told me you didn’t mind getting your hands dirty, which was why they put you in my unit. We were going to ease you in, gradually put you on the payroll. But obviously we got our wires crossed somewhere. You aren’t the cooperative kind, and the Mexicans… well, let’s just say they are being pretty insistent that you wind up in a slave factory for all the trouble you caused. But I’m a stand-up guy, so I’m going to do you one, itsy-bitsy, little solid and give you a choice.”
“What choice?” Demi asked. “Shoot you in the face or in the crotch? Cause it’s gonna be both.”
“That’s funny,” Casey said, shaking his head slowly. “No, our orders are to ship you back to Mexico so they can whore you out and do all other kinds of nasty things to you. But, my one-time offer to you is a bullet through that pretty little noggin of yours. We’ll tell the powers-that-be you tried to escape and grabbed a gun, and we’ll put all this behind us, and you’ll save yourself a world of pain.”
“Screw you,” Demi shouted, nearly breaking free of Pete and Claire when she lunged forward again.
“You really are stupid, aren’t you?” Casey said, clucking in disappointment. “Well, lucky for you, I’m a gentleman.” He raised his sidearm towards her, and Claire kicked her legs out from underneath her, forcing her to her knees. Claire and Pete stepped clear of Demi, and Casey angled his weapon towards her. She’d stood like that over more prisoners that she could count, once the blank-faced woman made the call that they’d given up everything they had to offer. Most of them hadn’t begged—death had seemed a mercy after what she’d put them through. Somehow, it seemed a mercy to her too, one she wasn’t sure she deserved.
“Nighty-night, princess,” Casey said, and the spotlights suddenly exploded with a series of violent pops, plunging them all into complete darkness.
“What the hell?” Casey exclaimed. Demi leapt to her feet, grabbing his hand at the wrist and twisting the gun away. It went off, lighting the world for a single brief flash, and for that slight moment, Demi saw a massive shape, a swathe of darkness that no light could fill perched atop one of the Humvees.
The desert suddenly rang out with screams of horror and automatic weapons. Demi ripped Casey’s sidearm out of his grasp and threw herself to the ground, crawling through the dirt. Shots flew overhead, and a ferocious snarl was followed by a scream and a sickening, wet crunch. More gunshots followed, but the same thing played out again and again, until suddenly there was silence.
The headlights of one of the Humvees flickered back to life, and Demi slowly stood up. There were bodies everywhere, but they hadn’t just been killed—she’d heard the term ‘ripped limb from limb’ before, but she’d never seen it in action until now. Arms and legs sat in pools of blood and viscera spilled from gaping torsos. Eyeless heads stared accusingly at the survivors.
“What the hell was that?” Pete shouted. He and Claire rose to their feet.
“It was the chupacabra,” Doug declared, breathing heavily amid the carnage. “It got everyone… even Dave.”
“What did you do?” Casey demanded, glaring at Demi as he nursed his left shoulder. It looked like the bullet he’d meant to kill Demi with had grazed him.
“She survived,” Cynthia said, appearing behind Casey, an assault rifle leveled at his back. Mariela gave a whistle from the top of the hill, brandishing a rifle of her own.
“Guns down,” the diminutive Mexican girl declared. “Or we can just kill you all. Doesn’t matter to me.”
“They’ll do it,” Demi added, and Pete, Claire, and Doug reluctantly lowered their weapons.
***
“This is ridiculous,” Casey groaned. The seven of them trekked through the wilderness, the sun slowly creeping up above the horizon. They’d been walking for hours, following a trail of dried blood left in the sand by whatever had attacked her unit last night. Cynthia said it was wounded, but Demi knew that would only make it more dangerous.
“I’m sorry,” Mariela said. “I didn’t catch that. Did you say thanks for not murdering us where we stood last night? Because de nada.”
“I told you the chupacabra was real,” Doug hissed under his breath. Claire rolled her eyes again.
“Looked pretty real to me too,” Pete admitted. “It’s not just a story.”
“You really believe all this skin-walker crap?” Casey said. “I don’t know what hit us last night, but I’ll be damned if you have me believing in shapeshifters and ghost stories.”
“Believe what you want,” Cynthia said, her eyes focusing intently on the ground as she searched for the next trace of blood. “Just do it quietly. The blood trail is getting fainter. We can’t be far from its den.”
“Probably a mountain lion,” Casey said, running his hands through his hair. Demi fell in step with him and gave him a disgusted look.
“Easy there,” he said, look
ing away from her. “I was trying to do you a favor last night. I don’t like the idea of sending a comrade off to White Dagger. I know what they do to their girls. You don’t deserve that.”
“I was told you were one of the good guys,” Demi said. “That’s why I wanted to be in your unit. They said you were a hero overseas.”
“Things work differently here,” Casey said. “When I got back from my last tour, everyone was crooked. White Dagger has their clutches in everything in the state, all the way up to the governor’s mansion. If you aren’t on the take, you get blackballed. Used to be you could run to the feds about that kind of stuff, but word is they’re compromised too. Bottom line, you squeal, you die. You don’t play ball, you don’t eat. But in case you hadn’t noticed, this isn’t a unit of superstars. Everyone here was on the brink of court martial. Claire was running drugs on her tour, Dougie likes to drink and get handsy with ladies who aren’t all that willing, and Pete’s so dyslexic he’s damn near illiterate. I wasn’t looking to make any boy scouts go dirty.”
“Why me then?” she asked. “What makes me one of the rejects?”
“The Butcher of Khost,” Casey said with a chuckle. Demi’s stomach tightened at the old moniker. “Yeah, you were famous. The CIA made you their little rabid dog. Word is, you tortured and killed more than a few of our own.”
“We all have our talents,” Demi said. “I was just doing what I was ordered.”
“So was I,” Casey said. “Only I don’t like this all that much. From what I hear, you loved what you did.”
“I thought I did,” Demi admitted. “Now I’m not so sure.”
“Yeah, well you know what I think?” Casey said, leaning in conspiratorially. “Far as I’m concerned, the spy-boys cooked this whole war up to make their contractor buddies rich while our people pay the price. So screw the CIA, and screw you.” He drove his shoulder into her, throwing her off her feet and ripping her rifle out of her hands. She fell to the ground, landing hard on her backside, and Casey fired a shot into the air.
Demi Mondaine: Volume One Page 3