by Reinke, Sara
How could you? The pain in Pilar’s heart at the realization of her friend’s betrayal felt for all the world like she’d taken a shotgun blast squarely in the chest. “Chita, how…how could you…?”
“Because I’m her pareja,” Pepe said with a laugh, striding over to Chita and putting his arm around her, drawing her roughly against him. “Isn’t that right, baby?”
What? Pilar stared at Chita in stricken disbelief. No, no, there’s no way she could believe that, no way she could ever possibly…
“He said he could feel it in his heart,” Chita said, her eyes round and unhappy, her voice nearly pleading. “From our first night here, the night we met, he said he knew it—we were meant to be together.”
“But he…he killed my father,” Pilar said.
“He told me I was his everything,” Chita said. “El sol y la luna, the sun and the moon, that’s what he told me.”
“He raped me that night, Chita,” Pilar cried, balling her hands into fists. “He and Miguel Torres, Tomás Lovato. They all took turns.”
“No.” Chita looked momentarily shocked, but then bristled, shaking her head. “That’s not true. He might have had your father killed, but he wouldn’t do the rest. He couldn’t.”
“He raped me!” Pilar screamed again, her voice ragged and hoarse. “In front of mi padre—while he made my father watch! How could you do this?”
“Because she’s stupid,” Pepe said, drawing Chita’s startled, wounded gaze. With a laugh, he gave her a shove, sending her stumbling forward, then falling to her knees. “All of you little Nahual girls with your fairy tale fantasies.” He spat. “I just say the word pareja and women spread their legs wide. Just like you did.” With a glance at Chita and a dry laugh, he added, “I wish I could saying fucking you made it worthwhile, Chita, but ay, but you’re about as good in bed as un cadáver—a corpse. I’ve had better sex with my hand.”
Tears welled in Chita’s eyes. “Huelebicho,” she seethed, a tremor shuddering through her. Then, her pupils shifting, widening to black, she rushed at him, uttering a hoarse, humiliated, furious cry.
With a smirk, Pepe punched her in the face, showing no restraint, striking Chita as he had Pilar, as he would have a man. Pilar heard a horrible grinding sound as teeth splintered at the blow; then Chita fell to the ground, lifeless and out cold.
“Stupid bitch,” he remarked again, giving his hand a little shake to refresh his knuckles. As he turned back to Pilar again, his thin smile widened. “Now you, on the other hand…fucking you on the night we killed your father—that was definitely worthwhile.”
Closing the gap between them in three quick strides, Pepe sneered in her face. “You thought you were so fucking clever, didn’t you? Stupid cunt—I recognized you from the start, your very first day here. And every time you’d dance for me, every time you’d shake those sweet tits or grind your ass into me, I’d remember what it felt like to be all up in you. So goddamn sweet and tight.” With a smirk and a nod at Elías, he added, “No wonder that poor chota son of a bitch thinks he’s in love. That’s why I’m really going to enjoy this—making him blow his own fucking brains out in front of you.”
Pilar watched, stricken, as Elías drew the barrel of the shotgun up, shoving it beneath his chin, forcing his head back.
“No!” Scrambling forward, she lunged at Pepe again, but two of his men grabbed her by the arms, dragging her back as she kicked and struggled. “No, no, please, no!”
“Any last words, chota?” Pepe asked, his voice edged with malicious glee as he forced Elías to jerk the pump action, readying a round. “You’d better make ’em fast.”
Pilar began to cry. “Oh, God, no, no, no, please don’t!” she screamed.
“It’s all right,” Elías gasped to her as Pepe at last allowed him to move his lips. His stark terror—both for himself and for her—radiated off him in waves. His eyes were wide, and he stared at her, trying not to focus on anything else—anyone else—but her.
“Listen to me,” he pleaded. “I love you. No matter what happens, Pilar, he can’t change that. He can’t take that away.”
“I love you too,” she cried. “I’m sorry, Elías. God, please, I’m so sorry!”
“Tell my son I love him.” She watched the lights from overhead glint off a tear as it slipped from the corner of his eye, trailing down his cheek. “Please, tell him—”
His voice was cut short by a sudden, booming report of gunfire, and for a terrifying second, Pilar thought Elías had pulled the trigger, that Pepe had made him as she helplessly watched, and she screamed. From her right, Pepe lurched drunkenly, then lost his balance, flipping over the railing and out of the lounge, crashing to the main dance floor below.
From the stage, Elías stared at Pilar, his head still very much intact, the shotgun still poised between his hands.
Then who…? Pilar thought, confused, turning to look behind her.
Chita stood, trembling and wide-eyed, Elías’s pistol clasped between her outstretched hands. A thin trail of smoke curled from the waggling barrel of the nine-millimeter, and she blinked at Pilar for a long, shell-shocked moment before swinging the gun around, aiming back and forth at the pair Los Pandilleros still holding on to Pilar’s arms.
“Let her go.” Her voice was tremulous and small, but then her brows narrowed and she cleared her throat, spitting out a thick mouthful of bloody phlegm. “I said let her go!”
The men dropped their hands to their sides, backing away from Pilar.
“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” Chita told her tearfully. “Any of it, Pilar. I thought he loved me. He…he said he…”
“You bitch!”
Pepe leaped from the dance floor back up to the lounge, sailing over the brass railing in a single, catlike bound. He landed within arm’s reach of Chita, his feet slamming heavily beneath him, and before she could do more than shrink back in frightened alarm, he grabbed the gun by the muzzle, wrenching it from her hand. At the same time, he backhanded her, sending her flying off the dais, slamming into another mirror with the back of her head. It shattered and she crumpled motionless to the ground, in a sudden shower of glass shards.
“Fucking bitch,” Pepe shouted at her. Spinning the gun in his hand so the grip came to rest against his palm, he leveled the barrel at Pilar’s head, marching back toward her. “No more games,” he snarled, and she could see that Chita’s shot had caught him too high in the chest to pierce his heart. The front of his shirt was bloodstained, but the wound had merely inconvenienced him, not done any serious harm.
“First I kill you,” Pepe said, drawing back the hammer with his thumb. “Then I go after your huelebicho brother. Since I’m using your sweet little chota’s gun, I might leave him here to take the goddamn rap.” He tucked his finger against the trigger, his knuckle flexing inward as he readied to fire. “He won’t know the difference once I’ve finished scrambling his brain.”
Another report of gunfire, this time louder. Pepe flew back like he’d been yanked by a string. Floundering clumsily, he swung around in a lurching semicircle, and Pilar could see that the breast of his shirt was now stained with fresh new blood. She whirled toward the stage and saw Elías leveling the shotgun at the lounge.
“You’ll…never touch her…again,” he seethed.
Pepe’s fingers fluttered against the front of his shirt, coming away bloody. His breath whistled loudly, disharmonically, his lungs riddled with holes. Blinking at the stage in shock, he said, “You can’t do that.” When Elías pumped the shotgun again, readying another cartridge, Pepe’s brows furrowed deeply. Pilar could all but feel the concentrated telepathic blow he leveled against Elías as he tried to tighten the slipping grasp on his mind. “You…you can’t…”
Another gunshot, and the top left quarter of Pepe’s face was obliterated in a sudden spray of blood, bone, teeth and brain matter, knocking him off his feet, sending him crashing to the ground.
From behind her, she heard the sudden scramble a
s the four Pandilleros backpedaled in alarm as Elías swung the muzzle to point at each of them in turn. One by one, he picked them off, even as they cried out in fright and tried to scramble down from the lounge and escape.
However, one of them managed to scramble onto the dance floor and took off running for the back door. Pilar ran after him, vaulting over the railing with the same preternatural ease as Pepe. Landing nimbly on her feet, she was off like a shot, sprinting in pursuit. When she drew within a few strides of the Nahual, she crouched low, then leaped, springing over his head and flipping over in midair. When she landed, she dropped directly into his path to face him, bringing him to a startled, skittering halt.
“Pudrete en el infierno, puta,” he said, his lips drawing back as he bared his fangs at her and snarled. Rot in hell, bitch.
“You first,” she shot back, and when he swung his fist at her, meaning to plow her aside, she reached up and intercepted the blow, catching it against her palm. Closing her fingers lightly, she gracefully sidestepped, using his momentum to her advantage as she swept his arm up and around, hyperextending it at the shoulder. Normally she would have stopped when she felt resistance in the joint; the point of aikido was to immobilize, but in this case, Pilar felt no need for such courteous restraint. Putting her weight behind her, she shoved his arm up, ripping tendons loose, shearing muscles and rending bone as she forcibly wrenched his shoulder out of socket.
He screamed, his voice shrill and agonized, then cutting short as Elías caved in the back of his skull with a final shotgun blast. Blood slapped her in the face and she turned him loose, scrambling back as he crashed, face-first, to the floor.
As if on cue, the music overhead abruptly stopped, plunging the entire club into a sudden, heavy silence. Gun smoke lingered, a thin, acrid film in the air, and above this, the scent of blood was bittersweet and strong. Turning to the stage, Pilar saw Elías sway unsteadily on his feet.
“They…bit me,” he said, his voice weak but audible now without the music blaring to drown him out.
She nodded. “I know.”
“I…I think they’re vampires,” he said, the gun tumbling from his hands to the floor.
“I know,” she said again, moved with pity for him, because she could sense his confusion, his sense of utter and absolute shock and disbelief.
“Are…are you one too?” he asked in a small, helpless voice, and when he motioned with his hand toward his face, his mouth, she remembered that her fangs were still extended, like Pepe’s; her eyes had rolled over to black.
“Yeah, Elías,” she said with a gentle smile. “Something like that.”
“Oh. Okay.” He nodded once, as if this explained everything, then shook his head because obviously it didn’t. Not even close. And with that, weak from blood loss, his poor mind and body unable to endure anymore, he collapsed in a dead faint.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Valien, help me!”
With these three simple words, Pilar’s tenuous grip on emotional control completely crumbled. Everything that had happened—not just that day, but in the last year of her life—came crashing in on her, and as she stumbled away from Elías’s car, cradling him in her arms as she might have a life-size, deadweight doll, she burst into tears.
She’d come to a screeching halt in the parking lot at the garage, leaving at least a few feet of blackened rubber scorched into the asphalt behind her. Valien had come out of one of the bay doors at the clamor, his expression puzzled. He’d quickly been joined first by Jackson, then Téo, and when she’d staggered out of the driver’s side door, when they’d recognized her, despite the unfamiliar set of wheels, all three had rushed forward in alarm.
“What happened?” Valien exclaimed.
“Pepe Cervantes,” she sobbed. “He…he took Elías, Valien. Oh, God, he hurt him! Please help!”
Behind her, Chita stepped hesitantly out from the backseat of the. Shoulders hunched, eyes downcast, she stood beside the car, trembling as she, too, wept.
“He’s bleeding,” Pilar cried as Valien gently eased Elías from her arms, hoisting him against his chest. Able to now fully see the extent of his injuries—the ruthless bite wounds in his chest, neck and arms—he glanced at Téo first, then Jackson.
“Madre de Dios,” he said grimly. “Let’s get him inside.”
He carried Elías back into the garage. Here, he squatted, gently laying the other man down against the cool concrete floor. Hooking his fingertips beneath Elías’s chin, he canted his face slowly from one side to the other, examining his throat.
“He’s lost so much blood,” Pilar said, dropping to her knees beside Elías, clutching his hand between hers. “We have to do something!”
Tearful, she looked to her brother. She thought he’d refuse her, that he’d tell her there was nothing they could do because Elías wasn’t a feeder. Elías wasn’t supposed to know about them, and if he’d been bitten, then he surely would know. He was a liability now, one who either had to succumb to his injuries or have his cognizant awareness completely obliterated to protect them.
“Please, Valien. He saved my life.” Her voice grew strained and she gasped miserably. “Pepe’s dead,” she said. Valien’s eyes widened and he drew back in surprise. “Elías killed him. He was trying to hurt me…and Chita too.” She glanced back at the other girl, who stood in the doorway of the garage now, still with her arms wrapped fiercely about herself as she shook like a palm frond in a storm.
“You can’t tell my father about this,” Chita had whimpered on the way to the garage from Melaza. She’d been riding in the backseat while Pilar had driven like a woman possessed, one hand on the wheel and the other of clinging to Elías.
Pilar had shot her a murderous glare through the rearview mirror, one that clearly imparted that Chita was lucky to be with them at all, because Pilar had fought the urge to leave her lying ass behind for the other members of Los Pandilleros to eventually find and claim.
“I thought he loved me,” Chita had cried, bursting into tears, clapping her hands to her face. “You don’t understand…he was so kind to me…told me I was beautiful. I didn’t know they’d hurt Elías. I told them about him, yeah, and what you said about where he lived, but I didn’t know they’d take him…do that to him. Pepe didn’t even know about him until this morning, when I called him after you got there to the store. I was scared, Pilar. I thought you killing Miguel and Tomás would mess everything up, that he’d think I had something to do with it. But he told me it wouldn’t, not as long as I helped him. Not as long as I brought you to him.” She’d stared through the mirror at Pilar, pleading. “I thought he loved me.”
She and Pilar had made a deal before they’d reached the garage.
“You go along with what I say—you do exactly what I tell you to—and I won’t tell your father or Téo any different. Comprendes?” Do you understand?
Chita had nodded, and she went along with it now as she’d promised, relaying to Valien and her brother the story as Pilar had instructed.
“We were at the store,” she said, trembling. “Pilar came in. She told me the police detective…” She nodded once to indicate Elías. “He’d said he was close to arresting Pepe for Enrique’s murder. Said he’d found new evidence or something. That’s why he came to the festín last night to talk to her. Then four guys from Los Pandilleros came in. They started hassling us, saying the same thing that happened to Enrique would happen to us if we weren’t careful.” Tearfully, she added to Téo, “I was so scared. They grabbed us, made me lock up the store, took us to this bar… Pepe owns it, they said. They were going to rape us, then kill us…kill Detective Velasco. It was a warning, they told us. A…a warning to you, Valien, that Bayshore belongs to Los Pandilleros now.”
Her voice dissolved into sobs, and Téo clutched her to his shoulder, hugging her fiercely.
“Elías killed them,” Pilar said softly, drawing Valien’s gaze. “They were busy with me and he got hold of a shotgun. He saved us, Valien
. Me and Chita both.”
Again, Valien simply stared at her. Then he caught her by the arm and drew her in step with him, leading her across the garage and out of anyone else’s earshot. “The thing I don’t get, hermosita,” he remarked at length, “is if Detective Velasco had this great new evidence Chita was talking about, then why were both of you out at Melaza, showing off your tits for chump change, trying to get on Pepe’s good side?”
With a gasp, Pilar shrugged away from his grasp. “How did you…?”
“Find out about that?” Valien cocked his brow. “Easy. Your galán over there—your boyfriend—came around here this morning all bent out of shape, wanting to know why I was putting you up to it.” Narrowing his brows, he added, “Not to mention why I was letting you take the fall for murdering Miguel Torres and Tomás Lovato.”
Ay, mierda. Pilar felt all the color abruptly drain from her face. Her mouth went curiously dry and tacky and she backed away from her brother, hesitant and anxious.
“Of course, I didn’t have an answer for him,” Valien said, “considering I had no idea what the fuck he was talking about. But I think maybe now I can piece it together. Unless you’d like to do it for me?” He said this last with his brow raised, an open invitation.
Pilar wilted, her shoulders shaking, her eyes stinging with tears again. With a desperate glance toward Elías on the floor, she whispered, “Please, Valien. I love him.”
Nothing outward softened in Valien at this quiet, anguished plea. But after a moment, he turned and waved his hand, catching Jackson’s attention from across the room. “Take him to my house, would you?” he called, using exaggerated pronunciation to make sure his lips were readable as he spoke. “Tell my mother to type the chota’s blood, then pull a bag to match from the blood bank downstairs, hook it up to him.”
Jackson’s brows raised in surprise, but he didn’t argue. “All right,” he said, nodding once.