“It wasn’t my plan,” she says. “It was—”
“Santa Muerte’s, I know. Who you aren’t. If you’re not Tabitha and you’re not Santa Muerte, the fuck do I even call you?”
She pauses, confusion crawling across her face. “I—I need to think about that,” she says.
“Have to think about that? How about Santa Pain-in-My-Ass? La Niña Multiple Personality Disorder? You have their memories and their desires? That’s gotta be a headfuck. Which of them wins out if they don’t agree? Do you flip a coin? Does she get the body on holidays and weekends, or do you alternate during the week?”
“It’s not that simple,” she says, gritting her teeth. She’s getting mad. Good. I’m fucking furious, my anger pouring out of me like a busted water main.
“Oh, it isn’t? You’re supposed to be La Dama Poderosa, La Flaca, the Bony Lady herself. But you’re actually some dead girl necromancer who kicked because she believed somebody else’s bullshit. I didn’t come here to talk to her. I came to talk to a fucking avatar of death, and if she’s not in there, then I’m wasting my time.”
“Oh, fuck you,” Tabitha says, standing and getting in my face. “You killed me, Eric. You stabbed me in the heart.”
“Really? I thought you weren’t Tabitha.”
“I—she. Goddammit. I have her memories. I know what you did. You shoved that knife into my chest . . . her chest, and then you—” She lets out a frustrated noise somewhere between a groan and a scream.
“What did I do?” I say. “Because I sure as hell don’t remember.”
“Nothing,” she says, a little too quickly. “You were just gone. Kicked out by Mictlan. That’s not the point. You murdered me.”
“To save you.”
“Well, it didn’t fucking work, did it?”
“Oh, do not give me that shit. I should have just killed you outright instead of letting you yank my chain thinking—”
“What, that you were more than just some guy I was told to fuck? Because that’s what you were, Eric. I had marching orders and I followed them. When I came on to you, you’d just gotten the shit kicked out of you. You really think a girl’s gonna go for a guy with a busted nose, covered in bruises? Yeah, that’s hot. You think I have that little respect for myself?”
“Clearly, or you wouldn’t have done it in the first place.”
One second she’s Tabitha. The next, her face splits open with cracks like dried mud, flames glowing behind her eyes. And then she’s Santa Muerte, an eight-foot-tall skeleton in a dress with a burning scythe in her hand, a screaming goddess of vengeance.
“Oh, there she is. The star of our show. Outstanding performance. Brava!”
“You know nothing,” she says, her voice a tear in the fabric of the universe. The full force of it slams into me, a freight train made of sound, pushing me back in the pew.
But now I’m on familiar footing. I might be confused about Tabitha, but a pissed off death goddess? That I can handle. Whatever came into being out of Tabitha and Santa Muerte, the binding between the personalities can’t be that tight. It didn’t take much at all to get Tabitha talking about herself in the first person. And it didn’t take much to draw out Santa Muerte.
I don’t doubt that I’m confronting something brand new, built out of both of them. But it doesn’t matter. I had a reason for coming here, and all this bullshit about Mictlan, rings, Tabitha, and my own fucking stupidity clouded it over. But I remember now.
“Oh, blow it out your ass,” I say. “I killed you once before, I’ll fucking do it again.”
She tips her head back, neck bones creaking, and laughs. Without flesh it should be comical, but everything about her is terrifying.
“With what?” she says. “You don’t have Mictlantecuhtli’s knife, anymore. That ridiculous razor? Foul language?”
“Xiuhtecuhtli’s fire,” I say. “Quetzalcoatl’s in town. And I bet he’d just love to get his hands on you.”
Chapter 19
That stops her. “You’re lying,” she says. “I would know if he was near.”
“You sure about that? ’Cause I had a lovely chat with the guy last night. He’s got a minion lighting shit on fire. You hear about the Vernon disaster? That was them. If the lighter can do that to a whole chunk of the city, just think what it can do to you.”
In Mictlan she was terrified of Xiuhtecuhtli’s fire. It could burn the whole place down and she knew it. It might not have quite the same power here as it does in Mictlan, but she’s not from here. At least the Santa Muerte part of her isn’t.
“Why, I bet you’d go up like gasoline-soaked cardboard. I’m betting if one of you goes, you both do. What would happen to Mictlan then? Neither one of you would be there to protect it. Quetzalcoatl could stroll right in and burn the whole place down.”
Santa Muerte shudders, her body shrinking, twisting, half her and half Tabitha straight down the middle. Tabitha’s skin melds bloodlessly into the bone. She pushes aside the wedding veil with a skeletal hand and I can see anger in Tabitha’s eye. But more importantly I can see fear.
“He’s here for you,” she says, her voice a resonant harmony between Santa Muerte’s and Tabitha’s. “What do I have to worry about?”
“Yeah, he’s here for me. So why hasn’t he killed me, yet? Instead he’s murdering other mages and pinning the killings on me. That sound like him? There’s something else going on. It can’t just be me he’s after. Maybe he’s hoping I can lead him to you, too.”
“I know this pitch,” she says. “You want something, Eric. Tell me what it is.”
“You sure you don’t want me to be all cryptic and subtextual and shit?”
“Just fucking tell me.”
“I need to know what he wants, and to do that I need to understand him. And you’re the only one left standing who I can ask. What the hell was his beef with you and the rest of his family? He turned on all of you and helped the Spanish wipe your people out. Why did he do it?”
“Because he’s an asshole,” she says, her voice more Tabitha than Santa Muerte.
“No,” I say. “I’m an asshole. What he did is so far outside the realm of asshole I don’t even know what to call it.”
“He betrayed us all for more power,” she says, her voice shifting back toward Santa Muerte’s. “He wanted to rule over everything, he wanted to be the only god. He thought to use Cortés to get that power for himself. But he was outwitted by the Spaniard after they tried to take Mictlan. Wounded and weak, he was trapped in a vessel and buried beneath the temple of Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc. I would send what few worshippers I had left to see him every twenty years, to spit on his writhing spirit and ensure that he was still trapped.”
“And then he got out,” I say. “How?”
“The vessel was weak like the Spaniard who trapped him. The magic guarding it cracked over time. With the spells failing, he was able to free himself.”
How does she know this? She couldn’t leave Mictlan. Then it comes to me. “Your followers who were staking him out. They were there when he broke free.”
“Only two lived long enough to see it. They brought me images and impressions, anything useful. The rest had died long before. I knew where he had broken through, and sensed that something in him had changed, and not for the better. He blamed me for his own betrayal. As you said, I was the last one standing. He believed I would try to kill him the first chance I got, which is what he would have done. There was nothing but rage there. Blind, pointless rage.”
Pieces are falling into place. If I hadn’t known before, I certainly know now. He wants revenge for what he sees as a betrayal. But is it revenge against me, or revenge again Santa Muerte? Both? Neither? What the hell is his game?
“Boy doesn’t give up, does he?”
“No,” she says. “His stubbornness is almost as strong as yours.”
“Ha, funny. See this face? This is the face of funny.”
“You want help defeating him,” she says.
“I just need to know how to do it. What was this vessel he was trapped in?”
“Fired clay,” she says, “ensorcelled by Cortés’s monks. I couldn’t recreate the spells. Their magic was alien to me. But I know it was powerful enough to hold him.”
“Well, I’ll just pop on down to Target and pick one up.” Dammit. I suspect the vessel isn’t the important thing here, but the spells that trapped him. I can think of a few, but none would be powerful enough to hold him. “Any suggestions?”
“Come with me to Mictlan and take your place by my side.”
“Not what I was asking. We’ve already had this conversation. You tried to kill me and stuff your ex-husband’s spirit into my body. What makes you think I’m going to trust you? Even if the you I’m talking to isn’t really the you who tried to murder me.”
“He’s gone. You know this.”
“Let me talk to Tabitha.”
“She’s not—”
“Let me talk to the piece of you that’s more Tabitha than not Tabitha. Jesus. Is this new? I don’t remember either one of you being so pedantic.” The skeleton shifts, muscle and skin and clothes flowing up the bones until it’s Tabitha again. She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly.
“I’m still getting used to . . . myself,” she says.
“I think I liked you better when you were just her avatar,” I say. She scowls for a moment, but then lets it go. I wonder if maybe she liked herself better that way, too.
“Do you have any suggestions?” I say. She starts to talk and I interrupt with, “That don’t have me becoming the new Mictlantecuhtli.”
“Fine. Well, you can’t kill him,” she says. “He’s a wind god, so Xiuhtecuhtli’s fire isn’t going to touch him. If anything it makes him more powerful. And you don’t have the obsidian blade, anymore.”
“Awesome. Okay. Fire bad, killing’s out.”
“I think you have to trap him,” she says. “Like what Cortés did to him before.”
“Inside a clay jar inscribed with a bunch of old Spanish spells that I don’t know how to cast?”
“Bit of a longshot,” she says. “I don’t know what to tell you, Eric. I think you’re right. When Quetzalcoatl exacts vengeance, he doesn’t fuck around. If he was really trying to kill you, he’d have just done it. There is more going on here. But I honestly couldn’t tell you what.”
Does this even have anything to do with me? Am I a distraction? Bait? Just a loose end to tie up? I was hoping to get some idea what he might be up to by coming here. Instead . . .
“I shouldn’t have come,” I say. Tabitha’s dead, or maybe not dead, and Santa Muerte’s—worse? Better? How would you know if someone snuck into your house and replaced everything you owned with an exact replica?
After spending time with her in Mictlan my feelings about Tabitha got confused. I went from wanting to kill her to wanting to save her and . . . maybe something more. Now I don’t even know what the hell I’m feeling. Numb, mostly. I expected this meeting to be weird and awkward, but not this weird and awkward.
“I’m glad that you did,” Tabitha says. She puts her hand gently on my arm. I jerk it back like I’ve just seen a scorpion sitting on it.
“Sorry,” I say. “How much of you is in there? And you know what I mean, so please, just give me a real answer.”
“All of me,” she says. “All of Santa Muerte.”
“Who’s in charge?”
“You still don’t get it,” she says. “Nobody’s in charge. I’m me. Just me.”
“I get it,” I say. “I just don’t want to.” She’s been Frankensteined together with personalities and powers intact. Thinking of her as Tabitha is like thinking of a heart transplant patient by the original owner’s name. Which reminds me. “I still don’t know what to call you.”
“I have to think about that,” she says. “In the meantime, use my old names.”
“Don’t suppose you’d like to take on Quetzalcoatl for me?”
“Not if I can help it,” she says. “I have responsibilities. Like you said, where’s Mictlan going to be if I’m not around? I can’t risk getting into a fight with him. I was serious about you coming to Mictlan, you know. If whatever he’s doing needs you, removing you from play is going to be a problem for him.”
If this were Tabitha, I might think about it. But Santa Muerte’s shadow taints everything. Some things I can’t forget, or forgive. One of these days I’ll have to finish what I started in Mictlan. I’m just not sure what that is.
“You know I’m not gonna do that,” I say.
“I know. But I needed to say it.”
“I guess that’s it, then.” I stand up from the pew. I’ve sat too long and every muscle in my body is yelling at me for it.
“I guess so. Goodbye, Eric.”
“Goodbye, whoever the hell you are.”
“Oh, Eric, one more thing,” she says, as I’m about to step through the curtain. A jolt of fire rips through my left hand starting from the ring. My fingers cramp and twist like knots. The pain almost brings me to the floor. I turn to look at her, wondering how I missed this trap. Her face is Tabitha, but her eyes are empty, black sockets. The pain disappears as quickly as it came on.
“Like it or not,” she says, a scent of smoke and roses filling the room, “we’re linked. We’ll see each other again. Husband.”
And with that, she’s gone.
Chapter 20
I yank the ring off my finger as soon as I’m out of the chapel. There are a few customers looking at candles and a woman behind the counter. They’re all looking at me like I’ve just grown a second head. Yeah, fuck you, people. You try being married to a death goddess.
I storm out the front and throw the ring as far as I can. I watch it sail over the parking lot and disappear among the street traffic. And then feel a sudden new weight in my pocket.
Goddammit. Of course it wasn’t going to be that easy. I pull the ring out of my pocket. Yep, same ring. Still warm from when I was wearing it. Fine. You want to play that game? I might not be able to get rid of the damn thing, but that doesn’t mean I have to wear it. I slide it back into my pocket. The fuck was I doing wearing it in the first place?
But I already know and it pisses me off. Because I’d hoped that somehow it’d be Tabitha waiting for me in there and not some goddess stitched together from leftover parts.
If I hadn’t pulled the knife out of Santa Muerte and plunged it into Tabitha in a split-second decision to try to reverse things, would it just be Santa Muerte wearing Tabitha’s skin? Shit, how do I even know it isn’t? Try to fix shit and all I do is make it worse.
Okay, yeah, not entirely true. Mictlantecuhtli is gone. Nothing left of him but a pile of ground-up jade blown away in the wind. Still feels like an epic fail.
I should just let Quetzalcoatl burn everything down. Shit, I should have burned Mictlan down for him when I had the chance. I should track his ass down and just ask him. Dude, the fuck do you want? Burn L.A.? Set fire to Santa Muerte? You want your pet assassin to put a bullet in my head?
Great. Let’s fucking do this. I am goddamn tired of this. I’m just tired in general. I’ve got mages hunting me down, a pissed off god whose agenda I can’t figure out, and a cartel sicaria intent on making everything a pain in my ass.
When the phone rings I’m not in the best of moods and instead of looking to see who it is first, I stab the answer button and yell, “What?” into the microphone.
“Mister Carter,” David Chu says. “I’m sorry, did I catch you at a bad time?”
“Is there a good time these days?”
“I’m an optimist,” he says. “I was wondering if you could come by the house later. I’m releasing t
hat file to the community and I wanted to give you a copy. You might be able to see something in it that we don’t.”
“Come again? I thought this was all Super-Secret Squirrel shit.”
“It was intended to be, but under the circumstances, I think it would be better to get the information out than have you draw out the assassin. I spoke with Letitia and I understand there are larger forces at play. She told me about Quetzalcoatl, Santa Muerte, all of that. Had I known sooner I would have done this already. I’m not your enemy, Eric. I’m doing what I think is best for the city, and for our community. I handled it poorly. I’m sorry.”
“Uh, sure. Okay.” I want to be pissed off, but he sounds sincere. It’s also his job to sound sincere, so I probably can’t trust it. I’m more disappointed in Letitia than anything else. But I knew she was going to say something to him.
“There’s another reason I want to get the file out there exonerating you,” Chu says.
“Oh? You find something embarrassing about yourself in there that you need to get ahead of?” Silence.
“I’m almost tempted to not tell you,” he says, irritation creeping into his voice. “You’ll find out eventually, anyway. But that would be cruel. The European branch of the Werther family is upset at what you did to Attila, and they— What exactly did you do to Attila, anyway?”
“I moved him, his car, and his chauffeur over the line into limbo and left him there. He’s smart. If he’s not out by now he will be soon. Let me guess, everybody’s saying I killed him, too?”
“They are. In fact, the family has put a bounty on you. Anyone who does the deed and brings proof in the form of your head gets, and I quote, ‘The full backing and support of the Werther Clan as an adopted relative.’”
Shit. Mages don’t need money. We want cash, we magic a few ATMs, manipulate some stock trades, whatever. If you want mages to take something on, you offer up something better than cash. Usually it’s some mystic heirloom, a spellbook, whatever.
Fire Season Page 14