by S. A. Hunt
The magician was there. “Come on, let’s go.”
* * *
Marina romped the Winnebago as hard as she could, doing seventy up a two-lane highway, right up until they got into Almudena, a tiny pitstop of a town with a handful of red lights. Kenway lay on the bed in the back, turning the duvet red with blood. Red light swirled out of Gendreau’s ruby ring and orbited his hands in flitting pulses like electrons around an atom as he worked on the veteran’s wound.
Sifting through her bathroom drawers, Carly came up with something wrapped in plastic. “Need a tampon?”
The curandero glanced at it, then up at her. “Not today, thanks.”
She mimed sticking it into Kenway’s entry wound as if she were dipping a french fry into ketchup. “Mr. Tuco says you can plug a bullet wound with a tampon.”
“Oh. I must regretfully decline.”
Stop-and-go traffic whipped Robin into a fury of panic. She paced up and down the length of the RV, out of her mind.
First thing she said when they got Kenway into the motorhome was “Where’s the nearest hospital?” but the Valenzuelas didn’t say anything. Carly looked shell-shocked. Marina seemed to know where she was going, so Robin didn’t ask about it any further—but as they came out the other side of Almudena, they emerged onto another two-lane that stretched to the horizon.
“Where are you going?”
Marina glanced over her shoulder. “Killeen.”
Robin blinked. “Killeen? That’s two hours out! He could bleed to death before we ever get there! Are you fucking bananas?”
“I’m not going back to Lockwood,” Marina said, glaring over her shoulder with steel in her eyes. “Not with Santi behind us.”
“There’s a hospital in Lockwood?”
“Yes, but—”
“Take us back to Lockwood. I’ll burn your husband’s bridge when we get to it. Right now, I have a man back there with a bullet hole in him. Bullet hole that’s your goddamn fault.”
Saying nothing, Marina didn’t slow down or stop, just drove. Drove and drove, her eyes fixed on the road.
Mental gears grinding, Robin watched the front of the Winnebago eat up the road. Then she stormed back to the breakfast nook and lifted one of the bench seats. Inside was a sawed-off shotgun, five shells strapped to the stock. She carried it up front and pressed the double barrel against Marina’s ear.
“Turn the RV around. Now.”
“What the hell?” Carly, by her side. The teenager grabbed her elbow and pulled the shotgun away, but Robin jerked her arm out of Carly’s hands.
“She’s not going to shoot me,” Marina said, calmly. “Not while I’m driving.”
“Good point,” said Robin, and she put the shotgun on the floor. Then she reached over the seat, grabbed a double handful of Marina’s shirt, and hauled her off her feet by her neck. The Winnebago immediately veered toward the middle of the road, reflectors thumping under their left-hand tires.
“Let go of my mom!” Carly beat on Robin, slapping and punching her.
Grabbing the teenager’s face, Robin cornered her in the door well, squishing her mouth into a goofy duck pout. Marina dropped back into the seat, coughing, taking control of the RV again. “Hit me again and I’ll zip-tie you to the front of the RV. You can eat bugs all the way to Michigan.”
“Miss Martine,” called Gendreau. “Come here.”
“Wish I’d thrown your ass out the minute I found you.” Robin picked up the shotgun, heading into the bedroom. “What?” she asked, annoyed at being interrupted.
Motes of red light still swirled around. The healer looked up with a vaguely offended expression, arms filthy with sticky blood. “Look, I’m working on closing off vessels and getting him stabilized so I can get to the bullet. Halfway there already. If I can get at least that far, we won’t need a hospital. Bullet went in about three inches to the left of his navel, hit his pelvis, and now it’s on the other side, just under the skin. Have to get to it through his back.” He pointed to the closet. “Pair of forceps in my bag, and a bottle of alcohol. I need them.”
Kenway grunted. “Do I get workman’s comp for this?”
Track 13
Santiago arrived with the Los Cambiantes in tow—a couple dozen men, some of them riding double. Shotguns bristled from saddlebag scabbards, and half of them were wearing pistols.
Monica didn’t bother to approach him. Thomas behind the bar didn’t say a word as Santi checked the bathrooms and kitchen, and then the back office. The owner, Aaron Fuentes, had already been by for his morning managerial rituals, but even if he were there, he wouldn’t challenge Santi either. Not while the Los Cambiantes charged them a protection fee.
“Where is he?” Santiago growled softly to the waitress.
“Gil?”
“No, Waldo, you fuckin’ blowup doll. Gil Delgado—where’d he run off to?”
Monica clutched her clipboard to her chest as if it was a shield. “Went out with those folks that were here earlier. They ordered food, but as soon as Gil talked to ’em, they left without eating it.”
“What about Joaquin?”
“He left before they did.”
“Did they have my wife and daughter with them?”
No point in lying. Santi had her dead to rights. Monica’s hands scrunched into protective fists. “I thought they were friends from out of town or something. Are they not?”
“See what they were driving?”
“No, I haven’t been outside.”
Santiago resisted the urge to judo-flip her over the bar and headed back out into the midday heat. He wore a white T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off to bare his brown shoulders. The leering Texas sun draped across his neck like molten gold.
Tuco and Maximo stood by the entrance, their fingers in their hip pockets.
“Which way’d they go?” asked Tuco.
Which way’d they go, boss, which way’d they go? Santiago had to swallow a crazed laugh at the mental image of a Looney Tunes character. “Gil took them outside after Joaquin called me. I don’t know if they did something to Joaquin or what, but I know Gil didn’t go with them, because his bike is still here.”
Their eyes cut over to the mint-condition motorcycle at the end of the parking lot.
“That means he’s still here somewhere,” said Tuco. “And he ain’t gonna get far with that ’Nam shrapnel in his leg.”
Panic built inside of him as Santiago paced in frustration. They have my wife and daughter, he thought, his fists on his hips. Barely aware of the heat now. God almighty, I’ll forgive them for everything, just don’t take them away from me. They’re all I have.
You know where Gil went, said a voice.
A brightly colored bird perched on La Reina’s handlebars.
A toucan.
The bird’s beak clattered like bamboo wind chimes. At the same time, Santi could feel that long banana-boat beak scraping the inside of his skull in long, languorous, excruciating strokes. He could almost hear it.
Sccccccratch.
Black stains ran in rivulets down the corners of his eyesight, pulsing in time with his heartbeat. Santi stared. Follow your nose, said the voice inside the motorcycle.
The toucan flew away in slow motion.
Invisible currents flowed into his sinuses as Santiago’s nostrils flared, so cold it made his teeth hurt, like icy mountain air. The atmosphere there in the secluded, open desert—the middle of nowhere, really—was so clean and clear, he could smell fucking everything. Broiling sunlight softened the pavement into the consistency of a granola bar. The exhaust from their bikes was a noxious swamp of dirty poison. Breath from the men standing around him puffed out in raunchy volumes: Tuco had had a liquid lunch but Maximo had eaten a hamburger. Santiago could smell the mustard and onions somewhere in that beefy miasma.
“Jesus Christ.” Tuco backed away from Santiago, eyes locked on his face. “You see that, Max?”
Men made alarmed noises. Everyone watched him with wide-e
yed expressions—some of them a baffled sort of amusement (Is this some sort of elaborate prank?), and some of them outright fear. Santi ignored them, pushing through the throng. Something else, something behind their combined sweat-musk and the funk of asphalt and halitosis … to the east-northeast, he sensed the astringent undertone of Gil’s aftershave, Pinaud Clubman—citrus, jasmine, lavender, rubbing alcohol.
Also a thready, milky odor. Fear.
He started toward the end of the parking lot, where a side road went past Heroes into a subdivision sprawling across the desert. The men followed.
“What’s up with his face?” someone asked.
“Cap, no offense,” said Tuco, “but you look like a gorilla got face-fucked by a bag of Cheetos.”
They don’t remember, said the voice in the back of Santiago’s head. His teeth ached. Pain rimmed the orbital bones framing his eyes. They’ve been at the edge of humanity with us, but they don’t remember, do they? They’ve danced with us out here, but they don’t remember the steps. That voice diminished as he walked away from his motorcycle. The feeling that La Reina was home base in a game of tag or second base in a ball game got stronger and stronger; the farther he strayed from it, the weaker the signal got, and the more anxious he became. Sooner or later, someone’s going to put the ball on him and then he’s OUT. OUT LIKE GOUT, OUT LIKE TROUT, OUT LIKE—
“You okay, Cap?” asked Maximo. “Where are you going?”
They don’t remember the dance, thought Santiago, or perhaps it came from somewhere deeper, somewhere darker. They don’t remember the wild, the nights when we made them like me, and we ran under the full moon for the first time. They don’t know their secret desert hearts. They don’t know how they can rip and tear like El Tigre.
“I’m fine.”
El Tigre? The sun beat on him.
Do you remember, Santiago? Do you remember, El Tigre, how it was to rip and tear and dance?
Their road captain walked around the corner of the sports bar and started down the street, following his nose. Turning his head was like dialing an FM radio up and down the band: every angle introduced him to a new smell, and if he stayed tuned into a specific station, he could follow it to its source.
Men lagged behind and dropped away, heading back to Heroes. A few minutes later, he only had Tuco, Max, and a handful of other guys. Fine. He didn’t need many, if any at all. You’ll remind them, said a voice that might not have been Santi’s own. You’ll give them back their claws and teeth, and we’ll ride a merry chase. Tonight, we’ll dance again, and we won’t let them forget this time.
Claws? Teeth?
Gil’s fear-stink and citrusy aftershave slowly came into focus as Santiago traveled into the neighborhood behind Heroes, down a dusty, patchy street that hadn’t seen a fresh paving in decades (Santi, in fact, stepped into a rather deep pothole and almost fell). It carried them into an arrangement of ranch homes on patchy brown lawns. Many of them sported FOR SALE signs in the yard or FORECLOSURE NOTICE taped to the front door. Santi followed the scent-trail to the end of the block, took a right, to the end of that block, then crossed the street. The house he found there—a Brady Bunch kinda place with yuccas out front—was foreclosed as well.
Outside the crusty old dog turds studding the dead grass, the property reeked of Gil and Joaquin.
The front door was kicked in.
Tuco headed in that direction, but Santiago stopped him. “He’s not in there. Thought he could outsmart us.”
Smell Radio led Santi around the side of the house where stairs curled down to a basement door set in the exterior wall. Santi went to open it but Max put a hand on his broad chest.
“Hold up.” He directed Santi to the side and pressed his back to the wall.
Reaching over his shoulder with a Miyagi backhand, he knocked on the basement door. Several gunshots rang out from inside and bullets punched through the door with the hard knocking of a judge’s gavel, spraying splinters out into the brown grass.
A moment of silence.
Max knocked again. Pock, pock, pock—more bullets tore holes in the wood.
“What you doin’ with that peashooter, vato?” asked Max, talking out of the corner of his mouth. “You ain’t got enough bullets for all of us. We can wait you out.”
“No, we can’t,” said Santiago. “I ain’t got time for that.”
Gil shouted from inside the cellar, “I ain’t tellin’ you where they went, Santiago. Not giving you a chance to beat that woman again. She ain’t done nothing to deserve that shit. Ain’t neither one of ’em have.”
“I’ll decide what she deserves. I’m her goddamn husband.”
“What kinda man—” Gil started to say.
“She’s my wife, old man,” said Santiago. Anger swelled in him, anger at the situation, anger at Gil for withholding information, anger at Marina for running off, anger at whoever these people were that took her.
Tuco gave him a weird look.
“Got something on my face, Tuc?” Santiago accidentally bit the inside of his mouth as he spoke, and a bolt of pain flickered down his neck. Saliva flooded his mouth.
Tuco’s eyebrows jumped. “No. No, man. Ain’t nothin’ on your face.”
Santiago grunted. Teeth felt funny. Sinus headache getting worse, spreading to his cheeks and eyes. Mental note to hunt down some Tylenol when he got back to the house. “Old bastard only got the one mag on him,” said Joaquin Oropeda from inside the cellar. “If you’re quick, you can—”
“Did I say you could talk?” asked Gil. “You ain’t shit, son. I killed Viet Congs that was more man than you. One more word and I’ll paint the ceiling—you got me?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Brought this on yourself. If you’d just kept your mouth shut—”
While Gil was distracted, Santi took the opportunity to go for the door. But when his hand hit the doorknob, the knob snapped off as if it were made of chocolate. Gouges across the front of the cellar door—four claw-marks separated by Gil’s bullet holes. He examined his hand. Seemed … bigger? Longer, somehow. The palm looked larger than it ought to, and his fingers tensed unnaturally, the tendons standing out. Both hands had developed this weird, strained tetanus appearance. Fingernails were definitely longer, two inches long, maybe, hooking forward in pointed spikes.
Claws, he thought.
Claws, thought the deeper mind.
On top of all that, the snowy white arm hair was back. This time, it was frosted with orange.
Santiago eyed Maximo. The slab of beef was looking at him with open concern. “Man—” he started to say, but Gil unleashed another volley of bullets through the door. Two of them missed by inches, but the third one tore Santiago’s ear to shreds. All the rage came to a head and Santiago’s body welled with a searing internal light. Euphoria and pain rippled down his arms and his skin seemed to tighten. Stitches popped in his jeans. He threw himself at the cellar door and it imploded around him, caving in and disintegrating as if it were little more than balsa wood.
As he entered the cellar, something roared in the darkness—a dragon? It sounds like a dragon; what the hell is that?
Both Gil and Joaquin screamed. Gil pushed Joaquin and Santi shoved him out of the way, his fingernails catching in the man’s clothing.
Blood spattered across the cellar wall.
“Jesus shit!” cried Gil Delgado, running for his life. He scrambled to pull open a casement window in the back so he could climb out, and Santi caught him, snatching his leg and dragging him out of the shadows. The road captain turned and flung Gil across the cellar as if he were nothing but a bag of trash.
The old man smashed into a pegboard, and a collection of tools fell off the wall in a cascade of junk. Santi was immediately on him, slapped the 1911 out of his hand before he could fire and lifted him up, holding him against the wall. The pistol clattered underneath a worktable.
“WHERE ARE THEY?” bellowed Santiago. Rich, cloying, saline, like popcorn butter, a sm
ell told him that Gil had pissed his pants. “WHERE DID THEY GO?” The white-orange arm hair was now a fin of shag the color of mango-flesh, hanging from Santi’s arms. The agony in his face was intense, as if his nose was broken. Salty blood filled his mouth.
“Santi.” Gil writhed in fear and pain, his Hunter S. Thompson glasses hanging off his face. “What’s happening to you? What is this?”
“What is what?”
“Look at you, man! What the hell are you?”
Santi bounced Gil’s head off the wall. “Tell me who has my wife and where they went!”
“Some chick with a Mohawk and a vet! Big blond guy!”
“What are—” Santi began, but then he caught sight of his reflection in Gil’s sunglasses.
Two tiny monsters gawked back at him. In just five minutes, he’d grown a beard, eggshell-white, cropped, silky. His eyes were bleeding, running down his face in twin harlequin trails. Yellow teeth jutted from his bloody mouth: too big, too many, all of them pointed. Black pinstripes rippled outward from his lips and eye sockets in a dozen concentric half circles. His face was a tiki mask of feral rage.
Teeth.
“Jesus,” Santi said in shock, backing away.
Do you remember now?
Collapsing to the floor, Gil scrambled around for purchase on some kind of weapon. Snatching up a hacksaw, he held it at port arms, shaking with the palsy of terror.
Do you remember the dance?
No one else was in the cellar with them. The thin sour-milk smell of fear drifted around the room on a lazy breeze, and Santi realized the gangbangers outside were all afraid to come in. “What is wrong with me?” The orange-white hair had climbed onto his knuckles and hung like a dandy’s lace sleeves.
Nothing wrong with you, said the voice from far away, a weak signal, almost just a current in the air. Do you remember the dance? Do you remember the night?