A Snake in the Grass (18 page)

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find him. We made
three circles of the packed courtyard, ducked into the kitchen and
made two sweeps through the main house, and even went to check out
the stable once, and there was nary a sign of him. I spotted the
woman he’d escorted, presumably his mother, several times, but
Paulito himself had vanished the moment we left the chapel. No
doubt, he’d known that we had cooked his proverbial goose, and he
was trying to delay the inevitable.

Sveta’s fingers curled around my arm as I
raked my fingers through my hair in frustration. “He is not your
concern, you know. They will deal with their own.”

“I know. I just wanted this done with, before
we left. Don’t want the kid having to handle this crap on his
own.”

She gave me a small smirk. “This ‘crap’
is
his to handle. He is not yours to protect any
longer.”

“I don’t like you very much.”

She chuckled and slipped her hand into the
crook of my arm again. “I know. Now let us go find punch. These
things have punch, yes?”

Yes, the party had punch, though I’m pretty
sure one bowl was eighty-five percent tequila. A very stern looking
older gentleman was guarding that one closely, herding the small
children toward the bowl at the other end of the table. There was
enough food to feed three armies, though the family was going to
put a pretty decent size dent in it by the time the evening was
done. We grabbed plates where we could, finding a seat near
Terrence just to make sure he wasn’t causing trouble. The old
geezer was holding court with the same gaggle of women that might
have been old enough to be
his
mothers, proving that he
could be a charming old sot when he put his mind to it.

I elbowed Sveta at one point, jerking my chin
in Terrence’s direction. We watched as his gaze left the group
around him to follow someone across the dance floor. Carlotta was
out there, whirled along like a girl of twenty by one of the
younger cousins. The old man’s eyes followed her, and I swear a
tiny smile curved the corner of his mouth. Several times, her gaze
found his, and she flashed him a flirtatious grin that I never
would have expected from Carlotta. Sveta and I just grinned at each
other. Old people falling in love are cute, especially when they
don’t realize it themselves.

It was nice, I decided, just drifting along
with the party atmosphere. I could sit and watch the people, just
listening to the joyous voices and it didn’t even matter that I
only understood about one word in five. Happy translates well. At
one point, Terrence threw a napkin at me, and pointed toward a
group of young men all clustered and whispering and glancing our
way. Finally, one of them was elected, and I bit back a smirk as
one of Estéban’s older cousins got up the nerve to ask Sveta to
dance. To my surprise, she said yes, and to my greater surprise,
she was actually really good.

The souls in my back didn’t matter, for just
a little bit. The demon war that I knew was brewing just out of
human sight didn’t matter. The fact that my secret was out was
irrelevant for just these few precious hours, and the only thing
that really dimmed the day for me was the fact that Mira wasn’t
there. For her, I’d have gotten up and danced, even though I suck
at it.

It was a good day. And there was cake! The
kid finally found a moment to come collapse near us, and our odd
little team of champions just sat and devoured like half a pound of
icing a piece. Even Terrence, and I shudder to think what
buttercream icing tastes like, mixed with gin.

“You’ve got icing in your hair. How the hell
does that even happen?” I grinned and nudged Estéban’s leg with my
foot, while he self-consciously wiped a bit of blue frosting out of
his hair.

“One of the little ones wanted a hug, it was
probably from her hands.”

“Sure it was.” He kicked me back with a roll
of his eyes. “So, I was thinking–” I promptly forgot whatever it
was I was thinking as the pack of younger children came boiling
into the courtyard, yelling at the top of their lungs.

“
Tía Carlotta
!
Tía Carlotta
!”
They jumped up and down around her like a pack of frantic puppies,
tugging at her skirt. “
La iglesia
!
Alguien ha destruido
la iglesia
!”

Estéban’s face went pale. “No…the church…”
And he was on his feet and running before I could even figure out
what had happened.

“Come on.” Sveta didn’t need to be told
twice, and we followed the river of people as everyone went to
investigate. It took some elbowing and shoving, but we managed to
make it through the doorway as everyone else peered inside with
hushed whispers of horror and awe.

Damn, someone had really done a number on the
place. The shrines had been wrecked, every single one, the placards
and photos scattered all over the floor and the weapons tossed into
corners without regard for their value. The altar was knocked over,
and a few of the heavy pews had even been shoved out of place.

Carlotta pressed her hands to her face, just
staring in shock, and Estéban knelt to retrieve one of the picture
frames from the floor, the glass now shattered beyond use. It was
Miguel’s, and it had obviously been stomped on after it was tossed
on the floor. His gaze found mine, helpless and bewildered, and I
didn’t have any comfort to offer him. “
Ave María purísima…Quién
haría algo así
?”

Terrence shoved his way in behind us, having
caught up, and hobbled his way to Carlotta’s side, putting a
comforting arm around her shoulders. She turned and hid her face
against his shoulder. The old man surveyed the destruction, then
looked to me. “Whoever did this was right peeved. Look at which
pictures were damaged the most.”

He was right, when we looked. The three
pictures that had been completely destroyed were the last,
Estéban’s brothers and father. Beyond just being thrown to the
floor, they’d been stomped on and ripped up. There was anger in
that action, with a specific aim.

“The armor…the machete. They’re gone.” Once
Estéban said that, we all looked closer, ducking down to peer under
pews, moving things aside, even walking a circle around the outside
of the chapel. He was right. Miguel’s gear…
Estéban’s
gear
was gone.

Yeah, I hated to be the guy to say it, but…
“Has anyone seen Paulito?” A murmur ran through the crowd, but it
quickly became clear that no one had seen him since the
ceremony.

“No. No, he wouldn’t do this.” Carlotta
sounded more like she was trying to convince herself than anything.
“He is family.” Estéban and I traded looks over her head as
Terrence patted her back comfortingly. We both knew damn well
Paulito was fully capable of doing this.

A group of women armed with brooms and dust
pans finally shooed us all out of the way so they could start
cleaning up the mess, and I gave Sveta and Estéban a look that had
them falling in step beside me. “Change clothes. The first moment
we can slip away, we’re going hunting.”

Chapter 12

Unfortunately, we didn’t get our chance to
sneak out until well after dark. The Perez clan firmly refused to
let the vandalism put a damper on their fiesta, and the music was
still playing when Sveta slipped me the pickup keys that she’d
managed to pocket.

The three of us looked like we were wearing
some kind of odd uniform, all of us in jeans, black T-shirts and
heavy boots, but I knew we were all capable of fighting in those
clothes, so it was necessary.

We almost made a clean escape, until Terrence
cornered us as we loaded into the pickup truck. He gave us a
once-over glance, and raised an eyebrow at me. “You shouldn’t be
leaving the safety of the wards, y’know.”

I wasn’t about to admit he was right. “We’re
going to go take care of this issue, then I’ll be right back here,
safe and sound. Besides, I’ve got Sveta with me.”

He snorted. “And you’re going unarmed? Take
this, at least.” He tossed something at me and I caught it before I
realized it was my own sword in its scabbard. I took a moment to
trace the kanji carved into the bone hilt, the same ones that
tattooed my biceps, then nodded my thanks to him. “If we’re not
back by dawn, get worried.” That earned me a grumble, and he
hobbled off toward the house again.

I carefully stowed The Way behind the seat of
the truck, and slid behind the steering wheel. “Okay, kid. Where do
we start looking for him?”

Estéban, crammed into the middle seat, just
looked straight ahead, his jaw tight. “Head down into town. He
wouldn’t try to hide with family, so he’ll go to one of his usual
places. We should try the warehouse first.”

“You got it.”

The ride down the mountain was bumpy and
silent, and I could see Cosalá lit up like Christmas long before we
drove into the empty nighttime streets. Even the tourists had
vacated, though with the windows rolled down, I could hear the low
bass beat of music throbbing from a few cantinas as we passed. The
town wasn’t entirely asleep yet.

The warehouse was dark, and the parking lot
was completely deserted. “No fight club tonight?”

Estéban shook his head as we slid out of the
truck. “They won’t come back here again. They’ll find someplace
else.”

“But you think your cousin will be here?”
Sveta had her gun out already, I noted, though it was pointed
safely at the ground.

“Probably not. But it is a place to
start.”

The door where we’d broken and entered the
night before was still unlocked, and we slipped in that way, the
kid producing a flashlight out of the old pickup. Sveta took point
and I brought up the rear, and we slowly made our way toward the
open end of the warehouse. The packed aisles of grocery staples
were still as tight and claustrophobic as before, but there was
something about the echoing silence of the place that made it
worse. I determinedly kept my gaze from drifting up, not thinking
about how someone atop the tall towers of pallets could easily
shove a stack over on us, ending all our worries in a second.

The fighting arena looked like one would
expect after an illicit party. Beer bottles and food wrappers were
strung everywhere, and broken glass crunched under our boots. With
no ventilation in the enormous building, the smells of sweat and
blood and…other things hung heavy in the air, almost solid enough
to form their own shapes. The kid muttered under his breath at the
stench, and Sveta cast him a withering glare. “Quiet!”

The three of us stood in the open, an easy
target if someone were so inclined, straining our ears for
something, anything, that might say there was another living
creature in the building. After long moments, I was willing to
concede that we were alone. Even the rats seemed to have vacated,
probably scared off by the sulfuric demon stench that lingered.

Still, rats weren’t the only vermin that
could linger in such a place. “Keep the light still, kid, I wanna
check something.”

My rune-etched mirror was always on my
keychain, and it buzzed softly against my fingers as I fished it
out and angled it to give me a view of the warehouse.

Watching my surroundings in the tiny glass, I
turned a slow circle, paying close attention to the dark areas just
outside the range of the flashlight beam. What I was looking for
would be hard to see in the shadows, but that’s where they liked to
hide. Sure enough, I caught a flicker of movement off to our left,
near the stacks of pallets we’d just cleared. I waited a few
moments to see if it happened again, then turned my head to double
check that what I was seeing was only in the mirror. “When I say,
Estéban, point the light at this pallet of rice over here.”

“Okay.”

I tilted the mirror so that I had a clear
view of the pallet’s corner, then said, “Now.”

The kid swung the light around, illuminating
absolutely nothing but a pallet of rice, at least in the real
world. In the mirror, a dark mop-like shape froze for a second,
then scurried deeper into the shadows on four insectile legs. “Knew
it. Nasty little buggers gotta be crawling all over this place.

It was what I called a Scrap demon, a
parasite of the demon world, and while I’d only seen the one, I was
willing to bet there were more. They liked to attach to people,
sucking their energy and will to live until the host just faded
away. A place like Paulito’s fight club, where stronger demons were
already hanging out, would be a prime breeding ground for the
filthy little things.

Sveta frowned. “Should we try to kill
it?”

“No, let it go. We don’t have time to clear a
place this size, if the infestation is large. We mostly just need
to make sure none of them latch onto us.” I flipped to another item
on my handy-dandy keychain, a small canister of demon mace. “Step
back, don’t breathe this in.”

The kid and Sveta both covered their mouths
with their T-shirts, and I did a quick perimeter sweep around the
cleared arena area, spraying a fine mist of cumin and cayenne in my
wake. Demons hated the stuff (wasn’t real fond of it myself, truth
be told), and hopefully it would keep the Scraps at bay until we
could get out of there.

That accomplished, Esteban slowly panned the
beam of light around us, even up into the rafters, then sighed.
“Paulito’s not here.”

“It was a long shot at best.” Something in
the beam of the flashlight caught my attention, and I gestured for
him to give it over. “But since we’re here, I want to take a look
at this magic circle he’s got going.”

The symbols had been slapped haphazardly on
the cement floor with blue paint. They formed a full circle about
ten feet across, but other than that, they made zero sense to me. I
traced one with my finger, waiting for the tell-tale tingle that
would mark lingering magic, and got nothing. Odd. “Do you recognize
these at all, kid? Sveta?”