Rescue From Planet Pleasure (9 page)

Chapter Fourteen

I paused to survey the aftermath. Smoke from Phaedra’s incinerated vampires fouled the night air. Dinner-plate-sized divots marked where her undead goons had come out of the ground, the holes now plugged with fresh dirt.

Phaedra was gone but her presence and the mayhem lingered like an echo.

Jolie staggered and sank to her knees. In a weary motion, she shoved both .45s into their shoulder holsters and waved that she was okay.

I turned my attention to Coyote. He remained in the dirt where Phaedra had thrown him. His aura trembled, flickering weakly between yellow, orange, and red. With every shift of color, his body morphed from coyote to human. His bones twisted, his fur dissolved into his skin, and his muzzle shrank against his face until he lay in his previous vampire form, naked.

Rainelle lay in the ravine, still unconscious, and by reading her aura, I could tell she was otherwise unhurt.

El Cucuy threw his shoulders back, his segmented body shimmering in the light of the moon. “It’s best that we go.”

I saw no reason to stick around. I rose to my feet and trotted into the ravine. Jolie stood and followed me. She scooped Rainelle in her arms while I gathered the clothes Coyote had discarded during his transmutation, including his purloined gold Rolex. His belongings in hand, I continued up the other side of the ravine where I crouched beside him.

Bruises marred the dark skin of his torso and arms. I slipped my hands beneath his shoulders and the back of his thighs. He weighed maybe a hundred pounds. His kundalini noir stirred faintly within him, and I knew he was in bad shape.

Jolie tossed Rainelle onto one shoulder and scurried up the side of the ravine. I hustled behind her with Coyote’s bony frame cradled to my chest. He bounced limply in my arms, making me regret not taking the time to stop and tug his pants on so his junk wouldn’t be flopping so close to my face.

El Cucuy jogged beside us as we ran to the mesa. I thanked him for his assist.

“Why did you help?” Jolie asked.

“You’re my friends, no? Friends help friends, no?”

“Now you’re Phaedra’s enemy.”

“No matter. She wasn’t my friend.”

“Where’s Marina? Aren’t you two … ahem …?” Jolie cleared her throat.

“She’s up north,” El Cucuy replied. “Doing her scary magic along Rio Chama.” He didn’t answer if he and Coyote’s mother were friends with benefits. I couldn’t imagine getting “friendly” with him—all those metal bits sliding into tight, moist places—and I didn’t want a demo.

“I can tell you,” he explained, “that she won’t be happy about what happened to Coyote. He is her lone surviving child.”

“Who’s going to tell her?” I asked.

“She probably already knows.”

“How?”

El Cucuy’s head blew apart. The pieces traveled maybe five feet, held steady in the air for an instant, then smashed back together to reform his head. “Can you explain that?”

“Uh … no.”

“Then don’t ask me to explain how Marina knows.”

We picked up our pace and hurdled the clumps of prickly pear in our way.

Jolie shifted Rainelle from her shoulder to her arms. “What are you, exactly?”

“I am El Cucuy, the boogieman.”

“But what kind of creature are you?”

His arms elongated until they stretched longer than his legs. Then he paddled his arms beneath him and bounded over the ground in kangaroo-like leaps. “
Rey de los espantos.
”

Jolie asked, “Shape-shifter?”

“No,” I corrected, “King of the supernatural spooks.”

“Shhh,” El Cucuy whispered, “Don’t say
shape-shifter.
” His arms shrank to their previous “normal” length and he resumed running on his hind lizard legs. “They might hear you.”

“They who?”

He pointed to the mesa, now a couple of hundred meters away. Jolie and I slowed to a trot. Bizarre ghostly shapes crawled along the face of the slope. Rectangular shapes that looked like hides stretched over stilts. Skin-walkers?

“Out here, those are shape-shifters. They’re very protective of the title. Apparently you have to go to school and learn all kinds of black-magic mumbo-jumbo ceremonies to call yourself a shift-shifter.”

Jolie asked, “Who are they?”

“Navajo.”

The skin-walkers wandered about the rocky slopes like emaciated horses looking to graze.

“Why do they look so weird?” Jolie persisted. “I thought shape-shifters would turn into animals. Fox. Wolf. Deer.”

“This is their in-between form, between human and animal.”

“Should we fear them?” Jolie picked up the pace.

“I fear them.” El Cucuy chuckled uncomfortably. “To the Navajo, they are the damned. But they are not here to attack. Your fight with Phaedra brought them. This is their turf.”

We reached the bottom of the mesa, and El Cucuy led us to an uphill trail. The skin-walkers ambled across the rocks to keep us in view.

Midway up the slope we heard a noise rumbling across the canyon. The ground trembled around us. At first I feared it was the return of Phaedra, but as the noise grew louder I recognized the too-familiar rhythm of helicopter rotor blades.

Three helicopters appeared in Chaco Canyon, flying low and fast, in the direction of our fight with Phaedra. Like I needed these assholes to show up. They cruised without lights and would have blended against the murky background, but thanks to my vampiric night vision, I could easily spot them. The lead chopper was a large CH-53, identical to the one we had seen yesterday with the psychotronic diviners mounted alongside. Its escort was a pair of UH-60 Blackhawks. Cress Tech must have been attracted by the psychic disturbance caused by Phaedra’s aural blasts.

The Sea Dragon hovered over the fight area. One of the Blackhawks peeled to the right, away from us, and circled Fajada Butte. The other gained altitude and banked in our direction.

El Cucuy continued up the slope, Jolie and I close behind with our arms full. We couldn’t outrun the Blackhawk, and there was no place to hide.

The helicopter slowed above the rim of the mesa. A searchlight beamed from under its nose and raked the ground. The beam swiveled to Coyote’s home and reflected off the doublewide with a dazzling glow. The shaft of light swept over the fence, the yard, and in our direction.

Just as the beam was about to wash over us, El Cucuy exploded to thousands of little Cucuys that scattered into the gloom and vanished.

The light fixed on Jolie and me, with Rainelle and Coyote in our arms. The beam held steady for a short moment, then flicked off, leaving me to blink away the spots. The helicopter turned from us and headed into the canyon.

Cress Tech was looking for something and thankfully, we weren’t it. Since their system had been triggered by huge pulses of psychic energy, they must’ve been looking for something more than two people carrying a couple of other people in their arms. To the Cress Tech crew we were probably drunken Navajos wandering the desert. Who else would be out here at this hour?

The Blackhawk joined the other two helicopters. They climbed to altitude and turned on their navigation lights, flashing red, green, and white. Forming a
V
—the Sea Dragon at the lead—they banked to the southeast and shrank into the distance.

“Where are they going?” Jolie asked. “Any military bases close by?”

“Kirkland Air Force Base,” I answered. “Just outside Albuquerque.”

“Anything special happen there?”

“High-tech black ops stuff.”

“I’m not surprised. What about the skin-walkers? Wouldn’t the helicopters see them?”

Good point but they hadn’t shown signs of having spotted the skin-walkers. Maybe the Navajo spirits had vanished into the night like El Cucuy.

We crossed the last fifty feet from the mesa’s rim to Coyote’s doublewide. The goats bleated. Coyote’s dog stumbled from under the doublewide like he had been sleeping off a bender. Phaedra’s minions must’ve drugged the poor mutt.

Jolie fumbled with the front doorknob and led us in. She turned the lights on, and we entered the master bedroom. I put Coyote on the right side of the queen bed and Jolie placed Rainelle on the left. I grabbed a blanket from the closet and spread it over Coyote’s naked body, partly because he needed warmth but more to spare my eyes.

Rainelle’s aura was a vivid red, the color of strawberry Kool-Aid. “She’s improving,” I remarked. “What do you think knocked her out?”

“A potion,” Jolie answered. “An injection. Something like that.”

Coyote’s aura still shimmered like a weak flame. I said, “He doesn’t look too good.”

Jolie crossed her arms and studied him. “This screws things up. He was supposed to show us how to use the Sun Dagger. Unless he gets better soon, we’re fucked if we want to save Carmen.”

I tried not to let Jolie’s pessimism further sully my already dark mood. “Let’s save those worries for later. Maybe his mom has a remedy. Maybe Coyote will get better on his own. Maybe by this time tomorrow, we’ll be back from D-Galtha, safe with Carmen.”

“Yeah, that’s likely,” Jolie replied, her voice keen with sarcasm. “And until then, we’ll count the bluebirds and rainbows shooting out of my ass.”

She grasped a bottle of Presidente brandy from the bureau. She uncapped the bottle and was about to take a sip when I said, “You know Coyote probably drank straight from the bottle.”

Wincing, she replaced the cap and set the bottle back down.

We left Rainelle and Coyote in the bedroom. Jolie and I returned to the living room and sat, me slouching on the sofa and she on the armchair. Our eyes settled on Coyote’s notes and drawings littering the coffee table. She picked up the charcoal rubbing of the Sun Dagger, squinted and tossed it back down. My sour mood reflected hers. We kept quiet. No need to dwell about the mess we were in. Looming before us was our one chance for the next hundred plus years to rescue Carmen. We’d fought Phaedra and her minions to a draw. Long minutes passed.

Rainelle appeared in the hall. Barefoot. With a bathrobe rumpled over her dress. Her short hair zigzagged in all directions. She wandered into the kitchen. Without asking, she grabbed a couple of blood bags from the fridge, tossed one to Jolie and one to me. Rainelle plugged in the water pot on the kitchen counter. Jolie and I inquired how she was doing.

“Empty headed.” She tapped her temple. “Like there’s a big hole in my brain and my thoughts are slowly filling up the space. Other than that, just pissed off.”

“And Coyote?” I asked.

“Not good. Maybe he’ll get better soon.”

“We need better than maybes,” Jolie said.

“You let me worry about him,” Rainelle replied. “If I need to, I’ll ask Doña Marina for help. How did he get hurt?”

Jolie and I gave Rainelle a rundown of the fight. When we mentioned how Coyote had been injured, she remained stoic though her eyes did mist.

The water pot boiled. Rainelle fixed herself tea. I got a rag and ran it over my Colt. She leaned across the counter and watched me as I polished the barrel of my magnum.

“Is that all you’re going to do?” she asked. “Play with your gun?”

“If we go,” rather that
when
we go to Fajada Butte, “I’d like something with a lot more
oomph
than this. Phaedra knows we’re packing heat and she’s going to up the ante.”

Rainelle slurped her tea. “I know someone. He might be of help.” She gave me a name—Francisco Yellowhair-Chavez—and an address in Farmington. “He’s a local Navajo,” she added, like that detail wasn’t obvious.

Setting her cup down, she walked around the counter. “It’ll be dawn soon.” She brought us quilts and padded about the doublewide, securing windows and closing blinds. She clicked off the light switches and the interior became dark as a tomb, which brought a nice comforting feeling. Retreating to the master bedroom, she closed the door.

An hour after sunrise, when the sun was finally at a safe height, Jolie and I crawled from under our quilts. Rainelle made coffee and toasted fry bread to go with scrambled eggs, bacon, and goat’s blood. Coyote wasn’t doing any better.

Jolie drove Rainelle’s pickup to visit Yellowhair-Chavez. I sat next to her, my head on the swivel. Rainelle stayed behind to care after Coyote.

We followed a dirt road to the highway, and my cell phone picked up the network signal. I used the GPS function to guide us to the address—
Yahtahey
—a sporting goods store/game processing/notary public tucked between a Lotaburger and a Church’s Chicken, both eateries definitely fine examples of traditional Native American cuisine. The parking lot around Yahtahey was plenty big. In fact, Farmington seemed more dirt parking lot than anything else.

Jolie and I entered Yahtahey. Sporting merchandise—team hoodies, uniforms, footballs, basketballs—on the right, fishing and hunting supplies on the left. We navigated past crowded shelves and spinner racks to a back counter. A short buck-toothed man in thick glasses and a mustache greeted us. When I mentioned Yellowhair-Chavez, the clerk’s eyes flared a bit, and he picked up the phone by a cash register. He spoke in a rushed, clipped tone and glanced to the ceiling. I followed his line of sight to a video camera. I sensed a reluctant tone in his voice so I mentioned that Rainelle had sent us.

The clerk relayed the comment, went “Uh-huh” a couple of times, and set the phone back on the cradle. He raised the center portion of the counter to let us pass and pointed to a door along the back wall. A loud buzz sounded from the door, and a dead bolt snapped.

Jolie followed me through. The back room was dimly lit with pools of illumination scattered beneath the ceiling. Rows of gun safes and shelves with boxes of ammo divided the room. The heads of deer, elk, and big horn sheep stared from the walls.

A man rose from behind a wooden desk at the rear of the room. A nameplate on the desk said: Francisco Yellowhair-Chavez. With a name like that I expected a blond Mexican, but his slicked-back hair was raven black with silver threads. He was heavy-set with skin burnished to a mahogany brown. Definitely Navajo.

His huge bovine-like eyes tracked us. A pale-gray cowboy hat with an enormous crown sat on his head. A huge silver and turquoise thunderbird clasped a bolo tie to his meaty throat. A silver and gold belt buckle as big as a saucer peeked beneath the swell of his substantial gut. Silver and turquoise bracelets the size of leg irons hung from both thick wrists. Everything about this man seemed massive and imposing, like he’d been hewn from a boulder.