Supernatural: Coyote's Kiss (18 page)

“Sam,” Dean cried. “Claudia!”

Sam was already on it, pushing Claudia behind him and letting one of the panther women have it with the Aztec weapon. The screeching shifter fell into the coffee table, snapping it in half. Dean finished her with the last silver bullet in the clip.

“Out!” he called to Xochi, holding up the empty gun where she could see it.

She wordlessly pulled a second magazine from one of her pockets and tossed it to Dean. He released the empty and caught the full clip in mid-air, snapping it smoothly into place just in time to fire at the third panther woman. At that point, two more shifters had joined the fray, one going after Sam while the other hung back in the empty window frame, taking potshots at Dean and Xochi. Meanwhile, the Borderwalker was attacking Porcayo’s corpse, screaming with unhinged, irrational fury.

Xochi dove across the room and behind the fallen bookshelf, pressing herself up against the wall beside Dean and swapping out her own spent magazine.

“It’s good to see you, Dean,” she said.

“You too,” Dean said. “But who are your little friends?

They aren’t Borderwalkers are they?”

“
Nagual
,” Xochi said. “They are helping Teo, but I’m not sure why.”

“So who else is on the guest list for this little shindig?” Dean asked. “Dracula maybe, or the Creature from the Black Lagoon? Or how about Hitler? Because I don’t know about you, but I think this party could use a few more monsters.”

“Well...” Xochi began.

That’s when Teo walked in through the broken picture window.

What happened next happened so fast it made Dean’s head spin.

Teo leapt on the Borderwalker’s back, but instead of ganking her with the obsidian knife, she spoke a rapid gush of words that seemed to form into glowing blue strands, snaring the writhing Borderwalker like a spider’s web.

The ceiling above them split wide open, gaping like a hungry gullet and Teo and the Borderwalker fell toward it, spiraling impossibly upward into the void. There was a sound like a thunderclap, like a sonic boom, and they were both gone. The two remaining shifters did a quick fade, transforming into doe deer and taking off through the broken window.

For a few heartbeats, there was just silence in the room as the three hunters waited to see what would happen next. Nothing did.

“What the hell just happened?” Sam asked, checking out a couple of nasty claw-marks on his forearm. He grabbed a crumpled red tablecloth and pressed it to the bleeding wounds.

“Teo has saddled the Borderwalker,” Xochi said. “Rode her through the gate into the Borderland between worlds.”

“Okay,” Dean said, frowning and handing Xochi’s pistol back to her. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” Xochi said, holstering both the pistols. “But I do know this. The Borderwalker’s power to transport people and things goes both ways. She can also bring things from the worlds beyond through the Borderland and into our world. I think maybe Teo is planning to unleash something ancient and terrible. We have to find a way to stop her.”

“This job’s too hard,” Dean said to Sam. “Let’s be firemen instead.”

Sam laughed, shaking his head.

“Where is Claudia?” Xochi asked.

They found her huddled underneath an end table, knees tucked up under her chin and eyes squeezed shut.

“Are you all right?” Xochi asked gently, offering Claudia her hand.

“Don’t touch me,” the girl responded.

“We need to get out of here,” Xochi said. “Now.”

Claudia started crying, face buried in her hands.

Xochi looked up at Dean. He could see that she was silently asking him to do something to comfort Claudia, but he wasn’t any better at nursing the wounded than she was. Dean had never considered himself the boo-boo kissing type. Normally Dean would have relied on Sam for that kind of emotional aftercare, but in his current soulless state his brother was worse than useless in that department.

“Listen, kid,” Dean began, kneeling down awkwardly beside her.

Claudia threw her arms around him, sobbing against his chest.

“Yeah, well...” He patted her back awkwardly, looking up at Xochi. Xochi gave him an encouraging thumbs-up. “Okay, come on, let’s get you out of here.”

He stood slowly and she stood with him, clinging to him like she was drowning. Xochi and Sam both headed for the broken window frame, Xochi waving for Dean to follow. Dean lifted Claudia in his arms and carried her through the debris, wreckage and bloody carnage that used to be her home.

When he got out to the Impala, his arms full of sobbing teenager, he just stood for a moment, unable to let go of her to get the keys from his pocket.

“I’ll drive,” Xochi said. “Where are your keys?”

“Yeah,” Dean said. “Look, nothing personal, but I don’t really like other people driving my car.”

Dean could hear sirens in the distance.

“Unless you plan to drive with her in your lap,” Xochi said with an arched eyebrow, “you’d better change that policy.”

Dean looked over to Sam, who raised his swaddled arm and shrugged. He was clearly way too amused by this exchange to offer any help.

“Right front pocket,” Dean said eventually. “But don’t touch the stereo.”

He lifted Claudia a little higher in his arms so that Xochi could reach into his pocket, trying not to think about how weird and uncomfortable this felt.

Xochi unlocked the Impala’s doors and Dean tried to put Claudia down in the back seat, but she clung to him with panicked desperation and he had no choice but to get into the back seat with her. Sam got in the front passenger seat and Xochi slipped behind the wheel.

Xochi revved the Impala and put her in gear, pulling away from the curb. Dean had to resist the urge to watch the road and lecture Xochi on her driving. After a while, Claudia slowly started to wind down, easing up on the death grip she had on Dean. He looked down and saw that the front of his shirt was smeared with black blotches from her runny eyeliner.

“You okay?” he asked her.

She shook her head.

“Would you be?” she asked.

“Believe me, I’ve been there,” he said.

She was looking up at him, black make-up running down her chubby cheeks and eyes narrow and suspicious.

“I lost both my parents to this kind of action,” Dean told her.

“What?” Claudia looked away, tears welling back up again. “That’s supposed to make me feel better?”

“I’m just saying,” Dean told her. “You don’t always get to choose what happens to you and your family, but you can choose how you react. Know what I mean? You can either let it chew you up or you can keep fighting no matter what. I chose to keep fighting. Now it’s your turn to choose.”

Dean could see that his words were getting through to her, but he could also see they were having another, unfortunate side effect. Now she was looking up at him with big puppy-dog eyes.

“Hey Xochi,” Dean said, pulling his hand away from Claudia and stuffing it into his pocket. “Why don’t you pull into that diner. I think we really need to talk some stuff over. Figure out our next move. There’s no point just driving around aimlessly.”

Really, he just wanted to get out of the back seat and Claudia’s adoring gaze.

“No problem,” Xochi said, hitting the turn signal.

She pulled into the first available slot in the parking lot, killed the ignition and tossed the keys to Dean.

“Thanks for trusting me to drive,” she said. “It was a real pleasure. This is a beautiful car.”

“Don’t get used to it,” Dean said, pocketing the keys.

This diner was called “ORBIT BURGER,” a mid-century classic, all futuristic angles and atomic-age details. The sign was shaped like a rocket ship and the décor inside continued the space-faring theme.

The four of them took a table all the way in the back, as far away from other patrons as they could get. Claudia sat beside Dean in the booth and so Xochi sat opposite her.

Sam took off into the men’s room with a first-aid kit while the other three stared at the menus and didn’t speak. In the end, none of them actually felt like eating, so they just got coffee. Claudia asked for a chocolate milkshake but then barely touched it. When Sam returned with a neat, white bandage on his arm, he slid into the booth beside Xochi.

Xochi was intensely relieved to be reunited with Dean and Sam. She’d felt sure from the beginning that they needed to stick together and now more than ever, she knew that was true. It had been a hell of a fight trying to make her way back to them. Teo’s pet
Nagual
were on her the whole way, hounding her and thwarting her at every turn. What had her sister got herself into?

“Where to begin?” Xochi asked. “This is such a mess.”

“First things first,” Dean said. “Claudia, where can we take you? Someplace safe, grandparents or friends maybe?”

“I’m not a child,” she said. “I’m not going to Grandma’s house, I’m going to find my real mother.”

“Don’t even think about it,” Dean said. “You can’t...”

“I can,” Claudia said. “She’s all I have left.”

“There’s no way...” Dean began.

“It’s my choice,” Claudia said. She turned to Dean. “I choose, right? You said so yourself.”

“Claudia,” Dean said. “You have no idea...”

“Don’t I?” Claudia picked up her napkin, shredding the edge with a chipped black fingernail. “I know where she is right now. I’ve always known. And if you won’t help me get to her, then I’ll go alone.”

“You know where she is now?” Sam asked. “Are you sure?”

“Ever since I was little, I’ve had these...” Claudia looked down at the shredded napkin. “They’re like dreams, but they don’t always come when I’m sleeping. We have a bond. I can’t really explain it. It’s like I can see her, my real mother, inside my mind. Her name is Elvia. I bet you didn’t know that. Elvia Revueltas.”

“No,” Dean said. “We didn’t know that.”

“For the longest time,” Claudia continued. “She was lost. Wandering alone, scared and hurting. Then I saw her in Choulic. In San Diego. In Yuma. She was so angry. So angry. I never told anyone about her. They would just say I’m crazy, but I’m not, am I?”

“So where is she now?” Sam asked.

Claudia looked at Sam with a hard frown.

“What, you want me to tell you where she is so you can kill her?”

“I’m sorry, but we have no choice,” Xochi said. “What your mother has become, it’s unnatural. She needs to be put down, like a sick dog. You have to help us find her.”

“No,” Claudia said. “Tell them Dean, there’s always a choice. Isn’t there? Isn’t there?”

Dean didn’t answer. He had no idea what to say.

“Screw you people,” Claudia said, standing up. “I’m not helping you kill my mom!”

An old Mexican man a few booths down looked up over the edge of his Spanish newspaper at Dean and Claudia, frowning.

“Keep your voice down,” Dean said.

“Okay, just hang on a second,” Sam said. “Please, sit down. I think I have an idea.”

Claudia paused warily, then sat cautiously on the edge of the booth, ready to bolt.

“Dean,” Sam said. “Remember when you got turned into a vampire?”

Claudia’s eyes went wide.

“Oh yeah,” Dean said, hard stare locked on Sam with half-buried fury flashing in his eyes. “I remember.”

“You’re a vampire?” Claudia asked, like she hadn’t heard anything else.

Xochi could see that Claudia was rapidly developing a massive crush on Dean. The rush of teenage hormones flooding the booth was thicker than the greasy smoke coming off the grill in the kitchen.

“Whoa, hold on,” Dean said. “First of all, being a vampire isn’t sexy, okay? Not even a little bit. I’m dead serious. It was one of the worst things that’s ever happened to me, and I’ve been to Hell so you better believe I know what I’m talking about. Second, I’m not a vampire anymore, because...”

He looked up at Sam, suddenly understanding.

“You think there’s a way we can cure the Borderwalker?”

Dean turned to Xochi. “Is that possible?” he asked. “To turn the Borderwalker back into a normal human?”

“I don’t know,” Xochi said. “But I know who would. Huehuecoyotl. If he can tell us how to transform her back into a human, then she will be unable to open a gate between the worlds. She will be useless to Teo.”

“Okay,” Sam said. “So we talk this coyote dude into giving us a way to cure the Borderwalker, but we’ll still need to find her.”

“I think she’s in Mexico,” Claudia said. “Somewhere close to the border, but not Tijuana. I don’t know where that woman is taking her, but she’s very scared and confused. Promise me you won’t hurt her. Please?”

“I cannot promise that,” Xochi said. “I won’t lie to you, but I can promise to try this other plan first. If we fail, we may have no other choice. This hunt has become so much bigger than simply putting a suffering animal out of its misery. I think my sister is using the Borderwalker for something big. Something terrible.”

There was silence for a moment at the table. Xochi could see the gravity of her words sinking in for Claudia but also for Dean. Claudia looked terrified and unsure. Dean just looked grim and determined.

“How about the panther chicks?” Dean asked. “Where do they fit into all this?”