Supernatural: Coyote's Kiss (27 page)

“Thanks, Chelo,” Xochi said, filling up the pack. “You’re the best.”

“Don’t you forget it,” Chelo said. “It was a pleasure doing business with you, as always. And you American boys, remember, I ship international. You can order online, anytime.”

She handed Sam a business card with a web address and a lot of gothy-looking clip art. He smiled and slipped it into his wallet.

Xochi shouldered the pack and laid a thick roll of Mexican money on Chelo. Chelo tried to refuse in Spanish, but Xochi insisted. Chelo gave Claudia a big hug and then kissed both Sam and Dean full on the mouth.

“Come back any time,” she said.

Xochi sold the two dirt bikes and the trailer to another friend before they left Chihuahua, arguing that they had a lot of miles to cover and they could drive faster without the trailer. Dean had been thinking the same thing.

“So where should we stop to try and summon the Alpha Borderwalker?” Sam asked as he pulled the Rover onto
Carretera Federal 45
.

“Anywhere along the way, I guess,” Dean replied. “Just make it somewhere pretty far from any kind of civilization.”

“Do you see anything around here that looks like civilization?” Sam asked, gesturing through the dusty windshield at the long flat stretch of nothing they were passing through.

“That’s for the best,” Dean said. “If she’s gonna be anywhere near as pissed off as the coyote guy said she’d be, I don’t want any innocent bystanders hanging around. In fact, that might be a good time for you guys to teach Claudia how to shoot.”

“We’re not letting you face the Alpha alone,” Xochi said.

“Trust me on this,” Dean said. “I can handle it.”

“No way,” Claudia said. “That’s crazy.”

“No,” Xochi said. “No, I’ll come with you. You need someone to have your back.”

“Look,” Dean said. “Don’t think I don’t appreciate the offer, but I’m the most expendable person in this group and you know it. You’re our native guide, Claudia’s our tracker and Sam, well whatever mystical reason you have for thinking you need him to succeed in this hunt, I’m not gonna argue with you on that. That leaves me.”

“He’s right,” Sam said.

“How can you say that?” Claudia asked.

“Tell ’em, Sammy,” he said. “I’m just trying to be practical here.”

Xochi swore quietly in Spanish.

“I hate it, but I cannot argue,” she said.

“But you were the one who said we all need to stay together from now on,” Claudia said to her. “You’re just gonna let him walk off and get killed?”

“This ain’t my first rodeo, kid,” Dean said. “I’m not gonna get killed, I’m gonna get that damn chunk of copal. And when I come back, I want to see you shoot the ace out of the ace of spades. Deal?”

“Fine,” Claudia said, turning her face away and staring out the window at the non-scenery. “I don’t care anyway.”

“Atta girl,” Dean said. “Sam, why don’t you take that little side road there. Just get us a few miles off the main drag.”

They passed a few little shack-like dwellings and a sort of roadside restaurant, then more nothing. The sun was starting to slide down into a smoldering-red sunset.

“Here,” Xochi said, pointing to a stubbly rock formation on the right.

Sam pulled the Rover off the road and killed the engine. The four of them got out and Claudia threw her arms around Dean’s neck, smashing her face into his chest. He patted her back and then pulled away.

“Hey, what did I tell you?” he said. “I’ll be fine.”

“Be careful,” she said. “Promise me you will. We need you.”

“Claudia,” Xochi said. “Get the ammo bag and a couple of those plastic bottles out of the back.”

“Go on,” Dean said.

Claudia looked up at him, then stood up on her tiptoes to press a lightning-quick kiss to his cheek.

“Good luck,” she said, blushing like a house on fire and turning back to the Rover.

Xochi came over to Dean and held out her flask. He took it. Took a slug. Tried to give it back, but she shook her head.

“Take it,” she said. “And this.”

She pulled out her sacred, snake-handled stone knife. Spun it in her grip so that the handle was facing him and held it out.

“It’s not obsidian,” she said. “But it’s better than nothing.”

He held her gaze for a moment, then nodded and took it.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Just bring it back,” she said.

She didn’t hug him or kiss him. She just turned without another word and walked back to the Rover. He wrapped his fingers around the sinuously carved handle. It was still warm from her hand. He silently promised her that he would bring it back.

He walked away, into the desert.

Dean walked toward the sunset until he couldn’t see the Rover anymore. The sound of Claudia’s target practice gradually faded into the distance. He couldn’t see any man-made structures anywhere. He couldn’t see the road or the car. He was utterly, completely alone. He eventually slowed and then stopped.

Reaching into his pocket, he took out the flute Huehuecoyotl had given him. He held it up, turning it over and over in his hand. It hadn’t occurred to him until that second that he had absolutely no idea how to play a flute. He’d never even touched one, not even a toy when he was a kid. The only toy instrument he’d ever had was a drum, and his frequently hung-over father had told him that it had “got lost” only two or three days after Christmas.

The flute had four holes in it, evenly spaced along the top. It was pretty obvious that you were supposed to put your mouth on the skinny end and blow into it, but he had no idea what the holes were for.

He lifted the flute to his lips and blew experimentally into it. The breathy, resonant note that came out was so achingly beautiful that it startled him into momentary silence. It was an inexplicably sexy sound, like a woman’s knowing, intimate laughter. The kind of laugh that let you know you were in. That you’d gone from flirting to making love for the first time. That she was yours.

Dean shook his head to clear it and raised the flute to his lips again, ready this time for the seductive effect of the music. He moved his fingertips over the top of the flute and realized that he could make the tone move up or down by covering or uncovering the holes. He was nowhere near an actual song or anything, but he was able to sustain several varying notes that echoed out over the ancient landscape like a beacon.

The air around him began to shimmer and blur. An undulating ribbon of soft white light appeared, bisecting the sunset and forming a deepening rift in the skin of the sky. The Alpha Borderwalker appeared out of the rift, the strange shimmer clinging to her long black hair as she stepped down onto the sand as casually as if she were getting off a train.

Huehuecoyotl had said that she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, and he obviously wasn’t lying. She was absolutely breathtaking. Dean had always been partial to women with dark hair and eyes and she was a stunning example of his ideal type. Wide-set, mesmerizing espresso eyes behind heavy black lashes. Impossibly lush mouth.

Regal cheekbones. Flawless without a hint of make-up. But something about her beauty was disturbing. It was too perfect, so unreal that it was almost terrifying. Monstrous. Inhuman.

She was nude, but the soft, brown human skin below her collarbones graduated into sleek, mottled scales like a rattlesnake, making her luscious curves seem almost clothed. Her fingers ended in hooked black claws. An enormous pair of black-and-white condor’s wings sprouted from her shoulder blades, flexing and stretching wide, stirring the sand around Dean’s boots. This was a magnificent, terrible creature. Nothing like the miserable, tortured abomination they’d battled back in the States. This was what a Borderwalker was supposed to be.

“Who are you?” she asked, her voluptuous lips unmoving, as if her words were being whispered directly into Dean’s mind. “You are not my lover.”

The flute in his hand turned to smoke, drifting away on the desert wind. He stood his ground, unflinching.

“Huehuecoyotl sent me,” Dean said. “He told me that you would help me.”

Her heavy eyebrows bunched together into a slight frown. She took a step closer, the rich, amber-like scent of copal dizzying at close range, and reached out a talon-tipped finger to touch his throat, just below the line of his jaw. He could feel Xochi’s stone knife pressed against the small of his back, tucked into the waistband of his jeans, but there was no way to get to it in time to stop her from slitting his throat ear to ear if that’s what she wanted.

“I do not help human men,” she said.

“This help,” he said. “It’s not for me. It’s for a woman. Her name is Elvia Reveultas.”

“Elvia,” she said, the name barely louder than a breath inside Dean’s head.

“You know her?” Dean asked.

“I know what has been done to her,” the Alpha said. “I could do worse to you, human. With pleasure.”

She caressed his throat with the flat of her palm, the sharp point of her thumbnail sliding up into the soft spot behind his ear. He needed to think fast. To say something. Anything.

“Wow,” he said. “This really isn’t the kind of welcome I was expecting.”

“You know nothing about me,” she said, unmoving lips inches from his. “Or my welcome.”

“I just meant...” He swallowed against the crush of her hand on his trachea. “After everything that Huehuecoyotl said about you...”

She released some of the pressure on his neck.

“What did he say about me?” she asked.

“Nothing important,” Dean said. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Tell me,” she said. “Or I will gut you and leave you for the vultures.”

This was way too easy.

“Well it wasn’t so much what he said.” Dean shrugged. “You know how guys are. We hate coming right out and saying how we feel, but...” He paused. Let her hang for a second. “The way he talks about you, he’s obviously still crazy about you.”

“You lie,” she said. “You lie like he does.”

Of course he was lying, but, like he’d told Claudia, this wasn’t his first rodeo. Dean was a professional. A black belt, grandmaster, superfly liar. He’d been lying all his life and he knew that the easiest lie to sell is the one that someone really wants to believe.

“Yeah, what do I know?” Dean said. “I must be wrong.”

He turned like he was going to walk away. She let him, hands held palm up and open. He took a step, then another. Then, that sibilant whisper inside his head.

“Tell me what he said.”

“He told me about the time he spent with you,” Dean said, turning back to her. “I think that was the only time when he was ever really happy. He said you made him feel human.”

She was listening intently, claws clicking as she nervously opened and closed her hands.

“He still carries this awful guilt over what happened to you,” Dean continued. “He only left you because he wanted to protect you and ended up hurting you anyway.”

“I don’t understand,” she said. “Protect me from what?”

“Protect you from his own inner darkness,” Dean told her. “He knew he could never be the kind of man you deserve. That loving him would only bring you pain.”

She took a half a step back, wings folding inward and dark eyes suddenly wet with very human tears. Dean had to look away from the weeping monster, because he was starting to wonder who was the real monster here. That didn’t stop him from moving in for the checkmate.

“He wanted to help Elvia,” Dean said. “To make up for not being able to help you. But he can’t. Only you can save her now.”

“I know the pain of all my daughters,” she said. “Elvia’s pain, it is unspeakable.”

“Then help me help her,” Dean said.

“How?”

Dean frowned. For some reason, in all the time he’d spent scoping her snakeskin cleavage, he never noticed she was not wearing a necklace. Not until that moment.

“Huehuecoyotl said that you still have the lump of white copal that he gave you.” Dean touched his sternum. “He told me you kept it in a deerskin pouch around your neck, but...”

Her mouth twisted into a smile and Dean heard a low smoky laugh echo inside his head.

“A necklace?” she said. “That’s what he told you?”

She delicately circled her own sternum with a clawtip. The heart beneath her skin began to flicker, pulsing with a hot, ruddy glow.

“That lump of copal is deeply embedded inside my heart,” she said. “Just like the man who gave it to me. I cannot give it to you any more than I could give you my own beating heart.”

Dean made a solemn promise to kick that shifty coyote in the nards the next time he saw him.

“You know him,” Dean said. “Probably better than anyone.” Dean tried to remember what Xochi said about Huehuecoyotl. “His lies are more revealing than the truth, right? What do you think he really meant?”

“I have never tried to take away my affliction,” she said. “Only share it.”

Dean thought back to the cure Bobby had mixed up for him when Dean had been turned into a vampire. One of the main ingredients was the blood of the vamp that turned him. Clearly the Borderwalker that turned Elvia was dead, killed in the transition, but if these Borderwalkers have copal smoke for blood, then maybe all of them share the same smoke flowing through their veins. Smoke from the original piece of copal, currently burning inside the Alpha’s heart.