Supernatural: Coyote's Kiss (29 page)

Claudia was searching across the radio dial when a lush, dream-like song came on featuring a melancholy male singer crooning in Spanish.

“This is
Caifanes
,” Xochi said. “‘
Los Dioses Occultos
.’ I love this song.”

“Cool,” Claudia said. “Sounds almost like a Mexican version of The Cure.”

This sort of music was way too girly for Dean, but he wasn’t really listening anyway. He looked out the window at the black nothingness they were driving through and then down at the bottle. Thought about what they were driving into. About the fact that this was probably the calm before the storm. Their last quiet night. He took his last swallow of tequila and handed it back to Xochi. Watched her drink. She offered the bottle back to him and he shook his head.

“I’m good,” he said.

She looked at him with questioning eyes, then shrugged and took another pull.

The hypnotic, drowsy music had a soporific effect on everybody in the car. Everyone but Sam, driving silently and lost in his own unknowable thoughts. Claudia had curled up like a cat in the front seat. Dean felt weary and tired, but still wound-up and unable to completely relax. There was nothing to look at in the dark cocoon of the Rover except Xochi. He watched her wrap her lips around the mouth of the nearly empty bottle, the muscles in her long neck working as she swallowed. She was making short work of that tequila.

“It is funny, no?” she asked.

She was watching him too.

“What’s funny?” he asked.

“I will admit to you something about myself,” she said. As she drank, her English got rougher, blurry around the edges. “I have never sleep together with a man as many times as I sleep with you.” She shook her head, waving the hand that held the bottle. “Only one other man. My husband.
Ex
-husband.” She shrugged. “With lovers, I do not sleep. I make love, and then I leave.”

“Yeah,” Dean said. He looked away, at the dark nothing outside the window. “Me, too.”

She downed the very last of the tequila and let the empty bottle drop to the floor behind the driver’s seat.

“Sex is not trust,” she said. “Sleep is trust. And trust is difficult for me.”

He didn’t say
me too
again. He didn’t need to.

“But I trust you, Dean,” she said. “You and Sam. I shouldn’t, but I do. You are like my family.”

Dean had no idea what to say in response to something like that. She clearly had quite a buzz going and was veering dangerous close to
I frickin love you, man
kind of drunk buddy talk. Under different circumstances it would be way too easy for Dean to steer that kind of talk in an entirely different direction.

“Speaking of sleep,” he said instead. “We should probably get some. It’s gonna be dawn before you know it.”

“Yes,” she said. “You are right.”

She slid across the seat and laid her head down on his chest. He just sat there for a minute, stunned and unsure what to do with his arms. Eventually, he gave in and put them around her so he wouldn’t have to keep holding them up the air. She snuggled against him with a wordless, sleepy noise, her hand sliding across his belly and around his waist. He looked up and saw Sam watching him in the rearview mirror with smug amusement. It was going to be a long night.

Xochi woke up in the back seat of the Rover with her face pressed into Dean’s armpit. She looked up at him and saw that he was not sleeping. He was looking down at her with his stubbled mouth twisted into a smirk.

“How’s my deodorant holding up?” Dean asked.

“Not so good,” she said, sitting up and sliding away from him.

“Admit it,” Dean said. “You kinda like my man stink, don’t you?”

She could feel her cheeks flush hot. She would rather die than admit it to him, but she did. The raw, natural scent of men’s bodies had always played a major yet not entirely conscious part in her decision to have sex with them. It didn’t matter how good-looking they were, if she didn’t like their scent, it wasn’t going to happen. And if she did, well, then they were a lot harder to ignore.

“Where are we?” she asked Sam, pushing a few stray strands of hair out of her eyes and peering out through the window.

They were no longer in the middle of nowhere. The road was lined with tire shops and garages, bars and warehouses and storefront churches. Still mostly closed. There was the slightest flush of dawn on the edge of the eastern sky.

“Just outside Guanajuato,” he replied. “We’ll be there before the sun comes up.”

“I think we should...” she began.

Claudia cut her off with a sharp gasp, suddenly sitting bolt upright in the passenger seat.

“What is it?”

“They’re coming,” she whispered.

A
Nagual
woman leapt up onto the hood of the Rover, fist smashing through the driver’s side of the windshield and shifting from a human hand to a broad panther paw.

Sam swerved, fighting to keep control of the big, unresponsive Rover on the rough road. The
Nagual
swiped at him with her claws, slashing his shirt. To Xochi’s surprise, Claudia reacted quickly and efficiently by drawing the snub-nosed .38 and firing through the hole in the glass. She hit the
Nagual
in the chest and the creature shrieked and rolled off the hood.

There was a brief, almost comical moment where Xochi and Dean both drew their guns and tried simultaneously to push each other protectively back and out of harm’s way. It took less than a full second for them to focus in on the danger and start working together to get Claudia out of the front seat. The front passenger side window shattered as Dean reached around the seat and hit the lever that dropped it straight back, while Xochi grabbed Claudia and hauled her backward, into the back seat between them.

Five or six huge crows swooped and dove around the roof of the car while another panther-woman ran beside the smashed passenger window, human from the waist up and holding a thin black reed to her lips.

“Are you hit?” Dean asked.

“I don’t think...” Claudia began.

One of the crows dive-bombed the windshield, shattering the already cracked glass and shifting swiftly into a man with long black hair, crouching on the front seat and reaching for Claudia with black clawed hands still hooked and bird-like.

Dean let the
Nagual
have it with the shotgun at point-blank range. The thunderous sound was deafening inside the car and the crow man’s entire upper half disintegrated into a spray of glowing cinders and feathers. Xochi could see but not hear Dean let out an exuberant cowboy whoop. She pushed Claudia’s head down and took aim at another crow circling the car. The first shot missed but the second hit, sending the bird spiraling and shifting until it hit the ground fully human.

Xochi saw Dean grab Sam’s shoulder, mouth making the shape of his brother’s name, probably yelling, though she still couldn’t hear. She saw that Sam was driving with one hand, the other on the side of his neck. A thin, feathered dart was sticking out from between his fingers. He swerved to avoid an oncoming truck and then slumped over the wheel, laying on the horn as the Rover left the road and slammed into the flimsy wall of a neighboring warehouse.

The back door on the driver’s side flew open, throwing Xochi and Claudia out onto the oily concrete floor while the Rover plowed into a large stack of boxes filled with plastic flip-flop sandals.

Xochi rolled into a crouch and tried to stand, but the damaged structure of the building was giving way, heavy beams crashing down all around her. She ducked and weaved through the chaos, trying to make her way to Claudia, when something hit her in the back of the head, making the world go red.

She staggered and fell to her knees, palms on the concrete. She didn’t seem to have her gun. Her hearing was starting to come back and she thought she heard Claudia screaming her name but her vision was blurred and eclipsed with spangles. She felt around her on the floor until her fingers found the handle of the .45.

“Dean,” she called. “Dean, protect Claudia!”

She shook her head to clear it and struggled to her feet, forcing her eyes to focus. Sam was still slumped behind the wheel. Dean had just shoved the other back door open and was crawling out, shotgun in one hand and ammo bag in the other, squinting against the blood that flowed from a cut just below his hairline.

Claudia was nowhere to be seen.

Xochi ran to the massive hole the Rover had torn in the warehouse wall. She was just in time to see a trio of crows carrying Claudia away, one clutching each shoulder of her shirt, the other the waistband of her jeans. She hung ragdoll loose in their grip. Not struggling, probably not conscious. Maybe not even alive. Xochi didn’t dare fire at the
Nagual
, for fear they would drop Claudia to her death. If she wasn’t dead already.

Xochi sank to her knees in the street, gun falling from her numb fingers.

When Dean crawled free of the wrecked Rover, he couldn’t see Xochi or Claudia anywhere, but all he could think about was Sam. The first thing he did when he got himself up on his feet was to run to the driver’s door and pull Sam out from behind the wheel. Sam was limp, a dead weight lolling against Dean’s chest as he half dragged, half carried his brother away from the leaking wreck.

“Sammy,” Dean said. “Come on, don’t do this to me, man. If you’re dead again, I swear I’m gonna frickin’ kill you.”

Dean’s legs felt weak as he got Sam out of the collapsing building and laid him out on the side of the road. A small crowd of curious spectators had gathered, advising Dean in Spanish and waving their arms. He ignored them, concentrating on his brother.

He pressed his ear to Sam’s lips listening for breath. Nothing. He pulled the dart out of Sam’s neck and then felt around for a pulse. It was there, but barely, weak and slow.

“Okay,” Dean said. “Okay, stay with me Sammy. You hear me? Stay with me.”

This hunt had been a bad idea from the beginning. This wasn’t just some entertaining little side bet, this was a nightmare that kept on getting worse with every turn. He should have never agreed to do this, he should have kept on pushing to try and find a way to get Sam’s soul back. Because as furious as he may have been when Sam let him get turned by that vamp, as much as it hurt him that this new version of Sam didn’t care if Dean lived or died, he just couldn’t bring himself to give up on the kid. He’d come close, more than once, but in the end, blood was blood, and Sam was all he had left.

Kneeling there in the dust with his brother’s barely breathing body in his arms, Dean realized suddenly that he didn’t have a clue what would happen to Sam’s soul if his body died. Would it stay trapped in that cage for eternity? There was no way Dean was going to let that happen. They were so deep into this now that the only way out was through.

He thought he heard the word
policia
more than once from the onlookers and turned toward the crowd.

“
No policia
!” he said, waving his arms in a broad negative pantomime. “
Por favor, no policia
!”

That’s when Xochi appeared out of the crowd, shouting in Spanish and running to Dean.

“Is he...?” she asked.

“Alive,” Dean said. “Barely.”

Xochi picked up the discarded dart and sniffed at the tip, then bent down and sniffed at Sam’s slack, open lips.

“I think this is a sleep drug,” Xochi said. “This dart was probably meant for Claudia.”

“How can you be sure?” Dean asked.

“Because if it was traditional
Nagual
poison,” she said, “he would be having convulsions and there would be an acidic yellow foam around his mouth.”

“Where is Claudia?”

Xochi shook her head, expression grim.

“They’ve got her.”

Dean clenched his fist.

“Dead?”

“I hope not,” she said.

A burly young man with long, curly hair and a Cannibal Corpse T-shirt pulled up in a battered, primer black El Camino, honking and hollering for people to get out of his way. He leaned out the driver’s window and called out to Dean, motioning at the open truck bed.