Supernatural: Coyote's Kiss (9 page)

“
Not this kind of trouble
.” Xochi raised her head to meet his gaze. “
This isn’t a joke. People are dying.
”

“
Child
,” he said. “
Your people are always dying. That’s what makes you human
.”

“
But even you must sense the wrongness of these events. It’s unnatural. Balance must be restored
.”

“
Must it
?”

He was no longer Dean. Now he was a giant black coyote, standing on its hind legs and towering over her with a disturbingly human posture. But he still had Dean’s green eyes.

“
This world lost all sense of balance hundreds of years ago
,” he said. “
It was lost when the greedy priests of Tenochtitlan started using their sacrificial rituals for political and personal gain. You and your family are backward artifacts of a lost age. Adhering to principles that mean nothing in this modern world of unchecked chaos and destruction. Your mother knew this. That is why she took her own life.
”

“
Your lies can’t hurt me,
” Xochi said. “
My mother died in battle. The death of an honored warrior.
”

“
Your mother gave up. She couldn’t face her own obsolescence.
”

He’d shifted again, this time taking the form of her mother. The intimidating, barely remembered beauty who’d never held Xochi. Never tucked her in at night and soothed her fears. Who’d always been too busy hunting to bother with mundane things like birthdays or skinned knees. Who was gone before Xochi was old enough to hold a knife.

“
With respect, Huehuetque,
” Xochi said, struggling to keep her voice level. She couldn’t let him get to her. “
I did not call you here tonight to talk about my family. I want to talk about your family. This Borderwalker is your own spiritual granddaughter. She has become corrupted, lost in hate and fear. Help me find her and take away her pain
.”

“
You must go home to find her
.” He was an old man again. “
Go home, huntress. This is not about my family
.”

Xochi studied him, trying to squint through the smoke of lies and catch a glimpse of the truth.

“
Does she bite with coyote’s teeth?
” he asked. “
Or is she driven by the wind of beating wings
?”

“
I don’t understand...?
”

“
She is just the song. Ask yourself, who is singing
?”

Then he was gone.

Whoever was banging on the motel door needed to die. It felt like they were banging directly on the inside of Dean’s skull.

“Up and at ’em, Sunshine,” Sam said, whipping the covers off Dean’s aching head. “Your girlfriend is here.”

“Tell her I’m indisposed,” Dean groaned.

“Tell her yourself,” Sam said, throwing the motel door wide open and letting in a vicious blast of sunlight like napalm.

“Aw, man!” Dean said, pulling the covers back over his face.

“Good morning, Sam,” Xochi said. “Dean. I brought some presents for you two boys.”

“You should give them to me,” Sam said. “Dean’s been naughty.”

“Close the damn door, will ya?” Dean said from under the thin motel bedspread.

Once the evil sun had been banished from the room, Dean peeled open his dry sticky eyes and peered out from under the covers. The first two knuckles on his right hand were scabbed and sore. Did he get into a fight the night before? He certainly felt like he’d gotten his ass kicked.

Dean had a vague recollection of killing the bottle of whisky, then making the brilliant decision to stagger over to the bar across the road from the motel. He remembered trying to pick up a woman who didn’t speak English and failing miserably. He remembered kicking a juke box that only played “Amor Prohibido” by Selena over and over no matter what songs he picked. After that, nothing.

When he looked up, he saw Xochi standing by the door, still dressed in the same clothes as the night before. She had a large, padded olive-green rifle bag slung over her shoulder and that same look of arch amusement in her eyes.

Dean sat up gingerly, put his sock-clad feet on the carpet and his aching head in his hands, running his fingers through his hair. He noticed that he was still dressed in last night’s clothes too.

“Give me one of those bottles of water,” Dean said. “My mouth tastes like demon ass.”

“You’d know,” Sam replied, tossing Dean the bottle.

Dean cracked open the water and hit it hard, downing more than half in one swallow.

“Well, do you want your presents or don’t you?” Xochi asked.

She handed the rifle bag to Sam.

“What the hell do you have in here?” Sam asked, weighing the bag in his hand, surprised by its weight. “Gold bars?”

“A hundred pounds of aspirin?” Dean asked. “That’d just about do it.”

“Open it,” she said.

Sam unzipped the bag and removed what looked at first like a baseball bat. But it was wider and flattened out, the wood darker. It took a second for Dean’s sluggish brain to process what it really was. There were several wickedly sharp, obsidian blades set into the edges of the bat in matched pairs, eight on each side, like a frozen chainsaw.

“This is
Maquahuitl
,” Xochi stated.

“Mack what?” Dean asked.

“
Maquahuitl
,” she said again. Dean didn’t feel any closer to being able to repeat that word than he had been when she first said it. “You can strike with the flat sides or cut with the sharp. In our case, you will want to cut. Edged weapons will inflict more damage to our Borderwalker than bullets and obsidian will be more effective than silver or steel. It is no guarantee, but it is better than empty hands.”

Sam swung the bat appreciatively.

“Nice,” he said. “There’s one here for you too, Dean.”

“And I have another gift,” Xochi said. “Outside.”

“This one is aspirin, right?”

She shook her head.

“A witness,” she said.

She opened the door and walked out into the parking lot. Sam set the strange weapon on the table with a weighty
clunk
and went after her. Dean got himself upright, shoved his feet into his unlaced boots and reluctantly followed them out into the bright morning. The mindlessly beautiful day seemed like a personal affront to his current condition.

There was another rider sitting on the back of Xochi’s Hayabusa. Helmet on, hands behind his back. It wasn’t until Dean got closer that he realized that the man’s hands were handcuffed to a bolt set into the frame of the bike.

Xochi pulled the helmet off his head, revealing a chinless, unshaven face and large, bulging eyes. One of them was blackened, swollen shut. He was gagged with a red bandana.

“I want you to meet my friend Ojon,” she said, pulling out a ring of keys and unlocking the cuffs. “Watch him. He’s a runner.”

Sam stepped up and took Ojon by the wiry arm, helping him down off the bike.

“Ojon was there the night of the first murders,” she said. “He’s seen our Borderwalker in action and he’s anxious to tell us all about it.”

Ojon was jittery, twitching like he was about to crawl out of his skin. His shirt was soaked with foul-smelling amphetamine sweat. His one good eye pinballed around the parking lot like he was trying to watch every angle at once. Like he was sure the Borderwalker was about to show up and eat his face.

Dean stepped up and took Ojon’s other arm and he and Sam tossed their witness into the motel room like bouncers giving him the bum’s rush in reverse. Xochi followed close behind, closing and locking the motel room door.

Ojon got up off his knees, untied the gag and pulled it out of his mouth. The second Xochi stepped away from the door he sprinted across the room and grabbed the door knob, frantically yanking and twisting. The lock was about an inch up from the knob and if he wasn’t so fixated on the doorknob, he could have just unlocked it and run.

Dean traded disbelieving looks with Sam and Xochi.

“Okay, okay,” Dean finally said, stepping up and putting his hand over Ojon’s. “Take it easy there, genius. We’re not gonna hurt you.”

“Keep her away from me,” he said, turning and flattening himself out against the door. His voice was high and reedy, his accent thick.

“I’ll try,” Dean said, leaning in close and dropping his voice. “But, between you and me... Well I’m sure you’ve seen
Q
.”

He looked at Dean like he’d just stepped off a flying saucer. Sam swallowed a snorting half-laugh.

“Come on, Ojon,” Dean said. “Relax. Have a seat. We just want to ask you a few questions.”

Ojon gave Dean a wary look, then scuttled over and sat on the corner of Sam’s unused bed, as far away from Xochi as he could be while still remaining in the same room.

“I’d offer you a drink,” Dean said. “But I don’t think there are any alcoholic beverages left in this county after last night.”

“I don’t know nothing,” he said, hands battling in his lap like he was a kid making invisible action figures fight.

“Just tell us what you saw that night,” Xochi said.

“Nothing,” he said again.

Xochi spoke to him in Spanish, her tone both intimate and menacing.

“A woman,” he said. “I saw a woman.”

“What did she look like?” Sam asked.

“Pretty at first.” He looked up at Sam, then away. “Then...” He shrugged. “Not so pretty.”

“Look, we’re not paying by the hour here,” Dean said. “Get on with it.”

“You pay?” Ojon looked suddenly hopeful.

Xochi hissed in Spanish and took a step closer to him, gloved hand raised.

“Okay, okay!” Ojon threw both hands up, shoulders hunched up to his ears. “I see a woman. She is pretty, with light skin and curly black hair. This CBP guy, he look to her and he know her. He
know
her. Then she change. She change to a monster. Like... like...”

He turned to Xochi and said something in Spanish.

“What?” Dean asked.

“Something about scorpions?” Sam said.

Xochi nodded. “He says the woman became a hole full of scorpion tails.”

“Charming,” Dean said. “Can’t wait to meet her.”

“Tell us what happened to the SUV,” Sam said.

“I no look. I run,” Ojon said. His gaze stayed locked on his hands.

“Is there anything else you can tell us about her?” Dean asked. “Anything at all?”

“She... she had a tattoo.”

“A tattoo?”

“Yes, a tattoo. On her neck.
Una mariposa
.”

“A butterfly?” Sam said, looking to Xochi for confirmation.

She nodded.

“Right,” Dean said. “Sam, make sure you write that down.” He turned to Xochi. “Look, he’s not telling us anything we don’t already know. I don’t think we’re gonna get anything useful out of this speed freak.”

“One more thing,” Xochi said. “I want his blood. For divination.”

That sent him flying over to the door again. This time he realized he could unlock it and was halfway out before Sam grabbed him around the waist and dragged him back in. He was flailing and kicking, shrieking like a howler monkey. Dean kicked the door closed and picked up the soggy gag, stuffing it back into Ojon’s mouth.

Despite his flyweight physique, it took all of both Sam and Dean’s combined muscle to hold Ojon down. His skin was moist and clammy and he stank, like bad teeth and burnt plastic. Xochi pulled out a stone knife with a handle shaped like a snake and pressed the blade to his dirty neck.

“You’re not gonna kill him, are you?” Dean asked out of the corner of his mouth.

“As much as I might like to,” Xochi said. “No. I only need a small amount of his blood.”

“She’s right,” Sam said. “If he was that close to our creature when she opened the doorway between the worlds, some residual bad mojo is probably still clinging to him. A divination using his tainted blood could point to where she’s headed.”

“Tainted blood?” Dean said. “This guy’s blood is so tainted we could sell it to truckers to help them stay awake.”

Xochi’s gloved hands were steady as surgeon’s as she nicked Ojon’s throat with the knife, collecting his blood on the flat edge of the blade. She then picked up the cap from Dean’s empty water bottle and let the blood run into it from the tip of the blade.

“Let him go,” Xochi said. “We have no more use for him.”

Sam and Dean eased up on Ojon. He eyed them both like it was some kind of trick.

“You heard her, slick,” Dean said. “You’re free to go.”

Ojon didn’t bother to remove the gag. He just bolted for the door, threw it open and ran out into the parking lot, where he tripped over his own big feet and ate asphalt about three feet away from Xochi’s bike.

Dean closed the door, shaking his head.

“Write the names of the two men,” Xochi said to Sam.

Sam tore a page from his notebook and did as she requested, setting the sheet of paper on the carpet at her feet. She knelt with the cap in one hand and the knife in the other. She spoke some words that Dean was pretty sure weren’t Spanish and the blood inside the cap began to swirl like a miniature maelstrom. When she up-ended the cap onto the center of the page, the blood ran toward one of the names as if the paper were slanted in that direction. Crimson tendrils flowed around the name, obliterating it.