Chapter Eleven
I stared at the two decapitated heads. Their dead eyes bulged from sockets ringed with sagging skin, their jaws drooping open, fangs protruding.
The world as I knew it turned inside out. Questions crackled through my mind. When had Phaedra done this? Had she brought only the heads or had she dragged Phyllis and Natacha from Denver still alive, and then butchered them close by? If so, how? How? How could two badass vampires like Phyllis and Natacha let themselves get murdered?
A small voice whispered through me. You like my little gift, Felix? I picked these for you.
Phaedra was watching, leering. But all I could do was put my hands to my ears and shout, “Get out of my head, damn you.”
They didn’t see it coming, poor things. But you will.
Jolie tugged my arm and brought me back to the moment. She was hollering, “Let’s go.”
The morning shadow around me turned gray. Light seeped down the mesa, into the draw above me, toward the heads and became a brilliant yellow, the color of molten rock.
Jolie pulled harder on my arm and yelled that we had to get going.
The air grew hotter like I’d stuck my head inside a furnace. Never had I been this exposed to the dawn. As the ground brightened around me, a humming noise began in my ears like I could hear the light growing stronger.
Jolie yelled again, but the humming drowned her words.
The sunlight edged closer to the heads, and my skin tightened, my nerves shriveled. The humming intensified into a shriek.
The instant the light touched the tops of the two decapitated heads, the hair sizzled and smoked. The ray of sunlight traced down their faces, burning whatever it touched. The eyes smoldered, popped, and flames burst from the sockets. Fire jetted out their nostrils, out their mouths. The flaming skin sloughed away, leaving their skulls intact for a moment, before they fractured to pieces and fell in clumps of dust around the stakes. Black smoke twisted up the draw.
Jolie yanked my arm, and I turned to face her. She was yelling, and her mouth formed the words: Move! MOVE!
The shriek was now a deafening howl that made my kundalini noir shake. Heated air parched my mouth. Stung my tongue. My nostrils. My eyes.
Jolie kicked the back of my legs. I fell backwards. She grabbed my collar and hauled me beside her. My legs swung around, twisting my body away from the slope.
Coyote was ahead of us, bent over by the rear bumper of the De Soto, struggling to open its trunk. I staggered alongside Jolie, both of us bent over in an awkward duck walk to remain in the sliver of shadow still hugging the canyon’s basin. The instant direct sunlight touched us, we’d start to fry. Annihilation was seconds away.
The De Soto was a blur in front of me. The light was blinding, the air thick as hot molasses. Coyote heaved on the trunk lid and the trunk yawned open. He grabbed Jolie’s arm. She grabbed mine, and we tumbled in a daisy chain into the De Soto. My sunglasses were knocked away. Coyote climbed on top of me and slammed the trunk closed. A merciful darkness swallowed us.
We wormed deeper into the De Soto. The back wall of the trunk had been removed, and the sedan’s interior gutted to form a cocoon-like chamber littered with ratty blankets, clothes, and heaps of fabric. Cardboard and plywood had been fitted into the windows with rags crammed around them to seal out the light and seal in a musky odor.
Coyote pulled a tattered velvet curtain from where it had been discarded on the floor. The curtain rained dirt and ants across us as he spread it over our bodies. We huddled together and waited.
The dawn screamed like a hungry monster. If one ray of light leaked in, our sanctuary would turn into an oven. I clenched my eyes and kept my face down. The howling grew into a hurricane of noise, the beast seeking to devour us. We pressed into each other, squeezing into a frightened ball.
The shriek ebbed into the ringing noise, the ringing into a hum, and the hum faded to silence.
We stayed locked together for several moments until our kundalini noirs stopped quivering. We separated and poked our heads from under the curtain. Coyote and Jolie had removed their sunglasses. He rubbed his eyes.
I fished a tube of sunscreen from my jacket pocket and smeared the soothing lotion on my skin. I passed the tube to Coyote who gooped the sunscreen on and then tossed it to Jolie. She slathered her face, neck, both hands, and tossed the empty tube aside.
I asked Coyote, “How did you know about this place?”
“Me and a girl used to sneak down here for, you know, some hootchie-cootchie,” he answered.
“Rainelle?” Jolie asked.
“No. Some ruca who worked at Los Alamos. On the bomb. You know.” Coyote made the sound of an explosion.
“You dated a nuclear scientist?” Jolie pressed.
“Don’t act surprised,” Coyote replied in an insulted tone. “Brainy chicas dig me.” His voice deepened. “According to the Pythagorean theorem, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.” His voice returned to normal. “Not sure what that means, ese, I was never good at geomagraphy. Besides, she is long gone. Muchos años.”
We remained quiet, bunched together like dogs in a cage.
Jolie broke the silence, “Coyote, you can teleport on your own, right?”
“If you call it that, símon.”
“Then why didn’t you teleport us out of danger?”
“Unless there’s a portal, each must access the psychic world on their own. I could’ve teleported myself but I didn’t want to leave you behind.”
“Fair enough,” Jolie said. She scooted under the trunk lid, lay on her back, and cocked a leg. “Everyone ready?”
“Go for it,” I replied.
She kicked the trunk open. Sunlight dazzled us. My kundalini noir hitched from so much sudden brightness.
Jolie crawled out, stood, and dusted herself. Coyote emerged next, then it was my turn. A momentary panic whisked over me, a worry that we might have misjudged stepping into the sunlight too soon. But the air was morning cool and fresh. We were safe.
I climbed out of the trunk. “What about Phaedra?”
“She’s steps ahead of us,” Jolie replied. “She knew we were here and she knew what route we’d take back from Fajada Butte. How?”
We both looked at Coyote.
He said, “There is much that she knows, and much that she doesn’t.” Spikes of anxiety pistoned in and out from his aura’s penumbra.
“What’s that mean?” I asked.
Coyote’s aura formed a doughnut-shaped halo around his head. Two red beams shot from his eyes through the hole. “Phaedra is using the psychic plane to spy on us. She knows we’re going to use the Sun Dagger against her, but she doesn’t know how.”
“Neither do we.” I pointed at Jolie.
“In time, vatos.” Coyote’s eye beams disappeared and the halo melted into his aura.
“And just as worrisome,” Jolie offered, “what about your mom and Rainelle?”
His aura started pistoning the spikes again. Jolie and I swiveled our heads as we swept our sixth sense like radar beams across the landscape. Nothing suspicious pinged back.
Coyote slammed the trunk closed and flung handfuls of dirt over the car in a half-hearted attempt to make it look as if we hadn’t disturbed the location.
We started up the draw and paused where the vampire heads had been. Nothing much remained, just ash piled around the bases of the stakes.
“Did you know them?” she asked Coyote.
“Only Natacha,” he answered. “We weren’t friends.”
That was no surprise. She was a real ball buster from the Araneum, an icy blonde so cold she could probably chill beer in her cooter, and I couldn’t see her chumming up with Coyote.
“She’s the one who ran me out of the Araneum.” He kicked her ashes into the surrounding dirt and continued up the draw.
Jolie yanked the stakes from the ground and threw them into the desert, where they clattered on rocks and bounced out of sight.
“Why the mind fuck?” she asked. “Why stake Phyllis and Natacha and show her cards? If Phaedra intends to knock us off, why not wait and catch us by surprise?”
“She’s toying with us,” I answered. “And as far as mind fucks go, I give this one an A plus.”
“Or maybe Phaedra is waiting,” Coyote said. “Maybe she knows about Carmen. Maybe Phaedra needs to make sure she can kill us all at one time.”
“That’s reassuring,” Jolie replied.
“Phaedra has weaknesses.” Coyote started walking up the draw.
Jolie and I fell in behind him. “Like what?” I asked.
“Like her fear of you. And Carmen. That fear will make Phaedra overplay her hand.”
“How do you know that?”
Coyote stopped and turned to face me, his wrinkled eyes smoldering with feral determination. “Vato, have faith. Otherwise lie in the dirt like a turd and wait to be stepped on. Jolie and I will continue. Right, chica?”
She nodded.
“Entonces, sígueme.” He resumed climbing up the draw.
I felt like Coyote had placed a dunce cap on my head. Jolie and I trailed after him, the three of us hopping from rock to rock until we reached the rim of the mesa. Wisps of smoke twisted from Coyote’s home and the neighboring buildings a quarter mile away. Everything peaceful. Everything quiet. Tranquil. A jarring juxtaposition in the wake of our recent brush with the discovery of Phaedra’s gruesome souvenirs and our near escape from the murderous dawn.
We trotted across the mesa—Jolie and I panning the seemingly infinite vista—anxious, concerned that a trap or bad news waited. Maybe Phaedra had also attacked Coyote’s mom and Rainelle.
As we got closer to the houses, the dog began to bark. A metal rake skritched the ground. Rainelle’s Ford pickup came into view where it was parked on the north side of the doublewide.
Jolie slowed and dropped behind to provide cover—just in case.
Goats bleated. Chickens clucked. The dog barked. A cat meowed from behind the fence. The scene was so homey we should’ve burst out singing “Old McDonald Had a Farm.”
Coyote’s posture wilted as if the night’s misadventures had at last caught up with him. Lines of fatigue strained Jolie’s face, and I was sure I looked just as worn out.
The skritching stopped and Rainelle appeared from behind her home, a rake propped on her shoulder. “Welcome back.” She stopped at the fence, stared, and studied our weary faces. “You okay?”
“Why shouldn’t I be?” Coyote answered.
That’s the dilemma of bringing humans into the circle of the supernatural. How much do you tell them?
She asked, “Café con sangre?” the question making it obvious that she was used to his evasive replies.
Coyote rewarded her offer with a smile and added, “Have you seen La Llorona?”
“Your mother?” Rainelle quirked an eyebrow. “She has a name, you know.”
Coyote scoped the area around the house. “But have you seen her?”
“She was around last night.”
“Was El Cucuy with her?”
“Don’t think so. Why?”
“Todo está bien?”
She quirked her eyebrow again. “What are you getting at?”
“Nada. Let’s go inside. We’re hungry.”
“Well you can stay hungry,” Rainelle replied, “until you tell me what’s going on.”
Coyote hunched his shoulders and let them drop as he sighed. I could practically hear his thoughts: viejas, como chingan.
“There is trouble?” she asked.
He nodded. “I don’t want to worry you, querida.”
“Anyone comes here for trouble,” she brandished the rake like it was a club, “I’ll break their heads.” She relaxed her stance. “Just tell me what to expect.”
She turned to enter the doublewide from the back door. Coyote led Jolie and me through the kitchen entrance. We stowed our sunglasses and our auras were finally calming into a steady orange glow.
Within a few minutes, Rainelle was working an espresso machine that sputtered and spewed steamed blood into our coffee. Breakfast around the living room coffee table: omelets and fry bread, smothered in pig’s blood. Afterwards, Jolie and I cleared the table and washed dishes. Rainelle stepped out back and resumed raking the backyard.
Jolie had stripped off her jacket and her pistols hung in their shoulder holsters within easy reach. I took her cue and tucked my Colt into the front of my jeans before I shrugged out of my jacket.
Coyote brought a small cardboard box from the room with all the junk. He set the box on the coffee table and opened it. Nested inside crumpled newspaper was a psychotronic diviner not much bigger than a pack of cigarettes. He set the diviner on the table.
The body of this diviner appeared to be constructed of stainless steel plates welded together. A four-sided pyramid the size of a large olive sat on top. The pyramid was made of sheets of clear quartz, and inside the pyramid stood a pink quartz crystal no bigger than a pinto bean. Coyote flicked a brass switch at one corner of the box. Nothing happened.
He closed his eyes and raised a hand toward the diviner. The pink crystal emitted a faint glow, and the diviner beeped.
“It’s working,” I told him.
He relaxed his hand and opened his eyes. The glow faded. “This diviner is not very sensitive. But if Phaedra is nearby and she uses her powers, we’ll get a warning.”
Coyote returned to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of Jameson. He sipped the whisky and studied the diviner.
Jolie took a shower, then it was my turn. As I washed off the grime and scraped away the layers of makeup and sunscreen, my muscles turned to rubber and I looked forward to a nap. Rainelle provided clean clothes she scrounged from the extra room.
Jolie and I slept in the living room, she on the sofa, me on the floor. Late in the afternoon, Coyote woke us. He had set a shoebox filled with papers next to the diviner on the table.
Jolie stretched and got up. She walked into the kitchen and returned to hand out straws and 500 milliliter bags of chilled blood. I fanged a hole in a Type B Positive and inserted my straw. I parked myself next to her on the sofa.
Coyote sorted through the shoebox and withdrew a handful of papers in assorted sizes and types that he smoothed flat on the table. Some of the pages were from motel notepads, others were torn from spiral notebooks, and others were the backs of crumpled receipts or loose sheets of copy paper. All were covered in ink scrawls and sketches. Coyote arranged the papers before him and raised his hands in a proud gesture. “There you have it.”
I glanced from scrawl to drawing to scrawl. “Have what?”
Coyote pointed to the confused mess with both hands. “How you’re going to bring Carmen Arellano back home from outer space.”