Highway to Hell (23 page)

I sank back onto my heels and speared my fingers through my hair, as if I could pull the magic words of cooperation out of my head. “It's getting worse.”

“Have you not thought that perhaps your presence here is making it so?”

The blood seemed to drain from my head, and I braced a hand on the cold stone floor so I wouldn't fall over. “What?”

She stared down at me, her black eyes piercing. “Perhaps your presence is not a coincidence. But that does not mean you were brought here by the side of the angels. Your well-intentioned blunderings seem to be strengthening the thing, not weakening it.”

My stomach knotted itself around that horrible idea. “That's impossible.”

“No one went to the hospital before you came.” She
positioned herself for her prayers, clasping her hands and turning her face to the altar. “I hope it's not true, but it's something to think about as you leave.”

“And in the meantime, you do nothing?”

“I'm doing what I know best.” Her voice was placid once more, but I saw that her fingers were white as they grasped the beads of her rosary. “Now leave me to it.”

She closed her eyes, and it was like a wall had gone up between us. I climbed to my feet, not knowing what else to try. As I turned toward the door, shoulders slumped, I caught sight of the Madonna in her niche, watching me with serene sympathy.

You don't have to tell me. That could have gone a lot better.

I didn't see the guys when I went outside. On a hunch I followed a trail that wound around the chapel to a shaded garden overlooking a salt marsh inlet, where fat dragonflies danced over the tall grass, catching their lunch.

Henry stood with his back to me, gazing at the water. Or maybe sleeping on his feet—I couldn't tell. Justin sprawled on a wooden bench; one arm shielded his eyes from the overhead sun, and the other rested on his chest. I kind of hated to wake him up.

“How'd it go?” he asked, startling me. Henry turned around, too. “Learn anything?”

“About Ol' Chupy? No. About Doña Isabel? Loads.”

He sat up, and gestured for me to take a seat beside him. “Like?”

“Doña Isabel thinks I'm a witch and a sinner.”

“Well …,” said Henry, in a she's-got-a-point tone.

“That's not funny.” Not when I wasn't sure he was joking.

Justin shot his friend a look, the kind of silent communication Lisa and I did all the time.

I got back on track. “She also thinks that
she
is a witch and a sinner.” I squinted out over the water, replaying the conversation. “It's not just her being a Seer. She was fine with that when I first met her. This feeling is new and it's tied to the chupacabra getting bolder. She can't deny its existence anymore.”

Justin leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “So, you think that in the past she did something she now considers a sin? Like maybe worked some kind of spell to vanquish the demon?”

“Maybe.” I scrubbed my hands through my hair. “This is like if Luke Skywalker found Obi-Wan Kenobi, but the Jedi just told him to piss off because he didn't believe in the Empire and he'd defeated them fifty years ago anyway. My entire movie has to be replotted.”

“So,” said Justin. “What's the first step?”

I tapped my fingers on the rough concrete of the bench. “She's sticking to the story about the BVM and the shrine. I think that's where we should start.”

He stood and grabbed my hand to pull me up. “Then that's what we'll do.”

Lady Acre wasn't far from the Big House, if you were going over land. But by the road it was more like five miles. Ten, if you counted where we came to a dead end and had to retrace our path.

“Um … turn left,” I said, trying to navigate while Justin drove. It didn't help that Texas required a road map the size of a bed sheet.

The next opportunity to turn was a narrow road about a car and a half wide. “Are you sure?”

“All I'm sure of is that if we keep going straight, we're going to end up in the Gulf of Mexico.”

Justin turned onto the small road, which seemed identical to all the other small roads we'd already been down.

“Well,” said Henry from the backseat. “This looks new and exciting.”

I groaned, and crumpled the road map in frustration. “This shouldn't be so hard!”

With a determined frown, Justin checked the rearview mirror, flipped on the hazard lights, and pulled onto the unimproved shoulder. “Give me the chart—the geological survey one.”

I slapped the neatly folded map into his palm, maybe a little more forcefully than necessary. Nothing tests a relationship like driving around in circles.

Justin climbed out and stood by the front bumper, orienting the chart on the hood. Henry collapsed against his seat with a moan of exaggerated relief. I shot him a you're-so-not-helping look and got out to join Justin, hardly slamming my door at all.

“We are nowhere near this Lady Acre place,” he said.

“Sorry.” I mostly meant it.

“Not your fault.” His eyes were on the chart, but he brushed my shoulder absently. “I should have let you drive instead of trying to navigate.”

I checked that statement for condescension, but decided to take it at face value. He had proven his familiarity with maps; I'd had us going around in circles. If he had said that he should have let
Henry
drive, then we would have had a problem.

“See this mark?” He pointed to a symbol on the chart. “It represents that water tower over there. And this line here is that power line to the east of us.”

Shading my eyes, I found the landmarks that he meant, then looked back at the map. “So, we're probably right about here.” I pointed to the intersection of a blacktop road and a thinner one coming off it.

“Right.” He folded the chart, with the relevant grid squares facing out. Obviously a practiced move.

“Where did you learn to do that?”

“Fold a map? It's a guy thing.”

This time he was obviously joking, but I wasn't quite ready to laugh. “Reading a topographic survey chart.”

“I was on the orienteering team in high school.”

“Your school had an orienteering team?” As sports went, it wasn't the weirdest thing ever, but I'd only heard of timed land navigation trials since I got to college.

Justin shrugged. “It was a boys-only boarding school. They had to channel all that testosterone somewhere. I also did track and fencing.”

I glanced into the car, where Henry looked like he was taking a nap, then back at Justin, with an arched brow that would have done Lisa proud. “Do
you
have a polo pony, too?”

“No. I have to borrow one when I play.” My jaw dropped, and he laughed, which sounded good after all the sniping in
the car. “Kidding. I've only done trail riding at summer camp.”

“You're a regular pentathlete.” I tried not to sound too impressed. Brains
and
brawn. Just as well he was a bit of a chauvinist, or he might be too good to be true.

He went back to correcting our course on the map, remarking absently, “I've never learned to shoot, so you're one up on me there.”

I sat against the hood of the car, wincing and readjusting my bruised butt, when I noticed the sunlight reflecting off something metal, barely visible in the distance.

Several big somethings, actually. Shading my eyes and stretching onto my tiptoes, I made out the shape of one silver pickup truck. The other vehicle was tan, which made it hard to distinguish against the drought-brown landscape. The light bar on the top, though, was hard to mistake.

“Justin?” He looked up, and I pointed to the trucks. “Maybe we're not in the wrong spot after all.”

There were three other trucks parked in a haphazard arrangement in the pasture, in addition to Zeke's silver pickup and the tan blazer with a bar of red lights on top and an official-looking seal on the door. Not the highway patrol, but the Wildlife Commission.

I let out a breath of relief that Justin, cutting the engine, echoed in words. “Hopefully that means there isn't a human involved.”

“Involved in what?” Henry asked, then sat back as I opened the door and the smell rolled in. “Oh. God.”

“Yeah,” I said. “This isn't going to be good.”

The odor wasn't old or putrid yet, but the day was warm and getting warmer. We hiked through the dry grass to where several men were standing around, talking in low, worried voices. While the land had appeared flat from the highway, the trucks actually were parked atop a gentle rise. Justin, Henry, and I reached the crest and stared down the slope into what seemed to be a slaughterhouse without walls.

I counted seven cows, all full grown. Their carcasses littered the ground like debris after a storm. They'd been there long enough for the blood to cake around the slashes in their hides.

“Jesus.” I didn't think Henry was cursing so much as praying. His hand twitched, like he'd checked the impulse to cross himself. His face had turned sort of green, and Justin didn't look much better.

When I'd climbed out of the car, I'd automatically grabbed my camera. I glanced around to make sure we were still under the radar, then clicked off a couple of pictures.

“Careful,” said Justin, nodding toward a guy in a khaki button-down shirt. “That guy looks official.”

“Just look like we're supposed to be here.” The camera whirred softly as I zoomed in on one of the cows. “He doesn't know we're not ranchers ourselves.”

“Your
Doctor Who
baseball cap might be a clue.”

Henry looked sharply at Justin, then at me. “How can you calmly take pictures of that?”

The answer was simple: The camera was a kind of shield. While I was photographing, I didn't have to think about what was in front of me, or use my other senses. But I could only procrastinate so long.

I slowly lowered the camera and looked at the grisly scene again, this time with a discerning eye. The cattle had all been slashed across the throat or the belly, but there didn't seem to be much blood. The ground had soaked it all up. Even though there were more animals dead than yesterday, I didn't see the same wholesale carnage. There was an economical intensity to what happened here.

“This is different from before.”

Justin frowned. “How so?”

“It's neater. Before, there were pieces all over the place, and the carcass was more torn up, picked apart.” I chose my words carefully, listening to my instinct. “This is just … slaughter. Ruthlessly efficient. It knows what it needs now.”

“What's that?” asked Justin.

The answer came to me through the soles of my feet. “Blood. This is a bloodletting.”

“You keep saying ‘it,’ ” said Henry. “But one creature couldn't have done all this.”

I shook my head. “It couldn't.”

“Lupe!” We turned toward the voice; I recognized Zeke, even from a distance, calling down the hill. The uniformed game warden stood beside him. “Do you have those ID numbers yet?”

The stable manager called back up.
“Uno mas, Señor Zeke. Un momento.”

Justin looked at me, his expression bemused.
“Mister
Zeke? And I thought the name Doña Isabel was old-fashioned.”

I turned off my camera and capped the lens. “They're
forty years behind the times in some ways. And once you meet Isabel Velasquez … well, it doesn't seem strange at all.”