Highway to Hell (32 page)

He gave me an odd look. “What makes you think that my life was completely normal before I met you? I was the one who convinced you that
you
weren't. Normal, I mean.”

I hadn't thought about it that way. “You've never told me when—or why—you started to believe that some folklore is more than mythical.”

He let out a reluctant sigh and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “It's not a very happy story. And it kind of sounds crazy.”

“Like I'm one to throw stones?” I reached for his hand, interlacing our fingers. If he didn't tell me now, he'd have to pry himself loose. “I want to know your sad stories,
and
the happy ones. Even the embarrassing ones with pom-pom girls.”

The corner of his mouth curved, just slightly. “Okay.” Then he sobered, and ducked his head, though his fingers stayed knit with mine. “I told you my parents were missionary doctors, and they died overseas?”

I nodded. “Treating an epidemic of tuberculosis in Africa.”

His gaze on the floor, he spoke evenly, with the distance of time. “My godfather told me they'd died of TB. But when I read Dad's journals, there was more to it. The people of the village were convinced that a witch doctor had put a curse on them. Dad didn't buy it, but since no one was responding to treatment, he and the village's own shaman did a kind of countercurse. Dad figured it couldn't hurt, and maybe there would be a placebo effect. And there was. Almost immediate improvement, and no new outbreaks for over a month.”

“That sounds like more than just the power of positive thinking.”

“Yeah.” He ran his free hand down his grubby khakis, pointlessly smoothing the wrinkles. “Then the village's shaman died suddenly, and Dad copied down some strange symbols he found sketched in the dirt around his house. Right after that, Mom got sick, and … that's the end of the journal.”

“You think they were cursed?”

His crooked smile was rueful. “Crazy, right? I had no reason to think so, except when I copied out the symbols from Dad's journal and stuck them on the bulletin board to study, I caught the chicken pox. Even though I'd been vaccinated for it.”

“Which can happen.”

“Right. Easily rationalized. I never told anyone but Henry what I thought, and only because I felt so guilty that he came down with the flu the very same week. I didn't even think he remembered, but he brought it up when I said I was coming down here.” Justin shrugged. “You were both so curious about each other, I figured it was time for my two worlds to merge.”

His words rang a bell in my head. “Two worlds to merge?”

“Yeah. Old life, new life.” He looked at me closely. “What is it?”

A charge ran through me—a good one, like a connection coming together to complete a circuit. “Something Lisa said about
brujería
rolling together New World traditions and Old World religion. You looked up those Native Americans that disappeared from here when the Spanish came, right?”

His brows drew together. “It was a common story,
unfortunately. Smallpox took a lot of them out. The survivors went into the missions, or married in with the settlers. Most of the families who have been here for a long time have at least a little of the Coahuiltecan bloodline.”

Invigorated by discovery, I went to the facsimile of the Velasquez family tree in the Bible. “When Isabel said
sangre
, maybe it didn't refer to the blood that was fueling the demon, but about the blood
line.
”

I bent to decipher the faded and ornate script. Carlos Velasquez's son, Miguel, married Angelina Ventura, whose birthplace was Texas. Their daughter, Dulcina, was the town's namesake. She married a man from Louisiana, and eventually her line would return with Doña Isabel, her cousin several times removed.

Justin read over my shoulder. “So, Velasquez came here, carved the ranch out of the desert, married with the locals, anchoring the family to this Native American blood.”

“That's why Doña Isabel is such a powerful guardian. It's her lineage.” I went back to the drum seat and sank onto it. “Oh, man. I think she's willing the ranch to the Church because she thinks that will protect it from the demon. But the Church has no link to the land.”

He pointed to the Velasquez brand. “What about this? They chose the patriarchal cross to honor the missionaries, right?”

“Let me check something.” I headed back to the library proper, and found my backpack on the floor by the desk where Lisa was working.

“I'm not done yet,” she said, without looking up from the screen. “This Internet connection must be run by carrier pigeon.”

“Ignore us.” Pulling out my smaller camera, I thumbed back to the pictures I'd taken at the snake museum, until I found the one of the bone medallion in the case.

“What does that look like to you?” I asked Justin.

“A flower?” He squinted closer at the tiny screen. “No, the leaves look more like wings.” Then he glanced at me in surprise. “A dragonfly.”

“It was right in front of me the whole time.” I'd felt the protective force of the artifact even through its case. I'd seen the dragonfly on Gran's china—twice—and when I'd been facing the demon coalition.

The bell on the front door jingled, and Henry came in, looking disappointed. Even Lisa stopped working. “No luck?” she asked, though the answer was obvious in his slumped shoulders.

“No.” He sank into a Cat in the Hat chair that was way too small for his big frame. “I thought the priest was going to call the loony bin. I'm glad I didn't tell him my real name.”

Since I hadn't expected anything different, I didn't let his arrival distract me now that I knew I was on the right track. “Justin, you said you'd never heard of the dragonfly being a good-luck symbol?”

“No. But it
was
associated with shamanism and supernatural powers. I remember in one of my early classes …” He grabbed a book from the stack beside Lisa—
Dictionary of Native American Pictograms—
and continued talking as he flipped the pages. “Survey of Ancient Symbols, I think. Here.” He read from the book. “ ‘The dragonfly was considered a messenger of change or enlightenment.’ ”

Henry levered himself out of the kid-sized chair and came over to the desk. “A messenger of enlightenment?”

“Check this out.” I grabbed a page from the pile of scrap paper by the card catalog and sketched something like the emblem on the medallion. Then I darkened the lines so that it was a sort of stylized dragonfly, with a bulb at the end of the vertical stroke and two thick horizontal lines crossing it where the wings would be. A double-armed cross.

“The Velasquez brand,” said Lisa, sounding impressed.

Without a word, Justin handed the book to me. Under
D
for
dragonfly
was almost the exact drawing I'd just made.

The text continued beneath: “ ‘Used by Indians who were Christianized to tell others that they still kept the old ways. A symbol of someone with a foot in both traditions.’”

“That's how the spell at Lady Acre works, right?” Justin directed the question to Lisa. “The combination of traditions?”

“That's what
brujería
is. Old World religion and New World folk magic.”

The guys and I looked at her expectantly, waiting for her to explain in more detail. When she didn't, I prompted, “Well? How do we repeat it?”

She began with a heavy sigh, and I realized how tired she was. We all were. “This is how I would do it, not necessarily how it was done. Once all the cattle are secure, so that they can't be used as food—I hope Zeke is still working on that, no matter how mad he is at me. I mean, us—then we have to put the demon back into the ground.”

Picking up the pad and pen, she made a hasty visual aid: a big blob under a solid line, with lots of little blobs above it, attached to tethers like astronauts are attached to the Shuttle when they go for a space walk. “Maggie says it's all one
entity, and we can use that. We'll bind the parts to the whole, and as long as there's more spirit-type underground than there is solid-type above, the chupacabras on land will be pulled back to the mother ship.”

“Then what?” asked Henry. “Cap it with another shrine?”

Her scowl deepened. “I'm not sure. The problem is the power source.” She tapped the notepad. “I've got a list of things I need for a binding spell. But the power source to actually work with the sorcery and make it stick? I don't know.”

Justin leaned against the desk. “Faith was enough for Doña Isabel the first time. Is it enough for us?”

Lisa looked doubtful. “There was only the one manifestation back then, right?”

My thoughts had circled back to my original interpretation of Doña Isabel's word
sangre.
“If blood is what gives the demon power to transform to solid matter, could the same power source put it back?”

“Blood is tied up with life force and vitality,” said Justin, defaulting into academic mode. “In ancient Rome the cult of Mithras bathed in the blood of a bull to gain the animal's energy. Aztecs offered the blood of their enemies to their gods. In the temples in Jerusalem, offerings were made to Yahweh to purify sins.”

Henry cleared his throat. “Would it be too obvious of me to mention the Eucharist? The blood of Christ grants eternal life.”

The answer was a fingertip away, if I could just reach it. I wanted to pace, but the children's bookshelves were in the way. “Remember how last fall, in order to undo the Sigma's spell, we had to counter with the exact opposite? So the flip
side of killing is self-sacrifice: stealing blood versus offering it.”

“You guys are being too literal,” said Lisa, then checked her words, “in a
weird
kind of way. Think symbolically. It represents the essence of who you are. You swear oaths, sign away your soul with it. Blood pact, blood brothers, blood kin …”

“Bloodline!” I shouted, then covered my mouth, a lifetime of library habits kicking in.

Justin easily followed my realization. Quickly, he explained our discovery next door in the museum. “The Velasquez bloodline is tied to the land all the way back to prehistory. That's why the combination of old and new traditions is so important. Doña Isabel's faith, plus the native magic older than the Velasquez name.”

Henry looked doubtful. “So, you're saying the family has superpowers when it comes to protecting the land?”

“Not superpowers like webslinging or laser vision.” I sank into one of the kiddy seats. “But power. Yeah.”

After a beat of silence, Lisa stated the obvious. “Too bad we pissed Zeke off so bad.”

“We've got to find that
bruja
,” said Justin.

“You could look in the phone book under ‘witch’ ” was Henry's suggestion.

“No,” I said, climbing purposefully to my feet. “We go where you find everything in this town. The Duck Inn.”

As the four of us headed across the square to the bar, I was surprised how windy it had become. A plastic bag blew across the street and tangled in the low chain that circled the
town green, whipping around like it was trying to get free. Overhead, the clouds were fluffy on top, but gray and heavy on the bottom, like cotton balls dipped in paint. Toward the east, over the gulf, the sky was dark as ink.

The red Escort—looking hard used with its layer of dirt and grime—was parked in the lot, and beside it was my Jeep, still sans its top.

Even topless, it was good to see my trusty steed. Since I'd met Sassy, the Jeep had gone from an “it” to a “she” in my mind. I ran—okay, limped—over and caressed her safari-brown paint.

“Would you two like to be alone?” asked Lisa.

No one pointed out the significance of the Jeep's return. Theoretically at least, we could leave. None of us—not even Henry, as new as he was to all this—seemed to consider that an option.

“Let's go get the keys,” I said, figuring Buck would be at the Duck, too. The three of them followed me inside, and we weren't disappointed. Buck sat at the Old Guy table. He, and everyone else in the bar, turned to stare as we came in.

“Hey, Buck.”

“Figured you'd be by eventually, little missy.” He dangled a set of keys from his fingers and then tossed them to me. “You're all set, except for the top.”

I considered that a pretty significant omission, especially considering the rain blowing in. But what was I going to do.

“Thanks, Buck.” I gave the rest of the Old Guys—Carl and Joe and the guy whose name I didn't know—a tired smile, and turned to the bar, where Teresa was drying mugs. Lisa,
Justin, and Henry had gone to one of the booths, letting me handle her.

I didn't mess around this time. As Teresa paused in her drying to watch me approach, I imagined gunslinger shootout music playing. Which was silly. We were all on the same side. But it was definitely time to start shooting from the hip.

“Where's Hector?” I asked.

“He left a few minutes ago.” Teresa flipped her dish towel over her shoulder. “But he said for you to wait for him. He'll be back.”

That I wasn't expecting: a direct, no-nonsense answer to my question. But then, Hector had never been unhelpful, just unforthcoming with information.

“So, he
is
the
bruja—brujo
, I mean.”