Highway to Hell (37 page)

The spout of fire looked like a piece of Hell on earth. And writhing, tortured, at the base of it was the demon, slowly being eaten away by the flame.

I
was never, ever going to complain about not learning anything useful from my dreams. Even when it came from the unlikeliest source.

Zeke and Lisa had dropped their concentration, the bowl, and the spell. “Oh my God!” cried Zeke, staring at the jet of flame shooting into the sky. It was so big, it looked within spitting distance. “What happened?”

“Oh my God,” echoed Henry, helping Doña Isabel to stand up. “It worked. The storm came back.”

The matriarch looked up the hill to where I stood, still reeling like everyone else. “What have you done?” she demanded.

“Heat and flame.” Justin sounded dazed. I probably should have warned him what I was hoping would happen.

“What about the binding?” Hector was justifiably alarmed, after all that trouble to hold the demon together.

“Everything aboveground is being consumed,” I reported, shading my eyes against the light and heat. “Even the parts that break off. Come and see.”

“We can't,” said Lisa, meaning her and Zeke. “The rest can burn off, but we have to set the seal on whatever is left underground.”

She sounded bone weary. I had never heard that from her. Zeke looked a hairsbreadth from collapse. He swayed on his feet when he bent to pick up the brass bowl they'd dropped. “So let's get to it.”

“Wait.” Inspiration wasn't done with me yet. “Don't cap it. Call it out.”

They stared at me in various attitudes of horror or confusion, depending on how much they understood what I was saying. “What do you mean, call it out?” asked Hector.

Lisa's expression had gone cold as soon as I'd said it, and she answered in a flat voice, “She means, summon the demon.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Henry asked. “Look at that thing. That's just the part aboveground. And you want to let the rest of it out?”

“Yes.” I flicked a glance at Justin. “Heat and flame. Zeke, you can wait to see what turns up the next drought, or you can vanquish this thing forever.”

“You're sure?” he asked. “You're certain this will kill it?”

I let him read it in my eyes. “As certain as I can be.”

He turned to his grandmother, and she spoke with quiet confidence. “I haven't been given this vision, Ezekiel. But I know this thing is Evil. Magdalena says this will destroy it. Not bury it, not allow it to grow and fester.”

Lisa met his gaze levelly. “All I need is your permission, Zeke. I can do this on my own.”

He looked confused. “Don't I need to do it? My link to the land?”

She took the brass bowl from him and set it on the concrete bench. “You've started the spell. I'm not rewriting the whole book, I'm just changing the ending.”

He shook his head. “I took on this responsibility. If something goes screwy, I'll be here with my magic bloodline. And I'll take the heat if I have to.”

“Zeke,” she snapped, “I'm not being noble and self-sacrificing here. I've got nothing to lose, karmically speaking.”

I knew what she meant; she was the only one of us who had summoned a demon before. Zeke didn't know that, but he had the unanswerable argument.

“I can't leave you to do it alone, anyway.” He pointed to the white circle. “If stepping over that makes it defunct, you don't have a way to redraw it. You used the last of the salt.”

She opened her mouth, closed it. Looking thunderous at having no rebuttal, she said, “Fine. Just stay back.”

Pulling out her pocketknife, she took the brass bowl in one hand and the knife in the other. The heat of the embers made eddies of mist in the damp air, wreathing her face. Her expression was determined, and in a way, serene.

Far away, the demon pieces, outlined in fire, fought the pull of the well. Hector and Doña Isabel came up to watch, but Henry stayed below with Lisa and Zeke.

Ceremonially—I couldn't hear her words over the roar of the flame—Lisa cut the cord around the bowl. Still speaking, she took the vessel in both her bare hands, shaking the embers so that they flared to life, then raised her arms parallel to the ground, holding the bowl over the campfire in front of her.

“You might want to move,” she told the guys, voice taut with strain. Then she dropped the brass bowl into the fire, where it cracked into shards of metal.

Instinctively, I raised my arm to shield my face. I caught Lisa in the same motion, and the guys turning away. Then the light from the fire went from orange to yellow, and a terrible sound, like the groan of an earthquake, bridged the space between the well and us. A wave of dry heat carried an acrid stench, and when I lowered my arm, I saw the demon forced out of the wellhead like a glob of Jell-O through a straw.

It took shape in the pillar of fire, pushing it outward, changing each time I blinked but never really altering, as if my mind was impressing on it the shape of fear. It grew until it loomed over the desert, not just a demon but a fiery god.

“Please, please, God, don't let me have screwed this up.” I didn't realize I'd spoken aloud until Justin's arm tightened around me and Hector laid a hand on my shoulder.

The red beast began to writhe and twist, and the roar of the fire multiplied with its agony. As the flames consumed it, the plume became again a narrow jet spewing into the clouds. It grew smaller as I watched, like a lighter running out of fuel, then burned itself out with a whoosh, leaving the desert in darkness once again.

All seven of us stared; the air was unnervingly quiet.

“Is it gone?” Zeke sounded afraid to ask.

Doña Isabel wasn't afraid to answer. “Yes.”

She would know. But I felt it, too—a peculiar emptiness where there'd been something nasty stuck to my subconscious. Cleansed by heat and flame.

Justin wrapped his arms around me and kissed my hair, which had to smell wretched. “You really are brilliant and resourceful.”

“I have good resources to lean on.” I laid my head on his shoulder for emphasis.

With his arm still around me, we climbed down the hill. In the circle, Zeke caught Lisa in a laughing embrace. I saw Hector say something to Doña Isabel that made her unbend enough to smile, and—despite their extreme age—I was a little disappointed there wasn't any hugging going on there, too.

The rest of us made up for it. Justin slung his other arm around Henry's shoulders, slapping him on the back, the way guys do. “So. Are you disowning me after all of this?”

Henry gave a snort. “No. But I will pray for you twice a day instead of just once.”

I tucked my filthy wet hair behind my ear. “What about me?”

“You, I'll pray for three times.”

Zeke came over, shook both guys' hands, and scooped me up in a tight, grateful hug. “I'm sorry,” he whispered in my ear.

“For what?” He set me back on my feet and I grinned my forgiveness up at him. “I would say a lot worse things to anyone who messed with my— Oh my God. Gran will be flipping out.”

I pulled my phone from my pocket, slightly amazed it was
still there, and saw that there was no signal at all. I'd managed to wipe out the cell tower, too. Oops.

Hector had helped Doña Isabel down from the hill, and the guys went to share their giddy relief with them. Lisa stayed by me, asking when they were out of earshot, “How did you know the fire would go out by itself?”

“I didn't.” I grimaced guiltily. “The idea just came to me and I went for it.”

“Divine inspiration, huh?”

“Not really. It was a John Wayne movie. About this guy that puts out oil-well fires. You know the name of it?”

“Can't guess.”

I grinned up at her.
“Hellfighters.”

I
n the end, the chupacabra was responsible for four hospitalized cowboys, six transfusions, the deaths of eighteen cows, twenty-six calves, a dozen chickens, two dogs, and three goats. Plus one Jeep suspension and
eight
punctured tires.

Zeke didn't have to call for assistance once we discovered the extent of the vehicular sabotage; there was no shortage of folks already on their way to check out the Cecil B. DeMille spectacular and its equally amazing disappearance.

Dave was the one who filled me in on the events back at the corral. The cowboys who had gone out with Zeke made it
back okay, but their calves were lost, after all that effort. A couple of chupies had tested the defenses, seeming to get stronger and more daring, until suddenly they fell back into the night and didn't return. Not long after, they'd seen the pillar of flame, and designated some guys to stay with the cows, and some to go check it out.

Oil well blowouts were bad news. They
never
put themselves out. By the time we got back to Dulcina to pick up the Escort and our luggage, word was spreading that nothing short of a miracle had occurred at Lady Acre. Our Lady of Perpetual Aid had done it again.

No matter who, or what, gets the credit, the way I figure it, there were a number of forces at work, maybe more than even my freaky brain will ever know. If my vision was to be believed, Team Evil had an infinite number of forms and faces. Why shouldn't Team Good?

Since I had to wait for all new tires, the four of us—Lisa, Henry, Justin and I—ended up spending the rest of the week at the Big House. When I'd called my parents to tell them about the change of residence, Dad had an intense relief in his voice that meant Gran had told him something was up. He'd even looked the Velasquez Ranch (and family) up on the Internet. Mom, rather than being suitably impressed by my new associations, despaired that I was
never
going to have a normal coming-of-age experience.

She did not ask about the dispensation of the bedrooms. Despite the copious space in the Big House, Connie, the housekeeper, had doubled us up: Justin and Henry in one room, near Zeke, and Lisa and I way down the hall by ourselves. Not that I was much of a chaperone, because the
second night we were there—the first night was solely about making up for forty-eight hours without sleep—I hinted very broadly that I wasn't doing bed checks.

Our room was decorated in a kind of Spanish colonial style—heavy wood furniture and opulent covers on the twin beds. Lisa was brushing her hair upside down, and turned her head to look at me through the strands.

“Thanks for enabling me in sin, Mags. But Zeke's got this old-fashioned code about respecting his grandmother's values while in her house or something.”

Which seemed about right for Zeke. “She is a Seer, after all. There wouldn't be any hiding it from her.”

Lisa flipped her hair over and sat on her bed. Her gaze rested on a painting of a lone cowboy riding through the snow. “He said he'd like to come up to Georgetown to visit me.”

That he wanted to see her again was not a surprise to me, since I had a working pair of eyeballs. “What did you say?”

“That I'd think about it.”

“Lisa, for a supergenius, you can really be an idiot.”

Her jaw clenched mulishly. “He doesn't even know me, Mags. I mean, jeez. I'm a lot to handle. And not in a good way.”

I swung my legs over the edge of the bed so I could face her. “Sooner or later, you're going to have to let someone in. It may be Zeke, it may not. But everyone deserves to be loved.”

“Even Hellbound novice sorcerers?”

I came to a sudden decision and stood up. “Even psychic girl detectives who seem to be demon magnets.”

Slipping on my flip-flops, I zipped up my hoodie and headed for the door. Lisa called after me, “I won't leave the light on.”

Thanks a lot for making me blush. Fortunately the hall was long enough for it to subside. I knocked on the guys' door, but when Henry's bass voice said, “Come in,” I found him alone, reading a book.

“Sorry,” I said. “I was looking for Justin.”

He gave me a “duh” look. “He went for a walk. We thought you girls were going to bed early.”

“Not yet.” I was wearing my pj's, but if he thought I always wore pants with purple hearts all over them, I wasn't going to correct him.

“Hey, Maggie.” His voice stopped me as I was about to close the door. “What did you see, when you were unconscious the other day at the shrine?”

I tried to look nonchalant and not wary. “Why do you ask?”

“Indiana Jones.” At my baffled expression, he explained. “When Indy is going through the traps at the end
of Last Crusade
, his dad says he has to pass through the ‘breath of God.’ He never uses the Hebrew word.”

My stomach seemed to sink, and my hand tightened on the doorknob. “You're sure?”

He smiled. “I wanted to be an archaeologist when I grew up, until I found out they don't really carry bullwhips.”

Then his expression grew sober and rather kind. For the first time, I could see the future priest in him. “Look. Justin's got the anthropological background. Lisa seems to have the practical end of things. But if you ever need to talk out the
spiritual ramifications …” He cleared his throat. “I know I'm still just a theology major, but at least you can talk to me without getting excommunicated.”

I was hugely touched. “What changed your mind? Besides the big chupacabra teeth, I mean.”

“Oh, I still think you're living dangerously. But I've seen now that you really do have a gift, and you really don't have a choice but to use it. To paraphrase Saint Paul, ‘To whom much is given, much will be required.’”

I did him one better. “‘With great power comes great responsibility.’ Spider-Man.”