Highway to Hell (7 page)

I'd asked the magic question. Everyone answered at once.

“It's a huge dog-shaped—”

“Lizard … like a lizard …”

“With spines down its back.”

“It can hop like a kangaroo …”

“Fly like a bat …”

“Stop!” Teresa held up her hands. The voices subsided; their queen had called them to order.
“El chupacabra
is too smart to be seen. It comes out of the darkness to drain the blood of its prey, then disappears. No one sees anything, just a glimpse of glowing red eyes.”

The bar had been warm a moment ago, but as she talked, embroidering the words with melodrama, my skin seemed to cool, and I shivered in the air-conditioning.

“Glowing red eyes like … taillights?”

Dave leaned in eagerly. “Did you see something like that?”

“We were on the highway,” Lisa snapped, too brusquely even for her. “Taillights are a given.”

Teresa held my eyes, encouraged by something in my expression. “It gives a hideous scream that makes you nauseated to even hear it. A few people, a very few, have been near enough to smell its horrible stench, like burning sulfur.”

My pulse tripped over itself, an instinctive panic of memory. I glanced at Lisa, but her face was stubbornly blank.

“So what about it, city girls?” asked Bud Man, the easy laugh in his voice diffusing the spell of Teresa's words. “Did you smell fire and brimstone?”

“No,” I said honestly. I'd smelled nothing but blood and gasoline. The demon in high school had smelled like sulfur and a lot of other gross things. But it had also been intangible, unable to touch things directly. At least it had at first. The problem with learning that there are things in the universe that break what you thought were the rules of reality is that there are all new rules to learn, and no textbook to study.

Dave was asking me another question. “Had the blood been sucked out of it? The cow, I mean.”

My stomach turned in memory. “Definitely not. It was all over the ground.”

Teresa was undeterred. “Maybe the car came before the creature could drink.”

Bud Man rolled his eyes. “And maybe it's not
el chupacabra.
Give it up, Miss T You owe me a case of beer.”

She pursed her lips and swept the empty out of his hand with a broad gesture. “No way. She didn't say it was, but she didn't say it wasn't.”

As if that was some kind of signal, people turned back to their private conversations. If folks were still talking about us, the accident, or the goat sucker, they did it among themselves. Music blared out of the jukebox speakers, and I realized it must have been playing all along, only I hadn't noticed.

Dave crossed his arms on the back of the chair he straddled. “So, how long are y'all going to be in town?”

Lisa stared at him coldly. “You can't tell us about a monster, then hit on us. Are you that desperate for fresh meat around here?”

He grinned, unrepentant. “The dating pool
is
awful shallow.”

“Still not making any points, cowboy.”

I wasn't really listening. I needed to think, and I had to do it away from all these people. Turning to Lisa, I lied abruptly, “We told Justin we'd call at nine o'clock.”

We weren't best friends for no reason. She dropped her napkin on the table and didn't miss a beat. “Gotta go, Dave. It's been real.”

He rose to his feet in time to pull out her chair. “I'll walk you to your room. Wouldn't want Ol' Chupy to grab you on the way.”

Dave was harmless. I picked that up even without touching him. He was a nice, eager guy with a big mouth, and he was totally in the way when I needed to talk to Lisa ASAP.

A man at the Old Guys' table—the one really not old
enough to hang out with them, the same one who had saluted me when the evening first started—spoke up, his voice casual but somehow authoritative. “Don't try so hard, Dave. Nothing will get them between the Duck and their room.”

Dave looked unabashed, but he also seemed to back off from us without really moving. “Just trying to be a gentleman, Hector.”

The older guy, Hector, had a long face that I couldn't see clearly in the smoke-filled room. He met my gaze with reassuring dark eyes. “You'll be fine as long as you don't go wandering around out in the dark.”

Lisa grabbed my arm, steering me toward the door as she tossed back over her shoulder, “Thanks. Fortunately, we left our idiot pills at home.”

I dug in my heels as soon as we were alone outside. “Jeez, Lisa. That was really rude, even for you.”

She faced me on the cracked concrete path between the empty swimming pool and the stairs up to our motel room. “Me? You're the one with the fake phone call.”

“You're welcome to go back in and get Dave's hopes up if you want.”

“That's not what this is about.” She set her fists on her hips. “You think this chupacabra thing is real.”

I took a deep breath to clear my lungs of the secondhand smoke, and to phrase my answer. “I don't think it was a coyote that attacked that cow by the road.”

“I suppose it was the comment about burning sulfur that convinced you?”

“That did catch my attention.” I noticed it had caught hers, too.

“Did you smell anything like that on the highway?” she asked, repeating Dave's question, but with the weight of our shared memories.

“No. But think about it, Lisa. The brake lights—those could have been glowing red eyes.”

“And they also could have been brake lights.”

“Okay, what about the footprint? We both agreed it looked like a lizard claw. And this thing is supposed to look like a lizard.”

Her brows knit skeptically. “You really think it could be this dog-kangaroo-vampire-bat thing the village people were talking about?”

“Would that be any weirder than some of the things we've seen?” It was strange to be the one using reasonable tones to discuss an unreasonable thing. “I know there's
something
here. Maybe it's related to this … whatever it is.” I leaned in, dropping my voice earnestly. “We should at least check into it, Lisa. Aren't you even curious?”

“Of course I'm curious, nimrod.” She jabbed a finger at her chest. “Evil-genius sorcerer, remember? But someone has to be the Scully to your Mulder.”

I gave her an I-don't-buy-it look. One, because there was more to it than that. And two, because … “Lisa, you have wake-up voodoo in your shower gel. You don't
get
to be the Scully.”

She blinked, and slowly her mouth curved—just one side. She looked as sheepish as I'd ever seen her. “Touché.”

This was one of those times when I wished I could read minds. “Does this have to do with your wanting to be normal for a week?”

Her fingers flexed where they rested on her hips, but she didn't reject my question. “Have you considered what this means for us if it is a supernatural creature? Like, is it impossible for us to be normal, even away from home?”

I stared at her, absorbing that, and feeling fear flutter lightly in my stomach. “That is a very uncomfortable thought.”

“Yeah, well. That's why I want to be the skeptic.” She dropped her arms. “I'm in, but I'm going to keep hoping for the least weird possibility.”

“Okay.” Because now I was, too. I mean, it
might
be some kind of normal animal. We didn't smell anything weird at the highway. The psychic fence in my dream could be unrelated. Maybe that was a statistically small probability, but what were the chances that, of all the people cruising down Highway 77 last night, Lisa and I were the ones to hit that cow?

Great. I'd worked my way around in a circle, and was back to dreading that I was right about the weirdness here.

“If you don't want to stay,” I ventured, though it killed me a little to say it, “maybe Zeke would drive you somewhere you could rent a car or catch a flight home.”

With a withering look, she started up the stairs to our room. “Please. Like I'd want to answer to Sir Justin if I deserted you. Not to mention your grandmother, who would curse me, or your mother, who would come after me with a hatchet.”

“That's probably true.” I climbed after her, pulling the key from the pocket of my jeans.

“And let's not forget, my karmic account is enough in the
red. I don't need to add to my debt by leaving you helpless against
el chupacabra.
Whatever the hell it is.”

I unlocked the door, and pushed it open—hard, because it stuck in the humidity. A rush of stale motel smell wafted out. “You're such a pal, Lisa.”

She entered ahead of me. “What are friends for?”

“Y
ou've reached Justin MacCallum. Leave a message, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.”

Sitting cross-legged in my pj's on the motel bed, I waited for Justin's voice mail to beep. Lisa sat on her own bed, legs stretched out in front of her as she surfed through the three television channels and stated the obvious. “No answer? He and his buddy are probably out doing bachelor stuff.”

“What kind of bachelor stuff can a pre-priest do?”

“Same kind of stuff as any other guy, but with less boobies, I guess.”

“Jeez, Lisa!”

The voice mail beeped in time to catch that. Great. “Hey, Justin.” I sounded flustered, and not at all as I'd planned. “I'm going to be stuck here in Dulcina for a while. At least until Tuesday.”

I caught Lisa watching me with a sardonic twist to her eyebrow. I shot her a silent
What?
and she rolled her eyes back to the TV.

“Lisa gets obnoxious when she's bored,” I said into the phone, earning a glare, “so we're going to investigate this local folk legend called
el chupacabra.
Something's been killing the livestock and, um, that's what they think it is.”

Ordinarily, Justin would be my go-to guy for information on myths and things. He's getting his degree in the anthropology of magical folklore. I would have been more frustrated at his unavailability when I needed intel, except that I knew his field of study was European legends, so I wasn't sure what he could have told me in any case.

“Anyway. You don't have to call me back. Just keeping you posted. Hope everything is going well.” I was back to the signing-off dilemma, only ten times worse, with Lisa a witness to the awkward. “Um. See you soon.”

I closed the phone and glared at her. “What?”

“I didn't say anything.” She rolled out of bed and headed to the cooler.

“You don't have to. I'm psychic girl, remember?”

She grabbed a Diet Coke and wiped off the melted ice. “Then why are you asking?”

Glaring at the back of her head wasn't very satisfying. “You know what? Someday when you fall for a guy and have to learn all new rules of conversation, I am going to laugh.”

She snorted and popped the tab on her can. “I thought you didn't see the future.”

“I don't need any hoodoo to know that when you run up against something you can't control, you're going to be a sad case.”

“Please.” Dropping back onto the bed, she reached for the remote. “Something I can't control. Don't make me laugh.”

I grabbed it before she could and turned off the TV. “You don't seriously think you're immune to everything, do you?”

Her expression was distinctly irritated. “No. I just think all that ‘you can't help who you fall in love with’ stuff is crap. We're human beings, not animals.”

“I didn't decide that I was going to fall in love with Justin.”

“Sure you did. He's perfect for you. Sensible and steady. Smart. Ready to slay dragons. And jeez, where else are you going to find someone who not only believes in the stuff you See, but has a freaking degree in it?”

None of that was news to me, of course. “So, who's your perfect guy, then?”

“Temporary.”

“Like Zeke?” I pried. “Do I detect a spark there? A little thawing of the D&D Lisa level-five ice shield?”

“There is no level-five ice shield,” she said in a voice full of ennui. “That's a level-ten spell, minimum.”

“Clever plan. Distract me with your nerditude.”

She drained the last of her soda and tossed the can in the trash basket. “So, how are you going to find out about this chupacabra thing if you can't ask the square?”

Grumbling in frustration, I tossed my cell onto the bed. “My next phone is going to have a Web browser.”

“I'd like to see what job you're going to get to pay that bill.”

Stretching out on top of the covers, I felt yesterday's nearly sleepless night catching up with me. “I guess I'm going to have to do my sleuthing the old-fashioned way.”

After all, Nancy Drew didn't have any Internet, just a great wardrobe and a sexy roadster. My Jeep was in the shop and I had a suitcase full of cargo shorts and flip-flops. But I would persevere.

The phone woke me from a dreamless sleep. In the dark room, I fumbled on the nightstand for my cell.

“Hello?” My voice was hoarse from the smoke in the bar. From the other bed, I heard Lisa roll over and pull the pillow over her head.

Justin didn't waste time on a greeting. “What's this about tracking down the chupacabra?”

“Hang on a minute.” I struggled out of the marshmallow bed and grabbed my hoodie from the desk chair. Unlatching the door, I slipped out and sat at the top of the stairs.