Supernatural: Coyote's Kiss (23 page)

The guy driving hit the breaks, swearing and trying to open his door. It opened a little less than six inches and then banged into the minivan. The guy on Dean’s side was already out and drawing down on Xochi’s running back with some kind of preposterous Dirty Harry hand cannon.

“Get down!” Dean yelled, diving out of the SUV and taking off after Xochi. He heard shots and the screams of bystanders as everyone in the street ran for cover.

Dean risked a look back and saw that the driver had climbed across the seat and out the passenger side. He had a snub-nosed pistol in his fist. It looked like a toy next to the cannon wielded by his clearly overcompensating buddy.

Up ahead, Xochi was zigzagging like a rabbit through the frozen traffic, staying low and never providing a clear target.

Dean could see bullets striking sparks off an abandoned cab a few feet ahead of him and before he could register how dangerous that was, the cab went up in a toxic cloud of choking black smoke and shimmering flame.

Dean threw himself down on his belly between two cars just as the cab blew with a strangely flat, eardrum-crushing sound like giant clapping wool-gloved hands. Dean felt like that same giant had just boxed his ears.

When he dared to look up again, Dean saw mad chaos all around. Women grasping crying children, running through the street. Men leaning out of windows to see what was going on. A dozen small retail stands had been knocked over. People selling corn-on-the-cob, bootlegged DVDs and magazines, toys and cheap silver jewelry all had their wares scattered into the street. Dean could see Xochi peeking up between a beater hatchback and a more fortunate taxicab and ran toward her.

When he reached her, she gripped his hand and pulled him toward the debris of the street vendors.

“They won’t change their form in front of all these people,” Xochi said. “So we have a chance to outrun them. But I have a better idea.”

She ran through the broken mess of plastic toys, looking back over her shoulder toward the twins, almost daring them to follow her. Of course, they did. As she ran, she scooped up a black-velvet tray of cheesy silver rings and pendants.

“Put these on,” Xochi said as they ran, handing Dean a handful of rings. “Both hands.”

He got what she was planning almost right away, so he did as she’d said, cramming as many goofy pot-leaf and skull rings as he could fit onto all his fingers. Moments later, she ducked into a little bakery and Dean followed close behind.

Inside the bakery, two older women were decorating a wedding cake. One was fat and sweet-faced, wider than she was tall with white hair coiffed into a fancy updo and wearing a floral apron. The other was pale and thin with a large, narrow nose, dyed red hair cut mannishly short and pink T-shirt that said “SEXY” in glittery silver letters. When they saw Dean and Xochi, they froze, pastry bags full of pearly white frosting held up like weapons.

Xochi asked them something in Spanish, and the fat one responded, indicating a door in the rear of the store. Xochi ran for the door, which opened into a narrow back alley full of trash and illegible graffiti.

“When the first guy comes through the door,” Xochi said, flattening herself out against the wall. “Let him have it.”

“Right,” Dean said, pressing his back to the opposite side of the door and trying to keep his breathing under control.

He was still scared, but it was the good kind of scared. The action, adrenalin-fueled kind of scared, rather than the trapped, helpless kind of scared he’d been feeling since the arrest. This was what he was good at, kicking monster ass. He had this.

The first
Nagual
came barreling through the bakery door and Dean spun toward him, firing off a straight right and aiming for exposed skin, for the guy’s unshaven chin. He connected, a spike of hot pain jolted his wrist, but the guy went down like he’d been shot, skin burning and blistering from the impact of the silver rings. Dean dropped to one knee beside him and followed through with a few more for good measure.

When the second shifter came through the door, Xochi garroted him from behind with a thick silver chain. The silver smoked and burned like it was molten hot, sinking deep into the flesh of the
Nagual’s
throat. He fell to his knees, then collapsed on one side in the slimy gutter. Xochi let him go and relieved him of the enormous gun, which turned out to be a Smith & Wesson model 500 .50 caliber Magnum. Dean took the snub-nosed .38 from the shifter he’d KO’d and swiftly patted him down for other weapons. He found a full-sized .45, a nasty-looking telescoping baton, a Leatherman multipurpose tool that would definitely come in handy, and a flint knife kind of like Xochi’s, only this one had a hideous, skull-faced woman carved into the handle.

“Leave the
Nagual
knife,” Xochi said. She had found a similar one on her shifter and let it drop to the pavement like it was rotten. “It is unclean. An instrument of evil.”

Dean looked the flint knife over. Shrugged. Let it drop.

The two ladies from the bakery stuck their heads out the back door, expressions curious. Xochi said something that sounded apologetic. The sweet-faced one in the floral apron leaned over and spat on the prone body of the shifter who’d been garroted.

“
Pinchés federales
!” she said.

Dean had to stifle a laugh.

“Wow,” he said. “How does she really feel?”

“People here have no love for the
federales
,” Xochi told Dean. “Many are corrupt, tied in with the drug gangs.” She leaned in closer to drop her voice and whisper. “It’s better if grandmas like these two don’t know what these men really are. Safer for them.”

Dean got it. He nodded.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said.

As they made their way on foot back to the hotel, Dean filled Xochi in on what was going on with Sam. She was furious; she looked ready to slug someone. Anyone.

“Dean,” she said, hand on his arm and looking up at him with emotion leaking around the edges of her intense gaze. “We’ll find Sam. I swear to you, on my mother’s soul. I won’t let anything happen to him.”

Dean nodded and looked away, thinking of what had happened to Xochi’s own little brother. Hoping she was right.

“This is my fault,” she said, pressing a clenched fist to her temple. “So stupid of me. We should have stayed together.”

“Yeah,” Dean said. “But what would have happened to Claudia if she’d been arrested with us? Maybe you can fight off those scumbags with your bare hands, but I doubt she could. Maybe it was wrong to bring her at all.”

“Well,” Xochi said. “Better she be with us than following her mother on her own. Besides, I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to scare her, but the
Nagual
will be tracking her by now. They know she is our link to the Borderwalker and they will want to take her out.”

Dean felt like bad luck was shadowing him everywhere he turned and sloshing over onto everyone around him. It seemed like anybody he’d ever set out to protect always ended up worse off than they would have been if they’d never met him.

Xochi stopped on the way to buy a pair of prepaid cell phones from a small electronics shop and gave one to Dean.

“Call your friend Bobby,” she said. “I will make some calls and see what I can dig up about who might have taken Sam.”

Dean turned on the phone and dialed Bobby.

“You touch a hair on that boy’s head, so help me...” Bobby said.

“Bobby,” Dean said. “Take it easy, it’s me.”

“Dean,” Bobby said. “Jeez, what the hell happened to you?”

“Got arrested,” Dean said. “But I released myself on my own recognizance. Xochi’s with me.”

“Who?”

“Yeah, well never mind that now,” Dean said. “What have you heard from the people who have Sammy?”

“Nothing since that first call.”

“Did you wire the money?” Dean asked.

“Not yet,” Bobby said. “Not that I’ve got that kind of money laying around, but they’ve given me till midnight and I didn’t want to do anything until I heard back from you. I tried calling the American Consulate to see if there was any way to spring you, but they’ve been giving me the runaround.”

“Okay, just hang tight, man,” Dean said. “Xochi’s making inquiries.”

“So who is this Xochi person anyway?”

“Long story,” Dean replied.

“A female kinda story?”

“What the hell does that have to do with anything?” Dean asked.

“Oh, nothing,” Bobby said. “It’s just nice to hear that you’re getting back into the action.”

“Bobby,” Dean said. “I’m hanging up now. I have to find my brother.”

He ended the call.

Xochi was talking a mile a minute into her phone as they rounded the corner and came upon the hotel where Sam and Claudia were supposed to be holed up. She ended her call and cranked up her pace, nearly running to the double glass doors.

“I’m not finding anything yet,” she said. “But I’m not giving up. Let’s go in and see if maybe Claudia is still here.”

The lobby of the hotel was a strange sort of mash-up of bland, corporate franchise and bizarre, over-the-top local color. There were a few stray, striped polyester couches that looked like they’d been stolen from a Best Western in Scranton back in 1981. When Dean looked closer, he noticed that they were the same approximate color scheme, but didn’t exactly match. The carpet was hot pink, which also didn’t exactly match. Framed swap-meet paintings cluttered the walls, a strange, incompatible mix of gory bullfighting scenes, cute little boys in oversized sombreros and images of the Virgin Mary. Hovering over the blond fake-wood check-in desk was an enormous, asymmetrical brass and glass chandelier that could have doubled as some kind of medieval torture device. The mousy young girl at the desk looked like she lived in constant fear of being decapitated by that light fixture at any moment.

“Hey there,” Dean said. “I’m looking for my brother. He’s a big guy, about...”

“Mister Swierczynski?” she asked. “Just checked in this morning with his niece,” she looked down at her book. “Jennifer. With that...”

She pointed to her lower lip.

“That’s them,” Dean said.

“She your daughter, huh?”

Xochi stepped up and took Dean’s hand.

“Our daughter,” she said. “Yes.”

“Room 418,” she said.

“Did you see either one of them leave since they checked in?” Dean asked.

She shook her head.

“No,” she said. “They didn’t come out this way, but there’s another door in the back.”

“Okay, thanks,” Dean said.

“My pleasure,” she said. Then she leaned in and said something to Xochi in Spanish.

“What she’d say?” Dean asked as they walked over to the elevator.

“She said she wouldn’t let her daughter wear a lip ring.”

Dean shook his head.

“Why did you say Claudia was our daughter?” Dean said. “Nobody’s gonna believe that. What, did we have her when we were in high school?”

“I didn’t go to high school,” Xochi said. “And of course people will believe it. Why wouldn’t they? My own mother was only a year older than Claudia when she had Teo.”

The elevator came. They got on in silence and rode to the fourth floor. In spite of everything else that was on his mind in that moment, Dean was struck again by the complexity of this strange yoyo connection he felt with Xochi. They had developed an intense foxhole camaraderie almost immediately, and there were times when he felt so close to her, like they had so much in common. Then there were other times, like now, when he really felt the gulf of vast cultural differences that lay between them.

“You have any kids?” Dean asked as the elevator slowly counted off the floors. He didn’t know why it had never occurred to him to ask before.

“Someday maybe,” she said. “There is pressure from my family, of course, but I’m not ready. Not yet. Not after what happened to my brother. What about you?”

Dean thought of Ben. Shook his head.

“No,” he said.

The elevator opened on the fourth floor. Xochi got out. She didn’t say anything else. Dean didn’t know what to say either, so he just kept quiet.

Room 418 was inexplicably right next to the elevator. Dean knocked.

“Claudia?” he said. “It’s Dean, you in there?”

The door opened. Sam was standing there with a bottle of water in one hand.