Supernatural: Coyote's Kiss (30 page)

“Come on,” Xochi said, grabbing Sam’s ankles. “Let’s get him into the back.”

Dean grabbed Sam under the arms and the two of them lifted him into the bed of the El Camino. Dean climbed in back with Sam and Xochi got up front. The driver pulled out into traffic before Xochi could close the passenger door. There was no tailgate, so Dean had to hang on to Sam with one arm and wrap a hank of knotted rope around the other to anchor himself to the body of the truck so the two of them didn’t slide out the back every time the driver hit the gas.

The El Camino took them down into the twisted, cobbled streets of Guanajuato. There didn’t seem to be any logic at all to the haphazard intersections, winding alleys, and damp, dripping tunnels. If there were any traffic lights or signs, they were more like casual suggestions that everyone ignored. Getting from one place to the other in this town seemed to be more like improvisational theater than actual driving. It was really a beautiful little town, full of gorgeous buildings, churches and theaters, but Dean was watching Sam, willing him to wake up.

The driver pulled up in front a little row of shops, none of which looked open. Xochi got out and came around back to give Dean a hand with Sam. Once they got him down out of the truck bed, Xochi called out to the driver and waved. The driver stuck an arm out the window in salute and then drove away.

“Who was that?” Dean asked, adjusting his grip on Sam.

“I don’t know,” Xochi said. “He said his name was Alejandro.”

“Why did he help us?” Dean asked, watching the El Camino drive away.

“He liked my ass.”

Dean laughed, adjusting Sam’s weight again.

“I won’t argue with that,” he said. “Where are we taking Sam?”

“Here,” she said, gesturing with her chin to an unmarked door.

She knocked on the door and it was answered by a person who looked to be in their early sixties. Dean couldn’t tell if they were a man or a woman. The features were rough and heavy, mannish and free of make-up, but the fluffy white hair was long, elaborately coiffed and curled. The clothes were plain, loose-fitting, and black, except for a bright purple, sparkly scarf with a beaded fringe. Jeweled rings on every thick finger but nails trimmed short and unpainted. Purple cowboy boots.

Xochi introduced herself and Dean. The person said their name was Lulo and exchanged a few Spanish words with Xochi, before motioning for them to enter. Lulo’s voice did nothing to clear up Dean’s confusion. It was low in pitch but distinctly feminine in tone.

They were led into a small cluttered room that looked like it had been decorated by the Native American Liberace in 1971. There was a full-sized mannequin suspended from the ceiling as if flying, dressed in an outfit that might have been selected by a drag-queen playing Pocahontas in a Las Vegas show. There were tons of kitschy tomahawks and feather headdresses and other “Indian” knickknacks, all embellished with various glittery, homemade touches. One whole corner was taken up with an elaborate altar covered in candles, incense, coins and small, greenish oranges. Above the altar was a painting of a shirtless guy with a coyote head and a red flute. Dean assumed it was an image of Huehuecoyotl. Lulo motioned for Dean to bring Sam over to a pink-velvet couch covered in thick, clear-plastic slipcovers.

Lulo looked Sam over, touching his wrists and forehead, smelling his breath and pushing his hair back from his face.

Dean wasn’t thrilled about the idea of this weird stranger messing with his brother, but he trusted Xochi. He didn’t want to and certainly hadn’t planned to, but he did. He had to. He looked over at her and she gave him a slight, reassuring nod.

Lulo said something to Xochi in Spanish and left the room.

“Okay,” Dean said. “First of all, is that Lulo person a guy or a woman?”

“Lulo is a two-spirit shaman,” Xochi answered, as if that explained everything.

“I don’t get it.” Dean frowned. “I mean, everybody’s gotta be one or the other, right?”

“Lulo doesn’t.”

Dean had no idea what to make of that.

“Well,” Dean said, shrugging. “If I’m not gonna date her... him... whatever, then I guess it doesn’t matter to me. All that matters right now is whether or not this person can help Sam.”

“Sam will be okay without help,” Xochi said. “Lulo confirmed that he is only sleeping. But we can’t do anything if we have to carry him around like this. We need him awake and able to help us, so Lulo has agreed to mix up a tonic to reverse the effect of the drug.”

“And what about Claudia? We gotta find her.”

“My guess is that the
Nagual
have drugged her like they drugged Sam. They will want to keep her hidden until she wakes. Once that happens, they will question her.”

“Question her,” Dean echoed. He knew exactly what that meant.

“They will make her tell them where Elvia is. Then they will kill her.”

“Any idea where they might have taken her?” Dean asked.

Xochi shook her head. “But you know who will know where she is?”

“Who? Lulo?”

“Elvia.”

Lulo returned with a small pink cordial glass filled with dark liquid, motioning to Dean to lift Sam’s head. Dean put his arm around his brother and cupped the back of his head. Lulo held the glass to Sam’s lips. Some of the murky tonic dribbled down Sam’s chin, but the rest went down his throat. Sam’s reaction was immediate and violent, as if he’d received an adrenalin shot to the heart.

He sat bolt upright, gasping, eyes flashing wide and white around the edges like a frightened horse. He knocked the glass out of Lulo’s hand and might have actually taken a swing at the shaman if Dean hadn’t been right there to grab his brother’s arm.

“Hey, whoa,” Dean said. “Take it easy, Sammy.”

“What the hell happened?” Sam asked. He looked around the room. “Where’s Claudia?”

Dean filled him in while Lulo gathered up the broken pink glass off the sparkly linoleum.

“All right then,” Sam said. “We’d better go find Elvia.”

“I don’t know,” Dean said. “You really think she’s gonna listen to us after we tried to kill her?”

“If you’ve got a better idea, I’d love to hear it,” Sam said.

“If you convinced the Alpha to help us,” Xochi said, “you can convince Elvia.”

“How did this hunt become all about me sweet-talking chick monsters?” Dean asked.

“It’s only because you are so good at it,” Xochi said.

“Yeah, but the Alpha was...” Dean struggled for the right way to say this. “Well not exactly normal, but normal for what she is. Elvia, not so much. She’s obviously been driven dangerously insane by everything she went through. I don’t think she can be reasoned with.”

“Come on, Dean,” Sam said. “You’ve had plenty of crazy broads in your life. Remember Niki Drummond?”

“You mean the facehugger?” Dean shuddered. “How could I forget? I thought I was gonna have to chew my own leg off to get away from her.”

“You can do this, Dean,” Xochi said.

“But I don’t think Elvia even understands English,” Dean said.

“I will translate,” Xochi said. “We are wasting valuable time with this argument. Whatever we are going to do, we need to do it now. Right away.”

“She’s right,” Sam said, getting to his feet. He pulled out that huge Magnum and checked it over. “Did you get the ammo?”

Dean nodded, hefted the bag.

“Okay then,” Sam said. “Are we doing this or are we doing this?”

Lulo came over to Sam and took his hand, saying something Dean didn’t understand.

“Lulo wants to bless you,” Xochi said.

“Bless me?” Sam frowned.

“Lulo says that you also have two spirits,” Xochi said, translating as Lulo spoke. “Not male and female, but good and evil, intertwined like connected twins who can never be separated. All your life, gods, demons, and men have been trying to push you one way or the other. But Lulo wants you to know that you will always have these two spirits inside you. That you must learn to accept and embrace that duality and find your own balance between the two. To be your own man, on your own terms. Lulo wants to bless your... your vessel while it is empty, so that when your twin spirits are freed from their imprisonment, the wounded halves will... integrate together more harmoniously.”

Dean looked at Sam and could see that his brother wasn’t buying any of this mumbo-jumbo. Twin spirits or not, Dean wondered if Sam was still just as dead set against getting his soul back as he was the last time they’d talked about it. They’d been way too busy to get into it again and Dean certainly wasn’t gonna be the one to bring it up, but he wondered. And although Dean wasn’t really sure if he was buying this mumbo-jumbo either, he did find it interesting that Lulo had said
when
Sam’s soul is freed, not
if
.

“Fine,” Sam said. “Whatever. Just make it quick.”

Lulo put a hand in the center of Sam’s chest, eyes closed and humming softly. Sam shot a glance toward Dean but said nothing. After about a minute, Lulo stepped back and nodded, big smile revealing two missing teeth, one on top and one on the bottom. Lulo then handed Sam a black-and-white-striped candle in a glass tube and said something in Spanish.

“Rub this candle on your hair, your face and your body,” Xochi said.

Sam looked skeptical but did as requested. Lulo took the candle, lit it and added it to the others cluttering up the glittery altar.

“Can we go now?” Sam asked.

“Yes,” Xochi said. “We can go now.”

El Museo De Las Momias
was still closed when they got there. Which was a good thing. The last thing Dean wanted to deal with was crowds of sunburned tourists if Elvia decided to go on another rampage.

It was an old colonial building, tan and brown with rows of columns and archways along the front. The place was locked up tight as a drum, all heavy bars and steel gates. No windows and only one other side door—some kind of emergency exit around the corner from the main entrance. The alarm was a pushover, but the lock was a bitch, a Medeco 80 series MVP cam lock. Not totally pick-proof, but a real pain in the ass. Dean sent Sam to watch out for guards while he disabled the alarm, got out his picks, and went to work on the lock.

Dean had always thought of locks like women, and he liked a challenge. He shut out everything else around him and zeroed his focus down to the smallest micro-movements of his fingertips. Didn’t think about Claudia, or Sam, or the Star Demons. He just concentrated on the feel of the picks against the tumbler. He almost had it. Almost had it—

Then the door opened from the inside, startling Dean and making him step back and drop the picks, hand going reflexively to the shotgun grip. Xochi stuck her head out of the doorway, looked around, and waved Sam and Dean inside.

Sam smiled and held out his hand for Dean to go first. Dean gathered up his picks and ducked into the dark, stuffy interior of the silent museum.

“How the hell did you get in?” Dean asked Xochi.

Xochi gestured toward a young, chubby guard lurking in a distant doorway looking pink faced and smitten.

“You’re not the only one who knows how to sweet talk the opposite sex,” she said.

She blew the guard a kiss and winked. He looked down, turning even redder. Dean grinned.

“Okay,” Sam said. “So how are we going to find Elvia?”

“I think I have an idea of where she might be,” Xochi said.

She clicked on her mini-Maglite and led them down a long dark hallway and into an exhibition hall lined with glass cases. Dean followed with his own flashlight and Sam took the rear. Playing his light over the glass cases, Dean knew what he would be seeing, but knowing and seeing are two different things.

The cases were filled with corpses. Dozens and dozens of desiccated dead bodies. Delicate, papery, and dry, with yawning mouths and empty eye sockets. Many still had hair. Some had ragged clothes. Most were naked. Some were laid out flat, others propped up with wire as if standing on their withered, curled up feet.

“What’s with these all corpses anyway?” Sam asked.

“They are natural mummies,” Xochi said. “Dried up because of certain minerals in the soil. Around the late 1800s, a burial tax was created and if families could not pay for their loved ones, the bodies would be dug up and kicked out of the graveyard. But nobody wanted to just throw the bodies away with the garbage, so they piled them up in storage. This practice was outlawed in the fifties, but soon tourists started coming to see the collection of mummies. That’s why they opened this museum.”

“Wow,” Dean said, shining his light on the box-kite ribcage and shriveled breasts of a mummy with long wispy hair bound into a braid. “Fun for the whole family.”

Truth was, Dean knew that while Lisa would probably be less than thrilled, Ben would love something like this. Dean needed to push thoughts like that right out of his mind and stay focused.

“So where do you think Elvia is hiding?” Sam asked.

“Well,” Xochi said. “If I was a confused, crazy mama who lost her baby daughter, I think I would want to be with the
angelitos
.”

“The what?” Dean asked.