Supernatural: Coyote's Kiss (8 page)

“I’ll work on tracking down current addresses for the two men,” Sam said. “And any other information I can dig up on the recent killings in San Diego.”

Dean nodded, pushed his fingers through his hair. He wasn’t exactly happy with this uneasy alliance, but it seemed almost like it could work.

“I must go now,” Xochi said. “But I will return in the morning.”

She walked over to Sam, stood high on her booted toes and pulled his shaggy head down so she could kiss his cheek.

“Thank you for the food,” she said.

“
De nada
,” Sam said with a wink.

She turned and locked eyes with Dean. She came to him slow and slid her arms around him, curvy little body pressed against his like it had been when she was struggling under him on the scratchy carpet.

“And thank you, Dean,” she said, low and close to his ear. “For giving me a chance to prove my intentions.”

Dean gripped her by the upper arms and stepped back, out of her embrace.

“Yeah, okay great.” he said. “See you tomorrow.”

She paused for a moment, looking up into his eyes.

“Tomorrow,” she said.

She turned and left. Dean closed the door and locked it. Let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

“Dude,” Sam said. “What’s with you?”

“What?”

“That chick’s a hammer. I’ll bet she could crack walnuts with that ass.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So she’s obviously into you,” Sam said. “You ought to hit that while it’s hot.”

Dean went for a much-needed drink, bypassing the beer and going straight to the whisky he’d stashed in the bedside drawer beside the King James Bible.

“Come on,” he said, breaking the seal and swigging directly from the bottle. “We’ve got more important things to think about right now.”

“You’re the one who keeps on saying you don’t believe I’m really me,” Sam said, hands held out in exaggerated disbelief. “But who the hell are you? My big brother, the unrepentant womanizer, just let an ass like that walk out the door because he’s got more important things to think about?”

“Look, if you think she’s so hot, why don’t you...:”

Sam cut him off before he could finish.

“Why are you still doing this to yourself?”

“Doing what, exactly?”

“Not like it matters to me one way or the other, but you and Lisa have been separated for how long now?”

“You were the one who wanted me to be with her so badly in the first place,” Dean said. “Besides, I’m just...”

“Just what?” Sam said. “Just not getting any. That’s what. Look, you gave the whole apple pie thing a shot, but it didn’t work out. Moping around and acting like there aren’t any other women in the world isn’t gonna change that. You need to lighten up. Have a little harmless fun. Clear out your pipes, because they’re obviously starting to back up and overflow into your brain.”

“Yeah, well,” Dean took another swig. “If you had a soul, maybe you’d understand.”

“You really think she hasn’t been with anyone else since you left?”

Dean turned to face his brother, eyes narrow.

“I really think you oughta mind your own damn business,” Dean said. He set the bottle down hard on the table, contents sloshing, nearly spilling.

“I’m just saying,” Sam said, shrugging. Unruffled as a reptile.

“Well don’t,” Dean said, hands curling into fists.

He was itching to let Sam have it, but there was no point. He was right, of course. Just trying to be practical. Besides, it wasn’t as if the idea hadn’t crossed Dean’s mind before. More times than he wanted to admit. Even though it made him crazy to think of anyone else touching Lisa, she deserved to find someone who could keep her safe and make her happy. Someone stable and decent and honest. Someone who could be a good role model for Ben. Someone who would never expose them to the kind of ugliness that Dean had brought into their lives. In short, someone who wasn’t him.

So why couldn’t he let go? Lighten up? Have a little harmless fun?

He grabbed the bottle by the neck and walked out the motel door.

Dean sat behind the wheel of the Impala, staring through the bug-splattered windshield at the motel parking lot. That car had always been more of a home to him than any house or any town anywhere in the country. It was where he went whenever he felt rocky. Disconnected. But sitting there that night, he just couldn’t shake the feeling of emotional freefall. Like he’d completely lost sight of what he was supposed to be doing with his life. Sam’s question was still echoing inside his head.
Who the hell are you
? Dean couldn’t make things work with Lisa, but he couldn’t just go back to who he used to be either. All he could do was keep busy, keep moving, and keep all his emotions crushed down and buried deep, like he always did. Numb up and nut up. Lose himself in the hunt. But it was the quiet times like this that got to him. Those long, lonely hours when night became morning, when no matter how much he drank, he just couldn’t seem to drown all the doubt and regret. The bottle propped between his legs was half empty. The pessimists’ verdict. Half empty, like he was. He took another pull, swiftly working his way toward completely empty. He thought of De La Paz, asking him if he still believed in justice.

When he first came out to the car, he had this absurd hope that Xochi would still be there, silently waiting astride her Hayabusa. He’d gotten into his head that if he saw her, he’d give her what she wanted. In spades. Toss her in the back seat of the Impala and prove to her that he wasn’t so hung up on the past he couldn’t have a little harmless fun. Prove it to himself. But she wasn’t there. So he sat in the car alone, drinking himself maudlin. Still hung up on the past.

He took out his cell phone. Lisa’s number remained on the screen from the previous dozen times he’d looked at it but didn’t dial it. He stared at it until the little screen went dark to conserve power, then put the phone back in his pocket.

Xochi had parked the Hayabusa beside a dying Joshua tree and hiked off into the desert. She had nothing with her but a thin bedroll, a canteen and a small pouch containing sacred tools and herbs. She had a flashlight, but didn’t use it. She didn’t need it. Her night vision was sharp as a cat’s, but she wasn’t following a visible path. She was following ley lines. Veins of psychic energy that flow like blood just beneath the skin of the world. Leading her to a powerful nexus point where her prayer to Huehuecoyotl would be most likely to be heard.

The sky above her was cloudless, a heavy three-quarter moon low on the horizon. She searched the scatter of stars for the
Tianquiztli
cluster out of childhood habit, feeling reassured and centered when she found it. She could hear the frantic, high-pitched yipping of coyotes in the distance.

The harsh, moonlit landscape gave no indication that humans had ever existed and seemed to actively resent her presence. The slithering sand filled in her footprints seconds after she made them.

It took several hours for her to reach the nexus. As she walked, she thought of the two big green-eyed
gringos
. So infuriatingly American in their approach, all cowboy muscle and cocky, self-centered entitlement, yet she could clearly see that their destinies were inextricably intertwined with her own.

The older brother was going to be a problem, but he was a problem that intrigued her. Sure, he was distractingly handsome, a ripe mango, and she couldn’t deny a certain raw physical attraction. But there was so much more going on under the surface. He was complicated, a haunted warrior. She knew she couldn’t just break into a man like that the way she’d broken into his cheap motel room. She needed to find a way to earn his trust, and cheap seduction was not the way to do it.

As for the younger, soulless brother, she knew from the first second she saw him that he was the key. But why couldn’t she see the shape of the lock?

The area around the nexus was no different visually than the hundreds of miles of surrounding desert. A slight indentation in the sand, to the left of a pair of large squarish boulders like dice thrown by bored gods. To the right, a thick stand of spindly creosote, an impossibly long-lived desert dweller that was already ancient back when the great city of
Tenochtitlan
was still young.

She unrolled her striped woolen blanket near the center of the indentation and started gathering kindling for a small fire. Once she’d collected enough, she dug a shallow pit, ringed it with smooth stones and stacked the gathered branches in a loose basket shape with the smallest underneath and the thickest at the top. She tucked a handful of dried leaves under the kindling and lit them with a silver Zippo. She was an old-fashioned girl, but not above modern convenience.

Once she got the fire started, she began to lay out ritual tools on the blanket. Bundles of herbs. A chunk of turquoise. A wooden cup. A pale flint knife with a handle shaped like a coiled snake.

She started with a spiritual cleansing, bathing her body in sage smoke and releasing all worldly thoughts from her mind. She mixed several of the dried herbs in the wooden cup, crushing them with the turquoise and then adding water from her canteen. The resulting brew was bitter and earthy, but she drank it down without hesitation. It left flecks of grit on her lips and tongue.

After throwing a handful of copal into the fire, she took the blade of the knife and held it to her sternum. It felt cold against her skin. Pulling in a slow, centering breath, she drew the razor-sharp stone blade across the tattooed heart on her chest. She clenched her teeth, hissing against the sting. Her blood gathered on the blade and she held it over the fire, letting fat droplets fall sizzling into the flames. A symbolic sacrifice to Huehuecoyotl.

“
Let me be open
,” she said, speaking in her ancient native tongue.

Then she waited.

It started with the coyotes. First one, then three, leggy gray shadows lurking around the perimeter of her vision. Soon more than a dozen, silently watching. Waiting, like she was. She was not afraid.

When Huehuecoyotl came, his form was human, a diminutive old man, as gnarled and brown as dried venison. Naked except for a tattered blanket clutched around his hunched and bony shoulders. But his eyes were young, dancing with wicked humor.

“
Little Xiuhxochitl,
” he said, calling her by her full name.

“
Huehuetque,
” Xochi replied, respectfully addressing him using the term for a wise elder. “
You honor this humble huntress with your presence
.”

“
You are a woman now,
” he said, his face flickering from canine to human and back again in the orange glow of her dying fire. “
A shadow warrior, like your mother. The flower blooms.
”

He held out his knobby brown hand, cupping a lick of fire in his palm. He swirled a fingertip though the captive flame and it began to coil itself into petals. When he handed it to her, it had become a flower, a lush yellow dahlia. After a few heartbeats, the flower became a fat horned lizard, regarding her with a cocked head and suspicious little eyes. When she moved her hand to put the lizard down, it shot angry jets of blood from its eyes, leaping away and leaving her arm streaked with crimson.

Huehuecoyotl laughed, flashing toothless gums and slapping his skinny shank like that was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. Xochi was familiar with his childish pranks and kept her cool, trying to stay focused on the matter at hand.

“
I need your advice, Huehuetque,
” Xochi said.

“
What will you give me in return?
” he asked. “
A kiss?
”

He was no longer a scrawny old man. In the swift flicker of a shadow, he’d become Dean Winchester. Still nude, his tattered blanket now thrown back off one muscular shoulder. Xochi looked away, focusing her gaze on the heart of the fire.

“
A kiss is what started this trouble
,” Xochi said.

“
Trouble is what makes eternity worth enduring
,” he replied.