The Devil's Bag Man (16 page)

G
alvan!” Rubacalo shouted.

No response. The man was swaying, head tossed back, eyelids twitching, a cruel smile creeping gradually across his bloody face.

Not good.

Not good at all.

The cartel chief took a hard step forward, the pistol smoking in his hand.

“Galvan,” he said again, and the eyes popped open, the head whipped toward him, a cruel new intelligence shining from eyes that were oil black and bottomless. Rubacalo's breath caught in his throat.

“Not anymore,” the man said, and Rubacalo knew he had failed.

That he would die.

“Cualli,” he whispered, the word out of his mouth before he could stop it.

The monster sauntered toward him, all swaggering hips and flicking tongue.

Looking into his eyes was like falling down a mineshaft, but Rubacalo forced himself.

Five hundred years, and it had come to this.

He could still die nobly. With the truth on his lips.

“You are no god. Only an impostor. Your very existence is unholy.”

The look on Cualli's face was curious. Indulgent. As if he had forgotten what the foibles of men were like and was taking perverse delight in rediscovering them.

Or as if he welcomed the chance to explore the vastness of his nascent power.

“Your mistake is thinking that there is any such thing as holy.” Cualli looked him up and down. “Izel's failure is now complete.”

It was then that Rubacalo realized the knife was still in the monster's hand.

He steeled himself for pain and then oblivion, or for whatever lay beyond this world. Perhaps in death, the gods grant attentions they denied the living; perhaps they had not abandoned humankind as thoroughly as Izel had taught. Rubacalo had always dared to hope as much—and to believe that the purity of his purpose would wash away his multitude of sins when he crossed over. That he would be received with honor in whatever realm came next. Rewarded, rather than punished.

Suddenly, he wasn't so sure.

“Make it quick,” he growled.

That brought a smile to Cualli's lips.

“Nothing is quick,” he said, and he looked past Rubacalo at Valentine and his forces. At the shrieking girls, Galvan's daughter and Nichols's sweetheart, both of them hysterical, flailing against their captors, crazed with shock and rage.

“Dile a tus cuates que chinguen a esos pinches motociclistas,” he commanded.

Tell your men to kill those biker assholes
.

Valentine blinked, as if struggling to comprehend, to accept whose words that voice was speaking. Then he nodded, turned, repeated the command.

If the True Natives had understood any Spanish, they might have lived a little longer. But being a racist fuckwad carried a price.

Valentine's men—Cualli's men, now—had the drop. And they had the numbers.

Twelve guns. Six bikers.

Most of them had been killed twice before they hit the ground.

Valentine dispatched the big one, the leader, himself: head shot from point-blank range, the effluvia of blood and brain geysering from the side of his melon head and splattering itself across Galvan's daughter's neck, torso.

The girl was too far gone to even scream.

Valentine dropped his gun arm, turned to his men.

“Quién hubiera pensado que este cabrón tuviera tanta carne en esa cabeza hueca?” he cracked.

Who would have thought that son of a bitch had so much meat in that empty head?

Rubacalo studied the soldiers' faces. Their smiles were forced. They had no idea what the fuck was going on. Perhaps he could exploit that, somehow. Buy himself another chance.

His eyes flickered, and his mind took stock. He still had two bodyguards. A pistol in his hand. Fuentes was still breathing. The limousine was armored, and less than a hundred feet away, and secreted away inside was the only weapon Rubacalo had left.

Though perhaps the weapon was a weapon no more. Perhaps it had never been one.

Even as he tabulated the vectors, handicapped the chances, Rubacalo knew survival was a fantasy. Darkness had fallen.

On him, and on the world.

Death.

For those who could die, anyway.

More suffering for those who could not.

Five hundred years
.

“I am at your disposal,” Valentine called across the field, that sniveling coward. “Command me, Great One, and it shall be done.”

Perhaps he could save his bodyguards, Rubacalo thought deliriously. Commit one final act of decency.

He had spent his life treating men like pawns on a chessboard, spoiling for an endgame that would never come.

The world was an infinitely worse place for his having lived.

Rubacalo tossed his pistol into the dirt and gestured at his men.
“These two are guns for hire,” he told Valentine. “Better they work for you than die with me.”

A smile spread across the procurer's face. “But how could I trust them?” he said. “If only there were some way they could demonstrate their loyalty.”

Rubacalo spread his arms to crucifix height. “Do it already,” he said. “I'm tired of waiting around.”

The bodyguards stood mute, waiting for an order. One gave Rubacalo a tiny, tight nod of gratitude.

Perhaps my name will find honor among his children
, Rubacalo thought. But he could not even remember the man's surname.

“Have you finished with him, my lord?” Valentine simpered. “Shall I—”

“No, I have not,” Cualli thundered. “Take your men. Search the premises. There are two boys hidden, and a woman. I want no loose ends here. Leave Galvan's daughter and her friend with me.”

Valentine's guards fanned out, eager to escape the monster's scrutiny. Rubacalo's followed, without risking so much as a backward glance at their former boss.

Valentine himself dragged the girl and the woman across the field and deposited them at the monster's feet. He passed within a few feet of Rubacalo, the pungent waft of his cologne cutting through the stench of sweat and blood that filled the air.

Close enough to kill
, thought Rubacalo, and he imagined lashing out, snapping that skinny neck before Cualli could stop it. But his limbs felt leaden, immovable. His will was evaporating, pushing its way out through his pores like sweat, and before Rubacalo could muster the resolve, the procurer and the opportunity were gone.

“You,” Cualli snapped, his voice like the crack of an icicle, and Rubacalo's heart fluttered.

But no. The Timeless One stepped around the heap of female flesh, Sherry, and the sobbing Cantwell woman, took three quick strides, and came to a stop in front of Fuentes.

The lawman quaked, and a dark stain spread across the front of his trousers. Rubacalo braced to watch him die, beginning to appreciate the deliberateness of Cualli, the utter lack of worry in him. It did not
seem to cross this creature's mind that any of them—not the virgin girls sobbing pathetically in the high grass, not the billionaire drug lord, not the daughter of the man whose very body he had just colonized—might exercise the slightest vestige of will. Their actions, their motivations, were of no concern or consequence. Did not even exist for him.

Worse yet, Cualli's reality eradicated any other, in the minds of those in his presence. Became theirs, too. Through the sheer force of his being, Cualli leached away resistance.

He had all the time in the world.

All of it.

It belonged to him.

Rubacalo was through the looking glass: already dead, and watching with a kind of detached horror—or was it admiration—as Cualli set his house in order.

“What is your rank?” he asked Fuentes.

The man could barely speak. “Re-regional supervisor of police intelligence,” he managed to get out.

The Ancient One mused on that a moment, as the piss stain on Fuentes's pants continued its inexorable expansion. It had become a symbol to Rubacalo in these last, unbearable moments. It represented corruption. Fear. Evil.

Soon it would be everywhere.

“Yes or no,” Cualli snapped. “Are you for sale?”

“Yes,” Fuentes answered, immediately.

“Then consider yourself bought.”

The Ancient One spun away. “Get out of here.”

“Yes, sir.”

The cop sprinted for his car, assiduously avoiding even a stray glance at his dead friend's wife, or his dead friend. A moment later the engine revved to life, and he peeled the hell out of Rosales for all he was worth.

A bought man. A minion in the devil's army. A turncoat. A spy.

But he was still breathing.

Then again, so am I
.

That was a cruelty. Cualli forcing him to savor the taste of death, the fullness of his failure. It was no surprise when the monster stalked back to Galvan's daughter and Nichols's woman.

“Rise,” he commanded.

The girl pulled herself to her feet, her tear-streaked, dirt-begrimed face rigid and planar, old beyond its years. There was something of her father in her, Rubacalo thought.

It was more than could be said of the thing that stood before her, wearing her father's skin.

The other woman did not respond. She was a puddle, rippling with quiet sobs, writhing and clutching at her stomach.

Cualli did not seem to care. He addressed himself to the Galvan girl. “You are of my blood,” he intoned. “Just as your father was. That is not a thing to be taken lightly.”

She stared back at him, her eyes as hard as diamonds. “Where is he?”

Cualli licked a fleck of blood from his lip. “Gone. Never to return.”

“You killed him.”

“I wish, for his sake, that it was so simple. For although he was my enemy, I owe Jess Galvan a debt.”

Sherry glared at him for a long moment. How could that feel? Rubacalo wondered. To look into her father's face and see a monster. That alone would drive a weak man insane.

But this was no weak man.

“If he's not dead, where the fuck is he?” she demanded.

“The Dominio Gris,” Cualli said, his voice tinged with a dreamy quality. “A prison for those whose bodies have been severed from their souls. Forged by the gods themselves, and inescapable.”

He leaned forward, until they were face-to-face. The girl didn't flinch.

“Out of respect for your father, and your blood, I will give you a choice, Sherry Galvan. You can live, you can die, or you can join him.”

Rubacalo's mouth fell open in shock. Surely, this could not be mercy. The word was not in Cualli's vocabulary. Perhaps he was thinking of the propagation of his bloodline—that in a few hundred more years, some descendant of this girl's might provide his next home. Perhaps he hoped to multiply the trickle of DNA he shared with Galvan and with Sherry—to breed himself a more easily dominated victim. The notion unspooled from Rubacalo's mind, messy and speculative. There was only one thing he knew for certain.

If Cualli offered you life, you were better off choosing death.

“I want to live,” said Sherry Richards, with all the conviction in the world and not an ounce of gratitude.

“So be it,” the monster replied.

“And my friend, too.” She reached down, pulled the other woman to her feet.

Cualli flicked his eyes down her length, and his lip curled in dismissal.

“Leave now,” he ordered.

And at last, he looked at Rubacalo.

“He will not be needing his vehicle,” the monster said.

A moment later, the ground beneath Herman Rubacalo's feet disappeared.

As did the air in his lungs.

Cualli held him aloft, squeezing ever so slowly. Ever so carefully.

Exquisite asphyxiation.

“Your sons and your daughter shall also die,” the Ancient One whispered, as Rubacalo felt his head engorge with blood, watched the sky flicker, and a final, uncompromising darkness curled toward him. “Izel's line is at an end.”

Speech was beyond him, but there was time for one last thought.

Rubacalo died with a tiny smile on his purple-black lips. Cualli was wrong about that much, at least.

Izel's line will never end
.

A
t least they weren't living on borrowed time anymore, Sherry Richards thought grimly as she crouched beside Ruth; she threw the woman's spaghetti-limp arm over her own shoulder, straightened her knees, and lifted the dead weight that was her shell-shocked friend.

For months, she'd been waiting for disaster to strike. The other shoe to fall. The devil to tally up the bill and demand payment. The dead, leaden sensation that filled her now was familiar. Welcome, even. It was horrible—a state beyond sorrow, a state of having cried yourself out, stared despair in the face until your eyes went dry and you wanted to drop to the ground and fall asleep—but it was where she lived. Who she was. The natural order of things.

And it was better than waiting. Better than dread.

Better than captivity. Better than listening to a gang of bikers openly discuss when, where, and how they were going to rape her.

But that was easy for Sherry to say. She hadn't lost what Ruth had. Her father was already gone—had been gone for months, even if she hadn't known it until now.

But Nichols? Nichols had been a good man, and very much alive. It was a good fucking thing Ruth was catatonic right now, because if she was in control of her senses, Sherry would not have been able to lead her past her beloved's body, twisted in the dust, and load her into the backseat of the limousine parked thirty yards past, its glossy black satin finish mottled by a thick layer of grime.

Best Sherry could do for a silver lining.

“We've got to get out of here,” she told Ruth, voice resonant in the cushy, soundproofed chamber.

No response.

“Okay, just hang on a sec,” Sherry chattered, knowing it was pointless, doing it anyway. Where she was getting her energy, she had no idea. It had to be pure adrenaline; she'd only slept in snatches since the True Natives had taken them: a twenty-minute nod on the back of a motorcycle, a couple of hours in the backseat of Valentine's car.

“I'm going to go look for the keys,” she told Ruth, “and then we'll be on our way.”

Or we won't
.

But apparently when God closed a door, he opened a window. Or, more accurately, when he fucked you bloody, he left a nickel on the pillow. The keys were behind the visor; Sherry pulled it down, and they fell into her lap. The engine purred to life, an obedient tiger. She spun the wheel, kicked up a scrim, and drove right through it. The absurd taffy-stretched car of the dead kingpin shouldered onto the pavement a few seconds later. Within minutes she was banging a hard left onto the highway, and a few after that Sherry had mastered the wheel and memorized the unchanging road well enough to start dashboard-hunting for the nonessentials: air-conditioning, seat adjustment, the switch that brought down the smoked-glass partition cutting her off from Ruth.

That last one was an essential, actually. Sherry had been where Ruth was now, gaping into the maw of the abyss, and it wouldn't do to leave her friend alone there for any longer than absolutely necessary. Sherry thought back on the room she'd built inside herself—the padded isolation chamber to which she'd learned to retreat in the face of abuse, hopelessness, the incomprehensible.

That place outside of space and time had saved her life, but it was
dangerous, too. Getting out was never as easy as getting in. Sunlight could not penetrate the walls; the voices of the people who loved you were inaudible. You risked losing yourself entirely.

And Ruth wasn't in there alone.

There was the baby to think about.

The fierce rush of protectiveness she felt for that kid brought tears to Sherry's eyes. Everything was simple now, she thought, backhanding the moisture away. No more divided allegiances, no more being pulled in two directions at once. The only people she had left were in this car right now. Sherry, Ruth, and the baby against the world.

The world.

Apparently, that thing was in some jeopardy. Unstoppable Aztec psychopath inhabiting her father's body and all that.

There was only one thing to do: get as far away as possible. Drive until the road ended, and get on a fucking boat. Get off the boat and get in a car and drive until that road ended.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

By the time she got the window down, Rosales was a memory, a speck in the rearview.

Sherry didn't trust mirrors, so she threw her arm over the seat back, twisted to check on Ruth.

The backseat was empty. For a split second, Sherry panicked. Then the sound of Ruth's ragged in-breath fluttered up from the floor, weak and labored.

“Ruth? You okay?”

No response. Sherry eased her foot down on the brakes, pulled onto the shoulder, parked, threw open the door.

The air outside was thick and muggy, the sun low in the sky and the ground practically pulsating with the day's heat. It was loud in that quiet way, or quiet in that loud way—the smallest movements of brush and bird and snake amplified, seeming to tear through the stagnant air.

Stopping at all went against Sherry's every impulse, even if there was nothing around for miles, but she had one job now, and she intended to do it. Cantwell could mourn all she wanted, but no way was she getting dehydrated on Sherry's watch. If tears came out, water was damn well going in. There had to be a wet bar or something in the limo. You
couldn't expect a cartel chief to enjoy his satellite TV and butter-soft leather without a beverage in hand, could you?

She opened the door, found Ruth curled fetal on the floor—a far wider expanse than the seat, Sherry had to admit—her back expanding and contracting like an accordion with each deep, shuddery breath.

Sherry climbed inside, crouched over Ruth, and splayed a hand across her shoulder. She started at the touch, jerked away. That was good, Sherry told herself; she was responsive.

“Ruth, I need you to drink something. Can you sit up for me?”

Keep it simple,
Sherry told herself.
Don't overload her circuits
.

But even as she thought it, Sherry became aware of what loomed on the periphery of her mind, a mushroom cloud of despair that billowed toward the heavens. The moment her laser focus on Ruth waned, it would engulf her. All this was a ruse, her brain's best attempt to distract her, lest she be blubbering on the floor beside her friend.

Well
, she thought grimly,
thank God for that
. And pushed it all away.

“Come on, Ruth. Sit up.” Sherry took her by the shoulders, pulled gently but insistently until Cantwell's body got the gist of it and decided that resistance would be harder than compliance. She leaned against the seat and blinked through her tears at Sherry; the world seemed to come back into focus.

“Good,” Sherry said and squeezed her hand. “We're going to get through this, Ruth. But we've got to take care of you, okay? Keep your strength up. Make sure you eat and drink. Now, let's see. There's got to be a minibar or something in here.”

She ran her hands over the leather upholstery, looking for a button, a switch, a keypad that might control the chunky, wood-grained console built between the backseat and the wall of the driver's cabin. It looked big enough to house a minibar of epic proportions. Hell, there could practically be a restaurant in there.

Before long, Sherry found what she was looking for. On the door panel, right beside the window controls, was a switch with four positions. She flicked it from left to left-center, and the panels of the console slid open.

Inside, resting on red velvet pedestals, were a pair of gleaming gold .45s. Sherry goggled at them for a moment—
good to know
—and flicked the switch to center-right.

Another velvet-lined cabinet, this one stocked with an array of decanters, full of clear and amber liquids. Beneath it was another, filled with bottled water, and a third, artfully lined with a range of snacks: chocolate bars and packets of tea cookies and all sorts of mouthwatering shit.

“Bingo.” She cracked a water bottle, gave it to Ruth. “Drink.” Tore open a chocolate bar, broke off a square, popped it in her mouth, and passed it over.

Ruth stared at the objects in her hands for a moment, as if unsure what they were. Then—haltingly, experimentally—she lifted the bottle to her lips, tipped it back. As soon as the water passed her lips, she seemed to realize how thirsty she'd been. Three gulps and the bottle was empty, the plastic crackling and caving from the force of her pull. She cast it aside, crammed half the chocolate bar into her mouth, and closed her eyes. If it wasn't ecstasy, at least it was relief.

It wasn't nutrition, though. Not the kind a growing baby needed. They hadn't had a proper meal in two days, if Sherry stopped to think about it, just the occasional apple or strip of beef jerky from the True Natives' saddle pouches. The stomach-churning fear had kept the hunger at bay, but now Sherry was ravenous—which must mean Ruth was doubly so.

For a moment, she considered heading back to Rosales to lay in some supplies. Who knew where the next town might be? To say nothing of how they'd get back into the States, passportless and driving a car that could only belong to a movie star or a successful killer.

But no. Put as much distance between themselves and the battlefield as possible. Drive until the road ended. That was the plan, shitty or not.

Sherry's hand wandered back to the switch she'd used to open the bar. She flicked it again, from center to right.

The console spun, and the plan went out the window.

The plan, and what little Sherry thought she knew about the world.