The Witching Hour: 11 Enchanting Novels Featuring Witches, Wizards, Vampires, Shifters, Ghosts, Fae, and More!, page 87
He was curious to know if I knew anything about the bomb that had been planted in the rapist’s car.
“Only the Shadow knows,” I’d said, and he’d laughed and then explained to me the American pop culture reference as if I’d never read a comic book or heard an old radio broadcast in my life.
He wasn’t a culo about it, though, and he had a nice laugh. He also had a clean aura that told me he was one of the good guys, even if he was pretending not to be.
I figured he was a Texas Ranger, or DEA.
Turns out he’d been a cop in San Antonio before joining the DEA.
But I didn’t learn that until later.
What I did learn right away was that he wasn’t some gringo tourist, but a man who knew his history in more than one language. He knew what my name meant and how to pronounce it. Most people think “Aixa” is Mixtec or something, but actually it’s Arabic/Hebrew.
Dale knew that.
I liked hearing him say my name — it was like he was caressing me with his voice. Later, as we got to know each other better, I liked what he did with his hands even more than what he did with his voice.
Dale was a good guy but a hard man. No one gets into the drug business — on either side of the line — unless they’re damaged in some way.
Dale’s blue eyes were clear as glass, but the soul behind them was cloudy with doubts.
If Dale had been in Sangre de Cristo on the night of blood and fire, things might have gone very differently. I always wondered if he was called away on purpose, if his absence had been planned in the shadows by those who arrange such things to their advantage. He didn’t think he was working with dirty cops but I wasn’t so sure.
In the month leading up to that terrible night, there had been weeks of increasing violence in town, days of random shootings and rising threats and big American cars driving too fast up and down Sangre de Cristo’s narrow streets.
When a blacked-out Escalade the size of a rhino hit a little kid as he crossed the street in front of his school, people finally said no mas, and the driver was arrested. A slick lawyer from the city materialized, shamelessly offering bribes to make the charges go away. The boy’s grieving parents were offered a couple million in compensation, and there the matter might have rested except that Jorge Pinero, Sangre de Cristo’s chief of police, had a son the same age as the dead boy.
It was all too easy for Jorge to imagine Raulito dead on a slab.
It was all too easy for him to imagine what it would be like for him if the killer of his son walked away free after offering him blood money. So Jorge told the fancy lawyer from Mexico City to get the hell out of his town and not come back until the driver went on trial.
The lawyer had smiled and said, “That will never happen,” and then he’d gotten into his luxury car and driven away.
That same night six fires broke out simultaneously all over Sangre de Cristo. Father Paz was trapped inside the church when a blaze broke out in the sacristy as he was changing out of his vestments after evening Mass. He escaped by breaking a stained glass window, getting cut to pieces in the process.
It was no surprise he’d been one of the targets. Father Paz was an outspoken opponent of the narcos and, in the spirit of Pope Francis, a man he admired greatly, he’d threatened the Shadow and all his lieutenants with excommunication.
Everyone was so busy fighting the fires they didn’t notice what was going on at the police station, but in the morning, as the last of the fires smoldered, Tonio Cruz arrived for his shift and found the doors of the lockup wide open and the prisoner gone.
He followed a blood trail out the front door and into the small plaza in the center of Sangre de Cristo. There he found the heads of the police chief and three of his men lined up in a row like so many bowling balls. They all had gags in their mouths, tied so tightly they’d cut into the flesh and dried blood had caked on the fabric.
The heads were already beginning to stink in the heat, and a bird had pecked out Jorge Pinero’s eyes.
Two of the dead men had been bachelors and Jorge was divorced, but the youngest, Ray Navares, had been newly married and had a child on the way. Ray’s widow had rushed to the plaza before anyone could stop her and had seen her husband’s head, his expression frozen in agony. She’d fainted on the spot. A couple of bystanders had brought her into the botanica while someone ran off to fetch her brother.
I gave Ana-Alicia lemon balm tea to calm her and kept her inside the botanica until the heads had been taken away.
It was a long and horrible day. Someone kept tolling the church bells, and the brazen clang only added to the dark carnival atmosphere. Tonio organized search parties and men fanned out in all directions, looking for anything that might lead them to the bodies of the murdered men.
Tomas Hernandez and some of the other narcos made a show of joining the search.
But there was no trace of the bodies anywhere.
I knew there never would be.
The heads had been hacked off by human hands wielding a machete, but the smell of black magic had been all over the plaza.
I knew that the police would never be able to identify the killers, not by normal means.
There was talk of bringing in the federales, but they’d be no more effective.
These murders had been planned in the shadows and they’d be solved in the shadows.
I knew what I had to do.
3
Death’s Bony Hand
Father Paz came into the botanica just before I locked up on the night I planned to do what I had to do.
His face was still peeling from the burns he’d sustained, but they looked no worse than a bad sunburn.
“Aixa,” he said.
“Father?” I replied innocently, as if I didn’t know why he had come. I reached for the potted plant that sat next to the cash register on the counter and broke off a portion of a fleshy aloe vera leaf. “You need to put some aloe vera on that burn,” I said, offering it to him.
He shook his head, wise to my attempts at derailing the conversation he wanted to have, but he took the aloe vera and rubbed the oozing gel over his face anyway.
“I’ve known you since you were born,” he said. “I baptized you.”
“I know,” I said, hoping to lighten the mood. “I was there.”
He didn’t smile.
“And I gave your mother her last rites.”
He let that settle for a moment.
“Is this the part where you tell me that she would be disappointed by what I’ve chosen to do with the life she gave me?” I asked.
“Do you think she’d be disappointed?”
I blew out a frustrated breath. He was worse than a shrink for answering a question with a question. I’d learned the hard way that it was futile to debate morality with him. He was a Jesuit, and an old and wily one.
Too old.
I could see the death coming in his face, knew that he would not live until the winter. I wondered if he felt it, too. I wondered who the diocese would send to take his place. I wondered if it would be a priest who would happily grant absolution to men who ran down children in the streets, men who shed no tears when children were caught in the crossfire of their gun battles.
How many Hail Marys would it take to expiate the sin of murder?
I almost asked the question aloud, and it was as if the priest heard my thoughts.
“You should come to confession,” he said.
“I have nothing to confess,” I said.
“Not yet,” he said.
He waited for me to respond to his unspoken accusation and I finally did. “I don’t think so, Father.”
He was silent for a moment longer, looking out toward the street, which was empty.
“They say that God forgives everything if only He is asked. And as a priest, I believe that.” He paused and I nodded, encouraging him to keep talking. “But as a man I have to wonder,” he continued. “Where is the justice when a man does what these men do and then ask forgiveness and ride away in their blacked-out cars with their whores by their sides and their ill-gotten gains bulging in their pockets?”
He sounded angrier than he sounded sad, and I knew that whoever else might condemn me for what I was planning to do, Father Paz would not be one of them. Still, he felt his duty required him to give me a warning.
“I hate this world, Aixa,” he said. “It will be a relief to leave it.”
So he had already felt death’s bony hand on his shoulder.
“I’m so sorry, Father,” I said. “I’ll miss you.”
“I’m not dead yet,” he said, but there was no mirth in his voice.
He left me with a blessing I felt I didn’t deserve but which I appreciated nonetheless.
I went home to the house I’d inherited from my abuela and made my preparations. What I was planning was not something my grandmother had taught me and it was not something she would approve. I was grateful her ghost did not show up to question what I was doing because I was determined in my course and I did not want to quarrel with her.
An hour before midnight, I left the house and made my way to the home of Ray and Ana-Alicia Navares, knowing that she would still be awake.
4
The Blood Cries Out
The house was quiet as I approached, but I could see a light on in the front room, so I knocked softy. Ana-Alicia opened the door, wearing only a nightgown, and quietly stepped outside and shut the door behind her so we could talk. She did not seem surprised to see me.
“Can you find out who killed Ray?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Can you make them pay?”
“Yes,” I said.
She looked away for a moment, and when she looked back at me her expression was fierce.
“What do you need?”
I explained what I needed, and she didn’t flinch.
“We should go now before my mother wakes up and realizes I’m gone,” she said.
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak, and turned to lead the way back to the botanica.
I was already feeling the pull of the darkness, and I wanted to be in safe, familiar surroundings before the fear began to build.
Back in the botanica, I had Ana-Alicia sit down while I laid out my supplies on the counter. I lit a candle and said a prayer, and then I approached her, knelt down, and put my hands on her belly. The skin was stretched taut under her nightdress, and I could feel the unborn child’s beating heart. A little girl.
“This might hurt,” I said, and Ana-Alicia gave me a scornful look.
“Do what you have to do.”
I nodded and plunged my right hand deep into her womb until I felt the shape of the baby’s head.
Ana-Alicia gasped but did not move.
I ran my fingernail along the baby’s scalp, scraping up a little tissue. I felt the baby’s discomfort, but she didn’t seem to be any real pain.
“Your baby is a girl,” I said.
Ana-Alicia took in the information with a sad look. “Ray wanted to be surprised,” she said, “so we didn’t have the test done.”
When I pulled my hand out, there was skin and hair under my fingernails.
Ana-Alicia watched wide-eyed as the skin on her stomach flowed back into place as if I’d never disturbed it.
For the kind of necromancy I was about to attempt, I needed the flesh of the dead man, or the next best thing. This unborn child carried Ray’s DNA in her own body and was the closest match there I would find.
“Now what?” Ana-Alicia asked in a cracked whisper.
“Now you sleep,” I said, and as I turned back to face her, I traced a symbol in the air between us.
It blazed brightly for a moment and when it faded, leaving behind a smell like burnt cilantro, Ana-Alicia had closed her eyes and slumped forward in the chair.
I gently pushed her back so that the chair cradled her, and then I left her sleeping as I made my way to the plaza.
Tonio had posted guards at the crime scene, but it was easy enough to send them to sleep as I had Ana-Alicia. Then, to all intents and purposes alone, I invoked a spell my abuela had never wanted to teach me, so I’d learned it from a brujo in Austin who followed the dark path.
I knelt down by the bloodstain that still marked where Ray’s head had been left. I wiped my finger with a cloth damp with oil, and then I put the cloth on the flat pavement of the plaza and built a small pyramid of stones above it.
I spoke the words of the spell, and suddenly I could see through Ray’s eyes as three dark figures emerged from the shadows. He and the others had been trussed up with what felt like wire, bound so tightly their hands and feet were already going numb.
The first person I recognized was Rosamara, the spider, and she was smiling like it was Christmas morning.
I felt Ray’s terror when he saw that smile and knew it was mingled with my own horror.
The second figure was a man I didn’t know. He was tall, with a bullet-shaped head, a pock-marked face, and an air of authority. I thought he might be the Shadow himself, come to oversee this terrible act, but I didn’t get the sense that he was el jefe.
The third man was Tomas Hernandez, and he was dangling a machete in his right hand, the blade so sharp it was bright in the moonlight. He was looking at Ray and he, too was smiling. Ray, the youngest, had been the first to die.
I held Tomas’ gaze through Ray’s eyes right up until the moment Tomas’ blade bit into his neck. I felt Ray’s pain, and then I felt nothing.
In the aftermath of the experience, I was so weak I sat down right in the middle of the plaza to catch my breath. It took all my will power not to vomit.
“And now what, mija?” my abuela’s voice said to me, as clearly as if she were standing next to me.
I turned my head and I saw that she was standing only a few paces away, a look of disapproval darkening her face.
I was not surprised to see her. Since her death, she’s had a habit of appearing at the most inconvenient times. At lease I was used to it by now. The first time had been a shock. Her ghost had appeared in the botanica two days after her funeral. “Our Lord was gone three days,” she’d said cheerfully when I saw her standing behind the counter, rearranging the lottery cards I sold, looking as if she’d never left. “I made it back in two.”
Father Paz would have been scandalized.
I soon learned that mostly what she’d come back to do was make my life miserable.
She felt she’d died too young and left me with my training incomplete.
And while she’d never been particularly critical of me in life, in death she’d developed an irritating habit of second-guessing every decision I made. It was like living with an unhappy mother-in-law who’d come to visit and then never left.
“You should leave Sangre de Cristo,” she said.
“I’m not leaving Sangre de Cristo,” I replied.
“You’re not strong enough to stand up to La Araña.”
“You were,” I said, and could have bitten my tongue out the minute the words left my mouth. My grandmother had died of natural causes, as far as I knew, but I sometimes wondered if she’d been helped along the path by supernatural means.
I expected my abuela to jump down my throat, but instead she’d said mildly, “You don’t have the skills. I thought I would have more time to teach you but it was not to be. You need to walk away.”
“You taught me enough,” I said. “Rosamara is allied with the Shadow, and if someone doesn’t do something, the Shadow will swallow Sangre de Cristo whole.”
“The Shadow will swallow you whole and spit out a red hairball,” she replied.
I shuddered at that statement because I knew she wasn’t talking about the drug lord but about the shadow side of the power I’d inherited from her, the shadow power I’d just used to discover the identities of the murderers. The pull of dark magic is strong. The more you use it, the more it calls to you.
“Someone has to do something,” I said.
“It doesn’t have to be you,” she said.
“Who else, then?” I asked but there was no reply. My abuela had disappeared. That was another annoying habit she’d developed—always wanting to have the last word.
I went back to the botanica and roused Ana-Alicia. She blinked at me sleepily for moment and then sat up.
“Who was it?” she asked.
I shook my head. I had no intention of telling her. “They’ll be punished,” I said.
“But by who?” she asked reaching out to grab my wrist, her short, sharp fingernails digging into my flesh hard enough to hurt.
“I promise you’ll have your vengeance,” I said to her, “but you cannot know more than that. If you do, you’ll be vulnerable yourself, and you have a child to consider.”
That made sense to her, and she let go of my wrist, leaving bloody little crescent wounds behind.
“Thank you, Aixa,” she said.
I waved away her thanks. I hadn’t protected Ray in the first place. She had nothing to thank me for. But I was through being a neutral party. The night of blood and fire had burned that neutrality out of me. I was done dabbling in love potions and low-level charms. If Rosamara Quintana and her minions wanted to take my town, they were going to have to go through me.
“I should get you back home,” I said to Ana-Alicia.
5
The Scorpion’s Sting
I spent the next day lounging in front of the botanica, chain-smoking as I watched what was going on around me. I didn’t want to look like I was carrying out a surveillance and I knew having a cigarette in my hand would give me a good excuse for hanging out.
I know I shouldn’t smoke, but I roll my own, and the dense dark tobacco Chuey sells in the shop next door is like candy. But even so, after an hour or two my throat was dry and my lips cracked and I was jittery from the nicotine.
