The Witching Hour: 11 Enchanting Novels Featuring Witches, Wizards, Vampires, Shifters, Ghosts, Fae, and More!, page 88
The day was warm and oddly humid, as if a thunderstorm was about to break. The unseen electricity in the air made me edgy. But maybe it was just stray tendrils of my magic hanging in the air.
I knew that sooner or later Tomas Hernandez would drop by Chuey’s store to pick up a pack of cigarettes. He was a hard-core smoker, and Chuey had the best prices in town.
Sure enough, around four o’clock he pulled up in a cherried-out Ford truck I hadn’t seen before. He nodded to me as he passed by on his way into the tobacco shop. He didn’t notice the little compulsion spell I cast but a few minutes after I went back into the botanica, Tomas followed me in.
“Aixa Riley, que tal?” he asked in a sleepy voice he probably thought sounded sexy.
“It’s been a long time, Tomas,” I said, wondering if he would correct me and tell me to call him “Scorpion” as if he were some low-level Marvel universe mutant or something.
“Looking good,” he said.
And honestly, the same could be said for him, stupid and mean though he was.
He was tall, maybe six foot two, and I had to look up to him, even in my heeled sandals, the pair I’d worn especially for him because they made my legs look sexy and longer than they were. Tomas had always been a leg man.
In high school he’d liked to pretend he was descended from Aztec royalty, and after every school vacation he’d come back with more tribal tattoos to lend weight to his personal narrative. He liked wearing tank tops that showed off his inked-up arms, and display his muscled torso. The skin on his chest was so smooth, it looked like he waxed it.
Maybe he did.
As Tomas moved closer to me, it felt like he was expanding to fill the space in the store, taking up all the oxygen so it was hard for me to breathe.
“What can I do for you Tomas?”
He smiled. I could almost hear him thinking, You can do so many things for me chica.
Despite his nicotine addiction, his teeth were very white and very straight.
He must have had them fixed at some point. I remember he used to have a crooked canine tooth that stuck out like a cat’s fang.
Or a vampire’s.
“I’d like a love potion,” he said.
I rolled my eyes inwardly.
“Who’s the lucky lady?” I asked, because I really couldn’t help myself.
He continued to smile at me with what I’m sure he thought was irresistible charm.
He leaned across the counter, close enough I could smell the cologne he’d splashed on that morning. It was something musky and sharp, and it had an almost fecal note at the bottom of it.
The scent reminded me of a woman I know who blends her own scents from essential oils she orders from some little internet store.
She’d told me that a fecal note was actually very common in perfumes. “Chanel No. Five,” she said. “Deep down it smells like poop.”
Somehow the idea of smelling like a fart, or worse, had never really appealed to me until just now. Just now I really wanted to smell like something other than myself. Letting Tomas take any part of me, even my scent, felt like a violation.
Tomas leaned even closer to me and inhaled like an animal.
“You smell like blood and roses,” he said, which surprised me because Dale had once said the same thing.
I let Tomas smell me some more and pretended I was listening to him as he babbled on about things he probably thought were important. Eventually I led the conversation in the direction I wanted it to go.
It was easy enough. Tomas was the kind of guy who liked to talk, and he liked people to think that he was connected.
“I’ve seen you around with those guys from out of town,” I said.
“Oh, yeah,” he said, “they’re my boys.”
I doubted that, but there was no point in contradicting him.
“Everybody says El Escorpión is the man,” I said, using the word for the big, brownish scorpions rather than alacrán, which refers to the much smaller black arachnids. Tomas looked more like an alacrán to me, but it would not suit my purpose to insult him.
His whole body inflated with pride at the bogus compliment.
“They say you have the ear of the Shark,” I added, naming the man who was second-in-command to the Shadow. I put my hand on his forearm so he wouldn’t think too hard about my questions.
“Everyone else is afraid of El Tiburón,” I said, “but not you.”
“We’re like this,” he assured me, holding up two entwined fingers.
I pretended to shudder with fear.
“I’ll protect you from the Shark,” he said, smiling down at me.
“Would you?” I asked, looking up at him and wondering if I was overdoing it. But apparently I wasn’t, because he kept smiling.
“I’m his money guy,” he bragged.
I figured that Tomas wanted me to think he was his banker but I had a hard time thinking he got any closer to the Shark’s money than taking bags of it to the bank.
“So you’re like his…accountant?” I probed. “You look after his financial interests?”
He liked that. “Exactemente,” he said. “Hey, check it,” he added, pulling an object from his pants pocket.
It was a key chain, and hanging from it was a very small skeletal hand. Some sort of monkey’s paw, it looked like.
To my horror, as he dangled the thing in front of me I could see the bones twitching as if they were still alive. I could sense the dark energy emanating from the bones and wondered why anyone would have given him such a powerful talisman. Had he gotten it from Rosamara?
I forced down my revulsion and ran my finger down Tomas’ forearm, scratching the back of his hand lightly.
I felt him shiver.
“Santa Muerte gave me this,” he said. “It’s my totem.”
That could only be Rosamara. Styling herself “The Saint of Holy Death” was a little over the top, even for her but then I guess Tomas was not the only one crafting a legend.
“That’s a lot of power,” I said, making my voice come out throaty. “It’s like you are the king of Sangre de Cristo.”
“You could be my queen,” he said. “If you’re not afraid of the power. If you’re not afraid of the scorpion’s sting.”
And there it was, that ridiculous nickname. I tried not to laugh at his words. “I was about to go home to make dinner,” I said. “Are you hungry?”
He raised his eyebrows suggestively. “Starving,” he said.
“Orale,” I said, “let’s go.”
He was groping me before we were even inside my front door, and as soon as I closed it behind us, he pushed me into the wall hard, grinding against me as he held my hands over my head with one of his own. He grabbed my breast with his free hand and pinched, hard.
It hurt.
“Tomas, slow down,” I said, but he ignored me.
He hooked his fingers into the neckline of my dress and ripped it straight down, leaving me naked to the waist.
He leaned in and bit me on the right breast, hard enough to draw blood.
I’m not saying I never like it rough, but I say when and I say where, and with Tomas it was not now and it never would be.
I bucked like a horse beneath his body as we fell to the floor, and that got him even hotter.
“You like that, don’t you?” he crooned.
I slugged him on the side of his handsome face with both my balled fists.
He didn’t like that and slugged me back.
And suddenly I saw myself through another’s point of view, and it was not a human’s eyes observing me but a fragmented mosaic of vision.
I realized I was seeing through the Spider’s faceted eyes.
And that scared me enough that for a second I lost control, and Tomas landed a blow, slipping right through the protective spell I’d cast before letting him in the house.
He grabbed a hank of my hair in his fist and slammed my skull against the wall.
I blacked out for a second, and when I came to, I was flat on my back on the floor and he was kneeling astride me with a gold-plated gun to my head.
It was the first time I’d seen an example of the infamous narco bling, and I would have laughed out loud if he hadn’t shoved the gold-plated barrel in my mouth like a metal dick.
“Suck it,” he ordered, and when I didn’t immediately comply, he jammed it further down my throat, drawing blood as the rough metal scored the soft tissue.
I started to gag and tried hard not to panic when I found it hard to breathe. My nose was blocked with blood from where he’d hit me. I was afraid I’d choke on the gun.
He leaned close.
“Suck it, bitch,” he said. “Because the scorpion is longer. And you need opening up.”
Even as I fought to breathe, I wondered what cheesy porn video he’d stolen that line from.
He was enjoying himself. He had me pinned down, his weight on my pelvis. If he was intent on rape, he was going to have to change position at some point, so I had to wait and just hope he didn’t do too much damage to me in the meantime. There were spells I could have used to back him off but the retribution I was planning depended on his unwitting cooperation. Blood magic is tricky and it almost always rebounds. That’s why people only use it in dire circumstances. And even then, it doesn’t always work. And even then, it’s always unpleasant.
I was really afraid he’d beat me unconscious and rape me while I was helpless.
But when he took out his penis, I saw that he wanted me awake, at least for the pre-game festivities. He wanted me to see the tattoo, which looked like something out of a low-rent anime, an armored monster of a thing. It was very detailed.
I wondered how long it had taken to get the tattoo. I wondered how much it had hurt. I hoped it had hurt a lot.
“Kiss the scorpion,” he ordered, and again I felt hysterical laughter bubbling up inside me. He hadn’t been exaggerating about the length of his cock. It was long and thick, and when he shoved it in my mouth, it was like a rattlesnake going down my throat rattles first.
I started to choke, and the noises I made excited him even more.
“Yes!” he screamed, “Yes!” And he unloaded in my mouth, the hot saltiness of his cum geysering down my throat like a shotgunned beer.
I swallowed convulsively. That was a mistake, Tomas.
It was not his first mistake of the night, but it was his last. All bodily fluids are sacred. All of them can be used to make magic. Blood. Tears. Saliva.
Semen.
He hit me again as I struggled to wipe my mouth. My head snapped back against the floor, and again I blacked out for a few seconds.
I woke to pain as Tomas rammed his cock into me like he was trying to crack my cunt in half.
His shaft was still slick from my spit, but I was bone dry. It hurt like a bitch, but I circled my arms around him like a lover and I scratched his back as if transported by raptures of the flesh.
And, fool that he was, he thought I was enjoying myself.
“You like that, puta?” he asked, “You like that?”
And I smiled at him with blood on my teeth, and he took that for agreement, never realizing that my nails were gathering scraps of his flesh and blood. And if blood and tears and spit have power, the flesh is all those things and more.
With my mind I shaped my blood and his seed and the tissue I’d taken from Ray’s unborn child into something monstrous, a thing of utter blackness, and then I set it free in the room.
I felt its hot breath touch us both, and then Tomas screamed. It was the sound of a man whose bones are being scraped raw from the inside.
He was terrified.
And I am not proud of this, but I relished his fear and his knowledge that I had brought this terrible thing into being and set it in motion against him. And I used his fear to feed the monster.
The shape shifted and grew darker and grew spotted fur, and it was something out of myth and legend that reached out its claws and pierced Tomas through the eyes and through the chest and pulled out his still-beating heart. Tomas had liked to brag that he was a descendent of Aztec royalty so in my quest for vengeance, I had summoned an Aztec deity, Tezcatlipoca, the lord of the smoking mirror, who metes out justice to evil doers.
Tomas died with a soul-sundering scream. And for the third time that night, I blacked out.
6
Blood in the Water
When I woke up, I could see a dark lake of blood pooled on the polished wood floor inside my entryway.
Tomas Hernandez was slumped against the wall, as peacefully as if he had just fallen asleep there.
He was dead, but there was not a mark on him, despite the blood.
I pulled my clothes together and called the police. I asked the dispatcher to send an ambulance to my house as well.
Tonio arrived first. He took one look at the blood on the floor and at my bruises and torn clothing, and simply asked, “Are you all right?”
I nodded.
“Orale, he said. “Do you need to go to the hospital?”
“I just need a shower,” I said.
“We need to take a rape kit,” he said.
“No,” I said. “We do not.”
He looked at me and I held his stare. Finally he nodded. “All right,” he said. “You can come down to the station later and give a statement.” He paused. “If you feel like it,” he said.
“I really don’t want to go re-live it,” I said.
He nodded thoughtfully. “That’s fine,” he said, and turned to give the ambulance driver and attendant orders to remove the body.
I cleansed myself inside and out with protective herbs to make certain no trace of Tomas remained. After my shower, I cleaned up the blood and burned the cloths I used. Then I purified the house with white sage and sea salt.
The next morning, I left all the windows open so the wind and sun would cleanse it even more, and then I walked to the botanica.
When I arrived at the store, there was a little pile of gifts in front of the door, notes and flowers and holy candles.
I carefully pulled the notes from the pile and took them inside with me.
Even though I’d drawn a target on my back, I didn’t want anyone else’s names to come to the attention of bad people.
Ana-Alicia’s baby was born a week later. She was premature but perfect. Ana-Alicia named her Aixa and asked me to be the baby’s godmother. I did not feel worthy of the honor but accepted anyway. The baby had the purest aura I’ve ever seen, and I felt like I needed to be around someone like her. Alicia named Tonio godfather.
Dale had been furious when he returned to Sangre de Cristo and heard the stories circulating about what had happened the night Tomas died. What they said happened was nothing like what had really happened but the stories were bad enough. I had been worried that sex with Dale might have been tainted by my ordeal with Tomas, but the protective magic I’d used had kept me from any lasting harm and even though Dale was still angry I had put myself in harms’ ‘way, when he came to me the night he returned, the sex was tender and loving and there were only two of us in my bed.
Tomas had exaggerated his role in the Shadow’s organization, but he must have performed some necessary function, because not long after his death another stranger came to town.
The minute he walked in the door of the botanica, I recognized him as the man Ray had seen giving orders on the night he and the other cops had died.
His bald head was bullet shaped and he had dead black eyes.
Like a shark.
It was bright on the street and dark in the shop, yet El Tiburón’s eyes found mine immediately.
And when he saw me, he smiled.
It was not a pleasant smile.
For a moment I felt afraid, but then I thought — I summoned this man; he is here at my bidding. The thought empowered me.
When you go fishing, you must use the right bait.
I’d used a scorpion to catch a shark.
I would use a shark to catch a spider.
“Bienvenido,” I said. “If you need anything, let me know.”
7
Swimming with the Shark
Enselmo Porras was surprisingly graceful for such a big man. When he’d entered my shop, his bulk had filled the doorway, but he moved so quietly that I might not have noticed his arrival if the little bell over the door hadn’t announced his presence.
Despite his boasts, I’d heard Tomas Hernandez had been terrified of the man they called El Tiburón, and with good reason, if even half the stories they told about him were true.
“El tiburón es el animal más feroz del mar,” the nature shows tell us, and so we learn not to swim in the deep waters where the sharks hunt their prey. Sangre de Cristo is nowhere near the ocean but even so, the people who lived in my little town weren’t safe from Enselmo’s kind.
Enselmo greeted me in English, which told me he knew at least as much about me as I knew about him. He also did me the favor of assuming I knew who he was and the reason for his visit, which told me he didn’t think I was stupid, and also told me that neither was he.
There was a reason he was running things for the Shadow. Tomas had been a lot of things, but smart hadn’t been one of them. If Tomas had been smarter, he might still be alive; if he’d been smarter, I might be dead. But qué suerte, I always knew where I stood with Tomas. His boss, though? He was another kind of man altogether, and I wasn’t sure at all I was strong enough to deal with him or the evil he carried like a stone in his soul.
That first visit, all Enselmo did was look around, pick up a few things, take a tamarind lollipop from the jar near the cash register, and leave without paying for it. He just nodded to me, a short incline of his bullet-shaped head.
Enselmo Porras was a man of few words.
His visit had accomplished what it was intended to do, though, announce his presence in town and mark the botanica with his scent so if there were any other predators cruising in the area, they’d know to stay away.
