You aren’t here to rescue them, Inés. Not like that. Don’t forget your purpose.
She sagged back down, defeated, and tried to sleep. It wasn’t the heat and relentless sun that kept her awake, though, but the muffled sounds from nearby.
They rested through the hottest part of the day, then rose to walk some more. Now it was clear that, however hard the night and morning had been, that was only the beginning of their trials; stiff muscles protested, and weariness made everyone clumsy. One of the young men stumbled on his way down a slope, nearly falling, putting Inés’ heart in her mouth; if he twisted an ankle, he was dead. Nowould carry him, not all the way to the reservation. He regained his balance, unharmed, and they went on.
Until the sun set and the desert air cooled, and Inés, stupid with exhaustion, began to wonder if all this risk and effort was going to come to nothing whatsoever, except an embarrassed trek back to Phoenix, and a passport in her mailbox with no stamp marking her return to the United States. It isn’t nothing, she thought, you know about El Rojo now, and can tell—
“Hide,” the coyote snarled.
The migrants didn’t move fast enough. They’d been stumbling along, one foot in front of the other, like zombies, and now they stared at him; Pipo and the others began shoving people to the ground as distant headlights sliced through the thickening dusk.
Inés remained standing, staring, until Pipo knocked her down, almost into the spines of an ocotillo. Two lights, moving independently: all-terrain motorcycles, not a Jeep. Border Patrol, not vigilantes, and following their trail from the fence.
A low, quiet laugh from El Rojo raised all the hairs along her arms and neck. “Come on, boys.”
Making only a little more noise than the desert wind, he and his three fellows loped off toward the approaching motorcycles.
Inés shoved a hand into her pocket, pulling out the rubber-banded tin. When she rose to a crouch, Miguel whispered, “What are you doing?” He wasn’t close enough to grab her.
Keeping those agents alive. “Stay here,” she hissed back, and ran before he could protest.
She kept low, taking advantage of the scant cover. Already she’d lost sight of El Rojo and the others, but that wouldn’t matter for long. She just needed to get far enough away from the migrants… .
Good enough. Inés dropped to one knee, stripped out of her clothes, and pulled the rubber band off the tin.
The pungent smell of the teopatli inside rose into the dry air. Its scent brought memories swarming around her like ghosts: her first visit to Cuauhtémoc, at the age of fifteen, re-united after seven years with the family she had lost. Her mother sending her out into the desert, with teopatli for her skin and pulque to drink and a maguey thorn to pierce her tongue, as her ancestors had done for generations before.
Careful despite her haste, Inés dipped her fingers in the paste, and began to dab it onto her body. Legs, back, arm, face, rings and clusters of spots, and even before she was done she could feel the ololiuqui seeds ground into the paste taking effect. Her vision swam, going both blurry and sharp, and smells assaulted her nose. Then everything came together with a bone-wrenching snap, and leaving tin and clothes behind, Inés ran once more.
The coyotes weren’t hard to follow now. They feared no predators, out here in the desert; Border Patrol, vigilantes, ranchers, all were just different kinds of prey. They ran together for a time, then fanned out, and Inés went after the nearest, knowing she would have to be fast.
He was on his way up a steep rise, aiming for a cliff from which he could leap. Inés caught him halfway, slamming his wiry to the ground, her jaws seeking and then finding his skull, teeth punching through into his brain. The coyote died without a sound, as in the distance, the barking calls of his brothers pierced the night air.
The motorcycles growled lower at the sound, but they were still approaching much too fast. Inés ran again, the teopatli giving her strength she’d lacked before. She was made for the stalking ambush, not the chase, but the lives of those two agents depended on her speed. The second coyote died with his throat crushed. The noise dropped sharply; one of the engines had stopped. She caught the third coyote on his way toward the motorcycles, and this one saw her coming; he twisted away from her leap, yipping in surprise, before going down beneath her much greater weight.
Even as the hot blood burst into her mouth, she heard a scream from the direction of the engines—a human scream.
Cold blue light flooded the narrow valley where the migrants had walked. One of the motorcycles had fallen on its side; the rider lay moaning and bleeding. His partner had a shotgun out, and was pointing it in every direction, unsure where the next attack would come from. If Inés wasn’t careful, he would shoot her instead.
Now it was time for the stalk. She circled the area slowly, paws touching down with silent care, nose alive to every scent on the wind. She thought the third coyote had been Pipo—couldn’t be sure—but the last was El Rojo. He was the smart one, the subtle one, the sorcerer who had given them all coyote shape, the better to hunt the humans who came to hunt them.
He knew she was out here. Inés realized that when she found his trail looping upon itself, confusing his scent. He’d heard Pipo die, of course—but maybe he’d known since before then. He’s watching you for something, Miguel had said. Maybe El Rojo recognized a fellow sorcerer when he saw one.
On an ordinary night, she wouldn’t have been stupid enough to approach the overhang. But the strength the teopatli gave her was no substitute for sleep; Inés’ human mind was sluggish, ceding too much control to the beast.
A weight crashed into her back. Pain bloomed hot along her nerves as the coyote’s jaws closed on her neck. Acting on instinct, Inés collapsed and rolled, dislodging El Rojo. When she regained her feet, she saw at last the creature she had come all this way to hunt.
His coat was different than the others’, more uniform in color along the head and back. In sunlight, it would be reddish brown. El Rojo, the red one, whose jaws now dripped red with her blood. Who had murdered Javier, and Consuela, and David, ranchers and vigilantes, and probably some migrants, too. Coyote attacks, the official reports said; they were suddenly more common than before. But agents of the Border Patrol died more often in the line of duty than any other federal law enforcement division, and the people in charge were more concerned with human killers than animal attacks.
Only Inés suspected more. She could hardly tell anyone it was nagualismo, though, even if she admitted to being a nagual herself. And so she had gone south, into Mexico, returning as an illegal immigrant, to hunt the coyote who ran on both two legs and four.
They snapped and feinted at one another, El Rojo using his greater speed and agility. But that was a dangerous game for him to play, especially on his own; when coyotes hunted larger prey, they did so in packs, and his was dead. That was why he had ambushed her—and as if he remembered that at the same moment, El Rojo turned and ran.
Inés followed. It might be enough to have killed the others, or it might not. If he could share his nagualismo with anyone, it wouldn’t take him long to be back in business. But it wasn’t pragmatism that drove her; it was the memory of Javier’s funeral, and his sister’s grief. And her own devastated face, staring back at her from the mirror.