La Santisima Read online

  ~ ~ ~

  … and drank the moonlight from the sky.

  Hector slowed and glanced back, but the group of migrants he’d just led across the border was almost out of sight. They walked in the opposite direction along the slender ribbon of a dirt road, hurrying toward the remote glow of the highway.

  The crossing had gone well for a change, and all of the three men and five women had managed to keep up. Good thing too, because Hector was alone tonight. He and his partner Alonso usually worked together to herd the migrants through, but Alonso hadn’t shown up at their rendezvous, and the migrants had money, and the narcos were hungry, and the night came down fast, there had been no time to wait …

  Hector stumbled and quickly righted himself. He damned Alonso and whatever carelessness had kept him from the run. Something must have happened to his friend. Like something will happen to me if I’m not careful. Twist an ankle or knee and if the Border Patrol or the narcos didn’t get him, the desert heat would end his days. More than once, Hector and Alonso had left migrants behind when they couldn’t keep up.

  Alonso always blew them off and said they had paid for a chance—good luck wasn’t in the gamble.

  Hector couldn’t rationalize their lives away so easily. He drank until he washed their faces from his mind, and as the years passed, he learned not to listen to their stories, or inquire where they were from.

  From somewhere behind him came the sound of shuffling feet, a murmur—a hushed rasp that sounded like a name.

  Hector dropped without thinking and squatted behind a clump of creosote. His fingers touched the grip of the pistol tucked into his belt. Shit. It didn’t matter whether the noise came from the narcos or the Border Patrol. Hector didn’t need trouble.

  Right now, he needed whiskey and a smoke—Leonor on his lap with her cool hair in his face—that’s what he needed. He was close to the border and Sasabe where his old van awaited him, a creaky steed with bad shocks. Another mile, maybe two, then he would be in the driver’s seat, headed to Altar and Leonor’s place. He practically smelled her perfume, hot and sweet like flowers tumbling on the morning air.

  The air wavered, a ripple across the night. Moonlight pierced the edges of the cloud with slivers of glass, fractured moonbeams that barely illuminated the land. Hector imagined he saw a young man standing several yards away. The youth held a crippled girl in his arms.

  Hector rubbed his hand over his eyes and looked out over the desert again, but the boy and the crippled girl were gone. Fuck. The kids were a hallucination. It was the heat, playing tricks with his mind. He needed water and rest.

  Hector counted his heartbeats, twelve … fifteen … thirty …

  He crouched behind the creosote until his thighs cramped.

  The sound didn’t recur.

  He was alone.

  Hector rose cautiously and paused until his dizziness passed. He took two steps. His left foot tangled with his right. Another step and his boot found only air. His curse choked into a strangled gasp as he fell forward, reaching out blindly. The scree slid beneath him. His gut turned hot with fear. Thorny limbs snatched his hat from his head and snarled around his arms. Skin peeled from his exposed hands as he tumbled down the embankment.

  He rolled to a stop and landed on his back. He clenched his hands and moved his legs. All his limbs worked. He was fine. Everything was fine. He sat on the ground and waited for his raging heart to slow.

  The cloud moved away from the moon and washed the gully in icy light. A corpse slumped nearby, the face tilted up toward the sky. Hector recognized him. It was the migrant they’d been forced to leave behind two days ago. There hadn’t been enough nights of booze and Leonor to put between him and this man.

  Jorge. He said his name was Jorge and he was from Pachuca.

  He had traveled with a smaller group of migrants. As they’d passed the gully, Jorge had stepped in a hole and snapped his ankle.

  Don’t leave me.

  There wasn’t any question of taking him. Hector had helped Jorge move to the shade and told him they’d pick him up on the way back.

  It was a comfortable lie. Experience taught Hector to keep the injured migrants calm—that way, the others wouldn’t offer to carry him and slow the group down. Lies soothed them, kept them from becoming hysterical and making a scene. Hopefully death had slipped over the young man before he knew she came.

  Jorge still clutched the rosary that Hector had fished from his bag and placed in his hands. The beads resembled roses and lay soft and pearlescent against his dark skin.

  Guilt shifted Hector’s gaze away from the rosary. He sat beside the corpse and rocked himself. Jorge’s death wasn’t his fault. Luck favored no man. God, but he needed a drink.

  Up ahead, a pale woman emerged from the shadows. She drifted toward Hector as if her feet never touched the ground. Her loose black hair framed eyes yellow as topaz. Something about her seemed familiar, the arrogant tilt of her head, her proud cheekbones—he’d seen a likeness of her somewhere.

  “You never returned.” The words crawled through a throat of broken glass. “You promised to return, Hector.”

  Moonlight fell on a figure behind her—a creature with two heads. Hector blinked the sweat from his eyes. His vision cleared and he realized the two-headed creature was really the same young man and crippled girl that he had seen earlier. Their faces were so similar Hector had no doubt they were brother and sister. Earlier, he’d thought them a hallucination, but now he saw that they were real—as real as the woman, who had ceased her merciless advance.

  The youth’s gaze went to the corpse and his jaw tightened. His accusing glare hit Hector like a blow. “Is he dead?”

  “It’s okay.” Hector tried to assure him. He felt for his pistol but the gun was gone. His hand found only the tail of his shirt, the fabric hot and wet. “It happens sometimes. He broke his ankle. We couldn’t carry him so we left him behind.”

  The woman observed Hector with yellow eyes that glittered in the moonlight. “You promised.”

  How did she know? How the fuck did she know anything? Hector’s mouth kept moving in spite of his need to shut up. Lies squirted through his lips with such regularity, he never knew when to stop anymore. “We got turned around and couldn’t find him.” He got to his knees and looked for his gun.

  “Don’t let him get away with this,” said the boy. He started to place the girl on the ground.

  “No, Sebastian!” She clung to his neck and whispered in his ear.

  Although Sebastian’s eyes were on fire with his hate, he nodded once and held her. She was so frail that Hector wondered how she didn’t break in the boy’s trembling arms.

  The woman measured the boy with her gaze. “What will you have?”

  “I want my brother home,” said Sebastian through clenched teeth.

  The woman nodded and stepped to Hector. Her pale dress billowed around her skinny body like robes. Then Hector realized where he’d seen her likeness: painted on the back of a truck owned by one of the narcos. She was death—they worshipped her and called her La Santa Muerte.

  She blocked the children from his sight. The wind caught the hem of her dress. Hector glimpsed the bones of her shins.

  Fuck, no, no, this isn’t real. His gaze caught the glint of moonlight on metal. His gun. There, just on the other side of the corpse. Hector slid backward.

  Skeletons didn’t walk, Saint Death was a fable. As soon as he put a bullet in her, this woman would die. He was sure of it … sure of it.

  A hot wind scattered the dust. Sharp rocks sliced his palms. His fingers tangled in Jorge’s rosary and the string broke—plastic beads flew into the crevices, decades of tears wept into the stone. The corpse tilted sideways and toppled slowly, sending a puff of dust into the air.

  The woman stepped quickly, her thin, white feet bare upon the rocks.

  “Who are you?” Hector sobbed.

  “I am the dark sound,” she said. “I am the lament of the rain.” He
r face was a grinning mask of teeth. “I am silence.”

  Overhead, the stars winked out one by one until nothing was left but an endless void. A finger of blackness oozed forward. Nothing was left but the woman and the night.

  Hector’s teeth chattered.

  She knelt beside him. Her breath smelled of the grave. “Don’t leave,” she whispered, amber eyes aglitter in the dark.

  She pressed her lips against his and held him still with icy palms on his cheeks. Dirt and bitterness flooded his mouth. He gagged and thrashed to wrench himself free. His hand touched something smooth and hard.

  His gun. Finally. His gun.

  Hector put the barrel to his head and pulled the trigger.