Come to think of it, that’s a way cooler magic trick than if she’d simply conjured fire.
The paper was a copy of the Houston Chronicle, dated three days prior. The top story was about yet another bloody border-town body dump, courtesy of the Mexican drug war. You know the kind; we’ve all read about them. Heads and hands removed. Bodies left someplace public, in this case, the busy north-south route of US Highway 83, where it jags eastward along the border, to send a message. No witnesses. No IDs on the vics. Gruesome, senseless, and unfortunately these days, a dime a dozen.
I scanned past it, looking for whatever it was Lilith wanted me to find. But when I made to flip the page, she shook her head. “No, that’s the one,” she said.
I skimmed. Missed the point. Four columns on the front page — complete with lurid shots of tarp-draped bodies and pavement stained red-brown — and another eight or so pic-free buried in the middle of the “A” section. I combed through a second time, Lilith watching lips pursed. Then I folded it over in frustration and said, “This thing’s five thousand words long, Lily, how about you just give me the bullets? Starting with why the hell I should give a shit about a bunch of rival dirt-bag drug-runners slaughtering each other?”
“Well, for one,” she said, clearly annoyed I hadn’t deduced what she wanted me to, “those victims weren’t gun-thugs or drug-runners. Their clothes were tattered, filthy. They weren’t armed. And what little’s left of them suggests malnourishment and poor health-care, likely stretching back to birth. They were illegal immigrants, who’d probably paid a pretty penny for the privilege of being smuggled safely across the border, likely utilizing the same pipeline as the cartels, sure, but that alone is not enough to make them a target to a rival cartel. For two, you’ll note the bodies were discovered on the US side of the border. Any cartel smart enough to stay in business is too smart to drag the US military into their fight with so brazen and foolhardy a move as that; to a one, their high-profile body dumps have all taken place south of the Rio Grande. And for three, those heads and hands? They weren’t sawed off to prevent identification, though I’m sure that’s what the perpetrator wanted anyone who happened by them to think. They were gnawed off. Eaten, perhaps. As, my friends among the Fallen tell me, were their hearts, though that fact didn’t make the paper. Purposefully withheld, I’m sure, by authorities too foolish to realize the perpetrator or perpetrators of this horrific act are beyond the reach of their justice system, not to mention beyond their ken.”
I fell silent a moment, listening to the waves roll in, while I digested what she told me. When I finally spoke, it was to say, “Whatever did this ate their fucking heads?”
“Maybe,” she said. “But I doubt it. The flesh and bone would provide little by way of sustenance for a creature subsisting on the life-force of living beings, though I will admit that cheek meat, well-braised, is quite delicious. Brain, heart, and blood are all far better. Eyes, too. Spinal column will do in a pinch. So my guess is, the hearts were consumed fresh, and the heads removed so that the brains might be eaten at the perpetrator’s leisure. Though skulls are difficult to break open, they are quite well-suited as storage vessels for the gray matter inside, and cellared properly, they will keep.”
“Jesus,” I said, more to myself than to her. Her utter lack of revulsion at the topic of eating human heads and hearts chilled me as thoroughly as the gruesome acts themselves. Yet another reminder that, despite her appearances, Lilith was pretty fucking far from human.
“Mind your tongue, Collector.” As if I’m the one whose utterances offended.
“I’m just saying. There’s gotta be someone else who can do this.”
Lilith sighed. “There’s a war on, Collector. Each of us is being asked to do our part. I would have thought ridding humankind of these creatures who’ve been feeding off the living for centuries would appeal to that pesky conscience of yours. You’ll be eliminating untold evil, preventing no shortage of human suffering. I won’t deny the assignment is high-risk, but even if I could convince the powers that be to reconsider, what are the chances your next task would prove so palatable? This is your chance to make a difference in the world, to fight the good fight for a change. See it as the gift it is, would you? For once, just be a good little soldier, and do what you’re told.”
She was right. I knew she was. But that didn’t mean I had to like it.
“So this thing,” I asked hesitantly, wanting yet not wanting to know the answer, “is it one of the members of the Brethren the Fallen moved against?”
“You mean does it know you’re coming? No. Its very existence is, at present, my own conjecture, pieced together based upon the evidence at hand. And I’ve only the vaguest of notions where you might find it. But I am certain that I’m right. And if I am, this is one of several that dropped off hell’s radar centuries ago; gone mad and feral, we’d assumed, since until recently we had no idea they could die. It seemed to me you might have better luck in hunting a quarry unsuspecting of your approach. The first time out, at least.”
“Okay, then, how do I find this as yet hypothetical quarry?”
Lilith nodded toward the newspaper once more. “There’s another story in that issue I’ve reason to believe is connected to the bodies found on 83.”
“What’s that?”
“Check the police blotter.”
This one was easier to spot. Seems at three AM the morning prior to the paper’s release, a known lieutenant of the Xolotl Cartel by the name of Javier Guerrera who currently sat at seventh on Mexico’s Most Wanted List wandered blood-soaked and panicked into a police station in McAllen, Texas, babbling nonsense and insisting he be locked up. Local PD kindly obliged. Guerrera now awaited extradition, said the piece, at the Willacy Detention Center in Raymondville, Texas — the largest detention center in the country for illegal immigrants, which also functions as a high-security prison for the most dangerous and recidivistic of border-breaching offenders.
Beside the blurb ran two pictures, one taken from his Wanted profile, and the other a mug shot taken upon his arrest. In the former, his hair was black as Texas crude. In the latter, it was white from root to tip, though the man beneath the shock of white couldn’t have been more than twenty-seven.
It made me wonder what he’d seen, and where exactly he’d seen it.
So to Raymondville I went.
The mission was a delicate one. They don’t let people wander willy-nilly into a maximum-security prison, so my preferred method of possessing a recently dead meat-suit wasn’t gonna cut it. Guerrera was in isolation on account of his position in the Xolotl Cartel — both to ensure his safety prior to extradition, and to guard against those who might wish to break him out. So to get to him I needed access. I needed credentials. I needed a ride no one would dare question if he asked to speak to Guerrera.
I figured the warden would do just fine.
Distance isn’t a factor when body-hopping. To leap from one vessel to another, my kind must travel through the Nothingness of the In-Between, which is both infinite and membrane thin. So to us, the trip’s the same whether it’s five feet or five thousand miles.
What we do need is a target, a person in mind. Something to stretch our consciousness toward, and latch onto once we find it. And I’m not talking, like, conjure an image of George Clooney in your head and blammo — you’re there. You need a location to fix on as well, or no dice.
Which is why, once the sun came up over Guam and I stumbled, stomach churning and head throbbing, from the beach, my board shorts grit-sticky from booze-sweat and sand, I popped five damn dollars into a payphone and gave ol’ Willacy a ring, and asked to speak to the man in charge.