The Temptation of Demetrio Vigil (36 page)

I backed instinctively away from the figure, toward
the flimsy plywood headboard of the bed. This only caused whomever
it was to laugh to themselves. I recognized that voice, that low
smooth tenor, that unsympathetic guffaw.

“Good morning, sunshine.” He stepped out of the
shadows and into the pale glow from outside. The light made his
skin glow with a red hue, and I saw that he wore only pants. No
shirt. He had gold chains around his neck, and the jeans were so
loose and belted so low around his hips that a good portion of his
boxer shorts showed. He had bandana around his head, knotted the
way gang members did it, and a limp to his stride that was
completely and utterly genuine.

“Hilario?” I asked.

“How sweet,” he said, sucking the ember bright
orange again. In the light from the end of the cigarette I could
see his eyes crinkle in a smile - but it was a smile without a hint
of kindness. “You know my name. That’s nice, baby.”

“Don’t call me baby,” I spat.

This excited him, and he chuckled some more, walking
slowly back and forth at the foot of the bed, looking at me with
eyes that seemed to have a supernatural yellow glow to them.

“Why not, baby? Don’t you like it? I felt something
when you touched me in the car, didn’t you feel it?”

“I didn’t touch you. You touched me.”

“That is true,” he said. “But you know you felt
something. Demetrio thinks it’s his, doesn’t he baby, that feeling?
He thinks he’s entitled to it, just like he was entitled to
everything else I ever wanted. Especially our father. I never knew
him, but he did. He never came to see me, but he loved
Demetrio.”

“What are you going to do to me?” I asked him.

He came close now, and touched my hair, my cheek. It
felt dangerous, thrilling. I had been scared a few times in my life
before then, but never terrified.

“What am I going to
do
to you,” he repeated
thoughtfully. “Now there’s a good question, baby.”

“Don’t.”

He sighed deeply and sat next to me on the bed. At
this range, I had a very good sense of how he looked, and again was
struck by how beautiful he was, from a purely aesthetic point of
view. Looking at him was something like looking at a lion close up
at the zoo. You recognized the majestic beauty of the thing, but
you also realized it could easily slice you in two and eat your for
breakfast. I remembered the child he had been once, how he’d once
had it in him to protect Demetrio, rather than destroy him.

“He showed me, the day your father broke your leg,”
I told him.

“What?” He grew very intrigued at this, but also
visibly angered, though he tried to conceal that fact through a
horrifyingly cruel smile. “Who did?”

“Your brother. He took me to your house the night it
happened, he let me see the memory, and I saw how you protected
him. You weren’t always like this. You don’t have to be like this.
That’s why he hasn’t let them get rid of you yet, you know that?
Because he carries that memory around with him, and it makes him
hopeful for you.”

I saw a flicker of emotion in his eyes, but I could
not tell what it was. It might have been regret, but it was more
like amusement.

“Demetrio was always too soft for his own good,” he
said.

I realized I was trembling in every muscle, dying to
be out of here.

“What did you do to Kelsey?” I asked.

“Your little blonde friend?” he asked.

“Where is she?”

“She’s hot. But not as hot as you.”

“Where is she?”

“She’ll be here as soon as she wakes up. We have her
in the next room. I wanted to have a moment to chat with you alone
first.”

“What did you do to us, while we were
unconscious?”

“My goodness, you ask a lot of questions. Don’t
worry, I didn’t defile you. No one did. If that happens with us,
and I would really very much like that,” he stopped to caress my
arm with his fingertips, in a way that made me shudder with horror.
“I want you awake for it so you can say my name.”

“You won’t get away with this,” I told him.

“Oh, but you see, that’s where you’re wrong. I
already have.”

At that moment, the door opened, and a flood of
light poured in from the dank hallway beyond. It looked like we
were in an old trailer of some kind. Two men stood on either side
of Kelsey, who looked like she’d been roughed up a bit.

“
Maria!” she cried when she saw
me. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I told her. “Are you?”

“I’m okay.”

“Shut up,
females
,” said Hilario now. “You’re
giving me a headache.”

We did as he said, because in that kind of situation
it was the best decision you could make. The men came into the
room, carrying a lantern of some kind. I realized that the light
wasn’t coming from any fixtures in the hallway, because this was
actually an abandoned home, without electricity. As they came
closer, I saw that one was Ulysses, from the trailer. The other was
Logan.

“How?” I asked Logan. “How is this you? What are
you? Why are you doing this?”

Logan looked at Hilario as though requesting
permission to answer me, and Hilario cut him down with a curt shake
of his head. Logan and Ulysses dumped Kelsey on the bed next to me,
and retreated to the wall near the window, to stand guard. I
noticed Logan had a gun in his waistband. Kelsey and I scooted as
close to each other as we could, not that this was going to help in
the even that we were shot, but instinct is instinct.

“Here is the short version of the
story for you, Maria,” said Hilario, getting up to pace nervously
back and forth, back and forth, in a way that very much reminded me
of the coyote he sometimes materialized as. “My brother is too
soft. He is a sellout, and a traitor. He left the gang, or he tried
to, and that was a no-no. You don’t have a lot of rules in the
gang, but you have rules. You don’t snitch, and you don’t leave. We
don’t let you leave. But he thought he was better than we were, and
he wanted to get himself out. Thought he was going to do good in
life.”

“He did,” I screamed. “He graduated with honors and
he got a college scholarship. He was on his way.”

“Shut up!” roared Hilario, stalking in a strange way
now, shifting shape before our very eyes. His shoulders grew
hunched, and his arms became thinner, and longer, and the bones
made a terrible din of crunching and crackling, as he became a
coyote. Even so, he was able to keep talking, through his coyote’s
mouth, the voice deep and horrible now, snarling and guttural.

“I wasn’t going to let that happen, you understand.
I wasn’t going to let him go free like that, and risk having him
turn me in, rat on me. He knew that. We were having that talk the
night it happened. And then, when it happened, wouldn’t you know,
it was the same old thing again, with him getting the better deal.
He always had it easier.”

Kelsey and I backed up as far as we possibly could
on the bed, and she was shaking as much as I was.

“I studied, after I died. I wanted
to know everything there was to know about revenants, about the
system, and how to manipulate it. I found out about the system of
Kindreds, and about Kindred Primaries. This intrigued me. And I
found out that there were spells you could do, divination
ceremonies, deals that could be made, to find out information like
that, and that’s how I found out about
you
.”

“You
knew
about me?”

“I’ve known about you longer than he has.” His eyes
glowed with pride.

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s not my doing that you drive
past his haunting grounds twice a week, Maria. The Maker has a way
of throwing souls together and hoping they figure it out. But the
two of you, without my help, you would have never figured it out.
Too stupid.”

“You caused my crash.”

“Of
course
I did.” He seemed insulted
that I might have ever thought otherwise.

“But why?”

“Because, I knew we’d eventually end up right where
I wanted us.”

“And where is that?”

“Here, of course.” He shape-shifted again, this time
into something even more horrible than a coyote. I heard the bones
of his body as they crunched and grew and shrunk and reformed in
the shape of something I can only describe as a demon, hairless and
spiny, with a long, barbed tail. The voice, when it came, was even
worse now than it had been before.

“Here,” he growled.

I didn’t ask anything more, because I didn’t like
the looks of the way he licked his chops and his yellow-green eyes
glowed at us.

“Your date, Logan here, is my friend. He’s always
been my friend.”

“Is he like you, a spirit?” I asked.

“No. He’s human. He’s one of the minions of humans
who do what we ask of them.”

“Gladly, your highness,” Logan said.

Hilario continued. “I found Logan because he called
me. There are some among you who seek to be associated with us, or
with even darker souls. They reach out in their own ways, through
their own magic, and I was lucky enough to find him just in time to
get him to ask you out last year.”

“But for what?” I asked. “For what?”

“The answer to that question is
very simple, Maria,” growled the beast. “You are the bait. My
brother’s soul is the prize.”

“He thinks you’re good!” I cried. “He refuses to
believe you’d do this.”

“Of course he does,” chuckled the beast, as it
seemed to be calming down now, and taking the form once again of
the man. “It’s all part of the fun.”

“He’s your own brother! How can you do this?”

“Because I enjoy it.”

“All so that you make him
fail
?” I asked. “Even
though you fail, too, in the process? Does that even make
sense
to
you?”

He came in close then, and kissed me on the lips. I
resisted, and spit his acrid taste off when he was done. Kelsey
somehow curled her legs into her chest, and unleashed them with a
stunning blow to Hilario’s chin, knocking him down, to protect
me.

He rose up, furious, with bright red blood dripping
from his lower lip, and took a knife from his pocket, unsheathed it
with slow, cold deliberation and a devilish smile. The blade
gleamed like the ones that had been used in the ceremony, with
snaking, moving lettering along the blade.

“You shouldn’t have done that, BFF,” he told her.
“You do realize you’re the disposable one here, don’t you
blondie?”

“No!” I screamed, as he came close to her, and,
grabbing her hair in his free hand, yanked her head back and held
the blade to her throat. “She was only trying to help me. Take me.
Not her. She hasn’t done anything to you.”

“My brother won’t come for
Kelsey
,” Hilario hissed
in her face. “Pretty as you are, delicious as you look, he
doesn’t
care
about you. And that hurts you, doesn’t it? I see what Maria
doesn’t. You’re
jealous
. You hate that she gets more boys than you do.”

Kelsey’s face was such a mass of fear and pain that
it physically hurt me to look at her.

Hilario laughed in her face.
“It’s
Maria
my
brother wants. I could cut you right here, right now, and it
wouldn’t make a bit of difference to my plan.”

“Please,” she stammered, terrified.

“I’m so sorry I got you into this,” I told her,
crying.

Hilario watched her squirm for a few more moments,
before abruptly dropping her, sheathing the blade once more, and
standing up to face me with a wild grin.

“I’ll wait to take care of your friend, later, after
you’ve gone to sleep. I wouldn’t want you so traumatized that you
won’t help him when he finally arrives, and be part of the
plan.”

“You don’t have to be this way,” I told him. “I saw
how you were when you were little. You had a heart. You felt
things. You can’t let them take that from you. That’s still inside
of you, somewhere. The Maker believes in you.”

“Listen to her lecture me,” he said to the other
men, and they laughed with him. He turned back to me, and oozed
closer.

“You see,” he said. “Here’s what Demetrio can’t
understand, because he’s a moron. Heaven never held much interest
for me. I was always a lot happier with the thought of Hell. Hell
is a lot more fun. I would have gone right away, except that it
would have been a lot harder to get to my brother from there. He
betrayed the gang, and he has to be made to pay. You don’t betray
your brothers.”

“Look who’s talking!” I screamed.

“My
brothers
are the ones who are
loyal,” he hissed, close to me. “
Not
the traitors. And my brothers,
they party hearty in hell. I’ll be happy to go, but I have some
work to finish here first.”

With that, he produced the
handkerchief, and once more put it over my nose and mouth, as
Kelsey screamed. The world faded, and I was gone, falling into a
deep, dark, blank, horrible sleep.

♦

I woke awash in nausea, to the sound of rain
on a metal roof. The curtains in the rancid bedroom where I was
help captive were drawn, but I saw that outside it was daylight. I
felt a small relief because of this, knowing that Hilario and his
friends had less strength now, and praying that Demetrio would know
I was here, and that he would help me.

I was still on the mattress, and my wrists and
ankles were still bound tightly. It felt as though I had no
circulation in my hands and feet anymore. I was thirsty, and
hungry, and I needed to pee. Kelsey was gone again, and I was alone
in the room now. I struggled to maneuver myself to the edge of the
bed, and wriggled to get myself to my feet. My high-heeled pumps
were long gone, I had no idea where, and the carpet felt like a
dry, hard Brillo pad under my feet. I looked about me wildly,
hoping to find something. My phone. My purse. But none of it was
here. I wondered what my mother thought. There must have been
people out looking for us by then. I wondered how long I’d been
gone.