Out of This World (14 page)

I turn back to my prisoner. “Either you talk to me, or you bleed out here in the dirt. Live, and maybe you'll get another shot at me. Dead, and that's all she wrote. Your choice. So what's it going to be?”

“Yo, J.,” I hear one of the Avers say. “Your bro losing it?”

Yeah, I know what it looks like. I'm talking to animals like they're people. But I don't care what anybody thinks. I'm getting the cousin
ping
in my head. I know what this dog is.

“Shut your mouth,” J-Dog says in a conversational voice that means he's getting pissed. “Or you want me to shut it for you?”

The boys are smart. Nobody responds.

Again I let the tire iron brush the piece of bone that's pushing out of the dog's shoulder.

“Last chance, Rin Tin Tin,” I tell him.

J-Dog comes to stand beside me, the Glock dangling from his hand.

Just when I figure the dog's ready to die before talking, he does his shift and I've got my boot on the neck of a dark-skinned, black-haired man in jeans, barefoot and bare-chested except for a leather vest. The shoulder wound is gone and I can feel him tensing, getting ready to make a move.

I hear gasps of surprise from the other Avers, but J-Dog just nods like he's seen this a thousand times before. He squats and presses the muzzle of the Glock against our prisoner's head.

“You're not feeling frisky, now, are you?” he asks.

The man swallows. The hate's still there in his eyes, but all he says is, “No.”

“Good. Now answer my brother's questions.”

“Who told you to take me out?” I ask.

“Who do you think?” the man says.

J-Dog gives him a casual whack with his free hand. There doesn't seem to be much power in the blow, but I can almost see the stars in our prisoner's eyes.

“Answer the question,” J-Dog says. Then he looks at me. “I think I'll call this one Little Bitch, yo.”

“Who told you to take me out?” I repeat.

“Vincenzo.”

“Bullshit. Vincenzo's dead.”

“Yeah, but it's on Vincenzo's orders. His brother Stephano gave the go-ahead.”

“Steph
-aan
-o?” J-Dog drawls, looking at me. “Seriously? And he thinks that's some kind of kick-ass scary name?”

I shrug. “Nobody probably thought much of the name Adolf until he invaded the rest of Europe.”

“Bro,” J-Dog says. “Why do you even know that?” He turns back to Little Bitch. I've got to say, I'm liking the name.

“What else were you supposed to do besides a drive-by on my bro?” he asks. “What was your
mission
?”

“We're going after all of the mountain lion's friends.”

I put a little pressure on his throat. “Yeah? And what did you do with the otter?”

He finds a little cockiness. “Hopefully she's dead—like you're supposed to be.”

I push down on his throat until the smirk leaves his eyes and he starts to gag.

J-Dog taps my leg. “Easy there, bro. Dude can't talk if you bust his windpipe.”

I let up the pressure. Reluctantly.

“She's not dead,” I say when I trust my voice. “You chased her somewhere out of this world.”

“Not—not me,” Little Bitch rasps.

“But one of your crew did,” J-Dog says. His voice is silky smooth, which I know means he's right on the edge of going
hardcore with the butt of his gun on Little Bitch's face. “So the question is, where would they chase her?”

“If she went into the otherworld, it was under her own steam. We wouldn't chase her there. It's too easy to lose her in that place.”

J-Dog looks at me. “That make sense to you?”

I shrug. As much as anything does.

“So this guy Stephano,” I say. “He's in charge now?”

“I don't know who's in charge. We took our orders from Vincenzo and Stephano and their other brother Lucio, but somebody higher up was pulling the strings.”

“And are Lucio and Stephano as hardcore as their brother?”

“I don't know that, either. But that whole clan's been around since the first days, so probably.”

Perfect. And with Josh off looking for Elzie, we've got nothing to stop them with if they decide to come after us, which they obviously have.

J-Dog turns to me. “Anything else you want to ask Little Bitch?”

I shake my head. What I need to do now is track down Cory or Auntie Min—find a way to get myself over into the otherworld and find Marina.

“Will you let me go now?” Little Bitch asks. “I've told you everything I know.”

J-Dog nods. He pats Little Bitch on the head. “You did good.”

Then he pulls the trigger on the Glock and blows Little Bitch's head away.

For a long moment I'm too surprised to do anything.

“What the
hell
did you do that for?” I demand.

“He was part of the crew that did Lenny. You think I was just going to let him walk away?”

Of course he wouldn't. What was I thinking?

J-Dog stands up and rolls his shoulders. He looks around at the other Avers and everybody starts talking at once. I'm going to have one hell of a lot of explaining to do.

I look around at them. Shorty, Bull, Dekker, Edwin, Tall Boy, Nas-T. I've known these guys for most of my life. I've had their backs and they've had mine. Like the way they stood up today. I owe them an explanation.

Before I can start, my phone rings its 50 Cent theme. I'd ignore it, but it could be Marina. When I look at the display, I see it's Donalita. I almost let it go to voice mail, but maybe she's got news. I push Talk.

“Yeah?” I say.

“Have you seen any dogs around today?” she asks.

“We just put down a pack of them.”

And then I remember what Little Bitch said.

We're going after all of the mountain lion's friends
.

“Is Des with you?” I ask. “Are you guys okay?”

“They've got us treed in a palm.”

“Tell me where.”

“We'll be fine. Cory's on his way. But I wanted you to think about your grandma and Josh's mother.”

“Fuck me. I never thought of that. Call me back if you still need help.”

I don't scare easily—not for myself. But for Grandma?

I cut the connection.

“Everybody shut up!” I call above the hubbub of voices in the junkyard, putting some of J-Dog's command into my voice.

The boys' heads come up and they all look my way. J-Dog raises an eyebrow as if to say,
WTF, bro. Keep it cool.
Which would make me laugh any other time because I'm not the hothead in our family.

“This pack wasn't working on its own,” I say. “They might be after Grandma, too.”

J-Dog's face changes and I would not want to be the cousin— dog or man—to get in his way today. He shoves the Glock behind his belt at the small of his back and starts for the bikes. The rest of us hurry after.

“So what's with the disappearing act?” I ask Tío Goyo.

“What do you mean?”

“You—taking off the way you did.”

He shrugs. “I had no way of knowing what sort of cousins they would be.”

“So you just left me to them.”

“You seemed to do well enough. And besides, you killed Vincenzo—what do you have to be afraid of?”

“Something happening to Elzie.”

He nods. “Then we should get back to work.”

“Not so fast,” I tell him. “What difference does it make what sort of cousins the de Padillas were? You disappeared like a scared mouse as soon as you knew someone was coming. So who are you hiding from?”

“It wasn't fear, so much as caution.”

I sigh. “I don't care what you call it. I want to know what's going on, or this ends now.”

“Then how will you find your friend?”

“I'll figure something out. Now dish.” He gives me a confused look. “Spill. Talk already.”

For a moment I don't think he's going to say anything. Then he nods.

“We don't always get along with all the cousins,” he says.

“When you say ‘we,' do you mean you and the other uncles?”

He nods.

“Because?” I prompt when he doesn't go on.

“Because sometimes evil spirits take up residence in them— especially here. We've been calling this the otherworld, but there's more than one.”

“I get that already.”

“And the deeper you go, the more tenuous its hold on reality.”

“And in plain English?”

“This place has many names,” he says. “One of them is the dreamlands, and as you go deeper into them, you start to enter more individual dreams.”

I put that together with what Agent Solana told me.

“And these evil spirits come from dreams,” I say.

“Exactly.”

“That still doesn't explain what the beef is between you and the cousins. Or why you'd have to hide from them.”

“I wasn't hiding. I was merely avoiding needless confrontations.”

“Can't you just talk plainly?” I ask.

“I am. The problem is, you're not listening.”

“So enlighten me.”

“We're warriors, my brothers and I from the Halcón Pueblo.

When we find evil spirits, we destroy them.”

“You kill the spirits, or the people they're living in?”

“If the evil has taken root in someone, what they once
were has already died. Their friends and kin aren't always so understanding about why we do what we do.”

“Jesus. Can you blame them?”

“That's not a question we dwell upon.”

“And it's just cousins you're killing?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “But here in the dreamlands, cousins are usually the target of these spirits because they seek to inhabit powerful beings.”

I've had nightmares from time to time. I think about some creepy spirit taking over my body, and how unfair it would be to have these hawk uncles just kill me outright instead of helping me. It could happen to me, or any of my friends. Elzie, for example. She's had enough crap in her life to give her bad dreams. I feel sick just thinking about it.

“Isn't there some other way to get rid of the evil spirits without killing their hosts—like an exorcism or whatever?”

There's genuine surprise in his eyes.

“Of course not. It is usually too late, and this is what we've always done,” he says.

He starts to go on, but I hold up a hand.

“Not now,” I tell him. “I need to process this.”

“But your friend—”

“Time moves differently here, right? However long we're here, we can still get back into the regular time stream when we need to. Isn't that what you said?”

“Yes, but—”

“So I need some time.”

I walk away before he can argue further. When he starts to follow, I shift to the mountain lion. I turn and snarl at him before loping off into the trees. He doesn't try to come after me.

Donalita thinks it's a riot to be stuck up here at the top of a palm.

“Look at the view!” she says. “This is the way birds see the world.”

She called Cory, then Chaingang. Now she's sitting on her precarious perch, dangling her legs like she's on a park bench. She divides her time between teasing me and yelling insults down at the dogs.

The three of them are at the base of the tree, looking up. People walk by. Traffic passes on the street. Nobody takes any notice of the two of us up here with the dogs below.

“How come nobody even looks up?” I say. “I mean, are we invisible?”

Donalita shrugs. “People only see what they want to see. They're not like you, with your third eye.”

She raps a knuckle against my forehead.

“Ow.” I rub my forehead. Then I think of what she said.

“What's ‘third eye' supposed to mean?”

“You see what's really in front of you.”

I rub my forehead again. “Dude, do you really think I've got a third eye?”