Carole Douglas - Virtual Virgin

HE’S A BOY again, in his seventh year of captivity to the human and zombie trafficker named Torbellino and his gang of coyotes.

Our Lady of Guadalupe has come to his dreams for years, perhaps even to his waking moments, her face melting with compassion for his loneliness, her pressed-together palms praying for him.

Now he’s mesmerized by the woman’s tantalizing image behind the smoke of a dirty magazine’s cigar ad. Now she ’s come to life, dancing for him in her sheer skirt with her bare breasts gleaming at the tips. He’s mesmerized, never having imagined anything like this.

But he likes it. He likes it even when he feels the needle fangs of a vampire bat he hesitates to tear away for fear the almost-naked woman gyrating in the cloud of smoke will vanish if he wakes from his dream trance and moves.

Pleasure seeps from him like smoke, and then he wakes up, pulling the soft bat body from his neck with a sharp spasm of pain. It flies away, but the woman has vanished, as he feared. Maybe he should feel shame. He’s seen the women dragged into the cabin of Torbellino and his men and has clenched his fists and squeezed his eyes shut, but this woman is different.

She likes him. She likes what she does for him, likes to ease his pain and fear.

He doubts the Virgin of Guadalupe will ever appear to him again.

But this vision will.

AKNOCK ON the door caught me slapping on some lip gloss late the next morning just as my stomach was growling up a storm.

So was the other side of the door.

I opened it pronto to find Quicksilver on perk-eared, lifted-lip alert next to Leonard Tallgrass. He and Tallgrass managed to look both worried and sheepish.

“So . . . how are you guys?” Tallgrass asked, not examining the room behind me with his usual law-enforcement sweep.

“Starving,” I said. “Ric will be out of what passes for a shower in a minute. What brought you two here?”

“The need to kill time,” Tallgrass said. “If your stomach is growling, we know how to feed it. The sun is shining. It’ll be a fine day. We could do the town until the heat of early afternoon, then take a siesta until it’s time to go back to the desert and kick butt.”

“Sounds great,” Ric said from behind me. “I worked up quite an appetite last night.”

“Scouting on the desert,” I added quickly.

“Peace at any cost,” Tallgrass murmured. “You two ready to do the Ciudad Juarez tourist shuffle?”

BREAKFAST WAS A very late brunch in the open patio section of a giant restaurant complex off the Plaza del Sol called Mariachiville.

More English than Spanish echoed off the colorfully tiled fountains, while parrots chattered in the surrounding jacaranda trees. Those gorgeous lilac-blur trumpet flowers were blowing in the wind with mariachi band fervor. Scents of hot peppers and cilantro mingled with the perfume of tropical blooms. The waitstaff was young, vibrant, and bilingual. I was ready to book a return trip to Juarez for a romantic getaway with Ric at a five-star hotel.

Dream on, Irma advised.

Over glasses of Negra Modelo beer Ric and Tallgrass were muttering about “rendezvousing” with military “big shots” and “borrowing” some firepower bearing numbers and alphabet letters instead of names.

“Quick and I go along tonight, no matter what?” I inserted into their intense, whispering dialogue.

Tallgrass looked at Ric, who nodded impatiently. “Of course. You and the dog have your built-in defense systems. You’ve proven that time and again. I get to solo head-to-head with El Demonio, though.” His expression relaxed into a grin. “Unless my ass is being whupped. Then, I expect all of you to play some really killer backup.”

The technical talk ended when the waiter wafted platter-size dishes of heavy pottery holding the kind of ammunition I dig—nachos, fresh guacamole, fiery salsa, tomatillos and chipotle sauce, enchiladas, tacos, jalapeño and habanero peppers.

This menu could melt down zombies, not to mention start a hot border war with the digestive system. We finished with smooth, sweetly bland crème caramel all around.

“I can see why tourists won’t give up on this border city.” Ric’s smile lit up the entire area and even the big blue sky above it. “I won’t give it over to the gangs and cartels either,” he added, his glance darkening.

“Softly,” Tallgrass cautioned him. “Enjoy the day, amigo , with great simple cuisine, an old friend, a beautiful woman, and a loyal dog. What more could a man ask? The night will bring the closure you seek.”

“ You? Talking about closure?” Ric teased Tallgrass. “Sounds like you’ve been powwowing with my foster mother.”

“Wouldn’t mind if I did.” Tallgrass winked at me as I lifted my bubble of a margarita glass in a toast to Ric. “Is her husband involved in the US side of tonight’s action?”

Ric shook his head. “Burnside is really and truly retired. It’s better that way. He never knew why I was enslaved by Torbellino. Discovering my dead-dowsing abilities—or even my civilian efforts to bring down the Torbellino cartel—would bring out the army mule in him.”

“Do you regret he never really knew you?” I asked Ric.

Now that I was starting to wonder who had sired me, I was realizing I needed to find that out as badly as Ric needed to stop his lifelong lethal enemy. My father might be someone I knew and would never suspect, or ever respect. He might already know me and not be willing to admit it.

Ric shook his head. “Why regret it? My foster dad’s a suck-it-up kind of guy. He wouldn’t have wanted any whining.”

I exchanged a glance with Tallgrass. This man was Ric’s soul-father. I could only hope to find one as wise and supportive as he was. I again recalled my brushes with the Perry Mason CinSim, and smiled. Couldn’t ever be for real, but I could always rely on Perry as paternal backup if my freewheeling investigation work got me into any tangles with the law.

I realized that Ric’s resting hand was warm over mine, the hot dappled sunshine sealing our mutual thoughts with the kiss of contact.

“I’ve had way more in the way of parents than you have, Del.” His smile was as healing as my lips and Quicksilver’s tongue could be at times. “Sometimes great, sometimes not so. Remember that.”

What struck me then, with surprise, was that Quick and I shared that oral healing thing. I’d never quite focused on that before. Poison dog lips? And mine? I stared into my dog’s blue eyes, blander and paler than my own.

He laid his snout on my knee and gave me his clearest mountain-lake gaze.

This tableside love fest was getting sweeter than tooth decay. I shook off my mood with Quick’s snout and Ric’s hand.

“What do we do next?” I asked.

“Shopping,” Ric said.

I didn’t think he and Tallgrass had silver and sombreros in mind. Besides drugs heading north and dead bodies, Juarez was most noted for being the busiest illegal weapons purveyor on the south banks of the Rio Grande.

“THIS PLACE IS called the Valle de Guadalupe ?” I repeated to Tallgrass, stunned.

Night had returned to Juarez, eclipsing its sunny side.

I was back in Tallgrass’s loaned camos and we were back on the ridge where Quicksilver and I had intercepted him and Ric the previous night, smelling creosote bushes and tented by small cold stars and a moon so big it seemed blurry.

“You asked me where our party was gonna make our stand,” Tallgrass said. “All the military intelligence targeted this place southeast of Juarez as the most violent drug-war zone. You have something against the name Guadalupe?”