Carole Douglas - Virtual Virgin

Ric swayed, most of his weight on my shoulders. And then the burden lifted.

“Delilah,” he whispered.

The demon’s last attack had failed to bring down his prey.

I looked up to see the moonlight clear and pure, liquid silver on the desert.

The hellish wind had been snuffed out like a candle flame.

The metallic insect hallelujah chorus was silent and I could hear my own breath panting, and Ric’s, and Quicksilver’s. Only Tallgrass stood tall and stoic.

“Justice,” he said, “is a mighty power to invoke.” He bent to pick up a palmful of desert sand. “May they rest in peace.” The grains fell to the ground, captured before rejoining the desert waste by small upsurge of wind.

I looked at the desert floor behind us. Spotlights of red shimmered in the silver moonlight and faded, softly. A chorus of sighs rode on the night’s back.

“Those are their graves.” Ric’s voice was hoarse from not having spoken for so long, and from his exhausting role in the mass rising of the dead. “Tallgrass, you report that when we get out of here. Tell the mission forces where to come to find and honor the Juarez dead. They’ll believe you’re an expert tracker. Torbellino?” he asked last.

Tallgrass shook his head. “Gone with the wind. El Finado . Still, a demon knows how to vanish when it’s outspelled. But he’ll have a far harder time than you raising another army.”

“I don’t want armies.” Ric struggled to his feet with my aid. My pat-down of his torso found no obvious wounds. A miracle. “I want one evil demon eradicated from the earth.”

“Perhaps he is. If not, next time, amigo, ” Tallgrass said, touching his shoulder.

Quicksilver was lapping at Ric’s slack hands, looking more doglike than he usually deigned to appear. His healing tongue would erase Ric’s physical wounds from raising the murdered women.

What would heal Ric from drawing on such unhuman power, I didn’t know.

THE JEEP BOUNCED our weary bones back to Juarez and the Flamingo motel for what was left of one more night.

I drove while Tallgrass updated me on what would happen next. Ric lay more drained than sleeping in the back with Quicksilver.

The government commanders and their troops would be fully occupied for a couple days, rounding up the quick and the dead from the cartel war they’d engineered and won, for the time being.

Fringe support people like Ric and Tallgrass were free to leave, the earth-shaking stand they’d taken against an underestimated drug lord named Torbellino merely freakish weather effects to the official armed forces from both sides of the border.

Quicksilver and I had never been spotted.

Apparently the military mind was the least vulnerable to—or most prejudiced against—Millennium Revelation influences, just like Ric’s foster father, the retired military man.

“Good thing,” Tallgrass said when I mentioned that. “Official forces have to obey orders at once, without hesitation. The brass doesn’t want unhuman hocus-pocus distracting them from their mission.”

“So the destroyed zombies they find are—?”

“Opposing cartel fighters their flamethrowers and handheld missiles really bent out of shape,” he answered with a chuckle.

At the motel, he hauled Ric into our room and installed him in the single sleeping bag on the floor without comment. When Tallgrass bid me good night, Quicksilver followed him to the door and then sat on the floor and moved no farther.

Someone had lost a roommate.

“Lock up good, Miss Delilah,” Tallgrass told me, giving me a forefinger salute before shutting the door behind him.

IN THE MORNING I drove the Jeep across the international bridge.

Tallgrass insisted Ric and I cover our clothes with camos. That and some official military personnel papers Tallgrass produced got our party through the border stations with only a cursory inspection of the vehicle.

Quicksilver following every move of the border officers with eyes and slightly open jaws speeded up the routine considerably. As for the duffel bags harboring any suspect items, I assumed the guys’ weapons were buried deep in the desert with the femicides.

Me, I was just glad that I didn’t have to produce a passport. Even if I’d taken Ashley Martinez’s passport, its theft had surely been reported by now.

When we got to the El Paso garage where I’d parked Dolly, Ric and I stripped off the camos to our street clothes. Quicksilver jumped out to inspect Dolly’s chassis from chrome bumper bullets to rear Cadillac insignia on the trunk.

“This where I say adios,” Tallgrass told me and Ric. “I got a short walk to a shortish flight to Wichita. You good for the long drive, amigo?”

“I did it solo and can again,” I was quick to point out.

“I know, Del,” Ric said with a flash of returning humor. “Make a guy feel redundant, why don’t you?”

I stepped close to rub my thumb under his lower lip and feel the rasp of that sexy three-day smudge of beard growth. “No worries. I just like to feel this guy.”

Tallgrass cleared his throat.

“Ric, there may still be some . . . lingering presence of El Demonio out there and after you,” he warned us. “Losing any confrontation just makes his type of supernatural more vicious if he shifted into another form, so be careful.”

Ric nodded, clasping forearms with his one-time mentor.

Tallgrass tipped his straw Western hat to me. “You let that dog take care of you, Miss Delilah, and you’ll never go wrong.”

“I take care of him.”

“You think.”

He turned and left us beside Dolly. We listened until the echo of his cowboy-booted amble faded entirely. Quicksilver whimpered.

“I drive first,” I said, not looking at Ric.

“Yes, ma’am,” he answered in mock military tones. “Just as long as I drive last.”

FUNNY, IT DIDN’T work out that way. I guess raising a killing field of zombies can wear a guy out. Not to mention what I put him through before and after in that sleeping bag.

I never thought seeing the neon fireworks of the Vegas Strip quivering like the aurora borealis on the night horizon would make me feel the relief of coming home.

From a distance, the place didn’t look infested by werewolves, vampires, and even completely human corporate-greed moguls.

“Okay if I drop you off at home?” I asked Ric, who was stretched out in the roomy Caddy passenger seat, dozing. Quicksilver did likewise on the rear seat.

I felt good about handling the last leg of the trip while my guys slept. The bad taste in my memory of being left behind like a girl had evaporated.

“Makes sense,” Ric murmured. “Then we both have wheels in the morning.”

Another bad taste in my memory had not faded. I knew I’d have to do something about it. That would be my showdown in the Valley of the Virgin, but it could wait.

Meanwhile, Ric was reviving nicely. He pushed himself upright.

“You feeling okay?” I asked. “No remaining pain from your hands, the impact of Torbellino’s magic bullets?”

“I’m coming back fast, chica. It was a good sign that the showdown with El Demonio took place in the Valley of Guadalupe. We had the blessing of the Virgin, who visited and comforted me during my childhood enslavement.”

“But . . . but that’s not what unreeled in the cloud cover over Juarez.”

“Sure it was, Del. You saw it too. Haven’t you ever seen a holy card of the Virgin of Guadalupe?”

That comment stunned me. “Remind me again how the Virgin manifests herself. She was the first and last Latina manifestation of the Virgin Mary, I know.”