Shapeshifted es-3 Read online

  He laboriously rolled up one sleeve, revealing the scars of living down here. Divots of healed ulcers from skin popping, and some straight cuts over his wrists, maybe self-inflicted when he was sober. The price of hard living and infrequent access to medical or mental health care.

  Not finding what he wanted on that arm, he rolled up the sleeve of the other, and I saw it. A wound dressing that was almost as grimy as he was, right in the bend of his arm. He’d punctured himself either with a dirty needle or into an unclean site, and pushed germs from the outside world inside his flesh where they could grow.

  I knew from my own brother that there weren’t any safe needle exchange sites in this town. I pulled on an extra set of gloves.

  Unfortunately, looking at his wound required being in breathing range of him. I tugged at the tape, which had fused with his arm hair. He grunted in pain until I managed to rip it loose. When I did, the packing at the center of the abscess popped out. It smelled worse than he did, and I was surprised there weren’t maggots inside waving hi.

  “You wanted this changed?” I asked him. His whole arm was red and swollen, and I didn’t need a thermometer—I could feel his fever through my gloves. He seemed stuporific. Was this his natural state? Pickled from alcohol? Or had the infection gone to his brain? It was hard to say when you didn’t know someone’s baseline. “Hang on.”

  I grabbed an entire box of alcohol wipes out of the cabinet, and started using them one by one to draw grime away from the wound, to find its margins. The surrounding area was puffy and tight, and the center gleamed with lymph and pus. Once I determined the edges of his infection—heated swollen skin down almost to his wrist and going up his upper arm, like the points of a flame—I made a face.

  “You’re going to need some antibiotics.” From a hospital. I didn’t envy whoever was going to have to start his IV. He muttered something; I didn’t know if he was talking to himself or to me. “I’m gonna get the doctor, sir.”

  I took a step toward the door, then turned. “Hey,” I said, and held up a hand to wave until his eyes tracked on me. He did live down here, after all. “Do you know anything about Santa Muerte?”

  With his good hand, he tapped a cross over his chest. And then he passed out on me.

  * * *

  I stuck around to help watch him until the paramedics came. He woke up a few times and tried to get out of the room, until I redirected him. Luckily, he couldn’t talk well enough to refuse medical care. Nothing was sadder than a patient who was lucid enough to say, “Leave me alone, the liquor store closes at nine.” The paramedics navigated their gurney in through the narrow hall and out again like pros, lashing him down onto it with casual efficiency. Unsurprisingly, they already knew him by name.

  Once they were done, Dr. Tovar came back from signing papers and jerked his chin at me. “Cellulitis? Good catch.”

  Not really. Just looking at him, smelling him, you knew that he was going to have something. I’d bet money he was covered in MRSA. Good thing my immune system was already strong-like-bull from prior hospital time.

  I couldn’t not wonder how my brother was doing. If he even knew about Mom’s cancer. If he even cared.

  Frank had a mother too.

  “You’re not having second thoughts, are you?” Dr. Tovar asked, eyeing me. He seemed concerned.

  I shook my head, and caught back up with reality. “No. Just not used to working days yet is all. But I will be, by the end of this week,” I promised with a smile.

  His gaze softened. Maybe he knew false bravado when he saw it. I bet he saw a lot of it down here. He exaggeratedly looked at his watch. “Why don’t you go to an early lunch then? There’s a bench in the parking lot in the back. Or you can eat inside.”

  “Thanks.”

  He nodded at me as he closed his office door.

  * * *

  I got my lunch out of the small fridge in the break room. There was no one else taking a break yet. Dr. Tovar wandered by again, called by Catrina into another one of the smaller rooms. I found the bathroom, then took myself on a repeat tour. There was one door that Catrina hadn’t opened. I tried the handle, and it gave. The men’s bathroom perhaps? Dr. Tovar was the only man I’d seen so far here. I peeked inside and saw a storage room, with a second small fridge at the back of it.

  Medical fridges were different from house fridges; they were all lockable and stainless steel. I felt the weight of the keys in my pocket and fished them out, looking for the shorter ones that would fit its smaller lock.

  One clicked, and I opened the door.

  There were three racks with tubes in them. I reached in and picked one up. The tube had a red top, which matched its contents. I tilted it back and forth. It looked like blood to me.

  “What are you looking at?” Caught, I jumped, dropping the test tube to find Catrina standing behind me.

  “Nothing,” I said instinctively—even though I was. I regrouped and picked up the test tube on the ground. I held it out to her. “What are all of these for?” None of the tubes had a label.

  “None of your business.” She took the tube from my hand and wedged herself beside me to replace it inside. I shuffled back out of her way while she slammed the fridge’s door and relocked it. Afterward she whirled on me. “I gave you the wrong set of keys.” She snapped her fingers and held her hand out.

  There was no good reason to collect or keep label-less blood. But I’d just gotten hired. I couldn’t get fired before I managed to figure anything out. I frowned. Even if I gave her the keys back, I knew what I’d seen. Reluctantly, I dropped the key ring into her hand. “What’s all that about?”

  “None of your business is what,” Catrina informed me, pocketing the keys, then glaring at me. “I don’t know why he hired you. Don’t be a brat.”

  I swallowed. There was no space in this small room for me to get away from her. “I’m just asking why. It’s not like I’m going to tell anybody.”

  She squinted at me, and her lips puckered thoughtfully. “I have you figured out now. You’re here because you’re a troublemaker.”

  Proving myself to people today was taking an exhausting turn. This wasn’t an argument I could win—and if I was honest, she did have a point. “Obviously,” I said, and made a show of looking at my watchless wrist. “But it looks like I’m a troublemaker still on lunch break,” I said, and then I walked around her.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I could only think of one reason why anyone would have unmarked labels of blood lying around—but I was biased, I had vampires on the brain. Hands clutched around my paper lunch bag, I went through the waiting room, heading outside. Maybe a walk would clear my mind.

  Olympio stood there, leaning against the wall, hiding in a fractional amount of shade, still hoping to direct our clientele his grandfather’s way. After the morning I’d had, I might just help him.

  “Peanut butter and jelly?” I said, offering the extra sandwich I’d brought for him.

  He made a face. “I don’t need your sandwich, lady.”

  “Edie,” I corrected him. I looked up and down the block. “How about a trade? A sandwich for a tour?”

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” he said. He sounded a little unsure, but now he was looking at the sandwich.

  “Just a block or two?” I held it out a little closer to him.

  He shrugged. “Sure,” he said, and grabbed the sandwich with practiced nonchalance from my hand.

  We walked around the neighborhood. Brightly painted buildings fought with general decay. Signs were in Spanish first, and then English, if at all. Any storefront window had bars or chain link covering it, and the roads did not improve. I wondered if any public services got down here, excepting the clinic.

  There were moments of hidden beauty. Old-school murals with block forms from the end of last century, and huge motifs, intentional rip-offs of traditional Mexican art. And graffiti, surprising in its vitality, bold streaks of color, with letters so distorted I could
hardly read them. Olympio told me who worked where, short stories from his life. He began by not sharing too much, but when I started asking questions and seeming appreciative, he morphed into a tour guide. When we reached the end of the next block, he pulled up short.

  “You see that?” He pointed at a mural with an elaborate triple cross. “That’s where Three Crosses territory begins. That’s how they mark their space.”

  I had seen others behind Santa Muerte on the clinic’s wall online. “Like a warning sign?”

  “Like we’d better turn back.”

  I stood on the street staring at the mural for a little longer. “Those were the guys from yesterday, right?”

  “Yeah. The second ones.”

  “What are they fighting for?” I hadn’t seen any gold mines along our way.

  “Territory.”

  “Really? I heard them mention a tithe.” I thought back to the moment. It was a little blurry, seeing as I’d been afraid I was going to get shot. “Yeah—they asked for a tithe, right before Dr. Tovar told them to fuck off.”

  Olympio bounced and laughed at this. “Ha!”

  I furrowed my brow, trying to understand all the layers at play here. “But—I thought you didn’t like him?”

  “We have different business practices. But I never said I didn’t like him,” Olympio clarified.

  “What’s a gang need a tithe for, anyhow?”

  “That’s just the fancy term they’re using for the bribes they’re demanding. You give them money, they protect you from themselves, and then they get to build their fancy church to Santa Muerte. Like she needs a church, or even wants one.” Olympio’s bearing was one of extreme disgust.

  I tried not to tense up or show any excitement. “Who is she?”

  Olympio gave me an odd look. “She’s one of us. She knows our hearts.”

  Person? Saint? Spare alien from Star Trek? Whatever. If she was what the Shadows were looking for, and I could trade her in to heal my mom, I needed to see. “Can you take me to her?”

  Olympio’s eyebrows rose, and he gave me a mystified look before shrugging one shoulder. “Sure.”

  Together we went down a side street, then came back on another block.

  Was it really going to be this easy? No way. If it was, the Shadows would have done it themselves. But I couldn’t help hoping as I followed him. I didn’t know how I’d catch her, but I’d think of something. I’d flat-out lie. Anything to save my mom.

  Olympio went into a wide alley. Partially hidden by a second-story overhang, one entire wall was covered with a bright mural. A woman stood in rings of primary colors, red, green, yellow on a wall of blue, like she was Venus stepping forward from the ocean inside a rainbow clamshell. She had purple robes down to the ground, which was painted with red roses the size of small cars. The only thing incongruent was that she had a skull for a face, and hands of bone. She held a globe in one hand as though she were weighing it.

  There was writing over her head in thick red script, the same color as the roses. REINA DE LA NOCHE.

  The rest of the blue wall around her image and the roses was covered in names. Names covering names, as though alternating groups were trying to claim her, and numerous solo names written in not by artists, but in pen and ink, or chipped into the stone of the wall.

  Olympio stopped in front of the image, and as I realized what he meant, my stomach fell. “This is her, isn’t it.”

  “Yeah. The Three Crosses act like they own her. This is the last of the murals that they haven’t put their crosses on. And if they see you praying to one of the other ones, the ones that they control, they’ll come by and try to collect one of their tithes.”

  “Tithe of what?”

  “Whatever you’ve got on you. And if you fight them, they’ll take you away and you’re never seen again.”

  “Oh.” I’d been a fool to think I could succeed where the Shadows had not. The Santa Muerte legend was just an excuse to shake people down.

  He side-eyed me. “You’re disappointed?”

  “I sort of assumed she’d be a person.”

  Olympio laughed. “She’s better than a person—she’s a saint. She can see everything. She protects us. Life is hard down here. She understands that.” He went up and put his hand on her dress. I could tell from the other stains on the paint that numerous other people had done that too.

  “So—” I looked at all her imagery. “She’s death?”

  “She protects people who know they’re going to die. Which is pretty much all of us. It happens faster down here than it does wherever you live. Faster to us than all the rich people on TV.” He pointed at a particular scrawl. “That’s my name. From the last time I prayed here. Not to be healed, of course. My grandfather can heal anything,” he explained with pride. “But she can grant wishes, when she wants to.”

  “Huh,” I grunted noncommittally.

  He narrowed his eyes suspiciously at me. “Why’re you looking for her, if you don’t know who she is?”

  “The old lady in the waiting room yesterday morning prayed to her when she saw the guns. I was just wondering,” I said, and he made a face like he was disappointed in me. “She is beautiful, though,” I added, because as artwork, she was.

  He nodded in agreement, and I could tell I was slightly redeemed. “Well, now you know who she is. We should get back now. We’re still at the edge of safe territory.”

  * * *

  Olympio took us back down another street while I tried to think. I wondered what Reina de la Noche meant. I reached back in my mind for comparable Latin words. Reign, nocturnal—ruler of the night? An apt name for Santa Muerte, I guessed.

  “How’s your grandfather heal people?”

  Olympio squinted at me. “Trade secrets.”

  “What—really?”

  “Yeah. You don’t have the don. You couldn’t even do it if you tried.”

  “So why not explain it to me?”

  He sighed exaggeratedly. “It would take up too much time.”

  “Can you do what he does—what he claims to do?” I corrected myself.

  “Some of it.” He picked up a rock in our path and chucked it across the street. “But I’ll be the best in the world, eventually.”

  I looked around at our surroundings, all cement and hot sun. This was an unlikely place for anything to grow, much less a peerless folk healer. Olympio must have guessed what I was thinking. He puffed out his chest like a pigeon and glowered at me.

  We were back at the clinic shortly. “So how far could we walk in this direction?” I asked, trying to rescue myself in his eyes.

  He resumed his station outside the clinic door, like a dark cloud against its wall. It must be no fun working all day during the summer, all summer long.

  “Only place you should be walking is back and forth from the train.” He’d changed from a sensitive kid who liked attention to a proto-adult carrying world-weary exhaustion and heavy pride. I remembered being his age, sitting on the fence of puberty, not sure which way to jump, torn between desperately wanting people to like me and being angry all the time.

  “Hey, don’t shut me out like that,” I complained.

  “Why not? I hardly know you.”

  He had a point. I didn’t know him either. But I knew his type. I shrugged one shoulder. “I just get the feeling, if we were someplace else we might be friends.”

  His eyes narrowed at me, the shy kid still coming through. “Yeah, well, I don’t know how to get to that place from here.”

  Catrina leaned out of the clinic, interrupting us, and waved at him. “Olympio, I’ve got your grandfather’s test strips.”

  Diabetic test strips. I recognized the box. Olympio snatched them from her hand and gave me a hot look before running off.

  Guess for all of his powers, Olympio’s grandfather hadn’t mastered the art of healing diabetes yet.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I stepped back into the clinic. There was a family in the waiting room now,
a woman with three kids and a man with gang-looking tattoos.

  I waved to the receptionist, who buzzed me into the back, and I reported to Catrina because she still seemed in charge of me. “What now?”

  “Now you do some paperwork.”

  And that’s almost all I did for the rest of the day, until Eduardo, one of the other medical assistants, introduced himself and rescued me from my desk.

  “Come explain to my patient why he needs to take his blood pressure meds.”

  I looked at his numbers—150/105, oy!—and started talking as Eduardo translated me.

  “No—of course they make your headache feel better. But you need to take them every day, not just when your head hurts. Has anyone in your family died of a heart attack? Or a stroke?” I leaned back against the counter behind me so I’d be eye level with the man. It was important he took his pills, or he’d leave his children fatherless.

  From my new vantage point, I could see just inside his collar, to a tattoo on the left side of his neck. I tried not to stare at it while I gave him my blood pressure spiel. Two dark tattooed holes, with ink blood dripping down. They could have been tattoos of bullet wounds, but the fact that there were two of them, and on his neck, made me think that they were supposed to be from fangs.

  I wanted to ask him about them, but I knew from working at County that it wouldn’t be right.

  Not for white kids, who mostly got anything on them that looked pretty on the wall. The hibiscus that reminded them of their trip to Hawaii, a bird because their spirits were free. But for people who had gang lifestyles, tattoos were a code, and you couldn’t just ask them what things were. And you wouldn’t get a straight answer if you did. I’d had to see three people with clown-type comedy–tragedy mask tattoos at my old job to realize that there was a local gang that used those masks to identify themselves. Before that I’d just thought it odd—and somewhat creepy—that middle-aged men were into clowns.

  Vampires were a popular motif among a lot of people. Just because not many people knew that vampires were real didn’t mean they weren’t in the popular subconscious. It wouldn’t have been the first time a gang thought that vampires were cool. I supposed they were, up until you actually met one.