And Anna.
He started to turn away, but her gaze found his over the heads of the crowd at the front of the stage. She gave him a nervous smile and played a couple of lines of the theme from “A Fistful of Dollars,” letting her guitar ring on the last note. He couldn’t help but smile. He gave her a thumbs-up and she returned the gesture with both hands.
What was up with that? he wondered. The last time he’d seen her, she’d wanted to punch him in the face.
He’d have to figure it out later. If there was a later.
Because now he was here. There was no turning back. There was El Conquistador and he could feel the big-time ping of El Tigre inside. And then the door opened and they started to come out, the gangbangers with their tats and their colors. There were almost two dozen of them, male and female, mostly Mexican, but a few blacks, a couple of white guys, and one Asian. They carried baseball bats and chains and knives. A couple had handguns, held down along the sides of their legs. One of them had a machete.
They spread out in a line along the front of the pool room, and then Flores stepped outside with his lieutenant Cruz on one side and—
Jay blinked in surprise.
Maria was on the other. She gave him such a cold look it was hard for him to remember her as anything but this hard-ass bandas girl. It was as though they’d never talked outside Señora Elena’s house yesterday.
“You go, dragon boy!” somebody yelled from the crowd.
“Yeah, kick some tiger ass!”
The crowd gave a half cheer until El Tigre looked up and down the street and everybody fell silent, realizing that if El Tigre killed Jay they’d have to face his displeasure.
Jay didn’t blame them for being cautious. Maybe Abuelo was right. Maybe he should have snuck up and am-bushed El Tigre instead of playing the big man, looking for a showdown on Main Street. Because who was he kidding? As his gaze met El Tigre’s, he knew he didn’t have the killer instinct to take Flores down.
But then the cool, hard look in El Tigre’s eyes faded, and he smiled.
“Jay,” he said. “I’m glad you came by so that we can have this chance to talk. I wasn’t expecting an audience, but . . .” He gave an elegant shrug.
Jay wasn’t fooled. He folded his arms and waited.
“Look,” El Tigre said, “this unfortunate business with Alambra and the girl upsets me as much as it does you.”
The muted sounds of instruments being tuned had been coming from the makeshift stage where Malo Malo was getting ready. It fell silent now. Jay could just imagine the angry look on Anna’s face.
“I’m here to tell you,” El Tigre went on, “that if you hadn’t killed that idiot, I would have. You and I, we had a bargain, and I fully meant to uphold my side. I only hope we can put this behind us.”
Now it was the bandas’ turn to be upset. They couldn’t have been surprised that El Tigre would punish anyone who disobeyed him, but it still didn’t sit well with them.
“Why?” Jay asked.
El Tigre gave him a puzzled look.
“Why do you care?” Jay said. “Why does our having a truce, or it being broken, mean anything to you?”
“It’s bad for business,” El Tigre said. “It’s just that simple. Crap like this goes on, it takes my attention away from making money. We had a bargain. One of my people screwed up, but I’m here to tell you that it’s not going to happen again. We can make this truce work.”
“No,” Jay said. “It’s over. What happened at the music hall is just going to happen again. Maybe not for a couple of months, maybe even longer. I don’t know. But sooner or later another one of your gangbangers is going to hurt somebody else because you can’t really control them. I don’t think anybody can.”
“You’re making a—” El Tigre began, but Jay cut him off.
“A mistake? I don’t think so. You’re running with a bunch of sociopaths who don’t care about anything except themselves. You can’t reason with freaks like that. So it’s time to shut this whole thing down.”
El Tigre’s eyes narrowed, though he kept the smile on his face.
“And you’re here to do that?” he asked. “By yourself? Because don’t think any of these cousins are here to help you. They’ve come to watch a show just as much as those kids came out to see one.”
“I know. They’re only here to witness.”
El Tigre didn’t say anything for a long moment. Finally, he asked, “Is this you talking, or is it the Yellow Dragon Clan?”
There it was, Jay thought. El Tigre’s real worry was that he faced the whole clan, not just some kid with his dragon waking up inside him.
“Would it make a difference?” he asked.
Of course it did. But he was interested to see what Flores would say.
El Tigre shrugged. “Not really. I just want everything to be clear.”
“This is between you and me,” Jay told him.
“Good to know.” He turned to his bandas and added, “Who wants to get rid of this little piece of crap for me?”
Jay had been expecting as much. He centered himself, let his qi flow to the rhythm of the land thrumming underfoot. He called up the energy that had created fireworks in the sky in el entre.
He tried to watch all the gangbangers at once, but it was hard. He wouldn’t use the dragonfire until they actually started their attack, but they were hesitating. He supposed they had a right to be nervous. Those who hadn’t been at the dance hall would have heard in great detail what had happened to Alambra.
Then Maria took a step forward.
“Me,” she said. “I’ll do it.”
Jay never saw where it came from, but suddenly her flick knife was open in her hand. Her gaze was fixed on Jay’s, hard and dark.
“Well, now,” El Tigre said. “Looks like the only one with any balls wasn’t born with them.”
He threw his head back and laughed.
In that moment of vulnerability, Maria turned, arm flashing, and the blade of her knife sliced through El Tigre’s jugular. Blood sprayed everywhere. But El Tigre didn’t fall. Instead, he . . . changed. He grew taller, broader. His dark skin was now covered with black fur. An enormous cat’s head replaced his human features.
With one taloned paw, he struck Maria’s chest with such force that she was slammed back against the wall of the pool hall five feet behind them. Her flick knife flew from her hand to clatter against the muffler of one of the choppers parked along the street. As she slid to the ground, her T-shirt blossomed with blood where El Tigre’s claws had slashed her.
Jay stared, frozen in horror. It was like Margarita dying all over again. Her blood red against the white shirt. He saw her lips shape words that never came out. But he knew what she’d tried to say.
Guard her well.
Then her head slumped down against her chest.
Jay turned to El Tigre. Dragonfire flickered between his fingers. He had long enough to think: Flores isn’t a tiger. He’s a panther. A panther man with blood soaking the dark fur of his chest, turning it darker still.
Then he let the dragon wake up and a red film swallowed his sight.
“Okay, that I wasn’t expecting,” Señora Malena said.
In the lawn chair beside her, Elena gave a nod of agreement.
“Neither did I,” she said.
Her gaze was locked on where her foster daughter lay crumpled against the wall of the pool hall.
“But she knew,” Elena went on. “She knew all along.”
Malena turned to her. “Knew what?”
Elena shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
But she’d read Maria’s lips just as Jay did and she knew what they meant. Guard Rosalie. Which also meant guard her friends. Her family. This place where they all lived.
Elena turned to Rita.
“Fix this,” she told the snake woman.
“I—”
“You made this mess. I can feel the dragon waking in that boy and while he might be many thing
s, one of them isn’t being prepared to control so much unbridled power. We need to bring the boy back into himself.”
Rita glanced at the stage that Malo Malo had set up. She nodded.
“I think I know how,” she said, and left the two old women in the doorway.
“That one,” Malena began, then simply gave a shake of her head.
“She means well.”
“So did my second husband, but he still managed to lose everything we owned on a rooster fight.”
When Flores had dismissively referred to Margarita as “the girl,” Rosalie and Hector were forced to restrain Anna. If they hadn’t, she would have gone after El Tigre herself, then and there. But now the three of them and the rest of the band and their fans simply stood there, staring at the front of the pool hall. They’d been shocked enough by what Maria had done, but nothing could have prepared them for El Tigre’s transformation into a literal giant cat man.
A giant cat man who was now turning his attention on Jay, who simply stood there in the middle of the street.
Except Rosalie didn’t think Jay was just standing there. There was something going on. Flickering lights played around his fingers like miniature lightning bolts and he seemed taller, broader. That, and the flatbed of the truck was shivering.
“Do . . . do you feel it?” she asked Anna.
Anna shook her head.
“The truck,” Rosalie said. “It feels like it’s trembling—the way the stage did in the dance hall just . . . just before . . .”
Her words trailed off as she watched El Tigre stumble to sprawl facedown on the street. Blood pooled on the asphalt around his upper torso and he didn’t move. The air was suddenly filled with a thick static charge. The gangbangers looked around. The ones with guns aimed their weapons at Jay. Rosalie couldn’t see exactly what it was that Jay threw from each hand, but bright balls of light swallowed the guns. The men cried out in pain, dropping their weapons to the ground.
A crack appeared in the front wall of the pool hall, the adobe splitting, pieces falling off. The pressure made one of the windows pop, and glass sprayed onto the street. The man with the machete took a step forward.
Jay lifted both hands and pushed the air. The man flew back through the open door of the pool hall, landing somewhere inside with a huge crash. Then Jay stomped a foot on the street and more cracks appeared in the adobe walls of the pool hall.
“Oh, God,” Anna said in a small voice. “He’s really doing this. He’s going to bring the place down just like he did the dance hall.”
Before Rosalie could respond, a woman in a straw cowboy hat jumped up onto the stage. Rosalie had noticed her earlier, standing beside two old women in plastic lawn chairs.
“Unless we stop him,” the woman said, “he’s going to bring the whole barrio down. You’ve got to play something—loud and hard. We need to pull him back into himself.”
Anna stared at her. “Who the hell are you?”
Out on the street, Jay stomped the ground again and the gangbangers’ choppers started to fall over, crashing to the ground, one after the other. The bandas surged forward. But Jay seemed twice his normal size now. He threw more light from his hands. The fireballs exploded and the bandas scattered.
“Play something!” the woman cried. “Do it, or we’ll lose him forever.”
Rosalie didn’t know why she trusted this stranger. She just knew that something really bad was happening with Jay. And if there was anything they could do to stop it . . .
“Do it,” Rosalie said. “Please.”
Anna nodded, her gaze on Jay. She cranked up her guitar and played the opening bars of “El Barrio,” one of Ramon’s originals. She turned to face the band and gave a nod to Chaco behind the drum kit, stomping her foot so that he could pick up the beat. The bass drum came in, and then Ramon and Gilbert were at Ramon’s mic with their trumpets.
“No!” Anna called to Chaco. “You’ve got the wrong beat.”
Except he didn’t, Rosalie thought. He wasn’t playing to Anna’s rhythm, but something from the morning air around them. It made everything feel solid and grounded. It was like he’d tuned into a heartbeat.
Anna picked up on it right away and changed what she was doing. The trumpets followed her lead. Luis turned up his bass and slipped into the pocket that Chaco had found. Once the trumpets were playing their part, Anna started to pick leads around them. Over by the turntables, Hector cued in a couple of samples from his laptop—the sound of an old truck starting up and the twittering of morning birds that he’d restructured into a trippy beat—then he lifted the arm on one of the turntables, brought it down on the vinyl and began to scratch a counter rhythm.
The woman in the cowboy hat pointed at Chaco.
“Slow it down!” she cried. “But gradually.”
Chaco glanced at Ramon, then Anna. They both nodded in agreement. As he brought the beat down, the whole band echoed the slowing rhythm with him—guitar and bass, trumpets. They played single strokes, emphasizing each one. Hector killed the feed from the laptop and took the needle off the record.
Rosalie could feel her own heartbeat slow down with the music. Her gaze had strayed from the street. When she looked back now, Jay was no longer so large—at least not physically. But there still seemed something big about him. It was as though his presence filled all the space between the buildings.
“That’s good,” the woman in the cowboy hat said. “Now bring down the volume, too.”
Like Rosalie, her attention was also on Jay. She had her back to the musicians so they didn’t hear what she said, but with the flat of her hand, she kept motioning for them to continue to reduce the volume. They followed her direction until the sound coming from the stage was no more than a muted echo of the original thundering heartbeat.
In front of the stage, and up and down the street, the Malo Malo fans and cousins were caught in the spell. The monotonous rhythm the band now played in unison should have been boring. Instead, it filled an empty place inside them that they hadn’t even known was there, connecting them to each other through its pulsing heartbeat. They bobbed their heads in time and smiles filled their faces. Here and there, some of the cousins began shuffling dances, stirring up the dust on the street. Up on the rooftops, the crow boys followed suit and happy cries of “Hey-ya, hey-ya!” came drifting down.
But whatever this connection was, it didn’t have the same effect on the gangbangers. As Jay drew the fury of the dragon back into himself, their courage rose in direct proportion. They collected themselves from where they’d been scattered by Jay’s fireballs. Picking up dropped weapons, they started toward him, Cruz in the lead.
“No,” Jay said. “This stops here.”
His voice was quiet, but it carried throughout the street. Everything stopped. The band, the movement of the kids and cousins. They all turned to where Jay stood over the body of El Tigre, facing the gangbangers. Even the crow boys fell still, standing on the edges of the rooftops, looking down.
Cruz shook his head. “The only thing you’re going to stop is the blade of my knife.”
Jay didn’t say anything. The tiny lights began to flicker around his fingers again. The bandas shifted nervously, all except for Cruz.
“Throwing fireworks only works once, kid,” Cruz said. “I know what’s up. You can’t pull the same scam twice and expect to get away with it.”
Jay still didn’t respond. That big presence Rosalie could sense in him swelled larger once more. She hoped he wasn’t losing himself to the dragon again and gave the woman with the cowboy hat a nervous look. But the woman only smiled.
Before he’d allowed the dragon’s red anger to swallow him, Jay had been pretty sure he was going to die. El Tigre had already killed Maria and it was pretty obvious he would be next. So he might as well make his own death count for something.
He no longer cared how much force he used or how many of El Tigre’s men he took out before he died. El Tigre should have been finished when Maria ha
d cut his throat. Instead, he’d changed into his animal shape as though the wound meant nothing, then simply swatted her aside, shattering her chest with one bone-crushing blow.
When El Tigre had turned to him, Jay had trouble focusing on anything except Maria. She’d probably known going in that she would fail. But she’d still been willing to try. That was true bravery. And even dying, even unable to use her voice, she’d mouthed her message to him.
Guard her well.
He wasn’t sure if Maria had meant Rosalie, Señora Elena, or the desert itself from which the barrio had grown. That didn’t matter, either. He’d have done his best for all of them. But he wasn’t going to get the chance. The monstrous panther man that El Tigre had become was going to kill him first.
Knowing he didn’t have a chance brought Jay an odd calm. He wouldn’t call it bravery so much as an acceptance of the inevitable. He’d take his cue from Maria and go down fighting. Let the dragon level the pool hall and kill as many of the gangbangers as he could before El Tigre got him, too.
Except then the panther man pitched forward to lie still on the street, blood pooling on the dusty asphalt around the body.
And everything changed.
Whatever it had been that held him apart from the spirit of the land disappeared as suddenly as though someone had reached into his head and thrown a switch. The medicine flooded him, and he felt connected to everything in these small acres of desert. He knew every being that stood among the adobe buildings and cacti, every bird that flew its skies, every mesquite and saguaro and prickly pear, every stretch of dry dirt and scrub. And the connection kept expanding and deepening until it was all a huge noise in his head.
He knew everything, and nothing. From the Hierro Madera Mountains, through the barrio, to the far desert beyond. From the dry bed of the San Pedro River south to the border of Mexico. He could see and hear and smell it all at the same time and the barrage on his senses left him unable to pick out individual detail. It was one enormous rush of input.