The Temptation Of Demetrio Vigil Part 9

"What?"

"Those were his exact words. Actually, he said 'it's a good thing that f.u.c.ker is a dead f.a.ggot, or I'd kill him myself, just like I do to people who p.i.s.s me off by interrupting my day asking about traitors.' And then he made sure I saw the gun in his waistband."

"What?"

"Yeah. He was packing heat, girl. Serious gun."

"Oh my G.o.d," I said, grabbing her arm and linking mine in it.

"I've never met a murderer, Maria, so I don't know what they're like, but I'm guessing they're something like that guy."

"You think?"

"He had crazy eyes. I did not like him at all."

"Maybe you'll listen to me now and stop with all your sheltered 'we are the world' c.r.a.p."

"Please don't lecture me."

"But I told you not to go up there!"

"I realize that. And when you stop gloating maybe you can focus on how we can get the h.e.l.l out of here before those dudes rape and kill us."

I turned to look back. "We're okay. They're not following us or anything."

"Let's just get out of here."

"Well, think about this. That guy, he's obviously a liar," I said. "Because we've seen Demetrio, and unless that guy killed him in the last few hours, he's very much alive and well."

"I know. But still. It's not every day a guy looks you in the eye and tells you he wants to kill someone, and then shows you his gun."

"Maybe he was just trying to scare you."

"Probably," she said. "And guess what? He did a really good job. I think we need to get as far from here as quickly as we can."

We hurried on, and soon arrived back at the Land Rover. I was about to get in when I noticed a piece of paper underneath one of the winds.h.i.+eld wiper blades. I grabbed it, and unfolded it.

Maria. Come in the church. D.V.

"Hey," I called to Kelsey, as she waited for me to unlock her door. "Look at this."

Still shaken, she hurried over, looking around nervously. She read the note, and looked at me briefly before we both turned our eyes to the church. The gate, which had been padlocked before, stood open now.

"This is freakin' weird," she said, hugging herself.

"Do you believe me now?" I asked. "You and my mom think I'm going crazy, but I'm not. I am telling you. There's something really weird going on here."

"I believe you," she said. "But I think we should go home. If he's one of them, this could be a setup."

I realized, depressingly, that she was probably right.

"Let's go, then," I said.

But when I turned to open the door to the Land Rover, Demetrio was standing in front of it, blocking my way. I hadn't heard him approach, or seen him, and all I could do was gasp before he grabbed me by the wrists, and pushed me up against the car.

"Hey, mamita," he said, smooth as silk, as though we often ran into each other in the church parking lot. "'sup?"

"What are you doing?"

"How did he get there?" asked Kelsey, and I could see in her eyes the same panic that now washed through me head to toe. She looked as though she was weighing her odds if she attacked him.

"Don't be afraid," he told us in a hushed voice, his eyes looking around wildly in a paranoid way. "I'm not going to hurt you, but you have to stay quiet."

He put a finger to his lips, and pulled me over to Kelsey, grabbing her hard by the wrist, too. He wore a black long-sleeved t-s.h.i.+rt, with the name of the old band Led Zeppelin on it, with a chain that appeared to have dog tags on it, around his neck. The s.h.i.+rt wasn't overly tight or anything, but you could tell how nicely shaped he was beneath it - a strong young man, not overly so in a stupid, grunty kind of way, but rather perfectly so. He glowed with good health. He wore jeans, too.

"Hey!" Kelsey shouted. "Let go of me!"

"I will, don't worry, but in there." He jutted his chin toward the church.

At that moment, we heard the sound of a car rumbling up the dirt road we'd just been on, and when we looked toward the noise we saw that it was the low-rider Bronco from the trailer, still a good ways off, but barreling down on us, fast. Demetrio saw it, too, and his face registered alarm and worry.

"I was afraid of that. Come with me. Now."

His grip on us was nonnegotiable as he yanked us away from the car, across the cemetery and through the open door of the church. I was astonished by his strength, which overrode our protests and struggling with ease. It almost felt like we flew behind him.

"What the h.e.l.l are you doing?" Kelsey shrieked, while I was too afraid to utter a peep. "Help! Help!"

Once inside the earthen chapel, he closed the enormous wooden door behind us with a dark, incontrovertible thud, locking it with an old-fas.h.i.+oned enormous metal key that hung from a hook in the wall.

"Shh," he said, putting his finger to his lips. Kelsey and I looked at each other, utterly terrified, as we listened to the sound of the Bronco pulling up next to the Land Rover outside.

"Help!" screamed Kelsey, once more.

Demetrio clamped his hand over her mouth, and steadied her with his other arm. He spoke with his face very close to hers. "You need to stop that, if you hope to live," he told her in a harsh whisper.

"OmiG.o.d, we're going to die," whispered Kelsey.

"Not if you can control your outbursts," said Demetrio. "Don't let them hear you."

"Who?" I asked.

"The guys from the trailer," he said as he regarded me with disgruntlement. "You shouldn't of gone there, mamita."

"I know that. I didn't want to go there. She did."

"Don't blame me!" hissed Kelsey. "You're the one who fell in love with him." She pointed at Demetrio. "Now we're going to die.

Demetrio registered what she had just said, and he seemed momentarily pleased by the news of my adoration of him. I, on the other hand, was horrified, until he kept talking as though she hadn't confessed my crush for me.

"Shh," said Demetrio. "No hysterics, please. They can't get in here. They won't come in here. Trust me. Just chill."

We stood still, all of us, and I think I held my breath for a long moment, listening as the Bronco's engine revved like a dragon outside the castle. After a minute or two, the obnoxious revving stopped, and we heard the Bronco peel out of the parking lot, the rumble of its overly-loud engine growing more and more distant until the air around us became completely silent.

"They're gone," said Demetrio.

"Who are they?" I asked him. "They have the same tattoos you do."

He nodded grimly. "Let's just say they're old coworkers. The one with the long hair used to be my boss. His name's Ulysses."

"You're kidding me. 'Ulysses'?"

He cracked a grin. "I wish. Nah, mamita. Ulysses. Variant of the name Odysseus, from the Greek verb odussomai, which means wrathful and hated. Suits him, right?"

I stared open-mouthed at him as I realized he was speaking proper English, just as he did in the dream.

"You were there," I whispered, unable to find my voice.

"Where, mamita? Greece? Nah. Lived in Golden all my life."

"The dream. The triangle. It was you, wasn't it?"

He blinked a few times and it seemed like he was deciding how to answer me, before looking away, embarra.s.sed.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said. "You always just say these weird things, Maria. It's kind of cute, but we should sit down and talk for a minute right now, before you guys get yourselves hurt. C'mon."

He led us deeper into the empty church now, and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim light. To my astonishment, the interior of the old earthen church was simple, cold, rectangular, ancient, and smelled of wet plaster, very much like the room had been in my dream the night before. I shuddered, and wrapped my arms tightly across my chest. I was not going crazy, I told myself. I wasn't. I couldn't be.

Demetrio stopped at the front pew, and knelt down to make the sign of the cross over himself before taking a seat and motioning for us to join him on the wooden bench. Kelsey looked completely confused and afraid, so I tried to rea.s.sure her with a smile. I knew something was amiss, but I didn't think we were in danger, exactly. I sat next to Demetrio, and Kelsey sat on the other side of me. The room was more visible now that my eyes had adjusted, and I saw the simple altar, with the images of saints painted on the walls behind it.

"Is this where you live?" I asked Demetrio, though as I asked it, I knew it to be true for some reason. Maybe because he had smelled just like this place the day he called 911 for me.

"I'll answer your questions after you answer mine," he said, matter-of-fact, turning to look me steadily, almost incriminatingly, in the eye. "What are you doing here, and why did you go to Ulysses house?"

I explained that we had decided to come looking for Demetrio on a "girlish whim, because we're stupid like that."

"Why?" he asked, clearly irritated with me. "I specifically told you not to come asking questions about me around here. I told you it wasn't safe, Maria. I said I'd find you. But you did it anyway. I thought Coronado Prep kids was supposed to be smart?"

I could tell Kelsey was about to go off on her tirade about money and intelligence, so I shot her a look to shut her down.

"I wanted to ask you about something," I said. "I'm pretty sure I saw you disappear in a twinkle of lights the other night, when you just left me there and ran away, and I want to know what's going on. When I drove home that night, I got attacked by a coyote, but after I showed it your prayer card, it dried up like beef jerky and flew away like a bat."

"She isn't always this preposterous," Kelsey told him. "I'm actually starting to get a little worried about her."

Demetrio chuckled at us as though we were both very young and utterly pitiful, and shook his head wearily. He used the tips of his fingers to rub his temples for a moment, as though we gave him an awful headache, and groaned in frustration.

"Maria. I think you might have a bit of trauma from the accident," he said.

"You see?" Kelsey said, punching me in the arm. "I told you! Even he thinks so."

"What?" I asked her, incredulous. "A second ago you believed me, and now you're on his side? Not fair!"

"Well, yeah, there's a logical explanation for everything, if you think about it," she said. "I have to stop listening to your superst.i.tious stuff."

"Ladies," said Demetrio, turning my head so that I was looking at him again. "I need you to understand what I'm about to tell you, and understand it good mamita. Can you do that?"

I didn't like his condescending att.i.tude, but I nodded.

"I told you I'm in a gang. I didn't front about it, I didn't lie. You asked about these," he indicated his tattoos, "and I told you the truth because I felt like I could trust you. What you didn't know, and I didn't want you to ever have to know, is that I did some things when I was part of the gang that were really bad, and now I'm trying to get myself right with G.o.d. I'm trying to leave the gang. It's not an easy thing to do. They don't like you to leave. They don't let you leave easy. It's a battle I don't want you in the middle of, because you seem like a great girl."

"That drowned-rat gang leader guy with meth breath said you were dead," blurted Kelsey. "What does that even mean?"

Demetrio paused for a moment to look over at her, something furious flas.h.i.+ng in his eyes. It scared me and I felt a brief dizziness and nausea course through me.

"It means I'm in deep," he said. "Let's just say he was speaking metaphorically, for now, that I'm dead to him, but that he has every intention of making it true in a permanent sense. You don't leave these situations without being punished. And these guys won't hesitate to punish anyone I love - or care about." He looked at me nervously, like he'd revealed too much. "Or anyone who cares about me. That's how they roll. That's why the nicest thing I can do for you is tell you to stay away from here. From me."

We sat quietly for a moment, and then I asked him, "Why don't you just move? Go to another town? Another state? Somewhere they can't find you?"

He laughed openly at me. "You don't get it, do you? They'll always be able to find me. I can't leave. Plus I got responsibilities here. It's hard to explain, mamita."

He regarded me with a sorrowful smile now, and took a deep breath. "There's so much I'd love to tell you, but for your own safety, and for mine, I can't. I don't doubt for a second that you both be smart enough to understand what I'm telling you. The men you spoke to today ain't good men."

"I saw that guy's eyes, the rat guy. I agree he's a bad man, a very bad man."

"Ulysses," I said. "Penelope's husband."

"I know, but I refuse to say that name without laughing," she replied, "and I'm not really in a laughing mood right now, thank you very much."

"Now that they know you're looking for me, and you're my friends - I'm a.s.suming that's what you told them?"

Kelsey nodded, guiltily.

He sighed again and briefly buried his face in his hands before sighing deeply.

"Okay. Now that you've done this, you're marked, too. It's all my fault. The last thing I expected was that I'd develop feelings for you in the middle of all this garbage, and I'm sorry for dragging you into it."

I stared at him, my mouth just a tiny bit open. "You have feelings for me?" I asked, b.u.t.terflies rioting in my belly.

"Yeah, mami. You can't tell?"

"She has feelings for you, too," Kelsey told him, to my horror. "But she's too goody-goody to admit it. She's too delusional about her boyfriend, who's an a.s.s. Tell him about the dream." She shoved me playfully.

"Kelsey, please," I said, blus.h.i.+ng and annoyed.

Kelsey steamrolled on, her eyes alight with pleasure, hands flying wildly. "She was practically naked, in this underground room, and you were dressed like a monk but you were going to seduce her but then her stepmom woke her up." She blinked at me. "It sounded better when you told it, honestly."

"Would you please shut up?" I asked Kelsey. "G.o.d, I can't stand you sometimes."