Tasìa was amazed at the lack of reaction from those going about their business. Of course, they heard the sounds of guns popping off from the range day and night. The gyrojet 13mm rockets snapwhipping the air at Mach 3 were much louder than her .38 rounds or Teodoro’s .22 LR.

  It helped that the brown-haired woman operated seemlessly efficient, tucking the dead spotter down in the seat and wiping off the blood spray on the front window and dash.

  The woman—Tasìa finally caught sight of her name tag, J. Gomez it said—had done cleanup crew disposal work before, evidently.

  The RSO saw Tasìa glancing her way, and in the same strident tone she displayed on the gun range, she yelled, “We’ll meet the Commander at the firepit.”

  “Commander?” Tasìa asked, confused.

  “Him,” J. Gomez said, her voice sharp.

  Tasìa followed the woman’s hand. She made a two-finger gun gesture pointing toward Matzi.

  Matzi reacted to seeing Tasìa speaking with J. Gomez with surprise—his jaw dropped as two separate aspects of his world collided—while he stood out in the open.

  Tasìa worried the coma had dulled Matzi’s defensive instincts.

  While he shook his head in wonder, Tasìa scanned the grounds in Matzi’s immediate vicinity for any remaining members of the hit squad.

  As if to remind Tasìa to hurry, the RSO spoke again. “Teodoro doesn’t believe the two were accompanied by anyone else. Scans show no interactions between them and our locals.”

  Tasìa acknowledged with a nod and ran to Matzi. The skin where he had worn the headband was much paler than his face.

  “Rough sleep?” she asked on approach.

  “She punched up on me something ugly,” he responded, taking a medicinal anesthetic cigarette out of his shirt pocket.

  “Just getting madder and madder because I wouldn’t talk, and none of my bones would break.”

  Sachmilli’s van curved slowly into the front parking lot. Tasìa took Matzi by his free hand and led him toward it.

  “What the hell did Fiona have against you, of all people, Matzi?”

  The Argentine grinned broadly and chuckled proudly before he spoke. “She finally wised up that I’ve known the game she’s been playing for months and have been using her as the weak link in my war on the Cartels.”

  Annebél stopped the van beside them, and the back doors auto opened. Tasìa helped Matzi step in.

  “A Nightwing texted me heads were popping off. That we needed to clear out. Where do you need to go, Viejo?” Annebél asked.

  “Cerro Tacautí, do you know it?” Matzi answered.

  “Don’t know much about it, but I’ll plug it into the navigation.”

  The name Cerro Tacautí caught Tasìa’s ear, stirring up words from an old memory.

  She used to be very spiritual

  “She used to be very spiritual,” Tasìa’s mother had said, nodding toward an illustration on the wall of the home where Tasìa grew up, drawn by her Aunt Tatiana.

  From a caption printed in the illustrated sky hung the words: My Seventh Sojourn. The illustration was indeed stylized to resemble the classic album of a similar name, but an actual place was subtly overlaid, alluding to the original artwork. A tower with a fire pit beacon stood on the highest peak above a sprawling temple, and at the base of the brambly hill, a second fire pit glowed with an unnatural, twirling flame.

  Tasìa gasped aloud, her awareness jolting back to the van. “Cerro Tacautí—I’ve been there!”

  Annebél chuckled. “Maybe you can help with the navigation.”

  Tasìa shook her head, wide-eyed and blinking.

  “Honey,” she said, “I’m so discombobulated, I’m not even sure if it was in this lifetime that it occurred.”

  She exhaled deeply as she eyed Matzi, who was dousing his head as he drifted out. She needed to be the grounded one.

  “Annebél, did you not feed him when he woke up?” Tasìa asked.

  “I tried to lure him to the diner, but he insisted on finding you first.”

  Tasìa nodded, accepting the answer. She scooted over to Annebél’s stash and retrieved a Ki-Jack energy drink and a pack of mini glazed donuts.

  The latter, she gazed at and self-assessed with a shake of her head: Outside of meat products, I’m as bad as any of the Nortes. And I give Beauregard so much hypocritical bullshit.

  Matzi opened his eyes at the sound of the Ki-Jack tab being popped.

  “That’s for me?” he asked, his voice pneumatic and hourse.

  “I taught you well,” Tasìa responded. “When we first met, I assumed you ate nothing not assembled and cooked in a Buenos Aires-based Italian restaurant.”

  To that, Matzi laughed more heartily than Tasìa assumed he had the strength to express. She handed the food over to him and continued to speak:

  “So, you insisted on seeing me first before everything else. What’s that about?”

  “We need your help. I got separated from Simone when we were attacked at the old Cathar temple by mercs the Cartels hired to deal with us.”

  Annebél looked away as Tasìa glanced into the virtual rearview mirror to catch her reaction.

  “As far as you know, she hasn’t been killed or captured?”

  Matzi shook his head. “She was headed uphill to the tower, providing me cover to follow suit when we got cut off.”

  Tasìa paused to assess the situation and how it felt incongruent with everything she knew about him.

  “Matzi, you aren’t really a mobster, are you?” she asked.

  “You aren’t going to like my answer, but just know, I was a crew member in good faith focused on protecting you.”

  Tasìa narrowed her eyes. “Spill it out, Matzi.”

  “No, I’m not a mobster. I’m retired po-po, now vigilante. I come from a long line of cops and servicemen, and I happen to be both.”

  Tasìa squinched up her face tight.

  “Ah shit, really?” she finally let out.

  “You mad, T.? Disappointed in me?”

  She shook her head. “Mad at myself for not catching on. I’m supposed to have a sixth sense for traps and setups, but of late, my vanity’s in that regard has been shredded all to pieces. Got caught on my six by that spaz, Fiona Caza.”

  Matzi shrugged. “Don’t beat yourself up. She led the Cartels to me and sabotaged my dive suit to blow out on me in midflight. None of us saw her coming, yet in the end, look who’s still standing. It didn’t end well for her.”

  She chortled in a light giggle. “You always did know what to say to cheer a girl up.”

  “Tasìa?” Annebél asked.

  Tasìa grimaced, looked down at her palms, and back up at Matzi before she spoke:

  “That’s my conscience driving us sitting up there in the front, by the way.”

  “You have a penchant for flippancy,” Annebél answered.

  Matzi looked puzzled, as if the conversation that took place went way over his head.

  “Let me explain. My dearly belovéd friend here is nudging me to be honest with you about what we’re here to accomplish. Simone has a death writ, a completely legit one, I should note, and it’s my job to talk her into coming with me peacefully so the party that signed for it can faithfully execute the warrant.”

  Matzi laid his head back.

  “Well, that complicates things,” he said and exhaled, sounding defeated.

  The rest of the journey took two hours, mostly silent, except for the occasional question from Matzi. By the time they reached Cerro Tacautí, Matzi had gotten a complete summary of the previous four days in Tasìa’s life, and she learned the fate of her tattered crew.

  When the conversation stopped, Annebél flipped on a soundtrack to an epic, fantasy western about vampire gunslingers and lycanthrope suffragettes fighting each other for control over a city named Kit Carson.

  Tasìa sat back and tried to enjoy the purposeful intensity the music supplied. Matzi ruminated to himself, but he seemed more at peace than at any time since she opened up about Simone’s death writ.

  Still, she wondered why it hit him as hard as it did. Then the answer occurred to her.

  “Matzi,” she began. “Are you and Simone an item?”

  He nodded slowly. “I’ve been using that abandoned temple as a base for my operations for some time now, but that day, that particular day, we were there to get married.”

  Tasìa was still churning over what an absolute asshole Fiona had to have been to set up a wedding for a cartel ambush when the van finally stopped.

  “We’ve got company,” Annebél announced. “It looks like one of the Gomez brothers from the Segunda Estrella gunshop. Did you get a chance to meet them?”

  “Met a lady by that name. Is one of the brothers named Teodoro?”

  Annebél chuckled, unlocking the back doors so they could swing open. “The handsome middle brother. Good guess.”

  Teodoro approached. He eyed Matzi and nodded, then turned his head up to Annebél.

  “We’re going to need you to circle to the off-ramp. My little brother is over there. He’ll fill you in.” Teodoro turned his head back to Matzi. “Your fiancée has a cartel squad pinned in at the temple back lot. For now, we’re closing off their route.” Teodoro finally turned to Tasìa, and he spoke pointedly. “As for you, I need you to come with me.”

  Tasìa was about to speak when Teodoro cut her off with a sharp whistle.

  “Nah. No objections. I’ve waited a very long time for this day; now come on.”

  Tasìa finally shrugged, deciding it was best to humor him.

  “Alright then,” she said, sliding out of the back of the vehicle.

  He offered her his hand, and when she took it, he led her fifty meters up the road to the temple ground gates. She eyed it fiercely, seeking a vantage point she recognized.

  Teodoro nudged her gently to a path she nearly missed to their right. It was made of inlaid red quartz rocks, winding in switchback fashion through a forest of thin trees.

  She glanced up at Teodoro as he still held her hand. His expression was gleeful, carrying little of the guarded machismo of the man she first met, though his janky walk was even more pronounced.

  They finally came upon staired steps around a rectangular platform, and it started to make sense to her as she ascended.

  Here will be the firepit; inside it will be a green flame. She would also soon see the seven majestic buildings that comprised the temple grounds.

  All of which came true as she took the final steps. She stared at the matted flame in silent awe.

  “It’s a metamaterial,” Teodoro told her, “designed to feed efficiently off atmospheric gases and never die out.”

  “I recognize all of this,” Tasìa stated breathlessly.

  “You should,” Teodoro said, walking slowly to a spot lined in jade on the platform, gazing toward a building shaped like a fleur-de-lis. “I was barely out of my teens when I worked for Sachmilli Cuervo, and I was there that day when your mother gave birth to you in that building over there. I was standing in this very spot forty-eight hours later when they brought you here for your baptism, and I saw with my own eyes the quetzalcoatl rise from the green flame, and you ate it.”