After what felt like weeks in the chicken coop, driving through the middle of nowhere, we made it to Albuquerque. The most eventful part of our border crossing was when the immigration officer asked Oscar if he was okay. He was sweating bullets, so the officer proceeded to offer him some water instead of investigating the back. I suspected it had more to do with Embry’s Gift than the officer’s good-heartedness, but Oscar was impressed. He let us off at a truck stop where we got ourselves some food, then continued our journey on foot.
When it got dark, we stopped at the most rundown, disgusting, rent-by-the-hour motel I had ever seen. If this were a movie, I would be yelling at the screen for the characters to get back in their cars and turn around. It was the kind of place only serial killers and psychopaths would stay at. On second thought, the psycho would probably kill their victims, dissolve the bodies in the bathtub and then drive off to sleep somewhere more inviting.
The three of us went together to the front desk to check in, but it would have been safer for me to wait outside, alone. If I still had hopes of it having cable or a swimming pool, they vanished when I saw that the front desk hadn’t been touched by anything but dust since the eighties. The carpet was orange shag, the walls had lime green wallpaper, and there was even a lava lamp in the corner.
“Can we have a room please?” Embry asked the old woman who was sitting behind the counter on a Chesterfield. She was about 300 pounds, noisily chewing her pink bubble gum, and looked about as happy to be there as Gabriel did.
She gave us a once over before asking, “King bed?”
The way she raised her eyebrow with the hint of a smile almost made me sick.
“Two beds and a cot,” Embry specified, as pleasant as ever, while Gabriel inched closer to me.
“If you say so,” she lost all interest in us. “No cots, so one of you can take the floor.”
We got an actual key for the door, and wouldn’t have been able to pay with a credit card even if we had wanted to. Her registry was paper, and she saw nothing wrong with Embry saying his name was Cesare Borgia.
“Do you think the Big Bad is busy checking hotel registries and credit card statements? Would he ever know if we paid cash to stay at a hotel that didn’t have bed bugs?” I imagined the Big Bad as an ancient, demon-like guy in a travelling cloak who was baffled by computers and possibly even electricity. If he could rule ancient magic, I was going to remove his current technology, at least in my mind.
“We might be old, but we still adapt. If the two of us have been able to figure it out, he will too,” Embry warned, not wanting me to underestimate my foe. We unlocked the door and got into the musty room that while relatively clean, hadn’t been used in the past ten years or so. I would be amazed if the television even turned on. It was one of those huge boxes with a tiny screen, and a knob that you had to get up and physically turn in order to change the channel. Even Embry, who had been around long before the invention of television, was eying it with apprehension.
“Rock, paper, scissors?” I suggested as a way of determining who would get a bed and who had to sleep on the floor. I wasn’t sure which option was preferable.
“Are we vying for the bed bugs or the blood-stained carpet?” Embry was hopefully just trying to get a rise out of me, but it worked as I rushed over and turned on the lamp to see if the ground truly had blood stains.
“Maybe we can pitch a tent in the parking lot. If anybody miraculously figures out that we’re here, they’ll barge into the motel room and we can drive off in their car. Safe and sound with clean seats and air fresheners,” I offered. Embry nodded, still looking to the stained carpet between the two beds, but Gabriel had a horrible look on his face.
“Gabe?” I asked, wondering if he had discovered a dead body. It wouldn’t surprise me at this point.
“I’m with her.” Embry turned to face Gabriel and realized, like I had, that it was something outside the window that was troubling him. Not like the stains were troubling us; he looked scared. Unless it was regret I saw etched onto his face. Either way, I didn’t like it.
“They’re here,” Gabriel told us, remaining calm, but I could see the electricity coursing through his body as he prepared himself for what was to come.
I had less than a second to react before the door behind me burst open, with a man entirely dressed in black barging through it. I was closest, and my hand was still beside the lamp, so I picked it up and smashed it on the top of the intruder’s head with all my might. He fell to the floor immediately. I looked over to the guys, childishly expecting praise, but he hadn’t been alone.
“Behind us, now,” Gabriel yelled as Embry took my arm and placed me in the corner of the room, so anyone would have to go through them to get to me. It also meant that I had nowhere to go if ever that happened.
Luckily, the men and women who barged in had no weapons, or at least they didn’t have time to take them out before Embry or Gabriel overpowered them. They were all dressed like civilians, and their hand to hand combat was mediocre at best, which made me think they were being controlled rather than voluntarily trying to kill me. I knew it was an arbitrary system, that evil people could be dressed like normal people, but it was reassuring for me to think that the majority of the Big Bad’s army would disappear if someone managed to kill him. One person was easier to fight than an entire army.
I was inching closer to the fighting, wanting to help as I saw my guys growing tired and making mistakes. The steady stream of assailants was never-ending. Before I could attempt to make a difference, a chilling voice called out from the middle of the parking lot.
“Stop!” it called, making the hairs on the back of my neck rise. Even scarier than his voice was how every single member of his army froze without question. Whether they were hunting me by choice or being controlled, they were terrifying.