Blood on the Highway Asphalt

Ocotlan

How many layers of skin did a wolf have to scrub off before an Alpha stopped smelling treason?

I stood over the rusted porcelain sink in the truck stop bathroom. The fluorescent tube overhead buzzed like a trapped hornet. In my left hand, I held a bottle of purple industrial degreaser from the wash-bay rack. It was the stuff the mechanics used to strip baked-on grease from semi axles. It smelled like artificial lemons and battery acid.

I poured a palmful straight over my collarbone.

The lye bit instantly into the raw bullet graze Tlalli’s rifle had carved across my left shoulder. Fire flared through my nerve endings. I gritted my teeth, grabbed a stiff brown paper towel, and scrubbed until my skin turned the color of a fresh beet.

Mine, my wolf whined inside my ribs. She clawed at the walls of my chest, desperate and confused. Stay.

Shut up, I growled back.

I scrubbed harder. Sweetgrass. Crisp mountain air. Clean gun oil.

The scent clung to the fibers of my denim jacket. It clung to the pores of my throat where Tlalli’s fingers had pinned me against the desert stone. If I walked out into the bay smelling like Yaretzi’s sister, Macario would tear my throat out before I could reach for my sidearm. Pack law was simple on the highway. You did not touch the ranch. You did not bargain with the ranch.

And you sure as hell did not mate with them.

I checked the mirror. My reflection was haggard. Dark rings bruised the skin beneath my eyes. My black hair was plastered to my forehead with cold sweat and purple chemical sludge. I turned the cold water tap and shoved my face under the stream, rinsing the soap away until the stinging faded to a dull, throbbing ache.

I took three slow breaths. My pulse steadied.

I unbuttoned my pocket and checked the evidence. The shard of amber glass was still wrapped inside my handkerchief. The serial code stamped into the curved rim caught the ugly bathroom light: SLV-409-TX.

It was proof. Real, solid proof. The ranch hadn’t poisoned the neutral arroyo. A third party had hauled industrial solvent into our desert on coyote paws.

If Macario had any sense left under his thick skull, he would read the code and call off the war.

And if he doesn’t? my wolf asked.

I didn't have an answer for that.

I shoved the glass back into my pocket, zipped my grease-stained jacket to the chin, and kicked the bathroom door open.

·  ·  ·

The heat in the service bay hit me like a physical slap.

The pack’s main compound sat at the junction of Interstate 10 and Route 18. It was three hundred acres of sun-baked blacktop, twenty commercial diesel pumps, a diner that served lukewarm coffee, and a six-bay repair shop that smelled permanently of transmission fluid and scorched steel.

Macario was standing in Bay Four.

He was six-foot-four, built like a Caterpillar engine, and dressed in a sleeveless work shirt stained with motor oil. Thick gray fur bristled along his heavy forearms. He didn't shift; he rarely needed to. His Alpha aura pressed down on the concrete floor with the weight of an overturned freightliner.

Three pack enforcers stood around the hydraulic lift. Between their steel-toed boots lay a man in zip-ties.

Except he wasn't a man.

The scent hit my nose ten paces away. It was sour, musky, and sharp with fear. Coyote shifter.

The prisoner was curled on his side against the oil-stained cement. His ribs were bruised purple, his left ear was torn, and his boots were encrusted with white caliche dust. His lips were parted, bubbling with frothy red spit.

"You're late, Oco," Macario rumbled without turning around.

His deep voice echoed off the corrugated metal ceiling. The hair on my arms stood up. I stepped around a pool of spilled coolant, keeping my boots flat and silent.

"I took the long way through the wash," I said. "Checking our south perimeter."

Macario turned his head. His dark eyes locked onto mine, narrow and searching. His nostrils flared once, twice, testing the air around me.

My heart slammed against my ribs. I kept my chin level. I kept my face blank.

"You smell like citrus wash," he said.

"Spilled a drum of solvent in the bed of my truck," I replied easily. "Didn't want your office smelling like a refinery."

Macario held my gaze for three seconds. Three long, frozen seconds where my wolf braced her legs to fight. Then he grunted and looked down at the coyote on the floor.

"Look what crawled into our fuel depot," Macario said, nudging the prisoner’s ribs with the steel toe of his boot. "Found him unscrewing the brass valve on holding tank three. What do you think, Oco? Does he look like Yaretzi’s work?"

The enforcers around the lift chuckled. It was a nervous, eager sound. They wanted blood. They had been smelling the drought for two months, and their wolves were itching for a slaughter.

I knelt beside the prisoner.

The coyote flinched away, his yellow eyes wide and bloodshot. A rattling wheeze tore through his chest.

"He's not with the ranch," I said.

Macario frowned. His heavy eyebrows drew together. "Caught him ten minutes ago at our pumps. Unscrewing the bleed valve."

"Look at his hands," I said, pointing to the coyote’s raw palms.

The skin across his knuckles was blistered and peeling in yellow sheets. It wasn't friction burn from a rope. It was chemical corrosion. The exact same yellow film I had seen floating on the surface of the arroyo well.

"He handled the solvent without gloves," I said.

I knelt lower, gripping the heel of the coyote's left boot. As I tilted the worn leather into the fluorescent glare, my fingers brushed against a crinkled scrap of paper tucked into the side of his sock. While Macario was looking at the chemical burns, I slipped the folded napkin into the palm of my work glove and buried it deep in my jacket pocket.

The cuffs of his jeans reeked of the same synthetic solvent that had poisoned the arroyo.

"Chemical burns," I told Macario, pointing at the yellow blisters on his hands. "And his clothes stink of the exact same solvent I found in the arroyo wellhead forty minutes ago. He was part of the coyote crew that dropped the toxin two days ago. Now he's back to hit our diesel supply."

The coyote coughed, spewing a fleck of blood onto my boot. "You... you don't own the water," he rasped, his voice thin and dry like rustling paper. "Nobody owns the basin anymore."

Macario stepped forward. The concrete seemed to vibrate under his boots. He grabbed the coyote by the collar of his denim jacket and hauled him three feet into the air with one arm.

"Who paid you?" Macario demanded. His Alpha voice cracked through the bay like a whip. "Did Yaretzi send you from the north pasture? Did that bastard tell you to poison my pack?"

The coyote didn't break. He laughed, a wet, choking rattle.

"The ranch is choking just like you," the coyote spat. "The whole valley is getting cleared. You're just... too blind to see the fence going up."

Macario’s jaw tightened. With a sickening crunch, his fingers closed around the coyote’s windpipe.

The coyote went limp. His eyes rolled back into his skull.

"Macario, stop!" I barked.

The Alpha dropped the body. The coyote crumpled onto the oil stain like a sack of dry feed. He wasn't breathing.

Silence descended on the bay, heavy and suffocating. The only sound was the hum of the compressor in the corner.