“…With Jorge sprinting toward us through the camp and yelling my name, I darted forward. Blatant fright showed on his face before he on the edge of a tent and stumbled. “Mariss – nah, Aiyla! You need to come now! Everyone! Monster, plus him! Whatshisname!” he yelled, pointing at Mortimer.

Jogging through the tent city and skirting people as they emerged to see what was going on, I attempted to ascertain what was up. Jorge kept shaking his head and putting his hands up as if he were past words, leading us to the docks.

Finally getting there, we were greeted by a herd of wailing young children and a hysterical mother clutching one of them. It took me a few seconds to realize she was holding a body, not a live child. Judging by the blood coating her skin, whatever had become of the kid was grotesque.

I recoiled as the boy’s head lolled back to reveal bloody, gouged out eyes. The eye sockets were empty. Blood dribbled from his slackened mouth. The nail beds of his hands and feet were clawed off, skin ripped down to the bone. Blood and dirty, slimy water streamed off them as if they’d come out of the canal. She continued to scream and cry, wailing to the heavens for God to help her.

Teagan took one look at the scene and recoiled, going over to the side of the canal. He gestured to me that there were more remains in the water, though his face remained twisted with dismay.

Going to his side, I peered over the side. Blood tinted the water and the sides of the dock. Bubbles continued to surface from below the depths of the tide. One fingernail, bits of a toe and what looked like a fanged tooth floated in the water.

Beyond words myself and now understanding Jorge’s hyper freaked out state, Mortimer voiced instead for us, “What happened?”

“I don’t know!” the mother wailed, stroking the hair back on her boy’s head. “Los niños said the thing came out of the water and grabbed him! They ran to me and when I got here, he was floating…”

She began to sob anew, crying for her son to come back to her. The sobs progressed back to wails and screams, despite my attempting to comfort her. She wailed for God to return him to us.

“Floating face down,” Jorge confirmed to Teagan and I, his voice two pitches higher than it usually was. He shifted behind me as if for his protection. “He was found like this within minutes of his being dragged down…”

So whatever did this could drown and maim a kid to this extent in that time?

“What kind of thing?” I asked, forcing myself into calm.

“It went for his eyes!” a smaller girl cried, sobbing from the ground. Another boy sat next to her, staring into nothing as if she’d disassociated in shock. “It cried like a bebé!”

“’It’?” I couldn’t help but repeat, beginning to understand why Jorge was so freaked out. Everyone present for the attack appeared as though they’d seen a ghost. Either that or a zombie.

Especially as the girl cried out, “Ahuizotl! The water god! It had to be!”

This was getting downright weird.

If I remembered the Aztec legend that I’d been told in my childhood, the creature was a friend to the rain gods. It preyed on people and dragged them into the water to feed. It was described to be like a possum or a dexterous monkey with hands, a prehensile tail and with grey, pointed ears. But it was the size of a small dog with a hand on the end of its tail.

“There’s no teeth either,” Jorge muttered, gesturing at the boy’s body. “Whatever it was pulled out his nails, eyes and teeth while the kids ran for help and found me. When I got here, something threw itself into the water to hide. From the rear view, it looked like a small monkey.” He looked to me for answers. “Tell me it can’t be. It can’t be Ahuizotl. Can it?”

The hair on the back of my neck didn’t rise like a cliché, frightened reaction. The hairs may as well have curled up and retreated into my skin with the bizarre feeling spreading though me. I had no words of comfort for him or anyone. Especially since small, clawed paw prints in the dirt led to the edge of the canal docks.
“Jesucristo hear me! Send him back!” the mother screeched, devolving into what I could interpret as unintelligible keens.
“For God’s sake, get out of the way!” Mortimer snapped, seizing the body from her and turning it over. Before she could stop him, he whacked the kid’s back so hard that I heard a bone crunch. Water erupted from his mouth. “Didn’t anybody try CPR?!”
I squatted next to Mortimer as he began trying to beat life back into the little boy’s chest. I radioed for any kind of medical professional to come to our aid.
Minutes passed. Brio came running up, kneeling next to us to help after hearing the screams.
As I pleaded for help, I was beyond astonished as more water came from the kid’s mouth. He took a shuddering, painful breath that turned into frantic coughing. Mort massaged his shoulders. “That a boy, kid. Breathe. You ain’t no goner.”
The mother screamed with joy, sitting over the child between thanking Mortimer and praising God. The boy morphed from hacking to sobbing, convulsing in on himself from the pain.
“I need an ambulance,” I stated again, sending the plea through to the local police radio dispatch. One of Carlos’ men responded, saying that they were sending medics.
I glared at Jorge who put his hands up. Jorge who I knew was perfectly proficient at CPR.
“They said he was dead, man,” Jorge said, somewhat less upset than before. “Who was I to disagree? You saw what he looked like. And you didn’t try CPR either!”
Darn. Jorge had me there. I’d taken the boy’s state at face value as well. Then he cocked a grin. “But I’m not sure who to thank for his resurrection, God or good ol’ Morty.”
“Both. It was Yaweh’s divine will that he was here to save the boy from the grip of death at the hand of that satanic, Nephilim spawn,” Brio agreed, kneeling beside the boy to lift him. “And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. I’ll get him to the gates.”
Satanic Nephilim spawn. Well, that was certainly an apt descriptive for whatever it was that attacked in the first place. Either way, I was rather impressed with Brio’s ability to insert a bible verse into any situation. The last bit was from Romans if I wasn’t very much mistaken. Then again, I’d prayed for someone to come save me months ago, the night before Kit’d crashed into my life. I supposed that verse should be near and dear to my heart as well.
“Get the kid to a hospital. He needs to be assessed for oxygen deprivation,” Mortimer croaked, wiping the child’s blood from his face. He sat back on his rear end and heaved in a huge breath as Brio ran with the child. The mother followed…
…

Sicario Book 3 The Sanctum of Hell series (Del Muerta)
Copyright Maggie Lynn Heron-Heidel 2015

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