He sat on the roof, enjoying the sunlight while it lingered, much of the town already cast into shadow below. He let his fingers run over the strings, not playing any particular tune, just leaving them to make their own way and listening to what they found.
It was odd, dissonant, almost a melody, but not. His hands and the guitar caught his mood, and there had been more of this lately. The shifting tension that had driven him from this town before edged back into him, the knowledge of somewhere else he needed to be.
"For a guy who got himself a tag as El Mariachi, you sure hit a lot of half-assed notes," Sands commented lazily.
He wasn't really sitting with him. As so often, he had settled himself some metres away, slouching back against the wall above the facade.
"Do you think you could do better?" he asked, not stopping the wanderings of his fingers.
"After thirty years of practice, damn right I could."
El considered that. "You could be technically good," he admitted. Sands would do anything that he set his mind and his will to, but he didn't strike him as someone who would ever feel the music.
"Why, El, I'm getting the impression you don't really consider that a compliment." Sands cocked his head, amused expression dropping from his face into that blank of utter concentration. "You might want to check the north road," he said.
By the time he reached the roof edge, El could hear it too, the deep, heavy rumble of powerful engines, unstressed and moving at speed. Nobody here owned cars like that.
That feeling tight through his body had been right; they wouldn't ever leave him.
Whether Sands was ready to do it or not, it was here.
He swung up onto the balustrade and whistled, long and piercing. The people in the square looked up briefly and began grabbing things from their stalls.
"So the guests are finally arriving," Sands said from behind him. "How many?"
He could see them now, past the trees – SUVs, smaller models to stay manoeuvrable on bad roads, raised suspension. Two of them, but that wasn't what Sands meant. "Eight, maybe ten."
"That's a little on the low side. Shouldn't be more than a quick warm-up exercise for you."
El didn't miss the significance of that last word. "And what about you? What will you be doing?"
"Oh, I don't intend to do a thing, El. These gentlemen came looking for you, and I wouldn't want to be the third wheel on the Harley." Sands tipped his head, amused. "When you're tugging all the strings along together, you learn never to interfere with a man in his area of expertise. And this, my friend, is definitely your area of expertise." He was grinning cheerfully at him as he finished, and the fact that he was right left El with a faint curl of sickness. Mass killing wasn't something he had ever wanted to be considered a specialist in.
The momentary nausea didn't even begin to damp the lazy anticipation coiling within him, the glowing hum threading itself through every joint and muscle of his body. More than two months without it, and it settled as familiar as the rhythm of his breathing before he slept.
It never left him. Even after years without fighting, it had been waiting inside for him to want it again, rushing through him greedily as he stood on the balcony of the church in Culiacán. Every sense stretching easily outwards, to know and feel everything around him, to predict and to move and to kill.
"Fine. You stay here." He pulled his hair back into a fast ponytail and headed for the stairs, ready to greet his visitors.
"You should know I'm going to shoot anyone who comes through that door," Sands called after him, "so you'd better not let any of your little friends come wandering up here."
El very much doubted that would happen. The warnings to stay away from Sands applied tenfold when there was a threat. He half-turned back. "What happens when I come wandering up?"
Sands snorted. "I know you, asshole. You honestly have no idea how many things give you away, do you?"
Sands, apparently, still believed he was an idiot. There would be no point to him shedding the clothes of a mariachi. Even without them, there were too many other, deeper things that marked him out as who and what he was.
"I know," he said softly, turning to go. "I never chose to hide them."
He took the stairs fast, knowing already where he wanted to be when they arrived.
They would stop in the square. They always did. Strategically, it was an ill-advised move, exposed and flanked by high buildings. But these people thrived through the fear of others, and that fear depended on them showing none themselves.
It gave him an advantage every time he fought them, one he was fully prepared to use as he slid into position behind the archway on the second floor, waiting.
It didn't bother him that Sands wouldn't fight. That wasn't why he'd gone after him. He preferred to fight alone, without the worry of someone else getting in his way, or getting killed. Even when he fought with Lorenzo and Fideo, he went separately, working a pincer movement with them.
He reversed his mental paths briefly, and picked his way through them again. He discovered that yes, he would have worried about Sands. At the most practical level, a dead Sands would give him no information. But he didn't want the cartel to kill him either, not after he'd fought so hard against them, and against what they'd done to him. Sands deserved now to outlive his tormentors.
El was more than happy to help him do it, expectation tuning his nerves into high voltage buzz, ready to inflict hurt once again upon those who would destroy him.
The engines dropped in pitch as they neared, slowing a little in the narrow streets between the houses. His fingers tapped steadily against the wooden stock of his shotgun, playing out a rhythm of fast beats and long pauses, tension focussed and checked.
El wanted no more incidents like Cucuy's arrival. Everyone knew now not to attempt to cover for him if trouble came, and the two SUVs drew up, trailing thick dust, in the square of what appeared to be a ghost town.
Tap tap tap. The vehicles stopped alongside one another, a couple of metres apart, close to the abandoned stalls. Tap tap tap. The doors opened and men climbed out, some in the inevitable dark suits even here, and all with readied automatics.
He waited, and counted, let them all take a look around and start to step away from the cars. Nine, yes.
This was going to be easy.
Closer, just a little closer, the men spreading out across the square, the first two almost there...
He angled the shotgun over the balcony; the first blast ripped open a man's chest, the second barrel taking the other lower, in the guts and off-centre as he spun, and he went down into the dirt, screaming.
He ducked back behind the arch as stonework exploded into shrapnel and sound, breaking open the shotgun and reloading. He dropped to the floor, crawling forwards on his elbows through dust and falling brickwork, a P14 now in his left hand. Flattened himself still further, slithering fast to the edge, guns slotting between the stone supports of the balustrade.
Most of them were behind the cover of the cars, but one had moved too far, was still running back. He tracked him with the .45, taking him down with the first bullet, three more rounds into the falling body to be sure. The shotgun tore off an automatic-wielding hand that stuck out too far from behind a fender, the second shell finishing the man as he staggered forwards in shock. He snaked back from the edge, from the multi-calibre hail concentrating there.
Easy, yes.
The gunfire was all forced above him, protected by the angle from bullets from below, and they aimed at the rail, waiting for him to come forward and attack again, or to rise and try and recover the protection of the arch. Stone splintered above him, painful shards and choking dust as he holstered the .45 and pushed two more shells into the shotgun chambers.
He went the way they didn't expect - down. He dropped from the corner of the damaged balcony, grabbing for one of the posts as he fell and pushing, swinging himself sideways towards the pillars by the main doorway. He landed with his body angled, rolling forward with the continuing momentum into the cover of the columns; straightening and sprinting for the archway, P14 back in his hand, gunfire and fragments behind and alongside him all the way as he emptied both weapons backwards, unaimed, to distract. Sudden, sharp pain across his calf, but nothing like being shot, and he dashed on through the entrance, cutting off their line of fire on him, and then he was out into the courtyard, up against the wall and reloading.
Now they would have to come through the archway for him.
The gunfire stopped. The screaming didn't, echoing high-pitched and rasping around the square.
A fast glance down at his leg - he'd been scored across the muscle, probably a stone shard - sore, but minor. Footsteps sounded across the square - three of them coming in after him.
Good.
It was shooting bottles on a wall. They didn't know the layout, and they didn't know where he was. The first one who moved half into sight stopped a close-range shotgun shell, and then he was melting backwards as the other two rushed him together, hammering automatics and heavy feet ringing off stone. He weaved around the columns, both .45s out now, no time to reload the shotgun, and his attackers had no skill. Like so many of these cheap, hired men, they relied on the gun to do the killing for them - they didn't move fast enough, and they sprayed bullets when they need only take the time to aim.
He killed them both.
He vaulted from the low wall surrounding one of the trees, grabbing for the branches and scrambling up, then across back onto the second floor of the building. He reloaded as he circled around to where he had a good view of the entrance.
At some point, the screaming from the square had stopped, and the feet sliding cautiously into the archway were obvious enough, amplified by the enclosing stone.
"No, wait!" The footsteps stopped, obedient.
So there was a smart one remaining. Maybe this would prove interesting after all.
The footsteps outside crept away again.
"There are other people in this town, hiding." That same voice carried clearly through the building, echoing slightly. "How long do you think it will take us to find them if we start looking? How many would we have to shoot, I wonder, before you come out?"
A smart one. And a very dead one.
He dropped cautiously back down into the courtyard, working his way around behind the columns. He didn't think it was a bluff to cover them coming in, but it paid to be sure.
He swapped a .45 for a convenient Tec-9 from one of the dead men, changing the empty magazine for a new fifty-round clip he found on his belt.
He didn't have to hurry. They would wait for him to come out before they went looking. They wouldn't want to be halfway across the square and exposed when he showed up.
He edged along towards the archway, stopped a few metres from its corner.
Most likely they were back behind the cars. They couldn't know which way he would appear - he might be up on the second level or on the roof, so they wouldn't risk waiting by the entrance. Most other places in the square were exposed to line-of-sight from the building, or too far away to be useful for them to shoot him. So they would stay where they were familiar, by their vehicles.
He listened, and heard nothing that would either confirm or deny.
It was tempting to empty a magazine or two into the gas tanks, but the cartel had an irritating habit of sometimes adding an extra layer of metal plate around them. Opening himself up for nothing was a poor option here.
Wherever they were, they would expect him to do any number of things before they would expect him to come back through the main archway, but that would buy him maybe a second.
The low sun backlit the hacienda from their viewpoint, long shadows stretching forwards down the length of the square. The entrance lay in deep shadow for the whole of its length, and between that and the angle to the cars, he would be perhaps half way through before they saw. That second's delay would bring him into the open, and leave him a lot of ground to cross while they had cover and he didn't.
But they were only two now.
Edging through the archway, back to the wall, sliding, creeping, and then that moment when he knew, some change in the quality of the silence screaming along his spine, and he bent low and he ran.
He was four strides across the square when the first burst of gunfire came.
Ohhhh, they were slow.
Not that he would complain about that.
He unleashed a quick burst from the Tec-9 into the SUVs, careful of spending too many rounds, unsure he'd get time to reload.
They disappeared back behind the bodywork, gunfire ceasing. They'd learned the lesson from their handless friend dead on the ground there. No hope of accuracy with this gun and this lurching, sprinting range, but they'd been conditioned, and it was so good to see they remembered him.
He ran on. And he ran fast, but everything slack, slowed, strung out, all the time he needed to think and react, as it always was. Over half the distance closed before they risked firing again, the dust kicking up thick and heavy around him, in his lungs, and he couldn't see them through it, but he didn't have to, knew they were there...
He threw himself to the ground, sliding forward through the dirt, firing ahead between the wheels, and a man went down with a shriek as his legs were ripped from under him, his torso taking the rest of the burst, and El rolled and spun back onto his feet alongside the rear tyre.
One to go.
One behind the other SUV, the metal bulk of both vehicles between them, and an intriguing game of stalking to play out.
He wondered if the one still there was the smart one or the dumb one.
"You don't have to stay here," he called, keeping low to the roof, cursing the darkened glass that denied him any flash of movement. "You can take the car and go."
Sometimes he would have said that and meant it. He couldn't let anyone leave here.
No reply, no sound of activity. With no feet on show either, that meant the smart one.
He hung the Tec-9 on his belt, hooked his fingers into the ridge along the windows, and stepped up carefully, quietly, one foot on the sill, the other on the tyre, slowly easing himself towards the roofline. There was a squeak from the suspension of the other car, a low metallic bump, and he froze, listening, hair straggling across the edges of his vision where it had escaped the tie.
THUMP, and the SUV he clung to shuddered, and his opponent was so far ahead of him, he was on the roof, and he dropped the .45 to grab the barrel of the automatic as it came over the edge, and pulled. His fingers tore free of their scant grip on the bodywork, and he fell backwards, dragging the gun free, rolling sideways as he hit the ground, AK slithering away into the dust, and the man landed right where he'd been.
He was back on his feet and twisting around, reaching for the Tec-9, when the arm hooked around his neck. He elbowed him hard in the ribs, and the grip across his throat slackened, but his other arm was already coming around at him, orange-metallic glitter brilliant in the low sun.
Fuck, he hated knives.
He grabbed hold of the knife-hand with both of his and twisted, but he didn't have the leverage, not from this angle, and he only held the blade away while the pressure built on his neck and the air whistled and stabbed in his throat.
He angled his head as far as he could and dropped his right hand to his belt, fingers groping while the knife edged closer, unable to hold it with just his left, and he unhooked the Tec-9 and slammed it back over his shoulder, barrel first.
The wet crunch of bone was loud, distinct, as something spattered at his neck; the man released him and dropped. El checked him quickly - dead, yes.
The gutshot man was still alive, but not by much, staring eyes and harsh, wheezing breaths dragging through his chest. He wouldn't be saying anything.
He put a bullet in his head.
The town was abruptly silent.
He listened for long seconds, and heard nothing. No engines, no hint there might be more on their way.
The best place to check was from the roof. He jogged back into the hacienda and through the courtyard to the stairs. And then he paused.
He wondered just how confident he should be in Sands' assertion that he would know him. It was something he really ought to discover under controlled conditions, before Sands shot him at a time that was not so controlled.
He shrugged out of his jacket and let it fall to the steps, unhooked the remaining chains and his spur. He went up steadily to the landing below the roof, then took most of the stairs fast, his shoulder brushing the wall to keep him clear of line of fire from beyond the door. He deliberately let his feet fall more heavily, the sound echoing around the curving stonework.
He slowed before the doorway to the roof, stopped, the way a man would if he didn't know who was up there. He took a single glance around the edge, and dodged straight back into hiding.
Sands was sitting exactly as he'd left him, only now with an M11 across his lap.
He launched himself through the doorway low and fast, rolling diagonally across the rooftop away from Sands, ending with his back to the stonework, ready to twist and take cover behind the tower if he needed.
Sands' head turned as he tracked his movement, but he stayed completely relaxed and didn't reach for the gun. "So, they're all dead then," he said, offering no comment on the nature of El's entrance beyond the curve of his eyebrows over the sunglasses.
"Yes." El uncurled to his feet and moved over to the balustrade, watching the roads. "Next time, you might like to give me a little covering fire. If it isn't too much trouble."
"You were doing fine without me," Sands pointed out. "Well, apart from that first interesting little trip through the archway with five guys firing automatics at you, maybe, but I thought you'd handle it."
He looked across, startled. "You could follow that?"
"El, nobody but you walks into a gunfight with a shotgun." It was that eye-rolling voice that drove El crazy. "Two rounds, and the reload time's a bitch."
"But when I shoot them, they stay down," he said. He heard the dark satisfaction in his words, the killer's voice.
"Well, that's true, but they stay down quite well with three rounds from a P14 too. And I'd still have twelve in the clip for the next guys." Sands had his right hand up and waving, gesturing towards him with extended fingers, sliding into his full lecturing style. "I swear, sometimes I wonder how you've lived so long, El. Tell me, do you ever have a plan? Or do you just go for the dramatic all guns blazing and shoot anything that moves approach every time?"
"Sometimes I plan," he said. His plans rarely held together half way before he found himself modifying and improvising, but that had never worried him in the past. He felt vaguely defensive, and that in turn was fast edging through into anger.
He'd been surviving this way far longer than Sands, and he had nothing he needed to explain.
"You let them get too close." Sands reached into his pocket for cigarette and lighter. "That last thug whose skull you broke – what's the point in you carrying all those guns when you end up using one as a club?" He was speaking around the cigarette as he slid through his little ritual of fingers to light it. "You should think about investing in some grenades. One in each car when they opened the doors would have cleared them all out with far less trouble. I know someone in Mazatlán who supplies."
He saw it then. The reason Sands had chosen not to fight. Not because he didn't want to, but because he had other priorities.
Sands had been assessing him the whole time, still the compulsive information-gatherer, wanting to know everything before he made an overt move of his own. The man had tested him, used this attack to sit back and calmly categorise him into a file of flaws and weaknesses.
The fury lit and flared, driving him forward in fast steps, words burning through his throat. "Who gives you the right to pass judgement on me? On what I do, how I do it?" Sands' head flashed around, angling, total concentration rigid on him the moment he moved. "You have no say in any of this, you understand? You don't ever get to tell me what to do. You are sick."
Sands had relaxed fractionally as he stopped before him, as he did nothing more than shout to unleash the rage.
"Interesting." For once, Sands did look genuinely intrigued instead of sarcastic with the slowly spoken word. "You realise, don't you, how much you change when you fight? Your accent thickens up a little, your voice gets an edge to it." The bastard was actually smiling, the corners of his mouth curving, stretching, tightening. "And then you rush to take the bait, all that anger just waiting underneath. I wonder, should I be wary of pushing you any more right now? Just how far could I go before you'd kill me too?"
El remained silent, taking in air long and slow, the first evening chill of it rasping along his throat.
He knew. He knew about that man he became, the one who prowled with a smiling trigger finger, seeking reasons, excuses, to fight on and to kill more. But he could control that part of him, hold it back when he wanted to, and he wouldn't, he wouldn't attack Sands now and prove him right.
No matter how much he wanted to smash his fist into the bastard's throat so he couldn't ever talk again.
"The thing about killing people," Sands said, sliding flawlessly back into his normal conversational tones, "is there's really no right and wrong way to do it. It doesn't matter if they see it coming or if you shoot them in the back. The only difference lies in the choice between the easy way and the hard way."
He swallowed hard and backed off a few steps, stamping down the hatred, his words spinning bitter. "And you choose the easy way."
Sands smiled up at him, bright and cheerful. "Every time."
El frowned. He didn't like that kind of killing. It felt like murder. When he shot a man who had a gun pointed at him, it didn't.
He knew Sands' words held a certain truth. Dead men didn't care how they'd died. But when logic came up against his feelings, logic lost. He didn't much mind it being that way. His instincts had served him often enough over logic that he didn't begrudge them the occasional inconvenience.
He never did know who had shot the boy in Santa Cecilia. Probably it was one of César's men, but he lived with the possibility it had been Campa.
He preferred to use weapons he knew he could fully control.
Sands reached out his hand and casually squashed the last of his cigarette into the ashtray beside him.
It crawled around inside him, the tension released and more of it coming, the things he had done, the things he would still do, and it made no sense, any of it. "Give me one of those."
"What?"
"A cigarette."
Sands tipped his head curiously as he pulled out the carton and threw it to him. "I didn't know you ever smoked."
He put a cigarette between his lips, caught the lighter that came his way, and turned back to scanning the horizon. "I'm glad I have some secrets from you."
Sands stretched his legs out across his peripheral vision, and gave an amused huff of air. "Only the small ones."
His ponytail had disappeared completely in that last struggle with the knife, and he pushed his hair back from his face, holding it against the breeze. Click, and he put the flame to the cigarette, drawing on it, crackle and flare. It burned along his throat, down into his lungs, and oh, it was good. He held it, letting it spread into him until that hint of dizziness hovered at the edges.
It was only like that after a long time without, before his body adapted. He took another long breath of it, stretching it out, feeling it distinct in a way it wouldn't be the next time.
"You realise I'll probably shoot you now," Sands told him.
"For smoking your cigarettes?"
"You won't smell like you."
El looked over at that. He'd assumed Sands' identification of him was based purely on hearing - the chains when they were there, but also how he walked, his rhythms and mannerisms, the sounds of his boots and the fabrics he wore. It hadn't occurred to him to think about how he smelled. He stank of sweat, gunpowder and blood now, but that wasn't normal, not even for him.
He decided not to ask. "Then I'll be grateful you learn quickly."
"You'd better hope I remember first thing when I'm half-asleep."
He never saw Sands half-asleep, not since he stopped taking the drugs. He was always one hundred percent there. "I suppose I'll just have to trust you."
Sands laughed. "I'm sure you will, any day now."
The breeze played over him, cool on his arms without his jacket, dragging at the smoke as he exhaled, snatching it away, uncontrolled. The horizon hung, unchanging, no engines, no dust, the roads still and empty.
The drug curled through his lungs, through his blood.
There were no more coming, it seemed. For now.
That was good, because the muscle in his calf was starting to stiffen.
He smoked the cigarette right down, killed the last of it into the ashtray beside Sands. "I'm going to check if our dead friends have anything to tell us."
Sands slid the M11 back away onto his belt as he stood, and headed for the stairs. "I left my jacket near the bottom," El warned him.
"I know."
The square was silent still, dust settling heavy onto cars and corpses alike, beginning to mask the blood. They were being watched from the windows, he knew, but the people wouldn't come out until he signalled it was clear.
He hadn't expected to find anything of interest on the bodies, and he didn't, just wallets and weapons. He knew one of them from when Cucuy had come for him, but there was nothing to say who they were working for now.
"They didn't really think they would find me here again, or they would have sent more. These people were looking for leads." He frowned. "If they knew they could track me from here, why didn't they come sooner?"
"With Barillo and that hellbitch daughter of his turned fertiliser, the cartels will have been busy fighting each other for a while," Sands said. "It was a twenty-four carat opportunity just waiting for anyone to reach out and grab a hold of, and more than one will have tried."
That made some sense. "It could be someone from the inside who's in charge now. There were still a lot of men at the Barillo estate when I left."
For the first time since he had known him, Sands looked genuinely amazed, his eyebrows angling high above the sunglasses and marking deep lines in his forehead. "The Barillo estate? Holy Christ, El, what were you doing there?"
El shrugged. "If they'd offered me the choice, I would have said no."
"So that's where you disappeared to," Sands mused. "You did leave me wondering."
"Not wondering enough to help me out," he said, pointed.
"Well, I found myself a little busy right around then." The sudden lightness in Sands' voice let El know exactly what that had been, and he shivered briefly.
He looked again at the bodies. Their cellphones wouldn't have worked if they'd tried, not from here, but they would have patterns. "When these people don't report back, they'll know."
Sands smiled, his lips parting smoothly over his teeth, and it would have looked attractive on anyone else, without the intent clear behind it. "Yes they will. And that means it's time for us to head on back to Culiacán before they know we're coming."
The anticipation inside him uncoiled again, never really sleeping.
Pay-off time. They were finally going hunting.
"You know where we need to go?"
"Not for sure," Sands said, with unwavering confidence. "So we're going to drop by and see an old friend of mine who will."
El narrowed his eyes at the stresses on the words. "Will this 'friend' be glad to see you or will he want to kill you?"
Sands tipped his head, considering. "Well, that's an interesting question, El, and you know, I can't really say. He didn't shoot me the last time we met, at least."
Something of the amused drawl dropped out of that last sentence, words suggestively serrated. There was more here than he was telling, but that was often the case. El supposed he would find out more when he discovered who they were meeting.
For now, he didn't bother to ask. Sands wouldn't fuck with him this time, not when the danger was here, seeking them down. It had come to his home, and they would find these people, and he would destroy them all.
He could still taste the burn of the smoke, heavy and perfect in his throat.