La Canción de los Pistolas

Now, this gringo, he was clever, though not quite so clever as he thought he was. One day he met the Most Beautiful Woman in Culiacan and fell in love. El Hombre did not know that his lover was really a witch and the daughter of an evil don.

Then El Hombre found out that the evil don and a greedy general were plotting to kill El Presidente and take over Mexico. El Hombre didn't really care about El Presidente, but he thought if he saved him, El Presidente would reward him well and he could run away with the Most Beautiful Woman.

El Hombre knew he could not face the evil don and the general and all their men by himself, so he cleverly decided he must have help. Only one man could stand up to a general and that was the great hero of Mexico, El Mariachi. The gringo knew that El Mariachi no longer wished to fight, but only to make guitars, so he tricked him, by telling all of the evil don's soldiers where El Mariachi was living, so he would have to come and fight. El Mariachi did not like this, but he agreed that general and the don were both evil and El Presidente was a good man, so he would come to Culiacan to fight beside El Hombre.

The gringo was so proud of this trick, he told the Most Beautiful Woman his plan. No one could defeat them if El Mariachi and El Hombre fought together.

On the Day of the Dead, the Most Beautiful Woman betrayed El Hombre and brought him to her father, the evil don, and they put out El Hombre's eyes so he could not go and fight beside El Mariachi. And then the evil don and the Most Beautiful Woman started toward the Palace at the center of town to kill El Mariachi and El Presidente.

But El Hombre would not give up. When the evil don and the Most Beautiful Woman left him behind to die, he stood up and walked after them. But he could not see which way to go, until the little yellow bird flew up and sang in his ear that it would be his eyes.

When they looked back and saw him, the evil don and the Most Beautiful Woman sent one man to kill him, because surely it would not be hard to kill a blind man? But they forgot that El Hombre was clever and he could only be killed by a man who could look him in the eyes. When the man tried to look into El Hombre's eyes, he could not because they were gone, and so he died.

Now, when the evil don and the Most Beautiful Woman were almost at the center of the town, they looked back again, and there was El Hombre walking behind them. So they sent two men to kill him.

The little yellow bird told El Hombre that two men were coming to kill him, but he could not see them to shoot them. So El Hombre told the little yellow bird to fly away. When the men saw this, they laughed, and when they laughed, El Hombre knew where they were and killed them.

Now, the evil don and the Most Beautiful Woman had reached the Palace, but when they looked back, they saw El Hombre Sin Ojos waiting in the square at the center of town. So the evil don sent the Most Beautiful Woman back to kill El Hombre instead of facing El Mariachi with him. And that was the end of the evil don, of course.

The Most Beautiful Woman forgot her father's orders when she saw El Hombre, because he was still the handsomest gringo to ever cross the border. Instead of killing him, she kissed him. When she did, El Hombre knew who she was, and he killed her for stealing his eyes. But El Hombre's heart broke to do it and he no longer cared about any reward for saving El Presidente and did not go in to fight beside El Mariachi.

So El Mariachi killed the greedy general and was offered any reward he wanted for saving Mexico from evil. But all El Mariachi wanted was to live in peace and forget all his sorrows, so he walked out of the palace and away and into the center of town.

That is where El Mariachi found El Hombre Sin Ojos, weeping tears of blood over the Most Beautiful Woman. And because El Mariachi knew that the Most Beautiful Woman would have killed him too, he took El Hombre Sin Ojos away with him, back into the west, where they could both forget.

The drugs were wearing off, whatever Guevara had dosed him up with before drilling out his eyes.

Sands thought he should have been writhing and screaming after what was done, instead of coming to and staggering out the front door. They hadn't expected him to pull himself together enough to get out or they would have strapped him down. The guard outside hadn't even known what they'd done to him or Sands couldn't have pulled the trick that let the kid kick him the gun back. But now the pain was swimming through the opiates and he couldn't take it much longer.

The kid. The kid had been good. The kid had come back and even got him this far. Sands laughed raggedly. So he'd told him to fuck off again. Had he heard the bike bell tinkle as the kid peddled away? He couldn't remember through the agony starting to take over his thoughts.

Oh, fuck. Fuck fuckity fuck, it really hurt now. He'd still been stoned when Ramirez walked by, too proud or just too shocked to beg for help.

"Be seeing you."

Sonovabitch.

"Fuck you."

He clutched at his arm, feeling the sticky warmth of his own blood soaking through the sleeve of his shirt.

Whatever that shit had been, he wished he had some more.

He rolled his head against the wall he was propped against, feeling his hair catch in the rough stucco. The bullets in his legs hadn't hit anything lethal like an artery, or he'd have bled out in the plaza before Ajedrez even showed up, but they hurt in a distant way. It was the wound in his arm that hurt most, more even than the hollowed-out, bloody wounds where his eyes had been. He was getting weaker with every breath, too.

The kid had still been there when Ramirez walked away.

"Are you all right?"

What kind of stupid question was that, anyway? He'd been shot three times, there was blood running down his face and his eyes were gone. How the hell could he be all right? Stupid damn kid.

"No sé."

"You will be."

And you know this how? Ah, hell, he could feel the sun on his face, it had to be late afternoon by now, but there was still gunfire in the distance. Just get out of here, kid, it isn't safe to be out on the street. Go home, keep the money, forget today. Forget the stupid blind gringo who thought he had it all wired.

Did he say any of that?

This was Mexico, how could it be so damn cold?

"Señor?"

"Fuck off, okay?" he gritted out. "Go on. Nothing to see here." Another rattling laugh escaped him. Nothing to see.

"See anything you like?"

"No."

No, you traitorous, beautiful bitch, you made sure I can't see anything. Christ, why didn't you just kill me? Did you pull the wings of flies, too? Ajedrez, you made me forget the rules. You … I almost … I could have .… Well, so much for that, lover, now the flies are feasting on you. Kiss kiss, bang bang.

"See you in hell," he whispered.

She was dead.

He was dying.

It wouldn't be long.

He could still hear the sounds of fighting, so much more fighting than he could have imagined. It was supposed to be a coup d'etat, not a civil war in the streets. Marquez' men were supposed to be intercepted before they rolled into Culiacan. But his team had no guns, no way to get the job done. Everything had come undone. He knew Ajedrez was dead and Ramirez had said...had said he'd got one of them.

Barillo or Guevara?

He should have asked. He wished he'd asked, so he could know. He just wanted to know before he let the darkness drown him completely. Had Marquez done it or had the Mariachi stopped him? Was El even alive or had Cucuy sold the poor fool to Barillo when he sold out Sands?

Sands took in a hissing breath. The pain was eating through him. He pressed onto his wounded arm and realized he was still holding the cell phone Ramirez had thrown at him. He'd heard the object moving through the air and caught it instinctually.

He could use it to try to call for help from the Agency. Except the only number he had had been compromised. In the taxi when he'd tried calling for backup, there had been nothing, no answer, just nothing. They'd cut him off, given him up and left him to fend for himself. It was what they always did. Not exactly surprising he'd wanted to grab the money, the girl, and get out. He'd known they were getting ready to screw him over.

He managed a cynical smile. He'd really screwed the pooch when he'd trusted Ajedrez with his plan. The Agency hadn't needed to set him up or take him out, his girlfriend had done it for them. Wouldn't they be pleased when they found out?

Screw them anyway. He just wanted to know who he was going to meet in hell.

Maybe, just maybe, if El Mariachi had survived, he still had the cell Sands had given him along with Marquez' picture. It was worth a try, he decided. Not like he was going anywhere or had anything else to do.

For a long minute, he couldn't force his brain to give up the number. When he remembered, he had to fumble and press the tiny buttons with his thumb, by feel.

Then he waited, not really expecting anything.

But the tone that signaled that someone had answered sounded. Just a breath, no words, and Sands knew that his inside man had made it after all. He caught his own breath and said, remembering to sound flippant, "Are you still standing?"

El Mariachi replied the way Sands hoped he would, just the way he had after the church shoot-out. "Still."

Sands smiled, ignoring the pain that ran through his face from his violated eye sockets.

"So Marquez isn't."

"Sí."

Sands lets his head drop back against the wall. He almost let go of the cell. What more was there to say? Marquez, Ajedrez, Guevara or Barillo, they were almost all gone. Their play was finished, it was time for the final curtain to come down. Time to let go …

"And El Presidente is still alive," El said, sounding pleased and defiant, thinking this would throw a spoke in Sands' plan.

It wouldn't please the CIA, but personally? Sands couldn't give a toss. He'd never had anything against the President of Mexico, just orders to preserve the status quo and keep the country weak, divided and corrupt.

He laughed, thinking about it. "Am I good or what? I knew you would save him." El had done exactly what Sands had predicted.

"You … knew?"

Sands said lightly, "El, El, my friend, why else would I want you involved? Cucuy could have killed Marquez. I was going to walk away with Barillo's money and Ajedrez and leave your good man alive as one last, big, fuck-you to the Agency."

El obviously missed that Sands had spoken in the past tense.

"My friends have the money, Sands."

The other mariachi gunslingers. Cucuy had said there were two of them, a pretty boy and a drunk. Sands bared his teeth.

"You know," he said, "if I wasn't having such a bad day, that would really, really get up my craw." He laughed harshly and began to cough, each cough jarring his wounds and making his head throb agonizingly. The words spilled out when he could breathe again, "Fuck, that's starting to hurt. Guess the drugs are wearing off."

"Sands?"

Sands concentrated on breathing through the pain and not screaming. The pain burned and stabbed through him now, but he'd begun shivering too. He clutched the phone, glad for any contact, any voice to accompany him into the long dark. He couldn't watch the sun set along with his life, his light was already gone, and he was so cold now.

"Sands?"

He didn't want El to hang up and go away, so he said breathlessly, "I made just one wee miscalculation, you see, El. Ajedrez. I told her everything … Love really fucks you up, doesn't it, El?" He began coughing again, bringing up something that tasted like blood, and couldn't bite back the moan of pain that came with it. Oh, damn, had he said love? He didn't want to admit that, not to El, not to himself. He didn't want to die a pathetic loser in love with a woman who had used him. He tried to sound angry. "She set me up. I had to dust the bitch. She just … stood there … and watched them do it."

That was not a sob and if it was, it was from the pain, the physical pain of having his eyes gouged out. He didn't have a heart. Maybe that was why Ajedrez had had Guevara take his eyes instead .…

"Sands?" El asked. "Do what?"

He couldn't say it. He didn't want pity, just the company of El's voice for little while longer.

He thought he heard El say something else, but couldn't be sure, the throbbing waves of pain were filling his head, obscuring everything else.

"Sands? Where are you?"

Confused, he asked, "Why? You want to come and kill me?" It didn't matter. "The main square." He added, "You can put me out of my misery."

Maybe El would deliver him with a merciful bullet to the head.

"Stay there."

He managed a raw chuckle and whispered, "Really, El, I can't think of anywhere I'd rather be."

The call disconnected.

He was cold and alone in the dark. Maybe … maybe he should just do it himself, Sands thought wearily. He tossed the cell phone away, heard it crack, and fumbled for a gun.

Some time after he'd started back toward Culiacan, El had stripped El Presidente's sash off and let it drop in a ditch. That wasn't Mexico. Not his Mexico. His Mexico was dust and sun and blood, cocaine and murder, silver and lead, love and grief, both bitter and empty.

He thought of the phone call from the CIA agent and sped his steps. Sands had been slipping away even as they spoke and even though El knew the man was a ruthless killer, El felt some concern. Strange, but there had been enough killing, enough death for the day. No matter that he despised the man for the manner in which he'd drawn El out of his solitude. Sands had given him not just revenge on Marquez for Carolina and his daughter's deaths, Sands had allowed him to stop the coup d'etat. Sands had set things up to stop Marquez and Barillo, and even if El had killed El Presidente too, Mexico would have been better served than to have one of those two in power.

A battered truck with a back full of chickens stopped beside him. El accepted the ancient driver's offer of a ride into town, but warned the man of the chaos that still reigned on the streets, of the fighting between citizens, cartelistas, and renegade military. His benefactor just nodded, his face seamed and crumpled and brown as a walnut and creasing into a toothless smile, and said that no matter what, someone would want the chickens. Everyone had to eat.

He dropped El off within walking distance of the main plaza, where black scars and blood marred the steps leading up to the presidential palace and a tank still burned, its tracks lost on one side and the hatches blown open. A soldier's body hung half off the main gun.

El hefted his guitar case and turned toward the square, searching for Sands, wondering if he would find the man, if he was even still there.

Instinct told him he was close as he found the bodies of two cartelistas dead on the cobblestones and a woman in black fatigues sprawled near another smear of blood and an arm. El looked closer and blinked. A false arm and a dropped, empty automatic pistol.

Sands' words on the phone replayed in his mind. Ajedrez. "She set me up. I had to dust the bitch. She just … stood there … and watched them do it." He looked at the woman again. She'd been shot point-blank. Even dead, she was beautiful, and El suddenly remembered her. This was the woman who had brought him away after he escaped Barillo's estado. He'd thought she was AFN, but he'd seen something dark and avid in her eyes. If she had been AFN, she would have wanted to ask him questions. He thought of the way she'd stroked his cheek with muzzle of her gun. She'd been a woman who would watch, he thought.

He looked around and saw a blood trail wavering away. Without any more thought, he followed it into a quiet side street.

At first, he thought the body was no more than a shadow along the base of the burnt-orange wall. Then a gleam off the leather vest caught El's attention and the figure of a slender man resolved itself from the dusky shadows.

El strode down the narrow street, stepping over tattered bits of fallen banners and forgotten masks. It was Sands, sunk down on the cracked sidewalk, back against the wall, all in black. The CIA agent's head lolled back and his pale face was stained with something dark under the sunglasses that hid his eyes.

El saw a shaking hand raise a gun to take wavering aim at him and hesitated. The cell phone he'd pictured in Sands' hand was tossed in the gutter. He knew if Sands could have gone any farther he would have. That meant the man was wounded and wounded things, wild things, were at their most dangerous when trapped.

He took another two steps toward the fallen man. The spur on his boot rang in the eerie almost silence overtaking the city as the sun set in a bloody blaze of red.

Sands whispered hoarsely, "You came."

"Sí."

Sands' hand holding the gun was shaking. He laughed and rolled his head to face El head on. The stained light painted the blood running down his face black.

"Well, no, I can't," Sands said. He almost convulsed with a giggle that hinted at madness. "That's a joke. Sí, see. See?"

El carefully stepped closer and crouched beside Sands. So close he saw the wet gleam of blood running from wounds in his arm and legs, seeping into the pavement.

He asked, "You shot the woman in the square?"

Sands answered, "One last kiss and bang, so long, Ajedrez, you hellbitch." His breath caught and he let the pistol drop from his hand. " - Now are you going to kill me?"

El heard what Sands hadn't said, in the wistful tones of his voice. "Do you want me to?" he replied. He thought if the man wanted to die, it would be simplest to just leave him. He would die soon enough if just left, or use the gun he'd held onto until now.

Sands cocked his head a little and licked dry lips. He lifted his good shoulder in a half shrug and winced.

"No sé."

He let his hand drop limply to his side and tipped his head back, exposing the long, pale line of his throat, in a gesture of vulnerability and submission. Whatever El decided, Sands wouldn't try to stop him.

El brushed the gun away from Sands' fingers and reached forward, slipping the sunglasses away from Sands' bloody face. A small moan escaped Sands, who had begun shivering. Shock, El diagnosed. He'd been shot enough times to know how blood loss stole the warmth from flesh. It was amazing Sands was even still conscious. The American hid a will of steel beneath the sarcasm and the sneering tourist attitude.

He drew in a harsh breath as he saw the bloody ruin the glasses had concealed. El thought the eyelids might still be there, lost under the clotted red-black mess of blood, vitreous humor and swelling, though his first thought was that everything had been cut away.

Gently as he could, El slid the sunglasses back into place. His fingers brushed Sands' cheekbone though, and the man flinched his face away, whimpering once.

"Who did this?" he asked in horror.

It was worse, in a way, than Marquez' murder of Carolina and his daughter, which had been swift, at least. No one who could inflict such torment deliberately should live. El would exact vengeance for this atrocity. He needed only a name. A new crusade, a new target, a new goal, something to keep him on his feet and moving, because he had nothing else. The American had given him his revenge, now he would give him this too. How ironic, that the man had said he had nothing to live for, then provided him that.

Sands, whispered, "Ajedrez and Guevara." He shuddered. El winced in sympathy.

He had heard of Guevara. He clenched his scarred hand. That was the one the sad-eyed man had shot, before El finished Barillo off. And Ajedrez Sands had killed himself. So there would be no revenge for Sands' eyes.

The one time he had really seen Sands, had been when Cucuy brought him to the Agent from Villa Perdidos, after killing the guitar-maker. He remembered Sands as too clever and laughing, a young Lucifer still clothed in beauty, with eyes even darker than El's, eyes to match a night-black soul. Was that why they took Sands' eyes, for their dark beauty? Did the blood of his suffering wash away any of the sin from Sands' soul?

It did not matter. Killing, El understood. Revenge. Justice. Even Sands' half-mad concept of balance made more sense than this atrocity. He might have killed Sands himself, even a day before, but torture and vandalism were alien to El. Perhaps Sands deserved to die, but El thought no one deserved to be shattered like this.

"Why?" he asked, not expecting any answer from Sands.

"Why not?" Sands answered. He licked his lips. "I'd … seen … too much, Barillo said." His hand curled into a fist.

"Guevara is dead," El told him gently, "So is Barillo, if that helps."

"Not really."

El dropped one knee to the pavement and gently took hold of Sands and began drawing him up. The man's slender body stiffened in pain.

"What? What … are you doing?" Sands exclaimed, suddenly almost panicked.

"Getting you out of here. You need a doctor."

Sands murmured bitterly, "A bullet's cheaper."

El shook his head, then said, "Sí. Pulling the trigger is easy."

He heard the echo of his own words, long ago, as Sands muttered, "But you have to do it the hard way."

He smiled. "Sí."

They stumbled to their feet. El was startled by how light the American was, how whipcord lean and stubborn under the black clothes and pretty face. He guided the man along the street, heading for the hotel room he'd never checked out of. When Sands' last strength ran out with the fresh blood from one of his wounds, El slung him over his shoulder and carried him the rest of the way, guitar case in his other hand.

They were seen, but no one asked any questions.

After laying Sands on the bed, El cleaned and dealt with the wounds as best he could, then left in search of a doctor. Sands' eyes, or what was left, needed more than El could provide.

The doctor he found was nervous and horrified, but did everything that could be done for Sands and left El with instructions and antibiotics, along with a bottle of strong painkillers, before leaving. Sands remained unconscious through the process and the first night, thankfully.

Fever and delirium consumed the American the next day, left him crying out and cursing, clawing wildly at the bandages over his eye sockets, until El was too exhausted to do more than tie him down and collapse into sleep beside him. He forced water and painkillers down the man's throat, along with the antibiotics, and redressed all his wounds each day while the drugs kept Sands unconscious and unaware.

He sang old lullabies and mariachi songs sometimes, trying not to listen to Sands' desperate, fevered pleas to Ajedrez. He ached with his own remembered pain over Carolina and thought that if you loved, then losing an illusion could be as painful as losing the truth. Sands was not a man who would have trusted easily nor have called what he felt love, but El suspected that was what the man had felt: in his tortured dreams, Sands didn't call out for his sight, he called out for the woman who had taken it.

El's voice seemed to bring him some comfort, though, and his touch; though at first, even unconscious, Sands had flinched from his hands.

As the third day dawned, Sands seemed to be sleeping somewhat easier. El left him just long enough to fetch new supplies, a meal, and a bag of oranges. He opened the doors to the room's small balcony to vent the scent of sickness and medicines and watched the people on the street. Culiacan was already returning to oblivious peace, the marks of the Day of the Dead quickly fading. He peeled an orange and ate it section by section, licking the juice from his fingers, and turned back to the room as he heard Sands begin to stir.

Sands was suffocating, drowning, trapped. Fever seared his flesh and lead chained him down. He couldn't escape. He couldn't open his eyes.

He was blind.

He understood he was awake when he remembered he was blind, when delirium left him stranded in the barren desert of the truth. There was only pain and darkness. His world was black. He was lost.

He had no idea where he was.

He tried to take stock. He was in a bed. A streak of heat over the skin of his cheekbone was … sunlight from a window. He was in a bedroom with a window. He took a breath. The sheets smelled clean, the room faintly musty, and there were fainter scents, of dust, diesel exhaust, a tang of citrus sharp like the rind of an orange. Not a hospital, he thought. He turned his head toward where he thought the window was, gasping as a needle of pain ran from his eye sockets into his head. The sun was warm on his face now, except across his eyes.

What?

Sands tried to lift a hand to touch his face and couldn't. He jerked, breath whistling in, feeling cloth binding his wrists down. He was tied down. He was blind and he was tied down, he didn't know where. Panic blasted through him and Sands threw himself into fighting the bindings wildly. Pain from his gunshot wounds, pain from his wrists, pulsed through him but he ignored it, trying desperately to tear himself loose.

He heard the sound of footsteps, the faint jingle of chains - chains? - as someone approached the bed. He kept writhing against the ties, a harsh whine at the pain escaping him. Chains, chains, he knew that sound …

A weight descended on the edge of the bed. Warm, rough, calloused hands pressed his shoulders down. Sands smelled dust and copper, ghosts of cordite and blood. Oranges again. The man had been eating an orange, the zest scented his fingers.

"Easy, easy," El Mariachi breathed softly. Voice like whiskey smoke, like burnt honey seeping into Sands' mind through his ears, and so familiar, so familiar. So practiced. "Sh, sh, sh." Like he was soothing a trapped animal, like he'd whispered and gentled Sands a hundred times before. Sands swung his head toward the man and snapped at his hand.

Missed, damn it.

"Let me loose, fuckmook," Sands tried to snarl. It came out as a near soundless croak, his throat was raw and dry. The Mariachi still pressed his shoulders down.

"Sands?"

He heard the other man's breathing pick up, the rustle of cloth, the jingle of those damn chains on the man's pants. Fucking Jingle El, Jingle El, jingle all the way; God, Sands was grateful for the sounds, something to hear and know and recognize in this wasteland. He heard the scrape of a boot on the floor, the distant sound of traffic on a street, faded voices, church bells.

"Fucking bells," he breathed hoarsely, but he stopped fighting and fell back into the mattress like a puppet with its strings cut. Helpless. Hadn't he been the puppet-master before, the man pulling the strings?

"You're awake."

"Unless this is the worst fucking dream of my life," Sands said bitterly.

Deft, strong fingers plucked the ties around his wrists loose. Sands immediately tried to lift one hand to his face. The Mariachi caught it.

"No."

His grip was firm but light.

"El?" Sands didn't try to pull his hand away. The touch of the Mariachi's hand felt like the only thing anchoring him in the world. It was his lifeline in the endless darkness. He licked his lips. "Why?"

El answered only the obvious. "You kept tearing the bandages from your eyes." He let go of Sands' wrist.

"What eyes?" Sands whispered desolately. He wrapped his arms around himself and curled away onto his side, rocking, trying to hold everything in. "They're gone."

"This is true," El replied. "But it will not help you if the wounds become infected. Do you want to make the scarring worse?"

"Like this could be any worse. You should have let me die."

"Sí."

El scooted onto the bed. His hands ghosted over Sands' hair, then down across his bare shoulder. Sands shuddered, realizing his was naked except for various bandages. He let El draw him close and turned until his face rested against the folds of the Mariachi's soft shirt and he could hear his heartbeat. He brought his hand up and caught a handful of cloth, clutching it tightly. He was shaking. El pulled the bedding closer around Sands and then ran his hand up and down between Sands' shoulder blades. Over and over, until Sands was limp and still.

"I wanted company in hell, I think," El whispered. Sands didn't know if the man understood that he was still awake or not. "We are both dead, now."

"Oh," Sands muttered. "That makes sense."

El stilled, not even breathing, his hand unmoving on Sands' back. Finally Sands lifted his face toward El's unseen countenance. "Did I thank you?"

"No."

Sands snorted and rolled away. "Well, don't expect me to, shitwit." He clumsily scooted up to sit shoulder to shoulder with El. Unconsciously, he stroked his fingers over the rough weave of the cheap sheets, wondering if they were white or dingy. He would never, ever know.

Fuck, he hurt.

His hair was falling over his face, tickling against his cheeks and jaw, catching in his stubble. Maybe he would grow a beard, save himself the trouble of shaving. He thought of food getting caught in a beard and shuddered at the thought of looking that fucking pathetic. No beard.

Cautiously, he pushed his hair away from his face. It was greasy and made him want to wash it, to stand in a shower of hot water until he'd scrubbed Mexico off him and could forget, could pretend his eyes were just closed and not gone.

He fingered the gauze bandages wrapped over his eyes like a blindfold.

"Leave those alone," El commanded.

Sands curled his fingers into a fist. He wanted to ignore the man and rip the bandages away. Somewhere in his head there was still a wild hope that if he did, he would find himself able to see again.

Slowly, he lowered his hand into his lap and opened his fist.

His head drooped and his shoulders slumped.

El got off the bed and jingled off somewhere. Sands didn't care. Didn't pay any attention when the man came back, nor to the clink of a dish being set down on a stand by the bed. El sat down on the bed's edge again. A hand picked up Sands' and wrapped it around a glass. His fingers slipped against cool condensation and El steadied his hand.

"Drink."

Shakily, Sands lifted the glass and took a cautious sip. Cool water, the most delicious he'd ever tasted, touched parched lips and washed over his tongue and down his aching throat. Helplessly, he gulped more down, losing a trickle out of the corner of his mouth. El pulled the glass back.

"Slowly. Slowly."

Sands wanted to protest, but the cold water had hit his empty stomach like a lead weight. It threatened to come up again. He breathed hard through his nose and dry swallowed until it settled. His whole body was shaking again, he realized in disgust.

He managed to nod.

El tightened his fingers around the glass, then let go once Sands was holding it steadily.

"You need to eat something."

Sands tried another, small sip of water, let it soak into the dry tissues in his mouth and slowly warm before he swallowed. When his stomach didn't threaten outright rebellion, he nodded.

"Okay."

El watched unguarded expressions flash across Sands' face, amazed at how much he could see without ever looking into the man's eyes. Sands had been a handsome man, almost pretty, El remembered from their single face to face meeting. A man full of secret laughter, the Hanged Man smiling as he turned everything inside out and upside down, and danger had shimmered off his surprising stillness. Now, he was bleached bone, drawn fine and sharp and still unpredictable, somehow as beautiful as he was brittle. Vulnerable.

Aware of that vulnerability, too, and frightened by it, El saw. His own stomach rolled at the prospect of waking, blind and tied. Sands had been like a trapped bird, beating and breaking his wings against the cage, wild to fly when he never would again.

El slowly and carefully fed Sands a small, plain meal, worried by how little the man would eat. Finally, he peeled another orange and fed the plump sections to Sands with his fingers. Sands silently took each piece and licked the juices from El's fingertips with a delicate pink tongue tip. El shuddered at the sensation; it was the most intimate touch he'd felt since Carolina's death.

Sands felt it and cocked his head. "El?"

"Sí?"

"Just making sure you're still there."

Sands was lying. He had to feel El's presence on the bed. But his silence might have disturbed the blind man. He summoned an almost smile and then realized it meant nothing to Sands, who could not see it.

"Still here," El murmured instead.

Sands ran his hand over the coverlet until he came to El's thigh. He hesitated, then skated his palm up. Unintentional or not, it felt like a caress, and El burned where he was touched. He grabbed Sands' hand and lifted it. Sands immediately twined his fingers into El's, hanging on so tight his knuckles shone white.

"The doctor left antibiotics," he said. "You need to take them."

He felt the flinch run through Sands at the word doctor. He wondered briefly before making the connection. Guevara.

"I don't suppose he left any kick-ass drugs, because - " Sands swallowed hard but forced the last words out and gestured at his bandaged eyes, " - this really, really is starting to hurt."

"He left painkillers," El said. "I'll get them for you." He let go of Sands' hand as though it was a burning coal.

"Yeah," Sands muttered flatly, "you do that."

El returned with the vials of painkillers and antibiotics and slid the pills into Sands' palm, then handed him the glass of water again. Sands clenched his hand on the medication, then silently swallowed all of it down. He shoved the glass in El's direction, almost spilling the rest of its contents, and when El had it, slid down in the bed and curled in on himself again.

El set the glass a safe few inches back on the nightstand and left it. He took the medication away, not sure if Sands would choose such an escape, but not willing to give him the chance. Afterward, he went back to the chair on the balcony and the guitar he'd left leaning against the rail. He picked it up and began picking out a slow melody.

He was irritatingly aware of Sands lying on the bed, facing him. He was sure the man was awake, imagining the fierce falcon's gaze Sands would have trained on him in a some other nightmare. Sands was too still. Neither of them spoke though and El went on playing the old tune.

It was the one his brother had taught him.

He wondered if Sands remembered it. But something, some lessening of tension in the air made him look up and listen. Sands' breath came evenly and he'd uncoiled. One hand flung out over the pale yellow sheets, half open. He had gone to sleep.

Sands drifted in and out of sleep, still barely able to discern any difference between the two. He rose closer to the surface as evening set in, feeling the air change. The sun no longer touched him. Cool, faintly moister air slid into the room through the window. He pulled the sheet and blanket higher.

"Awake?" El asked.

"Yes," Sands said tiredly. He listened, identifying the sounds. He could find El by the chains chiming quietly. He heard something set down with a soft thud. Sands frowned and decided: guitar case. Faint hinge squeak and then a latch being closed teased at him, until Sands identified the sounds, as a balcony door being shut. The air went stiller in the room and began to warm. Boot soles on bare wood was El walking to the bed.

Twin thuds.

Boots.

Soft rustling sounds of cloth made Sands' frown.

"What are you doing?"

"There's only one bed," El said calmly.

"Oh, golly, that's just great," he muttered, "You just better not get any ideas," but the Mariachi ignored him and stretched out with a soft chime of chains. Sands listened in absurd, growing disgust as El settled into the bed with a sigh and swiftly fell asleep. He'd never gone to sleep so easily in his life. With a sigh, he rolled his head on the rather flat pillow. The bastard didn't even snore. The soft rhythm of his breathing was rather soothing though, Sands decided sleepily. He fell asleep listening to it, curling closer to the body warmth and human presence without realizing it.

Despite himself, Sands grew used to sharing the bed with El. The Mariachi didn't thrash around and didn't object to waking up with Sands plastered next to him. The first morning Sands had been freaking right out, but El had just shrugged and rose, coming back later with coffee and breakfast that he insisted Sands eat. Nothing was said.

The third day after he woke - which he gathered was about a week after El Día de los Muertos - El took away the breakfast dishes and returned with Sands' clothes. He tossed the bundle on the bed and dropped the boots on the floor beside it.

"We need to leave now," El said. "We've been here too long."

Sands felt through the clothes and awkwardly began to dress. It was different without sight. The clothes felt right, though, and he wondered if they were his. Found the answer when his fingers grazed a darned hole in the arm of the shirt. Bullet hole. Matched the one in his arm. He wondered if El did the sewing and grinned to himself. When he'd dressed and was sitting on the edge of the bed, he turned his head toward where he could hear El standing and breathing and asked hopefully, "Guns?"

El snorted and walked over. Body-warmed metal pressed into Sands' hand. He examined it with his fingers. Small, a twenty-two, a familiar weight, like, if not the same, as the one he had carried down his pants. He checked to make sure it was loaded, thoughtfully keeping the muzzle aimed at the floor - but not at his feet. Hell, even sighted guys blew their boots off if they got careless, he knew. Heard a sound of approval from the Mariachi as he double checked the safety by touch and slid the gun into his coat pocket.

Then El's hand was at his elbow, guiding him to his feet and toward the door, Sands supposed. He doubted El had nursed him this far to push him over the edge of the balcony.

Yep, the door.

"Stairs," El said economically at one point.

He had to feel his way down, lowering his boot slowly, but after the first step he knew the height of the steps and moved not unconfidently.

"Last three steps," El told him, saving him from trying to step through the floor. El wasn't bad at this, not condescending, just providing the information Sands didn't have eyes to catch. He wasn't treating Sands like they had scooped out his brains along with his eyes, at least.

He shadowed along beside El, listening to the other man's steps, the chimes on his pants making an excellent guide, stopped when El stopped, a step behind him. A small thud was the guitar case settling on the floor briefly.

"Where are we going?" Sands asked, balking.

El froze for a second, but then recovered.

"Down the stairs, out the front, then the curb. The car's on the left," El said and opened the door. Sands was right behind him, resisting the urge to reach forward and curl his hand into El's waistband. Instead he tucked it in his jacket pocket and curled his fingers around the .22.

Happiness was a warm gun.

Days on the road brought them to Villa Perdidos, late in the honeyed air of last light. Long black shadows stretched eastward. Dogs and children were running home for dinner; the scent of cooking was on the subtly cooler breeze that heralded dusk. The villagers still in the square were quiet, watching with dark, questioning eyes as El parked the battered convertible in front of the old monastery. Maybe they sensed the death that seemed to cling to him like a pall of invisible smoke.

They would not have expected to see him again. Not after Cucuy drove him away, holding a guitar and under a dozen guns, while the guitar-maker's blood stained the dusty stones of the market square.

El stared back at them, half in defiance, half in apology.

Sands had been sleeping in the backseat and woke.

"Why are we stopping?"

"We're here."

Sands didn't even sit up. El thought he might be too weak and ill and that worried him. "Here, where?" Sands asked in his light, flat tone that conveyed complete disinterest. He hadn't even lifted his head.

But why would he? El acknowledged. Sands wouldn't see anything.

"My village," El said.

"Guitar Town." Still, the tone was empty and disengaged.

"Sí."

El got out of the car and opened the door behind the driver's. Sands flinched when he touched him, then silently sat up and allowed El to guide him out of the car. El let him lean against the side while he pulled out a duffle bag and the guitar case. When Sands still didn't speak, he cast a worried glance at the man.

Sands had his arms wrapped around himself and his head hanging. The red T-shirt El had bought in one of the towns they'd passed through hung on him, highlighting how thin the man was becoming. Sands never asked to eat and only did when El insisted. With his face half-turned away, the veil of his dark hair concealed the white gauze pads taped over his eye sockets. The long, vulnerable line of sharp jaw, lean tendon and bare neck caught El's eye. Something twisted painfully in him when he looked at Sands too long, something he wished he could blame on the man, but El knew Sands was completely oblivious to this effect.

Sands had never been a fifty peso mariachi fuck.

Sands had become steadily quieter since they left Culiacan. El didn't know how to deal with him. He didn't think Sands would welcome any overt comfort. El wasn't sure he had any comfort to offer. Sands' life had been shattered, just as El's had been. Nothing could make that better. Sands didn't even know what El intended with him. El didn't know himself.

He realized he'd been just standing, staring at Sands, when a scuffed footstep made Sands' head come up. El turned and saw the old man, the priest who had made guitars with his now-dead brother, approaching.

Sands could barely stand on his own, but he half-turned toward the sound and his hand slipped under the long, loose tail of the T-shirt and found the .22 tucked in his waistband at the small of his back. El dropped the duffle in the dirt and took three fast steps to Sands' side. He caught the fine-boned wrist and stopped Sands from drawing the gun.

"Your men killed one man here," he said in a low voice. "You won't kill any more."

Sands' muscles tensed in resistance beneath his hand, but he nodded. El let go after another instant and Sands didn't move. He almost wished Sands would make some snide, defiant remark. He didn't like this new, quiet Sands. He seemed … broken.

"You are home," the old priest said, a sad smile on his face.

"Padre," El acknowledged.

Wise, dark eyes moved from him to Sands and studied the pale figure. His mouth shaped a silent word. Blind? El closed his eyes. Sí.

"Let me help carry your things inside," the old man said.

"Thank you, padre."

El hefted the guitar case himself, though. The padre picked up the dropped duffle. Sands lifted his head and walked beside El. A frown of concentration pulled his fine, dark brows together. El deliberately slowed his stride and walked heavily. He was forced to take Sands' arm when the other man stumbled and almost went down.

Sands didn't draw away or fight him.

The padre had the doors into the old monastery open and waited, his face creased with sadness.

The echoing stone and adobe building was dark and cool inside. Sands immediately began shivering. Their footsteps echoed, louder than El remembered. He guided Sands' faltering progress through the halls back to the room he'd made into his after Carolina and his daughter died.

The bed was there, just as it had been the day Cucuy and his men roared into town, shot a good man, and took him to meet Sands. The blanket on top hadn't even been straightened. A soft haze of dust covered everything. El's hand tightened on Sands elbow abruptly as anger coursed through him. Sands tried to twist away from him and almost fell.

El roughly pushed him down onto the bed. "Stay here," he told Sands. Sands tipped his head at a curious angle, then nodded tiredly and sank down on the bed.

El watched him for a long moment, until Sands' weary, irritated voice startled him.

"Are you going to just stand there forever? Because I can feel you staring."

El set the guitar case down with a thud and stalked out of the room.

Behind him, Sands' light, lilting words floated in the empty room. "A moody mariachi. Perfect. I am in hell."

"You have changed, my son," the padre murmured as El stalked into the main hall where he was waiting. El clenched his fists.

"Sí, padre."

"You are angry now, but not haunted."

El nodded and opened his hands.

He brushed his hair away from his face and found a piece of leather in his jacket pocket to tie it back. He bowed his head. "I destroyed the guitar."

The padre rested a gnarled hand on his arm. "But you are alive now, sí?"

El hesitated, but slowly nodded again.

"Sí."

The numb hollowness that had been his existence since Marquez killed his family and left him for dead had finally closed over. Perhaps he had filled it with his revenge. He was not sorry for killing Marquez. What he had done on the Day of the Dead filled him with satisfaction. Marquez and Barillo would destroy no more lives and the President was alive, the coup a failure.

Lorenzo and Fideo were rich. His lips quirked. He had boxes of money in the trunk of his car too, thanks to their quick thinking. He'd found the money and a note in his hotel room when he'd brought Sands there. He knew it was money Sands had meant to steal and it amused him that now he was using it to care for the man.

Sands …

"Who is he, my son?" the padre asked, as though reading El's thoughts.

How did he explain a man like Sands to this good, kind priest? Sands, who had killed for only his own reasons, who danced along the knife edge of madness, treated his life and others as a game to be played, all of it with the thoughtless cruelty of a child. Sands, who had no guilt or regrets when he killed. Who blithely sought to defy and cheat the cartels and the military. The man who had drawn El back into the world of blood and guns … and life. A man who suffered now, not for the wrongs he'd done, but for trusting and wanting the same things El himself had lost: life, a love, and freedom. The padre would not understand. El didn't think he understood Sands. He wondered if Sands even understood himself.

"A victim of the cartels," he murmured at last. It was the truth, just not all of it. Not enough, said his conscience. Haltingly, he added, "He is … a bad man, padre, but … perhaps not as bad as he wanted me to think."

"So you are helping him," the padre mused, "because you are not sure."

El said, "I am sure that if he dies, then Barillo wins again - even dead."

"He is hurt very badly."

"Yes."

"I will bring the doctor here."

"Tomorrow, padre. Tomorrow."

"I will bring you some food, then."

El was too tired to care much, but he thought of the way Sands' bones had felt beneath his hand, and knew the man needed to eat. "Gracias."

"You are tired, I can see. I will bring enough for your friend, too."

"He is not my friend," El objected.

The padre only smiled and walked out.

El sighed and walked back to the dim bedroom. Sands was curled on the bed, his still booted feet hanging over the edge. Dusk leached the color even from the T-shirt, shaded the slender form in a chiaroscuro of pale and dark. He looked like an exhausted child.

El pulled the boots off and lifted Sands' feet onto the bed. Then he toed off his own boots and stretched out beside the sleeping man. It was instinct to pull Sands close when he shivered.

Nothing more, he told himself.

Three days passed after they arrived at Guitar Town. The first one, Sands barely stirred from the bed, too sick and exhausted to even protest when El's padre arrived with a doctor in the morning. He silently tolerated the unknown hands checking the bullet wounds and only fought back briefly when the doctor went to peel away the bandages over his eyes.

He lost it a little then, cursing and trying to tear himself away, until El's hands locked on his shoulders.

"Sands, lie still," El told him in that hot sun and dust voice.

Sands rolled his face away from the doctor's hands, but stilled under El's hands, the gentle weight more soothing than restraining. His panicked breathing slowed, though his heart kept hammering fast and wild. He couldn't control the tremble of horror that fluttered through him, couldn't stop the hopeless protest from escaping him.

"Don't … please."

"Señor, it is necessary to check," the doctor said quietly. "Please hold still."

El took one hand from his shoulder and grasped Sands' chin. He gently turned Sands' face away from the pillow. "It must be done," he murmured. He brushed long strands of hair back from Sands cheek and absently kept stroking. Or maybe not so absently. The slow, repetitive motion gave Sands something to concentrate on as the tape was peeled away from brow and temple and cheekbone. There wasn't any real discomfort yet, but he found it somehow sickening anyway.

Sands tried to breathe steadily and not move. The doctor removed the first pad of gauze, delicately teasing it free from scabbed blood and lymph crusted on his eyelids and eyelashes. The feel of it tugging away made Sands' stomach roll.

A sucked in breath by the doctor told him it wasn't pretty. He gritted his teeth.

"The tearing to the eyelids should have been stitched. There will be scars."

A gurgle of ugly laughter escaped Sands. El sighed.

"Could you just fucking finish it," Sands muttered.

His eyelids were pried open. It felt like a fistful of razor sharp metal shards being ground into his brain. The doctor kept the examination and cleaning quick, but Sands lost track anyway. He was vaguely aware of a new gauze pad being taped over one eye and then the whole process was repeated on the other. This time the pain seemed worse, multiplied by the stabbing ache in his head from the first one. He bit his tongue to hold back the scream rising through him and his mouth flooded with his own blood, the thick salt taste only adding to his nausea.

Cold sweat coated him and he was shaking before the doctor left. El walked the man out. The instant Sands heard them step out of the room, he rolled onto his side, stuffed a corner of the pillow in his mouth, and allowed himself to whimper at the pain. It was too much.

He didn't hear El return. Those already familiar hands were tugging the pillow away and pulling him close the next thing he knew. He obediently swallowed the painkillers El offered him, eager for once to sink into the oblivion they offered him. After that, everything melted into the hollow daze that kept sucking him down, and he didn't wake again until the next day.

Necessity forced him to his feet, stumbling for the door then, battering himself against sharp corners and sudden edges, hands flailing into the emptiness around him when his balance dissolved into the nothingness. Sands wanted to fall down on his knees and crawl. Instead he forced his feet forward, stumbling, noticing the shocking difference as his bare foot left a rough wool rug and touched down on cool tile. He found the door standing open, bruised his hip against the doorknob and snarled curses as he hung onto the jamb and tried to figure which way the bathroom would be.

Left, he decided arbitrarily, and staggered in that direction, brushing his shoulder against the wall and periodically stopping to just lean. Two doors down, he found the object of his search and emptied his complaining bladder with a sigh of relief. He had not wanted to yell for El's help. A little more groping around found the washbasin and he washed his hands slowly. Either there wasn't a towel or he couldn't find it by waving his hands around, so Sands settled for wiping them on his sagging jeans.

He didn't quite make it back to the bedroom, though, and was pathetically grateful when El showed up and helped him the rest of the way. Sleep sucked him down again as soon as he sank down on the bed. He was vaguely aware of El undressing him like a child, but didn't care.

The third day he surfaced to the sound of El's guitar. He listened to the plaintive notes, recognizing the song, and found himself whispering the words without thinking about it. El's music never faltered or Sands would have stopped. Instead, he let his voice strengthen and follow the song to its end.

As the last note faded into silence, Sands cursed himself.

El said, "I did not know you could sing."

"Obviously, because you don't know dick about me," Sands snapped. "And I don't sing."

"Mmn."

El followed the wordless noise by setting the guitar aside - Sands heard that - and walking over to the bed. Hating the feeling of helplessness that went with being flat on his back, especially without sight, Sands dragged himself up. It was an iron bedstead and the bars were cool against the bare skin of his back. He was stark naked again. What the hell was it with the mariachi and undressing him in his sleep?

The back of El's hand pressed against Sands' forehead, startling him. He jerked his head back and knocked it against the bed frame with a painful clunk.

"The fever is gone," El stated.

Come to think of it, he didn't feel like he was being slow roasted for the first time in forever. He did feel drier than a desert, though.

"Well, do you think you could do something about me being thirsty enough to drink the filthy stuff you call water in this country?" he snapped back.

"Get it yourself," El told him shortly.

"Fine. Where?" Sands slid to the edge of the bed and pulled the sheet around him as he wobbled to his feet. "And where the hell are my clothes?"

El wrapped a big hand around his upper arm to steady him. "Your clothes are over here." He guided Sands to a table and set his hand on the folded T-shirt and jeans. "Get dressed and we will eat."

Getting dressed took more energy than Sands wanted to admit. He could feel El watching him, too. Presumably El just wanted to make sure Sands didn't fall over, crack his head open, and bleed all over the rug. It still made Sands remarkably conscious of his body, when he'd never been particularly body shy before.

As he picked up the T-shirt, his fingers brushed something beneath it. Sands stilled, then let himself feel the distinct shape of a gun. He pulled the T-shirt over his head and picked up the gun. Of course, there was a gun, he thought, El wouldn't feel dressed without a gun and so 'clothes' would always include one.

He found the belt and belt holster coiled beside the gun. Even sightless, threading the holster onto the belt and belt into his jeans, came naturally. When he slid the gun into the holster, a sense of relief rolled through him. Even barefoot and blind, he would be able to defend himself.

El strode over to the door and waited as Sands followed him more slowly.

"Right," he said as they stepped into the hallway. He led Sands into a cornmeal-scented kitchen and seated him at a plain table. Sands waited quietly as El prepared a meal for them both after first opening a refrigerator and bringing him a bottle of water. "Here."

Sands twisted the top off and drank. He remembered to take it slowly this time. When he sat the bottle down, he said, "Thanks."

El made an indecipherable sound.

Sands wiggled his toes against the sun-warmed tile floor and tried to think. What did he do next?

He was alive, when he should have - would have - been dead, except for the mariachi. No one, not even Ramirez, knew that.

He wasn't penniless, he had accounts and fallbacks that no one had ever known about, back-up plans he'd put together never believing he'd need them. It might be a little more difficult without his eyes, but he could manage. He had contacts and with money, he could …

He could …

He curled his hand into a fist on the table top.

He could … go back … there wasn't anyone alive except El to say what he'd really been up to after finding out about the coup. There were some ruthless bastards - worse than him even - with the CIA, but they wouldn't have him taken out just because El Presidente hadn't bought it on the Day of the Dead. No one, no one outside his own head, had ever known that he'd guessed El Mariachi wouldn't kill the man. Ajedrez had known he meant to make off with Barillo's pay-off money … but Ajedrez was as dead as the rest of them.

They wouldn't kill him.

Sands dug his nails into his palm.

They'd take one look at what Guevara had done, and once they'd puked their guts out, they'd pity him.

He shook his head sharply.

They'd fucking debrief him until his brains ran out his ears, they'd send him to psychiatrists and trauma counselors and pay to send him somewhere to learn to live with his 'disability', and then they'd pension him off like a used-up whore. Or if he couldn't fake sanity for long enough, if he slipped - and how the hell do you pretend to be sane and stable after having your eyes ripped out? - they'd lock him away somewhere because he was a danger to himself and others.

Which he was and always had been. Sheldon Jeffrey Sands shouldn't be trusted, anyone reading his last psych write-up could have read it between the lines. That was why they'd sent him down to Mexico. You didn't assign assassinating the President of a neighboring country to a good guy, after all.

One way or the other, though, they would get rid of him as fast as they could. No one would want him hanging around, reminding everyone of just how bad any operation could go. A pension, pity, and a pink slip were all he could expect from the Agency.

Fuck that, he said silently to himself. Fuck that and fuck the Agency and fuck the horse they rode in on, too. He couldn't tolerate that.

He forced his hand open and pressed it palm down against the cool wood of the table top. Sticky blood glued his skin to the wood. He took a deep, shaking breath. It had been a long time since he'd had to do that, had to hurt himself to rein in the festering rage that lived inside him.

"What are you doing, Sands?" El asked.

He tipped his face up and smiled his best, sweetest, you-have-no-idea-how-much-I-want-to-kill-you smile. Once, he would have had to keep the murder out of his eyes too, but that wasn't a problem now. "Thinking," he said softly.

"Try eating," El said and set a dish in front of Sands. A utensil clinked on the plate.

"What is it?" he asked. His nose told him, anyway, the warmly delicious scent of eggs and salsa reminding him how long it had been since he ate last.

"Eggs," El told him laconically. He picked up Sands' hand and put a fork in it.

Sands tried a bite. His stomach didn't rebel, so he tried another. Eating neatly without being able to see wasn't as easy as he'd have thought, but he went slowly. Tapping around the plate with the tines of the fork found something else he identified as some sort of sausage. Several warm, folded tortillas were next to it.

El sat down opposite and silently ate, too.

Sands' thoughts kept running in circles. What the hell was he going to do? Exactly what were the options for a blinded, ex-CIA agent? What did he have to live for now, anyway?

There wasn't a human being on earth who gave a damn if he lived or died, he realized. In the end, he wasn't even important enough to hate.

He stopped eating and just sat.

Maybe it would have been better if Ajedrez had just killed him. Better than this. Or if he had simply bled to death lying there after he shot her, better if the kid hadn't come back, if El hadn't saved him.

Balance.

Where was the balance in what had happened to him?

He dropped the fork onto his plate, winced at the noise, and braced his elbows on the table, dropping his face in his hands. Part of him was aware of the picture he must make, part of him didn't care. The gauze and tape over his eyes rasped against his palms. He itched to tear the bandages away. His fingers curled inwards.

He heard El slide the plate away, but didn't move.

He wasn't going back to the States. He wasn't going back to the CIA. He wasn't a CIA agent anymore. He wasn't ever going to see again.

El walked around the table and set his hand on Sands' shoulder. The warm, steady weight of that hand slowly soaked into the cold, choking blackness. Sands took a deep breath and slid his hands up through his hair. Then he dropped them to the table and straightened a little. El's hand tightened.

"El," he said softly.

"Sands?"

"I can't … I'm blind," Sands said bleakly. "I don't know how to do this."

"You'll learn," El declared. The hand resting on his shoulder promised that El would help. Sands couldn't imagine why the mariachi would do that, any more than he understood why El had saved him. He couldn't make himself ask why either. Not yet. The answer might destroy the delicate balance he had held onto since waking up blind.

There really wasn't anywhere he wanted to go, Sands thought. All his dreams of escape, of another life, of taking Ajedrez with him, were dust.

All he had left was El's hand and the sudden knowledge that he didn't mind that touch. For the first time, he wasn't alone.

Sands didn't know how to deal with that. He hated the very idea of needing anyone, but he wasn't going to let go or give up the strange companionship El had offered him so far.

He frowned.

He wanted to stay.

Well, wasn't that just dandy? Apparently, he really had lost his mind somewhere along the way. Anyone sane would want to get as far away as possible from anything that reminded them of this place and what he'd lost, but not him. No, he had to fixate on a revenge-obsessed guitar player turned assassin.

God damn Mexico.

El was startled to discover that the American could sing. In fact, Sands' voice was much better than his own. Persuading him to sing, though, was another matter. He'd finally decided Sands was embarrassed by the talent.

His efforts to get Sands to sing as the days went by finally earned him a punch to the belly, a split lip, and a snarling, spitting, clawing, backed-into-a-corner Sands.

He gave up.

Perversely, once El stopped pushing him, Sands remarked snidely, "Fine, you want me to sing for my supper? Get me some shades and I'll be a regular Ray fucking Charles."

But when he sang, El was ready to forgive much. American rock'n'roll, Mexican pop, tango ballads, country and western, blues and bluegrass, Sands knew an amazing variety of songs, including what he called Broadway and show tunes.

He'd sing in English and Spanish and a couple other languages El didn't know, including French. He'd start a song out of the blue and keep going until El joined in with the guitar.

El finally figured out why Sands was reluctant to sing, though. It wasn't embarrassment, it was vulnerability. When Sands sang, he couldn't focus his hearing on his surroundings. After that, El let Sands choose when to sing, knowing it was a gesture of trust when the man did. Mostly, he sang when he went up on the monastery's high walls or quietly when they were alone.

He had no bloody idea when it became more than neither of them wanting to sleep on the floor. El had been sharing his bed, soothing his nightmares, since he woke up blind. He'd grown so used to El's touch, any absence made him miss it, when before he'd never liked anyone touching him. Touching, yes, but he always wanted to be the one doing. He'd always wanted control.

He even fooled himself he had it, most of the time.

Lost it with Ajedrez, though, and lost badly. He hoped El wasn't going to be as bad a mistake. He didn't have much more to lose.

Enough to miss, though, if he lost it, so he let El make the first real move.

Pretended to be still asleep when El pulled him closer, relaxed against the big, furnace-hot body, comfortable. Slow, shallow, steady breaths as El hovered a hand over Sands' face. He could feel it in the air, a subtle pressure. Then a calloused thumb was stroking along his cheekbone.

Just that touch and Sands was melting, soft sound escaping his lips. Cock swelling embarrassingly fast. El's hand cupped his jaw, lifting his face. Sands pressed himself against El helplessly. His breath caught. El trailed his fingers over Sands' mouth and he opened, touched his tongue to them, tasted and sucked them in. His hands molded El's hardened body, trying to see with his fingertips. Warm skin and scars and he needed to be closer, skin to skin. Sands wasn't in control at all.

El slipped his fingers away and Sands whimpered. Hated himself for sounding so needy, but whimpered again and tucked his face against El's neck and tasted him there, kissing and gently biting. He was undulating against El now, too turned on to help as the Mariachi undressed them both.

El's hands smoothed over his back, streaked fire down the valley of his spine, played over his ribs and tested the hollows between each one, sliding down over Sands' flanks. He shuddered. El's hands on his hips guided him, pulled him up to sprawl over El's body. Sands found El's face with one hand, tried to trace it, but he was shaking too hard.

"Sh, sh, sh," El whispered. His hands gentled over Sands.

Sands slid down and found one of El's nipples. He tasted of salt, blood, lime. Sands licked it up, scraped his teeth over the sensitive flesh and smiled in delight as El twisted beneath him. He moved to the other nipple and treated it to little cat-licks, blowing on it in between.

El's hands were threading through his hair, fingers pressing into his skull, and he was growling. His erection pressed against Sands. Sands went still, forgetting to breathe.

What the hell was he doing?

He laid his cheek against El's chest and tried to think through his arousal. El's heart was beating fast, but not hammering its way out of his chest like Sands'. He didn't sleep with men. He never had, though he hadn't given a damn who did. El's hands on him felt so good but suddenly he was petrified. Hard as a rock, leaking pre-cum, and too scared to move. Not scared of suddenly being with a man, but of doing this with El. How far was this going to go and who was going to do what and … Oh, don't be ridiculous, he told himself. You think macho gunboy is going bottom? You know where this is going, Sheldon. Suck it up.

Find a different idiom too, because 'suck it up' might be just little too literal in the circumstances. A bubble of hysterical laughter hovered in his throat.

He was fucking terrified of what might come after they both got off, though, because El already meant more to him than was healthy. Or sane. Though sanity was over-rated, in Sands' opinion. Jesus, he was already like a textbook example of Stockholm Syndrome.

El stroked his hair. "Sands?" he asked in a low voice.

"No sé," Sands whispered.

"You don't like this?"

Sands shook his head, then nodded. He trailed his hand over El's shoulder, left it there. He was too confused.

"If you do not want to -"

El started to pull away and Sands latched onto him as tightly as he could. "I want to," he choked out. "I want to, okay, I just don't want you to blow my brains out in the morning." At least not with a gun, some irreverent part of his mind commented.

Soft, rumbling laughter spilled from the Mariachi. He relaxed and pulled Sands up and began kissing him. Sands responded mindlessly, letting El's tongue into his mouth, kissing back with all the skill and excitement he felt.

He was lying between El's legs, rubbing against him almost unconsciously, and gasped when his cock brushed against El's. A sigh slipped out of his mouth as El snaked a hand between them and wrapped it around both cocks. The friction, the silky heat and firmness, threatened to blow the top off Sands' head. His hips jerked and rocked as El found a rhythm that pumped them both together. Should have known the guitar-playing bastard would have a superior sense of rhythm.

Sands moaned against El's neck, unable to hold his head up, and pushed into that expert touch. Fuck, El was good. He kept running his own hands over whatever parts of El he could reach. Slickness from both of them mingled on their cocks as they slid together. El twisted and squeezed his hand, and then traced his fingers in patterns against the glans like he was playing a complex chord.

Sands whined and jerked into El's grip, desperate, urgent, needing with every fiber in him. Then it was just too much, too much wound too tight, and he came, felt the hot wet heat and surge of El coming too, and for an instant everything went white, light crashing through his brain. He groaned in pleasure and helpless, desperate longing, and collapsed against El. Fell into his darkness again, the semblance of light and sight locked away from him once more. Found out to his horror that his tear ducts still worked.

He was heaving for breath, slick with sweat, shaking in the aftermath, and leaking fucking tears. Before he could take another breath or pull himself away from El, Sands was folded tight in El's arms. El locked his mouth on Sands and drank the sound of pain and sorrow and loneliness until nothing was left and Sands thought he would pass out. Only when Sands was limp and compliant against him did El let him breathe.

He had nothing left. Whatever he was, whatever remained of Sheldon Jeffrey Sands, had just been pledged to El.

What had Ajedrez said? Pathetic little monkey. Sands laughed silently and added, Lamebrained, dick-whipped, fucked up little blind monkey. He kneaded his fingers against El's shoulder. He had this much. Burn in hell, Ajedrez.

El settled him more comfortably. "Stop thinking," he murmured against the top of Sands' head. "You think too much."

Sands laughed raggedly.

He didn't know how they'd got here. Didn't know what happened next. He couldn't go back, though. He knew that. There was only forward. Maybe it didn't matter that he couldn't see. Everyone walked into the future blind.

El set the blue guitar in Sands' arms without warning. He immediately noticed that Sands held it naturally, in the way of a man who has played. Long fingers ran up the neck, touched the frets, slid down the steel strings, and unconsciously shaped chords.

The guitar was slate-blue, silver-chased, lighter than El's instrument. Curving cut-outs decorated the body, graceful, note-like forms. How it had come to the market in Villa Perdidos, where it had come from, no one could say. He'd known it would fit Sands the instant he saw it, though, sensed its sharp, pure tones would ring with the same lilt as the American's voice. He bought it immediately, following the same instincts that kept him alive in a gunfight, without hesitation.

"I was going to ask if you wanted to learn to play," he said.

Sands cocked his head. A black bandanna formed a blindfold over the gauze pads that protected the still healing scars underneath. Sitting in the sun in the square the last few days, eating again, staying in one place, had been good for him. A faint tint of gold now colored the pallor of his face. Some of the strain had faded from around his mouth.

"Why?"

It was the strangest part of Sands, that constant 'why?' he asked whenever El, or anyone, did anything kind for him. El found himself thinking that Sands simply didn't know that anyone could treat him well. It made him wonder about Sands' past.

He didn't ask. Not yet. Maybe not ever, El acknowledged to himself. Sands wouldn't trust his reasons for asking.

"I see you listening whenever anyone plays." He paused. "I can see the music moving through you, hear it when you sing."

"Oh."

Sands strummed a few chords, then picked out the beginnings of a song, stumbling and clashing for a moment, then relearning an old reflex. Just as El thought he would recognize the song, Sands flattened his palm over the strings and muffled the guitar.

"It's been too long."

"No," El insisted. "Your fingers remember."

Sands shook his head. "Really. I was always more of an electric amps kind of guy. Not acoustics. I'm a long way from those garage band days." Something forlorn in his voice spoke of wanting to turn back if he could, though.

El shrugged. "Maybe you will change your mind. The guitar is yours."

Sands brushed his fingers over the strings soundlessly and shook his head. A long strand of dusty black hair fell over his face, escaping the tie that held the rest of it back. He set the guitar aside - carefully - and got up.

"I'm tired," he muttered and walked away, unerringly heading his way back to the monastery. El watched him go. Sands' shoulders were straight, his gait without hesitation. He only drooped and fidgeted when he thought no one would see. He only relaxed completely when El coaxed him into sleep. The man was always braced for a blow, still and waiting, and curiously that wasn't a change. El remembered that coiled readiness from their first meeting.

Later, he brought the guitar into the bedroom, deliberately jostling the strings as he set it in a corner. Sands betrayed no interest, but El knew he had heard and marked it.

He was learning to read Sands. The man was more like a cat than anything, always walking alone. Curious and cruel. Sands wanted to know things. No, Sands needed to know things, needed to feel in control, if only of himself.

He didn't doubt for an instant that eventually Sands would try the blue guitar again. He had only to be patient.

"I see a red door, I want it painted black."

Sands was playing from memory, sitting high above the village on the monastery parapet. He'd found a place on the far side of one of the bell towers, where he could lean back and let the sun warm him and stay well out of sight of anyone. Out of earshot too, he knew. Because if he couldn't hear anything from the square, he knew damn well no one else could hear him.

It wasn't that he was hiding that he'd started playing the guitar El had given him. It just wasn't something he wanted an audience for.

It was a piece of a past he'd pretty much tossed out when he left Austin. Playing guitar was a reminder of a gasoline-scented garage, puberty, screaming amps and screaming parents. The States. McDonalds, apple pie, highways to forever, clean toilets, English, rock'n'roll on the radio, blond girls, cops who weren't pulling triple their paychecks from drug smuggling fuckmooks. Nothing he couldn't live without. Everything he'd never imagined he would miss.

Not that he did, really. Only the perverse part of him that resented being denied anything, whether he actually wanted it or not.

This wasn't the same, though.

The chime of El's pants signaled his approach. Sands kept playing as El sat down next him, hip to hip, the line of a long thigh along his. His voice hitched, but his hands stayed steady.

El leaned close enough his breath was warm and moist in Sands' ear.

"It has a good tone."

Despite himself, Sands tipped his head toward El.

A warm, calloused hand glided over his side and wrapped around his waist. El worked his fingers beneath the tail of Sands' T-shirt and rested his fingertips against bare skin. Sands was so hyper-aware of that touch that his world seemed to shrink into that single area of skin. It almost burned.

He tried to keep playing, but his voice died and his fingers tangled in the strings. A tremble ran through him. Excitement, arousal, fear … he couldn't distinguish between them. El's touch was pleasure and pain. El's fingers rubbed tiny circles against his skin, just under the waistband of his jeans.

"You have a good touch," El murmured. This time his lips just touched Sands' ear, sending a shiver through him that ended with a damning heat at his groin.

"Don't - "

El gently disengaged Sands' hands from the guitar and set it aside. Then his hands locked on Sands' waist and drew him over to sit between El's legs. He pulled Sands back until they were locked together chest to back, in contact from shoulder to hip. A different kind of heat than from the sun soaked into Sands, promising to melt his bones from the inside out.

"Oh, okay, that's not what I meant," he said.

He let himself sag back against El. His head dropped back against El's shoulder. With a soft sigh, he turned and bit into El's neck, tasting clean salt sweat and musk, the faint metallic tang that was blood. El's hands roamed over Sands' chest and down to his belly.

Sands caught his breath. He was already half hard. El's knees were bent, his thighs enclosing Sands. One hand found the Mariachi's knee and clamped on it. The weave of the pants' fabric felt harsh under his palm. He ran his other hand up and down El's leg, fingers playing with the chains on his pants.

El dipped his head and caught at Sands' lips, insistent and tempting, until he opened his mouth. His strong, slick tongue invaded Sands' mouth, tasted him, played with his tongue until Sands was moaning into the other man's mouth. El tasted like a hot desert wind, like the best tequila, like the scent of sandalwood and the rasp of a cat's tongue. Sands was dissolving into him, while El's hands moved possessively over his body. One hand pushed up under his T-shirt to find a suddenly sensitive nipple. The other worked its way inside Sands' painfully tight jeans.

He rocked forward as El closed his hand around his erection. Calluses caught at silken skin with exquisite friction.

"El," he muttered against the other man's warm lips. "El, El." A hoarse sound of pleasure followed. "Fucker."

El's lips brushed softly along his face, the sensation somehow magnified because Sands couldn't open his eyes and look. Teeth grazed the tender skin just behind his jaw. El's hand tightened on his cock, just enough to tease.

Sands was panting. His hands were clenched on the chains on El's pants. He squirmed, trying to press himself harder into El's grip. He rolled his head from side to side, losing himself in urgent need for more touch, more stimulation, though it was already almost too much. When he pressed his hips back, El gasped. Sands pushed back, feeling the hard evidence of El's arousal against his ass. When he did, El's hand locked around his cock, stroke after stroke driving Sands the rest of the way insane.

But El wouldn't bring him off. Sands wriggled a hand behind him and fumbled at El's pants. It was an awkward angle and made his elbow ache, but was worth it when his fingers found their way in and curled around El.

He couldn't really jerk El off like that, but apparently his touch was enough to spur El on to the next step. El had Sands' jeans unbuttoned, unzipped and dragged down fast after that.

He could feel the sun on his suddenly bared flesh. The touch of the air was cool, but the sun heated delicate skin too. The contrast sent a shudder through him. "Oh, God …"

"Not God, amigo," El whispered in his ear, hands opening his own pants and pressing another heat against Sands; hot, hard cock pushing between his thighs and nudging the back of his balls.

He let out a harsh breath and pushed back. El's arms locked around him again and one hand ran down his belly. Long, deft fingers threaded through his pubic hair. Sands imagined what that looked like, while he tightened his thigh muscles and rubbed back and forth over El's cock, eliciting a long, moist moan against his neck. El's hands were big - his memory provided a picture of El's hands on that unfinished guitar, honey-brown skin, blunt nails, wide palms, and the pale, unstained wood - they'd be dark against his own pale skin, arrowing down through silky dark hair, beautiful contrast. El stroked his fingers so lightly it almost tickled and Sands shifted his hips in annoyance, wishing El would just quit dicking around and start jerking him again.

Then he laughed breathlessly.

"Are you fucking petting me, you bastard?"

"Sí, mi gato."

"Well, pet a little damn lower."

El obliged and Sands' awareness narrowed down to his groin, to El's hands on his cock, El's cock rubbing against his ass and inside his thighs, to the tight wound spring of pleasure that threatened to completely undo him. El came first and his hand tightened just that much more on his last stroke, sending Sands over the edge after him.

Awareness hazed out until he could breath steadily again. He was still wrapped up in El's arms, still bare-assed, and the sticky, cooling mess of their mingled come was drying on him. Okay, that was something he'd never considered about sex with another guy: twice the clean up, double the wet spot. Sands twisted and buried his nose against El's neck, snickering to himself.

"What?" Faintly indignant.

Sands smiled, because El couldn't see it, and shook his head. "You want to give me a hand here, not that you haven't already - " snickering again and El's deep chuckle vibrated through him, " - big guy, but I'm feeling kind of sticky and that definitely isn't sunscreen on me."

El let go and Sands gave up on the cleaning-up portion of the program and just wriggled his jeans back up, wincing when barely healed flesh and scar tissue pulled where he'd been shot. Why the fuck did it have to be both legs, anyway? Of course, that didn't compare to the whole eye-gouging thing - because who did that? - but it was still annoying. As would be a sunburn on his even more important bits, which were not inured to the Mexican sun.

He assumed from the sounds that El was tucking himself away too.

His legs wanted to wobble a little when he stood up, but Sands wrote that off as the bullet wounds. A little groping found the guitar. His memory told him how many steps to the door onto the stairwell. He headed that way, calling over his shoulder, "Are you coming?"

The sound of El's footsteps told him he was.

"I thought we just did," El said from just behind him.

Sands stopped in his tracks. "Oh, my Christ," he said, "you made a funny. Wait, wait for it, this is definitely a sign of apocalypse." He grinned and dodged away just as El's hand would have clamped onto his shoulder. The feel of the air, a pressure wave ahead of the movement, had told him what was coming.

He sprinted down the stairs, trailing one hand along the cool, plastered wall, keeping count of the steps in his head. His muscles still twinged, but here in the old monastery he could move with confidence. He'd explored and measured off every inch of the crumbling building. Blind, he knew this place better than he ever would have sighted. That let him move fast enough to stay ahead of El.

Which translated to reaching the washroom and hogging all the hot water. It was really more like lukewarm water, but the point, Sands felt, was to get it all for himself.

Sands didn't sprawl. He curled into a protective ball or plastered himself against El, if he was asleep. Asleep, the damage wasn't so apparent. Asleep, he didn't push away El's hand when he threaded it through Sands' hair. Asleep, he turned toward El, and not away.

Asleep, he whimpered, trapped in the web of nightmares, until El caught his hands - such surprisingly delicate wrists, El's strong fingers wrapped around them so easily - and held them away from the still-healing cavities that had once been eyes.

He hadn't thought further than bringing Sands back to the monastery and keeping him until the American was recovered enough to survive. He'd grown used to the other's presence, though, like a shadow with an acerbic tongue, grown used to the lithe form pressed against him in bed. He'd missed sleeping with someone. He'd missed touching.

Even so, wanting Sands had come as a surprise.

Wanting to keep Sands was a greater surprise.

Finding some way of keeping him was what troubled El most now.

Sands had healed, slowly, and adapted to his blindness with the absolute will of a survivor. El thought that soon Sands would grow restless. He would go back to the United States or to Mexico City and pick up his web of plots and manipulations and murder. He would leave the blue guitar behind. He wouldn't sing.

He wouldn't smile that smile that had amazed El the first time he saw it; amazed him with its sweetness, amazed him with its innocence.

Instinct and rattlesnake reflexes had always served El, had kept him breathing, but that hadn't been enough to save anyone else. His cursed luck had never extended to the people he cared for, not Domino, not his brother, not Carolina or their daughter. Instinct didn't tell him how to hold onto anything now.

He found himself watching Sands, admiring not just the lean and shattered grace of him, but the feral soul and too-clever mind. Sands had that same almost untouchable luck; luck that didn't render him immune to hurt, only insured he was left when everything else was gone.

The American was his match in ruthlessness and his opposite in his capacity for cruelty. El couldn't stop watching him, trying to understand him.

Sands would cock his head, face turning toward El as though he still saw, somehow sensing the weight of El's gaze on him. His brows would arch into an expression of wordless question and El would find himself groping for words or an excuse for his preoccupation.

The weeks passed, though, and Sands, though he complained waspishly about the town and Mexico and El, showed no signs of leaving. He stayed in El's bed, burned in his arms, and quietly, steadily fit himself into the empty hollows of El's life.

Sands seemed almost at peace, something El wouldn't have predicted. El still kept a wary eye on the American, though, aware that a current of violence ran through Sands' veins with his blood. They both went armed and ready for trouble. In El's experience, and apparently Sands' too, trouble always came, sooner or later. They were both content to wait for it where they were, though.

Ramirez had contacts in Culiacan, people who were happy to tell him things now that the shadow of the Barillo cartel no longer hovered over the city. People who, though no one ever mentioned it, knew he'd played a part in the events of El Día de los Muertos. When the reporter started asking questions, some of these people made sure Ramirez heard about it, so he was ready when she knocked on his door.

No one told him she was pretty. Short, a little wider than the current American idea of perfection, but curvy, dressed in blue jeans, a loose white shirt over a turquoise colored tank-top, and confident enough in herself she didn't resort to high heels to add to her height and instead wore a pair of comfortable huaraches. A leather bag was looped over her shoulder.

He raised his eyebrows.

"What can I do for you?" he asked.

She smiled at him, a smile that reached her brown eyes.

"My name's Grace Reyes," she said, extending her hand to shake his. "I'm a reporter and I'm putting a story together on the coup d'etat attempt last November. Some people have said that you might be able to tell me about what happened."

Ramirez took her hand and shook it, but shook his head. "I'm afraid there's nothing I can tell you."

She frowned. "But you were here, in Culiacan, on All Souls' Day."

Ramirez shrugged and stepped outside, closing his door behind him. He didn't invite her inside. She sniffed but didn't say anything. Ramirez looked at her silently. She tucked a strand of black hair behind her ear.

"No one who knows - really knows - anything wants to talk to me," she complained softly.

"Many people died that day," Ramirez told her.

"And the world should know why," she insisted. Her jaw set and Ramirez decided she was about a decade older than he'd first thought. Early forties, but she carried the years well.

He just shook his head.

"Okay, maybe you're just too American to get it," she snapped, "but what happened that day is incredibly important. The people stood up and refused to let the military take over. They defied the drug cartels. This was a grass-roots, textbook example of the true power of the people. It's what democracy means - "

Ramirez began to laugh.

"Señorita, it was a textbook example of what guns and money can buy you," he said. She was staring at him, perplexed. "The only thing it was about was greed and revenge."

"Tell me why," she demanded.

"No. Better that the ones that survived are left alone." He made a cutting motion. "It's over."

She walked down his porch, to where Ramirez had a row of terracotta pots filled with flowers. She drifted one finger through the petals. "The stories about that day are already becoming folk legends, Señor Ramirez. I think you know part of the real truth and I don't understand why you wouldn't want everyone to know."

He brushed past her, plucked a red blossom, and tucked it into the jet black hair behind her ear. "Maybe I'm not proud of how I acted that day, Ms. Reyes."

Her hand lifted to the blossom but didn't remove it.

"There's a boy who sells chewing gum - "

"There are a hundred boys who sell chewing gum or keychains or bootleg CDs," Ramirez interrupted. There was only one boy who would have a tale to tell of the Day of the Dead, though. He remembered him clearly, standing over his bike, wearing a yellow T-shirt, confused dark eyes moving from Ramirez to Sands' bleeding face and back. In a hundred years, Ramirez might make himself forget he'd walked away from a dying man with no more than a bad joke on his lips, but he would never forget that child's eyes.

They hadn't understood and then they had. He'd walked away with a dog and left a man to die. That boy's silence had condemned Ramirez more thoroughly than Sands' fierce refusal to ask for help. Sands didn't believe anyone was good. The boy didn't think Ramirez was.

Reyes twiddled with the flower stem.

"He told me a story about a blind man who faced off with the cartel," she said. "It was unbelievable, really. The Blind Pistolero is one of the stories growing up here, but this kid, he had details that the others don't. Enough to make me think there's something the stories are based on." She looked at Ramirez steadily. "He told me that the American federale was there that day, that he saw El Hombre Sin Ojos."

Ramirez flinched. That was a part of the story that couldn't be true. It couldn't. Even Sands couldn't have got as far as he had if he'd been blinded. And if he had?

The blood ran down his face like tears …

"I saw too much that day," he said finally.

"Have you heard the story? The one the boy tells?"

Ramirez shook his head. "I don't want to."

"You should."

He waited as Reyes recited the story from the beginning, ending with, "That is where El Mariachi found El Hombre Sin Ojos, weeping tears of blood over the Most Beautiful Woman. And because El Mariachi knew that the Most Beautiful Woman would have killed him too, he took El Hombre Sin Ojos away with him, back into the west, where they could both forget."

The blood ran down his face like tears …

She looked at him expectantly afterward. He blew out a long breath. "It's a fairytale, señorita."

"I think there's some truth in it. I think the little yellow bird is the boy I met and the Most Beautiful Woman is an AFN agent who was found shot dead in the central plaza."

"You can think whatever you want," Ramirez said. He glanced at his watch. "I have to go. I have an appointment, so if you'll excuse me?" He gestured to the steps down from the porch.

Reyes sent him a dirty look and gave in, leaving his porch and, Ramirez hoped, his life. She looked back when he came down the steps after her, her jaw set. "I'm not giving up."

"Good luck."

Ramirez' day only got better. First the reporter arrived at his doorstep, now two FBI agents wanted to have 'lunch' with him. All of them coming to him, wanting answers to questions he didn't want to think about. He wondered who would be next, someone from one of the Mexican federal agencies, another CIA officer, or maybe even an ambitious member of the new cartel that had taken over after Barillo's death, greedy for the Colombian bounty still offered for the head of El Mariachi? All he wanted was to live quietly. He was retired. But that wouldn't make them leave him alone.

Sands, damn his weaselly black guts, had drawn Ramirez into the bloody arena of Mexican history with his devil's bargain, offering revenge in one hand and justice in the other. All it cost him was his peace.

It was the same restaurant that he'd met Sands at, Ramirez realized when he arrived. That amused him in a dark fashion, enough so he managed not to snarl when he saw who the FBI had sent to talk with him.

The woman was a stranger to him, dressed in a no-nonsense pantsuit, shoulder length brown hair pulled back in a short pony-tail, dark-eyed, Caucasian, attractive if she hadn't had her face set in a severe frown. Ramirez had never met her. The man, a stocky gringo in his late forties, was dressed in a dark-blue, Western-style suit, complete to the turquoise-and-silver belt buckle and a bolo-tie.

"Mr. Ramirez," the female agent said, walking up to the table and stopping ahead of her companion. She extended her hand to shake. "I'm Agent Holliday. This is Agent - "

Ramirez looked past her and sneered.

"Bethel. I know."

"Of course, you do, Jorge," Bethel agreed, grinning at him like they were old buddies. "We worked some cases together back in San Antonio."

Holliday's lips thinned. Maybe she thought they were going to start telling old war stories. The only stories Ramirez had about Special Agent Arnie Bethel involved watching your back for the knife the corrupt sonovabitch was likely to stick in.

Ramirez took her hand - it was warm and slightly damp with perspiration - and shook it. "What is it you want, Agent Holliday?" he asked. He ignored Bethel.

"Information, pal," Bethel said. He sat down opposite Ramirez uninvited.

Ramirez glared. "Try the phone company."

Bethel gave him a shit-eating grin. "Well, you see they aren't retired FBI agents who were right here for the Day of the Dead coup."

Ramirez sipped his wine, then waved to Holliday to take one of the other chairs. "Attempted coup," he corrected.

"I guess you'd know about that, hunh?"

Ramirez ignored that. Bethel snapped his fingers at a waitress. "Hey, babe, get me a beer and my partner here - " he almost leered at Holliday, " - a bottled water, 'kay?"

"Ignore the Neanderthal, Mr. Ramirez," Holliday said.

"I always tried," he said.

She almost smiled.

"We aren't here about the coup attempt," Holliday said. "We're trying to run down the last of the Barillo cartel's connections in the States. Everyone knows Barillo himself died during the coup, but no one is completely clear on how or why or who among his people survived. Considering your past, we thought you probably took an interest in what happened."

The waitress arrived with Bethel's beer and a bottle of water for Holliday. Holliday thanked her in stiff, but correct Spanish. Bethel ignored her, immediately taking a long draw on the beer. Ramirez took the time to consider how much he wanted to admit knowing about the Day of the Dead.

"I'm retired," he pointed out.

"Oh, come on, pal, you can't tell me you didn't come down here to keep an eye on old Armando, after what he did to your buddy Archuleta back in San Antone," Bethel said.

Ramirez shrugged. "This is Mexico. I knew he was here. He couldn't be touched, though." He stared at Bethel, letting a message leak through his eyes. "He wasn't the only one responsible for what happened to Tom. - Did the Bureau ever find that leak?"

Bethel grimaced. "You still spouting that shit, Ramirez? Archuleta blew his cover. No one else."

"So you say."

Holliday looked back and forth between them, picking up the hostility with ease. She tapped one long, clear-painted, manicured finger against the pink linen table cloth.

"Could we return to the point, gentlemen?" she said.

Ramirez sipped his wine and smiled coldly at Bethel. He knew the agent had been corrupt back then; he knew the piggy-eyed bastard was still dirty. Only his master would have changed. He'd never been able to prove Bethel had been behind blowing Archuleta's cover, though.

"What do you want to know?"

"Who died, who took over, who's running things now," she ticked off.

"Barillo, Guevara," - he leveled a meaningful look at Bethel, who flinched, - "Ajedrez, Billy Chambers, and a truckload of rent-a-thugs are dead," Ramirez recited. "Along with General Marquez, one of El Presidente's advisers, many members of the military loyal to El Presidente, even more of Marquez' men, and several hundred civilians."

Holliday drew a sleek, leather bound notebook from her bag and began writing in it. Her brows drew together. "I'm not familiar with Guevara or … Ajedrez?"

"Dr. Guevara was Barillo's torturer." Ramirez smiled, remembering his bullet killing the man. Something about that smile, paired with that statement, obviously disturbed the two FBI agents. He sipped his wine. "Agent Bethel probably knows who he was."

Bethel's small, pale eyes locked on him, but the FBI agent didn't speak. Ramirez raised his brows.

"No? According to the CIA, Guevara was responsible for keeping my partner drugged and alive for two weeks, while Barillo had him tortured and interrogated, before they killed him."

Bethel jerked and spilled beer on his pants. Ramirez nodded to himself. Sands hadn't lied about Guevara. The crazy sonovabitch was probably dead by now, but in his own strange way, he'd done more good than harm on the Day of the Dead. Ramirez knew he'd been set up to take out Barillo and the doctor and he hadn't liked it - still didn't - but Sands hadn't forced him. He often wondered what had happened to the CIA man, who had disappeared by the time Ramirez' conscience forced him back to offer the wounded man his help. Nothing had been left but ugly bloodstains on the orange wall and the sidewalk.

"Who told you that?" Bethel demanded. "Why the hell are you talking with the CIA, anyway?"

Ramirez smiled sourly. "It doesn't matter now. They're all dead." Sands, too, he thought again, almost sorrowful. Manipulative and amoral though he had been, Sands hadn't ever sold out. Ramirez had asked some quiet questions of old contacts after El Día de los Muertos and there were plenty of stories about the CIA officer. Sands had been a near legend in the closed community of American intelligence, but he'd disappeared completely in the aftermath of the coup d'etat. Some stories said the man was dead, others that he was living on a Caribbean island off of a fortune stolen from the drug cartels. None of them had a real clue and Ramirez hadn't bothered to tell anyone anything. No one needed to know the truth - that part of it he knew.

Let Sands become a spooks' legend, let the man become another myth, like El Mariachi, or the new one told since the Day of the Dead, the one that reporter had heard, El Hombre Sin Ojos.

Holliday gave her partner a disgusted look and then wrote down what Ramirez had told her. He waited until her pen was still before going on.

"Ajedrez was an agent of the Mexican AFN," he said next. She'd still been wearing the uniform when she was shot down in the plaza before the ayundamiento. Billy Chambers had told Ramirez who she really was, though, before taking Ramirez inside to confront Barillo. "She was also Armando Barillo's daughter. "

Holliday's pen jerked. She looked up. "Barillo had a daughter?"

Ramirez nodded.

"So who's left, pal?" Bethel asked, somewhat recovered. "Who's running the cartel down here now?"

Ramirez shrugged. "Like I said, I'm retired. The only name I've heard is Esteban Bautista, but I don't keep up. Barillo's organization fell apart, operations moved further south, towards Quintana Roo and Chiapas. No one's left here in Sinaloa. I don't know who is left in the States. I don't live there anymore."

Bethel sneered. "And you don't care, because you're a Mexican again."

He set down enough money to pay for his meal and the agents' drinks, pushed his chair back, and stood.

"I don't have anything else to tell you."

Holliday frowned thoughtfully, but stayed silent. Bethel gave him a hard look.

"Yeah, I bet."

Ramirez paused and looked at Bethel, at the expensive suit, the short-cut hair and broad, sunburned face. He thought about warning Holliday about the man, but what would be the use? He'd never had a shred of proof. Bethel was clever. Holliday might be just as dirty, anyway. He shrugged and started to walk away.

"So long, Bethel. Better watch your back. Don't forget, this is Mexico."

"Hey, Ramirez," Bethel called, just loud enough Ramirez would hear and no one else. "I heard you were the one who got Barillo."

"No, that was El Mariachi," Ramirez said. He nodded at them, a small smile curling around his mouth, and walked out onto the street.

The waitress was nervous. She knew the distinguished, older hidalgo at the table was powerful and wealthy. His attitude of absolute confidence, more even than his fine suit and manicured hands, told the story. If she displeased him, a word in the manager's ear and she would have no job. But Esteban Bautista didn't worry her as much as the rene sitting with him.

She wasn't pretty or important enough to interest a man like Bautista. The black man sitting at the veranda table with him was different. He saw her. It made her sweat and fumble with the drinks she'd brought them. Th