Chapter 14

The living room looked like every abuela's house Rocket had ever been in, that whole regional architecture of grandmother-rooms repeating itself across the entire diaspora north of Mexico City: terracotta walls, mismatched furniture that prioritized comfort over aesthetics the way every abuela's furniture had for the last hundred years, family photographs competing for wall space with religious imagery in the small territorial truce that working-class Catholic families had been negotiating between earthly and heavenly relatives since the conquistadors. A corner shelf held ceramic saints she recognized from the night before, their painted faces unchanged by daylight or the violence they'd witnessed, painted by some workshop in Puebla or Oaxaca who had been turning out the same saints in the same colors for so many decades that the saints had taken on a uniformity that was not quite regional and not quite ecclesiastical, but commercial-spiritual, the iconography of the Catholic working classes mass-produced for export.

And there, mounted on the main wall above the couch, a large silver crucifix caught the lamplight like a blade raised in benediction.

The pressure hit immediately, subtle but wrong. A tightness behind her eyes, faint ringing in her ears that didn't quite register as sound.

What. No. It's fine. Just nerves. First impressions matter. Don't fuck this up.

Bisbee occupied an armchair near the window. Three girls rose from the couch as Rocket and Abuela entered: synchronized movement that came from predator reflexes, not rehearsal.

The one on the left wore earth tones and bone jewelry. Center position, simple clothing, and careful composure. The third, electric blue hair, black western shirt, perched on the edge like she was ready to spring.

The ringing got louder. Pressure building like altitude change, like her skull was adjusting to atmospheric conditions that shouldn't exist.

Blue hair screaming for attention, earth tones, and bone jewelry like some spiritual warrior, and one who just... watches. Fuck, I don't fit anywhere in this lineup.

"Nietas, come meet your new hermana." Abuela's tone held both warmth and command.

"This is Rocket," Abuela continued. "She and Bisbee found each other. She has survived much to reach us."

Survived much. That's one way to describe getting trafficked, turned, and abandoned. Focus. Smile. Don't let them see...

The pressure drove deeper. White heat flashed behind her eyes for just a second before subsiding to dull throb.

"Rocket," the blue-haired girl said, her Colombian accent turning the name into music. "I'm Blondie. Welcome to the madhouse, corazón."

"Marigold." The one in earth tones smiled with genuine warmth, no performance in it. "It's good to have you here."

The quiet one just nodded. "Copal."

They're all looking at me like they know. Like they can see. Fuck, why does my head hurt? Why is there ringing?

"Hey." The greeting sounded more like a challenge than a greeting.

Bisbee's gaze met hers across the room, steady, grounding. That look that said you got this, kid.

But his eyes narrowed slightly. He saw something. Tension in her shoulders, maybe. The way she was holding herself too still.

He's right there. I can do this. Just talk to teenage girls. I've done harder shit in the last seventy-two hours. Whatever this headache is, I can push through it.

Rocket took another step into the room.

The sound exploded.

Not sound, exactly. A high-pitched whine drilling behind her eyes and into her teeth, bypassing her eardrums entirely. Like feedback from something divine, something that recognized what she was and screamed rejection at frequencies only the damned could perceive.

What the fuck...

She staggered, hands flying to her head.

"Rocket?" Bisbee was on his feet instantly, predator reflexes moving before conscious thought.

The whine became a shriek. White heat bloomed inside her skull, pressure building like something trying to claw out from the inside. Her vision blurred, the room tilting sideways.

The crucifix blazed in her vision: each silver line burning against her retinas without touching her skin. Not seeing it. Perceiving it. Like it was reaching past flesh and bone directly into whatever corrupted essence animated her corpse.

Can't. It hurts. Why does it HURT...

"¡Ay, no!" The words ripped from her throat. "It hurts! ¡Dios mío, me duele!"

She collapsed to her knees on the Saltillo tile, fists pressed against her temples. The spiritual screaming drowned out everything else: voices, movement, the whole physical world reduced to background noise behind the assault.

"What's wrong?" Marigold's voice, distant and muffled.

"Rocket!" Bisbee, closer now. His hand on her shoulder felt like the only solid thing in a reality that was trying to tear itself apart.

The pressure climbed.

"The sound!" she gasped. "Can't you hear it? ¡Está gritando! ¡Me está matando!"

"I don't hear anything," Bisbee said, his voice tight. Controlled. That tone he used when situations were going sideways fast.

"What sound?" Abuela's voice carried confused concern. "Mija, I hear nothing."

The crucifix burned in her vision. Not with heat. With wrongness, the kind of wrongness that did not belong to any of the senses her old mortal body had been issued, that did not come in through her eyes or her ears the way ordinary information came in, that arrived already inside her, already past the perimeter, already setting fires in the small interior rooms her mind had built for survival. With rejection, with the fierce indignant rejection of something holy that had recognized her dead body as the kind of thing it was made to drive out.

Make it stop make it STOP...

She pointed with one trembling hand at the crucifix on the wall. "¡Quítalo! Please, take it away! ¡Me está quemando por dentro!"

Abuela's face went pale. "Dios mío. In nearly forty years, I have never..."

The pressure built to breaking point.

Something inside her broke.

And suddenly there were flames.

Fire erupted across her skin: crimson and gold dancing over her flesh like living tattoo of damnation. Beautiful and terrible and utterly wrong. The flames consumed her without singeing her clothes, without marking the tile beneath her knees, without touching anything in the room except her.

The fire existed in dimensions that shouldn't overlap with reality, spiritual assault made visible through supernatural agony.

"¡QUÍTALO! ¡QUÍTALO AHORA!" The scream tore from her throat with harmonics that made the air tremble, Spanish the only language adequate for expressing agony that transcended physical sensation.

"Holy shit!" Blondie's honey-smooth accent cracked with genuine shock.

"¡Chinga!" Marigold breathed.

Bisbee jerked back, tactical instinct recognizing supernatural crisis beyond physical intervention.

"The cross," he snapped. "Get it out of here. Now."

Blondie reacted instantly: darting across the room, snatching the crucifix from its mounting, bolting for the front door with professional thief efficiency.

The moment the blessed silver cleared the threshold, the flames died.

Rocket collapsed against the tile, wisps of smoke curling from her body. The spiritual screaming cut off like someone had flipped a switch, leaving only ringing silence and the whisper of settling ash that shouldn't exist.

Her exposed skin showed blisters and burns: second-degree damage across her hands and forearms, first-degree redness on her face and neck.

But the tile beneath her remained pristine. Unmarked by heat or flame.

"The floor," Copal observed quietly. "It's not burned."

Can't think. Everything hurts. What the fuck just happened what the FUCK...

Abuela crossed herself, lips moving in silent prayer. Her weathered hands trembled. First time Rocket had seen her composure crack.

Bisbee crouched beside Rocket, not touching but present. His voice stayed level. "You still with us, kid?"

Bisbee. Right. Bisbee's here. I'm not alone. I didn't, I didn't mean to...

"Bisbee," she managed, voice raw from screaming. "I'm... fuck, what was that?"

Blondie slipped back through the front door, breathing hard. "Left it in the front yard, Abuela. Far from the house."

"Gracias, niña." Abuela's voice carried forced steadiness. "You did well."

Marigold approached with careful grace, like she was approaching a wounded animal. "Let's get you to the couch. Can you stand?"

Rocket let them help her up, legs shaking. She looked at Marigold through eyes that held too much trauma for eighteen years.

"Yeah, I..."

She stopped.

The blisters writhed. Living things retracting, burns being swallowed back into her skin. Flesh knitting itself together with slow inevitability, pink and new and perfect. Vampire healing accelerated by trauma, drawing on blood reserves like fuel.

Marigold's eyes went wide. "¡Cójeme! I've never seen anything heal that fast."

"¡Verga!" Rocket stared at her own hands. No trace of burns. No evidence of the spiritual assault that had left her screaming moments before. "What the jodido hell just happened?"

Her knees buckled. Marigold caught her with quick reflexes, guiding her to the couch.

"Dizzy. I need to..." The words slurred. Her vampiric systems had just burned through hours of stored energy in minutes.

She collapsed into the cushions, body shaking with exhaustion that went deeper than flesh and bone.

A sharp pang shot through her gut. Hollow. Demanding. The supernatural healing had drained her blood reserves, leaving her system crying out for replenishment.

"¡Puta madre!" One hand pressed to her stomach. "Now I'm hungry again. Like, really jodido hungry."

Bisbee settled into the armchair across from her, his expression unreadable but his eyes sharp with assessment. "Well. That was new."

New. Right. Because decades of vampires living here and nobody's burst into flames before. What the fuck is wrong with me?

Copal perched on the couch arm, her deep-set eyes reflecting understanding that went beyond words. "Fire takes energy. Even supernatural fire."

Blondie studied Rocket with calculating gaze, strategic mind reassessing threat levels. "So, corazón, what exactly are you?"

I don't know. I don't fucking know and that terrifies me.

Marigold lit a fresh candle with reverent precision, flame casting dancing shadows across her face. She studied Rocket with the intensity of someone reading omens in smoke patterns.

"She's what happens when something sacred and something hungry try to occupy the same space," she said, brown eyes reflecting candlelight with unsettling intensity.

Rocket looked between the four faces staring at her; Bisbee's tactical concern, the girls' mixture of fascination and wariness, Abuela's troubled confusion.

"I don't know what the fuck I am," she said, flat honesty cutting through diplomatic deflection. "All I know is there was fire, and pain, and I still don't understand why. It didn't happen to any of you. Why me? Did I do something wrong?"

Abuela settled into her chair with careful dignity, weathered hands folding in her lap.

"In all my decades sheltering our kind," she said, her voice unhurried, "I have never seen such a reaction to blessed objects. I had come to believe the stories were propaganda, cover stories to hide our true nature from mortal understanding."

She paused, dark eyes moving from Rocket to the empty space where the silver crucifix had hung.

"But that cross was special, mija. Blessed by Padre Miguel before the cancer took him. His faith, my faith, I suppose it carries power most holy objects lack. Genuine belief and dying blessing combined."

Rocket processed this through the lens of immediate concern rather than theological speculation. Her stomach cramped again, hunger demanding attention.

"Great," she said, sardonic edge automatic defense mechanism. "So, I'm allergic to extra-strength Jesus. That's just fucking perfect."

She pushed herself deeper into the couch cushions, dark eyes moving between faces.

Blondie's honey-smooth accent made the observation sound almost affectionate. "Most vampires get cute nicknames, corazón. You go straight to 'Hellfire Barbie' on night one. Impressive, really."

"Her name's Rocket," Bisbee's voice cut in from across the room, flat and final. "She earned it."

Rocket met Blondie's eyes directly.

"Yeah. Rocket. Not negotiable." Blondie's expression shifted: respect, maybe, or just recognition that this particular boundary wouldn't move.

"Rocket it is, then."

Silence settled heavy. Not uncomfortable, but weighted with the kind of truth that required space to breathe.

Just waiting. Like I get to decide what comes next.

The set of her shoulders eased a notch. She noticed her weight had shifted back into the couch cushions without her deciding to. The three of them were still there, close enough to reach her fast, none of them angled toward the door. Her threat-mapping had gone quiet without asking permission.

"It's not like I was a bad person. My grandmother taught me the Rosary. We went to Mass every Sunday. Baptized, confirmed, the whole Catholic girl package. And now I can't be in the same room as that blessed silver without catching fire."

The quiet pressed back in, heavier this time.

Bisbee's voice cut through it with characteristic pragmatism. "Kid, you're undead. Pretty sure Jesus isn't taking that personally."

Despite everything, Rocket felt her mouth twitch. Almost a smile.

"Look," she continued, focusing on immediate needs because that's what kept you functional. "I appreciate the whole 'let's figure out the mystery' thing. But right now I need to deal with being hungry enough to eat a whole person, and I'm pretty sure that's not something we want to explore in Abuela's living room."

Marigold exchanged glances with Blondie: silent communication developed through shared crisis navigation.

"There's a park about six blocks from here," Marigold said, tone practical. "Good hunting grounds. Police don't patrol heavily after midnight."

Blondie nodded, tactical mind already mapping routes. "Safe extraction points if things go wrong. Far enough from the house to maintain security."

They're just... they're just offering to help me hunt. Like it's normal. Like they do this.

"You're not going to ask what kind of hunting?" Rocket's voice carried genuine curiosity beneath sarcasm.

Blondie's accent made the statement sound almost casual. "We're vampires, corazón. We all hunt. The only question is whether you prefer your prey conscious or unconscious when you feed."

The matter-of-fact delivery should have been disturbing. Instead, Rocket found it oddly comforting.

"Depends on how hungry I am," she admitted, honesty carrying the gravity of someone who understood survival sometimes required choices that kept you awake during daylight hours. "Tonight? Unconscious would probably be safer for everyone involved. I've frenzied once. Don't want that happening again."

Copal had been quiet through most of the exchange, empathic senses processing complex emotional landscape. "The reaction to the crucifix." Copal's eyes stayed on her, certain of it. "It wasn't something you were doing. It was something being done to you."

Rocket shrugged, gesture more defensive than indifferent. "Yeah, well, whatever was doing it can fuck right off. I got enough problems without mystery spiritual shit trying to set me on fire from the inside."

She pushed herself off the couch, testing balance. Her supernatural systems were still recalibrating after trauma.

"Right now, I need food that doesn't ask questions and doesn't remember my face. Everything else can wait until I'm not about to start eyeing people's necks like a menu."

Marigold rose with practiced grace. "I'll show you the route. Blondie can brief you on local security patterns."

Rocket nodded, mind already shifting into focused awareness hunting required. The spiritual crisis with the crucifix got filed away for later analysis, joining fragmented memories of desert fire her consciousness couldn't quite access.

"Thanks," she said, word carrying more weight than casual gratitude. "For all of it. For getting rid of the cross, for not freaking out about the whole bursting-into-flames thing, for helping me figure out where to hunt without getting arrested."

She paused, looking around the living room that had become the site of her first major supernatural crisis since awakening in a desert grave.

"And for not asking a bunch of deep questions I don't have answers to."

Blondie smiled, expression carrying genuine warmth beneath calculated edges. "Corazón, we've all got mysteries we're not ready to solve. The important thing is learning to live with them while we figure out what comes next."

Bisbee's voice carried dry amusement. "And on that philosophical note, I'm gonna make sure the Harley's ready for the ride back to Bisbee. You girls don't burn anyone else down while I'm outside."

He's leaving. No, he's just going outside. He'll be back. He's not abandoning me. He said he'd ride back. He's not leaving.

"Thanks for the ride," Rocket said, meeting his eyes. "And for... you know."

"Yeah, kid. I know." Bisbee headed for the front door, pausing in the doorway. "You got good people here. Don't fuck it up by being too scared to let them in."

Then he was gone, leaving Rocket with three teenage vampires who had just witnessed her burst into supernatural flames and were still offering to help her hunt.

Good people. Right. People who didn't run screaming. People who helped. People who might actually... stay.

"Come on," Blondie said, standing and stretching with theatrical grace. "Let's go get you something to eat before you start looking at us like snacks, ¿sí?"

As they prepared to leave out the back, none of them spoke about larger implications. The healing that transcended normal vampire capabilities. The fragments of memory suggesting abilities they didn't understand. The spiritual vulnerability revealed by blessed silver.

Those conversations could wait for another night, when hunger didn't drive immediate needs and spiritual crisis didn't feel quite so raw.

She could still feel the ghost of the fire in her forearms, the skin there newer than the rest of her, phantom warmth where the blisters had been. But she was standing. Upright. Moving through a back gate with people who hadn't left when the flames started. For now, that was the whole world.

After the girls disappeared into the darkness beyond the back gate, voices fading into ambient sounds of Sierra Vista settling into deeper night, Abuela moved with careful deliberation of someone whose seventy years had taught her crisis management often continued long after immediate emergency passed.

She retrieved a flashlight from the kitchen drawer and stepped into the front yard, the small careful steps of a woman who had stepped over a hundred snakes in this same yard in seventy years of living in this same desert. House slippers crunching softly against desert-adapted landscaping, against the gravel and the volunteer cholla and the small dry remains of last summer's wildflowers that nobody had bothered to clear because the desert always cleared itself in its own time. The crucifix lay where Blondie had dropped it: blessed silver gleaming under starlight like fallen piece of heaven waiting to be reclaimed, like a thing that had done exactly what it had been asked to do and was now lying in the dirt waiting to be told what came next.

Abuela picked it up with reverence due to sacred objects that had proven their power through trial by supernatural fire. The metal felt warm despite cool night air, as if Padre Miguel's dying blessing continued to pulse within carefully crafted lines.

"Forgive me, mija," she whispered to memory of Rocket's spiritual agony, weathered fingers tracing the crucifix's edges. "But some protection requires distance, not abandonment."

Back inside, she carried the blessed silver to her bedroom, where decades of accumulated faith had created layers of spiritual sanctuary within sanctuary. The crucifix found its place in the top drawer of her dresser, wrapped carefully in white linen that had once belonged to her grandmother: another woman who understood love sometimes meant hiding sources of pain rather than removing their power entirely.