Tick Tick Tick
48 minutes. That's about how long he had to appreciate his vague grip on his humanity, give or take a few seconds of error. In the time of the average response time from Davis Monthan AFB was under an hour, Border Patrol would be crawling all over the area and he'd be some kind of cryptid that'd make the average National Geographic photographer shit their pants. He wasn't too happy with His choices that'd lead to this point, He let a Curandera from the Reserve get shot to bits around lunch time. He gave her some last rites and a proper burial (at gun point), and took a $1,000 pay cut in hopes that the typically flighty Flock that the Prowling God kept would continue to let them pass. Holy grounds like these are not the places for cruelty and bloodshed, foolish men and their little guns don't really stand a chance against things that can survive going extinct with the power of spirit. That's the kind of shit the Curandera would've said, if she was alive right now.
He shouldn't have taken this job in the first place, but He wanted a life off the Reservation and the Curandera needed a hand cleaning up after the Coyotés and their people-smuggling operations that ever-agitated the Prowling God. He'd gotten them both into the business proper because He didn't want to get on the wrong side of the wrong men, men who worship violence and money, not old Apache Spirits. This many miles north of the border you're free of most of the Gringo patrols, so arguments for pay between the smuggled and the smugglers tended to come to pass just a few miles shy of Flagstaff. The young men come up easy enough for simple pay, they're not product like the young women, and that clarification usually is clarified when people are about to get shot. Can't blame the old lady for intervening with the Coyotés, the girl was barely 12, her parent wasn't ready to part with her as payment for making it to the bus hub before heading East to the job site.
He should've just kept walking, but something angry and hungry watching from just beyond view had convinced him otherwise. He'd never seen them up close, now he wish He hadn't.