A jingling of bridles sounded behind him. Ricardo did not have to look; he sensed the four men approaching with the horses.
"Brother Ricardo, it"s good you"ve finally come into the air. It"s not good to be cooped up all the time."
"I"m not your brother," he said. His voice scratched, weak and out of practice. He had taken breathing for granted, and had to relearn how to speak.
Diego laughed. "We"re all you have, now. You"ll understand soon enough."
"He has lots of time to learn," said Octavio, one of the four demons who had once been men, who followed Juan. Rafael and Esteban were the others.
Diego said, "Ride with us. We hunt tonight, and you"ll learn at our side." It was a command, not a request.
He followed, because what else could he do? Except perhaps stand in the open when the sun rose and let it burn him. But suicide was a sin. Even now, he believed it. He would show that he did not forsake G.o.d. He would ask for forgiveness every moment of his existence.
Diego seemed to be Fray Juan"s lieutenant; he had been the first of them turned to this demon life, years ago now. That was why he looked no older than he had when they returned from Coronado"s expedition.
He explained what they did here. "Each of us is as strong as a dozen men. But there are still those who know how to kill us. Those who would recognize certain signs and hunt us down."
"Who?" Ricardo asked. "What signs?"
"Secret members of the Inquisition for one. And what signs? Why, bodies. Too many bodies, all drained of blood!" They all laughed.
"New Spain is the perfect place for us. There are thousands of peasants dying by the score in mines, on campaigns, of disease. Out here on the borders, no one is even looking much. If a whole village dies, we say a plague struck. We take all the blood we need and no one notices."
At the mention of blood, Ricardo"s mouth watered. A hunger woke in him, like a creature writhing in his belly. Each time Diego said the word, his vision clouded. He shook himself to remain focused on the hills before them.
"I know how it is with you," Diego said. "We all went through this."
"Though the rest of us were perhaps not so holy to start with." Again they laughed, like young men riding to a night of revelry. That was what they looked like, what anyone who saw them would think. Not that anyone would see them out here. That was the point, to feed on as much blood as they wished without notice. A land of riches. Diego had not lied.
"It"s eating away inside of me," Ricardo said under his breath.
"The blood will still that," said Rafael. "The blood will keep you sane."
"Ironic," Ricardo said. "That you must become a monster to keep from going mad."
"Ha. I never thought of it like that," Diego said.
He is already mad, Ricardo thought.
They rode for hours. They could not go far-half the night, he thought. Then they must go back, to take shelter before dawn. He could feel the night slipping away in his bones. It was the same part of him that now called out for blood.
Rafael said, "The villages nearby know of us. They go to the hills to hide, but we find them. Look toward the hills, take the air into your lungs. You can sense them, can"t you?"
The air smelled of dust, heat, sunlight that had baked into the land during the day and now rose into the chill of night, lost in the darkness. The breeze spoke of emptiness, of a vast plain where nothing larger than coyotes lived. When he turned toward the hills, though, he smelled something else. The warmth had a different flavor to it: life.
When they brought him the child, he had known what was there before he saw it. He could feel its life in the currents of the air, sense its heartbeat sending out ripples, like a stone tossed into a body of still water. A live person made a different mark on the world than one of these demons.
"Our kind are drawn to them, like iron to a lodestone," Diego said. "We cannot live without taking in the human blood we have lost. We are the wolves to their sheep."
"And now you hunt. Like wolves," said Ricardo.
"Yes. It"s good sport."
"It"s a thousand childhood nightmares come to life."
"More than that, even. Come on!"
He spurred his horse. Kicking dirt behind them, the other four followed.
It was just as Diego said: a hunt. The leader sent two of the caballeros to ascend the hill from a different direction. They flushed the villagers from their hiding places, where they lived in caves and lean-tos. Like animals, Ricardo could not help but think. Easier to hunt them, then, when one did not think of them as human. It was like facing the native tribes with Coronado all over again. The imbalance in strength between the two parties was laughable.
On horseback, Rafael and Octavio galloped across the hill, chasing a dozen people, many of them old, before them. Diego and Esteban had dismounted and tied their horses some distance away, waiting on foot for the prey to come to them.
Ricardo watched, and time slowed.
It was as if he played the scene out in his mind while someone told him the story. Diego moved too fast to see when he stepped in front of the path of a young man, grabbed his arm with one hand and took hold of his hair with the other. The boy didn"t have time to scream. Diego held the body like a lover might, hand splayed across his chest, holding him in place, while pulling back his head, exposing his neck. He bit, then sank with the boy to the ground while he drank. The boy didn"t even thrash. He was like a stunned rabbit.
Each of the others chose prey and struck, plucking their chosen victims from the scattered, fleeing peasants. The creature lurking where Ricardo"s heart used to be sang and longed to reach out and grab a rabbit for itself. As he watched, the scene changed, and it was not the caballeros who moved quickly, but the villagers who moved slowly. Ricardo had felt like this once in a swordfight. His own skills had advanced to a point where he had some proficiency, his mind was focused, and he knew with what seemed like supernatural prescience what his opponent was going to do. He parried every attack with ease, as if he watched from outside himself.
This was the same.
It was not himself but the unholy monster within who stepped aside as a woman ran past him, then slipped into place behind her and took hold of her shoulders, moving like the shadow of a bird in flight across the land.
Jerked off her feet by his hold on her, she screamed and fell against him, thrashing, panicked, like an animal in a snare. He held her, embraced her against his body to still her, and touched her face. The coiled hunger within him gave him power. As he ran his finger down her cheek and closed his hand against her face, she quieted, stilled, went limp in his grasp. Her heartbeat slowed. He could take her, drink her easily, without struggle. This was better, wasn"t it? Would he have this power if this wasn"t what he was meant to do? She was young, almost a girl, her skin firm and unlined, lips full, her eyes bright. He could have her in all ways, strip her, lie with her, and he could make her want it, make her open to him in a way their Catholic religion would never allow, even in marriage. In the ghostly moonlight, she was beautiful, and she belonged to him. He lay her on the ground. She clutched his hand, and confusion showed in her eyes.
He couldn"t do it. He sat with her as though she were his ill sister, holding her hand, brushing damp hair from her young face. The creature inside him thrashed and begged to devour her. Ricardo felt the needle-sharp teeth inside his mouth. And he turned his gaze inward, shutting it all away.
I am not this creature. I am a child of G.o.d. Still, a child of G.o.d, like her. And the night is dangerous.
Quickly, he made her sit up. He lay his hand on her forehead and whispered, "Wake up. You must run." She stared at him blankly, groggily. He slapped her cheek. She didn"t even flinch. "Wake up, please. You must wake up!"
Her gaze focused. At last she heard him. Perhaps she didn"t understand Spanish. But then, which of a dozen native dialects would she understand?
Fine, he thought. He didn"t need language to tell her to run. He bared his teeth-the sharp fangs ripe for feeding, wet with the saliva of hunger-and hissed at her. "Run!"
She gasped, scrambled to her feet, and ran across the hillside and into shadow.
Just in time. The world shifted, the action around him sped up and slowed as it needed to, and all appeared normal again. A still night lit by a waxing moon, quiet unto death.
The caballeros surrounded him. Ricardo could sense the blood on their breaths, and his belly rumbled with hunger. He bowed his head, content with the hunger, with the choice he had made.
They could probably smell on him the scent of resignation.
"Brother Ricardo," Diego said. "Aren"t you hungry? Were the pickings not easy enough for you?"
"I"m not your brother," Ricardo said.
Diego laughed, but nervously. "Don"t starve yourself to spite us," he said.
"Don"t flatter yourself," Ricardo said. "I don"t starve myself for you."
The four demons looked down on him, where he sat in the dust, content. They would kill him, and that was all right. The demon they had given him screeched and complained. Ricardo sat rigid, keeping it trapped, refusing to give it voice.
"You"re not strong enough to survive this," Diego said. "You don"t have the will to refuse the call of our kind."
At this, Ricardo looked at him with a hard gaze. Unbelievably, Diego took a step back.
"I was one of the hundred who returned to Mexico City with Coronado. Don"t tell me about my will."
To his left, a branch snapped as Octavio broke a twisting limb off a nearby shrub. "Diego, I will finish him. Turning him was a mistake."
"Yes," Diego said. "But we didn"t know that."
"We"ll leave him. Leave him here and let the sunlight take him," said Rafael.
Diego watched him with the air of a man trying to solve a riddle. "The Master wants to keep him. The Governor will listen to him, and he will keep us safe. He must live. Captain Ricardo de Avila, you must accept what you are, let the creature have its will."
Ricardo smiled. "I am a loyal subject of Spain and a child of G.o.d who has been saddled with a particularly troublesome burden."
Diego looked at Octavio. Ricardo was ready for them.
Together, the thing coiled inside him and his honor as a man of Spain rose up to defend, if not his life, then his existence. Octavio made an inhuman leap that crossed the distance between them, faster than eye could see. The perception that made time and the world around Ricardo seem strange and move thickly, like melting wax, served him now. For all Octavio"s speed, Ricardo saw him and wasn"t there when his enemy struck.
He could learn to revel in this newfound power.
Ricardo longed for a sword in his hand, no matter that steel would do no good against these opponents. He would have to beat them with wood through the heart. Octavio held the torn branch, one end jagged like a dagger. The other three ranged around him, ready to cut off his escape, and a wave of dizziness blurred his vision for a moment. Despair and hunger. If he"d taken blood, he would have more power-maybe enough to fight them all. As it was, he could not fight all four of them. Not if they meant to kill him.
He ran. They reached for him, but with flight his only concern, he drew on that devilish power. Make me like shadow, he thought.
The world became a blur, and he was smoke traveling across it. Nothing but air, moving faster than wind. He felt their hands brush his doublet as he pa.s.sed. But they did not catch hold of him.
He found a cave. Villagers might have hidden here once. Ricardo found the burned remains of a campfire, some sc.r.a.ps of food, and an old blanket that had been abandoned. The back of the cave was narrow and ran deep within the hillside. It would always be dark, and he could stay there, safe from sunlight.
But would they come after him?
They could not tolerate rivals. Animal, demon, or men fallen beyond the point of redemption, they had claimed this territory as their own. He had rebuffed their brotherhood, so now he was an invader. They would come for him.
Ricardo put the blanket over a narrow crag in the rock, deep in the cave. The light of dawn approached. As he lay down in the darkness, he congratulated himself on surviving the night.
He fell asleep wondering how he would survive the next.
At dusk, he hurried over the hill side, gathering fallen sticks, stripping trees of the st.u.r.diest branches he could find, and using chipped stones he had found in the cave to sharpen the ends into points. It was slow going, and he was weak. Lack of blood had sapped his strength. His skin was clammy, pale, more and more resembling a dead man"s. I am a walking corpse, he thought, and laughed. He had thought that once before, while crossing the northern despoblado with Coronado.
Ricardo had to believe he was not dead, that he would not die. He was fighting for a much n.o.bler cause than the one that had driven him north ten years ago. He"d made that journey for riches and glory. Now, he was fighting to return to G.o.d. He was fighting for his soul. But without blood, he couldn"t fight at all.
"Senor?" a woman"s voice called, hesitating.
Ricardo turned, startled. It was a sign of his weakness that he had not heard her approach. Now that he saw her, the scent of her blood and the nearness of her pounding heart washed over him, filling him like a gla.s.s of strong wine. His mind swam in it, and the demon screeched for her blood. Ricardo gripped the branch in his hand, willing the monster to be silent.
The mestiza woman wore a poor dress and a ragged shawl over her head. Her hair wasn"t tossed and tangled in flight tonight, but he recognized her. She was the one he"d let go.
"You," he breathed, and discovered that he loved her, wildly and pa.s.sionately, with the instant devotion of a drunk man. He had saved her life, and so he loved her.
She kept her gaze lowered. "I hoped to find you. To thank you." She spoke Spanish with a thick accent.
"You shouldn"t have come back," he said. "My will isn"t strong tonight."
She nodded at his roughly carved stake. "You fight the others? The wolves of the night?"
He chuckled, not liking the tone of despair in the sound. "I"ll try."
"But you are one of them."
"No. Like them, but not one of them."
She knelt on the ground and drew a clay mug from her pouch. She also produced a knife. She moved quickly, as if she feared she might change her mind, and before Ricardo could stop her, she drew the knife across her forearm. She hissed a breath.
He reached for her. "No!"
Ma.s.saging her forearm, encouraging the flow of blood, she held the wound over the mug. The blood ran in a thin stream for several long minutes. Then, just as quickly, she took a clean piece of linen and wrapped her arm tightly. The knife disappeared back in the pouch. She glanced at him. He could only stare back, dumbfounded.
She moved the cup of blood toward him. "A gift," she said. "Stop them, then leave us alone. Please?"
"Yes. I will."
"Thank you."
She turned and ran.
The blood was still warm when it slipped down his throat. His mind expanded with the taste of it. He no longer felt drunk; on the contrary, he felt clear, powerful. He could count the stars wheeling above him. The heat of young life filled him, no matter if it was borrowed. And he could survive without killing. That gave him hope.
He sc.r.a.ped the inside of the cup with his finger and sucked the film of blood off his skin, unwilling to waste a drop. After tucking the mug in a safe place, he climbed to his hiding place over the cave and waited. He had finished his preparations in time.
They came like the Four Hors.e.m.e.n of Revelations, riders bringing death, armed with spears. They weren"t going to toy with him. They were here to correct a mistake. Let them come, he thought. Let them see his will to fight.
They pulled to a stop at the base of the hill, within sight of the cave"s mouth. The horses steamed with sweat. They must have galloped most of the way from the village.
Diego and the others dismounted. "Ricardo! We have come for you! Fray Juan wants you to return to him, where you belong!"
Ricardo could smell the lie on him. He could see it in the spears they carried, wooden shafts with sharpened ends. The other three dismounted and moved to flank the cave, so nothing could escape from it.
Octavio stepped, then paused, looking at the ground. Ricardo clenched fistfuls of gra.s.s in antic.i.p.ation. Another step, just one more. But how much could Octavio sense of what lay before him?
"Diego? There"s something wrong-" Octavio said, and leaned forward. With the extra weight, the ground under him collapsed. A thin mat of gra.s.s had hidden the pit underneath.
Almost, Octavio escaped. He twisted, making an inhuman grab at earth behind him. He seemed to hover, suspended in his moment of desperation. But he was not light enough, not fast enough, to overcome his surprise at falling, and he landed, impaled on the half-dozen stakes driven into the bottom of the pit. He didn"t even scream.
"d.a.m.n!" Diego looked into the pit, an expression of fury marring his features.