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 God. 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.
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 laid 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.
Quickly, he made her sit up. He laid 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?
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?”
