“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 God 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.
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 passed. 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 scraps 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 hillside, gathering fallen sticks, stripping trees of the sturdiest 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.
Ricardo had to believe he was not dead, that he would not die. He was fighting for a much nobler 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 God. He was fighting for his soul. But without blood, he couldn’t fight at all.
“Señor?” 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 glass 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 passionately, 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!”
Massaging 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 scraped 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 Horsemen of Revelations, riders bringing death, armed with spears. They weren’t going to toy with him. They were here to correct a mistake.
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 grass in anticipation. 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
