“Call off your hired thugs, Luna.”
Blanching, Rafael Luna’s lips were drawn back from his teeth in a grimace. He swallowed, and the saber tip cut a small gash into the skin of his throat.
“Sergeant Rameriz…” he sucked in a breath between his teeth as the blade shifted slightly, and got out in a choked gasp, “you are dismissed!”
There was a heavy silence before the sergeant said, “I do not think so, General Luna. It is unfortunate that you have lost your battle and your honor, but we were made certain promises. We do not like being disappointed.” He levered the rifle up slightly, the barrel pointing at Steve as Ginny watched with glazed comprehension. “We will take our money and the woman, and leave you alive if you allow it, but if not…”
The unfinished sentence was eloquent in intention.
Crouched by the bed, Ginny slowly slid upward, her spine pressed against the wall. The loose mass of her hair tumbled over her shoulders and back, then caught on an object stuck into the wall. Terrified, with a madly beating heart and fear coursing through her in a flood, she did not comprehend what had snagged her hair. Then she realized—it was her own little dagger, the one Rafael had taken from her in Mexico City.
The Rurales attention was focused on Steve and Rafael; no one noticed as she pulled the dagger from the wall. It was a comforting weight in her hand, a promise that she would not have to endure what the Rurales had in mind for her. There were things worse than death. Didn’t she know that well enough?
She felt so sick. Mixed with the fear that beat through her was the strange, thundering heat that was unabated, the fever that left her in torment. It was all such a blur of sensation and sound, washing over her and then receding. The only thing real was the dagger in her hand and the perception of danger.
Then it all grew loud at once, with men shouting and gunfire racketing in the room, deafening explosions, spurts of orange flame and the smell of sulphur a terrifying blur. A man lurched forward, his uniform identifying him as the enemy, and grabbed her, hand digging painfully into her flesh as he spun her around and in front of him.
“Halt!” he shouted. “Or you will hit the woman!”
He held her against him, one hand clamped down on her breast, his fingers squeezing cruelly so that a wave of nausea shot through her, cutting through the haze with swift clarity. Ginny had brought up one hand instinctively to grab at his arm, fingers plucking at his sleeve in a futile effort to remove it. He only squeezed tighter, until she cried out. He laughed.
She remembered him then, the hot-eyed man named Rameriz who had watched her earlier, one of the Rurales….
Rameriz was saying in a reasonable tone, “See? You will only kill her if you do not put down your weapons.”
Vaguely, through her red mist of pain and outrage, she saw a man who looked familiar standing in the doorway, but her mind would not identify him. She lifted her other arm to push at her tormentor, but there was something in her hand.
As Rameriz started to move forward, Ginny shoved hard at him with one hand, and heard his grunt of shocked pain. She pushed him again and again, the heat inside her building with each blow as he released her and fell away, collapsing into the shadows that spread around her, shadows tinged red and black and yellow-orange, encroaching on her field of vision.
Half sobbing, wet and sticky with something on her hands and arms, Ginny waited until she could see again, then looked up, pushing her hair from her eyes.
Panting, with blood streaming into his eyes from a cut on his forehead, Steve came to kneel down beside her, his voice soft.
“Ginny, it’s over.”
He sounded so faraway, the words drifting to her through the heavy layers of fever that raged through her body.
When she said nothing, Steve reached down for her and pulled her to her feet, reaching at the same time for a blanket to pull around her, his hands swiftly efficient.
“Christ, Ginny, are you all right?”
He sounded so angry…Why was he angry? The moment of lucidity began to fade. She clung to it desperately, her muscles shuddering beneath Steve’s touch as he slung her over his shoulder and strode from the small room. With her head bobbing, she caught a glimpse of Rafael Luna’s body sprawled bonelessly on the hard floor in a spreading pool of blood. Then the dark shadows came to claim her, washing over her in clouds of black streaked with crimson.
There was a vague impression of men in uniform, and she thought she recognized one man who wasn’t in uniform. Steve went to the man and talked to him in a hard, low tone before she was thrown atop a horse. Steve mounted behind her, and there was a jarring, jolting motion as they rode out of the village and into the night beyond the cluster of buildings.
When she glanced back, the wool blanket tilted into her eyes, she thought she saw flames licking at the sky, but it was probably just the fever working, turning the world to crimson and heat, to a fire that was consuming her.
It seemed forever until they stopped. A night sky so purple it
