“Look at me,” Néstor repeated.
Nena’s breathing came harsh and staccato, but it was drowned by the thunder of cannons behind them. For a few ragged breaths, they were suspended in the middle of the resaca as the horses swam.
She risked a glance up. Néstor’s eyes burned desperately in his dirt-streaked face.
He would not let her drown.
“Stay with me,” he cried.
Then came the metallic clicks of shod hooves on stone; Nena’s mare swayed forward as she found purchase among the weeds. Nena leaned forward to use her weight to help the mare move forward. One of her hooves must have slipped; the mare stumbled precariously.
“No!” Néstor cried.
Nena’s heart leaped to her throat. She thrust her weight in the opposite direction to help the mare right herself.
“Stay with me,” Néstor shouted. Their horses moved forward, necks straining as they laboriously pushed out of the water. Néstor leaned forward in the saddle and seized the bridle of Nena’s horse with his left hand. “Stay with me.”
She knew then that she would.
Whatever awaited them, she would stay with him.
16
NENA
NEARLY AN HOUR later, their ride west through the thick chaparral finally slowed. Nena’s legs ached from exhaustion; her hands were sore and lined from how tightly she had been gripping the reins. Neither she nor Néstor spoke as they rode. They kept out of sight of well-trod paths, with Néstor breaking chaparral with a machete that had been attached to his saddle. Cannons still thundered in the distance. A haze hung overhead, darkening the horizon and dyeing it red. Though the heat of the afternoon had worsened as the sun crept west, it was so humid that her clothes and saddle were still wet from the resaca crossing. Her skirt chafed the insides of her thighs and hung heavy over her legs.
When they reached a clearing, Néstor brought his horse to standing.
“We can rest here, if you want,” he said, voice raw and tired. He dismounted and cast a broad, searching look at their surroundings. Here, it was quiet. For the first time all afternoon, the air tasted clear. “I think it’s safe.”
She released the reins with stiff, aching hands and came out of the saddle gracelessly. When her boots hit the ground with a thump, her legs shook violently, as if bracing for cannon tremors. She swayed on her feet.
Néstor was already behind her, placing a steadying hand on her upper back.
“Whoa there,” he said. “Are you all right?”
How was it that after all these years, it still felt like second nature to turn into him and slip her arms around him, to bury her face in his chest? He responded in kind, tightening his arms around her back. She inhaled the smells of worn leather and sweat, the metallic tinge of drying blood, the warmth of his neck. A shadow fell over her as he rested his cheek on her hair—the brim of his hat was blocking out the sun.
“You’re safe,” he murmured. She felt his voice more than she heard it, rising from a soft rumble in his chest.
But Félix wasn’t. Nor was Papá. Were they still alive? Were they hurt? What of the vaqueros from Los Ojuelos, like Casimiro? Fear bloomed in her chest for them.
Unbidden, the image of Susana staring up at the sky flashed behind her eyelids. The cracking of bones and wet, thick splitting of flesh as wounded men were trampled beneath the hooves of the Rinches’ mounts.
A sob wrenched free of her chest, raw and dry. Within another breath, she was crying uncontrollably. She was aware that her body was shaking, yet could do nothing to steady it. Without his arms holding her upright, she might have collapsed where she stood.
Néstor said nothing. He simply held her, his feet planted wide to support them both, his breathing steady.
Finally, her sobs softened, then stopped altogether. Awareness uncurled in her chest: the afternoon around them was still, quiet. There was no sound but for Néstor’s heartbeat, his breathing. That awareness blossomed into a prick of embarrassment: she was in a man’s arms, but not just any man’s.
Néstor’s.
She stiffened; Néstor loosened his arms and released her.
“I’m probably getting blood on you,” she murmured and took a step back from him. Her forearms were still sticky with it. Its metallic aroma bit her tongue, still surprisingly fresh. She suppressed a shudder.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
She shook her head. “And you?”
“No.”
Her heartbeat was steadying. Here, miles away from Palo Alto, it was as if the battle didn’t exist. The heat of the late afternoon rose as it always had, as it always would. Chachalacas squawked from the direction of the river; cheeping and the flutter of wings punctuated the trees overhead as Néstor led her to the shade. He unstrapped a water flask from his saddle and handed it to her.
She curled her fingers around the worn leather of the flask, still warm from the sun. The clicking hum of chicharras rose and fell in steady pulses as Néstor turned his attention to the horses. He led them into the shade and began to loosen girths and curry mud away from their coats. Presently, she noticed he was singing to himself under his breath.
Panic ebbed away from her body, leaving it shaking and weak. She sank to the hard earth and sat among the roots of the trees, pulling her knees up to her chest. Her skirt was still heavy and wet, its weight suffocating as it absorbed the afternoon heat.
The water in the flask was warm and stale on her tongue, but she drank it anyway, staring into space as Néstor found a branch around which to loop the horses’ reins. The shift of leather grew closer; spurs clicked as he lowered himself to the earth and sat next to her with a heavy thump. He sighed deeply, but said nothing, not even as she handed the water flask to him.
In the distance, a cannon boomed.
She flinched. Her ears were still ringing. Perhaps they would never stop ringing.
“Are you sure none of that is yours?” Néstor asked softly. She followed the path of his gaze to her blood-streaked hands and arms. The blood had darkened and cracked like dried earth in the heat. It was beginning to itch; she scratched off flakes of it.
She had failed to save the nameless men whose blood this was. Out on the battlefield, she was next to useless. What help could she have possibly been, with her eyes stinging with smoke and gunpowder and body after body being dragged toward her and the other healers? What could she have done, in the face of such slaughter?
She was a fool to think she could have helped. A fool to think that she could have proven her worth as a curandera to Papá this way.
“I should wash it off,” she murmured.
“We can find a place to do that,” Néstor said. “But we’ll go together. I don’t want either of us to be alone with . . . those things out there.” He had pushed his hat back from his forehead and ran a hand over his face. His expression had a distant, haunted look.
All Nena could think of was that gray, sightless face as it lifted from the bodies of fallen Mexican soldiers, gore slick on its chin, to stare at her. It had no eyes, but she knew with a cold certainty in the pit of her stomach that it was staring at her.
A shudder raced over her skin at the memory.
“What were those things?” she asked.
“You saw them too,” Néstor said. It wasn’t a question—it was firm, as if he were confirming that he was not mad. “They looked like they were feeding on . . .” His voice trailed off.
“Sucking blood,” Nena said. “That’s what they were doing.”
She had seen it with her own eyes. She was on horseback and meters away, but there was no mistaking it. The long, spindly arms cradling the fallen bodies, bringing throats and arms up to their mouths. To their long, red-soaked teeth.
“Like bats?” Néstor said.
She thought of saying yes. Then, from the back of her mind, she heard an echo of Don Antonio Canales’s voice. When he was on the rancho speaking to Papá about mustering a squadron, he had quoted some guerrilla when he called the Yanquis—