His neck went stiff, cocked backward, chin thrust in the air. Then, with a crack of bone that stole a gasp from Nena’s chest, his neck bent further back. His neck split at the throat, sliced open from within by a long, clawed hand.
A monster clawed its way forth from within the man’s body, slick with viscera, wet as a birth, its long teeth bared. The crack of bones and snap of sinew echoed against the walls of the jacal as its head and shoulders emerged from the chest. Soon the monster would claw itself free from the body it had followed them in, shedding its cage with butchery, shattering a protective egg of bone and gore.
“Fuck,” Néstor breathed.
The fire was at their back. A small pile of firewood, broken branches. They had two guns. Néstor’s ammunition lay in a pile against the back wall.
They were trapped.
19
NENA
NENA CLOSED N?STOR’S fingers over the handle of the second gun. They trembled against her palm.
“Shoot,” she hissed in his ear. “Shoot now.”
His arm lifted. She braced against his back, hands over her ears. There was no missing at this range; the bang was followed by an unearthly, hair-raising howl. The horses tethered behind the jacal raised their voices in fear at the sound of the shot.
The vampire stumbled backward, out of sight of the doorway, and fell. It wrenched and spasmed like a beetle on its back, clawing at the meaty cage that bound it. Dark wounds were torn open through its chest, at its throat. But still it fought to be free.
“Bullets,” Néstor rasped. “Back wall.”
She stumbled back and sprang to snatch the bandolier from the floor. She pivoted on her heel and thrust it at him.
With a brutal, wet cry, the vampire shucked off the last of its meaty bindings and lurched forward onto all fours. As it rose to its full height, Néstor shoved a bullet and gunpowder into the first pistol, then the second. Bullets found their marks in the vampire’s chest and neck; each blow sent shudders through its body, but still it loomed over them, a full head taller than Néstor. Blood slicked its hairless skull and the metal band around its throat, gleaming in firelight.
But it would not fall.
The only way to kill El Cuco is to cut off its head. Abuela’s fireside tales were ghost stories. Nothing more.
Or were they?
Nena spared a quick glance at the fire for anything she could use as a weapon. Branches burned hot and white in the hearth. There was a pile of unused firewood; among the unburned branches was one long, green branch, one that she planned to use as a poker to nudge embers as the fire burned low.
Even better: next to the firewood lay the machete. Firelight reflected against scratched metal, winking up at her.
Néstor’s attention was solely on shooting the vampire, on driving it back onto the patio.
Nena scrambled toward the fire. She seized the machete in her right hand and a smoldering stick from the fire with her left. Then she whirled to face the door as a cry—a human cry—split the night.
Néstor was ducking out of the way of the vampire’s viscera-wet claws. Firelight from inside the jacal caught them like the edges of knives. Néstor was being driven down the patio by the monster, back to the rotten table and the thicket of huisaches, where he would be trapped.
But then the vampire turned, swinging its low head back toward the doorway. Back toward Nena. Perhaps it saw her as easier prey, trapped as she was in the close walls of the jacal. It filled the doorway, its attention wholly on her as it raised its long, spidery right arm, reaching to seize her.
With a feral cry and a blur of movement, Néstor appeared on the back of the vampire. A flash of metal in his hand; he was bringing his knife down into the side of the monster’s neck with all his strength.
The vampire released a strangled howl, half rage, half pain, its teeth bared like weapons in the firelight. It stumbled back a step, then, in a swift movement, seized Néstor by one arm and flung him across the patio as if he weighed no more than a wet rag.
A sickening pop cracked through the air. There was no cry, no scream; only a strangled whimper and the sound of a body falling. The clatter of a knife hitting the stony tipichil floor of the patio rang through the night.
Néstor.
She needed to get between the vampire and Néstor. He had no defenses. She crossed to the doorway in three steps and was enveloped by night.
Before her was the gray, leathery spine of the vampire. It curved over a prone body on the ground, in front of the half-rotten table that their saddles rested on, curled on one side like a sleeper.
Néstor.
The vampire lifted its clawed right arm high.
Nena thrust the smoldering branch into its exposed underarm as hard as she could. A sickening sizzle; the sudden smell of burning flesh. With a strangled howl, the monster whirled on her. Nena dropped the wood. Instead of falling back, she barreled forward, determined as a bull, dodging under the arm and claws of the monster. She clambered onto the rotting table, clutching the machete with both hands.
The vampire looked up at her. Though it had no eyes, and the sockets where eyes ought to be were slicked wet with gore, gooseflesh erupted over her arms: she could tell it was holding her gaze.
Santa Madre, help me, she thought. Or whatever saint knows about these. Please.
There was a wound in its throat where Néstor had stabbed it, just beneath the metal band around its neck.
She tensed.
When it stepped closer, she swung the machete as if she were hacking at the trunk of a tree, aiming just above the metal collar.
It struck like the sound of a pig being butchered.
Whether the machete was too dull or her strength was not enough, the blade did not sever the neck cleanly; it was deeply buried in viscera and flesh when the monster fell, dragging Nena down with it.
There was no cry. No shriek, no gush of blood spraying her.
She thought she heard the hollow sound of metal striking stone; then she hit the ground and rolled, grazing her cheeks and arms. She hit the wall of the jacal. Sparks filled her vision as she hauled herself upright, scrambling for the machete. She braced against the wall and held it out, heart pounding, breath coming in severe gasps.
But the vampire was gone.
All that remained was a coating of gray dust on the ground before her, sticking to the puddles of the Rinche’s dark blood like ash from a kitchen fire.
Amid the dust and the blood lay the metal band.
But the vampire was gone. Madre Santa, it was gone.
“Néstor?”
He had not moved. He was still curled into the ground, cradling his left arm to his chest.
He gave a soft grunt. “Move inside,” he said. His voice was mangled by pain.
She dropped the machete by the doorway. It fell with a clatter as she took in the blood that wet Néstor’s shirt, how it was shredded as if it had been grabbed by a clawed hand. She crouched at his side. “Can you stand?”
He grunted again, pushing himself upright, still cradling his left arm. It hung at an angle from his body that she could only register as wrong.
She moved to his right side and pulled his good arm over her shoulders, bracing, her thighs burning from the effort it took to bring him upright.
Somehow, they made it back inside the jacal, ignoring the ruined body of the Rinche just past the door. They stumbled to the ground before the fire. He slid down as if to lie on his back, then, with an animallike yelp, shot upright. The sound tore her like cloth ripped in two.
He could not lie back on his shoulder.
“Let me see,” she said. “Relax your left arm.” Her voice sounded strange, distant to her ears. Like she was apart from herself watching this scene unfold before her. Néstor, his shoulder at a wrong angle and shredded by claws before the fire. His face pallid and beading with sweat as he obeyed, laying his left arm at his side. The smell of fear still thick on the air.
His arm dropped, the shoulder hollow beneath his flesh, sagging where it ought to cut the sharp silhouette that made her breath catch.
His arm was dislocated.
20
N?STOR