Better to be safe than sorry.
She used it to draw a thin arc around the mouth of the cave, wide enough to leave space for the horses after sunset. Instead of putting it back in the saddlebag, when she let herself fall to the ground beside Néstor, she set it at her side.
They sat in silence, watching the sun’s steady crawl toward the western horizon. Watching the silver, snakelike belly of the river warm to gold, then red. Usually, they would still be riding at this hour, taking advantage of the light and the lessening heat. But the horses were spent from galloping hard through the hottest part of the day.
“What do you think that was?” Nena asked at last.
Néstor cursed softly, then leaned back and lay on the ground, his hat abandoned at his side. He interlaced his hands behind his head and let out a long, defeated exhale. “I don’t know,” he said. A long moment passed, silent but for the calls of evening birds and the wind in the grasses. “Do you think . . . do you think the Rinches are trying to get rid of the vampires?”
Nena twirled a long blade of grass between her fingers, worrying it as she gazed down at the river. This thought had occurred to her as they rode; she mulled it over, then dismissed it. There were easier ways to destroy the monsters than what the Rinches were doing. They had captured the vampires. They were taking them somewhere, an undertaking that clearly took an enormous amount of effort and time.
It reminded her of watching men haul cannons across the soft earth at Palo Alto, their boots sinking into the muck, their faces red and cords popping out from their necks from the strain.
It was the memory of cannons that brought the notion of weapons to mind.
“No,” she said softly. “I wonder . . . I wonder if they’re using them to get rid of us.”
Néstor propped himself up on his elbows to look up at her. “What?”
“Think about it,” Nena said. She didn’t meet his eyes, for fear that seeing an incredulous reaction would take her idea out at the knees. “What if they get sent before the army to weaken us? They only attacked men on Los Ojuelos, which weakened our defenses. There were rumors among the Mexican army that they were being attacked too. And I know for a fact that they had cases of susto. It’s almost as if . . . they’re targeting the men meant to defend us. Leaving the ranchos weak against attacks.”
“No,” Néstor said, letting the syllable drawl long with his disbelief. “Nena, you can’t possibly think that.”
“So what about the chains?” she cried. “The collars around their necks? They were captives. They were . . .” She thought of the Rinche using the butt of a rifle to knock one of the vampires to the ground. It made her want to flinch. “It made me feel bad for them.”
This prompted a sound of sheer disbelief from Néstor. He gestured at the scar on her neck, then his shoulder, which he had only taken out of the sling that afternoon.
“Maybe not very bad,” she amended. “But what if . . . what if they are wild creatures, like wolves or vultures, creatures that cannot help but be what they are, and they are being used against us?”
“But how?” he challenged. “Breaking a horse is one thing. Breaking one of those . . .”
“Can’t any animal be broken, if you hurt it enough?” Nena said. “Besides, Félix always says that Anglos have never met anything they couldn’t turn into a means to take what they want.”
Néstor sat up and ran a hand through his hair, his brows furrowed as he thought. “I don’t like this idea.”
“Why?” Nena asked.
He exhaled heavily. “Because it means they’re smarter than we thought, and more powerful, and . . .” He let this trail off.
Nena waited. After nine years apart, she still knew the rhythm of his speaking. She knew he had more to say, that he was searching for words or untangling a difficult thought. He was one of the few men she knew who spent time with his thoughts before speaking, even in the midst of an argument or excitement. It was one of the reasons she loved him.
“It makes me feel afraid,” he said at last, gazing out into the night. “It makes me think of Dos Cruces.”
She pulled her knees close to her chest. Rumors of murder and land theft licked through las Villas del Norte like wildfire. The events that brought Néstor and his family to Los Ojuelos from Rancho Dos Cruces in San Antonio de Béxar many years ago were being repeated again, and again, each time creeping closer and closer. Was it only a matter of time until they were at the gates of the Serranos’ rancho?
“That’s the whole point of this war, isn’t it?” he said flatly. “They claimed the land all the way from the Nueces to Río Bravo. Will they stop there? They’ll take, and take, and then what?” His voice was raw with emotion. “What will become of us? Who will we be without the land we grew up on? Without our home?”
Nena curled her arms tight around her knees. As if that could protect her from the fear of what she would become, when Papá gave her to another rancho. She would leave Los Ojuelos behind. Her whole heart was buried beneath the anacahuita grove behind la casa mayor, tucked between the pebbles of the stream bank. It rested every morning under the eaves of the chapel her grandfather had built, waiting for the swallows to sing to the rising sun. Without it, she would be nothing but a husk.
“It’s about more than the land,” she said. “It’s the people too.”
“But when they take the land, the people scatter,” Néstor said passionately. “I know.”
For that was exactly what had happened to his family.
“And then it doesn’t matter where you are,” he added, grief softening his voice. “There is no home anymore, when the people you love are gone.”
When she lifted her head, he was watching her. There was a dreamy look in his eye—she would think he was caught in some fond, distant memory, if it were not for the fact that his gaze was fixed on her, that he was present. That his breath was held as he gauged her reaction.
Was he speaking about her? He was. He had wandered for years, far from home, because as far as he knew, she was dead. She was gone.
How would he feel when she was married and left the rancho? Her throat tightened a measure at the thought. She could not think of that now, not when purple twilight softened his sharp edges, when he looked at her like this, in a way that made her face feel pleasantly warm, that made her feel as if she were the only other person on this earth.
And yet it was the only thing she could think of when he looked at her like that.
“But when I came back, and I saw you, I knew,” he said softly. “My home is with you. It always will be.”
It was all she wanted to hear. It was what she dreaded hearing. She would only disappoint him. She would only hurt him, and she cared for him too deeply to wound him. She might not be strong enough to prevent herself from hurting him. She had to be honest with him.
“What if I can’t be with you?” Her voice was in tatters. Her cheeks were suddenly slick.
He put a hand on her knee and squeezed it gently. There were scars on his knuckles, calluses on his thumb. She imagined that hand flat against the plane of her stomach, or running over her body when they were kissing. She wanted that again. She wanted to feel the heat his fingertips left in their wake. She wanted to be held so tightly she bruised, kissed until she could not breathe.
He had said on the road that afternoon that they would arrive at Los Ojuelos by siesta tomorrow. Reaching the rancho meant they would reenter the world in which she did not spend her days alone with him. Where divisions spoken and unspoken created barriers between them. Where her mother would be shocked to even hear Néstor address her with such familiarity.