What was the quickest way to explain?
“El Cuco,” Nena said, gasping for air as she readjusted her grip on the knife. “Or one of them, rather. Salt!” she barked at Didi.
“One of?” Didi yelped as she passed a jícara cup of salt to Nena, her voice pitching toward panic. She grabbed another cup and began following Nena’s example in making a thick band of salt around the perimeter of the kitchen, enclosing the fire and where the knives were stored. In the distance, gunfire cracked. Nena shied away from the sound, her teeth clashing against one another painfully.
“You mean there are more?” Javiera asked.
“Are there more?” Mamá asked, her voice laying over Javiera’s with authority, even as it trembled from shock.
Pollo began to bark, snarling from somewhere around the vicinity of Nena’s ankles.
“There!” Javiera shrieked, pointing again.
The scar on her neck erupted with the crawling legs of a thousand insects. Nena turned. Beyond the kitchen fire, a gray form prowled on four legs. It paced back and forth, watching her. The vampire crept forward, briefly like a deer in its timidity, and examined the barrier of salt.
It drew back with a start, lifted its head to Nena, and released a virulent hiss.
Nena clutched the handle of the knife, its worn curves digging into her palm. She was angry too. Yanquis were attacking her home. And, if her theory was correct, Yanquis had whipped this creature into a frenzy and released it on her home with a singular intent: to kill. To sweep through the rancho like a plague, draining it of life. Clearing it for the taking.
She thought of the vampires in chains by the river, how agonizing their shrieks were.
A beast could not change its nature. Coyotes were born to scavenge. Pumas would stalk and kill the youngest and weakest of a herd, for they had to eat. Vultures would always circle, not caring if they fed on man or beast.
This creature, whether it was made by God’s hand or the Devil’s, whether it was born of its own foul will in the shadows of the chaparral, would feed as it had been born to feed.
That alone did not make it evil.
The vampire rose onto its hind legs, baring its long, curved teeth. Dark flecks of rotting flesh wedged between incisors. Nena locked her eyes on its skull, on the delicate flesh where eyes should be. Her scar burned with the searing intensity of the vampire’s attention.
She bared her teeth back.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said. Her voice shook violently, but she meant it. The screech of the chained vampires by the river had cut to her marrow. “But I will defend myself. I will defend my family.” She raised the knife for emphasis. “Leave my land, and I will not hurt you.”
She kept her gaze level at the monster, never blinking, firm and aggressive. It stared back for a long moment. A distinct sensation slipped under her skin: it was weighing her as a threat, as a predator of equal might.
It dropped to all fours, turned its back on the kitchen, and loped into the darkness.
It had . . . listened to her.
Was it intelligent enough to comprehend her speech? Did it register the defensive stance of her body, the salt and the raised weapon, and decide that attacking was not worth the trouble?
Or was there something in the burning scar that linked them, that revealed her intent? She knew when their attention was on her; did they, too, sense the force of her will back?
She lowered the knife. Her hands shook.
Whatever the truth was, it had worked. Relief flushed her body like a bucket of cold water.
She turned to Mamá. “Put salt at every entrance into this house,” she said. Her mouth was dry; her voice cracked. “If there is enough, surround the patio with it. It drives them back.”
“Like the stories,” Javiera breathed.
Abuela’s stories. Nena’s attention snapped to the Duarte jacal.
A soft orange glow brightened the night. Someone’s jacal had been lit on fire. Beto was on the patio of the Duarte jacal, pistol in hand. Horse whinnies pierced the night; gunfire and the spark of gunpowder echoed close to the jacales. Too close. Abuela would not be safe there.
“Beto!” Nena cried. She whistled, then waved her hand at him, staying behind the salt barrier. “Bring Abuela here!”
He saluted her, then disappeared into the jacal. He emerged with Abuela on his back, clinging to his neck as if she were a child, and began to sprint toward la casa mayor.
Nena ducked as gunfire pocked the night. Tías inside the house shrieked at the sound.
Beto stumbled into the kitchen, taking care to step over the protective line of salt. Abuela slipped from his back into Didi’s waiting arms.
“What’s happening?” Nena asked Beto as Didi and Alejandra brought Abuela inside la casa mayor’s thick stone walls.
“It could be worse,” he said, his breathing labored. Sweat shone on his face and darkened his shirt. “There are some thirty Yanquis, about half of them Rinches. Even with our wounded from Matamoros, it’s about an even match. But . . .” He took a swift draft from the flask at his hip, then shook his head fiercely. Nena crinkled her nose at the harsh scent of aguardiente. “But Casimiro said there’s a group of them by the tree line,” he said. “About twelve. In chains. Just . . . waiting.”
“Those aren’t Yanquis,” Nena said.
They were weapons.
A plan began to fall into place in her head. With tormented vampires waiting to be unleashed, the people of Los Ojuelos were grotesquely outnumbered.
But without them?
They stood a chance.
“Beto, I need you to listen closely.” She pulled her sarape from around her shoulders and handed it to Javiera. She needed to be able to run unimpeded, and it was too heavy, too unwieldy. “I think . . . You know how your scar hurts when they are watching? I think because of that, they are able to understand us.”
Someone had lit candles in the house behind her. Light revealed when Beto’s brows raised toward his hairline in disbelief.
“I know it sounds crazy,” she said, bending to tighten the laces on her boots. “When one came up to the salt, I told it that I did not want to hurt it, but that if it did not leave, I would. And it left.”
He watched her as she moved quickly about the kitchen, a tempest of activity. Bullets were loaded into her pistol. Gunpowder spilled over the toes of her boots as she loaded the gun with shaking hands. She filled a small bag with salt and fastened it to her holster by its drawstrings. Finally, she took a knife from the wall and handed it to Beto.
“You need to look them in the eye when you say it, all right?” she said. “Well, where the eyes should be.”
Beto stared back at her, apprehension drawing his brows together. He had realized that she was leaving him to guard la casa mayor, and judging from the upward tilt of his chin in understanding, he was not happy about it.
“And where do you think you’re going?” he accused.
“Trust me,” she said. “Be careful. And if you ever see Néstor again . . .” She steeled herself. “Tell him I love him.”
Beto’s eyes widened; his mouth dropped open. He held out his hands, as if to say whoa and steady a spooked horse and keep it from bolting. To keep her from bolting.
“No,” he said flatly. “No way, kid. If it’s that dangerous, you should stay, and I—”
She turned on her heel and leaped over the line of salt. She set her sights on the tree line and ran.
31
NENA
NENA PEELED THROUGH the night, Néstor’s gun bouncing in its holster against her hip with each step. For a moment, she heard nothing but her own harsh breathing. The song of crickets thickening the night.