Torchlight illuminated the straw-haired Rinche: his hip was wet and dark. He could not rise. He was shouting, screaming at her; it was as incomprehensible to her as the shrieks of the vampires.
She scanned his body for keys. Found them at his waist, attached to a belt that went over his blue uniform. They were splattered with blood.
She set the knife and Néstor’s now-useless pistol down and crept toward the Rinche.
He writhed as she walked toward him, as she bent and reached for where the keys were attached to his belt. His pain was obvious, palpable.
She did this.
She, who wanted to become like Abuela, someone who healed wounds and did not cause them. She caused him this pain.
Nausea flashed up her throat. Her fingers faltered.
A flash of a hand; her head snapped backward. Pain shot up the back of her neck, searing her scalp.
“?Puta, tú!” the Rinche screamed in broken Spanish as he pulled her back by the hair. “?Puta!”
Quietly, barely audible above the man’s screaming that bludgeoned her skull, a voice in her mind calmly concluded that if she survived this, she wanted to cut off her damn hair.
Then she reached for the pouch of salt at her hip, tied next to her holster.
She seized a fistful and flung it in his eyes.
He released her hair, screaming anew as he pawed at his face.
Salt worked against all monsters, it seemed.
She seized the keys from his belt and then flung herself back from his reaching hands.
Her boot collided with the revolver, which had fallen to the grass when she shot him.
She picked it up, latched the safety, and put it in her holster. Then she retrieved the knife, shut her ears to the Rinche’s shouting. It would surely bring others running. She had only minutes.
She inhaled deeply to steady herself and turned to the vampires, her scar throbbing dully.
They watched her intently, still as only predators could be. The air buzzed with their interest, as if she were standing next to an agitated wasp nest.
Casimiro’s numbers were off: there were only six of them, but that alone was enough to ravage a rancho the size of Los Ojuelos. They shifted their weight from foot to foot as she walked toward them, her heartbeat thick in her throat. Their breathing was so much like that of horses: as they inhaled, their ribs popped out like the guts of an accordion.
They were starving. Their hunger would drive them to attack.
Would this work?
She had no choice but to try.
She approached one at the front of the group. This close, it looked remarkably like a bat. Its nostrils were long and slender and lined with delicate, petallike folds; its ears of paper-thin flesh were shot through with narrow purple veins.
Its skull had eye sockets; where eyes might be, thin gray skin, lined with delicate veins, stretched precariously over the hollows.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said.
Her scar pulsed with fresh pain. She inhaled sharply.
Was it listening? It had to be listening.
“If I let you go,” she said. “You leave.” She pointed at the tree line. “Leave my home.”
Her heart pounded against her throat, hard and fleshy and panicked to be so near the vampire. This could be the most foolhardy thing she had ever done. This could be suicide.
The vampire lowered its head. A hum reverberated through Nena’s chest, so strong she felt it drumming against her bones. So strong she could almost hear it.
Madre Santa, let that be a yes. Please let that be agreement.
Palms slick with sweat, she took the knife and crouched down to the monster’s ankles. She sawed through the ropes binding all four of its legs, then yanked the loose rope away.
She lurched backward, out of the range of its claws.
The vampire did not move to grab her. It simply watched.
It waited.
It waited for her to draw near again, watching as she shifted the metal circle of keys to her right hand and the knife to her left. Waited for her to fumble with clammy fingers for the correct key.
She stepped close and slid the key into the heavy metal padlock that locked the collar. Close enough to the vampire’s head that when its ear twitched, it brushed her cheek, soft as a moth’s wing.
She turned the key. The padlock slipped open.
Beneath the collar, the vampire’s pulse fluttered rapidly against its throat.
Was it afraid too?
She slid the padlock away from the collar. With a soft click, the collar came undone and fell on the monster’s shoulders. It was heavy; she would need both hands to remove it. Taking a steeling breath, she tossed the knife next to her feet, close enough that she could snatch it out of the grass if she needed it, and lifted the metal collar from the vampire’s neck.
She flung it aside. It fell to the ground with a resounding clank.
The vampire was still muzzled. It could run, it could bolt, but it waited.
It lowered its head before her as if it were bowing, low enough that it was level with her stomach.
The muzzle was fastened with a buckle on the back of its skull. This was what kept it from killing the Rinches who had brought it here. The thin, delicate skin of the beast’s head was scabbed and blackened; beneath the leather strap, open sores wept in the torchlight.
With gentle hands, she reached for the buckle.
Santa Madre, protect me, she prayed. If you know anything about these monsters, protect me. This was the moment she would learn if her plan would work or if she would never see another sunrise.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” she repeated. “Please, do not hurt me.”
Fingers trembling, she undid the buckle. Took a strap in each hand and lifted the muzzle off the vampire’s face.
She took a step back, muzzle in hand.
The vampire raised its head. Two fangs, long as a panther’s incisors, extended over its lower lip. These caught the torchlight, bright as silver, as it lifted its head and sniffed the air.
Then it turned its attention toward Nena.
For a long moment, nothing happened. Her heart pounded; her scar throbbed.
A series of high-pitched clicking noises came forth from the vampire’s skull, so sharp Nena wanted to cover her ears. The others raised their heads and echoed the first vampire’s call.
The first vampire shook out its shoulders, stepped around Nena, and took off at a gentle lope.
It turned toward the dark line of trees and vanished into the night.
It was gone.
And when she turned to look at the remaining five vampires, when she saw their agitation, the way they watched the tree line with expressions she thought might have been hopeful, she picked up her knife.
They would follow the first. She felt it in her gut.
She made quick work of releasing the next four. They were still and patient as she sawed rope and fumbled the keys, as she tossed collars and muzzles to the ground. One even gave her a gentle, almost affectionate shove of its shoulder before it loped away into the night.
The final vampire shifted its weight from foot to foot, making agitated clicking noises.
“I know, I know,” she muttered as she fumbled with the keys. Her palms were sore and blistering from sawing through thick rope with a swiftly dulling kitchen knife; her eyes strained in the low light, stinging from the gun smoke on the air and the dying torch. “Almost.”
She was so absorbed in her work that she did not hear footsteps approaching behind her. Not as she heaved the last collar off the vampire and tossed it to the side with aching arms.
Not as she reached up and fumbled with the buckle of the last muzzle.
This time, when the final vampire shook its head, at last free of the muzzle, something was different.
It retreated quickly, its movements sharp and aggressive. Fear spiked in the back of her head, where her spine met her skull, as the vampire rose onto its hind legs and flung its arms out wide.
Her knife. Where was her knife? She had grown lazy in tossing it aside; she had not thought to mark where it landed. She could not drop and paw around for it now, not when the vampire hissed and bared its too-many teeth.
She reached to her side for the salt. She fumbled on the drawstrings with shaking hands.
The vampire lifted one arm and brought it down in a long, fierce swipe.