She saw almost human bodies, moving in animal ways—they were bent over, using their shorter arms to slap upon the ground and pull themselves forward. Their heads were up and their eyes were red and glowing even in the bright sunlight. Their mouths were full of teeth that were narrow and sharp, bent at all sorts of angles that crossed each other. Their faces were pulled into snarling, inhuman grimaces.
The sound they made as they loped toward the three of them was an awful bass rumbling growl.
Even though the creatures were moving fast, Octavia still had time to lift the gun and aim it.
She realized from the way they were changing their lope to a shortened stride that the creatures were going to leap. “Remmy, take the one on the right,” she said, using the same clear, unhurried tone he had.
“Yes, ma’am.”
As the creature on the left leapt off the ground, its hands out to grab her, she took a half-step forward and to the side, to meet it when it was at the apex of the leap and would have no ground beneath it to push off against. She reached with her left hand and the throat slammed into the crux of her thumb and fingers. She absorbed the impact, only mildly surprised her elbow had not bent and given way.
The creature was still in mid-air, gravity not yet pulling it down. She raised the gun, put it against the thing’s temple and pulled the trigger.
The creature was slammed sideways by the impact and the force of the shot threw the gun back, too. That was a good thing. She wanted the gun to go there. She had been expecting it to kick that much. Now it was flung out to her right, all she had to do was pivot on her heel.
She turned, as the second creature that she had left for Remmy was dropping to the ground, Remmy’s hands around its throat. She let the heavy gun follow it down to the rocky ground, the barrel coming to rest almost naturally against the back of its head.
She pulled the trigger and both the gun and the creature jumped.
Octavia let the gun raise her arm up into the air, keeping a grip on the butt so it didn’t go flying.
Suddenly, she could hear everything. She could smell gun smoke and the thick black evil smelling blood pouring from the still creatures. Remmy was breathing hard.
Ángel edged in between them. “They’re not behind us at all,” he said urgently. “They’re all around us. We’ve walked in among them.”
“They are spreading across the land like shadows on a cloudy day,” Remmy said. “There is nowhere we can go where they are not already gathered. We just have to find a way through them, that is all.”
He pushed at the creature at his feet with his boot. “Do you still not believe?” he asked them.
“I don’t believe how
fast
Octavia moved,” Ángel said, looking at her. “That wasn’t natural.”
“No, indeed,” Remmy said quietly.
Octavia held the gun out to Ángel, her hand shaking. “Take it,” she said quickly.
When he took it, she moved three steps away, bent over and vomited. They could see her clearly. There was nowhere on this blasted, open landscape where she could be in private.
Each time she thought she had finished, her stomach would roil again and more would come up. She couldn’t get the sight of the crooked teeth out of her head. She couldn’t stop hearing the sound they had made. Even now, she could smell the foul stench of them and that made her stomach clamp, too.
Remmy helped her stand up straight when she was finally done. He used the corner of his shirt to wipe her forehead and all she could focus on was the pale, flat plain of his stomach that was revealed by the half-open shirt. Her hands twitched to stroke the flesh. Even now, in this desperate moment, the bonding was playing with her.
“A crying woman does all sorts of things to my innards, my darling beauty,” Remmy said gently and blotted her cheeks. “It’s done now,” he added, “and we must be away from here.”
Ángel took her arm. It was a soft grip, meant to comfort, not lead. “Let’s get away from the stink,” he said. “You’ll feel better then.”
Octavia sniffed and nodded. “Yes. God, yes. Anywhere away from here.” She glanced at the bodies once more and stumbled away from them.
“If I remember this area properly, there’s a cave in the base of that bluff, at the end of a short crevasse,” Remmy said, pointing ahead at a shadow on the face of the bluff. “The rattlers like it, which keeps humans away. We can clear them out easily enough and be safe until sunset.”
“How often have you been here?” Ángel asked. “Because you’re right, there is a cave up there.”
“I was here in 1884,” Remmy said. “When the border was being formalized.”
Octavia stared at him. He remembered even after a century had passed?
Remmy gave them a self-conscious smile. “We do not forget anything.” Then his smile faded. “Alas…” he added.
After the vampeen attack, Octavia no longer wondered if any of the supernatural stuff was really true. She had been handed her proof in a physical and irrefutable way. Oddly, that made it easier to adjust to the new and crazy tilt to the world she was now in. The vampeen were real and they were killable. That meant everything else was real. If it was real, then it would have rules and natural laws, even if she didn’t know what those rules and laws were, yet. She would be able to learn them and that would make everything understandable, like why Remmy could move about in daylight.
Everything in life became manageable once she had learned everything she could about it. She had even learned how to cope with the fact of Mandy’s horrible life and death once she had discovered the truth of what had happened.
The Grimoré, too, could be adjusted to.
Snakes didn’t bother her the way they unsettled many people, although she had a healthy respect for rattlers and the speed they could move. She and Ángel stood outside the cave while Remmy went in to find what rattlers were there and bring them out. He emerged with a double fistful of snakes, three in each big hand. They hung like inert rope, not moving, not trying to coil back and bite him.
“The cave is clear now,” he said and tossed the snakes nearly twenty yards away, where they snapped into hissing s-shapes and writhed away. “There may be more of them in the far back reaches. They won’t bother us if we stay in the front part.”
Ángel swallowed. His eyes were big.
“Snakes don’t like my kind,” Remmy told him, with a small smile. “Most creatures do not. They tend to hunker down and wait for us to pass by. Those won’t dare return to the cave until we have left.” He nodded toward the six he had tossed.
“Suits me,” Octavia said. “I just want to sit down for a while.” She headed for the narrow fissure that was the entrance to the cave.
It took Ángel longer to step inside and even then, his gaze kept darting around the cool, shadowed interior.
They settled down on the hard, flat rock. Octavia put her back against the rough wall, protected by the denim jacket. She was too tired to care that the wall wasn’t a pillow. After a while, she closed her eyes. She wasn’t hungry enough to stay awake, either.
* * * * *
Ángel sat cross-legged in the middle of the cavern, watching dust float in a narrow shaft of sunlight pushing through a crevasse in the wall. The light shone on the rocky floor, showing ochre stone worn almost smooth from centuries of animals passing over it.
Octavia was already asleep and he envied her. They had both been up all night and tiredness was making his bones ache.
Only, he didn’t think it was just tiredness gnawing at him.
“You can feel them, can’t you?” Remmy said, lowering himself down to sit next to Ángel. He didn’t cross his legs. Instead, he thrust both legs out in front of him and leaned back on his arms. “It’s eating at you. Clawing at your mind.”
Ángel sighed. “There is much to think about.” He nodded toward Octavia. “The way she handled the gun. Taking them down. I thought I was to be the hunter.”
“You are,” Remmy said easily. “You are developing all the senses. Heightened hearing, improved vision, faster reactions…and your animal instincts are growing. That is why you are restless.”
“I thought it was the snakes making me twitch,” Ángel confessed.
“Them, too. I suspect you could pluck one from the ground and wring its neck before it did much more than raise its head. Your reactions are speeding up. Hers, too.”
“Then Octavia is to be a hunter as well?”
“Octavia is to be something else altogether. A fighter, I am guessing.” He was studying her. “She took flawless advantage of every element, without thinking about it. She used the weight of the gun to move it into place. She used the inertia of the vampeen against them. Economy of movement, anticipation, use of externals…it was perfect.”
“You sound as though you’ve done more than your share of fighting, too,” Ángel said.
“I have, alas. Evil is universal.” Remmy’s hand rested on Ángel’s shoulder. “Your family is but a tiny outreach of a blight upon the whole world and beyond it, too.”
Ángel sighed. “I think we should stop calling them my family.”
“What should we call them, then?”
“Whatever you like. The Garcia cartel. The enemy.”
Remmy’s hand dropped from his shoulder. “I would offer my condolences, except I know you separated yourself from them many years ago.”
“I stopped being my father’s son the day I learned that he killed my mother because she wanted to move to America.” Ángel shrugged. “It’s over and done with,” he said flatly. “I found the exit. Now it’s time to move on.”
“I begin to see why you accepted the idea of the trinity so readily.”
Ángel looked at him. Remmy was sitting opposite him and it was easy to see his face. The cave was not dark, not with the shaft of sunlight and daylight spilling in from the opening. It was filled with hues of red and yellow from the rocks under them and around them. So now he could read Remmy’s face. “That wasn’t all of it,” he said.
Remmy nodded. His gaze was thoughtful. “The Commerce dinner, two years ago.”
Ángel felt his middle jump. The Commerce Association’s dinner was an annual event that his father had usually attended. This time, he’d sent Ángel. As it was a legitimate organization with honest intentions, Ángel had not minded the assignment the way Severo would have. Severo hated mixing socially with outsiders because it meant he had to dissemble and cover up his true nature. Worse, he had to watch his tongue the entire time lest he reveal too much about the real work of the Garcia family.
For Ángel, though, being among honest people was a chance to relax and speak freely. To be himself…almost.
The Commerce dinner was a grand affair that brought together most of the influential businessmen and their wives from across the state, in an evening of dinner and speech-making. The most critical component of the evening, though, was the networking and cocktails before the dinner started. As always, most of Mexico’s real business happened on a hand-shake and a promise, at events like this one.
For that reason, Enrico Garcia had sent his second son, who put a normal face upon family affairs.
* * * * *
Bear Dawson was there that night. Ángel saw him across the room, talking and laughing, his Spanish flawless and almost completely accent-free. Bear had been setting up a new branch of a bottled water franchise in Chihuahua. He seemed to understand the principals of bribery and favors that built most businesses and he had a circle of Mexicans listening to his low voice.
Ángel sipped his whiskey, using the drink as a way to hide his sudden distraction from the conversation happening in the circle he stood in.
What was it about the man that drew his attention? True, he was taller than just about everyone in the room. His white skin, blond hair and pale eyes stood out like beacons in a sea of black-haired and black-eyed people.
Until that moment Ángel would have said that his preferred type of people was purely nationalistic. Doe-eyed, dusky women and hot-blooded Hispanic men. They were the type of people he understood, like the woman standing at his side now, smiling at the jokes of the men in their circle. For a moment, Ángel could not remember her name.
The group around Bear Dawson broke up. At that point, Ángel didn’t know who he was or what his name was. He found out later, when the moment was gone. All he knew was that this stranger, this American, was pulling his attention in a way that was almost annoying. He couldn’t afford to be distracted by anything that wasn’t legitimate, normal and respectable tonight. He didn’t
want
to be distracted. He wanted to enjoy himself, untroubled by exotic demands.
Bear’s gaze met his.
Ángel knew then that the man had been aware of his attention all along. There was no surprise in his expression.
The moment when they looked at each other could only have lasted for the barest second or two, yet seemed to stretch out for hours.
There was knowledge in the man’s gaze. Knowledge and acceptance.
Ángel tore his gaze away, pummeling his attention back to the people around him, gripping his glass until the sharp bumps of crystal bit into his fingers. He couldn’t afford to have anyone notice his distraction.
He managed to keep his gaze upon the little circle he was in right up until supper was called, while his attention wandered just as his thoughts did. His body trembled.
He knew he had not misinterpreted the man’s glance and he was throbbing with the possibilities.
The woman’s hand on Ángel’s forearm kept him anchored where he was. She was the daughter of one of his father’s friends and he could not afford to offend her in any way because at the very least, his father would learn of the insult to his friend. Severo did not have a monopoly on cruel and unusual punishment. Their father was just as capable of dreaming up painful retribution for errors and mishaps.
Later that night, when she was beneath him and moaning her pleasure, Ángel let himself think of the blond man whose name he had finally discovered. Bear Dawson.
His thrusts deepened, his body quivering for release and his orgasm tore through him like a wild thing.
* * * * *