On horseback, Rafael and Octavio galloped across the hill, chasing a dozen people, many of them old, before them. Diego and Esteban had dismounted and tied their horses some distance away, waiting on foot for the prey to come to them.
Ricardo watched, and time slowed.
It was as if he played the scene out in his mind while someone told him the story. Diego moved too fast to see when he stepped in front of the path of a young man, grabbed his arm with one hand and took hold of his hair with the other. The boy didn’t have time to scream. Diego held the body like a lover might, hand splayed across the boy’s chest, holding him in place, while pulling back his head, exposing his neck. He bit, then sank with the boy to the ground while he drank. The boy didn’t even thrash. He was like a stunned rabbit.
Each of the others chose prey and struck, plucking their chosen victims from the scattered, fleeing peasants. The creature lurking where Ricardo’s heart used to be sang and longed to reach out and grab a rabbit for itself. As he watched, the scene changed, and it was not the caballeros who moved quickly, but the villagers who moved slowly. Ricardo had felt like this once in a swordfight. His own skills had advanced to a point where he had some proficiency, his mind was focused, and he knew with what seemed like supernatural prescience what his opponent was going to do. He parried every attack with ease, as if he watched from outside himself.
This was the same.
It was not himself but the unholy monster within who stepped aside as a woman ran past him, then slipped into place behind her and took hold of her shoulders, moving like the shadow of a bird in flight across the land.
Jerked off her feet by his hold on her, she screamed and fell against him, thrashing, panicked, like an animal in a snare. He held her, embraced her against his body to still her, and touched her face. The coiled hunger within him gave him power. As he ran his finger down her cheek and closed his hand against her face, she quieted, stilled, went limp in his grasp. Her heartbeat slowed. He could take her, drink her easily, without struggle. This was better, wasn’t it? Would he have this power if this wasn’t what he was meant to do? She was young, almost a girl, her skin firm and unlined, lips full, her eyes bright. He could have her in all ways, strip her, lie with her, and he could make her want it, make her open to him in a way their Catholic religion would never allow, even in marriage. In the ghostly moonlight, she was beautiful, and she belonged to him. He laid her on the ground. She clutched his hand, and confusion showed in her eyes.
He couldn’t do it. He sat with her as though she were his ill sister, holding her hand, brushing damp hair from her young face. The creature inside him thrashed and begged to devour her. Ricardo felt the needle-sharp teeth inside his mouth. And he turned his gaze inward, shutting it all away.
I am not this creature. I am a child of God. Still, a child of God, like her. And the night is dangerous.
Quickly, he made her sit up. He laid his hand on her forehead and whispered, “Wake up. You must run.” She stared at him blankly, groggily. He slapped her cheek. She didn’t even flinch. “Wake up, please. You must wake up!”
Her gaze focused. At last she heard him. Perhaps she didn’t understand Spanish. But then, which of a dozen native dialects would she understand?
Fine, he thought. He didn’t need language to tell her to run. He bared his teeth—the sharp fangs ripe for feeding, wet with the saliva of hunger—and hissed at her. “Run!”
She gasped, scrambled to her feet, and ran across the hillside and into shadow.
Just in time. The world shifted, the action around him sped up and slowed as it needed to, and all appeared normal again. A still night lit by a waxing moon, quiet unto death.
The caballeros surrounded him. Ricardo could sense the blood on their breaths, and his belly rumbled with hunger. He bowed his head, content with the hunger, with the choice he had made.
They could probably smell on him the scent of resignation.
“Brother Ricardo,” Diego said. “Aren’t you hungry? Were the pickings not easy enough for you?”
“I’m not your brother,” Ricardo said.
Diego laughed, but nervously. “Don’t starve yourself to spite us,” he said.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Ricardo said. “I don’t starve myself for you.”
The four demons looked down on him, where he sat in the dust, content. They would kill him, and that was all right. The demon they had given him screeched and complained. Ricardo sat rigid, keeping it trapped, refusing to give it voice.
“You’re not strong enough to survive this,” Diego said. “You don’t have the will to refuse the call of our kind.”
At this, Ricardo looked at him with a hard gaze. Unbelievably, Diego took a step back.
“I was one of the hundred who returned to Mexico City with Coronado. Don’t tell me about my will.”
To his left, a branch snapped as Octavio broke a twisting limb off a nearby shrub. “Diego, I will finish him. Turning him was a mistake.”
“Yes,” Diego said. “But we didn’t know that.”
“We’ll leave him. Leave him here and let the sunlight take him,” said Rafael.
Diego watched him with the air of a man trying to solve a riddle. “The Master wants to keep him. The governor will listen to him, and he will keep us safe. He must live. Captain Ricardo de Avila, you must accept what you are, let the creature have its will.”
Ricardo smiled. “I am a loyal subject of Spain and a child of God who has been saddled with a particularly troublesome burden.”
Diego looked at Octavio. Ricardo was ready for them.
Together, the thing coiled inside him and his honor as a man of Spain rose up to defend if not his life, then his existence. Octavio made an inhuman leap that crossed the distance between them, faster than eye could see. The perception that made time and the world around Ricardo seem strange and move thickly, like melting wax, served him now. For all Octavio’s speed, Ricardo saw him and wasn’t there when his enemy struck.
He could learn to revel in this newfound power.
Ricardo longed for a sword in his hand, no matter that steel would do no good against these opponents. He would have to beat them with wood through the heart. Octavio held the torn branch, one end jagged like a dagger. The other three ranged around him, ready to cut off his escape, and a wave of dizziness blurred Ricardo’s vision for a moment. Despair and hunger. If he’d taken blood, he would have more power—maybe enough to fight them all. As it was, he could not fight all four of them. Not if they meant to kill him.
He ran. They reached for him, but with flight his only concern, he drew on that devilish power. Make me like shadow, he thought.
The world became a blur, and he was smoke traveling across it. Nothing but air, moving faster than wind. He felt their hands brush his doublet as he passed. But they did not catch hold of him.
He found a cave. Villagers might have hidden here once. Ricardo found the burned remains of a campfire, some scraps of food, and an old blanket that had been abandoned. The back of the cave was narrow and ran deep within the hillside. It would always be dark, and he could stay there, safe from sunlight.
But would they come after him?
They could not tolerate rivals. Animal, demon, or men fallen beyond the point of redemption, they had claimed this territory as their own. He had rebuffed their brotherhood, so now he was an invader. They would come for him.