His dark eyes sparkled with disapproval. “How am I supposed to keep you in clothes?” he asked as he touched her arm.
Her blouse hung upon her in shreds. Her trousers were little better. She regarded him for a long moment, then put her finger through a rent in his shirt.
“I could ask the same of you, Ramon,” she said with a hint of sarcasm. “This looks very much like a bullet hole.”
Ramon Estrada grabbed her in both hands with a grip so tight he hurt her shoulders. His gaze burned into her, and despite herself, Elena knew a moment of shock and fear. Her heart quickened. Then her own gaze narrowed, and she knocked Ramon’s hands away. She pushed him back and clenched her fists.
“I don’t like to be manhandled, Ramon Estrada!” she hissed. “I don’t care how angry you are with me!”
Ramon squeezed his eyes shut and slowly shook his head. “I’m not angry with you, Elena,” he answered in a quiet voice. “I don’t approve of your nightly hunts, but I understand...”
“Don’t patronize me!” she shouted, interrupting him. She shook a fist under his nose, then recoiled as she noted the blood that covered her skin—not her own, but that of the creature she had just killed. Even in the dark barn, she could see the rich red blood, feel the stickiness of it between her fingers, smell its maddening odor.
Elena glared at Ramon. Suddenly, his heartbeat was loud in her ears. She could hear the blood rushing in his veins, feel the heat of it. He smelled rich, sweet. For an instant, he was not the man she loved at all. He was just—food.
Her skin began to tingle and burn, sensations that marked the beginning of her transformation. And she wanted it! She wanted it!
Horrified by her own thoughts, Elena dropped to her knees. She stared at her bloody hands, and began to tear the ribbons of cloth, stained with Pedro’s blood, from her arms.
“My God!” she muttered. “What’s happening to me, Ramon? What have I become?”
It was a momentary lapse. She got quickly to her feet before Ramon could answer. Elena Sanchez y Vega was not a woman to cower. She was in control of herself again.
Nevertheless, she stepped away from Ramon, no longer trusting herself to be near him, and away from the moonlight that spilled through the barn door.
“I’m leaving, Ramon,” she announced in an icy voice. “I can’t stay with you anymore.”
“Shut up, Elena,” Ramon shot back.
Her mind churned. She was a monster, a killer. No matter how she tried to control her transformations, sooner or later, they would control her. Her thoughts flashed to her little brother, who was asleep in the main house. She didn’t dare to keep him near her, either.
“I’ll make arrangements to send Alejandro to Barcelona. To a school, perhaps.”
Ramon grabbed her again and shook her. “Shut up!” he ordered. “Stop it!”
His eyes bore into her with passion and anger. This time, when she tried to knock his hands away, he held on, flung his arms around her and drew her tight against him. Unexpectedly, his mouth came down upon hers.
She tried to protest. “Ramon! Listen!”
But he didn’t. Ramon swept her up in his arms, carried to her a stack of fresh hay and knelt down gently with her. His movements were tender, but determined. As he kissed her face and throat and breasts, he tore away the shreds of her garments.
Elena stopped fighting. Her skin burned again, but with a welcome and exciting heat. Finally, with a deep sigh, she pulled Ramon down on top of her and began tearing at his clothing. Turnabout was fair play, after all, and she savored the feel of his naked, muscled flesh.
~o0o~
Dawn found them still in the haystack, slumbering in each other’s arms. When a warm shaft of light speared down through the upper loft door and touched Elena’s face, she snuggled closer into Ramon’s arm. The songs of barn swallows disturbed her only slightly. Still, she clung to delicious sleep.
But when a deeper shadow fell across her eyes, she rubbed her nose, untangled herself from Ramon, and sat up. Then she shrieked. Her twelve-year old brother stood over them, his face pale, his mouth wide-open.
“Alejandro!”
Ramon Estrada shot awake and grabbed for his sword. Then, recognizing the unexpected invader, he reached, instead, for his cloak. With awkward haste, he spread the silken garment over Elena’s body and his own. In her embarrassment, however, Elena ripped it from his hands and wrapped herself, leaving Ramon scrambling with a handful of strategically placed straw.
“Thank you for sharing!” he grumbled as he covered himself in the scratchy stuff.
“I could say the same to you!” Elena shot back. She looked to her brother. “Alejandro! Go back in the house this instant!”
The blond-haired boy stood as if paralyzed, his eyes still wide, jaw still agape.
“Go!” Elena ordered.
Alejandro licked his lips, then spun and ran out of the barn.
Elena sighed. “I think it’s time for you to have a talk with him.”
Ramon gave her a quizzical look and seemed about to protest. Instead, he pushed her back and snatched away the cloak.
“Later,” he whispered. “I’m hungry again, and you look like breakfast.” He rolled on top of her.
“Funny you should say that,” she answered as he nibbled her throat. “For a moment last night, you looked like dinner.”
They made speedy love, then sprang up and brushed away the pieces of hay that covered them both. Ramon grinned as he slipped into his trousers and boots. Elena wrapped herself once again in her lover’s cloak. Together, they exited the barn, hurried across the lawn like youngsters sneaking home in the morning, and entered the ranch house through a side door to Ramon’s bedroom.
“I must bathe,” Elena said as she plucked another piece of hay from her hair. “Ramon, can you see to Alejandro and get his breakfast, please?”
Ramon pursed his lips tightly and nodded as he unwrapped her again. “We’re a family now, Elena,” he said, suddenly serious. “Don’t forget that.”
She kissed him, then tossed him a shirt from the closet. He slipped it over his head and adjusted the laces at his neck, played with the buttons on his sleeves and left the shirttails untucked. All the while, he watched her. Finally, mindful of the boy, he turned to leave.
She stopped him, calling his name in a low voice. “It’s over now, Ramon,” she said. “Pedro was the last. I don’t have to hunt anymore, and they will never come after us.”
Ramon answered with a grim nod. Pontevedra’s citizens would not unlock their doors at night, nor unshutter their windows. Not for a long time. There had been too many killings, too many rumors of werewolves and ghosts, too many men like the sorcerer, Cortez. The tales and legends of haunted Galicia were no longer just tales to the townspeople, whose lives had been marked with terror, and he shared some blame for that.
He remembered his encounter with the pair of coaches. He’d not yet told Elena about them. Right now, however, it was time to think of Alejandro. In a very short time, the boy had become like a son to him. Alejandro and Elena mattered to him in a way that nobody had mattered in a very long time.
“I’ll make breakfast for all of us,” he said, “but hurry.”
Alejandro was not in his room, nor anywhere to be seen. Ramon thought little of that. They lived on a ranch, after all. The boy had chores and performed them without complaint. He kept his own secrets, too, and secret places, like all boys. Alejandro would come when breakfast was ready, consume everything put before him, and then vanish again to ride his pony or swim in the nearby lake.
Ramon prepared a simple breakfast of toast and apricot jam, cheese, coffee and milk, and as he set them on the dining room table, he smiled at the sound of approaching footsteps. But it was not Alejandro.
Looking fresh in clean trousers and a white blouse with her wet hair tied back, Elena swept through the doorway. She wore a ruby pendant around her throat now, and the jewel glimmered in the light. The stone was special—i
t allowed her complete control over her transformations, even during the full moon. She wore it now like a promise to him.
“You’re going to make some lucky woman a wonderful husband,” she said as she noted the table.
Ramon held her chair for her. “What is the size of your dowry?” he teased. “I cannot be had cheaply.” He cast a glance around as Elena reached for her coffee. “Now where is that boy? Alejandro!”
Alejandro didn’t answer. Ramon frowned, and Elena set her coffee aside, untasted. It wasn’t like the boy to avoid breakfast. Had the encounter in the barn upset him so much?
Elena pushed back her chair and rose. “I didn’t propose,” she said, continuing the banter, but there was a note of worry in her voice. “Let’s look for him together.”
They moved through the ranch house and out into the yard. “I’ll check the barn,” Ramon said. “Perhaps he’s gone riding.”
He walked briskly away and checked the stalls. Alejandro’s pony was still there. The hayloft was empty.
Elena came into the barn, her manner agitated. “He’s nowhere in the house. I looked in every room.”
“We’ll find him,” Ramon answered. He knew the reason for Elena’s worry. “Cortez is dead, Elena. He can’t harm the boy, or anyone.”
Elena bit her lip, and her body stiffened. “There were two coaches on the road last night,” she said. Then a new look came over her face, and she touched his chest. “The bullet hole.”
She was an observant woman. “I encountered them,” he answered. “The driver took a shot at me. He’ll never use that hand again.”
“There was something...strange about them. I sensed it at the time, but Pedro attacked me and I had my hands full. What are these people doing here, Ramon? Who are they?”
Alejandro came suddenly through the door and glared at them as he put his hands on his hips. “Are you two in here again? What does a man have to do to get fed?”
Elena clapped a hand to her breast and sighed with relief. “Oh, so you’re a man now?” She started toward her brother. “I’ll feed you! Get inside, and I’ll beat you with a loaf of bread!”
Ramon sighed also as he watched them cross the yard. It gladdened his heart that the boy was all right, and he chided himself for dark thoughts. The morning had started well. Very well, indeed. Yet, one small incident had changed everything, leaving him with an inexplicable sense of foreboding.
~o0o~
All day long, Elena kept watch. Inside the house, she stayed near the windows. When she was outside, she scanned the horizons. She tried to conceal her edginess with light-hearted banter and easy laughter, by making special lunches and favorite dinners. But when Alejandro asked to ride his pony, she said no.
When the sun went down, they gathered in the parlor. She huddled with Alejandro over a game of chess and quietly discussed opening moves and strategies while she watched out the window. Ramon took a well-worn Bible from a shelf and curled up in a large chair by a lantern. Elena watched as he turned the pages.
He seemed to be studying the same passages over and over. “What are you reading?” she asked between chess moves.
“Genesis,” he answered. He looked up and stared past her through the window with a strange, faraway look in his eyes.
“Again?” She couldn’t hide a small frown. He often sat reading those same pages without ever explaining why. When she asked, he would say nothing. She found his silence irritating. After awhile, she let Alejandro win and suggested bed for all of them.
Even in Ramon’s arms, she found little rest. When she slept at all, she dreamed of hunting. Mostly, she tossed and turned and tried not to wake her lover. Sometimes, she reached toward the bedside table and felt for her ruby pendant. She didn’t need the talisman—the moon was not yet full. Still, it reassured her.
A soft knock sounded at the bedroom door. Elena and Ramon sat up at the same time as Alejandro stepped over the threshold with a finger to his lips.
“There are people outside,” he whispered. “Strangers.”
Elena sniffed. “Go back to your room, Alejandro, and wait.” Ramon was on his feet, reaching for his clothes and the sword he always kept close, but she was not so eager for her little brother to see her naked again. When Alejandro departed, she sprang up.
“At least six,” she told her lover as she snatched up garments of her own. “I can hear their horses. Two in the barn, and the others around the house.”
“Leave them to me,” he said darkly.
She reached for her boots. “Why should you have all the fun?” But before she had the first boot on, she glanced toward the night table.
Her ruby began to glow, to burn with a red heat that seared a mark into the polished antique wood. Elena grabbed for it, but the heat stung her fingers, and she snatched her hand away. The talisman was her most precious possession!
Alejandro ran back into the room. He’d dressed himself and carried the slingshot Ramon had made for him. “They set fire to the barn!”
Elena sniffed the air with her sharpened senses. “Díos! Not just the barn! The house is on fire! Ramon, get my brother out!”
Sword in hand, Ramon grabbed Alejandro’s arm and steered the boy from the bedroom. Elena leaped to the window, tore away the curtain, and stared outward.
Red flames licked the walls of the barn, danced over its roof. Her horse, Ramon’s, and Alejandro’s pony raced out through the gaping doors, followed by a pair of sorrel mares. The panicked animals fled into the night.
An angry curse escaped her lips. New flames flickered on the other side of the glass. Ignoring the increasing heat and the danger, she lingered at the window. A line of riders galloped toward a hill in the distance. A black coach waited at the summit. Even in the night, she could see it.
Elena knew enough. Rolling across the bed, she snatched her ruby pendant. She would not leave it behind, though it burned her hand. A drawer in the night table contained her pistol. She took that, too, and raced from the room.
Smoke snaked through the hallway. Flames licked under the door to Alejandro’s room. The parlor was already an inferno.
For the first time, Elena’s animal senses played against her. She felt a rising panic, an instinctual fear of fire. She fought it, though, and dashed into the kitchen. Fire burned outside that window, too, and the glass shattered from the heat before she could react. Still, there was a door. Elena jerked it open and dived through a veil of flame.
She hit the ground rolling. “Ramon!” she called, as she scrambled up. “Alejandro!”
Ramon and her brother were nowhere to be seen, but a pair of riders charged from around a corner of the burning house straight for her. Elena brought her pistol up, too late. The weapon discharged, but the shot went wide as her assailants caught her arms, snatched her into the air, and carried her toward the coach on the hillside.
~o0o~
Ramon and Alejandro dashed around the side of the house, just in time to see Elena borne away. Ramon aimed his pistol and fired, but if the bullet found its mark, neither rider reacted. The boy would have given chase, but Ramon stopped him. They could never hope to catch the riders on foot.
Something red glimmered on the ground in the light of the flames. Ramon Estrada bent and snatched up Elena’s ruby talisman. Curling his fingers tightly around the arcane jewel, he stared in the direction the riders had gone.
“Go to the lake, Alejandro,” he told the boy through clenched teeth, “to the place where we fish. Wait for me there until I come for you.”
Tears shone on the boy’s cheeks as he looked up at Ramon, but he hesitated only long enough to pick up a stone for his slingshot before he sped away.
For a long moment, Ramon stared at the inferno that his house had become. He had lived here for a long time, but only recently had it become a home.
He gazed toward the distant hilltop and sensed, as much as saw, the movement of the coach as it rolled away. Whoever they were, they had come specifically for Elena. They would reg
ret that.
He considered the talisman he held. The ruby had felt warm at first, but was beginning to cool. He slipped it into his pocket and went in search of his horse. Along the way, he would find a hollow tree, as well, a hiding spot where he kept another set of clothes.
He glanced toward the moon as it climbed toward zenith. Before it got much higher, the Highwayman would ride again.
~o0o~
Even in the night, the tracks of the heavy coach were easy to follow. Ramon Estrada rode across the hills, down into a valley where a narrow path led to the Pontevedra road. By the time he reached it, he suspected where the tracks would lead.
The streets of the town were deserted. Here and there, the light of a lantern glimmered through window shutters, indicating that someone remained awake. Even the tavernas were closed and locked tight. The hoofbeats of his horse seemed to echo among the buildings. A dog growled from an alleyway. A cat dashed across his path. Otherwise, all was quiet. A hush hung over the town like a pall.
Still, he remained alert, his masked gaze sweeping from side to side. Down every street he rode, down every alley, past the commercial liveries and stables, wherever a coach might be hidden. When he reached the far side of town, he stopped, turned his horse in a slow circle, and studied the moonlit road. He spied fresh tracks again in the soft dust.
A cold anger filled the highwayman as he steered his mount in the direction of those tracks. Elena’s captors were a bold lot. They had ridden right through the middle of town. He wondered—not for the first time—why he was not following a trail of blood.
Why had Elena not transformed and freed herself?
Ramon Estrada rode southward, contemplating the answers with a grim expression. When the tracks abruptly disappeared, he dismounted. At first, he thought it some trick of the moonlight, but the marks of the heavy wheels and its mounted escort simply ended as if the caravan had vanished.
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