Gently, he scooped her up. Carrying her like a child, he took her away from the danger of the rain-slick rocks.
The storm made it impossible to see, or perhaps that was her exhaustion, so she closed her eyes and let Ham carry her away.
***
Her third night on the barge, Sambethe stared out at the drowned world.
She held on tightly to the railing as the river pushed the large ship forward in ragged lurches. She couldn’t feel her fingers, and she shook from the chill of the water spraying her, but it didn’t occur to her to go below and change into dry clothing. She didn’t believe she deserved any such comforts.
She had failed. She hadn’t been strong enough to wield the power of the Black Rider, and her weakness led to the destruction of her village.
One thing that never changes about you people, said a small, still voice. You are so quick to assume that your point of view is the only one that’s correct.
Sambethe sighed. There was no other point of view. She’d had a job to do, but she hadn’t finished it.
Of course you did. What was it that your father had told you to do?
She whispered, “I was to make sure he had enough time to load the barge.”
And you did, Sambethe. You woke your parents and told them the river was flooding. They heeded you.
“They thought I had lost my mind,” she said bitterly. “They sent Ham to chase after me.”
And he discovered you on the ridge and saw you fall into the river, which had indeed begun to flood. He carried you home, and then his family and yours gathered all they could onto the market barge and sailed against the storm. He saved your life, Sambethe, and your warning saved your families.
“But not my village.”
But not your village.
She sighed again, and the wetness she felt against her cheeks wasn’t from the river. “Was I the Black Rider, or was that all in my mind?”
Does it matter?
She thought about it, and she decided that it didn’t. “Has the entire world drowned?”
No. You will find land soon.
Sambethe sniffed. “You are the sort that lives for a very long time,” she said. “Your ‘soon’ could very well mean my great-granddaughter’s time.”
A sound like the wind in the dunes, and then an amused reply. Clever Sabba. Here, then, is the answer: You will know when dry land approaches by the sign in the sky.
“Sabba,” called her mother, her voice booming over the roar of the water. “Come below before you catch your death of cold!”
Sambethe thought this was funny, as Death wasn’t one for catching, but she kept this truth to herself; she had no desire to see whether her mother had brought her sandals onto the barge.
***
On the seventh day, the sun finally burst through the clouds. And then Sambethe let out a joyous cry as she saw her promised sign, painted brightly in the sky.
Where the drowned world ended, a rainbow awaited.
The first time I became the beast I took two lives.
The second time, I took three more.
After that, I ran away from my home and cowered in the jungle killing animals and drinking their blood until the beast was sated. It took seven days. The animal blood kept me alive throughout the curse, even though all I wanted was to die.
I was nine years old that first time. Nine, when I killed five people.
I spent the next five years in seclusion, living in a hovel I constructed, learning to survive in the wet, miserable Puerto Rican jungles. I only saw one person during my self-imposed banishment: my brother. He alone had seen what I had become. He alone knew the truth.
And he helped me. Together, we prepared for the day when the beast would return and I would be tested yet again. He feared me, though. I could see it in his face when our eyes met—he wasn’t convinced I could control the beast. But I knew one thing for certain: I would die before I hurt another person.
One year to the day after the beast first appeared, I was taken again. And there was no more me, no more brother. No more control.
There was only blood.
***
Emily calls me during AP Calc.
I surreptitiously ignore the call with a tap of my thumb, keeping my eyes locked on Mr. Miller’s lecture. The vibrating stops after five seconds, but Michael, who sits beside me, grins coyly.
“What’s in your pocket?” he whispers.
“My vibrator,” I say and smile triumphantly as his mouth drops open. I whip my hand into the air.
“Yes?” Mr. Miller drones.
“I need the bathroom,” I say, already getting up. He waves me on and I shoot past him without grabbing the pass from the desk.
In the dank, freezing bathroom, I pull out my cell and am shocked at the caller I.D. Emily. My sister and I haven’t spoken in close to three years, not since I left Puerto Rico to come live with Jeff and Marie. If she’s calling me, something bad happened.
I hit redial and lean against the icy pink-tiled wall.
She answers on the first ring.
“Hola?” She’s speaking Spanish and it takes me a moment to switch gears. I haven’t spoken in my native language in some time.
“Hey,” I say. “You called?” I can’t keep my tone from sharpening.
“Eva,” she whispers. Her voice is thick, choked.
“What happened?” I ask. “I don’t have a lot of time. Spill it quick.”
“R-raphael is dead.”
Something cold slides through my veins, freezing me. I can barely get out the word, “What?” but I manage to make an inquisitive sound.
“Murdered,” she says. “Something killed him, Eva.” She’s crying hard.
I shake myself as I murmur to her, trying to calm her down. Her husband was murdered. He’s dead. It won’t stick in my head.
“Are they sure?” I ask. The police aren’t exactly the best in her tiny village. I hate to say it, but I don’t totally trust their judgment. Especially knowing what I know.
“His body was l-left in pieces,” she says, hoarse. “Nothing but bones.”
“Couldn’t it have been an animal attack? A coyote?” It’s happened before. The coyotes get lured into the village by the scent of the farm animals and some unlucky bastard gets eaten.
“It wasn’t like that,” Emily rasps. “This was … Eva, this was different. That’s why I’m calling you. This wasn’t normal.”
My body ices over again, but this time my mind turns sharp, muscles tensing in anticipation. “You’re sure?” It’s sick that I sound excited, but what can I say? I love this stuff.
“Yes. I need you to tell Marie and Jeff to come. They have to kill it.”
“Do you know what it is?”
“N … no.”
I suck in a long breath. I don’t want Marie and Jeff to take this case. They promised me a solo case months ago, but keep blowing me off whenever an opportunity comes up. They use school as an excuse because I can’t miss too much. But I know they don’t think I’m ready.
“Jeff and Marie are out of town,” I lie. “I’ll come.”
“Are you sure? You can do this alone?”
“Absolutely. I’ve done it a thousand times.” One of the great things about training with Jeff and Marie is they teach me to lie like a champ.
Emily breathes deep for a moment and then says, “Okay. Come, Eva. Come and kill whatever murdered my husband.”
***
I headed straight for the village, smelling the rich scent of human life, my mind set only on feeling it slide down my throat and thrum through my veins. I needed blood. I needed it and that was all that mattered.
But as the lights of a farm burst into view, I felt a sharp pain in my flank. I yelped, rolling across the field, stopping face-up. My breath coiled in a fog in front of my face, creating a haze across the stars.
A voice told me I had to stop. I was going to kill someone.
But I wanted to kill. I needed to kill.
A face appeared, blocking the sky.
“I’ll do whatever it takes to stop you,” said the boy. “You know I will.”
I growled, but the pain in my flank stopped me from attacking.
“We can kill the goats,” the boy said. “Kill them all if you have to. Just leave our family alone.”
I was confused. What family was he speaking of? To the beast, there was no family, no friends, no life beyond blood.
The boy left and I tried to stand again, only to feel the pain in my leg intensify until my vision went dark.
I quit struggling when I smelled the blood.
The boy returned, dragging something behind him. The knife in his hand was wet with blood, the body behind him leaking in a long river. He dropped the animal’s warm body beside my head and I consumed it, sucking the blood, taking everything but the bones.
More. I needed more.
“We have hundreds,” the boy said. “Stay quiet. I’ll bring you another.”
***
The next morning, I’m in Puerto Rico, back in the tiny house I grew up in—the house Emily now occupies with her baby. I wake before dawn, pumped to start my investigation. If I can pull this off, Jeff and Marie will have to let me start hunting with them after I graduate this year. No more excuses. If I do this, I’ll be a pro like them.
In the miniscule kitchen, I pocket the biggest knife Em’s got, since I wasn’t able to bring my weapons on the plane ride. I just hope the cleaver will be enough to get the job done. I turn to find Emily watching me, my nephew Isaac in her arms.
“Hey,” I say, striving for casual. No, I didn’t just swipe your kitchen knife, why do you ask?
She pins me with a shrewd look and sets Isaac down in a cradle by the only window in the house. “What do you need to know?”
“Everything,” I say and lean against the concrete countertop. “Specifically, the when and where.”
“It was two nights ago on the solstice. Raphael was working late.” She sucks in a deep breath. “But in the morning he still didn’t return so I went into town and told the police. It wasn’t more than an hour before they found his r-remains.”
“Okay,” I say slowly. “Where was he found? Exactly?”
“The Rodriguez’ farm. It’s the farthest from town.”
“Rodriguez,” I say, frowning. “Not Diego and Carlos?”
She nods.
“Yikes … do you think they … ” I cut off at Emily’s face. She’s flushing. Something was going on there. Definitely.
“We were having an affair,” she whispers as if reading my thoughts.
“Diego?” I half-choke. He and I went to school together. We kind of … loved each other once upon a time.
“Carlos,” she says, and I sag in relief. I don’t know why, but the thought of Em and Diego getting it on is more sickening than some demon picking Raphie’s meat off his bones.
“Did Raphie know about you and Carlos?” It’s awkward to be talking so intimately after not speaking for over two years. I can tell Em feels it too, because she won’t meet my eyes when I look at her.
“Yes,” she says, stony.
“So … do you think maybe Carlos, I don’t know … did something to get rid of him?”
“Carlos isn’t a suspect.”
“How do you know?”
“He’s dead.”
Lots of people turning up dead lately. I can’t keep the suspicion out of my voice when I ask, “Did Raphie have anything to do with that?”
She turns and looks at Isaac. “I can’t prove anything. But I think so.”
Interesting.
“Let me get this right,” I say. “Raphie killed Carlos because you were sleeping with him. And then Raphie shows up dead in front of the Rodriquez’ farm? Seems a little convenient, don’t you think?”
She nods. “But I know it wasn’t any of the Rodriguez’.”
“How?”
“The body had been … eaten. Alive.” Her eyes go dark and I can’t suppress a shiver. I only know of a few creatures that consume human flesh, and none of them are easy to kill. Especially with a kitchen cleaver. “No human could do something like that.”
“I guess not,” I say. “But why was Raphie at the Rodriguez farm then?
“I can’t say. But I know—know in my bones—that they have information they’re keeping quiet.”
I move around the counter and head for the door, grabbing an apple from a basket on the sofa as I go. “Sounds like I should start there, then. I’ll be back by dark, Ems.”
She turns and meets my eye, finally. “I know things have been bad between us,” she says. “But thank you … for coming to help me.”
I crack my teeth into the skin of the apple. “It’s what I do.”
***
I arrive at the farm twenty minutes later. My sister’s car is run-down and I don’t want to chance using the crappy old thing, so I hoof it, following a cruddy asphalt road until it morphs into dirt.
The Rodriquez’ place is exactly as I remember it. They grow fruits and vegetables in vast fields that fade into tropical jungles and raise livestock in pens behind the ramshackle barn.
The house is typical of any around here. Faded white-painted walls, a small window out front and a teeny porch where some old lady rocks on a chair, her eyes focused on a tangle of yarn balled in her lap.She looks up at me with muddy brown eyes as I stand in front of the door and greets me in Spanish, switching languages smoothly when I respond in English. Unlike Em, she doesn’t use Spanish as a weapon to remind me of everything I left.
“Is, uhm … Diego here?” I ask. My cheeks flush. I don’t know why I asked about him except that he seems a likely lead if I’m to believe Em’s story. Then again, maybe I just want to see him.
Her face shadows and she shakes her head. I swear I see fear in her eyes.
“Know where I can find him?” I ask.
She points silently to the field. I suppose that means he’s working, so I drop it.
“Do you remember me?” I ask, watching her sagging profile carefully.
“Eva,” the old lady rasps. “Diego never stopped mooning over you.”
My blush burns deeper. So much for professionalism.
“Carlos just uhm … passed didn’t he?” I ask.
She nods slowly.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “He was a sweet kid … from what I remember.”
“Your sister seemed to like him, anyway.” Bitterness now. So the old woman knew about the affair. I wonder how many others knew—it could widen the suspect pool considerably.
“We both did,” I say.
“Didn’t see you at the funeral, though,” she grumbles. Her eyes, though thick with cataracts, pierce through me. “Your sister didn’t show neither. Not that she’d have been welcome.”
“I’d have gone if I’d known about it,” I lie smoothly. “My sister didn’t call me until yesterday, after her husband was murdered.” I search her face for tells, but if the old lady knows anything, she hides it well.
“And you’re just now stopping by to pay your respects? Two years, and you’d think a sister would visit sooner.”
Now I’m frowning. “Wait … Carlos died two years ago?”
“Just about. It was July of last year.”
I’m violently annoyed that Emily didn’t mention this huge gap in Carlos’ and her husband’s murders. It’s kind of vital. If the Rodriguez family was responsible in some way for Raphie’s death it seems like they would have struck a little sooner.
So Carlos was killed a year and a half after I left Puerto Rico. I was sixteen, and Em had only been married to Raphie for maybe a year (and already cheating). Carlos had to have been around nineteen years old. So freaking young … and Diego … my chest constricts. First me. Then his brother.
I am total scum. I never even called him.
“How did Carlos die?” I ask to distract myself.
“Suicide,” she barks, as though the word is a slap.
“Bullet?” I ask. A bullet wound could have been easily staged.
“Wrists,” she says quietly. “No blood left in him at all … not a drop. And he’d been moved, cause the house wasn’t bloody where they found him.”
Freaky.
“But Carlos wasn’t violent,” she says. “He’d never kill himself.”
“So you think … he was murdered?”
She nods.
“And I take it you think Raphie did it.” She hates him, obviously, so it’s not a stretch to imagine. And with Raphie dead, there’s no risk of compromising him anymore.
She shakes her head, though.
“No man could take blood the way Carlos’ was taken,” she says. Her voice is haunted, giving me chills.
“What do you mean? You said he slit his wrists.”
She turns on me. “Not one drop left.”
My chest goes cold. Looks like I’m getting somewhere, finally.
“What did it, then?” I ask, low.
“The chupacabra.”
I stare.
And stare.
I can’t stop my lips from splitting in a grin. This old bat is screwing with me. The chupacabra is a stupid myth about a half-coyote, half-dragon that sucks goats dry and leaves their bones. It’s a bedtime story used to scare little kids. I grew up listening to my dad whisper about the chupacabra in the darkness as I attempted sleep, heard my own grandmother tell “true” stories around the dinner table.
For years, I was terrified of this thing, fully believing it was out there, feeding on livestock. Glowing eyes. Scaled body. The whole shebang. I even went so far as to ask Marie if it was real when I discovered the truth about their world.
She laughed in my face.
So, yeah. As much as I want to believe in the chupacabra, I’m not going to be stupid. Marie tells me it’s fake? I believe her.
Now, do I believe someone staged Raphie’s death to look like the chupacabra’s work? Sure. I’ll buy that. But how annoying is that, because I really wanted Jeff and Marie to be proud of me for once. To trust me to hunt on my own.
Very Superstitious Page 4
