Devotion Calls

by Caridad Piñeiro

  The color of his eyes had deepened to an intense dark green, like the shadows beneath a stand of pines. His lips were parted, his breath a little ragged from her caresses. As she covered the head of him, he was wet. Sticky. Losing control.

  He confirmed it when he reached down and took the condom from her. But she laid her hands on his, followed him as he rolled the condom into place, her hands stroking him through the latex, and after, guiding him to the center of her.

  They were eye to eye as she sat on the edge of the bed and he slipped the tip of his penis into her. Bracing her hands on his shoulders, she glanced downward to watch, to marvel at his slow entry into her body, stretching her almost to the point of pain with the thickness and length of him.

  She held her breath as he completed his possession.

  She gripped his shoulders tightly and he waited, as if aware that her body needed to learn the feel of him, needed to accept his intrusion into the most private of places.

  That delay was more intoxicating than she could have imagined. Their bodies trembled, reaching for something. The muscles of his shoulders tensed as he reined in his need. The tips of her breasts barely grazed the smooth wall of his chest.

  “Ricardo?”

  She didn’t even know what she was asking for, only that she had to say his name.

  “Sara,” he said with a thready breath. “This is…amazing.”

  It was. So much so that she didn’t want to move and risk losing the wondrous feeling that being joined with him created. But her body seemed to have a mind of its own, because within her, muscles moved against him, dragging a ragged gasp from him.

  Ricardo sucked in a breath, almost overwhelmed by what he was experiencing on so many levels. Emotionally. Physically. Spiritually. Some said there was such a thing as a soul mate, and in that moment of unity with her, he thought he understood just what was meant by that.

  There was a rightness in being with her. A peacefulness, coupled with a storm of emotion that was completely fulfilling.

  Did she sense it? he wondered as he cupped the side of her face. When she met his gaze, he thought he saw it there. The same emotion. The same sense of completeness.

  He risked a kiss, almost afraid that the moment might shatter by doing so, but if anything, her gentle and tentative response made it even better.

  He explored her lips and once again pleasured her breasts as he slowly moved his hips. His strokes were careful until she asked for more, with her hands and with the faint whisper of his name on her lips.

  Sara leaned back and took him with her. It deepened his penetration, and she raised her legs, cradled his hips as he pumped into her. She urged him on by tightening her hold on him with her hands and thighs, until the strength of his thrusts shifted her upward from the edge of the bed.

  She gasped and he stilled with apprehension, but she eased his concern. “No, por favor. I’m fine. More than fine.”

  His chuckle was followed by a groan, and she knew why. Just another push. Just one more…

  Her climax rushed over her and she rose up, her back bowing from the force of her release as it transferred to him. With a sharp cry, “Sara!” he stiffened and followed her into the throes of ecstasy.

  Chapter 15

  H e remained inside her, the length of him still hard and driven deep into her. Even now, moments after their climax, Sara found pleasure, comfort in the weight of him on her, the thickness of him in her.

  She brushed back his long hair, needing to see his face.

  She wasn’t prepared for what she discovered. Peace. Contentment. Desire, banked but waiting to be awoken again.

  “Can you stay the night?” he asked.

  Sara glanced upward, past his shoulder to the skylight above them. There had been little moonlight tonight, but the stars were out and bright, visible through the clean glass. She’d had little time to appreciate it, but could imagine lying with him beneath the star-sprinkled night, making love with him again as moonlight bathed their bodies.

  But not tonight, she realized sadly.

  “I’m sorry. But with mami…”

  “Lo comprendo,” he said, and he kissed her.

  Although he said he understood, she wasn’t sure that he did, mainly because she wasn’t sure she did. Yes, she felt concerned about being away from her mother too long, and the reality of work early in the morning. But there was something else, as well. Something she couldn’t quite define. Maybe fear—of Ricardo and how he made her need him. Of whether he would lie and hurt her.

  Not to mention Melissa’s fears for her, as if her friend knew that becoming involved with him might change her life, and not in a good way.

  “Sara?”

  Ricardo made no motion to stop her as she gathered her things. She was running, that much he knew. Even while he was still buried within her, he had sensed her withdrawing from him emotionally.

  But he understood and even considered that it was maybe for the best tonight. They had begun by wanting a night of enjoyment, but somewhere along the way it had become much more than that.

  And like her, he wasn’t quite sure he was ready to deal with it. Not with so many other things hanging unsettled between them. So many lies on his part.

  Having little time to consider it further, since she was dressed and ready to go, he said, “Give me a minute to get ready and I’ll walk you home.”

  Her polite nod brought an end to the wonder of their night.

  The creature had been looking forward to finishing off his feast—that lusciously fat and well-fed hound he had spotted the other morning. The woman who normally walked it had decided to just let it loose in the small alley for its nightly outing.

  Given the hound’s rotund shape and short squat legs, he had snared it quickly. He had bounded up to the roof where he sank his fangs deep into the sweet rolls of its neck, and tasted the richness of its blood. The dog had whimpered and kicked its short legs in protest, but its movements weren’t enough to dislodge it from his grasp. But he admired the hound’s fight, even if futile, and so he didn’t completely drain it.

  Some cultures, he recalled, believed one could acquire the spirit of conquered enemies by eating them. He understood it well, for the blood of an animal that had given him a good chase or fight pleased him more than that from the weak or willing.

  Because of that, he would let this hound linger for just a bit more, and savor the vigor in its blood later.

  In the meantime, he would slip by the human’s shop and see how he was reacting to their earlier brief encounter. The man had known that something was in the alley, but had he sensed it was him?

  With the hound’s limp body tucked under his arm, the creature bounded from rooftop to rooftop until it came to rest on the building of the shop. A dim light came from a skylight in the roof, beckoning him to move closer and look within. He crept to the edge of the skylight, careful to avoid being seen.

  When he did peer down, he saw them. Naked on the bed. Limbs entwined. Loving each other.

  The woman was beautiful, her breasts generous, with dark copper tips. As she rocked with the force of the man’s thrusts, her head was thrown back, her eyes closed against the pleasure she was experiencing.

  Her cries of passion drove him away from the skylight, a painful reminder of how long it had been since he’d had a woman. Since he had shared a bed with another human. Felt the warmth of a hand against his face. Felt a human breath spi
lling on his lips before a kiss.

  The hound beneath his arm, seemingly restored with his delay, kicked at him once more.

  He gazed down at the dog. At the two gaping holes in its neck and the blood smeared along its white fur.

  Nothing human had made those marks. Nothing human…At the realization, misgiving filled his heart, rent it apart as he saw all that he had lost and what he had become.

  What he no longer wanted to be.

  He fled to the next rooftop, and was preparing to leap to the adjacent building when the dog renewed its struggles in earnest. Angry at himself and at the humans for reminding him of all that was no longer his, the creature lost his appetite.

  He tossed the animal over the ledge. The meaty thud of its body hitting the ground reached his ears as he fled from the rooftop and the bitter reality of his lonely existence.

  Sara exited the shop and hadn’t even taken a step when she saw the animal lying on the ground near the next building. “Oh, no,” she cried, and raced over to the still body of Mrs. Lopez’s dog.

  Ricardo chased after her, kneeling beside her as she laid a hand on Lucy’s body. Beneath her fingers, the dog’s muscles quivered, and it whimpered in pain. In its neck were two deep puncture wounds, about a hand’s-length apart.

  “What did this?” She gazed up at Ricardo, but he didn’t answer. He brushed her hands aside and laid his own on the dog’s body. As it had before, the dog whined with pain, but then calmed.

  There was nothing to be seen as Ricardo touched the dog, nothing she could pinpoint, but that calm transferred itself to her. That feeling was followed by another so strong that she found herself backing away.

  She rose and stood a couple of feet from them, observing Ricardo as he knelt beside the dog. His body was still, and yet she experienced motion all around him. Energy.

  He moved his hands up the body, to the dog’s neck and the wounds there. The animal’s legs twitched a few times, as did its ears, but then quieted. Ricardo slowly and carefully grazed the dog’s body with his hands until the dog gave a shake of its head—a forceful movement she wouldn’t have thought it capable of moments earlier.

  Suddenly, the power she had perceived earlier vanished.

  Ricardo sat back on his heels and rested his hands on his thighs. She returned to him and knelt beside him and the dog. The animal was attempting to rise, but Ricardo issued a command.

  “Down, Lucy. Down, girl.”

  The dog complied, its breath rasping noisily in the night air, but with much greater strength than when they had first discovered its body. As Sara glanced at Ricardo, there was a pained expression on his face and his skin glistened with sweat.

  She laid a hand on his arm, worried for him. “Are you okay?”

  He nodded curtly. “I couldn’t let Lucy die. Not with Mr. Lopez—”

  She covered his mouth with her hand, understanding why he had done it. Poor Mrs. Lopez couldn’t lose her dog so soon after her husband’s death. What Sara didn’t understand was how he had done it, and why he couldn’t do the same for her mother.

  He seemed to recognize the questions in her gaze, but chose to answer only one of them. “Lucy’s life force is small compared to a human’s.”

  As if to avoid any further inquiries, he shifted into action, tearing off the light jacket he wore and wrapping Lucy within it. “We should get her home,” he said as he rose.

  Sara stood, as well, but was silent as they took the dog up the block to Mrs. Lopez’s building, which was around the corner from Sara’s home. Mrs. Lopez was surprised and then instantly worried. When she asked what had happened, Ricardo quickly offered up a lie.

  “We found her by the curb. We think she got hit by a car.”

  Sara didn’t care for the fact that he included her in the untruth, but couldn’t imagine telling the older woman that some demon bloodsucker had nearly killed her pet.

  Sara had no doubt about the bloodsucker part, she thought as they left Mrs. Lopez, and Ricardo walked her home. The injuries on the dog’s neck had clearly been puncture wounds.

  What she had doubt about was Ricardo and what he was. How he had healed an animal that was nearly dead just by laying his hands on it. As they stood at her door, she examined him.

  He seemed like an ordinary man, hesitant, expectant as he waited for her move. For some indication. But she was too confused by all that had happened that night. And afraid. Of the creature. Of him. Even of herself.

  “Will I see you tomorrow?” he asked.

  It wasn’t in her to be dishonest. Lifting her chin, she said, “Maybe.”

  With a sad nod of his head, he turned and walked away.

  Chapter 16

  B loodsucker and animal.

  After typing those words into the search engine, she looked at the first dozen or so hits and found a word with which she was vaguely familiar. Chupacabra.

  The stuff of legend and myth.

  Only nothing legendary or mythical had killed that cat and sucked on poor Lucy, Sara thought. Something real had done that, and as she skimmed the information on one Web site, she decided it merited more detailed research.

  She typed “chupacabra” into the search engine and pored over the various hits, trying to see if what she and Ricardo had experienced matched any of the assertions at the assorted Web pages.

  The first site purported a UFO theory that the animal was the result of some kind of alien experiment, or possibly one of their pets. It described the creature as being tailless, with a long nose and a strong sulfuric stench.

  Sara wrinkled her nose as she recalled the odor from last night—nothing sulfuric, just the smell of rot and decay.

  The notes also indicated that there had allegedly been thousands of sightings in places like Puerto Rico, Miami, Nicaragua, Chile and Mexico.

  New York seemed a far cry from those tropical climes, she thought, but continued reviewing the materials at all the sites, making a list of the assorted traits as she did so.

  Lizardlike. Gray-green skin. Quills down its back. Red eyes. Lots and lots of teeth. Makes two puncture wounds. Able to stand, like a kangaroo. Three to six feet tall.

  Except for the odor and the two puncture wounds, nothing else matched up. Especially not the orange feather, although there was comment after comment about quills, spikes and gray or green feathers. Which meant that maybe the feather the cops had found came from somewhere else.

  “I should start charging rent.” Melissa walked into her office, a rosy flush on her cheeks.

  Sara recognized that flush well. “The baby was down for a nap, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes, and you’re busy researching again.” She looked at the screen. “Please, tell me I am not seeing—”

  “Remember the thing taking the cats?”

  Her friend sat on the edge of the desk. “You think this chupa-whatever is doing it?”

  Sara swiveled around in the chair and faced Melissa. “Last night we found a dog near Ricardo’s shop. It was near death and had two puncture wounds on its neck.”

  The becoming blush fled from her friend’s face, replaced by a sickly pallor.

  “You okay?”

  Melissa dragged a hand through her hair, shook her head and cursed under her breath. “I warned you that you should reconsider getting involved, but from that hickey on your neck, I gather it’s even more impossible today than it was when we discussed it.”

  “Possibly
impossible. He’s…amazing. But also amazingly weird. He healed a nearly dead dog last night right before my eyes.”

  “Healed it? As in—”

  Sara copied what she had seen Ricardo do the night before. “He laid his hands on the beagle and stroked gently, soothing it. I felt an energy, strong enough that I had to back away, and then after a few minutes, he pulled his hands away and the dog was better.”

  Melissa rubbed her chin thoughtfully, as if considering what Sara had said. The silence surprised Sara.

  “No comment? Dr. Science and Logic is actually—”

  “Maybe he’s not a santero. Maybe he’s a psychic healer.”

  “Next you’ll say that a chupacabra can actually exist.”

  When her friend didn’t deny it, Sara felt something shift, like the foundation of a building crumbling. Melissa had always been dependable, predictable and stalwart. Logical and rational.

  Considering that chupacabras might exist? Never.

  “You’re serious about this demon being real?” she asked.

  With a shrug, her friend said, “I’m serious. If Samantha and Peter can’t help you, know that I’m here for you. No matter what you need.”

  Sara was starting to think that what she needed was to wake up, because this had to be a nightmare. So she closed her eyes, took a deep breath and told herself that it was just a bad dream. That when she opened her eyes, she would be in bed and it would be time to wake up and go to work.

  Only when she did so, Melissa was still there, gazing at her with concern. “Sometimes real life is scarier than the stuff of our dreams,” she said.

  Thinking back on the past few years of Melissa’s life and her own, she sadly realized her friend was right.

  Chupacabra. The name and images from the Web sites she had visited at lunch trailed her all the way home. As she stopped at the bodega for a few items, she passed two older women in the produce aisle. They were huddled together, whispering like conspirators.