Vampires were real.
Her friend Melissa was somehow mixed up in their undead world, she thought, recalling their conversation of the other day.
A chupacabra thought it could be human again.
And her lover was not what she had thought.
“I have to go,” she said, and raced out the door.
Weariness settled into Ricardo’s bones as he watched her rush out. He was too physically drained to follow her, too emotionally drained to call out to her.
Sensing that, Samantha laid her hand on his arm in comfort. But her undead force pulled at his, and he shifted away. “Please. I just need to rest.”
Diana approached and settled on the coffee table before him. “You said that the chupacabra wants you to cure it. How do you know?”
He didn’t expect either Peter or Diana to understand, being human and all. Or, in Diana’s case, at least part human. But Samantha and Ryder would. “Every creature has a force and some creatures—or humans like me—can sense those forces. Even control them for their own purposes. Take them if they want.”
Diana shot a glance at Ryder. “So this creature tapped into your power and along the way—”
“It got into my head, as well. There was a maelstrom of images and emotions. Most of them not good, but one thing was clear—this thing used to be human.”
“And wants to be human again,” Peter added, as he joined the group, sitting on the arm of the sofa near Samantha. “So how do we tell it that being human again isn’t possible?”
Ricardo couldn’t imagine connecting with it again. He didn’t want to run into it in another alley or anywhere else. And unlike his vampire friends, who somehow managed to maintain their humanity, he got the sense the chupacabra wouldn’t be as amenable to restrictions on its actions.
Diana came up with a plan. “We need to trap it. To make sure it can’t get to Ricardo again.” She glanced up at Ryder. “Did you see where it went?”
“We tracked it for a long time, but it was too fast,” he said. “Maybe there’s something else we can do, like tag it somehow.”
Diana nodded. “I’ll talk to my brother. Maybe he can round up something we can stick to this thing so we can see where it’s going.”
“Anything else?” Ricardo asked. “There’s something I need to do.”
“Not alone, mon ami. It could still be out there,” Samantha advised.
“It could, and Sara is alone. I need to make sure she’s all right,” he said. He attempted to rise, but his legs refused to cooperate. He was still too weak.
“Give us her address and we’ll check on her,” Diana offered. “Ryder and I will drop by before we head home.”
Probably not what Sara either wanted or needed, Ricardo thought, but as a fine trembling settled into his limbs, he realized he was in no condition to go. “You don’t need to. I’ll just call her.”
Once again he tried to stand up, and this time managed an upright position, though he wobbled. Peter was at his side immediately. “Let me help you upstairs.”
“I’m going to stay here tonight and make sure you’re okay,” Samantha added.
He was too exhausted to argue. Not to mention that he wanted to call Sara and make certain she was fine. With a nod, he allowed Peter to help him up the stairs, settle him in bed and hand him his portable phone.
Peter stared down at him as he lay there. “Are you sure you’re going to be fine? You kinda look like shit.”
“I feel like it, too, but I can’t let them know that,” Ricardo said as he nodded in the direction of the stairs.
“No, you can’t ’cause they’ll go all girlie on you, and that’s the last thing you need.”
Peter’s humor dragged a chuckle from him despite the gravity of the situation. With a wave, Ricardo bade him good-night and picked up the phone.
Sara knew who it was even without looking at the caller ID. She let it ring…until it occurred to her that the noise might disturb her parents. So she grabbed the phone, immediately hung up and set the receiver on the nightstand.
Within a few seconds, the grating beeping blared, reminding her that the phone was off the hook.
She tried to ignore it, and when that proved impossible, she grabbed one of her pillows and covered her ears.
It wasn’t the clatter of the phone, but the gentle touch of her mother’s hand against her back that made her sit up again. “Mami, perdoname. I didn’t mean for the phone to wake you.”
Her mother sat beside her on the bed, her keen gaze settling on the side of Sara’s face, which likely sported a heck of a shiner. “Something happened tonight?”
“I’m fine. And you?” Sara touched her mother’s cheek. It was warm and her gaze was clear, with no hint of pain. It brought to mind what Ricardo had said earlier—that there were limits to what he could do. Sara wondered whether this interlude from the ravages of her mother’s illness would be a short one.
“Mi’ja, I’m okay,” Evita said, clearly aware of what she was thinking. But then again, her mother knew her better than anyone.
“For how long, Mami?”
With a shrug, she said, “You need to have faith, niña.”
“In Ricardo?” Bitterness tinged Sara’s voice.
“In God. In why He’s chosen this path for us.” Evita stroked some wayward strands of hair from her daughter’s face.
This crazy monster-filled path? she wondered, but couldn’t say. What kind of God would make her mother suffer so or create creatures like the chupacabra and the vampires she had seen today? Or make a man like Ricardo? One who could make her feel so many amazing sensations, but had such a wondrous and terrible gift. One that could be used for evil.
“Mi’ja?”
“I’m sorry, Mami. I was just thinking.”
“About Ricardo? He’s a good man, sabes.”
She couldn’t face her mother, and so she lay down and looked up at the ceiling, watched as the cracks there blurred from the tears in her eyes. She felt their warmth as they leaked down her face. “How do you know, Mami?”
“Some things you just know.” She rose, dropped a quick kiss on Sara’s forehead and left the room.
Sara looked at the phone, heard its insistent call, like a clarion that demanded she answer. That she confront him about his lies. Still, something within her made her acknowledge her true sense of Ricardo Fernandez—that he was a good man, much as her mother had said.
A good man, but maybe not one she was meant to be with.
She picked up the phone.
Ricardo had punched in the code so that he would be called back the moment the line became free.
Over half an hour had gone by since she had taken the phone off the hook. He wondered what she had been thinking about all that time. The same thing as him? That their lives had suddenly taken a turn toward horrible? That he didn’t have a clue how to make them better?
He was only just beginning to recover some of his strength. He had never had his power depleted this badly before, so he had no idea how long it might take to return to normal.
When the phone rang, he instantly grabbed it. “Sara?”
Her harsh chuckle cut across the line. “Expecting someone else?”
He had to admire her spunk. “Actually, I was expecting you not to put the phone back on for the rest of the night.”
Silence greeted his comment, followed by a reluctant laugh. “I wanted to, only the damn noise
was keeping me up and I have the early shift tomorrow.”
“I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
Her voice was low when she answered. “I’ve just found out that there really are things that go bump in the night, and that the man…” She stopped, clearly struggling for the right words.
“Comprendo, Sara. You don’t need to say anything else. Just get some rest and tomorrow—”
“There may not be a tomorrow for us.”
Pain filled him at her words. “I didn’t take you for the type to cut and run when the going got tough.”
“And I didn’t take you for the kind that would lie to my face.”
Ricardo couldn’t contradict that statement. But he also couldn’t let it end like this.
“If I had to choose between saving a life or telling a lie—”
“You already made that choice, Ricardo. I need to go.” She hung up.
Chapter 20
T he chupacabra stomped back and forth angrily, muttering to himself. The chirps and furious clatter of his teeth echoed off the walls of the sewer. His hands flailed through the air as he sought a rationale for his failure of a few nights ago.
He had truly tried to communicate, but the puny humans were too dense to understand. After the touch, however, the human knew. That simple contact had opened a floodgate between the two of them. The human’s energy, his healing strength, had surged into him, along with something else. Images. Memories.
As the mortal’s force filled his core, the beast’s humanity had come to life and his own recollections had returned. Images of the man he had been. Of the things he had done.
Hateful visions. Too easily came the recollection of the whip in his hand as he beat his slaves. Of his women, crying beneath him as he took them with no regard. Finally, of his family as they turned him away from his father’s funeral.
Unfulfilled dreams. The woman he had lost because of his bitterness. The plantation he had destroyed as the beast consumed him. All gone, long before the Civil War that drove him further into hiding.
Visions so unlike those of the human.
The human had seen so much, done so many things. Good things. The reality of all that decency had only made the memories of his own selfish life that much more bitter.
He had done no such good things. Nor had he ever experienced anything like what the human had with the woman. The strongest of the emotions and strength had come from those memories.
The chupacabra screamed in outrage at those recollections, at the pain they brought to the newly awakened traces of his former humanity.
Once the human totally cured him, things would be different. He would be a better man. Touched by the human’s emotions about the woman at his side, the chupacabra imagined her with him instead of with the human. He imagined the pleasure to be found between her thighs. The sweetness of her breasts at his lips.
Maybe when he was human again, he thought, and stalked to the mirror. In the shiny reflection from the chrome of the hubcap, he thought he saw something.
Was that a bit of skin? he wondered. Right there at the edge of his brow? Nice pink human flesh. The man had given him that with just the briefest of touches. Imagine what could happen if the human truly sought to cure him, he thought. He stared through the sewer grate at the street beyond. At the human life teeming past the rusted metal and cement.
That was the world where he belonged, not hiding out in sewers like the refuse of their lives.
Soon, he thought. Soon.
Sara paced back and forth before Melissa’s desk, her arms wrapped around herself as if that gesture could somehow keep her together in a world that suddenly made no sense.
Whirling to face her friend, she said, “You knew about Ryder and Samantha? You knew what they were?”
Melissa was clearly troubled by the discussion. She propped her fingertips together, hesitating before she answered. “For most of my life, I’d had a crush of sorts on my handsome uncle Ryder. When I was a child, he always had time for me. He was always there when I needed him.”
“And you didn’t know what he was?”
Melissa shook her head and dropped her hands, glanced down at them rather than meeting Sara’s gaze. “I didn’t. Maybe it was stupid not to notice that he didn’t seem to get older, but I didn’t notice.”
Sara stood there, thinking about it. Her tio Pedro was fairly timeless, kind of like George Hamilton, so she could understand that. “So when did you find out?”
“When my parents died. That’s when I discovered I was next in line to watch over him. To be his keeper.”
It immediately clicked in her brain. The blood bags she had seen Melissa taking, and which Sara had provided to Ricardo, as well. The blood bags helped feed both Ryder and Samantha. “Are you still his keeper?”
Melissa shook her head. “He released me from that obligation, but how do you stop caring for someone who is like family? How do you stop worrying about him?”
Her friend finally faced her. The anguish on Melissa’s face was clear. The worry was not just about Ryder, but about her family’s role in his undead life.
Walking over to her friend, Sara sat on the desk and rubbed Melissa’s back with her hand. “Whatever you need, Melissa, I’m here.”
“When I saw you take blood bags last year I worried you might be a keeper. That your life might be as difficult as mine.”
Sara thought about all that had happened last night. As weird as it was, could it be any harder to deal with the undead than with the illness that had plagued her mother for the last few years? “It’s been rough, but not because of anything supernatural.”
Melissa understood. “My mom being sick for so long shaped my life long before Ryder turned it upside down.”
“But you found Sebastian because of it, so something good came out of it,” Sara reminded her.
A broad smile came to her friend’s face and she glanced at the pictures on her desk. One of her and Sebastian on their wedding day, one of their baby daughter, Mariel, being cuddled by her papi and mami.
Through the smile, Melissa said, “As hard as it might be at times, I wouldn’t trade my life for anything. Would you?”
“Me?” Sara thought about all that had happened lately. “I don’t need any more trauma, so nix the thought of having all those creatures of the night in my life.”
“Okay, so forgetting about Ryder, Samantha and this little monster—”
“Come on, Melissa. Little is not a word I would use to describe anything about the chupacabra.”
Her friend chuckled and mimicked the monster, baring her teeth as if they were fangs, and curling her fingers into fake claws. “As scary as Nurse Simmons from the fifth floor,” she teased, dragging a laugh from Sara.
“Get real. Simmons would scare this thing back to wherever it came from.”
Melissa nodded, then paused. “So, assuming you can banish this thing back to hell—”
Sara held up one palm to silence her friend. “What makes you think I want any part of this whole banishing act?”
“Girl, I’ve seen you in action at the dojo, and when you asked to join my team, I saw your file. You kicked major ass in the army. You’re just not the type to sit around and wait for it to go away on its own.”
No, she wasn’t. “So, what do I do now?”
“Do you want Ricardo?”
She’d have to be dead not to want Ricardo. He was
probably one of the handsomest men she had ever seen. As a lover…she got wet just thinking about him. But being an old-fashioned girl in some ways, she wanted forever from her man, and somehow she wasn’t sure that was possible with Ricardo.
“I’m not sure,” she finally said.
Melissa seemed taken aback by her comment. “I thought you liked him?”
“I do like him. But I’m not sure I like like him.”
“Because he’s not like like material or because—”
“He lied to me. And not just about the vamps. He’s not what he said he was.” She dropped her gaze to her hands to avoid looking at her friend.
Melissa, however, was not to be dissuaded. She tucked one finger beneath Sara’s chin and applied subtle force until Sara looked at her. “He lied because that’s the only way he could help people. He didn’t do it to take advantage of you, like dandy Dr. Dan did.”
“So what you’re saying is that the end justifies the means?” she countered, well aware of Melissa’s moral fiber and her feelings.
“I used to think the answer to that was clear, but not anymore. Sometimes there are too many variables. Too many things that shouldn’t be, but are.”
Like vampires and other monsters, Sara thought. And a man who could heal—or kill—with his touch, and who had lied about it. Things that in her book were total negatives.
But then the sight of her mother this morning came to her. Her mother at the kitchen table, reading the paper and sharing some coffee with them. Looking happy and downright healthy.
If Sara had stuck to the rules of her normal world, she would not have not sought out Ricardo, and her mami would likely be dead. And all those people who came to him to heal their assorted aches and illnesses would be suffering if not for his devotion to healing their pain. Not to mention the women in the shelter Samantha ran. Who would protect them, clothe them and feed them if Ricardo stopped taking care of Samantha?
Devotion Calls Page 16
