Devotion Calls

by Caridad Piñeiro

  She shrugged, her slim shoulders barely moving the heavy terry cloth. It reminded him of how physically fragile she was compared to him. Not that she let that stop her, he thought, recalling how she had fought side by side with him against the chupacabra.

  “You know that old joke about the dog with three legs, no tail and one eye?”

  He nodded and provided the punch line. “His name is Lucky.”

  They both chuckled at that, but then she continued. “When I was a kid, that’s what most of my pets were like. I had a tendency to collect injured strays and nurse them back to health.”

  “Why aren’t you a vet, then?” he wondered aloud, although he had been much the same way as a child.

  She motioned to his plate with her fork and said, “Could I try those?”

  He moved the plate so she could get some of the salsa-laden eggs. She ate them quickly, but then fanned her face with one hand. “That’s spicy.”

  “My mom makes it and ships it to me. So, why not a vet?” he repeated, anxious to learn more about what made Sara tick.

  She paused to sip some coffee, probably to clear the sting of the salsa, then continued. “In high school I did a stint as a candy striper and I got hooked on working in a hospital. There was just so much energy there, so many ways to help people.”

  He understood it well. During his years as an EMT, he had loved the hospital environment, but the constant flow of sick and injured had taken too much out of him. “Sometimes too many.”

  “Is that why you stopped being an EMT?”

  “You know how you want to help people get better? How when a patient needs you, you’ll stay by their side even if it’s been hours since your shift ended, or you haven’t eaten in a day?”

  She nodded, but then leaned forward and laid her hand over his. “But you know you have to let it go because you can’t give that much of yourself when others need you, too.”

  Although she said it, he knew from gazing into her expressive hazel eyes that she struggled with the same thing. That she was the kind to stay with someone until the very end. He had, as well, more times than he wanted to remember. More times than he should have.

  “I couldn’t break away sometimes. Too many times. I would try to heal them and sometimes I could, only…It left me weak. So weak that when someone else came along, I couldn’t do anything.”

  Sara searched his face, not that she had to look that closely to see the anguish there. “What happened?” she said, and slipped her hand into his, hoping to ease some of his pain with that connection.

  “There was a crash. A school bus filled with kids smacked into a minivan. A few of the kids were hurt pretty badly. I was told to work on them first.”

  “And you healed them?”

  “They would have made it anyway, I realized afterward. Their injuries were serious, but they were young and strong. Still, I used my powers to stabilize them, give them a better chance.”

  He stopped and hung his head. The hair that fell forward hid him from her, but she wouldn’t let him bury those emotions away. She wanted to share more than just her body with him.

  She placed her forefinger under his chin and gently eased his face upward. His eyes had turned that dark, intense emerald color and a sheen of tears made them glisten. “What happened?”

  “When I left the bus, I realized my partner was working on the woman they had pulled from the car. He was trying to revive her, so I went over.”

  The tears slipped down his face. She wiped them with her thumb and urged him to continue with a tender look.

  “She was young, barely thirty. Two of her kids were standing by, watching her die. I stepped in, but I was too weak. I had used most of my strength on the kids in the bus.”

  Sara didn’t need to be told the woman hadn’t made it. She moved to the edge of her chair and embraced him. His body vibrated with emotion. “It wasn’t your fault, sabes,” she said, and stroked his hair.

  “I told myself that, over and over again. But it made me realize that I wasn’t making the right decisions about when to call on my power.” He moved back, but not far, allowing her to continue to brush her fingers through the long strands.

  “Is that why you quit?”

  He nodded. “I realized being an EMT placed me in situations where I made wrong choices. It not only risked exposing me, but worse, it prevented me from helping the people who needed me the most.”

  “Working in a hospital was out, too, I gather,” she said, and he nodded.

  “That left working for humanitarian relief agencies. I might have been able to handle that, but I wasn’t sure. And then there was the idea of moving around after all my tours in the marines. I knew I couldn’t do that without losing a piece of myself.”

  Which explained his decision to settle down in one place, but not so many other things. “That chakra thing. Is that how you heal?”

  He shook his head. “Not really. My time in the marines exposed me to a lot of other cultures and people. I learned all kinds of different things and which of them work better for me.”

  She wanted to ask so many more questions. Like how he chose his clients or managed to survive when he asked for so little in return. But she was getting tired and needed to rest before she returned to the hospital later that night.

  Leaning forward, she brushed a kiss on his cheek and said, “Thank you for telling me all this.”

  “You need to go, don’t you?” The expectant note in his voice said that he wished it was otherwise.

  “I need to get some shut-eye.”

  “There’s a bed upstairs,” he said and pointed to the floor above. “You could sack out there.”

  Chuckling, she shook her head. “If you join me, I’ll never get any sleep.”

  With a broad, bad-boy grin, he brushed a quick kiss on her lips. “Find me irresistible, do you?”

  “Get real, Fernandez,” she teased, and playfully nudged his shoulder.

  “Okay, so how about you come back later for dinner?”

  Since he was so irresistible as he had claimed, she said, “Yes.”

  After she was dressed, he walked her to the door, where they both paused. “Is six o’clock good?”

  “Six is good. I can head to work afterward. By the way, no Fang Gang meeting tonight?” she asked, wondering what was planned, given the incident a few nights earlier.

  “Diana is getting some tracking devices that we can shoot at the chupacabra. She’s supposed to be bringing them by later tonight, but you have work.”

  She nodded. “I do have work. I can’t help you with the chupacabra thing until tomorrow morning.”

  He shot her a devilish grin, leaned close and, in a very possessive and determined way, grasped her waist. Bending his head, he brought his mouth close to her ear and whispered, “The morning? I guess you could come by for breakfast tomorrow. Share some time like we did today.”

  A wave of sexual energy sizzled along her nerve endings as she imagined a replay of this morning. Rising on tiptoe, she licked the edges of his lips with her tongue and then said, “Breakfast tomorrow definitely sounds like a plan.”

  Chapter 23

  R icardo examined the tagging devices that Diana had placed in the center of the coffee table. They were similar in shape to the tranquilizer darts, but with something that looked like a small transmitter or antenna at one end.

  “Sebastian selected these because they are highly relia
ble and powerful,” Diana advised the group that had assembled in the shop that night. “We should be able to pick up the signal for quite some distance. He’s already got the frequencies for these tags ID’d, and is monitoring their transmissions on his computer.”

  Peter picked up one of the devices. “Do they fit into the tranq guns?”

  “They do,” she confirmed, but then shot an uneasy glance at Ryder as he sat beside her. “This creature is faster and more powerful than we expected. Not to mention intelligent. If we see it, all we want to do is tag it and run. We don’t want to confront it at this time.”

  “And once it’s tagged, we’ll regroup and follow it back to its lair. We’ll have strength together,” Ryder said.

  Samantha looked at Ricardo. “Is Sara coming tonight?”

  He shook his head. “She’s working.”

  “That means you’ll have to stay with Peter and me, mon ami.”

  “And Diana and I will team up,” Ryder confirmed as he reached for one of the tags.

  As Peter grabbed one of the devices and placed it into the barrel of the tranquilizer gun, Ricardo’s cell phone rang. It was Sara’s mom. “Hola, Evita. How are you doing today?”

  Sara had mentioned earlier that her mother seemed to be doing better. While they both knew the boost was temporary, he had hoped it would last for just a little bit longer. At least until they had this chupacabra under control so that he could fully focus his power on trying to help her again. He was unprepared for her next words.

  “Is Sara with you?”

  “Excuse me?” he asked, unsure he had heard right. Sara had left for work over two hours ago, after their dinner together.

  “Sara didn’t show up at the hospital. Her friend Melissa just called to see if she’s okay. I thought Sara might have changed her mind and stayed with you, but that’s not like her.”

  No, it wasn’t like her at all, he thought. “Don’t worry, Evita. I’ll find her.”

  “Gracias, mi’jo. I don’t know what we would do without her.”

  Ricardo understood that only too well. He didn’t know what he would do without her, either.

  Her head throbbed painfully and something warm trickled down her left temple and along her forearms where her hands were bound above her. Her nostrils burned from the acrid odor of the foul-tasting wad of cloth that had been shoved into her mouth.

  Sara opened her eyes. Her vision was blurry. Nausea came quickly and forcefully.

  She took a deep breath to fight the feeling, but the awful smell only made it worse. She told herself she couldn’t vomit no matter what. With the gag in her mouth, she would likely choke to death.

  Inhaling again deeply through her nostrils, she contained the urge and then took note of her surroundings.

  The light in the space was dim, but she was surprisingly thankful for that. Anything brighter would have just brought more pain from the concussion she likely had.

  As she forced her eyes to focus, things slowly took shape in the near dark of her prison.

  The cement floor and walls were dirty and stained by the passage of time and the elements. As she turned her head, she realized she was in some kind of alcove, barely a few feet wide and not all that deep. On the ground she noticed an old blue milk crate, filled with assorted rags and some bottles.

  Had some homeless person grabbed her on her way to work? she wondered. But why would they do that? She shook her head, but that motion only brought throbbing pain in her temples and an ache at the back of her neck.

  Definitely a concussion, and possibly whiplash, she thought.

  An instant later came the memory of being knocked out. Fast and brutal, a backhanded blow had swiped the left side of her face. The force of it had been enough to send her smashing into the brick on one of the brown-stones.

  She tried to remember how it had happened. How after all of her years in the army and keeping up her skills at the dojo, someone could have taken her by surprise like that.

  The answer came all too quickly—it hadn’t been anything human that had attacked her. It had been the chupacabra.

  She looked upward, skimming her eyes over the large and brilliantly shiny chrome hubcap that hung on one side of the small alcove. Light reflected off of it and she searched through the gloom for the source. Just across from her she found it.

  A sewer grate let in rays of light from what she assumed was a streetlamp nearby. There was also some kind of dim illumination at the mouth of the alcove. Focusing her vision, she realized a wire ran along the top portion of the wall. She suspected it was electrical and probably fed lights of some kind in what she now recognized to be a tunnel. A sewer tunnel.

  It was no wonder they hadn’t spotted the chupacabra on all their nightly patrols. The creature used the rooftops and alleys to hunt. This dank and stinky alcove belowground was where it lived and hid. Where it probably finished off the strays it had captured.

  Was she next? And how long had she been down here? she wondered. How long before anyone noticed and came to look for her? And how would they think to look for her here?

  Her cell phone.

  Glancing around the floor of the alcove, she looked for her knapsack, but it was nowhere to be found. Shit. The chupacabra must have left it behind when it grabbed her.

  She heard a noise. A loud footfall from something big and heavy. She pulled at her bound arms, trying to break free, but all she got for her effort was excruciating pain in her wrists. Glancing upward, she realized sharp wire bound her wrists and then had been slipped over a large metal hook protruding from the wall. She yanked again as hard as her precarious position would allow, but the wire and hook were too strong, and held fast.

  She would never be able to break free.

  Don’t panic, Sara, she told herself. Don’t panic.

  And then the chupacabra came into view. In one paw it carried a small gray cat by its hind legs. The animal dangled limply, either dead or badly injured.

  The creature paused before her. Raising the cat to its mouth, it sank its fangs deep into the feline’s neck and began to suck.

  Sara closed her eyes to block out the sight, but the noises still filtered into her brain. The slurp and lick. The grisly clack of teeth against something. Bone? she wondered, and again had to remind herself not to panic.

  Nothing in the literature indicated that chupacabras ate humans. There had to be some other reason why the creature had grabbed her. It was sentient, after all, and maybe in its twisted brain it had a reason for imprisoning her.

  When there had been silence for a few minutes, she dared to open her eyes again.

  The chupacabra now stood before her, staring at her intently. Or at least she thought that’s what it was doing. Its odd, glassy red eyes gave little away, but then its mouth opened, as if in a lipless smile.

  The creature reached out and passed its talons along the side of her face and spoke.

  “P-preet-ty.”

  Shit, she thought. Time to panic.

  A call to Sara’s cell phone had yielded just one useful bit of information—it was on. With that knowledge, Diana called her brother, who went to work immediately on picking up the signal from the GPS chip they had enabled in the phone on the first night of their patrols.

  Ricardo paced back and forth by the large window of his store, staring up and down the block with the hope that Sara would miraculously appear. That she hadn’t been taken by a very large and pos
sibly very lethal bloodsucking monster.

  If there was one thing that kept Ricardo from panicking, it was the knowledge that chupacabras had never been known to kill humans. Not that there couldn’t be a first time.

  The shrill ring of Diana’s cell phone split the silence in the shop. Whirling in her direction, Ricardo watched her anxiously, expectantly, for some sign that Sebastian had done the trace. Finally she nodded as she jotted down the cross street coordinates.

  They were ready to go once she hung up. Diana handed him one of the tranquilizer guns loaded with the tracking device. He looked down at it, but shook his head.

  “This isn’t about tracking anymore,” he said, realizing that there was only one thing he wanted to do—get Sara home safe no matter what. He motioned to Diana’s suit jacket and a telltale bulge. “You’re ready for it, right?”

  She nodded. “I’m ready, but…You agree this is capture and not kill, right?”

  He glanced behind her to the rest of the group, who all waited expectantly for his answer. He thought about Sara. About what he would do if the beast had hurt her.

  He remembered the night the beast had touched him, how he’d felt. The evil within it. Evil that wanted him and what he could do. In his brain, that malevolent energy lingered, almost as if waiting for Ricardo to join with it again.

  He still hadn’t puzzled out the reason why.

  And at that moment, he didn’t care. He just wanted Sara safe. As for the beast…

  He wasn’t like it, and because of that, he knew there was only one answer to Diana’s question. “Capture and not kill.”

  Diana and Ryder took one side of the street, while he, Peter and Samantha scoured the other, in search of the cell phone. A large city block versus something small enough to be held in the palm of your hand. Ricardo didn’t like the odds, but he knew this was the only way they had to get to Sara.