by David Boop
When I finished telling Malachi about Elsa’s vanishing act, he tilted his head back and exhaled a hearty plume of smoke. “It’s not up to us to make sense of this world.” He took another puff and let it seep out from under his mustache. “That’s up to the Almighty.”
I stood over Ambrosio. “Where did Elsa go?”
“Probably to find the rat who told you I was here.” He scowled. “So who was it?”
“Even if knew, I wouldn’t tell you.” Whoever had sent the crow had done so in secret and knowing their identity didn’t matter. Someone wanted Ambrosio caught, and we’d caught him.
Malachi and I sorted through what we’d emptied from Ambrosio’s pockets—coins, tokens, loose cartridges, assorted keys. From the horse saddlebags, forged promissory notes and phony letters of credit.
Ambrosio mumbled, “I have a stash of gold.”
“The Deming-Cheyenne payroll, no doubt,” Malachi replied. “Maybe that’s where your loving wife went. To abscond with your loot.”
“She has no idea where it is.” Ambrosio chuckled. “I never told her. I love her, but not that much. She’ll be back because without me, she has nothing.”
I hoisted Ambrosio to his feet. “She can visit you in prison.”
He kicked his legs and tried to wrestle free. “Cabrónes! Cabrónes! I’m not going.”
A solid punch on the nose took the fight out of him. A few minutes later, we had him tied to his horse, lashed to the saddle and gagged with a stick of mesquite I’d cinched across his mouth. Blood dripped from his nostrils and past his lips.
I tethered Ambrosio’s horse to Malachi’s. Since we didn’t need Elsa’s horse, I removed its saddle and tack and gave it a swat on the rump to make it gallop away.
We then rode east toward the border between the West Kansas and New Mexico Territories. Ambrosio was a prize wanted by many, and we steered clear of any settlements to avoid getting our prisoner lynched.
My mind shifted between maintaining vigilance on our surroundings and wondering about Elsa. Would she return to rescue her husband, or had she fled from his side forever? What other magic tricks could she count on?
Our path wound over and around low hills dotted with sage and creosote. The ground rose gradually toward the distant mountains. We were climbing into the foothills when my kundalini noir buzzed like the rattle of a sidewinder.
Ahead and about three hundred yards distant, a string of men on horses held still on the slope’s crest. I didn’t know their business, but it wasn’t coincidental that Malachi and I had captured Ambrosio right before these men showed up. I didn’t know how they found out about our prisoner, but as the viejos say, the wind has ears.
Or was it they who had sent the mechanical crow?
“Trouble,” I said.
Malachi replied, “I see ’em. Any ideas to keep the odds in our favor?”
“I’ll hold back and outflank them,” I said. “Come up from behind.”
Malachi waved a gloved hand. We ambled on as if we hadn’t noticed the men. When we dipped into an arroyo, I slowed my horse and at the next fork, turned right as Malachi and Ambrosio continued straight. Ducking flat against my horse’s neck, I stayed low as I proceeded in a wide looping maneuver. When I’d gone about a quarter mile, I circled to the left along a dry creek bed.
The advantage I had on any guard watching their flank was that he had no idea I was coming his way. My kundalini noir shifted through the faint traces of my various senses to gauge what trouble might be lying ahead.
A trembling in the center of my chest told me to slow down.
From up the dry creek bed, a horse snorted faintly.
Stealthily, I slid off my horse and patted its hindquarters so he continued up the sandy wash. I scurried to the left, low to the ground like a ferret, sneaking from cover to cover. Upon reaching a narrow draw, I found the guard tucked against one side, his back to me, where he watched the creek bed. A tattered, misshapen sombrero draped a wide shadow over his frame. His serape was thrown back over his shoulders to allow quick access to his holstered guns. Glancing about, I made sure he was alone.
From the dry creek came the crunch, crunch of my horse’s hooves in the sand. The guard perked up and readied a revolver.
The sight of the empty saddle on my horse made the guard tense with suspicion. He shied back into the draw and closer to me.
I extended my fangs to dispatch him because a gunshot would spook his companions. The closer I crept upon my mark, the more my kundalini buzzed. The slightest wrong move—my foot tripping a rock, a branch of creosote scraping my clothes, the sudden flight of a hidden bird—would spoil my attack.
My horse kept the guard distracted. I moved to his right, fangs out, fingers tense.
I grabbed his leg and yanked him off his saddle. As he fell toward me, I clamped my hand around his throat to keep him quiet. A tiny gurgle managed to escape his lips. With my vampire strength, I carefully lowered him to the ground and held him still. His eyes bored into mine, and they brimmed with terror.
I plunged my fangs into his neck. His blood—hot and delicious—spurted into my mouth. He squirmed for a moment until my undead juices flowed into him, and he lay quiet like he’d been given a dose of laudanum. Suspecting that I might not have a blood meal for at least a couple of days, I helped myself to several hearty mouthfuls—but not too much lest I become sluggish and lethargic.
His swarthy face paled to the color of sun-bleached bone. He might live or he might die; that wasn’t my concern as long as he was out of my way. Wiping my mouth and savoring the lingering taste, I pushed up and dusted off my clothes, then climbed back on my horse.
I followed hoof prints up the draw, over a slight ridge from where I spotted the rest of his party skylined on the next ridge over. From their direction, the air carried the fragrance of incense. I stayed out of sight until I found where my horse and I could sneak through a stand of juniper. The men were so fixed on Malachi’s approach that I emerged unnoticed right behind them and on their left flank. In case of trouble, my fangs wouldn’t be enough, so I drew my revolver.
I counted five in the group, arranged around a stocky, leathery man whose pate of cropped gray hair reflected the afternoon light like a ball of cut wire. Cartridge belts kept his white cassock in place. Sunlight glinted off the silver crucifixes adorning his saddle and tack. A mother-of-pearl handled pistol and matching Bowie knife hung from his crimson waist sash.
The riders at his immediate left and right carried lantern torches, the glass panels illuminated with images of the Virgin of Guadalupe and of Saint Michael slaying a dragon, the panels lit by an oil lamp within. The incense fragrance I’d smelled earlier came from the scented smoke vented by the lanterns. The smoke swirled around the silver crosses fixed on top of each lantern, where the eyes of the crucified Jesus glowed red with judgment and vengeance. As a western vampire, I was immune to both crucifixes and sunlight. Otherwise, I would’ve perished long ago.
What all these religious trappings meant was that Malachi and I, unfortunately, had attracted the attention of the Brotherhood of Penitentes—vigilante enforcers of the Holy Roman Catholic Church of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
The other two men of the group rode as flankers and they spurred their horses to line up with their leader.
Malachi, with Ambrosio in tow, rode out of the arroyo and halted at the bottom of the slope in plain view. My hope was that Malachi and I could continue without bloodshed, but that was up to the Penitentes.
From his vantage on the slope, the leader’s gaze settled on Malachi. “I am,” he lisped in Castilian, “Padre Bendito Matamoros, el hermano supremo.”
“We know who you are.” Malachi touched the brim of his hat. He panned the group and acted as if he hadn’t noticed me. “We are honored by your presence.”
“Where is the third rider?” Bendito asked.
Malachi turned in his saddle, surveyed the arroyo, then faced Bendito and shrugged. “He was never the rel
iable sort. I think you scared him off.”
“You need to choose your companions with greater care,” Bendito said. He nodded to the flanker on the left. He wore a beaded, canvas vest but no shirt. The flanker tossed a small leather pouch into the arroyo to land with a metallic thunk beside Malachi’s horse.
“Five hundred pesetas in silver coin,” Bendito announced. “One hundred of your Yankee dollars for Ambrosio.”
“Sorry, padre, no can do,” Malachi replied.
Bendito nodded once more to the flanker and another pouch landed in front of Malachi.
“One thousand pesetas,” Bendito said, his voice sharp. “We demand justice for this desgraciado’s violations against the laws of both man and God.”
I wanted to laugh. It was well known in these parts that one of Ambrosio’s violations had been bedding the padre’s favorite concubine and getting her pregnant.
Malachi began, “We have to deliver Ambrosio to—”
“Ambrosio belongs to us,” the flanker shouted. He shrugged off his vest to reveal a torso corded with muscle and lacerated with gruesome scars. Penitentes showed their devotion to the brotherhood by flagellating themselves with iron-hooked cat-o’-nine-tails and branches of chollas. “We fear nothing as we have proven ourselves to our Lord, the Creator.” He crossed himself and dropped his hand to an enormous dragoon revolver sheathed in a saddle holster.
I silently cocked back the hammer of my Colt.
Bendito raised his gloved hand to quell any forthcoming trouble. “Tell me Don Justos’s bounty. I’ll match it, plus you may keep the silver.”
Don Justos was Justos Zamora, Ambrosio’s father, but he was more than that. Much more. He was El Jefe de la Comancheria. My kundalini noir tightened as I realized that the stakes to all of us had been raised a few notches. I wondered if Malachi picked up the gist of what Bendito revealed.
So Don Justos had a bounty on his own son? Perhaps he was behind the mysterious visit by the mechanical crow.
Malachi kept a poker face as he said, “Our task is to deliver Ambrosio to Don Justos.”
Just like that, Malachi had switched our plans. We were no longer going to hand over Ambrosio to the marshal but to Don Justos. The strained look in our prisoner’s eyes became heavy with certain doom.
Bendito said, “You’re a long way from the Comancheria.”
“It wouldn’t be wise to get crossways with Don Justos,” Malachi replied, “He won’t take it kindly if you delay the reunion with his dear son.”
Bendito knew that his cutthroat acolytes were no match for Justos’s marauding comancheros: half-Comanche, half-Mexican roughnecks as fierce as desert wolves. After a moment, he inhaled deeply, then said, “You’re not only a long way from the Comancheria, but also a long way from anyone who could help you.”
“That’s right, gringo!” the flanker exclaimed, his hand tightening on his dragoon. I raised my Colt Navy. He shouted, “It’s just you and us.”
Bendito and both of his flankers went for their guns. By the time they had cleared leather, my revolver roared once, fire and smoke bursting forward, the bullet striking the shirtless flanker square between the shoulder blades. He flung his arms up, the dragoon spinning away. As he toppled from his horse, I aimed at the lantern carrier closest to me and fired. My bullet caught him in the side and he toppled from his horse, dragging his lantern on top of himself. When he hit the ground, the glass bottle of lantern oil shattered, the volatile oil exploding, the blast of light and heat causing our horses to rear back. The lantern carrier rolled on the ground, on fire, screaming.
The other Penitentes whirled toward me. Malachi pulled his Schofield and fired, a tongue of flame and smoke lashing to the flanker on the right. He rocked back in his saddle, dropped his gun, and hugged his chest.
Bendito had his revolver drawn and his head whipped from me to Malachi, back to me, then to the lantern carrier rolling and kicking on the ground as he burned, his shrieks of pain tearing across the landscape.
Bendito lowered his revolver toward the man, aimed at his head, and muttered, “Deus miserere animae meae.” He fired once and the lantern carrier slumped against the ground, dead, flames flitting over his corpse like hungry rats. Smoke eddied around us.
The man Malachi had wounded wheezed and struggled to remain on his horse. The flanker I’d shot lay face down, twitching, blood seeping out the hole in his back while more blood pooled around his side. So much spilled blood. What a waste, especially for someone with my unholy appetite.
Malachi holstered his Schofield. “Padre, I’ll pass on your offer, tempting as it is.” He tapped the brim of his hat in salutation. “Perhaps next time our acquaintance will be more cordial. Adios.” Malachi snapped his reins and started toward the Arapaho Trail. His horse stepped around Bendito’s bags of silver.
As I urged my horse down the slope, I kept Bendito and his forlorn crew covered with my gun as they whispered, “Vampiro, devil’s spawn.” Upon reaching Malachi, I put myself between Ambrosio and the Penitentes in case any of them decided to do something brash. Ambrosio wasn’t worth a drop of my sweat, much less any of my blood, undead as it already was, but Malachi and I had a bounty to collect.
When the Penitentes were far behind us, I rode close to Malachi and kept my voice low so Ambrosio couldn’t overhear. “What gives?”
“The padre tipped his hand,” he said. “I’ve never known him to be a generous man so if he was offering us two hundred dollars, I figure Don Justos’s bounty on Ambrosio is ten times that.”
Two thousand dollars. “And the marshal?”
“I’m sure he knows all about the bounty. He pays us five hundred and keeps fifteen hundred. Seems that you and I were getting played for suckers.”
I glanced back to Ambrosio and wondered how he’d wronged his father to deserve such a bounty.
The rolling hills flattened into high desert—the Comancheria—a landscape as inhospitable as the moon. Across the desolate wasteland, formations of jagged mountains arched through the desert floor like the spines of monstrous dinosaurs.
Twilight fell upon us, bringing a night as dark and cold as the day had been bright and hot. Malachi and I could press on but our horses couldn’t, so we made camp in a buffalo wallow.
I staked Ambrosio to the ground and removed his gag. “It’ll behoove you to keep your mouth shut,” I told him. “We’re surrounded by Comanches, and they’ve got a score to settle with you as well.”
Ambrosio rubbed grime from his face and stretched out on the dirt. In the dim light of a crescent moon, the bottoms of his bare feet glowed white as fish bellies. Even if he got loose, he wouldn’t walk far, not across this treacherous expanse of cactus, sharp rock, and venomous critters.
All around us, coyotes yelped back and forth, singing their mournful songs. But I was certain Comanche scouts accounted for a good amount of the yowling as they kept tabs on us. The next morning, after a cup of freshly brewed but bitter coffee, we were on the trail again.
Every mile closer to our destination, Ambrosio seemed to shrink, like a slice of bacon shriveling on a hot skillet. I couldn’t blame him. Who knew what fiendish punishments waited at the hands at his father?
We followed the trail down a slope that emptied onto a wide flat valley, crisscrossed with dry streambeds like so many of life’s empty promises. Horned toads scurried from shadow to shadow beneath the prickly pears. Gradually the valley narrowed into a canyon that squeezed against us like the jaws of a vice.
My kundalini noir buzzed again. Dust devils swirled around us—atop the canyon walls and along the canyon floor—and as they vanished, comancheros appeared in their stead.
I counted seven above us on the left, six on the right. Turning around, I spied another seven behind us.
From up ahead, a second group of riders rode closer. Six women on horseback. I realized all the riders surrounding us were women. Female comancheros. Black lace wafted from their rangy frames as if the garments were made of smoke. Each of the
women bore aspects inked and painted to resemble Dia de los Muertos skulls. They weren’t only comancheros, but Justos’s elite bodyguards, escaped slaves of the various Plains Indians and who had reclaimed their scarred lives by becoming las brujas malditas—the Damned Witches. Had one of them dispatched the telltale mechanical crow?
Ambrosio tensed like his blood had turned into bile.
One bruja rode ahead of her compatriots. From behind a diaphanous veil, green eyes glowered within black swirls. Silver conches embossed with skull and crossbones decorated her saddle, tack, the gutta-percha grips of her holstered revolvers, and the small top hat pinned to her veil. Her cropped red hair shot out in all directions like the quills of a porcupine.
She nodded and wheeled her horse back down the canyon. Malachi and I, with Ambrosio, followed her lead, her comrades flanking us.
Our horses crunched over the occasional scattering of bones. We turned an abrupt corner and a hundred yards distant, a tall wooden palisade crossed from one side of the canyon to the other.
We passed through an open gate into an enclosed yard. What dominated the space was a towering statue of an Aztec god carved from sandstone. I wasn’t familiar enough with them to tell which one. The figure held a rattlesnake and squatted on a plinth of human skulls. Deep-set eyes glowered from a face carved into a perpetual scowl as if this effigy saw nothing worthy of salvation.
To the left and right, various structures—sheds, houses, stables—had been hewn into the canyon walls. Directly ahead sprawled Justos’s home. Balconies circumscribed its two stories, and pennants hung limp from the peaks of its gabled roof. Though not palatial by big-city standards, out here the house was a bastion of luxury.
The brujas formed a U and herded us to the house. Once there, Malachi and I swung off our horses and hauled Ambrosio to the ground.
