Sacrifice of Passion (Deadly Legends)

by Melissa Bourbon Ramirez

  Vic’s eyes narrowed. “She said to be careful or you would die. There’s a big difference.”

  “Semantics.” She made a gesture with her hands, brushing away his suggestion. “How does she know these things?”

  “I don’t even pretend to understand.”

  She stared out the window behind Vic. The skeletal branches of the cottonwoods stretched and jerked in a dance macabre. The steady roar of the river sent a chill through her, which she fought off. “Then how—”

  “She helped my mother once,” he said, his voice low and memory-laden.

  Her gaze darted back to him. He’d never told her that. “Really?”

  “A long time ago. My mother was pregnant and the baby hadn’t moved for days. The doctor said it was going to be stillborn.”

  The angles of Vic’s face were starkly shadowed in the dimly lit room. He reached out to take her hand. “Esperanza made my mother a special tea. Gave her cumino.” Vic’s expression had taken on a quiet reverence. “Her labor started two hours later.”

  She was mesmerized by his face, his voice, the intensity of his gaze. “And the baby?”

  His lips twitched. “You’re looking at him.”

  She inhaled in surprise. “You?”

  He nodded.

  Her fingers curved around his, squeezing. “Thank God.”

  “Or Esperanza.”

  “Maybe the doctor was wrong. Maybe everything was fine and you were just as stubborn in the womb as you are out of it.” She tipped her head, her lips lifting at the corners.

  He winked. “There are worse traits than being stubborn.”

  “Don’t I know it.” The tension that had slid away returned.

  He squeezed her hand. “Sleepwalking is not a trait. It’s a bad habit.”

  “More semantics,” she grumbled, but she relaxed as he tugged her a little closer.

  He leaned his forehead against hers. “We’ll figure this out. I promise.”

  We. It wasn’t a declaration of love, but he wasn’t going to leave her to fend for herself, twisting in the wind. Looking at the sincere contours of his face, the set of his shoulders, she found herself believing him. About the promise. And the “we.”

  He stepped back, but slipped his arm around her waist as he turned and called, “Esperanza! ¿Donde estas? ¡Ven aqui, por favor!”

  Almost instantly, the curandera materialized, stepping out of the shadows, then launched into a frenzy of Spanish. Vic stared, his jaw dropping as the medicine woman went on. Finally, he cut in, speaking in rapid-fire Spanish equal to the curandera’s. The conversation was completely lost on Delaney.

  The intensity of their exchange escalated, Esperanza’s voice growing whispery and haunted, and Vic’s growing louder and angry. Delaney looked from one to the other, growing nervous. Wanting to demand that they slow down and translate. Deep foreboding trickling through her bones.

  Abruptly, they stopped talking.

  Delaney held her breath as Esperanza seemed to unfurl. She straightened her shoulders, and Delaney could almost hear the woman’s bones cracking with the effort. Her mouth worked, her lips stretching over her teeth. And then she spoke, a raspy chill in her voice. “He will not thtop. Chupacabra no parará hathta you are hith.”

  Delaney’s heart went into hyperspace. She’d understood the first part. He will not stop—presumably the chupacabra—but what was the rest?

  Suddenly Vic was behind her, his arm banding around her, tight across her collarbone. He pulled her back against his chest until there wasn’t a breath of space between their bodies. She turned her head, peering up at his face. His jaw pulsed, his expression tense.

  His gaze was unflinching on Esperanza. “She will never be his,” he ground out. “Do you hear me? I won’t let that happen. She will never be his again.”

  Horror jolted through Delaney as his words sank in.

  Her insides went still as death.

  Again?

  …

  Vic felt Laney’s spine stiffen against him. Her body began to tremble as she croaked out a single word. “Again?”

  Esperanza ignored Delaney. “If she ith not careful, she will,” she said to him.

  He cursed. “Laney, this chupacabra—”

  She jerked, pulling herself free of him, wincing in pain. “What do you mean, again?”

  The curandera reached her gnarled hand out to touch Delaney’s arm, but Delaney recoiled. “Lo thiento, m’ija,” Esperanza said. “Con cuidado.”

  “Lo siento,” Delaney echoed. “You’re sorry?” Her voice turned shrill. “What are you sorry for? Tell me!”

  Vic put his hands on her shoulders and looked into her frightened eyes. “The day you were raped, a man came to see Esperanza. He told her he couldn’t sleep. She sold him a small vial of liquid. A sleeping draught.”

  Delaney gaped.

  Vic’s jaw tightened. “Obviously she didn’t know the potion would be used for such a purpose. That a man”—Vic swallowed, his throat tight, his head buzzing from his barely contained anger—“that a man would use it to drug a woman. And then rape her. Delaney, she says he was a local man.”

  Delaney stared, unblinking, back at him. He waited for her to say something. Anything.

  Finally, she drew in a raspy breath. “Until I saw my first therapist, I thought my body’s response—how I couldn’t move or speak while it was happening and even after a while after he left—was because I’d gone into shock. When the therapist told me I’d probably been drugged, I dug around online. There was a rapist hitting major cities in Texas and New Mexico about the same time as I was raped, a guy who’d climb into people’s windows, drug the water on their nightstand, and then come back later and attack them. I always left a bottle of water by my bed, so I figured it was the same man. The serial rapist. A stranger.” She never thought it would be someone from San Julio. Someone she maybe even knew.

  A flurry of Spanish flew from Esperanza.

  Vic listened, turning back to Delaney a moment later. “She says your nightmares, your sleepwalking, the animal sacrifices—it will all stop when the chupacabra is found.”

  She blinked, then put a hand to her head and groaned. “The sacrifices. And— Oh, God! Jasper. This man killed those animals and Jasper because of me?” Her face paled. “Why would he do that?”

  “It wath Jathper.”

  Vic and Delaney both swung their heads to stare uncomprehendingly at Esperanza. Vic’s whole body went very still. “What?”

  The curandera closed her sightless eyes. “Thi. Wath Jathper. He came for the drug to thleep.”

  Vic’s mind reeled. He shook his head. “No.” He couldn’t accept what Esperanza was saying. There had to be a mistake. “Not Jasper. He couldn’t have—” Vic paced, feeling like the world was spinning out of control. He’d trusted Jasper. Jasper had always been there, a helpful neighbor. A loyal friend. He’d even given Zach that pig. The idea was incomprehensible.

  “You could not know,” Esperanza said slowly.

  That didn’t make him feel any less guilty.

  “Someone must have stolen the drug from Jasper,” Delaney said shakily.

  He looked up, his brain instantly seizing on the idea. “Yes. That’s true. Or even deliberately set Jasper up, got him to buy it for him. To lead the police to someone else if you reported the attack.”

  Esperanza nodded slowly, muttering, “Thi. A trick. El chupacabra, he likes tricks, like el coyote.”

  The puzzle pieces clicked into place. “And that’s why Jasper was killed,” he said, his fury close to boiling over. He met Delaney’s gaze. “When the attacks on you started, Jasper must have suspected something. Maybe even confronted the man.” Hell. Jasper must have been tortured with guilt once he’d realized.

  Delaney’s
teary eyes were wide and frightened. And grew even more so when Esperanza circled her cane in the air until it came to point at her. “Ten cuidado,” the old woman said, her voice whispery as sandpaper. “Chupacabra wantth only you.”

  Vic was in front of the curandera in a single stride. “Who?” he demanded. “Who is it? Who is this chupacabra, damn it?”

  He waited for Esperanza to answer, ready to strangle her if she didn’t, but the old woman just shook her head, her wrinkled lips pulled into her toothless mouth. “No se.”

  She didn’t know.

  “Why? Why is he doing this to me?” Delaney demanded.

  The old woman’s lips pressed together.

  Vic didn’t think Delaney really wanted to hear that answer. So he quickly asked, “The animals. Why kill the animals?”

  Esperanza lifted her face and turned to the heavily decorated altar that lined one whole wall of the room, where even now candles flickered and handmade wooden bowls overflowed with flowers, herbs, and…white bones. “Thacrificio.”

  Sacrifice. Vic clamped his jaw at the concept he’d familiarized himself with on the Internet just yesterday. Because Chris Locke and James McDuff had talked about it. So had Derek Braido. About sacrificing for atonement of a sin. So his instinct had been right. The violence started as a path to redemption for the rapist’s act of violence against Delaney.

  He watched as Delaney closed her eyes, her body visibly trembling. “I can smell him. Hear his voice,” she said in a strangled voice. “His hands are so cold.” She flinched, and her shaking hand brushed over her thigh, where Vic had seen the long, angry scratch. “His nails are sharp and ragged.”

  His jaw was clenched so tight his muscles ached. “Laney, you don’t have to do this.”

  Her eyes squeezed tighter. “Last night… I remember seeing those nails in my dreams.”

  He watched her, an ache deep in the pit of his stomach, thinking about who it could be. He remembered what Alan had been doing in the cabin. “Was it Alan?”

  She considered briefly. “No. I know Alan too well. I would have recognized his voice, his body size. His scent, even.”

  Vic swiped a hand over his mouth. “You’re sure last night the man who attacked you was the same man as in your nightmares?”

  She nodded, her face stricken. “Positive. Only his voice seemed somehow different now. Somehow changed in pitch, I think.” She opened her eyes. “I just…I don’t know.”

  Esperanza spoke again, her face tilted up to the sky. Vic translated for Delaney. “That night, she says, Jasper was not alone.”

  Delaney jerked, pulling free of him as Esperanza pointed her cane at the river, out toward the river, and muttered some more.

  Vic wrapped his arm around Delaney, thankful when her trembling body stilled. “She said the chupacabra was out there waiting,” he translated for her. “And that she can still hear him breathing.”

  …

  On the way home, Delaney insisted Vic stop at the vet clinic to check in with the doc and to say hi to her furry charges. She missed work. The normalcy. The unqualified wiggly love she always got from the dogs and the body rubs she was gifted with from the more discerning cats. By midday, they were back at his house at Tierra del Oro, the warmth and comfort of Vic’s den enveloping her the second she entered. The dark rust and beige colors, the brick red sofa and the huge overstuffed chair, the wood paneling along one wall, all represented homey comfort to the core. Strong. Masculine. And it made the pit of her stomach swirl.

  Her current emotions were pulsating through her, that same anticipation she’d felt twelve years ago on the night they were supposed to elope. But now it was coupled with the foreboding that had taken root in her and was growing with each passing day. The rape had been a catalyst for so much change in her life and now the threat was back, rearing its ugly head with a force she couldn’t ignore. Her nightmares had come to life during her waking hours and she couldn’t do a thing to stop them.

  “You okay?”

  The concern in Vic’s voice chased away her anxiety. Being with him gave her a sense of hope. Of calm. Of being able to recapture the innocence and trust she’d long since given up for dead.

  She tucked her keys and phone into her coat pocket, slipped out of it, and slowly turned to meet his gaze. He hadn’t budged from the doorway. Just leaned against the closed door, watching her with those intense eyes.

  She raised an eyebrow at him. “What’s the matter?” He’d probably expected her to put up a fight when he insisted she stay with him rather than go to her parents’ home. But somewhere along the day today she’d given up the pretense that she didn’t want to be exactly where she was.

  “Not a thing,” he said as he strode forward, coming to stand in front of her. Heat radiated off his body. She ran a finger along the neckline of her shirt. She’d been fine a minute ago—a perfect 98.6 degrees—but now she was melting.

  There was scarcely a breath of space between them now. She looked up at him, her chest going tight, the constant low throbbing of her ribs minor compared to the flurry of emotions coursing through her by just being so close to him.

  With his full lips so close to hers, she longed to abandon all of the painful old memories and start fresh. Exactly one week ago, he hadn’t been a part of her life. Now she was standing in his den with decided warmth between her legs and an immense ache of longing in her heart. She never wanted to leave this house.

  Or him.

  But did he want her? Or was this still all about the deal? She shook her head, hooking her thumbs in her belt loops and taking a step back, trying her damnedest to look casual instead of ravenous for him.

  “We have to talk, Laney,” he said, going around her to lean against the fireplace.

  She didn’t want to talk, just wanted to melt into him, breathe him in, and lose herself completely. “About?”

  “Take your pick. Esperanza. Chupacabra. Nightmares.” His rugged face softened as he smiled. “You and me.”

  She swallowed, backing up until her legs bumped against an overstuffed chair. She sank into it, preparing herself. She didn’t believe that smile. He must have sensed she’d fallen for him again and this was his moment to set her straight.

  The robin’s egg sky reflected light through the window. Even so, the room had a chill, and she shivered. He moved to the sofa, picked up a knitted afghan, and tossed it to her. She wrapped the afghan around herself. Too bad it wouldn’t protect her heart as well as her body.

  “There hasn’t been a you and me for a long time, Vic,” she said.

  The air in the room shifted as he sat down on the couch opposite her. “That doesn’t mean there can’t be again.”

  “Your deal—”

  He shook his head and she felt his frustration, felt like she could almost reach out and touch it with the tips of her fingers. “I’m not talking about that asinine deal.”

  “No?” If not, then what was he saying? She opened her mouth to ask him, but closed it again. Coward.

  “You and me now, Laney. That’s what I’m talking about. This—” He pointed to her, then to him, and back. “This thing we’ve been doing.”

  This thing? What did that mean? Did he want her, or was he cutting her loose? She tried to think rationally. Not let her heart and her body overpower her mind. She knew what she had to do, regardless of what he wanted. “You have a son, Vic. And there’s someone out there killing—maybe because of me. The idea of us is too dangerous,” she said, realizing as she spoke that this was the biggest obstacle. Someone had killed Jasper. The same man who’d raped her so long ago. And who’d attacked her again. Even if Vic could fall in love with her all over, he had to be a father first. She would never expect anything less. Keeping Zach safe was his priority. “How can there be a you and me?” she asked quietly.

  Anger washed ove
r his face. He was up off the couch in a flash, his hands fisted, a vein in his temple pulsing. “The goddamned chupacabra took you away from me. Sheila took my son away from me. Trust me, losing something that matters to me is not happening again.”

  She clenched the afghan, her heart racing. His anger and frustration filled the room, flowing straight into her. “You think I wanted any of this?” Choice and control had been ripped away from her, too.

  He turned around and clutched the fireplace mantel, dropping his head between his outstretched arms. He stayed that way for a long minute.

  “Sheila left San Julio,” he said at length, his voice low, the anger controlled. “I never heard from her again. I didn’t even know she was pregnant. At the time, I was thanking my lucky stars she’d taken off. Now—”

  Her heart melted at the anguish he must have felt when he’d learned he’d had a son and had missed the first eleven years of his life. “And now you have a child who barely talks to you.”

  She got up and walked up behind him, pushing aside the strength of her feelings. Nothing she could say would take away his pain or his regrets, or their past. But touching him, sharing her warmth with him, would let him know he wasn’t alone. She slid her arms gingerly around him, burying her face against the back of his neck.

  “I wish it had turned out differently,” she said, her lips brushing his skin. “For all of us.”

  …

  Vic needed her. Wanted her. Would have her. In a quick, fluid movement, he turned and backed Delaney against the wall, extending one of his arms against the wood paneling, running the other down the length of her arm. “You’re here now,” he murmured, his lips brushing hers. “I swear, if you walk out on me this time—” He stopped, his heart heavy at the thought. He didn’t know what he’d do if she left.

  He felt her shake her head, barely heard her whisper, “Last night I told you I’m not going anywhere. I meant it.”

  True confession time. He’d thought he could erase the past. Purge her from his wounded heart. But he knew now it was impossible to forget about Delaney. He lifted her chin with the light touch of his fingers. “I love you.”