Devotion Calls

by Caridad Piñeiro

  A cool nip lingered in the spring air. As he spoke, vapor marked his breath, but not Samantha’s. In her human state, her body temperature was well below normal. Only when the vampire emerged, and that strange life force totally took over, did she heat up.

  As she stood before him, arms crossed to ward off the chill, he reached out, let himself sample her undead energy and store away the unusual signature of it, so he would have something to compare to the unknown power they had both discerned in the past several days. “Why, Samantha? Why can I do this?”

  “Why am I a vampire?” she replied with a shrug. “Fate. Kismet. Destiny. We’re all given our roles in life.” She paused and laughed harshly. “Or in death, right?”

  How true that was, he realized. Each of them had unique reasons for being what they were, who they were. Compared to Samantha’s, Ricardo’s situation was easy. At least he was still human. Gifted in a strange way, but human.

  “Do you think this thing…will go away?”

  She shook her head forcefully. “No. I get the sense it wants something.”

  “Besides our cats? So what do we do?”

  “We look for it until we find it,” she said, and afterward, allowed herself to morph. While he had seen it happen dozens of times, the transformation still both shocked and intrigued him. Her teeth grew longer and sharper; her eyes, those wonderful sea-blue eyes, became a radiant neon green that pierced the dark of the night. Her body heated up, and now, he knew, she had true superhuman strength.

  “I don’t think it wants to be found,” he warned her.

  “I don’t think so, either. But, mon ami, we need to find it before it finds us.”

  Sara held her mother’s hand as she napped. It felt warmer than before, with a strength that surprised her. Evita had been so weak prior to Ricardo’s visit, so much paler. But afterward…

  Sara told herself not to hope. Not to let herself lose perspective. As a nurse, she knew too much about cancer and what it did. As a daughter, she had seen how it had toyed with her mother for the last few years, playing a game of hide-and-seek with the doctors, who had finally said there was nothing else they could do. Evita would be dead in a few weeks.

  That had been over a year ago. A year since Sara had turned to Ricardo in desperation.

  At the thought of him, a sigh escaped her. Ricardo confused her on so many levels. She had expected a charlatan, but found an honorable man. She had thought they’d connected on a personal level recently, but tonight it seemed he wanted to get away from her as quickly as possible.

  Then again, maybe that was wisest, given the situation.

  “Mi’ja, que pasa?” her mother asked as she roused from her light sleep.

  “Just thinking, mami.”

  “You think too much, niña. You always did. Not like your hermanitas.” Despite the words, there was a playful tone to her voice.

  Her sisters were all happily married and living in the suburbs—two in Jersey and one on Long Island. Sara’s eldest sister was pregnant, only partly because she felt ready to have a child. Sara also suspected her sister thought the prospect of a grandchild might help keep their mami with them just a bit longer.

  “So, I should stop thinking?” she asked now. “Is that it?”

  “Ricardo is a good man. Don’t judge what he does or how he does it. Follow your heart’s truth.”

  How did her mother know what had been on her mind? And why the wise old adages now? As Sara met her mami’s clear-eyed gaze, a gaze no longer clouded with pain, she saw that her mother was being secretive. About Ricardo? she wondered.

  “What does he do?” she asked, not that she expected her mother to explain, even if she did know. It made Sara uneasy that she was feeling something for a man who was clearly hiding things from her. But maybe knowing that in advance was better than what had happened to her with dandy Dr. Dan. She had given her heart and body to that creep and never seen the betrayal coming.

  At least with Ricardo she knew to guard herself.

  “He helps people, mi’ja. Does it matter how?” Evita said.

  Did it matter how? Sara wondered. Or did she only need to know that he was a good man, much as her mami said? Filled with guilt about the way they had left things earlier, she decided she needed to apologize.

  Glancing at her watch, she saw it was barely nine o’clock. She shot a look at her mother, who smiled and nodded in approval.

  “I’m going to go for a walk.”

  “Sounds good. If you happen to see Ricardo, thank him again for me.”

  If she saw him? When she saw him, she thought. Sara hurried from the bedroom, grabbed her jacket and called out to let her father know she wouldn’t be that late.

  It was odd by modern standards that at twenty-eight years of age she still answered to her parents. But these were the cards life had dealt her. If Fate hadn’t chosen this path for her, she wouldn’t have been here when her mother had gotten sick. Wouldn’t have had the top doctors in the world to treat her. Wouldn’t have met Ricardo.

  Ricardo, she thought again as she raced down the stairs and out onto the street. His shop was just around the corner and up the block.

  She hurried, rushing both to set things right and to get out of the cold. She hated winter, figured it was a genetic thing, being Dominican. She much preferred warmth and humidity, sun—

  She stopped as she saw Ricardo emerge from the women’s shelter with Samantha. Sara told herself it wasn’t what it seemed. That wasn’t a tender look on his face. That was a friendly hug, right? So what if it took a little bit longer than she liked? Or that he dropped his head toward Samantha’s in what looked like a kiss?

  A good and honest man, huh? Bullshit.

  Sara whirled, wanting to get away before he noticed her. That would make things too messy. Too hard to deal with.

  “Sara,” he called out.

  “No.” She cursed beneath her breath.

  She hurried her pace, but from behind her came the sound of his footfalls, moving faster than hers.

  She wouldn’t run. That would be embarrassing.

  Okay, she admitted, she was running, but her short strides were no match for those incredibly long and well-muscled legs she had admired recently. No match at all, she thought when his hand wrapped around her upper arm to stop her.

  Unable to escape him without doing him bodily harm—a possibility that did occur to her now that the shock of seeing him with the other woman made her want retribution—she faced him. “Did you want something?”

  “It’s not what you think,” he said.

  Over his shoulder, Sara saw that Samantha still stood on the landing, watching them. Sara lifted her chin a notch in challenge, and the other woman stepped back into the doorway.

  Sara finally faced Ricardo. His dark gaze feigned concern. Or maybe it was real concern—concern about being caught. “I was wrong about you. So wrong,” she said.

  When she turned away from him and he grasped her again, her years of army training took over. She grabbed his arm, slipped back and, using his momentum, propelled him over her shoulder and onto the ground.

  He landed with a solid thud and lay there, staring up at her. Surprisingly, a smile quirked his lips. “I’m not sure I deserved that.”

  With an agile flip—courtesy of his own military training—he came to his feet before her. “It’s not what you think. We’re just friends. Good friends.”

  “You expect me to t
rust you?” Sara shoved past him, but he knew better than to grab hold again. Instead, he fell into step beside her and pleaded his case.

  “I expect that a bright and logical woman such as yourself won’t jump to conclusions.”

  His challenge stopped her more effectively than physical force would have. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye to better gauge his response. “You’re friends?”

  Ricardo nodded. “Just friends. She’s helping me with…”

  He paused, unsure how to explain. Any explanation risked exposing his true self to Sara, but what he was beginning to feel for her merited truth. He had no choice but to tell her.

  “I went to Samantha for help, since—”

  A noise intruded from above. A loud and unusual noise from the rooftop of a nearby building.

  Sara heard it, as well, for she glanced upward. “What was that?”

  He raised a finger to his mouth to ask for quiet.

  The sound came again—a scrabbling like a dog’s nails across a tile floor. A very large dog with very long, very sharp nails.

  Ricardo wrapped an arm around Sara’s waist and brought her close in a defensive gesture. She didn’t put up any resistance, and they found themselves back to back, his arm bent around to keep her near as they both searched the rooftops above for the origin of the worrisome sound.

  All he heard was his rapid breathing and her own. They waited for some other sound, some other movement.

  “Ricardo?” she asked, and suddenly it came.

  A dark shadow leaped from one building to the other above them. A very large shadow. They heard hard nails raking across the rooftop, followed by a heavy thud as whatever it was landed. But before either of them could say another word, whatever had made the noise raced away, the clatter of its escape echoing in the night air.

  Sara slipped from behind him and pointed upward. “Do you plan on telling me what that was about?”

  Now was the time to tell her everything, he realized. He couldn’t hide any longer.

  Unlike whatever had made the noise, he couldn’t escape.

  Chapter 10

  T he light. The light was on the street. The power emanating from it was familiar. No, not an it. The power came from a human; the light was human.

  A h-huuuman just like me.

  The beast waited until the man and woman had calmed, no doubt thought him gone. He had only moved a few rooftops away. With his keen hearing, he heard them speaking, then listened as they walked away to the man’s shop.

  A shopkeeper.

  He had dealt with more than his share of shopkeepers in his former life, haggled with them for the best prices and merchandise. He had been in the process of haggling, squeezing the last penny from the creepy traveling tinker, when the man had offered to give him something like nothing he had ever seen before.

  He was intrigued, especially when the man mentioned it would cost him something of little value. He had followed the man to the back of his cart, his curiosity aroused by a thick wooden door with a small window barred with fat iron rods.

  “What is this?” he’d asked the tinker.

  At the sound of his voice, something rattled inside the cart.

  “See for yourself.” The man almost cackled with glee.

  He’d approached the bars slowly, stopped a foot away when the rattling from within grew louder and a strange combination of chirps and screeches rent the air. He’d stepped back then, but found the odd tinker behind him, urging him forward.

  “Afraid? Surely a fine gentleman such as you isn’t afraid.”

  Afraid? He had never feared anything in his life.

  With a quick stride, he was at the door and peering inward.

  Even now he could remember the sharp pain across his hand as something bit deep and held on, even as he beat at it with his other fist. A wild and eerie wail erupted from the strange creature when he’d finally freed himself.

  Whirling, blood dripping from his hand, he had turned toward the tinker, rage seething through his body. “What is the meaning of this?”

  “You wanted something of value for nothing. Now you have it,” the tinker crowed, motioning to the cart and then down to the wound on his hand.

  He glanced at the bite, where blood oozed freely, staining the ruffled cuff of his shirt. Reaching into his pocket, he took out his monogrammed handkerchief, shook it open and then wrapped it tightly around the wound. “What do I have, old man? What are you talking about?”

  “Life eternal. It’s yours now in exchange for something of little value—your soul.”

  He’d stared at the man, rubbed at his hand, which throbbed painfully. Making a fist, he shook it at the tinker. “You’ll pay for this.”

  But the other man wasn’t listening. He almost danced with joy as he said, “Suck the life out of me, would you? Me and other poor working stiffs? You’ll get yours, you will. You’ll get yours until you learn the error of your ways.”

  The tinker was crazy. That had to explain the wild look in his eyes, the nonsense he spouted about the lack of a soul and being a bloodsucker.

  Finished with his dealings with the tinker, he had walked away, but days later, the side of his hand still throbbed and a strange gray-green rash had erupted at the location of the bite.

  The wound had healed, but the rash hadn’t gone away. If anything, it slowly spread. So he had begun to wear a glove whenever he went out. He haggled with the shopkeepers, more resentful than ever, feeling cheated somehow, embittered inside.

  The rash spread and spread, as did his hostility, until finally, he’d shut himself off from the human world, since nothing pleased him anymore. Only blood satisfied him. First he drained the blood from the animals on his plantation, until none were left alive and he was forced to scavenge the wild game in the hills surrounding his home.

  He’d wandered farther and farther, and wherever he went, a name chased after him—chupacabra.

  Only he wasn’t a goat sucker or a vampire. He was human.

  “H-huuman,” he said now, the word spewing from his lips together with the screeches and other noises so similar to what he had heard so long ago in the back of the tinker’s cart.

  He looked down and listened carefully.

  The man and woman had walked away to the man’s shop.

  He had to follow. Had to see if the building was over his mark. That would definitely confirm his suspicions that this human was the source of the light. The way to be cured of whatever disease the tinker’s beast had infected him with.

  If he hadn’t helped her mother, Sara would have left him on the street. She had no time for liars. But Ricardo had helped, and up until a few minutes ago, she had fancied that she might be attracted to him. Although what did she really know about him after only two dinners together?

  Still, at his invitation she walked with him to his shop. They didn’t stop downstairs. As he had several days ago, he led her up to his private space.

  He paused in the living room and invited her to sit.

  “No, thanks. I prefer to stand.”

  He nodded curtly. “At least take your coat off.”

  “What makes you think I plan on staying that long?”

  Sighing, he raked his hair back in agitation. “I thought you came here for an explanation. That might take some time.”

  She considered him carefully. His dark green eyes were intense. Pleading. Much like when he had pr
omised a few hours ago to come back and help her mother again.

  Help her mother, Sara thought. If for no other reason than that, she had to listen to him.

  Ripping off her jacket, she tossed it on his couch and followed it. She crossed her legs and then her arms, wrapping the latter tightly around her. “So? You’ve got some explaining to do.”

  Ricardo could tell from the defensive way she sat and the determined set of her chin that it would be difficult to breach her barriers, even with the truth. But even the truth had multiple spins. If there was one thing he had learned in the military, it was how to say “Yessir” while actually meaning “No way.”

  “I met Samantha nearly three years ago, when we both moved here. We became friends—just friends, despite the neighborhood talk to the contrary.”

  “Didn’t look like a friendly kind of hug just now.” A pout actually marred Sara’s lips as she said it. He found the pout intriguing. Sexy.

  He decided to push it a bit further. “Samantha never questioned what I could do, unlike some people.”

  The pout grew bigger for a moment, before she started to worry her lip guiltily. He knew Sara hadn’t believed in him. That had been obvious from the first time she had entered his shop. Come to think of it, her posture then had been similar to now. She had been uptight, her arms wrapped around her body, her chin thrust out much like it was at the moment.

  She lowered her chin a smidgen and her teeth bit down a little more, making it hard for him to concentrate, since what he suddenly wanted to do more than anything was to soothe that spot she was worrying with her teeth.

  He knelt before her and ran his thumb across her lip to stop the nervous gesture. “The other morning I felt something weird. Samantha also—”

  “Samantha can feel what you feel? How is that possible?” Sara leaned back, away from his consoling gesture, obviously not buying what he had said so far.

  So much for his power to spin things.