Devotion Calls

by Caridad Piñeiro

“The phone,” Ricardo whispered. He yanked it off his belt and answered.

  “Nothing here,” said the clipped, serious voice. It was Samantha. “Peter is heading to a late shift at work, so we’re calling it a night. You should probably head home, too,” she said.

  “We will. We just have something to finish up.” Ricardo gazed down at Sara’s face, flushed by the heat they’d generated between them with their mouths. Without bothering to wait for a further reply from Samantha, he shut off the phone and tucked it into his coat pocket.

  He cradled Sara’s face in his hands. “You do want to finish this, don’t you?”

  She didn’t answer; she merely stood on tiptoe and kissed him.

  The creature peered around the edge of the bulky chimney. The large orbs of its green-yellow eyes absorbed every available ray of light, permitting it to see well beyond what any mortal could. He had been watching for hours now as the humans walked from roof to roof, searching for him, but he was well hidden and too far away from whatever senses allowed the human to connect with him.

  He had sat there for the better part of the night, entranced by the motion of the human who bore the light within him. Even now, a shimmer of his special energy encircled the man’s silhouette. It grew even brighter as he kissed the petite woman with him.

  The human liked her. She pleased him, the beast thought, unlike the present he had left that morning. The human hadn’t seemed pleased with that.

  The woman, however, clearly made the man happy. All around the couple, an aura of contentment shimmered, growing stronger as they deepened their embrace.

  The woman could be helpful. Maybe she could understand what the man wanted, the beast thought as he continued his voyeurism.

  The humans stood together for the longest time and the aura around them brightened, beaming with beautiful colors. Eventually, however, they broke apart and left the rooftop.

  The beast dared to move then. He jumped to the next set of buildings as quietly as he could, watching as the man walked the woman around the corner to one building and then returned to his shop.

  With glee, the beast realized that while the human might not know where he was, he had no such problem.

  The shop was right above the mark he had made in the sewer.

  For nearly two days, his work on a homicide kept Peter from tracking down the two officers who had filed the dognapping report. He finally caught up to them as they were walking their beat along First Avenue. One of the officers was small and thin, while the other had the imposing build of a football player starting to go to flab.

  “Gerber. Anderson,” he called out as he approached, flashing his gold lieutenant’s badge to identify himself.

  “You’re a little far from your precinct, aren’t you, Lieutenant?” asked Officer Gerber, the larger of the two men, as he took a quick sip from the foam coffee cup he was carrying. Judging from the way he winced, the liquid was hot.

  Peter slipped his badge back into his suit jacket. “Actually, I live not far away and this is a personal call. That is, if you have the time to talk about that dognapping you wrote up.”

  Gerber shot a quick look at his much shorter partner, who picked up the conversation. “I guess it depends on what you need.”

  Peter adopted a casual stance, his hands loose by his sides and empty of his ubiquitous notepad, since the two officers were obviously uneasy. “I read the report,” he said, “but there’s a few things that don’t seem clear.”

  They exchanged nervous glances again before Gerber finally spoke. “The lady was freaked out. Totally crazy when we arrived.”

  “I thought she was an EDP at first, the way she was ranting,” Anderson added in explanation.

  An Emotionally Disturbed Person?

  “Was she injured during the attack?” Maybe that would account for her being so out of control, Peter thought.

  Anderson shook his head, held out one hand and rubbed his wrist as if to demonstrate. “Just something like rope burn on her wrist. The strap of the leash rubbed her raw when…”

  He stopped massaging his wrist and looked to his partner, as if for approval. When Gerber nodded his assent, he explained, “She claimed some kind of animal grabbed her dog.”

  “An animal? Like, what kind of animal?” Peter finally pulled his notebook out of his suit jacket, but at that action, Gerber motioned for his partner to stop.

  “No way, Detective. You’re not getting either of us on the record with this.”

  He pressed the officer. “You said an animal. What kind? A bigger dog?”

  “You plainclothes guys think you’re the only ones with brains,” Gerber retorted. “If it was just another dog, we would have called Animal Control.”

  “Not another dog, then? Something more exotic? Like a big cat, maybe?”

  “This broad was carrying on like it was some sort of monster. Big, ugly and toothy.” Gerber emphasized his point by making a clawing motion with his large, beefy hand.

  “Kind of green with some feathers and something sharp and pointy at its tail,” Anderson added. “That’s all she saw when it took her dog to the roof.” He shot a nervous look at his partner out of the corner of his eye.

  Gerber hesitated for a moment, eyeballed Peter up and down before elbowing his partner. “Show him what we found at the scene.”

  Anderson shook his head. “You know—”

  “He’s not going to believe it anyway. We don’t.” Gerber took another hit of the coffee, but it was obvious he wished it was something stronger.

  Anderson once again delayed, earning another forceful shove from his partner. At that, he reached into his shirt pocket and removed a folded envelope. Passing it over, he said, “These things were on the ground. Don’t know where they came from and there wasn’t anything I could do with them.”

  “The creature,” Gerber answered, but with a tone of insincerity that prompted nervous laughter from his partner.

  “Right. The monster,” Anderson chimed in, his voice a falsetto likely intended to mimic the dog owner.

  Peter opened the envelope to discover what looked like a very fine, orange-and-beige feather, and the remnant of an exceptionally long nail. More like the talon of a falcon or eagle. Maybe that was the dognapper, although he had never heard of such birds of prey hunting at night or running around on building rooftops.

  “You’re kidding, right?” he asked, and looked from one cop to the other, thinking that maybe they were putting him on. All too soon he realized they were serious. But then again, who was he to doubt claims about monsters, when he was in love and living with a vampire?

  “Okay, so let me get this straight. The lady claimed a monster snatched her dog, but you wrote it up as a plain old dognapping?”

  Anderson gave a brusque nod of his head, as did Gerber. “We convinced her no one would believe her, and promised her we would keep on looking for her dog if she let us list it as a dognapping.”

  Peter tucked the envelope and his notepad into his suit jacket. “Did you find the dog?”

  Gerber shook his head. “We didn’t find it, or for that matter, any other strays. No carcasses lying around, either.”

  “Meaning?”

  “It was like someone swept the neighborhood for all the loose animals and took them away,” Anderson replied. “But sometimes the dog fight people do that.”

  “Yeah, training material for their fighters,” Peter said. After thanking the two officers, he w
alked toward his sedan. Once he was inside, he picked up the phone and called Samantha.

  “You have some information, love?” she asked.

  “Probably not what you were expecting to hear.”

  Chapter 13

  N eeding some privacy, Sara had borrowed her friend Melissa’s office and computer during her lunch hour at work. She was still pounding at the keys, searching the Internet for “monsters,” when Melissa returned from having lunch at home with her husband and new baby.

  As Melissa rounded the corner of her desk and noted the keyword, she hitched her hips on the edge of her desk and said, “This is getting too weird, amiga.”

  It was, wasn’t it? Sara thought. But if she couldn’t tell her best friend, who could she tell? “I don’t want you to think I’m crazy. Promise?”

  Melissa nodded.

  “I feel something with Ricardo. When he touches you to heal, there’s warmth and this…sizzle.” She shrugged as words failed her, then plowed onward. “He can perceive power in others, or at least he says he can.”

  Maintaining a calm countenance, Melissa adopted a professional demeanor. She began to explain, “There’s been literature in the journals about faith healers. Psychic healers, as well. What you’re describing has been documented. However, the healers and their cures have sometimes proved to be fake.”

  Sara nodded. “I know that. But I’m telling you, I don’t know if he’s for real, but the feelings definitely are.”

  “So what’s bothering you? Besides being in like with him?”

  “I’m not in like with him,” she said, but as Melissa raised one eyebrow, clearly incredulous of the claim, Sara backtracked. “Okay, so maybe a little like.”

  “So you little-like him and you’re sitting here looking for ‘monsters’?” Melissa teased, trying to relieve some of Sara’s anxiety.

  It didn’t work.

  In retrospect, they were both fairly serious, driven, logical and scientific women, which made what Sara was about to say all that much harder. “Ricardo says he’s felt another life force and it’s not a good one.”

  Melissa raised an eyebrow. “And you believe that?”

  With a quick shake of her head, she said, “Not at first, only several nights back, we heard something weird on one of the rooftops near his shop. Then something killed one of the neighborhood cats and left it on Ricardo’s doorstep. Now other cats have turned up missing.”

  Sara leaned back in the desk chair and waited for her friend’s disbelief and possibly even condemnation. She wasn’t prepared when Melissa remained silent and took on a faraway look.

  It was her turn to press for an answer. “Melissa?”

  She looked at Sara now. “I don’t think you’re crazy. In the past couple of years, I’ve come across things….” She clearly struggled with what else to say, but finally finished with, “There are some things science can’t explain. Maybe not even faith can justify them. But they exist. Sometimes we have to deal with them.”

  Melissa’s life hadn’t been all that easy, Sara knew. Both her parents had been murdered, and their murderer had kidnapped Melissa just over a year ago. Sara had never really asked why, sensing that the reasons behind both the murders and kidnapping were ones that likely defied belief. She also sensed that by not asking questions and by behaving as if everything was back to normal, she was helping her friend cope with the recent changes in her life.

  “This thing taking the cats, if it does exist…you think we can stop it?”

  A hard glint entered Melissa’s blue eyes. “Probably not alone.”

  Needing to help rein in the tension that had overtaken Melissa, Sara laid a hand on her friend’s arm. Beneath her fingers, Melissa’s muscles trembled with strain. “You’re not telling me something. Something bad.”

  Melissa shook her head forcefully, shifting her shoulder-length blond hair back and forth with the movement. “There are people who can help you.”

  Sara nodded. “Ricardo has friends. One of them is a detective.”

  Melissa looked up, her brow furrowed. “Peter Daly, by any chance?”

  Sara shifted back in her chair, surprised. “You know him?”

  With a curt nod, Melissa confirmed it. “And Samantha Turner. They’re friends. They can help you if…” She let the thought trail off and took a different path. “You know, when you first came to me about this santero, I worried about what he was.”

  “And now?”

  Melissa met her gaze straight on, her look fierce. “I worry about what will happen if you get any more involved with him.”

  Her friend was holding back, Sara realized. Melissa knew more about Ricardo and his friends than she was letting on. That bothered Sara, but what she was about to say would trouble her friend even more.

  “Then I think you’d better start worrying.”

  Peter Daly nervously fingered the plain white window envelope before placing it in front of Ricardo on the table later that evening. The unlikely quartet had gathered once again. “Have you ever seen anything like this before?”

  Ricardo glanced at Sara before reaching for the envelope, opening it and spilling out the contents. The long nail made little noise as it tumbled out onto the surface of the oak kitchen table. The tuft of what looked like an orange feather landed beside it soundlessly.

  Both he and Sara leaned forward at the same time to examine the two items. Sara poked at the piece of nail with her own manicured one. “Is that…blood?”

  Blood and who knew what else, he thought. “Yes. Where did you get these?” he asked Peter.

  Peter exchanged a hesitant look with Samantha before he answered. “The two police officers who filed that dognapping report. They found these things at the scene.”

  Sara trailed her finger along the edge of the feather and then shivered. “This isn’t just another animal taking those strays, is it?”

  Ricardo shook his head. “No, it isn’t.” Even these small items radiated remnants of the energy he had been sensing for over a week now. They were from the life force that had intruded into his psyche, and seemed to have taken up residence in their neighborhood.

  He glanced at Sara before fixing his gaze on Samantha and Peter. “What is it?”

  “We were hoping you had some idea,” Samantha said.

  He swept the nail and feather into the envelope and passed it back to Peter. “I have no idea. So what do we do now?”

  With a shrug, Samantha replied, “We do what we’ve been doing—keep an eye out for it. Try to keep it from hurting anything else.”

  “What if that’s not enough?” Sara said, confirming what they all were thinking but hadn’t voiced.

  Ricardo leaned over, laid his hand on hers as it rested on the table. “When the time comes, we’ll handle it together.”

  Hand in hand they walked along the nearly empty streets, searching. Though they had seen and heard nothing out of the ordinary, they kept up their patrols.

  Ricardo’s hand was warm around Sara’s, a steadying presence in the dark, dank street. To temper the silence she started a conversation.

  “Mami is holding steady.” His hand tightened on hers and the apprehension flickered across his face. She sought to alleviate his concern. “I know it’s because you came by this morning. You’ve been coming by a lot lately.”

  “I want to do what I can. I wish I could do more,” he stated, much as he had said on other occasions. She wanted t
o understand. Wanted to prepare herself for when her mother’s time came.

  “Your power. The ashe your orishas gather for you…”

  His hand stiffened in hers. “There is only so much power they can bring me. Only so much power I have within me to give, and after that—”

  “You risk yourself,” she finished for him, finally beginning to comprehend. But with that comprehension came doubt once again.

  She stopped, turned and looked up at him, but he averted his gaze. Reaching up, she pressed her palm to his cheek. It was smooth, but taut beneath her hand. “You’re not telling me everything.”

  He surprised her by nodding. “I’m not, but…Sometimes you have to have faith, Sara. You have to believe that I would never hurt you or your family.”

  In her heart she knew as much, which was troubling. Had she placed her faith in him too quickly?

  She was about to respond when a foul odor engulfed them. With it came the sense of evil that had surrounded the dead cat’s body the other day. Ricardo experienced it, as well, for he placed his back to hers and wrapped his arm around her in a defensive posture, almost as if they had fought together during their times in the military.

  The odor—like the stench of something decaying—grew stronger, and they pressed closer to each other, ever more tightly. Then a noise intruded from a nearby alley. A noise or just her imagination? Sara wondered. She had her answer when Ricardo took a step toward the gap.

  He shifted so that Sara was positioned safely behind him. Bending slightly, he whispered, “Stay close.”

  “I’ve got your back,” she murmured.

  With an abrupt nod, he moved to the entrance of the alley. The stench grew more pungent the closer they got. At the mouth of the narrow space between the two buildings, he paused and peered into the darkness, made even murkier by the lack of any moonlight tonight.

  He made out the shapes of garbage cans near the front of the alley, but not much else. He sensed a presence, however, and confirmed in that instant that it wasn’t a vampire.