“Santa Fe is at a crossroads,” he sighed. “But that isn’t important right now. How are you?” He put a hand on his friend’s arm.
“I’m dying.”
Ricardo bowed his head, almost so his chin touched his chest. “I wish you wouldn’t say that.”
“But it’s true. You can’t help me. But all these people? Whatever is happening in this town? Help them.”
He supposed he could take it as the man’s dying wish.
Ever since he’d been cursed, he’d known the world was filled with strangeness and terrors. He had tried to live a good life despite it all. Not let the power overcome him. And certainly not let anyone who desired such power use him. Now the battle had come to him.
He had an idea.
“I will need all your help,” he said to the others in the room. “Let us go out to the courtyard to talk. Juanito, I’ll be back soon.”
“I’ll be here.”
Imelda, Lucinda, and Father Diego followed him to the courtyard, where John was standing, looking out over the wall. The priest clutched his beads even more tightly; his hands were shaking.
“Señor,” Diego said. “You have been shot, you should lie down, the señora should tend your wound—”
“You see, Padre, I’m no longer even bleeding.” Ricardo tugged at the ruined corner of his shirt, the single hole only marked with a spattering of blood. He should have been drenched, but he no longer even felt pain.
“¡Dios!” Diego quickly backed away, crossed himself so fast his hand seemed to tangle with itself. He ran into the courtyard wall.
“You see, there are worse things than healer women,” Ricardo murmured.
“What are you?” the priest cried out.
John seemed amused and looked the priest up and down as if he found the man wanting. “He’s called El Conquistador. He’s lived three hundred years. A monster of the dark. But he has many friends, so who’s to say what he is?”
They were all staring at Ricardo now. One thing to say he was some indeterminate and perhaps inconsequential demon. Another thing to have it laid out so clearly.
“He pays the rent in advance,” Imelda said, shrugging, as if the practical consideration stood for all.
“Shh,” the Navajo man said. “Hear that?”
A howling voice filled the night—the piercing, drawn-out call of a wolf. Then another, and another. All from different directions, as if they surrounded the plaza.
“Wolves in the city?” Father Diego said. “I’ve never heard them so close.”
“They’re not wolves, not really,” Ricardo said.
“What is happening?” Lucinda demanded, her hands laced over her belly.
“The demons have come to Santa Fe, Father. All those stories that the priests frightened us with when we were children—they’re all of them true.”
“And you’re one of them! If demons are in Santa Fe, it’s because you have brought them!”
“Oh, there’s so much worse than I in the world,” Ricardo said. “Men who are wolves, women who drink blood, beings who can’t be killed, who come out at night—they are here in Santa Fe and preparing to do battle.” And what awful timing for Ricardo to be here in the middle of it. He sometimes felt he had spent most of his three hundred years fleeing from these battles, and now they were catching up to him.
Imelda was praying audibly now. Lucinda was also praying, words that flowed like a chant, and she sprinkled herbs from a pocket in her dress all around the courtyard.
“And you would save us from these monsters?” Diego said, voice edging to panic. “You cannot! You are cursed! You have no soul, you are damned!”
“Yes. Probably. My soul was taken from me through no fault of my own. What of that? What of God’s forgiveness, then? If I have no soul, if I am already damned, then what is left to me but my choices? So I choose to do good and hope for salvation no matter how hopeless it seems. Would you have me do otherwise, Father Diego? Would you hear my confession now and take it as I offer it, in earnest?” If a demon repents, does one believe it? Ricardo didn’t need Diego to trust him. Just . . . not interfere.