Chapter XXIII #2
She would sink her teeth into that muscle. Ligament and gristle, wet and rubber against her teeth, rrrrrrrip from bone—
Water struck her face, so cold that it burned. Her flesh was seared, it would melt away.
Alba gasped.
She could have sworn that the water was a torrent, but it was not—when her eyes focused on Bartolomé, when she steadied, chest heaving, she saw his hand outstretched, water dripping from his fingertips. It was only a dew-like sprinkle from the small bottle he held with the rosary in his other hand.
Color flushed his cheeks; his eyes burned with an emotion that made her want to shrink back. When she did, her spine curling away from him as if she were a trapped animal, she was stopped by a solid body.
Elías stood behind her, his hands on her shoulders. A glance down showed his fingers gripping her so hard that they would doubtless leave marks. His knuckles were pale.
The tips of his fingers were black.
Not as black as they had been in the workshop—the color had faded somewhat—but the evidence was there all the same.
“I see,” Bartolomé said. His voice shook, close to cracking. He cleared his throat. “I see.”
“And that’s not the worst of it, Padre,” Elías said, voice hoarse as if he had been shouting.
“I thought I had seen something,” Bartolomé said. “I thought I was wrong.”
He lowered his outstretched hand. The motion was tentative, a test—could he, without her launching at him with a snarl?
He could, for she was spent. She slumped against Elías; her legs folded beneath her like playing cards.
Elías caught her beneath the armpits. A shift of his weight, a soft grunt, and he placed her in the chair opposite Bartolomé.
“Would you like water, senorita?” Bartolomé asked, and before she could reply that yes, her mouth was so dry, he was pouring her a cup from the pitcher at his nightstand. He was already back before her, crouching so that he was at her eye level.
An instinct pulled her away like hands on her shoulders. Her heart, weary though it was, lifted its exhausted head and panted.
But whose instinct was that—hers, or someone else’s? Something else’s?
This was her body and she would do with it what she wanted. She would speak to whom she wanted and not fantasize about mauling them. She would maintain control. It was her right.
She took the water from Bartolomé and drank. Her throat felt as if it were lined with inflamed welts; the water slaked her thirst, but swallowing pained her.
“I hoped it was the light playing tricks on me,” Bartolomé said, softly, as if half to himself. “Or my own superstition, my fallibility. An overzealous imagination…”
“I thought the same,” Elías said, “but I have seen too much, and in broad daylight, to be in any doubt that something is very wrong.”
“Senorita,” Bartolomé said softly.
She met his pale eyes. Flinched, then settled. Every muscle in her back tensed. Her shoulders ached with the desire to fling back, to get away.
“Does this have to do with the sleepwalking?” he asked.
She forced herself to nod.
“I wake with dirty feet,” she murmured. “Almost every morning. And no memory of where I went. Where I was taken. No memory of anything.”
“How long has this been happening?” he asked.
Alba let the silence stretch long.
“I saw her the night Romero died,” Elías offered. “Sleepwalking toward the mine.”
Bartolomé nodded; he knew this much from her confession and seemed to be piecing the shattered vase back together. Picking up each shard and examining it in the light, then putting it down with care.
“I fear it began before that,” Alba said. “I fear…”
An infant’s wail rose in the back of her mind, hungry, desperate, gratingly pitched.
It moved out of her skull and into the room, and it was there , it was so close and so loud and so insistent that she was certain that if she only turned around in her chair, she would see a red-faced infant on the floor by the door, screaming to be helped.
But there was nothing. There was only silence, silence that rang white and clear with anticipation as Bartolomé waited for her to speak.
“I fear it began in the mine,” she whispered. “It began here.”
Bartolomé leaned back on his heels. Was the exhaustion that marked his face a mirror of her own?
Were the hollows beneath her eyes shadowed with that same bruised shade?
Did her skin look thin and parched, sucked dry by the mountain air?
She felt she would collapse to dust if anyone so much as put a hand on her.
Bartolomé sighed deeply.
“I need…I need time to pray,” he said. “And you need to rest. You look as if you were dragged here from the gates of Hell.”
Her laugh, when it came, was dry and cracked, and unexpectedly high. Such humor from the priest was startling. Not unwelcome. But painfully apt.
Rest . It was as seductive a word as she had ever heard. Sleep. Her whole body ached for it.
“Padre,” Elías began, “there is a problem with that.”
Bartolomé lifted his head to Elías, his expression a question.
“It…” Elías trailed off, then tried anew: “Everything bad happens when she falls asleep. Perhaps her defenses are down. It is a clear pattern.”
“He’s right,” Alba said.
“She cannot stay awake forever,” Bartolomé said. He stared at her in silence for a long moment. “That will only weaken her further.”
She felt pinned to the chair, as if lances were stuck through each of her shoulders and a knife were held to her throat. Her heart was racing again, and it ached, oh, it ached from the effort.
Bartolomé stood. His back was straight as a rod; energy lifted through him to the ceiling as if he, too, were animated by a force beyond their understanding.
“Elías,” he said, and it had the weight of a command. “I will tell the others she has signs of matlazahuatl and must be kept in isolation. I will tend to her and keep watch. But I cannot do it alone.”
“Whatever you need, Padre,” Elías said. “I will help.”
Bartolomé’s piercing gaze was on him now, weighing his willingness, examining it in the light like a jeweler searching for flaws in a stone.
A new hum of unease ran over Alba’s bones.
Elías had brought her here at a time when everyone ought to be resting. Elías had brought her here alone . What would Bartolomé suspect?
If any of those thoughts were moving through Bartolomé’s mind, he was mercifully focused on logistical matters.
“I need a fellow watchman,” he said. “Starting tonight.”
“Done.” Elías spoke without hesitation, before Bartolomé could even draw breath at the end of the sentence.
“Good,” Bartolomé said. “And in the meantime,” he added, looking down at Alba, “we must confine you.”