High Moon

3: Rust

Glancing back to survey her dingy, lantern-lit establishment, Coa adjusted the flower in her hair. Diego thought the pallid petals looked beautiful against the dark gleam of her hair, but he held his tongue. He didn't need no trouble, not even if he didn't plan on sticking around long enough to suffer the consequences.

"Revenge is a mighty dangerous undertaking," she decided at last.  She gestured for another shot, covering it with her hand this time to keep it from Diego's reach. Her eyes watched his carefully. "Only folks seeming to enjoy it are the ones building the coffins. You planning on making our undertaker busy?"

Ignoring the drink, the man dusted the hat balanced on his knee. "I ain't staying past dawn."

Coa stretched the fine curve of her neck and, rubbing the bare skin, leaned closer. "Got a wife and kids?" she asked.

"Does it matter?"

She nodded. "Never met a man who'd chase the devil unless blood of his own or his kin's been spilled."

Diego let his fingers stretch for the glass at her hand. He knew he shouldn't be having many more, but something about having the last drink in his life compelled him to attempt another swipe of hers. The last last one didn't have the taste of finality. Maybe one this would.

Her thumb pushed his grip away. "And?" she continued.

"Kin's blood," he grunted.

In a smooth motion she backed off the drink. "You'll be paying for this," she told him primly, and settled back on her stool, palms on her knees, a keen glint in those fierce eyes. "As the owl says, 'who?'"

The man's brow furrowed. "Who?" He let the word roll off his tongue with a ponderous slowness, more or less debating what he'd say. Entertaining a pretty woman with deeply personal stories wasn't exactly something he'd done much of. Across the ocean, and even on this side of the Atlantic he stuck to tales of bravery and courage, of slithering beasts and sharp claws in the far reaches of an endless Savannah. That was how he courted ladies, and what he did with them after wasn't...Was a different kind of personal. The sort of personal a man might like if he knew this was to be his last night walking on this side of the dirt.

You can get it from one of them others, he reminded himself, though his body was well and truly tired of the long journey. Not this one.

"Hey," came her sharp voice. From the corner of his eye he saw her hand hit the curve of her waist and tap impatiently. "You know, who did the killing and who did the dying?"

Much as it pained him to turn from the epitome of feminine sensuality, he hunched his shoulders and just slightly positioned himself towards the less attractive visage of the barkeeper. But oh, Coa didn't move, not one bit, except to blink and draw in patient breaths beside him. At last he caved. "Long time ago in this very bar, back when you could see the original color of the wood down below," —her hand slapped his shoulder lightly; the grin it brought from him he tried to mask—"Back when your father maintained an active presence at the counter here, there was a drought, not unlike this one plaguing us today. The demon crossed the waters. Blew through the old doorway like old man winter and snatched my sister from her bed."

Coa didn't react like the ladies of the courts and estates who'd heard tales of such monstrous affairs. She didn't gasp or faint or let one flicker of sadness cross her lips at the dire news. The women out here, what he liked about them was that they understood how life was. And living out here in the grotto, Coa knew better than most. She simply brushed her hair through her fingers and murmured a soft but impersonal, "I'm sorry."

That bothered Diego's liquor-soaked mind in a way he didn't fully grasp or understand. It wasn't that she didn't care; he didn't care about her dead relatives either; no, it was that his sister never got the chance to be mourned proper by folks. Maite was young. She hadn't lived enough of a life to be remembered- and the pang in his heart was due to knowing that his death would in some sense forever extinguish her memory. Well, there was his brother, but his brother hadn't so much as spoken her name since the day she died; he just carried on like she'd never been there. Diego could only hope she might be remembered still, but he knew his brother, and he knew it would not be so.