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.

Another shot found its way into his calloused fingertips.

"Strange thing was, it didn't kill her, not that night," he continued, downing the thing without a thought. Maybe, he thought dimly as the drink warmed his veins, Coa might even remember Maite now and then if he spoke more. "I was a young boy then, cowering under mama's skirts. It flung Maite over its shoulder and carried her into the night. No one ever heard from her again, but for weeks her screams echoed across the plains and the stench of blood soaked the night wind. Then one evening, it stopped. We knew she was dead then. Now that I'm grown, I reckon I've got to do what I couldn't back then, and kill the bastard."

Drinks were poured and folks were shouting and whores were dancing to an old piano's tune. Yet the space between Diego and Coa stayed quiet. At last she braced her elbows on the table and pushed away. "Cowboy, you do us all that favor and I'll see to it you have a drink waiting for you each night for the rest of your life. But what makes you think you can?"

"Well, I ain't so much a cowboy as a trapper. Been chasing shadows across the world, in fact. Put away nightmares from the queen's palace in London to the wild savannas in the heart of Africa. This one here's the only one I'm afraid of."

Diego had been expecting a sharp snort or question about his prey. He did not, however, anticipate Coa's interest in what he considered to be the more mundane part of his wandering. And for some reason it amused him.

"Did you meet the queen and king?" she was saying, brown eyes filled with curiosity.

He let himself turn back to her. "I did."

"Huh," she said softly, crossing her arms, looking him over as if he wasn't the sort of man she'd think could come within a mile of meeting royalty. "What were they like? What was the palace like?"

"What did you hear?"

She shrugged. Bracelets jingled on her wrist. "Wigs spun in gold, silver plates, paints the size of my house. I've heard the Queen has a waist the size of a candlestick, and the King is the most handsome fellow in all of England."

Diego felt his chapped lips pull into a smile. "They're a lot more human than that."

In the time it took for him to describe the palace and field her further questions, the bar had begun to clear out. Patrons took their women and the men left behind had their fill and settled into a relatively quiet preponderance as if mulling the decision to make love or mischief.

"And where is this fiancee of yours?" Diego asked her at this point, tired of talk. He stretched and yawned; she insisted on guiding him to his room, trying to squeeze in a half dozen more questions about the world beyond her doorstep. "Seems inappropriate for an engaged dame like yourself to be escorting a man to his bed."

A smile pulled at the woman's thick lips. "You think I'm bullshitting you."

He returned her grin with one of his own and tapped his ring finger. "Just asking a question to a lady without a ring is all." 

Her shoulders stiffened, making her back arch slightly. "He's not just someone I made up to stop the perverts," she hissed. "I can stop 'em plenty fine without the threat of a man's name."

"Where is he?" Diego repeated, setting his hat to his head as they reached the dented staircase that led to the rooms. 

"New York."

He and on the railing, he peered at her from beneath the dark brim. "Quite a walk away."

Coa swept past him to take the higher stairs, always one step ahead. "He's a newspaper writer. He'll be back for me soon as he raises the money to get me outta this hellhole. We're going to have an apartment in New York. We might even travel, and I can see for myself if you're telling the truth."

The man kept his thoughts about promises to himself. Instead, he dipped the brim of his hat and caught up to her. "Well I've about exhausted myself for the night, Miss Coaxoch," he said, "and I'd rather not talk about your fellow's good fortune in landing you. So you tell me where to lay my head and I won't be disturbing you until breakfast."

She'd opened her mouth to speak when he pressed a hand to his lips, listening. The hair on the backs of his arms prickled. There was something, over the slow, plodding keys of the piano and the drunken shouts behind closed doors. There was something that activated that ancient, primal part of his brain that said to run, or, failing that, hide.

"What the—"

He left Coa standing at the top of the staircase, hustled out into the night with his hand on his hip. The moment the bar door slammed into the darkness the night came alive. The horses had broken from the barn, trampling the hillside as they rushed to higher, safer ground. Men ran through the town, swinging lanterns and hollaring to sleeping townsfolk.

And in the distance came a rippling, metallic groan as something large and hairy scrambled up the town's barrier walls. In the moonlight the demon clung to the rusted wall like an ancient, hairy gargoyle, and then it jumped onto the first roof, crashed through the weak wooden slats and disappeared from view.