The Wolves of El Diablo. Eric Red

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      Copyright © 2017 Smash Cut Productions LTD

      Cover art copyright © 2017 John Gallagher

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, scanning, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission from the publisher.

      This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

      eBook ISBN: 978-1-909640-99-3

      2017 SST Publications eBook Edition

      Published by

      Short, Scary Tales Publications

      15 North Roundhay

      Birmingham

      B33 9PE

      England

      www.sstpublications.co.uk

      eBook design by Paul Fry

      First Digital Edition: August 2017

      To John Fallon and Spunky,

      my two favorite werewolves.

      Other Books in Eric Red’s The Men Who Walk Like Wolves Series

      The Guns of Santa Sangre

      The Claws of Rio Muerta – Coming 2018

      Books by Eric Red

      Don’t Stand So Close

      It Waits Below

      White Knuckle

      PROLOGUE

      The Mexican church once known as Santa Thomas was in ruins. Gutted by fire, walls and roof collapsed, the fallen bell from the steeple lay on the bloody ground of the poor village.

      The Men Who Walked Like Wolves had blasphemously changed the church’s name to Santa Sangre—Saint Blood—and hell had come.

      Now those werewolves were gone from the earth.

      Three outlaw gunfighters who became The Guns of Santa Sangre forged the church silver into bullets for their pistols. In one violent night, they used those silver bullets to kill The Men Who Walked Like Wolves—every last one. Or so they thought.

      Now all the silver was gone, save for one silver bullet the heroic three took with them when they left.

      That silver belonged to the church, which lost its treasure but reclaimed its true name.

      One single round, less than an ounce of silver, was a small price to pay for salvation.

      Let The Guns of Santa Sangre keep the one silver bullet.

      Perhaps they might need it.

      CHAPTER ONE

      The cantina sat off the beaten desert trail, a ramshackle structure at the foot of a lonely canyon in the barren Mexican badlands. The red sky was a bloody sickle on the horizon, a full yellow moon on the rise.

      The saloon was a cheap hovel cobbled together from mismatched boards and a tin roof, a gob of chewed tobacco God had spat in the desolation. A hand painted sign outside the blanket-covered doorway advertised cheap whisky for the unlikely passersby on the rural trail. A few horses were tethered to the post outside, tails swishing flies in the lazy heat.

      Tumbleweed rolled, stopped, rolled again, was gone.

      A cloud of dust appeared in the distance, shattering the stillness.

      Eight riders materialized, huge, ragged and unkempt, coming on with frightening speed and purpose.

      The Mexican bandits rode up, brutally reined their horses outside the cantina and swung out of their saddles, dusty boots hitting the dirt in a jangle of spurs. The gang was six men and one woman, a hairy bunch. All were wildly hirsute in appearance, bandoleer gun belts draping their chests, sweaty hats or bandanas on their heads, jackets and trousers old and covered in filth. The brigands didn’t bother to tether their stallions for the lathered animals were too fearful to budge from where they stood. Wild eyed, snouts frothing, the horses cowed as their harsh masters pushed aside the hanging ragged blanket and stalked through the door into the cantina.

      Once inside, the leader of the bandits took off her hat, shook her lush black hair loose to tumble down her broad powerful shoulders and brushed it out of her face. The woman was savagely beautiful with hard Aztec features, cruel lips and startling blue eyes a blaze of turquoise in a brown and ageless windblown face.

      Her name was Azul. The word meant blue in Spanish.

      As pack leader, the woman entered the cantina first, the other bandits following obediently on her booted heels.

      The other customers looked up at the chorus of ringing spurs as the bandits filled the place. Five Mexicans sat at makeshift tables drinking dirty glasses of cheap whisky in the stifling heat, three sunburnt cowboys and two Federales huddled perspiring in the shade of the cantina like lizards under rocks. Flies buzzed. The place reeked of cheap alcohol, sweat, dirt, and body odor.

      Azul’s fierce predatory gaze scoured the cantina, her lip curling in displeasure when she did not see what she was looking for. Heads swiveled to watch her, all eyes fixed to the bandita’s voluptuous figure framed in the failing light through the doorway. The customers ogled her heavy brown cleavage bursting against her leather shirt, twin firm mounds fighting to bust loose of their cloth restraints. Azul smiled like a slash of a blade.

      Fools. How well she knew those cabrone looks—they always came right before the screams.

      With a squeak of the leather gun belts slung on her shapely hips, Azul strode purposefully past the faces watching her strong rounded buttocks pumping like pistons under her trousers atop her long legs. The atmosphere in the bar quickened, the air crackling with mounting danger. A pungent smell of strange animal heat mingled with the bar odors. Azul’s seven hulking, bearded, filthy vaqueros were fanning out behind her. She cast a fiery glance at her gang then cut her gaze to the wakening full moon in the sky. The bandita smiled for she was well protected.

      The bartender watched Azul’s bouncing tits as she approached fearlessly. Behind the nailed boards that passed for a counter, the scrofulous barkeep’s shifty eyes still ogled her breasts as the bandita bellied up to the bar. A fierce whistle from her puckered wet lips brought his eyes up to her own and the raw force of Azul’s stare shackled his eyeballs.

      Azul slammed a paper handbill down on the bar. “I seek these hombres,” she whispered in a husky susurration, animal in cadence. Drawing a slow glance down to the paper under her hand on the counter, her eyes pulled the barman’s gaze along with hers to the handbill.

      The crumpled wanted poster bathed in red hued twilight showed the crudely sketched faces of three gunfighters. The names of the notorious outlaws were stamped in bold block type lettering above the thousand-dollar reward notices on their heads.

      Samuel Tucker.

      John Fix.

      Lars Bodie.

      “Have you seen them?” Azul demanded.

      The bartender shrugged. “Gringos all look the same, but I have not seen them.”

      “They would have ridden from the north.” The bandita’s lips compressed with hatred. “From Santa Sangre.”

      “I have not seen these vaqueros. Haven’t seen you before either, señora,” the barkeep said warily. “Where are you from?”

      “We ride from the south.”

      “You are bounty killers, sí?”

      “No.”