The Wolves of El Diablo. Eric Red

smell the Rio Muerta stench on his skin.

      Colonel Jesus Higuerra knew he would not be making this trip again for any number of reasons, but regardless of the consequences, that suited him just fine.

      It would be the last time he would ever have to set eyes on Rio Muerta.

      And exactly at that moment he heard the deafening explosion up ahead and saw the huge blast blow the tracks sky high as loud voices yelled to stop the train.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      The TNT went off the instant the plunger was injected, erasing the tracks from view. The sound of the earth-shaking explosion was a low register sledgehammer thud. The valley shook from the seismic concussion.

      Spurs were dug into the flanks of the three gunfighters’ stallions with the horses already at full gallop down the canyon seconds before the explosion. Tucker, Fix, and Bodie knew from experience their horses must be on the move before the dynamite blew or the blast would startle and shy them from being ridden.

      Down below the riders, the blast swept two parallel sections of rail and trestle sky high, twisted and corkscrewed, in a mushroom of flying dirt, disintegrating debris and smoke billowing upwards in thick clouds the height of the canyon. The reverberating noise was deafening in the echo chamber of the granite gorge but the outlaws didn’t hear it nor did their horses—the robbers had used wads of cotton to plug their own ears and those of their mounts. Shrapnel, stones, and chunks of burning trestle were falling now in a steady rain from a towering height in a billowing fog of dynamite smoke that crashed in a wave across the floor of the ravine, obscuring the train now violently braking, sparks flying off the slowing wheels, a piercing steel-on-steel screech adding to the cacophonic din. Through the smoke, the slowing railroad’s gargantuan silhouette loomed ever larger, ever nearer to the gaping blasted crater in the earth where the rails had been seconds before. There followed a screeching, banging clamor as the train, with a concertina collisioning of bumpers, began to slow towards a stop. The train, though abruptly decelerating, was closing in on the blasted hole in the tracks.

      The sun had just about set, a razor wound on the ridge, the last of the failing light engulfing the whole canyon area in a bloody glow and shadows of deepest amethyst. Through the colored gloom the darker hues of the three gunfighters rode hard down to the bottom of the cliff, rapidly closing the distance between them and the waylaid train.

      Chucking away his spent TNT plunger box and coiling wire it trailed, Tucker smoothly drew his Colt Peacemaker revolver from his side holster, leaning back in the saddle to compensate for the declination his stallion took in a cantor, sure in its footing. To his right and left, Fix and Bodie drove their horses down the face of the canyon towards the steam train shuddering to a lurching halt just feet from the smoking hole the explosives disgorged in the El Diablo earth. The galloping hooves of the outlaw’s horses filled their ears as the ground leveled out, the train that was their intended prize dead ahead. The men were grinning. It was payday.

      The echo of the blast faded and many voices sounding crisp and disciplined shouted orders. The train robbers knew right away something was wrong. Ghostly figures of many men moved in the hanging smoke, leaping off the train and taking position instead of fleeing for their lives. As Tucker, Fix and Bodie charged the train at full gallop they aimed their pistols skyward and shot into the air to scare the passengers. But when their fire was returned a hundredfold by the hazy coaches and slews of bullets whistled past their ears, the gunfighters knew they had made a big mistake choosing this particular train to rob. They were riding into a meat grinder.

      Grey uniforms were now visible everywhere and dozens of gun barrels were all trained their way. Staccato muzzle flashes flared up and down the train as the air crackled with rifle fire.

      “Federales!” yelled Tucker. “Shit!”

      “It’s a fucking army!” Bodie cried out. “You said this was going to be a passenger train!”

      “How the hell was I supposed to know it was an army train? It was supposed to be miners! What the hell are Federales doing in these Godforsaken parts?” Tucker shouted across the horses, firing into the smoke at the silhouetted figures by the railroad coaches. Bullets were coming at them from every direction it seemed.

      “I’m already missing them damn werewolves!” Fix snarled.

      “Let’s get the fuck out of here! We’re gonna get cut to pieces!” screamed Tucker. “We’re gonna be dead quicker’n a whore gets fucked.”

      His words were muffled as a grisly splattering gust of brain, blood, skull and horsehair exploded in his face when his stallion’s head was blown clean off. The decapitated steed fell where it stood, crumpling in a pile of akimbo legs, catapulting Tucker out of the saddle over the ragged stump of neck jetting blood like a fountain. The cowboy hit the ground hard, landing on his back with a bone-crunching impact that smashed the wind out of him. Rolling over and over in the dirt, somehow he kept the grip on his pistol, had drawn his second revolver, and was already shooting at the source of the gunshots before he ended up on his belly. Slugs blew geysers in the dirt near where the cowboy lay. The bullets kept missing and Tucker quickly realized the dense smokescreen from the dynamite blast that hung over the area made it as difficult for the soldiers to see him as it was to see them, and he just might have a chance.

      He aimed his pistols and fired, hearing the dull click of hammers on spent cartridges.

      Out of bullets. It just kept getting worse.

      Tucker heard loud hooves pounding by his ears and felt the grip of a huge hand on the scruff of his neck and his grateful eyes met Bodie’s as his friend leaned out of saddle and hauled him off the ground with one powerful sweep of his arm.

      The full moon rose.

      Atop a cliff high above the skirmish at the train, seven sets of red eyes and a pair of blue ones watched the battle raging by the tracks below.

      The hirsute figures were silhouetted against the moon but camouflaged by the rocky promontory of the ridge. Hastily, they tied off their horses so as not to rip them asunder during the change shortly to come. They cared nothing for horses but it was a long walk to the nearest town and they needed healthy beasts of burden to ride after they slaughtered those they came for and everyone else they didn’t. When the sun was up they would be back walking on two legs.

      As they all felt the itch, the bandits disrobed, piling their garments beside one another.

      The woman underdressed as hungrily as a female in heat desperate for sex but it was blood not intercourse she lusted for. Azul stood brazenly naked in the moonlight, her enormous tits flushed and nipples hard with excitement. She was wet and the untamed black forest of hair between her legs glistened with her juice. Her bandits stood naked, muscles rippling, their hefty cocks engorged in erection. The bandita gazed with lip smacking approval at her gang’s virile tumescence. Azul ran a forefinger up herself and licked it. Once a month, after a good kill, when they changed back from werewolves and resumed human form, she let her men fuck her, taking them three at a time vigorously filling her every opening, and often eagerly on all fours she sucked their cocks at her slightest whim. The gang of lycanthropes were a lusty, uninhibited pack who gave full rein to their unbridled appetites and urges—their sexually insatiable and bloodthirsty bandita leader was all the woman they needed or could handle: Azul had made certain of this for the last three hundred years, for she knew once they wilded as werewolves returning to their human form was to inhabit a puny shell, suffering it for thirty miserable days until they could again flex lycanthrope muscles, bask in their power to rip and tear and be in their true glory. While human, in the house of man, wearing those weak skin suits, Azul made sure they all made the most of the pleasures of the flesh and the joy of unbridled violence. The werewolves loved their lives and for centuries had endured.

      The worst part was the changing. The pain of the transformation was unbearable: to feel every bone and joint breaking and reforming, every muscle and tendon shredding apart and knitting back together—every time it was torture. It took the