The Wolves of El Diablo. Eric Red

the slaughterhouse the cantina had been reduced to.

      He knew this because he had seen it all before.

      The peasant had known werewolves and been face to face with the creatures, and he knew what to do—Pedro’s village of Santa Thomas had been held hostage when bandit wolfmen such as these had occupied his church and changed its name to Santa Sangre. Last month, three American gunfighters had destroyed them all with bullets of silver and freed his people. The werewolves were all dead, of this he had been so certain ... yet here tonight were more.

      While Pedro had not laid eyes on a woman werewolf until now, her face was strangely familiar. The boy wracked his brain in the darkness as the gurgling wet snarls of the werewolves’ snores and explosive stinking farts came through the crack in the trapdoor—he had met her somewhere before, but where?

      “They killed my brother.” The bandita’s parting words to the bartender before she ate him repeated inside his brain until at last he remembered where he had seen her face before.

      But it was not her he had seen.

      The bandita bore an unmistakable familial resemblance to the brutal bandit leader named Mosca who led the wolfmen who took over his town, who murdered and terrorized so many of his friends until the tres pistoleros had ended him. “I am looking for these hombres,” the wolfwoman had said. There were three faces on that wanted poster he had seen from his position under the trapdoor.

      The wolfwoman was Mosca’s sister!

      There could be no doubt she was hunting The Guns of Santa Sangre who with bullets of silver had gunned down her brother and his gang of bandit wolfmen.

      And she wanted revenge on the men who killed Mosca in the worst way.

      The three shootists surely believed they had killed all the werewolves, Pedro worried. They would not be expecting a vengeful sister and whole new gang of bloodthirsty bandit wolfmen tracking them looking for payback. Pedro knew he must warn los tres pistoleros of the danger but did not know where they were now. The gunfighters rode out of Santa Thomas a month before.

      They needed to arm themselves, be ready.

      These men had saved his town, saved his people. Pedro owed them that.

      And so, the peasant hid in the fruit cellar fretting as the hours passed. Finally, a trickle of warm sunlight filtered into the basement through the slit of the opening of the trapdoor. Morning had come.

      The sounds that came then were horrific for as the sun rose the monsters suffered the torture of another agonizing physical reversal back to human form. Outside the trap door were grisly noises of bodies thrashing, male and female screams, of flesh ripping, bones cracking and cartilage shearing until those sounds ceased and all was quiet above the peasant youth beneath the floor. Pedro heard the forced respiration of werewolves returned to human shape, struggling to their feet. Mindful to stay sheathed in darkness, the peasant dared a careful glance through the crack in the trapdoor.

      For all the horror he had seen these last hours, Pedro could not take his eyes off the naked woman. She was magnificently exposed as she rose from the ground and stood up drenched head to foot in gore, her colossal breasts and big nipples covered with blood that dripped down her voluptuous thighs to the untamed bramble of black pubic hair nested between her legs. She walked brazenly nude past the naked men, who also showed no modesty as they got up and yawned and scratched their balls and dangling cocks. The peasant boy had never seen a woman out of clothes before and her bare body gave him a throbbing hardness in his crotch, despite her being soaked with blood. Gathering her loose-fitting clothes from the floor near the bar, the woman tugged trousers over the proud mounds of her ass and slung a serape and poncho over her bosom. She buckled the gun belts to her thighs, pulling on her boots and spurs. One by one, the other bandits retrieved their clothes and dressed, moving with the slow, bleary gait of men who were hung over after a hard night’s drinking. “We ride,” the bandita barked in an order that broached no argument as she strode out the front door. Her gang followed like a well-trained pack of dogs, nearly as scary as men as they were as monsters.

      Pedro could see through the doorway as the hairy brigands swung into the saddles of their big horses—the cowed and fearful stallions had not moved a hoof the entire night. With a savage whoop, the gang drove their boot heels into the spur-scarred flanks of the horses and galloped off, charging north like thunder.

      Before they rode out, the savage bandita threw a bottle of whisky through the bar doorway that exploded on the ground then tossed a match from her saddle. Flames whooshed up and lapped away at the wooden walls of the cantina shack. Within minutes the structure would burn to the ground leaving no evidence of the lycanthropes’ feast in the ashes.

      Choking, Pedro tried not to cough as thick smoke poured through the opening of the trapdoor. Through the crack, he saw angry licks of flame engulfing the bar and floor strewn with human bones. The blaze spread like brushfire. Waves of searing heat scorched the boy’s face as the temperature instantly rose like an oven in the fruit cellar. Visible through the fiery conflagration, the distant figures of the bandits melted in shimmering waves of heat rising from the doorway. Pedro was getting cooked in the basement and knew he had to flee now or be burned alive. Seconds later, the sounds of the galloping hooves had faded and The Men Who Walk Like Wolves were in the wind.

      It was safe to emerge. Scrambling up the ladder out of the fruit cellar, the peasant staggered through the billowing inferno all around, recoiling from the sights and smells of the butchery. Dodging flames, he hove through the window in a running dive, hitting the hard ground outside in a summersault just as the whole ramshackle cantina went up in flames. His horse was still tethered to the post, rearing and pawing the air to get away from the heat and fire. Pedro clambered into the saddle.

      Riding safely away from the burning bar, the peasant lad squinted over his shoulder at the dusty wake of the departing bandits on the distant horizon, hot on the trail of The Guns of Santa Sangre.

      God help them when they catch up, Pedro thought.

      The boy rode hard for his village of San Thomas, recently known as Santa Sangre.

      CHAPTER TWO

      “Bless me, father, for I have sinned.”

      “What is it, Pilar?”

      “I have hatred in my heart.”

      “For whom, my child?”

      “For the men we call The Guns of Santa Sangre.”

      “They saved our village from the werewolves, Pilar. Saved all of our lives. Killed all of the monsters. It was because you found and brought these men that the town survives. Why do you hate them?”

      “Because they left.”

      “Their work was done.”

      “Because they left me.”

      “I see. You loved one of these vaqueros?”

      “Yes.”

      “Heartbreak is not a sin, my child.”

      “I gave my virginity to him, father.”

      “Did he force you?”

      “No. Never. It was my free will.”

      “He promised he would marry you?”

      “No.”

      “Did he say he would take you with him?”

      “I knew he and the other two, Fix and Bodie, would ride away when they had killed the werewolves. It was in the books.”

      “What books do you mean?”

      “The western pulps. The dime novels the old missionary brought for me to teach me English when I was a little girl. They were always stories about brave gunfighters who came to a place and saved the people from bad men with their six guns and swept the woman off her feet, but always in the end rode off on their horses, alone. I believed this was how it would be.”

      “The vaquero did