Vampires Of El Norte Quotes

His voice was like coming home. It loosened the unease that had curled in her chest all week.

It all made her want to shed her skin like the witch in Abuela’s story, let everything that made her a woman fall to the ground to be salted and ruined as she flew into the night, her bones bare and cold in the starlight.

He was a man of dust who served men of silver: it was impossible not to know his place in the world.

If other men were charcoal sketches, he was drawn in fine ink.

He was rich with magic she couldn't understand, a key to a part of herself that had been dead for a long, long time. To her, he was worth more than he knew.

She became more and more tightly bound by the ropes of womanhood; he roamed free, unburdened by responsibilities.

Losing you,” she said, her dark eyes searching his face. “To you, Nena died. To her, you left. Those are two very different griefs.

He pressed his lips to hers. When he pulled away, her eyes were open, her gaze liquid and intense. A new understanding cracked open in his chest: they both knew that was not practice.

She was there. She was with him, as real as she had been in life. He wanted to see her. He wanted to see her face more than he wanted water on a hot afternoon, more than he wanted rest after weeks in the saddle.

Nena waited. After nine years apart, she still knew the rhythm of his speaking. She knew he had more to say, that he was searching for words or untangling a difficult thought. He was one of the few men she knew who spent time with his thoughts before speaking, even in the midst of an argument or excitement. It was one of the reasons she loved him.

could survive on the scraps from her table—had he not spent the last nine years starving? Anything she gave him now was a bounty. It would be fine.

Duérmete, niño, Duérmete ya, Que viene el Coco Y te comerá

What’s that, you ask? Why are we alone in the chaparral, looking very much worse for the wear and clearly running from something? Well, for that I have a perfectly reasonable answer. Vampires, señor. We are running from vampires.

Porque así fue la suerte.

A world without you. I am not brave enough.

Fuck you.” The words came easier than she expected. Néstor winked at her. Touched an imaginary brim of the hat. “A sus órdenes, señorita.

Maybe, if you wanted, you could even live there too. With me. We could get married. Or something like that.

Fear was sour in her sweat, in her breath, in the pale, wordless ringing in her ears as teeth as sharp as knives sank into her neck.

All Nena could think of was that gray, sightless face as it lifted from the bodies of fallen Mexican soldiers, gore slick on its chin, to stare at her.

Like Néstor, he had found his way in the world alone. He did not know why Néstor had left Los Ojuelos, but he understood something about ghosts.

Growing older felt like holding water in cupped hands; the harder she pressed her fingers together to keep life with Néstor the way it used to be in her grasp, the faster it slipped away.

This creature, whether it was made by God’s hand or the Devil’s, whether it was born of its own foul will in the shadows of the chaparral, would feed as it had been born to feed. That alone did not make it evil.

A strangeness. A ripple of unease. An understanding, though timid at first, that perhaps there was some truth to the stories of blood-hungry beasts and river ghosts that the abuelas on the rancho spun to keep children close to home after sunset. A sense that there was a reason to watch one’s back when shadows grew long.

It was intoxicating, how much he wanted her to trust him. To relax around him. To smile as she used to, when they were children. Broad and unguarded and sweetly dimpled, her teeth flashing like a loaded pistol in the sun. He would happily be shot dead by it any day of the week.

Let your gut guide you, Casimiro always said. When you’re bringing down a bull, your gut knows you could die. Your gut wants to live. Shut up and listen to it.

table of Nicaraguan cedar

beef buyers in Cuba.

It was easy to work hard, when he knew what he wanted.

Don’t you always. He did. Because without work and a distant goal, he did not know what else he was living for.

Following him was a long-dead habit; she hated how easily it resurrected itself. How easily she fell into it.

She didn’t care that the words weren’t true, she wanted him to feel what she had felt when he left: aching, hollowed out, abandoned, cast carelessly aside.

But when I came back, and I saw you, I knew,” he said softly. “My home is with you. It always will be.

And what could have become of me if I stayed?' he challenged. His voice was soft at first, but frustration hardened it as he continued. 'What future was there for me here?' 'What future?' she repeated, incredulous. A future with her. A future where she wasn’t alone. 'Our future.

but he could see the thing’s face clearly now. It had no eyes.

The wound that festered deepest wasn’t that of loneliness. She could stomach being alone. She could build calluses against it and grow strong. It was that, by leaving, he had robbed her of him. She was left without the one person who listened to her, the one person who made her feel like the heavens spun around no other point but her.

the many unspoken dicta that ruled life on the rancho, one of the most important was this: if tragedy struck and you escaped unscathed, it was unlucky to call attention to your fortune by talking about it. Even if you emerged with scrapes and bruises, it was simply not prudent to talk about it. You survived, and that was what mattered. Nothing could be gained from lingering on the past.

Néstor’s disappearance had planted the seeds of fears that grew feral and wild through her ribs. Fears that if she was not obedient or perfect enough, those she loved would vanish with their love or snatch it away, leaving her empty and aching. For years, they had trapped her.

If she chose to barrel through the door and pour out her thoughts like a torrent, he would listen. If she kept the door shut, he would ask no further questions.

She prayed she did not have to use it as she strode into la sala with Javiera and the cousins, but it was a thin prayer at best. A weak, faithless thing that dissipated on the fear of the night like smoke.

How could she not care? She was a tree with its roots yanked violently from the soil. She was a bird without its flock, a colt cut off from the herd and lost to the chaparral. The world could not make sense without heaven overhead and earth beneath; so, too, did the world make no sense without Néstor. How could it be that everyone seemed to have forgotten about him? How dare they expect her to do the same?

She hated it. Growing older felt like holding water in cupped hands; the harder she pressed her fingers together to keep life with Néstor the way it used to be in her grasp, the faster it slipped away.

And then it doesn’t matter where you are,” he added, grief softening his voice. “There is no home anymore, when the people you love are gone.

he read her shifts in energy, her expression, the way she held her weight. She loved him fiercely for it.

How every day since then, he had felt like a burden to his uncle. An outsider in his own family. This was why he wanted his own rancho, Nena knew: to belong. To never be powerless again.

Life would be as simple as it was when they watched the sheep together with Tío Macario, dozing in the heat of the siesta. Life would be perfect.

Even in shadows, his beauty caught her in a trancelike kind of stillness, as if the world beyond them had ceased to exist

But he was dust clinging to a wind, too afraid to touch the earth, too afraid to meet the ground.

Away from Néstor. She could not let that happen. She would not.

But its tone was as it always had been: a question. An invitation. A door she could either open or shut.

Perhaps he had always known how fragile a home she was. Perhaps he had grown complacent over the years. Now he knew better: one false move and he could lose her.

Fear was sour in her sweat, in her breath, in the pale, wordless ringing in her ears as teeth sharp ad knives sank into her neck.

Their eyes locked. It wasn't that his heart stopped beating, no--it hurt too much to have simply stopped.

Nena was not the same. His fears shifted beneath his skin; new ones rose and grew thorns. He did not know what he meant to her. Vaqueros may call me señorita, or better yet, say nothing to me at all. He feared that he was nothing to her. That if he offered her his heart, she would take it and drop it in the dust to bleed whenever her father called.

Not if he’s the right one, she had whispered last night. Nose to nose, their breath mingling.

BY DAWN, HE found the outline of nine horses, the horns of their saddles like a small mountain range against the lightening horizon.

During the day, Nena obeyed. Mamá and Papá’s love was a fragile thing. Lately, she felt that if she moved too quickly, it might snap.