get the chance to meet many vampire hunters," he replied, a twinkle in his dark eyes. He stepped back and looked her over. "The years have been kind to you, I see."
"You'd sing a different tune if you saw me in the daylight," she said. "You look the same as you ever did."
Father Baez smiled. "Not much changes when you reach my age." Despite his years, he still stood upright, not stooped like so many old men. He sat down in a pew and motioned her to sit beside him. "So what brings you here?"
"Well, I'm in a fix," she said, taking the offered seat and crossing her legs. "Got me a monster up near Leadville that I can't lick or even put a name to."
The priest's white eyebrows drew together. "You've never seen one like it?"
"Not a one," Cora replied.
"Tell me what it looked like."
"Well, it looked like a cross between a frozen corpse and a spider. It had black skin like frostbite on its fingers and hands and lips. And it was missing its nose. The head and chest was normal-sized, like the kind you'd find on anybody, but the arms and the legs were a good sight longer than they ought to be." Cora settled into the pew as she continued. "If I had to guess, I'd say the arms were half as long again as the torso, and the legs maybe another half or so. It made a kind of moaning sound, which I first took to be the sounds made by a miner who done hurt himself something fierce. Imagine my surprise when the miner I was searching for turned out to be the monster what tried to eat me."
"Did you notice anything else about it?" Father Baez asked.
"It made my hands and feet go all chilled, like I was standing outside in a blizzard without gloves or boots. Had itself a big old mouth, too. Bigger than it should be." She paused, thinking for a moment. "Didn't smell like much of anything, which is rather irregular. This thing has a taste for people, so it should have the smell of death on it, but it just smelled cold."
"I see." The priest stroked his beard with one hand as he considered her story. "And you said it looked human?"
"Yessir," Cora said. "Was human at one point, in fact. The body belonged to Jules Bartlett, a hermit-style miner that lived near town. I ran into him before a few years back when the sheriff of those parts thought he was a vampire."
"A vampire?" The white eyebrows arched. "What gave him that impression?"
"His own cowardice tossed in with the old coot's habit of hunting for his keep at night. That sheriff felt a mighty fool when I dragged the hermit into his office, but he was grateful all the same." She grinned at the priest. "Or maybe the sheriff's instincts were spot on and it just took the miner a bit to catch up."
Father Baez shook his head even though he knew she was joking. "No, not unless the sheriff himself turned the miner into what he is. Might that be a possibility? The sheriff may be looking for revenge on the man who humiliated him."
Cora laughed at the thought. "Ain't no way old Jim Barnes would go and do a thing like that. The man is as yellow as they come. He might have been sore about it awhile, but he wouldn't go making trouble for himself. The only reason he's kept his seat as long as he has is thanks to the toughs he's got working for him. They take care of the dirty work while he cools his heels wherever he sees fit. Without Mart Duggan and that herd of deputies he's got, there'd be no Sheriff Barnes."
The priest's dark eyes reflected the candlelight as he stared at the crucifix hanging above them. Vampirism, curses, necromancy; none of the usual suspects matched what the hunter was telling him. He supposed it could be some new creature, but that seemed unlikely. Evil had been crawling all over the face of the earth since its creation, and most of the demons in the world were as old or older. They always found new bodies, new servants, and new lairs, but their nature never changed. Yet whatever Cora Oglesby had encountered was a creature he had never heard of before.
He thought of something else and turned back to her. "You fought this thing, didn't you?" She nodded.