August 1983

Revingston, Ohio

Bill Tucker's farm was a hundred acres of corn stalks and livestock grazing fields. A large green-painted two-story ranch house sat on a low hill with an equally large barn a little ways away from it, connected via a gravel path. A big forest lay at the edge of the property, just beyond the livestock fence, and a squat wrought iron gate stood open in their way, stretching in both directions for a few hundred yards before linking up with the fence. The fields were spread out to the right side of the property, from their perspective, and green stalks went on for as far as Oliver could see. A pair of large farming machines were parked near the barn, along with a pickup truck in the driveway. As they trundled down the path towards the house, Oliver subconsciously started scanning the ground for clues but didn't find anything of interest near the main path. He spared a glance at Denali, who shook his head in return. Nothing out front. He had filled the rest of the team in on what Chief Chaves had told him during the drive, so they had at least some idea of what to look out for.

They parked right behind the pickup, which he now saw was full of huge bags of fertilizer, twenty pounds at least. A few of them were empty, with long cuts along the top and a little bit of green powder scattered around the bed. Oliver noticed that the truck was sort of busted up; both the bumper and grill had nasty dents in them. He glanced up at the windshield. Not a scratch. Odd. Oliver thought he saw something else and crouched down, slinging his pump-action over his shoulder and pulling a pair of sturdy work gloves from his pocket and slipping them on. Sure enough, the metal had a little smear of some kind of dark gunk near the bottom, and Oliver produced his hunting knife from the sheath on his hip. He scrapped a bit of the gunk off with the tip of the knife and held it up, smelling it. Copper. Definitely dried blood.

Oliver heard his father talking in the back of his mind, long lessons in smoky rooms spent pouring over papers and maps, rock music playing through the beat-up old radio on the table. "The details, Oliver." He would say, his voice like sandpaper as he leaned back in his chair. "Leave the tracking to the tracker, leave the patchin' up to the sawbones. Let your team do their jobs. Listen to them, take their council, but let them do their job. Your job is to take all the bits of detail, every little fragment, every little thread, every little string and weave'em together into a plan that won't get you and your team killed. You understand me, boy? 'Cause if you make a plan, and you missed the fact that the migration patterns for your suspected monster don't add up, or didn't make the connection that the phases of the moon correlated to the sightings or some other detail that didn't seem important, then what happens when you put that plan into motion is on you. No one else. You."

Oliver turned and asked, "Denali, you got a bag?"

Denali handed him a small plastic bag and Oliver rubbed the weird gunk off into it, handing it back to the tracker who took it without a word. He gestured at the dents and blood with his knife and asked no one particular, "Think he hit one of the Chuppas?"

Kevin inspected the bumper and frowned, "Maybe, but it would've been one bigass Chuppa. They don't grow to be much bigger than a coyote, right? A coyote-sized animal wouldn't have done this to no damn pickup bumper. Whatever did this must've been as big as a deer, at least, which would make it, what, the third or fourth biggest Chupacabra we have on record, right?"

Oliver shrugged, "I don't know off the top of my head. I'll have to check the records at the library later."

Nina smirked as she walked around the side of the truck, inspecting it from various angles for damage, "Anything else you wanna do at the library, Oliver? Spend some quality time with a certain librarian assistant, perhaps?"

Oliver felt a rush of heat race up his neck, and he quickly said, "Kevin, what about the windshield? It doesn't look like it's gotten hit with anything harder than some bugs."

Kevin fought down a smirk of his own and looked at the windshield, and then back down at the grill and said, "It must've gone under the chassis then, in which case it might have fucked up the suspension, transmission, driveshaft, all kinds of fun stuff. I'll bet you ten bucks if I start that thing it'll just burst into flames or something."

Rosa spoke up, "Didn't Chaves say he found the cow the morning after it was killed? Why didn't he mention to Chaves that he hit one of the little bastards with his truck? Isn't it the law that the Bureau has to be informed on every monster sighting in the county?"

Oliver answered as he rose to his feet, "Well, all Chaves said was that Bill Tucker found one of his cows dead and that it was killed last night. He didn't mention any series of events or specifics, but that's what we're here to find out. For all we know he might've just hit a plain old deer a while back and didn't mention it because there was nothing to mention."

Kevin raised an eyebrow and asked, "Then why did you take that sample if it might be nothing?"

Oliver looked him dead in the eyes, his best deadpan expression on, "Because I'm a paranoid son of a bitch, Kevin, and if there's some kind of foul play going on I don't want Bill Tucker knowing what we know. Don't mention this to him; we'll test the blood back at base, and if it's nothing, it's nothing."

"And if it's something?"

The facade cracked as the corner of Oliver's lip turned up, "Then this gets interesting."

Kevin grinned back, and the rest of the walk up the rest of the path towards the house was mostly quiet until he heard Kevin say, "Five bucks say the cow's body is within a hundred yards of the forest, and five says he didn't hit a Chuppa and didn't say nothing cause it ain't nothing."

Oliver glanced over and responded, "I'll take that bet. I think it's within, uh, seventy-five yards, and I'll say that he did hit a Chuppa, just to make it fun. No money on this, but how many Chuppas do you think we'll find? I say at least five, to take down a cow."

Kevin thought it over and answered, "Yeah, I think five too. They ain't much bigger than a coyote, so I suppose it would take a full pack to kill a cow. Plus they're poisonous so that probably helped."

The walk was silent for a few more seconds before Nina cut in, her huge black boots crunching against the gravel, "Venomous."

"What?" Kevin asked.

"You said Chupacabra are poisonous, but the term is venomous."

"What's the difference?"

They were on the porch of the house now; it ringed around the front of the house, with a big wicker rocking chair and a small table next to it. A few tacky windchimes sang in the breeze The table was covered in a few cheap beer cans and a nearly-full ashtray of cheap smelling cigarettes. Nina and Kevin faced each other from across the table as Oliver walked up to the door and Denali and Rosa hanged back, watching the two go at it from a safe distance.

The discussion continued with Nina giving an annoyed sigh and stating, "Kevin, I swear to God I told you this before; Venom is injected, while poison is ingested."

"You just said the same word twice."

Oliver sighed and knocked on the door, using the big brass knocker in the shape of a bull. Kevin was one of the smartest guys he knew when it came to machines, explosives, weapons, or just about anything else involving tools. He made most of their custom shotgun shell loads and Rosa's machete to name only a few things. The guy knew his way around a workshop. But God he was dense sometimes.

"No, I said injected which is like a rattlesnake bite and I said ingested like eating Wolfsbane or Shade of the Evening."

"Well, wouldn't a Chupacabra be poisonous too, smartass, since it's venomous?"

"Only if you eat the venom sack, dipshit, which you totally would."

"Oh, so they are poisonous!"

"Oh my fucking God, I am going to kill you so hard."

The door opened and Oliver damn near sighed in relief as Bill Tucker stepped onto the porch, and the twins shut up. The farmer was getting into his years, his thinning copper-colored hair and beard were streaked through with threads of silver, and a pair of square wire-rimmed spectacles covered dark brown eyes. He wore jeans, boots and a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, revealing arms corded with muscle. Farm work was hard work, and Bill Tucker's been doing it for more than thirty years. A corn cob pipe hung out of his mouth, smoldering with sweet-smelling tobacco. He cradled a double-barreled shotgun in his arms, peering at Oliver over the rim of his glasses, taking the pipe out of his mouth and asking, "Thought your daddy would have been the one to come, Irons. Where is he?"

Oliver felt his eye twitch, but he answered calmly, "My father stopped doing fieldwork last year, Bill. After the Halloween Festival. You know that you saw what happened to him, to his leg. Hell, just about everyone knows, everyone saw what happened. So you gonna show us the body, or just stand there flappin' your gums at me all day, or what?"

Bill looked at him for a long few seconds, smoking his pipe and narrowing his eyes at Oliver before he bared his teeth in an odd sort-of smile and said, "Just checking if you inherited your old man's spine is all. C'mon, I'll show you where ol' Betsy bit it."

Bill walked out, locked the door behind him and walked down the porch, appraising each of the team members and grunting and moving on down the path. Oliver looked back at his friends, gave a look like, 'Let's get this over with.' and followed Bill Tucker down the path towards the woods. After a few seconds, he heard them follow behind him, six pairs of boots crunching against gravel and dirt.

The afternoon was warm and pleasant, with a slight breeze carrying the smell of freshly cut grass and manure, the sky clear and blue. A herd of maybe twenty cows grazed in the field and a flock of chickens pecked and fought each other for seeds. It was idyllic countryside, so wholesome and American it belonged on a postcard. And then the wind changed, and he caught the smell of blood. He glanced at Denali, and the tracker nodded. He smelled it too. Bill lead them through the gate for the grazing field and Denali shut it as he walked through it, scanning the ground like a bloodhound. Bill Tucker looked at him and chuckled, talking around his pipe. "You should really tell your Injun to relax a little, Irons. Only beasts out on this property are him and the cows."

Denali looked up from the path and narrowed his eyes at Bill's back, while Rosa also glared at the farmer, and she cracked her knuckles. They both shifted their gaze to Oliver as they reached for their machete and feathered tomahawk, respectively, silently asking for permission. Oliver shook his head and made a motion with his hand, saying to Bill, "He's just a little jumpy, is all. It's pretty late in the year for a pack of Chupacabra to be out and about, so we're just tryna make sure there's nothing else weird goin' on around here. Speaking of, did you had an encounter with Chupacabra or any other animal last night? Or did you just find the body this morning?"

Bill scratched at his red beard, "Naw, didn't see or hear nothin last night; I was having my weekly poker game with Horace, Jerry, and Lincoln. I was just about swimming in a lake of Jack Daniels by midnight, though, so maybe they heard something I didn't. I just found Betsy this mornin'. See, I got up real early to fertilize the grass seeds around the edge of the fence, since I had done some land renovatin' a few months ago, and I had only put down a couple of bags before I saw her. Saw the tracks, saw the bite marks and the fact she ain't got no goddamn blood, that's when I put in the call." He pointed forward, "And there she is. Poor girl."

They were close to the forest now, a hundred yards or so, with the livestock fence separating the field from the large, looming Alder trees. The ground near the fence was turned-up dirt scattered with green buds and green dust. The body of Betsy was still about a dozen yards away or so, but Oliver could still make out a few details. The body was gray and shrunken, the skin tightly wrapped around the skeleton frame. A crow the size of a small cat was perched on Betsy's neck, a ribbon of dry flesh dangling from its razor-sharp beak. Bill saw the crow and bellowed, "You get your dirty fuckin' claws offa her you sonovabitch!" Leveling his double-barreled shotgun and firing a shot just above the crow's position.

The gun roared, buckshot ripping through the treeline in a burst of wood shrapnel and leaves. Oliver's right ear started ringing and his hand flew up to cup it, pain exploding through his skull. He heard the yells of his friends and was vaguely aware of an impressive array of obscenities being slung through the air. He grabbed the barrel of the gun, the metal burning his hand, and shoved it down before the idiot could shoot again. The crow took off, it's prize clamped tight in its jaws, as Oliver shouted at Bill Tucker, fury racing up his veins like his blood had turned to gasoline, "Do not fucking shoot without warning! You..." He managed to compose himself, and he motioned for his team to calm down before saying. "Warn us next time before firing your gun, so we can put in our ear protection first."

Bill Tucker squinted at him, biting down hard on the corncob pipe in his mouth, "Listen to me now, boy, and listen good. You ain't worked on a farm before and you sure as shit ain't ran a farm before, and because of that I'll tell you this; each of those cows you see before you, each one grazing in that field, is worth nearly twelve hundred dollars a head. Now, it is bad enough that I got some god-forsaken pack of monsters sulking around my land, but then I have to watch some scavenger pick apart her body? You oughta understand, not all of us have such a cool head or stable source of income. So why don't you go over there, and start collecting yours, huh?"

Oliver met his gaze evenly, mulling the prospect over in his head. He wasn't fond of Bill Tucker. Didn't like his attitude, didn't like his lack of firearm safety and especially did not like the remark he made about Denali. All of that, paired with the leaden feeling in his stomach that something wasn't right with this guy, all contributed to Oliver's opinion of the man. But the Occult Prevention and Investigation Bureau, often referred to as simply the Bureau, paid a hundred dollars for a Chupacabra body, more depending on size and age. And besides, if they let these Chupacabra run free they'd undoubtedly hibernate, multiply and become an even bigger problem come Spring.

He deliberately reached into the pocket of his Vietnam-era army jacket, retrieved a hand-rolled cigarette, stuck it in his mouth and said, "Alright, Bill Tucker. Just stay out of our way, right? Hate to see you end up like poor old Betsy."

Bill bit his cheek, studied Oliver for several long seconds and then gave a small, mean smile, saying, "Be my guest, Oliver Irons. Just don't end up like your old man, eh?" He turned and walked back up the trail, resting the shotgun on his shoulder, calling back. "And make it quick, boy! I still have fertilizer to put down!"

Rosa spat on the ground in his direction, "Hey Oliver, can we beat his ass after we get this done?"

Oliver lit the cigarette and shrugged, "I'm thinking about it. Let's get this done first, then I'll let you know." He waved a hand forward, towards the body of Betsy. "Alright, let's get paid."