Dylan heard the creature moving around in the darkness, grabbed the shotgun and went after it, ramming two new shells into the shotgun's chambers as he went. Just as he snapped the breech closed, he saw El Chupacabra stand, turn and leap into the air. It was fleeing Dylan now, jumping twenty feet or higher into the air and using its quills to glide out and away. Dylan fired both barrels in rapid succession and cheered when he saw the second blast strike the creature hard enough to make it bobble between leaps. The shot had not been fatal, though, and the El Chupacabra escaped into the night.

Suddenly, Dylan had no energy to follow or even reload. His limbs were shaking with fright and adrenaline. He was bleeding from where the creature had clutched his head, and his ribcage creaked when he bent over to pick up his pistol.

Exhausted, he sat down on the hay bale again. He tried to sleep, but he kept replaying the images of his fight over and over in his mind. Towards dawn, he was so fatigued these replays changed, and now the barbed tongue no longer missed, but struck him squarely on the jugular. Dylan repeatedly hallucinated his own death, being sucked dry by El Chupacabra.

Paco arrived just as the first fingers of light came flooding over the distant mountains. He found Dylan shivering and drooling, wrapped in a dirty blanket and clutching the shotgun so tightly his fingers had cramped and had to be pried away.

"Señor Dylan," Paco asked hesitantly, "You have looked into the eyes of El Chupacabra?"