The Rail Specter

by Vennessa Robertson

  Three days.

  I looked at Nate.

  I didn’t have to explain, he already knew. We had failed. We were dying. We had been here too long. We had not completed the path to the great camp, or Heaven, or whatever the destination was. She had warned us the journey would consume us if we could not complete it, that we would become one with the sky for all eternity.

  Was the ground we had walked upon the spirits of those who never completed the journey? Was it just God’s view of the sky? Whatever it was, it was consuming us. I struggled in Nate’s arms. He needed to run. If he could get to Seana maybe the Great Chief would send him back. He might have a chance.

  But he didn’t seem to notice he was sinking.

  Finally, he sank down beside me. It was as though he was sitting on a beach as the tide came in and made the sand soft. Nearly an inch of his seat was already in the ground.

  “Run.” My voice was rough.

  He turned to watch the wendigo. It had finished reforming and turned its exposed skull and glowing dead eyes upon Geiger. For the first time there was no interest, no play, only hate, tense, fierce, and vicious.

  It apparently no longer had interest in us. The wendigo crept to Geiger’s body, where my seax lay embedded deep in his chest. One long-fingered, skeletal hand pulled the blade free and examined the knife with great interest. The monster seemed to sniff the blood with its nose-less face, brought the blade to its mouth and licked it with a tongue-less mouth.

  A shudder cut through me I knew had nothing to do with the cold. I swear the monster smiled. The wendigo took another bobbing step forward, throwing its shaggy, black body wide, and, like a great vulture, crouched over its prey.

  My stomach clenched.

  Flesh tore, bones shattered. The monster fed.

  Nate turned his back upon the horrific scene and held me tighter. “I’m not going to run.”

  I closed my eye, letting my body fall deeper into the void. I didn’t have the strength for anything else. He thought I wanted him to run from the wendigo. I couldn’t summon my voice to tell him to run to the camp, not just from the wendigo, but for his immortal soul. I was not sure the wendigo wanted to catch him, anyway. And, I had to admit, it was a comfort to not be alone.

  God help us now.

  Judgment. The wendigo was passing its own form of horrible punishment. Geiger had made a deal with the devil and lost. But judgment was for all, and when we died, we would be judged for our deeds. In the Tarot, Judgment is an Angel, probably Gabriel, coming down with a great horn to judge the dead for their deeds in life, and to either welcome them to heaven or send them elsewhere. The dead are rising from their tombs, their hands raised in supplication, in trust. God would do what was just.

  In the Tarot, Judgment represented judgment and rebirth but, most of all, absolution, a formal release of guilt or punishment. Let this work.

  I slid deeper into the ground. Even Nate felt it now. He held me closer, his arms clasped tightly around my torso, but I was sinking. Even if he didn’t understand what was happening, I finally did: I was dying. If he didn’t let go, I was going to pull him down with me.

  I summoned the strength I had left. I needed this to work. I shook then suddenly, possessed with vigor I could not name, I demand judgment upon myself and Nate! Let all that he has done on my behalf pass to me, for good and for ill.

  The Tarot mark on my chest grew hot and sharp. I could not breathe, and the ground swallowed me up. The world screamed like a hawk, like an eagle. Like a glorious trumpet. Then silence.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  IT WAS DARK. I had not seen the dark in what felt like an age.

  My throat hurt. My back ached, and I was shaking. I didn’t want to move. I hurt so badly, I worried that my flesh might just slough off and my bones lift right out. Tears dripped down my cheeks and I tasted salt and smoke. My papa was gone. I fought and burned and fell through the sky and I could not feel my husband by my side. All I wanted was for him to hold me.

  Suddenly, hands were on me, peeling my eyes open. The world was blurry, but at least it wasn’t the orange sky and gray slate ground. Somebody jerked me upright, painfully by the underarms, and then honeyed water trickled down my throat.

  The sod house was dark and smoky.

  “Rest,” Chelan said. “Your spirit returned to your body just in time. Your body learned your spirit had left it behind. There was nothing we could do. You were dying. You both were.”

  I was so hoarse I could barely speak. “My husband?”

  “He is strong. The thunderbird carried you both on his mighty wings.”

  I forced my eyes open. “Thunderbird? Does the thunderbird sound like a hawk?”

  “Nonoma gives a mighty victory cry, calling the storms and banishing evil spirits. To some, Nonoma sounds like the thunder. To some, it is the cry of the eagle or the scream of a hunting hawk.”

  “Or a trumpet?” I asked

  Chelan blinked at me. “I have not heard Nonoma’s cry compared to a horn before. Why do you ask? But you must rest now. Your body is weak. It is good your spirit is strong. It is fortunate for the both of you. Your spirits were nearly gone for too long.”

  I looked over at Nate. He lay, covered in a woven blanket with colors too dark for me to see clearly.

  The ruby was gone. I had grown used to where it always pressed into my hip in the pocket beneath my trousers. It had been my only weapon against a monster that made men tear themselves apart.

  I was overcome with the need to feel something, anything. We were alive and whole. My shoulders hurt so badly, I could barely lift my arms. Though I knew I had been lying right here the entire time, it was the same pain I had experienced when Nate desperately held me as I was slipping from his grasp, falling though the wrong side of the sky, my soul dying.

  I reached out and squeezed his hand in mine. He squeezed back. He was not sleeping, he was staring at me. The firelight made his eyes warm and welcoming. I did not think he ever stopped looking at me that way, but I didn’t remember him looking at me that way in months. Then again, I didn’t remember actually looking.

  My hips, my thighs, my shoulders, everything, hurt. It was a deep, bone-weary ache that settled into me like I had been battered upon the rocks of the world and left washed up on the shore. I had lost so much. I would not lose my husband.

  My corset lay with our boots, coats, and packs, all thrown together in one comfortable, untidy lump. We were so different here, not an esquire and a lady but a man and a woman, tempered by fire and magic. The rest could just fall away. And for the moment, this moment, everything was right again.

  I crawled over to him and set my head on his chest. He must have felt like I did, weak and tired and, yet, wanting more than food, more than rest. We had traveled to the land where no mortals dwell. We had battled monsters and demons. I had striven to defend him with my life, while trying to keep my very soul. He trusted me with his sacred self. It was only fitting I remind him I would share my body with him.

  We snuggled in a blanket, sharing small touches. Though we had never been physically apart, there had been a chasm between us for so long. The ruby had created a distance between us as I tried to shield him from the doom of the world. It had not been mine to bear alone. We were together, in all things, now and forever, Nate reminded me with a touch. His hands flexed on my hips. Beneath the blankets, his hands were warm. His touch was soothing.

  The dragon, Mehne, took back the dragon’s heart, and it no longer drew me into the earth. And perhaps it was just my imagination, but whatever else had conspired to keep Nate and me divided, it was no longer present.

  Nate’s fingers ran lightly across my skin, touching where the symbols should lay, searching for the raised marks of the burned-out Tarot symbols. They no longer hurt. Healed or gone, they no longer pained me. I returned the favor, tracing the scars left by the Lamia during our first adventure together.

  I lay on top of him, letting our bodies match up, my knees re
sting to either side of his waist. It was the warmth of life, a purifying, loving heat, nothing so forceful or crude as mere fire. It was Nate, in all that made him powerful and masculine. It was the man I had lost in the ever-expanding responsibilities of running an estate. I never realized, until that moment, how much I had missed him.

  Later, we lay with our limbs tangled under a warm blanket. I listened to his heartbeat slowly return to normal. I still ached, a delightfully wonderful fatigue of hard-won battle.

  All was right in the world.

  The monster—the real monster—was gone, as was his pet. The key was now and forever broken. With the ruby beyond the reach of men, locked in the otherworld and back in the possession of the dragon, it could never be used as the center of a key. My Nate was safe. The rest of the world was safe. I rolled to my side to ease the pressure from my hip. My husband lay with me, mated up like matching teaspoons in the silver drawer, his hand casually resting below my navel in familiar, comfortable ease.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I LAY WRAPPED in my husband’s arms, listening to him breathe. I was home for the first time in what felt like an eternity. No matter that we were thousands of miles from our bed in England, this was home, beside Nate, this was where I was meant to be. Moments as wonderful as that do not last forever. We dressed and left the smoky comfort of the cabin.

  My eyes blurred in the bright sunlight, I had not encountered actual sunshine in days. The village that greeted us was unnaturally quiet. Nate swept me behind him and glared at the sea of suspicious faces.

  It was kindly meant, but I had just faced the wendigo and Geiger and made demands of a god. I was hardly going to be afraid now. “What’s going on?”

  A heavyset woman, missing several teeth but with a friendly smile, waddled over to us. She locked eyes with me once, twice, then again. She touched her beaded necklace, and beckoned for me to follow her with short fingers with cracked skin from heavy work, stained dark. We followed a few feet behind her.

  She led us to several racks where a root I could not identify was twisted and laid out on frames to dry in the sun, past racks of reeking hides that had been scraped and set out for tanning. She pinched the roots, testing their elastic feel, and then motioned with her head to several horses that stood, snorting and rolling their eyes.

  These were not Cheyenne horses. These horses were unpainted, and their manes were undecorated.

  For one thing, they had what I come to recognize as western saddles, they were not the riding saddles I was used to from back home and they were not the saddles the Indians used for their own horses. These saddles had large horns for roping. The most telling thing was the gear they carried, not just saddlebags and bedrolls, but special pouches designed for rifles. The Cheyenne were not allowed to own firearms of any kind.

  The woman snapped off a piece of the twisted roots and squeezed one to taste the juice that oozed out. “Haimovi and Nacto are meeting with their brothers to battle several of the devil’s men. They hold He’heeno as their prisoner.”

  “How is such a thing possible?” Nate demanded.

  “The devil and his men brought many guns.”

  Guns. The devil brought guns. The Cheyenne would be outgunned, literally. Nacto had told me his people were not allowed to own guns, either on or off their land. His people were forced to hunt with spears and arrows. But that would not matter to the men Geiger brought. I doubted they would leave without a fight. Geiger was dead, and whatever they were promised for their aid would go unfulfilled. They would be looking for something as payment. I looked up. The sun was still rising but nearly at its peak.

  Was Geiger still up there being consumed in ravenous bites by the vengeful wendigo? If the devil was true evil then Geiger had been the devil, while the wendigo had merely been his latest tool. I had never seen a man so consumed by his own selfishness, his own desire to achieve, and with a willingness to harm anyone to reach his goals. The wendigo was a monster, a terrible one, but a monster that merely followed its nature. The true evil was in the man’s soul.

  Geiger would be here somewhere, or at least his body would be lying somewhere, watched over by his men.

  He’heeno warned us that if we died there, we could never return to our living bodies. We would be lost along the spirit path for all time.

  Geiger’s men might not realize he was not returning to his body. “We have to do something before they realize Geiger is dead.”

  Nate nodded.

  I pushed aside my fatigue.

  I counted nine horses. That should mean Geiger and eight of his men. I was sure one of them would be Mr. Massey. We needed a plan. I was not willing to risk He’heeno’s safety while trying to rid the Cheyenne of Geiger’s men.

  “Little Dog, you will come now,” Haimovi said, grabbing Nate’s shoulder.

  Nacto waited with another warrior. Both men wore white feathers in their hair and painted black stripes down their noses and across their eyes. I had seen similar paint before—Chelan had painted Haimovi in a similar pattern before he went out to the Carey yard after the wendigo attack to protect him from the monster’s sight.

  The warrior touched his chest. “Tahopa.”

  My husband touched his chest. “Nate.”

  Both men were satisfied with the introduction. Tahopa was convinced we were not with Geiger and his band, and Nate was convinced Tahopa was an ally.

  Haimovi pulled his knife from his side. “Tahopa has other warriors looking for more of the men that came north with the devil man.”

  “There will be about nine of them,” Nate said.

  “There are four in He’heeno’s house,” Nacto said. “They forced her to let him follow you. Great men make great enemies.”

  Nate smiled. “Then the Cheyenne are great men.”

  Haimovi gave Nate a hard, genial smack on the shoulder and the flash of a smile.

  Nate and I led the way to He’heeno’s home. Shadows moved within. The only windows were at the front of the house, shuttered against the sun and the elements. I had been in that home before. It was set in the side of the hill like the rest of the homes. While it protected the people from the elements and kept the homes from becoming either too warm or too cold, it also made sneaking up on the people within impossible. The only way in or out was through the front door.

  Nate was unconcerned. He burst through the door and into two men. One knee slammed into a man, leaving him winded and sucking air with a wheezing gasp. Nate threw another man, Mr. Massey, into the log wall with a bone rattling thud. Nacto moved in on his heels, and pinned one man’s arm behind his back, dislocating it with a pop. I knocked over the last man, one of the rail worker crew we had met. He blinked stupidly as he rolled, trying not to roll into the fire. He’heeno darted past us and into Tahopa’s care.

  He’heeno was free.

  Near the fire, lay Geiger. I could stab him here. I could roll him into the fire. I could strangle him. I trembled. Hysterical laughter bubbled up. My lips trembled, and my chin did, too. On one hand, I saw myself dissolving into a fit of hysteria, while on the other, I thought I should check the man for signs of life. I had to. I had to be sure he was finally dead.

  I swallowed hard. The last time we had touched, Geiger had been burning me, melting my flesh and turning my hair to ash. I had driven a sword through his chest, felt his hot blood wash over my hand and over my fingers, then down my arm in an evil flood of hate and greed.

  I could taste the fire, hot and metallic, like an English penny pressed painfully into my palate until the oily taste of it made me retch. My fingers twitched, aching for the phantom weight of the Ace of Swords. The card was victory, crowned, and it was justice. I had found justice for those murdered by Geiger’s bloodlust.

  I knelt next to Geiger. My hands shook. I could not see his chest rising and falling with breath. Please, please be dead. His pulse was thready and weak, his skin cold and stiff. He was not yet dead, but I doubted he was truly alive.

  His jaw
twitched. I nearly leapt out of my skin.

  Geiger’s eyes snapped open.

  I stumbled backward into two men. Mr. Massey cursed.

  Geiger shuddered and regained his feet slowly, shoving Mr. Massey aside. He had never been a tall man, but now something about him was huge.

  He cocked his head at me, it was a strange turn of the head, a motion no man would make. Papa’s birds would watch us like that, first through one eye then the other, head tilted forward, bobbing to look down his strong Roman nose. One might expect an animal to stare that way down a beak or a muzzle. It was the look of a predator or a scavenger—the look of one that fed on the misery of mankind.

  He strode past us as though we were not there and went out into the square where the Cheyenne warriors were gathered, painted for war in white and black, with white feathers in their hair and dots of sacred red. They were gathered around He’heeno, Tahopa, and Chelan, ready to fight.

  I stepped back, stumbling into Nate. He released Mr. Massey and thrust me behind him. It was a futile gesture. Of the assembled warriors, only Nacto and Haimovi knew what he could do, and the last thing we needed was for the warriors to assume that we were aligned with Geiger and his men. He’heeno and Chelan might be willing to speak on our behalf, but if that wasn’t enough we might be caught in violence against all who were not Cheyenne.

  But it was not Geiger, it couldn’t be. As arrogant as Geiger always looked, as cold as he was, there had been an underlying rage to him. The way he was moving now was more like the monster he had called forth, but confused by its very essence. It understood hatred, pain, and sin, but the wendigo was confused by love. It was angered by the compassion we showed Geiger’s victims.

  “Stay back!” I shouted. If they touched his skin they would be consumed by the wendigo’s evil. They would turn upon each other.

  I searched the crowd. Chameli held her baby brother in her arms. He would not be spared by Geiger. Haimovi stood beside her, ready to protect her. Meturato wore his hair untamed, still short as Mr. Carey demanded, but it was now wild. He had a spear in his hand, ready to stand and fight.