Wake of Vultures

by Lila Bowen

  The whore dragged Nettie up the rickety stairs, every step taking the girl one foot closer to death and away from a life that matched her wildest dreams. It just figured she’d get killed by a panther-toothed whore the week she finally got to be a ranch hand. Why had she agreed to come to this stupid saloon? And why hadn’t Rita tried to hurt her worse, since it was so obviously easy? All Nettie could reckon was that whatever the tiny woman wanted, it wasn’t going to leave much blood in the bed, as that would likely make a man like Poke downright uncomfortable.

  The balcony out back was a lot less fancy than the one inside the saloon, but it had the same three doors. Rita dragged her in the one on the end, and Nettie’s heart stuttered as the door slammed and locked. The room was over-warm and coated in red, thanks to an embroidered shawl draped around the lamp. The furnishings tried hard to be pretty and failed, like most things in Gloomy Bluebird. The bed sagged, the armoire was spineless, and the coverlet still held a man-sized indentation stippled with sweat. Nettie paused on the threshold, gagging on the perfume overpowering the stale scent of rutstink on the air, but Rita gave a final yank and all but threw her on the bed.

  Nettie scrunched away from the feather-leaky pillows and glared her defiance.

  “How do you know?” Rita rounded on her, eyes burning red and teeth bared. Away from the saloon, her accent changed completely. All sweetness had fled.

  “What’s to know? You got cat teeth and red eyes and I killed a man like that. He tried to force me, out on Pap’s farm.”

  Rita crossed her arms and nodded, eyes narrowed under black swooping brows.

  “That’s how, then. Once you kill one, you always know. You will always see. More’s the pity for you.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Rita paced the room in her cracked maroon boots, flailing her arms and talking almost too quick for Nettie to catch her drift. “We are monsters, to you. You kill one, you start to see us everywhere. We hide among the people, taking what we need to survive. We are harmless enough here, in the saloon. But you don’t want to go out alone at night, I promise you. A chupacabra will come along, suck you dry to bones, and crack them open for the marrow.”

  Nettie snorted. “A goatsucker? I ain’t scared of no goatsucker.”

  Rita’s smile curled like burned paper. “Then you haven’t met one.”

  “Then that ain’t…” Nettie pointed to Rita’s face “… what you are? And that feller?”

  Rita drew herself up tall. “I? Am a vampire.”

  “That supposed to mean something?”

  Throwing up her hands and rolling her eyes, Rita said, “Have you never heard of a vampire, carita?”

  “No.”

  “Ay-yi-yi. Vampire sleep all day and come out at night to drink blood. We are monsters.”

  But the way she said it was proud, which confused Nettie all the more.

  “Why’d you want to be a monster, anyway?”

  Rita sat down on the other side of the bed in a puddle of skirts, smoothing them down like arroyos in the rain. “Papa sold me off when I was young to a traveling man. That man used me hard, lost me in a game of dice. The saloon that won sent me upstairs with the girls. It was a nest of vampires, and they turned me that night. Since then, no man can strike me or give me the pox. I never get drunk. I cannot get pregnant and die in childbirth. I drink from the men, and they leave, thinking they have been pleasured, that they have bought me.” She leaned back on an elegant elbow. “But they are offering themselves to me. I drink their strength. For a woman, it is the ultimate revenge.”

  Nettie shook her head, trying to take it in. “So all three of y’all are…?”

  Rita nodded. “Si. If this is the life you lead, it’s better this way. Far better. Men are cruel.”

  “Then that feller that came after me was a whore, too?”

  Rita flicked her fingers. “Men come and go. But women run this town. He could have been any outsider, a wrangler or a traveling man. Outsiders respect our territory and avoid our streets. But if they wish to eat the leavings of dirty farmers, that is their business.”

  “Jesus Damn Bullnuts.” Nettie listened to the rhythmic rustlings of the corn-shuck mattress in the room next door as she tried to make sense of what Rita had revealed. Growing up on a farm, she’d had an eyeful of what critters did when they felt the itch, and she’d thought she had a pretty good idea of how whores made their coin, but now she felt sick to her stomach, thinking maybe one of the cowpokes was getting sucked dry in an entirely different way on the other side of that wall.

  “Does it hurt ’em much?”

  Rita shrugged a bare shoulder. “No. They like it. And we mostly suck out the liquor, which means they can buy more whisky and drink longer. The only problem is that they get very sleepy.”

  Nettie had just about come to terms with the whole damn thing when Rita was suddenly right up in her face, their noses almost touching. “Do you want me to make you a vampire, carita? Then the cowpokes cannot harm you.”

  Nettie jerked her head back. “Oh, hell no. Outside of Pap, the only man ever came close to harming me was one of you all, and I killed him for it. If I had to sleep all day, I couldn’t be a wrangler.” Nettie turned away, trying to hide the fact that she was working hard to keep from upchucking her beans at the thought of living off blood. “Thanks just the same.”

  Rita was somehow already at the back door, holding it open, her face a cold and inhuman mask. “Then go. Tell your friends that it was wonderful. And tell no one what I’ve told you.”

  Damn glad to leave the hot, red room, Nettie skittered out the door. But Rita stopped her with a small, hard hand on the shoulder of the dead man’s shirt. Her cherry-red lips just brushed Nettie’s neck, where the big blue vein was, and Nettie’s heart stuttered stupidly.

  “And if you do tell anyone, know that I will hunt you down and kill you in the night,” Rita whispered.

  Nettie gulped and nodded.

  “I got nobody to tell.”

  Rita’s door closed with a bang, and Nettie held a hand to her neck and tried to remember how to breathe.

  “She break you in good, Nat?”

  Jar was leaning against the crooked railing two doors down, smoking a cigarette. His eyes drooped, sleepy-like, but he was smiling.

  “Oh, yeah. Lord, Jar, I can hardly walk.”

  Jar just nodded knowingly and stared off into space. “It takes a man like that, every time. You’ll sleep good tonight, I reckon, but you might have trouble waking up come morning.”

  Walking over, spurs jingling, Jar clapped a hand on Nettie’s shoulder.

  “Best get on back downstairs. More liquor to drink. More cards to play. And we’re on the trail with a herd, heading north in two days. Best be ready to ride.”

  Nettie’s grin was as big as the sky.

  Finally, she’d escape Pap and Mam and hit the trail as a wrangler. With any luck, they wouldn’t notice she was gone until she was farther than either of them had ever been from the broke-down homestead. Maybe she’d stay with Boss Kimble, or end up on a ranch up north, where the mountains were so big they poked holes in the clouds. The only thing that stuck in her craw was what Rita had told her about monsters. Said she’d be seeing the goddamn things everywhere, now. Vampire whores and goatsuckers that would come after a human. Sure as hell explained why so many folks just up and disappeared. And maybe why that broken woman in the bunkhouse had been willing to crawl a hundred miles just to mumble about some cannibal bird. Maybe there really was a baby-stealing monster with a spike out there, waiting.

  Nettie looked out over the prairie as she followed Jar down the saloon stairs, the wood swaying with each step. Gloomy Bluebird was barely a pile of goat squat on the long, wide land of Durango, a giant child’s game of mumblety-peg in the rocky dirt. The stars poked out hard, the moon a quarter disk almost ripe for rustling cattle. A coyote wailed, and a horse snorted in its sleep. Before, those’d been normal noises, night music.
Now, she could only wonder what the hell else was lurking in the desert.

  Back in the saloon, Nettie took an empty seat and slurped down the swill that Monty slid across the table. The hot heat of the rotgut pooled in her belly, smoothing out the worries caused by a vampire whore and a weeping woman with shredded feet. A flicker of red caught her eye, and she watched Rita crook a finger at Poke from her door on the balcony. With a loud whoop, the skunk-drunk cowpoke wobbled his way up the stairs and disappeared inside.

  Nettie lost two hands of poker and ten cents waiting to make sure Poke came out alive.

  First thing he did was ask to borrow a dollar from Monty so he could go back for more.

  With Nettie trailing behind, her knife in her hand, Poke and Monty hobbled back from the saloon on jelly legs, singing songs about fine women. They were happy as pigs in slop, arms around each other’s necks, swaying back and forth. Nettie lagged in their wake trying to keep the liquor in her belly, as a cowpoke who couldn’t hold his drink was likely to suffer a horrible nickname for the rest of his life and possibly be driven from the territory, which was what she figured had happened to a feller she’d only known as Urp Longly, who hadn’t been seen in two years. As the least drunk and most wary of the ranch hands, Nettie nervously scanned the prairie, stark in blacks and whites under the grinning moon, waiting for a gleam of red and the reflection of moonlight on sharp, wet teeth. All she saw was a dead armadillo and, far off, a coyote. Critter yipped once and ran away before they got close enough to hit it with a rifle, drunk or sober. Smart things, coyotes.

  And as Rita had said, the next day, the wranglers were sleepier than usual.

  “Damn hangover,” Monty said.

  “Ayup. Girl drained me dry,” Poke agreed with a grin, tipping his hat further over his eyes to shut out the sun.

  Jar just grinned and rubbed two tiny red dots on his neck, muttering, “Mm. Love bites.”

  Nettie just got up for breakfast and went for the first bronc in the pen as usual. In the early morning after everyone else was asleep, she’d upended a stomach full of cornbread and liquor over the porch rail and had felt better almost immediately, more alert than seemed possible. The Injun woman had watched her from a tangle of blankets on a rocking chair on the porch and nodded her head.

  “Best keep the sickness out,” she’d said in a quiet voice. “Don’t let them claw into you.”

  But when Nettie blinked, the rocking chair was gone, the woman just a huddled lump of blankets on the boards. Far beyond, green animal eyes glowed for just a second, and she imagined the whisper of a single word traveling over the prairie.

  “Fool.”

  Nettie wiped her mouth on the dead vamp’s sleeve. Liquor was more trouble than it was worth.

  Over the next few days, Nettie did her best to fit in with the wranglers of the Double TK, which involved eating, farting, joshing, and breaking as many fancy broncs as possible, preferably while Boss Kimble was watching. Her proudest moment happened between dippers at the well when a gentleman in a pressed linen suit put the big white stallion through his paces under the boss’s watchful eye before handing over a fat wallet. No wonder the boss didn’t mind paying her a quarter a bronc; he’d made at least fifty damn dollars on the white.

  As of today, she’d broken seven broncs. That was two more than Jar had done, and one of his had been chosen badly and nipped a chunk out of his arm after tossing him ass over kettle into the dirt. Sitting across the table at dinner, he couldn’t stop worrying it with black-rimmed fingernails. It was likely to get inflamed, if he kept at it, but a man’s business was his own, so she kept eating. The stew went down fast, chunks of goat mixed in with the beans and a few wild onions. She’d already settled in for seconds when Boss Kimble walked into the room and cleared his throat. All the wranglers went silent, the only sound a clatter of bowls on the table and hurried swallowing.

  “Headin’ across the border at moonrise. Scout says there’s about two hundred head of cattle waiting over the river, Juan de Blanco’s boys being lazier than usual after stealin’ ’em from Lance Morgan. We’ll swim ’em over, brand hides until we fall down, and set off quick as a lick to sell the herd up north. You all know your business. Best bring your pistols.”

  And then he took a double helping of stew and left to eat in the saddle while looking over the horseflesh in his pens. Nettie knew a crew’s mounts were the difference between a successful cattle raid, drive, and sale and a bunch of dead cowpokes, but it hadn’t really occurred to her until just now that the horses she’d been breaking would be among the ones they’d rope along in case their regular mounts got busted up. She knew which horse she’d pick, if Ragdoll stepped in a prairie dog hole or got shot up by de Blanco’s banditos. And for just a minute there, her heart ached for sweet, dependable Blue.

  Sure, the one-eyed mule was ugly as sin and slow as cold molasses, but you couldn’t sit on a creature for that many years and not come to care for it. Considering a mule was half horse, half donkey, odd-looking, generally disrespected, and confused on the gender front, Nettie had a lot of fellow feeling for old Blue. She could only hope Pap wouldn’t get too desperate and eat the damn critter when his bacon ran out. Or accidentally shoot the poor thing, if he went aiming for the pesky black mare again. At least that bit of trouble hadn’t followed Nettie to the Double TK. It was almost like she’d shucked her old life as easy as a kernel of corn slipping the hull and finding fertile ground in which to sprout.

  Of course, the best corn got eaten, transplanted in a bird’s belly and shat out in more pleasant places, but Nettie figured it didn’t hurt the corn much.

  After Boss Kimble’s announcement, Nettie was so excited she could barely eat her stew, which meant she actually had to taste it, which was a bad move. Something in the brew had clearly gone south, and she ended up on the back porch of the ranch kitchen, staring at something squirmy on her plate because her only other choice was to watch Sil piss onto a scorpion.

  “You’re scared, ain’t you?” he said, spitting tobacco onto the wet tangle of black pinchers with grim finality.

  “I ain’t scared. The stew’s gone bad.” She spit a wad of meat on top of the scorpion to prove her point. As the scorpion died shortly after that, she felt justified.

  “Grub’s always been bad. But your belly’s turned, sure enough. Ain’t you ever been on a raid before, boy?”

  She shook her head, pulled her hat down lower so he couldn’t see her face. Her hip felt too light, considering she was the only wrangler of the company who didn’t have a pistol. Without touching the stranger’s money and rousing suspicion, she’d managed to break enough broncs and win enough hands of poker to buy a notched Bowie knife and leather sheath off the cook, but the damn thing was about as sharp as a hammer, despite the careful whetting she’d given it. Still, she liked the way it felt, strapped to her belt, and had grown comfortable enough yanking it out dramatically and brandishing it at splintered posts and one deeply confused armadillo. If they ran into trouble tonight, she’d just have to lay low on her horse and ride like hell.

  “Don’t influence the boy, Sil. Lord knows you still yark before every gunfight.” Monty came up and pissed on top of what was left of the scorpion, and Nettie’s eyes shot sideways as she tried not to see her friend’s unmentionables. “Reckon I’ll keep Nat with me so he don’t pick up your bad habits.”

  “Hope he don’t get you killed.” What teeth Sil had curled up in his smile. “Lost three boys last time we went into de Blanco’s territory. One feller got trampled, one disappeared, and another showed up nailed to the wall of the church a week later.” Sil spit a wad of tobacco at Nettie’s boot, and she stepped back without thinking. “Or at least, his skin showed up. Ol’ de Blanco don’t take kindly to being stole from.”

  “So why’re we stealing from him?” Nettie asked.

  Sil laughed. “We’re just stealing back what he already stole from the fine folks of Durango. If that old Aztecan bandito hasn’t got the sense
to brand his damn cattle, that’s what he deserves. Lord knows de Blanco stole ’em from Lance Morgan, and Lance probably stole ’em from some city fool from out east or some other Aztecan vaquero. Every damn cow in this territory’s been stolen and sold and stolen again. That’s why Boss is having us brand ’em for the Double TK. If a man values something, he’d best leave his mark on it.”

  Nettie thought of the scars on her back and down her arms and legs. For something she’d been long told had no value, she carried a lot of brands.

  Maybe tonight, while Boss Kimble and his men stole the herd, she’d just gallop away from Durango forever.

  CHAPTER

  5

  The moon was high, and Ragdoll was dancing between Nettie’s knees. The little mare was skittier than usual as she pranced alongside Nut, the light sorrel Monty favored.

  “You nervous?” he asked.

  Accustomed as she was to ignoring questions from Pap and Mam, Nettie’s instinct was to shrug and keep on riding. But she figured that if a feller like Monty had put up with her this long and got her the job she’d always wanted, she owed it to him to be honest. “Just a bit.”

  “Don’t be. You’re doing fine. Boss is right pleased—told me so himself. Does life on the ranch suit you?”

  “Lord yes, Monty.”

  After a moment of thought, he said, “Other fellers giving you trouble?” And she heard a certain sort of concern in it and knew it meant more than it sounded like. If she’d thought of herself as a girl, if she’d dressed like a girl and let the cowpokes know that underneath her wraps, she had the same parts as the whores, they probably would’ve given her trouble. But she hadn’t let that happen. She wouldn’t. So they hadn’t.

  “Not after I punched Jar in the arm for joshing me too hard.” She grinned to let him know it was truth.