by Lila Bowen
The thing was, Nettie had been raised to think she was nothing—they weren’t wrong about that. But she’d also held, somewhere deep down in her heart, that she was special. That she was more than an unloved child, an unpaid servant, a dark splotch in their dirty white life. She’d figured maybe the homestead would catch fire and she’d drag out the drunk old coots and suddenly find out what a hug felt like. Or maybe she’d be in town, begging for cornmeal, and save the mayor’s wife from a runaway wagon, get a medal. She’d reckoned that one day, for some reason as yet unknown, someone would actually look at her instead of through her.
And now two people were, and it was downright unsettling.
They thought she was somebody that mattered. Someone special. A hunter. A legend.
The Shadow.
That sounded awful ominous, like a thundercloud waiting to strike a body dead. And yet… something about it felt like home. The dream vision was all but printed inside her damn skull. The Shadow. So she was supposed to, what? Spin around until something twisted her guts like she was gonna upchuck, then kill it? How was she supposed to know if the monster was good or evil? What if it was a good monster having a bad day? Was there a polite way to ask a mostly nekkid person what sort of critter they turned into? And what happened if she decided Coyote Dan and his sister were crazy as a bag of cats, turned her mare around, settled with a ranch up north, and fiercely ignored everything that made her insides wobble?
She reined to a halt, glared into the sun, and scanned the prairie while lightning was still bursting across her eyes. Against the blinding white, she saw an inkblot shade on horseback, pointing west, where the Javelina had gone. Blinking ferociously, she forced the image away, but it lingered against the black of her eyelids. Would that fool Injun woman haunt her forever, endlessly pointing from the back of a wet black mare?
That would be reason enough to kill the Cannibal Owl, whatever it was. Just to be free. Nettie didn’t care to be pointed at so damn much by somebody who didn’t have the good sense to stay dead. And underneath the weight of all the stolen children, Nettie remembered what the Injun woman had said: Nettie had had a tribe, once, and the Cannibal Owl knew the truth of it. Dan said she spoke Comanche in her sleep, but that didn’t tell her how she’d come to have black blood. The goddamn monster might be the only creature alive who knew where Nettie’d come from.
With another savage yank on her reins that she immediately regretted, Nettie trotted back to where Dan and Winifred squatted around a fresh little brush fire, farther behind than she’d have guessed. She’d run the mare longer than she’d meant to, been gone longer than was smart, and Ragdoll sighed in relief when Nettie pulled her cinch loose and hobbled her. A long, thick snake was skewered over the coals, its head sitting on the ground and judging her with an alien sort of distaste. She dismounted and kicked the snake head away.
“If I kill this owl thing, can I go back to just being a normal cowpoke?”
It came out all breathless, as if she’d been running instead of her mare. Dan’s and Winifred’s eyes met and narrowed.
“It’s possible,” Dan said slowly.
“But unlikely,” Winifred finished.
“What the Sam Hill does that mean?”
Dan stood, picked up a stick, and walked to where the rattlesnake’s head had landed. When he returned with the grisly thing impaled on the twig like a puppet, he picked up a chunk of petrified wood and shoved it into the jaws. The snake’s head snapped down, fangs leaking milky venom. A shiver ran up Nettie’s arms as she thought about how much of her life she’d spent turning over boots and stirring up the bottles in the lean-to, making sure she never found out exactly how hard a rattler could strike.
“A creature is what it is. Even death can’t change that. If you kill the Cannibal Owl, you won’t stop being the Shadow.”
Nettie squatted down. The rattlesnake seemed to watch her, its mouth still working to pierce the rock-hard wood. It reminded her of Chuck, damn its scaly skin.
“So you’re saying”—she poked the snake’s snoot with her own stick, positive that its eyes rolled back in annoyance—“that if I don’t kill the owl, I’ll be haunted for the rest of my life. And if I do kill it, I’ll feel like I’ve got to kill whatever monster starts acting up after that?”
Dan squatted beside her, elbows easy on his thighs.
“As I see it, you have two choices, the same choice as every animal. Hunt or be hunted. What will you choose?”
CHAPTER
13
Nettie picked up the stick and used it to fling the rattler head as far as she could. The dang thing soared into the white-blue sky and landed beyond her vision. She imagined it spitting out the chunk of wood and cussing at her.
“Shit, Dan. I choose lunch.”
He grinned. “I thought you might.”
They passed a few minutes in expectant silence, waiting for the snake to finish cooking. Winifred started to say something a few times, but a hiss and head shake from Dan stopped her. They ate before the meat was fully done, and Nettie was more than happy to suck down half-roasted rattler and feel the burn down her throat. It was better than the lump that had been living there, reminding her with every breath that she was going to have to do something she didn’t much care to do.
At one point, she poked the long skin with her toe and said, “Why don’t more people eat snake? It tastes like chewy chicken, don’t cost nothing, and doesn’t shit all over the yard.”
Dan licked his fingers. “Our people consider them unclean. But when I lived with the sawbones, I studied his books and specimens. There is nothing unclean about a healthy animal, no matter what a shaman says. Outside of monsters, meat is meat. Science is a powerful teacher. And hunger is a cruel mistress.”
“I still refuse to eat fish,” Winifred added. “But snake grows on me.”
When she’d finished the last of her share and felt a little more settled, Nettie checked the ground around her for scorpions and centipedes and settled down with her legs stretched out and her back against a rock.
“Fine. So let’s say I’d rather hunt. What kind of critter is the Cannibal Owl?”
Winifred snorted, and Dan finished his last bite of snake and tossed the bones in the fire.
“No one knows. No one has seen it. The night that our tribe was attacked, there were werewolves and harpies first, before Pia Mupitsi came. Too many ripples to pick apart a single thread. There are endless kinds of creatures in the world, with new ones born all the time, half-breeds and mongrels.”
Nettie bristled. “Like me.”
Winifred shrugged. “Settle down. It’s not an insult. Nothing is pure. What happens if a skinwalker and a werewolf mate in human form? What happens if a human gets a skinwalker with child? Whatever is born is something new, something unique. Nothing is pure. Everything is a half-breed.”
“But nobody calls a white man that.”
“No one pokes the biggest, dumbest bull in the herd, but no one follows him, either,” Winifred shot back.
Dan just snorted.
Nettie stood and dusted off her pants. Much as she didn’t like it when Winifred was right, her world had definitely changed. Now she was a wrangler, she’d killed three monsters, and she had something like a destiny dogging her every step. And she couldn’t seem to hold her head low anymore. Her chin stubbornly stuck up and out and wouldn’t see a bit of reason regarding turning south in spirit or body.
Whatever part of her that had feared Pap? That part was dead.
She had bigger things to fight.
“Hellfire, Dan.” She looked far across the prairie. First west. Then north. “I figure you’d better take me to the Rangers so I can get this destiny thing finished and get back to breaking horses.”
As the sun staggered down, bloody and beaten, to collapse on the horizon, Nettie could sense that they were very near their destination. Must’ve been something in the way Winifred’s coyote ears flicked back and Dan finally picked up his rein
s instead of steering the sorrel with his knees. The stark black teeth of a small ranch not unlike the Double TK nibbled at the low clouds as if waiting to devour the night instead of it being the other way around. They hadn’t stopped for dinner, and Nettie’s stomach grumbled over the clopping of the horses’ hooves. The snake was just a greasy memory of a burp. They were just about done in, with nothing but a little creek to slurp from that afternoon, which meant it was a bad time for jerky. Nettie was spent, too. At least until she felt the wobble.
Her stomach turned over right about the same time the horses pricked their ears and sped up to a gangly trot, their necks stretching out as if they could get to the hay faster that way. With a soft yip, the coyote turned and slunk toward a low butte near a mesquite thicket. Her eyes gave one acid-green flash in the gloaming and winked out. As far as Nettie was concerned, a pretty woman like that probably had no business among the Rangers, especially if she was draped in nothing but some scanty bits of leather wet with a day’s worth of dog drool. And speaking of which…
“You gonna tell me how to act, Coyote Dan?”
He snorted. “What’s the point? You are what you are, even if you’re lacking manners. You’re what’s needed. If they don’t like it, there are other Ranger outposts. But this captain is a good man, so try not to make him angry, even though you’ll want to.” His horse whinnied, and the bugle was answered by half a herd milling behind a rickety fence. “It’s just your nature,” he added. “Stubborn thing. No wonder you favored that old mule.”
Someone carried a tin light out onto the porch of a long ranch house. Spurs jingled against the wood as two dozen men stepped through the door and spread out along the railing, cradling rifles or putting hands on the butts of pistols as they talked in low, threatening voices. They all looked like normal men, but someone… wasn’t. At least, that’s what the lump in Nettie’s belly and the prickle on the back of her neck were telling her.
“One of them’s a… thing,” Nettie whispered, and Dan nodded.
“I already knew. But don’t you forget.”
A throat cleared, and one shape detached and hopped off the porch onto the dirt, a sheathed cavalry sword hung over his shoulders like an oxen’s yoke and a sombrero-type hat shading his eyes. He was an older man made up of gristle and bristles, gray and wiry with heavy muttonchops. But his leather vest was well fit and nicely kept, his tall boots recently shined. Little bits of gold winked on his lapels like brass fireflies.
“Evening. You folks lost?”
Normally, Nettie would’ve said something both smart and stupid, but considering that she could almost feel how hard some of those fellers were itching for a fight, she stayed mute.
The silence strung out for a minute. The feller with the sword spit. And then someone on the porch said, “Cap, don’t you know that’s Coyote Dan?”
Quick as a blink, the sword was unsheathed and pointing at the stark white throat of a feller at the rail. “’Course I know, idjit. Wasn’t what I asked, was it?”
“No, Cap.”
The sword lowered and pointed at Nettie.
“Who’s your friend, Dan?”
Before Dan could say something stupid that she’d be stuck with forever, she said, “Rhett.”
“Rhett what?”
“Rhett… Boss?”
The fellers on the porch broke out laughing, and Cap held up a hand. They quieted instantly.
“Now first of all, son, I ain’t a boss. I’m a captain of the Durango Rangers, Las Moras Company. Second of all, a feller’s only as good as his name, and so far, I only heard half of yours.”
Nettie swallowed hard, glad the night hid her red-hot face. “Rhett…”
Not a goddamn thing came to mind. Plenty of first names had. But she couldn’t say Lonesome in case she was wanted for Monty’s and Chuck’s murders. She knew of only one other last name she’d taken a shine to, so she just went on and said it out loud. Not like anybody in the Rangers would’ve known the young, sunshine-smiling, hot-shot wrangler who’d stopped in at the Double TK for one all-too-short summer.
“Rhett Hennessy.”
A queer quiet descended, broken by a familiar voice.
“You any relation to the Tanasi Hennessies?”
She knew it was him before the lanky shape detached from the porch and hopped down beside the Captain.
“No relation,” she muttered, shoving her hat down before Samuel Hennessy could get a good look at Rhett Hennessy, who looked an awful lot like the girl who’d watched Sam, quiet and big-eyed, in the bronc pens a few summers ago.
It had only been a few short months, but Nettie had taken a fancy to the young cowpoke. To his golden warmth, his kind blue eyes, his puppy-dog smile, his open gladness and a sweetness so unusual among the hard-as-nails men who managed to defeat death in the grueling Durango territory. Samuel Hennessy of Tanasi had maybe been the first feller besides Monty who hadn’t reviled Nettie in the slightest.
But he’d always been a curious, friendly sort of feller, so he looked to the Captain for permission before walking up to her horse and patting Ragdoll on the neck. “You sure you ain’t got no people from back east? Maybe…” He stared up into her face, and her eyebrows drew down in defense of her nose. “Maybe your folks… worked there?”
Her back stiffened. “My people ain’t slaves, and we ain’t from Tanasi.”
With the pup-dog grace she recalled, he shrugged it off good-naturedly and stuck out a hand. “Well, I’m Samuel Hennessy, and folks around here already call me Hennessy, so I hope you won’t mind if I call you Rhett.”
“Rhett’s fine.”
She grabbed his hand, surprised that lightning didn’t shoot from his palm to hers like the prickles on a metal latch in winter. He just felt like a person, any person, the handshake swift and vaguely punishing. She squeezed his fingers, gave him a bone grinder of a shake in return. He hadn’t seemed to care that she was a girl back then, and she didn’t want him to notice now.
“Nice to meet you, Rhett. Good to see you again, Dan.”
When the Captain cleared his throat, Hennessy nodded and returned to his place in line on the porch, although he was the only one who didn’t see fit to keep a hand on his weapon. But Nettie could feel his eyes roaming over her from across the indigo night. He was still smiling, but he knew there was something funny about Rhett Hennessy, and she half-hoped he would persist in trying to figure out what it was just so he’d keep looking at her. But mostly she hoped he wouldn’t.
Hellfire stupid of her, to use his name like that.
Durango was a big country, but damned if it didn’t seem smaller all the time.
“Dan, Rhett. We got supper to finish, if Qualls ain’t et it all. What can we do you for?”
Coyote Dan didn’t get off his horse, which Nettie took to mean things might still go south. She kept her hand on her gun and her heels off her mare, hoping there wouldn’t soon be a dozen hardened men aiming for her back.
“Rhett here’s killed before, and now he’s hunting the Cannibal Owl. Ever heard of it?”
The Captain shrugged and spit tobacco as if they were discussing the weather. “Monster’s a monster. One’s better than a passel. If we see it, we’ll kill it.”
“This monster is stealing children and destroying good tribes across your sector of Durango.”
The Captain hung his sword on his belt and unholstered his pistol, inspecting it in the dark.
“When it hits a town, you just let us know. Men?”
The older man spun his gun and stuck it home in its holster before turning his back to Nettie and Dan. As he moseyed toward the warm rectangle of light, his men faced out. Somebody cocked a pistol, and Nettie felt the first spider legs of doubt tap up her spine. She’d only had a gun for a few days, and although her aim was decent, her mettle was still in question. At least Coyote Dan would probably live, provided no one hit him direct in the heart, if she understood monsters correctly. But if a fight started, Nettie would die like
a dog out here, and that wasn’t the welcome she’d hoped for.
“Wait.”
The Captain stopped. A stocky man with a full black beard hopped to the ground and stumped over to where Nettie sat. When he looked up at her, he was the closest thing she’d seen to a live bear: black beetle eyes in a round face, all surrounded by dark hair and a beard like an eagle’s nest.
“What are you, boy?”
Dan chuckled. “Strange, isn’t it, Jiddy?”
“Ain’t one of us. But ain’t one of them. Not quite.”
“Jiddy?” The Captain had turned back around, but the grim set of his jaw said he wasn’t feeling patient.
With a savage grunt, the man put a hand on Nettie’s boot, pressed his nose almost against her britches, and took a deep breath as he dragged his face up. She very nearly kicked him, but she knew a test well enough when she saw one.
“It’s like…” Up close now, she could see Jiddy’s face working like a cat about to sneeze and felt a brief surge of smugness at consternating him. “Like how a chair’s shadow ain’t a chair but looks like one? Feller’d have to be pretty sensitive to pick it up. I never seen anything like it. It’s like he ain’t even there.”
At that, the Captain snatched a lantern off the porch and walked toward them, and Nettie’s heart ratcheted up into her throat. “Jiddy, are you saying… he’s like a shadow?”
Jiddy stepped away and nodded, looking right disturbed. “Maybe a little. Hard to say. Feels human, but not like a human who’s killed a monster. Different.”
“So if a vampire wasn’t being real careful, he wouldn’t notice Rhett? But Rhett would notice him?”
Backing away, Jiddy nodded, all slow and thoughtful. “Maybe so.”
The Captain strolled up, a little too close, held his lantern high, and used his sheathed sword to knock Nettie’s hat back off her head. “What the hellfire are you, boy?”
“Wrangler,” she answered, making it a manly grunt. “Bronc breaker.”
Up close, she could see how wind-chapped his tanned face was, the gauntness of his cheeks under his whiskers. Their eyes met, and Nettie matched her scowl to his and pulled her hat back on.
