Wake of Vultures

by Lila Bowen

  A few hours in, Nettie’s behind started to ache, her thighs screaming from the hard trot. Monty had always said a cheap saddle was worse than no saddle at all, but she wouldn’t let the Rangers see her consternation. There’d been no chance to rest, really, since she’d left Pap’s farm. She wanted to ride faster and get it over with, but she didn’t dare talk back to the Captain or urge him to hurry. Even her tough life with Pap and Mam hadn’t prepared her for two weeks spent entirely in the saddle. Hellfire, but breaking broncs at least allowed a person a few minutes on the ground between horses while something else ached. She began to see the value in a broad-backed horse and a well-cushioned saddle and daydreamed that they’d come upon a town, and she would slip the dead vampire’s roll of bills into Sam’s hand and tell him to pick out a saddle with lots of silver conchos and plenty of padding for her. And fetch some penny candy for himself, too. In the dream, he grinned, and his breath smelled like peppermint.

  Just when she was about to scoot over behind a group of boulders to relieve herself, mainly her legs, the entire company stopped. The Captain and Jiddy had their heads together, whispering excitedly. Nettie closed her eyes and focused on her belly. Sure enough, she felt a tiny ripple like an angry nut doing somersaults.

  That meant there was a monster nearby.

  Staring the way Jiddy was pointing, Nettie could just barely make out something jutting from the prairie over a rise. If she hadn’t felt that ripple, she would’ve reckoned it was just a group of especially pokey rock formations. Heck, maybe it still was, and one of them ugly harpy-things was sitting on top of a branch, waiting to yank out somebody’s eyeballs. Hard to tell, from way back here.

  “Jiddy, Virgil, Hennessy, and Rhett. You boys go on down and investigate if that creature’s toeing the line or waiting to kill. You need us, you shoot twice.”

  Nettie looked to Hennessy to see what to do, and he was untying his ponied horse and handing it off to the next youngest feller. She did the same, tossing her rope to a skinny wrangler named Boyd Chickamauga who’d developed the unfortunate nickname of Chicken, thanks to his bright red shirt and worrisome nature.

  “You reckon it’s a chupacabra, Rhett?” he said.

  She shrugged. “If so, I reckon it’ll be dead soon.”

  Hennessy trotted around the company to meet Jiddy and one of the most respected fellers in the bunch, Virgil Scarsdale. Virgil was second in command and had been at the Captain’s side through countless skirmishes, from the stories Nettie had heard. He was a man of few words, mainly because his brother Milo fought with him and would never shut up. Nettie was right uncomfortable around Virgil, as she suspected the gray-maned, hatchet-faced older man could see straight through her disguise and would one day gather up enough words to tell the Captain who and what she really was. For now, he just stared at her like she was a corn on a sore toe that he was too busy to scrape off. Shaking his grizzled head, he kicked his bay and led their foursome toward the shimmering something-or-other on the horizon.

  “Can you feel it, Rhett?” Hennessy asked.

  Before Nettie could answer, Jiddy spit in the dirt and said, “Don’t matter what Rhett feels. I feel it, and that’s enough for you, squirt.”

  “Shut yer trap and come on,” Virgil said, and Nettie breathed a sigh of relief that he wouldn’t speak again for at least two weeks after using up so many words.

  Virgil kicked his horse to a lope, and Jiddy and Hennessy fanned out to leave Nettie and Ragdoll taking up the rear, which suited them both fine. The ground was rocky and rumpled, which meant she couldn’t check her gun so easily, and the jagged shape ahead soon quit wavering and turned into a little town, not even as big as Gloomy Bluebird. There were three tall, false-fronted buildings on each side of a tidy street, their signs lettered in a fancy, curly hand that Nettie admired but couldn’t read. The wood was mostly new and honey gold instead of the misty blue-gray of an old town, and a wagon still sat out front, filled with barrels of nails and boards brought in from far off. A little creek to the side explained why some fool had chosen to make his last stand out here in the middle of nowhere. A dozen penned horses bugled their welcome, and Nettie’s stomach flopped around like a fish on the ground.

  They dropped down to a walk as they entered the lone street. Nettie felt like she was about to get shot, but Jiddy aimed his horse for the building that had the distinctive swinging doors of a saloon. It was downright eerie, how quiet the town was. The only movement came from the flap of washing hanging from a few lines, and not a single dog or person was visible. Nettie waited for Virgil and Jiddy to dismount, not sure if she needed permission to follow the older men or if they wanted her outside, on horseback and ready, gun in hand.

  “Reckon I’ll have me a drink,” Jiddy said.

  Virgil looked up and smiled like a slit throat. “Fine idea. Boys, you stay out here and keep watch.”

  When Nettie followed Virgil’s line of sight to the upstairs of the saloon, she saw an open window with a fine pink curtain rustled by someone just gone. So tight-lipped Virgil was a whoremonger. Figured. And if the whores here were vampires, that would make sense for the flopping in her belly, although she did wonder at what an upstanding Ranger like Virgil would get from a woman he considered a monster. Still, vampire whores didn’t seem to bother anybody, which meant there might not be trouble.

  “I guess we sit?” she asked.

  Hennessy looked at the door and sighed with longing. “Guess we do. I can’t wait to get my badge and actually do something besides wait.”

  Nettie grinned. “Look at it this way: If somebody’s gonna get gobbled up by a monster, it’s gonna be them.”

  Hennessy swallowed hard, stared longingly at the saloon doors, and gave Nettie a mischievous, secretive sort of smile that made her stomach flip in a different way. “There’s ways to be gobbled up I wouldn’t mind so much.”

  She looked away and blushed. It was one thing when Poke said it, but she hated to think of sweet Sam as anything less than perfect. Two pairs of spurs clinked in the dust as Virgil and Jiddy swung through the saloon’s double doors. The town was altogether too quiet, and Nettie’s stomach kept on cartwheeling like a tumbleweed.

  “I got a bad feeling about this,” she said.

  Hennessy shrugged. “Feel whatever you want, so long as you do what you’re told. Last feller who went against the Captain’s orders ended up in four separate chunks that wouldn’t quite fit together.”

  Cheerful voices called out inside the saloon, and a piano started up, too jolly for the middle of nowhere. With a sigh of annoyance, Nettie walked Ragdoll over to a water trough and let the mare drink. Hennessy followed, his gelding gulping down the water. A peculiar sound started up, and Hennessy’s head snapped to attention, his eyes swiveling back to the saloon door.

  “What the Sam Hill is that racket?” Nettie asked, a pinky shoved deep in her ear, as it felt like all the little hairs in there were quivering.

  “I reckon that’s opry.”

  Hennessy swung off his horse, clumsy as all get-out, and walked toward the saloon door like he was half-asleep. He didn’t even bother to tie up the gelding, which was about the worst thing a smart wrangler could do in the middle of nowhere.

  “Hennessy!” He didn’t answer. “Samuel!” Nothing. He kept walking. “Sam!”

  He’d always been a friendly feller, but he didn’t so much as twitch an ear in response. Yanking her lariat off her saddle, Nettie kicked Ragdoll across the street, swung the loop overhead, and lassoed Samuel Hennessy around the shoulders just as his hand was about to push through the double doors of the saloon. Even then, he didn’t turn around, just tried to shrug out of the rope. With her stomach erupting and her heart trying to flop out of her chest, Nettie wrapped her lariat around her saddle horn and spurred her mare in the opposite direction, yanking Hennessy off his feet and away from the saloon.

  As soon as the feller was on the ground, Nettie turned and hollered, “Dangit, Hennessy! What’s wrong with
you?”

  But Hennessy just stood like a dumb dog and tried to plow back toward the saloon without even bothering to remove the rope. Whatever he was heading for, so far as Nettie could tell, was very bad news. So she walked her mare away slowly, tugging Hennessy step by reluctant step out of the empty town. He fought the rope all the way, but it was clear his brain wasn’t working, as he never tried to duck out of the loop. When she’d pulled him to the far end of the buildings, she hopped off her horse and waved a hand in his face.

  “Hennessy?”

  He shoved her aside and took another step toward town. And that’s when she decided the only way to keep the boy safe was to rope him to a hitching pole, which she did, using the mare as an anchor. When he was secured, she stepped away and dusted off her hands.

  “You in there, Sam?”

  He shook his head like a fly was on his nose. “Quiet. There’s purty singing. I wanna go.”

  Nettie’d heard singing coming from the one-room church in Gloomy Bluebird, but it hadn’t been anything that would make her behave like Hennessy was right now. The way his head was cocked toward the saloon and the uneven warbling within convinced her that there was something monster-y going on, something dastardly. Whatever it was Sam claimed to hear, all Nettie heard was a peculiar, fish-strangling sound that made her want to plug her ears with her fingers. It definitely wasn’t opry. She raised her gun to the sky and was just about to shoot twice when she saw the entire company of twenty men and twice as many horses heading right for the town, their faces as slack and dumb as Hennessy’s.

  Whatever was in that saloon was calling the men. And for some reason, it wasn’t calling Nettie. And that meant she was the only one who could kill it.

  Fast as she could, Nettie unpacked her whip and took up her gun and hot-footed it for the saloon. As she shoved the doors open, the music smacked her in the face, unbearably loud. She crashed through, and no one so much as turned their head, in part because so many of the saloon occupants were dead and half-eaten, sitting in the spindly chairs and staring at the stage with what was left of their eyeballs. The only living men in the saloon were Virgil, Jiddy, and a scrawny, scared-looking bartender polishing a dirty glass behind the bar with tufts of cotton stuck in his ears. Like all the dead folks, the Rangers were staring at a tiny stage and the moon-faced, dark-haired woman standing on it in a faded dinner dress. She was singing, but it wasn’t normal singing. It was too high and too low all at once, scraping up against Nettie’s teeth and backbone like sandpaper against an open wound. And if she knew anything about men and women, she knew it wasn’t the woman’s looks and figure that held the men so captivated.

  Nettie looked at that woman and saw nothing out of the ordinary, save for a face that even she recognized as plain and lumpy. But she knew it wasn’t human. And she knew it had to die.

  With her gun drawn, it was easy enough to shoot the woman in the chest from across the half-built saloon. Well, fine. It took her three shots, but nobody complained. For just a second, Nettie felt pretty good about her shooting lessons—until the bullet pinged right back out of the woman’s chest and fell to the ground. It had barely dented her dress, hadn’t even left a hole, as if the woman’s body were made of rock. The broad face jerked to Nettie like a hawk catching sight of a rabbit, and the voice got louder and louder and even louder, so loud that Nettie figured shooting herself in the head was the only way to make enough room for all the sounds inside. It wasn’t until she felt the cool kiss of steel against her temple that she realized that was a very bad idea and definitely not something she would’ve come up with herself.

  So she shot the woman-thing again, this time in the face. The bullet bounced off the pale skin between mud-brown eyes, and the singing mouth curved up in a haughty smile. The woman stretched out a hand and curled a finger at Nettie, all welcoming-like. Nettie took one step forward, then reached for the bandanna around her neck, ripped it in half, wadded up each side, and stuck the rags into her ears. It helped drown out the goddamn noise, at least a little. Shoving her gun back in her holster, Nettie took up her knife instead and uncoiled the whip in her left hand.

  The saloon door burst in, just then, the Captain leading his entire regiment of Durango Rangers with the dumbest look imaginable on his face. Jiddy hadn’t budged in all this time, just stood in the middle of the saloon, staring at the woman with a rapt sort of slackness on his bearlike face. So much for the head scout. Far as Nettie could see, she had to act now or watch the woman’s plans unfold, which was doubtless going to be horrible for the Rangers.

  Knife in one hand, whip in the other, Nettie stalked around the tables, her eyes never leaving the woman and the woman’s eyes never leaving her. Since feeling a gun in her hand for the first time, Nettie hadn’t faced a creature like this, something smart that knew it was being hunted as it was, itself, hunting. The Captain’s men sleepwalked toward the stage, a bright red shirt leading the pack. Of course Chicken would want to be the first to reach the woman. Nettie was fast, but she wasn’t fast enough, and Chick hit the stage before she could stop him. Still singing, the woman grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him up to join her. His eyes were wide, his weak chin wagging, and his mouth goggled open. The woman pulled him close, brought her lips to his, and wrapped her fingers carefully around his throat as she kissed him.

  Seconds later, Chick hit the ground and didn’t move again. Also, he didn’t have a face.

  And Nettie ran.

  When she was right up near the stage, the woman’s arm stretched out toward Nettie, the fingers joining together into something that looked like a snake’s tail as the arm went rubbery and elongated. Caught by surprise, Nettie slashed down with her knife and cut the thing off in a burst of black blood.

  Fast as lightning, the woman quit singing and her snake-arm recoiled, her mouth opening up the wrong way, top to bottom, and her other arm shooting out for Nettie’s neck. Nettie leaped back, away from the blood spray, and flung her whip like she was going for a calf’s leg. The braided leather caught the woman’s long arm and wrapped around four times, and Nettie gave a mighty yank. Most of the woman got tugged off the stage, except for the six sticky snake-tail legs that sprouted under her dress and kept reaching to stay up there.

  The woman quit singing for one second as she struggled to stand, and the Captain had the good sense to pull his pistol and shout, “What in Hades—?” but then the singing started up again and his face went slack.

  In the moment that the woman refocused on the men and opened her mouth, Nettie pulled her lasso taut, stepped on it to pin the woman to the ground, and stabbed her Bowie knife deep into the place where the creature’s heart should’ve been.

  But it wasn’t there, or at the very least, the skin was too hard in that spot to allow a knife access. The blade skittered off, just like the bullet had. One of the snake-tail legs wrapped around Nettie’s boot, and another went for the wrist holding the lasso. Nettie’s eyes met the woman’s brown ones and found only otherness and hunger and disbelief. So Nettie yanked out the knife and stabbed her again, higher up. The blade sunk in like the critter was made of ripe cheese, and finally, with one deep gasp, the song stopped and the body exploded into wet black sand.

  Nettie’s knife fell to the floor, and she flopped onto her back on the shiny-gold boards beside the sliding hills of sand. Killing monsters was damn near exhausting.

  A second later, the Captain and Jiddy were staring down at her. The Captain yanked the rags out of her ears and said, “I believe I asked you what the hell that thing was.”

  “Reckon I don’t know, Captain. But now it’s a pile of sand.”

  All around the saloon, fellers were blinking awake and being horrified by the scene surrounding them. Three of the Rangers had the bartender backed into a corner, but all he could do was cry and mutter in French. Again and again, he kept saying a word that sounded like sea wren, and something else that sounded like eh-poose, but nobody had any French, so nobody knew what he was ta
lking about. The more guns they stuck in his face and the more they hollered at him, the more he blubbered. Finally, he just pointed to the back door and passed out, which was a vast improvement.

  Through that door, they found a room filled with piles of treasure, or what passed for treasure in the wilds of Durango. Scraggly little gold nuggets and silver dollars were sorted neatly into barrels and chests, along with a few bits and bobs of ladies’ jewelry. The next door led to a peculiar sort of general store stocked with neat piles of used clothes, bolts of new cloth, dozens of pocket watches, shelves of worn boots, and saddles stacked up around the walls. Out back, an arroyo was filled with stripped, nekkid bodies that had been mostly picked to bones by the fat vultures waiting expectantly on the fence posts.

  “I ain’t never seen nothing like this,” Jiddy said. “Best I can figure, she lured in men with her singing and ate their soft parts.”

  Virgil’s brother Milo took one look at the pile out back and nodded. “Siren. Just like Odysseus. Don’t any of you fellers have your letters? Old Greek monster, used to sit on an island and lure fellers in with singing, then steal their goods and eat ’em. This ain’t no island, but it looks like men’ll go pretty far out of their way if they think there’s a whore and a glass of whisky.” He gave his brother a significant sort of look.