by Steve McHugh
A quick sprint across to the nearest building adjacent to where I was, and through the open front door, made sure that I was no longer a target for either of the two rifles, but it also put me in direct contact with another barren—the young red-haired woman who had been sent to kill me in the bath.
She was crouched on the ground, feeding on a small animal of some kind and hadn't noticed me. A small jet of fire left my finger tip and hit her in the temple, ending her suffering. She slumped forward just as a bullet crashed through the broken window beside me. I ran through the building to the rear and blasted the locked wooden door into tiny pieces.
I darted down the narrow opening between the buildings, stopping before it opened back out into the street. More shots were being fired at the front of the building I'd just left, and I wondered if the shooters actually had any idea of what they were doing.
I made my way to the edge of the opening and, still concealed by the shadows of the buildings on either side of me, used air magic to gather as much of the loose dust and grit from the street as possible, and set it rotating until I had something that resembled a small sand storm. The shots stopped as the mass of grit and dirt got larger and larger until I flung it at the front of the bar.
Glass shattered as the wind-controlled mass slammed into the bar windows, quickly followed by shouts and screams as that same glass was plucked up and added to the contents of the spinning cyclone.
The entire front of the building was ripped apart and flung inside at whoever was hiding there. I sprinted to the front of the bar, as the wind died down, and found two men inside who were rubbing their eyes, both of whom I recognised as having worked for the sheriff.
Too disorientated to fight back, they were easily put down with a gust of air, lifting them from their feet and slamming them into the nearest wall. They fell to the floor with a thud, as I made my way up the stairs to check for any other holdouts.
Sure enough, they were found without too much trouble. Two more armed men sat by the window at the end of the corridor. Neither of them appeared to be moving, and on closer inspection, I saw the long jagged piece of glass that had been torn from the ruined window and imbedded in the throat of one of them. The shock had apparently caused him to spin round and fire his shotgun directly into the chest of his companion—the same man that Chief Blacktail had taken prisoner. A fitting end to a partnership with murderers and monsters.
It took only few minutes more to check the rest of the upstairs and discover it empty, so I made my way back to the ground floor where I found Sheriff Bourne crawling toward the entrance. A large cut was seeping blood down his face.
"So what hit you?" I asked, as I kicked him onto his back and relieved him of the silver revolver still in its holster. The sheriff winced in pain. Apparently the cut wasn't his only injury. Good.
He pointed behind me at a table leg which had come loose from its home, and apparently struck him in the head.
"Well, you stay right there." I punched him in the face, knocking him out. I wasn't finished with the town yet.
I took Sam's father's revolver with me and stepped out of the bar as the first drops of rain fell. I fastened my coat and walked toward the sounds of battle as Sam ran around it, followed by two barren.
"Drop," I shouted, and he dove to the floor as I launched a jet of fire hit at the two barren, incinerating them where they stood.
"What the hell are you playing at?" I snapped at Sam, dragging him to his feet. "I told you to stay back, to stay away."
"And I told you, I need this," Sam's retort was full of anger, at me or at the sheriff, I wasn't sure which.
I swallowed my reply and I got back to more important things. "What are you doing here?"
Sam pointed behind him. "Sergeant Roberts and Chief Blacktail are fighting barren at a crossroads up the road from here, and they're being overrun. Sergeant Roberts asked me to find you. They need your help."
I was moving before he finished speaking, running in the direction he'd pointed. Sam kept pace for a few steps.
"How many?" I asked.
"Forty, maybe more. I think the whole town was turned into one of those things."
"Stay here," I commanded Sam and sprinted away without waiting for a reply.
I was almost at the end of the street, when two barren burst from a house and ran toward me. I picked them both up with a gust of wind and flung them back at the building. The impact and loud crack suggested it would be the last thing they ever did.
I rounded the corner and saw Chief Blacktail and Lieutenant Roberts, fighting side by side with daggers and swords, killing barren that got close, their men following suit. I was a hundred yards from them when Sergeant Roberts was knocked to the ground by a barren who leapt onto his back. Chief Blacktail killed the barren with an axe to the head and offered his hand to Sergeant Roberts who accepted and together they continued fighting.
Despite their camaraderie and superior numbers, they were fighting barren who felt no fear or pain. There were no such things as retreat or surrender. If it wasn't a killing stroke on the first blow, they might not get a second chance.
I readied a huge charge of magical energy, but as I was about to release it, the barren stopped attacking en masse and turned toward the opposite end of the street. The human fighters took the opportunity to dispatch many of their foes, but around a dozen barren had already started to make their way toward whatever it was they were waiting for.
"Get back," I shouted, fearing that Sky had failed her job and the lich was about to make an appearance.
Chief Blacktail and Sergeant Roberts did as I asked and moved all of their men away from the now stationary barren, and back toward me. Some of the men had cuts and at least one had been rewarded for his efforts with a nasty gouge across the arm.
"How many did you lose?" I asked.
"Nine," Sergeant Roberts said. "Four were too wounded to continue and the other five died fighting."
"Eight," Chief Blacktail replied. "Three of those are wounded."
"Anyone got any bullets?" I asked.
"We're out," Sergeant Roberts said. "We sent the wounded back to the fort to get treated and prepare for the worst. We kept shooting the bastards, but they wouldn't stop coming."
"Is this about to get worse?" Chief Blacktail asked.
I didn't answer. I wasn't sure what the answer was. The barren were milling around, all of them staring at the corner of the adjoining street.
I thought about having everyone attack the barren, but if the lich were to make an appearance the humans would be too close to retreat without suffering heavy casualties. "I think we're about to find out," I finally managed.
A man in a long, dark duster emerged from around the street corner and seemed to notice the barren.
I breathed a sigh of relief. "Lower your weapons."
Everyone obeyed my order without hesitation.
The wind blew the man's long white hair over his shoulders, and one of the barren decided that was the moment to strike. It howled something and sprinted toward the newcomer, whose response was to raise one hand out on front of him. The barren kept running for a second and then just fell to the ground, twitched twice and was still.
Several of the remaining barren sought their own opportunity and charged the man. This time he raised both hands and once more the barren stopped running and fell to the ground.
One barren climbed onto the roof of a nearby building and launched himself toward the stranger. The man didn't even move, he raised one hand, like before. But instead of dropping to the ground, the barren just stopped in mid-air, held by some invisible force, until the man clenched his hand in a fist and the barren exploded in a shower of blood.
All of the remaining barren remaining ran at the man, but none of them got within six feet of him. He waved one arm and they fell like downed trees, until only one remained. The man grabbed it by the throat as it ran toward him, lifting it off the ground until its feet were a few inches above the dirt
and gravel.
"Vermin," he said. "Your master is dead." He touched the snarling barren on the forehead with one finger, and the body went limp before being dropped back to earth, where it began to dissolve like its kin.
Despite my order to lower weapons, the fear and awe radiating off both the Crow and the soldiers was almost tangible. A measurable fog of thick terror, that hung in the air from what they'd just witnessed.
The man walked past them all and embraced me. "It's good to see you," he said.
"Hades," I said with a smile. "I didn't realise you would be here, it's good to see you, too."
"I was in the area; a lich is not something to trifle with." He turned back as Sky and six men followed in what had been his path—one of them helped to walk by another, his leg heavily bandaged.
"The lich had silver knives," he said, almost anticipating any questions I had about what had happened. "But he's no longer an issue."
Sky helped the injured man sit on the ground and then came over, embracing me. "I'm glad you're not hurt," she said.
"I'm fine," I said. "Although, both Chief Blacktail and Sergeant Roberts lost men today."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Hades said, turning to the two men. "They were brave to fight against these things. Your men will be honoured tonight when we remember our fallen."
"Thank you," Sergeant Roberts said, sounding more than a little confused. "What did you do back there?"
Hades glanced behind him. "Oh," he said as if only just aware that he might have done something out of the ordinary. "I removed their souls."
"Their souls?" Chief Blacktail asked.
"Everything has a soul, even the most evil deplorable beings on earth. They might not be technically alive, but everything needs a soul to be able to function. A barren's is just twisted and rotten. I removed them."
"But one exploded,” Sergeant Roberts said.
"I used the energy I'd taken from absorbing the souls to put them all back into that one barren. The effect is quite spectacular."
I left Hades to talk to the two confused men, and found Sky by herself, washing blood from her hands in a nearby water pump.
"Everyone survive?" I asked.
She nodded. "I have something for you." She reached into her coat and removed an old leather bound book. "I assume this is what you're looking for here in Montana. I spoke to my father, and he agreed that you can have it."
"Thank you," I said, and then realised what the rest of Sky's words had been. "Your father? Hades is your father?"
"I was adopted by him and Persephone a few centuries ago. I'm sorry that didn't come up before." She smiled a wicked, sly grin.
"You do realise that having sex with Hades' daughter might not have been my greatest idea."
"Good thing I didn't mention it at the time then," she laughed, and walked off to talk to her father as a single shot rang out across the town.
I darted into the bar and found the sheriff knelt on the floor, his hands tied behind his back and his ankles tied together. Sam stood in front of him, his father's other revolver in his hand, a match to the one I'd taken off the sheriff earlier. A large bullet hole pierced the woodwork close to the sheriff's head.
"Sam, what are you doing?" I asked, taking great care to keep my voice calm and careful.
Sam's eyes were trained firmly on the sheriff. "I'm doing what I need to do; what I have to do to make everything right."
"He should die," I agreed. "He made a pact with an evil monster, and then when everyone else in town was being killed and turned into barren, he got to keep his life."
I turned to the sheriff. "You were useful to him, that's why he let you and your men live."
The sheriff nodded. There appeared to be no fear in him, no concern that anything would happen to him. "He needed someone who wasn't dead to help during the day."
"He chose you, because you had power, and you convinced the rest of the town. You told people that the lich would protect them and make them money, but you always knew he was going to kill them all."
"Yes, I knew. It wasn't meant to happen so quickly, but when he discovered that you'd been here, he knew he had to act. So he started the transformation of the townspeople. But there was no lie. Montana was going to become a haven of the kind of America that we wanted. Free from outsiders. Free from crime."
"You just all had to become monsters to do it."
"You say monster, I say free."
"You murdered Sam's father and took his revolvers. Sam here wants to kill you with one of them."
The sheriff shrugged as best he could. "He doesn't have the balls to kill me."
"Screw you," Sam screamed. "You killed my dad. He was just doing his job. He was here trying to protect people."
"He was in my way." The sheriff spoke in the same way you'd describe trimming a hedge or knocking down a wall, a job that needed to be done to make life easier. "He was looking around. A marshal in my town; I couldn't have that. So, we killed him. Or we did after the lich was through with him. Do you want to know how he screamed? How he begged to be allowed to see his son again? How he cried and pissed himself like a fucking coward?" The sheriff stared directly at Sam, his eyes never leaving the boy’s face. "He died slowly and painfully screaming your name over and over until I put a bullet in his head just to shut him up."
Sam pulled the hammer of the revolver back, as tears fell from his eyes. "You ruined my life, I have nothing now."
"So, kill me. Don't be a fucking pussy, just shoot me and be done with it. Because I'm not spending the rest of my life in some fucking prison, rotting for all to see."
Sam's shoulder tensed, as if he was willing himself to pull the trigger, but he couldn't bring himself to do it.
"Sam," I said. "You have every reason in the world to kill him. Hell, no one out there would turn you over to the authorities if you did. This man deserves justice. Your dad believed in justice, I'm betting that's why he was a marshal. But this isn't justice, this is vengeance. And I know vengeance, Sam. I know it well. I know what it feels like to hold the life of a man who took someone important from you. To be able to decide if they live or die. And I know what it's like to kill him."
"Just let him fucking do—"
I kicked Sheriff Bourne in the head, knocking him to the floor. "Sam, look at him. Look at the man who tortured you and your dad. Look at this pathetic reason for a human. If you kill him, you're going to lose a part of yourself. His face will stay with you forever, the face of the man you executed. Whenever you think of your dad, that piece of shit on the floor will always be close by. I promise you, it will fester your memories until just thinking about your dad will cause you to remember what you did here. Or you can walk away, right now. Go live your life; do what your dad would have wanted for you. The choice is all yours."
There was no painfully slow wait to decide what he was going to do. He released the hammer and re-holstered the gun.
"Fucking pussy," the sheriff said as he got back to his knees. "I knew you were a gutless coward. Like father, like son."
Sam shook his head. "You had to tie my dad up and torture him to make you feel like a man. You were too scared to face him one on one. He will always be the better man, because you couldn't bring yourself to deal with him like anything but the tiny coward you are." Sam walked out of the bar and back outside.
The sheriff laughed. "I actually thought he might shoot me for a second. So, where are you going to take me to prison? Or do I get a hangman's noose? Because I have a whole lot to talk about to whoever wants to listen. The army’s involvement in murdering Indians, monsters roaming the lands killing ranch folk. It will be quite the tale."
I picked up an Army Colt that someone had dropped on the floor during the fight, and checked to see that it was loaded. Three shots left. It was an old piece and well used. I placed it on the table near me.
"Sam's a good person," I said, and glanced outside onto the street in front of the bar, but couldn't find him. "He's going to mov
e on from this, get a nice job and settle down with someone who cares for him. Or not. His life is utterly open to live how he sees fit."
"Why do I care?"
"Why? Because, although Sam is a good person. I'm not." I picked up the Colt up and shot the sheriff through the eye. The bullet exited through the back of his skull and sprayed blood and brain matter over the destroyed room behind him, as he toppled to the floor. I emptied the last two bullets into his forehead. I didn't want him coming back as anything, just in case.
I dropped the gun on the ground and poured fire out of my hands all around me. The alcohol soaked room ignited and was quickly turned into an inferno. I stepped out of the fires of hell back onto the street, where I was greeted by Sky.
"Sam went for a walk with the Chief," she said. She passed me the leather book. "You dropped this."
"Thanks, I'll make sure that Merlin gets it."
"And then what?"
I flicked through the old pages and fought the urge to incinerate it. "If it's up to me, it'll never see the light of day again."
"So, do you have any recommendation as to what you want to do with this place?" Hades asked as he joined Sky and me.
The fire from the bar was hot against the back of my neck. "Burn it to the ground. Wipe it off the face of the earth."
Hades' smile contained no humour. "With pleasure."
Chapter 34
Winchester, England. Now.
Olivia asked me a question, but for the life of me I couldn't have said what it was. My attention was centred totally on the picture of the lich who had almost killed me over a hundred years ago. The realisation that I was unlikely to fair better against his great-great-grandfather hit me like a truck. I was grateful I was already sat down, because I was pretty certain that my legs had gone weak.
