The Professor’s eyes narrowed at the sight of the tiny corpse. “How much—how much would you take for it?” he asked, licking his lips. “With a little pure alcohol and formaldehyde—”
“You goddamn murderin’ bastard!” shrieked the dead child’s father, catching the Professor square in the chest with his boot. “I’m gonna kick you yeller!”
The one called Jed grabbed his friend by the elbow and pulled him away. “Hold on, Ezra! Everyone here wants a piece of that sumbitch. And there’s only one way we’re gonna get satisfaction, and that’s lynchin’ ’em good and proper.” He turned to look at me. “You pick yore friend up and stand where’s we can see you. And don’t try no funny business, y’hear?”
I nodded my understanding and went to help the Professor off the ground. He was bleeding from the nose and mouth and his spectacles were busted, causing him to squint so hard that his eyes were slits. He shook his head and patted my hand.
“I’m sorry you’re gonna die, Billy,” he sighed. “I kinda always knew this would be how I’d leave this world. Goes with the territory. But you—you’re a young man. You got your whole life ahead of you. At least you did.”
“Don’t go talkin’ like that, Professor,” I whispered. “We can get outta this.”
“My luck’s played out, son. It’s what I get for leavin’ Jack to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.”
I frowned. “You mean your old partner? I thought he died of a broken neck when his horse threw him.”
“The broken neck part was true enough. But it was more on account of his horse being rode out from under him. I left Jack to hang in Burning Water, Texas, damn my soul. I make it a policy never to visit the same town twice, but it turns out some of Burning Water’s citizenry had moved there from one of our previous engagements. They recognized me when I rode into town to distribute fliers and followed me back to camp. They got the drop on Jack and I left him, curse me for the coward that I am!”
Before I had a chance to respond to what the Professor had confessed, there was a horrible shrieking noise from the direction of Whatisit’s cage. One of the sodbusters had forced the lock and was trying to drag the terrified pinhead out into the open. Judging from the shit dripping from his attacker’s angry face, Whatisit had already exhausted his only mode of defense.
The sight of the tiny, frail Whatisit frightened out of what little wits he possessed, shrieking and writhing helplessly in the grip of a rawboned cracker made me forget myself.
“Leave him be!” I snarled, letting my teeth grow and hackle rise.
If any of the gathered farmers noticed the start of my transformation, I’ll never know, because at the very moment I took my first step toward them, Jed reversed his rifle and brought its butt down square on my head.
I woke up to find my hands tied behind my back and a noose around my neck. Our attackers had unharnessed the mule team that pulled our wagon and put them to use for our execution. The Professor had his own mule, in deference to his position, while Whatisit and I were forced to share. Jed squinted up at me, then at Whatisit, and shook his head and spat. He stepped back a couple of yards, cocking his rifle in preparation for firing.
“Any last words?” he asked the Professor.
“My one regret is that when I die, so dies my medical knowledge!” Professor Praetorius replied, a showman to the last. “Not since Hippocrates has there been such wisdom! What a loss to the ages—”
“To hell with you!” Jed bellowed, and fired the rifle.
The mules left in a right hurry.
At least Whatisit and the Professor died quick, their necks snapping like dry twigs. So did mine, for that matter, but I didn’t die. Not that I felt good, mind you. Getting lynched, like I said earlier, is not my idea of entertainment.
The first thing my body did was fill my pants, fore and aft, with shit and sperm. Now, I’ve known folks who got their jollies from choking themselves, claiming orgasms on the brink of death are the ultimate in sex. Personally, I’d rather stick my dick into something living.
So there I was, jigging in midair, my eyes agog, my tongue stuck out, my lungs on fire and my pants full of stuff I’d have rather kept inside me for a while longer. The pain was so intense that I couldn’t concentrate long enough to shapeshift. Not that it would have helped me any. If I’d succeeded in changing shape right then, my so-called executioners would have filled me so full of holes it wouldn’t have mattered they didn’t have silver bullets.
As I struggled against the rope, it suddenly dawned on me that I was better off putting my physical discomfort aside and playing opossum before one of the lynching party started feeling sorry for me and elected to put me out of my misery with a bullet in the brainpan. The moment I went limp, the posse issued a collective sigh and readied itself to leave. But before they left, they took the time to set the Professor’s wagon ablaze—after they’d looted it of its strongbox, of course.
As I slowly twisted in the midnight breeze, flanked on either side by a dead con man and a freak, I wondered just exactly where life was leading me and what was I expected to learn from this, my most recent experience. And, more importantly, I wondered exactly how in hell I was going to get down.
Chapter Six
There are a lot of things I’ve learned about being a werewolf over the years. And since I wasn’t raised by my own kind, it’s been something of a hard-knocks education.
Most folks assume the only thing that can kill a werewolf is a silver bullet. That’s true enough—up to a point. Silver is lethal to my kind, whether in the form of a bullet, blade or bludgeon. But that’s not the only thing that’ll put us down. Like most living (or undead) things, being decapitated tends to put us down. So does being burned alive. But outside of that, we’re damn near indestructible. For instance, I discovered the hard way that werewolves can grow back fingers, eyes and other body parts. Which doesn’t mean they don’t hurt like Hell, mind you.
So there I was, dangling like some strange fruit from the limb of a cottonwood tree, my hands bound behind me and my neck snapped. Normally, most folks would be somewhat dead under such conditions. Not me. However, a snapped neck—while not fatal for my kind—was hardly a cold in the nose. It was going to take time for me to recover, but exactly how long I had no way of knowing.
As I hung there, I became extremely aware of the fact that the Professor and Whatisit stank to high heaven. Not that either of them had been particularly sweet-smelling when they were alive. So it wasn’t long before we attracted visitors. Carrion crows, to be exact.
One of the bastards landed on my head, dug its talons into my scalp for a better grip, then leaned forward so it was looking at me upside down. It peered at me with one shiny black eye, then the other, trying to decide whether I was dead or not. Before I could muster a moan to scare the damn thing off, it flapped its wings and plunged its beak into my right eye.
There are no words that can convey what it felt like to have an eye skewered and yanked out of its socket. There were several excruciating minutes as the carrion crow worked to sever my optic nerve, yanking and pecking at it until it finally snapped. When the eye finally came free of its socket, the bird cawed out in victory, gobbling down its prize. Lucky for me, vargr meat is not very appetizing to beasts of the natural world, so it did not attempt to reach further into my skull and peck at my brains.
I spent the rest of the day twisting in the hot, dry wind and being tormented by every breed of fly known to man and beast, which—unlike the crows and other scavengers—were not so particular in regard to the taste of vargr meat. They were buzzing and biting and swarming about me in the hundreds. I could feel the little sons of bitches walking over my face, laying eggs in the corners of my eyes and in my nostrils. The idea of thousands of maggots chewing away on my face from within didn’t improve my mood. By the time the sun went down, I was one sorry, fly-bit son of a bitch, believe you me.
As the sun faded from the sky, I heard what sounded like
a horse. I couldn’t see who or what it was since I was dangling in the wrong direction. Next thing I know, there is a black stallion with a rider dressed in clothes the color of midnight looking up at me. The horse made a weird whickering noise and took a nervous sidestep as its rider drew his gun.
“Open your eyes, wolf-son,” snarled the dark rider. Wherever he was from, it sure as hell wasn’t Texas, judging from the thickness of his accent. “You can’t fool me. I know you’re not dead.”
I lifted the lid of my remaining eye and glared at the stranger. “I can only open one. Damn bird ate the other.”
“They’ll do that,” grunted the dark rider. He fired his pistol point-blank, severing my noose just above my right ear.
I hit the ground and broke my shin, but compared to what I’d gone through earlier, I didn’t even notice. The dark rider climbed down from his horse and knelt beside me, using his knife to free my bound hands, and then helped rid me of my hemp necktie.
“You look like several kilometers of unpleasant road, as they so colorfully phrase it in this land,” he laughed.
I squinted up at my savior with my left eye, more confused than grateful. “Who the hell are you?”
“My name is Saltykov, late of her serene highness, the Czarina Catherine II of Russia. But you can call me the Sundown Kid.”
“Why?”
“Because I am a gunfighter, my friend! And all gunfighters have such colorful names! I find it most refreshing!”
I stared at the Sundown Kid for a long second. He was dressed like many of the cowboys I had seen—albeit far more expensively. His black shirt looked to be made from silk instead of flannel, and he wore what appeared to be gold-plated spurs on his boots. He was young in the face, but not in the eyes or around the mouth. He was lean without being skinny, his skin so pale it seemed to glow in the moonlight.
“You’re not human, are you,” I said. “If you ain’t a man, what are you then?”
He laughed for a second, then realized I wasn’t joking. “You really don’t know, do you? I shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose. The vargr are notoriously lax when it comes to the education of their by-blows.”
“Vargr?” That was the first time I’d heard the word. The sound of it made my ears prick, even in human form.
“Yes. That’s the name for what you are. Just as upir is the name for what I am. Although some prefer the more vulgar human slang of ‘werewolf’ and ‘vampire.’”
As I got to my feet, the Sundown Kid clapped me on the shoulder and smiled, displaying pearly white fangs. He gestured at my exposed socket with his knife. “You better clean that eye out—you don’t want a skull full of maggots, my friend.”
“Thank you for cutting me down! I owe you a great debt!” I was so excited by the immensity of my good luck I was close to both tears and laughter.
“And I fully intend to have you make good on it. I am in great need of an aide de camp, you see. While I have devised an ingenious mode of protection for myself during the day, I still require the help of someone capable of functioning in open sunlight. My last servant came to a tragic end in New Orleans, and I have yet to find anyone to replace him. Until now.”
“It would be my honor, Mr. Sundown Kid.”
“Please—there is no need to be so formal. Call me Sundown.”
In the two years since I had left the Comanche to seek answers amongst the Whites, I had come across many different kinds of men: lawmen, bad men, mad men, con-men and, now, walking dead men.
When Sundown told me he was a vampire, I had no idea what the hell he was talking about. As it was, I only had the vaguest notion of what a werewolf might be. I didn’t want to let on just how ignorant I really was, so I kept my lip buttoned the first few days, although I was close to busting from curiosity. After all the time I had spent looking for someone who knew who and what I was, I was too tongue-tied to ask any questions!
Despite my initial ignorance, it didn’t take me long to figure out that Sundown was a creature of dark and ancient power. He moved with the grace and strength of a wild animal, and when he spoke, his words had the ring of one who is used to being obeyed without question. While he could pass for human at a distance, up close it was obvious Sundown was far from your average shootist. His flesh was chill, like that of a corpse, his ears came to a slight point, and his wine red eyes had cat-slit pupils.
Direct sunlight was something of a bother for him, but he had devised a unique method of keeping himself safe from the deadly ravages of the sun: He kept folded in one of his saddlebags what amounted to a cross between a shroud and a sleeping bag made of sturdy but pliable leather. Every morning, just before dawn, he would crawl into his portable coffin, fastening it shut from the inside with a series of buckles, and go to sleep. The trouble was that while he was sealed inside, he couldn’t travel and—worse yet—was vulnerable to discovery.
That’s where I came in.
Every morning I rigged up a pony drag and hitched it to Sundown’s horse so it could haul its master during the day. Sundown was greatly pleased by my ingenuity. To show his appreciation for my abilities as a manservant, he allowed me to ride his stallion, Erebus, during the day.
It’s hard for modern folks to realize how big and empty this land was, even as late as the turn of the Twentieth century. The eastern seaboard, like the European cities its citizens had fled, was overcrowded and densely populated. But in the days prior to the Civil War, civilization effectively ended at St. Louis. From Kansas City on, a man could travel for days—even weeks—without laying eyes on another human being—Red, White or otherwise. It’s easy to understand how folks back then came to see the West as this big, blank slate just waiting to be filled up with their hopes and dreams.
The Sundown Kid, just like the hundreds of thousands of immigrant settlers who would stream across the prairies and badlands in the decades to come, was looking to reinvent himself. During our travels together, he and I had numerous bull sessions together. He was a gregarious fellow and liked to talk about himself and the things he’d done and seen in the century since he had fallen prey to a vampire’s kiss in some place called Carpathia. Essentially, Sundown was a romantic. He had wearied of Europe and wanted to go somewhere new, somewhere fresh. Somewhere the locals didn’t hang garlands of garlic and wolfsbane over their doors at night.
He had become friends with the American sailor John Paul Jones, who came to Catherine the Great’s court to serve as Kontradmiral during the war against the Turks. He was taken by the bold, straightforward sailor’s manner and developed a fascination with his native country and decided to immigrate. I have yet to meet anyone who was more in love with the idea of America than Sundown. Granted, he spent most of his time draining the lifeblood of pioneers, settlers, Indians and cowboys, but his appreciation of our country was heartfelt.
“While in Russia I became convinced that such a brash, newborn land would produce the freshest and most potent of nectars, free of the taint of inbreeding. I was correct! Even the sickliest rum-soaked derelict possesses the headiness of a fine claret!” he often enthused.
I learned a lot from Sundown during our time together. He was an amiable and patient teacher, forgiving of my ignorance. He taught me most of what I know about the world that exists at the corner of humanity’s eye, the societies that dwell in mankind’s shadow. And although he was not of my ilk, he knew enough about the vargr and their ways to answer most of my questions. It was from him that I learned the name of my people and their history, albeit tainted by the disdain that the upir hold for those who must reproduce through the messy business of physical sex.
I learned that what I was, in truth, was a species of being known as a metamorph, a creature who could take the shape of man or beast at will. I also learned that there are many different kinds scattered all over the globe. There were the kitsune of Asia, the naga of India, the birskir of the Arctic Circle, the anube of the Nile, the bast of Africa, the silkie and undine of the North and South seas … and
the vargr of Europe.
My particular clan, the vargr, are wolves. And, according to Sundown, they were the most successful and aggressive metamorphs on earth. Europe had proven a fertile home for their packs, and many had come into power in the world of man as popes and kings and warlords, albeit in their human guise. In fact, the vargr had proven so successful they had expanded their original territory and begun to traveling into the New World. The vargr, like the Europeans they had tied themselves so closely to, were champion exploiters and imperialists.
“That is how you came to this country, my young friend,” Sundance explained. “No doubt your sire was a vargr who traveled to this country in search of unmarked territory, intent on breeding his own pack. And, from what little you’ve told me, he was unfortunate enough to place his den too close to those familiar with werewolves. Still, I must admire his courage in coming to this new world!
“While our peoples have warred with one another over dwindling territory and supplies in the Old Country, the upir have always held a grudging respect for the vargr. And, in this open country, I do not see any reason for such Old World animosities to continue. We are strangers in a strangle land, wolf-son, surrounded by humans.”
All of this information was heady stuff for a kid my age. Bear in mind, although I was almost seventeen years old—which is fairly young, even in human years—by vargr standards I was little more than a pup, still wet behind the ears, with feet I had yet to grow into. For the first time in my life, I began to truly think of myself as something besides a man. While I had been aware of my difference, my otherness, from an early age, I had also been raised human and taught to act human and respect the customs erected by humans.
Still, despite my embracing my vargr identity, there were some taboos I could not bring myself to knowingly break, the strongest of which was the deliberate taking of human life and the eating of human flesh.
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