“Fellow? What fellow?” I said, my scalp tightening. For a second I imagined McCarthy knew about Sundown and our plans to ambush him.
“Another traveler, such as yourself, that’s all. He showed up a couple of days ago, just as the storm was getting ready to hit. He goes by the name of Jones. But don’t they all? He headed out a few hours ago to look for some game. Hope he can find his way back.”
As if on cue, there was the sound of heavy boots on the front porch. The front door swung open, letting in a blast of frigid air. As I turned around to get a look at McCarthy’s house guest, I set eyes on my private demon for the first time.
He was huge, covered with hair, and had two heads—one of which was horned. Then I realized I was staring at a man dressed in a full-length buffalo-skin coat with a dead antelope tossed over one shoulder. He stepped inside the house and slammed the door shut behind him, shrugging the antelope onto the floor as if it were a woman’s stole.
McCarthy bent over the carcass, shaking his head in awe. “I didn’t believe it when you said you’d bring back venison! But, by damn, you done it!”
Jones removed his heavy buffalo-skin coat and tossed it in the corner. Underneath the coat he wore a shirt made from what looked to be timber wolf or coyote skin. This he did not offer to remove.
“Hunting is in my blood.” His voice was deep, like that of a pipe organ, with a slight Slavic accent.
As he turned to face me, I was struck by his bristling black beard, which seemed to start at his cheekbones, and eyebrows so thick and bushy they literally covered his brow ridge from temple to temple. Jones fixed me with piercing eyes the color of a coming storm and scowled.
“I saw a strange horse in the manger. Who are you?”
Before I could answer, McCarthy piped in. “This here’s Billy Skillet. He showed up just an hour or two back. Got himself lost in the storm …”
“Did he now?” Jones growled. “Have we met before?” he asked, staring at me even harder.
“I don’t think so.”
Jones grunted and brushed past me to stand in front of the fire. As he warmed his hands and stomped his feet to restore circulation, I found myself staring at his wolf-fur jacket. There was something … familiar about it. Something I couldn’t place. Maybe I had met this hairy-faced giant before. Perhaps he was one of Professor Praetorius’ erstwhile customers.
“That’s a fine shirt you got there, mister,” I said. “How many wolves did you have to kill for it?”
“Just one.”
“Must have been a damn big wolf!” McCarthy snorted.
“It was. Big as a man.”
I cleared my throat. “Excuse me, sir. I don’t believe I caught your name?”
“They call me Jones.” The giant didn’t even dignify me by glancing in my direction.
“Jones? Is that all?”
There was a pause, as if he were deciding on whether or not to reply, then he slowly turned his head and fixed me with those gray eyes and said, “Witchfinder Jones.”
“Unusual handle. How you come by it?”
The big man returned his gaze to the fire. “I hunt things.”
“What kind of things?”
“Things like vampires, witches, ghosts and werewolves.”
“That’s plum silly! There ain’t no such critters! Ain’t that right, McCarthy?” I laughed nervously, glancing over at the older man for support.
However, McCarthy was shaking his head. “I wouldn’t say that, Billy. I seen a lot of things that couldn’t be explained, both here and when I was at sea. Snakes with wings, women with the tails of fish, serpents that chased down and ate whales …”
I was starting to feel dizzy. I found myself needing to sit down. I looked over at McCarthy to see if he’d noticed, but he was busy hacking off one of the antelope’s haunches with a cleaver in order to prepare the night’s meal. The smell of the animal’s blood made my stomach knot with hunger. It had been a couple of days since I’d finished the last of my old horse.
With a deep, guttural sound that was almost a growl, Jones lowered himself onto a chair next to the fire. Without looking at me, he fished a hand-carved briarwood pipe and a drawstring pouch out from his wolf-skin shirt. For some reason, I could not take my eyes from the leather sack that held his tobacco.
“That’s—um—a mighty unusual tobacco pouch you got there.”
Jones smiled—it was an ugly sight, believe me. “This is the only one of its kind. It is a trophy. Just like my shirt.” He leaned forward and held the pouch out to me.
As if in a daze, I reached out and took it. As I did so, some faint memory squirmed in the back of my brain like a blind grub. A memory of warmth, the smell of flesh, the taste of milk …
“I took the pelt for my shirt off of a werewolf, nearly twenty years ago, and I took his mate’s left tit for a tobacco pouch. I keep the whore’s vulva in a box in my saddlebag. Salted, of course.”
I stared at my Ma’s breast, trying to summon further memories beyond those of a blind, suckling pup—but none came. I looked up at the man responsible for the slaughter of my natural family, meeting and holding his gaze. Although I realized he knew what—if not who—I was, I refused to let him rattle me.
“What you say is all very well and good,” I remarked, handing back what remained of my mother’s breast to her murderer. “But how am I to know you’re not just flat-out crazy? For all I know, you took that off some poor Indian gal. And as for the shirt—well, a wolf skin is a wolf skin.”
Jones shrugged his indifference. “It doesn’t matter if you believe me or not. I know what I know. I do what I do.” He produced a buck knife, its silver blade shining in the light from the fire. “I use my knife and I use my silver bullets to kill them. Nothing unnatural can survive a wound dealt by silver. There are plenty who believe me—and pay me to rid them of these monsters.”
“Is that what you’re doing out in the middle of nowhere?” I asked. “Hunting monsters?”
Jones nodded as he resheathed the knife and turned back to the fire. “I was hired to kill a vampire.”
I felt my stomach hitch itself even tighter. “Vampire?”
“I have been tracking him since New Orleans. The creature committed an outrage against a young girl in the city of Boston. Her family is of some stature, and they hired me to track the fiend down and bring back his head. I found him in a fancy Basin Street whorehouse. I would have claimed my bounty then, except for interference from his servant. The bastard shot me in the shoulder. It wasn’t much of a wound, really, but it was enough to make me lose my prey. I dealt with the man-servant, though. I put the silver bullet I had reserved for his master right between his eyes.”
I realized then that Jones was describing was the demise of my immediate predecessor. The knowledge made the sweat rise on my brow and upper lip.
“It took me a couple of days to recover from my wound, but by then the bloodsucker had fled the city. He had a head start, but not enough of one that I could not track him. I have since seen evidence of his passing: Indian raiding parties slaughtered to the man as they slept; isolated farmhouses where the family members were drained while seated at the dinner table; hotels where, after the stranger checked in for the night, half the clientele were found dead in their beds the next morning.
“Somewhere along the line, the monster found someone else to serve him. Someone to hide and transport his body during the daylight hours. Someone else to help him do his dirty work. Or should I say, some thing?”
Jones was staring at me, the storm clouds in his eyes about to break. I could tell by his body language he was getting ready to lunge at me. I knew I should try to get up, move away from him, prepare my own counterattack, but my dizziness had grown worse. Sweat poured down my back and my head ached horribly. He leaned forward even closer, until his hairy face was inches from my own. His wide nostrils flared like those of an animal scenting blood.
“I can smell an unnatural thing from a mile away, boy.�
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Before I had a chance to respond, there was the sound of something heavy striking meat and Jones’s eyes rolled up in their sockets. He pitched sideways out of his chair, narrowly missing the open fire. I stared for a moment at the big man sprawled on the floor as a halo of blood formed about his skull. I then turned to look up at McCarthy, who stood over the body, a hammer clutched in one hand. The older man’s eyes gleamed strangely in the light from the fire. They reminded me, in a way, of Sundown’s eyes when he got the hunger on him.
“Had to wait him out. Wait until he wasn’t paying so much attention to me and what I was doing. Tried slippin’ the stuff in his coffee the first night, like I did with you, but he was too big. Too tough. It didn’t take.”
“Wh-what did you do—?” I tried to get up, but my legs gave out and I found myself on the floor.
McCarthy squatted next to me, peering down into my face. “I don’t like using force,” he explained. “Usually I just dose their coffee, then they go to sleep and don’t feel nothing—not even when I brain ’em with the hammer. But this one—and you, for that matter—just ain’t respondin’ properly. I hate it when that happens. I don’t like using violence. I’m a peaceable man, by nature.”
I tried to change from my human form into my faster, stronger vargr skin, but I couldn’t focus. The room was swimming, and everything seemed to be pulsing with a rhythm all its own. I watched, helpless, as McCarthy raised his hammer on high.
There was a rush of cold air and something black struck McCarthy head-on, knocking him backwards. I heard him scream as my savior tore into his throat. I didn’t feel so sorry for McCarthy anymore.
The next thing I knew, Sundown—his mouth wet with fresh blood—was helping me to my feet. “You all right, Billy?”
“He—he must have drugged me.…” was all I could mumble.
“He must have put enough laudanum in your drink to kill a normal human three times over. I woke shortly after you placed me in the stable. I decided to check the other buildings, in case there were more humans about. There are—but they’re all dead. There must be over a dozen corpses stashed in the outbuildings, in various stages of decay. I’d say the oldest was five years old.” Sundown shook his head in disgust. “Humans! And they accuse us of being monsters! But at least the madman did us the favor of ridding us of that wretched bounty hunter!”
A groaning sound came from the direction of Jones’s body. Sundown and I stared, openmouthed, as Witchfinder Jones sat up. His hair and beard was sodden with blood, and part of his brain bulged outward through the crack in his head. His left eye was so full of blood that it leaked from the corners like crimson tears. His right eye was as clear as before—only angrier.
“I got you now, you stinking whore-son!” the bounty hunter bellowed, pulling his revolver.
“Run, Billy!” Sundown yelled, propelling me towards the open door. “Run!”
I stumbled forward, my limbs still numb from whatever drug McCarthy had slipped me. I turned to see what was happening, just as Jones released his initial volley. The first shot went wild of its target. The second did not. Sundown opened his mouth and vented an ultrasonic shriek of pain. I caught my friend as he pitched forward and dragged him out of the hut. Jones struggled to get to his feet, his boots slipping in a pool of his own blood.
I didn’t look at Sundown or ask him if he was okay. I was too scared to do anything but run with him to the stable, where—reverting to my boyhood—I hopped on Erebus bareback and simply fled, clinging to the horse’s neck with my right arm while I cradled Sundown with my left. As we charged past the front of McCarthy’s hut, I glimpsed Witch-finder Jones slumped in the doorway, taking aim at me.
I dug my heels deep into Erebus’ flanks just as a silver bullet whizzed past my ear. I heard Jones bellow something into the storm that might have been a name, but it was quickly snatched up by the wind and made meaningless.
It was a half-hour before I was willing to slow my pace enough to check on Sundown’s condition. I had him pressed between me and the horse’s neck to keep him from falling.
“Sundown? Sundown—? Are you all right?”
No answer.
“Saltykov?” I prayed he would at least respond to his true name.
No answer.
I gingerly touched my friend’s shoulder, hoping to rouse him enough to at least groan. To my horror, I felt the bone and flesh inside his shirt crumble like chalk.
I tossed back my head and howled for my father, whose pelt now covered his killer’s back. I howled for my mother, whose breast now served to carry her murderer’s tobacco. I howled for my friend, now reduced to ashes and powdered bone, caught by the wind and scattered across the frozen prairie. But most of all, I howled for myself, lost in the wilderness.
Chapter Eight
After the death of the Sundown Kid at the hands of Witchfinder Jones, I reckon I went a little crazy. I wandered the high plains for several days in a feverish delirium, and at times I thought Medicine Dog rode beside me, his blind eyes undaunted by the snow. Other times I fancied I saw Sundown standing on the horizon, waving me on, Whatisit’s moronic laughter echoing from the darkness.
On the third day after Pilate’s Basin, poor, faithful Erebus literally dropped dead underneath me, spilling me back into reality. There was little I could do but eat the horse, which strengthened me enough to press on. I continued on in my true skin, preying on antelope, the occasional buffalo calf, and any other four-legged creatures that crossed my path. It was easier to survive the winter as a werewolf than it was a man.
At the end of each day, I would find an outcropping of rock, or dig out an abandoned prairie dog burrow in order to shelter myself from the unceasing winds. I listened to the true wolves howling from the distant hilltops like lost souls mourning their expulsion from Hell. Sometimes I would take up the howl, only to hear confusion and mistrust in their reply. Even without seeing or scenting me, my wild cousins knew an unnatural thing when they heard it.
I moseyed westward without planning it that way. Before I knew it, I was leagues beyond my old tribe’s hunting grounds, moving towards lands undreamed of when I was a boy tending Eight Clouds’ horses. I have no way of knowing precisely how long I spent in the wilderness—at least two seasons, perhaps three. I steered clear of both Whites and Indians during that time.
Since leaving the Comanche, I had found little joy in the White Man’s world. And while I had known a kind of friendship with the likes of Praetorius and Sundown, I knew their types to be few and far between. Buffalo-Face and Medicine Dog were right—it was best not to trust them on general principles and give them as wide a berth as possible. As for why I kept my distance from the Indians … well, it seemed to me I was cursed. Everyone I had ever loved or befriended in my short life—for I was still shy of my twentieth year—had ended up dead, some by my own hand.
But there’s only so long anyone—human or vargr—can spend alone before anger gives way to loneliness. And loneliness, left untended, can sour into madness. I thought of McCarthy, isolated until his mind turned in on itself like a fox in a snare, and began to fear that I would lose control of myself and slip back into the red-eyed savagery that had cost me everything. I decided it was time for me to leave the wilderness and seek out others. Since the odds of my hooking up with one of my own kind were slim to none, I had no choice but to seek out the company of humans.
I smelled the wagon train before I saw it.
Its scent came to me on the wind, causing me to prick up more than my ears. I could smell female, and plenty of ’em. There was also the distant odor of a campfire and something strangely familiar that I could not name. Intrigued, I set out in search of what could produce such interesting odors.
Three miles later, I crested a small butte and found myself looking down on four covered wagons yoked to oxen, and a couple of horses and mules. One of the wagons had a busted wheel, and the train had halted in order to repair it.
From my vantage, I cou
ld see a man dressed in the apron of a wheelwright laboring beside the disabled wagon. He was large and fleshy, his head and face completely devoid of hair. I could almost see the sweat trickling down his smooth pate and dripping from his thin eyebrows. But what truly caught my interest were the women—there was at least a dozen of them, all young and healthy. Some tended the cook fire, while others were mended clothes and laughed amongst themselves. Except for one or two young girls, all of them were pregnant.
The sight of so many women made my groin ache. I did not know whether to be excited or disgusted. I had been with only one woman in my life, and that was Flood Moon. Part of me—the part I had come to think of as my vargr self—wanted to go down and do to the women what it had done to Flood Moon. The temptation to succumb to my wild self’s desires was strong—but then I forced myself to remember my dead wife’s screams and how she had looked at me with hate and terror in her eyes, and my ardor weakened. Still, I found myself scanning the encampment for sign of any males beside the wheelwright.
A second man, as chunky and bald as the first, emerged from the back of one of the covered wagons. He had a rifle in one hand and a knife stuck in his belt. None of the women paid him any attention. A third man, younger and not as heavy as the others, but equally hairless, rode up on a mule and dismounted beside the man with the rifle. They bent their bald heads over what looked like a map, looking up now and again to point in various directions.
My attention was drawn back to one of the females, who appeared younger than the others and did not appear to be pregnant. Her hair was long and unbound, hanging almost to her waist. She had a habit of tossing her golden mane over her right shoulder, like it was a veil of spun gold, that I found captivating. Perhaps it was her youth, or perhaps it was simply that I had gone so long without a woman, but I fell in love with her instantly.
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