by Anne Bishop
The males looked at Nicolai as he came out of the station with a mailbag. Nicolai pointed to Virgil and Tolya.
Hesitation. A flash of fear when they noticed Kane and understood what he was. But they came forward, removing their hats.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen.” The male Virgil considered the dominant one among them nodded to Jesse Walker. “Ma’am.”
“What brings you to Bennett?” Tolya asked, giving the men a smile that showed a hint of fang.
Another hesitation. It was one thing to be told the terra indigene were in control of a town; it was another thing to look that truth in the eyes and hope it didn’t eat you.
The man looked at Jesse Walker, then must have realized she wasn’t the one he needed to convince, because he focused on Tolya. “My sister married a man who lives on Great Island. Have you heard of that place?”
“It’s near Talulah Falls—and Lakeside.”
“Yes.” His relief was almost a taste in the air. “My sister sent a message that there was work here.”
“Did your sister tell you this is a mixed community and what that means?”
“It means we must accept the customs of those who are not like us,” another man said. He stood apart from the others just enough to make Virgil think he might be the same kind of human but he hadn’t come from the same pack as the other four.
Kane growled—and Virgil agreed. It wasn’t what the man had said but the way he’d said it. Virgil didn’t smell anything wrong about the man, but . . .
he said to Tolya.
“Don’t fuss,” Jesse whispered. “I have a feeling he won’t be here long.”
“Collect your baggage and put it in the van that’s waiting in the parking lot,” Virgil said. “Then walk down to the Bird Cage Saloon. We’ll meet you there to sort out the paperwork.” Not that he would do any sorting. He was the sheriff. He got to bite wrongdoers. Tolya had to deal with paperwork because he was the town’s leader.
The thought of being able to give that one Simple Life male a hard bite or two cheered him up, so he smiled, showing his teeth.
The one with the stick up his tail had opened his mouth—probably to yap about going to the saloon—but one look at Virgil’s smile and he hurried away to fetch his luggage.
The next group was a family pack made up of an adult female, a younger adult female, a boy, and . . .
Virgil cocked his head to one side, trying to figure out the third female. She didn’t look like the others. She was short and blocky and her face wasn’t shaped like any human he’d ever seen. She had to be a juvenile, but that didn’t feel right.
She gave Kane the sweetest smile and hurried toward the Wolf.
“Doggy!”
“Becky, no,” the dominant female said sharply, grabbing for the girl and missing.
Virgil leaned toward the girl, just enough to draw her attention from Kane. “Not a dog. A Wolf.”
She stared at Virgil. “Wollllff.” Her hand suddenly rose and came down, as if she was going to clobber Kane. Then she stopped the movement and said, “Gentle, gentle.”
Sometimes Wolf pups were born with a skippy brain that made it hard for them to learn how to hunt—made it hard for them to survive. If they managed to reach adulthood, many of them outgrew the skippiness but most didn’t live that long in the wild country.
“She doesn’t mean any harm,” the dominant female said. “She’s a good girl and a good worker.”
“Will her brain get better?” Virgil asked.
The female’s mouth tightened and she looked like she’d been driven out of more than one pack because of the girl. “No. She’ll always be this way.”
Huh. Virgil glanced at Tolya.
“Your name?” Tolya asked.
“Hannah Gott. I’m Simple Life.” She gestured to the long dress and white apron. All three females wore white caps over their hair, although the skippy’s hat had food stains on the tie strings. Virgil smelled some kind of fruit and gravy made from beef.
Hannah Gott introduced her sister, Sarah, then her niece, Becky, and finally her nephew, Jacob.
“I’m guessing you have clothing here,” she said. “Lots of it that needs to be sorted into what is good and what just hasn’t been cut up into rags yet. There are plenty of people now who need clothes but can’t afford to buy new. I think it’s possible to find communities that are in need and sell them the excess goods that are here for a reasonable price.” She looked at Virgil but didn’t quite meet his eyes. “I’m guessing your people might appreciate a little help when it comes to buying human garments. Especially if it’s a new experience.”
“Because we have Intuits, Simple Life, and humans living here as well as terra indigene, we are establishing communities so that people can live among their own,” Tolya said.
“That’s not necessary for us.” Hannah Gott sounded sharp. “We would prefer to live among people who are tolerant of differences.”
Her response made Virgil wonder what usually happened to skippy-brained humans.
The two railway men offered to haul the Gotts’ luggage to the van, and Kane was assigned to lead them to the saloon.
And that left the last human who was waiting for their notice and permission to enter Bennett.
“Not another one,” Tolya said under his breath, causing Jesse Walker to huff in a way that sounded like laughter.
The smile and the look in the female’s eyes were things Virgil also recognized from his dealings with Barbara Ellen. Here was another bouncy fluffball.
“I’m Lila Gold.” Her arms were full of books and folders with papers sticking out the tops. “I heard you say there’s a saloon. Is it wonderful? I bet it’s wonderful.”
“You want to work in a saloon?” Tolya asked.
“Uh-huh. I’ve studied frontier towns since I was a little girl. It’s kind of my hobby. Or passion. Or vocation. Something like that. And I always thought working in a saloon would be fun. Not the more carnal things that used to go on, but the dancing and singing and talking to people. I worked as a waitress while I went to school, so I know how to wait on customers. And I took a self-defense class, so I know what to do with my knee if I need to. You know?”
Virgil didn’t know. Was sure he didn’t want to know. She was like a puppy who couldn’t resist grabbing his tail.
“You went to school,” Tolya said. “What did you study?”
The smile dimmed a bit. “I took secretarial classes but I don’t really—”
“So you can type and file and answer phones?” Tolya interrupted.
The smile dimmed a bit more. “I wanted to do something different.”
“You’re an Intuit,” Jesse Walker said. “You had a feeling that if you came here, you could have something different, something that would make you happy.”
“Yes!” Now Lila Gold focused on Jesse. “I was good at my job. I really was. But I’d come home at night and . . .” She waved a hand to indicate Bennett—and almost dropped all the books and folders. “A couple of weeks ago, I thought why shouldn’t I give it a try? No, it was more than that. I knew I should give it a try. So I quit my job and packed up my belongings and bought train fare to Bennett because this is the only frontier town that still has a train station. Well, not the only one, but it was the first one on the list because the name starts with the letter B.” She smiled at them.
She didn’t have freckles on her face but she did have yellow hair and blue eyes like Barbara Elle
n. What were they supposed to do with a pack of bouncy fluffballs? Could two fluffballs be considered a pack?
“We need secretaries,” Tolya said. He held up a hand. “We need people who can do that work. However, if you’re willing to use your skills in that area for part of your required work hours, I’ll talk to Madam Scythe about giving you a chance to work in her saloon.”
“Her name is Madam Scythe? Really?” The bounce was back. “That would be awesome!”
“Then let’s go up to the saloon and go over all the requirements for residency in Bennett.” Tolya looked past Lila Gold. “Nicolai?”
“Should we take these belongings to the van?” Nicolai asked.
“Yes. It looks like everyone will be staying,” Tolya replied.
“Then I’ll tell the conductor the train can go on to the next stop. He’s been waiting to make sure no one needed to board. They want to leave soon to make all their stops before dark.”
“Tell them we appreciate their waiting.”
Jesse Walker took some of the books Lila Gold was carrying, and the two women headed for the Bird Cage Saloon.
“We have to do this for every train from now on?” Virgil asked.
“The humans migrating from Lakeside will have papers. We’ll send them on to the saloon,” Tolya said. “It’s the ones without papers that we need to look at carefully. There is something I need to show you and Kane. Will you be back at the sheriff’s office later this afternoon?”
“I’ll be there.”
But first he was going to go back to the office and strip off the human clothes and shift out of this human skin, and he was going to run and run in order to feel like who, and what, he was.
* * *
* * *
Standing in her office doorway, Scythe brushed a hand over the sapphire dress, enjoying the feel of the material. Not quite like the pictures of dresses worn in a frontier saloon, but close enough for now. Garnet Ravengard and Pearl Owlgard had found a shop where humans had had their pictures taken wearing frontier costumes and had found some clothing that looked appropriate for a saloon. They brought back all the costumes they could find and chose two outfits each. They also brought back dresses they thought might suit the owner of a saloon.
Did they know what she was, know what she could do to any of them? All of them?
The desire to belong had to be stronger than the compulsion to feast. Most of her kind didn’t have enough control. Better to feed and feed until there was nothing left and then move on. But sometimes one of them wanted more—and showed others among their kind that it was possible. Not easy. Never easy. But possible.
It took years to learn how to have that control. Years and mistakes. Villages devastated by a mysterious illness, where there might be a single survivor who ended up with a dead eye after glimpsing a black-haired stranger heading away from the village—a stranger who was too sated on the lives already consumed to take one more.
Or a crop bursting with life and ready for harvest—and the whole field changed to dead and rotting plants overnight.
It took years to learn how to sip a little life energy from many and even eat food the way a human would.
She might have settled in one of the little towns that had been emptied of humans—towns the terra indigene had reclaimed—and lived on whatever she could find until fresh prey arrived in the form of two-legged scavengers. She had been heading toward one of them when she came across the strange girl bleeding out on the side of the road. The girl should have been prey but wasn’t.
She hadn’t known about the sweet bloods, the humans who weren’t prey because they were Namid’s creation, both wondrous and terrible.
That day, Scythe had felt the life force flickering in the girl and knew there wasn’t much left to harvest, even if she hadn’t felt uneasy. But she’d crouched beside the girl, careful not to touch the blood.
“You live in Bennett,” the girl had said. “You wear pretty dresses and run a saloon. You have friends. Yellow bird.”
“I’m a Harvester. A Plague Rider. You think I’ll be wanted in a town?”
“You help protect the town.” The girl breathed out the words “black stones” and died.
Scythe picked up the girl and carried her away from the road. Hid the body under stones and brush. And then she found her way to Bennett.
The Sanguinati who ran the town and the Wolves who were the enforcers didn’t trust her but they had agreed to let her stay, let her run this place. Eventually they might even accept her living among them—as long as she could resist the compulsion to devour all the life force of a being that mattered to the Sanguinati and Wolves.
Yuri Sanguinati, one of the saloon’s two bartenders and the only one working today, turned toward her when she stepped out of the office to join him behind the bar.
“Tolya is sending some humans our way,” Yuri said. “Potential workers and residents.”
“From Lakeside?” Barbara Ellen had stopped in a couple of times to say hello and show her how to take care of Yellow Bird, and had told her about the humans who were migrating to Bennett from Lakeside. The girl had also told her about meeting Tess, which explained a lot about why Barbara Ellen had approached a Harvester in the first place. The friendliness was genuine, but the girl also seemed to be making a point that she would choose her own friends, regardless of Tolya’s concern or Virgil’s growling.
“No,” Yuri replied. “Those humans should arrive on Watersday, if the train stays on schedule. These humans heard there was work here.” He picked up a stack of papers off the bar. “Don Miller worked on the computer yesterday and made up these forms for potential employees. He said he had a feeling you would find them useful, and they might be useful now for dealing with these strangers.”
Don Miller, her other bartender, was an Intuit who had a sense of what people needed. Freddie Kaye was another Intuit, but he had a feel for numbers and wanted to work as the house gambler.
“Are there enough forms?” she asked.
“Won’t know until the humans walk through the door, but I won’t be surprised if there is exactly the number of copies that we need today.”
“We’re going to have customers?” Garnet Ravengard sauntered over to the bar and smiled at Yuri. She had the dark eyes and black hair typical of her form of terra indigene. Except for a couple of black feathers mixed in with her hair, she looked human—and had more of a bosom than she’d had yesterday.
Had the Raven been able to alter her human appearance or had she achieved that effect by using some kind of clothing beneath the garnet red dress?
“The dress looks good on you,” Yuri said.
“And you look like a frontier bartender, right down to the little black tie,” Garnet replied.
The Sanguinati did look the part in the white shirt and black vest and trousers—and the black string tie.
No telling if the humans would appreciate the costumes and the rest of what had been done to give the saloon a particular flavor, but Scythe realized that everyone who worked there would have fun. And that pleased her.
A minute later her pleasure faded and her gold hair suddenly had streaks of blue and red—and a warning thread of black—and began to curl as five human males walked into the saloon.
“I’m Madam Scythe,” she said. “Welcome to the Bird Cage Saloon.”
Four of the men removed their hats in what she assumed was a gesture of courtesy. The fifth man did not.
Something in his eyes. Something that scratched at her instincts to feed. She moved toward him slowly as her hair changed to red with streaks of black and threads of gold and blue—and it coiled.
“We should not be required to be in this house of fornication,” the fifth man said loudly.
Yuri vaulted over the bar one-handed, drawing everyone’s attention, including hers. A movement, a reminder to be careful.
“We sell a variety of drinks,” Yuri said, showing a hint of fang when he smiled at the men. “Our girls are here to talk to customers, even do a little singing and dancing. But Madam Scythe does not allow fornication in this establishment.”
The man looked pointedly at the stairs that led to Scythe’s suite and the rooms the employees could use during breaks or as dressing rooms.
“As you can see,” Yuri said with a nod toward the stairs and the red velvet rope that was attached to the wall and newel-post, “the rooms are for employees only—and that rule is strictly enforced.”
There was enough bite and warning in the words that Scythe understood that Yuri was also uneasy about that particular human. Adding to her own sense of wrongness was the way the other four men were looking at their companion, as if they, too, recognized something odd about his behavior.
“Now, if you gentlemen will fill out these forms, that will assist everyone when the mayor comes in to talk to you about what work you might do here.” Yuri handed out the forms. “On the second page, where it says ‘Miscellaneous’? Please provide the reason you left your previous place of residence.”
Garnet went into Scythe’s office, then reappeared with two pens and a pencil. “Here are writing implements if you need them.”
One man approached Garnet but glanced at Scythe as he accepted the pens and pencils. “I don’t know why he is saying these things,” he said quietly.
“He’s your friend?” Scythe asked just as quietly.
“No. He joined us at the border station. He said he was coming here and asked if he could travel with us. We thought, because of some of the things he said on the journey, that he was from a community that lives by stricter rules than our own, but that doesn’t explain his rudeness.”
Scythe nodded. “I’m sure Mr. Sanguinati is already aware of your companion’s difference.”
He returned to the table and handed out the pens and pencil just as the next group arrived, led by Kane in Wolf form. Two adult females, a boy, and . . .
