The Rider wiped at the blood staining the onager’s hide. Something had dealt it a glancing blow. There was a trio of large cuts in its shoulder, ragged and claw-like, but oddly grouped, not like the mark of any bear or cougar he had ever seen. Whatever had done it had sheared through its hide and muscle, nearly to the bone. He prayed the wound wasn’t septic.
He heard a snap of movement out in the trees then, and spun. Ever since Tip Top he had felt the gaze of unseen observers. He knew these were the shapeless demons hounding him, the minions of Lilith that kept him awake at night. They made his drink bitter and his food ashen, and worried him in a hundred annoying little ways that were altogether taking their toll on his health and nerves. He knew of these, though he was powerless to perceive or affect them, just as they could not end his misery with an all out assault, thanks to Nehema the succubus’s rosette token. But there was something else out there. Another presence. Not demonic, yet malevolent. Not intelligent, but cunning. Savage, animalistic. It was as if a tiger watched him, raising his hackles. Something was out there. Something he couldn’t see. Something strong enough to decapitate a horse and fling another into the air. Something that could physically kill him.
Yet it was the lantern he held up, not his pistol. The meager light barely shined, casting little more than a faint red tint on the already bloodstained snow. Nothing moved. Somehow, he knew the lantern was holding it at bay, like a torch waved in the face of a hungry wolf padding around the edge of vision, eyes shining in the night. But there were no eyes to be seen here. There was nothing.
He dropped the pistol in his belt, took the onager by its bridle and led it back to the clearing, holding up the lantern before them like a man navigating a dense fog. It was ridiculous, but somehow, he knew it spared them.
Doc had his gun out still, and Dodgy and the Indian had shed their pistol belts, but held on to their lanterns.
Mather was dragging the Professor back from the cabin by the scruff of his neck, and as the Rider stepped out of the trees, the skinny Englishman was flung down beside the wounded Bullshit.
“What the hell?” Doc said, at the sight of the bloodied onager.
“The horses are dead.”
“Skinned?” asked Mather.
“No, not skinned. Ripped apart.”
“What killed ‘em?”
The Rider came closer, and motioned to the dead man lying there. The one they had all forgotten, whom Dodgy, the Indian, Bullshit and the Professor had been talking over only a few minutes ago.
“Probably the same thing that killed this man,” the Rider said.
The corpse’s wounds were very much like those of the horses. He had been completely disemboweled. It looked as if something had swept its great claws down his front and ripped open his chest. The animal appendage (huge, it must have been) had broken through chest bone and ribs and taken out every organ behind, even scoring the exposed vertebrae. It had ripped out the stomach and left it partially hanging over the lip of the dead man’s pants, attached by torn shreds of connective tissue. The man’s expression was wide-eyed, his face a bloody toothed grimace. His neck was broken, and his limbs were at odd, cringe-inducing angles. One swipe of those wicked claws and then he had been flung into the clearing, bones snapping as they smashed through tree branches and finally smacked down on the cold hard ground.
“You’re right about that,” said the Professor from the ground.
“That damned dingus,” Bullshit said from his side.
The Professor closed his eyes, as if in pain.
“Please don’t call it that.”
“What do you call it?” the Rider asked.
“Ah!” the Professor smiled, leaning forward, wide-eyed. “You believe? Well! You’re an open-minded fellow. It took quite some time to convince these men it existed at all.”
“Who the hell are you?” Doc interrupted.
“Oh, of course—A.W.W. Spates. Professor Arthur William Wallace Spates. Arthur for the king, William Wallace for the knight. Father was a great admirer of legendary personages. Father was of Scottish stock, mother was a Londoner. Arthur is fine. Professor is better.”
The little Englishman rattled all this off in moments.
“I’m sorry,” he said at the Rider’s blank look. “I’m used to explaining my name moments after giving it. Force of habit.”
“Professor of what?” the Rider asked when he stopped to take a breath.
“Ah yes. Professor of zoology, Cambridge University. Well, formerly. I’m on something of a professional sabbatical. Well, I was, until my funding was pulled….although Brown University has expressed interest in my findings. You see I’m compiling a sort of a field catalog of.…”
“Save all that, and tell us what’s out there,” Doc snapped.
Spates stopped in mid-sentence and raised his eyebrows.
“Well,” he admitted, “I don’t know. It’s an animal of some sort, I should think. Whatever it is, its hide is of a color imperceptible to the unaided human eye.”
“In plain English!” Mather demanded.
“He means you can’t see it,” Crazy Horse Bob said.
“That don’t make any goddamned sense,” Doc said.
“We didn’t believe him neither at first,” said Bullshit. “But hell, look at what it done to Cady.”
Cady lay in silent, mutilated affirmation.
The Rider’s mind reeled. He had experience with invisible forces, but never had he been unable to perceive a creature that existed on the physical plane. What of the lanterns? There was definite magic here.
“Why the lanterns?” he asked.
“Ah! You’re so clever! Well, they render the thing’s shadow visible. It also seems to have some sort of a deterring effect, though I haven’t quite come up with a plausible explanation for that.”
“It shows up in the light of red glass?”
“Just the shadow. But it’s not the glass at all,” Spates said. “Well, it is partially the glass, which is why I asked these men to collect as much of it as they could. Red glass isn’t easy to come by in this area. The fuel is the catalyst, however. Here. Let me show you.”
He gestured for the Rider to hand over the brakeman’s lantern. Reluctantly, he did so.
As Spates worked at disassembling the lantern, Doc prodded the Rider’s arm.
“You don’t buy into this do you?”
“Something killed the horses,” the Rider said.
“The horses. Why’d it spare your mule, anyway?”
“It’s not a mule,” the Rider said.
But it was a good question. Why had the onager survived yet another near death scrape—literally, this time? Thinking back, the creature had managed to pass mainly unscathed through some abominable situations. It had even killed a thief once. He had jokingly thought of it as living a charmed existence, but in truth, it did. It was as if some protective spell encircled the animal. Of course, if there really were anything special about it, he would have detected it long ago.
“There!” Spates exclaimed. He had removed the red glass globe (scorching his fingertips in the process), and was unscrewing the fount. “It’s not kerosene, but a composite fuel derived partially from a substance I haven’t been able to identify. It burns much faster, and appears to give off some sort of actinic emission, the light of which reveals the thing’s shadow.”
“Wait,” said the Rider. “If you don’t know the composition of this stuff, how did you know it would ‘reveal’ this thing? Where did you get it?”
“Oh, I was given a couple barrels of it by my associate, a chemist. I believe he invented it.”
“What chemist?”
“A gentleman of medical science I became acquainted with via correspondence while I was in Pine Barrens investigating the Jersey Devil. He had learned of my proposed catalog of hitherto unknown creatures and wrote me of the existence of this invisible thing here in the mountains. I confess even with all I have seen already in the course of my work, I was so
mewhat skeptical, but he certainly made a believer out of me.”
“Was his name Sheardown?” the Rider ventured.
Spates’ face lit up.
“Yes indeed! Dr. Amos Sheardown. Are you an acquaintance?”
“We’ve met,” the Rider affirmed. “Once.”
“I haven’t been able to reach him in weeks! I’ve left several messages for him at the post.”
“He met with an accident,” the Rider said.
“Oh my…nothing too serious I hope? What sort of an accident?”
Me, he thought.
“So you’re saying there’s something out here we can’t see,” Doc began, grinning sardonically, “and all the red lamps you all took off the train are what’s keeping it from ripping us to shreds?”
Dodgy, Crazy Horse Bob, and Bullshit looked somewhat embarrassed.
“I don’t expect you to believe us, Doc,” Dodgy said.
“I believe it,” Mather said.
“Et tu, Brute?” said Doc.
“More things in heaven and earth, Fellatio,” Mather shot back.
“Horatio,” Doc, Spates, and the Rider all said at once.
“Whatever,” Mather said. “In that year I spent at sea, I saw plenty I never would’ve thought was true. Somethin’ of a color you can’t see, that doesn’t sound so crazy to me. But my question is, how’d this skinny little limey convince you all to rob the train and come up here?”
“I didn’t really convince them,” Spates said. “My colleague, Dr. Sheardown promised them a substantial reward…well, through me.”
“What for?”
“There’s a passage beneath the mountain. Remnants of a previous excavation. Mining or archaeological, I don’t know which. Dr. Sheardown said there was an artifact that had been uncovered in the dig and left behind.”
“What kind of an artifact?”
“A jewel or a stone. I shouldn’t think it’s naturally occurring—possibly of native craft. He asked me to procure it for him, and as payment, he provided me with the means to catalog, maybe catch, or at the worst, kill the creature dwelling on this mountain. Actually, I suspect the tunnel is its den.”
“Jewel, huh?” Mather said, noting the greedy light in the eyes of Bullshit, Dodgy, and Crazy Horse Bob.
“Yes, possibly more than one. Apparently he’s been looking for them for some time. Star-Stones of Mnar, he called them. There’s folklore around them. A lot of mumbo-jumbo. It seems one or more of them were buried up here some time before your revolution. They were rediscovered recently, but the creature killed one of the diggers and drove off the rest.”
What was this? Some scheme of Sheardown’s, or something he had been tasked with doing by Adon? If the latter, then surely these ‘star-stones,’ whatever they were, were better off out of Adon’s hands. The connection of the lanterns with Lilith in Tip Top bothered him. She had said that a war was coming. A war she had not chosen sides in, but that Adon would be a part of. Yet she had employed lanterns with presumably the very same fuel Sheardown had given to Spates.
That Spates was oblivious of all this, the Rider highly suspected. He doubted this man was so good an actor. If Sheardown had been any indication of the type of individuals Adon had recruited to take part in this “Hour of the Incursion’ plot, then they were not much on subtlety.
Spates meanwhile, had pulled a leather notebook from his coat pocket and riffled speedily through the pages. Finally, he came to what he had been seeking, and he thrust the open book at the Rider.
“There you are. He said I’d know the stones by that marking.”
The Rider froze.
The sketch in Spates’ notebook was of a stylized five pointed star with a blazing eye in the center surrounded by three circles.
The Wisdom and Sacred Magic Of Zylac The Mage had the same drawing in its pages. So did the scroll. It was the Elder Sign.
“I know this emblem,” the Rider said, taking the notebook.
“So do I,” said Mather beside him.
The Rider turned, and saw that Mather had rolled up his sleeve. Up past his Mariner’s Cross, just below the pit of his elbow on the inside of his forearm, was the exact same glyph in blue ink.
“What the hell?” Doc remarked. “Is this some kinda joke?”
“Where did you get that?” the Rider asked.
“This drunk of a sailor gave me and my brother Sy a matching pair when we sailed on The Hetty. Sy had this fear of drowning. Used to have nightmares about bein’ pulled under the water. This fella said these were proof against drowning. Lot of good they do me now.”
“They may do you more good than you know,” Spates said.
“Sailors are as superstitious as Indians,” Doc said. He glanced at Crazy Horse Bob. “No offense, Crazy.”
The Indian shrugged.
“This is all well and good,” Doc continued. “But I think we’re forgetting the real impetus of this little diversion. There’s the matter of two thousand dollars Dirty Dave took off a Spaniard.”
“You ought to take that up with him,” Dodgy said.
“He says you all switched bags on him.”
“Then he’s a liar as well as a chickenshit,” said the German.
“You don’t convince me, Dodgy,” said Doc, walking over to the bigger man. He frowned when they were face to face. “I don’t much like looking up at you either. How about I cut a couple inches off you, bring you down to a more manageable height?”
“Doc,” Mather said. “We got more important things to worry about now, don’t we? What about whatever killed Frank Cady and our horses?”
“All in good time, David.”
“You promised you’d bring that money back, Doc,” Mather said, his previous threatening tone returning.
“That jewel might be worth a look, though,” said the Rider quickly.
Doc looked over at him, and a smile broke out beneath his mustache.
The Rider smiled back. It was time to appeal to the man’s instincts, to keep them from killing each other. He had to get a hold of this star-stone. To keep it away from Adon if nothing else. By now Adon surely knew of Sheardown’s death. He might be sending someone to complete the man’s work here. He could worry about getting it away from these men when he found it.
“We didn’t say anything to Hoodoo about delivering a jewel,” he went on.
“Why Rider…now you’re talking like a proper bookseller.”
Then Dodgy’s big right arm gave an almost imperceptible flick. Down out of the voluminous sleeve of his buffalo coat dropped an object that glittered in the late morning light in a golden way the Rider was quite familiar with.
Dodgy brought the squarish barrel of the gilded Volcanic pistol up and down like a hatchet, and swatted Doc’s gun to the ground.
Then he grabbed Doc by the cravat and yanked him across his ankle, sending him flat on his face.
As if by a previously decided signal none of them had observed, Crazy Horse Bob grabbed the Rider’s gun hand and mashed his crotch with a swift knee that forced all the wind up out of him and double him over in a fascinating agony.
On the ground, Bullshit scrambled over Spates and Cady’s corpse in a desperate grab for Doc’s fallen gun.
Mather lit into him with both pistols and sent him rolling and bucking like a rabbit caught in a fusillade, little bursts of blood erupting in his neck, face, and hand.
Crazy Horse Bob and Dodgy wasted no time, but ran into the brush at the opposite side of the clearing. Of course the Volcanic was useless as anything other than a gaudy club to the German, as the warded ring that allowed it to be fired still rode on the Rider’s finger.
But Crazy Horse Bob had pulled the gun from the Rider’s hands as he dropped to his knees, and now he fired back at them as he ran.
Doc dropped flat at the Rider’s side, unhurt, but eager to avoid the Indian’s wild fire.
Mather backed away, banging away at his two guns until he disappeared in a cloud of smoke. The thunder soon d
windled into a series of impotent mechanical clicks as his hammers fell on empty chambers.
When it cleared, Dodgy and the Indian were gone.
“Goddammit!” Mather bellowed with uncharacteristic passion. “What the fuck were you two lookin’ at?”
Doc got to his feet, dusting himself off.
“Why don’t you just shut up and toss me one of those pistols of yours. You can’t seem to hit a goddamned thing with two. Maybe you’ll do better with one.”
The Rider caught his breath and limped over to Spates, who was curled up with his knees under his chin, his hands over his head, and his rear end in the air. The man was alive and unhurt, but understandably shaken from the sudden explosion of violence and death.
“My God,” he said, when the Rider helped him to his feet. “I must say I didn’t expect all this.”
“They left their horses,” Doc said, gesturing up to the shack at the nickering animals still tied there.
“Where are they headed?” the Rider said, stooping to pick up one of the discarded pistols.
“They’d be going to that tunnel, if I know Dodgy,” said Mather, reloading his guns. “He’s a greedy sonofabitch, and will want that jewel before he lights out.”
“If he’s got Rider’s gun, then he’s probably got that two thousand on him,” said Doc.
“One of us should stay here and watch the horses, make sure they don’t double back and try to get away,” said the Rider.
“I can do that,” said Doc. “Dodgy bashed my knee when he threw me down. I won’t be much help chasing those two ducks anyway. I’ll see to it your mule doesn’t bleed to death.”
“It’s not a mule,” the Rider snapped.
“Where’s that tunnel, Professor?” said Mather.
“We’ll need to refill some lanterns,” said Spates. “There’s not much left, and Dodgy and Bob’s are full. We’ll have to leave one here with him as well.”
“Keep your damn lantern,” Doc scoffed. “You just bring that two thousand and the rock back.”
Spates hefted an oil barrel out of the shack. There was not very much left at all. Only enough to fill two lanterns. Bullshit had kicked over his own when he’d died, and Dodgy and Crazy Horse Bob had run off with theirs.
Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name Page 12
