by J. P. Sloan
His footsteps shuffle around the house, and the cellar doors creak open before slamming shut again.
I move quickly to my work.
I have the three sharpened stakes I’d pilfered from that fat ghoul. Straight hemlock, barked and whittled to a point keen enough to slip through clothing. Those things in the hills were carrying prepared-like for striggers, sure enough. All I need is one, though having more on hand than is necessary has saved a Godpistol more times than not. I don’t know how strong Folger’s wife will be when she brings her teeth to bear. A strigger has a way of bringing a human’s face when it suits them, then bringing out the Devil when it comes time to feed. I saw the Devil face as it sucked the venom from my leg. What would the human face look like?
Well, should the stakes fail me, I always have my silver slugs. Assuming I get the chance to draw before she tears me in half.
My safest choice is to lie low, feign sleep, lull the monster onto me. I can’t move as fast as a strigger, and I’m not nearly half as strong. But we kill them, nonetheless. We kill them by the dozens. And we do so because we’re smarter than the striggers.
I peel off most of my clothes and settle myself into Folger’s bed with the hemlock tucked tight against my forearm and my Remington stowed neat under my pillow. I steady my breathing as best I can, watching the daylight bleed out into the night sky.
My brain throbs. The weight of the day falls heavy onto my chest, and though it would mean certain death, sleep tempts me. This Gethsemane vigil tears my mind into shreds as I try to preserve the face of sleep while keeping my coil tight and ready to spring.
The rain comes pittering on the roof.
I jerk awake, sucking in a quick stab of breath. I’ve lost control for a split second. I run a hand up to my neck. No wetness. No blood. I’m intact.
A sweep of wet air rushes into the main room of Folger’s hovel, and I hear the easy scrape of the front door. Then footsteps. These were not Folger’s plain and direct footfalls. These are tiny. Thin. Slow. I hear more of the creaking wood beneath a body’s weight than the sound of sole to floor.
I grip the stake tighter and try to loosen my face. I must seem asleep.
The rustling of clothing brushes my ears. And a scent. What is that scent? Something sweet. Night-blooming flowers, sugared and narcotic. The aroma fills my nose, and it thrills me.
Long garments sweep alongside the bed. She is close, but not close enough. Not yet.
Fingers land on my thigh and trace a delicate line down to my wound. Her hand lies flat on the outside of my leg. It’s surprisingly warm. I had felt a strigger’s blood before, red hot as I put wood to chest. But the skin is always so cold. Gunmetal cold. Perhaps this one is different?
A second hand rests on the side of my face, and I suck in a surprised breath.
“Shh,” a voice whispers.
Moist hair falls along the sides of my face, gently tickling my cheeks.
She’s closer, now.
Close enough.
I open my eyes to get a bearing.
And I finally see her face in earnest. Long eyes, dark and soft. A thin nose that rises to a point. Her mouth rests in an overbite, pouting and soft.
Smiling.
She’s smiling at me. My mind stirs, thoughts slamming one into the next. I’m in danger. The blood-suckers have their way with minds, and if I wait another second―
I don’t.
I jerk my hand up from my side and cock my wrist. It would be two motions. Cock, then thrust. That’s all it would take. And I would have had the thrust into her chest, had the stake not slipped in my palm as I turned my hand. It slips just a little, enough to teeter into my fingertips. When I slam it home, it only grazes her arm, ripping her black lace gown.
Her eyes shoot wide, and with inhuman speed, she pulls away and swats at my hand with the back of her own. My weapon flies across the room, rattling uselessly in the corner. I have a choice to make. Go for the gun, or the backup stakes? Both are limited in supply, but the stakes are closer.
She sucks in breaths like an overheated dog, and in the space of a thought, her face pulls tight and dark. Skin turns charcoal, stretching over her bones. What white rims encircled the dark orbs of her eyes melt into whole bowls of ink.
I ready another stake and pull my feet under me. This is going to be harder. She’s ready for my attack, and she has her speed and her demon strength. Should have tried for the gun. Dammit. This is why Gil has us ride out to smithies like Holcomb. A silver bullet would be much preferred at this particular moment. This is why I’m not a Godpistol yet.
The monster reaches for my face, gesturing with her clawed fingers. They turn a slow circle in front of my face.
“Won’t work,” I grumble. “You can stop trying.”
She cocks her head much like a hound considers a thing it can’t understand.
“You are not well,” she says with a husky voice saddled with an Old World burr, though spoken through her maw full of needles. “Lie still.”
“The Hell I will.”
I gamble as she draws another breath to answer. With a shove of my legs, I leap into her. My hands only hit the far wall, though. She is out of my way almost before my body leaves the bed. I turn fast and ready the stake.
Another swat stings the back of my hand. This time she snatches the stake from me and spins its point to my face.
Her lips pull back in a smirk. “You wish to kill me, now?”
“That’s the plan.”
She shoves the stick closer to my chin. “And why? What have I done to deserve this hatred from you?”
“You’re a killer.”
“And what are you if not a killer?”
I ease my chin up from the tip of the stake. “A killer in God’s service. It ain’t sin.”
“Sin?” She chuckles. “God and sin. These are strange words in this house.”
She pulls the stake away from my face, and with a complete spin on her heel, drives it to mid-shaft into the wall beside my head. She steps away without a pause and reaches for the bed dressings. With a snap of her wrist, she pulls the sheet away and shakes her head. She takes the last of my stakes and snaps it in her hand.
I consider the door. Remaining here would mean death for me, which is the risk any Godpistol takes when throwing paws with a demon. But it would mean Gil would have to come for me. And the bullets. And he wouldn’t know what he was riding into. Fleeing felt right for that half breath of thought I gave it, but no door would keep this witch from tearing my throat out. And no horse could outrun a strigger. They were simply too strong in the dark of night.
My only escape was talking.
“I suppose a creature like yourself don’t have much call to discuss God.”
She turns, her face falling back into her more comely humanlike mask. “I am not the disbeliever in this house.”
I nod. “I believe that. If I was to guess, your kept man down in the cellar doesn’t even know what you are. Does he?”
“The question I would ask is, what are you?”
I ease closer to the door. “Call ourselves Godpistols.”
Her smirk melts.
“‘Least I’ll be a Godpistol soon enough,” I continue. “But I have experience with your type.”
“My type?”
“Blood-sucker.”
She looks down to the bed. “Is that what you call me?”
“Strigoi, I think is the word you prefer. Not that it matters much to a man like me.”
“And you would kill me,” she asks, “simply because I exist, and no other reason?”
“You’re a creature of evil, ma’am. There’s not a Hell of a lot of reason to be found in it.”
She scowls with moist eyes. “Even after I have saved your life?”
“It’s my work. It’s what I do.”
The thing blinks and runs a finger beneath her eye to catch a tear. “What do you call yourself?”
“Odell.”
“Well, Odel
l of the Godpistols,” she announces, “you will not be killing me. I think you see this now.”
I don’t respond.
“And whatever fortune has entangled you with my husband, I’ll have you know that you are not welcome in this house.”
“You know that I can’t just leave him here with something like you.”
Her hand flies through the space between us and clamps around my neck. Just enough of the monster is left in her eyes to bring the point home. “You will be gone by sunrise. You will leave us and not return.”
I choke as my feet lift off the floorboards.
“Do you understand?” she growls.
I can’t say yes or no. I can’t breathe, let alone answer. I manage to blink.
She seems satisfied with it. Her body rushes from the room in a flurry of black lace and wind. She’s gone before my feet hit wood. The sound of something like wings washes in between the patter strikes of rain, and the front door closes.
Stupid.
Christ on a horse, was I stupid. I had one chance, and I managed to almost get myself killed. I take a moment leaning against the wallboards, catching my breath. Folger’s wife, or whatever she was to the man, was stronger than I had accounted for. I’d stared down striggers ever since I rode with McQuarrie. They’d always put up a stinger of a fight, to be sure. But this thing in black lace is a hellcat the likes of which I have never seen. I couldn’t have known.
Nor could Folger.
He’s clearly a kept man. The way she spoke so possessive it sounded like human greed. Or a rider protecting his horse. Striggers have no capacity for love or any fashion of normal human feeling. They’re animals. Predators, like coyotes swarming over a downed elk. They don’t feel nothing like sympathy for the damn thing. They just feed and move on to feed again.
So why didn’t she kill me?
That’s a question. I’m not sure I can answer it. She had every chance to put me down, but instead left me standing. Actually, she sent me packing. Probably protecting Folger from my wayward thinking. But why not kill me?
Saving my life seemed important enough to her. I don’t know.
In any event, this is not the place for me to be right now. I have to think about the mission. I have a clutch of silver-slugged bullets to collect in the morning, and if I get myself killed in the meantime, that will leave Gil and the Godpistols in a hell of a pinch. Folger will have to sit where he is.
Which is a shame. I like the man well enough. He’s simple. One might call him naïve, but he’s got guts, standing his ground against a man like Richterman. Assuming Richterman is a man. I have my doubts on that particular note, but that’s just another local drama I’ll have to forsake if I’m going to get that silver back into the proper hands.
I give Folger’s strigger wife some time to put space between me and this shack before sticking my head out the front door. If she’s looming nearby, I don’t catch sign of her. The rain has eased a bit, but the clouds shroud stars and moon. Total darkness. Best to stay put until daybreak. I work on the hemlock stake driven into the wallboards until it shimmies loose, and keep it handy in case the lady of the house decides I’m worth drinking after all.
I settle in the corner, waiting out the nighttime hours. Another stupid move, since my heart calms a spell, sending me directly into that sleep my body has been screaming for.
I awaken on the bed. Either I moved, or I was moved. That don’t sit well with me at all. It’s enough for the woman to cut me loose and broom me out the door, but I’m in no mood to have some blood-sucker doting her housewivery over me in my sleep. I gather my pistol and my hat before the last wisps of dawn sunlight slip into the window.
The rain’s cleared out overnight, and the morning air warms quickly as I step out into the brush outside the Folger home. I move to the cellar doors along the side of the house. They remain closed. Good. Folger’s probably still bedded down, and his wife is likely at his side, for well or ill. This is my space to shuffle off, so I take a few quick strides to the shelter and saddle up old Ripper for town.
spot Cheevy, the simple carpenter, wandering into his stacks of lumber as I reach the outskirts of Gold Vein. He gives me a lift of his hand before climbing up onto a frame half-worth the nails he’s about to invest in it. Richterman for definite has designs on the town and the property surrounding. I ain’t never heard of such higher thought coming from a strigger before, but the particular cut of demon in and around Gold Vein appears to be a hair more clever than anyone would have figured.
As I head toward the center street of town, two dust-caked men lurch out from one of Cheevy’s half-finished frameworks, gazing hard on me, gripping what look like axe handles close to their sides.
It’s clear this pair has murder on their palates.
Moving Ripper around the corner of one of the more complete houses isn’t so difficult. Might work, too, were it not for the extra pair of sod-fingered bastards pinching me before I can make sunlight on the main street. I rein Ripper back, and he gives me an annoyed huff.
The forward goon has iron drawn in-hand and rising to my chest.
Even if I could reach for my Remington, I doubt I’d beat him to his own trigger. Besides, Godpistols don’t draw on humans. It ain’t our way.
“Now, hold up, boys,” I announce. “Ain’t got no fight with you. I’m on my way out―”
“Shut your mouth!” the gunman shouts. “You shut it!”
His companion grumbles a cough as he looks back and forth between his pistol and my torso.
“Go ahead, Amil,” he whispers just loud enough I can hear it over the gunman’s fevered breathing. “Won’t get another chance.”
Amil’s hand trembles.
The first pair of malcontents round the corner behind me, brandishing their timber. This is a lost cause.
“Do it, Amil!” a shout booms behind me. “Before Scarlow drags hisself out of the office!”
A timber creaks overhead, and a second-story window to one of the original Gold Vein structures slides open.
“Oh, he’s done drug hisself already, Horace,” Scarlow purrs as he steps out of the doorway beneath the window. “Nice try, Amil, but y’all want to drop your weapons, now.”
The goons behind me toss their lengths of timber onto the ground, but Amil holds. He for definite has an eye full of murder.
Scarlow raises his voice. “Put it down, Amil. You’re in for it, as it is.”
Amil spins his shoulder, raising his gun toward Scarlow. It’s a sharp rabbit of a motion, but a cough of gunfire from the window above sends Amil bustling backward, folding in on hisself until he slumps into a coughing heap. I squint up at the window only to find the end of a rifle slipping back into the dark room behind the window frame.
The back goons beat feet, sprinting out of view. Amil lies in the dirt, his companion giving Scarlow a white-faced gape.
“Eddie! He’s… he’s got a right. You can’t―”
“I can’t what?” Scarlow taps the metal pinned to his coat. “Lest you’ve forgotten, I am the goddamn law in this town.”
Words flicker in the corners of the man’s mouth, but he chokes them down.
With a grin, Scarlow waves his hand. “Get on home to Mary Nell. And you spread word, now. No more of this horse-nancyin’. You people know better.”
He takes one last look at Amil as the poor bastard spits up a course of blood, then turns and plods away.
I give Scarlow a nod. “This town’s a touch inhospitable.”
He snickers. “If this ain’t convinced you to take your leave of our precious valley, then I’m sure you’ll find another in short order.”
“Don’t worry, Scarlow. I’m about done here. Just have a last piece of business, then I’ll vanish right and proper.”
He takes a look down the immediate lanes, then whistles. Two of his deputies emerge from the doorway and gather Amil’s motionless frame between them.
“Best get to your business, then,” he declares as
he turns to follow.
The deputies drag Amil into the nearest building, leaving a wide trail of dust and a trickle-trail of blood.
I despise backwater lawmen.
With a quick pat on Ripper’s shoulder and an adjustment of my hat, I ride on into town and up onto Holcomb’s shack at the end of the lane. As I dismount, I keep an eye toward Richterman’s two-story keep in the center of town.
Holcomb is waiting for me inside, my sack dangling from his fingers. He gives me a slow nod as I pull off my hat.
“Mornin’,” he grunts. “Got you settled.”
He tosses me the bag, and I catch it in my hat. I give it a jingle, then pry open the string.
“That’ll do it, then?”
He shrugs. “As good as the silver will get you. I can’t control that.”
“Good enough for striggers?”
He squints. “Depends on the strigger, now don’t it?”
“I don’t follow.”
“You’ve run with McQuarrie for how long, now?”
I rustle my fingers through the cartridges, giving them a count. “Two years, thereabouts.”
“Then you ought to know how Strigoi come in shades of strength.”
I nod. “I’m gettin’ that notion. You’re saying a silver bullet might not be enough to put one to dirt?”
“It’s not as simple as all that. They have different blood. Older is stronger. A young, fresh-turned Strigoi is likely to scratch with a single bullet, if you aim good enough. An old one, though? Faster. Stronger. I heard tell of Old World Strigoi that walked away from a stake in its heart. There’s no rules to govern the whole mess of them. Gil knows this.”
I finish my count and give Holcomb a hard eye. “I count eighteen.”
“Right.”
“I had twenty-four coins in the sack.” I take a step forward. “You dealing short with me?”
He eases away from me, and though he’s set his jaw square, I can see fear in the corner of his eyes. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“Still, I find my bag six coins short.”
“I―I lost some material to the crucible and the mold. I was moving fast, trying to press your slugs by daybreak. I was up all night. Makes for sloppy work.”
