by J. P. Sloan
Folger leans back in his chair, rubbing his chin. “I’m not saying I buy into this Godpistol codswallop, but it does bear noting that Richterman does.”
“For the love of God, Denton. This fight is real. As real as the War. And you can’t just sit in the middle without declaring sides. That’s how you end up like the Hitchens boy.”
Denton gives me a sharp look. “Chris… Chris was drunk. And angry. And confused.”
“Don’t feel like having this argument two times.”
“You’re not going to go stampeding into Richterman’s office. Not now. There’s too much at stake, now.” He sweeps his hand across his desk, gathering two sheets of hand-scribble and a fair sketch of the Hitchens boy lying in the grass, bleeding. “I’m about ready to set type. You get Richterman in a lather, and he’s going to lose his tenuous grip of patience with this little pressroom.”
“Won’t matter.”
“The Hell it won’t.”
“Denton?” I start, before taking a grip on my own tongue. He don’t need to know what I’d just seen in Richterman’s basement. The crates of papers. All of Denton’s papers. It’d crush him. I can’t handle that, not just this moment. I need Denton pissed, but pliable.
“What?” he sputters, laying his papers down flat back on his desk.
“You want to hurt Richterman? Then you gotta knuckle under and get ready for a fight that ain’t neatly framed on a goddamn sheet of paper.”
“This is what I do, Lin.”
“Yeah? Well, how’s it played out for you? How long you been putting out these papers? How many months? Years? What’s it got you?”
Denton gives me a squint, then looks down at his own knee.
“Any cavalry come riding over that hill, yet? Marshals with warrants? Hell, I finally get around to riding into this damn valley out of shit-house luck. If Gil hadn’t sent me here, I’d have never even heard of Gold Vein. And that’s how it stands with the rest of the fuckin’ world, Denton. The dramas of Gold Vein don’t exist anywhere but in your head.”
He jumps to his feet quick enough to send his chair sliding behind him and then starts pacing.
“Lin? You gave me your word.”
“I did.”
“No killing.”
“I know that.”
He shoots me a desperate look. “So, why are you deconstructing my only plan of attack when it’s so close to fruition?”
“Because it won’t work, Denton. If I didn’t give a shit, I’d just ride west and let all this catch fire without my particularly ill-advised involvement.”
“Thank you so much for that,” he spits with his particularly articulate East Coast venom. “You’re saying we can’t stop him. That’s what you’re doing. You’re conceding defeat.”
“No, dammit.” I take to my feet, just to maintain eye contact. “I ain’t giving him no ground. No quarter. He killed one of my own. That puts this fight square on my shoulders, too. And everything being equal, I’d play this your way. But seeing as to how your way ain’t done shit for the people in Gold Vein, I’m telling you I’m about to open up this plan of attack to the Godpistol way.”
Denton sneers. “That’s what, exactly? Shoot the monsters until they fall down?”
“It’s reconnoiter. Identify. Then strike. We done our reconnoiter already. And now Richterman’s thrown down his glove. I can’t just run in, guns blazing, lest I get everyone killed. I’m not stupid. So I parlay with the sumbitch. Identify what he’s up to, exactly. What he’s planning. He don’t think much of me, I can tell that already. And that’s exactly how I want it.”
“Then I’m coming with you.”
“Fuck that.”
“No. Not negotiable.”
I give Denton as hard a look as I can muster, though it don’t seem to stick. “You’re not going to be welcome up there.”
“I’ve gathered that.”
“You think Richterman’s going to cotton to me hauling your hide up to his office to give him a what-for? He thinks he can silver-tongue my ass out of your good graces. Why do you think he’s doing this? And that’s where he’s going to make his mistake. He thinks he’s smarter than me. He’s dead wrong.”
Denton pauses and gives me a long stare before nodding. “He’s an arrogant ass, I’ll give you that.”
“I go. I talk. I let him pour it on nice and thick. In the meantime, I hear everything he ain’t saying. Trust me, Denton. You can’t help me right now.”
He takes a few huffs and nods again. “All right, but I’m staying here in town. Right across the street. If I hear any commotion, I’m coming across.”
“With what? You got any weapons?”
“Not as such. But as you say, Richterman seems eager to keep me alive.”
“I’m not as worried about Richterman as I am Scarlow.”
Denton eases hisself back into his seat. “Why’s that?”
“Well, he’s not the thumbed-under sumbitch I thought he was. Scarlow’s got his own agenda. Reliable evil? That I can handle. It’s the unpredictable flavor of asshole you got to keep a gun half-cocked for.”
“I think I take your meaning.”
Folger and I sit in silence for a while, watching as the sky drains its sunlight into the horizon. Candles in a few windows across the street start to flickering as the remaining townsfolk of Gold Vein brace for nightfall.
After a space, two of Scarlow’s men ride up to the assay office, hitch their horses, and take positions on the porch. They have rifles, but drape them over knees casual-like. A message. We got guns, but we won’t drop you for stepping outside.
It’s time.
I take one last look at Folger, rest my hand on his shoulder, then step out into the chilling night air. The stars have lit themselves bright overhead, the only light to walk by. No moon. Just starlight and darkness.
I take a cleansing breath on Folger’s stoop before stepping out into the street.
Movement catches my eye on the rooftop across the lane.
A shadow flutters between gables, and I freeze.
My hand rests calm on the top of my pistol.
Light slaps hit dirt behind me, like clothes dropping onto a dusty floor. I turn enough to catch sight of a tall, postured silhouette giving me a cold eye. Then another, dropping from Folger’s rooftop without so much racket as a leaf hitting ground in autumn.
Their eyes are dark, darker than the lane around us. They gather their cloaks tight around their arms, huddled, closed off.
Strigoi.
One hiss and a chatter of needle-teeth announce the arrival of their third comrade. I complete my full circle to find myself surrounded by Strigoi, all bearing full monster faces.
“Evening, gents,” I mumble.
I receive another wheezing hiss for an answer. These Strigoi don’t seem eager to use English words with me. Maybe they can’t. Maybe they’ve held their monster faces on so long they couldn’t remember how to put on a human mouth adequate for speech. At that moment, as I kept a running check on all three Strigoi, the nature of their mouths wasn’t as particularly vital to my attention as was the contents of my Remington.
Said contents being exactly one silver slug.
This won’t end well for me. One bullet cannot drop three Strigoi.
A clatter of sorts makes me jump, and in a flurry of dusty flapping, I feel my feet whisked off the ground, talons clamped over my arms. It’s over before I can even protest with a decent vulgarity. The Strigoi set me several yards down from Richterman’s front door as Scarlow’s men bustle their fat asses inside with all alacrity.
I shake off my shoulders and put a little more ground between myself and the Strigoi, choosing my steps carefully in the dark.
“The Hell are you boys playing at?”
The creatures look to one another, engaging in their strange breathy communication, before the shortest of the three points up the lane.
North, to the burned-out church.
Something rustles in the
charred remains of the building, and that same clatter draws my attention.
“What is that?” I whisper, squinting through the starlit shadows to the overturned steeple.
Something’s moving amid the wreckage. Something tall and lean. A thick, scorched, four-by goes hurtling through the air and into the center of the street.
A deep, growling voice bellows, “Richterman? You come on out here and face me!”
I hold my breath.
“That Magner?” I mutter to no one in particular, excepting maybe the Strigoi, which appear to ignore me.
The taller pair whisk off down the lane, inky shadows blown on a hot breath into the night. Shorty stays put, his hand held back to me in caution, though his gaze is solid on the church.
The door opens a crack, and Scarlow sticks his nose out. “The Hell is wrong out here?”
His gaze lands on the Strigoi, and his face pales a good measure.
I ask, “You boys packing lead balls, or you got anything with silver?”
“Silver? Hell’s fire, Odell.”
“Do you?”
“What do you think?”
I sigh. “So, no then?”
“Why in the name of the Devil’s coin purse would I try firin’ silver out my pistol?”
I point to the Strigoi. “Ask him.”
The Strigoi turns slowly to Scarlow, who tightens the gap in the door a hair.
“Odell, you better step inside before something unnatural happens to you.”
I squint up the lane. My eyes are sharpening up in the dark, and I make out the lanky silhouette lumbering through the remains of the church. Four… no, six Strigoi close in from rooftops alongside. They move in short, quick sprints. Tactical. Organized.
Just like the night I first met the Parson.
They drop in pairs, two by two, on either side of the creature inside the church. I can’t make out anything inside the old, burned timbers, aside from pieces of limb being torn and tossed about.
“The fuck?” Scarlow bleats.
I hold out a hand. “Would you just shut up, Scarlow?”
He ducks inside and closes the door. I hear a bolt draw closed. Fine. He’s sitting this one out.
I give Shorty a nudge, and he nearly jumps out of his cloak.
“That’s not Magner, then what the Hell is it?”
The Strigoi cocks its head at me in a peculiar, birdlike angle. Once was a time that would send the creeping horrors up my spine, but at this very moment I found it oddly naïve.
“You no hablo English?”
The Strigoi frowns at me. Shit. I think I offended him.
“If it ain’t Magner, then it’s one of his cannibals. Right?”
Shorty gives me a long, slow nod.
I pull my gun. “Then no offense, Shorty. But you fellas are getting your arms handed back to you. I can put him down quick.”
I move to step up the street, but Shorty sweeps in front of me, his arms held out to block my way.
“You mind?”
He moves off a foot or so, but keeps his arms out in a T.
“What, are you trying to protect me or something? The Hell is going on in that brain of yours?”
He holds his ground.
“Listen. Katherina don’t need to protect me. Your friends are buying me precious time, and you’re wasting it.”
Shorty lowers his arms slow. His face, drawn back into a length of charcoal rawhide as it is, looks completely miserable.
“Good boy. Try to get your wounded clear of the church. If we can salvage anything from this little scrap, it’d be a miracle.”
Shorty slips up the side of the building, and despite my best effort, I feel a chill shoot across my ribs.
I double-check my chamber. My last cartridge is set correct. Still, it’s just one shot, and I’m only sighted up to fifty-some yards. I’ll have to get into the mix with this thing before I get a decent shot, particularly with this darkness.
Two more Strigoi flutter across the rooftops along the street, and I take advantage of their movement to ease along the storefronts opposite the lane. I give Folger’s pressroom a quick check. He’d be watching me from the window, and this turn of events would capture his attention. Hell, with luck, it’d make a believer out of the man.
But as long as he keeps his head tucked inside that store, I can’t waste much more thought on the man. Not now. I have a berserking cannibal loose in town.
The Strigoi drop to street level, one turning in my direction to hold out a hand.
I give him the thumb and hoist my pistol with verve.
A vicious hiss rolls from the church. As I inch up to the last intact corner of the old building, I hear a murderous growl, a snap, and the sound of something smashing against the other side of the mud and timber I lean against. This sumbitch was clearing through Strigoi like a hog through shit.
“Richterman!” the beast bellows.
My two Strigoi companions make hand gestures one to another, and the farther of the two tosses his mate a length of rope. Before I can suss out their plan, the two sweep with unnatural speed into the ruins. I swing my shoulder around the crumbled remains of the wall against my back in time to spot them jerking the jute taut. It cracks like a whip under the strain and lashes into the tall figure looming behind a felled beam inside the church.
The beast howls as the jute cuts into his leg, sending him hurtling tits-over-ass into a charcoaled pulpit.
I train my pistol over the edge of the hulled-out wall, but the shadows obscure his thrashing. I keep a steady eye on his limbs as they swing and crash through the rotten wood.
His hand reaches up and takes a grip of the jute.
I check the two Strigoi. The smarter of the two drops his rope.
The other gets jerked back into the midst of the coal-tinged furniture, its body slapping into wood like wet rags. With a bubbling growl, the Strigoi flies through the air over my shoulder, landing in the center of the lane with a slump.
The remaining Strigoi turns to me. I lift my gun and stab twice into the air with my flat hand, a signal from my months in the Union infantry. The Strigoi seems to understand my gist. It creeps into the church to spread its arms and legs and give the cannibal beast a ferocious hiss.
A long arm reaches for the angled beam slicing down into the middle of what used to be the church, and pulls a long, stretched figure upright. A glow of candlelight from a nearby window sheds just enough light for me to recognize the face.
The Parson.
He’s even more gaunt than last I set eyes on him, if that were possible. His jaw is wider at the base, though it’s just as likely his cheeks have hollowed and given his face the cast of a grasshopper. And he’s taller, easily another head and a half. Whatever curse has set into the Parson’s body, it’s slowly turning him into an abomination even Gil would think twice about.
My gaze lingers too long on the Parson. The Strigoi eases its hiss and charges. I shake my head and grip the gun, swinging my legs quiet around the edge of the wall. My boots land in a heap of ash, and I slush forward like wading through fallen leaves.
The Parson turns his full attention to the advancing Strigoi. I brace for him to slam a killing blow into my last ally on this battlefield, but my Strigoi friend leaps high into half-rafters, angling into starlight. It hops from plank to plank with unnatural ease, keeping its black pinpoint eyes on the Parson.
I ease my approach as the Parson holds his position, and the noises around me fall silent. The Remington sits steady in my hand, and I freeze. No sounds. Soft breaths. I don’t know what this curse has done for his hearing, but if I’m discovered, I’ll only have one shot to end this.
The Parson slams his foot down against the ground, or what I’d assumed was the ground. Turns out it’s a stretch of pine boards spanning a cellar. One board slices up into the air in a pivot around the Parson’s foot, and he grabs it with a flat palm. With one quick overhand toss, he hucks the pine plank into the air.
The S
trigoi dodges it, mostly.
The part of the Strigoi that doesn’t make the dodge shatters against the wood. A rain of something like fire-hot blood and pine splinters sprays against my face. The Strigoi howls in pain, trying for a long jump to the far and last remaining wall.
He doesn’t make it.
His body splays against the stucco, and he drops ten good feet. The landing is soft, though, and he gets his feet underneath him.
Unfortunately, the Parson slaps his hand against a half-burned pew and snaps off a nice, long shard of hickory. It could be oak. Either way, it ain’t hemlock. The Parson leaps forward to give the Strigoi two heavy, bone-cracking swats with the bludgeon before spinning its narrow point at the Strigoi’s chest and impaling him directly through the torso.
The Strigoi hisses, its arms flailing like a stuck roach. Its spine arches against the wood with a series of wet cracks. That wood won’t kill the Strigoi, but it’s enough to consign the damn thing to God-cursing pain.
As my fallen comrade raises a ruckus with its paroxysm, I take advantage of the moment to close ground with the Parson. I swerve around the fallen beam, dart past the crumbled pulpit, and finally raise my gun for one clean shot to the Parson’s back.
“Are you being punished, Uriah?” A strange voice swoops through the ash-laden air. It’s deep, polished, with some lacey European notes hanging in its corners.
The Parson jerks his head high, staring up at the far corner of the church. My gaze follows his, but I find nothing of note.
The Parson clenches his fists. “Richterman.”
I squint. Still nothing.
The voice answers, “Magner must surely be cross with you to send you into town.”
“There is no treaty, Richterman,” the Parson growls. “Not anymore.”
“Why does he throw your life away, Uriah? Surely he knows I must kill you now.”
The Parson storms the corner of the church, sending the entire structure shuttering under the blow. I reach for something to steady myself as soot snows onto my shoulders. As I take a step backward, the old snakebite gives me a dull ache. Damned fine timing.
