by J. P. Sloan
“I am trusting you, Odell.”
“All right?”
“This was my House Bible. It was given to me by Lars, my Master, before he lost the plantation. I was charged with the task of preserving it, possibly to resurrect the House with my own blood.” A lone tear rolls down her cheek. “For a while, I thought it could happen. But now, with these mongrel-beasts, I cannot see any future for the House.”
“I appreciate that, but what is it? The Bible, I mean. Why’re you handing it over to me now?”
“It is a written history of my House, from Master to Master, leading back to its founding.”
I pull it open and thumb through a few pages. The ink writing is curly and neat, though I find after a few pages, I have a very specific problem with the words. They’re all in some other language I’ve never set eyes on before in my life. I can recognize Spanish, though I can’t follow it. And if someone reads French out loud to me, I gather it’s French quick enough. Half these letters seem like some totally different language. Several, actually, as I continue to flip forward page by page.
“I can’t read this,” I grunt.
Katherina gently slips the book from my hands and steps into the room to set it upon a table. She fingers forward most of the way through the bindings until she reaches a fresh sheet of dark black ink.
With a flourish of her finger, she announces, “My additions, all in the English tongue. For the past ten years, I have contributed to the Bible. My story, my birth, my turning… even my travels west.”
I lean down to skim over her handwriting. It’s florid and ornate. Graceful. I feel a catch in my throat as my finger slides along the page against the hoops and hooks of her script. It feels intimate.
The pages smell of jasmine.
My voice cracks as I ask, “How’s this help us?”
“It is everything, Odell. It is the story of the Strigoi. Our history. Our fate. Our weaknesses.”
I look up to Katherina. “You’re saying―”
“This book will tell every way to harm and kill my kind. In the wrong hands, it could become a manual for genocide.”
spend the next several hours poring over that damned Bible of Katherina’s. The light in this underworld city is painfully dim, and I find myself squinting and rubbing my eyes out of routine. She has withdrawn to the far corner of this library-hole, dark and silent, just watching me with her eyes dark-turned.
Her English is fine enough, but hard for a man like me to read. This work is better suited for a man like Folger, though I can suss out why she wouldn’t trust him with this book. Richterman’s too close to Folger’s eyes. And as capable a mind as Richterman has, his one great weakness is his lack of experience. He’s a steam engine of ideas, with a furnace stoked by raw avarice. Nothing can stop that man once he makes up his mind.
Nothing, except for Magner and his half-Strigoi cannibals.
Most of the English pages are history, and I find myself skipping through it. I’ve picked up a Holy Bible a few times in my life, never to much success. The sheer volume of begats and shalts drives me directly to sleep. And such is the flavor of this piece of work… Katherina stepping from generation to generation of undead sumbitches I couldn’t rightly give two shakes of piss over.
Then comes the parts where she flees the Union Army and scurries toward the Mississippi. I reach a line, “I found a man named Denton Folger today,” and shove the book away.
She snaps her face up from her hunch in the corner, and I lift a hand.
I don’t know how I’ve come to resent Folger so completely. He’s a good man. Half of him, anyways. He saved my life that night after I staggered into the Parson’s business. He nursed me to health, gave me a purpose, and has never once lied to me.
Lies. That word implies intent. Folger can’t be said to be a liar, if he doesn’t know what evil he’s carrying around inside his skull. And the God’s truth? Richterman don’t enter into this.
I started resenting the man the very moment I realized I was falling for his wife.
My eyes sting, and I run a sleeve over them to keep the tears from forming. Shit. I’m the monster here. I’m supposed to be doing the Good Work, and all I do is to forsake everything I’ve come to know about the Strigoi. I find the last Good Man on this Earth and lust after his wife. I dedicate myself to joining the Godpistols, and as I sit in an underworld city of the Godpistol’s sworn enemy, I wonder if Gil really understands anything about the Strigoi. He never really stopped long enough to ask questions.
I move past those paragraphs, flipping pages, only allowing my eyes to see enough to recognize what I don’t want to read. Katherina fidgets in her corner, gaze still hard on me. I don’t blame her. This is intensely private truck she’s given me to read. She’s bore open her soul to me, or what passes for a soul. I feel responsible for it, careful not to cause it misery.
At length the rambling pages of her life with Folger on the prairie end, notably without mention of the mine accident or of Richterman. The book skips a page, then starts in on a note-for-note description of the Strigoi condition. The writing is no longer a story of lives. It has become a text of conditions.
“Silver,” I mumble as I pause over the page. “In any quantity can be poison for the Strigoi.” I look over to Katherina. “Can you touch it? I mean, does it have to be inside your blood to kill?”
She drifts up from her corner and gathers her lace around her shoulders, stepping behind me. “It burns if we touch it. Lethal if taken in.”
“Or forced in?”
She doesn’t answer. Instead, she moves outside the archways and makes a series of gestured to one of the orphans huddled in the wall nearby. After a space the orphan returns with a golden goblet, the kind you see in particularly pigeon-stuffed churches.
Katherina sets the goblet beside me. The liquid inside looks clear.
“Water,” she urges.
I nod and give it a sniff, then a sip. Seems clean enough. I don’t know why I feel so suddenly suspicious. Were it just me and her, I’d have taken the water without wondering if it was anything other. Perhaps I don’t really trust these Strigoi yet.
“Anything enlightening?” she asks as she moves around the table.
“Not yet.”
She makes a motion with her finger, winding it as if I should stop speaking and continue reading.
Which I do.
The detail in this new chapter of her book gets nice and thick. She speculates as to why silver is poison, while other white metals like nickel do no harm. Something about an antiseptic this or another. I move on to herbs, their uses to her healing powers, and the herbs which serve to weaken. Garlic is high on that list of herbs, and I find a side note regarding an attempt to overthrow her House masters resulting in the stuffing of garlic into four bodily holes of the traitor in question.
Then I reach the section on sacred trees, comments on some old pagan religions, and a list of woods best used for stakes. Cedar, hawthorn, hemlock…
I snap my fingers. “Aspen.”
Katherina winces and takes a step back from the table. “Aspen. Yes, the white wood. Known for its intensity of proliferation.”
“Think that’ll do it on these mongrels? Right through the heart?”
“Possibly.”
“I seen a clutch of them not far from the Sayles’ property. Supposing it’s fatal to these cannibals, and we get enough people motivated, we can hew a hell of a lot of ramming stakes from those trees.”
“How do we know if aspenwood is fatal to these mongrels?”
I close the book and stand. “Well, we have one locked up. Assuming Scarlow ain’t put him down yet.”
She reaches for the book, but I keep a firm hand on it.
My eyes meet hers.
“I should hold on to this,” I mumble.
Katherina’s face runs a course of emotions, her eyes flickering in and out of darkness.
“But, you said you was trusting me,” I add. “So I reckon that�
�s worth something.”
I slide the book over the table to her.
She gathers it up and clutches it to her chest. Her gaze lifts slowly to meet mine, and my chest swells with all manner of impropriety.
“The sun has risen,” she whispers. “You must travel alone.”
“Don’t worry about me.”
“I do,” she blurts before turning away.
“Hey, I’m not Denton. I have a mind to put a thing in the dirt, I do it. I do it without thinking.”
“That is untrue.” She turns back to me, eyes soft.
“Yeah. I suppose it ain’t.”
I move back toward the surface and rustle Ripper awake from Katherina’s spell. He hoofs and grunts in a bout of panic before I get him under control. The orphans in the entrance have moved deeper underground. Daylight warms the rock face near the opening, though the air outside slices cold directly through my coat. I mount Ripper, happier to have sky over my head than I cared to admit below.
The trees around us are quiet, save for the rustle of the healthy north wind filtering down into the valley. No Strigoi to escort me this time. No Katherina. Nothing but me and my horse, the way it had been for so long. Being tangled with so many lives is new to me, and not entirely comfortable.
The passage down the old mine trail is easier in the daylight. We make good time reaching the valley floor with its rolling grasses. I nearly forget my anxiety as I put the pines behind me, until Ripper gives a warning grunt.
I rein him to a stop and rise up in my saddle to survey the grass surrounding me. Ripper stomps and backs up a few steps. Something is out there. And with the sun overhead, I know it ain’t Strigoi.
Six figures step through the taller grass ahead, pushing it aside with long, bony fingers. The middle of the crew, the tallest and gauntest, throws hands on his hips with a chuckle. The others fan out a little, presenting me with a half circle of Wendigo mongrels.
“So, what’s this?” the tall one calls out. “Magner said you were bold, but I didn’t figure you’d be stupid, too.”
I give each of the creatures in front of me a good look, then answer, “Am I supposed to know who you are?”
“Name’s not important.”
“Suppose that’s true.”
He looks over to his compatriots, urging a snicker or two from the ones that appear to speak English. Satisfied with his posturing, he takes a step closer and sticks his finger out. “You’re pretty calm for a lunatic.”
“That a fact?”
He stands still, waiting for something. I’m not sure what. I suppose he wants me to beg for my life or some other shit he ain’t going to hear from me.
The leathery creature on the right-hand end of the line chomps his jaws. I give him a quick look. Drool flows from his mouth like vomit.
Through a wince, I turn back to the peacock standing in front of me. “You Magner’s new lieutenant?”
With a smug grin, he nods. “That’s one way of looking at it.”
“Good enough.” I turn to the woman on his right, a short, emaciated redhead in a black kerchief. “You speak English?”
She screws her head at an angle, considering me like an insect.
The tall one takes another step closer. “Don’t waste your time―”
“Do you?” I prod.
She nods once.
The tall once sucks in a breath as he raises his hands.
My hand slaps my holster, and I pull my Remington. With a smooth, easy draw, I cock the hammer, take aim at the bastard, and fire. The silver smacks him center of the chest, and he drops like dead weight. The others move to converge on me, but as they get closer, my aim gets easier. Two shots. Three shots. Four, then five. One by one, they all drop into the grass, leaving me with the redhead woman.
I move the gun slowly to her head and kick Ripper forward.
“You run back to the hills, ma’am. You tell Magner I said it don’t matter how many Seconds he dresses up to come after me, I’ll put them in the ground. You tell him Linthicum Odell is coming for him, and he’s coming shortly.”
She scurries backward, diving into the grass. I watch the tops of the leaves parts and swirl in a long arc back toward the mine hills.
Message sent.
I reach into my satchel for more silver slugs and pause to consider the gun.
Five kill shots, easy as if I were dreaming it.
A quick, short puff of only half-frigid valley air rushes across my face. Surely, if the Good Lord wanted to see me damned, He wouldn’t have given me quite so keen a trigger. Would he?
Enough collar tugging. Time to test my theory.
carlow steps out of the jailhouse to meet me before I’ve dismounted.
“You sober?” I ask.
“Regrettably.”
I drop onto the dirt in front of the building and take a sniff of some malodor.
“Did you have to put him down?”
Scarlow shakes his head.
“Should you have?”
He shrugs.
“Well, I suppose that’s as for the better. Got designs for our little mongrel.”
He slaps a hand onto my shoulder. “Keep your head. I’ve rode with Ramon since North Texas, a good three years now. He never gave me shit, and now’s not the time to start tossin’ it in his face.”
“That’s good and well, but you need to get something soaked into your skull. Ramon, that fellow you rode with since North Texas? He’s dead. The thing in that jail cell ain’t him, and never will be again. So, no disrespect to Ramon, but let’s go see if we can find a way to kill that abominated sumbitch.”
I step inside with Scarlow tight on my heels. My two men with my silver slugs huddle up in the corner, passing a bottle of something. I give them a squint, then turn to Scarlow.
“They still got the silver?”
He nods slowly.
“Good. We might need it.”
“Y’all got a sudden fuckin’ plan, Odell? Because it sounds like you do, and if that’s so, then I’m eager to hear it.”
I whisper, “Aspenwood.”
“What about it?”
“These things,” I gesture at the frame of what was Ramon lying like a corpse on a cot behind the bars, “are only half Wendigo.”
“How’d you figure?”
“Folger’s wife tried to turn Magner.”
“Turn him? Into what?”
“Strigoi. One of her kind.”
Scarlow winces. “They can do that?”
“Where the Hell do you think all these Strigoi orphans are coming from?”
“Sorry, I ain’t the Godpistol here. Okay, so, aspen. Fine. What do we do with it?”
I take a step toward the bars. “For Strigoi, you run it into their heart. Kills them dead. For him? I’m not so sure. These things are mongrels. I wasn’t just being discourteous. They share some of the weaknesses of the Strigoi, like silver.”
Scarlow nods again, slowly.
“I’m going to go collect some aspen and try it out on Ramon, here.”
“You are?”
“Yes,” I answer with thinning patience.
“You goin’ in there with him?”
I sigh. “Unless you want to fucking volunteer.”
He holds up his hands and steps away.
“You got a knife, by any chance?” I ask.
Scarlow slips a nice long-handled Bowie from a sleeve on his belt. “That work?”
“That works.”
I take his knife and exit, mounting Ripper and sweeping on out to the west. Downhill, I spot the copse of aspens and Sayles’s property not far beyond. It sits dormant. No one’s moved in yet, from what I can gather. Not sure how long that’ll last, what with Richterman’s open invitation for the homeless to settle into the valley.
I reach up from my saddle and snatch a good inch-wide branch and give it a working with Scarlow’s knife. After just a little abuse, it cleaves off. I reduce it to about a foot in length, toss the leaves aside, and whi
ttle the end to a good point. The wood’s soft. Damned soft. It usually isn’t such a problem against the Strigoi, seeing as to how their flesh is somewhat insubstantial.
But these Wendigo things? They look solid enough, and it puts me to wishing I had some decent Old World hemlock in my hand.
I move back toward town, giving thought to what we’d do should this experiment prove successful. I’ve got a whole army of Wendigo mongrels out there somewhere, and their numbers are increasing every day. Any one of those bastards can make more. So, I’ll have to go total war. Kill them all. One survivor will be failure.
And Magner, for all his field marshalling, ain’t shown his face outside his cursed forest. He’s the real nut to crack under my boot, and I’m not sure my boot’s big enough.
I return to the jailhouse to find Scarlow dressing down his men. They’re standing at attention against the wall, their bottle of whatever sitting in Scarlow’s hand, corked. In another life, he could have been a real sheriff.
“Got it?” he asks without turning to me.
“Yep.”
“Well”—he sighs as he pulls a key from his shirt pocket—“guess there’s only one way to do this.” He walks over to the bars and unlocks the door. He holds it closed and gives me a curled brow. “You got any plans for if you get bit?”
“Yep. Shoot my ass.”
“You really want me to shoot you?”
“If I get bit. I mean, not if I don’t. Only if it’s necessary. What I’m saying is, don’t shoot me.”
He lingers, the corner of his mouth rising in mirth.
“I know you’re in love with me, Scarlow, but you’re going to have to get over it.”
“Shut up,” he grunts as he pulls the jail door open.
I step inside, and he closes the door behind me with maybe a little too much racket. Ramon’s body don’t move, so I figure he’s either already awake and ready to pounce, or he’s gone too long without feeding.
I wonder if we couldn’t starve these things to death, but we can’t wait that long.
Gripping the sharpened aspen stake, I inch closer, keeping a short eye on Ramon’s face. A tiny bubble of snot balloons in and out of one of his nostrils, so I can tell he’s breathing.
