Lilith barely noticed the commotion behind her. She’d already regretted the decision to bring the two Anasazi with her, anyway. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. But it didn’t matter now. She was right on top of the cowboy, and he was out of his pesky bullets. She’d thought that he might try to turn and make a run for it, but he just stood there, shielding his eyes so he wouldn’t look directly at her.
“There’s my good man,” she said in her throatiest voice. She braced herself and readied to enter him.
And was blocked.
Lilith stood, confused and unbelieving. She tried again, and immediately encountered the same resistance. But that wasn’t possible, unless the cowboy possessed some unique magical resistance, or…
Holy water! Demons could only enter through the mouth or nose. The cowboy had saturated his face with holy water. That’s why he hadn’t tried to escape. He had tricked her. They had both tricked her.
“Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum,” a voice said from behind her, and she felt a sudden, sharp pain between her shoulder blades as Loco plunged his blade into her flesh. The magical blade, combined with the first line of The Lord’s Prayer in Latin, had conspired to make her vulnerable to attack.
Even as she spun around to face her assailant, Murphy loaded several fresh rounds into the Exterminator. He worked the lever and forced a round into the chamber.
“Adveniat regnum tuum,” Murphy said, and squeezed off a round. It was the next part of the prayer, and he supposed he’d pronounced it badly, since he’d had to memorize it while riding full speed on horseback while they were chasing the stagecoach, and he’d never before spoken anything in Latin. To his surprise—as well as the demon’s—the bullet penetrated Lilith’s form. The succubus screamed and arched her back in agony as the round tore into her side.
Murphy levered a second round, but before his finger could find the trigger, the demon turned and unleashed a stream of blinding fire in his direction. The hired gun dove sideways, thus missing the brunt of the hellish blast, which only grazed him, singeing his hat and jacket. But he hit the ground hard enough to jolt the mare’s leg from his grasp. It scuttled away into the shadows.
Lilith turned her attention back to Loco, but the Apache was already on the run, anticipating that he would be the next target of her hellfire. She started to give chase, but the pain in her back and side was tremendous. She could destroy these two another day. And, when that day came, she would make them beg for the sweet release of death. Oh, how she would make them beg.
But right now, she needed to rest and heal herself. She needed a host. The two men were out of the question; they had effectively sealed themselves from her. Baxter’s body was so full of holes as to be practically useless. She scanned the immediate area, searching for anything that would suffice, and sensed something coiled protectively among the rocks behind Baxter’s body.
In the next instant, the demon was gone.
Murphy, having finally located his lost weapon, rushed back into the fray. He was waving the Exterminator at everything and nothing in particular at the same time, searching for Lilith’s whereabouts.
“She’s gone,” Loco said. He kept ducking around, trying to stay out of the path of the mare’s leg. “Stop swinging that gun around! I’d hate to survive all this, only to have you shoot me!”
“Sorry,” Murphy said, dropping the gun to his side. “Where do you reckon she went?”
“Who knows?” Loco said. “I’m sure she’ll end up in Phoenix before long. But we hurt her. She’ll need some time to recuperate.”
“So, why didn’t we say those prayers when we first started fighting?” Murphy asked. “If we’d started in with the Latin from the beginning, we might have been able to whip her.”
“The Latin wouldn’t work against the Anasazi,” Loco explained again. He’d already explained it once, back when he’d given Murphy the vial of holy water. Now he was explaining it again. “We had to separate them. I told you this an hour ago, before we caught up with them.”
Murphy removed his singed hat and studied it. “You should have explained about that fire of hers, if you had wanted to be helpful,” he said. One side of the hat’s brim was charred to a crisp. “I think I may have figured out why that McCoy fella’s straw hat was toasted.”
“In my defense, that was the first time I’ve faced an archdaemon,” Loco said stiffly. He cleaned the blade of his knife on his pants leg and holstered it. “I suppose it was a learning experience for the both of us.”
“I suppose,” Murphy agreed. “So, what do we do now?”
“We’ll take the stagecoach and head on into Phoenix,” Loco said. “I don’t know about you, but I could do with a hot meal and a bed.”
“And Lilith?”
Loco shrugged. “She’ll show up eventually. We’ll get some supplies, and next time we’ll be ready for her. Unless something else comes up first.”
“Something else?” Murphy asked. “Like what?”
“Could be anything,” Loco said cryptically. “Roop’s not paying us to sit on our haunches, is he?”
“I reckon not,” Murphy said. “Okay, let’s load up that poor driver’s body. You want to drive the stage back, or do you want me to?”
“You look more like a stagecoach driver,” Loco said. “I go driving it in, people are going to think it’s an Indian raid.”
“Fine. You can follow in behind me.”
They loaded up the body and headed into the city, and the full moon above them lighted their way.
***
Shorty Thompson rode through the desert, scanning the sands from his perch atop his old mule. The mule’s name was Charley, but he didn’t answer to it anymore. That’s because Charley was old and almost completely deaf. As for Shorty, he could hear just fine, but he couldn’t talk worth a damn. He had such a lisp that hardly anyone could understand him, so he’d basically given up on trying to talk to anybody. Which was fine, since Shorty didn’t much like the company of other people, anyway.
Shorty already had a sack full of sidewinders and diamondbacks, but he was on the lookout for a few more before returning to Phoenix. On a good day, Shorty could capture maybe fifteen or twenty rattlesnakes. There was a man in the city who would pay him ten cents per snake. Shorty knew that the snakes’ venom was used for something, but he didn’t know for what. He did know that they used the skins for hatbands and boots. Mostly, though, he knew that any day he could make two dollars for wrangling snakes was a good day.
As he passed by a rocky outcrop, Shorty heard a familiar rattling sound. It was the sound of cash money. Shorty quickly dismounted and grabbed his walking stick. He’d been catching snakes for over twenty years, since he’d been ten or eleven, and he was somewhat of an expert in the art. He’d only been bitten once, and it had damned near killed him, but it hadn’t dampened his enthusiasm. And it was an easy way to make money, much easier than working in the stables or cleaning floors at one of the hotels. Which were about the only jobs he could have held, given his speech impediment.
With catching snakes, you only had to worry about two things. You had to be quick, and you had to be accurate. Once you got the snake uncoiled—if it was coiled—you needed to catch him right behind the head with the stick, trapping the critter. Then you picked him up, right there behind the head. He might thrash something fierce, but as long as you didn’t drop him after that, you were okay.
Shorty listened for the snake to shake its rattler again. He didn’t have to wait for long. He’d been afraid that he might have to go into the rocks after the rattler, but here it came, crawling right out towards him. The snake seemed neither aggressive nor frightened. It just came crawling toward him, as pretty as you please. This surprised Shorty, but it was a welcomed surprise. Less work for him.
Stepping forward, Shorty used the stick to gently trap the rattler. It offered no resistance as he picked it up. Most snakes would thrash their bodies and hiss at you, but this one
didn’t. It was an awfully curious specimen. Shorty held it up and looked at it.
The eyes, he noticed. Something about the eyes. Snakes had black eyes. But this one didn’t.
This snake had red eyes.
Shorty stood perfectly still for a long time, just staring at the snake. Charley began to get restless. He was old and deaf, but he wasn’t senile. He sensed that something was off-kilter. Had he been a younger mule, he might have skedaddled. But he was old, so he just stood there and waited for Shorty.
Finally, Shorty let the snake fall to the ground. It hit the sand and lay there, lifeless. Then Shorty walked back to Charley and removed the sack containing the other snakes from the pack saddle. He stepped a few feet away and dumped the snakes out onto the ground. They poured out in a twisted, squirming frenzy. Most sped away as fast as they could, seeking shelter. One bit Shorty on the ankle. He didn’t notice.
Shorty climbed back on Charley. Though none too happy about it, Charley didn’t put up a fuss. He sensed a change in Shorty, but he was just an old mule. He turned and headed back toward the city, carrying Shorty with him.
An hour later, Shorty walked into the Palace Saloon. Ned, the bartender, was taken aback. He knew Shorty, of course; quite a few people in Phoenix did. He was somewhat of an oddity, so people noticed him. But he had never before walked into the Palace and bellied right up to the bar, preferring to get his whiskey by the bottle, and always via the back door. So it struck Ned as unusual that Shorty would walk right in, in the middle of the day. But, he guessed, there was a first time for everything.
Ned walked over and gave Shorty a hesitant smile. He’d spoken to Shorty once or twice, and he always hated it because he couldn’t understand a thing the man said. It was awkward, all the way around.
“What’ll it be, Shorty?” Ned asked.
Shorty looked at Ned and smiled.
“My good man,” Shorty replied, “I do believe a shot of whiskey would hit the spot.”
He spoke the words with no trace of a lisp.
The End
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Drovers and Demons Page 14
