Shadow Soldier (The Gunsmith Book 2)

by C. K. Crigger

  “Gotta question, Walsh. You happen to hear or see a woman around here a while ago? She’d have been looking for somebody, calling a man’s name.”

  Walsh gave him a brief, narrow-eyed glance before turning and, with wary caution, raising his head barely far enough over the edge of the trench to watch the ground in front of them. He coughed out a short laugh. “Well, I’d hope she ain’t out here callin’ her dog, Sarge. But no. You nuts? There ain’t been no women on this battlefield. You musta got your brains scrambled by that shell, if you thought you saw a woman.”

  Caleb closed his eyes briefly, sagging with fatigue and relief. “Of course. You’re probably right.” He stood, almost rubbing elbows with Walsh.

  Where in God’s name was Boothenay, if she wasn’t here? Where in God’ s name was here?

  “Heads up,” Walsh sang out. “Here they come.”

  Caleb, with the air of a man well versed in the art of warfare, raised his rifle, taking aim at the rush of enemy troops.

  CHAPTER 5

  My first thought, of course, was to go after Caleb. Or maybe this wasn’t really a thought, but an automatic reaction.

  Scott read the intention in my expression. He slammed shut the lid of the gun case where the.45 lay, as malevolent looking as ever, before I could snatch it up. So close had I been that the lid clipped the end of one of my fingers, leaving a tiny blood blister on the tip. There must have been pain, though I didn’t feel it. Then there was the panic. Of the two, the panic was the harder to deal with.

  “No,” Scott said, his voice shaking. He scooped up the gun, container and all, lodging it under his arm.

  “What do you mean, no? Give me that!” I tried to grab the case from him, without success, since he’s nearly a foot taller than I am. I felt as though I could see through the walls of the case to where I imagined the.45 Colt shone with exultation.

  “Let go! I’m not letting you touch this fricking thing.”

  “Scott! For God’s sake! What do you think you’re doing? I’ve got to go after Caleb.” I tugged frantically at his arm, yanking it lower, though not low enough for me to take the gun from him.

  “Go after him?” Scott choked. “Go after him where? Where the hell is he?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’ll find him.” I hung on his arm.

  Yet I fought against a rising wave of black despair. Where? Realization pounded at me. I knew where, just as I knew when. I’d been too wary—more—too frightened of the Colt to want to delve into its history. Apparent now, my fear was justified.

  There was another thing I comprehended, something that hadn’t clicked with Scott as yet, and which I felt bound to point out.

  “Where ever Caleb went,” I said, talking very fast, “every second I delay in going after him lets him get farther away. Well, I can trace him with the gun, so⏤” My voice rose to an imperious shout. “Give me the goddamned gun!”

  “No.” He answered with as loud a shout, the sound reverberating within the confines of the fireproof, burglarproof vault, and bouncing off the stainless steel door.

  “Scott, you idiot, are you trying to lose Caleb?” My fists clenched and unclenched. Desperation made me, not only furious, but rough- tongued and hateful, mean and unfair. Especially when I added, “This is your fault, you know. What on earth possessed you to play around with the Colt? I distinctly told you it’s dangerous.”

  And that was before I’d spoken for a brief moment with the old man earlier today. I’d been a little frightened, though curious, previously. Now I was terrified of the power both the gun and the man possessed. I’d grown up around men and they don’t intimidate me as a general rule. This man had.

  If possible, Scott turned paler at my accusation. “Oh, good one, Boothenay. Blame your damn voodoo on me. Caleb wanted to see the piece, so I showed him. How the hell was I supposed to know—”

  Into our shouting match, Sonja’s soft inquiry injected a note of reason. “What is going on with you two? I could hear you from the top of the stairs. Are you trying to wake your father with your quarrel?”

  I ignored her. “Quit being such a jerk, Scott. Give me the gun.”

  “Not hardly.” My brother, stubborn to the core, wasn’t about to relinquish his hold and give up playing God.

  Still, we lowered our angry voices a fraction. No, we didn’t want to awaken Dad. Not yet. Not until we had to. But someone would have to deal with Sonja. Or Scott would have to deal with Sonja, I decided. She was none of my responsibility.

  “I heard you talking about Caleb. Where is he?” she asked. She stood in the doorway, looking around the vault, before turning to check the darkened shop. “I thought he was down here with you. You didn’t have a fight with him, too, did you, Boothenay?”

  Oh, sure. Blame me. Scott’s and my fight came to a standstill.

  “No,” I said, glowering at my brother. I know he missed my expression because, as I watched, realization broke through to him at last. Sonja had finally prodded him into seeing what wasn’t there.

  His whole body jerked and he glanced wildly at me. “Oh, hell,” he said. “He’s one, too. Another voodooer.”

  One thing for certain: if Caleb was indeed a magician of my own sort, he truly did know how to do a clean, thorough job of disappearing. Far better than I, for when I was cast into the history of a gun, I always seemed to leave traces of myself behind. My family variously described my—shall I say, remains?—as an empty shell, or a shadow, or a faded outline in need of being filled in. Rather grotesque when you think about it.

  But at least this remnant of self gave those waiting for me something to cling to. Some indication that at least a part of me was of this world, somewhere or somewhen, though I might be beyond their touch. I know Dad and Scott had retrieved me more than once with their persistent—and successful—efforts to refill my outline.

  Dear God. Caleb had no such outline, no shell, no shadow. How was I to reach him? Was I already too late? I discarded this notion the moment it entered my mind.

  Scott, recovering from his shock to a point where he was at least vocal, lodged the gun case more securely under his arm and stepped forward to answer his fiancée.

  “Caleb—” He swallowed. “He, um, Caleb stepped out for a minute. He’ll be back. Soon. I’m sure.”

  I don’t know if he was trying to reassure Sonja, himself, or me. If it was me, the ruse failed.

  Sonja’s brow wrinkled with puzzled speculation. “What are you trying to hide from me, Scott Irons? I can always tell when you’re worried about something, especially when you prevaricate.” She turned to me. “Boothenay, what’s up? And don’t tell me Caleb has simply stepped out. I know he must be here someplace. His truck is still parked in the side lot.”

  Scott seized upon this observation like a drowning man who has been cast a line. “Well, then, sweetie, if you know he’s here, what are you worried about?”

  “Because, sweetie, I could hear you and your sister yelling at each other all the way from the top of the stairs. That’s why. You were yelling about Caleb—and a gun.” Sonja smoothed her already perfect hair. “And I didn’t say I was worried. I said you were. Should I be also?”

  She sounded a little as though she suspected us of some nefarious deed.

  “No!” Scott said, with a bit too much emphasis to be convincing. “Of course not. You’re letting your imagination run away with you.”

  I barely heard anything else they said, for Sonja’s words gave me pause and, for the first time in the last couple of minutes, perhaps a glimmer of hope. “I know he’s here,” she’d said.

  Well, what if she was right? What of the possibility of his being just beyond our ken, here in this very room? What if he had merely stepped out? In that case, it must be feasible for him to step back in.

  My fingers, hidden in a fold of my dress, crossed one over the other. Come on, Caleb. The plea blazed large in my brain. Come on home. Yet somehow, a more substantial talisman than crossed fingers seemed necessar
y, especially when long moments ticked by and he failed to reappear. I thought the waiting would kill me. My heart thundered like a racehorse in the homestretch, refusing to slow. I have never been so scared, and at the same time, so angry in my life, suffering in silence with the three of us crammed into a vault the size of a walk-in closet. Perhaps three more minutes passed before I knew Caleb wasn’t going to simply pop back into our space and time.

  Finally, silently screaming from nerves and dread, I ducked past Scott and Sonja and went out into the shop. They followed, Scott still hugging the Colt to him.

  “What is wrong with you two?” Sonja asked again, uneasy as the strain grew. “You’re frightening me.”

  She thought she was scared? I snorted, ignoring her question.

  Scott, not answering, shook his head.

  Stubborn, overbearing lunkhead! Why had he picked this time to play the protective brother? God knows he never had before. All he’d ever done was bitch and take my powers as a personal affront.

  “Scott,” I said, holding my voice steady by sheer determination. Calm—that’s the key. Don’t spook him. “Give me the gun. I won’t do anything stupid, I promise. But I’ve got to see if I can somehow reach him. Please, help me with this. Don’t make it more difficult.”

  A second was all I required. If I could have only one second in which to act, I felt sure I’d be able to circumvent Scott’s vigilance and get to the gun. It never crossed my mind that perhaps the magic in this particular gun wasn’t meant for me. How could such a thing be? I was the gunsmith.

  The relationship between Scott and me is clear. We can trust each other to be bullheaded to the end. He stared at me while I ground my teeth, then he gave a short nod and turned to Sonja, “Go get Dad, will you, honey? I think we need him.”

  She drew breath to speak—probably dying to ask more questions— but eyed my brother with an expression that said she’d learn the whole story later or know the reason why. Then, mercifully, she went to do as he asked.

  He kept careful hold of the gun case while she was gone. I watched him like a cat at a mouse hole. We waited for Dad.

  “WHY ARE YOU SO BOTHERED, Boothenay? I’d think you’d be thrilled Caleb can pull the same kind of tricks as you.” My father voiced his opinion at the same time as he took charge of the gun case.

  “Yeah.” Scott seized on Dad’s words with a palpable look of relief. He must have wished he’d thought of that himself. “Aren’t you the girl who always said she didn’t need a babysitter? Well, I don’t imagine Caleb needs one either. Why should he?”

  Good Lord, they could be so dense. Hadn’t I told them over and over there was something about the Colt that was just plain wrong?

  “I am thrilled, Dad, but remember, he’s only had one other out-of- time experience.” I was lying through my teeth. I wasn’t really thrilled. “I’d feel better if I was with him, that’s all. I never said I had to babysit.”

  “Sounds like it to me,” Scott said. He’d taken Sonja to sit in his Explorer and asked her to wait there for him, though it made her unhappy to be left out of our discussion.

  “Anyway,” he said, “you never had anybody with you. Not before the one time with Caleb and you always made out all right.”

  I couldn’t help thinking I’d been subject to dumb, blind luck. And that sometimes I hadn’t been as all right as I let on. Besides, none of the guns that revealed their history to me had radiated evil like the Colt. Mostly the magic expressed faded revenge that turned, at the last, to grief.

  Still, his words gave me something to build upon.

  “If you think I’ll be okay, then why don’t you give me the gun and let me follow him? He could very well be in trouble without it.” I couldn’t help the sudden tremor in my voice.

  Dad frowned. “What I don’t like is the lack of any of Caleb’s substance here for us to hold on to. You, Boothenay, may have become more ethereal over the years, but you’ve always left at least a shadow.” He shook his head as he walked over to my workbench and set the case down, switching on one of the lamps in an effort to drive away the gloom.

  Scott and I followed him and stood looking down at the innocent leather container.

  “I don’t like it,” he said again.

  “Don’t you think this is my decision?” I asked. I tried to soften the blunt words. “Neither you nor Scott have any conception of the power moving through the guns and into me—and now to Caleb. And I don’t think either of you have the right to keep me from magic’s path. I’m going to use the gun.” I reached, flipping the first latch.

  Dad’s lips thinned to a grim line, though he made no move to stop me. Scott flung up his hand and shrugged, as though to disown any responsibility.

  I flipped the second latch and threw back the gun case’s lid. Same as before, the power propelled a stench of carnage into the workroom air. Gunpowder, chemicals, and roiling, oily smoke. And blood. My head began to pound.

  I took a breath and closed my eyes. Caleb. I said his name, thinking of him, his likeness coming alive in my memory. Before I could change my mind, I slammed my hand over the Colt’s gleaming blue barrel.

  Nothing happened. Nothing. No more reaction than if I’d been Scott.

  “Oh, no. Oh, dear God,” I whispered. Power eddied in waves, but it didn’t want me.

  Dad flashed me a look of utter astonishment, and said, “Boothenay?” on a note of startled dismay.

  Scott stood frozen for a moment, and then, like a man fleeing a nightmare, strode toward the rear door. “Hell and damnation,” he said. “Now you’ve really done it, Boothenay. You’ve gone and lost Caleb. Goddamned voodoo!”

  If he hadn’t been inside, I’m sure he would have spat on the ground beneath his feet.

  “Maybe the time’s come for you to explain to Sonja about me and my extraordinary talent,” I snapped a second before he went out. And since I was feeling vindictive, I added, “And while you’re at it, maybe you’d better warn her the talent could very well be genetic. I inherited it from Mom. Could be your children will inherit it through you.”

  The door slammed.

  Dad’s quiet words hit like a spray of ice water. “Now you know how it feels to be left wondering if your loved one will ever be back.”

  I shuddered.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I have no idea.” I felt a hideous, tearing guilt. I should never have bought the Colt from those kids. I’d always known it meant trouble. My mistake had been in taking for granted the trouble was aimed at me. Who would ever have thought Caleb⏤well. “If Scott hadn’t been so highhanded and kept me from following immediately, maybe I could’ve prevented this.”

  Dad waved me down. “Maybe Scott’s tired of doing all that wondering.”

  Heat rose in my face. More guilt, as I’m sure he meant me to feel. “But this is Caleb. How can he . . . how can you . . . be so calm when it’s Caleb who has vanished? Don’t you care?”

  “Calm?” He snorted. “Does your brother seem calm to you? Do I? Although we should, God knows. We’ve had years of practice. And while we both think a lot of Caleb, we think more of you. Scott was only trying to keep you from getting in a bind.”

  Another bind, he meant. I could hear it in his tone. Like the one last winter when I had first shown Caleb the ways of power. The palm of my hand would forever carry the resultant scars and my mind’s eye remember the vivid gush of blood.

  Ah. Appalled suspicion nudged me. Was that the key?

  I knew Dad would never standby while I deliberately wounded myself and used the blood as a rite of passage. Caleb wouldn’t have approved either, if he’d been around to ask. Luckily for him, I had no intention of asking permission—from anyone.

  As though he reckoned some such thing of me, Dad seemed bound and determined to stay by my side. He sat in his rocking chair by the cold woodstove and watched my frustration grow.

  Caleb did not reappear.

  I kept thinking that any second now Caleb w
ould pop home as quickly as he’d popped away, but he didn’t. Half an hour crawled by, then another. After a while I quit waiting for him. I waited now for Dad to take himself off.

  Only once during this vigil did he initiate a dialog. I soon wished he’d kept quiet.

  “If you found a way to use the power, are you sure you’d end up in the same place as Caleb?” He set the chair creaking to and fro. “Or would you have to start at the beginning, no matter where he is now? Thing is, you don’t know where he’s gone or to what era. If the Colt was machined in 1911, it could be any time in the last ninety years or so.”

  Oh, God. Why’d he have to bring that up? As if I needed anything else to worry about. I shook my head by way of answer.

  “You should think of those kind of things, child. You could spend all your time chasing after him and never catch up.”

  “I’d catch up,” I said. Blind faith.

  “You’re thinking with your heart, not your head.”

  I shrugged. Magic is a thing of the heart. Certainly not the head. What rational person actually believes in magic?

  Dad heaved himself out of the rocker and headed for the stairs.

  “Come on upstairs, Boothenay. You can wait for him just as well there. Sit down, try to read or watch TV or something.” He smiled slightly. “Let me teach you the art of patient waiting.”

  “No. If he comes back I want to be here.” Would it be melodramatic to say I felt as if I must keep watch, honoring a sacred trust?

  “He knows the way upstairs.” Dad tapped the switch plate. “I’ll leave the light on.”

  There seemed no choice but to let myself be persuaded. Once settled in the living room, I sat on the edge of a hassock, eyes fixed, watching a rerun of an old detective show where the Chinese cop was interrogating a suspect.

  Interrogating! I shot to my feet as though touched by a live, electric wire.

  Dad jumped. “What?” he asked. “Is he back? Do you hear him?”