Dust Devils

by Janz, Jonathan

  Perhaps realizing the extremity of his situation, the strong man began to struggle, his iron jaw working, his blunt fingers slapping at Cody’s forearms. But though smaller, Cody had leverage. The twin fell forward, Cody grafted to him like a shadow. He sat on Seneslav’s back and strained against him. There was a cracking noise. Dimly, he heard the man break wind. Seneslav’s struggles dwindled. A weird mewling sound issued from his throat, but Cody refused to take anything for granted. He wound the belt around his wrists and hauled back again, placed a foot in the middle of Seneslav’s back, and soon Seneslav’s arms hung limp. Cody stayed that way, pulling with all he had, until he could no longer pull. He knew not what he was waiting for—the man to bust in half? But still he pulled. And pulled. Then he slumped forward and lay on the ground beside the dead man, utterly spent.

  Cody glanced over at Seneslav and was greeted with the sight of the man’s nearly severed head gaping at him in permanent disbelief.

  Cody closed his eyes and breathed deeply of the night air. By degrees the fragrant sage usurped the fecal smell of death emanating from Seneslav. The air had cooled considerably, but the sweat was still warm all over Cody’s body.

  He remembered Willet and opened his eyes.

  How long had Seneslav had the kid down before Cody intervened? Twenty seconds? Thirty? There was an ugly roiling in his gut. A kid that small and a sinewy powder keg like Seneslav, Willet wouldn’t have stood a chance. The boy was surely dead.

  Cody got up and scanned the darkness for Willet, but there was no movement at all save Sally, who was tossing mad, twitchy looks all over creation.

  “Easy,” Cody told her, though he knew it would have no effect. As he whispered, he gathered a handful of reins. She seemed not to hear him, slowly but surely towing him away from Seneslav’s corpse. It was just as well, Cody thought. He too wanted distance from the body. He couldn’t yet think of the murder as having anything to do with him. He wasn’t a killer. Men like Price and Penders were the killers.

  Cody was nearly upon Willet when he heard a groan. Cody whirled and beheld the little body lying there half-hidden by the scraggly sage. Worried Sally would bolt at any moment, Cody snagged the boy by one trouser leg and hauled him back toward the horse. If Willet’s wounds were fatal, well, getting dragged wouldn’t make any difference. If they weren’t fatal, so much the better. Cody was banking on the latter, for despite Willet’s barely conscious state, the boy’s body seemed intact. There was one cut a few inches to the left of where his belly button would be, but other than that and the gunshot wound to the leg, it looked like Will T. Black was in decent shape.

  Careful not to touch the glistening gash in the child’s stomach or the injured calf—it didn’t appear to be bleeding too badly—Cody lifted him up into the saddle, leaned him forward onto the animal’s neck and climbed on behind him.

  He urged Sally into a trot as quietly as he could, but it was an awkward struggle managing Sally’s skittish nerves and preventing the kid’s limp body from lolling right off the saddle. They couldn’t dally though, for at any moment one of the remaining two devils might come charging out of the darkness to tear Cody and Willet apart.

  A sinking feeling in his gut, Cody whipped his head around, sure Price or the other Seneslav would be right behind them. But the barren hardpan was devoid of life. Just where the hell had they gone?

  They’d ridden for less than a minute when a bloodcurdling wail arose behind them. It perplexed Cody nearly as much as it frightened him until he understood who was wailing and why the heartbreak was so profound. Then, thinking of the other Seneslav twin back there discovering his dead brother, fear usurped all of Cody’s other emotions. If they weren’t in trouble before for what happened to Penders; if Price somehow managed to forgive them Horton’s murder; even if those two unlikely events took place, Cody knew that the slaying of one twin would never be brooked by another. It seemed entirely natural that Dmitri or Dragomir Seneslav—whichever one was still alive—would harbor a death vow toward his brother’s executioner.

  Cody spurred Sally faster, and even though Willet was only half-conscious, the boy held tighter to her without complaint.

  Chapter Five

  An hour’s ride brought them to the edge of an imposing run of badlands. Cody had meant to head back the way they’d come, thinking to find the boy medical attention in Las Cruces, but he must have veered the wrong way at some point.

  His calf a screaming agony, Cody slid off of Sally, whose breathing had grown harsh and uneven. If he didn’t water the old girl soon, she’d be a goner.

  He tugged on the boy and caught him in a rough embrace. Willet was conscious, but he was mumbling gibberish about bloodsuckers, about monsters in the woods. Cody tried not to think about the boy’s words as he rested him on the hard earth. Then, his own calf throbbing from the knife wound, he flopped down beside Willet. He wanted to find water for them and Sally, but at the moment all he could do was rest. Cody closed his eyes and forced himself to think.

  That the devils would follow them he had no doubt. This was the true reason he’d hoped to reach Las Cruces. There, he might find someone who’d believe his story. Back in Tonuco, Cody had been ridiculed as a fool when he rode into town claiming Angela had been butchered and eaten. Every man there already knew what had transpired with Angela and the actors at the inn.

  Against his will, Cody recollected that first awful night, the night he’d lost his wife to the devils. He’d ventured into the Crooked Tree a short while after she’d gone inside with Price. Under his breath he’d told her it was time to head back to their ranch. Angela had made a scene. Red-faced, with those bastards Horton and Penders smirking at him, Cody had stormed out of the bar.

  But after a walk through town in the deepening twilight, he’d decided that maybe he’d overreacted. It was true that Angela had always talked of becoming an actress. He’d invariably reacted to this aspiration with indulgent politeness. After all, what were the chances of Angela actually making good on her wish? But now that it was here, he figured he might as well keep an open mind about it.

  He returned to the Crooked Tree and took a seat in the back of the house. A placard outside the saloon read THE RETURN OF THE MAIDEN CARMILLA. Damn near everyone in Tonuco had packed the Crooked Tree for the performance. Cody did his best to blend in with the jostling, shiny-eyed men, but there were sniggers and contemptuous grins directed at him nonetheless.

  Soon, though, they forgot about Cody and focused on Angela. She first appeared as a maiden walking through the forest. Her blond hair lustrous in the manufactured stage moonlight, she had never looked so beautiful. The white gown they’d given her was slit high—nearly to the waist. As she glided through the forest, Cody caught glimpses of her milky thigh that made his throat constrict. Several male voices hooted and catcalled, but she seemed not to notice. Then a dark figure appeared from behind a tree and everything grew silent. The figure was tall, elegant but wholly evil.

  The first time Adam Price approached Angela, Cody nearly leaped onto the stage to intervene. The malice radiating out of his face and his black flowing cape made Angela seem utterly vulnerable. Cody even took a step in the direction of the stage, thinking to rescue her from Price’s clutches. To make matters worse, two more figures had joined Price, a pair of square-jawed twins with short, dark hair and fair skin. Like trained panthers they prowled on all fours on either side of Price, starting and halting at his sibilant commands.

  Then Horton appeared.

  Looking virile in his open-throated flannel work shirt, Horton stepped between Angela and her pursuers and demanded that Price recede into the shadows. For the first time Cody realized that Price and the twins were supposed to represent vampires. Their white teeth gleamed sharp and hungry in the flickering stage light as they stalked their prey. Horton produced a gun but Price kept coming. The gun fired—a sound absolutely realistic in the confined space of the Crooked Tree—and Price staggered. But the vampire strode on. Horton fir
ed another shot, and when this one did even less to impede the vampire’s progress, the young man shouldered Angela and hurried offstage.

  In the next scene Horton was placing Angela on Penders’s bed and explaining to his stage father what had happened. Penders listened sympathetically and told his son to go stand watch at the front door.

  Angela proceeded to explain that in another life she’d been transformed into a vampire and had become a slave to her own insatiable thirst. She had preyed on young women and had therefore deserved her ultimate fate.

  Because Cody’s father was such a prodigious reader, Cody was familiar with the story, having read Carmilla only a month or two before meeting Angela. Of course, he’d never mentioned the tale to her, which was why he found it uncanny that she could essay the role so effectively. Granted, it was obvious she was improvising her lines, often pausing or stumbling to keep up with the other actors. Yet despite this, she was convincing in the role. Like Le Fanu’s eponymous temptress, Angela’s Carmilla was at turns vulnerable and beguiling, naïve and infinitely wise. She explained to Penders’s character that she’d been given a second chance on earth by the most merciful God, but that her redemption had been marred by the unceasing attempts of other vampires to reindoctrinate her into the life of a bloodsucking predator. Price and the twins, of course, were three of these vampiric fiends.

  Angela begged Penders to please protect her from the monsters. Penders said he’d do his best. Angela declared her willingness to do whatever it took to show Penders her gratitude. Penders asked what she had in mind.

  Then the pain began.

  Sitting on the bed next to Angela, who lay in a half swoon, Penders began to stroke first her pale arms, then her shoulders. When his big hands graduated to her breasts, Cody thought he would die of grief and humiliation.

  Yet he couldn’t look away.

  It wasn’t arousal he felt—not as Penders drew down Angela’s top and began lapping at her pink nipples—it was something akin to death. The woman he married was not the woman allowing herself to be defiled onstage in front of fifty men. The Angela up there was something else entirely, an accursed creature of the night. Even though she hadn’t yet taken her belongings from the ranch, she was already lost to Cody.

  As Penders’s hand slipped under the hem of Angela’s dress, the house lights were snuffed.

  Wild applause and a few frustrated groans accompanied the changing of the scene. When the guy they’d hired to orchestrate the lighting finally got enough kerosene lamps going to illuminate the stage again, the set had changed to the suggestion of a horse barn. Horton was alone onstage with a pitchfork in his hands; shirtless, he was miming the work of tossing hay. He paused to wipe the sweat from his brow, and as he did, his father poked his head in the door of the stall and announced he’d be heading into town to buy supplies for their visitor.

  “How’s the girl?” Horton asked.

  “Still resting,” Penders said with the merest hint of lasciviousness.

  Horton watched after his dad and soon went back to work. Barely any time passed before Angela appeared in the doorway of the barn, a glass of water in her hand. Her hair was tousled, her dress boldly open to reveal a wide swath of cleavage.

  Cody leaned against the wall, numb to it now.

  Angela handed Horton the glass. As he drank from it, her frank gaze traveled down his bare chest, his ridged stomach. When he finished the glass at a gulp, he wiped his mouth and regarded her hungrily. She asked him something—Cody couldn’t make out what—and he stepped toward her and chucked the glass against the wall. It shattered. Horton enfolded her and kissed her. Angela yielded herself up. He tore the straps of her dress and began to lick her bare shoulders. Then the rest of the gown slipped down her body, and Cody saw without surprise that she was naked beneath. The men in the audience whooped and hollered as Horton’s hands kneaded her bare buttocks.

  That’s my wife, Cody thought. That’s my goddamned wife.

  The scene ended before Horton could rut with her in front of God and everyone, and when the house lights came on for intermission, the men around Cody began to slap him on the back and offer to buy him drinks.

  “That’s some woman you got there, son,” one old man crowed, his voice rank with something like curdled cheese. Cody longed to stick his .32 in the man’s leering face, but he knew if he did that, his life would be over tonight, and then he could never kill the men he was truly angry with.

  After what seemed an eternity, the house lights dimmed.

  Angela had her feet kicked up on a table. She wore a revealing, dark-green dress now, one that suited her character much better. She was filing her nails and watching Horton pace around the kitchen.

  “He should be back by now,” Horton was saying. Penders was several hours past due, and Horton was about to strike off into the woods in search of him when the huge man lurched onstage, his bedraggled body a horror of cuts and bruises. Price and his men, Penders said, had gotten him. They were furious at Penders for harboring the girl. Horton had to avenge him, Penders said. Then the huge man died in his son’s arms.

  Good riddance, Cody thought.

  But Penders wasn’t dead after all.

  In the penultimate scene, when Horton found himself backed into a corner by the Seneslav twins with all his ammo spent and nothing but the pitchfork with which to defend himself, his burly father stumbled onstage with what looked like a long wooden spear. One of the twins whirled just as Penders plunged the spear through his chest. It was obvious that the sharp tip had merely slipped between the twin’s arm and his side, but from Cody’s angle, it really did appear as though it pierced the man’s heart. The still-living twin gaped at his brother, who fell lifelessly onto the stage. Horton, seeing his advantage, impaled the remaining Seneslav with the pitchfork. Horton and Penders watched the twin fall beside his brother on the stage; then father and son grinned at each other.

  Their grins vanished when demonic laughter sounded from offstage.

  In the next and final scene, Penders and Horton rushed onstage to find Price bent over Angela, whom he’d carried into the bedroom, his long white fangs inches from her exposed throat. Penders reached into the bedside table, brought out a wooden cross and brandished it before Price’s aghast face. Demanding the creature leave the lovely maiden alone, Penders drove Price into a corner, where the hissing vampire cast frantic glances about the bedroom. But before Price could find some means of escape, Horton stepped grimly forward with the same stake that had been used on one of the twins. Horton thrust the spear into Price’s heart, defeating the vampire and manumitting the maiden Carmilla from her dread fate.

  The play ended with father, son and Angela locked in a triumphant embrace.

  The stage darkened, and Cody escaped before the kerosene lamps were twisted on again.

  Chapter Six

  They rode on in the darkness. It was at least half an hour before Cody felt safe to ease up on Sally a little. The bone-weary mare let loose with a grateful, low-pitched sigh that showed plainly how hard she’d been toiling. He didn’t know whether it was loyalty to him or sheer terror of the devils that had endowed Sally with such prolonged stamina, but regardless, he was overcome with an urge to lean forward and embrace her mottled neck. Of course, had he done that, Willet might have slipped sideways off his perch in front of Cody, and Cody doubted he had the energy to pick the boy up should he fall.

  From his right came the plaintive call of an owl. Cody started at the sound, which always reminded him of a little dog yapping to be let inside.

  He blew out a tremulous breath. Lord, but he was thirsty. Poor Sally had to be parched too. As he’d invariably found out here in the wilderness, water was never present when you needed it. The wettest thing they’d encountered since escaping the devils was his leaking calf muscle. He knew he had to tend to it soon, yet an atavistic dread of Adam Price kept him moving.

  Got three of them at least, he thought and gazed up at the lucent sliver of moon
. At least, I think we did.

  Cody had a clear image of Penders tumbling down the stark rock face of the valley, heard the brittle thump the big man made when he hit bottom. Like the crunch of a heavy cudgel on the base of a heifer’s skull.

  Cody shivered recalling it, yet it went a long way toward reassuring him. Next to Price, Penders was the devil he’d most feared. He’d been the muscle of the group, though all five were twice as strong as the average man. Almost like the supernatural creatures they played…

  Knock that crap off, a voice scolded. It was Jack Wilson’s voice—his father’s voice—and as often happened, it was accompanied with a hollowing gust of guilt. Cody tried to shake that off too, but the old regret lingered, stronger now than ever because every damned day he seemed to realize more and more just how unfair to his dad he’d been.

  Focus on now, he reminded himself, but the voice was weak, as if whispered through gauze.

  It was the blood loss, he knew. It was past time to stop riding poor Sally toward her grave and time to see what he could do about his and Willet’s wounds.

  Yet he made no move to halt the mare. Idly, he thought about this and realized he was still afraid the devils were following.

  Just how in the hell they gonna follow you, Cody? his dad asked. By smell? They’re men, not bloodhounds. They could no more scent you in the darkness than they could guess you’d have ridden for miles on end through the sage, risking a broken neck for yourself or the boy, not to mention inviting a snapped foreleg for your mare, and then where would you have been?

  We made it though, didn’t we? Cody thought, and raised his chin at the black dome of sky looming over the ghostly skim of hardpan that went on and on. Granted, riding blindly into the wilderness might have been a foolhardy move, but it worked.