by Ivanna Roze
The man behind the counter didn't smile as they came inside, but he didn't look like he was going to fall asleep, either, so Cora supposed it could have been worse.
There was indeed a stage to Silvertown, left once a day. Two dollars, he said. The stage usually left 'round noon, which wasn't for a few hours yet if they wanted to go get something to eat before they left.
Cora looked up at Ashton, hoping he would pick up on the signal in spite of how bullish he tended to be.
"We'll wait."
Cora settled onto the bench and didn't let herself show any disappointment. The man was impossible. Every step forward came with a step back, and every so often he just… moved right back to square one. There really was no teaching him. He was too stubborn, and too perfect to just let it go.
Cora waited beside him, no longer in the mood for the affectionate act. If he was bothered, he didn't show it. And if he did show it, Cora added silently, then he didn't show it well enough.
When the stage came, it was a welcome distraction from looking angry with Ashton. They didn't have much to carry on, though she now had one new bag, so they at least had that much. Ashton helped the man load it up onto the top of the coach and the driver tied it down as Ash joined her inside.
He gave her a faint smile as he sat down opposite her. A minute later, another man joined them, and decided to sit beside Ash. He made space for the man to slide in.
The new man looked like you might expect the sort of person going to a mining town to look. Shabby clothes, shabby hair pressed down by a shabby hat. His white shirt was stained brown by the dust and dirt, and though it wasn't a hot day there were sweat stains already visible in the shirt. Thankfully, though, Cora couldn't detect any offensive odor about the man. So while he took poor care of his clothing, the man at least had the good taste to bathe.
The ride was uninteresting. A whole lot of not much out in the Utah plains. They were heading south, and from what she understood, they would be heading south for several hours. Most of that time, she had little to look at but the mountains off in the distance and the scrub and brush close by. It was beautiful, but that only entertained a girl so much.
She thought for a moment about starting up a conversation, but between Ashton, who she saw no special reason to talk to if he wasn't going to learn to read the situation, and the sweat-and-dust-stained man beside him, she couldn't find a single person worth talking to during the trip. So, excruciatingly boring, she just passed the trip in silence.
The cold hit her all of a sudden like a hard gust of wind. The same sort of bone-chilling cold that they'd been dealing with so many times. This time, though, there was no question what had caused it. Ashton's hand darted immediately for the gun on his hip, which made the other man suddenly press himself into the wall for fear of being shot or robbed.
Cora wrapped her arm around the stagecoach pillar for support, and in that instant she felt something wrap around her arm. It pulled until it hurt, until she thought that her arm was going to come off. She watched with terror, seeing a whole lot of nothing grip her arm as firmly as she could imagine.
Then, as suddenly as it had began, it stopped, and for a moment she breathed a sigh of relief. Then all hell broke loose, sending the stage sprawling across the dusty plain on its side. The stranger was thrown from the stage an instant before it hit, and the stage made a sickening thump as it hit the ground, leaving little question in Cora's mind what had happened.
Her legs dangled as she tried to hold herself away from the bottom, away from the ground. Ashton did the same, bracing himself with one leg and holding on as tight as he could with his arms. Sometime in the confusion his gun had gone to the floor, and now it was skidding along the dust somewhere back behind them.
He looked ready to scream in frustration, but he had an expression of determination that Cora wasn't sure she could manage if she had to.
They slowed and then stopped. Ash went first, forcing the high door open and pushing himself up and out of it. "Stay there!" He took off. She could hear his boots stamping in the dirt as he ran hard for where she could see his gun was left.
A face appeared above her a moment later. A body followed a moment later. The man looked to be in his fifties, dark hair graying throughout, but he looked hard and capable. He reached down a hand without giving his name. "Let me help you up."
"What happened to the driver?" She didn't take his hand, but she had to admit that she wanted to. Anything to be out of that stage.
"He fell under the wheels, it's what sent you over."
"Are you sure?"
"I was just passing by." The wind howled as it passed across the open windows of the stage, making a strange whistling noise. "I saw you go down, and knew I needed to do something about it. I can't imagine if I passed by and someone was hurt."
"It's not safe, you need to leave," she said, firmly. If this was a nice man, then he needed to know that they hadn't been knocked over by bad luck, or someone going under the wheels of the stage. They were under attack.
"If it's not safe, then we need to get you out of there."
"Please. My riding companion, he'll protect me."
"I can't leave you down there. He can protect you just as well outside the coach, can't he?"
She pursed her lips. It made sense, she supposed. She reached out and took his hand. She gasped at the cold and tried to let go, but by then it was already too late.
Twenty-One
Ashton grabbed the pistol and scrambled hard. Someone was leaning into the cabin, he could see. Might have been the driver, and if it was then he would thank the man. Right after he made sure that there wasn't something very worrying going on.
"Hey!"
The man leaning in didn't make any attempt to turn and answer for what he was doing. He didn't seem to react at all, in fact. Just kept reaching inside the cabin. The wind was blowing so hard, though, that it might have been he didn't hear. Ashton looked around. Wind this hard, cold this deep, they were close to him.
And not some dust-shade, either. No, they were close to the real deal. Ashton should have been worried about that. It meant a big risk for Cora, and it meant better-than-even odds that he would be joining Peters.
Unlike his teacher, who had been buried properly with all his students around, it seemed more likely that he was going to be buried in an unmarked grave, if there was anyone left to bury him at all, once he was done.
But if that was going to happen then he would make damn sure that it happened after he killed that thing. He raised the barrel of his pistol to point it at the man. Ash wasn't a killer, but if it was to keep Cora safe and kill the thing that took his master away from the world, then this once he would take the risk.
As his finger started to squeeze, fighting against the cold making it hard to even move, the man—though as he looked now, it couldn't have been a man—got its weight onto its feet, and leapt straight up.
Ash didn't want to believe his eyes. He'd sworn that he had seen a skirt billowing behind in that split-second, as it began its ascent before winking away into nothing as it got too far to see. One jump. One god-damned jump had sent it more than a mile. The force of landing from a jump like that would kill her, all by itself. Never mind what the thing that had taken her would do.
There was always the risk, though. Always the hope that he had just made up whatever he thought he had seen. He took a deep breath and started running again. There was the stranger, a broken and bloody mess in the dust. His last mistake had been getting anywhere near either of them. Ashton mourned him for an instant as he ran by, no more.
He took the side—now top—of the stagecoach with a single hard jump, pushing and vaulting himself up onto the side, letting his momentum carry him a little way past the door. Empty. God-damned empty.
Ashton screamed out a curse, the heat of the sun starting to warm the chill that had set in. That had been it. That had been him. Ashton was sure of it. What else could it have been?
Th
e best opportunity they had ever had, possibly the best they ever would have, to get revenge for his master, and he'd let it go. For what? Because he was afraid of shooting a man?
He fought to keep himself from screaming. He'd have to make it to town somehow. The horses had been pulled over when the stage went down, and neither made an attempt to get back up. They just looked at him with sad, confused eyes as he looked them over for a moment.
There was important work to be done, but he couldn't bring himself to let the animals suffer. He said a few words for the dead and dying and eased the horses passage into the next world.
Then he went back to following the stage line. He'd glanced at a map of the route, and it was mostly straight. It would take the rest of the day to even hope to make it into town, but there wasn't much choice. He had to do what he had to do, after all.
Ashton didn't let himself think about anything as he walked, sometimes jogged. It was still early in the season, and there was even grass growing some places. It wasn't quite the hellhole he'd imagined out here, but this was exactly why he stayed back east. Too much danger, too little civilization.
If he exerted himself too much, he would feel the lack of water sorely. The good news was, from the place markers he could make out, they had made it most of the way. He would make it before the dark came. If he didn't, then it wouldn't change what he had to do. There was no way that he could leave Cora behind, not with a creature like the one that had killed the other men on the stage, had killed King Peters and who knew how many others. A death march suited him just fine.
He made the best time he could, though. As much as he deserved to be taken in the darkness of night, Cora needed him. He wasn't about to abandon that duty.
The town, when he finally reached it, was empty. Or at least, near enough to it. A dozen shops, each of them manned. Ten or twenty women walking from place to place, some of them standing there gossiping.
Ashton could feel that he'd torn his god damned jacket again, just like he'd known would happen. He was walking through town, covered in trail dust and wearing a hundred-dollar suit torn into a nickels'-worth of rags. If he wasn't filled with such a terrible sense of purpose, it might have been humiliating.
The first stop was the telegraph office. He'd seen the lines running along the stage line, and someone needed to get word back that their driver had died.
"I need a message sent back to the city."
"What should it say?"
He thought for a second. "Driver dead. Stage overturned."
The man scrawled about as fast as Ashton could say it, and then asked him for a quarter. Ashton paid up and left. He wasn't about to begrudge them the money when he had other things to take care of.
As he walked out, though, an idea occurred to him.
"You know anything about a family around here? Husband and several wives. Can't say about children."
The telegraph officer shook his head, but he had a look on his face like the answer wasn't 'no.'
"Thank you for your time, then," he said. No reason to cause too much trouble. Not yet.
He made his way out into the town, slipping the jacket off his shoulders as he did, emptying the pockets into his blue jeans. It made a strange, uncomfortable bulge in his pocket that would take time to get used to. By the time he had, he'd be back in Cincinnati and he could get a new jacket.
That, or he'd be dead, and then the discomfort wouldn't exactly be any sort of problem.
Twenty-Two
Cora didn't know what was going on until she set her feet on solid ground again, and she didn't want to know. All she wanted was to know that she was going to survive the next thirty seconds. Whatever it was, she knew that the man whose hand she had taken was nothing like a man. He was some sort of creature, but he was man-shaped.
And, now that she got a look at him, he was quite a specimen as far as men's shapes went. Lean in all the right places, with a pleasant width to his frame that would have been flattering on anyone with the way his hips came together.
"Are you hurt?"
"No," she said softly. That wasn't what she needed to know, though. What she wanted to know was where she was. Why had she been brought here? Could Ashton find her before she got hurt?
She wasn't about to ask this creature any of those questions. That would have been suicide, she knew. If it caught wind for even an instant that she wanted to leave, then she would get her wish, but she wouldn't be leaving quite the way she wanted to.
"Come on," it said. The cold was still powerful, burning its way through her. Why couldn't she get warm?
She knew why. That man. That… thing.
He turned, a tired smile on his face. "Let's get you out of the elements. It's much cozier inside, and I think there's someone who wants to meet you."
It was hard to reconcile what she knew with what she was seeing in front of her. Whatever he was, he wasn't human. That wasn't good, she knew. Couldn't be good. He'd brought her here under the pretense of helping her out of the stagecoach cabin and nothing more. The lie only made her doubt more.
But now that they were here, now that the damage was done, the man had taken over again, and the man was… surprising, to say the least. Almost kind.
She looked back in the direction they'd come from. She couldn't even begin to guess how far they'd come, except that she couldn't see where the stage had fallen any more. It could have been five miles or a hundred, and she wouldn't know any better.
She turned back toward the big house and started making her way into it.
The minute she passed through the door she could feel the cold melting away. Like he'd gone away. Cora let herself wonder about that for a while, but she knew there wouldn't be any answers, not for her. Not here.
"Come on, this way."
She let herself be led by the man. There was something about the way he was acting that seemed strange. Now that they were there, his attitude wasn't just kind, wasn't just thoughtful. He seemed nervous about something, as if this was the critical moment in some grander scheme.
They stopped outside a closed door, and the man-shaped thing turned to her and spoke softly. "Stay there until I call for you, alright?"
"Why?"
"… Please."
Cora looked it in the eyes and saw the pleading in them. She nodded and stepped back a bit. The door opened and the man walked inside.
"Good morning, sunshine. Are you feeling alright?"
"John, is that you?"
"It's me."
"Why is it so cold?"
The long, sad silence that followed almost made Cora feel bad.
"I've brought you something."
"What is it?"
"It's a surprise, darling."
A woman came up behind her, almost making her jump. Cora caught herself at the last moment. The woman spoke in whispers. "Are you our new sister?"
"What?"
"Oh, John is so wonderful. You won't miss your old life. You won't miss it one bit."
"I don't want to stay here."
The woman looked past her at the open door. "Poor dear. Are you—you aren't. You couldn't be."
"Come in, dear," came a call from inside. Both of them started moving at once, and as she stepped inside she noticed others coming along as well, in their own time.
"Say hello, Sunshine."
"Hello. John, what's going on?"
The woman lying in the bed stared into the room with unseeing eyes. She looked tired, even frail. Whatever had taken her sight had taken her strength, taken everything from her. She was sitting up, though, her back propped against pillows.
Cora tried to speak, but found that she couldn't. The words wouldn't come. So many questions answered, but now that she finally had what she had come looking for, her voice failed her. Finally, coming out like a croak, she managed to get one word out.
"… Momma?"
The blind woman's eyes went wide, and she reached out into the empty air. "Cora?"
Twenty-Three
/>
It was damn hard to find the place, Ash thought. He didn't mind that. Of all of the things about this job, finding the place was the most normal. Working a case like this almost brought an air of normalcy to it.
Nobody seemed to have seen them, per se. They'd all heard stories from a friend of friend about a place outside of town, but which direction seemed to vary.
That was how it often was hunting Devils. Twice as many stories as there were leads, and three times as many rumors as stories. Half-remembered and half-whispered to folks in the night. But they were out there, and he hunted them, and compared to some of the hucksters out there, he was good at it.
Ash pulled a little amulet out of his bag. Not much different from the protective amulets he used, except for the thin iron chain that held it around. The whole thing together might have weighed a quarter of a pound, but even that quarter of a pound was heavier than he wanted to have around his neck all the time.
Walking into hell seemed like a good chance to find a use for the thing. The stories had common threads, and that was how you always rooted out Devils. You see where the stories are common, make a few educated guesses, and go rooting around in the dark for a while.
It was never surprising, not any more, what he found. But Ashton had a sneaking suspicion that this case might be a little different. Especially since the connecting threads were all about the places being isolated, hard to find from the outside. Folks wandered into a box canyon, they said.
Or, no, they were herding goats in the mountain. Or, wait, this time—
The one thing he knew for sure was that it wasn't anywhere too obvious. The rest was a hodge-podge of stories that weren't true, stories that were only half-remembered, and if one of them was true then he'd be surprised.
But that didn't mean he wasn't going to check first. It would take time, and that was time he didn't really have, but the alternative to doing the leg-work was not being able to find the place. It brought things a little bit into perspective. He could afford the time after all, if that was the alternative.
