by Ivanna Roze
"What makes you think that it will work this time?"
"I'm an old man, Cora. I'm not young, like you, or even like your mother. I've been walking this country since near three-hundred years ago, and I just don't have the energy I used to."
"So what does that mean for my mother?"
"I need energy. I need someone to let me use their energy to work my miracles. If you had been here only a little sooner, enough time to get to know me, then maybe I could have asked you for this. But I couldn't. It wouldn't have been right."
"What would I have to do?"
"If we were to become—I'm sorry. This is too forward."
Cora grit her teeth together for a moment. The whole conversation confused her, and she didn't like being confused. She liked being left in the dark even less. More than that, though, Cora couldn't abandon her mother in her time of need, not if it was within Cora's power to save her.
"Tell me what I would have to do."
"Well, the most painless way to extract that energy is to—"
Cora blushed as she realized what he was asking her for. Then she blushed harder, suddenly realizing exactly what she had been asking her.
"I wouldn't do that to you, of course. You're my wife's daughter. I love my wives, and I wouldn't want to do anything improper with someone who I wasn't married to."
"No, of course not," Cora agreed, her words coming out faster than she intended.
"But if we were to marry…"
She wasn't as disturbed by the idea as she should have been. She was ready to accept an arranged marriage if it was for her brother, or for her father.
Why wouldn't she accept it for her mother? Would that be so wrong? A voice in the back of her head told her that she should temper her embarrassment and give it serious thought.
"Can I have a few days?"
"I told you, Cora. You can stay as long as you need to."
Twenty-Nine
The three of them were riding the rails in silence. It wasn't Samson's natural state of being, and Ash could see that it was eating at him, but eventually their talk had started to set him on edge, so he'd asked them to be quiet a while, and they had.
Three days in a box together was enough to drive any man crazy, but when it was two people who you had hoped to avoid apart from the occasional Christmas card it was that much worse. Ash took a breath and looked out the window, waiting for Samson to decide it was time to talk again. Just one more day, he reminded himself.
They'd get into Salt Lake City just before supper time, and they'd all just finished breakfast. Not even a day. A few short hours. It was only going to be a few more quick, short hours until they were able to get working.
It wasn't Sam, though. He kept his mouth shut, and when Hewitt finally said it, Samson looked at him like he'd just peed in the punch bowl.
"Why you never come around, Ash? Before now, that is."
Ashton tried not to show that he'd heard the question at all. That was the real question, wasn't it? Why is it he never came around? New Orleans was as much his legacy as it was Hewitt's. Certainly, as much as it was Samson's.
They kept watch over the place to remember the old man, but he could have done it, too. They'd asked him to, and it had been easy to say the words. 'I'll think about it.' He hadn't considered it for one solitary second, and only an idiot would have thought he might have.
What was he supposed to say? Nobody wanted to sit through his whining about not being good enough. The clerk, Tom, he'd known the score. These two were good men. Capable, well-trained. Ash was better than nothing, and he knew which end of a gun to point at the monsters, but between Hewitt and Ash, there was no question which someone would rather have on their side.
It was just a matter of convenience that got him jobs. Otherwise, everyone would be going down to New Orleans to find a hunter, because everyone knew that was where Peters's boys were.
"I don't want to talk about it," he said, finally.
That seemed like the fairest answer. He wasn't about to make an ass of himself, talking about feelings or some shit like that, a few short hours before he had to get himself messed up storming a Devil's lair.
"I get you, man, you don't have to—" Samson was cut off by Hewitt's glare.
"I'm serious, Ashton. If you have something going on, we need to know about it. I have to know what's going through your head. If you're working alone, you work through your stuff alone. That's fine. But if you're working with me, I need to know I can trust you."
"Then you can't."
Ashton didn't look back from the window. He liked the countryside out here. The change in lifestyle wasn't as much as he'd thought, either. Not if he stayed in a city. The isolation of it all, though, was beautiful. The scrub, the plants, it all looked so different. Alien, even, but beautiful.
Hewitt reached across the cabin and grabbed his face, forcing Ashton to look at him. Ash stood up, ready for a fight in half a second.
"You want to make something of it?"
"Ashton, nobody blames you."
"It was my fault, though, wasn't it?" Ashton let out a long breath and sat back down. "If it weren't for me, the old man would be fine."
"Don't say stupid shit, man. Nobody thinks that."
"Then I think it."
They were silent a while longer, the same uncomfortable silence they'd ridden in for most of the trip. Samson was still fidgeting, though Ashton didn't think that he wanted to talk any more. Finally Ash reached into his bag and pulled out the rolled-up magazine.
"Here you go, Sam. Read this. It's only a few more hours until we hit Salt Lake City."
Hewitt looked at him with a mix of frustration and concern. "What the hell is that supposed to mean, Ashton?"
"I was done with it."
"That's not what I meant, and you know it."
"I told you that I don't want to talk about it."
"So, what. When we get there, and some Devil's rootin' around in your noggin, I'm supposed to just be flying blind? Cause they—"
"I know they can do that, Hewitt, I ain't an idiot. I may not be a real hunter, like y'all. May not have ever finished my training, but I finished my first day of training, at least."
Ashton couldn't force himself to keep looking out the window. It was the better thing to do, but all he could do now was shoot Hewitt the challenge to agree with him. Go ahead, see what happens, he thought.
"Oh—I see now. It's about that, is it?"
"Not the whole thing."
Hewitt sucked in a breath and leaned back. The cabin was crowded with the three of them, but with his long legs it seemed like he could practically reach them across to Ashton's bed if he wanted to.
Once he'd let the breath out and taken another one in, Hewitt leaned back forward, his face almost teasing now.
"Ashton, are you a god damn idiot? I know you're not stupid—you probably read that damn magazine in ten minutes, and you could probably read it back to Samson while he holds it in his hands just from the first time. So you ain't stupid, but you just might be the biggest idiot I ever met."
"Go to hell."
Ashton forced his eyes back to the window. This could get dangerous fast. He could already feel the heat rising in his chest. This was why he never went around. To avoid this exact conversation. He hadn't figured on it coming from Hewitt. He was usually pretty easygoing. Hewitt and Samson being on the line for watching New Orleans made them the best choices.
Aside from Sam's joker act, he was pretty cool with what he said to folks, and Hewitt was the one who usually cut him the most slack out of all the boys. Or, he had, before. Now it seemed like he wasn't in the slack-cutting business.
"Ashton, the old man's death had nothing to do with you."
"You don't know that. We were only out there because of me."
"Because you called that there was something out there. Nobody else thought anything of it. We all figured it was a couple different Devils running around, making trouble. You said there was a pattern, but you coul
dn't place what it was, and sure enough, there was something there."
"Don't patronize me, Hewitt."
"Samson, tell him."
"He's not wrong. I mean, you know—Louisiana's pretty quiet, right? So we have some time to spare, and we've gone over it a few times. We have plenty of time to look over reports coming in, folks sending messages asking for our help, right? So we look for him. The thing that took the old man."
"Yeah, I thought we were all supposed to be doing that."
"Haven't you been?"
"Yeah, but I mean—what are you getting at?"
"We figured out a long time ago there ain't a snowball's chance in hell we find the thing."
"So, what, you stopped looking?"
Hewitt shrugged, and then Ash couldn't hold the frustration back any more. He pulled back and slugged him in the mouth.
"You stopped looking, you son of a bitch?"
"We can't figure what to look for, Ashton. You're the only one ever saw it! And, no offense, baby brother, but you ain't exactly around to consult on that shit, are you!"
Ashton settled back into his seat, straightened up his clothes. "Not exactly, no."
"Nobody blames you, Ash. Not for the old man." Samson's face was in an unusually sincere expression for a moment before twisting into an impish smile. "And as for slugging Hewitt… Well, I say you deserve a medal."
Ashton didn't smile back. Instead, he turned to lay down on the bed. "Whatever you say, man."
Thirty
It was an odd thing, having someone ask you to marry them. That it was someone who was already married to her mother only made it stranger. That it was a non-human someone… well, perhaps it was all strange, wasn't it?
There was nothing normal about the situation, which made it all that much harder to do what Cora had always done. She was used to everything being a simple matter of manners and grace. Now she was starting to realize, however, that the ground beneath her feet wasn't supported by anything at all. She was just wandering in the darkness, and any minute she could break right through the thin ground and be totally alone.
Ash, she thought, was not coming. If he was, then he would have done it by now. That he didn't was as clear an indicator as anything that something was very, very wrong. Maybe after the way that she had left it, he thought she was choosing to stay.
Or maybe he couldn't come back for some reason. Maybe he'd caught wind of the Devil that had killed Martin, and had overturned their train. The thing that had been after them all this time. He'd tried to shoot it before, but he said that they all had a physical presence. Something that made it so that they could be close enough to where they were doing their thing.
She hadn't seen anything physical but the dust on the wind either time. Just a strange apparition made out of dust and tricks of the eyes. If the dust was the physical presence—well, for one thing, that was a terrifying thought. She pushed it out of her head. And besides, Ashton had shot it. The apparition had disappeared, but it had reappeared again, right outside the hotel.
So he sure hadn't killed it. Could he?
Maybe whatever it was had gotten him. It seemed keen on killing anyone around her, and it had gotten most of them. Maybe it just took a few extra tries with Ash.
She laid her head back and tried not to think too much about what it would mean to marry a Devil. She wouldn't be able to go back home again. There would be no justifying why she'd gotten married. She couldn't even say 'I got married to bring Momma back to life,' because they'd throw her in an asylum somewhere.
The choice wasn't going to be easy, and the more that she thought about it the more she realized exactly how not-easy it was going to be. but that didn't mean that there wasn't a right thing to do, either.
She looked out the window in her room. Her mother's room had a window, too, just like it. Some clever design of the house that allowed about every room to have a window in it, in spite of the house being so large. She couldn't figure out how they did it, with all the rooms like that. Something about light shafts and cleverness, Cora thought.
The night was dark, and no moon. She hadn't seen one all night, and she knew that it rose right in view of the window. She should've been able to see it, but all she could see was the black and the stars, and the tops of the trees a little way down the mountain where Enoch hadn't cut them away for the house.
She should have been asleep. She should have been asleep an hour ago, but Cora had tried to for a while. The thought just kept running through her head, what if I'm wrong?
The whole suggestion—that Enoch could take her energy through fucking—was absurd. Or, it sounded absurd, at least. Especially when he insisted on marrying her first, which didn't seem like the sort of thing that a monster would do in either case. The idea that he could bring people back to life, but couldn't do it this time…
All of it seemed somehow suspect. Like it was all crafted to get something out of her that she couldn't quite put her finger on.
But over and over again, that voice in the back of her mind.
What if you're wrong?
What if it was completely within her own power to bring Momma back, and all she would be giving up would be a little social life she'd never particularly enjoyed back in Detroit and the chance at a marriage with some stuffy old wealthy man who probably wouldn't respect her and definitely wouldn't be anything like as polite as Enoch.
Nor, she added before she could stop herself, as exciting as Ash.
She didn't like that she had thought it at all. She shouldn't have, because Ash was, for all intents and purposes, off-limits. But it hadn't stopped her, no more than it had stopped her from having sex with him. She made a mental note not to mention that to Enoch, just in case she decided to change her mind.
She tried to quiet her mind. Her eyes ached from tiredness, even after she closed them. It was time to sleep, and she wasn't going to let a little distraction get to her, not if she could help it. She forced herself not to think about anything, and reached for the warm oblivion of sleep.
Her dreams weren't so bad, this time. She chastised herself when she woke up for having those kinds of thoughts. Two men at once? Nobody had ever proposed it, and in her waking mind she hoped nobody ever would. She couldn't be married to two men. She couldn't have a life with Enoch and Ashton both.
The law would never allow it, but more than that, Ashton seemed too buttoned-up to allow a Devil in his house, regardless of who it was. But in her dream it had all seemed perfectly plausible. A pleasant breakfast, talking to her two beloved husbands, both of them doting on her…
And then after breakfast, they took a trip over to the bedroom, and… she shook her head to get the images out, pushed herself out of bed and stripped off her bedclothes to let them air out. It seemed that as cold as it had been during the night, she'd been sweating. The dream still hadn't faded when she coyly wondered to herself why that had been. It certainly wasn't anything to do with her, was it?
No, it couldn't be. That would be unladylike of her, and she was never unladylike. She made a mental note never to think about what she'd been thinking about again. Then, a moment later, decided that she wasn't going to be so hasty. After all, there was a whole world of possibility out there.
A knock at the door made Cora press herself against it to keep it closed against anyone coming in and seeing her standing there in only her skin.
"Yes, who is it?"
"Cora? It's Delilah. Are you alright?"
"Of course, everything's all right. Why shouldn't it be?"
"I don't want to get you worried, darling, but… Harriett's not doing so great, so we were afraid that, whatever it was took your mother, maybe it was, you know… catching."
Cora pursed her lips. No, she was fine. She was sure of that much, at least. But if Harriett was in bad shape, then…
She let out a breath. She hadn't had a choice about her mother. Nobody had given her a choice. Maybe it would have been too forward, but, Cora thought, she would h
ave rather made that choice for herself. Bringing her mother back from the dead was one thing. She wanted to do it. Oh, God, did she want her mother back.
But could she let another woman die because she was selfish? She already knew the answer before she pulled herself away from the door.
Nobody was going to die because she was too sheepish about what she was going to tell her family.
Thirty-One
Ashton couldn't get off the train fast enough. No, that wasn't true. Samson couldn't get off the train fast enough, and Ashton was only a few steps behind him. But good lord, could that boy move when he wanted to. And after their little chat in the morning, it seemed that none of them absolutely wanted to be in the same room any longer than they had to.
An ideal reunion, it wasn't. An ideal lead-in to the job they were about to do? It couldn't have gone much worse. But now they were there, and it was time to get to work.
The manor—Ashton couldn't think of it any other way—was a few hours south of there, and if they didn't wait around, they could be there by sun-up. Of course, that carried with it dangers of its own. Only a fool would be caught outside, in this territory, at night. They'd dodged a bullet, somewhat.
The new moon had been last night. If they'd given it a shot then, there wouldn't have been much they could do but get themselves killed. Instead, it would be at least marginally better, and at least marginally was as much as Ashton could hope for.
"Ash."
He slowed a minute but didn't turn. He and Hewitt hadn't had the best working relationship so far this trip. He might be provoking something by not looking the man in the face, but he wasn't going to provoke something by doing it.
"Don't rush."
He took in a breath.
"She's been in there for a week, Hewitt, you know that ain't going to be good. We'll be lucky if—"
"You're right. We will be lucky if we find her alright. And I know we can't afford to risk your girl's hide, neither."
Ashton decided that he shouldn't lie by trying to protest.
"But if we wind up dead before we ever get there, what's that going to do for her? A whole lot of nothing, and you know it. So let's slow it down, take it easy, and do this smart."
