If he came back mindless, she would have to remove all healing apparatuses and let him die for good. Would she have to break her promise to not give up?
Jonny came down every few hours, allowing Anna to use their bathroom upstairs and to get herself a couple of small meals.
Finally, while Anna held her father’s head and poured drops of water into his mouth, Creed began to stir. He groaned and shrugged his shoulders, legs flexing against leather. Anna eyed him nervously, waiting for him to fight the restraints.
As she stepped back he stared at her, periodically blinking his new metal eyes. He breathed steadily and wore a blank, observant expression. Was that reason in his gaze? Did he always look this way at potential danger?
“I'm Anna. I'm sorry you must be restrained but there's a lot we don't know. I hope we can let you out soon.” She had a sense of being a child again as she took in his face. The urge to tell him who she was surged into her chest. She opened her mouth to speak, but reason prevailed.
Anna pressed her hands to her chest. “Do you remember who you are?”
His brows lowered in what seemed to be suspicion, but he made no attempt to speak.
“Your name is James Creed. You were a U.S. marshal. The best, as many tell it. You...” How would he react to the news of his death? “You were killed a few weeks ago. I brought you back.”
He glanced at his chest and nodded.
Anna gasped. He understood her! “I hope it doesn't hurt, what I had to do to bring you back.” Creed’s eyes narrowed and he gazed toward the ceiling. “You're in Santa Cruz, California,” Anna said. “You can understand me. I know you can, but I don't know how well, or what you're thinking. Can you speak?”
Her patient remained silent.
“I think you might have tried to when we first woke you. Like I said, my name is Anna. Anna Boyd. You saw one of my steelies and my assistant, Jonny, last time. I couldn't have helped you without them. I think your throat was too dry when you tried to speak, so I’ve been giving you sips of water. You can also let me know if you’re hungry.” She studied him, but all expression had left his face.
“The sooner you can talk,” she said, “tell me what you're thinking, the sooner I'll know I can let you out. You're my hero.” Her breath shortened and her belly fluttered. “I truly do just want to help.”
Anna checked the nearby clock. It was already ten in the evening. She sat down, wanting to stay near him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
After the weeks it had taken to restore Creed to life, the next two days at The House of Amber Doves seemed surreal to Anna, as though she had walked through a door into another time. Sunlight through the red curtains cast a blush over tables, johns, and other customers. The rare steaks seemed a healthier pink, the carrots crisper, and the beer bubblier. The women, her old friends, appeared more beautiful. Their mingling perfume smelled like a flower garden, the winks they gave johns seemed more alluring.
Anna attributed her brightened perceptions this to the progress with her father. She also felt happy spending time with the doves. Though she spent most of her time those two days in the laboratory, sometimes reading old newspaper clippings to Creed about his own adventures, sometimes reading to herself, she enjoyed the hours that she spent in the saloon.
However, she faced new problems. On Sunday, July twenty-third, half a dozen new men arrived, went upstairs with doves, and refused to pay what they agreed to. Of course, the girls denied service, but several times Lucky and Dixie sprung to action to pull bad johns, and one woman, from the bordello. Anna had to remind the ladies to take payment before heading to their rooms.
Charlotte Southered, one of those doves, left on Monday morning with heavy suitcases in hand and didn’t return. Anna only found out at three in the afternoon and rode to the local marshal post to report it to Bateman. He replied that unless they found evidence of foul play, they couldn’t do much. The young lady had a right to go wherever she wanted.
On her return to the parlor, Anna wished she had spent more time working with the women in her employ. She thought everything would take care of itself, but clearly, her presence was important. Yet she wondered what she could have done differently. Only she and Jonny could bring back James Creed, and she couldn’t be in the saloon and in the laboratory at once.
Just after nine that evening, Anna retired to her room, sat on the bed, and stopped to think. Though Creed hadn’t attempted to speak to her for the last two days, he had remained calm, listened to what she had to say, and allowed her to feed him.
Anna went through the trapdoor and down the stairs. Jonny sat at his desk, sketching. Creed’s gaze met hers.
“It’s time. Jonny, Zero, come close.”
With the steely and her lover there, Anna undid Creed's restraints. For the first time since his rebirth, he smiled, then pushed himself to a sitting position. However, the moment he stepped to the ground his legs buckled and the sheet fell away. Jonny and Anna helped him sit.
“You need to exercise, even though you’re exceptionally strong. Maybe it’s just your arms? I don’t know,” said Anna. “We bought some barbells for you. Zero can help you walk, lend you support. If you can start talking to me, I won’t need to keep you here much longer. We’ll have to discuss where you’ll go.”
Creed nodded. Anna helped him sit and told Jonny, “Would you help him dress in the clothes you bought him?” She then strode to the kitchen to get Creed a late supper, something easy for his stomach.
It took about ten minutes for the head cook to let the spuds finish boiling, but about ten minutes after that Anna stepped into her room with the plate of mashed potatoes and gravy, then stopped. Something felt wrong. When it came to her scientific discoveries, Anna’s intuition seemed to come from nowhere. However, her sense of dread and danger came from the environment. Something had flashed in her gaze and touched her mind before she entered her bedroom. She placed the plate on her vanity and stepped back into the hallway.
All seemed fine in the saloon, people laughing, including the girls, and Hattie tinkling a trail tune on the piano. Anna turned to the back door.
“Fuck,” she whispered. The iron doorknob was bent down, wood cracked around it.
Anna rushed to her room, kicked aside the carpet, and fumbled with her key before unlocking the hatch, only to find the floor cracked and the lock jerked to the side. She pulled the handle and swept down the stairs, unmindful of her high-heeled boots and her frilly dress. Half-way down, she stared into the laboratory.
Jonny lay on the operating table with a blood-touched bandage wrapped around his head. Zero slumped over, knees folded under it, head askew.
Creed was gone.
Anna rushed to Jonny's side. The steely and even Creed would have to wait, though she was terrified that her father would reveal himself, that he might even lead Bateman straight to her.
Creed had to be even stronger than she had imagined to break Zero. Clearly, he had also knocked Jonny out, then placed him on the table and bandaged his head. How could he have done this, when he could scarcely stand twenty minutes before? Creed had faked his weakness, of course. Anna shook her head, thinking that she should have known.
Jonny breathed steadily, so Anna took a vial of smelling salts from a medical cabinet, opened it, and waved it under his nose. His nostrils twitched, but he remained out cold. She pushed the bandage aside near his ear, thinking of the broken lock and door handle upstairs. To her relief, Jonny's ether unit had suffered no damage. She palpated his skull without removing the bandage and felt a lump.
Anna knelt by Zero and turned the steely’s head. The thinner back plates that protected its spinal column had been wrenched aside, wires severed. With a sigh, she headed for the stairs, but a flash of beige caught her attention. On her desk sat a piece of paper she had not put there. She approached, staring at the strange yet familiar writing. Her chest tingled as she lifted the note, written in the code she had invented as a child. She had only ever shown it to
her father. Did this mean he remembered her? Did he even realize he had used it? It contained two words.
Payback. Justice.
What sort of payback? Against her? That made no sense. True, he had knocked Jonny out and damaged Zero’s spine, but her partner would recover and she could repair her steely.
Anna dropped the note and rushed upstairs, boots echoing through the laboratory until she climbed through the hatch. Though her dress might slow her down, she had no time to change or to tell anyone what had happened, not even Maybelle.
She hoped Jonny hadn't suffered a bad concussion, but a lot worse might happen with her father in the night on his own, his memories and intentions vague at best. In the saloon, she twisted past a table and a few customers and went to Lucky.
“Come with me,” she told the steely. It followed as she ran out the entrance and toward Smullen’s Stables and Livery. The night air felt cool and humid, and she wiped sweat from her forehead. A stable hand spotted her and Lucky and immediately began to saddle Espiritu.
Within three minutes, she rode her steed down Pacific Avenue with Lucky racing beside her. With no idea where Creed had gone or if she could trust anyone outside her bordello, she decided she would search the entire city if necessary. She both hoped for, and dreaded, the possibility that he would soon make his presence known.
John L. Cooper had closed Cooper Brothers Mercantile after a busy business day. He had given away dozens of lemon and ginger snaps to the children, while more adults than usual bought rifles and revolvers. After the murders of the federal marshals on the centennial, people feared for their safety. Wanted posters for Corwin Blake and a mysterious criminal called Heilong adorned walls all over town.
Marshal Bateman now had a posse looking for Blake and performing arrests, but illegal acts had spiked. The crimes included a train robbery between Scotts Valley and Santa Cruz and the murder of a ranch hand in Railroad Flats.
John’s brother, Mayor William Cooper, frequently urged the U.S. Marshal Service to send replacements, but construction on the new federal post had just started. John himself figured that Blake had accomplished his goal in murdering Creed, then skipped town.
After closing the shop about an hour earlier, John Cooper cleaned up, putting items in their places, sweeping, and preparing the cash box for deposit at the bank the next day. Just as he locked the safe in the back office, he heard the front door rattle.
Cooper placed a hand on his rotund belly and considered bringing with him the gun in his desk. He almost decided against getting it, figuring someone simply forgot how late the store stayed open. Yet he felt the paranoia filling Santa Cruz as well, so he retrieved his Colt Peacemaker. He flipped a switch beside the safe to bring up the store lights. As he strode down an aisle with bolts of cloth and sewing supplies, he looked toward the front door. A thump came, then another. Someone out in the dark was knocking.
When he saw the stranger, he froze, chest aching as his heart drummed. Could it be a ghost?
Porch shadows obscured the man outside. He wore a beige shirt, dark gloves, and denim pants over boots. His cowboy hat kept his face in darkness while a whistling wind from the bay blew the fringes of his dark hair around his pale ears.
Cooper sighed with relief because this tall man clearly couldn’t be Blake or Heilong. Who, then?
He held his revolver behind his back and stepped toward the door. The closer he came, the better he saw the stranger. Silver eyes gazed out from under the stranger’s dark brim. He thought that couldn’t be right. Surely the dark lent his eyes this alien quality.
On the left side of the man’s shirt, Cooper spotted a dark stain. Was it blood? Did the man need help?
“There’s a doctor’s office, two blocks north, near the clock tower,” he stammered.
The stranger propped one arm over his head against the door and stared. The proprietor stepped closer still. The man appeared unarmed, so Cooper asked, “Are you hurt?”
The stranger spoke up in a gravely, quiet voice that somehow still pierced the glass. “Open up, please.”
“What do you want here?”
“Not to rob you. I’m a U.S. Marshal.”
Cooper took in the man’s build, the sharpness of his nose, the cut of his beard, and his height. It couldn’t be! He grasped his chest as his dinner of bacon, biscuits, and coffee burned. That marshal had been killed, shot in the heart, buried. The stranger stepped back and crossed his arms.
With no idea what motivated him, Cooper tucked his Peacemaker into his belt then unlocked and opened the door.
As the man who claimed to be a marshal strode in, Cooper nearly tripped. This had to be a ghost. The stranger’s skin was nearly white, his eyes the color of steel. He walked with the slow confidence of a gunfighter.
“Wait here,” he said, and Cooper caught a whiff of his breath, dank and heavy, like that of a person just recovering from pneumonia.
Marshal James Creed had risen from the dead to haunt Santa Cruz.
Why, then, peruse the Mercantile?
The store contained anything the average citizen might need, and then some. As Cooper went to the counter and leaned over it, legs feeling weak, Creed strode over to the coats. He found a duster in midnight blue and tossed it over his shoulder. Next, he grabbed a large satchel with a strap and shoved into it more clothing: two vests to match the duster, shirts, black denim jeans, socks.
Though Cooper had never seen this spirit in life, Creed carried himself just as he imagined such a man would. Every move seemed full of purpose.
Creed came to the rows of guns and settled on the very best Cooper sold, a pair of new Austin Equalizer revolvers by Austin & Co., with attached blades.
He attached the guns, in their holsters, to his belt, then dropped his hands to the grips as though to see how they felt.
Next, Creed took two ammunition belts loaded with bullets, and wrapped them over each shoulder so they crossed over his torso, before donning the duster. He slipped the satchel strap over his left shoulder.
He then went back to the clothes and took several black bandannas, one of which he wrapped around the lower part of his face to cover mouth, nose, and chin.
Cooper no longer knew what to think. Though he didn't fear for his life, he feared what the encounter meant for his sanity. Perhaps he was dreaming.
Creed reached into his pants pocket as he approached the counter, and Cooper backed away. The marshal placed a handful of gold double eagle coins on the polished redwood, his metallic eyes gazing at the store owner. The marshal then left without a word, wind blowing across a dress in one display window.
Immediately, Cooper shut and locked the door, backed away, and leaned against the counter waiting for a wave of dizziness to stop. When it passed, he looked at the money.
Ten coins. Two hundred dollars. Enough to buy all Creed had taken, twice. What would he tell people about this? What would William think? He decided the best solution might be to keep his mouth shut.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Around town, folks called Edward Hartgraul “the other brothel owner,” or “the big daddy of Plowshares.”
Nancy Hartgraul, his wife, kept their establishment clean and their soiled doves in frilly clothing, but required women working there to perform kinkier acts that many at The House of Amber Doves refused.
Santa Cruz had many stories of Nancy Hartgraul kicking out girls who displeased her, literally pushing them out the front door if she saw them as too old, too skinny, or too ugly. Many prostitutes at Plowshares wished that Anna Boyd's parlor had room for them.
On the night of July twenty-fourth, the middle aged, middling height madam of Plowshares had screamed at their newest girl, Charlotte, who had just started working for them that morning, and chased her out the door. The new whore had come from Amber Doves after getting in a fight with another girl.
Since starting at Plowshares, Charlotte brought in too little money. Nancy expected enthusiasm, and Charlotte didn’t have enough for the H
artgrauls.
Discipline fell to Edward, the big daddy.
A half block from Plowshares, he gripped her left biceps. He brushed sweat from his brow with the back of his other hand and pushed her to the back of an alley. Charlotte stumbled, then he shoved her hard, open palms smacking her breasts. Her back slammed into the far wall. Here, the streetlights scarcely cut the gloom, so Hartgraul doubted anyone would bother with them.
“The missus says you ain't working hard enough. Is that so? What did we agree on?” Hartgraul punched both her shoulders just as she took her first long breath.
“No, it ain't so!” she yelled. “I went back with nearly three men, and it’s my first day!”
“Sure. Five would’ve been better.” Hartgraul held up one hand.
“Horse shit. You told me four. The day isn’t over, and you don’t get as many fucking johns as at Amber Doves. “
Hartgraul slapped her across the mouth. “I don't need to hear you swearin'.”
“I can fuck all day, but I can't curse?” Charlotte's voice shook.
Hartgraul knew he'd have to give her some bruises to satisfy Nancy. If she thought a girl wasn't paying her keep, it meant she’d nag him for hours. Nancy had no idea how lucky she was that Hartgraul himself didn't fuck the girls. He knew of holes in the walls he could peep through, and he could think about their whores while screwing his wife.
One more hit, he figured, and he could drag Charlotte back.
He pulled back his fist when her boot caught him like a hammer in the crotch. Pain burst from his balls to his gut, and Hartgraul doubled over.
Charlotte ran past him, and he decided to Hell with the pain. He grabbed her around the torso and they fell to the hard earth. The wind whistled from her mouth.
Bodacious Creed: a Steampunk Zombie Western (The Adventures of Bodacious Creed Book 1) Page 9
