by Lila Bowen
“Time. With you. Alone.” If Rhett had been the type to swoon, he would’ve. “Now. Before Trevisan kills you.”
Cora’s wicked smile almost took the sting out of her words.
“Why? Why me?”
“Because you are like a specific spice I have never tasted and might never find again.”
“How much time do you need?” Rhett said, his voice all husky.
“Not much.”
She kissed him, and he decided she was an unusually reasonable woman.
Cora sent a runner boy in the thoroughfare to tell Bruiser that Rhett required some watching, which wasn’t unusual. Some bones knit more easily or correctly than others, apparently, and some men stayed unconscious all day. She turned back from the slice of daylight wearing that dangerous smile and silently tied the tent’s flaps shut—top, middle, and bottom. The tent went dark and quiet, shadows dancing through the canvas.
“What about your grandfather?” Rhett asked.
Cora flicked her fingers. “He is a peculiar man. He goes for long walks to find plants.”
“And Trevisan lets him?”
“Trevisan sends a guard with him. Grandfather very much enjoys making his guard uncomfortable, in walking very, very slowly.”
“And Trevisan doesn’t guard you?”
With each question, Cora stepped closer to the cot—not that she had far to go, considering it was a small tent. Her arms were behind her back, as if she were pretending to be an innocent, harmless little thing. Rhett didn’t buy that for a minute, and he liked that about her. He imagined those dainty hands behind Cora’s shapely back edging into claws, sharp and glittering.
“Trevisan knows I do not require a guard. He holds Meimei’s life in his hands, and that means he holds my life, too. I will be good so that he will be good to her. That is my curse.” She smoothly kneeled between Rhett’s knees, curling her dragon claws over his thighs. “But it is also my salvation. I am not watched.”
Emboldened by her brazenness, Rhett caressed her hair and pulled the leather thong that held it back, letting the inky curtain brush Cora’s cheeks. “You take your salvation often?”
She shook her head, letting her hair play. “Not since I came here. These men are crude, hairy beasts. I am accustomed to…softer flesh.”
Rhett wondered, for just a moment, if Cora was calling him a woman. But when she started touching him, he didn’t care anymore.
Hours later, after they’d talked and kissed and done a hell of a lot more than that, someone hollered and tugged at the tent flap, and Cora leaped up from the cot, tying her jacket closed and pulling back her hair.
“One moment!” she called, flapping her hands at Rhett.
He indulged in one good, luxurious stretch before setting himself to rights and yanking his hat down to hide any love bites or bruises that were hopefully already fading. The girl had shown him her claws in more ways than one.
“You must be careful with your arm,” Cora scolded, her voice shrill and rude. “Come back tomorrow so that I can check the dressing. Keep it clean!”
“Yes, ma’am. Thanks mightily for the doctoring,” he answered, likewise overloud, a lazy smile on his lips.
Cora chuckled and leaned close. “You can count on me,” she said. “But you had better be as good as your word, Red-Eye Ned, or whatever your name is.” She leaned in close enough to bite his ear with her sharp teeth. “I am not done with you. Kill Trevisan and free Meimei, and you will see.”
Rhett stood.
He very, very much wanted to see.
Chapter
23
At breakfast the next morning, he realized he’d been betrayed. Rhett was sitting with the rail runners, shoveling down his food as fast as he could, when the dining tent suddenly went silent. He looked up to find Adolphus towering over him like a hungry mountain.
“Can I help you?” Rhett asked, wiping his mouth off on his sleeve. He swallowed his food, and it tumbled like a cold ball of lead down to his belly.
“Big boss wants to see you,” Adolphus said, his grin as friendly as a cave-in.
“What’d he do?” Bruiser asked, doing some towering of his own.
“I reckon I got promoted again,” Rhett said, standing and sticking out his chin.
“Like hell,” Adolphus said. “Cora told us about your little plan.”
He punched Rhett right in the gone eye, and everything went black.
Well, blacker.
“Come now, my little conspirator. Time to wake up.”
The voice was cultured, with a peculiar accent that bounced like a hard trot. And it sounded as delighted as a rich kid at Christmas.
Rhett blinked sand out of his eye. His head was pounding and his mouth tasted of copper. His palms and wrists burned, and when he looked down, he realized his arms were bound. He was in another damn chair, although this model was much, well, prettier than the one from the tent. Shiny chrome gleamed like a mirror in the lantern light, and instead of leather restraints, there were chains. And spikes through his hands, pinning them down, far too similar to the one the Cannibal Owl had favored.
Silver. Hence the burn.
Of course.
So he couldn’t heal, and he couldn’t change.
Bernard Trevisan was a right bastard, but he knew his business.
The man himself stood just a bit in front of Rhett, looking down at him like Rhett figured a doctor looked at a dead body. Like it was only kind of interesting, and only if there was something unusual and freakish about it. Lucky for Trevisan that Rhett had quite a bit unusual about him. Rhett spit a glob of blood at the man’s shiny black shoes and raised his head warily.
“They ought to hire you out as the timekeeper,” he said. “Even if you’re a few hours late for the wake-up bell. I’m sure you’ll catch the hang of it by supper.”
Trevisan’s snow-pale face lit with delight. Last time, he’d worn black and pink, and today he was in all lavender with pink trimmings, right down to his gloves and a floppy cravat that would’ve been just the right size for strangling the man with. Rhett’s innards recoiled at the sight of such a fancified, lady-like dandy.
“Oh, this is going to be fun. Isn’t it, Ned?”
“I believe we do have different ideas of fun. Sir.”
“One moment, please, while I prepare myself.” Trevisan bowed his head slightly and turned his back to mess with whatever he planned to use to torture Rhett.
Rhett let his head slide forward like he was swooning, but really he was scouting around the room. Last time he’d faced Trevisan, the two thugs had been there, too. Now they were alone, and they weren’t in the tent. They were in a train car. If Rhett was lucky, he’d finally made it into Trevisan’s personal car, the seat of his magic.
Only problem was, the damn car had no door. No windows, either.
Excluding such regular things as doors and windows, though, there was a lot crammed in the smallish space. On one side was a pigeonhole desk stuffed full of papers and velvet bags and evil-looking glass bottles. A leather knife roll much like the one from the Captain’s doctor’s bag lay there, but the instruments were far more complicated, clean, and shiny. This set looked like they could whittle Rhett up into a thousand twisty pieces that would never fit back together.
On the other wall were two shrouded shapes that Rhett figured for birdcages, each under a twilight-purple velvet cloth. Rhett would’ve bet Sam’s hat that Meimei was in one of the two cages, and he would’ve bet his own hat that Trevisan’s pet bird was under the other. But why were they covered? Either so Rhett wouldn’t know about them, or perhaps so their occupants wouldn’t see whatever dark deeds Trevisan had planned for him.
The wall directly ahead of Rhett was taken up by a long workbench covered in what he could only figure for witch business. Peculiar drawings of not-quite-letters were scrawled on the wall overhead in black as if burned there, elegant and sinister as the devil’s own curling mustache. The bench itself was the messiest thing in
the room, sprawling with bowls, cups, cauldrons, crucibles, oddly shaped glass gewgaws, tripods, books, and stains ranging from fresh blood to old blood to burned blood. Tall, drippy black candles were stuck everywhere like charred rib bones. The air crackled with magic and ashes, making Rhett’s nose twitch.
Worst of all, Rhett could tell that there was at least half a train car’s worth of space behind him, looming empty the same way a storm cloud does. The rustling of wings and rasping of sharpening beaks told him that Trevisan’s birds roosted there, black eyes bright. Maybe sometimes they were black wax balls stuck with feathers, but just this moment, they were a dark-winged jury that didn’t know the word innocent. Rhett didn’t need his one good eye to know they’d gladly carve him up before Trevisan found his way to the beating heart underneath all that meaty flesh.
Rhett was right where he’d wanted to be. Right where he’d asked Cora to put him by turning him in to Trevisan’s men. She hadn’t liked the plan, but in the end, she was as good as her word. He hoped she would receive some sort of reward for her part in their carefully planned betrayal. That was the good news—he was finally here.
The bad news was that he had no damn idea what to do now.
Being the Shadow might’ve given him an edge, but it didn’t give him much sense.
Oh, if Coyote Dan could’ve seen him now. He’d have laughed his fool head off. Of course, he’d have to find a way into the car to do it, first. And in order to do that, he would’ve had to have seen the crudely drawn pile of stones Rhett had scrawled on a south-facing tent with a chunk of burned wood last night on his way back from the privy. The camp had moved several times since they’d parted ways, and there was no way for Rhett to get back to that particular stump in the forest, even if he could’ve found it. So a clumsy drawing was the best he could do, and he’d done it more so Dan couldn’t scold him later than in the hopes that his ragtag posse could somehow ride into Trevisan’s camp and do anything useful. Truth be told, he didn’t want them to show up at all. He’d fare better here believing they were safe, far from the fate that he now faced. Their safety was the sole reason he’d come here alone and gotten himself into this fine mess.
“Ah! Here we are now. Hello again, Ned. Or would you prefer I call you Red-Eye? I know the men do enjoy their little monikers.”
Rhett’s head jerked up to find Trevisan standing over him, holding…something. It looked like a tool he’d seen blacksmiths use to shoe a horse, like a long metal pincer. Rhett didn’t like the look of that thing one bit, and Trevisan’s avid smile cinched it.
Nope. Rhett was against witches with pincers.
“It don’t matter what you call me, so long as you don’t call me—”
Trevisan’s salt-white eyebrows rose, and he squeezed the pincers knowingly, click-click.
Rhett flinched. “Ned’ll do.”
“Fine, then. Ned. Please explain your plans to…what did Cora say? End me?”
Rhett took a deep breath, and Trevisan snuck his pincers into Rhett’s mouth and grabbed his tongue. Silver again. Rhett had no way to pull away, with his body strapped into the chair, and turning his head to the side only made it hurt more. His heart started yammering and he nearly pissed himself.
“Did I mention that I don’t like lying?” Trevisan said casually. “And that I could yank your tongue out right now?”
“Ih yuh dih—” Rhett started.
The pincers released his tongue, and he swallowed desperately before repeating himself. “If you did that, I couldn’t tell you my plan, though.”
Trevisan smiled like Pap had when Nettie—Rhett—was little and struggling to learn something difficult, like starting a fire. It was a smile that said you had maybe one more minute of patience before the whip came out.
“Tell me your plan now, then, while you still have your tongue.”
Rhett cleared his throat but didn’t open his mouth wide this time. “Revenge. Simple as that. You killed a friend of mine, and I was hoping to find help in taking you down. Figured the Chine girl had probably met everybody in camp and had some idea of who-all might want to throw in with me.”
“Tsk.” Trevisan actually looked…slightly sad. “That’s not the truth. Men who burn with revenge don’t talk about it like it is yesterday’s biscuit. Revenge is anything but simple. And a man seeking revenge would begin among his crew, whispering with his equals. He would not seek out and seduce the only woman in the camp.”
A blush crept up Rhett’s neck, and his eye slid sideways. “I don’t know what you mean by—”
“Come now. I have spies everywhere. For example, I know Cora is not the only woman in camp. And I know that you never spoke to anyone on your crew—on either of your crews—about fomenting rebellion. So what is it, then? Is it the money or the magic? Because let us be honest. It is always the money or the magic. I have killed far greater men than you.” He winked solemnly with one ice-blue eye. “And women. They die much the same in this chair.”
“And how’s that?”
“Piece by piece until there is nothing left. Why do you think there’s so little sand in some of those jars in the feed tent? Just a handful of grains. Just a heart left, at the end, still beating.”
“Why?” Rhett asked.
Because it had worked with the Cannibal Owl, hadn’t it? Asking all his fool questions to prolong the inevitable? And because he truly wanted to know.
“Oh, poor Ned. You don’t understand how interrogation works, do you? The thing is…”
The lavender glove reached out to pinch Rhett’s nose closed. He struggled to tear his face away from the iron grip, but Trevisan was fiercely strong and as patient as stone. Finally, Rhett had no choice but to open his mouth if he wanted to stay conscious. When he did, the pincers yet again snagged his tongue.
“Gahammit!”
Seconds later, Trevisan had snaked another instrument into his mouth, and Rhett shuddered as something tightened around one of his teeth. Not a heavy molar in back, not a pointy one in front—one of the middle ones. As Rhett realized what was happening, his struggle hit a frantic note, his fingers digging into the arms of the chair and his body bowing up off it as he howled wordlessly.
The sound and the feeling were equally goddamn horrible as Trevisan wrestled the tooth out of Rhett’s jaw with a crunch, the roots pulling out with a long, painful snap. Rhett was breathing hard, panting around the pincers as Trevisan held up a pair of pliers latched onto a blood-tipped tooth, staring at it with a love that some men only showed to bibles or whores.
“Do you know what this is, Ned?”
“Ugh oo!”
“Ah. The tongue. Sorry.”
The pincers withdrew, and Rhett probed the blood-filled socket in his jaw tenderly with that sore muscle. His whole skull rang with the hurt and wrongness of it, his chin trembling with shock.
“It’s my goddamn tooth, you son of a bitch!” Rhett hollered.
Trevisan nodded kindly. “Oh, but it’s so much more than that. It’s life to me, Ned.” His eyes took on a crazy light, as if he really needed Rhett to understand. “Life.” The floor didn’t even creak under his shiny shoes as he moved to the workbench and dropped the tooth into a glass jar full of what Rhett now realized were more teeth. Teeth, and little bones. Pinkies and little toes, most like, all white and shiny and streaked, here or there, with rusty red, probably twenty in all.
Rhett’s mouth was sore as hell as he said, “You’re one sick bastard. Anybody ever told you that?”
“Only for the last three hundred years or so. It doesn’t really hurt my feelings anymore. What’s your real plan? Lie again, and you’ll lose more than a tooth.”
Rhett snorted and shook his head. “What is it with you bad guys? Always pinning a body down and acting like you’re owed the hellfire truth. I never signed on for that. I don’t owe you shit. I’m here to kill you. It’s that goddamn simple. You’re a bad man, and I’m a Durango Ranger. I kill what needs to die.”
Trevisan looked
up from lovingly patting his instruments. “A Ranger? No. That can’t be. Haskell hates monsters like you. And more than that, Haskell and I have an arrangement.”
“You think I don’t know that? Why the hell you think I’m here alone instead of riding in with fifty friends? Hell, man. I thought you were smart. After you’re dead, I just might go after Haskell as dessert.”
“Eugene would kill you.”
“Eugene ain’t the only Ranger captain.”
Trevisan put down the knife he’d been caressing and slunk to Rhett’s side like a hungry cat. “Tell me, then. Which is your outpost? Not Garland or Houston. Must be Las Moras or El Paso. Lubbock’s nearly in my pocket. This is important now.”
“What’ll you give me if I tell you?”
A small laugh.
“I might let you live a little longer.”
“Oh, well, praise the lord. I’m enjoying life so much right now. In fact, it’s been a right treat for the past seventeen years. Please, let’s keep on. Just like this.”
“I see.” Trevisan’s face went dark and distant, and he turned away.
The throbbing in Rhett’s jaw warred with the ongoing burn in both palms. Realizing that the harder he clenched his fingers around the arms of the chair, the more the silver spikes tore through his hands, he took a deep breath and tried to relax, which proved impossible.
But did it mean he truly couldn’t change? That was obviously what Trevisan was guarding against—letting Rhett go from a well-secured, fleshy human to a half-wild animal that had slipped its bonds. Sure, most folks wouldn’t be able to change in this situation, considering thick hooves or wide paws. But what was the point of being the Shadow if the same rules applied? Rhett reached for the golden cord—
And found Trevisan perched over him with a silver spike and a hammer, the spike’s tip hovering over his heart.
“I can kill you quicker, then, if you think that would be wise.”
