Malice of Crows

by Lila Bowen

  “I reckon I see now why fellers drink so much. If we had a saloon handy, I’d be out of quarters by midnight and yarking in an alley by dawn.”

  “Perhaps I can help with that.”

  The man who’d spoken wasn’t part of the posse. Rhett had his pistols out in a hot second, pointed at the figure that had emerged from the darkness. Dan’s fire caught, but Rhett didn’t need the growing flame to see who’d showed up at their camp uninvited and unexpected. And, for the most part, impossible. His flopping belly and sense of disquiet told him fine enough who he now faced. He shoved his pistols back in his holsters, considering they probably couldn’t do a lick of damage, anyway.

  “Howdy there, Mr. Buck. Welcome to our camp.”

  Buck tipped his black hat and grinned, teeth flashing white in the scant light. He was a god, of sorts, and looked it. “Thank you, Mr. Walker. I’ve brought gifts, if that’ll soften your welcome for me.”

  Every hair on Rhett’s body was standing on end, his senses casting out to find all his people as they went about their chores in the darkness. “It’s not the gifts that cause alarm, but the fact that you found us in the first place. A bit far from your grove, ain’t you?”

  Buck laughed and tossed something on the scant flames, which roared up into a bonfire.

  “Not that far, no.”

  The man – or god, really – looked just as he had in Rhett’s dream last year and then again in his saloon, the Buck’s Head. Sturdy, muscled, as manly as a rutting stallion, dressed all in black like a gambler who never lost. As always seemed to happen around Buck, things got a little wiggly, and then there were comfortable logs placed around the fire and food set out on silver platters that had no goddamn reason to be in the middle of the Durango desert.

  “Y’all come on over,” Rhett hollered. “Buck brought magic food.”

  Buck snuck his arm around Rhett and pulled him away from the fire in a grip that felt somehow charming and utterly dominating at the same time. Rhett allowed it, seeing as how he’d been warned against raising the god’s wrath.

  “I’d like a private word, first.” Buck’s whisper sent an unpleasant squirm through Rhett, as if the Shadow was both pulled toward and away from such a peculiar sort of monster, one both mortally dangerous and possibly unkillable.

  “I reckon I can’t stop you,” Rhett said, going along with it.

  Buck steered him over near the horses. As Sam walked toward the fire, he cast a careful glance. “All right there, Rhett?”

  “Just fine, Sam,” Rhett answered. “Don’t start drinking without me, though, okay?” Because he knew well enough what happened when folks ate Buck’s food, and he’d be goddamned if he’d let anybody else sit near Sam in such a state.

  “So you remember the grove,” Buck said as if only mildly interested but clearly goddamned perturbed. “You weren’t supposed to.”

  “Reckon I’m special.”

  Buck grinned, and even here, the fire danced against the wet white of his teeth. “Reckon you are. You seemed to enjoy my hospitality more than most.”

  Rhett looked down, fought the flush creeping up. “Well, that cheese was mighty fine.”

  Buck’s laugh was a low rumble, like thunder still far-off but threatening. “Let’s say that, sure. Tell me, Mr. Walker. How goes the lady’s travails?”

  Rhett didn’t rightly know what the hell Buck was talking about until Buck turned slightly to where Winifred watched from the fire and tipped his hat to her. She nodded warily but respectfully and nibbled on grapes.

  “If by lady you mean Winifred and travails you mean your get in her belly, I reckon she’s doing fine. Had a bit of the sickness at first, but Cora said that was a good thing, meant the babe was sticking and healthy.”

  Buck smiled and nodded. “Good. Good. Now listen close. I expect you to take care of her. More than just what you’re doing already. Think of her as a stagecoach carrying very valuable cargo. She crosses a river, you’re by her side, holding her pony. There’s a fight, you save her skin first. You get me?”

  Rhett snorted, his head snaking back. “Oh, I hear you. Just like I heard her brother when he said the same thing. You think you can scare me into taking care of my friend? That’s a shitty thing to ask, Mr. Buck. I already take care of her, and what’s more, she takes care of herself. You don’t own that girl.” He spat on the ground. “Hell, nobody owns that girl. Nobody ever could. She’d have none of it.”

  Buck tsked and shook his head. “I don’t own her. Nothing wild can be owned. But I own maybe half of what she carries, and I like to protect my investments.”

  “And what are you gonna do to me if something happens to her?”

  With a long sigh, Buck crossed his thick arms and looked Rhett up and down. Rhett knew he didn’t look like much, but he also knew a feller like Buck could see beyond what was on the surface. “That’ll depend on the circumstances. I’m no monster.” His grin could’ve swallowed up the moon. “But I’m asking you as a friend, and I make a bad enemy. Take care of her.”

  “Her brother might be a better person to carry that burden than me.”

  Buck watched the scene around the fire for a moment and chuckled. “Yeah, and we both know that if I asked him for any such boon, he’d set his mind to killing me. He might know, deep down, where that baby came from, but he won’t want to hear the words aloud, I promise you.”

  Rhett kicked a stone and looked off into the distance. “You know she’s under a curse, right? Cat shaman, so I hear. She’s gonna die nine times, and the last one’s final. So she’s got a few deaths left in her. That should ease you some.”

  “Even the impossible to kill can be killed, as you well know. And that curse doesn’t cover what she carries.”

  Buck took a step toward the fire, and Rhett stopped him with a hand. When Buck looked down at Rhett’s hand, it jumped right back to Rhett’s side with no interest in ever returning.

  “So the baby – it ain’t really Earl’s?”

  “What do you think?”

  Turning to face him, Buck seemed to step sideways out of space, and he wasn’t the cushy black gambler anymore. He was eight feet tall with a spreading rack of antlers, naked but for a deerskin breechclout, his muscles glistening with sweat and blood in the firelight and his eyes full of stars.

  “Take that as a no,” Rhett muttered.

  Rhett blinked, and Buck was a gambler again. “Any more questions?”

  “Uh, that food. And wine. Is it the same stuff we had in your saloon?”

  Buck’s smile was amused, a parent looking down on a naughty child. “Do you want it to be?”

  “I…”

  Rhett remembered back to what had happened in the high roller room at the Buck’s Head Tavern, surrounded by velvet and gilt and filled up with sweetmeats and liquor. The feeling of Sam’s fingers unafraid on his skin, the sweet slurp of peach juice, the look in Sam’s eyes as Rhett took to his hands and knees. Did he want that again? Hell, yes, with every fiber of his goddamn being.

  Would he settle for it on Buck’s terms when he was this close to maybe getting it all on his own?”

  “Don’t reckon I do,” he decided.

  Buck nodded, considering him.

  “You surprise me, Shadow,” the god said.

  Rhett nodded. “Yeah, well, sometimes I surprise myself.” He headed for the fire, where the scent of Dan’s roasting rabbits merged with the syrupy headiness of Buck’s wine. “Reckon you’re welcome to join us,” he added, knowing Buck didn’t need an invitation but would probably be waiting for one.

  “Saved you a seat,” Sam said, patting the long log he sat on, and Rhett gladly took it, wondering if Buck had placed it there for just such an occasion. Sam had a loaf of bread in hand, and he tore off a chunk and handed it to Rhett, their fingers brushing with the transfer.

  Buck took a place beside Winifred, but not so close as to make the girl uncomfortable. Cora was on Winifred’s other side, regarding him with outright suspicion.
>
  “Cora, this here’s Buck. Buck, this is Cora,” Rhett said.

  Buck tipped his hat and gave her a charming smile. “Well met, darlin’.”

  Cora slitted her eyes. “What are you?” she asked.

  “A friend,” Rhett said, figuring it was better to interrupt a god than let him take unkindly to Cora. “A peculiar friend, but a friend. A friend who don’t like being insulted.” When she opened her mouth, he added, “Even by a magnificent and dangerous dragon, if you catch my meaning.”

  Cora’s mouth snapped shut, and she gave Buck a nod. “Greetings,” she said coldly, but not so coldly as to offend.

  “Please, friends. Eat,” Buck said, arms spread to encompass the platters of fruit and cheese. “Drink.” He uncorked a green bottle with his teeth and poured out into tin camp cups that he’d apparently conjured out of nowhere. It was unsettling and all too familiar, Rhett figured, but right handy. Knowing he didn’t have much choice, and that the god would drug or poison his food as he wished, Rhett took the cup, clinked it against Sam’s, and drank.

  It tasted the same as it had last time and went to his head immediately. He took another sip and was focusing so hard on feeling for magic, trying to decide whether or not Buck had drugged him, that he forgot Sam was beside him. Right up until Sam’s hand landed on his knee. At that, Rhett went stock-still like a mouse in a hawk’s shadow.

  “Uh, what?”

  “I asked if you wanted some meat,” Sam said, holding out a skewer of rabbit parts.

  It wasn’t the most romantic thing Rhett had ever heard, but it was a damn good start.

  “Thanks kindly, Sam.” Rhett plucked off a leg and set to gnawing on it before he realized Sam was still watching him. He closed his mouth, chewed, swallowed, and ran his cuff over the grease on his face.

  “You look right thoughtful,” he murmured, sipping at the wine to cover the awkwardness.

  “I’m having that thing where it feels like you’ve done something before, or maybe dreamed it,” Sam said.

  “Déjà vu,” Buck offered.

  “Bless you,” Rhett said. Then, hoping to learn if Sam actually did recall any of their time there, and if it was a happy recollection, “What seems familiar, Sam?”

  Sam looked around, innocent and scruffy and perfect, as always, by firelight. “I remember sitting next to you, and Buck was there, and we were drinking this wine and eating something…”

  “Peaches,” Rhett supplied.

  “That’s it, and then things got right fuzzy.”

  “My wine is stronger than most folks are accustomed to,” Buck said.

  “So that’s why you’re feeling that way.” Rhett cast Buck a disapproving glance. “Because it’s pretty similar to what we did at Buck’s tavern. Had a hell of a hangover the next day, though, so maybe we ought to slow down on the wine?”

  Sam gave him a mischievous grin and chugged what was left in his cup. He silently held it out to Buck, who refilled it. “I think you might be wrong there, Rhett. We had a rough day today. We could use a little bit of carousing.”

  Rhett stared down into his wine and saw a glimmering and dark reflection of himself there, his one eye looking slightly terrified. He gulped it down before he could start thinking about how ugly he was, and how Sam could never want him without the benefit of the god’s drink or a dark wagon and a near-death experience. Those thoughts weren’t much good. He glanced around the fire to see what everybody else was doing. Winifred and Cora were turned toward each other, foreheads touching as they giggled. So that was fine, then; those two couldn’t get into too much trouble together, and from what Rhett assumed, they’d already done just about anything the god could encourage them to do, and on their own.

  Dan, as usual, sat aloof. Back straight, arms crossed, he frowned into the fire as if he didn’t like what he saw there.

  “Not gonna eat, Dan?” Rhett asked.

  Dan looked at him, looked down at Sam’s hand, forgotten on Rhett’s knee, and stood. “I don’t believe red wine agrees with me,” he said. Everyone stopped to watch as he shrugged out of his clothes and stood there, naked and unafraid, wearing nothing but a bland smile, his parts as limp as a slug. “Please forgive me for my bad manners.” He nodded to Buck, transformed into a coyote, and loped off into the night.

  “You ain’t offended?” Rhett asked when Buck didn’t strike Dan down with lightning but merely shrugged and went back to filling the women’s cups with wine.

  “A man’s predilections aren’t my business,” Buck said. “I serve the thirsty, and you can’t make a man drink if he isn’t thirsty. There are always plenty of folks who like what I’m serving.” He winked and leaned over to refill Rhett’s cup.

  “I’ll drink to that,” Sam said with a whoop, tossing back the wine like it was a watered-down shot at the Leapin’ Lizard back in Gloomy Bluebird.

  Rhett put his hand on Sam’s wrist. “You’re drinking mighty fast.”

  Sam’s pulse leaped under Rhett’s fingertips as Sam clinked his cup against Rhett’s. “I’m a big boy, Rhett. I can take it.”

  Having clinked cups, Rhett was duty bound to drain his glass. As he wiped the red from his lips, he looked at Buck, who was on the ground now, leaning back against a log and plucking grapes from a bunch held in one hand.

  “You eat your own food?” Rhett asked.

  Buck’s grin said a lot of things. “I take what I want, whether it’s mine or no.”

  Rhett wanted to leap in front of Sam and pull out his pistols, but he knew well enough what he was dealing with, or at least he knew enough to recognize that Buck could end him faster than a regular human or monster. Plus, if he stood up, Sam might move his hand from Rhett’s leg where it had crept up from his knee to his thigh, sending all sorts of tingles through Rhett’s middle. His head felt all spinny, and when he looked at Sam, it was like stars lived in the boy’s eyes, and Rhett couldn’t decide if that was the drink or the god or just how he felt most of the time, anyway.

  “Do you feel funny, Sam?”

  “You’re asking a lot of questions, Rhett. You do that when you’re nervous.”

  Rhett swallowed hard. “Do I? Am I?”

  Sam’s grin was a sweet, curling thing. “Yep. And I don’t feel funny at all. I feel… free, maybe. Some of the Rangers weren’t so kind to me, you know. I told you Scarsdale caught me and beat me down, but I guess I didn’t mention he told some other fellers, and they… treated me bad. I didn’t say nothing, but there was a scuffle, and the Captain put a stop to it for good. But I always felt like there were maybe some Rangers just waiting to take a shot at me, and today they did, and I’m still standing. It’s a hell of a relief.” He held out his cup to Buck. “If you’ll be so kind, sir.”

  Buck nodded and refilled the cup, and Sam drank and looked all thoughtful. “It’s like my secret died with ’em. Or at least…”

  “The shame?”

  Sam looked up, and his eyes went from raw and open to… something very different. Rebellion and anger. Rhett found it as intoxicating as the wine.

  “Not shame. Maybe just the fear of being judged by idjits. I can do what I want now.”

  His hand left Rhett’s thigh, and Rhett mourned its loss until it landed on his jaw, Sam’s fingers warm and calloused as a cowboy’s ought to be. Caught as he was, Rhett’s eye darted around. Winifred and Cora were a hazy blur, disappearing into the wagon, laughing as they leaned on one another. Dan was long gone. Buck was just an antlered shadow across the fire, and Rhett reckoned that anything that might happen here was something the god had seen a million times or more. His due, he’d called it, back at the grove.

  “Rhett. Look at me.” Sam’s voice was husky, his fingers pulling Rhett’s face closer.

  Rhett focused on him, wishing to hell he had two good eyes. One eye didn’t seem enough to behold the man before him, a man Rhett had longed for when he was still a girl in pigtails, sitting on a white board fence.

  “I’m looking,” he said, his voice
just as low.

  So slowly, like he was sneaking up on a kicky colt, Sam’s face moved closer and closer, his fingers never loosening. Rhett felt like he was being pulled down into a swirling river and wished for the surety Buck’s wine had given him last time he’d been this open with Sam. Then, he’d felt compelled, pushed, caught in a tornado and unable to stop. Now, he was only himself, and whatever happened, he had only his heart and body to blame. Or to thank.

  Sam’s lips landed on his, softly, a question. Rhett answered back the only way he knew how: honestly, and with enthusiasm. Every touch was a revelation. Warm lips, warmer tongue, rasp of beard on raw cheek, flutter of eyelashes, a thumb pad stroking his temple. He was there in every moment, as awake as he’d ever been, sober as hell and so brimming with joy that he thought his heart would explode. The one time his eye opened and wandered to Buck, he found the log empty. The god was gone.

  So they were alone under the stars, him and his Sam.

  The kiss went on and on, and Rhett wanted it to go on forever. Sam’s hands roamed over Rhett’s shoulders and down his sides, carefully skipping over his wrapped front. Emboldened, Rhett slid his fingers up Sam’s firm arms before pulling away in shock.

  “Sam! Your shoulder. I’m sorry. I forgot.”

  Sam shook his head in surprise, his mouth deliciously open. “It… It doesn’t hurt. It’s like I was never shot.” By firelight, he unbuttoned his shirt and slid it down to show smooth skin with a tight pink scar on either side of his shoulder. “Hellfire, Rhett. What was in that feller’s wine?”

  Rhett reached back to his buttock, where Cora had removed the silver bullet. It didn’t hurt anymore, nor did any of his bruises or contusions. Even his broken nose felt less squashed. It usually took him at least overnight to recover from a fight, if not longer, but he felt fit as a fiddle now.

  “I’m all fixed up, too. Pretty good magic.”

  Rhett’s eye strayed to Sam’s shoulder, and he licked his lips and reached out, all tentative, to touch the skin there. Sam’s eyes blinked shut, long lashes sweeping down, and Rhett ran his fingertips up the taut side of Sam’s neck, down his throat to where curly golden hairs disappeared down Sam’s shirt. Sam didn’t say anything, didn’t move, didn’t blush or run away screaming. Rhett briefly wondered if it was a dream, because his life thus far hadn’t included such freedom to do as he wished.