by D. J. Butler
“No!” Rockefeller spread his arms defiantly. “What are they going to do to me, really?”
The single wolf-man slammed into Davison Rock from behind, dragging the prospector instantly to the ground and then falling on his throat. Rockefeller screamed once and then fell silent, but jets of blood squirted up and his booted feet kicked at the sand repeatedly.
“Asshole should’ve been paying more attention!” Preacher Bill shouted.
He and Hiram ran.
Fear put steel rods into Hiram’s legs and stoked a fire in his tinder. He charged up the hill, cresting the top of the stone just in time to see large deer-monsters bolting away in various directions. One of the slowest, and the last to vanish from his sight, was red-skinned and scabby, and bled from a wound in its hindquarters.
Hiram shot a glance back, not to see Rockefeller’s remains, but to look at the werewolves. They were leaping off the knuckle of rock now, one at a time, each leap beginning in the shape of a man but hitting the base of the boulder in monstrous form.
“Satan!” Reverend Clay roared. “Get thee behind me!”
Hiram was inclined to agree, but he wasn’t willing to waste his breath.
He ran.
He tried to stick to the ridge, because it would be harder to follow them, and he tried to get out of sight immediately. How good was the wolves’ sense of smell? If it was as good as the smell of a natural wolf, then maybe any effort to hide tracks was a complete waste. He also tried to aim for the Bloomers, as Davison Rock had indicated the way. If nothing else, once he got there, he would have some ability to orient himself. Also, the arch itself stood on high ground, and might be at least somewhat defensible.
At the end of the ridge, one deer-man, startled by Hiram and Earl Bill Clay crashing into its hiding space, leaped away. Hiram turned up a crack between two cliff faces, struggling to step over a thicket of prickly pear in the dark without spearing himself. Clay made the same climb and then stopped, panting.
“Need…drink,” he huffed, and then produced a fifth of some spirituous alcohol from inside his ragged coat.
At the same moment, leaping down off the ridge forty feet away, came two of the wolf-beasts. They were bigger than ponies, they were the size of small horses, and though they were shaped like men, they ran on all fours. The one in front threw back his head and howled.
Hiram snatched the bottle from the Reverend.
“Satan!” Clay objected.
The wolves leaped forward.
Hiram sloshed alcohol across the bed of cactus, and all the dried foliage packed in around it, and then touched his Zippo to it.
Fire burst up in a thin line. The wolves hesitated, back slightly away, and Hiram shouted a Biblical fire verse.
The fire vamped higher, and one wolf whined.
“This way!” Hiram grabbed Clay’s sleeve and dragged him up the narrow crack.
They climbed a stair built of choking boulders and flash flood jetsam, up toward the top of the mesa. Looking down, Hiram saw five or six of the wolves, pacing anxiously as they waited for the fire to die down.
He wasn’t going to be able to do that all night. He had enough spirits in the bottle, he guessed, to light one more fire. Memories of Helper came back to him. Fire had saved them then. It could save them again, but he’d have to be clever.
Emerging at the height of the crack, he ran along the top of a cliff. He wasn’t looking for ways down, but for holes to hide in. A cave or a dead-end canyon, preferably with wood he could use to start a real defensive fire.
How would the hunt end? Did the pack transform back into men at dawn, and slink away home? Would the law of this bloody hunt somehow guarantee that, in the future, Fang and Hoof would leave Hiram alone?
A strange little thought tickled him: did the fact that Hiram was participating as the hunted mean that his survival would bring prosperity to his farm? Or was that only true for herders, and not for farmers?
It was after all, Fang and Hoof, and not Fang and Beet.
“There.” Hiram stopped and pointed.
“Give me back my liquor.” Clay was out of breath, and leaned over onto his knees to spit stringy saliva onto the rocks.
“No.”
“You’re as bad as one of them children of Sheth.”
Hiram grinned. “You know that’s not right.”
Preacher Bill smiled back. “Naw, probably just a Mormon.”
Hiram saw a canyon that looked as if it dead-ended. The walls were steep; he couldn’t be certain in the darkness, but he thought he was seeing a narrow box canyon. But what he knew for sure was that there were trees. Wood for a fire.
“I’m going down there,” Hiram said. “You want to come with me, do. We’ll use your spirits and start a bonfire.”
“That’ll attract the monsters.” Ironic that the insane preacher was more clear-eyed about the nature of what chased them than the scientist had been.
“And be a weapon.” A stand of cottonwoods grew close enough to the cliff at this point that Hiram could touch them. He reached out, grabbed a trunk, and began to shimmy down.
“Satan, you can kiss my ass,” the Reverend Majestic Earl Bill Clay grumbled again, and jumped.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Michael pulled under the cottonwood in front of Edna’s house and parked. The rain had stopped, though lightning still flashed out over the Colorado River and thunder rolled across the valley. He took the shotgun with him, just in case. The spread of the shot would be more effective than the single round of the rifle, if one of the wolf-beasts showed up. Had the wolf-man he’d knocked into the Colorado drowned? Probably wishful thinking.
Could they die by drowning, or fire?
He also tucked Lloyd Preece’s Jupiter knife into the pocket of his pants.
With the gun in his hand, he crunched across the gravel. He’d go right to Diana, see if she attacked him, and then try and get her to help. Maybe the clay balls had been wrong. More wishful thinking.
He knocked quietly on her door. He knew it wouldn’t look good to the neighbors for the widow to have men showing up on her doorstep late on a Sunday night. There were already enough rumors about her floating through town. Only, they weren’t rumors, apparently. But Michael couldn’t very well accuse her of prostitution—or murder—when he needed her help. First things first.
Michael knocked louder.
Diana opened the door in a silk gown, covering what could only be her night-time outfit. A word slithered through Michael’s head, a silken word he’d never actually had occasion to say out loud. Lingerie. He was looking at her lingerie.
She gave him a crooked grin. “It’s kind of late to drop by, Michael. Where is your father? Or should I not ask?”
“We’re in trouble,” Michael said. “I need your help, desperately.”
She stepped aside.
She was barefoot. One foot had toenails painted red. The other was a wooden foot, or the approximation of one; the white wood, maybe pine, met the white flesh of her stump below her knee. A strap connected the false leg to her real one.
Michael went in, and suddenly felt silly carrying the shotgun.
“I like a man who comes to my house prepared to do battle,” the widow quipped.
“Sorry about this. Like I said, there’s trouble. I feel terrible coming this late, but there’s no one else I can trust.”
“I’m certainly glad you feel you can trust me.” She motioned to the couch where his father had sat the other times they’d visited the widow.
Diana took her chair. As she sat, the lingerie moved around her body in interesting ways. “Tell me what’s going on. Does it have anything to do with Adelaide’s abrupt departure?”
“It’s all connected.”
Diana held a wine glass, half full. A bottle stood on the table. “Would you like a drink?”
He was thirsty beyond belief, and there was no plumbing in her little house…and suddenly, he found himself asking what Hiram Woolley would do, if he
were here. He wouldn’t drink the wine. Would he ask the widow to put more clothes on? But maybe that would be impolite. Plus, the sight of Diana Artemis in this state of near-undress would probably have knocked Hiram Woolley unconscious immediately. Or if not, it certainly would have left him unable to speak. “No, I’m fine. Diana, how much do you know about this town and the men in it?”
She smiled wryly. “I know a great deal about the men.” Her eyes seemed a bit fuzzy, and there was a bit of a slur to her speech. Was she drunk?
“There’s a cult. There’s a hunt.” Michael swallowed, and told her what he knew, about the deer-men, the wolf-men, and the Blót.
That smile grew even wider on her face with every word. “This sounds like the movie showing at the Ides. Are you sure you aren’t trying to pull my leg?” She lifted her left leg and flexed her toes. “You’ll want to pull this one. The other one would come off, tout suite.”
She hit those last words hard, with a full seductive French accent. Hearing the language of ooh la la wasn’t going to help Michael keep a chaste and sober mind. Neither would the smooth skin of her leg.
Michael looked at the floor. “I wish I was.”
“And so you and I will charge out into the desert to save your father from this hunt?” she asked with a laugh.
Michael felt the situation coming unraveled. “I don’t have anywhere else to turn. I can’t go to the sheriff. He’s one of them.”
She swirled the wine in her glass. “Yes, it would be hard to trust anyone, once you learn that everyone is wearing a mask. I too wear a mask.” She gestured to her candles, the bookshelves, and the rest of her room. “This is all a mask. But people believe. They want to believe.”
“I was skeptical for a long time,” Michael admitted. “But I have proof. Or at least, reasons to believe.” He set the shotgun to the side and retrieved the Jupiter knife he’d stolen from the Reverend Majestic. “This has power.”
She raised her eyebrows at him. “This knife has given you reasons to believe?”
Michael shook his head, feeling confused. “Things I’ve seen have given me reason. This may give me power, but I can’t use it. I’m born the wrong year. I don’t suppose you were born the same year as Lloyd Preece, were you?”
She laughed out loud.
“Or twelve or twenty-four years later,” Michael added, feeling himself blush. “Or thirty-six. Approximately. When Jupiter was in Taurus.”
She chuckled at his befuddlement. “Why should I help you on this dangerous mission, with loups-garous rampaging the countryside?” She paused. “I heard a legend like this before, the Beast of Gévaudan. As a young girl, I might have shivered at the tale. But now, I am no longer a child. But you, you are young. The world has its mysteries for you still.”
Michael frowned. “I need to know if you’ll help. If not, I have to leave.”
More laughter. “Because time is of the essence. That is what they would say in a novel or a movie. Yes, a grand rescue. But surely, you don’t expect me to dress and help you.”
“You helped before,” Michael said. “You helped Addy Tunstall when Pap asked you to.”
“That?” Diana waved a hand. “That served my interests. I’ve been interested in the Preeces’ fortune for a long time now. I came to Moab in the first place because I met Lloyd Preece and learned that he was single and wealthy. He and I have been good friends for a long time.”
She kept her gaze on him.
Michael couldn’t meet those smoky green eyes. It felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. He was afraid of how it would go, but he only had one last card to play. “You were there, at the cabin, the night Mr. Preece was murdered.” The clay balls had said she was involved.
The widow sighed. “I’m not going to confess to you, Michael. As I told your father, I do things because I’m paid to do them, and I find that an entirely reasonable approach to living my life.”
“So Mr. Preece paid you to be there?” Michael asked.
“Oh, he paid me. Many of the men in this town do. But no, there was another gentleman involved in that transaction.” She shrugged. “You’re a smart boy. You can piece it together, I think.”
Michael’s mind whirled. This encounter was not going the way he’d expected. “Bishop Gudmundson. He paid you to make sure you were there, at the Preece homestead, with Preece. You were the bait. In that way, you helped kill him.”
She looked at him, eyes glittering.
“But why would you do that, if Lloyd was your…uh, source of money?” Michael felt his own eyes widened. “You learned Lloyd was planning to leave. That source of cash had dried up, so at least you could get paid one last time for helping kill him. Wow, that’s…you’re…cold.”
Was she unburdening her soul before she killed Michael? Or was she now planning to leave town, and negotiating for one last payment on the way out?
But the confession, or hint of confession, seemed to have come to an end. “Would you like to know how I lost my leg?” she asked.
Michael was a little afraid to find out. He nodded anyway.
She continued in the quiet. “I met a man, this was in Denver, a few years back. He said he loved me, but they all say that. They love me. I’m beautiful. I have grown accustomed to the game, and I could recite the encounters, line for line, before they happen. There are monsters in this world, Michael, but they don’t need to sprout fangs or horns. Men are monsters enough in their own skin.”
Michael moved his hand to the shotgun.
“This man in Denver wasn’t the only gentleman in my life. My occupation, my trade, requires I see many men. He grew jealous. He chased me, on a night like this, when the moon was new and hidden. I hid in a barn, while he raged, looking for me. I got away, but stepped on a rusty nail in the process. They had to take the leg.” She paused to sip her wine. “At first I thought that would be end of my trade, but fortunately I was mistaken. Men’s interest in me generally lapses about mid-thigh. As long as I was complete, from mid-thigh to my forehead, I could continue my occupation unimpaired.”
Michael felt sick.
“If I were to go with you,” Diana said, “there is a chance I would lose more than a leg. Almost certainly, I would have to leave town and never come back again. I do things for money, Michael. Do you have money to pay me for my services?”
He didn’t. “I guess you must be even more disappointed than the rest of them that there was no stolen bank silver hidden in Lloyd’s cabin.”
Mercifully, now that Diana had revealed her true colors, his lust was abating. She was bad news.
Diana shrugged. “Lloyd had money, it just wasn’t from a bank robbery, it was from ranching. And it wasn’t in a pot of silver.”
“It was in bearer bonds,” Michael said. “I saw one. Addy had it. We figured that she went back to her dad’s cabin to look for the rest.”
“I went to his cabin to look for them, and couldn’t find them. Not with the little clue Adelaide had. What was it her father said all the time? Oui. There’s a fortune to be had in a man’s good opinion of himself. I don’t know what that means. Do you? Or maybe it wasn’t a clue it all. Maybe it was the desperate plea of a man who wanted to be admired, disguised as self-deprecating humor.”
Michael stood, shotgun in hand. “It was a mistake coming here.”
“Probably, but you did get to see me in my nightie.” She touched the wine glass to her lips, rubbing it there.
The sick feeling in his stomach deepened. “I’m going.”
He left the house, walked to the truck, and stowed the shotgun in the front seat. The houses were all dark, the town fast asleep.
Her perfume lingered on his clothes, and Michael wished he could take a shower. Diana didn’t kill Preece, but she’d been instrumental in his death. And she’d done it for money. If only they’d added Gudmund Gudmundson’s name to the clay balls. He bet both bits of clay would have melted away simultaneously. Gudmundson paid her to make sure Preece was in his cabin. She’d l
eft, and Gudmundson had probably walked right in.
Diana was Preece’s mistress, and Gudmundson was his best friend. They were in the bishopric together. Lloyd Preece had never had a chance.
Michael looked up at the stars. Constellations peeped bright and visible around the edges of storm clouds. He found Scorpio, the scorpion, a troublesome sign, full of passion and power. It was a water sign, and it flowed into open spaces, and filled cracks.
Diana was like that, flowing into Moab, providing false insight into the mysteries of the universe for the women, providing other services for the men. But even those were false, counterfeit, temporary, mercenary.
She was a fake, through and through.
Michael missed his father.
“God,” Michael started. “I’m in a mess. Me and Pap are. I know you’re probably surprised to be hearing from me. Thou art probably surprised. I’m not a very prayerful fellow, but that…maybe it will change. Thou have…you’ve protected me, and you’ve protected Pap, over and over. We’re out here, trying to do your work.”
That was true, no matter how odd it seemed. Helping the poor, they did that all the time, but their true calling was to deal with the evil outside the scope of normal human affairs. Michael was a part of that now.
Michael could go alone to the Monument, but the thought frightened him. He’d survived one encounter alone with the werewolves, but he didn’t think he’d get that lucky again. He wanted someone else to drive, leaving his hands free to shoot. And he didn’t think anyone else in town would even begin to take his story seriously.
Michael gripped his chi-rho amulet. “I don’t know the Bible as well as my father, and I’m learning the stars, but they aren’t telling me much. I need a burning bush. Can you give a poor Navajo boy a break? You haven’t been very kind to the Navajo in general, Lord, but maybe you can make an exception for me?”
What did he expect? One of the roses in Edna Whatever’s lawn to burst into flames? Or a mysterious voice to come booming out of the night sky? Michael wasn’t certain, but he waited.
