by Gary Jonas
“You can’t outthink him,” Sara Beth said, confirming his fears. “You should have realized that.”
“Holy shit,” Jack breathed. How could he have been so stupid? Chief had seen it. He should have listened to the big Indian. He should have known without the warning. You don’t play shadow games with a rattlesnake and then express surprise when it bites you.
“He’s already here, isn’t he?”
Lord Wolcott stepped away from the shadowy doorway of the shack and smiled. “Of course I am.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“How could you, Sara Beth?”
“How could I betray you? It was easy, especially after Buckminster explained what you were.”
“No. How could you be so stupid? As soon as Lord Bucky here gets what he wants, you’ll be dead.”
“Why? Because he’ll eat me? What makes him any different from you? You’re both killers. You’re the great Suicide Jack. You’ve killed hundreds of men. Shot them in cold blood. Never in any danger yourself, because guns can’t kill you, can they, Jack?”
Jack knew he was a killer, but never chose to think of himself that way. As a gambler and a reluctant gun fighter, he’d killed twenty-five men out of necessity, not hundreds, but the number was often exaggerated. “The reputation I earned as Suicide Jack came when I was alive. I’ve only been a vampire for a few months.”
“Oh!” She laughed again. “Is that supposed to make it better?”
Jack shrugged. His concern for Sara Beth was waning. It’s not like he planned to shoot her for her betrayal, but her lack of brains was about to get them both killed. He needed to concentrate and find a way out of this mess. But Sara Beth was far from finished.
“You took advantage of me. You made me believe you could care about me.”
“I do care about you,” Jack mumbled. “I did.”
Sara Beth seemed not to hear.
“Charles tricked me into coming out here with promises of wealth. He was going to make me a lady. A lady of what? Of a dust bin? Do you know how many styles of hats they have at the store in town? Two? Can you believe it? But now I have a chance to leave and to get what I’ve always—”
“You’ll be dead before morning,” Jack said. “Wolcott will never let you go. Surely you understand that.”
He watched with satisfaction as the clear, cold conviction of his words spread across her face. Her confidence drained away and she glanced nervously at Wolcott.
Wolcott stepped away from the shack and handed her a small carpet bag. Jack assumed it was filled with money.
As the handle of the bag touched her hand, Sara Beth relaxed. A smile slid across her face and she laughed, high and sickly sweet. She spun toward Wolcott, stepping on tiptoes as she kissed him long, and hard, and deep. Then she made a point of smiling at Jack, but it held no warmth.
Jack noisily sucked saliva through his teeth and spit.
Sara Beth’s smile faltered, but only for a moment. She handed Wolcott a piece of paper, probably the deed to her property. It might as well have been her signed death certificate. After a last nervous glance at Wolcott, she flounced to the buggy and tossed the carpet bag in the seat ahead of her. She climbed in and clucked to the horse. Accompanied by rattling and hoofbeats, she disappeared into the night.
Jack watched her go, then turned to Wolcott. “She really doesn’t understand, does she?”
“Of course not,” Wolcott said. “She’s a woman.”
“Letting her live was possible. Letting her take your money? Never.”
“Yes,” Wolcott said, almost purring. “The eastbound train leaves Hays City at ten tonight. She and I will both be on it. After all, I’ll need something to eat before morning.”
Jack shook his head. “You’ll never make that train.”
Wolcott grinned the way he enjoyed doing, the tips of his canines peeking from his too red lips. “Of course I will, you stupid, arrogant upstart. The elders in these contests always win. We’re smarter. We’re stronger. We’re more experienced. Your sire should have taught you how to respect your betters.”
“Maybe he would have,” Jack said, “but I never gave him the chance. I cut off his head with a shovel.”
Wolcott’s eyes widened and he took an instinctive step back. The eaves of the shack cast deep shadows across his face. “That’s impossible. You can’t act against your sire.”
“You know, that’s what my sire thought,” Jack said. “Boy, was he surprised when I shot him. You see, I’ve found it easier to shoot someone first and chop off their head second. If you’d like, I’ll be happy to show you what I mean.”
Wolcott’s mouth dropped open and he brought his arms in across his chest. Then his mouth closed into a thin line and he stepped forward again.
Wolcott whistled. Jack heard rustling behind him and glanced over his shoulder. In one matching motion, eight werewolves scrambled out of the ditch and formed a semicircle behind Jack. They had him trapped. After his experience from the previous night, he knew he’d have only seconds after Wolcott gave them the signal. They’d tear him apart as easily as a priest breaking bread.
Jack had no chance to escape. Fortunately, he didn’t plan to.
Wolcott raised his cane. The silver wolf head at its top caught the moonlight. Chief was right. The cane had to be Wolcott’s source of control, his method for forcing his thoughts onto the chaotic beasts.
Jack had been waiting for this signal as much as the werewolves had. As Wolcott raised the cane, Jack swung the saddlebags back, cocking his arm. When Wolcott swung the cane down and pointed its tip at Jack the way he’d done the night before, Jack swung the saddlebags forward and up, tossing them as high and as straight into the air as he could manage.
As soon as the bags left his hand, he ran flat out, straight for Wolcott.
The Englishman stumbled backward, feeling for the doorway, managing to find it, but too late. Jack was almost on him. He obviously hadn’t been expecting this frontal assault.
Betters my ass, Jack thought.
Jack still had the rifle in his left hand, but it was slowing him down. As he neared the doorway he tossed it aside. The next moment, Jack slammed into Wolcott. He’d meant to run past him into the shack, but at the last possible instant, Wolcott tried to move into the shack and ended up blocking the doorway. Jack crashed into Wolcott, and the collision sent shockwaves of pain through Jack’s shoulder. The Englishman looked skinny but he must have drunk too many ranchers’ wives lately. They both collapsed in a heap onto the shack’s wooden floor.
For the briefest instant, Jack thought something had gone wrong. The nitroglycerin hadn’t exploded. As he started to lift his head and look around, what felt like a giant hand slapped him, the force of the blow flattening him the way he would squash a fly. At the same instant a deafening bark like nothing he’d heard before took away his hearing. He’d expected a loud boom, like close thunder, but this sound was far louder and much sharper than anything he’d ever experienced or even imagined. The blast knocked all the breath from his lungs and part of the shack’s roof collapsed. Lack of breath made no difference to Jack but the eight-inch thick beam that fell across his back trapped him and Wolcott together like some kind of demonic bonding.
Both struggled to free themselves, but Wolcott slithered free first and the entire weight of the beam settled onto Jack, holding him fast against the shack’s wooden floor.
Jack’s hearing came back, first as an ever increasing volume of ringing in his ears while he and Wolcott had struggled, and now as diminished ringing giving way to muffled sounds and finally to increasing clarity as Jack fought to pull himself from under the debris.
A soft susurrus of yelps and pained snarls came from behind him, barely audible at first but growing louder as if they were being made under a heavy blanket gradually lifted. He’d injured some of the werewolves in the explosion, but how many? Chief’s idea had been to bury the silverware in a circle around the explosive. Instead it had been separate from
the nitroglycerin. Chances were good the shrapnel from exploding silverware had cleared one side of the semicircle but not the other, although the blast force would have downed the werewolves on the other side too—at least temporarily. From what he’d seen, werewolves didn’t heal as quickly as vampires. Even so, he guessed that he had maybe a minute to free himself before jaws closed around his throat.
It turned out he didn’t have that long.
Wolcott stumbled forward and bent over him. Jack twisted, trying to see. He clutched at his holster, but it was empty. The Peacemaker must have come free when he’d hit the ground. Jack stirred through the rough clods of sod and splintered wood, trying to find it. Then Wolcott straightened and Jack caught the flash of cold steel in his hand. Lord Bucky had found his gun.
“Not quite the way I’d planned it,” Wolcott said in his British accent, “but you’ll be just as dead.”
Wolcott cocked the weapon and aimed it at Jack’s head. Jack rocked his head back and forth, trying to make it a more difficult target. The trick seemed to work, because Wolcott hesitated, then brought the gun closer to the back of Jack’s neck. Jack twisted his head as far as he could. Even if the last thing he saw was a bullet on its way to his brain, he wanted to see it. Suicide Jack Talon was not about to go out of this world by being shot in the back.
Wolcott watched the movement. A satisfied smile crossed his face just before a flash of brown feathers and yellow talons engulfed his head.
Chief!
Wolcott stumbled backward, blood seeping from his eyes, his arms batting at the air. He tripped and tumbled to the ground. The great owl fluttered, rising and twisting. Just as it was ready to dive at the downed vampire, a set of red, gaping jaws rose up and snapped down with a crunch across the bird.
A sudden silence came across Jack and the world seemed to narrow. Through his tunnel vision, he saw those jaws closing again and again, the motion impossibly repeated.
Chief was gone. But he couldn’t be. The Indian was too big, too powerful. Too magical.
Anger flooded Jack. He’d had enough. He might die, but he wasn’t going to die lying here, pinned like some mouse in a trap.
Jack focused on the beam that lay across his back. In all the stories he’d ever heard about vampires, they had incredible strength. He wished he had some of that strength now. Instead, he brought his arms in tight against his chest and shuffled his legs around until his feet found solid objects to push against. Then he put all his will and effort into a single mighty heave.
The beam moved. He strained and the beam moved another inch higher. Gritting his teeth, he pushed forward, but the rough wood snagged his duster like clawed hands holding him back. The beam collapsed onto his back again, but this time Jack had some wiggle room. By slipping out of the duster and leaving it behind, he slithered free.
As Jack stood up among the rubble that was once Sara Beth’s sod shack, Wolcott appeared at the doorway, Jack’s Peacemaker in hand, his eyes healed but blood staining his cheeks like red tears.
Without a word, he lifted the gun.
As Wolcott pulled the trigger, Jack threw himself to the right. The bullet passed inches over his left shoulder. When Jack landed on his side, he was halfway through a hole in the shack’s south wall. He scrambled forward. Another shot whizzed behind him, and he tumbled onto the ground outside. After gaining his feet, he headed for the front of the shack, intent on finding the rifle he’d dropped as he ran. It might be damaged but it was his only hope.
As he rounded the crumbled corner of the shack, several sensations hit him. Behind him, Wolcott scrambled to get through the hole in the wall that Jack had passed through. Ahead, Jack saw two werewolves attacking a third, which was wounded. No. The third creature was a normal wolf, except much larger. Chief!
Jack dropped to his knees and crawled forward, his hands searching the grass for the rifle.
Chief wasn’t dead, but he couldn’t last much longer. He hobbled on an obviously broken front leg and streaks of bloody wounds showed through his thick fur.
Just as Jack’s hands closed around his rifle, he heard Wolcott’s footsteps behind him. Jack rolled to his right, and a shot sent up a spray of dirt where he had been. Before Wolcott could shoot again, Jack placed two shots from the rifle between his eyes.
Being from a normal gun, they accomplished little beyond causing Wolcott to stumble back and wipe blood from his eyes. His wounds were already healing but that delay was all Jack needed.
Jack jumped to his feet and swung the barrel of the gun down, aiming for Wolcott’s right wrist. Wolcott sensed the movement and tried to jerk out of the way. Instead of hitting Wolcott’s wrist, Jack hit the vampire’s hand and the Peacemaker spun away into the night.
Wolcott’s eyes followed the arc of the gun, but Jack paid it no heed. Instead he cocked the rifle and shot Wolcott in the heart, then quickly cocked it and shot him again. Wolcott sunk to his knees. While vampires could recover quickly from wounds, especially if they’d recently fed, the wounds had a cumulative effect.
Normally Jack would have emptied the rifle into Wolcott, but the vampire wasn’t the only foe around. Instead, Jack twisted the rifle and grabbed the barrel. Using the rifle like a club, he swung it at Wolcott’s head. The blow would have killed a normal man, but Wolcott tried to stand. Jack hit him again, and again. Wolcott wobbled, then fell backwards onto the ground.
This kind of savage, hands-on attack had never been Jack’s style. Wyatt Earp once told him that he had too much finesse to live long, but in truth, Jack always did what needed to be done to survive. Usually that was smooth and precise, but when there was no choice, he wasn’t above using whatever tools he had on hand.
Certainly there was nothing refined about beating Wolcott to death with a rifle butt. Jack swung the gun at Wolcott’s head several more times. He continued hitting the downed vampire even after Wolcott’s face turned into a mass of blood and bone resembling a bloody cow pie. Blood covered Jack’s hands and the rifle barrel. It spattered his face and droplets stung his eyes. If he’d had a knife or even a shovel, he could have ended this much more quickly, but this would work as well.
A yelp of pain from behind stopped Jack in mid-swing. He turned. Two werewolves had pinned Chief and were going for his neck. A third werewolf shook itself as it healed, straightening broken limbs and preparing to join the fight. The attack on Wolcott had taken ten seconds at most, but that had been too long.
Jack spun the rifle and shot one werewolf in the head and then the other. Besides causing the werewolves to flinch and growl, the shots had little effect. Both werewolves continued to attack Chief.
This wasn’t going to work. Jack alternated head shots between the two attacking werewolves as he moved sideways. Each time he cocked the rifle, he scanned the littered ground for anther weapon.
Torn bits of werewolf surrounded him. While dead werewolf bodies switched back to human form after death, apparently pieces of werewolves didn’t. And pieces lay everywhere along with shards and scraps of twisted silver. Between shots, Jack bent down, grabbed several thin shards, and dropped them into his rifle barrel.
The damned rifle would probably blow up in his face, but normal shots from the gun weren’t doing much to the werewolves. He stepped closer, careful to keep the barrel tipped up until the last second. When the barrel was only two feet from one of the werewolves’ heads, he squeezed the trigger. The werewolf twisted and growled, but went down. A moment later, it lay still.
Jack had already cocked the rifle and was dropping more silver into the barrel when the other werewolf attacked.
As the big body hit Jack, he lost the rifle and tumbled backwards. As soon as he hit the ground, the beast was on him. He grabbed its neck, trying to keep its jaws away from him, and struggled to throw the werewolf off. Blood matted the werewolf’s head where Jack had shot it before, but it showed no other signs of injury. While it snarled and drooled and snapped its jaws, Jack looked for the rifle. It lay only a foot away, but
he needed his hands free to reach it.
He made the decision in an instant. Twisting his shoulder, he pushed against the werewolf’s side as hard as he could in the direction away from the rifle. As he expected, the werewolf shifted its weight, pushing back against Jack and using its powerful muscles to stay on top of him. Jack jerked his arms down and pulled hard on the werewolf’s front leg that was nearest the rifle. Without any resistance, the werewolf’s own momentum carried it in the direction Jack wanted it to go. With the support of its leg gone, it fell. Jack went with it, grabbing the rifle as they rolled over it. As the moved, the beast tore through the meaty part of Jack’s left shoulder, but his right hand was around the rifle. One-handed, he brought it up, placed the barrel against the werewolf’s head, and pulled the trigger.
The werewolf died seconds later. Jack scooted away as it collapsed. With only one arm working, his movements were slow—much too slow. The third werewolf, the one that had been nearly healed when he started firing at the first two, was up and loping toward him. Just as Jack freed himself, the werewolf pounced and drove him to the ground again. Jack was pinned. The rifle wasn’t cocked and had no silver in the barrel. He had no chance. As he struggled to hold the beast’s jaws away from his neck, he searched for something, anything, but he’d exhausted his options. In seconds he would die, and he could do nothing to change that. At least he and Chief had taken down Wolcott and most of the werewolves. They’d both gone down fighting. Jack always liked to say that dying was dying no matter how you went about it, but suffering from consumption all those years had convinced him otherwise.
And then Chief was there, a giant arm swinging down at the beast’s head, a glint of silver in his massive hand.
The werewolf yelped and slumped against Jack. A silver table knife was buried to the hilt in its brain.
Jack shoved the beast off just in time to see Chief stumble back and fall. The big Indian lay on the ground, his right arm broken and bloody, his face and body cut. He coughed and blood bubbled from his mouth.
