Lockhart's Legacy (Vespari Lockhart Book 1)

by J. Stone

  Regardless, she twisted her leg around and slid off the saddle, landing on the dirt with a thud. Slipping her rifle out of its holster amongst the saddle bag, Wynonna gripped the reins and continued pulling the horse forward with her, as she grew closer to the body that she was now certain was Lockhart. She approached him and his horse, finding his foot stuck in one of the stirrups. The horse had dragged him some distance before stopping there to chew on some grass, which had earned him some scrapes and cuts on his exposed skin.

  Deciding that there was no danger there, Wynonna stowed the rifle back in the saddle of her horse. Whatever had happened here, no monster had attacked. This was something else. She pulled Lockhart’s foot out of the stirrup and laid his leg down on the ground. Taking the reins of both his horse and her own, she pulled them over to a nearby tree and tied them up. Wynonna then returned to Lockhart and dragged him to the tree as well, careful not to exacerbate his wounds.

  Touching his skin, she felt a heat radiating off him. He had a fever, but he didn’t look ill, nor had he stirred at all when she dragged him along the rocky ground. After laying him down at the base of the tree, Wynonna stopped to examine him. Either by the horse dragging him or when she’d done the same, his duster had come part way off him, and a portion of his shoulder exposed. Something black pooled against the fabric of his shirt.

  Her first thought was that it was similar to the black goop that the Gentleman had infected her with. Undoing the top button of his shirt, Wynonna pulled the fabric aside and looked underneath. There was no wound. In addition to the vespari tattoos that stretched all across his chest, there was another design. This one was cruder, and it looked fresh. The shiny black, almost metallic, ink itself was seeping out, staining his shirt. The skin around it looked irritated and spongy. She couldn’t explain what the symbol was, but something about it made her think it malevolent.

  Distracting her from her thoughts, a breeze of wind swept through, chilling the air. The heat of the desert day would soon be gone, and they would need a fire to make it through the night, especially if he was ill. Leaving Lockhart there for the moment, Wynonna set out to find enough pieces of wood, weeds, and anything else that would burn, and she started gathering everything up.

  After a few minutes of collecting what the desert had to offer, she returned to Lockhart and dumped them beside him. Wynonna intended to go out and find more, but she heard a sound. Then, both of the horses whinnied and shifted as though they wanted to get away from something. Walking over to the horses, she tried to get them to calm down.

  “It’s okay,” she told them. “It’s okay.”

  Pressing her palm against her horse and petting the fur, she simultaneously pulled her rifle out. She took the time to grab a handful of cartridges from her bag, stuffing them in her jeans pocket. Despite her assurances to the horses, she knew that everything was not alright. Something was stirring out there in the dark. Silence followed her retrieval of the rifle though, and her eyes couldn’t find anything among the shadows. The sun was completely gone now, and the starlight was not a sufficient source of light.

  When the silence was finally broken, it did nothing to relieve Wynonna. Laughter. Not human laughter though. This belonged to a hyena. A constant source of frustration for her family back on the ranch, they lived in the wastes, hunting what they could. There though, she had the others with her and fences that would help block the animals. Now, she had nothing but the rifle in her hands. There wasn’t even a lit fire to scare them off nor time to get one started.

  Another laugh echoed the first. Wynonna twisted about. This one had come from behind her. They were surrounding her, Lockhart, and the horses. More of them laughed, forcing her to swivel back and forth, unsure which direction they’d come from first. She panicked. This situation sat outside her usual wheelhouse. She’d defended the cattle from similar threats before, but not like this. She couldn’t recall a situation where something had so directly threatened her life. Not knowing what to do or how to combat these things, Wynonna aimed into the darkness and fired. Her shot rang out in the night, followed by a moment of silence, and then a series of cackling laughs.

  The hyenas grew louder and closer. All she’d done was waste a bullet. Wynonna cocked back the bolt, exposing the breech and ejecting the spent cartridge. Rifling in her pocket, she retrieved another cartridge and slid it into the breech before closing it with the bolt. She then took a deep breath and waited for what she knew was coming.

  Taking a knee, Wynonna ignored her failing sight, choosing instead to focus on the mocking sounds the hyenas made. Despite her previous panic, she now forced herself to stay calm. Raised on the ranch with three brothers, Wynonna had plenty of practice with a rifle. Her father had taught them all, but she’d taken to it better than her brothers. Her father had treated her as a boy ever since she was born, and it shaped her. All that time and energy put into shooting, and she had let the hyenas rattle her. No more. She was in control now.

  Wynonna raised the rifle and listened for one of the cackles to stand out from the others. Focusing on it, she heard the footsteps that accompanied it. She swiveled the rifle around and fired again. Once more, the explosion rang out in the night. This time, however, she heard the thud of the bullet collide with a hyena followed by a yelping sound. The laughter ceased, as Wynonna pulled back the bolt and slid another cartridge into her rifle.

  “Come on,” she muttered to the beasts.

  After a few seconds of the silence, the hyenas started to make noise again. They grew louder than before. They understood that she was dangerous, and she felt them moving in on her. Regardless, Wynonna forced herself to remain calm and focused. The footsteps of one on her left side sounded closest, so she turned and aimed her rifle in its direction.

  She fired. Another hard thud followed by a whimper. She couldn’t stop yet though. Another set of footsteps fast approached. She pulled another bullet from her pocket before pulling back the bolt to remove the spent cartridge. Despite how quickly she’d reloaded, it proved to be too slow. The hyena at her side cackled mere feet away, and she heard it leap off the ground. Twisting around to face it, the best she could do was raise her rifle in defense, which was all that saved her. The animal clamped its jaws around the barrel of the gun, slobbering on the wood and metal.

  Wynonna stumbled backward and fell to the ground, while the hyena came with her. The beast thrust its head toward her again, but she pushed with the rifle, keeping it from biting her face. The hyena reared back, trying to free its mouth from the weapon, but Wynonna raised her hands too, ensuring the animal couldn’t loose itself from the barrel.

  While she fought off the hyena, the others in the pack had moved to an easier target. One of the horses cried out in pain, struggling to get free of the tree where she’d tied them both up. Wynonna couldn’t help it, not when she had the beast on top of her to contend with. The tree creaked, and she heard something snap. Then, there was a gunshot. The hyena fell dead on top of her, while both horses ran off into the night, pursued by the hyenas. Wynonna looked over to see the glint of metal with a trail of smoke rising upward. The vespari was awake.

  ***

  “What a-a-are you doing here?” Lockhart asked her, standing up with a groan.

  “You’re welcome,” she told him, pushing the dead hyena off her. “I just saved you from being eaten in your sleep.”

  The vespari stowed his revolver and lowered his hand down to Wynonna.

  She frowned and slapped it out of her way, standing up on her own. “I’m fine,” she told him.

  He sighed and looked to where he’d last seen the horses. “We h-h-h-have to get the h-h-h-horses,” he told her.

  Wynonna leaned down and picked the rifle up, wiping the hyena’s saliva from the barrel and flinging it to the ground. “No kidding,” she shot back.

  Lockhart shook his head at her attitude and started toward the horses. Their tracks wouldn’t be hard to follow despite the dark of that night. Behind him, Wynonn
a followed, glaring a hole in his back. She plodded after him, completely ignorant to the noise she was making. There was no way they were going to sneak up on the hyenas if she kept that up.

  Stopping and turning around, the vespari held his finger to his lips. Wynonna gave him a confused look and shrugged her shoulders.

  “I’m not saying anything,” she whispered.

  He pointed to her boots. She rolled her eyes and sighed. Assuming he could manage nothing better from her, he turned back to the trail and proceeded forward in the dark. To her credit, Wynonna did try to step softer, but she was still much louder than him. It would have to do.

  They didn’t travel but a few minutes before Lockhart found a sign of the horses. One of the saddles lay along the trail but without the horse that had worn it. He leaned down and inspected it. Saliva, blood, and bite marks littered it. The contents though, he did not recognize. This wasn’t his horse’s saddle.

  “Yours,” he told Wynonna, standing back up.

  The woman now took her turn, kneeling down at the saddle. She collected the bags themselves and threw them over her shoulder.

  “My supplies,” she told him, standing up as well.

  Lockhart didn’t care what she’d brought. As soon as they found his horse and the sun emerged, he would make sure she went her own way. For the time being, it was best she stayed with him. He nodded for her to follow, and they kept going.

  The trail soon split into two. One he attributed to the horse that had lost its saddle. These tracks weren’t as deep as the other, and so he ignored them. He needed to find his horse. Nearly all his things were in those bags. His food was his primary concern. He knew that you couldn’t last long in that harsh desert if you didn’t have the proper supplies.

  Hearing a cackle in the dark of night, the vespari found they were getting close. He also spotted a fresh trail of blood. The hyenas had injured them both. If he were to guess, he’d say he wasn’t going to find his horse alive. A few more minutes, and he proved himself right.

  In the distance, Lockhart saw the outlines of the rest of the hyenas devouring what remained of his horse. He ducked down behind a large rock, pulling Wynonna with him. He pointed the animals out to her, though she seemed to have trouble seeing them in the dark. There were still four in their pack. He could deal with that easily enough. The problem was he didn’t want to waste any more of his bullets. He was down to only nine runed bullets with one more needing to be inscribed. Wynonna had her own weapon though.

  Turning back to her, he whispered, “R-r-rifle,” while holding his hand out to her.

  “You have your own,” she muttered, matching his volume.

  He sighed. “I’m low on b-bullets.”

  “What? And like I’m made of them or something?”

  Lockhart just glared at her.

  “I need your help,” she whispered to him. “Promise to train me, and you can have the rifle.”

  “This is h-h-h-how you ask for h-h-h-help?”

  Wynonna shrugged. “Whatever it takes.”

  “Forget it,” he told her. “I’ll h-handle it.”

  Lockhart grabbed the knife from his boot and stood up, walking around to the other side of the rock they’d used for cover. If she wouldn’t allow him to do it the easy way, he’d still get by fine doing it the hard way. While he approached the pack of hyenas, Wynonna stayed behind that rock and took aim at the beasts with the rifle. He wouldn’t need her help in dealing with them. He just hoped she didn’t shoot him.

  Before he even got to the group or alerted them to his presence, however, Wynonna fired a shot. He looked back at her only to find she was reloading. Then he traced her gun’s sight to the pack of hyenas. The animals cackled and moved away from the bloody horse lying on the ground. Wynonna’s gunshot had struck one of them.

  Behind him, she took aim again. Another hit, as he heard a yelp and the thud of the animal hitting the ground. One of the surviving hyenas rounded back and charged toward him. Lockhart gripped his knife and turned to face it, but another shot rang out in the night, and the animal fell to the ground before it could attack him. The vespari turned around to find the last hyena. He couldn’t even see it in that darkness, but Wynonna fired again, and once more, he heard the yelp of the creature as it fell.

  “Hm,” he muttered to himself.

  Lockhart stowed his knife back in his boot and walked over to his dead horse.

  “I told you I’m a good shot,” Wynonna said, standing up and then ejecting the spent cartridge and sliding another in. “I wouldn’t be hard to train. I just need to know how to kill the revenant. Tell me that, and I’ll leave you alone.”

  “No,” he told her, bending down to the horse and gathering his things.

  “Why not?” she demanded. “Is it because I’m a woman?”

  He glared back at her. “I d-d-don’t care that you’re a w-w-w-woman.”

  “Then what?”

  Lockhart grabbed what he needed from the saddlebags and stood up. “We n-n-need a fire,” he told her.

  “You can’t just ignore me,” she told him.

  He intended to do just that. Lockhart proceeded to gather what he needed for the fire, and he set to building it. Wynonna simply watched, sitting on a rock and stewing. Once the fire was going, Lockhart found one of the hyena’s bodies and dragged it back with him. As he skinned and prepared it, the woman opposite continued to glare.

  “Why not?” she repeated.

  “Drop it,” he replied. “I’m n-n-not training you.”

  Wynonna remained quiet for some time, but he could tell that she was still dwelling on it. He couldn’t blame her. The Gentleman had killed her whole family. He understood that, and he understood her response to it. His would’ve been the same. His had been the same. Regardless, he couldn’t do any more than promise to kill the revenant once he was finished with the beldam coven. They both remained silent, as he cooked several bits of hyena meat on the fire.

  “You h-h-hungry?” Lockhart asked her, pulling a strip off the fire.

  She just glared at him, as though she were trying to size him up.

  “Fine,” he replied, eating his fill of the meat.

  Once he’d had what he wanted, Lockhart sat back on a rock and stared into the fire.

  Wynonna tried again. “I need your help,” she said. “I have to kill the revenant. Train me to be a vespari. I’ll come with you. Help you. I--”

  “You’re n-n-n-not my problem,” Lockhart said, interrupting her. “I’m n-n-n-not taking you with me. I s-saved you once. I’m done.”

  Wynonna was silent for a moment, as she considered her next step. “Fine, but I’m still going after this so-called Gentleman,” she eventually told him, eyeing him carefully as she spoke. “If what you say is true, I have no chance of killing him. And now you know my intentions. You know that if you do nothing, I’m going to die. You’re now complicit in my death. If you do nothing, you’re killing me. You. Not the revenant. You, a vespari sworn to protect people from things like the revenant.”

  Lockhart groaned, shifting on that rock and staring at the fire.

  “Can you live with the guilt of my death?” she asked him.

  He looked up at her. He knew he couldn’t. “Fine by m-m-me,” he lied. “Go h-h-home. Get killed. I d-d-don’t care.”

  Wynonna glared at him. “Then I guess I’ll go now.”

  Without wasting a second, the young woman grabbed her rifle and her bag. She threw the bag over her shoulder and propped the barrel of the rifle against the other. Then, despite the night still looming over them and the beasts that went with it still out there, the woman walked away from their campfire.

  Lockhart was tough, strong, smart, and resilient above all else. He didn’t feel like he had many weaknesses. This woman had sized him up and honed in on the one thing he couldn’t stand. Guilt. He couldn’t stand the idea of being responsible for her death or anyone else’s. It was what drove him to be a vespari and what made him so good at it.
He thought that if sacrificing his own life would save others, then he would be all too happy to do it. So, when someone died who didn’t have to, that stung deep.

  “Stop!” he yelled after her, without getting up. He stared into the fire. “Come b-b-b-back.”

  He heard her footsteps in the dark and soon saw her boots near the fire, but she refused to sit down.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I’ll… I’ll help y-y-you,” he told her.

  Wynonna shifted on the spot. “You will?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s the catch?”

  He shook his head. “No c-catch.”

  “So, you’re going to train me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” she declared. “When do we get started?”

  “Tomorrow,” he told her, starting to lie down.

  “But, I’m ready now,” Wynonna replied, plopping her things back down on the ground.

  “I n-n-need sleep. So will you.”

  “You were just asleep.”

  “That w-w-wasn’t sleep,” he informed her.

  “Whatever. I’m fine anyway. I haven’t slept much since…” She stopped and thought. “I don’t sleep much anymore. I need something to do. I can’t just sit still like this.”

  Lockhart sighed and propped himself up. He pulled his notebook from his duster pocket. “You r-r-read?”

  She sat down on the rock across the fire. “Yeah, my mother taught me. Why?”

  He tossed the little book over the top of the fire and into her lap. “Start reading.”

  “What is it?”

  Lockhart lay back down and turned away from the fire. “Details on my k-k-kills.”

  Wynonna flipped open the book. “Really? Everything you’ve ever killed?”

  “Nearly.”

  With that, he closed his eyes and tried to get some sleep. Wynonna remained quiet for a minute, but just before he could drift off to sleep, she spoke again.