by Ric Beard
All heads turned toward the fire, except Mitch’s.
“We get it, Stone is under our protection. New allies, and all that.”
“My brother proves the presence of wisdom.”
“Fucking Earl,” Josiah said. He smiled. “Always causing trouble.” Earl smiled and, just like that, the tension seemed to melt away. When his eyes raised up to Sean’s, however, Moss spoke again.
“Advocate, why don’t you go patrol the boundary. Have a nice walk.”
Earl stood without a word, pulled his hat on, grabbed his rifle, and moved away from the fire.
“Apologies,” Moss said.
“No offense taken,” Sean said. “I’ve been around the block a few times. He didn’t hit me or anything.”
“No, if he’d done that you’d probably be dead.”
Sean shot a look over his shoulder at the width of the man’s back as he stepped into the shadows and thought Moss might be telling the truth.
“Not sure how I offended him.”
“You didn’t,” Mitch said. “Earl’s just an asshole.”
“Where was I?” Moss asked. The orange glows of the flames seemed to dance in his eyes and Sean appreciated the moment with his SmartGlasses tucked away in his shirt. “Right. Sacred Plains. One of my ancestors was the founder of the city, when the ways of the old world died.” He held up his Tab, or what OK City called a handheld. “He left his journal behind and I use it as a guide in life, as have the men and women of my line for many decades.”
“Was Plains City its old-world name?” Sean asked.
Moss shook his head subtly. “No. I don’t know the old-world name. It was remote.”
“Why ‘Sacred Plains?’”
“My ancestor and our other founders decided the thing that caused the fall of their civilization should be kept from the hands of the people who would misuse it.”
Sean mulled it over. What in the Dakotas could be…
The oil rush. Sean seemed to remember people coming from far and wide to work in the oil fields discovered in the Dakotas when he was young. When the price of oil dropped, the business dried up.
“Oil.”
Moss smiled and raised the handheld again. “I’ll bet you could fill in a lot of holes left void by my ancestors’ writings.”
Sean felt one side of his mouth tick upward. “I’m betting we could learn a lot from each other.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
SOCIALLY-CHALLENGED
38
Ruby slammed the door behind her, but didn’t bother with the wheel to secure the door. Though she’d expected to find Augustus waiting in the hallway, looking at the woman he saw as his prize through the portal out here, he was nowhere to be seen.
Her boots clanged on the metal stairs leading to ground level, and she emerged from the covered area atop the tarmac, into the Thursday afternoon sun. Augustus was standing with a man in camouflage pants pointing at the back of a truck with a strange, metal weapon with a monster ribbed cylinder at the back of the barrel forged to the top of its cab.
When Augustus saw her, he frowned, dropped the pointing finger and nodded at his guy, who wandered off in another direction.
“You finish her, yourself?” He asked.
Ruby sighed and stared through the wire fences at the deep browns of a rocky foothill beyond.
“No, I wouldn’t take the pleasure from you, Augustus. To tell you the truth, I was hoping I’d find a way to cut her loose.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
Ruby shook her head and pursed her lips as she turned and walked past him.
“Is the concept of mercy so foreign to you?” After a few more steps toward the crew that’d waited for the last hour on the asphalt, she said, “Don’t dilly dally with that one. Just finish it. She’s been through enough.”
“Whatever you say, boss lady.”
“Hey.”
Augustus stopped but didn’t turn to look back.
“Where’s Jonesy?” Ruby asked.
“I don’t know. Where’d you put him?”
“I’m in no mood for your humor. Was he brought here?”
Augustus turned and cocked his head to one side.
“Why don’t you just ask Sampson?” When Ruby smirked in response, his chin dropped open, and he chuckled. “I see. You don’t want to look like you’re going soft, or else Sampson might get second thoughts about your promotion.”
“So, you gonna tell me, or just prove that you’re a socially-challenged ass?”
The grin melted off his face, and Augustus peered at her through a squinting eye.
“No, Ruby. I haven’t seen Lawkeeper Jones, around.”
He turned and paced toward the stairs leading underground. Ruby watched him go, looking for the slightest bounce in his step that might give away his lie, but she saw nothing but the slight limp he’d displayed since the day they’d met.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
WOULD'VE SET THE HOUSE ON FIRE
39
The corpses of two adults and two children lay at intervals, feet from each other, in a neat little row. The woman was nude, with a gaping puncture wound in her chest and very little throat left among the torn meat from which an animal had gotten its fill. The man’s otherwise blonde hair was caked with matted blood, locks stuck to the gaping wound where his cheek had been. A hollow socket was all that remained of an eye on his left side.
Nina would never forget the ancient sign that prefaced the scene, its metal arch running suspended by poles on either side of the road.
The Churchill Farm.
Nina’s eyes had seemed magnetically opposed to the site of the children, the flash of their brutalized forms ingrained in her mind’s eye. Lexi gazed upon them with such cold determination that Nina figured hundreds of years of violence could desensitize anyone and wondered if she’d be like that, one day. The softer, loving demeanor of the mentor she’d gotten to know atop the mountain had been abandoned for a frigid, emotionless soldier amidst the violent scene.
“Nina!” Lexi said, dragging her from her trance. She swung around to find the tall redhead with the twisting curls extending a finger in the direction of the dead. “Look at them, Nina. If you don’t look, you can’t remember. If you don’t know what you’re out here fighting for, you’ll never win the fight. Look, Nina! How will you ever be able to handle it if you don’t absorb and process it?”
Nina woke with a start, her heart thumping in her chest, sweat running in rivulets down her forehead. She blinked it out of her eyes and sat up on the bench of the electric cart.
Where am I? How did I get here?
As she registered the rain drops pinging off her forehead in the uncovered vehicle, her predicament flooded back. The crazy man on the farm abducting her, the incestuous father planting his seed in the vilest of places, and the mother standing almost idly by in a passive aggressive display until her own daughter sprayed her life force onto the front of her dress.
“Nina glass, Night Vision.”
The inky darkness of night gave way, and Nina saw clearly through the lenses designed to simulate high noon. Once she realized the rolling liquid on her forehead wasn’t sweat, she started fumbling around the packs in the back. Yanking a cord off the rolled-up tarp, she winced at a rope burn and stuck her finger in her mouth.
Of course…dammit.
The plastic was just long enough to cover the back, so Nina tied it down and thanked the universe that she hadn’t given in to her desires not to take any of the family’s belongings with her. Janie was dead, Twyla was a complete loon, and Charlie deserved whatever justice he got.
Lexi would’ve set the house on fire and watched them burn.
The thought lifted the cloudy vale covering the dream, allowing her to conjure the image of Lexi in a green version of her combat suit, pointing down at dead children and ordering her to look. But Lexi didn’t own a green combat suit, and while the memory of the dead family was real, she’d found t
hem with Jenna and Scruff—not with Lexi.
Lexi wouldn’t have set her captors on fire and watched them burn. What are you thinking?
Nina rolled out and stood in the drizzle, gazing at the towering foothills that had sewed so much awe in her when first she’d seen them. The awe was gone, the newness shriveled like a prune. This fucking world, over which she’d pined so, didn’t seem interested in letting her find her people. First the clouds kept her from seeing which way she should travel to cut the distance to Lucian, or whoever would come from the compound for her. By the time they’d cleared, she’d been abducted. Now it was raining, and the clouds darkening the sky in all directions told her she could count on more of the same luck she’d had so far.
Lexi’s angry face flashed into her mind again and Nina pushed it away.
You just dragged the sentiments from a dream world back into the real world, that’s all. That’s not Lexi. It’s the stress.
As Nina nodded to herself, the rain poured harder, and she crawled back onto the bench. Her body quivered with each step, and as she settled against the cart’s wall, her stomach grumbled. It was time to rattle around and see if she was lucky enough to find some food. But she was sure her luck wasn’t having any of it.
Chapter Forty
OOPS
40
Britt Marbury had to remind himself to release some of the tension in his grip as he pulled Lacey Rupert along the rocky street in Ingle’s Ferry. The truck would be waiting on road 232, just short of the New River, and the men waiting for him to bring Rupert out would be impatient.
Those assholes are always impatient, riding around in their oversized troop truck, acting like they own every town they come upon. Like I should be at their beck and call. Do they think about me, any? Nope. Not at all. They don’t care how the townies are gonna look at me tomorrow, when they find out one of their own was taken in the night for her husband’s debts. Why should they care? They’ll be at their compound in Shawsville, living high while I evade questions and tell people I’m looking into it.
Impatient assholes.
Britt stopped at the end of the narrow side road at the intersection and looked in both directions. Only one of the two-story lodging buildings’ lights was on and it was a good two blocks in the opposite direction from which he was traveling. A quick glance the other direction at street level told him the going was good.
“C’mon, Lacey. Best get this over with.”
“Best for whom, lap dog?” The last word came out more as dawg than dog, but that was the way of the town. Language down here was more drawn out than where he hailed from, and the pace was slower, too. Britt figured all that would change when Sampson’s influence reached this far south, and industry came along, but Blacksburg was just to the north and he’d have to get through them first because the main thoroughfare ran right through their gates.
Proctor woman knows what she’s doing, controlling that road.
“Lower your voice, Lacey, I’m not your enemy.”
“Sure, you aren’t, Lawkeeper Marbury!” she barked in falsified laughter. “Hell, you’re a righteous son…of somewhere. The disciple of our lord and savior, Sampson De Le Court! Why, I’d be surprised if you couldn’t walk up yonder to that river and walk right across it!”
“Lacey!” he barked in a whisper. He jerked her arm hard, yanking her face close to his. His words filtered through clenched front teeth. “If you get someone out here trying to make trouble for you, they’re gonna get shot, then more will come, and then those men at the truck down there are gonna come wipe all of ‘em out. You come quietly, do whatever it is they want you to do, and you could be back in a couple days. Now, I don’t like it no better ’n you, but you’re gonna go and get someone killed with your hysterics. Now come!”
The tug at her arms met no resistance this time. Lacey lowered her head and trudged along beside him in a defeated gait that left Britt equally dejected. At the end of the road, the truck’s dim headlights shone off toward the east, pointed out of town.
At least they didn’t point them right down the road, here, but damn, don’t those boys have enough sense to turn ‘em off?
Crossing the last intersection before 232, Britt gave a furtive glance up the single side road before turning his attention south again.
Lacey’s voice cut the quiet night air. “What’re they gonna do to me?” She sounded more like a teenager caught in a loft with her beau than a spirited woman in her late twenties. Her long, brown curly hair bounced around her girlish face and eyes so bright they almost belonged in the noon sky, and Britt didn’t like to think about what they might do to such a pretty thing.
Sampson was his boss, and he really seemed like the decent sort, but the stories about what his men got up to, like them boys down at that Churchill farm, was cause for worry when Britt knew he was about to hand this woman over to a truckload of them who might take their liberties before she got wherever it was she was going.
A fleeting thought about cutting her loose and taking her out of here tickled his brain before he dismissed it. One lawkeeper—two if you believed the radio—was dead at the hands of these Black Ghosts gallivanting around in the shadows of the MidEast towns in the dark of night, but the odds of him dying were a whole lot greater if he denied Sampson’s justice.
What kind of justice is this, though? Making a woman pay for the sins of her husband…her dead husband.
The thoughts were washed away as he came to the corner where the truck idled, its headlights shining off into the void of night on the edge of town. He gripped her bicep good and tight as he came up on the truck and looked around. Something near the back tire on the other side of the truck caught his eye, and as he stood beneath the only working streetlight on this side of town, he peered out of its halo, into the darkness.
What is that?
Pulling her closer and taking a few tentative steps forward, his heart caught in his chest.
A leg.
He reached down with his free hand to his holster when his vest bunched around his shoulders, and he was jerked backward. Something cold pressed against his neck.
“Let the woman go or I’m gonna open up your carotid.”
“My what?”
“Your throat, hillbilly. Let her go!” The voice snapped.
Britt released his grip, and Lacey Rupert took a few steps before a short chirp of fear escaped her lungs. Britt’s neck was accounted for, but he slid his eyes in their sockets and saw the source of her fear standing a couple feet in front of Lacey…a figure, dressed all in black. The lone street lamp cast a shadow over the wide-brimmed hat covering the devil’s face and neck in a shroud darker than death’s void itself.
Britt’s Adam’s Apple seemed to swell to twice its size.
Weapons hung from a holster on either hip; one looked like a .45 automatic, the other, some kind of black, plastic-looking get-up with a fat cylinder. The short figure raised an empty gloved hand with open fingers but didn’t speak; it just turned its head slowly from side-to-side.
“Take your hand away from your weapon, asshole.” The last two words were spoken with syrupy disdain that they sent a chill up his spine and reverberations through his arms. His hand jerked away from the weapon. He felt the weight on his hip relieved as his holster fell to the dirt road. That’s when he noticed another body that’d been dragged away from the street light and into the grass near the river’s edge.
“What do you y’all want? She hasn’t done nothing. Let her go.”
The warm breath of the whisper warmed his ear. “Seems you were the only one holding her. You trying to tell me you weren’t bringing her to these men?” The cold metal wrapping around his neck, which hugged so that he could only assume it was a curved blade, tightened against his Adam’s apple. “Well? What were you doing with her?”
“Yes! I was bringing her to those men! I didn’t have a choice.”
“What’s your name, lady?”
“Lacey.” She brushed
curly hair away from her face and took a step back from the demon.
“Lacey, what were they gonna do with you?”
“I don’t know.”
A low, growling voice emitted from the shadow’s face on the other side of Lacey.
“Yes, you do. Admit it to yourself. Say it out loud.”
“I guess…I guess they would’ve raped me and took me to the coal mines to work.”
“I figured it was something like that,” the voice behind Britt said. It wasn’t a whisper anymore, and he realized the voice belonged to a woman!
The knife slipped away from his neck, and a push into his back sent his chest slamming into the side of the truck.
“Turn around.”
Britt slowly turned, fear ravaging his body in quakes, afraid he would see another of the Black Ghosts. What he saw instead was a tall woman, dressed all in black, but she wasn’t wearing a trench coat or a hat. Instead, she wore a leather mask pulled over her head so that only her eyes and mouth were visible. The feminine figure was covered from head to toe in skin-hugging, dull fabric in which he could see diagonal weaves creating the impression of black diamonds all over her lean, muscular form. A long, curved blade with a fat head jutted from her right fist. His weapons, at her feet.
“Give me one reason I shouldn’t open your guts and spill them onto the ground with the rest of theirs.”
Britt reached for his hat, pulled it off his head, and dropped it into the dirt. Shaking his head, he leaned back against the truck as his eyes shifted from one figure in black to the other.
“If I hadn’t brought her, they’d have killed me, anyway.”
“It’s true,” Lacey said. “These boys—” she looked down at one of the men and jerked, pulling her arms to her chest, “—they had a deal with my husband. He crossed them and disappeared a month ago. They been cutting Sampson’s drug shipments and selling on the side. My husband got mixed up in it, and when he didn’t come through, I think they killed him.”
