Of Grave Concern

by Max McCoy

  “It could use some cleaning,” I said, “but it is hardly my idea of hell.”

  “Pahghh!” Malleus spat. “You mean your Christian idea. How bored am I of this theology for simpletons. One god to rule all—how uninspired! Give me that old-time religion, when there was a god for every temper. And hell is merely the netherworld, the place of the dead.”

  Malleus motioned for Katie to come to him, and she scooted across the floor and put her back against the throne. She loosened the silk gown and he caressed her bare shoulders as he spoke.

  “Why have you come here?”

  “My aura,” I said. “Give it back.”

  “You had your chance,” he said. “I dropped it from surprise when I took it—it was made of better stuff than I expected. It lay there in the mud, and you could have snatched it up, but you did not. I placed it in my collection then. When I have enough of the shiny ones, I will transform into something more pleasing. . . .”

  “Are you Macedonian, too?”

  He waved dismissively. “I speak more dead languages than any Oxford don,” he said. “No man has heard my native tongue in five thousand years, and none know its name. Call it ‘Enigma.’”

  “Obviously, you aren’t human,” I said.

  “Brilliant,” he said. “Any more revelations for us?”

  “What are you?”

  He smiled. “If I told you,” he said, “I might be lying. Or I might not.”

  I had my answer.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Anything I want,” he said. “And what I want at the moment—meaning the next hundred years or so—is to set loose a new kind of evil upon humanity. Murder as a kind of sickness. I don’t know what to call it yet, exactly. I might just wait and see what kind of bad name you can give it. You get so many things wrong! Oh, some of my favorites—spontaneous generation, the miasma theory of disease, pinochle, maternal imprinting, phrenology, Lamarckism.”

  “We get a few things right.”

  “Given enough time, perhaps,” he said. “Problem is, your race doesn’t have time, does it? What can you accomplish in your biblical three score and ten? The best of you make some music for others to hum, scribble some dreams or nightmares for others to share, or work a lifetime to discover and perfect some new knowledge. But the rest of you—driven by the pursuit of pleasure and profit, turning a blind eye on the pain of others, and always beating ploughshares into swords. Yours is a murderous race. Why, look at what you have done here on the plains in the space of a single generation. You have driven the aborigines from their lands, destroyed a multitude of cultures, and slaughtered the bison to near extinction.”

  He made a motion with his hand, and Katie somehow knew what he wanted. She brought him one of the skulls from a pile near the wall.

  “Look upon the legacy of an empire,” he said, holding up the skull as if he were in a play. “You have no name for them, but they ruled this land for a thousand years and did but a fraction of the harm you have done in a handful. Their empire collapsed, in time. Now, even their name is known only to the wind.”

  He squeezed the skull, and his fingers crushed the ancient bone as if it were thin plaster; teeth and dust falling to the floor.

  “That is man,” he said. “That is your fate, and soon. But I offer something . . . better.”

  “What?” I asked. “You want to turn me into one of those whackers?”

  “Why would I do that when I have a surplus of dull auras and an unlimited supply of prairie wolves?” he asked. “No, I want you to serve me as your ageless sister, Aikaterini, serves me. In return, I offer eternal youth, power second only to my own, and a seat at the table of darkness.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “I’ll kill you, of course,” he said. “Your soul will wither and die without its shadow.”

  “Doesn’t sound like much of a choice.”

  “Oh, but it is,” Malleus hissed. “I can kill you, but I can’t make you serve me. You must do that of your own free will. Choose now.”

  “Thanks, but I’m tired of playing this game,” I said. “Just give me my aura, and I’ll be on my way.”

  “You’re choosing death,” he said. “You’ll become food for the whackers.”

  “Well, I always liked dogs.”

  Where the hell is Calder? I thought.

  Malleus struck the cane on the floor, producing a rap that echoed from the walls.

  “Enough!” he said. “There is one last thing you should see.”

  He nodded to Katie, and she stood, picked up a clay jar by the throne, and removed the wooden plug. She shook some handfuls of blue powder into her hand and threw them into the fire pit.

  The fire erupted like she had thrown kerosene on it.

  It continued to blaze fiercely, with a weird blue tinge, and Malleus began chanting in the Enigma language. Presently a form appeared in the flames. It was a nude man, a young man with blond hair.

  It was Jonathan.

  Suddenly I couldn’t breathe. I felt like the floor would sink from beneath me. I staggered back a step or two.

  “This is a trick,” I muttered. “Something you’ve ordered from Sylvestre and Company. It’s not real.”

  The nude Jonathan stepped out of the fire and into the room. Katie padded over and looped an arm around his neck and nuzzled his cheek.

  “Oh, he seems real enough to me,” she said hungrily.

  “Get away from him!”

  I shoved her aside.

  “Jonathan,” I said. “Is it you?”

  He smiled, just as I remembered. He was still the age he was when he died. And when once I had been so much younger than he, now I was older. Nearly twice as old.Would he still want me now?

  “Jonathan, are you real?”

  No response. He seemed confused.

  “Ask him,” Malleus said. “Ask him for the secret sign, the message that you had agreed that he would send from the other side as a sign that love survives death.”

  I took his hand and squeezed it against my cheek.

  “Do you remember?”

  He blinked.

  “Do you remember me?”

  “Ophelia,” he said.

  “My love,” I said. “What was the message?”

  “J’attends ma femme.”

  It was the message: “I await my wife.”

  I sank to the floor beside him, sobbing, still holding his precious hand against my cheek.

  “Oh God,” I said.

  Katie put a hand on his shoulder and urged him down with me. I cupped his face in my hands and kissed him, a kiss that thrilled me to my shadowless soul. Then I rested my head against his chest.

  And frowned.

  “This isn’t right,” I said.

  “What could not be right?” Katie asked. “It is your love, returned from the grave. This is your heart’s desire. All of your prayers have been answered in an instant, and you can stay here and rule with us—and live with him—forever.”

  I got to my feet. My head was spinning, and I had to think hard to get out the words.

  “This is a trick,” I said. “It’s not Jonathan.”

  “But the message,” Malleus said. “What of the message?”

  “I—I don’t know,” I said. “You read my mind, somehow. Maybe you even read my heart. But it’s not him. I know it’s not him. It can’t be.”

  “Why not?”

  “He doesn’t smell right.”

  At that, the Jonathan-like apparition vanished in a flash of light and thunder and blue smoke. I fell backward from the concussion, landing heavily on the stone floor, my head throbbing.

  Malleus stepped down from the throne and walked around the fire pit to where I lay on the floor. He looked down at me like I was a pile of trash, something annoying that needed to be cleaned up.

  “Tell the whiskey peddler to feed her to the whackers,” Malleus said.

  “Shame,” Katie said, walking over to me on swiveling hips. “We wo
uld have found her amusing . . . for a time.”

  Then she reached down and grabbed hold of my earlobe and pulled me to my feet. I knocked her hand away with a forearm.

  “That hurts, you bitch.”

  She laughed.

  “You dare defy me?” she asked. “Your suffering will be great.”

  I reached up and grabbed one of the alabaster earrings.

  “You first.”

  I jerked the thing out of her ear and threw it to the ground. She shrieked and clasped her hand to her ear. Blood ran down the side of her neck. Then she looked at me with a hatred that made my heart skip a beat.

  I made a dash for the steps.

  She scrambled after me, and I was nearly at the top when she caught my ankle and pulled me down. I fell, but kicked out hard with my free leg. The heel of my shoe landed squarely in Katie Bender’s face, and she fell backward down the stairs.

  I emerged from the steps into the sunshine.

  “Stop her!” Katie Bender called.

  Vanderslice was standing with his arms crossed, the bone-handled skinning knife in his right hand, and he was smiling. He was about ten yards away, between me and the creek.

  Katie Bender made it to the top of the steps. Blood was gushing from her nose and the corner of her mouth. She wiped her mouth with the palm of her hand, smearing the blood across her cheek.

  “Didn’t know immortals bled,” I said.

  “You fool,” she said. “This isn’t my blood. I’ll just replace it with my next victim. And I’m going to start with you. Toss me the knife, whiskey trader.”

  Vanderslice tossed the skinning knife over my head, a perfect pitch, and Katie Bender caught the bone handle in her left hand. Then she approached, the knife at the ready.

  I stumbled backward, into Vanderslice.

  He pinned my arms to my side.

  “I’m going to slit your throat from ear to ear,” she said.

  “Get back!”

  “Then I’m going to skin you and throw your hide in with the others, and you’re going to end up becoming a belt for some kind of machine back East, turning out spools for thread or toothpicks or maybe hammer handles.”

  “Don’t touch me!”

  “Are you going to beg?” she asked. “There would be some pleasure in that.”

  Vanderslice grabbed my hair and jerked my head back, exposing my throat.

  Katie Bender placed the point of the knife beneath my right ear.

  “Beg,” she taunted. “I want to hear you beg until your words are just bloody bubbles oozing from your neck.”

  “Bon Dieu and all my ancestors,” I mumbled, recalling the first prayer that Tanté Marie had taught me. “Give me breath to vanquish those who torment me.”

  Then I blew in her face.

  There was the crack of a rifle from across the creek and something hit Katie Bender like a hammer. She was knocked off her feet and the bone-handled knife spun from her fingers and skittered on the gravel.

  She sat up slowly.

  Her black silk robe was parted, revealing an ugly hole between her breasts, with blood and gore spilling from it.

  “This can be fixed,” she said weakly.

  Then the whackers, smelling the blood, began clustering around. They were on all fours, sniffing and snarling.

  “Malleus!” she called. “There is little time.”

  Then the first whacker lunged, and I could not tell if it was in the form of a man or a wolf, but I could see bright teeth tearing at her throat. Then the others were on her, and one of them that was still a man snatched up the bone-handled knife and began slashing with it.

  Katie Bender’s screams died amid a geyser of blood.

  I looked away.

  33

  Vanderslice released my arms and backed away from the horror.

  “Stop right there!” Calder shouted.

  Calder was wading from the creek onto the gravel bar. The big rifle was held at waist level in both of his hands. The unlit cigar was still jammed in the corner of his mouth.

  Vanderslice pulled his six-shooter and turned.

  “Drop the iron,” Calder said. “You’re under arrest for murder.”

  “Jack Calder,” the whiskey trader sneered. “Always the vigilante, aren’t you?”

  “I aim to take you back to stand trial,” Calder said. “But I’d settle for putting a five-hundred-grain bullet down your throat. What’ll it be?”

  Vanderslice let the pistol fall.

  “Get down,” Calder ordered, pulling his own big revolver while placing the rifle on the gravel. “On your knees. Turn around. Do it, damn you.”

  Vanderslice fell to his knees, and Calder kicked him between the shoulders, sending him stomach-first on the gravel. He aimed the revolver at the back of Vanderslice’s head.

  “Maybe I ought to settle things here,” Calder said. “Save the Ford County taxpayers the cost of a trial. How do you feel about a slug in the back of your head? That’s a lot kinder than what you did to that poor Russian girl.”

  Vanderslice’s eyes were wide with fear.

  “No, Jack!” I shouted.

  “Why not? He would have killed you. You know what he is.”

  “I know,” I said. “The question is, what are we?”

  “Damn it,” Calder said, and pulled a pair of iron handcuffs from his pocket.

  “Put these on him,” he said, tossing me the cuffs. “Just clamp them to his wrists and make sure they lock. Make ’em real tight.”

  In a moment, I had the whiskey trader’s hands locked behind his back.

  The frenzied whackers were still working on Katie Bender.

  “What the hell is that?” Calder asked me.

  “You got the hell part right,” I said.

  “Are they men or something else?”

  “Something else,” I said. “These, you should kill.”

  Calder raised the revolver and emptied it into the pack, sending dead wolves flying. The rest backed away, snarling, while Calder reloaded his revolver from cartridges in his shirt pocket. There wasn’t much left on the ground of Katie Bender—parts of one hand and a foot, some chunks of meat and splintered bones.

  Crows called raucously from a tree on top of the bluff.

  Calder again emptied the revolver at the pack. Again he reloaded. Two of his rounds had missed their mark and pierced the barrels behind. Whiskey ran on the ground toward the steps.

  A whacker came around and tried to get at us from the creek side, but Calder turned and put a bullet in the wild man’s chest. He fell back, and by the time he reached the water, he was a dead wolf.

  “Where’s the demon?” Calder asked.

  “Here,” Malleus said. He was standing at the top of the steps, the ancient pistol upraised in his right hand. “Your next question is whether this amateur has recovered her aura. I’m sorry to disappoint, but it is still safe in my collection.”

  “Hand it over,” Calder said.

  His pistol was leveled at Malleus.

  “No.”

  Calder fired.

  Malleus shrugged.

  Calder fired twice more. The bullets passed through the creature and pierced the barrels behind him. More whiskey gurgled to the ground.

  “This is a forty-four-caliber Russian,” Calder said. “It should have killed him.”

  “Told you,” I said.

  “Guns have no effect on me,” Malleus said. “But I can certainly make use of them. Observe.”

  He whistled and called the last of the whackers. The wild man slunk over, low to the ground, his head down in submission. Malleus urged him to stand. When he did, the demon fired the pistol at him.

  The whacker’s chest exploded with a flash that looked like lightning and sounded like thunder.

  Pieces of dead wolf littered the gravel.

  Smoke curled from the barrel of the antique pistol. The crows were flitting overhead, made bold by the smell of carrion.

  “Impressive, isn’t it?” Malleus a
sked, sloshing powder from a flask into the muzzle of the pistol. Then he reached into his bag and came out with a fistful of auras.

  “Let’s see which of the bright ones we have here,” he said.

  He opened his palm, revealing six auras of varying sizes and colors. They glittered like jewels in his palm. The largest was violet and yellow and blue, swirling in harmony.

  “That’s mine,” I cried.

  “Give it to her,” Calder said.

  “This one?” he asked. He tossed the other auras on the gravel and held mine between his pale thumb and forefinger, lifting his hand to the sun. “It is my favorite. Oh, look how it shines!”

  Then a black bird wheeled and dove and plucked the aura from his fingers.

  “Pahghh!” Malleus cried. “The raven!”

  It was Eddie.

  Malleus raised the pistol and fired impotently. He had not yet loaded an aura into it. He dropped the gun and ran, with surprising speed, to where the woman and child were cowering near the wagon.

  He snatched the child from the woman’s arms and made a waddling run for the steps.

  “Come after me,” he said, “and I’ll kill the child—then I’ll eat his soul.”

  The woman dropped to her knees and began to wail.

  Then Malleus ran down the steps.

  Calder reloaded. Then he picked up Vanderslice’s pistol and put it in his belt.

  “Jack, what are you doing?”

  “Going after him.”

  “But the boy,” I said.

  “What about the little bastard?” Calder asked. “Comanchitos grow up to be warriors, and warriors kill innocent women and children. Best to stop them now, before they get the chance.”

  “He’s just a boy.”

  The mother was crying even louder, on her knees, begging for her son.

  “We should kill the mother, too. She could produce more young.”

  “Jack, they didn’t kill Sarah and Johnnie. They didn’t kill your family. You’re blinded by hate. It’s Malleus, Jack. He’s making you act this way. He feeds off misery, and he’s using your grief against you.”

  “They should die,” he said.

  “Remember how you love justice, Jack?” I asked. “Do you remember how the whiskey trader put the body of the dead girl on the meridian marker to show his contempt for justice? His contempt for you?”