Crossroad (The Gunsmith Book 3)

by C. K. Crigger

  He screamed from the pain of it which impressed me as being kind of wimpy considering what he’d done to the woman.

  “Bruja!” he screeched. “Bruja.”

  “Shut up,” I growled in my deepest, most vicious voice. I took the Guardian off cock and set the safety before shoving it in one of my pockets. I flipped the hood back over my head.

  “That was a projectile,” the man yelped, gawking at me in flabbergasted wonder. “What are you? What?”

  I know what he believed me to be.

  The tape the men had used to gag the girl lay on the ground. To all intents, it looked exactly like duct tape which couldn’t have been better from my point of view. Grabbing it up before the man could regain feeling in his arm, I whipped it around his wrists, crisscrossing between and going around and around. For good measure, I put a couple of wraps over his fingers, binding the tips toward the palms of his hands. If the circulation was cut off, I didn’t care.

  When I had his hands taken care of, I copied the ninja sweep Teagun had used on me that time, and took the man’s feet out from under him. He fell heavily, breaking wind. I pounced on him and got his feet taped together before he regained his breath and started kicking. He’d probably be able to work them free in short order, and I wanted to be long gone by that time.

  Only when I had him trussed up like a rotisserie chicken did I pause and let myself feel the pain in my abused ankle. It didn’t make me any more predisposed toward the outlaw’s comfort.

  To my considerable surprise, the man I’d shot gave me the most trouble, when I went to tape him up. I suppose he thought I’d already done my worst with him, and finding himself alive, didn’t think he had anything to lose by fighting me. I got to thinking a ninja sweep on him, too, would have been useful, if he hadn’t already been down. A fall helped knock the wind out of a person, making them a bit less feisty and hard to handle. No such luck here. He’d never gotten up from taking the fall, though his prone position didn’t slow him much to speak of. He kept rotating on his shoulders and spinning in circles, keeping me at a distance.

  It was impossible to get close enough with the tape to bind his hands. I had him under the gun, of course, so we both knew he couldn’t get away, but with him free to thrash around, all I could do is keep watch over him.

  Finally, as bad as it sounds, I simply stepped in and beaned him with the pistol barrel, all one and seven eighths inches of it. I was afraid to hit him hard enough to truly knock him out, mind you, for fear of breaking his skull. But the blow I landed raised a hell of a welt on his head and quieted him fairly well.

  By this time I was so aggravated with the man himself, so concerned with the time the others had had to take Teagun away, that I was past all consideration. Not that he had any consideration coming to him. I was reminded of this when I reached for the tape and inadvertently touched the dead woman’s hand.

  Ignoring the fresh blood that welled from his shoulder, I pulled his hands behind him. I’d had plenty of practice with the wild man, so binding this guy went faster. I left him right up next to the woman and the powerful stench of death surrounding her, hoping he would realize the magnitude of his sins.

  As soon as I’d gathered up the men’s arsenal of weapons, I turned my attention to the girl. Of them all, she was the only unconscious one in this group, and it took an unholy amount of time to wake her up.

  I suppose she was better served by remaining in her faint until I’d ripped the tape from her mouth, accidentally taking a certain amount of her personal DNA along with it. Next, I cut the bonds knotted around her wrists with the oscillator knife. I’m afraid I had to kind of chew through the cords with a dull blade, to the detriment of her skin, since I couldn’t figure out how to turn the knife on. I know Teagun had demonstrated, in a cursory manner, with the one Villanova had used on me, but this knife worked a bit differently. Or maybe I’m a slow learner.

  The girl, though not a child, was small. Smaller than me, and I’m no heavyweight. I easily raised her head and shoulders in my arms and dripped a few drops of water from my canteen onto her tongue.

  She smacked her lips and swallowed, grabbing weakly at the canteen.

  “Not so fast,” I warned, pulling the water away.

  The sound of my voice roused her. She stirred and lashed out with her legs, all the time drawing nearer to awareness. After a minute, her eyelids fluttered and opened.

  She had light eyes, the first non-dark-eyed person I’d seen in this time. I figured out later that she probably wore colored lenses, duh, but for now I was too busy to think of such unimportant things.

  “Who are you?” Her voice sounded cracked and whispery. The effect of all that screaming I suppose. “Are you a ghost? ”

  “A passer-by,” I said. With any luck she’d think she dreamed what she saw. “Can you stand up? I’ve got to catch up with my . . . friend, the man the outlaws captured, and I can’t leave you here with them.” I motioned toward the bound men. Bemused by the puzzle of deciphering what Teagun was to me, besides a friend, I bounced up, leaving her struggle to her feet by herself.

  “It’ll be too late,” she said. “The others, they’ve probably already killed that man.” She picked up the knife and absently flicked the switch that had remained hidden from me. Light started glowing around the edge of the blade. “We should bury my Aunt Jennie.”

  I guess she’d cried all her tears, for she remained dry-eyed as she glanced at the dead woman sprawled on the ground.

  “If they wanted to kill him,” I snapped, ignoring the part about the burial and going straight to what mattered most to me, “they would’ve done it right here. No need to drag him off. I think they wanted him for a different sort of reason and I mean to see they don’t succeed. Come on, girl. Gather yourself up and let’s go.” Impatience made me short.

  “Too late,” she said again, dispassionately. Slowly, too slowly for my taste, she at last put herself into motion. Seeing she was able to navigate, I hurried over to the other four-wheeler, which of course had no actual wheels, and climbed into the driver’s seat. No key, but there was a little button that absolutely begged to be pushed.

  I pushed it, and immediately, the vehicle’s engine purred to life. There was a lever attached to the steering wheel like the gas-feed on motorcycle handlebars, and when I engaged it, the engine revved louder and the craft begin to lift. Fans underneath the skirting whined softly.

  Shoot, I thought, my spirits rising. This doesn’t look hard. Not so different from what I knew from my own time. A little common sense and we’d be fine. After all, I had the whole of the Great Empty to practice in before I got bound up in traffic. The important thing was to jump into action, begin pursuing the outlaws who had Teagun.

  No. I take that back. The important thing was to catch them, before Teagun and the Weatherby both disappeared.

  I don’t know which sound carried the better over the low engine noise; the girl cackling or one of the men trying to yell through his taped-shut mouth. Then I saw what she was doing while she bent over the man. My hands slipped from the steering wheel, loosing my grip from the hand-feed. The four-wheeler thunked to the ground with a head-rattling jar. I was out of the craft and, following my usual modus operandi, running toward her before I paused to think. It was only afterward I did that. Gave myself a good case of the shakes, too.

  “Stop that!” I yelled. “Are you crazy?”

  Quickly, she rose from her crouch, the oscillator knife in one hand, the grisly trophy of a chopped-off ear in the other. Blood poured from the outlaw’s head. His eyes rolled wildly in the sockets.

  The girl’s lip lifted in a feral snarl. “He cut my Aunt Jennie.”

  “Oh, I have no doubt he deserves to have his ears chopped off,” I said, trying not to look at the man or to sound censorious. Believe me, I didn’t want her mad at me, not when she had that knife in her hand. “At the very least. But not now, okay? Come on, we have to catch the others.”

  “Go.” She d
idn’t bother to look at me. “I’ll take care of these.”

  I was reasonably sure her idea of “taking care of these” diverged quite a bit from mine.

  “Can’t do it. What did you say your name is?”

  Now, she did pause in her contemplation of the ear to glance at me. “Sy-enna. Sy-enna Thorguard.”

  “Well, Sy-enna Thorguard, I can’t leave you here. I need you to show me how to drive that hovercraft. You do know how to drive, don’t you?” She might be too young to legally drive, but I figured she would probably know the general principles. Her expertise could save me from having to figure it out.

  “Of course,” she said, her eyes focusing, looking at me now with a show of interest.

  Gingerly, I reached for her arm to hurry her along as I turned back to the four-wheeler. “Come on, Sy-enna, help me. Help that man. You owe it to him, you know.”

  “I do?” She let herself be drawn and somewhere along the line, she thumbed the off switch on the knife.

  Seeing this, I went weak with relief. “Yes. If he hadn’t come along and distracted them, you’d probably be lying beside your aunt by now—or wishing you were. Besides, you don’t really want to be left all alone with those murderers, do you?”

  She thought about this, then climbed into the two-person craft and seated herself beside me almost automatically.

  Sy-enna stared as one mesmerized by those googlie-eyed things they give babies, at the gruesome piece of flesh she carried in her hand. I wished she’d toss the horrible thing out, at the same time hoping she wasn’t planning on making a collection of them. She came around enough to show me the brake—foot operated, thank goodness—and the button to press that put us in forward motion.

  Let me tell you, that little four-wheeler possessed serious forward propulsion, for when I squeezed the finger-lever we took off like a racehorse out of the gate. Away we buzzed, zigzagging wildly, snagging once the corner of one of the rock outcroppings and almost overturning before I got the vehicle straightened out. I scared myself.

  Startled, the girl’s light eyes widened. “Aunt Jennie never drove like this.” The slipstream set both my curly dark hair and her light, straight locks, flying out behind us. “What did you say your name is, Miz? And where are you from? You talk funny. And you look like a mutant.”

  CHAPTER 12

  The terrain looked different, zipping along this fast. It was disconcerting, knowing I didn’t have a wheel on the ground. I didn’t answer the girl’s question right off, being kept too busy retaining a suitable height, trying to hold an even speed, and following the course I knew the other group of outlaws had taken. This wasn’t the easiest thing in the world. The energy-feed to the craft was goosey as all get out.

  Once the girl tittered when, of its own accord, the vehicle took a ten-degree turn and I swore. She sobered though, watching me wrench at the steering apparatus with my arms quivering with strain.

  “That’s why Aunt Jennie brought us down,” she said. “She was afraid we’d sheer off into the desert and get lost. Those men saw our car was malfunctioning and followed us. At first, we believed they meant to help. They said they’d fixed the steering, but when they suggested a test-run and Auntie said no, they took us anyway. Brought us out where you found us. One of them grabbed the comp so we couldn’t call for help.”

  Comp? What the hell was that? I thought I could guess.

  She was looking at that damned ear again.

  “And then?” I wanted to learn what had happened, though I worried about reminding her. But she looked a little more together when she had to talk, to explain things, even if it was about what had happened.

  “The things they said.” Sy-enna choked. “Aunt Jennie told them to be quiet. That they had no call to be talking that way, but she made one of them mad. He took out this knife and while Auntie was standing there, just standing there, he swiped it across her stomach. Oh, miz, she didn’t let herself scream. Not to begin with. But then—”

  “Stop,” I said. I saw I’d been wrong to make her speak of it. And now I couldn’t make her be silent.

  “But then she did scream and she tried to hold her guts in but she couldn’t and the men laughed and when they looked at me they laughed louder and louder and there wasn’t anything I could do to help her. Well, I can do something now.” She raced through this explanation, telling a story whose words were unbearable, nearly unspeakable. I felt sick at heart. More than heartsick. My soul felt as though it was shriveling as I listened.

  “Yes,” I said, trying to soothe her although my own voice quavered on the verge of sliding out of control. What had I gotten into here? “We’ll both do something. We’ll make sure they’re put in prison as they deserve. Just as soon as we get Teagun Dill back.”

  “They were going to cut me next,” she said, huddling closer into her seat and wrapping her arms around her front.

  “I know.”

  “They deserve to die,” she said, and my inclination was to agree with her. What I didn’t agree with, thinking of the severed ear, was the preliminary steps she had taken toward this end.

  The little craft rumbled and clanked, though that might have been normal, seeing that Sy-enna didn’t seem alarmed by the racket. Of course, she may have been incapable of alarm after what she’d been through.

  “The next thing I knew, that man came,” she said, continuing the story. “Teagun Dill.”

  “How did they catch him? Teagun is usually too canny to be taken unaware.”

  “Bad luck,” she said. “Pure bad luck. Mir Dill came over the hill, hurrying because Aunt Jennie was still making sounds. Only one of the outlaws walked to the top of the hill to check his bearings at that same time. I guess the outlaw must have heard Mir Dill coming and stunned him.”

  The night had turned inky dark like a thunderstorm could be in the offing if they still had such weather. Our running lights glowed softly, both inside and out of the four-wheeler’s cabin, much too bright for my comfort. Sy-enna showed me how to turn them off, which I did, though their absence made our trek more eerie. But with them off, my night vision improved and I could see, in the distance, the other craft lit up bright as a neon beer sign. We were about to catch them.

  I knew they’d be heading for the hotel. Well, they simply must not arrive. Not with Teagun Dill hanging on the back of their vehicle like a trophy elk taken in the fall hunt. Accordingly, I squeezed the accelerator all the way closed. We sped closer until we were near enough to zip out a way and pass them on their right. The driver didn’t pay any attention to one more shadow, an extra, come down to race the moon.

  “Do you know if a bolt from a stun gun will pass through whatever that windshield is made of? Will the energy be spread and diffused or will it hit the target?”

  Sy-enna stared at me. “What? I don’t know, Miz. What are you going to do?”

  The hotel lights would soon come into sight ahead of us. She had a good question. What was I going to do? Whatever it was, I’d better do it fast.

  “The main thing,” I said tightly, “is to force their craft to stop before they reach the hotel. I’d start shooting with the laser pistol, but I’m afraid of hitting Teagun. Likewise, I’m afraid to shoot the pilot because I don’t want them to crash. Again, for fear of harming Teagun.”

  The only option I could think of was enough to curdle my blood. I could feel it, all the corpuscles shivering into lumps like soured milk.

  “If I stop this buggy for a minute, will it stay up and hover?”

  “Buggy? Aren’t you a funny one?” she said, sounding as though my simple words had confused her and made me suspect. “In a way you know how to drive, and in a way you don’t. Where are you from, Miz? Who are you? You never told me your name, even when I told you mine.”

  “Well, will it?” I insisted. What did my name matter at a time like this, for heaven’s sake? Or anything else about me. I gave the lever a little more juice so we rose higher in the air. The faulty, radical steering kept tryin
g to pull my arms out of their sockets. I didn’t think the little vehicle was meant to ride this high. “Stay up, I mean?”

  “Of course. All you have to do is flip the switch to automatic, that one right there”—she pointed—”when you reach desired height. My goodness, Miz. Everyone knows that!”

  Silently, I nudged our vehicle into a position a couple of feet higher than the oncoming hovercraft. It seemed a miracle—or a disaster— when they didn’t see us. Regrettable, too, as I’d been counting on them taking quick evasive action when they did. To my amazement, they continued on straight into our path, and only at the last possible opportunity, with Sy-enna screeching in my ear, did I wrench the wheel and take us out of danger. So much for evasive action!

  They passed, not more than a foot off our beam, the disturbance of the airwaves jiggling our craft as we must have jiggled theirs.

  “Are they crazy?” I gasped, spinning the four-wheeler on its axis. “Are they blind? Didn’t they see our rig?”

  The girl swallowed, her mouth clicking dryly. “I guess not.”

  “Good Lord, we were in plain sight.” I could almost hope Teagun was still stunned. If not, he must have suffered an awful shock when he saw us close enough, almost, to smell our breath. We must have looked as large as a 747. They had looked at least that large to me.

  Not until much later did I remember I hadn’t turned the lights back on.

  “What now?” Sy-enna asked. “They don’t know who we are. I’ll wager they think we’re friends of theirs playing games.”

  They zoomed on ahead of us, and from this position, I finally realized it was from behind I should have made my attack in the first place. The only worrisome thing was that the formerly distant hotel lights were becoming awfully bright.

  Damn! Once they got Teagun and the Weatherby inside the Crossroad grounds, I’d never get him—them—out. Never! And I’d never make it home.