“Hang on,” I said, with an involuntary tightening of my stomach muscles.
Gunning the throttle, I swooped down on the pair of outlaws. They trundled forward, oblivious, not looking around at all. Sy-enna and I and our craft may as well have been nothing more than their shadow, keeping them company in the sky. Whatever they were on, whether drugs or high-powered booze, it was as if they were wearing blinders.
Not so, Teagun. The other craft’s running lights showed him in the reflective glare. His eyes were open, staring back at us in shock, and even from our own bobbing vehicle, I could see his biceps straining, his pectorals swelling as he fought to break the cords tying him to the skirts. He probably thought we were the other set of outlaws, because he couldn’t see into the craft with its lights out.
I took the LadySmith from its holster, pulled the hammer back, and tried to let my racing heart slow down a beat or two. Desperately, I wished I had the Weatherby in my hand right now. A gun I could be sure carried enough fire power to stop these guys. A gun with a good night-scope. Flipping our craft onto automatic, I stood on the floorboards and leaned out the cab and over the top of the windshield to take aim. God, I hated this. Please, please, let me be accurate, I begged. But I didn’t see any other way to handle the situation.
I must have gotten too cocky. I don’t know. Teagun’s struggles may have put the pair on alert. But somehow the men became wise to the fact that Sy-enna and I weren’t their friends after all. In the very instant I was squeezing my pistol’s trigger, the outlaw in the passenger seat whipped around and started shooting at us. Little yellow holes pockmarked the cowling of our machine. And not only in the cowling, but a bit of their fire hit the windshield also, melting the plastic to slag in less time than it takes to tell the story.
So. They’d not been so oblivious after all. What kind of gun were they using? I wondered. Surely not a stunner. A laser? What else could it be? Our craft’s engine whooped and hesitated under the onslaught. Our altitude slipped. Another hit and we’d be grounded for sure.
At the last possible instant I squeezed the trigger. The LS .357 kicked in my two-handed grip. Once. Again. I was down to one shell in the cylinder, I reminded myself.
No. I wasn’t dumb enough to shoot the pilot dead. But I winged him enough to teach him the wisdom in setting his rig down. It was his partner who took my second bullet, and him I saw slump all of a heap as finally, they came to a stop
I was vaguely aware of Sy-enna alternately screaming and cheering as our craft followed them, bouncing twice as we came to earth.
“Watch them,” I told her. “Use one of those guns we confiscated and stun the bastards if they move.”
“Yes,” she said, her hoarse voice grating like rocks. “I will.”
My legs felt as flexible as a Gumby’s as I walked over to the downed four-wheeler. I kept the LS, with its single shell, trained on the pilot who remained motionless, staring straight ahead at my approach. Blood, red as anybody’s, stained his coverall. His partner lolled gracelessly, head caught between their cracked windshield and the low side-door. He appeared to be dead. Or if not dead, at least awfully uncomfortable.
Mindful of Sy-enna following me through the churned up dirt to the downed rig, I decided to leave guard duty to her. She’d probably feel better if she had a job to do. I went around to the back of the vehicle where Teagun was tied.
He looked sick as a drunk on the day after the night before
“Hi,” I said, leaning over him. “Are you glad to see me?
“Hurry,” he croaked. “Get me loose. I’m going to puke.
One might wonder why I didn’t relieve him of the Weatherby, right then and there. Aside from the fact he was lying on top of it, of course, because otherwise, there isn’t a blooming thing he could have done to stop me. But I didn’t think of it. I guess the decidedly gruesome concept of him choking on his own vomit drove all other considerations out of my mind.
Poor guy. He must have been fair panicked. I hurried to release the rubber tie-downs.
After he finished with the bout of stunner sickness, he came back to sit, hands shaking, on the edge of our own machine. He was telling me that illness was a usual and predictable after-effect of being stunned when we heard the outlaw cry out.
Teagun broke off in the middle of the word antidote and leapt erect. “Did you hear—?”
“Yes. A kind of sizzle.” I jumped to my feet as well, but now dread glued them to the ground. I felt a great reluctance when it came to investigating the noise we heard. Pure silence reigned from over at the other machine now.
He reached up and adjusted the Weatherby, loosening it in the holster. “That girl. Do you think she—?”
I guess he was fated to lose his train of thought tonight because every time he tried to speak, he interrupted himself midway.
“I’m afraid so.” My voice dropped to a whisper. “I think she’s out of her head, what with watching her aunt being killed. She’s gone ’round the bend for sure. You know—eye for eye, ear for ear.” I paused. “We captured the other two men and left them tied up. She cut off one guy’s ear and has it in her pocket for a memento. I couldn’t get her to throw her prize away.”
“Hmm. Well, as long as she doesn’t get it in her head to do the same to us, I’ll be damned if I’m going to complain about anything she does. Let Clive deal with her. He can trank her and take her in on a medical. “
“Oh, good,” I said. “You’re going to call him in?”
“Have to. I wish you’d quit shooting people with that damn little gun of yours, Boothenay. Raises too many questions. Why don’t you take one of their lasers?”
Ungrateful wretch. “Do you really?” I asked, quite cool. “Wish I’d quit using my LS, I mean? If you’d hand the Weatherby over to me, the problem would be solved.”
He glanced down at me; his mouth worked, his dimple flashed. “I think not.”
As the sizzle we’d heard earlier repeated, it became obvious Teagun didn’t want to go investigate the noise any more than I did. Quite frankly, I’d as soon delayed forever going over to the other craft to see what the girl had done, but when Teagun pushed himself away from the vehicle he was leaning against and lumbered over to the other rig, I followed. In his footsteps, like a coward, hiding behind his taller body.
His breath hissed in; not a good sign.
I peeked under his arm, about half-prepared for what I’d see. Not entirely prepared, though. No one could be. Intellectually I knew lasers get hot, here was the proof. They can get hot enough to burn holes through solid steel and they can melt plastic, as I’d already discovered. The human body simply cooks.
“She is a board certified, raving maniac,” I murmured, only loud enough for Teagun to hear. I clutched him around the waist.
“Would you care to take that laser away from her before I get close?” he asked. “She doesn’t seem to react kindly to men.”
I snorted.
Sy-enna—I’d forgotten her last name—was standing atop the cowling with her legs spraddled in a gunfighter stance above the two outlaws. If there’d been doubt in my mind earlier about whether the passenger was playing possum, this doubt vanished. A hole the size of my fist was punched through his back, the edges still smoking. The sight erased any lingering question regarding his liveliness. The pilot matched his passenger, hole for hole.
One thing I was spared, death by laser being a bloodless affair. The beam cauterizes all bleeding as it burns through flesh. No, the sight didn’t bother me so much. It was the smell.
I cleared my throat, drawing the girl’s attention.
“Good job, Sy-enna,” I said, sounding as perky as a kindergarten teacher in a classroom of overachieving five-year-olds. I added a note of admiration. “We certainly won’t need to worry about this pair again.”
Her gaze flicked to Teagun. I heard him speaking softly into his wrist com calling for Clive to come relieve us of responsibility. “Tranks,” I heard him say. “Bring th
e bus and, Clive, don’t come alone.”
“Who is he talking to?” she asked suspiciously, the laser moving in his direction.
I approached her slowly, my innards shrinking as though they already felt the searing cut of the laser. As unstable as she was, I didn’t trust her not to begin firing at me if it occurred to her to do so. I was very aware of being between her and Teagun.
“He’s calling for the border patrol to come pick up the outlaws,” I said, making the statement matter-of-fact. “The officer will help you, too. He’ll take you where you’ll be safe.”
The gun sagged in her hand, inching off a degree or two until the firing tube pointed into the desert instead of at Teagun or me. A relief, but I wasn’t going to shout hurrah just yet. Not until I had the laser gun in my own hand.
“You’ll be glad to get rid of that weapon, won’t you?” I said, hoping she’d take my words as a suggestion. “I’ve never used a laser. Is it heavy?”
The gun drooped lower. “Yes. A little. But it’s easy to shoot.”
I could see the evidence of her marksmanship with my own eyes, thank you. I’d also noted the red beam of the pistol’s sighting system, a method of aim not changed at all in the years separating our centuries. The difference was that in my time we’d generally had only laser sights and scopes. She had the actual firepower.
“You did a good job,” I said again, holding out my hand. “May I try?”
The red beam wavered toward me. I cringed, for I could see her finger glued to an activation button—the trigger—or so I supposed. I guarantee you, I didn’t want to startle her.
The beam shone past me as she handed the laser over. Its grip was wet from her sweaty hand and I couldn’t help thinking I’d had a piece of decent luck at last, in that she hadn’t slipped and shot me, too.
“Thank you,” I said, my voice shaking.
“Fire it, Boothenay,” Teagun advised quietly. “Bleed off the charge. Use the white button.”
A stunted juniper grew a few yards from where our hovercrafts had come down. A good enough target. The red beam caught on a cone; the laser kicked slightly in my hand, like a backfire of air, and the cone disintegrated. All I felt was an incidental relief from a danger avoided.
As I turned to hand the discharged laser tube to Teagun, it came to me that I could have solved all my problems if I’d simply turned the weapon on him. I think he was a little slow on the uptake about now. Inertia, a leftover of his being stunned and captured earlier, was still a weakening force. I could have surprised him. Taken the Weatherby for my own use. If I’d needed blood to feed the power⏤ Well, I wouldn’t need to kill anyone. A wound would do as well.
Or I could turn the gun on myself. It wouldn’t be the first time I suffered from a self-inflicted wound. The initiation of power often required sacrifice of me. I’d gladly pay the price, any price, in order to find my way home.
As though I’d never known, I forgot the laser left no blood. God knows what Teagun saw in my eyes, read in my expression. The laser gun hung between us, me on one end, him on the other.
“Boothenay,” he said, “let go. Give the laser to me.”
I couldn’t make my fingers turn loose. If I used the laser on him, it wouldn’t be the same as shooting him with my LadySmith or so I rationalized to myself. I’d have a difficult time explaining what this difference might be, but there was one. I think it had to do with the LS being a part of me, my culture, while the laser belonged in his time. He’d brought me here. Whatever happened must be his fault.
I don’t know. My mind was as mixed up as the dirt that swirls in a tornado.
“Boothenay?” He tugged on his end of the gun.
The laser would fire in an instant. My forefinger, same as Sy-enna’s had been, remained glued to the firing button, the white one. Aware that my eyes were frozen wide open, dry feeling in the heat of the night, I had to wonder what was happening to me. It was as if I were under a queer kind of spell, a compulsion unlike any I’d ever experienced before. Was I being hoodooed somehow?
Realization suddenly hit. The girl was doing it. Another fledgling magician trying to bend me to her will. Anger surged through my brain.
To hell with that!
Sy-enna stared at us, a look of anticipation on her face, and giggling with unsettling glee, she sank down on the ground as though to watch an entertainment. Oh yeah, fun. Gladiators in the arena.
Teagun was sweating in a way the daytime heat had never caused him to do.
With heroic effort, I relaxed my grip on the laser, finger by finger, leaving possession to Teagun. I heard his soft exhalation. Sy-enna sighed, too, but hers sounded more like disappointment.
“Thank you.” Teagun’s fingers closed on the laser tube. He hesitated. “For a minute, I thought you were going to shoot me.”
I bit my lip. “For a minute, I was going to shoot you. Or myself.”
His dimple dipped. “But you didn’t.”
“No.” I was disinclined to tell him what a struggle I’d had to resist. Better if he never found out.
He went over to the outlaw craft and jumped aboard. The rig’s motor still hummed idly, running lights brightening our area and marking our location for Clive Hawkinson.
Teagun moved until he was standing in almost the exact position as Sy-enna when she started shooting. I jumped, protest on my tongue, when without warning he fired the laser into the already dead men. Until I figured out he was doing it for me, burning the evidence of my LadySmith’s projectile bullets from their bodies.
“Let the girl take the blame,” he said, “or the credit. Whichever way the suit turns out, the courts will protect her.”
I gestured dismissively. “Suits me. What’s an extra hole or two if you’re already dead?”
He could do whatever he wanted, anyway, I reflected. He was the only true lawman, the peacekeeper, in the whole of the Great Empty. The only reason he wanted to hide the bullet holes was to protect me and keep anyone from learning of my illicit presence. Although I expect it also helped the Border Patrol to verify his bounty claim.
Sy-enna had quite suddenly fallen asleep, still seated on the ground, her head bowed over her folded legs as the psychic charge purged from her system. I can’t say as I was sorry to see her sleeping off the violence of her emotion. In doing so, I was released from the last of the mystical hold she’d managed to place on me. She slept through Teagun’s alteration of evidence.
A half-hour later, Captain Hawkinson brought a large hovercraft to rest beside us.
CHAPTER 13
The Border Patrolman’s face bore a falsely jovial expression when he slammed open the door of his hovercraft and walked toward Teagun and me. We were sitting in the ruined little two-seater that had belonged to Sy-enna’s Aunt Jennie, waiting for him. Sy-enna remained in her lotus position on the ground.
Captain Hawkinson’s keen eyes darted from shadow to starlight to artificially-lit vehicle as though they could pierce through to the truth. When he’d seen all he wanted to see, he lifted a finger, beckoning Teagun from the four-wheeler. I stirred to join them, but he motioned me back into the seat.
“I’ll talk to Teagun now. You next.” He jerked his head at Sy-enna who only stared at him with a dazed expression. “Is she all right?”
“Yes. More or less. Be sure to keep her calm when she wakes up, please. I don’t want to get her in any trouble, but she’s been kind of . . . um . . . off her head. Not that she doesn’t have good reason,” I added hastily.
He patted his pocket. “I brought tranks.”
Tranks, short for tranquilizer. “Good.”
I watched as Teagun took a turn at showing him around. Teagun kept pointing here and there, illustrating his points. His finger stabbed behind us, his signs telling how he’d been strapped to the back of the outlaws’ vehicle. Agile hands made a diving motion, dodging, jerking, helping him explain the fight. He seemed to be talking non-stop, certainly a departure from his usual reticence. At last, C
live scrambled on top of the other vehicle’s cowling and stood looking down at the men’s dead bodies.
He was the third one to stand on that very spot tonight, I remembered. I was beginning to feel left out.
He soon jumped to the ground, his expression grim now, and pulled out his credit transfer thingy, matching it up with Teagun’s in conclusion of their business. The presentation of evidence must have met with his satisfaction. With or without Captain Hawkinson’s permission, I climbed out of Aunt Jennie’s banged-up four-wheeler and went to meet them. My ankle, I realized, felt as though it had been plunged into the middle of a bonfire.
Hawkinson separated me neatly from Teagun when I would have gone to his side.
“One question, Ms. Irons.”
Artfully, he made certain Teagun and I could not see each other. “About what, Captain Hawkinson? I’m sure Teagun has told you everything.” Everything essential, I added to myself.
“Mr. Dill has told me only as much as he wants me to know. No more. But I admit to a greater curiosity.”
I remained silent, though my pulse-rate accelerated. This was his party. Let him pay the band.
When he saw I wasn’t going to inquire what made him curious, he said, “I’m not going to delve too deeply into the matter of the projectiles. I’ve always been sure there were more guns handed down from the old time than the Dills were allowed or ever reported. As far as I’m concerned, all shots fired here today are authorized.”
“That’s generous.” I strove not to let the sarcasm sound in my voice, though I don’t think I quite succeeded. After all, from where I sat, these two were in the same line of business. For the life of me, I couldn’t see why people who had weapons like oscillator knives, light garrotes and lasers capable of disintegrating a human body were worried about a few bullets.
Hawkinson gave me a narrow-eyed look. “Yes. It is. If Teagun Dill goes beyond the creed, I am the one who pulls his bounty license. He and you, too, perhaps, would do well to remember that.”
Crossroad (The Gunsmith Book 3) Page 15
