Jack moved. He hit the boy squarely, the knife sinking into the thin chest, and Robbie Browne laughed. Rolling, wet dirt flying and his exhausted body betraying him, the knife slapped out of his hand and the boy’s limbs closing around him like a vise. He struggled, and the prickles of grace burned unholy flesh. Robbie Browne hissed, his breath a sudden foulness…but even though Gabe’s spirit was willing, the flesh enclosing it had endured quite enough. Grace ebbed, and the struggle ended with a greenstick crack as bone in Jack Gabriel’s right arm gave way. He screamed, but the thing had its teeth in the juncture of his neck and shoulder. Tearing and ripping, a gout of hot blood down his shoulder, and his left hand was full of the gun he had loaded with charter-blessed ammunition.
Rolling again, the barrel jammed into the boy’s ribs. The thing inside Robbie’s flesh gapped and leered, and when the gun spoke, the white horse screamed to match Gabe’s cries and fled, trumpeting its fear as it tore through shadows and undead mud-substance alike. Another shot, and Gabe’s prayer rose like a charter-bell’s tolling, grace washing through him in a last hot flood of in extremis.
Catherine, he thought, deliriously, and Robbie Browne’s body sagged aside.
Jack curled himself into a ball, whisper-screaming as edges of broken humerus grated together. His lower arm had snapped in two places, too, and the pain ate him alive. Everything he had ever thought of eating rose in his throat, escaped in a series of retches.
Robbie’s body twitched. It hissed, a viper temporarily dazed. It wouldn’t be down for long.
I wish for her to be proud of me.
Me too, Gabe might have said, only he was busy trying to breathe. On his knees, left hand dropping the useless gun, and his fingers scrabbling through dirt for the knifehilt.
He found it, and the thing with Robbie Browne’s face glared up at him, its mouth working, black with Jack’s blood. “Do…it…” it hissed, and Jack didn’t hesitate. The broad blade bit deep, a tide of blackness gouting, and he hacked grimly at the thing’s neck until the head fell free, spurts of unholy ichor steaming in the chill night. The jessum trees rattled as they shook their fingers, just like slim graceful women letting their hair down, and the sound of the undead and the mud-creatures outside the consecrated ground falling to bits as the will that had impelled them decayed into dissolution was a whisper fit to haunt nightmares.
There was a brief starry period of blackness, and when Gabe regained consciousness he found himself lying under a cloudless sky, the stars a river and a graying of dawn in the east.
There was a wooden shape to one side, and two slumped corpses that were probably horses, drained to feed Robbie Barrowe’s unholy thirst. Jack didn’t care. He lay for a little while, until, blinking away dirt and crusted blood and nastier decaying fluid, he found the last gift Robert Barrowe-Browne would ever leave.
It was a second grave, dug just to the side of the freshly turned earth with the charterstone at its head. All Jack had to do was crawl, and pull some of the dirt over himself.
It should be enough. He prayed it would be enough.
His right arm hung useless, and the gun was left behind. He clutched the knife, its blade running with bubble-smoking black ichor, in his left fist as he crawled, scratching along the pan of the flats under Heaven’s uncaring vault. In the predawn hush, the scrape and rattle of his boots digging against damp earth were loud as trumpets. When he tumbled into the hole, the sides gave loosely, scattering over him.
It ain’t so hard, he told himself. All you have to do is put the knife in the right place.
He set the fine-honed edge against his own throat, and arranged his feet. His right arm throbbed and screamed, but he disregarded it. All it would take was a single lunge, jamming the hilt against the side of the grave, and he would bleed out.
But he had to do it before the sun rose.
Jack shut his eyes.
“Cath—” he whispered, and his legs spasmed, pushing him forward.
Chapter 36
Four months later
San Frances was a simmering bowl of smoke, dust, filth, mist, corruption, lewdness, and outright criminality.
It was, Cat reflected, merely Damnation writ large.
Her arms were too thin; she had not yet recovered from the agonizing thirst of the desert. She no longer felt the dreadful heat, and every drop of moisture they had been able to scavenge had gone to Li Ang and little Jonathan. One of the horses had died, so they traveled at night, Cat’s boots slipping and sliding as she heaved the wagon along like a mindless undead in a quarry. Next to her, the other horse had lost its fear of her predator’s scent, and had merely endured that terrible passage.
The thirst had consumed every excess scrap of flesh, leaving her slim and breastless as a boy. Still, she possessed enough inhuman strength to lift both heavy trunks, and settle them on the wagon. It was a far finer vehicle than the one that had carried them out of the desert; the bars of un-cursed gold from the claim had proven most useful. There were even solicitors who could be paid to transact business after dark, and Cat’s experience had built a fairly unassailable comfortable independence for a certain Li Ang Cheng Barrowe-Browne, as the widow of one Robert Barrowe-Browne.
How Robbie would laugh.
Not only that, but Catherine Elizabeth Barrowe-Browne and Robert Heath Edward Barrowe-Browne, both deceased, had named Jonathan Jin Barrowe-Browne their heir, and all papers were in order.
Mother would be horrified, and Father might be angry…but it was right, Cat thought, that it should be this way. At least the wealth would shield Li Ang and little Jonathan from some of the unpleasantness of life.
Her dress hung on a too-wasted form, scarecrow-thin as Robbie’s. Now that the thirst raged through her, she understood a little more of his bitter laughter. She refused to think on the slaking of said thirst, of the lowing of the cattle and the stink of the slaughteryards. Overcoming her disgust at such feedings would help her survive…but dear God, it did not completely erase the terrible burning. Another manner of blood was called for.
Human. It was a mercy her parents were dead.
She sighed as she surveyed her work and found it as proper as she could make it. “It’s safest this way, Li Ang.”
The Chinoise girl, heavily veiled and mutinously quiet, shook her head. There had been argument, and the throwing of a butcher knife…but really, it had taken only one instance of Cat standing over baby Jonathan’s new cradle, shaking and dry-weeping with the urge to sink her newfound, pointed and razor-sharp canines into the tiny, helpless pulse, for Li Ang to become convinced of the wisdom of Cat’s plan.
Little baby Jonathan, tucked safely in his mother’s arms with charter-charms on red paper attached to his swaddling, was fast asleep. Cat stepped back, not trusting herself, and bit her lower lip.
But gently. The teeth she now sported were provokingly sharp. “I shall miss you,” she said, softly. “The gold shall help, and do not let anyone take advantage of you. Especially solicitors. Jonathan is the heir to a fortune in Boston, and you shall be safe enough there. Though I advise you to go overseas.”
She had expected Robbie to follow her before now. That he had not, and that he had not met her at any of the appointed times…well, it did not bear thinking of.
If I could survive Damnation, I can very well endure this. She set her chin. “Come now. You shall just make the station, and mind you do not overtip the porters. I shall be watching, to see you off safely.”
Li Ang refused to answer. She did accept Cat’s help into the wagon, and Cat melded into the shadows as the nervous horses were chirruped to and the whip flicked. I would have liked to embrace her, at least once more.
But it was too dangerous, when she could hear the mortal heart working its cargo of precious, delicious fluid through Li Ang’s veins.
It was no great thing to pass unnoticed, her shawl over her head, keeping the wagon in sight. She did not ease her vigilance until the veiled woman carrying her baby was helped aboar
d the huge, steam-snorting train by a solicitous conductor, and Cat moved aimlessly with the crowd at the station, the soft press of their flesh and the many heartbeats a roar of torment until the cry of Allll aboooooord! echoed and the metal beast heaved itself forward. Slowly at first, then gathering speed, handkerchiefs fluttered from windows—and there was Li Ang’s slim hand, waving a red silken rag that fluttered from her fingers and landed at Cat Barrowe’s feet. The woman with the shawl wrapped about her dark, pinned-up hair snatched up the scrap of fabric and held it to her mouth as she watched the train disappear into clouds of steam crackling with stray mancy-sparks.
There was nobody to remark when the shawled woman vanished. One moment there, the next gone, as the next train heaved and screeched its way forward to disgorge its weary passengers.
Chapter 37
It was a fairly respectable boardinghouse, and the rooms were at least clean. Nevertheless, a fastidious hand had been at work among the draperies and at the two beds, and there was a space between a large armoire and the washstand just large enough for a cradle. The marks on the floor showed where the armoire had been pushed aside, no doubt by two strong men.
Or by an entirely different strength.
A key rattled in the lock, and the darkness was complete. It was silent, though the street outside throbbed with catcalls and wagon wheels, clockhorse hooves—for here, the citizenry could afford the pens to marry metal to living equine flesh and bone, instead of the wilderness where plain flesh was good enough.
She sighed as she stepped through the door, locking and barring it with swift habitual motions, and shaking out her shawl. There was a heavy mist from the bay tonight, and its salt-smoke scent clung to her skirts. A dark, unassuming brown, but the cloth was of very good material and the cut was new, if not fashionable.
Quick, decisive tapping bootsteps, crackling and pert. She did have such a distinctive step.
The lucifer hissed as he struck it, and the lamp’s sudden golden glow swallowed her indrawn breath.
Her shoulders hit the door behind her, and he stared for a long moment, settling the glass lampshade and turning it down so it wouldn’t sting her eyes further. She’d probably been feeding off cattle, and looked like it. Too birdlike-thin, her cheekbones standing out sharply, and the way her throat worked convulsively as she stared at him made him long to speak.
But he’d waited so long. He could wait a little longer.
“Jack?” she whispered.
He nodded, once. “You get into more trouble, sweetheart.”
The sudden leap of hope in her dark eyes was enough to break a man’s heart. “Robbie…” A mere breath of sound, and he could not look away from her lips shaping the two syllables.
“He killed the thing in the claim.” The lie came out easily. It should—he’d had plenty of time to practice the words, tracking her down, thinking of what he would say. What he would do, if he ever saw her again. “He…you can be proud, Catherine. He did right.”
Her gaze flicked to his chest, where the tin star still gleamed. It was easier to say he was a lawman, and precious few questioned him. Her throat worked again as she swallowed, and he was surprised to find out some things about his body still worked, even if he was technically…undead.
“Are you…” She set herself more firmly against the door. “Are you here to…”
“I’m only here for one thing.” Now was the time to rise, the floorboards squeaking sharply underfoot. Measured steps, his spurs striking stray sparks of mancy as intent gathered in the tiny room, the washbasin rattling in its stand. “And that’s you, Miss Catherine Barrowe.”
“I…” Had he finally struck her dumb? Not likely, because that chin came up, and her dark eyes flashed with familiar fire, through the sheen of phosphorescence on the irises. “I cannot hear your heartbeat, sir.”
“Technically, I’m dead. Undead, more like.” He shrugged. “Your brother and I agreed it was best.”
“Oh, did you?” She folded her arms, and he had never been so glad to see the prim mask of politeness. He approached her as carefully as he would a nervous horse, and when he was finally within reaching distance, he stretched out a hand.
Please. He couldn’t say it out loud. I’ve followed you over half the goddamn earth. I’ll follow you over the other half, but give me something, sweetheart.
Instead, his mouth ran away with him again. “I’ve been getting what I need from the guilty, sweetheart. There’s ways to take what we need and not spread the…not spread the bad mancy. I can do it for both of us, if you like. There ain’t no need for you to—”
“It’s still murder.” Deadly pale. “And you’re a sheriff.”
I was something else before. His shirt tore, and he tossed the star. It pinged as it hit the floor, rolling under the bed. “I don’t care about no goddamn law, sweetheart. I care about keeping us both alive. I don’t care if we’re goddamn cursed. I ain’t going to see you die. Not if I can help it.”
“Language, sir.” But her shoulders dropped, and a trace of color crept into her thin face. “There…Jack, we’re undead. We’re…I don’t even know what to call it, unless—”
“I know what to call it. I’ll even tell you, if you like. I’ll tell you anything you want to know. But you have got to tell me something too, sweetheart.”
“Sir.” Frosty now, and her hands dropped to her sides, became fists. “Must you address me in such a manner? I hardly think—”
“God damn it.” That did it. He closed the last bit of space between them, and when he had restrained the urge to shake her, he found himself nose-to-nose with a deathly tired–looking, trembling, paper-pale, absolutely beautiful woman.
Dead, undead, or alive, she was all that remained to him of grace.
“You’d better be willing to marry me,” he told her.
“We’re undead, Jack. Somehow I think the question is moot.” But she smiled, and the tips of her long pearly canines dimpled her lower lip, fit to drive him mad. “But if you’re proposing—”
“I ain’t proposing, sweetheart. I’m telling you. Now pack your things. This ain’t no fit place for no lady.”
The silence stretched between them as she studied his features. The stolen blood in his veins burned, and he didn’t care if it turned him to ashes, so long as he immolated right where he was, with Catherine’s beautiful, stone-cold hands creeping up around his neck and clasping sweetly.
“Don’t you think,” she said quietly, “you had better kiss me first?”
In the distance, a train’s long mournful whistle sounded. And outside a slumped, barely respectable boardinghouse in the sinks of San Frances, the moon rose higher in a soot-darkened sky.
Finis
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Mel Sanders, who encouraged me to head for the finish line, Miriam Kriss, who encouraged me to consider it for sale, Devi Pillai for not throttling me when I dug in over the brass kettle, and Susan Barnes for sheer good humor. Last but not least, thank you to my dearest Readers. Hopefully you will have as much fun with this one as I did.
meet the author
Lilith Saintcrow, photo © Daron Gildow, 2010
Lilith Saintcrow was born in New Mexico, bounced around the world as an Air Force brat, and fell in love with writing when she was ten years old. She currently lives in Vancouver, WA. Find her on the web at: www.lilithsaintcrow.com
Also by Lilith Saintcrow
Dante Valentine (omnibus):
Working for the Devil
Dead Man Rising
The Devil’s Right Hand
Saint City Sinners
JILL KISMET NOVELS
Night Shift
Hunter’s Prayer
Redemption Alley
Flesh Circus
Heaven’s Spite
Angel Town
ROMANCES OF ARQUITAINE
The Hedgewitch Queen
The Bandit King
As Lili St. Crow
THE STRANGE ANGELS SERIES
Strange Angels
Betrayals
Jealousy
Defiance
Reckoning
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The Damnation Affair (the bannon & clare affairs) Page 22
