Malice of Crows: The Shadow, Book Three

by Lila Bowen

  “I got to reload,” he muttered, cantering his gelding out of reach and fumbling with his bullet pouch.

  That was perfect timing as far as Rhett was concerned. He bolted forward, whipping the rope around his head like he was aiming for a particularly wild mustang. Clever Dan already knew what was up and had his own rope out as well. They were on opposite sides of the dancing scorpion, and Rhett judged his throw and tossed his loop at a waving pincer, catching it neatly. On the other side, Dan missed, damn his eyes, and Rhett found himself the sole cowpoke in charge of a wagon-sized, angry, magic monster.

  He had no gun. No knife. Nothing but a body, already damaged in the fight and not even hidden under clothes. The scorpion turned toward him and waved its pincer in an experimental-type fashion before clicking its mouthparts in delight and skittering right at him on three legs.

  “You’re too ugly to win this fight,” Rhett said, hoping to buy himself a few moments. He backed up, step after step, ignoring all the sharp things and patches of burning black scorpion blood under his feet. The scorpion didn’t look like it had understood him, but it also didn’t look like it cared.

  The unroped pincer struck at Rhett, quick as lightning, and he threw himself on the ground and rolled. Sure, he could probably survive whatever happened, but he didn’t want his guts squashed out here in the middle of nowhere. And maybe the alchemist’s magic had a poison to it, would make even skinwalker innards stay scrambled. Soon he was trundling away on hands and knees, waiting for Sam to get his guns loaded or Dan to remember how to lasso a goddamn cow, or anything that would get the scorpion to change its focus.

  “Any time now would be great!” he hollered over his shoulder.

  For a thing half-hobbled, the scorpion wouldn’t give up on its goal. Rhett clambered and rolled and crab-walked backward as the giant pincer and leaking tail stabbed, again and again, inches from where he’d just been. Where were his friends, his Rangers? He couldn’t even get a good look to see if they were shooting or turning tail. What a way to go, he thought – stabbed to death by a scorpion miles from anywhere, and buck nekkid to boot.

  The pincer came down hard, knocking him sideways.

  “I hope my goddamn dust blinds all of y’all when this critter gets me!” he yelled.

  Something whistled through the air, and the scorpion hit the dirt with a loud whump as one of its remaining three legs exploded. As the monster fell, Rhett flopped onto his back, out of range, and tried to get his heart to stop hammering.

  “Sorry if I’m late,” Winifred said, taking the Henry from her shoulder as she walked up to give Rhett a smug grin. “My horse was misbehaving.” Soon she joined Sam in filling the downed scorpion with holes as it struggled to stand again and stabbed at them with a tail that was pretty much a useless stump.

  Since the monster couldn’t bedevil Rhett anymore, he stood as nonchalantly as a naked feller could and dusted off some of the prickly bits and gravel clinging to his rump. He was hunting around for his dropped knife when he heard a noise unlike anything he’d ever heard before, a scream of rage that sounded something like an eagle, but much bigger and louder. A winged shadow passed over him, and he looked up and shielded his eye.

  It was a dragon.

  It had to be. Like a sinuous snake covered in scales ranging from gold to orange, with a fiery ruff around its neck and a long mustache and claws the size of Rhett’s arm. As he watched, it hovered above the scorpion and snorted, shaking its grand head at the silly people scurrying around on the ground. One by one, they backed away from the scorpion – because they weren’t dumb, Rhett’s posse, and it was a goddamn dragon. When they were out of range, the dragon’s mouth opened to reveal a row of razor teeth, and it belched a plume of flame that left the scorpion screeching and scrabbling in the dirt.

  Smoke rose from the critter’s black armor, and the giant pincers flailed like an old lady running from a rat, and the dragon turned around and dove again, spraying out even more flame.

  Rhett realized in this moment that he was possibly a little more impressed with Cora than he’d thought, but that getting involved with someone who could breathe fire might actually be a death sentence for someone as ornery as he was liable to be. Still, it was a beautiful scene, watching the girl become a dragon and annihilate a monster.

  “It ain’t dying,” Sam offered, sounding perplexed. “Rhett, why won’t it die?”

  And it wasn’t, either. It was still trying, half on fire and with only two legs, to scurry after Rhett in particular. He finally spotted his knife, picked it up, and squinted at the scorpion. When the dragon finished the latest run and kinda looked at him, he waved a hand to indicate that maybe she should stop with the fire for a minute. As the scorpion struggled toward him, he snatched up his trailing lariat and tossed it to Dan. Sam neatly lassoed its other pincer, and they backed up their horses until the critter was strung between them like a taut line of laundry and struggling to stand.

  “No tail. No claws. It’s not your day, son,” Rhett said as he stood in front of it. “I reckon you aren’t gonna tell me where your heart is?”

  The thing just chittered and struggled like an idjit.

  “Guess I’ll keep stabbing until I find it, then.”

  His stomach griped as he plunged his knife into the scorpion’s smoking back, and he had to dodge the leaking tail stump as it tried to sting him again and again. Winifred ran up behind it, and the sound of her knife sawing into the tail made Rhett’s teeth itch like a dull blade on bone. Soon the tail was half–lopped off like a dead branch and couldn’t flick anymore, and Rhett had no choice but to go stab-happy, hunting for whatever controlled the alchemist’s creature as his chest burned from the heat rising off its smoking black shell.

  “This was a hell of a lot easier with ravens,” he muttered, hacking and hacking as more black gunk leaked, burning, onto his hands.

  Finally, finally, he must’ve hit something, as what was left of the scorpion shuddered and stopped moving. Once it was completely on the ground and still, he stabbed some more, because he had the feeling that if it was good and dead, it would… change. Like all the rest of Trevisan’s magic, the thing wasn’t supposed to just rot out here on the prairie like the bones of an old wagon.

  The scorpion’s shell was in chunks now, and he pried them away to reveal a wet, crusty tube, black and charred and stringed with more of the ichor.

  There.

  The thing he was looking for: a ball of wax molded around a bitty black scorpion, the thing still struggling weakly. Stuck in the wax were a sliver of bone, a shard of gold, a bit of scorched paper, and the usual fancy BT crest that that Trevisan asshole just couldn’t resist stamping on everything he figured he owned.

  “It ain’t personal,” Rhett told the little scorpion, right before he slammed his knife down to chop it in half, along with the wax.

  The scorpion curled and uncurled in agony for just a second, and then the giant body surrounding it collapsed into silvery gray dust, leaving Rhett to suddenly fall forward. On his hands and knees in the dirt, he pulled the note off the nasty bit of magic and silently handed it to Dan, who stood closest.

  “It’s from Trevisan,” Dan said.

  “Well, no shit, Dan,” Rhett said, as he always did.

  “It says that if you follow him, he will kill you.”

  Rhett stood and snorted and walked toward the pile of his clothes.

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” he said.

  When Cora walked up, it was the first time Rhett had seen her looking sheepish or shy – or exhausted. He was fully dressed, at least, and had even chuckled to himself as he reflexively shook out his boots for scorpions. His only wounds from the fight were burns from the black gunk that had spurted out of the monster every time he cut on it, and from the looks of the wounds, they would never fully heal. He’d have splattery pink scars on his copper skin forever, most like. Before today, he’d figured he was already as odd as odd got, but he’d apparently been wron
g.

  He pulled his sleeves down over his scarred forearms as Cora stepped in closer than she should’ve, considering how they’d left that this morning. Her chin was down, her eyes burning and her forehead rumpled. A sheen of sweat glittered on her skin, and she was trembling, just a little.

  “Go on, Rhett Walker. Say it.”

  Rhett cocked his hat up to give her a teasing grin. “Say what?”

  “That I should’ve listened to you.”

  A waterfall of feelings tumbled through his mind, but in the end, what came out was, “I don’t say things I don’t mean, if I can help it.”

  Cora looked up at him, curious. The others listened in from a comfortable distance, like the nosy fools just couldn’t help themselves.

  “But you said we shouldn’t go south alone, and when we did, it nearly killed us all.”

  Rhett looked away and rubbed the back of his head. He wasn’t used to people acting all… well, like he was an authority and they were looking to get punished for their mistakes. It was a new feeling, and a strange one.

  He didn’t like it.

  “Hellfire, Cora. It didn’t nearly kill anybody. I got a few burns, but it’s not like I can get any uglier. It was just a scorpion. Or, I guess, a bunch of bitty little scorpions that decided to be a big ol’ mama scorpion. It’s gone. We’re fine. There’s nothing to fret about.” Then he patted her on the shoulder, like he figured the Captain or Monty would do to make a feller who was shamefaced feel like there were no hard feelings.

  But Cora still couldn’t quite look him in the eye. “Where I come from, a woman who opposed authority and put everyone at risk would be punished severely.”

  He snorted. “Well, that’s pretty dumb. Women got just as much right to make dumb mistakes as fellers do. Look, I told you: Dangerous things gather to me, and I’m called to them. You just tripped a trap before I could, that’s all. That note was for me. It’s me he wants dead.” He held her shoulder longer this time, gave it a comforting squeeze. “But maybe you’ll consider coming with us now. If Trevisan’s the bastard I reckon he is, the trail he’s left from here to the sea’s gonna be chock-full of traps like this. Everywhere he’s stepped, he’s left death in his footprint.”

  “In Meimei’s footprint.”

  That got him to look her in the eyes. He had to make sure that what he said this time sunk in, and sunk in good. “That right there? It’s gonna be the death of you. You got to think of it as Trevisan now, or one day you’re gonna look at your sister’s little face and go soft when you got to go hard. I believe she’s still in there. Okay? I believe. I want to believe. But I got to get him out first so we can find her. What she is now will kill you as soon as look at you. Today should’ve made that pretty clear. So you come with me to Las Moras, and we’ll regroup and start the hunt again, but sideways. Where he won’t have laid any traps. Where he won’t be expecting us. That sound like a plan?”

  Cora sighed the sort of long-suffering sigh women do when they know they’re going to be hostage to a fool’s whims for a while. “I don’t like it, but it’s better than facing another monster like that one. I thought my dragon’s fire would be enough, but it is not. And now I am exhausted, too exhausted to fight another trap. I can barely stand.” She gave the saddest chuckle and clicked her fingernails together. “I always thought that if only Meimei were free, Grandfather and I could lay the entire camp to waste, could destroy Trevisan with one deep breath. But it would appear he and his magic are something beyond what we are.”

  “What he does – it ain’t natural,” Rhett agreed. “But we can fight it. Together.” He toed the heap of glittering gray ash that had been the scorpion. “We make a pretty good team, truth be told.”

  “Well, you had help,” Winifred said, walking up and putting a hand on her hip.

  “We’s a pretty big word,” Rhett growled. “You were included in it, which you’d recognize if you weren’t so damned ready to take offense all the time.”

  He used up his annoyance with her by grinding the ball of wax into the earth with the heel of his boot. The gold chip glimmered, and suddenly Earl was there, plucking it from the trash and pocketing it. Something about that gave Rhett the willies, so he covered up the bone chip with some dirt, effectively burying the bit of whoever had powered the scorpion with stolen magic. Hell, for all he knew, it could’ve been a sliver of his stolen toe bone. Feeling a sudden rush of sympathy, he dug the bone chip back out, studied the bitty thing about the size of his fingernail, and tucked it into the leather bag around his neck. Now it could stay with him, wherever it’d come from. For all the damage he did, it felt right nice, sometimes, to carry remnants of folks with him, to know they wouldn’t be alone or forgotten. Wherever his toe bone ended up, he hoped it wasn’t in the service of hurting anybody.

  His head jerked up.

  “Wait. Coyote Dan, does that book the Captain gave us say anything about tying magic to particular folks? Like, could Trevisan be using my own bone bits to draw his monsters to me? I know we only seen this one, but I’d be a damn fool if I didn’t think there’d be more waiting along this trail.”

  Dan shrugged. “The book doesn’t have much information on making alchemy work, it just identifies alchemists as another monster to be wary of. Your theory is possible. That could be your bone. But also remember that you weren’t the one who triggered the trap.”

  Rhett chewed his ragged lip. “So anybody who comes across one of Trevisan’s traps might get et up by a monster? All the way from here to the gulf?”

  Dan’s look was a hard thing, a warning not to stray too far from the path. “There’s no way to tell. Maybe it’s just monsters that can set them off. Maybe it’s just people with your stink on ’em. We can deal with that after we’ve got the Captain’s blessing and more weapons, as the Shadow wills it.”

  A trill of worry something close to fear went down Rhett’s neck. Whichever direction he went, he wasn’t headed toward anything good.

  Rhett looked at his posse, one by one. Sweet Sam, sour Earl, steady if annoying Dan, defiant Winifred, and poor, out-of-her-depth Cora, caught halfway between guilt and terror. His main goal now was to keep them near him, where he could help protect them.

  Clearly, breaking up the group spelled disaster.

  Clearly, keeping them nearby wasn’t just him being selfish.

  “Then let’s saddle up,” he said. “The plan’s the same. We go west. For now.”

  But what would they find there? The queasy churning of his gut suggested it was going to be even worse than usual, which was saying a hell of a lot.

  The posse was back on the trail. Nothing unusual happened for quite some time. The horses found their calm and still had plenty of stamina. The first day on the road was always Rhett’s favorite, when the sun was out and the food was plentiful and nobody’d gotten sick or shot yet. They’d been lucky with the scorpion – Rhett was the only one who’d taken damage, and even that was just his skin. He was out front on Ragdoll, working like a mostly human compass to guide the group in the right direction. Sam rode by his side with Dan in back, keeping an eye on the trail behind. A drained and weakened Cora wobbled on the box seat of the purple wagon, relying on Samson to follow the other horses. They’d left her original wagon from the train camp behind to mark their old path, so Earl trotted along in donkey form instead of driving, which seemed to work best for all involved.

  Winifred hung back near Cora’s wagon, and Rhett was glad to see them smile shyly at each other instead of raising their hackles. With so few women roughing it in the wide spaces of Durango, they had quite a lot in common, once Winifred got over herself and her ridiculous jealousy. Cora was still exhausted, so he was glad to know someone else was watching over her. In any case, with all the ponied horses tied up off the wagon and Rhett free of most of what had dogged him, he felt right fine.

  They broke for lunch after Sam shot a fine, fluffy bird. Winifred and Cora worked up some taters and greens, both claiming that if Rhe
tt didn’t eat better, he was liable to lose his teeth and get bow legs. Considering how the train camp had left him so wiry he could count every rib, even with his binder on, he was glad enough to take an extra helping, if that made the women fuss less.

  Everything went just fine until they stopped just a bit before sunset. As soon as they spotted the little creek, the fellers nodded to one another and split off to do the chores. Even Earl had learned well enough how to find things that would burn, and he’d nearly mastered the art of fetching enough tinder that the fire didn’t go out by morning. Sam was off hunting, Dan cleared the camp and started up the fire from Earl’s pile of sticks, and Rhett took care of the horses. Cora’s wagon was just a bit behind, and he watched it trundle across the ground, imagining that the girl’s rump would be sore as hell after such treatment. He immediately blushed for having thought something so personal, but he wasn’t the sort of man who would ever choose a seat over a saddle.

  As Samson strained toward the little creek, Rhett took hold of the gelding’s bridle and walked by his side to a pretty field of green. Cora didn’t say anything, and Rhett didn’t say anything. Samson made happy, snuffling noises. When Cora disappeared through the canvas curtain into the back of the wagon, it was like a weight had lifted from Rhett’s chest. He talked to Samson as he unhitched him and hobbled him in the field, then went over the ponies one by one, checking for ticks and burrs and thorns and stones hiding in hooves. Next to being alone with Sam, this was probably his favorite thing to do. Horses were simple. They made sense. They had clear, honest personalities that rarely changed, and they knew almost immediately how they felt about a body. Humans and monsters, as far as Rhett figured, were just about the opposite of that.

  Once all the horses were hobbled and gulping from the stream, Rhett stretched out until his back popped and headed for the fire. Everyone was there already, drinking from their canteens and watching a fat rattlesnake sizzle over the fire.