Malice of Crows: The Shadow, Book Three

by Lila Bowen

  Vampire whores. Lots of ’em. And plenty of other trouble, too, if you considered the human men gambling and drinking within. Rhett could use some trouble. He had all of tonight, then tomorrow, then another fool night to get through before he could make his move on Trevisan, and there wasn’t a goddamn thing he could do until then.

  Well, supposedly.

  But considering Trevisan was locked down in his room with the Mallards and Mr. Franck and whatever other hired muscle got set on babysitting, the necromancer was stuck here, just like Rhett. Just like he had been for weeks. So odds were he wasn’t gonna be able to do anything naughty tonight.

  But Rhett could.

  Well, hell, maybe not naughty. Not without Sam around. But entertaining. Inés had ordered him to stay put, but she wasn’t his mama. He could mosey on down to the saloon, have a drink, play a hand of cards. It almost felt like he’d be stepping out on Sam, but he told himself a sort of story about what it could be like if Sam had the same idea. Rhett would walk in the front door and stop, and he’d feel a tug across the room, and there would be Sam Hennessy, sitting alone at the bar. No – a little table. In the corner, shadowy and private. Rhett would flip a coin to the bartender for two shots of whiskey, head over to where Sam was sitting, and slide one across the table, cool as you please. Maybe he’d turn his chair around, spin it so he was sitting on it backward, resting his arms across the top. And the noise of the saloon would be friendly and the air would be warm and he’d lean over to Sam, secretive-like, and whisper something like, “What’s a tall drink of water like you doing in a shithole like this?”

  And Sam would blush like he did sometimes and maybe look down, but he’d be smiling, and he’d say something like, “Waiting for somebody like you, I reckon.”

  And Rhett would lean in, and —

  Was that someone scratching at the door?

  Was it Sam?

  Feeling a bit flushed and flustered, Rhett loosened the kerchief around his neck and settled the gun belt on his hips and walked to the door.

  “That you, Sam?”

  One long, suggestive scratch was all it took, and Rhett thanked his lucky stars and opened the door.

  Or tried to. He turned the knob, and the door flew open, knocking him onto his back. A huge shape bounded into the room, taking up most of the space. With the light of just the fire and a few candles, and with his brains rattled around from the fall, Rhett couldn’t quite tell what it was. More than anything, it looked like a giant deer with strangely shiny antlers. The creature’s great head swiveled around, its eyes finding Rhett.

  “That you, Buck?” he asked, hopeful that it might be someone he at least partially considered a friend while still pretty sure it wasn’t.

  But when it lowered its head at him, he saw that the beast’s eyes were black and dead and its antlers were tipped with knives.

  That’s when he knew it wasn’t Buck, or anything like him. It had to be one of Trevisan’s creatures.

  Which meant bullets wouldn’t kill it, although they would draw other guests and staff to the room, likely getting them killed. As the monster deer stabbed at him with its antlers, Rhett rolled sideways and drew his own knife. Like the big black cat, he was going to have to get uncomfortably close with this thing if he wanted to live long enough to kill its maker.

  With a snort, the monster swung its head, sending a lamp flying and nearly slicing Rhett’s arm. As Rhett crawled away, breathing hard, he realized that the stag was having trouble navigating the small room filled with dainties. It knocked over a little table and got its hooves tangled in the rug as it stalked him. Being small and limber and possibly clever was the only way for Rhett to survive.

  Still, it was a monster covered with knives, and at every stage of the fight, it tossed its head, the blades slashing the air and leaving the wallpaper in strips. When Rhett was too slow scrambling away, he took a hot slice to the shoulder, and he could’ve sworn he heard the monster’s lips part in a fiendish and un-deerlike grin.

  “You’re Trevisan’s thing,” he said.

  The monster gave no answer, choosing instead to pause in chasing him around the small room and paw at the rug, rumpling it. Well, hell. If the room was going to be destroyed anyway, Rhett might as well stop pussyfooting around and get down to business.

  Picking up a vase of flowers, he threw it in the stag’s face, hard, and used its surprised snort to crawl across the floor and wedge himself up under the bed. It was a narrow thing, barely big enough for two even if they were skinny, and it wasn’t nearly the kind of cover he liked to have in a fight. The door hung open, and no one had yet come to investigate the sound of hooves and slashes and a scared boy rolling around on gangly knees and elbows as sixteen knives rent the air where he’d just been.

  Good. He didn’t need anybody else to worry about just now. That’s why Sam and Winifred were staying somewhere else.

  The stag stepped close to the bed, worrying it with his antlers, and Rhett pulled out his Bowie knife and slashed hard at the slender tendons of the thing’s fetlock. Whatever it was made of, the flesh there was softer than the bones and bits of a real deer, and its hoof soon dangled from a thin black string. The beast bellowed its rage and flipped the bed off him with its rack, and Rhett did the usual sort of thing he did, the thing that would’ve seemed downright stupid to anybody watching: He crawled toward the stag, past its bad leg, and around back to slice at another leg.

  Black ichor spilled out, just like it had with the other creatures, burning up Rhett’s forearm like fire. No time to worry about that – the beast was falling, and Rhett barely had enough time to roll away before it landed and started thrashing around like a goddamn fool.

  Rhett stood and backed away, considering. Problem was, he needed to get to the stag’s heart, but it was on the same side as the blade-tipped antlers. Whether he went in from the back or the front, the thing would twist its monstrous head and fillet him like a nice steak. But at least it couldn’t stand up anymore, seeing as how he’d cut both its left feet.

  Knife still in hand and dripping black ichor, Rhett stood and dashed back over to the bed, stripping off the puddled coverlet and tossing it over the stag’s rack like a tablecloth. It didn’t cover all the bladed tips, but it covered most of ’em and the monster’s eyes as well.

  Saying a brief prayer to whoever was listening, he slid to the floor on his back and managed to waggle in right up against the stag’s chest. It tried to bite him, but its mouth couldn’t reach him, and it was still fighting the blanket, and he shoved hard with both hands until his Bowie knife juddered into the thing’s chest, all the way to the hilt.

  As he sawed the knife around, hunting for the heart, the stag flailed against him, landing hard blows with its front legs and remaining hooves. But Rhett was Rhett, and he wasn’t going to budge until the goddamn job was done, no matter how much punishment the creature rained down on him, which was turning out to be quite a lot.

  The stag didn’t take the cut like a sensible beast. No, the flesh of its chest had the consistency of a log, hard and unyielding, and Rhett wasn’t finding the heart no matter how hard he jabbed or how he dug around with the point of his blade. The monster landed a punch in the gut with its good front hoof, and Rhett muttered, “Fuck you, deer.” Yanking out his knife, he stuck his hand into the mangled hole he’d created, ignoring the burning pain as his fingers reached for something that wasn’t a heart exactly. There. A ball of wax. His fist closed around it, and he yanked it out through the jagged hole and crushed it.

  The stag gave a bleating sigh and just… collapsed, melting around him in a puddle of black glop and fur and a tinkling storm of blades that hit the ground with all the power of a mirror’s useless, broken shards. Rhett rolled away from the growing puddle, certain that Inés was going to kill him if the snotty little hotel man didn’t beat her to it. The monster was no longer a monster, just a soggy black mess with bits of metal stuck here and there, as if it had melted on a hot day. Rhett hope
d the already-ruined rug would help protect the floor and wondered what he would sleep under now that the coverlet was in tatters.

  Dragging himself away to sit with his back against the chest of drawers he took a moment to catch his breath and let his heart find its rhythm. It took time, forcing his clinched fist to open. There was the crushed ball of wax he expected to see, although it wasn’t the shiny black wax within all the other creatures. It was whitish-gold candle wax, just like the candles still burning around his own room. And stuck in the middle of it were three things, both exactly what Rhett expected to find and utterly different: Mr. Franck’s antler-handled pocketknife, folded closed; a gold shard of ceramic from a doll baby; and a child’s tiny tooth.

  He plucked out the tooth and held it up to the nearest candle’s light. It still had a dab of blood on the inside. He had a few such teeth in his little pouch, as he’d saved them when he’d lost them as a child. Pap and Mam took everything he found, back then, and he’d just assumed they’d have some nefarious purpose for his teeth, were they to discover he’d been foolish enough to let them fall out. He’d been surprised as hell when new teeth grew in in their places, and then furious that no one had told him that such was the way of things.

  So this must be one of Meimei’s teeth, and whether it had fallen out on its own or Trevisan had found an easy handhold and yanked was anybody’s guess. Rhett had known that Trevisan’s spells required bone and gold to run, but now he better understood that they also required some small shard of the animal they were based on. The birds had been powered by feathers. The seed of this stag was an antler-handled blade, which explained its goddamn bladed antlers. For the cat and the scorpions, Trevisan must’ve used what he found on the trail. Maybe all it took was a housecat’s single whisker and Trevisan’s words to send the panther out hunting.

  Pulling out the knife, Rhett had to wonder if Mr. Franck was still alive. Had Trevisan killed him or merely stolen the man’s fine knife? The worst thing Rhett could do right now would be to run downstairs and bang on the Mallards’ door, demanding answers. He’d just have to show up at breakfast tomorrow like nothing had happened, eat his vittles, and play nice so they wouldn’t get uninvited to Sunday’s picnic.

  Rhett stood, cracking his back and flexing his fingers. He went to the ewer to wash off the black gunk, but it clung like hot mud and burned. When he wiped it off on a bit of the rug that hadn’t been destroyed, it pulled long strips of skin off with it. By the time he’d gotten it all off, his fingers were mottled pink and brown.

  “This job’s making me ugly,” he observed to no one in particular.

  He tried to kick the stag, or what was left of it, but it had dissolved down into nothing but a stain. Hell, maybe it had dripped down between the floorboards and onto Trevisan’s damn head. With a grunt of annoyance, Rhett smashed what was left of the ball of wax in his hands, glad to see the stag’s remains turn to proper sand, black and sparkling. That, at least, could be swept up. If only getting the stains off his hands were so easy.

  He righted the bed, collected and fluffed the pillows, and went to close and lock the door. The wood had scratch marks on it from the stag dragging his bladed antlers down the front. When he turned back around, the room looked like… well, like an annoyed feller had gotten into a hell of a fight with a bucket of sand.

  Rhett sighed deeply. He was just fine with fighting monsters, but he wasn’t a big fan of doing the same kind of useless cleaning he’d been forced to do at Pap and Mam’s. Still, he couldn’t get tossed out of the hotel before their picnic with Trevisan, so he snuck out into the hall in his sock feet, went to the closet where the maids kept their cleaning supplies, and spent most of the night sweeping the floor and sewing his blanket back together with the kit he kept in his saddlebags. He mixed some ash from the fire with water and rubbed it into the scratches on the door, glad that it was dark wood and not painted, and that the scratches mostly disappeared unless you were really looking hard.

  When he was done, he returned the broom and dustpan to the closet, the dustpan brimming with sand. Not his problem anymore. At least this time nobody could beat him, even if he did a middling to poor job cleaning up. He went to sleep aching in every crevice from the stag’s hooves and didn’t wake up until Inés started beating on his door the next morning.

  “Go away,” he murmured from under his stitched-up coverlet. “I been killing monsters all night.”

  “Wake up!” Inés shouted again. “You must guard me at breakfast.”

  Rhett grunted and rolled out of bed. He’d used up all his ewer water last night, and his face looked ten years older and bore new scars from flecks of dead stag. He dragged a hand over his hair and shoved his hat on low. Feet into boots, gun belt over hips, mouth into something like a smile. He pulled the door open to find Inés standing there looking like somebody’d ironed her clothes while she wore ’em, starched and upright as the nun she had once been.

  “You look like hell,” she observed.

  Rhett pointed to the barely visible scratches on his door. “He sent one of his friends to say hello last night. The conversation was not pleasant.”

  “But you won.”

  “Lady, I always win.”

  He knew she was inspecting the damage because her veil twitched, this way and then that. “And you tried to clean up.” Kneeling, she brushed fingertips over the floor and stood, dusting away sand. “You should probably stay in your room all day so no servants enter. They won’t like this.”

  He shook his head. “Small spaces make me itchy. I got to get to breakfast and see Trevisan for myself. And then I got business in town.”

  Inés hummed to herself. “That will be tricky. Remain silent when I speak to the hotel staff.”

  “As if I was really looking forward to that conversation,” he groused.

  It took him a moment to relock his door, as he still wasn’t accustomed to the key system, and he followed Inés downstairs. She went directly to the big desk, and Rhett stood behind her, staring down at the sparkling white floors with their fancy black designs. He could imagine all too well how many hours with a scrub brush it took to keep such an extravagance clean in a place as dirty as Durango.

  “Can I help you, ma’am? Er, sister?”

  It was a different stuffy white feller this time, but they were all about the same to Rhett. This one was too big for his waistcoat, bulging out like an overdone sausage.

  “I wish our rooms to remain undisturbed,” Inés said, sounding stern. Keeping her hands hidden, she slid a coin across the desk, and it disappeared down the man’s cuff. “I must pray and do my readings. See that no servants enter rooms 109 and 110, and there will be another coin before we leave.” She snapped her fingers at Rhett. “The money, boy.” He tried not to look too annoyed as he handed her the four dollars, and she slid that across the desk, too. “We will be staying one more night as well.”

  “You don’t wish to have your, ahem, water changed?”

  Inés drew herself up as tall as she’d go. “I do not.”

  The man dipped his head. “I’ll see it done.”

  Inés inclined her head like a queen and swept off toward the clamor of the breakfast table. Exhausted and drooping, Rhett followed, finally perking up when he smelled bacon sizzling. As they entered the room, Josephina flapped a napkin at them.

  “Sister Inés! Sister? There’s room down here.”

  The sight that greeted them was so ridiculous that Rhett had to stifle a laugh. Trevisan was wearing… some sort of pajamas with arms that wrapped around his front, crossing, and then tied around his back. His hands were all tucked up in there, and he clearly couldn’t figure out how to escape. He was radiating fury from Meimei’s eyes, and as Rhett slid his long legs over the bench opposite him, Trevisan bared his teeth, showing a fresh gap where a tooth was missing.

  “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here. Herbert had to do business, and Mr. Franck was… well, he had an accident last night, and I’ve had to care for po
or Mildred alone. It just won’t do. I haven’t been able to take a bite of my breakfast, and I swear I’m going to faint.”

  Josephina did look flustered, her hair slightly askew and her food nearly untouched.

  “I’m not sure how we can help, but you should take care of your needs,” Inés said, her voice tender and caring. No one had ever spoken to Rhett like that in his entire goddamn life.

  Josephina sighed and sat down, shoveling breakfast into her mouth in a way that suggested she wasn’t as gently bred as she would’ve liked folks to think. As soon as her hands were off his shoulders, Trevisan began to thrash about, trying to escape from the confines of his shirt.

  “Rhett, why don’t you hold sweet Mildred down,” Inés suggested. “Gently. As gently as if she were one of your new foals.” Leaning in to Josephina, she added, “He’s a great hand with young things, Rhett is.”

  Rhett toned down his grin and nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, ma’am. I can soothe that little one while you have a bite.”

  About the only thing better than eating a breakfast he didn’t have to cook was the chance to torture Trevisan, so Rhett abandoned the plate he’d been filling and moved around to the other bench, putting a hand on each of Trevisan’s shoulders and gently but firmly shoving Meimei’s little body back onto the bench. Trevisan’s tension and fury all but vibrated up Rhett’s arms.

  Rhett leaned in close and whispered, in a singsong voice, “Rockabye, asshole, in the treetop. When the wind blows, your stag turned to glop.”

  Trevisan growled and flailed in his arms, and Rhett smoothed his hair. “She’s feeling feisty today, seems like. She ever get any exercise? Little things like to run free.”

  Josephina swallowed and glugged her coffee before dabbing her lips with her napkin and answering primly, “It’s not safe. She might do herself damage. Why, she bit off one of her own toes, once! And she can be, well, violent toward others. Poor Mr. Franck didn’t believe me, and look where he is now.”