Blood Riders

by Michael P. Spradlin

  With his first clear look at her, Hollister felt her beauty strike him like a punch in the gut. She was beyond gorgeous, her blond hair hanging below her shoulders and green eyes peering out at him from a face carved from alabaster. Her clothing hid most of her figure, but even as she sat in the saddle he could tell she was tall for a woman, her knee-high boots and leather riding pants covering long legs.

  Jonas suddenly realized how long it had been since he’d really stopped and looked at a woman. Even after four years locked away in Leavenworth, most of his thoughts had gone only to getting out. And in the past few days, events had moved so quickly, there hadn’t been much time to think about anything else. At West Point, and after the war, he had courted women as an eligible bachelor, but he’d never met anyone who really made him think about marriage or a life beyond the army. Now he stood twenty yards away from what he thought might clearly be the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life, and for a moment it was difficult to speak.

  “Who are you?” he finally asked.

  The woman stared at him. Her face was a curious mixture of fear and anxiety. It looked to him like she was wrestling with something: a problem so big the weight of it might crush her. It made Hollister want to help her. Take off his hat and hold it in his hands and ask her, like a Knight Errant might ask his queen how he could be of service.

  She stared hard at him for several seconds.

  “I am called Shaniah,” she said. Her voice was low and Hollister and Chee had to strain to hear her.

  “What are you doing here?” Hollister asked.

  She did not answer but pulled the cloak back over her head and reined the stallion around, giving him the quirt as she rode hard back the way she had come. Vanishing into the trees almost as mysteriously as she had arrived.

  Hollister looked at Chee, who still seemed ready to jump on his horse and ride the woman down.

  “Huh,” he said.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  “Monkey Pete, what does this train have in the way of maps of the territories?” Hollister asked the trainman.

  After their encounter with the mysterious woman Shaniah, they had finished their inspection of Torson City, buried the three bodies and returned to Denver just after nightfall. Slater and his men had shadowed them all the way back, but had offered no interference.

  “We’ve got all the maps you might need, Major,” Monkey Pete said. From a cabinet in the main car, he pulled several metal tubes and set them on the table in front of Hollister. They had finished their meal, and Jonas wanted to get moving. The encounter with the mystery woman had given him pause at first, but now it felt like he was closer to something, to finding what he was looking for.

  Chee sat across the table from the major, quiet and lost in thought. He’d been like that since the woman appeared. Hollister was not surprised that Chee had been right. It had been a woman following them. He was beginning to learn that Chee was right most of the time. At least about Deathwalkers and mysterious women.

  “Cheer up, Chee. You’ll get to shoot somebody soon,” Hollister said.

  Dog lay on the floor of the car, theoretically asleep but his eyes slitted, always close to Chee.

  Monkey Pete was fishing through the maps, finally settling on one, pulling the rolled paper from inside the metal tube, and unrolling it on the table in front of them.

  “This is a Central and Pacific railroad map, Major. Printed just last month. It’s probably the most accurate and up to date of any. What is it you’re looking for?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure. But something Declan’s kid kept saying is sticking in my craw,” Hollister said. “He kept saying, ‘mine,’ over and over. At first I thought he was talking about Torson City, then maybe something personal or a possession he’d lost there when those creatures attacked. Or he was referring to the men he lost. But now I wonder if he meant something else. Chee and I found blood down in the mine. Like maybe they ambushed those men.”

  Hollister opened his copy of Van Helsing’s journal and went to a page he had dog-eared. “Dr. Van Helsing has some notes about ‘suspicious’ attacks out here. There’s a half dozen places where a group of people were murdered in the last six years, and it was put off as Indian massacres. He and Pinkerton weren’t sure that was the case.”

  He thumbed through the diary, marking the locations on the map.

  Hollister picked up a charcoal pencil and pored over the map, putting marks on Torson City, the spot in Wyoming where he’d lost his platoon, and where the half dozen attacks noted in the journal occurred. When he was finished, he was not surprised to find that three of the eight spots were mining camps. There had to be a connection.

  “Van Helsing also thinks these things are mountain creatures by nature. They come from Eastern Europe, where I understand it’s very hilly, and the altitude doesn’t seem to bother them like it does us. If they were hiding out or had a remote home base, I expect it would be in the mountains somewhere.”

  Curiously enough, the spots on the map made a rough circle from Torson City on the southern end to the spot in Wyoming just west of Deadwood where he’d been attacked. The circle was a few hundred miles in diameter.

  “I don’t know, Major, that’s a lot of territory,” Chee said. “And what if some of those were Indian attacks? Makes it even harder to pin down.”

  “I don’t disagree, Chee. I’m just trying to suss it out. One of the two places we know for sure they attacked was a mining camp. I’m wondering if there’s a reason for that.”

  “What kind of reason?” Monkey Pete asked.

  “I don’t know, but I remember something from when . . . from Wyoming, they don’t like moving around in the daylight. Van Helsing said enough sun is fatal to ’em. So they like the dark. What’s darker than a mine?”

  “But there’s got be dozens of mines within that circle you’ve drawn. Maybe hundreds,” Monkey Pete said.

  “True. But how many abandoned mines? That’s where I expect they’d be hiding. They wouldn’t be holed up in a working mine. Unless they’d killed or did what Van Helsing called ‘turned’ everyone working there first.”

  “Turned?” Chee asked.

  “I read it too,” Monkey Pete chimed in. “The creatures drink the victims’ blood first and then make the victims drink the creatures’ blood. Turns ’em into a vampire. I want you boys to promise me something . . . if them things ever gets a’holt of me and starts turnin’ Monkey Pete, you promise me you’ll shoot me dead.”

  Hollister looked at the engineer, his face a curious mixture of surprise and some form of admiration for the man’s mind. “Sure Monkey Pete. You just promise me you’ll do the same to me.”

  “Oh sure, Major, I’ll be happy to shoot you,” he said.

  “But just to be clear, only if I’m being turned into a vampire. Not for any other reason,” Hollister said.

  “We’ll see,” Monkey Pete said and turned his attention to the map again.

  Chee shook his head. “It seems kind of thin, sir.”

  “I don’t disagree. But we got nothing else. And these other attacks in mining camps makes it a connection, no matter how thin it might be,” Hollister said. “And I’ve been thinking, maybe when they attacked Declan’s group, they were hiding in the mine. The sun went down and out they came. If you can’t be in the sunlight, a mine is the perfect spot to spend the daylight hours. There are mines all over the west. Maybe this is how they’re moving and gathering a group large enough to make whatever move it is he has planned.”

  Chee nodded. He had to agree, reluctant as he was. It made sense.

  “Let me see that map,” Monkey Pete said.

  He took it off the table and sat down with it at the desk. Making marks with the pencil, he muttered to himself as he worked. “I’ve driven trains for Mr. Pinkerton all over this territory. I may not know them all, but I can tell you a lot of the mines that have played out . . .” His words trailed off.

  Jonas filled his coffee cup and
looked across the table at Chee. The young man sat there looking all jangled up, like the weight of the world was on him.

  “Something on your mind, Chee?” he asked.

  “No, sir,” Chee answered.

  “Chee, I told you about calling me ‘sir.’ Now we had a good first effort in the field today. You did good work out there. When I was in the army I wasn’t the type of officer who didn’t value input from his men. If you got something to say, I think you need to tell me. I don’t want to have to give an order.”

  “The woman, sir,” Chee said.

  “What about her?”

  “She’s the key to this. I think we should try to capture her. If we want to find these things, she’s the one who can lead us to them.”

  Hollister paused while he measured the young man’s words.

  “Let’s say you’re right. Suppose this ‘Shaniah’ is part of this. How do you suggest we go about catching her?”

  Chee shrugged.

  “And if we do catch her, what if she turns out to be one of the creatures like you figure? I mean, she scattered them Utes in seconds, and God only knows how. She had her back to us, but I’m wondering if she didn’t show ’em her real face.”

  “Her real face, sir?” Chee was curious.

  “Yeah. Back in Wyoming, when they attacked my platoon, they came at us, and their faces . . . they change somehow. The eyes turn bright red and their jaws get long and they get these big-ass fangs coming out of their mouths. It’s enough to make you shit if you weren’t so worried about dying. Out there today, she kept her back to us the entire time she was facing down the Indians. I reckon this Shaniah showed the Utes her real face, and that’s what spooked ’em. They probably thought she was some kind of witch.”

  Chee nodded. There was logic to the major’s words. And it did explain what happened when the woman appeared.

  “So while I admire your initiative, I’m not so sure I think we’re ready to capture and control one of these things yet. Not until we learn a little bit more about them.”

  Right then, Chee understood even more why Hollister had made such a good commander. He had taken Chee’s input, even encouraged it, and given it thorough consideration. And while he hadn’t outright rejected it, he had shown Chee the holes in his argument but had done so in a way so as not to discourage him. He had made a command decision. But he had included Chee in the process. Hollister was the kind of officer men fought for.

  “Here we go,” Monkey Pete said from the desk. He rose and shuffled back to the table where the two men sat, spreading the map out.

  “Inside your circle, Major, there’re six abandoned mining towns I know of.” All of them were on the Front Range of the Rockies, and spread from a point about one hundred and thirty miles north of Torson City all the way up into Wyoming. He pointed to each one.

  “How many of them can we reach by train?” Hollister asked.

  “These four should still have spurs,” the engineer said, pointing out the locations on the map. “The trains don’t run there no more, so I don’t know what shape the tracks will be in, but we can get close, I expect. But this one, the mine is closed but the town is still there. Train runs in once a week.”

  Hollister looked at the first spot, a town called Absolution. It was a silver mine, nearly played out but, according to the map, still working. “This might be the place!” Hollister said. “If they want to turn people, wouldn’t this be the perfect place to start?”

  A small number of people, controllable, and a mine for the daylight hours.

  “It’s as good a place as any to start,” Chee said, nodding his head in agreement.

  “Monkey Pete, how long to get there from Denver?” Hollister said.

  Monkey Pete put his hand on his chin, calculating the amount of time it would take to be under way. “The horses are loaded up on the stock car. We’re ready to go. It’s a couple hundred miles to Absolution, and it’s about a seven percent grade. Even with our extra speed, it’ll take us most of the next day to get there. If we get started right away.”

  “Well my good man, let’s see what this train has got. Get us going to Absolution and don’t spare the whip!” Hollister said.

  He scurried off, happy to have his train running again.

  Chee reached inside his shirt and fingered his medicine bag. He had a feeling he was going to need it. Something had bothered him ever since he and Hollister had ventured into the Torson City mine earlier. It was the bats. Chee knew that bats were night creatures. They wouldn’t normally leave their nests and fly out in the daylight unless they had to. The bats had swarmed out from deep in the mine. Something had scared them recently and when Hollister and Chee had ventured there, they were upset again, frightened enough to ignore instinct and fly out into the daylight sky.

  Chee squeezed his medicine bag and wondered what that could be.

  Chapter Thirty

  Slater watched the train leave the warehouse. It confirmed his suspicions that his adversaries had learned something from the mysterious woman who had ridden to their rescue that day. She must have given them a clue or a direction to go in and now they were on the trail. Depending on where they went, it would be much harder to contain the situation now. Harder, but not impossible.

  As the train departed, Slater confirmed the warehouse was still guarded by Pinkertons: two men at each entrance and two others regularly patrolling the perimeter. Whatever was in there, Pinkerton didn’t want anyone finding out about it. The train shifted onto a siding and slowly rolled westward. Slater had anticipated they’d be going soon and had stationed his men along the most likely routes, with instructions to report back and to follow the train as far and as long as they were able.

  He pulled the collar up on his duster. Even though it was early summer it was unseasonably chilly and rain was coming. Leaving the train yard, he rode through the streets, and was at the senator’s mansion in a few minutes. He found Declan inside, sitting in front of the fireplace in his study. The bottle of brandy on the table next to his chair was almost empty. The man was good and drunk. He’d been like this for the last two weeks. Ever since he’d realized his son had been telling the truth. It had unsettled him and he hadn’t gotten a handle on how he could fix it. Slater found it mildly disgusting.

  “They’re gone,” Slater said.

  “Where?” Declan asked.

  “I don’t know yet. I’ve got my men tracking the train. We’ll hear soon enough.”

  “What are we going to do, Slater?” Declan asked, sucking down another big swallow of brandy.

  “Whatever we need to,” Slater said.

  “I don’t think that’s going to work this time,” Declan muttered.

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning even if Hollister finds these . . . things and succeeds in killing them, us killing him isn’t going to be overlooked. I got a telegraph from Washington today. Nobody knows anything about him.”

  “So? Isn’t that a good thing? No one will miss him when he’s gone.”

  “You don’t get it,” Declan grunted, rising and leaning against the mantel. “The only things I could get my hands on were his original army records and the fact that his release from Leavenworth was signed by President Hayes himself. That fancy train, the Pinkertons, a mysterious warehouse big enough to hold that gussied-up train—all of it takes massive amounts of money. You don’t hide something like that, especially in Washington. If anyone knows anything, they’re not saying a word. Which means they either don’t know or . . .” He let his words trail off.

  “Or?” Slater prodded.

  “Or it goes all the way to the top, to the president himself. And that means people are watching Hollister’s back. Which means our ‘usual methods’ won’t work.”

  Slater shrugged. “I wouldn’t worry, Senator.”

  “You sound awful damn confident,” Declan said.

  “I seen what happened in Torson City with my own eyes. That many men, gone without a trace. If Hollister
gets mixed up with . . . in it . . . he ain’t likely to survive it. And even if he does, it would be easy to make it look like he didn’t,” Slater said.

  The senator was quiet a moment, turning Slater’s words over in his mind. He smiled. “By God, you are an evil sumbitch. I hadn’t even considered that,” Declan said.

  Slater smiled, taking the glass from the senator’s hand and draining the rest of the brandy. “It’s what you pay me for, ain’t it?”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  The night sky was overcast, but there was enough moonlight behind it to give light to the Front Range, where Shaniah rode Demeter, trailing along with Hollister’s train. It was heading north, not into the mountains, and thus her horse had little trouble following it. Of course the stallion would not be able to keep up such a pace forever. But she had captured Hollister’s scent and she thought she would have no trouble tracking him.

  He intrigued her even more, now that she had faced him in the open. To Archaics, humans were no more than enemies or prey. Viewed the same way a human might view a bear or elk. It had been hundreds of years since she had had close contact with a human in an adversarial way, and she couldn’t say why quite yet, but Hollister was different.

  She thought most humans, especially males, were ugly. Hollister was not. His face was full of lines and angles, sharply cut, and his eyes were dark. Had she been so inclined, Shaniah would have said they were mysterious, yet that was not exactly right. There were a host of things at play there, not just mystery, but intelligence, integrity, and maybe mischief.

  Although she was certain the man-witch with Hollister knew what she was, Hollister had shown no fear of her. Chee had wanted to kill her without hesitation; she could read it on his face. But Hollister had resisted. He had spoken to her. Tried to draw her in.

  She remembered him on the plains four years ago. He had fought so desperately to save his men.