Blood Riders

by Michael P. Spradlin

  He was about to step through when, without warning, he was jerked off his feet and pulled backward into the street.

  What the hell?

  Chapter Forty

  As he flew through the air he had enough presence of mind to hit the dusty street in a roll and come up with his pistols raised. Shaniah stood in front of the door to the saloon, a long knife in her hand. It was dripping with blood that was now pooling at her feet.

  Hollister kept the Colts leveled at her.

  “If you go in there now, you’ll die,” she said.

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance. Again. I’m going to have to ask you to step aside, though. There’s a young boy who has gotten separated from our party and I need to collect him,” Hollister said.

  Shaniah snorted. “You mean the little idiot that ran out of your jail in the middle of the night, with the town full of Archaics?”

  “Archaics?”

  “I’m not sure what you might call them. Vampires, perhaps, which would be a close description but not entirely accurate. The boy is already dead.”

  “Oh. Well. That changes everything. Thanks so much for letting me know. I’ll just mosey on elsewhere then.”

  Though she had been chasing Malachi for several years now, she always made an effort to keep her distance from humans. The human language was rich in nuance and subtlety, and she could not be sure if the man named Hollister was serious.

  “Good. Now since I have saved your life, it would be easier if you returned to your jail. Wait until morning, when it will be safer for you to venture to your train.”

  “Sorry, I can’t do that. I need to find the kid.”

  “I told you, he’s already dead,” she said, puzzled at why he would doubt her.

  “So you said,” he stood slowly, the pistols maintaining their aim at the center of her chest.

  “I don’t understand. . . . If he’s dead . . .”

  “I’m afraid I can’t just take your word for it. I’m going to have to find it out for myself. Now, I appreciate what you’ve done here and in Torson City. You probably saved our hides with those Utes. But I need to find Billy,” he said.

  “If you go into the saloon you will die,” she said.

  “Then I guess today is my day for it,” he said. “Now, kindly step aside.” He took a step toward her, holding the guns steady. In reality he was squeezing the handles so hard he wasn’t sure he’d be able to fire them even if he wanted to. She didn’t move, and he was sorry for that as he didn’t know what his next tactic would be. His only hope was that she wouldn’t try to use the big knife on him.

  “There are four Archaics inside this saloon. They are waiting for you to come in. You’ve killed two Archaics tonight. That is far more than any single human has done in centuries. You’re too late to save the boy. He has already been fed upon. Walk in this door and you will die. I cannot make it more simple than that.” She watched his face expectantly, waiting and wondering what he would do next.

  “I’m still going after the kid,” he said. “Maybe I can save him.”

  “He cannot be saved. You can only die,” she said.

  He was only a few feet away from her now, and even in the soft moonlight he could see the lines of her face. She was stunning. He knew he needed to focus, but his mind was all jangled up, trying to figure out why she was here. Why she had saved him twice and what her endgame was.

  There was nothing else to discuss. He moved to his left to go around her and enter the saloon.

  If he had to, he would shoot her.

  Chapter Forty-one

  Shaniah was surprised at Hollister’s reaction to being pulled back from the saloon door. Most humans had horrible reflexes, and were she so inclined, he could have been dispatched with little effort on her part. But Hollister had reacted quickly, like a cat, rolling on the ground and rising smoothly, his guns still out, ready to fire. This human confused her. He was sure to die if he entered the saloon, but he seemed determined to do it anyway. All in pursuit of a child who was likely already dead or well on his way to death.

  Hollister had been or still was—she wasn’t sure—a military man. She wondered if he considered it his duty to find and protect the child. Regardless, for him, entering this saloon would only result in his demise. And if she let him, she would be that much further from finding and stopping Malachi. She had to keep him out of the building.

  Her plan almost worked. He circled to her right, his guns still pointed at her, not yet convinced she was here to kill him. She remained rooted to her spot.

  “Are you going to move? Or do I have to shoot you?” he asked.

  “You won’t shoot me,” she said.

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Because if you kill me, you’ll never find Malachi.”

  “Who’s Malachi?”

  “The Archaic who nearly killed you in Wyoming four years ago. Tall. Long white hair.”

  She was not expecting the reaction she got.

  Hollister’s face turned white, then seconds later red again as the heat rose in him.

  “It was you! You were there! Why?” he demanded, his voice low.

  As he spoke, his left hand wavered and the Colt dropped slightly, no longer pointing at her chest.

  Shaniah made her move.

  Her plan worked, at least partly. She grabbed for the Colt, her hands moving like a cobra. She twisted both pistols from his hands, but the major shocked her again. Almost as if he’d been expecting it, he pulled the long knife from his belt and held it at her neck. She dared not move.

  “I read somewhere your kind has an aversion to pointy sharp things,” he said.

  She remained silent.

  “Now. Very slowly turn the pistols around, handles first . . .”

  “Major . . . you have to trust me. I know you are after Malachi. I can help you.”

  “Help me what?”

  “Find him.”

  “Why should I trust you?”

  “You shouldn’t. If I were you, I wouldn’t either.”

  “Well then,” he said.

  She didn’t like the feel of the steel at her neck. She was sure she could disarm, even defeat this man. But something held her back. He knew things about Archaics. The guns she held felt heavier and different in her hands. Unlike other firearms she had handled before. And she’d seen them kill the Archaics. He also understood that decapitation would kill her. What if the blade he held was blessed with an elemental? With even a slight cut, she could be weakened or even killed before she had a chance to counter him.

  She sensed a new threat. There were more Archaics stalking them, and those inside the saloon were growing restless, stirring, tired of waiting for Hollister to enter the saloon. She and Hollister were outnumbered. The only advantage they held were that these were new initiates. Freshly turned, they acted like predators, a pack mentality overcoming them, hunting and feeding their only thoughts. Not strategy. Not separating Hollister and Shaniah from each other, making it easier to overwhelm them.

  She remembered her turning. It had happened on the steppes of Eastern Europe almost fifteen hundred years ago. Her family were peasant farmers, and Turkish raiders constantly preyed on her village. Her husband, Dimitri, had been killed in a raid two years earlier. She was eighteen years old. They had never had children and she was nearly past the age to marry.

  The raiders came during harvest, the villagers were simple people, not fighters, and they had no chance—doubly so, when they discovered that these raiders were not like the others. There was something wrong with them. They didn’t just rape and pillage; their faces were strange—and God help her, but they tore at the necks of her parents, her sisters, and their children, and drank their blood. And one of them fell on Shaniah and she felt the fangs sink into her, and a bloody finger was forced into her mouth.

  At first nothing happened, then, in a few hours, she began to change. Some of the people of her village could not tolerate the change and died as the raider
s drained them of their blood. But she and some of the others became wild with blood lust. They joined the pack and they hunted. And since then, she had been an Archaic. Only, unlike her brethren in her homeland, she kept her human memories. This puzzled the Old Ones. No Archaic had ever remembered their human life. It made them believe she was ideally suited to deal with the oncoming encroachment of humankind. It was one of the reasons she had been chosen leader over Malachi.

  Shaniah knew it took time within the change for primal urges to recede and for intellectual capacity to reassert itself. Shaniah remembered her first weeks as an Archaic. She understood that, right now, the newly turned Archaics in the saloon could think of nothing but killing and blood. With time, they would control it; and the longer they survived, the easier it would become.

  The major still hadn’t moved. His eyes never left hers. Something in his look reminded her of Dimitri, her long-dead husband, a human she should no longer remember. Hollister’s eyes were dark, like his had been. He was beginning to show a faint growth of beard on his face, most likely because he found shaving unimportant. His duty came first. At least that is what she imagined. It suited him, giving a clearer definition to his chiseled features.

  She snapped back to the moment, silently cursing herself for letting the human distract her.

  “Major, please. I beg of you. Trust me,” she said.

  “Why?” he asked again.

  “If you look slowly to your right, just slightly, you will see that there are Archaics standing in the street. We’ve only got a few seconds.”

  Hollister pivoted his head, just as she’d said. Sure enough, he saw three Archaics in the street in his peripheral vision. He could hear the rasp of their breath.

  He made a snap judgment.

  “Can you shoot?” he asked her.

  She nodded.

  “The gun in your left hand . . . aim for the heart.”

  The three Archaics leapt at them.

  Chapter Forty-two

  The sound of the gunfire was impossibly loud in what had been a momentary calm. Jonas had to admit Shaniah knew how to fight. She shot two of the creatures dead center in the heart and they descended with agonizing screams into piles of ash. The third one was going to be trouble.

  It landed on the wooden sidewalk in front of Hollister and reached for him. The knife was one of Monkey Pete’s inventions . . . a bowie that had silver inlaid in a groove along the blade. It had also been dipped in holy water before he left the train.

  As the Archaic advanced, he slashed it across the arm and it howled in pain and drew back. Jonas lunged forward, driving the blade into the creature’s chest and twisted it through, leaving the creature in a pile of ash.

  The sound of growls and footsteps could be heard coming from inside the saloon.

  “Come on,” Shaniah said, stuffing one of the guns in her belt. Grabbing him by the arm, she spun him past her so she was between him and the doorway.

  Five more Archaics burst through the door. She fired the pistol loaded with silver bullets and hit three of them, sending them spinning to the ground stunned and nearly unconscious.

  One jumped at her and she somehow pulled a knife from her boot, pushing it into the chest of the creature. It died instantly. The fifth one stood there, eyes red, fangs snapping, studying the two of them. Shaniah raised the pistol, but before she could shoot, the creature darted back inside the darkened saloon.

  Shaniah handed Hollister the pistols and he wasted no time reloading. She took the knife from the dead creature and used it to dispatch the other three, who had yet to recover from their wounds.

  “Are they dead?” he asked.

  “Yes. This blade is special. The reason why would take too long to explain. Right now it is enough to know it will kill either Archaic or human.”

  “What do we do now—”

  He was interrupted by a strange howl, loud and long, sounding like it came from inside the saloon.

  “The one who escaped is calling the others,” she said, the worry evident in her voice.

  “How many are there?” he asked.

  “How many people were there in this town?” she replied.

  He shrugged. “Not sure.”

  “Most were killed,” she said. “Fed upon. But many were turned. Part of Malachi’s plan. There could be dozens of them.”

  “Great,” he said.

  She tensed suddenly, her head up as if she were straining to hear something.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “They’re coming, Major.”

  “What do you suggest we do?”

  “Run!” she said.

  Chapter Forty-three

  It was sixty yards down the street, then down the cross street another fifty or sixty yards to the jail, but to Hollister it felt like miles. In the confusion it seemed easier to count the places where there weren’t Archaics than where there were.

  She was fast. Far faster than he was, and he was not slow by any stretch. He fired as he ran, hitting his targets with the silver bullets, and after the first five or six went down screaming in pain, the others kept their distance. Yet, he and Shaniah were going to lose.

  “Hurry!” Shaniah called back to him and slowed, lessening the gap between them. An Archaic came at her and she took off its head with her knife.

  “There’s too many of them,” he said. “Jesus Christ, where did they all come from?”

  “Jesus Christ is not a name you should mention to an Archaic,” she said.

  “Why?” Hollister asked.

  “Long story,” she said.

  Another Archaic charged at them from the shadows. Hollister’s gun barked and the creature spun screaming into the dirt of the street. They had another twenty yards to reach the corner, and Shaniah willed him to run faster.

  “I’ve got six shots left, no time to reload,” he told her.

  “Then you had better make them count,” she said.

  They reached the intersection and rounded it toward the jail. She skidded to a stop and he nearly collided with her. Thirty yards away, standing in a line across the street, stood more than a dozen Archaics.

  “Well, shit,” Hollister said. He threw open the cylinder on his empty Colt and pulled a speed loader pre-filled replacement from the belt Chee had given him. He slammed it into place and worked the hammer, ready to fire. “Goddamn Chee, if you were here, I could kiss you right now.”

  “We’re not going to get through them,” Shaniah said. She looked behind and the Archaics that had been chasing them from the saloon, another eight in total, were advancing toward them. They were surrounded.

  “We should try to make it to your train,” she said.

  “Can’t. If Monkey Pete sees me running toward the train with you, he ain’t going to guess, he’s going put us both down. The jail is our only shot,” he said.

  “You have a monkey on your train?” she asked, confused.

  “No . . . it’s a . . . never mind.” He kept his head on a swivel, watching the Archaics at their front and back closing in fast. He fired at one of them and it flew backward, clutching at the wound in its chest. It had the desired effect, slowing the others momentarily as they warily studied the two of them.

  “You’re only going to make them mad,” she said.

  “I’m going to make them dead,” he replied.

  Shaniah tried to think. She was not used to fighting her own kind. It was a simple matter to understand how they thought and reacted, and she had killed Archaics before. Yet it did not come easily to her. She wished Hollister would come up with a plan.

  She looked at him and found him studying the rooftops of the buildings where the jail lay, fifty yards from where they stood. A few feet away, the wooden walkway ended, but it was covered by a roof all the way down to where the buildings ended beyond the jail.

  “You’re pretty strong,” he said.

  “Thank you,” she said, confused again. This man was unlike any she had ever met. He was about to di
e—horribly in fact—but he was, apparently, standing in the street daydreaming.

  “Not a compliment, a fact,” he said. “All right, on the count of three, break for the roof there. You go up first, and then you’ve got to pull me up. I won’t be able to get enough lift to make it on my own. Then we go down the roof to the jail. We’ve got to be quick,” he said.

  “Are you joking?” she asked.

  “No,” he said, and fired at another male Archaic that had ventured too close. The creature managed to dodge the bullet aimed for its head, but they had learned his bullets weren’t like ordinary human bullets and they dropped back a bit.

  “Because I can’t tell. We are not big on the use of sarcasm,” she said.

  “You got a better idea? I’d love to hear it,” he said.

  “They’ll be on us—”

  He interrupted her. “I went to West Point. They may be on us, but we’ll have the high ground. It’s not much, but it’s better than dying here in the street.”

  “Is Wet Point a place you go to learn how to die?” she asked. He fired again and another Archaic dropped to the ground, but the first two he’d shot had recovered, rejoined the pack, and looked a lot angrier.

  “West Point. Not Wet Point,” he said. “Go!”

  His shout spurred her to action, almost against her will. As he had suggested, she sprinted the few feet to the roof and leapt up, landing lightly on her feet. She turned immediately at the sound of Hollister’s gun, which he fired three times in rapid succession. She heard Archaic cries of pain, and then saw Hollister leap in the air below her. She grabbed his wrist and lifted him in the air, but an Archaic, a small female, grabbed hold of his legs. The creature threw back her head ready to sink her fangs into him, but with his free hand, he put the Colt’s barrel right in her mouth and pulled the trigger.