Blood Riders

by Michael P. Spradlin

  This time, when it was over, Shaniah stood and dressed.

  “It was you, wasn’t it?”

  “Me what?” she said.

  “On the ridge in Wyoming. When Malachi attacked me and my men. I was unconscious for a while. But I saw a face. A woman. Beautiful, with long blond hair. It was you.”

  As she was pulling on her boots, the train whistle sounded.

  “It would appear our timing is impeccable,” she said. Hollister studied her and knew she wasn’t going to answer him. He had just had one of the greatest days of his life. Why press it?

  “It would,” he said. He made his way to his knees and tried to stand using the trunk of the aspen tree for support, hoping like hell she wouldn’t notice that it took him almost five minutes to get his pants on.

  “Are you all right, Major?” she asked.

  “Right as rain,” he said. He somehow managed to get his arms into his shirt and he stepped into his boots. He wanted to throw his gun belt over his shoulder but he knew if he rode up to the train like that, Monkey Pete and Chee would take all of three seconds to know what had happened. Finally, he was ready. Shaniah was dressed and sitting atop Demeter, looking everywhere but at him, trying to be polite so he wouldn’t feel self-conscious. He wanted to tell her it was already too late for that.

  Before he mounted up, he walked over to her and took her hand. He kissed it gently, and then with his arms holding her, pulled her slowly out of her saddle until she stood in front of him. He kissed her, a soft gentle kiss.

  “Whatever you need. Whatever you’re looking for. This thing you must do. I’m going to help you see it through. All the way. Do you understand me?” He looked at her, his dark eyes fierce and proud, seeing nothing but her at that moment.

  It wasn’t possible, it couldn’t be. She was an Archaic, not a creature of emotion; but she felt a tear form in her eye.

  She nodded and he kissed her again.

  “All the way,” he said.

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Slater stood in the parlor, warming himself in front of the fireplace. June in the Rockies could still get cold at night. He had poured himself a large glass of brandy from the senator’s decanter. The one Declan usually kept for himself, filled with the good liquor, thinking no one ever noticed he poured his guests the cheap stuff. He never fooled Slater. And he wasn’t here yet, so fuck him. He’d drink the best.

  Declan finally entered the room. He looked like shit. He had lost weight and his eyes were drawn and weary-looking, like a couple of prunes stuck to his face. When he’d heard Slater’s report of what had happened in Absolution, he’d nearly had a nervous breakdown.

  “What are we going to do, Slater? What are we going to do?” he’d muttered over and over. “Word gets out. You can’t keep this under wraps forever. People start hearing this kind of talk, no one will move into the territory. It’s bad enough when the Utes and the Sioux and the rest of the red niggers are on the warpath. This will be worse. Far worse. I’ll lose everything,” he moaned.

  “Word won’t get out. Pinkerton will dynamite the mine and seal those things in and burn Absolution to the ground. They’ll make up some story, that it was smallpox or something. After a while it will just be a scary story people tell little children at night to scare them. You need to stop worrying.”

  Slater had assured the senator they were going to be fine. They were going to let Hollister find the leader of these things. The one who’d done all the killing at Torson City, and then they’d take care of everyone. Hollister especially. With no one to back up any of the wild claims, it could all be put off as an Indian uprising that Delcan had been essential in putting down. Hell, he would be a hero in the state again.

  “Hollister, the breed and that woman are headed for someplace called Clady, Wyoming,” Slater said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Bribed one of the Pinkertons,” Slater said. “They ain’t so upright and virtuous once they see a few greenbacks. Told Nolan they loaded up a bunch of ammo and ordnance and left about an hour ago.”

  Declan nodded. “This is good, this is good. You get the men, take my private train, whatever you need, and follow them.”

  “I got the men ready, and the train standing by. Don’t worry, Senator, we’ll clean up the mess.”

  Declan poured himself three fingers of brandy from his own decanter. He took a large swig and the liquor seemed to calm him. Slater hadn’t moved. He stood by the fire staring at the senator.

  “What is it?” Declan asked, his voice shaking.

  “It’s nothing, just . . . we’re going to need to make a small change in our arrangements,” Slater said.

  “What? What in tarnation are you talking about?” Declan asked.

  “I’m talking about money and land. I’ve ‘handled’ plenty of things for you over the years. We both know what’s been done. But this here is a whole different brand of cattle. And a lot more dangerous to boot.”

  The senator was getting his feet under him now. He knew where this was headed and he didn’t like it. “Get to the point,” he mumbled.

  “After this is over. When I kill Hollister and clean up this mess, things are going to change a little bit. I’m going to want some land, not just money. The two-thousand-acre piece down by the Sweetheart River ought to cover it . . . well, here,” he pulled a document from his coat pocket. “I had an attorney in town draw it all up nice and legal so you could sign it before I leave.”

  Declan snatched the paper from Slater’s hand, his eyes scanning it quickly.

  “Why . . . you . . . what the hell . . . you can’t possibly think I’m going to sign this, you sonuvabitch,” Declan said.

  “I expect I can, and I expect you will. I don’t think you got the time right now to find anyone who does what needs to be done. What I’m willing to do, and let’s face it”—he paused to refill his glass, this time pouring from the decanter with the good brandy and making sure Declan saw it—“Hollister and the breed ain’t going to be easy to kill, number one, and number two, I been keeping your secrets all these years and you know I’ll keep this one. Don’t see as how you got much choice, Senator,” he said.

  Declan glared at Slater. He was trapped. Slater knew everything. Every rule he’d bent, every law he’d broken, everyone he’d had killed and every farmer he’d burned out. He’d known this day was coming. Slater wasn’t a church deacon. He was a killer and he was smart. This was the price of doing business. He gulped down the rest of his brandy, and walking to his desk, dipped a fountain pen in the inkwell, signed the paper, and handed it back to Slater.

  “Thank you, sir. Now I’ll be on my way,” he said.

  He left Declan standing alone in the parlor, wondering what the hell had happened to his life.

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Hollister was reasonably sure that Chee and Pete knew he and Shaniah had slept together as soon as they arrived back at the train. The behavior between a man and a woman changes when it happens, no matter how much they try to hide it. The train was ready to go: steam was pouring out of the engine and the ramp to the stock car had been lowered. He and Shaniah rode Rose and Demeter right up into the car and unsaddled the horses, giving them water and straw.

  When they stepped off, Monkey Pete pulled a lever and the ramp rose up until the car was secure. Then he locked it into place. He tried hard not to pay attention to Shaniah and the major, while Chee waited outside the main car, wrestling around with Dog. Pete and Chee made every effort they could to not look at each other or at Shaniah and Jonas. Finally, Jonas couldn’t take it anymore. Might as well clear the air. But he’d be damned if he’d say anything in front of Shaniah. He was an officer and a gentleman after all.

  “You two got something on your mind?” Hollister asked.

  “No, sir,” Pete said. “Just enjoying the night air.”

  Chee had some kind of knotted rope that he threw through the air. Dog leapt after it, returning at a sprint to drop it at Chee’s fe
et. This apparently was the greatest game ever invented as far as Dog was concerned.

  The quiet hiss of the engine was the only noise disturbing the night. It was almost fully dark now, with a half moon rising in the east.

  “Well then, I suggest we get moving,” Hollister said.

  “Yes, sir,” Chee said. “Sounds like a good idea.”

  “There is one thing I’d like to show you before we leave, Major,” Pete said.

  “Sure, Pete, what is it?” Hollister said.

  He scampered onto the train and disappeared inside. He was so quick and agile crawling around the train, Hollister understood why General Hunt had given him the nickname “Monkey.” He returned a few minutes later with another strange contraption strapped to his back. There were two metal cylinders inside what looked like an army rucksack an infantryman might carry. At the top of each cylinder was a gauge and from one of them came a hose attached to a long metal barrel welded to a double-barrel shotgun handle.

  “What the hell is that?” Hollister asked. He noticed Chee had perked right up at the prospect that Monkey Pete might have invented another weapon.

  “See that pile of scrap wood yonder?” he said.

  The two men nodded, fascinated as Pete worked one of the gauges on the contraption he was wearing. He pulled one of the triggers on the shotgun handle and Hollister thought he caught a brief smell of coal oil, then Pete turned another knob and there was a spark near the head of the barrel. Without warning, a flame shot out of the barrel with a mighty whoosh. Pete leveled the barrel at the pile of wood and it burst into flames.

  Pete released the trigger and the flame from the barrel died out and disappeared. The wood continued to burn.

  “Holy shit!” Hollister exclaimed. “What in the hell have you done, Pete?”

  “I got the idea from Winchester’s Ass-Kicker,” he said, shrugging out of the contraption and setting it on the ground. “I figured out a way to pressurize one of the tanks, just like on the gun, only this tank is a little bigger so it can hold more steam, which means more pressure, and it can push out more of the mixture with extra force and distance. It funnels the mixture out through the barrel, sort of like a beam of fire, and you can aim it how you please and burn up most anything. Think of it like a shotgun that shoots fire instead of slugs or buckshot.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Hollister said.

  “What’s in the mixture that catches fire?” Chee asked.

  “My own little concoction of coal oil, kerosene, and corn alcohol,” he said. He glanced at Shaniah “and there’s some special additives, certain . . . well these things we’re after won’t like it.”

  “You can make fire . . . with this machine,” Shaniah said, the look on her face a combination of fear and admiration.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Pete answered.

  Shaniah shook her head in amazement.

  “Pete, if I’m wearing one of these, can I still carry the Ass-Kicker?” Hollister asked.

  “Oh yes, sir. You can store the barrel for the Fire Shooter in the holster, like this.” He slipped it into a slot on the canvas straps that fit over the shoulder. “The Ass-Kicker won’t get in the way. In fact, you could shoot off your four rounds, leave it on the sling and then draw the Fire Shooter. You’d have hell of a lot more power,” he said.

  “I’ll bet you would,” Hollister said.

  “How many of these do you have?” Chee asked.

  “I made three,” Pete said, “but there is one thing. If you’re facing someone that’s got guns, you don’t really want them shooting at you when you your tank is full of mixture.”

  “Why not?” Chee asked.

  “ ’Cause if a bullet punctures the tank, you’d likely explode and any parts that was left of ya would burn to a crisp.” The engineer replied calmly.

  “All right. That’s a drawback,” Hollister said. “But from what we saw in Absolution, the Archaics ain’t much for guns. So we should be okay.”

  Chee nodded in agreement. The young sergeant was a fan of anything that might kill more of his enemies faster and more efficiently.

  “All right then,” Hollister said. “Let’s head for Clady. See what this Malachi fellow has to say for himself.”

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  They spent the rest of the ride in the armory, checking weapons, charging the Ass-Kicker, sharpening bowie knives and generally getting ready to go to war. Hollister didn’t like going into a fight like this with so little intelligence. Especially when they were likely to be heavily outnumbered. Chee looked happy as he prepared his weapons. Shaniah’s face was impassive. Dog didn’t seem to care. He lay on the floor of the car, never far from Chee, chewing on the giant knotted rope the sergeant had made for him. He also never took his eyes off Shaniah.

  Hollister tried hard not to stare at Shaniah and he knew she was trying just as hard not to stare back at him. But there were times he couldn’t help himself. She was beautiful. He was not a poetic man. The words to say she had eyes like pools of melted emerald, or hair like golden flax—those words weren’t in him. For him it was enough to say she was beautiful, the most gorgeous woman he had ever been so close to. He couldn’t for the life of him imagine what possessed her to make love to him. He didn’t particularly consider himself a catch. Now though, it didn’t matter. It had happened. And that was all.

  At the Point he’d been required to go to balls and cotillions and had occasionally heard young women speak of him as he passed by, calling him “handsome” or “dreamy” or some other such girly description, but he didn’t understand it. And especially after the war, with the way he’d been beat up, scarred, his face pocked by shrapnel, so much so that when he looked in the mirror he saw forty miles of bad road.

  But Shaniah had seen something different. She had been the one. While he had lain beaten and battered on the hillside in Wyoming she had come to him. Like a dream. Only not a dream because she was real. And though Hollister didn’t believe much in these things, he felt like she was an angel. He knew, intellectually, that she was an Archaic, by all accounts a monster, though she had given up her very nature in order to be more human and though she hadn’t specifically been there to help him, that day had led to this moment. At least that is how he saw it. In his mind and in his heart she came from heaven. She had saved him. He didn’t know why, he didn’t care how he had been deemed worthy of a woman so beautiful, and he was not foolish enough to ask. He would take this blessing and no matter what happened, if he died tonight or tomorrow or next week, he would do so knowing he had found the one.

  He couldn’t read Shaniah’s mind, but he knew she felt something for him. While they worked she studied him and smiled. Her hands lingered over his when she handed him a box of bullets or a weapon, and she watched him as he worked.

  “What are you carrying, Chee?” Hollister asked.

  “Modified Colts in a double rig. One Henry, two backups on my saddle, and I reckon I’ll give Pete’s Fire Shooter a try.”

  “Well, you ought to be able to conquer Canada with that,” Hollister said. “Shaniah, what about you?”

  “I have the Archaic vengeance blade.” She pulled it from her boot, and it gleamed in the lamplight of the car. She had cleaned and sharpened it since Absolution, and Hollister had to admit it was a formidable weapon.

  “That’s it?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “But you . . .”

  “It will be all I need,” she said.

  “What about one of Pete’s Fire . . .” Hollister started to say, though he knew he wasn’t likely going to change her mind.

  But she held up her hand. “No.”

  “Why not?” he asked. Chee looked at her curiously as well, wondering why anyone would chose to decline a weapon of such destructive capability.

  “The Archaics Malachi has turned are not likely to use weapons. However, there is the possibility. And let’s not forget the men following us who do carry guns. And as your Monkey Pete explained, if I am
shot at I do not wish to explode into pieces and burn to a cinder.”

  “Fair enough,” Hollister said.

  Their inventory complete, their weapons ready, there was nothing left to do but wait.

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  The opening to main shaft 7 at the Clady mine was crowded with Archaics. Most of them were initiates, although Malachi had sired a few of them when he first landed on American shores. He had kept his band intentionally small then, hiding, feeding either in major cities or remote towns. Places where they could either blend in and find easy food, or out-of-the-way locations where no one would likely notice when they did feed. They moved ever westward until he found what he was looking for. A place much like the Archaic homeland in Europe. Filled with mountains, defensible and secluded, but populated enough so he could begin raising more followers.

  The Archaics were waiting for Malachi to ascend from the mine. In three more days he would be fifteen hundred years old and immortal. No human weapon, no elemental, no damnable priest of Saint Ignatius could summon the fires of heaven to consume him. He would live forever. And here he would rule. He would sire more and more humans until his army was too large, too vast to defeat. The centuries of humiliation, the years of living high in the mountains, feeding on vermin and cowering, hiding from the humans like frightened dogs would be over. Archaics would rule. As it had been intended since the dawn of time.

  Only one thing could stop him now.

  Shaniah. She was nearly an Eternal herself. She could have the power, although he doubted it. Since he’d left the Archaics in Europe, he had broken the covenant and fed on humans again. What strength flowed from the Huma Sangra, human blood. He was the most powerful Archaic alive. He knew this. He also knew Shaniah was a puppet of the Old Ones. There was little chance she had fed on human blood while she pursued him, and she would be too weak to stop him. He smiled at the thought.