The Gunslinger's Man

by Helena Maeve

  “Take it you didn’t know about the broad,” Halloran said once they’d left Sargasso safely behind them.

  He’d been quiet so long that Asher startled at the sound of his voice. He resented knowing that Halloran must have felt it more than his initial fright. “Barring a select few head cases, I didn’t know anyone,” he answered obliquely.

  “They all know of you.”

  Asher snorted. “Nyle mentioned.” You’re all anyone’s talking about for three towns. “Lucky me.”

  With his back to Asher, Halloran’s terse tone was all the indication Asher got that his flippancy had missed the mark. “I could’ve let you die that night. It would’ve been slow and painful, and you would’ve begged for Ambrose’s mercy before it was over.”

  Asher glared at the back of Halloran’s head, where his hat didn’t quite cover the short auburn hair beneath. That was where Asher would have driven the stake, if he’d had one.

  “I didn’t ask you to save me.”

  “No? And what was the five hundred for? A courtesy call?”

  Halloran wanted to hash this out now? Asher gritted his teeth, sense warring with the banked coals of his rage. He’d spent the evening biting his tongue, afraid. He didn’t have the wherewithal to keep doing it for Halloran’s sake.

  “The five hundred dollars were a last resort. I knew the risks—”

  “You didn’t know shit. Think getting pushed around a little is reason enough to kill a man?”

  “A vampire,” Asher corrected, seething. One who had somehow stripped Asher of his agency tonight, who’d reduced him to a ventriloquist’s dummy in the space of a single heartbeat. Recalling the shock of being divorced from his own body filled Asher with terror.

  “And that makes it right, does it?”

  “It makes it us or them.” Asher smirked, aware that Halloran couldn’t see it. “Or you.”

  “Better watch my back, then.”

  “Better do.”

  They rode the rest of the way in tense silence, Asher toying with the prospect of making another run for it—far-fetched, pointless—and Halloran steering them along the uneven ground with expert care. Asher could tell that he was a born rider. He knew when to give their mount the freedom it needed to negotiate the rocky terrain and when to nudge it with his heels.

  Willowbranch appeared out of the evening gloom like a ghost house. None of its windows were lit and only two horses waited by the hitching post out front. They directed indifferent glances at Halloran and Asher before returning to the bale of hay beside the trough.

  “Where’re the others?” Halloran asked, shoving the farmhouse door open.

  Blackjack raised his head slowly. Blood marred his chin and lips, and the neck of a cowherd Asher had glimpsed around Sargasso but whose name he couldn’t recall.

  “Did you check the Pony Inn?” Blackjack asked, unruffled by the interruption.

  Sitting on the edge of the couch between his splayed legs, the cowherd gave a faintly inebriated giggle.

  Asher looked away.

  “Didn’t I say no whores?” Halloran grumbled.

  “You said, they listened…and, I reckon, disagreed.” Blackjack shrugged indifferently. “Can I go back to my dinner now?”

  Halloran’s sullenness seemed to satisfy. His gaze studiously averted, Asher registered the wet, sucking noises of what could only be Blackjack feeding from his chosen victim.

  Was that what it sounded like when Halloran bit him? Asher couldn’t recall, that whole evening was wrapped up in sensory overload and shelved away to spare Asher the humiliation of dwelling on it.

  He startled when Halloran took his elbow, jerking free before he could marshal the show of defiance.

  Halloran scowled.

  “S-sorry,” Asher stammered, feeling his face heat. “I know. I’ll go up.” And to prove it, he steered his leaden feet in the direction of the stairs.

  He tried not to think that he was becoming a good little prisoner, locking himself away at a mere glance from Halloran. His cell, which he’d despised for days since Halloran stole him from his old life, offered sanctuary.

  Relief shot through him when he closed the door, muffling the cowherd’s encouraging moans and Blackjack’s obvious delight in feeding from him.

  Asher’s stomach roiled. He was suddenly glad he had been spared supper.

  A flash of movement caught his eye—his own reflection in the mirror opposite the bed. What little light penetrated the sash windows painted him in hues of blue and white, shadows pooling in the hollows of his eye sockets. He looked like a demon in evening dress. A marionette for Ambrose to play with.

  He grasped the plackets of his jacket and tore it off. He couldn’t wait to undo the buttons on his waistcoat, prying it off by force, his shirt along with it, heedless of the fragile seams. He had no other clothes save for the nightshirt he’d been wearing when he’d been taken from his bed, but he didn’t care.

  Urgency lanced him like a scalpel. He’d suffocate if he spent another minute done up like a vampire plaything.

  He wrestled his trousers off, only to catch his right foot in the wool and miss the bed on the way down. The frayed rug muffled the impact, but the indignity of his fall nestled as deeply as the flare of pain that shot up his knee. It wasn’t enough to keep Asher from crawling into bed and pulling the covers up to his quaking shoulders.

  His eyes stung.

  An hour or a minute later, he thought he heard the door handle twist.

  A pang of dread sank into his bones, but he was too tired to come awake all at once. His confused dreams faded slowly. When he finally blinked awake, it was to discover the room empty and his wrists still free.

  It might have been his imagination. The floorboards creaked all the time as the old ranch settled, lacking the predatory elegance of its newest residents.

  Asher rolled over and willed himself back to sleep.

  The last thing he saw before his eyelids drooped shut was the pile of clothes on the armchair by the window—the same clothes he’d stripped off in a rush, now folded more or less neatly.

  Chapter Seven

  Until he found himself free to walk around his cell without restraints, Asher didn’t quite realize how dull captivity could be. His morning ablutions accomplished and his clothes fastened as best as he could, given last night’s reckless treatment, he soon tired of pacing the length and breadth of the room and parked himself on the divan.

  Peering wistfully out the window didn’t help. The valley surrounding Willowbranch was painfully lacking in variation. After a while, even the circling vultures couldn’t sustain his interest. And still Nyle didn’t saunter in with his breakfast. Still, no one came to harass him with empty threats.

  His stomach growling, Asher pushed up from the divan and went to try the door.

  To his surprise, it opened easily.

  Daylight illuminated the landing, spilling from hopper windows set high in the wooden walls. The soft warble of voices rose from below, indistinct but not unfamiliar.

  In another life, Asher had crept out of bed many a morning to find his uncle poring over some new device he’d decided to construct on a whim. Howard was often prone to lavishing praise on his mechanical creations, whether or not they amounted to anything before he tired of tinkering.

  The memory sank its fangs deep into Asher as he negotiated the creaking steps, wincing with each burst of sound.

  His heart hammered at his ribs with the fear of repercussions, yet no one leaped out from behind closed doors to reprimand him for daring to leave his room. In a house full of vampires, no one appeared to have noticed the lone human breaking the unwritten rules of his own imprisonment.

  The potential for trouble followed Asher into the kitchen, where the hum of voices seemed to be coming from.

  He pushed the door open with more than a little trepidation.

  “Took your sweet time,” Blackjack volleyed from his sprawl at the kitchen table. He balanced on the rear legs of h
is chair, his feet up on the windowsill, his pistol in one hand and an oil-streaked rag in the other. “Halloran said you’ve been up since dawn.”

  How would he know? Asher decided he didn’t care to find out. “Where is he?”

  “Left a while ago.” Blackjack’s cowherd flashed a smile. With no one else in the kitchen, his had to be the other voice Asher had heard.

  Despite the ugly bruise on his neck and his blood-stained collar, the boy looked no worse for wear. His black eyes were clear and alert. The smattering of stubble on his cheeks and chin made him seem older than he had last night.

  “Flapjack?” he offered as though in answer to Asher’s intense gaze.

  “Uh, yeah.” At the mention of food, Asher’s stomach gave another guilty growl. “Thanks.”

  “They ain’t as good as my mama makes ’em, but a man’s gotta eat, right?”

  Asher mustered a tepid smile. “I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Charlie Wheeler.” The cowherd exchanged the frying pan from right hand to left, wiped his palm on his trousers and thrust it out in greeting. “Asher, right?”

  “How did you know?”

  Blackjack snorted. “Your reputation precedes you.”

  “Nah, it’s not that.” Charlie pumped Asher’s fist one last time and let go. “I used to work with the Foleys. You knew Wesley, right?”

  ‘Knew’. Past tense. Asher nodded and filled his mouth with pancake.

  “I’ll get you some coffee to wash it down.”

  “You don’t—” Have to, Asher started to say, but talking around the flapjack was a choking hazard and Charlie had already brewed a pot of Arbuckle’s.

  He seemed to have made himself quite at home at Willowbranch.

  “Sure am,” Charlie acquiesced, which was how Asher realized he’d spoken aloud. “We drive the cattle through here in the spring, when there’s still prairie for ’em to graze. There’s a whole patch north of the ranch that’s perfect till mid-May or so. Then it gets all scorched and the cattle won’t touch it.”

  Asher nodded. He’d gone by New Morning Farm once or twice, always with Wesley, when he was working. The one time he’d witnessed Wesley driving the cattle out of their pens, it had been a befuddling, chaotic experience and Asher, who didn’t think he had much of a future in watchmaking, had promptly returned to Uncle Howard’s shop with renewed interest in the family business.

  “I still remember when the Willowbranch folks used to breed horses,” Charlie went on, at the stove. “Beautiful, big mustangs they bought in Santa Fe and brought back to train right here. Boy, I sure wanted to work in their stables when I was old enough…”

  The longing in his voice prompted Asher to ask, “What happened?”

  “Ranch got shut down.”

  “Your old pal Ambrose,” Blackjack put in with a snide little smile.

  Asher bristled at the charge but struggled to keep a lid on his temper. He’d walked a fine line last night and somehow got away without a much-deserved thrashing. He didn’t want to tempt fate twice in as many days. “And the horses?”

  “Sold,” said Charlie, “for the most part. Few of ’em weren’t fit to ride yet so…”

  They couldn’t be put up for profit, Asher understood, so they had to be disposed of. Given the value in horseflesh, an order like that could only have come from Ambrose.

  “Good on you for finding somewhere else to work,” Asher said tepidly, concealing a grimace behind his coffee cup.

  “True enough, but cattle ain’t the same, you know? ’Course, I could be rustlin’ instead.” Charlie let his eyes linger on Blackjack. “Hear there’s all kinds of benefits to turning bandit…”

  Though he must have felt the meaningful stare, Blackjack didn’t raise his gaze from the stain he was feverishly worrying on the steel barrel of his pistol.

  “Maybe for some people,” Asher said. “Me, I’ve only ever been good at one thing—”

  “Oh, yeah!” Charlie’s whole face lit up when he grinned. “You used to work in Howard Franklin’s shop. Wesley said so. Boy, how you didn’t go cross-eyed from fiddling with all them gears and pins…” He shook his head with what seemed like genuine astonishment.

  “Howard’s my uncle. Didn’t really have a choice to learn the trade… I don’t suppose—that is, if it’s not too much trouble—that you could get him a message from me?”

  Blackjack looked up, arching his brow.

  “Just to tell him I’m all right,” Asher explained, annoyed that he had to justify himself at all. “So he won’t worry.”

  “Sure,” Charlie answered. “I mean, if it’s okay with, uh…”

  Blackjack paid him no heed. “Did you ask Halloran?” he asked of Asher.

  He could lie. What were the odds the Riders would have discussed this among themselves? Asher tightened his grip around the chipped mug. “No, but—”

  “Wait until he gets back.”

  Asher scowled. “Don’t he have more important things to fret about?”

  “You’ll wait,” Blackjack said with pointed emphasis, and went back to attending to his gun.

  There was no relief in glowering at his bald, scarred head.

  * * * *

  The sky was a dark bruise by the time Halloran returned to the house. The clomping of horse hooves outside was the only warning Asher had before the front door was wrenched open. Halloran stepped through with his usual swagger. Dirt marred the toes of his black boots and his duster had been ripped at the shoulder.

  The telltale signs of a brawl were replicated in his fellow blood-spattered Riders, who stalked in, chattering among themselves in low, angry voices.

  “You don’t know what you missed, Blackjack,” said the only woman in the outfit.

  Asher thought her name might be Maud, but he couldn’t swear to it. He was dimly aware of Blackjack volleying a reply, deadpan as always, but couldn’t tear his gaze from Halloran. His frown didn’t bode well. Asher had turned his request over and over in his mind all day. He bit it back now. “You forgot to lock me in before you left,” he muttered without rising from the rocking chair by the fire. Halloran’s chair. Halloran’s fire.

  Halloran’s glare. “You think me forgetful?”

  “Must be. Otherwise…” Asher shrugged with shammed indifference. Otherwise Halloran had deliberately granted him permission to roam around the house. Otherwise he wanted Asher to have a taste of freedom, knowing full well he’d be brought back kicking and screaming if he tried to take more than was on offer. “You look a mess,” Asher said instead, opting to change the subject rather than beat a horse already dead.

  Halloran peered down at himself, as if only then noticing the state of his gear. “So I do.”

  “Did you get into a brawl?”

  He snorted and proceeded to peel off his duster with care. It was much too little, much too late. The sleeve was a bust and would have to be patched up. The boots could be cleaned, though, and Asher, who’d shined enough shoes for pocket money when he was a boy, winced to see them tossed haphazardly aside. Halloran wore socks underneath, which shouldn’t have been astonishing. What was surprising was the state of them—no holes, not even a stain.

  A tidy bandit. Asher sucked the corners of his mouth to hide a smile.

  “You gotta hand it to him,” Nyle drawled, joining them in with a lit cigar in hand. “Ambrose may be a slick son of a bitch, but he knows how to do business.”

  Asher’s blood went cold. “Ambrose?”

  Most of the Riders had kept their distance while Asher had been tied up in the bedroom. The few times they’d had cause to venture upstairs, they’d ignored his pleas and generally treated him like he was part of the furniture. Not Nyle, though. If he’d been a dog, his tail would have been wagging at the attention.

  “You didn’t think he threw that little bash in your honor, did you?” Nyle snorted, rolling his wide eyes. “Breather arrogance.”

  “Nyle.” Halloran’s voice was a low warning.

  A
sher ignored it. “You mean to say…you all work for Ambrose?”

  Of course they did. Why else would they have been granted the keys to Willowbranch and allowed to come and go as they pleased? Humans weren’t the only regimented species in Ambrose’s town.

  Confirmation didn’t come from Halloran, whose lips were a thin line of displeasure and whose frown had deepened, but from Nyle. “You’re just getting that now?” He snorted. “Sure, if by work you mean culling his rivals, then yes. We work for him. Thanks to you…Señor Anarchist.”

  Tension vibrating in him like steam through a copper chimney, Asher stood from the rocking chair.

  A brief flicker of surprise manifested on Nyle’s smug face. It quickly gave way to a snicker.

  No wonder—they thought Asher was a joke. Halloran didn’t see a need to cuff him anymore. He’d been convinced by Asher’s placidity. He probably believed Asher to be broken.

  He wasn’t wrong.

  An impotent display of anger was just about all Asher could give. Anything more and he’d be pounded into dirt.

  Before he felt compelled to test that hypothesis, Asher rounded on his heel and made for the stairs.

  “Asher.”

  His name in Halloran’s mouth was as effective as a fishhook snagged in his throat. Asher stopped in his tracks.

  Was it his imagination or did a hush fall over the room as the other Riders took notice of him at long last?

  “I’ll want your blood tonight.” Halloran didn’t even bother shaping it into a request.

  Asher gritted his teeth. “Lucky me…that you couldn’t find anyone better to abduct.” Powerless to refuse, he turned for the stairs. Once on the landing, he slammed the door behind him so hard it rattled its frame.

  Though satisfying, the reverberating echo did little to quell his wrath. He could imagine Halloran taking offense and coming up to teach him a lesson.

  Let him. His back against the door, Asher slid down until his backside met the creaking hardwood boards, and put his head in his hands.