The Gunslinger's Man

by Helena Maeve

  Nyle let out a sharp bark of laughter. “I ain’t scared of you, Halloran! You’ve gone soft, hiding behind Ambrose’s skirts and letting this one push you around… You used to be a leader. Now you ain’t nothin’!”

  “You think you could lead this outfit better than me?”

  “I’d prove it,” Nyle snorted, “in a fair fucking fight.”

  Maud snapped her fangs at him from the floor. The tear in her cheek was already closing, though the blood remained, tinting scarf and short brown hair a deep shade of burgundy.

  She glanced at Halloran when he stood.

  So did everyone else.

  “Then you’ll have a fair fight. Two shots, fastest draw gets to walk away with his life.” Halloran nodded to Blackjack. “Get him a pistol.”

  No. Asher shook off the fear immobilizing him. “Are you out of your goddamn mind?” He didn’t remember Halloran’s strides being so wide. Trying to keep up with him was like sprint. “Halloran, no—what if he gets lucky?”

  “He won’t.” Halloran wrenched the door open.

  Whatever God still roamed this valley had really turned up the tap on the rain outside. Halloran was drenched with three steps of the porch. Droplets showered Asher’s face as he made to follow.

  A hand grasped his shoulder. “This ain’t up to you,” said Maud.

  He broke free, but his retort died on his lips. Blackjack in tow, Nyle sauntered out of the farm with a big grin.

  The idiot was whistling.

  Asher made to grab him. He didn’t know why, having seen what Nyle had done to Maud, he thought he might fare better. Their one and only scuffle in Uncle Howard’s shop didn’t mean a thing. Nyle had been holding back. He’d been making a point.

  “Stop this!” Asher shouted over the pelting rain, as if a plea might achieve what violence could not. “You’re not thinking straight. You’re not—”

  “Keep him quiet for me, Maud,” Nyle laughed. “Wouldn’t want him to scream himself hoarse before we even get started, hmm?”

  Thunder roared over the valley, drowning out his cackle. He seemed as impervious to the foul weather as he was to the peril before him. Twenty paces away, drenched to the bone, Halloran stood as immobile as a block of marble. Runoff dripped from the tips of his fingers, which hovered just above the pistol holstered at his hip.

  “Stop!” Asher yelled again, for all the good it might do any of them.

  Lightning split the sky, casting the world under a shard of light so bright it scorched the eye. Another clap of thunder followed quick on its heels. Its din masked the first gunshot.

  The second rang out like an echo.

  Asher’s breaths snagged on the barbs inside his throat. Both Halloran and Nyle were still standing. Both had their pistols drawn.

  What were the odds that both of them had missed?

  A twitch of movement drew his eye to Halloran, who shifted his weight, boots slipping in the soft mud. The tension in his shoulders leached out as he slid his Colt back into its holster, as calm as if he’d been shooting cans for target practice.

  Nyle dropped his pistol into the pool at his feet. It took Asher a moment to realize that it wasn’t rain he was seeing puddling before him, but blood—a vampire’s blood, and enough of it to suggest Halloran had clipped an artery.

  Asher had seen what happened when a silver bullet pierced a vampire’s flesh. The memory gave way to fresh horror as Nyle crumbled to his knees, two red flowers blossoming between his shoulder blades even as the rest of him contracted, warped by the poison spreading through his body.

  Dry heaving, Asher had to glance away. He had to lean against the porch rail to keep from sinking to his knees like Nyle.

  He was dimly aware of Blackjack stepping out into the downpour to retrieve Nyle’s fallen pistol. If there was any sign regret in the gesture, it was lost to the gray, filmy rain obscuring Asher’s vision.

  “Told you,” Halloran said grimly on his way back into the farmhouse. “He wasn’t that lucky.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Once in the valley, rain clouds could and did settle there for days at a time, disgorging every last bit of the ocean they’d swallowed up on their journey inland. Drab sheets battered the cracked earth, filling every crevasse with treacherous sand. Runoff flooded the gutters and wore furrows into the dirt. Timid droplets clung to the windows like tears, refracting what little light morning brought.

  It oughtn’t to have been a surprise to find the sky leaden and mournful the next day and it wasn’t surprise that kept Asher from climbing out of bed as sleep released its hold on him.

  “Why did you do it?” he asked into the silence of the bedroom.

  Halloran could deny him an answer. He’d done it often enough in the past, with no compunction.

  Bed springs squeaked beneath him as Halloran sat up. “He challenged me.”

  “He wouldn’t have done, if you’d kept up your end of the bargain.”

  The bonds that vampires in general and the Riders in particular formed among themselves were too opaque for Asher to grasp. Even Ambrose and his brood looked beyond filiation to forge their nests.

  “Didn’t realize you wanted to be passed around from bloodsucker to bloodsucker,” Halloran snapped. “My mistake.”

  Asher squeezed his eyes shut. “If that’s the way you’ve always done it…” Why stop now? A sliver of self-preservation stopped him from voicing his thoughts.

  “People change,” Halloran said vaguely.

  “Not your kind of people.”

  The twang of bed springs jostled Asher. Behind him, the heavy thump of Halloran’s bare feet gave way to jangling spurs. Vampires didn’t need sleep the way a human might, but Halloran had come up to the room last night and laid in bed with Asher until morning.

  He hadn’t touched him. Hours ticked by with nothing but the sound of Asher’s breaths to fill the silence. Until now.

  “Get dressed,” Halloran muttered. “We have work to do.”

  “Cattle’s been fed.” Asher had done it single-handedly, because none of the vampires who should’ve helped him could tear themselves away from their card game and the couple of hands who’d survived the New Morning fire were used to conking out early.

  He remembered being annoyed with them for saddling him with such a gargantuan task. He recalled the one-sided conversation he’d entertained with the cows on the matter.

  But Halloran’s willingness to indulge him had reached its expiration date. As a parting gift, he hooked a hand around the covers and yanked them off the bed. The morning chill crept over Asher’s skin as swift as rabid hare and about as pleasant.

  The door closed behind Halloran with a dull little click.

  Asher shuddered. It was going to be a long day. Running his mouth wouldn’t help the hours pass any quicker.

  * * * *

  The weather stayed as miserable as predicted for the rest of the day, which at least spared the hands from having to nudge the cattle out of the barn for a stretch and a graze. The downside, equally predictable, was that shoveling shit in the musty old barn was about as easy as practicing surgery on an ant.

  As the afternoon crawled slowly into evening, Asher stuck his shovel in the mud and capitulated. He breathed in deep, filling his aching lungs with damp, clean air. The valley was drenched, but to little purpose. Farmers and farm hands would have been gladder of it in the early summer. Now all they could do was watch weeds sprout where corn and barley ought to have grown. Vegetable patches might still be persuaded to sprout tubers before the nights turned truly glacial, if they hurried.

  “You want any?” Charlie’s voice reached him from the depths of the barn.

  Asher turned at the offer. The smell of dung and hay prickled his nose. Wesley had once accused him of being too fine to work with his hands. He wasn’t. There was satisfaction to be had from sweating out a day’s work in the tight press of animal bodies. If not for last night’s insanity, he would’ve slept like a baby.

&nb
sp; Charlie tilted a battered steel flask in his direction.

  Asher shook his head.

  “Go on. You look like you need it,” Charlie insisted and pressed the flask into his palm. “What’s with the long face?”

  “What do you think?” Who, Asher would’ve said if he trusted that none of the Riders could hear him over the patter of the rain. He brought the flask to his lips in a polite sip and promptly choked on the fiery contents. “Jesus! What’s in that thing?”

  “You like it? Brewed it myself.” Charlie’s eyes lit up with pride. “Wesley and I had a little operation back at New Morning—nothing big, just, you know—”

  “Bootleg?” Asher arched his brow. His throat was still burning.

  “We never tried to do business in town or nothin’. Romero would’ve had our heads. But…” Charlie rolled his shoulders, unable to hold back his grin for very long. “Had to fill those nights at the farm somehow.”

  Asher gave the bottle a sniff. “I’m guessing it ain’t whiskey.”

  “Fermented turnips. Great for cleaning brass too.”

  “I’ll bet.” And brass it could go on cleaning, because Asher handed the flask back with a headshake. No, he was all right. Really. What ailed him wasn’t going to be fixed by filling his belly with liquor.

  “Blackjack was quiet this mornin’ too,” Charlie mused. “Y’all didn’t have another squabble, did you? I thought you weren’t makin’ waves no more…”

  Of all the people to say that to him, Asher expected it least of Charlie. Was the kid playing pretend or had Wesley misunderstood?

  Nothing about Charlie Wheeler suggested a great intellect, never mind the cunning to ingratiate himself with a vampire like Blackjack while working against his kind. His face was too earnest. His eyes too honest.

  “You didn’t notice someone’s missing?” Asher tipped his head back. “That might have something to do with it.”

  “Oh, yeah…” The penny seemed to drop at long last. “Did Malachi get Nyle to go back into town?”

  That penny must have snagged on its way down.

  “He sure is somethin’, that Malachi,” Charlie went on, shaking his head. “My daddy knew him before he was turned, did I ever tell you that?”

  “You didn’t.” With Charlie’s wide, white grin and bovine expression, Asher had never thought to award him an overabundance of time. His allies in Sargasso had been people who could keep a secret—folks like Connie and Wesley.

  Folks who were now gone.

  Oblivious to the path Asher’s thoughts had taken, Charlie nodded to himself.

  “Yes, sir, he did. Pa was ’bout my age, working in this here farm. Malachi just blew through town one day…like a goddamn whirlwind. Real charming fella, liked by everybody, loved by the ladies. From the old states,” Charlie added, with a knowing chuckle. “So you can imagine how sharp he must’ve seemed to the locals.”

  “Let me guess. Ambrose took a liking to him?”

  That seemed to be the way of things in Sargasso. Mayor saw something he liked, he had to have it. He grew his power through flattery and gifts as much as hostile takeovers. Better for Malachi to have gone quietly into the fold than put up a fight and wound up like the poor souls in Redemption.

  Charlie shook his head. “Nah. Malachi wanted it.”

  “The bite?”

  “The house, the fancy china… There was a rumor he slit his wrists at dinner one night to force Ambrose’s hand. Pa wasn’t too sure that’s how it happened, though.” A long sigh escaped Charlie. “But that’s Malachi for you. Never can be sure of the guy.”

  Asher flattened his tongue to the roof of his mouth. “No. No, you can’t.”

  * * * *

  The sting of fangs in the crook of his elbow triggered a gasp. Asher regretted it as soon as Halloran peered up. His fangs retracted with a snick.

  “I’m fine,” Asher grumbled. “Keep going.” He made a point to turn his head and bite his lips. It wouldn’t help with dissimulating any future outbursts, but it was the best he could do.

  Coaxing Halloran into feeding had been a strange and unpleasant experience. Asher had no desire to repeat it simply because his treacherous body was letting him down. He forced himself to think of tomorrow’s list of chores, of spending another day in the rain and the wind until his toes ached in his boots.

  A mental tally of the reclaimed silver under the floorboards in his uncle’s shop kept him focused. Thirty grams of the stuff would yield a little less than twenty bullets—enough to take out twenty men, assuming it only took one shot to down each vampire.

  That would leave Sargasso with another forty-two and no means to finish the job unless Asher got his hands on Halloran’s arsenal. Even now, that possibility dangled from a hook in the wall, the pistol still in its holster, bullets chambered like discrete possibilities for change.

  Abruptly, Halloran sat back and pricked his thumb on the point of a fang. Blood welled over the tiny cut, astonishingly crimson. It darkened to a blackish smear when pressed to Asher’s inner arm. Torn flesh stitched itself back together in no time.

  “That’s it? That’s all you’re gonna take?” Asher barely felt dazed.

  “You need your strength,” Halloran said, rising. “I’ll let you take care of the rest.”

  Heat bloomed in Asher’s cheeks. Of all the ways Halloran could humiliate him, Asher would have thought indifferent silence was the worst. Apparently there was a level of mortification below that.

  “Squeamish about fucking me now, are you?”

  “I don’t need to fuck the unwilling.”

  Need to? No. Halloran exuded power. He was easy enough on the eyes to find a tractable bed warmer if the mood struck him. His feelings about the town’s trollops aside, there were other options available to him besides Asher.

  The reverse didn’t hold true. Two silver bullets in Nyle’s chest had proved as much.

  “Funny how you neglected to mention that before you got what you wanted,” Asher snorted as he rolled down his sleeve. He didn’t know what galled him more—that Halloran had used him or that Asher had implored him to do it like the worst kind of harlot.

  Unperturbed, Halloran fastened his holster at his hip and picked up his hat.

  “I know you did it ’cause of Malachi.”

  It was a stab in the dark, but it paid off. Halloran stopped in his tracks, one hand already on the doorknob.

  Asher pressed his luck. “Nyle was workin’ for him, wasn’t he? That’s why you let him talk you into the duel.” That’s why you killed him.

  “Is that what you want to believe?” Halloran’s voice was soft, a jagged, rusty blade sheathed in silk.

  Yes. It would mean that Halloran wasn’t as rotten as he claimed. It would mean that somewhere under that arctic exterior the man who’d saved his life had done it for some other reason than pure, territorial greed.

  Asher pushed up from the bed. “You could have left by now. You and your crew. You could be slayin’ and stealin’ as far as Yukon…instead you’re here, herding cows.” He smiled, though Halloran couldn’t see it. “And fasting.”

  The moment seemed balanced on a knife’s point. Curling his hand around Halloran’s shoulder called for courage Asher didn’t know he possessed. Maybe without that flutter of want in his chest, he wouldn’t have done it.

  To his surprise, Halloran didn’t shake him off. His gaze was wary as he turned.

  “I don’t work for Malachi,” Asher told him.

  “Never said you did.”

  “And I don’t work for Ambrose.” Feeding the mayor’s cattle hardly qualified. Not so long ago, he’d been planning his assassination. “I’m my own man.” He couldn’t explain why it was so important for him that Halloran understood that.

  Halloran arched an eyebrow as if to say, I know that, too. “This morning I was a murderer. Now you want…”

  “You’re still a murderer.” And a vampire. But that didn’t stop Asher from tangling both hands in his lapels and
tugging Halloran back to bed.

  For reasons unknown, Halloran allowed it.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Asher woke to darkness and silence. He woke to Halloran’s silhouette in the window, a cigarette smoldering between his thick fingers.

  “Rain’s stopped.”

  He must have heard Asher stir, but he only slid his gaze toward the bed at the sound of his voice. “Go back to sleep.”

  It was sound advice and Asher’s eyelids were still heavy with grit, but he propped himself on an elbow and fumbled for his pocket watch. “Time is it?”

  Halloran didn’t hold the answer. The pocket watch did—a little after two in the morning. Asher had managed a couple of hours of sleep after just one spent slowly losing his mind under Halloran. He was still a long way from rested. The twinge in his backside confirmed it, though it wasn’t enough to prevent him from sitting up against the headboard, Halloran’s instruction be damned.

  “Can I have a smoke?”

  Halloran exhaled long and exasperated, as if he’d expected Asher to do as he was told. He tapped the drooping cone of ash from the tip of the cigarette into its tray before handing it over.

  Their fingers brushed in the exchange. Asher quashed the strange little quiver in the pit of his stomach. Past a certain, ill-determined point, pleasure flung parts of itself to the far corners his addled mind. A touch here, a scent there, and suddenly Asher was transported into carnal memories—all of which involved Halloran. It was a perversely effective form of self-flagellation.

  “I thought Maud was keeping watch tonight,” he volleyed, rubbing his nose with a knuckle.

  “I do.”

  “Don’t trust her to spot any cattle rustlers before they surround us?”

  Scowling, Halloran slid his hand around Asher’s and eased the cigarette free. It didn’t occur to Asher to resist.

  “I trust my outfit just fine.”

  You didn’t trust Nyle. Asher was reluctant to speak his name. The bedroom he’d once thought of as his cell had become an odd sort of sanctuary. He wanted to preserve that illusion a while longer.