Riders on the Storm

by Rob Blackwell

  Chapter Thirty

  “There are some stories that remain untold. One is Etta Place, the girlfriend of Butch Cassidy and later wife of the Sundance Kid. We know that she assisted them in their exploits and fled with them to Argentina. After that, however, her life remains a complete mystery.”

  — Jessie Berry, “Overlooked Women of History,” 2016

  The sense that the world was off-kilter increased. It was as if the earth had become shaky. Or maybe she’d become unmoored from it, adrift.

  You’re the daughter of the Kid.

  The words echoed in her mind. Trent had always been her father, acted exactly like one to her. She found it impossible to believe he would raise another man’s child, even one as revered as the Kid.

  Then came anger. Only she wasn’t sure who she was mad at. The Kid, for running off and leaving her? Trent, for lying about who she was? Or Luke, for telling her the story in the first place?

  She thought of the woman she’d met at the traveling show. “You will learn the truth about your family.”

  Well, it hadn’t been what she expected, but she’d learned something all right.

  She looked up at Luke, unsure if she wanted to punch him, shoot him, or hug him.

  “If you were there when he left, why are you back?”

  Luke nodded as if this were the question he expected. “About three years ago, I got a visit from Trent. He said he had a lead on the Kid, and asked that I keep an eye on you—from a distance. So that’s what I did.”

  “I never saw you.”

  “That was the idea,” Luke said. “I mostly just checked in from time to time. Trent had done right by you. You were tough, like him. Like both your fathers, since Trent did the hard part of the job. I didn’t step in until I heard Graves had hired you to find those keys. I knew you were finally on Trent’s trail.”

  Jules sat staring at the prairie on the edge of town. She should be getting ready to go, but suddenly the idea of getting up felt like too much.

  “Do you know who my mother was?”

  Luke gave a quick shake of his head. She looked up at him, meeting his eyes. He wasn’t lying.

  “I’ve had some thoughts on it,” Luke said. “My guess is that the Kid lived a double life. That was why he disappeared so often. He’d go to some town, maybe Stanton itself, and pretend to be someone else. Since he wore that bandanna, he could have fooled me.”

  “The eyes, though.”

  “Maybe you’re right. If I’d seen those eyes somewhere else, I might have known. Don’t rightly know what to tell you. It’s possible he was even married.”

  “Then why not leave the baby with her—my—mother?” Jules said.

  “Don’t know that either. All I can tell you is that when the Kid came back, he was something I’d never seen before—scared.”

  “Of what? Vipers?”

  “No, those didn’t exist then. I’d never connected their appearance to the Kid’s vanishing act, but I’ll admit that it’s not a bad theory. Something else had him spooked.”

  “The law?”

  Luke laughed out loud. She wondered if she’d ever heard him laugh before.

  “No chance of that. That man feared nothing on this earth. That’s what makes me wary. Whatever he was afraid of, it must have been some other kind of threat. Maybe something worse than the Vipers.”

  On another day, that thought might have alarmed her. But every minute she sat there, the storm carrying the Vipers drew closer. She couldn’t afford to be afraid of what else might be out there.

  She closed her eyes, wishing she’d never heard about the vase or the keys or the cursed Maelstrom. Right at that moment, she wished she’d never been born.

  “What am I supposed to do now?” she asked.

  She hadn’t meant to ask the question out loud. It was just the question that popped into her head. She was running off to save her father, who probably wasn’t actually her father, who in turn had been running off to find her actual dad. It was insane.

  But staying here was no better. Everyone was going to be killed, her sister included. The thought made Jules nauseated. In her mind’s eyes, she saw a Viper biting her sister, watched as her skin turned sallow and her eyes became red. She was abandoning Miranda to that fate, was abandoning the town to it.

  “What you always do,” Luke said. “Long ago, I had a choice between two evils. Dying on the run or living under a man who used me like a weapon. I came to understand that maybe dying wasn’t the worst fate a man could choose.”

  She gave him a hard look.

  “Is that what this is about? Convincing me to stay?”

  He shook his head. “Not at all. There’s no right or wrong. You’ve got that part right. This is a choice like any other.”

  But he was incorrect about that. There was a wrong choice. She’d felt it from the start.

  “We’ll die if we stay.”

  He didn’t respond immediately. Maybe he was agreeing or thinking about what Miranda had said. Her sister’s words needled at her. Her sister couldn’t shoot a gun very well, but damn if her verbal assault hadn’t wounded her.

  When did Father’s words become sacred?

  It was a good point. She’d chafed at the limits that Trent had set, the rules he’d laid down—but only when he’d been around for her to defy. After he’d left, she’d treated them like gospel.

  She knew what Trent would have done. The question was, what was Jules Castle going to do?

  She opened her eyes again.

  “You knew the Kid,” she said. “In this situation, what would he have done? Would he have stayed when there was no hope?”

  Luke didn’t even take a minute to consider, but responded immediately.

  “He would already have been gone,” he said. “He and Trent were similar in that way. They were no cowards, but they knew when they’d been beat. They’d make a hasty retreat and live to fight again another day.”

  Fight again another day. It had practically been Trent’s motto. Survive, survive, survive. But what happened when surviving took the place of living?

  And if she was willing to abandon her sister to these monsters, what was she surviving for? She didn’t know the answer.

  There is always a choice. Trent and the Kid would have let this town die without a fight.

  But she didn’t have to do that. Damn her, but Miranda was right. Once she’d been willing to risk it all to do what she felt in her heart. That had started the day she’d saved her sister and adopted her. Was she willing to turn her back on her now? Was she willing to turn her back on Will a second time—to condemn this town to its fate?

  Or was she willing to fight?

  Jules got to her feet. She fixed Luke with a stare.

  “Let’s go to Hubert and get the silver bullets,” she said.

  “And then?”

  She turned on her heel and began walking down the street.

  “Then let’s figure out how to defend this sorry excuse of a town.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “So much depends on the actions of so few. Push a man or woman slightly in a direction, and the fate of nations can be swayed.”

  — Attributed to the Lady of Shadows, 1861, excerpted by Terry Jacobsen, “A History of the Supernatural,” 2013

  Jules felt strangely lighter despite having picked up a huge load of silver bullets from Hubert. It was almost like a weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

  That was odd, considering she was about to single-handedly take charge of the town’s defenses. If anything, she should have felt heavier, burdened down by the responsibility.

  But she had an ace up her sleeve. She knew they were all going to die anyway. That certainty—and she could see no way around it—made it easier to consider what course of action to take.

  The trick was accepting her fate and thinking of the best possible way to avoid it, even knowing it was futile. Despite the grim nature of that task, she didn’t feel despair.

 
; It felt like a challenge, one that she was born to take on. After all, her father—and despite the recent revelations, that was how she saw Trent Castle—had trained her to survive. She was going to see if she could apply his maxims to saving an entire town.

  She tested ideas, checking the bank for a vault to hide in (it didn’t have one) and briefly considering evacuating the town. The problem was there was nowhere to evacuate to. There was nothing for at least a dozen miles in any direction, and Jules wasn’t sure how much time they had in any case. It seemed likely they would lose whatever protection they had and get caught out in the open, which would make them even more vulnerable.

  She was still weighing the notion, though, when she approached Dy’s saloon. When Miranda spotted Jules, she came rushing toward her, enveloping her in a fierce hug. Jules was tempted to joke that she was just here to get another drink, but one look at her sister’s joyous face and she no longer had the heart to do it.

  “I knew you’d come around, I knew it!” she whispered in her ear.

  “Well, you sounded so convincing when you said I was your hero,” Jules replied. She meant it as a joke, but Miranda responded in earnest.

  “This is what the old woman was talking about,” she said. “The one at the fair.”

  “Come on, Mira.”

  “No, it was, I can feel it. She said you could be a hero, save people.”

  Jules grunted. “Don’t get your hopes up,” she said. “We’re all still going to die.”

  She thought that might dampen her sister’s enthusiasm, but Miranda was unfazed. She shook her head.

  “No,” she said. “That vision didn’t have you in it. It showed people dying on their own, spread out. I think… I think the Vipers are collecting people. They bite them, turn them, and bring them back to the Maelstrom.”

  “As food?” Jules said, shuddering at the thought.

  Whatever happened going forward, she planned to leave one last bullet for herself. She wasn’t going to let herself become one of those things.

  “No,” Miranda said. “There’s something darker going on in that place. I’m not sure what. Something worse.”

  Jules wasn’t sure what could be worse than being another creature’s food, but she didn’t intend to find out.

  “Where’s Will?”

  “Trying to organize a defense,” Miranda said.

  “How’s it going?”

  She frowned. “I think he’s used to dealing with soldiers.”

  Jules smiled, patted Miranda on the arm and walked inside. Will had succeeded in rounding up most of the town’s men, some four dozen of them, who were packed in the saloon. He’d even managed to get their attention. They were gathered around him in a circle, though she could still see him through the throng.

  Dy was situated behind the bar, appearing thoughtful. But most of the others were staring at Will like he was Crazy Pete. It didn’t help that the actual Crazy Pete was in the corner of the saloon singing to himself.

  Nobody noticed Jules come in, so she leaned against the entrance and listened.

  “How do you know they’re coming again?” Dy asked.

  “It’s not important,” Will said quietly. “What’s imp—”

  “Miranda had a dream?” Dy said. “Cause this is what she was talking about.”

  “These creatures took out my men!” Will said. “They’re real and they’re coming! I know it would be easier not to believe it, but you’ve all heard the stories. You know these things are real.”

  There were a couple of nods, but far more people were shaking their heads.

  “Even if what you’re saying is true, how are we supposed to defend against creatures that come inside a storm?” asked Gus, the grocer who ran the general store. “You’re right I’ve heard of ‘em. The word is they can fly too. And they can’t be killed by bullets.”

  “Silver bullets will do the trick,” Will said. “I’ve got someone talking to Hubert and smelting whatever we can get our hands on. If any of you men have jewelry at your homesteads, or anything else made of silver, hand it over. With any luck, we’ll get enough—”

  “Oh, so that’s what this is!” shouted another man with a long black beard. Jules was pretty sure his name was Phillip. He was as close as this place came to a doctor. “You’re trying to take our valuables!”

  “I am not trying to take anything,” Will said. “We need that silver if we’re going to fight these things.”

  “I think I’ve heard just about enough,” Phillip said. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I thought we were here to elect a new sheriff, not listen to ghost stories.”

  “If you’ll just give me a few more minutes, I can explain,” Will said. “Your lives are in jeopardy.”

  “From monsters,” said a local rancher Jules recognized as Grady. He was standing next to Will, looking skeptical. “You’ve got quite a pair of cajones, Colonel, I’ll give you that. I don’t know what your game is—”

  “It’s no game—”

  “—but we’re not playing it,” Grady said. “Understand? Go find some other town to swindle. I say we all go back to our homes, gentlemen. Maybe there’s a storm coming or maybe there ain’t. One thing I know is there ain’t no such thing as monsters.”

  Jules could see the situation was going to get away from Will if she didn’t step in. She raised her voice and spoke loudly.

  “You always were a damn idiot, Grady.”

  Several men at the back jumped when she spoke, whirling around. But Grady didn’t seem to know where she was standing.

  “Who said that?” Grady demanded, peering around the room.

  Jules whistled and all eyes in the place turned to her. “You fellas want to live the night?” she asked casually. “If so, you best listen to the Colonel here.”

  “I should have known you were behind this, you little vixen,” Grady said, sneering at her.

  “Careful with the sharp words, Grady. I do believe you might hurt my feelings.”

  That won her some laughter, but the crowd was on Grady’s side. She could feel it.

  “Now listen here—” he started.

  “Shut up and sit down, you lazy bastard,” Jules said.

  The men between her and Grady parted as they sensed a fight brewing. Will held up his hands.

  “Now, Jules, if you could—”

  “What did you call me?” Grady said.

  “A. Lazy. Bastard,” Jules said. “Sorry, do you want me to use smaller words so you can comprehend them? You never were the sharpest tool in the shed, if you take my meaning.”

  Apparently he took it very well. Grady went for the gun in his holster, but he was out of his league. Jules had her gun out and fired once, knocking his weapon out of his hand. He yelped and backed up with his hands held high.

  “Don’t shoot!” he said.

  “I just did,” Jules said with a smile.

  She walked slowly to the front of the room, standing beside Will.

  “Now, you all know me,” she said. “You know my reputation, but you also know I’ve never done anything to hurt this town. Sheriff Garrett and I had an understanding.”

  “And your friends killed him!” someone in the back shouted.

  “That was no friend of mine, Stewart,” she said. “And you can come out from behind Phillip. I recognized your voice. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “You did just shoot a man,” Will said under his breath.

  “I shot his gun. Wildly different,” she whispered back.

  “Jules, you really saying you believe this man?” Dy asked, his eyes narrowing. This was the one Jules had to win over.

  “I do,” she said loudly, turning to the room. “I’ve seen what’s coming. I’ve fought ‘em. I’m here to tell you we’re probably all gonna die.”

  “Good grief, Jules,” Will whispered again. “This how you generally inspire men?”

  “Pays to be honest,” she replied to him, before raising her voice again. “So here’s y
our choice. You gonna die like men, a gun in your hand? Or like scared dogs, hiding in a corner and wetting yourselves? Because that’s the only two options I see. Grady, I said you were lazy, and I meant it. Everyone here knows your hired men do all the work.”

  There was a snicker of laughter and Grady’s face went red. He clearly wanted to retort, but without a weapon in his possession, he appeared reluctant.

  “But you’re no coward, Grady, I’ll give you that,” Jules said. “When Garrett called for a posse against the Gill Brothers, you were one of the first to volunteer. And Gus, I’ve seen you stare down a desperate outlaw or two, come to claim free food off you. Never seen you give ground. You’re brave men. Have to be, to live out here.

  “But these Vipers are everything you’ve heard and worse. They can fly, they’re hard to kill, and they have claws as sharp as a straight razor. The question isn’t whether we can beat ‘em, because nobody can. The question is how we plan to face ‘em.”

  Will still looked doubtful, as if he disagreed with her strategy, but Jules saw more nods than shakes of the head now. Strangely, it was the voice of her father guiding her once again. “If you can, always appeal to a man’s better nature. They might surprise you,” he’d said.

  She was going to put that to the test.

  “Now, I’m not giving up completely, mind you,” Jules said. “I said we’d probably die, but nothing in this life is certain. We pull together, we think this through, we might just have a chance to defeat these sons of bitches. Won’t be easy, odds are we’ll fail, but a slim chance is better than none.”

  More nodding now, though Phillip still looked skeptical, as did Dy.

  “Let’s put all the cards on the table,” she said. “You know what I am. I steal for a living. But I’m willing to donate a fresh supply of silver, which the U.S. Army has generously donated to our cause.”

  She nodded to Will, whose eyes widened.

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s right. The U.S. Army gave me silver coins to melt into bullets. I gave those to Jules.”