Riders on the Storm

by Rob Blackwell

  Jules had a sudden memory of Will gasping for air as the transformation overtook him. She had no wish to be a queen of whatever could do something like that.

  “I don’t know what happened to you, Elizabeth Gatton,” Jules said. “But there is no way I will let you make me one of you.”

  “Are you sure?” the Queen asked. “If you come to me of your own accord, I will let your ‘sister’ walk free. Peter stays with me. He should have been my first convert. Instead he fled from me as I changed.”

  Pete started shaking back and forth on the floor. He was holding on to his cross like it might protect him. But if the Queen or her Vipers were scared of it, they gave no sign. Jules doubted it would help. She glanced back at Miranda.

  “Why don’t you give me my father and I’ll let you walk free? How does that deal sound?”

  “What leverage do you have, daughter? You think to bluff me? I have an army of faithful adherents. You have nothing.”

  But Jules thought of how the Queen had jerked her head away when she had fired at her. She was vulnerable. She had to lure her out. She just couldn’t think of how to do it.

  She opened her mouth to speak and stopped just as suddenly when another figure emerged from the tunnel on the opposite side of the cavern. He was a tired-looking, disheveled man with a long, white beard. He was so thin he was almost emaciated. He was unmistakably human, but looked almost skeletal. He shuffled out and up the steps toward the Queen as if he were pulled by an invisible leash.

  “Ah, here we are now,” the Queen said, turning to follow Jules’ gaze. “Come see what has become of our daughter.”

  Jules took another step back in shock. She looked up into the eyes of her father, Trent Castle. When he looked back at her, however, he was nothing like her memory. The look he gave her was so lifeless he seemed more like a walking corpse than a man.

  “Our daughter has come to save you, Trent,” the Queen said. “Would you like to go with her?”

  He shook his head, but when he did, it was almost like he was a puppet being pulled by string.

  “Wouldn’t you rather she stay with us?” the Queen asked.

  Trent nodded, again looking eerily like a marionette.

  “You see, my dear? He doesn’t want to leave. Stay. Stay and we can be a family again. And the world will be ours.”

  Jules wasn’t sure where to turn. Her father was clearly gone, enemies surrounded her, and her sister’s and her lives depended on what happened next. Every job had a strategy, her father had said, his mythical five plays, but what was the one to use now?

  “Go, Trent, and bring her to me,” the Queen said.

  Trent walked across the Greek temple like a man who was sleepwalking. As he neared, she could see his bloodshot eyes and sunken, hollow face. What had they done to him?

  He walked down the steps toward her slowly, and Jules kept trying to think of the right angle to play. But he was there before she knew what to do. She looked directly into his brown eyes. They were glassy and unfocused. And then, so quickly she thought she was imagining it, she saw him wink.

  It was an old signal, one he’d used on countless jobs where they had been playing different parts. Her heart practically leaped in her chest. Her father was still in there, somewhere.

  He grasped her arm and pulled her forward with surprising strength. Miranda rushed forward to stop him, but he shoved her away. Jules held up a hand to show it was okay.

  “Trent, my love, I do believe you’re forgetting something,” the Queen said.

  Trent stopped and stared blankly at the Queen. It was all Jules could do to continue looking grim when inside she was suddenly excited.

  “The guns, Trent,” the Queen said patiently.

  Jules unhooked her holster before Trent could do anything, lowering it carefully to the ground. She was not completely unarmed, but the Queen wouldn’t necessarily know that.

  “Check her,” the Queen said, and she felt her heart sink a little.

  Trent patted her down thoroughly. He found the large silver knife strapped to her belt and the two smaller ones tied to her ankles. They clattered to the floor where he dropped them.

  “Excellent,” the Queen said. “Now you may approach.”

  They started forward, but Trent tripped on the first step, falling to the floor. Jules instinctively reached down to help him up.

  “I’ll handle her,” he said in a whisper when Jules leaned down to him. She noticed that he’d snatched one of her knives off the floor. “Run up the tunnel she came from. Destroy the vase. You’re the only one.”

  He said the words so quickly and softly she almost didn’t catch them all, but gave a quick nod to show she understood. It was like old times. Her father gave her a job and she got it done.

  When they stood up, she kept her face impassive, trying to look suitably defeated. Trent shambled up the steps with her in tow. If she hadn’t just heard him talk, she would have completely believed his performance.

  As they neared the Queen, Jules felt the familiar thrill of a job taking hold. The nervousness she’d experienced started to fall away. All she had to do was follow the plan. Of course, she had only a vague idea of where the vase was, but it couldn’t be too hard to destroy it.

  She glanced beyond the Queen, toward the tunnel in the back wall from which she emerged, and over at Duggett, Jacob and the others, who’d remained silent this entire time. A part of her wondered what they thought of this, suddenly caught up in her family drama.

  Trent pulled her close to the Queen, who rose out of the chair again and approached them. Jules thought of the knife clenched in Trent’s hand. The Queen stepped forward, her arms spread out. Jules tensed, waiting for her father to make a move.

  The Queen leaned forward, and when she was this close, Jules could see a faint echo of who her mother used to be. She remembered seeing a poster of Elizabeth Gatton, a faded one she’d come across at some traveling show. That had showed a pretty woman with a rifle in her hand. But it hadn’t done her justice. Her mother had been beautiful.

  “One happy family,” the Queen said.

  There was a blur of motion from Trent, who surged forward with the knife in his hand. But just as quickly, the Queen caught him by the throat and suspended him in the air. There was a hiss as the Vipers around them were suddenly alert that their Queen had been attacked.

  “Do you think me stupid, Trent?” the Queen asked.

  The knife clattered to the floor of the temple. Jules jumped to try and help her father, but the Queen backhanded her, sending her sprawling.

  “In a way, I’m almost impressed,” the Queen said, sounding strangely calm and furious at the same time. “I had thought you broken years ago. To see that you still have some spark left, that is encouraging. Let us remember you that way, Trent Castle—a fighter until the very end.”

  She was going to kill him. Trent’s eyes were bugging out of his head and he clutched at his throat. Jules crawled forward and held up her right hand.

  “Enough!” she shouted.

  She finally understood what she had to do. Her father had taught her five plays to use. He’d focused almost exclusively on four of them: aggression, defensive, deception and the cowardly play.

  The fifth was the sacrifice play. He’d only mentioned it once. But it was time to use it.

  She crawled toward the throne on all fours, trying to appear like a supplicant.

  “Please!” she shouted.

  The Queen turned her attention to Jules. “You had your chance.”

  “I will do what you say willingly,” Jules said. “But he lives.”

  The Queen tossed Trent away from her. He flew through the air, landing in a heap by the steps and then falling down them one by one.

  “He’ll live,” the Queen said, glaring at him as he came to rest by Pete. Miranda rushed forward to help him.

  “Miranda and Pete live too,” Jules said. “That’s my price.”

  The Queen gave a small smile that see
med more cruel than amused. “Of course.”

  Jules remembered what her father had told her a long time ago.

  “There may come a time when everything goes against you. You might be surrounded, or cornered in some hole. You and whatever men you have may have no chance of escape. But there is one way out from this. You won’t like it. It will go against everything I’ve taught you, every instinct you have. It’s the final strategy. It might be necessary to get the job done.”

  Jules felt anger burning inside her as she approached the Queen, stalking toward her. This wasn’t the ending she’d wanted. But she took one last glance at Miranda and her father. If Jules was going to go out, she was taking this bitch with her.

  She approached and held out her arm. She heard Miranda gasp behind her, and her father call out weakly, “No!”

  But the Queen seized Jules’ wrist eagerly. She spared her one last look, perhaps searching for a hidden agenda. Then she raised her lips to Jules’ wrist and bit into her skin.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  “I thought to make her task easier. Instead, I have only made it harder.”

  — Attributed to the Lady of Shadows, 1872, excerpted by Terry Jacobsen, “A History of the Supernatural,” 2013

  Jules screamed.

  She’d meant to stay stoically silent, but the bite hurt far more than she expected. The Queen was there for a moment, sucking her blood from her, almost slurping it up, and Jules’ arm was white, hot agony.

  She heard Trent and Miranda both calling her, but it was like they were a far distance away. She felt time slow, and kept thinking, over and over, the sacrifice play. The sacrifice play.

  It had been Will’s death that gave her the idea. She’d seen firsthand how quickly the change happened, but she also knew it mattered where victims were bit. She had some time. A measure of a lifespan counted out in minutes before whatever was now inside her body gobbled her up.

  The Queen released, her mouth red with blood, and smiled at her. It was a hideous, ghoulish grin. Making it worse was the fact that there was genuine pleasure in it, almost ecstasy. Jules staggered backward, her hand and wrist feeling like they were on fire. She saw the angry red welts that had already popped up around the wound as she slipped to the floor.

  “Have no fear, daughter,” the Queen said. Her voice was very clear now. It had lost its guttural strangeness, sounding almost sweet. “The pain won’t last long.”

  Jules knelt on the floor, counting out the seconds, as she watched the blackness that formed in the wound.

  “Let. Sister. Go,” she managed to say through the pain.

  The Queen smiled at her like she was a small child.

  “Oh, there’s no longer any need for that,” she said. “By the time this is through, you’ll want your sister to join you. You’ll want to save her too.”

  “Had. Deal,” Jules said, but it was getting harder to talk.

  It was getting more difficult to do anything at all, in fact. The fire in her wrists had spread to her arm and into her shoulder. She was conscious of breathing in short gasps.

  And there was a buzzing in her head—persistent, but low—as if many people were talking in a room next door. It made it difficult to think.

  She kept her mind on one idea, repeating a mantra over and over: sacrifice play, sacrifice play, sacrifice play. Her right arm still in agony, she tumbled to the floor, her left hand finding purchase on what she wanted.

  “Kneel before me, daughter,” the Queen said, and her voice was soothing. She wanted to do what her mother asked. It felt comfortable. It sounded like she was coming home.

  She rose unsteadily forward and managed to lift her leg to a kneel. As she did, she noted dimly that the blackness had consumed her right arm. The buzzing in her head was louder and more insistent. It hurt to maintain her concentration.

  The Queen stepped before her. She raised her arms high in the air.

  “Behold, my family,” she said, and there was a chattering excitement from the Vipers around them. Jules could hear it in her mind. “My blood returned to me.”

  Jules almost lost her grip on what she wanted to do. It seemed unimportant. Her right side was on fire, and her vision was swimming. She seemed to be seeing everything through a red filter.

  But she remembered the two words she wanted: sacrifice play.

  “When it’s time to play the card, Jules, play it well,” Trent said in her mind. He wasn’t really there, just a phantom. But she could hear the Vipers, an excited chorus speaking in an alien language.

  “Mother?” Jules managed.

  The Queen looked down at her, benevolently. It seemed to Jules in that moment that she’d never seen someone more beautiful in her life.

  “Yes, my daughter?” she asked.

  “Go to hell,” Jules said.

  She summoned all her remaining strength as she said the words. She seemed to be moving in such slow motion that she felt sure that the Queen would read her intention and bat her attack away. But the Queen didn’t do anything until Jules rammed the silver knife into her belly.

  There were two screams—one in her mind and one from the person who stood before her. The one inside her head was echoed by the hundreds of Vipers surrounding them.

  Jules felt something slip, making the next move easier. She withdrew the knife from the Queen, who staggered backward with black blood pouring out of her, and then leaped at her. This time Jules buried the knife in the Queen’s throat.

  The two of them were eye-to-eye for a moment. What Jules saw in her eyes was a mixture of shock, betrayal and—if this was even possible—a fierce pride. Some part of her mother was proud of what Jules had done.

  The Queen crumpled to the floor, but Jules didn’t stop. She ripped the knife free and for good measure, buried it into the creature’s right eye.

  “That’s for Will,” she said, though she wasn’t sure if she said it out loud or only in her head.

  She fell back to the floor, her energy exhausted. She would become one of them now. She understood that. She’d intended to turn the knife on herself, but she could no longer summon the energy.

  She was only dimly aware of being hauled to her feet, one strong arm grabbing her and holding her up. Then someone was running her forward.

  She wanted to tell them not to bother. She’d made the sacrifice play and was content with that. But she was being dragged somewhere. There was only a red haze in front of her, so she wasn’t sure where she was going.

  What did interest her was the burning sensation. It had reached all the way down her torso—and then stopped. It had continued to spread even after she killed the Queen, but it was as if it reached a point and hovered there, deciding what to do.

  The buzz in her mind was still loud, except it had turned to screaming. Still, now it seemed to be coming from further away, like it was receding.

  They stopped and she again slipped to the ground, her back against a cavern wall.

  She heard other voices now, but it was as if she was underwater and couldn’t hear them properly.

  “… one of them.”

  “Don’t you touch my daughter!”

  “We need to kill her now.”

  “Why are they just standing there?”

  “That won’t last forever. We need to move.”

  “That ain’t the way to the exit, old man.”

  The burning was fading away. Like cool water on her body, she felt the fire pass out of her chest and head back down the arm. The buzz in her head was so distant she could barely detect it.

  She looked around, was unsurprised to find Miranda hovering over her.

  “She’s coming around,” her sister said.

  Her father peered over her shoulder. He looked so old, so tired. Duggett, Jacob and their men were behind them. Duggett had his gun raised, and was aiming it at Jules.

  “Look at her arm!” one of the men beside him yelled.

  Even Jules looked. She expected to see it as black, scaly skin, but ins
tead, she saw pink flesh returning. The black seemed to shrivel up on her body.

  “I’ll be damned,” Trent said.

  Jules’ vision cleared further so that she could see they were in a tunnel, probably the one on the far side of the temple.

  She looked around, everything coming into sharper focus. She heard noises from behind her.

  “They’re coming!” Duggett shouted.

  But it wasn’t the Vipers. Jules turned to find Luke rushing up the tunnel. He seemed breathless and decidedly uncalm. He was carrying a heavy-looking sack.

  “I found it, Trent,” he said. “It was right where you said it’d be.”

  “Come on then,” Trent said. “There’s still a chance, but Jules needs to come.”

  “What. Hell. Happened?” Jules managed, her throat still raw.

  Trent met her eyes. “You saved us. That’s what happened.”

  “The screaming stopped,” Jacob said. “That’s not good, is it?”

  Trent squatted down and looked across at Jules. “Can you walk?”

  Miranda was already pulling her to her feet. Luke darted forward and took her other side.

  “Where. You’ve. Been?” she said to Luke.

  “Why the hell are we going this way?” Duggett said.

  “You want to survive? Then do what I damn well say,” Trent said.

  He may have looked different, but his voice was as clear and commanding as ever.

  “You boys guard the rear,” Trent said. “Shoot anything that moves. Come on, Jules.”

  But there was no way to keep moving inside the tunnel running three abreast. Her sister dropped behind her and she and Luke squeezed together.

  Jules had so many questions. She looked down at what Luke held in his hands and had even more. But there was no time to ask them.

  They rushed through the tunnel, running as fast as they could. As they went, Jules’ gait became steadier. Her breathing returned to normal. And the buzzing in her mind vanished entirely.

  The burning sensation was entirely gone, as was the blackness of her skin. It had fallen away as if it had been peeled off.

  “Vipers!” Jacob shouted at the back. “And they look really, really angry!”