Wake of Vultures

by Lila Bowen

  Crouching before the dead bird, the man closed his eyes, as formal as a preacher. He bowed, said something in a strange language, paused dramatically, and stabbed Nettie’s knife down into the bird’s chest, right between her dugs. The wings raised up, flapping, the eyes blind and the mouth shrieking, but only for a single breath. The man’s back was to Nettie, but she could tell by the movement of his elbow and the thick stench of death and gore that he was butchering the critter. Soon he turned and presented her with a wet, purple thing cradled in both hands and shining with black like ink.

  “What the sweet goddamn—”

  “Take it.”

  Nettie jerked her head back and scooted away on her britches.

  “I don’t want that nasty chunk of gristle!”

  He shook his head, stretched his arms out farther.

  “If you wish to finish with this business and continue your quest for the Cannibal Owl, you must destroy it.”

  “I don’t—I can’t—How do you—?” Nettie swallowed a mouthful of dust as the world wavered around her, the air thick with heat that pressed in from every direction on a night that should’ve been cool. “You don’t make any more goddamn sense than she did.”

  “You’re not ready. And that’s too bad for you. But it changes nothing.”

  Quick as a sidewinder, he grabbed her wrist and slapped the meat into her palm with a sick splat. It gave a trembling thump, all thoughtful-like, and she struggled to swallow down bile. The man took her other hand, forceful but gentle, and wrapped her fingers around the hilt of her own knife, which glimmered with the black muck that passed for the buzzard’s blood.

  “Now stab the harpy’s heart to destroy her, and I will help you find what you seek.”

  Nettie looked up at him, her hat tumbling down her back and a rare breeze stirring her shorn hair. “And what, exactly, do I seek, you crazy-ass Injun?”

  He guided her knife with the softness one shows a child, pushing the blade deep into the heart but not so deep as to cut her bare palm, underneath. The harpy dissolved into silvery sand and collapsed into the desert floor. The heart in Nettie’s hand gave one last, sick thump and followed suit, the smooth grains pouring through her fingers and into her lap.

  “You seek what we all seek, Nettie Lonesome.” His eyes met hers, black to black. “Freedom and revenge.”

  The man paused meaningfully, and Nettie’s eyes slid left and right as if waiting for a crack of lightning and a fleet of goddamn unicorns.

  “Mister, what the hot, sweet hell is that supposed to mean?”

  He sighed, and as his shoulders lowered, the mask of solemnity slid off him like a shed lizard skin. He grinned, just a boy. A little older than her, a little redder than her, a lot more nekkid and amused than her. “It means I need to doctor you before you die of stupidity. Can you stand?”

  Nettie dusted her hands off on her thighs and took to her feet with less grace and toughness than she would’ve liked. The ground in these parts had a tendency to wobble, that was for sure. The feller, on the other hand, rose smoothly. He seemed taller than Nettie, even though he wasn’t. When he held out a hand as if to steady her, she swatted it away.

  “I don’t need help,” she snapped.

  In response, he poked her swollen bicep, hard, and the pain that thudded down her nerves and into her fingertips made her eyes roll back.

  “I think you do.”

  She almost fell over, and he caught her with a dry hand on her good shoulder. Help wasn’t a thing she’d ever really been offered before, outside of a few kind words from Monty. She was just about to shove the feller away when she was overcome with the most peculiar feeling. It was as if the stars had swollen up to blot out the night, and she was the only waking thing in a thousand miles, a furious sun in a world of heat that would be ripped down to bones by wind and sand before she saw another living creature ever again. A shadow flashed over her, and when she crouched and cried out, fearing another harpy, it hit home that she could take the nekkid man’s assistance or crumble away into bones and sand beside the bitch bird’s silvery remains.

  But she planted her feet and stuck out her chin, because accepting help was going to be her own goddamn idea.

  “Maybe if you got some water.”

  He inclined his head just the tiniest bit, the corner of his mouth curling up. “I do not. But there’s a place where the creek pools, very close by. Your horse is waiting there, but I warn you: Her feelings are very hurt.”

  Nettie sighed deeply and cleaned her black-stained knife on her now-ruined pants. “Well, lead on, mister. You don’t seem to know what pants are, but you know where I’m hurt and how my horse is feeling, so I suspect you can at least find water.”

  He shifted the bow on his shoulder. “You are an unkind woman.”

  For once, she didn’t argue the point.

  “Yeah, well, it’s an unkind life.”

  Pulling her hat low, Nettie started walking in the direction he was facing, where just the haziest smudge of green tinged with moonlight suggested the presence of water. The man took his place behind her, close enough to catch her if she fell, which she found insulting as hell. But then she tripped on a scrubby bush, and he did catch her, and that unkind girl did him the great kindness of going unconscious.

  When Nettie blinked again, firelight blinked back. Her initial response to existence in general was to panic and shoot something full of holes, but she felt too poorly. She could barely move, as a matter of fact, and her whole goddamn body ached like she’d been tossed in a gunnysack, thrown into a gulch, and beaten with old boots. Plus, her pistol was gone.

  “I know you’re awake. And I have your gun. I’ll give it back once you decide you don’t want to shoot me. In any case, it’s still too wet to do any damage.”

  Nettie sat up and rubbed the sandy sleep out of her eyes. “You a mind reader?”

  He grinned at her from the other side of a small fire, white teeth shining in the night as he roasted something on a stick. “Not quite. But your hand went to your hip before your eyes were open.” He held out the stick to her, bringing her face to face with a skinned and greasy rabbit. “They call me Coyote Dan.”

  She stared at him. “That what you call yourself?”

  He inclined his head. If they’d been keeping score, she’d won a point. “Names are just skins to wear for a while. Dan’ll do.”

  “What’s your friend’s name, Dan?”

  When she didn’t make a grab for the steaming meat, he shrugged and held it back over the fire. “His name is Dinner. But I agree. He’s not done yet.”

  A soft snort in the shadows alerted Nettie to the fact that Ragdoll might not have forgiven her but was willing to consider it. Standing on numb feet, she surveyed the camp. Aw, hell. It wasn’t a camp at all. Just Coyote Dan, a fire, one dead rabbit, and one huffy mustang mare. At least there was enough bristly grass around to keep the horse busy.

  “Sorry, Rags. My aim’s bad.”

  The horse snorted and swung her rump around. But when Nettie staggered over to her to check that Coyote Dan had loosened the mare’s cinch a bit, which he had, Ragdoll pressed her neck over the girl’s shoulder and breathed out in a horse-type sigh that said they were both fools, or possibly that harpies were no-good varmints.

  “You got any—”

  “—water? You can help yourself at the creek. I’ve already filled both your skins.”

  And dang if they weren’t dangling from her saddle like fat little babies. She flicked one just to watch it swing before heading in the direction Coyote Dan was pointing with his half-cooked dinner. Calling the dirty rivulet a creek was generous, but dang if it didn’t feel good to have a wet tongue. The water ran down her chin and tickled the hot little marks where the buzzard’s talons had pricked into her chest. Lord and crow, if her skin didn’t itch all over like it was a size too small. Her britches were crusted to her body with dried flux blood and mud and piss, and she sat right down in the creek to wash away her sham
e. And that place on her shoulder… might as well have been a rock snatched right out of the fire. If she really focused, she could feel some foreign fleck of mesquite poison caught beneath her skin, angry and fighting to get out.

  With nothing but the blue light of moon and stars, she couldn’t see much, but she unbuttoned her shirt anyway and slid the collar down over her shoulder, her back to Coyote Dan and his fire. He’d been good to her so far, but life had taught her that showing weakness was the fastest way to being made even weaker. Her horse probably wouldn’t even try to save her this time, if the man went for her.

  The lump on her upper arm was swollen and hard. When she pressed on it, liquid oozed out, smelling sweet and dead.

  “Aw, hell.”

  She’d watched an old man die on Pap’s porch once, thanks to a wound that looked and smelled about the same. Of course, that feller had been dumb enough to get his leg caught in a trap, but the size of the injury didn’t matter when it went bad. Gray Hawk had muttered something about the old fool being too stupid to let him cut off his foot, which Nettie figured meant she was either going to lose her arm or die with a fever hot enough to boil meat. Unless maybe she could squeeze out all the evil…

  Nope.

  She nearly fainted from the pain, although the burp of white ooze was gratifying.

  “Dinner is ready.”

  She glared at him over her shoulder.

  “You sure you want to waste a perfectly good rabbit on a dead cowpoke?”

  At that, he really did laugh, so hard that he rocked back, his bare feet lifting off the ground. “You’re not going to die today. But maybe don’t eat too much, just in case.”

  When had she last eaten—yesterday’s supper? No. She counted back the turns of moon and sun. Four days ago. It had to be. And she hadn’t eaten much then, as they were getting ready to rustle over the river and the beans had been off. Skitty as a cat, she redid her shirt and approached the fire. She sat opposite her supposed savior, the flames keeping watch between them. Coyote Dan, he said they called him. Probably a name white men had given him, as nobody in their right mind would claim to be like the sneaky little desert dogs. He held out the stick, the rabbit’s crisped, dead-black eyes staring at her. With a shrug, she grabbed a bit of bone and yanked off a haunch, the grease sizzling into the fire. Maybe it was just a jackrabbit, but danged if it wasn’t the best thing she’d ever eaten, and pretty soon she was sucking on her fingers and trying to figure out the best way to ask for more without seeming rude as a coyote herself.

  Something sailed out of the air, landing just between her boots. A rabbit skeleton missing one leg, picked clean.

  “Next time, take what you want,” Coyote Dan said in that preacher-type way he had, and Nettie picked up the carcass and flung it right back at him, where it splattered against his bare chest. He caught it as it fell and stared into its skull as if waiting for it to apologize.

  “I know I look like a banker in my fine duds, Dan, but I wasn’t born to a life of plenty. Now what exactly are you expecting in return for helping me and feeding me a quarter of a measly ol’ rabbit? Because I won’t be your wife, your whore, or your slave.”

  Coyote Dan wagged his head, slick hair swinging. “I don’t need any of those things. Hasn’t anyone ever helped you because it was the right thing to do?”

  Unwanted tears stung her eyes. “Top hand named Monty was kind to me. I watched him die a few nights ago. So as you can see, helping me ain’t exactly good for a man’s health. What do you want?”

  Without a word, he popped the skull off the rabbit and threw it back in what was becoming the dumbest game of toss she’d ever seen played. Instead of catching it, she batted it to the ground with her left arm. The right one was starting to swell up beyond the thorn wound, but she wasn’t about to tell him that.

  “Look at the skull. What do you see?”

  Nettie looked sideways.

  “Rabbit skull, nibbled down.”

  “Look closer. Look at the teeth.”

  She almost didn’t. But the fact that this strange feller kept his bow close at hand convinced her that she might as well humor him. Leaning over, she inspected the picked-over bone, digging out the tiny, tender cheeks to pop in her mouth. And saw…

  “Jiminy crow. Its teeth ain’t right.”

  He nodded. “Fangs. That rabbit smelled you, came here to take a bite. Instead, you ate it for dinner. Do you know why?”

  “You gonna tell me, preacher?”

  He smirked off the insult.

  “Because you and I… we can see things.”

  Nettie straightened back up and let a hand settle, all casual-like, on her gun.

  “Yep. I sure can see a lot of things, Coyote Dan. And one such thing is that you’re crazy as a bedbug.”

  Dan laughed again. It was getting downright uncomfortable, the way he did that. But when he looked up at her across the fire, his eyes were clear and sane and as dark as the inside of a cave.

  “Tell me, Nettie Lonesome. What was the first monster you killed? The first creature that turned to sand and blew away? Because whatever it is, that’s where you can lay your blame.”

  A shiver skittered down Nettie’s back. “Did you just say monster?”

  “I did.” He grinned. “Once you kill one of us, your eyes are open to all of us.”

  CHAPTER

  10

  Nettie’s eyes narrowed. How quick could she draw? How fast could he nock an arrow to fly into her mouth, silencing her like the buzzard-woman? And how long might a bullet hold him back, if he really was one of… them?

  With her gun arm full of pus, she was at his mercy, of which he’d definitely shown a bucketful. So maybe she’d hear him out. At the very least, Coyote Dan believed the hogwash he was spouting.

  And he didn’t have red eyes or fangs.

  So she gave him the truth to see how he’d swallow it.

  “Man found me out by the barn. Tried to make me go inside, and I took offense.”

  “Did you shoot him?”

  She shook her head. “Didn’t have a gun yet. Put a sickle in his eye, but he just laughed. Ended up stabbing him in the heart with a chunk of wood.”

  “And then?”

  She leaned back and sat her hat on the ground, feeling a sheen of sweat break over her forehead. He already knew her name and her gender and had her weak and on her back; what more was there to hide?

  “I reckon you already know. He turned into sand. Blew away. I kept his clothes and boots.” She shot her gore-stained cuffs as she’d seen the mayor do once downtown.

  “And what did you see, after that night?”

  Nettie gazed up into the stars. “Blood-drinking whores. A boy I liked turned into a killer lizard with fangs. That buzzard with the dugs.” Ragdoll whuffed in the dark, and Nettie added, “And the Injun woman on a wet black horse, pointing me west.” Suddenly, it was all too funny, and she flopped back on the ground, half-laughing and half-crying. “Am I going crazy, Coyote Dan?”

  He rose smoothly and hurried around the fire to her side. With gentle hands, he rolled her onto her back.

  “Not crazy. Fevered. Infected with mesquite poison, suffering dehydration, and thick with filth from a harpy’s claws. You need medicine, Nettie Lonesome. Do you trust me?”

  Her head rolled side to side as she tried to squint him from two men back into one. What was trust when you were dying in the desert with nothing but a stranger by your side? The fire burned up her arm, the wound sickly pulsing like the harpy’s heart she’d held in her hand. His face was so warm, so urgent, lit by the orange flames, and when she blinked, she would’ve sworn his eyes glimmered green. She blinked again, and all she saw was concern turning the corner into worry.

  “Might as well, I reckon.” She swallowed around a lump of rabbit in her throat. “Ain’t got much choice, far as I can see.”

  “Your confidence honors me.” His eyes said it was a joke even if his mouth didn’t, so she felt obliged to smile, just
a little. “I must tend to your wound. I can cut open your shirt, or you can withdraw your arm. The choice is yours.”

  Nettie unbuttoned her shirt with shaking fingers and yanked her swollen, hot arm out of the sleeve, grateful for what little coolness the night afforded. Let the feller look; she kept her chest bound up tight in a strip of muslin for a dozen reasons. And his leather flap sometimes showed what little a man kept to himself, so they might as well be even.

  “Listen carefully,” Dan said. “I’m going to do things you won’t understand, things that will confuse you and might hurt you, although I’ll do my best to ease your pain. If you fight me or stop me, you’ll most likely die or at least lose the arm. It will take you much longer than a monster to fall away to dust, but it will happen.”

  She tried to shrug her assent, but it hurt too much.

  “Fine,” she muttered. “Might as well try to keep from dust awhile longer.”

  Slowly, as if she were a wild bronc just brought to the corral, he unbuckled her gun belt and placed her pistol far out of reach. Her Bowie knife followed. As she watched the firelight glint on the blade, she realized that she was just about where she’d been last week: crippled by outside forces, without weapons, at the mercy of a man she didn’t trust, and pretty much ready to die.

  With a slight bow, Dan began singing in another language, a pulsing beat that drew her into the starlight. He moved around, in and out of shadow, cutting and pounding things and visiting the creek, giving Ragdoll a pat on the rump as he passed. Something pressed against her lips, his arm strong behind her shoulders as he helped her to drink. Oh, Lord, it was bitter, bitter as hell, but she drank it down so long as he urged it, the water skin’s mouth clacking against her teeth. Soon the stars spun around in a whirl, thrumming with his song and, later, singing back to him. There was dancing, a dozen shapes hopping around the fire and throwing shadows against a canyon that she was danged sure didn’t exist.

  The harpy’s beak ripped into her arm, but when her head whipped around, teeth bared, it was just her Bowie knife, heated cherry-red and pressing gently into the apple-sized lump on her shoulder. She shuddered as it burst, the worst and best thing she’d ever felt in her life as the evil drained out of her body to drip, a mix of black and white and red, onto the sand. Strong thumbs pressed, pushed, massaged, forced, expelled, probed, and then, holy crow, entered the knife’s cut.