Wake of Vultures

by Lila Bowen

  “And why can I feel it? You saying I’m one of… them? Of you?”

  Dan threw back his head and laughed. “You’re not one of us. You’re human, all human, tempered with long suffering and brief mortality like a blade forged in fire and ice. And yet… you’re not.”

  Standing up, Nettie stared down at him. Her patience was a slim thing at the best of times, and just now, it was spiderweb thin. “Excuse me for bearing bad news, but you sure got a way of sayin’ a whole lot of nothing. Now if you’ll kindly point me toward the nearest ranch that could use a wrangler, I’ll leave you to your coyotin’, or whatever you call it.” She turned to face west and added, “With thanks for the doctoring. Hope I can pay you back one day.”

  “You don’t want to leave now. There’s more to tell. I’ve told you what you’re not, but aren’t you curious about what you are?”

  Nettie snorted. “I know what I am, and that’s leaving.”

  She checked Ragdoll’s saddle, tightening the cinch and running hands down the mare’s legs to check for hot spots or thorns or stones in her hooves. The horse bumped her, and she absentmindedly scratched her neck and muttered, “Sorry ’bout that rock I tossed, sugar.”

  Coyote Dan stood and brought her the saddlebags. “You should change. That shirt looks like you murdered somebody in it. And monsters can smell the blood of their kind. They know when you’ve killed before, when you can sense them. The best way to avoid notice is to pretend you can’t see them and stay far away.” He gave her a peculiar look. “At least, that’s how it’s always been before.”

  “Fine,” Nettie snapped. “I’ll change. But I’m leaving after that.”

  “We are leaving after that.”

  “I didn’t say you could come along.”

  “You have no choice. I won’t have your death on my conscience. Nor will I take up your task.”

  Giving Ragdoll’s saddle a final cinch that made the mare gasp, Nettie snatched the saddlebags from Dan’s hand and took off for the same big rock he’d disappeared behind before supposedly becoming a coyote. Lord, if she found a pet coyote tied up back there with a rabbit carcass in its smiling jaws, she would finally follow her gut instinct and shoot Coyote Dan for a liar. But all she found on the other side of the rock was more endless prairie and a scuffle in the loose dirt where human footprints mixed with coyote prints. The coyote prints, she noticed, only went in one direction, and it was right to where the coyote had laughed at her.

  “Goddammit,” Nettie muttered, dumping out the saddlebags.

  She checked that Dan was still with the horses before shucking her old shirt and unwinding the strip of sheeting she used to bind up her chest. There was a very similar piece in the saddlebag, which almost got her dander up again until she remembered that he’d doctored her arm and the buzzard claw wounds on her upper chest. So he’d seen her binding but not touched it, which she could allow. Once she was tight and comfortably tucked above, she unrolled the pants and took stock of her current situation. At least her godforsaken courses were done for another month, bled out over four days lost in the desert. No point in ruining another perfectly good pair of pants. No wonder women couldn’t get anywhere in life, considering they spent a week out of every month in pain and inconveniently gushing blood.

  “Dan, could you toss me a water skin?”

  She poked her head around the rock, and he lobbed one right to her like he’d been waiting for her to ask. Catching it hurt like a bitch, but she felt much better after its application.

  The new britches still smelled like the herbs they’d last been boiled in to wash, and they were a damn sight better fit than her old pair. The shirt was meant for a slender man, too, plaid with plenty of tail to tuck. Right thoughtful of Dan, stealing from a tall, thin feller. The new bandanna felt cool around her neck, and she kept Monty’s old one on her upper arm. Not because Dan wanted it there. Because it was Monty’s and she liked the feel of it.

  Switching out her sweat-hard socks for the nicer pair in the saddlebags, she immediately felt like a new person in a new skin. She wasn’t Nettie anymore, and she couldn’t be Nat—they might be looking for him. Ned, maybe? Pat? Or something entirely new? She’d never put too much thought into being a girl, didn’t really feel like a girl or identify with the little girls she’d seen in skirts around town. Being a boy just felt… natural. There were plenty of benefits to looking and acting like a feller, including never having a man look at her like Pap had, just once, when he found her bathing in the creek in her ratty white nightgown. Being a woman in Nettie’s world meant being a whore or being a wife, which was no better than a slave to her taste. Either way, she’d just be taking a feller’s orders for the rest of her life. Now that she’d tasted freedom, she’d die first. A feller would have to earn her allegiance, by crow.

  But now she had to put actual thought into being a boy without Monty around to hand her the name.

  “Matt Lonesome. Newt Loner. Pat Friendly? Goddammit.” Slapping her hat back on and tilting it down, she put a boy’s swagger into her walk, stuffed her old rags in the saddlebag, and rounded the rock to face Coyote Dan, man to man. If there was one thing she didn’t need, showing up on a new ranch to start her life over again, it was a dirty-footed Injun feller who laughed too loud and turned into a coyote when he took the notion.

  Dan sat his horse, a plain but rangy sorrel with agreeable eyes and forgettable markings. His feet hung bare beside the stirrups, his bow was slung casually over his shoulder, and he held his reins more loosely than Nettie considered wise. Beside him, Ragdoll was packed and ready. The fire was smothered, all evidence of their camp erased. There was nothing left to do but mount up and hope Dan got thrown off his horse and broke his neck.

  It was past noon, and the sun was awful high, but Dan set out flat east, whatever that meant. She kicked Ragdoll ahead, but the damn mare did her best to lag behind, following Dan’s sorrel gelding with stupid contentment.

  “Just like a woman,” Nettie muttered, giving the mare a kick that made her pin her ears.

  Dan clucked his gelding into a trot that Ragdoll gladly joined. “Not all women are weak, you know.”

  “I ain’t never met one that wasn’t.”

  He gave her his coyote smirk. “And how many women have you actually known?”

  Nettie grunted. “Besides them vampire whores, just Mam, I reckon. Went begging in town, when I had no choice. Saw nothing in skirts I wanted to be.”

  “Don’t blame what’s between a creature’s legs. Blame what’s in its heart.”

  She spit in the dirt. “You got anything to say that ain’t crap?”

  “I have plenty to say, but you have to want to hear it.”

  “I’m trying, Dan, but all I hear is jabber.”

  In response, he clucked his horse to a canter. Ragdoll followed, the little ninny.

  Nettie had to admit Dan had a helluva seat on a horse, riding the lope easy as pie despite his lack of stirrups or rein control. With the afternoon’s cruel heat, they couldn’t keep up the pace much longer, which meant he had to know where they were headed and that easy water lay in that direction. She didn’t like him, but she recognized that he knew the land here better than she did.

  As they galloped across the prairie, Nettie’s worries fell away. For so long, she’d ridden her old mule at a snail’s pace, barely able to entice the bag of bones into a jaunty trot. She’d broken more than a few broncs, but that was always in a round pen made of rough twigs or clean white boards, barely far enough for a few good skips of a canter. And she’d rustled cattle with the wranglers, but she’d been scared to the point of yarking, too anxious to enjoy it. She’d always dreamed of the freedom of a flat-out run, a loose lope across the wideness of the world. As if sensing her exhilaration, Dan glanced back at her, grinned, and whooped loud enough to hop his horse into a race that Ragdoll took up easily with a little shake of her neck. Before she could stop herself, Nettie had whooped, too, and her hat was in her hand, slapping the
mare’s rump to bring them neck and neck with Dan’s gelding.

  Holy crow, but she’d never felt so free. Like nothing could stop her. Like she could run forever on the endless plain. Like she could fly. Like the word stop suddenly held no meaning, and walls were just something to knock down. She inhaled the wind and breathed out fire, sucked in life and spit out the bones. The horse ran hot and sleek beneath her, muscle and bone, perfect and pure. The ground was just something to pass by, the sky something to aim for. And when she looked over, Dan’s grin echoed the one she felt on her own face.

  God damn. She didn’t know a heart could feel so light.

  And then it fell off. Run to canter, canter to lope, lope to trot, trot to a bouncy walk.

  The horses were breathing hard, and so was Nettie, as if she herself had been running.

  “Like flying,” she muttered, half to herself.

  “I imagine so. I have a friend who shifts to a hawk. He can’t fly if he’s thinking human thoughts. Goes into a roll and falls like a bag of rocks. He has to let go completely to stay in the air.”

  Nettie’s eyes went shifty.

  “You’re gonna start jabberin’ again, ain’t you?”

  “I must. For your own good.”

  “Pap used to say that before he beat me.”

  “There are things in the world worse than Pap.”

  Nettie shrugged and swigged down some water from her full skin. “Go on, then. Give me all your damn jabber. I don’t know why a cowpoke needs to know anything aside from breaking broncs and eating beans, but go right ahead.”

  Dan rode in silence for a moment, eyes straight ahead and jaw working.

  “This is what you know now: The world is filled with monsters hiding in human skins. Just like people, some are bad, and some are good. Many contain the seeds of both. Many change their alignment with the winds. Do you understand?”

  Nettie nodded.

  “You’ve killed these creatures, and you’ll kill more. There’s only one way: Puncture the heart. Shoot it with a bullet or an arrow. Stab it with a knife. Crush it with a rock or throw it in a fire. Do that, and the monster dissolves to sand. Until that happens, the creature might fall or take a wound, depending on its nature. But it won’t truly die. Given time, it will heal almost any wound.”

  “That don’t sound good.”

  “If the creature is good, then it’s a blessing. I’m awfully hard to kill. But if the creature wants you dead and holds a grudge, it’s very, very bad. An immortal thing can hunt you forever.”

  “Like the woman on the black horse?”

  He shook his head. “No, she’s something different. A ghost. The water horse took pity on her, and now they travel together until her revenge is final. You are their instrument of redemption.”

  Nettie pulled Ragdoll to a stop so suddenly that the mare squealed and almost sat down.

  “Water horse? Instrument? Redemption?” She spit in the dirt. “Bullshit.”

  Dan circled his gelding around to face her.

  “That woman lost her child to a monster. A bad one, the only thing the mighty Comanche fear. She swore a blood oath for revenge, and she passed it on to you before the water horse drowned her. It was a mercy.” He nickered and nudged his horse back on track. “Do you not wonder why she chose you?”

  Ragdoll followed Dan’s sorrel before Nettie had decided to go. Whether it was because the danged critter liked Coyote Dan or his horse, Nettie couldn’t say. She kicked her mare until they rode side by side, so at least she would feel like they were on equal footing.

  “What the Sam Hill is a water horse?”

  He chuckled. “The wet black mare. She took a liking to you. Must’ve recognized that you were special. They’re mischievous creatures with peculiar whims, known for luring men to ride and then drowning them. Perhaps you led her to the woman, or perhaps she knew what was coming. But they’ll trail you now, forever, those two, until justice is served.”

  Nettie snorted. “Injun woman told me I had until the new moon. Or else the Cannibal Owl’s gonna reap again. And I’ll never know the truth about where I came from.”

  Dan looked up as if counting the days in his head. “My village was struck on a new moon. Every village in our part of the territory lost children that night. You’d best hurry, then.”

  “Look, son. All I want is to get me another job breaking broncs, rustling cattle, and trailing as far away from Gloomy Bluebird as I rightly can. As much as I’d like to know where I came from, I ain’t special, and I don’t want revenge. And from what I hear, the Injuns wouldn’t want someone like me around, anyway.”

  Dan’s head whipped around to face her, mouth open in shock. “Why do you say that?”

  Nettie pointed at the face Pap had called a thousand ugly words. “Ain’t nobody wants a stupid, useless half breed.”

  Dan’s eyes went all sorrowful and angry at the same time. “You poor creature. Those are a white man’s lies. The Injuns, as you call them, value children above all else. Any tribe would’ve taken you in, had they found you. They would’ve raised you as their own, valued you. They would’ve loved you.” His hand twitched like he might try to touch her, and her lips twitched like she’d bite off a knuckle if he tried.

  “That… can’t be true.”

  Nettie licked dry lips and felt her stomach wobble as the world spun around her. She could accept that she was surrounded by monsters all the time; raised the way she had been, monsters were a regular part of life. And she had almost gotten used to the taste of the word slave in her heart, mainly because free had a much stronger flavor. But she had always been unwelcome, unwanted. Always. Even some of the fellers at the Double TK had refused to sit beside her or speak to her. And to know that somewhere, somebody might’ve been glad to have her around but she’d stayed with Pap and Mam instead, thinking it was the best and only life available to her… well, that was the last straw.

  Leaning over, she threw up all over her left boot and Dan’s right foot.

  And… another coyote?

  Nettie pulled her horse to a stop and watched as the honey-brown critter spit out a bundle of leather and wood, shook itself, bent its head, and trembled. As Nettie stared, the coyote curled over, sort of rippled inside its skin, and unfolded. Seconds later, a tall Injun girl stood, nekkid as the day she was born and beautiful as the morning, her black hair sweeping to her waist. She had Dan’s same high cheekbones, fiercely straight nose, and intelligent dark eyes, but her lips were wide and plush. She pointed up at Nettie but spoke directly to Coyote Dan.

  “You call this ragged… thing… revenge?” Giving Nettie the briefest of stares, she snorted and bent for her bundle, brushing off flecks of chewed eggs. “Then truly, brother, we are doomed.”

  CHAPTER

  12

  Nettie wiped her mouth on her bandanna and straightened her spine. She wasn’t about to take shit off a coyote.

  “Name’s Nettie Lonesome,” she said, tipping her hat. “You need to borrow a saddle blanket before the cactus wrens try to settle on them things?”

  The girl looked down at her bouncy bosom and quirked an eyebrow. “Please. I have standards. And horse hair is so very itchy.” She unrolled the package she’d been carrying and tied on a brief leather skirt and a narrow apron over her chest. The last two things in the roll were a loop of leather and a knife, both of which she stuck through the waist of her skirt. “Is this less offensive to you, slave girl?”

  “Winifred, don’t—”

  But Coyote Dan’s worry was spot on, as Nettie leaped off her horse’s back and punched the girl in the face. For a prissy-looking thing, the half-nekkid coyote girl gave as good as she got, growling and struggling to pin down Nettie’s shoulders as they tussled in the dust. Dan watched for a moment before hopping off his horse, grabbing the coyote girl by the hair, and yanking her backward. Nettie got in one good kick to the girl’s shin and stood, dusting off clothes that had seen the last of cleanliness the moment they’d found her han
ds.

  “I ain’t nobody’s slave. Reckon I don’t care to be nobody’s revenge, neither.”

  The girl stood primly despite the red prairie dirt dusting her skin and the tumbleweed puppies caught in her straight hair.

  “Unless you know how to put a ghost to rest, you haven’t much choice. What you are now is living on borrowed time.” She looked to Dan, who simply glared at her, arms crossed. “You’re taking her to the Rangers, yes?”

  “Yes. And we don’t need your help, Winifred. You know what will happen if you get involved.” He gave her a significant look before turning his back, mounting his horse, and kicking the sorrel into a walk.

  Nettie hopped on Ragdoll and followed.

  “What the hell does she mean, you’re taking me to the Rangers?”

  The girl sighed deeply behind them, but Nettie didn’t look back. Her hand hurt, which surprised her, as she’d never punched anyone and hadn’t expected it to cause her any pain. And yet it felt damn good, to actually punish rudeness, an extravagance she’d never known with Pap and Mam. The girl was making a fuss of her belongings, and in a few moments, the coyote was once again trotting beside them with a leather-wrapped bundle held tenderly in its teeth, although it did have the good sense to stay on Dan’s side instead of getting anywhere near Nettie and her pointy boot tips.

  “The Durango Rangers?” Nettie prompted, and Dan shot a dirty glare at the coyote before answering.

  “The Rangers are not what they seem. Many believe them to be heartless white men who fight the native tribes and the Aztecans, that they are thieves and murderers who kill and pillage and destroy. But that’s because few can see what the Rangers truly hunt. Chupacabra, werewolves, harpies, minotaurs, vampire covens gone wrong. Horrible things. Things like the Cannibal Owl you now hunt. The Rangers have much to teach you. They see the monsters, too.”

  Nettie thought back to everything she’d ever heard of the Rangers. By the time the news reached Gloomy Bluebird, it wasn’t news anymore so much as ancient history passed down by blind idiots. An entire tribe of Comanche murdered, their village destroyed. A vaquero’s ranch just over the border turned into a pyre, the men nothing but ashes. Thousands of buffalo slaughtered, their bones left to rot in the sun.