Wake of Vultures

by Lila Bowen

  He stopped and looked up at her, hands on his hips.

  “You love me.”

  She nodded. “That’s got to be what this feeling is, like my stomach’s in knots and my heart’s about to flop out. I think about you all the time. I feel safe when you’re riding next to me or bedded down beside me. And when you tried to kiss me, I got scared. Never kissed nobody before. And I don’t need to. I don’t expect you to change for me or… or want me, that way. I just want to go on being your friend.”

  “How can I?” His shout scared Ragdoll, and the mare nearly dumped Nettie on the ground. “The person I thought I might love don’t exist, and now the person who killed him wants to be my friend? That’s horseshit, and you know it!”

  Quick as a crow’s blink, Nettie slid off her horse, dropped her reins, and threw herself into Hennessy’s chest, pushing him onto the ground. He was heavier, but she’d surprised him. Little as she’d tangled with people, she’d wrestled many a calf or hog to the dirt, and she used his befuddlement and unwillingness to hurt a girl to get him on his back, where she straddled his chest and pinned his hands to the ground. It was right unsettling, her legs split over a body, but she had to make him listen.

  “It ain’t horseshit, fool. Now listen. This is where we are. You’re you, and I’m me, and neither one of us is gonna change. Neither of us can change. So we might as well stay friends.”

  All the struggle went out of Hennessy, and he stared up at her like she was an armadillo walking on its hind legs and swinging a bumbershoot.

  Finally, all quiet-like and blinking back tears, he said, “Hellfire, Rhett. I don’t know if I can. I look at you, and I see two different people, and it tears me up inside.”

  She shook her head in consternation. “I’m lots of different people. But I’m your friend, and I’m a Ranger, and I got your back. I’ll keep your secrets to my grave. Can you live with that?”

  His jaw worked for a minute, and his head fell back. Nettie figured she’d see hurt in his bright blue eyes for the rest of her days.

  “Will you let go of my arms, at least?” Hennessy asked.

  Nettie released him and sat back on his chest, hoping she’d managed to convince him.

  All in one swift motion, Hennessy sat up and clocked her in the jaw with a brawny fist. Nettie fell over on her back, seeing stars, and he climbed to his feet to stare down at her, hands on his hips.

  “What the Sam Hill was that for?” she asked, sitting up slowly and rubbing her aching jaw.

  “Because if you’re going to play at being a boy, I’m damn well going to treat you like a man. A feller causes me this much trouble, I find that punching him in the face makes me feel a lot better.”

  He held out a hand to pull her up, and when she stood, they eyed each other warily.

  “I can live with that,” Nettie said with a nod.

  “Can’t believe I’m saying this, but come on, other Hennessy, or whatever your name is. We got two flighty horses to catch if we don’t want to be left behind by the Rangers. I still got to earn my badge.” He flicked the metal star on her chest. “A girl Ranger. I’ll be damned.”

  She shoved him in a friendly-type way. “I ain’t no girl. You keep my secret, I’ll keep yours.”

  Hennessy spit in his hand and held it out, a look of grudging respect on his face. Nettie spit in her hand and grabbed his, hard, the cords on her wrist standing out. He looked down with a shadow of his old grin, and she reared back and threw a wild left punch directly into his cheek. As she’d never hit anybody before she’d clocked Winifred the other day, she must’ve done something wrong again, as it apparently hurt her more than it hurt Hennessy. She’d busted up a knuckle, and probably broke her thumb, and her whole arm was burning. Hennessy watched her hop around, shaking her hand and cussing, and his regular smile finally broke out as he rubbed his cheek thoughtfully.

  “You can’t punch worth a damn, Rhett. What was that for, anyway?”

  She stood up straight, met his glare.

  “That was for calling me a liar.”

  He put his arm around her shoulder, making her stomach bounce like hail on a roof as they staggered off to their horses.

  They’d just mounted up when they heard the Captain’s Henry crack over the prairie, followed by a dozen more shots and the bloodcurdling screams of Injuns on the warpath.

  CHAPTER

  21

  Nettie’s eyes met Hennessy’s, and they wheeled their horses and headed off for the Rangers at a gallop. Hennessy was slower, since he was ponying another horse, and Nettie slapped Ragdoll’s rump with her hat and drew her gun as they climbed a small hill that hid the flatland beyond. When they hit the top, she pulled the mare to a stop, lay low on her neck, and scanned the scene. The Rangers had circled their horses and dismounted, taking shelter within the ring of their well-trained but panicking mounts. A couple of the fellers lay on the prairie, still and dead, stuck full of arrows like porcupines.

  A shot zinged past Nettie’s ear, and she rolled off Ragdoll and tugged the little Appaloosa behind a column of rock to figure out the best way to help. Hennessy pulled up beside her, gun likewise drawn and his horses dancing like silly little fools.

  “Captain still up?” he asked.

  The crack of the Henry and a death scream answered the question, and Nettie squinted.

  “Captain’s up and shooting. Jiddy’s up but bleeding from the arm. Winifred’s in there, too. Looks like we lost Lee and Qualls and someone else.”

  Hennessy peeped around the rock. “Moran. Had a danged fine mustache. Good feller.” He spit and aimed his revolver but lowered it before shooting. “Too far to aim true. Goddammit, I hate werewolves.”

  “Me, too—” Nettie stared at him. “Hold on. What’d you say?”

  Hennessy jerked his chin at the nine braves galloping their ponies bareback around the tight wheel of Rangers. They rode flashy horses decorated with dabs of red in the shapes of handprints and paw prints. The men wore strips of leather, and their cloaks were made of gray and black fur stuck through with feathers. As Nettie watched, the biggest feller tipped his head back, and it rippled into a wolf’s snout. When he let out a bloodcurdling howl, all the skin rose up on the back of her neck.

  She shook it off. “So they’re skinwalkers. Why’re they attacking?”

  Hennessy rolled his eyes like she was dumb as a possum. “Skinwalkers and werewolves ain’t the same thing. Not even close. Folks like Jiddy and Winny and Dan, they’re pretty decent. They change into critters when they need to. But werewolves are nasty. Turn into giant killer wolves whenever there’s a full moon and cause trouble in between times. They ain’t even tribes, just the curs that got kicked out for being no good or got turned into wolves by the bad sort in jail. Any time you hear about a massacre, about scalping, it ain’t the Injuns. It’s Lobos.”

  Nettie added that to her mental map of all the peculiar things in the world that weren’t what she’d been told.

  “But why? What good’s killing do?”

  Hennessy’s head swiveled over at her, and she was gladder than anything that he could look at her without wincing again. “For werewolves, killing means you get to eat your favorite food. In this case, white men. Why do you think the Durango Rangers are known for slaughtering ’em?”

  “But why didn’t I feel ’em?”

  “I don’t rightly, Rhett.” Hennessy grinned and shrugged, and her stomach flopped.

  And just like that, all the pieces fell into place. Nettie realized that as long as she was near Hennessy, she couldn’t trust her gut or her senses. All that monster-caused stomach flopping and lovelorn heart-busting: It felt the same. Even if she’d never be more to him than a friend, and the sort of friend you punched in the face when one of you got riled up, she couldn’t tell her feelings for him apart from the feeling of nine werewolves murdering her compatriots a mile away.

  “Huh” was all she could manage.

  “So what we’ve got to do is figure out a way t
o kill the Lobos or draw ’em off before night falls and they turn to full-on wolves. They’re playing with us now, but soon they’ll start shooting down the horses for fun when it gets too easy.”

  “You saying you done this before?”

  He nodded, grim. “Battle of Bandera Pass. Lost a lot of good fellers that day.”

  The Lobos were trick riding, hopping up and off and around their galloping ponies and taking occasional lazy shots at the Rangers just to make ’em dance. A horse screamed, and Nettie saw that a thick-built dapple gray horse had taken a feathered arrow in the chest. Much to her surprise, the horse reared, pawed the air, and fell away to glittering, sugar-white sand.

  “Captain’s been riding a unicorn?”

  “Finest mounts around. The rest are just normal horses. They’ll go down just as easy, though, when the Lobos want ’em to.”

  Nettie was trying to put it all together, and as if he were well-tuned to her confusion, Hennessy added, “Werewolves won’t eat monsters or horses, neither. They’re just having fun, now. They only like human flesh.” When Hennessy shivered, Nettie did, too. But it gave her an idea.

  “And all they got is arrows, right?”

  Hennessy squinted. “I don’t see any rifles. They can’t carry rifles in their mouths, when they’re wolves.”

  “Then all we got to do is split up their attention. I’m going to that ridge over yonder. You go on the other side. We’ll try to pick ’em off or draw ’em out. I know only a shot to the heart can kill ’em, but will a shot to another tender place slow ’em down a little?”

  Hennessy laughed bitterly and looked down. “Shit, girl. You don’t know nothin’. Only thing that’ll kill a werewolf is silver to the heart. Bullets do best, although Captain docks what little pay we get if we waste it. Regular bullets anywhere else’ll just annoy ’em, and it’s right hard to get close enough to hit ’em with a silver knife. That’s why the Captain gives every man a handful of silver shot. It ain’t just being nice.” He was already shaking the shells out of his pistol and reloading it with soft-looking, shiny silver. “You got six, I got six, and each of them fellers in the circle’s got six. We keep them braves busy, maybe we’ll get a chance to aim.”

  Nettie rattled her silver bullets in her hand. “Those ain’t good odds, and don’t call me a girl.”

  “You are a girl, fool. And nobody ever promised a Ranger good odds.”

  “That’s ’cause most Rangers do their thinking with a trigger finger. I got a better idea. You think they seen me real good, Sam?”

  Hennessy snapped his gun barrel shut, cocked it, and stared at her with a look she hadn’t missed since putting on britches. It was the look that said a man was underestimating her because of what was between her legs instead of what was between her ears.

  “They just saw two people and three horses, probably. Sun’s behind us and you’re wearing a hat. Why?”

  “I used to hear about how Injuns like to steal women.”

  With a snort, Hennessy lined up his pistol as if he thought he could hit the broad side of a barn from this far away, which she knew he surely couldn’t. “Well, yeah. Women…” Sam cleared his throat. “They can be right useful for men with no family. And they supposedly taste sweeter to werewolves, after.”

  Nettie shuddered and passed it off by slapping at a bug that wasn’t there. “So you give me to ’em. I’ll act like a fool, and while they’re focusing on me, you and the boys can show up and we’ll all take ’em out.”

  Hennessy’s head jerked back, and he looked her up and down. “Hellfire, Rhett. You know what they’ll do to you if me and the fellers can’t get there in time? Or if we don’t aim true?”

  “I ain’t thinking about that. And I trust you, Sam. Point is, I’m pretty handy with a knife, and we don’t got a lot of options if we want to save our men before they all get shot.”

  As if to punctuate her words, another war cry rent the sky, followed by a horse’s scream.

  “It don’t matter how handy you are with a knife, Rhett. If it ain’t silver, you’ll just piss ’em off.”

  Nettie pulled the vampire’s knife from her boot and held it up in the desert sun next to one of her silver bullets. “Reckon that’ll do?”

  Sam took the knife from her, turned it over in scarred hands. “Looks like it’s got a heart of silver, I reckon. But are you sure you want to do this? Them Lobos won’t care that you style yourself a man. They’ll hurt you bad as a girl.”

  Nettie snatched the knife back and swallowed down her fear as another horse screamed and fell. “I’m sure enough. But we got to hurry.”

  Before Sam could use his dull brain to argue, Nettie shoved the knife back in her boot, unbuttoned her shirt, and started to unwind the bindings on her chest. Sam gulped and looked away, and she stuffed the fabric into her saddlebag and unbuttoned her shirt to an unforgivable level. Her throat was drier than dry, and she began to understand why there was always whisky where the whores were. She could’ve used a shot of something hot and wet and burning, something to dull her to the possibilities of what might happen if her plan didn’t work. Hennessy tried to pretend she didn’t exist as she likewise emptied her gun and packed it with silver. When she held it out, he took it and shoved it into his belt beside his own pistol.

  “Get some rope, Hennessy.”

  He all but dove into his saddlebags as she took off her hat, rumpled her hair, and rubbed dirt into her face. When he turned back around with the softest rope they had, she held out her wrists and looked away.

  “Get on the horse first, fool woman.”

  His black pony was smaller, and Nettie had no interest in losing her new saddle yet again. She patted Ragdoll’s fuzzy nose and hobbled her before mounting up bareback on Hennessy’s pony. When she held out her wrists again, Sam wound the rope around them and tied a shank knot, giving it a hard tug to make sure it was solid.

  “This feels all kinds of wrong, Rhett,” he said, all sorrowful-like.

  “It’d feel worse to wait until morning and burn what’s left of the Rangers, I reckon.”

  Still, he wouldn’t quite look her in the eye. “Fine, then. If you can bruise or scratch yourself around the arms, you’ll look like you been fighting,” he said, voice husky and blue eyes as sad as a rainy day. “Make you look like my captive.”

  With a grim nod, she worked her hands back and forth, nose wrinkling at the lack of give in a rope that had seemed pretty soft for tying calves but was damn hard on her own skin. With her shirt flapping open over a front accustomed to being bound up tight, she felt like there was a target on her chest and a chunk of silver sitting heavy at the bottom of her heart. Was she as fast as she thought she was? What if they didn’t untie her first? What if they searched her and found the knife in her boot? Would the Rangers catch on in time? And would they snatch back her badge for being a girl, provided they all lived through the night?

  “My badge,” she muttered. Hennessy just stared at a point over her shoulder. “You got to take it, Sam. Them Lobos can’t know.”

  “We don’t usually take these off a feller unless he’s dead on the ground.” Hennessy’s hands were gentle and awkward as he unpinned the star. She couldn’t help noticing that he put it in his own saddlebag instead of hers, and that helped her turn fear into anger. Damn if she was going to die and let him have sloppy seconds at her badge. It didn’t matter that it was what he wanted most and she cared for him, it was hers, by God. She sucked in a hard breath of dusty air and raised her chin.

  “Let’s go, Sam.”

  He mounted up without looking back at her and held up a white handkerchief on a stick—he must’ve fashioned it while she was lost in thought and turning herself into a goddamn damsel. Chin up, back straight, she let her hips roll with the pony’s jigging and steeled herself for the worst. As they topped the ridge, a single arrow flew overhead, but Nettie didn’t flinch.

  “If they wanted to hit us, they would’ve,” Sam muttered. “Act like you weren’t bor
n on a horse, fool. Try for once not to look so proud and angry.”

  There was no challenge in riding a ponied horse bareback, even with her hands tied, but Nettie remembered how silly and unsettled most women looked astride in the saddle and leaned forward, wrapping numb fingers into the gelding’s black mane. She’d learned early on that most of riding was knowing where your hips were and settling into your rump, but now she tried to pinch her legs together like she had to piss. The horse snorted and skipped like he didn’t approve of the ruse.

  “I have a woman,” Sam hollered, and the Lobos answered with joyous, echoing screeches that froze her blood everywhere but the place on her ankle where the silver knife pressed. That place—it seemed to warm up at the scream as if sensing a challenge.

  “What you want for her?” one of the Lobos called, riding out to meet them with an arrow nocked.

  “I want the Rangers.”

  The other Lobos laughed and hollered and shook their bows.

  “One skinny woman for all the Rangers? Good joke. Maybe we kill you, too.” The feller riding toward them turned his horse right when he got into pistol range and aimed the arrow at Sam’s chest.

  “She’s a virgin,” Hennessy shouted. “I checked.”

  “But she ain’t white.”

  “She’s young and beautiful. Exotic.”

  Nettie barely stopped herself from laughing along with the Lobos.

  “I will check the goods. If you are lying, we shoot you, too.”

  The Lobo jerked his chin, and Sam looked back and muttered, “Hellfire.”

  Nettie heard hooves on scree and swallowed down the belly-flop of a werewolf sneaking up behind her. The leader trotted up easy as pie and swung off his black-and-white pony. His smile was wolfish, his lap astir as he walked to her and put a hand on her calf, just above where the knife nestled in her boot. She didn’t have to feign clumsy fear anymore; her spine was rigid as a mesquite thorn, her throat dry and her middle as wild as a herd of cornered horses with no place to run.

  The Lobo man was kind of fascinating up close, if you didn’t mind being face to face with a feller who wanted to kill and eat you. His skin was a color just a shade more yellow than hers, his hair black and oiled in a topknot, slightly streaked with gray. His human body was as ridged and spare as the desert, his hands dusty and hard as they roved under her shirt, testing and squeezing greedily. His teeth were straight and round as new tombstones, his grin promising that her meatless bones would be under one soon, if he had any say in it.