“Didn’t mean to frighten your wife, Jesús,” Walton said. “We’re all plenty shook up.”
Cortijo nodded, which seemed like the thing to do. “That’s it then,” he said, painfully aware of the brand on his chest. “Wolves.”
“Well, only if they reckoned how to open doors.”
He shivered. “They leave anything? A trail?”
The sheriff bit his lip. “Just a mark of some kind. Something drawn in blood. A star.”
Norris’s eyes widened, but Cortijo gave him a sharp look to cut him off before he could say anything. “There anything we can do to help?”
Walton looked at him suspiciously. “You don’t know nothing about last night, huh?”
Cortijo’s chest itched, but he resisted the urge to adjust his shirt. He shook his head. “Maybe I should ride out with you and see. But—” He gestured to the burned out stable.
Without horses, he couldn’t possibly have ridden out to the Parsons’s ranch and murdered them all. At least, he thought so.
“Nah, that ain’t necessary.” Sheriff Walton snuffed. “You just set a while.”
Cortijo nodded. “We’re staying right here.”
Walton and his men rode off, leaving Cortijo and an anxious Norris. “What he said—you didn’t have nothing to do with—?”
Cortijo rounded on Norris, grasped him by his stained collar, and slammed him against the wall of the house. “What did you see?”
It took the horrified Norris a shocked second to focus on Cortijo. “What?”
“It had to be on your watch. What did you see?” Cortijo demanded. “Did I get up? Did I leave the farmhouse?”
“N-no,” he said. “Not that I saw, just—” He closed his mouth tightly.
“What?” Cortijo asked. “What was it?”
Norris looked uneasy. “I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, Jesús.”
“Tell me.”
“The younger Parsons boy—Danny,” Norris said. “He rode up in the middle of the night. He was sneaking around the ranch, looking for a way to get to the house without me seeing him. Did a pretty bad job of it, too.”
Cortijo hadn’t expected that. “What’d he want?”
“To see Ana, I reckon,” Norris said. “He’s done it before—been courting her best he can while you’ve been on the road. She don’t talk, a’course, but he does enough talking for both of ’em. She started to respond, too—just lookin’ at him and such. He took that as encouragement. Never called on her in the middle of the night, though.”
“Ana?” Cortijo’s heart raced. He hadn’t seen his daughter this morning. “Then what?”
“I sent him off on his way, is what. He tried to tell me off, but the rifle put the fear a’God in him. All his bluster blew out, and he begged me not to say anything—to you or his father. He stood about a spell, just looking at the house. Not sure why. But he wasn’t making no trouble, so I didn’t mind. Then he got back on his horse and headed home.”
Cortijo turned away from Norris and headed for the house. Norris didn’t understand what Danny had been doing, waiting around, but Cortijo had a sinking suspicion. What if Ana had somehow got out of the house and rode off with him? She moved so quietly. Had Danny told her about that plan back in town, under the tree in the churchyard? He prayed he was wrong, and that Ana’s corpse was not at the Parsons’ house.
He threw open the door. “Marta!” he called. “Ana?”
He found his wife in Ana’s room, sitting next to the empty bed, and his heart stopped.
Then he saw Ana standing by the window, staring out in the direction of the destroyed Parsons ranch, and he breathed again.
“¿Qué pasa?” Marta asked.
Cortijo threw his arms around his daughter and clasped her to his chest. It hurt when he pressed her face against his wound, but he didn’t care. He cried relieved tears into her hair.
Ana stared out the window, heedless of her parents.
As the sun dipped on the fourth night after his homecoming, Cortijo faced it without fear. Perhaps he was simply too tired: he felt as though he hadn’t slept in weeks. Norris was out on his deck, keeping watch with his rifle at the ready. Cortijo knew it wouldn’t do any good, though. The enemy they had to defend against wasn’t something that came from the outside, but something already here.
He’d thought—prayed—that it would be over when he killed the witch. But now…
What if it was him? Maybe, when Cortijo had stepped into the bloody symbols in the cave, the witch had cursed him. Back at the farm, Rosa would only have come to someone she loved and trusted. Who else could have gone to all the trouble of burning both the stable and the symbol around it without being caught? And then the murders of the Parsons, the blood on his hands, and the symbol cut into his chest…
God.
He’d thought he’d expunged the witch from the world, but really, he’d just given her demon a new home.
He understood what was happening now, and he knew how to stop it.
His hand rested on the smooth-worn grip of his pistol. The weapon had served him well over the years, saving his life and taking many others. It only had one life left to take now, and so many to protect. Would God forgive him for what he had to do now? And even if He wouldn’t, would that really stop Cortijo from doing what he had to do?
He slid the pistol out of his holster and looked at the metal gleaming in the moonlight. After his family was asleep, he would walk out into the field and put an end to it. He wouldn’t do it by the house—no sense making a mess. Let him hike out among the tall grasses he loved so much—let the wind weather his body to dirt and bone. Let his soul rot with the witch in hell. If that was what it took to protect his family, then he would do it.
The door whined open, and Marta came out onto the porch. Cortijo started to talk, but she put a finger to her lips and shook her head. Ana was sleeping, he reckoned.
Marta sat beside him in the other rocker, and together they looked out across the flowing fields. An ocean surrounded the tiny island of their ranch—not another living soul for miles.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I never should have let that girl anywhere near our home. I shouldn’t have let Clara befriend her—take her in. It’s… it’s my fault.”
Marta looked at him in the moonlight for a long, long time.
“You think that is why I am angry?” she asked finally. “You think that I blame you?”
Cortijo nodded.
“I am angry at you,” his wife said. “But it is not because of what happened to Clara, or the witch. I am angry because you left.”
“Because I—?”
“You left!” She rounded on him with fire in her eyes—the old fire that had made him fall in love with her all those years ago. “My daughter was torn apart like a sheep, my other daughter driven insane, and you just left. You abandoned us!”
“Marta, I had to see it done. I did it for us!”
“No.” She slammed her hand down on the table. “If you were thinking of us, you never would have left. You did this thing for you.”
“Marta—”
She went back into the house and slammed the door behind her.
The cold night wind stirred the leaves and made waves in the tall grasses around the house. Cortijo felt the chill, but he would not let it inside. He was so tired. A year of vengeance had worn him from the inside out, and his skin was only just starting to grow as old as his heart.
Now.
Now was the time to walk away. Norris would care for them. Marta would find a new home. Now was the time to put an end to this.
Then he thought of Marta—of the angry fire in her eyes.
“No,” he whispered. “I won’t do it.”
He would not abandon them again. He would not run.
When he awoke, he tasted blood—smelled it on his face and hands. Embers stung his skin and smoke made his eyes water, but he could see clearly enough.
Cortijo stood in Ana’s room, his hands
around her throat as she lay on her bed. The farmhouse was burning around them. Somewhere behind him, Marta screamed, but he couldn’t understand her. Norris was there, his rifle shaking like a sapling in a windstorm.
Cortijo looked down into Ana’s bruised face. Angry purple welts rose from her cheeks and blood oozed from her split lip. Despite her obvious injuries, Ana just stared at him, unable to care and unwilling to fight back. Her eyes gleamed bright in the firelight.
It was her eyes that gave him strength. Even in the depth of her empty world, she was still defiant. She still wanted to live, even if she couldn’t fight for herself.
Cortijo could fight for her.
He pried his hands free from Ana’s throat, letting her slump back into her bed, and turned to face the others. Norris and Marta stared at him in absolute horror.
“¡No!” Marta cried. “¡Déjalo! ¡No!”
Cortijo thrust his arms wide and faced Norris. “Mátalo,” he said.
Norris shook his head, pretending not to understand. The rifle was shaking in his hands.
“Kill it!” Cortijo shouted. “Kill it!”
Marta was clawing at Norris to get the rifle away. Ana’s eyes were fixed on her father, and Cortijo thought he saw the hint of a smile on her lips.
Norris raised his rifle, hands no longer shaking, and fired.
As the sun rose, Marta loaded the last of her things onto Norris’s cart and tried not to look at the smoldering remains of the farmhouse. Her husband’s body lay in there as well, but she could not think of him. She could hardly think at all.
This place was cursed, and they needed to leave as soon as they could.
Ana sat beside the wagon, her eyes fixed on the wreckage of their home. She had traced something in the dirt, but when Marta moved toward her to look, Ana turned to look at her so she could not see it. “Mamá,” Ana said.
Marta caught her breath. Ana had not spoken in a year—not since her sister’s death. “¿Sí, mi amor?”
Ana turned toward her and smiled, “I love you.”
Marta felt like crying.
Ana looked back toward the burned out farmhouse, and finished tracing her father’s star in the dust.
“Uno más,” she whispered.
A smile split her face ear to ear.
Erik Scott de Bie is a speculative fiction writer whose work has appeared in numerous anthologies ranging from dragons to aliens to superheroes to demonic infestations. He is mostly known for his genre-bending fantasy work—his first novel, Ghostwalker (2005) is a Man-With-No-Name tale set in the famous Forgotten Realms fantasy world. Shadowbane: Eye of Justice, his fifth novel (and third in his ongoing Shadowbane series), released in September 2012. Hyperion, his scifi novel set in the Traveller universe, releases summer 2013, and he hopes to bring out Shadow of the Winter King, the first book in his epic fantasy series World of Ruin, in 2014.
When he’s not writing, Erik lives in Seattle with his wife, cats, and entirely-too-excitable puppy. Catch up with him on Facebook (!erikscottdebie), Twitter (@erikscottdebie), or his website: erikscottdebie.com.
The Bear Trap
Daniel Durrant
“Fulad-zereh!” the woman screamed, thumping her fist against the glass. “Fulad-zereh!” Glancing over her shoulder, she swept up her sobbing child and ran.
“I guess this is it,” Crozier murmured, guiding the Land Cruiser onto the dirt track. The remainder of the directions supplied by control was superfluous; he simply followed the stream of terrified-looking people back to the source.
“Fulad-zereh?” Lilli repeated.
“Middle-east mythology.”
Swerving around a family, he stopped outside the entrance. Sealed behind earth banks with a fence atop, Kacha Garhi looked more like a prison than a refugee center. One of the biggest camps in Pakistan, it housed thousands of Afghans displaced by the Russian invasion.
Five guards lay dead near the open gates, surrounded by dozens of other bodies. They’d fired into the crowd before being overrun. Watching the exodus continue around them, Crozier figured most of the occupants were already out on the streets of Peshawar.
Leaping out, they gathered their kit from the trunk.
“Armor piercing?” Lilli asked, pulling out the weapons rack.
“Definitely.” Sighing, he adjusted his grip on the gun. Unfamiliar, the AKMS felt wrong in his hands. It was like wearing someone else’s clothes, but the weapon was a critical aspect of their disguise. Called in by the CIA, they were operating without the knowledge of General Zia’s government, and had to pass for members of state security. “I’d give a lot for my FAL right now.”
“These aren’t enough?” Fluent in nine languages, Lilli’s native Italian accent crept back in under stress.
“There’s no direct translation for Fulad-zereh, but ‘armored demon’ would be closest. There’s no such thing as enough. You ready?”
“Ready,” she replied, tying her hair back.
Moving against a human tide, they went in. There were more bodies past the gatehouse, but the crowd itself was responsible. They’d been crushed during the stampede.
“Okay,” Crozier said. “Where is it?”
“Hold on.” Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes. “I can’t keep track of it,” she hissed, shaking her head. “Too many minds. I—.”
Gunfire sounded behind them, a single shot followed by a rapid burst. For Crozier, it bought more relief than alarm. After three days and nights of false leads, the waiting was over. Now, it was a hunt.
Weaving between the clay huts that functioned as refugee accommodations, they found their first victim. The woman’s throat had been torn out, her spine visible through the tattered remains of her neck. Twenty paces bought them to another body. Someone had stepped outside for what had turned out to be their last smoke. A cigarette burned next to a corpse. The head was missing.
“Cloaker?” Crozier ventured, surveying the wounds. He’d felt no such presence, but she needed to learn. And, he reminded himself, some of her abilities were already exceeding his.
“The skin is here. Mostly,” Lilli added.
They ran toward another ripple of gunfire. It sounded like four, perhaps five, separate weapons. In a land where Kalashnikovs changed hands for thirty dollars, it seemed even refugees were armed.
As they closed in, the rate of fire increased. Something roared. It sounded like a gorilla, but Crozier was quite sure it wasn’t. The rate of fire dropped. Three guns now, he thought. Then two. One.
“Maybe they got it?” Lilli suggested.
Fresh screams suggested otherwise.
Cutting through a food-aid station, they caught the creature dispatching the last shooter. Seemingly oblivious to the pistol rounds being fired point-blank, it stepped forward and rammed six-inch claws under the man’s jaw hard enough to lift him from the ground. Four men were already down, resting on a carpet of spent cartridges. Something in the scene tripped a wire in Crozier’s mind, but there was no time to process it.
The creature tossed the limp body aside before turning to face them. Humanoid in form, it stood six feet tall, but strange antler-like growths made it seem much larger. Heavily fissured, the green-grey hide looked more like tree bark than skin. There was no posturing, no attempt to intimidate with vocal display. It charged on sight.
They separated, forcing the creature to choose a target. Lilli had time for a single shot before it reached her. Pivoting on one heel, she rolled forward under the attack.
Now behind it, Crozier targeted the spine. The beast staggered, but even copper-jacketed, the rounds lacked sufficient energy to kill. He put a second burst into the chest as it turned, but howling, it still leapt at him.
Arching her back, Lilli performed a perfect Valdez flip to stand again. Her headshot was on target, but the antlers stopped the round short.
Exposed to their crossfire, the creature gave up the fight. Diving into a wooden shack, it smashed through the back wall.
Shoving
through the collapsed structure, Crozier got one last burst off. A few rounds hit, but the creature dashed around a corner.
“Fucking Russian Shorts!” Grabbing his radio, he called for backup, but the nearest support was ten minutes away.
“Not enough penetration,” Lilli agreed. “It’s hurt, though.”
Reaching the edge of the original camp, they passed the last of the clay huts. Until he saw what lay beyond, Crozier had never truly grasped the term ‘tent city.’ Thousands of temporary structures formed a fabric labyrinth. They followed the creature through.
Past the tents, the camp became even more haphazard; people were living in freight containers, rusting cars, even an old boat.
“Look out!” Lilli yelled, as a man tried to herd his family away.
He fired a shotgun, but even under attack, the beast detoured to slaughter them.
“It’s killing just for fun,” she snarled. “What the hell is it?”
Reaching the camp perimeter, it stopped. As it padded back and forth, Crozier thought they had it cornered, but then it saw them. Using its claws like crampons, the creature scaled the fence.
Climbing on top of an old bus, they followed. The barrier marked a financial divide as well as a physical one; a single leap took them from poverty to the forecourt of a high-end car dealership.
“Wait. I can feel it now,” Lilli said, lifting her rifle. “There.”
Crossing the asphalt in front of the showroom, the creature ducked from car to car like a soldier under fire. The behavior wasn’t instinctive. It could think.
They emptied their weapons when it broke cover, but the showroom windows were the only casualties. Their target vanished behind the building.
“We can’t let that thing get into the city,” Lilli gasped.
“Agreed.” But their guns were nearly useless, and Crozier couldn’t shake the feeling the creature knew it, too. As he pushed a new clip home, it reappeared beside the workshop, looking back at them. They needed a leveler, and the garage might just provide it. “Change of plan,” he said. “Come on.”
Use Enough Gun (Legends of the Monster Hunter Book 3) Page 8