Dust of the Damned (9781101554005)

by Brandvold, Peter

  In addition, she had three ninja-style shurikens with five points of thinly shaved silver tucked into two separate pouches inside her cartridge belt, over her belly. She’d trained herself to throw the discs nearly as well as a twelfth-century samurai.

  She was well armed and well skilled, a formidable foe against even hobgobbies.

  How many wolves could be out here, anyway? To avoid leaving a too-clear trail for hunters, they usually ran in fairly small packs.

  Finally, when the music and voices dwindled and it seemed the hobgobbies were settling down, Angel rose from behind the boulder and began following the trail Leonora and Rubio had followed, moving quietly in her boots and keeping her eyes and ears skinned for a possible night guard. She doubted the demons would post a lookout—for all their savagery, they were a drunken, arrogant lot—but she hadn’t climbed the ranks to deputy U.S. marshal by being careless. Moving as gracefully as a puma, she stole up and over a low rise, following the game path through the scattered trees and desert shrubs.

  Ahead, the fire’s pulsating glow shone—a circle of umber light in a slight clearing. The strummer had put away his mandolin and was at the far edge of the firelight, his back to Angel. By the set of his head and shoulders and position of his arms, he was relieving himself in the brush.

  Leonora was arranging a bed for herself a few yards to the right of the mandolin player and casting jeering glances at Rubio. Her unsatisfactory lover was keeping his head down, scowling as he poured coffee from a black-speckled pot into a dented tin cup. The two other males in the group, one of whom was the leader, Rafael Ortiz, were resting back against their saddles, grinning mockingly at Rubio, their near-lipless mouths stretched wide beneath their long, pointed noses.

  Angel heard the murmur of their voices, but she couldn’t hear what they were saying. They seemed to be speaking to both Rubio and Leonora, who grunted her responses while keeping her dark-eyed, incriminating scowl on Rubio, who said nothing.

  Good. They were all distracted.

  Angel hurried forward, moving on the balls of her feet. She’d learned to tread quietly on the quietest of desert nights, always leaving her spurs in her saddlebags and wearing no ornamentation on her clothes. She gained a cottonwood about thirty feet from the clearing, crouched behind it, and drew the Winchester’s hammer slowly back to full cock.

  Chapter 9

  SOMETHING SNORTED

  Angel had just started to take one final gander at the camp, hearing one of the men say, “You know, Leonora, back in Rio Juarez, the senoritas all marvel at my love skills,” when Leonora’s brother yawned suddenly, and said, “Forget it, Pedro. No one can satisfy my sister’s goatish lust. No one. Not even I—her brother!”

  He laughed and began to haul himself to his feet, casting his eyes toward the tree behind which Angel was hunkered. She drew her head back behind the cottonwood and gritted her teeth as Rafael continued to laugh his menacing, high, squeaking laugh, and said in slurred Spanish that it was time to drain his dragon.

  Leonora said, “Thank God I was that drunk only once, Rafael!”

  “As I remember, mi hermana, you came pretty close to enjoying yourself.”

  Spitting sounds of revulsion rose from the other side of Angel’s tree. At the same time, she heard Rafael’s laughter and saw a long shadow stretch across the ground to her left. The hatless silhouette continued to angle off through the trees in the direction from which Angel had come.

  Rafael followed it, passing so close to the cottonwood that Angel could smell the sour tequila sweat mixing with the typical death stench of the hobgobbie. The smell filled her nostrils and brought tears to her eyes, nearly making her choke.

  Rafael stopped about ten feet beyond her, facing away. Angel held herself as still as possible. She could hear her heart pounding and hoped the demon neither sniffed nor heard her, as a hobgobbie’s senses were nearly as keen as a wolf’s. Rafael growled, hiccupped, and gave a grunt. His piss streamed down before him, steaming slightly on the cool ground.

  Angel gritted her teeth resolutely, her heart racing, and raised her Winchester, flipping it end for end. So much for keeping the gang corralled. She stepped toward Rafael, and, closing her upper teeth over her lower lip, smashed the rifle’s butt solidly against the back of his neck, just up from the hump on his back. She heard his neck crack, saw his head tilt at an odd angle just before he staggered forward, appearing even drunker than before, and wheezed.

  “What the hell was that?” said Leonora. “Mi hermano, you all right over there?”

  Rafael gave a long, last sigh and fell face forward on the ground with a thud and a fart.

  Angel swung around with the Winchester, dropped to one knee, raised the rifle to her shoulder, and aimed into the clearing, drawing a bead on Rubio sitting on his saddle, knees spread, holding his steaming cup to his lips but scowling over it toward Angel.

  She squeezed the Winchester’s trigger. The rifle roared, punching a hole through Rubio’s wool serape and causing his eyes to widen suddenly. He dropped his coffee cup. Angel quickly racked another shell into the Winchester’s breech. There was no arresting ghouls, only dispatching them.

  Before her, the others, including Leonora, had all reached for weapons, but only the male nearest Angel, a fat, bearded Mexican ghoul with one milky eye, had wrapped his hand around the Schofield jutting from the holster beside the saddle he’d been reclining against. Angel calmly drilled a bullet through the dead center of his forehead and was ejecting the spent, smoking casing, when the fourth man bounded off his heels with the agility the hobgobbies were known for, and dove like a demon missile toward the marshal. Angel nimbly threw herself to one side, rolling up off her right shoulder and springing back to her feet, but not before the fat ghoul was on her again, bulling into her chest with his head and shoulders.

  Angel dropped the rifle and hit the ground hard on her back. She groaned. The hobgobbie half snarled like a wolf and half hissed like a diamondback, his eyes glowing red as coals as he peeled his nearly nonexistent lips back to show the fangs that, when the ghouls were aroused, became even longer and more savage-looking than a swiller’s.

  The light in his eyes dulled, and his fangs retreated a little. Angel withdrew her ten-inch Mexican dagger from the ghoul’s side, feeling his hot, piss-yellow blood wash over her hand. She stuck it into him again, angling upward toward his heart. He made a gurgling sound and, staring incredulously at Angel, shook his head and closed his eyes.

  Leonora had frozen halfway to her feet and was staring at Angel with her lips bunched, a knife in one hand while she raised a Colt with the other. Her pointy-nosed face with close-set, dull brown eyes was twisted with near-hysterical rage, showing her curved yellow fangs, but she held fire.

  In her right hand, Angel held her cocked, silver-chased Colt around the shoulder of the ghoul still sprawled and death-spasming on top of her. She narrowed an eye as she aimed down the barrel at Leonora, crouched as though ready to spring.

  Leonora said throatily, just above a whisper while narrowing her devil’s eyes, “What did you do to my brother, Scar Face?”

  “He was resisting arrest.”

  “He was taking a piss!”

  “Got me.”

  Leonora screamed and triggered her pistol with one hand, then threw the knife with the other. The male atop Angel jerked as the slug and the bowie ripped into his back. The Colt in Angel’s hand roared once, twice, three times. It barked once more, flames and smoke streaking across the camp.

  Leonora was sent staggering backward with the first shot, and the following rounds kept her moving and screaming like a wounded hyena, hair flopping around her head.

  Somehow still on her feet, she turned around and, holding her arm across her belly, staggered off toward the edge of the firelight, dragging her boot toes and howling. Several yards beyond the light, under a drooping willow, she dropped to both knees, screamed once more, and fell flat on her face.

  Angel shoved the body off of her
and gained her feet, breathing hard, chest rising and falling heavily behind her doeskin vest. She stooped to clean the dagger on the dead male before her.

  A wolf howled.

  Angel froze.

  The high-pitched wail was louder than before, and Angel jerked her head up toward a ridge forming a saw-toothed, black velvet silhouette against the stars about a half mile away. Her heart shuddered. The hobgobbies’ horses nickered and shifted uneasily off in the trees to Angel’s right, about thirty yards away.

  Something snorted.

  There was a thud of something heavy hitting the ground behind her. Dropping the dagger and the empty Colt, Angel wheeled, automatically plucking a five-starred shuriken from the pouch in her cartridge belt. Her eyes had just skimmed the shaggy, gray-black wolf standing crouched before her, hackles raised, before she threw the deadly silver disc with a flick of her right wrist.

  The beast’s shrill scream sounded like a train whistle as the shuriken cut into its chest, instantly stopping its heart. The beast itself lurched up on its back legs and twisted around before tumbling in a heap, quivering.

  She couldn’t be sure it was a werewolf, but the way the shuriken had stopped it was a pretty good sign….

  Angel picked up her Winchester. On one knee and looking around wildly for more beasts, she quickly loaded the Winchester with silver cartridges. Off in the darkness beyond the fire, the horses danced and nickered. Brush snapped, and faint snarls and mewls rose. They didn’t seem too close yet.

  Angel racked a live round in the Winchester’s chamber, then set the rifle aside and loaded her.45, plucking the silver cartridges from her shell belt without looking but keeping her eyes on the darkness beyond the fire. Quickly, she decided to make a run for it. Probably, the wolves would linger over the bodies of the dead hobgobbies, devour them first before they came after her. If they did, and if there were only five or six in the pack, she’d be able to hold them at bay with her rifle.

  Having made up her mind, she holstered the Peacemaker, fastened the keeper thong over the hammer, grabbed her Winchester, and ran. She’d run about fifty feet before the snarling rose from the hobgobbies’ camp, and she could hear quick, padded feet moving toward her from both sides of the trail.

  Shit.

  She might have made the wrong decision.

  She kept running as fast as she could on the treacherous terrain, holding the Winchester in her right hand, pumping her left arm. Her black Stetson blew off her head and flopped down her back by its horsehair chin thong.

  A cold stone dropped in her chest when she heard the thuds of the running pack growing quickly louder, and she could hear the throaty, slathering snarls. She didn’t look back, knowing it would break her stride, but kept running until, when she sensed at least one beast getting too close, she stopped, swung around, dropped to a knee, and raised the Winchester to her shoulder.

  A big wolf nearly as black as the night but limned in silver moonlight was twenty feet away and closing by fluid leaps and bounds. His eyes glowed yellow red. Angel raked the Winchester’s hammer back and fired.

  The beast snarled and yipped, dropped, and rolled, piling up on itself four feet in front of Angel’s knees. She cut a glance around, saw at least three more shadows bounding toward her from both sides of the trail, their strides now slowing in light of what had happened to the black.

  “Come on, you bastards!” Angel shouted, angrily racking a fresh round into the chamber. “Come and get it!”

  The shadows sort of hunkered low to the ground, making them hard to see even with the milky light radiating from a big, round moon hovering about a quarter of the way from its zenith and casting the night in an eerie twilight.

  One of the silhouettes moved. Angel snapped a shot at it, heard the precious silver round spang off a rock. She ejected the cartridge, heard it clang onto the gravel behind her.

  “Shit!”

  Levering a fresh round into the chamber, she rose slowly and began backing away, sliding the rifle from right to left and back again. She couldn’t tell if the beasts were following her or not. When a werewolf had turned completely into a wolf and not some man-wolf amalgam, it was especially cunning and dangerous. These might be trying to get around her and cut her off.

  That thought fired adrenaline into her veins. She twisted around, took the rifle in one hand once more, and broke into a full-ahead sprint. She’d seen a cave near the place where she’d tied her horse. If she could get in there, she could hold off the wolves till morning if she had to.

  Liquid breaths rumbled in wolf lungs behind her. Padded feet thudded. Sage branches snapped and gravel crackled. She glanced over her shoulder, saw what must have been a whole dozen of the shadows lunging toward her, several pairs of eyes glowing fiercely in the moonlight.

  She dug her heels into the ground, pushing harder, her heart racing now, blood flowing hot through her veins. She ran past the place where she’d stumbled onto Leonora and Rubio fucking, and followed a path down a steep incline. The wolves were on both sides of her now. One was lunging toward her so quickly he almost appeared to be slowing so he wouldn’t overtake her. Another was coming hard on the other side, fangs showing pale between gaping jaws.

  Angel wanted to stop and shoot but she couldn’t. Something told her that if she did that, she’d be dead almost instantly. Even if she got one of the beasts, the others would be on her in seconds.

  “Oh, Christ,” she heard herself nearly sob aloud.

  She should have stayed by the fire.

  Ahead was the sand-bottomed draw she’d crossed on her way to the hobgobbies’ lair. The wolves would get her down there. The deep sand would slow her. She glanced once more over her shoulder. One was so close to her now that she could smell the rancid stench of his breath, see the foam flecking from his jaws as he breathed.

  Angel bolted into the draw. A strange resignedness overtook her as she felt the deep sand grabbing at her boots, slowing her.

  On the draw’s opposite bank, she glimpsed something that she only vaguely registered as odd. A hatted figure silhouetted against the sky hunkered over something that appeared mounted high up off the ground and that flashed like gold sequins in the lunar light.

  At the same time that she recognized the bullet-crowned hat, she heard a man’s voice shout, “Down, Red!”

  Angel probably would have gone down, anyway, as the sticky hands of the sand were grabbing at her heels. She hit the draw, rolled, and buried her face in the sand as a great cacophony shattered the night’s bizarre silence.

  Bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam!

  Beneath the din, wolves yelped and yowled. A furry, rancid-smelling body hit the ground beside Angel and rolled beyond her until it piled up against the base of the draw’s opposite bank. She heard the thuds of several others, and the wild thrashing of brush as a couple of the wounded tried to crawl away.

  When the gun had hammered away for nearly twenty seconds, Angel lifted her head and glanced up to see the flash of the revolving maws and the quicksilver of its bullets streaking out over her head and off across her backtrail.

  After another fifteen or so seconds, the din died suddenly, leaving only swirling echoes growing softer and softer, as though the moon were swallowing them piecemeal.

  The gun blazed once more, causing Angel to jerk with a start and again mash her cheek against the sand, watching her backtrail with one eye. Several more streaks of silver flashed across the draw.

  A final, agonized yip rose. A body thumped to the ground.

  After a few more seconds the Gatling gun fell silent.

  On the chill night air, Angel smelled the coppery stench of hot, flowing blood.

  The silence was broken by a scratching sound. Angel gained her knees as she looked up the bank before her. The silhouetted figure crouched over the smoking Gatling gun mounted in its open casket, touched a match to a cigarette protruding straight out from between his lips.

  Blowing gray smoke, Uriah Zane said, “Damn, tha
t’s a lot of ’em.”

  Angel drew a deep breath, the blood only just now beginning to slow in her veins. The terror was still there, but it was mixed with embarrassment and an automatic defiance. “I hope you’re not thinking I needed your help, Uriah.”

  “Oh, no,” Zane said, a ghostly silhouette smoking atop the casket. “They were just about to turn tail and run in the other direction.”

  Chapter 10

  “NOT YOU, TOO, URIAH!”

  When Angel said nothing, only stared up in anger and with a sickening feeling of humiliation at the giant wolf-killer towering over her, Zane gave a disgusted grunt, leaped out of the casket, and strode down the slope to drop to one knee beside her, puffing his cigarette. “Where you hurt?”

  “My pride.”

  “Fool woman.”

  She could smell the musky horse-and-sage scent of him as he bored his gaze into her, blowing smoke in her face. Only vaguely did she admit to herself that she was relieved to see him, that, in fact, she wanted to throw her arms around him and bury her face in his chest. It wouldn’t do for him to know that, however. She’d never been a damsel in distress, and even though she’d come to within inches of being wolf bait, she wasn’t about to start now. There was a bone-deep need in her to be respected…especially by Uriah Zane, for some damn stupid reason.

  Not going easy on her, he said, “What in blue blazes are you doin’ out here on a full moon?”

  Tears of fury oozed from her eyes, and she felt a great convulsion in her throat. A wave of rage as well as frustration and befuddlement exploded within her, snuffing expressible words from her racing thoughts and emotions. How was it only Uriah Zane could make her—her, a deputy federal marshal, and a damn good one!—feel like a silly, little, pigtailed schoolgirl hysterical over a harmless spider crawling across the floor?