Dust of the Damned (9781101554005)

by Brandvold, Peter

  Charlie stretched his lips back in devious delight as he stepped softly toward the woman, biting his lip with the effort of silence, lifting one foot at a time in the four-inch-deep black water. Humor rippled through him, and he had to pause a moment to choke it back down into his chest.

  He continued forward. Ravenna was within four feet of him. He could see the pores in her skin, the droplets beading on her hair ends, tracing jagged routes across her shoulders and the backs of her arms.

  Charlie held his arms out to both sides, crouching, cupping his hands, getting in position to grab the young, ravishing sorceress from behind, to grab her big breasts, scaring the holy hell out of her, and steal a wild kiss.

  Ravenna was smiling, only Charlie couldn’t see her face. She glanced behind her to see the javelina she’d conjured blinking up at her through Charlie Hondo’s bright, horrified eyes.

  It was a typical desert javelina, brown and gray, with a ridiculous-looking face that resembled that of a bear cub but with a long nose and flaring pink nostrils. The nostrils were really flaring now, the sides of the javelina that was now Charlie heaving as he breathed frantically, snorting his dismay at the sudden transformation.

  Ravenna poked a finger to a corner of her mouth and tittered delightfully. “That’ll teach you to sneak up on a girl saying her prayers to Elyhann!”

  Charlie lowered his head and shook it wildly, as though to rid himself of this ugly pig’s body. His sides heaving faster and faster, he ran off squealing down the stone trough around the steaming pool, his little black, cloven hooves slipping and sliding on the slick rock.

  He bulled forward into some manzanita grass and willows growing just beyond the spring and along the cut the runoff made through the middle of this canyon that slanted gradually down to the Salt River and then out of the mountains to the open Arizona desert beyond. He came back through the brush, splashed across the runoff creek, squealing and oinking madly, his eyes still the brown eyes of Charlie Hondo but now owning a horror that Ravenna doubted they’d ever shown before. Gold javelins of stark-raving terror shot from them as Charlie dashed up the ravine and into more brush on the stream’s opposite side.

  Ravenna threw her head back and laughed huskily with unabashed mirth, cupping her big breasts in her hands, as she watched the brush thrash and jostle, catching occasional glimpses of Charlie’s pig head and curled tail above the weeds, willows, and black volcanic rocks.

  Charlie arced away from Ravenna, then dashed back into the narrow ravine, splashed across the stream, and mounted the left-side bank, heading back in Ravenna’s direction. When he reached the misty pool below her perch on the slab of rock, she touched the amulet with both her hands, muttered a phrase or two, and watched as the pig’s front legs buckled. The javelina was suddenly Charlie again, lying belly down in the mud and moss and manzanita grass beside the pool.

  Charlie’s back rose and fell as he breathed. He pressed his cheek against the ground, grinding one of his hoop earrings into the mud, and blinked his wild eyes as though trying to reassure himself that he’d regained his human form. The cross tattoo on his right cheek shone spruce green against his terror-bleached skin.

  Ravenna cradled her knees in her arms and loosed another volley of wicked, elated laughter.

  “I’ll put good money on the barrelhead that you’ll never try that again!”

  Charlie winced, pressed his hands to the ground on either side of him, and pushed himself up. He looked at Ravenna, his eyes hard with fury, teeth gritted, pale cheeks mottled red. Ravenna pointed at him and laughed all the harder, rocking back and forth on her naked bottom.

  “You fuckin’ bitch,” Charlie bit out angrily, though instinctively knowing he had to restrain himself. If she could turn him into a javelina, she could turn him into a spider that she could crush under the heel of her hand.

  And he had a feeling that if he pushed her at all, she’d be thrilled to do just that.

  He got his knees beneath him and, drawing deep breaths of calming air, sat back on his heels. He ran a sleeve across his sweat-slick forehead. “Whew! You really had me going there.”

  “Sí,” Ravenna said, her laughter slowly dying. “I had you running everywhere, Charlie.” Suddenly, the laughter died and she looked at him coolly, narrowing one chocolate-brown eye. “I can do it again. Anytime.”

  “I thought you was tapped out.”

  “Too tapped out to conjure dragons, maybe. Too fatigued to let you boys turn into wolves just any old time. But any witch worth her salt can cast a spell like that in her sleep.”

  “Thanks for the warnin’.”

  Charlie heaved himself to his feet, grabbed his hat off a willow branch, pulled it down tight on his head, and strode off sulkily toward a wide crack in the canyon wall.

  “Oh, come on, don’t go sour on me, Charlie. I was only fooling around, just as you were, mi amor!”

  “I didn’t turn you into no pig,” Charlie snapped, wheeling at the entrance of the defile that led back to the camp. “Hell, Ravenna, don’t you know that during full moons, I eat pigs!”

  “I apologize, mi amor.” Ravenna raised her eyebrows beseechingly. “Forgive me?” She drew her arms away from her breasts, lifted her chin, and threw her shoulders back. Alluringly, she said, “If you forgive me, you can have me….”

  Charlie would have none of it. He’d been scared shitless, and he wasn’t used to the feeling. Didn’t like it a bit. “Where we goin’, anyways? You say we’re getting close. Don’t you think it’s time you let me an’ the boys know?”

  “You’ll know by the next full moon, Charlie.”

  “Goddamnit, Ravenna. Why’s it such a big secret?”

  “It is the biggest secret in all the world, Charlie. And not to be taken lightly. No offense, but if I tell you, you might blab it to the others. I know how you boys like to drink and carry on. We’ll be laying in supplies in Tucson, and I don’t want anyone there having any inkling about where we’re headed.”

  “Me an’ the boys don’t like bein’ kept in the dark by no…” Charlie let his voice trail off, frowning in frustration, averting his eyes.

  “By whom?” Ravenna arched a severe brow. “By a girl? By a Mexican witch…?”

  She wagged an admonishing finger and clucked her tongue. “Never forget what I’m capable of, Charlie.”

  “Ah, hell.” Charlie snorted, miffed, and stomped off down the rocky defile.

  Ravenna laughed, funneled her hands around her mouth, and called, “I’ll make it up to you soon, mi amor!”

  Chapter 23

  CUTTING THE TRAIL DUST IN TUCSON

  Two weeks later, the dust-laden wooden sign leaning along one side of the stage and freight road and in the shadow of a tall, one-armed saguaro warned:

  BY ORDER OF THE TUCSON

  CITY COUNCIL ALL GOOLS

  WILL BE SHOT ON SITE!

  Someone had scrawled in faded green paint below the main admonishment: “Specially hobgobs!”

  “Now, that ain’t no way to treat us ghouls that got jingle in our pockets,” said Curly Joe Panabaker, riding directly behind Charlie and Ravenna, who headed up their small pack.

  “Yeah,” said Lucky Snodgrass indignantly. “Here we was, aimin’ on payin’ for our trail supplies. Maybe we ought not be so damn nice, if’n they’re gonna treat us like third-rate citizens!”

  Ravenna chuckled. “I don’t think they’d call us any kind of citizens, amigo.”

  “What I’d like to know is how they think they can pick a werewolf out of a townful of humans. They know and we know they can’t, less’n there’s a full moon, o’ course.”

  Ravenna said, “Don’t get cocky, Charlie. Word is probably out about your break from the pen, no? Telegrams have probably been flying all over the frontier—with your descriptions on them.”

  “Hell, you know there ain’t no telegraph wire up longer than two days anywhere in the West without a ghoul of some sort rippin’ it down.” Charlie looked around with interest as
he and the others rounded the trail and entered the outskirts of Tucson with its smelly stock pens and ancient adobe hovels from which the smell of spicy Mexican meat rose from brick chimneys. “Word of our escape from hell won’t get out here for another month yet.”

  “ Ah… Tucson.” One-Eye sat up straight in the saddle, his lone dull brown eye sparkling beneath the brim of his shabby brown bowler hat. “Been a while since we been to a town, amigos. I say it’s time to do a little stompin’.” He glanced at a narrow, three-story building with FOUR ACES painted in arcing red letters over the high false façade. “And ruttin’,” he added with a wolfish growl.

  “Three days here at the most, boys.” Ravenna looked around uneasily at the heavily armed men in skins and furs walking the boardwalks or slouching out front of quiet, dark Mexican cantinas or the more rollicking saloons. Bounty hunters, most likely. “And we keep our heads down and stay out of trouble. A few drinks, a few girls, a little harmless fun.”

  She narrowed her eyes as she swept her admonishing gaze around the group. “But no trouble. Not even if it comes stalking. We avoid it at all costs. We are choir boys—remember that. We are the humble and meek and we give trouble of every color a wide berth. We have, as the gringos love to say, bigger fish to shoot.”

  “I think that’s ‘fry,’ chiquita,” Charlie corrected her, giving a snort as he ran his glance across a long, low-slung building on the south side of the pueblo’s main street, which a board over the shake-shingled roof identified as a U.S. Bounty Office.

  “Whatever,” Ravenna said, as Charlie led them toward the Rincon Mountain Dance Hall and Beer Parlor on the street’s right side, across a side street from a whitewashed Catholic church with a half-ruined wall around it. Several Mexicans in striped serapes and straw wagon-wheel sombreros lay atop the wall, hats tipped over their eyes. One had his arm hanging down the side of the wall, his brown hand still wrapped around the neck of a half-full tequila bottle. Another Mex lay slumped at his side against the wall’s base, a brown cur sniffing around the pockets of his white cotton slacks.

  Ravenna held back, looking up and down the street as the others drew rein at the hitchrack before which ten or twelve horses were lined up, the autumn-cool, late-afternoon sun shining on their backs.

  “Come, chiquita,” Charlie called to the witch as he swung down from the leather. “I’ll let you buy the first round.” He grinned, hitched up his blue wool cavalry trousers that showed the wear, tear, and campfire smoke of the long trek from Colorado, and adjusted the black holster containing Warden Mondrick’s.44.

  “Me…” Ravenna said, narrowing her eyes at a building farther up the crooked main street. “I’m gonna have a long, hot bath. Scrub some o’ the trail dust off my lovely body. I’ll find you scalawags later.”

  “Ah, come on.” Charlie beckoned to the black-haired sorceress. “One drink, and I’ll join you!”

  He grinned again.

  Ravenna turned to him, one eye narrowed speculatively. She looked at the big, gaudily decorated building before her and from which came manic piano patter and the low rumble of male conversation. “I guess it couldn’t hurt to see that you boys get our little sojourn here off on the right, quiet foot.” Ravenna put her horse up to the hitchrack, swung down from the saddle, and tossed her reins over the tie rail. “And I sure could use some tequila and carne asada!”

  “Now you’re talkin’!” Charlie wrapped a long arm around the young woman’s neck, leaning into her and glancing down her open vest as they followed the others up the porch steps and through the batwings. He’d forgiven the mercurial witch for changing him into a javelina under the waterfall. Or, at least, with the prospect of the treasure she was leading them to, he’d filed the transgression in the back of his mind for later.

  “Welcome, gents…and, uh…senorita!” rumbled a jovial voice from the bar. The barman, a big, mustached, square-headed man in a white silk shirt, string tie, and paisley vest, was filling a schooner from a beer spigot. “Sit an’ light a spell. Less’n you’re spooks, that is. Don’t allow ’em on the premises even if their pockets are loaded with silver!”

  He tipped his head back and laughed as he swiped a flat stick across the frothy head of the beer schooner, sending a white spray of creamy foam shooting onto the floor behind the bar. He glanced at the plank sign nailed to a two‑by‑two ceiling beam about ten feet in front of the batwings. On it was crudely painted in a firm hand:

  NO GOOLS ALLOWED.

  IF YOUR A GOOL

  THIS MEANS YOU!

  Ravenna glanced at Charlie, who was still moving his lips and sounding out all the words, as he’d never learned to read above the third-grade level in his native tongue and was almost illiterate in English, as well.

  “Like I said,” announced the bartender, beckoning with a large, freckled arm revealed by a rolled‑up shirtsleeve, “come on in an’ sit a spell. I’ll bring your drinks out in a minute!”

  As the barman set the freshly poured beer on a tray and then carried the tray out from behind the bar, heading for one of the dozen or so tables, a good three-quarters of which were occupied by swarthy, bearded, sunburned frontiersmen of every stripe—mostly Americans—Charlie cut his perplexed gaze away from the sign, glanced at the other three men, and began tracing a zigzagging route toward an empty table toward the room’s rear.

  Ravenna remained in front of the batwings and jammed her thumbs behind her cartridge belt, a little apprehensive about the setup of the place. There seemed to be a lot of ghoul hunters in town, and that worried her. Not so much for herself—although she did have a sizable bounty on her own head in Arizona as well as New Mexico Territory and even western Texas. She was mainly worried about Charlie, One-Eye, Lucky, and Curly Joe. She didn’t have the power to allow them to turn at will, so they couldn’t turn until the next full moon, a week away. That meant they were relatively easy pickings for ghoul hunters.

  But only if said ghoul hunters knew they were ghouls, that was. And Charlie himself had said it best—there were few ways to tell if one was a werewolf at any other time but the night of a full moon.

  That thought relieved her apprehension somewhat.

  Another one took its place, tying a little hitch in her belly. Werewolves and ghoul hunters were natural enemies. Could Ravenna’s boys keep their heads when surrounded by the breed? Even after they’d had a few drinks and were hearing their wolves’ howl?

  Well, she’d never be able to get them out of here now. She doubted the crazy beasts realized how important it was they stay out of trouble, and what was at stake, all the power that was theirs for the taking once they got out of Tucson in one piece, with plenty of trail supplies, and reached the Lobo Negro Mountains three days southeast.

  Deciding that she, a witch of her formidable powers, couldn’t control three male wolves even in their human forms, she sauntered over to the bar, raking her spurred heels across the floorboards. She glanced at Charlie and the others just now doffing their hats and sagging into kicked-back chairs. Charlie eyed Ravenna with one brow arched questioningly.

  She indicated with a toss of her head that she wanted to stand at the bar, then clutched her rump and grinned to signify she was sore from the long ride. She continued striding along the varnished mahogany counter with its brass footrail, past the half dozen men standing there chinning and drinking and casting lusty glances Ravenna’s way.

  Ignoring the leers she was so accustomed to, she drew up to the gap about two-thirds of the way down and was met there by a second bartender, a stocky, black-eyed gent with a nasty scar on his lower lip that was in contrast to his slicked-back and pomaded black hair. A citified half-breed, Ravenna reflected. Probably Pima or Apache.

  Vaguely, she felt a little sorry for the man. She knew how it was to be an outcast, growing up as she had—a witch in the sprawling hacienda of a wealthy Mexican landowner who’d cast her out at an early age. Secretly coached by a half-breed peon witch whose family raised chickens and hay on her family’s e
state in southern Chihuahua, she’d finally been unable to suppress her powers. In a fit of pent‑up rage, she’d turned her taunting older brother into a lobo who’d run away into the hills howling and yipping like

  a moon-crazed hyena, never to be seen again.

  The half-breed gave Ravenna a dully inquisitive stare.

  “Tequila,” she said. “Put it up there with a beer, amigo.”

  While the Indian set about filling the witch’s order, the jovial barman took the orders of Charlie and the boys. Ravenna threw back her first tequila, picked up her beer schooner, and turned to face the room, hooking a boot heel over the brass rail at the base of the bar behind her.

  The jovial bartender hauled the tray of beer schooners and a whiskey bottle out to Charlie and the boys. He was the chatty sort, and as he passed around the beers and shot glasses and set the bottle on the table, he said, “You fellas don’t have to worry about no ghouls in Tucson. No, sir!”

  He turned to cant his head toward the rough-hewn men playing cards at the tables between Charlie’s group and the door. “We got some o’ the best ghoul hunters anywhere in the West right here in my very own saloon, and I’m proud to welcome Mr. Jesse James, his brother Frank, and their cousin Cole Younger to our fair territory.”

  He said this loudly enough to be heard above the patter of the scrawny little piano player in armbands and green eyeshade, smoking a loosely rolled quirley and hammering away at “Little Brown Jug.”

  A small-boned man with frosty blue eyes and a sparse blond mustache glanced toward Charlie and the boys and gave his chin a cordial dip. The man with the black beard beside him, a little bigger than Jesse James but with the same blue eyes, reached up with a sun-browned hand to pinch the brim of his battered felt sombrero. Cole Younger wore a tattered serape crisscrossed with bandoliers holding a good number of silver cartridges among the brass. There were six men with James and Younger, and the bartender proudly pointed them out, as well.