“You’re favorite,” she said.
I merely nodded as I accepted the drink.
I wondered for a fleeting moment if it was poisoned. I accepted my fate if it was—there wasn’t a version of me that would turn down good scotch. Besides, I was definitely missing the lowland taste. The blended stuff that remained after my bender wasn’t nearly as satisfying.
I sipped and smiled, slightly, trying to look friendly. Amalfi smiled back.
“Would you like some music?” Amalfi asked. “Maybe a film? We have a huge selection.”
“Sure,” I said. “What do you recommend?”
“Hmm, for you? I’d suggest either Heat or Ronin. If its music you’re after, might I recommend some early-career Warren Zevon? Or perhaps a bit of Huey Lewis and the News?”
Clearly, my mysterious benefactor knew much more about me than I knew about him.
She passed me an iPad, and I soon I found myself engrossed in a film. After what seemed like a short time, Amalfi tapped me on the shoulder.
“We’re here,” she said, beaming. She had, without my noticing, picked up my luggage. “Don’t forget to put on your shirt!”
I changed, and soon I was in the back of a Lincoln Continental. Amalfi was driving, and we rolled out of the private airport through West Texas. The bright blue sky seemed to go on forever, an endless ceiling of sweeping expanses. We drove past strip malls and drab, brown corporate low-rises, which gradually gave way to oil derricks and grazing cattle. It wasn’t long before we arrived at a huge ranch with a big, stone wall. The wall was topped with those spiky spear-tops popular in the old world. As we drove up to the gate, I wondered if my eyes were playing tricks on me, or if there really were infernal symbols in the stones. I chalked it up to paranoia as the gates opened, and Amalfi pulled the car through. The ranch was a sprawling estate, with several houses on the property and a huge pasture where a cowgirl was rounding up a herd of horses.
One of the houses looked like a guest house, while the others might have been stables. All the houses, except the mansion, were haciendas, with red-orange tile roofs and yellow adobe walls. The mansion at the center of the ranch bore influences of both the traditional Hacienda and the Southern plantation styles, fused in a way that was so perfectly Texan I had to assume the architects were Sam Houston and Tom Landry. Out past the pasture, I saw the telltale backstop of a shooting range. I also saw a small slope that might’ve been a bunker of some type or, perhaps, some sort of emergency shelter.
Amalfi pulled the Continental into the drive and got out, putting the hazards on.
She hustled around the side and opened the door for me, and I stepped out and saw a smiling, middle-aged man offering me a hand. He was wearing a bowling shirt identical to the one I had on and regular cut jeans that fell over a pair of mud-caked work boots. His face was weathered and beaten, with a nasty scar over the right side of his lip. His eyes glowed a soft, golden yellow, the kind you see in the rising sun, and a white Stetson adorned his head.
“Mr. Soren,” he said. “I’m so pleased to meet you. Name’s Jerry Vinter, and we’re brothers. Welcome to Acheron Ranch.”
I shook his hand. “It’s a nice place, Jerry.”
“Glad you think so, bud!” he said, grinning. “Come on in, we’ll get you fed, put a beer in that hand. Amalfi will handle your bags, don’t you worry about that. It’s time to relax.”
I forced a smile and followed him into the house.
The entryway was sprawling, with a grand staircase in an atrium that reminded me of a ballroom. Paintings, expensive landscapes, hung from every wall, and we passed an antique grandfather clock that looked older than both of us combined. The house dripped with Western class, a kind of monument to a nostalgic version of Texas that had never really existed. Revolvers in a glass case were said to have been recovered from the Alamo, while the head of a buffalo on one wall was noted to have been killed in 1871.
“I guess you used to do my job?” I said, examining a statuette as we walked.
“Did the shirt give it away?” he said, grinning. His teeth were yellowed, stained from tobacco. There was something endearing about the man. “There will be time to catch up later. Come on, let’s head out back. I’ve got some brisket smoking out back, and it’d be a shame for it to go to waste.”
Jerry strode confidently across the ample living room as he talked. A 42-inch television ran a 24-hour news channel in the background, filling the room with mindless chatter from talking heads obsessed with the day’s issues. Soon, we came to a sliding glass door. He opened it and motioned for me to step into the backyard. The backyard had a sprawling vista, with only the ranch’s stone walls obstructing the view between the porch and what felt like forever, all under a beautiful Texas sky. Contrasting with the scrubby desert of most of the area, the backyard had well-maintained grass that came right up to the stone patio. A few lawn games lay scattered about. The sounds of James McMurtry echoed over the twang of a guitar from a small speaker system, accompanied by the crackles and snaps of good barbeque.
The sound, though, was nothing compared to the smell—the rich, hickory aroma of real barbeque, Texas brisket, accented by the telltale scent of beer. On the back porch, five women sat around a table, some sipping iced tea, some sipping beer, all talking and laughing excitedly, as a sixth worked the grill. They were all attractive and copper-skinned in a way that reminded me of Amalfi, though they seemed to lack her almost animal jaunt. They each wore a different colored sundress, though I noticed the sundresses seemed to be of the same kind and the same pattern. Each woman wore a flower in her black hair that matched the color of her sundress.
“We’ll do some introductions in a short moment,” said Jerry, “but the brisket comes first. I’m uh, heh heh, sure you understand.”
He hurried over and tapped the grilling woman on the shoulder. She bowed slightly, and he moved to take over. He picked up some brisket and nibbled, savoring the taste. He turned to me and grinned a big, goofy grin.
“Just in time, my brother, just in time,” he said. “Let’s have some brisket!”
“You can sit near me,” said one of the women, patting a chair. Her honeyed accent dripped southern charm. “Daddy’s told us all about you.”
“He has?” I said, haltingly, as I walked over. “What has he said?”
I sat down and took a good look at the woman. She had shoulder-length, raven-black hair, done up in a loose ponytail. Her sundress showed off her shoulders and accented an ample chest. She had doe-like, blue eyes, almost icy in their color, and she smiled a smile that nearly matched Amalfi in both beauty and ferocity. Her face glowed with the serenity that women who know exactly how beautiful they are seem to carry around endlessly.
She passed me a can of beer, a Texas brand I didn’t recognize. I popped it and took a strong swig. From the look of it, I would be expected to have more than just one. I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to jump back into social drinking after my month-long frenzy, but it would’ve been rude not to, and I can’t abide poor manners. Besides, I’d been responsible with my Scotch, and I thought I’d earned a night or two of light intoxication.
“Daddy said you performed the same services he used to but got out of it,” she said. “He said you did it the conventional way, though, not the way he did.”
Jerry plopped down in a chair, putting his cowboy boots up on the table as he set down his plate of brisket.
“Zaira,” said Jerry, wagging a finger. “The way I did it was plenty conventional, just, you know, not in the way you might think.”
Zaira rolled her eyes. “Daddy, getting a demoness pregnant is not conventional in any way.”
Jerry shrugged, locking eyes with me. “A man’s got urges.”
I nearly choked on my beer. “Wait, you got out of a contract with…” I hesitated and didn’t name my Patron. Names carry power, and with my Patron, that kind of power came with frequent surveillance. “With our Patron by…by sleeping with a demoness?”
“The Patron’s mistress,” Zaira said, helpfully. “My mother.”
She smiled again. There was something unnerving about her smile, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
Jerry grinned. “Yup, old boy hadn’t thought of that, but it turns out deep in that blood contract, his missus had written in an escape clause, and I’d, uh, well…”
He motioned at the table of women. They giggled, almost in unison, a chorus of titters that seemed simultaneously endearing and disconcerting.
“I’d activated it.” His easy grin suggested he had more than a little pride in becoming a father.
“Wow,” I said. “My time must seem a lot less remarkable.”
“Oh no,” said Zaira. “Dad’s been tracking the gunmen that have taken his place, since he got out of the game twenty-five years ago. You’re the first of more than 100 to have gotten out alive.”
I nearly choked again. “Wait, out of how many?”
“Well,” Jerry said, rubbing his head as he sat down. “If you’d like to talk specific numbers, there were a total of 127 between me and you. That Miyoshi fella, the one whose throat you put a Wakizashi through, was the next longest lasting. Made it a year in service.”
“And you? How long before you, uh, escaped?”
Jerry stroked his chin. “I think it was about a decade.”
I was floored. I couldn’t imagine dealing with all the hassle and paranoia for a decade. Not to mention the sheer number of missions.
“Did you think you were the only one?” Jerry asked.
“Well, no,” I said. “Mostly, I was too busy trying to survive. I didn’t think of it as a process or anything.”
“It is,” he said. “It’s an honored position. Comes with a few different names. Sometimes known as the Duke’s Knife, or the Court Enforcer, or the Pact Warden. The job you and I did has been around since the first man took a rock to the neck of the second man.”
“The Patron, naturally, being the Duke in question,” Zaira added helpfully.
I was still trying to come to grips with the idea of Jerry doing the satanic hitman gig for a decade. In my two years, I’d eliminated 200-220 targets, or so, almost all of them in the Twin Cities area. Most were supernatural targets—vampires, demons, monsters. I assumed about one-third of them were humans. The Patron’s claws had helped mask the official numbers—other than Khalif, maybe three of my murders were ever even registered as such.
“How many—” I started, but he glanced at me with a flint-eyed look that made me stop.
“Now, this here’s a pretty new club,” he said, quietly, his look softening as he spoke. “And we ain’t got many rules. But, the rules we have, we’re gonna take seriously, okay? I’m gonna lay out two right now. The first is that we don’t talk specifics about what happened on the job. The second is that we don’t talk about how we got the job. That agreeable, brother?”
I nodded. Sensing my unease, Jerry gave me a big smile.
“But we can talk about the fact that we survived, my man. We can talk about the post. I’m sure you’ve got some questions. The, uh, Patron, ain’t exactly forthcoming when it comes to information. Speaking of which, we have to talk about our Patron. But that can wait until after the brisket.”
One of the girls coughed politely, and Jerry seemed to remember himself.
“Sorry, Nick. In my haste to celebrate our unique bond, I’ve been rude. Let me introduce the rest of my girls.”
He went around the table and introduced me to Vittoria, Gemma, Ornella, Nina, and Bianca. As he called their names, they smiled and waved those girlish waves where they waggled their fingers in sequence until their whole hand told you Hello. It struck me again how damn similar they were, like a pack of sundress-clad clones.
“And you’ve already met Zaira. By the by, Bianca did most of the work on the brisket,” said Jerry. “So, if you’re enjoying it, thank her.”
“Dad, please,” Bianca said, blushing slightly. “The servants did most of it, I just checked.”
“Servants?” I asked.
“Yeah, you met Amalfi,” said Jerry. “She’s our house bodyguard, chauffeur, and all-around go-to woman. We also have Cetara and Minori, some of my wife’s old holdovers. They’re cooks and housekeepers primarily, though their formal titles are, uh…”
Confusion crossed his features as he struggled to find the word. The big Texan sighed as he gave up, waving a hand dismissively.
“It’s some damn Italian word with too many fuckin’ syllables. The missus is bonded to southern Italy through some kinda blood pact one of the latter Caesars entered into, and she’s grown fond of the area, going so far as to recruit some of the local talent into her household. This goddamn Hell hierarchy shit doesn’t make any damn sense to me.”
“It’s medieval,” I explained. “Or, well, prior to that, really. Our Patron was a Duke, if his ledger is accurate, so your wife was a—”
“Duchess,” came a bass voice from behind me that sounded like the fury of the sea and the beauty of the night sky.
I turned and saw a woman with an Amazonian build—she must’ve stood six feet tall, and the sundress she was wearing showed off impressive musculature. It was a blend of the colors of her daughters’ dresses, woven together with a hypnotic, flowing, chameleon effect. Spiraling ebony horns framed her head, which was otherwise classically beautiful. Her eyes were a monochrome ebony that matched her horns and seemed to absorb all the light that came their way. Her hair was a soft, wavy, chestnut brown, cascading down around her shoulders to the middle of her back. She was smiling, but the smile contained no happiness. I tried not to look into her void-like eyes, staring into my beer instead. I couldn’t deal with this. Another damned devil, the real thing, despite how friendly she might’ve tried to look. I missed the days where I thought the worst devils of the world were figurative.
“That’s correct, Mr. Soren,” she said. “I am a former Duchess of Hell, and as such, am due retainers, sworn through blood and summoning to me and my house.”
She must’ve picked up on my anxiety, and she smiled. “Don’t fear, Mr. Soren. Or may I call you Nick?”
I nodded and risked glancing at her. “Nick’s fine, ma’am.”
“Don’t ma’am me,” she said. “Haven’t you heard? I was stripped of my title for falling in love with a mortal man.”
She stopped to stroke Jerry’s face. He blew the demoness a kiss. The absurdity of it calmed me down. My heart stopped racing.
“It was quite the scandal,” she continued, beaming with pride.
“What should I call you?” I asked. I doubted she’d give me her full name. Demons and devils, especially, are particular about true names. Names carry power. For several of my assassinations, I was required to first learn the true name of a target, which was an ordeal in and of itself. Some names, when mentioned, allow whoever is named to listen in on a conversation. They are also used in rites of summoning, dismissal, and, perhaps most importantly, binding. At least, that’s what the Patron told me. Most magic made little more sense to me than particle physics.
“I prefer to be called Mimi,” she said, grinning as she took a seat. She helped herself to several slices of brisket, the barbeque sauce dripping off it uncannily, reminding me of a lion with a fresh kill. “Tell me about Minnesota. I’ve never been.”
For a few hours, I talked with, Jerry, Mimi, and the girls. They were amicable enough company, if a bit fake, a bit shallow. We had the kinds of conversations I excelled at when I was in finance—talks of new fashion, of weather trends, of places to visit when you go somewhere…The usual kind of information swapped between people that isn’t very useful but passes time. Of Jerry’s daughters, only Zaira seemed to have a distinct personality. The rest didn’t quite finish each other’s sentences, but it was the kind of conversation where one of them would bring up horses, then the others would all agree that horses were good. Then another would bring up coffee…It was a bit eerie. Reminded me of high school
, when everyone aped what the popular kids liked, hoping to get a seat at the right lunch table. Amalfi came out and poured us some bourbon and lemonade cocktails from time to time, always serving me and Jerry first.
As the barbeque wound down, well after the sun set, most of the women excused themselves and headed to bed. Amalfi came out and lit some torches, and the drinks continued. It felt different, better, drinking with someone. I didn’t have a good read on Jerry, but in the time since I’d been under infernal orders, few had been nice to me. I flirted with Zaira, joked with Mimi, and traded stories with Jerry about being a cowboy. We played some lawn games, sang along to music, and kept drinking. I didn’t quite feel at home, but I definitely felt a lot more welcome than I had in ages.
Eventually, Zaira and Mimi left, leaving me and a more-than-slightly-drunk Jerry outside looking into the darkness. The night sky was alight; I’d never seen so many stars. The constellations were laid out before us, the dim glow of the Milky Way backlighting them. A chorus of crickets, occasionally joined by the howls of a pack of coyotes, completed the scene.
“I never thought there’d be another one, you know,” he slurred. “Another one who survived, anyway. That prick, the—what’d you call him? The Patron? He was such a goddamned asshole.”
“I mean,” I said, “he was a literal devil.”
“Yeah, I guess,” said Jerry. “Most of them are pricks, but not like that guy. Most of ‘em, they’re simple critters, out to get their prey, to control whatever petty domain they rule. The big guy, though, the Patron…He’s something; he’s something special. Claims he invented bureaucracy.”
“I believe it,” I said. “I’ve never met anyone more familiar with laws and codes and exactly what paperwork needs to disappear to ruin someone’s life.”
Jerry rolled his eyes. “Fuckin’ bureaucrats.”
The Devil's Gunman Page 3