by Devon Monk
“We promised Holland Kyne three favors,” Cadoc said. “One favor for each of our lives saved.”
“He saved your lives?” Miss Dupuis asked, surprised.
“It was long ago,” Cadoc said.
“It was that,” Alun agreed. “And a promise made to a dead man. We’ve done Holland his favor and the favor to his son, Lars. That’s two favors. Now that Lars is gone, the last favor dies with him.”
“Brother,” Cadoc said with soft reproach, “he saved our lives.”
Alun turned and glared at Cadoc. “We’ve repaid enough.”
Cadoc only shook his head slowly, the dark of his hair curled out to the side into points, his close-set, rounded features visible between beard and hair and scrubbed red from wind and snow.
“Perhaps your life was repaid,” Cadoc said. “Perhaps Bryn’s life. But not mine. Not all of ours. Three promises given must be kept. Madders do not break their vows.”
Alun grunted and pointed a finger at John Kyne. “This better be good. We are doing important work, Mr. Kyne. Work that might just save this land and a fair more people than who sit in this room. Now we have to halt that important work to tend to your favor that couldn’t wait. So tell me, what is it you want? And if you say more favors, I promise you it will be the first time I’ve shot a man in a house of God.”
“Mr. Madder,” Mae cut in. “Please, show some gratitude for our host. He brought us in, gave our animals food and shelter, and is offering the same to us. Without him we would be lost in a blizzard.”
“We weren’t lost.”
“Yes,” she said, “we were. And now that we are found, we will show our appreciation.”
There was a clear threat in her tone. A threat Cedar knew she could follow through on. Mae’s magic ran toward curses and bindings. She could make a very formidable foe, though he’d never seen her raise magic in anger.
“Widow Lindson, I do believe you are threatening me,” Alun said with just a bit of a glint in his eyes.
“Believe what you will, Mr. Madder.” Mae took a sip of her tea.
Father Kyne watched the exchange without much change of manner. He seemed to be a man with little expression beyond a serious, almost sad stare. Still, Cedar could tell there was something weighing on him. He certainly hadn’t brought the brothers here on a whim.
“What is your trouble, Father?” Cedar asked. “And how can we help?”
Kyne nodded. “Thank you, Mr. Hunt. The trouble is not mine alone. Although many of the town do not choose to worship in the church my grandfather built, our congregation was once very devout. Common people, miners, farmers, millers, and a few merchants, all gathered here.
“Many families too. Some young and of distant homelands, pushing west, looking for a beginning. Children worshiped here until three months ago when the children began to disappear. Called into the night, and gone, never to return home.”
“Children?” Alun asked, a little startled at the story. “How many?”
“Dozens. Perhaps hundreds. Ever since the star fell out of the sky.”
“Is this your favor?” Cadoc asked.
“Yes.”
“Then give it words that bind and speak it true,” Alun said. “Tell us exactly what you want us to do for you. And we will do that exact thing.”
“Find the children. All the missing children and return them to their families. Do not leave this city until you have done so.”
All the Madder brothers sat back, their chairs creaking. “That’s your favor?” Alun asked.
“Yes.”
“You had to say it that way, didn’t you?” Alun muttered. “You want us to find children who have been lost for months. Not just one, not just the living, but all the children. Did you see the blizzard beyond the doors? We promised a favor, not a miracle.”
“We will do it,” Cadoc said, throwing a stern look at his brother. “Just as you have said. We will find all the missing children and return them to their families. We will not leave this city until we have done so.”
Alun threw up both hands and exhaled. Then he crossed his arms over his chest and scowled at Father Kyne.
“Is there more you can tell us about their disappearances?” Bryn asked, ignoring Alun. “Has the local law been involved?”
“Yes. Sheriff Burchell has searched the city. He has found nothing. No trace of the missing children. But the mayor has done nothing.”
“Over a hundred children?” Alun grumped. “This could take years.”
“Was my father wrong, then?” Kyne asked Alun.
“Probably.”
“When he spoke of the Madder brothers, he said they were men above all others. Men who cared about the misery of their fellow man. Men who would never shirk to help the innocent.”
Alun scowled, his dark brows pushing wrinkles across his broad face. “Your father had a way with words.”
“What is the mayor’s name?” Miss Dupuis asked. “Perhaps I could speak with him.”
“Vosbrough,” Father Kyne said. “Killian Vosbrough.”
All three brothers looked at one another. They knew that name. They knew that man. But none of them spoke a word. Even Miss Dupuis seemed a bit startled.
“I see,” she said.
“But it is late,” Father Kyne said. “Perhaps morning will bring us all more rested to this endeavor.” He stood and gestured toward the doorway to the right. “There is a room, a fire, and blankets for sleeping. I am sorry I don’t have beds to offer.”
“No, that is fine,” Mae said. “We are grateful, truly, for everything you’ve given us.”
“Yes, thank you, Father Kyne,” Miss Dupuis agreed. “The tea was lovely, and your kindness most welcome.”
Cedar pushed up away from the table. He was bone tired. “I’ll do what I can to help find the children also.”
“Mr. Hunt,” Alun said. “You aren’t forgetting your promise to us, are you?”
“How could I? You remind me of it constantly.” He nodded at Father Kyne, then walked from the room with the women.
Wil lifted his head from where he had been drowsing near the stove. He got to his feet, then stretched and yawned hugely before padding off after Cedar.
Cedar wondered if he should stay and see what the Madders and Father Kyne discussed. Wondered if he should do what he could to warn the priest that making deals with the brothers could land a person in more trouble than bargained for.
But this time the shoe was on the other foot. Father Kyne was owed a favor by the brothers, not the other way around. It was no wonder Alun was so angry. Cedar didn’t know if the brothers had ever owed any man or any country anything ever before.
He smiled. It was about time the table was turned.
The narrow hall ended in a room that must have once served as a bedroom, but now looked more like a storage space. There was a chest of drawers and several shelves built into the wall. The shelves held some canned goods, three books, boxes of candles, and several bottles of kerosene and medicine.
Wool and cotton blankets sat folded on top of the chest, enough to make up fifty beds. A small stove in the corner put out enough heat to make Cedar wish he were dry and curled up beneath every last one of those blankets.
Mae and Miss Dupuis spread quilts on the other side of the room, then untied boots and took off their wet outercoats. Mae drew the combs out of her hair, and used them to brush through her long honey locks.
He found himself yearning to touch her, to draw his fingers through her hair, to hold the heat of her body against his.
“Do you suppose they’ll be coming to bed too?” Miss Dupuis asked as she rolled up a quilt to use as a pillow.
Cedar blinked and wondered how long he’d been staring, transfixed by Mae.
“I would assume so, eventually.” He walked over to the chest and pulled out five heavy blankets, then turned his back so the women could strip down to their undergarments. “I think Father Kyne was weary and ready to turn in.”
“And so am I,” Miss Dupuis said with a sigh. “I could sleep for a year, right here on this hard floor with nothing more than my dreams for a pillow.”
“Do you think they’ll start in the morning, looking for the children?” Mae asked.
Cedar shook out two blankets near the door, for Wil and himself, careful to keep his back turned so the women had some privacy. Enough time on the road together had afforded them a certain sort of ease around situations more civilized people might shy away from.
Time on the road had also set them into much worse sleeping arrangements than this.
“You heard them as well as I,” Cedar said. “Cadoc seems set and ready to see this promise through to fulfilling it, and so does Bryn.”
“And you?” she asked. “Are you going to search for the children? If they’re lost…like little Elbert Gregor… ?”
“Yes.” Cedar resisted the urge to look over his shoulder at her. “Even if they aren’t lost like little Elbert Gregor.”
“Good,” Mae said over the shush of crawling beneath blankets. “I had hoped you would.”
Elbert Gregor had been kidnapped for a man named Shard LeFel by the Strange creature known as Mr. Shunt. Cedar had killed Mr. Shunt, had felt him fall apart into bits and pieces of bone and bolt and spring. There was no chance that monster was still alive.
But there were other Strange, other monsters. The wind was thick with them. Likely, the town was thick with them. And Strange were known to steal children, though he’d never heard of a hundred missing at once.
As long as there were no bodies available for the Strange to wear, whether the freshly dead or the rare Strange-worked creatures built of cog and sinew, like Mr. Shunt, the Strange couldn’t directly harm anyone. They were spirits—bogeys and ghouls—reduced to haunting the living world and desperately looking for ways to become a part of it.
No, it made the most sense that the children of Des Moines had been taken for more common evils by more common men—to work mills and factories in faraway cities, or to do some other labor in this quickly growing land.
With the railway connecting coast to coast and all lines pointing to Des Moines, it would be fairly simple to send a large group of children off to the far corners of the country. But a child-smuggling business that large had to have a reason to pull so many from one place alone.
Cedar lay down and dragged a thick, well-patched quilt that smelled of pine up to his chin. He’d left his boots on and laid his hat on the floor next to him. Wil settled down too, groaning as he stretched out.
Cedar dropped one arm out to the side, and dug his fingers into Wil’s fur. They’d track the children tomorrow. He’d have most of the day to do so. He’d look for the Holder too.
And when the moon rose full, Cedar would ask Mae to make sure he was locked up, in the wagon or in a cellar.
The Pawnee curse turned him into a beast like his brother, but he had far less control over the animal instincts. When he changed, all he wanted, with every pump of his heart, was to kill the Strange. This tired, in this unknown city, he would be too likely to kill at random, kill people in his rage to destroy the Strange. He didn’t want to lose control near a city this size with Strange so near. He didn’t want innocent deaths on his hands.
He’d spilled enough innocent blood. With that grim thought, sleep finally claimed him.
Cedar startled awake as the Madder brothers tromped into the room. They each took a blanket and made beds, rolling up without removing coat or gloves, and snoring nearly as soon as they hit the floor. From the rhythm of breathing in the room, he knew Mae and Miss Dupuis slept through their arrival.
Wil twitched his ears. Other than opening his eyes into slits for a moment, he didn’t move.
Cedar closed his eyes again, but sleep shifted further from his reach. He rolled over, which didn’t do anything but make his back hurt, so he turned the rest of the way, facing the stove, the women, and the window, with Wil and the door behind him.
He was exhausted, mostly dry and warm. Why couldn’t he sleep?
The skitter and odd scratch of tiny footsteps brought him awake, all of his senses open.
Something was in the room with them. Something was moving with uneven clawed feet toward the women. Toward Mae.
Cedar reached to the floor for his gun. He tugged it from the holster, then sat, aiming at the noise.
The noise stopped. It took a moment, no more than that, for Cedar’s eyes to adjust to the darkness.
Then he saw it.
A creature with too much head for its spindly body, fully the size of a grown man, hunched over Mae, who lay sleeping. Its big head turned toward Cedar.
It was made of bits of straw, spun in a tight twist as if from a spindle, with dirt and leaves and long, wet pine needles caught within it all. The arms were too long, overwide hands dragging along the floor next to buckled legs that ended in tiny hooves.
The head was round, but the face was sharp, with no nose and a wide, slotted mouth full of pointed teeth. Two very human eyes glittered with damp light.
Strange. It had to be. But the beast inside Cedar was not stirring to kill it; Wil was not stirring to kill it.
He’d felt no warning that it was in the room, no warning it had crossed window or threshold. Yet it was so close to Mae it could strike her.
It opened its mouth and made a sound like a hissing moan, almost like crying.
If Mae held still, he could shoot it. He would miss the curve of her hip by inches. But if she or the creature moved, he’d surely hit her.
“Mae,” he said softly, raising the gun slowly to show the Strange that he was about to blow it to bits.
“Mae.”
And then the creature rushed him. It screeched and howled as it ran on all fours across the room and leaped for him, mouth wide, teeth glistening like knives.
He raised the gun again, this time pointing it toward the creature as it whispered, “Hunt-er. Run.” It opened its huge mouth and sank teeth into his neck.
Cedar yelled and turned the gun.
“No! Cedar, don’t!”
Mae Lindson grabbed for his gun hand, pulling it away.
The creature was gone.
Cedar blinked hard, instinctively pulling his finger away from the trigger, since the gun was held by both him and Mae, and remaining very still until he gained his wits.
“You were dreaming,” Mae said. “A nightmare. A nightmare.”
Cedar took in the room. No more than a few hours must have passed since they bedded down. The Madders were still snoring. Miss Dupuis was awake, sitting wrapped in her blankets, staring through the dark at him. Wil stood in front of him, head lowered, eyes glowing.
Mae crouched in front of him too, wearing nothing more than her chemise, with one white strap having fallen off to reveal the creamy curves of her shoulder, collarbones, and breast.
“You were dreaming,” she said again, pulling the gun gently the rest of the way out of his hand. “We are safe here.”
“There was a creature. A Strange.”
Wil’s ears flicked up, and he started around the room, scenting for the intruder.
Mae took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Here? Now? Can you see it?”
He peered at the corners, looking for any shift, any odd shadow.
“No. It wore straw and leaves. It was bent over you.”
“I’m fine. Nothing touched me. Do you want me to light a candle to see if you’re hurt?”
Cedar glanced at Wil, who had finished a full search of the room. Wil’s ears flicked and he gave Cedar a steady stare.
There were no Strange in the room. Maybe there never had been. Wil would have woken up if there were, wouldn’t he?
He wiped his hand over his face, rubbing away sweat, and realized Mae must have woken to see him holding his gun to his own head.
“Mae,” he said. “I’m sorry. I…It must have been a nightmare.”
“It was,” she said firmly. She slid his gun back i
nto the holster. “Can I get you anything?” she asked. “Help you in some way?”
She sat on her knees, beautiful and soft in the darkness. But she was also worried, and from the goose pimples on her skin, he knew she was chilled in the cold room.
“No, I’m fine,” he said. “Just fine. Go on back to bed. Morning’s coming soon enough.”
She paused, then leaned forward and gently pressed the palm of her hand against his cheek.
He wanted to hold her, draw her in to him, bring her beneath his blanket and warm her. But then she leaned away, walked back to her bedding, and folded down beneath her covers.
Miss Dupuis, still across the room, released the hammer on her gun like the slow crack of knuckles.
Cedar nodded slightly. She’d had a gun beneath the blankets aimed at him. Practical. But unsettling, nonetheless.
She shifted and stretched out under her blankets, but lay facing him.
Cedar rubbed at his hair and tried to settle his mind. His neck ached from where the dream creature had bit him. He pressed his fingers there and didn’t feel blood, though it was too dark to see.
He was no stranger to nightmares or the Strange. And he knew that creature had been watching them. It had known what he was and had called him “hunter.”
Maybe he wouldn’t let Mae chain him at the full moon. Maybe it was time for the hunter to hunt.
Rose left the house at a run. She’d overslept and dawn was already starting to shine up the sky. There was no time for walking now. If she was going to catch the train out to Kansas City, she was going to have to steal Hink’s horse.
But before she left, and even though it might mean she’d have to gallop a mile or two, she wanted to take one last look at the Swift. She was the first airship Rose had ever been aboard, and the first she’d ever had the chance to help repair. She couldn’t leave without saying good-bye.
The door to the big wooden shed was propped open by an overturned bucket. The voices of two men drifted out.
“. . .get word back to you soon, so watch the wire,” Hink said.