The Curse of Jacob Tracy: A Novel

by Holly Messinger

  Trace slitted his eyes against the cold he knew was waiting and stepped into the gray space. Starlight and fire-glow splintered in the edges of his vision. Boz’s form leapt out of the darkness, so bright he looked like a man-shaped moon against the dark rock face of the creek bed. The gray swirled around him, whistled with the wind around the horses and the scrub brush growing along the top of the bank—

  And the dark shape hunkered there.

  “Boz,” Trace murmured, “get behind the fire.”

  Boz shot him one wary glance and then turned to follow his sightline. He backed down the gravel bed, skirting the campfire, easing his guns clear of the holsters. The dark figure slunk along the top of the bank along with him, and Trace recognized the shadowy aura that clung to the inhuman shape.

  “All right,” he said into the darkness. “Come on down where we can see you, so Boz here don’t have to start shootin.”

  There was a soft snort from the cliff above. “Dunno, Prêtre, he look kinda spooky to me.”

  Trace glanced at Boz, who had both guns trained on the ridge. “Then I suggest you move slow and keep your hands where he can see ’em.”

  A rustle of the brush above the cliff, and then a rush of motion. A lanky form dropped like an oversized spider onto the sand, grunting as it landed. It hunkered there for a moment, giving the look of something bestial, demonic. But then it stood up, taller than the Kid, tall as Trace himself, buck naked and hairier than any man ought to be, but human.

  Mostly.

  Remy’s eyes reflected the low flames between them. His neck and shoulders were thickened, his back unnaturally arched. His teeth and jaw were distorted enough that his speech came out more garbled than usual. “Guess you know dat Kid been here.”

  “I did work that out for myself, yes.”

  Remy jerked his chin to the north. “He bout two hour gone, head on to ranch. Mebbe catch ‘im if we don’t wait.”

  “What made you change your mind?” Boz said.

  The loup-garou’s shoulders hunched—Sheepish, Trace thought, and then wondered if he was finally losing his mind. “He one of my kind,” Remy said, and looked at Boz. “You know bout dat, eh, Compair Lapin?”

  Boz glanced at Trace and holstered his pistols. “Can you track him?”

  “Better than you, Mitchie Boz. Specially in the dark.”

  Boz jerked his chin. “You lead.”

  The loup-garou’s eyes glinted in amusement. “You try an’ keep up.”

  Trace turned away and walked around the fire to where Blackjack was rolling his eyes and stamping his feet. He didn’t like the proximity of the blood and the wolf-smell. And his ears laid back at the sound of something stretching and groaning and a long, yawning whine that ended in a yelp. Blackjack tossed his head and whinnied in alarm. Trace steadied him with a hand and a murmur, and turned at the sound of feet padding across the creek bed.

  A black wolf the size of a small pony dance-stepped down the gravel toward them. The horses snorted and shied back. The wolf locked eyes with Trace, dipped his head regally, and then trotted away up the draw.

  “Handy,” Boz said sourly, and boosted into the saddle.

  * * *

  THE RIDE THROUGH the dark was slow and nerve-wracking. The horses didn’t like following the wolf, and because the wolf could see better than the horses, he kept running ahead of them and circling back. Several times in the first hour Trace thought they had lost him, but then he would appear again at Blackjack’s stirrup and cause the quarterhorse to shy and snort.

  After a while Trace decided if he was riding into a trap he’d rather see it coming, and opened up the veil a crack, casting his spirit-sight ahead of them. He could keep track of the Remy-wolf that way, follow the faint dark trail of its essence—whatever it was that was not human soul, that nevertheless clung to the flesh and bone.

  After a longer interval Boz rode up close to his stirrup. “Why are there no lights?”

  Trace pulled himself a little closer to reality, looked around at the landscape, and did not quite recognize it. “Are we that close?”

  “We’re not two miles out.”

  Trace squinted into the darkness. All he could see was a long stretch of black horizon, with aeons of stars stretching away overhead.

  “Stop,” Boz said. “Just stop.”

  Trace reined back. Blackjack stopped gratefully, blowing out his sides. Boz’s paint pressed in close, as did their two reserve horses. They were nervous, sniffing the air and twitching. The wind blew in their faces, too strongly for Trace to hear much else.

  “What is it?” Boz whispered. “What do you see?”

  He couldn’t see anything, that was the problem. Even through his spirit-sight, the prairie was a disturbing blank—the little critters had bolted for holes and crannies. There were horses out far away around the edges of the pasture, but none of the familiar man-spirits he should have recognized. And the loup-garou had vanished. “I think Remy gave us the slip.”

  Suddenly there was the thud of rushing footfalls—no more than three, at close range, and a large, growling body landed on the back of the sorrel gelding at Trace’s flank. The horse screamed and staggered, knocking into Blackjack. The snarling beast on its back tore at the sorrel with claws and feet, head bent over the horse’s neck, trying to bite. Trace yanked at the slip knot binding the sorrel’s lead to his saddle horn, and Boz reached around Trace’s back, fired his pistol at the beast at nearly point-blank range.

  The monster fell from the horse’s back with a yowl and thudded to the ground. Trace tried to untangle his stirrup from Boz’s while Boz fought to separate his reserve horse’s lead from his saddle. Everything seemed to come free at once, and Blackjack took off like a shot, racing like the devil was at his heels.

  Trace didn’t try to fight him. He bent low over the quarterhorse’s neck, gave him his head but applied firm pressure with hands and knees, trying to reassure the animal and slow his panic. They raced over the hard-packed ground, Trace praying that Blackjack wouldn’t put his leg in a hole or run them both into a fence.

  The thought had scarcely passed through his mind before Blackjack sailed up and over, landed with a grunt on the enclosed side of the south pasture, and then slowed to a trot, his sides heaving and his mouth fighting the bit. “Easy, easy,” Trace muttered to him, and the big horse huffed his annoyance. He was home now, he might have said, and what was Trace thinking, taking him out in the dark amid monsters like that?

  “Sorry, fella, sorry.” Trace patted the horse’s neck and wheeled him around to see what had become of Boz. He could hear hoofbeats coming fast, though not at the breakneck pace he had just ridden. There was a flash of white underbelly as Boz’s paint cleared the fence and trotted daintily up to Trace’s side.

  “You all right?” Boz demanded. “What was that? That wasn’t the Kid?”

  “I don’t think so. Let’s don’t sit here.” Blackjack was still moving agitatedly in a circle—he knew the paddock was close and wanted to go there, now.

  They let the horses set the pace, and they pushed to an agitated trot, as if being pursued. Trace kept looking behind them, but saw nothing, not with his eyes nor his spirit-sense. He hadn’t felt this blind in months, and he didn’t like it. Boz rode with a pistol in his right hand, head up and scanning the darkness.

  “Shit,” he said abruptly.

  They were almost upon the ranch’s yard, and it was dark. At this time of night, every bunk-house should have been aglow with lamp-light. On a clear mild night like this, the boys should have still been loitering around the fire-pit, but it was dark and deserted.

  The only light Trace could see came from Miller’s house. There was lamp-glow coming through the front door, because that door stood wide open. He could see no movement within.

  Far off in the distance they heard yips and yelps, and the sound of gunfire.

  “This ain’t right,” Boz said, in a tight, nervous voice. “Where is everybody?”

  They
rounded the corner of the dairy barn and came upon the remuda corral. The wind hit them fresh in the faces, and the smell of blood was like a slap.

  At least a dozen horses had been torn to pieces within the corral. Blood had pooled in the ring like black tar. One of the young colts had jumped, or been dragged, over the top rail and gutted there so it hung from its back legs in an awkward jackknife.

  “The Kid didn’t do all this himself.” Trace’s chest was tight with horror and a sense of doom. “It’s started to spread already. We need to get out of here.”

  “And go where?” Boz lifted the reins from his paint’s drooping neck. “These horses are finished.”

  “You think anybody else is here alive?”

  “You’d know better than me.”

  Trace brushed the veil aside and scanned the dark, still yard. He went deeper, felt further, into the bunks, the barns, the big house—

  “Miller,” he said.

  A single glimmer of life, in the boss’s house. They rode across the yard to the front porch, where Trace vaulted down and threw the reins to Boz.

  Boss Miller lay in the front hall, splayed on his back, as if something had forced the door open and tore into him before he could retreat. His shotgun was still in his hand, both barrels spent. His eyes were closed and there was so much blood Trace couldn’t even evaluate the damage.

  “He alive?” Boz called.

  “Barely.” Trace wouldn’t have guessed it, except he could feel the faint spark in him. He grabbed the carpet on which Miller lay and dragged the rancher’s body down the hall, around the corner into the parlor. Mrs. Miller was strewn across the sofa in that room. Her corsets and heavy skirts had protected her body from scrabbling claws, but her face and shoulders were slashed to bone. Trace covered her with a shawl from the back of the sofa.

  He went back to the front door and took Blackjack’s reins from Boz. “Come on. Bring ’em inside.”

  Boz dismounted without a word. Trace led Blackjack through the front door and down the short hallway to the dining room. The big quarterhorse’s sides scraped the walls, knocking down pictures and toppling knicknacks. He could barely squeeze the turn between the dining table and the sideboard, but once alongside the table he huffed in relief and began nibbling the daisies in the centerpiece.

  Boz led the paint in along the other side of the dining table, and then had to step up on the table and walk across it, to get out of the room. He hopped to the floor and started toward the front. “I’m gonna block up the door.”

  Trace followed him, intending to check the house’s second story, but as soon as they stepped into the front hall they heard yips and howls and footfalls, out in the yard and closing fast. Trace recognized the spirit racing toward them, as well as the snarling dark menace closing in behind. He shouldered Boz out of the way and slammed the door just behind the sleek black missile that hurtled across the threshold and skated, scrabbling on the polished floor, a good length down the hall before rolling head-over-tail.

  Something heavy hit the door against Trace’s shoulder, almost forcing it open. Trace kicked back, his boots slick on the boards, and thrust the latch closed. Boz was right behind him with the cross-bar, which they dropped into brackets on either side of the door. Miller was no fool—he’d made money in the horse business, and he’d built his house to be a fortress. Which begged the question, why had he opened the door in the first place? Had he heard the horses being slaughtered, and gone to investigate? Or had someone banged on the door, hollering for help?

  Trace backed away from the door, aware of a scratching and snuffling along the threshold outside. More footsteps landed on the porch, some thumping like boots, others clicking like toenails. Something yipped out in the yard, to be answered by a sharp growl from the porch.

  “What are they?” Boz whispered. “Jesus Christ, Trace—”

  “Eez wolves,” Remy’s voice said.

  They turned to see him, naked and bloody and panting, slumped against the parlor door, one hand clutching his bleeding neck. “But none like I never see.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Remy healed with astonishing speed. By the time Trace and Boz had pushed all the furniture up against the parlor windows, and tipped the dining room table up against the windows in that room—which required a complicated and infuriating game of backing the horses out into the hall, then stacking chairs in the butler’s pantry—Remy had licked all of his wounds he could reach and bathed the one on his neck with brandy and one of Mrs. Miller’s doilies.

  He also talked, in between lapping and gnawing at his hide. “I never see no’ting like dis. Remy track dat Kid to the yard, true nuff. But then I find dead horse, smell of Kid, smell of man-blood. Now smell of two wolves. Kid and new wolf-smell go to bunks. More man-blood, much hullabaloo, suddenly more wolves. New wolves spread out, track all over yard—every bunk, every corral. But they not wolves.”

  “They’re werewolves,” Boz grunted, holding up the table while Trace drove nails through into the walls. “Like you.”

  “Non.” Remy sucked at the bite mark on his bicep and spat onto the carpet. “Remy eez loup-garou, true nuff. Dat Kid one, too. These new ones something else. Change like dis take years, sometime. Not same night, and not like—” He paused, mouth skewed as he groped for the words. “Remy change little by little—sharper teeth, better ears, better nose. Get stronger. Heal quicker. First full moon change full wolf. That some scary experience, be damn sure. Years later, learn to half-change—use d’ears, d’eyes, d’nose, but still walk upright.”

  He shook his head, swabbing with the doily at the half-healed gash on his thigh. “Dees things outside, they like patch-up quilt—some ears, some tails, some paws, some walk like man. An’ dey all change immediatement after bite. That not normal. Most folks take many bites, long time to get infection.”

  “Hey,” Boz said, alarmed. “Miller was bit.”

  “He dead?” Remy asked.

  “He wasn’t,” Trace said, and they all trooped into the parlor. Remy appeared to feel no shame at striding around naked, and indeed his loins were so hairy he hardly seemed more unclothed than a dog or a bronc stallion.

  The loup-garou dropped to a crouch alongside Miller’s body, drew in a long sniff, and peered at the wounds. “Eez not bites. Dis all claws. Somebody want him dead, don’t want him changed, maybe.” Remy leaned his ear closer to Miller’s lips. “Don’t matter, he dead anyway.”

  “Trace?” Boz said, his voice high and tight. “Where’s Mrs. Miller?”

  Trace switched toward the sofa. The shawl lay on the floor; the body was nowhere in sight.

  Suddenly there was a chorus of yips and howls from the front yard, right beneath the parlor windows, echoing under the porch’s roof.

  “Oh, no,” Trace said, and they all lunged for the hallway.

  Mrs. Miller was on her knees before the front door, her shredded dress hanging off her shoulders, her furred paws just lifting the cross-bar clear of its brackets.

  Trace hollered and rushed forward, but she turned on him with a snarl, teeth and bone flashing in the ruin of her face, one eye gleaming gold and feral. The cross-bar crashed to the floor as Trace leapt away from the slash of her claws. She gathered herself to spring at him, but was caught by Boz’s bullet through her mangled jaw. She crumpled against the wall, but before Trace could collect himself to say thank you, a heavy body hit the front door and the latch gave way.

  A phalanx of horrors surged into the hall—a riot of claws and teeth and fur. Boz got off three or four shots before they overwhelmed him. Trace managed to get his gun clear but the first shot went wild as teeth closed around his wrist. He punched at a yellow eye—Pancho’s olive skin and mustaches above those teeth, he saw in a kind of nightmare—and heard Boz’s shouts rise to a shriek of pain. Trace fought like a madman after that—shooting wildly, punching and kicking at ribs, throats, hindquarters, but they laughed like coyotes and pulled him down in a mass. Claws sank into him; boots and
bare, hairy toes pinned him down. The creature on his chest had Red’s face, carroty thatch spread over his brow and cheeks like rust, breath of whiskey and blood in Trace’s nostrils. Its eyes were quite, quite mad.

  Trace strained and gasped and in desperation, slipped out of himself, hovered above the carnage in the hall, heard Boz’s screaming as if at a distance, felt the kicks and scratches and thumps to his own body as faint echoes, saw Remy’s lean fierce shape slash and twist free of the snapping jaws and grasping claws, and bolt for the door, ears back, running for his life. Trace felt a weak relief as the loup-garou cleared the porch and vanished into the night, pursued by two or three of the others.

  It was short-lived. Somebody seized his balls and squeezed. He came back to himself with a choked scream, and the devils all around him howled in amusement. Their laughter mutated into yips of excitement as a new figure, slight and tow-headed, appeared in the doorway.

  Head hung low, face rough with more beard than he’d ever grown in his life, the Kid swaggered through the pack and snarled at Red to get off Trace’s chest. Red slunk away with a submissive yip and the Kid dropped both knees into Trace’s ribs.

  There was blood on his lips, and a cold, cold smile. “Guess God didn’t tell you about me, huh, Preacher?”

  * * *

  THE MOON HAD risen, and a cold light spilled over the yard as Trace and Boz were dragged out into it. The wolves who still had fingers tied Boz’s arms to an old ox yoke, and hung it from the porch of the foreman’s house, just high enough that Boz’s bare toes dragged in the dust. It was plenty low enough that the pack could still torment him.

  “I always heard crucifixion was an awful way to go,” the Kid remarked. “My father used to say that Jesus and the thieves could’ve hung there three, four days if the soldiers hadn’t pierced their sides. I don’t reckon Boz’ll last that long, do you?”