by J. P. Sloan
I shout, “What are you―” before she flings me with a mighty hurl up onto the ledge. My chest slams into the sharp edge, but my hand finds purchase. I dangle for a moment until my feet clamber against the rock face enough to push me onto the ledge.
I roll to my back, sucking in breaths against the agony in my side.
Kate calls from below, “Go, Denton!”
“No!”
“Just go! Leave me!”
I want to respond, but my voice fails. My strength is spent. More than that, my will is spent. We can’t fight this monster. She’s come to that realization quicker than I have. And now she’s trying to save my life. At least one life. It’s her final act.
My wife is going to die.
I clutch at my chest as a sob lurches from my throat.
No. No, she can’t.
She can’t die.
I turn to the chasm once more. Magner shakes his hand to free the aspen from his bones. It’s in tight, however, and anger has taken him over. His face, a grotesque twist of rage and pain, centers on Kate.
And he strikes.
I close my eyes.
The stone beneath my shoulder rumbles.
Something inside me dies.
A finger taps me on the back. I suck in a breath and look up to find Odell glaring at me, his hat cocked half over his face.
“You gonna let that sumbitch limp away from this?” he grumbles in his gravelly tone.
“She’s gone, Lin.”
Odell shakes his head. “It ain’t over until that bone-chewing nightmare is put into the dirt. You know your mission. Now see it through, dammit!”
He’s right. I have a mission.
The pain doesn’t matter anymore. Neither does my life. There is only one thing that exists in Heaven or in Hell or here in this cursed space between. And that is Magner’s demise.
I wrestle myself onto my knees. Then to my feet. I steady myself, shaky, but enough to hold my own weight.
Magner swats at something with his unpierced hand.
I squint, and my heart races as I find Kate clutching to his arm.
She’s alive!
Kate rips at his flesh, bone showing now through the wounds. His fingers twitch as she slices through his gristle.
He swats at her, but only succeeds in slicing at his own arm with my aspen point. With a bellow, he withdraws his pierced arm.
Kate pauses and looks up.
Her gaze meets mine.
And she nods.
She pushes off of Magner’s arm, curving in the air until she latches on to his chest. Her talons dig deep, hooking into his ribs. He slaps at her with the broad side of his wounded hand.
Kate digs deeper into his chest, bringing her head up under his chin.
As her head collides with his jaw, her eyes flutter, and she falls away.
And it happens. He reaches for his chest wound. He reaches with his pierced hand.
I stagger backward until my back hits the rock face of the ramp. I draw in a breath, and I push away. My feet pound forward, three long strides.
I leap into the air over the chasm.
The flat back of the stake slams into my stomach. I shout as the air rushes out of my lungs. My voice blends with the crunching of bone. Magner’s hand twitches around the aspen stake, fingers flickering against his collarbone. The stake sinks into his chest, directly into his heart.
Magner’s entire frame convulses, making it impossible to hold on. I fall once again, landing on the flat of my back into the heap of Strigoi below.
The pile beneath me shudders, sending me back into the air and down again, as Magner’s body falls.
I struggle for breath.
My vision fails off and on, until my entire chest relaxes. I go numb.
But I’m breathing.
And before I black out one last time, I watch Magner’s feet as they twitch in their final throes.
t’s the silence that hits me first.
I open my eyes and try to cough. The sound that escapes my throat is more the squeak of an insulted mouse than anything worthwhile. I reach for my neck, but my arm won’t move. Nor my legs.
Nor anything else.
Piece by piece, the pain sets in. Christ, the pain! What had been knife-fire slicing into my side has become intolerable heat, spreading well across my chest. My leg complains to the point I wonder if my foot is still attached.
And my head. Thunder pounds with every heartbeat, just behind my eyes and sending lightning bolts down into my neck.
As I can’t move a single part of me, I just lie there. Darkness surrounds me, save for one ring of shadow well overhead. The ledge. A pitiful flicker of orange lantern light spills down from the underground city overhead, granting me the pale assurance that I am not, at least for this specific moment, dead.
But what of Kate?
I try to turn my head, but even my neck refuses cooperation. All I can do is take short breaths and stare up from my mile-deep grave.
The ledge overhead begins to ripple. Shadows mill about. Eyes glisten as they peer down at me. Seems the Strigoi have returned. Are they holding vigil? Or do they see an opportunity to feed? Are these the orphans Kate kept at bay, the ones who can’t be trusted not to bleed a man dry? Perhaps the very creatures who killed Hitchens and his wife?
If they find Kate dead beside me, they will have lost their Master. Outside of her control, this entire city may turn into a swarm of nightmares.
And if it’s true, if Kate is dead, then I won’t want to survive it anyhow.
So I wait. I wait and watch the Strigoi as they begin a slow decent on foot down the ramp. Their footsteps make no sound, so light are their bodies. All I hear is the fluttering of their clothes, or wings, or whatever else they brush against one another in the dark.
I try my voice again, but make no sound.
I need to know if she is alive. It’s all that matters.
Hands slip beneath my shoulders. Then my back and legs. These hands pull me free of my bed of Strigoi corpses. They twist me and tug at me until I rise to their shoulders, born up the ramp like a coffin in the tender care of undead pallbearers. The jolts send waves of fire and nausea through my body, but I have no recourse. I submit to the agony, and with each step the pain purifies me.
We pause for a moment as we reach the stone-hewn windows and edifices of the Strigoi city. There is shuffling behind us. Another phalanx of Strigoi.
With the very last ounce of my strength, I will my chin to the side to find Kate carried on the outstretched arms of her orphans. Her eyes are closed, her arm hanging limp. Lifeless.
But… she is Strigoi.
The orphans have abandoned their own dead in the pit. Why would they carry Kate up out of the depths unless there was something to save?
The flickering light and the view from my back, staring up at the cliffs beside us, grant me a moment of vertigo. I pass out again.
In and out, resting but in motion.
Prairie grass slides beneath me, steady and hushing. It lulls me back to sleep.
When I awaken, I find I have the means to cough. A rheumy gob rises from my lungs. As I turn to spit it onto the floor, I find myself covered in a wool blanket, lying on our four-poster in Kate’s cellar.
She lies beside me. Her face has returned to one that appears human. Her eyes closed. Her lips puckered the way they always do when she’s asleep. I steal a kiss from her lips. It’s something I remember doing before, so many times, when I was only occasionally Denton Folger.
I wrap an arm around her, wincing as I shift to my side, and rest my head on her chest. It had never occurred to me before that she never breathed when we slept side by side. There is no rising and falling of her chest. No tiny breaths or snores. Nothing but silent repose.
Another coughing fit snaps me awake. I roll aside and try to avoid hacking a gob into the bed. A hand slithers around my shoulder, gripping me tight. When I clear my throat, I turn back to see Kate blinking at me with a sensuous la
nguor.
“Hi,” I wheeze.
“Good morning.”
“Is it morning?”
She nods. “I can feel it.”
“Are you all right?”
“I am.” She runs her hand up to my face and cradles it. “Mostly,” she adds with a wince as she shifts her shoulder.
I close my eyes into the chilly smoothness of her palm as she asks, “And you?”
“I might be dying.”
She grins, but it fades rapidly. “I will never allow that.”
“If it were so simple.”
She tries to sit up, but her eyes clamp down in a fit of pain. She reaches for her shoulder.
I ease her arm away. “You broke a wing. Don’t know what that means to you, but―”
“I shall heal.”
“Then you should rest, while the sun is out.”
I run a hand over my side. My stomach feels hard and tight, not from muscle but from injury. When I roll to swing my legs off the bed, it sends hot waves of nausea up through my gullet.
“Don’t leave me,” she whispers.
“I’ll protect you while you sleep.”
“No. Don’t go.”
“Kate,” I whisper. “You’ve saved me already. I won’t be lost again.”
She reaches for me, and I take her hand. I bend over as quickly as my trunk will allow and leave a long kiss on the center of her palm.
Her eyes slide shut, and I lay her hand over her chest. She lies there like some beautiful corpse.
The climb up out of the cellar is murderous. The cellar doors swing out into filmy sunlight, streaming through the remains of the brush fire still raging to the west. I slip out into the prairie grass as quickly as I can, hoping the smoke has choked out enough sunlight to let Kate slumber.
The struggle takes its toll. I slump against the closed cellar doors, arms spread out against the pine boards, gripping on to it like a man lost at sea, latching on to the side of some flotsam. The fire spreads all through my gut, down into my groin and up to my neck. I want to vomit, but this isn’t a stomach complaint. Something is deeply injured inside me, and I feel it’s going to take my life.
I can’t leave her. Not yet. I need to hold on for at least one more sunset.
My eyes close as the winter wind slices across my back. It helps to keep me from a deep slumber, reminding me that I am alive, though in agony. It keeps me from slipping away.
Just one more sunset. That’s all I ask, God. If you have ever existed, if you’ve guided my hand these past weeks, you’ll grant me one last sunset with my love.
I jerk awake after an unexpected nap. The sun is brighter, warming my back just a little. The smoke has subsided, either by virtue of the fire running its course or the winds shifting. I can’t know, nor muster the first moment’s care of it.
I listen to the grass rushing all around me. The house creaks as it usually does during the stronger gusts. This moment of peace has been hard earned. Finally, all of the cannibals are gone. If only there were more survivors.
Even those who have been killed can’t find purchase to haunt my thoughts. I may have been responsible to some degree, a degree no more credible than any battlefield commander’s.
The wind rushing through the grass sings its elegy for me. I’m embraced by it, that soft and gentle sound.
And the sound of hoofbeats.
Hoofbeats?
I cock my head to the side, wincing at the sunlight, and listen. Yes. Riders approaching. More than two.
And where am I? Clutched to the cellar doors. Are these townsfolk, possibly coming to cleanse their valley of the monster and her husband? Or are they interlopers? Even in the most peaceful of years, I’d learned to keep close watch on anyone traveling free on the plains. It’s too easy to take what doesn’t belong to you here in the frontier.
I must right myself, at least enough to draw attention away from Kate. I have to defend her. Something deep in my soul heard those horses coming hours ago. I knew I had to be here at this moment.
I push against the cellar doors. No good. I’m too weak.
This is more important than weakness. Even if it kills me, I have to stand.
I draw my feet closer and roll onto my haunches. Inch by painful inch, I walk myself upright with my hands against the side of the homestead. I sway in the wind, much like the dried grass around me. I’m a dead man, that much is clear to me. This has released something deep in the shell of my carcass that’s killing me ever so quickly. I might not see that sunset after all.
But at least I can save Kate.
My boots slip through the grass as I stumble away from the house. I make it halfway to the horse shelter before I spot the riders. I count six in total and reckon I should hold my ground here instead of trying to make it to the support of the shelter, lest I indicate my frailty to these intruders.
So I stand. Such a simple act should never require this much commitment.
The six riders swing in an arc around the front of my house, slipping up in front of me. They wear filthy traveling clothes, and each is armed with pistols at their sides and long-slung rifles near the backs of their saddles. The point man nudges his Palomino forward until I can make out the white of his eyes.
Blue eyes, crystal and piercing, consider me under bushy white brows. A lamb’s wool beard slings around sun-crackled lips. His face is weathered and aged, but his frame is considerable. This is a hard man staring at me from his saddle.
He turns to his left and motions for the nearest rider to approach. When he does, I squint through the sunlight to make out his face.
And I do make it out. I know this man riding second-horse. I know him well. Holcomb.
The white-bearded point man clears his throat and waves a flat palm at me.
“So is he the one, Hol?”
Holcomb takes a few breaths before replying with a few quick nods.
I take in the white-bearded man in detail as a delirious flurry of emotion swells in my chest.
I see it. The solar cross in silver, pinned on his coat.
It’s him. It must be him.
Gil McQuarrie.
He gives me another long, hard glare until he tosses another wave at Holcomb. “All right, then. Give him the water.”
Holcomb swings a leg slowly around his saddle and drops to the ground. He approaches with his hand in his coat pocket, and I find I have just enough strength to keep from pitching over into the grass.
So I nod at Holcomb. “You came back.”
He pauses, as if stricken by the very sound of my voice. I admit, it’s an odd sound slipping from my lips. Crackled and dusty like desert clay.
“Figured this affair had escaped your control,” he mumbles.
“Well, it’s over now.”
Holcomb blinks furiously. “Over?”
“That’s right.”
He pulls his hand from his coat to reveal another pewter flask, much like the one I’d been gifted by… well, by myself.
With a quick screw of its stopper, he waves it in two broad strokes, probably a cross, as some of the fluid slaps against me. I close my eyes and blink away the water from my lashes.
I just stand, uncertain what this test was meant to indicate, but as I put thought to the Godpistols’ mission, I feel it’s for the best that I’ve extricated myself from the cellar doors.
I open my eyes to find Holcomb turning uncertainly toward Gil.
My heart pounds. This is the man to whom Odell had devoted so much of his existence. He was, for lack of a better word, God in Odell’s eyes. And now, I finally see him, his face wholly unfamiliar to me, but the legend of the man still towering over my heart.
Holcomb declares, “Clean.”
Gil sighs, then peers over to my house.
“Take him inside and strip him. Check for bites.”
Holcomb’s shoulders tense, then wilt. He turns to me with misery filling his eyes. “Let’s step inside.”
“Holcomb?” I venture. �
�What am I supposed to do, here?”
“Obey. Just… do what we say.”
He reaches for my arm, but I pull it away.
“Keep your hands off me,” I grumble.
I hear a click of metal. The riders directly behind Gil have drawn pistols and have them cocked.
Holcomb steps in front of me with a hand held up behind him.
I look up to Gil, whose face is granite. “Holcomb,” I whisper. “It’s me. It’s Denton.”
His face eases a moment, and he waves his hand vigorously. “Is that you, Folger?”
I nod.
He squints into my eyes. “Magner’s dead, you say? What about Richterman?”
“You won’t have to worry about him anymore.” I give him a wink. “I know, Holcomb. I know everything, now. I’m in control.”
“You said it’s over,” Holcomb responds close to my ear. “What happened?”
“Magner’s dead, along with his minions. I killed him myself.”
Holcomb steps back and grins. “You did that?”
“Last night. They’re all gone. To the last.”
His eyes drop. “We’ve seen the town. Looks like a hell of a fight.”
A tear falls down my cheek.
Gil calls from his saddle, “No need for conspiring, Hol. You got something to say to the man, you say it for us to hear. You understand?”
Holcomb pivots toward Gil. “He says the Wendigo have been exterminated.”
I shake my head. “You know what they are, then?”
“Hunger spirit,” Gil answers. “Evil incarnation of gluttons and cannibals. Problem being, they appear in singles, not in groups.”
I take a cautious step around Holcomb. “Gil?”
His eyes narrow. “Have we met, sir?”
I suck in a breath, then clamp my jaw shut. And I laugh. A slow, ridiculous child’s babble erupts from my clenched teeth, and I can’t fight the emotion enough to compose myself.
“No,” I let slip between cackles. “I don’t suppose we have.”
Gil turns to his compatriots with a weary look. “Hol, take him inside.”
I hold Holcomb off with a stiff arm. “Get off me.” I take another far less cautious step forward, greeted with the brandishing of more pistols.